Outside the Lines (15 page)

Upon closer inspection, I saw that the bricks were crumbling in enough places to make me concerned about the building’s structural safety. The windows were leaded and ornate, but as we ascended the broken concrete steps, I noticed the white paint on the sashes was peeling. “This place has seen better days,” I remarked.

“It’s an old neighborhood,” Jack said. He leaned down and scanned the mailboxes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the manager’s apartment.” He ran his finger across the names posted on each box until he happened upon the right one. “Got it. W. Reilly. One-A.”

“All right, then. Let’s go.” We approached the first apartment door. Jack rang the bell, a muffled buzz. After a moment, when we didn’t hear any footsteps, he rang it again.

“Coming!” a woman’s voice cried. “Keep your panties on! Just need a minute to find my hair!”

“Her
hair
?” I whispered, and Jack shrugged. I imagined a bald little old lady rummaging around in her apartment.

A minute later the door creaked open and an older woman with cloudy blue eyes and a crooked black wig smiled at us. It was immediately apparent she had opted to locate her hair instead of her dentures. “How can I help you young people?” she asked. “Looking for an apartment? I’m afraid I don’t have any open right now.”

“No, actually,” Jack said. “We’re looking for any information you might have about an old tenant of yours. David West?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you?”

“I’m his daughter,” I said. “Eden.”

“Oh, Eden,” she said. Her expression softened as her eyes moved off Jack and searched my face. “You take after your dad, no doubt. I’d know those blue eyes anywhere.” She stepped back and motioned us inside. “Come in, come in. Pardon the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. “We don’t mean to intrude.”

We both maneuvered through the stacks of newspapers that lined the hallway leading into a small living room. The air inside the apartment was laced with the stale aroma of recently fried meat. My stomach gurgled at me—in my excitement to pick up Jack, I’d forgotten to eat. We were definitely going to need a post-errand meal.

“You’re not intruding.” The woman plopped herself into a well-worn tan recliner; the flowered housedress she wore rode up and exposed her knobby knees. “I’m Wanda. Wanda Reilly.”

“I’m Jack Baker, and you’ve met Eden.” We sat on the only other reasonable surface in the room, directly across from her on a tiny wooden-backed velvet love seat. I found the solidness of Jack’s thigh muscle pressed against mine reassuring.

“How is your father?” Wanda asked. “I’ve missed him around here.”

“Well,” I said, “I actually haven’t seen him. Not for years. Which is why I’m here. He sent me letters from this address and I was hoping you might have some information about where he might have moved. I’m trying to track him down.”

Wanda furrowed her almost nonexistent brows, pulling together the wrinkles on her forehead like a couple of window treatments. “I remember him trying to get in touch with you. He talked about you all the time. I always hoped you’d come see him.”

I looked down, unable to meet her gaze. “It was complicated. I don’t mean to make excuses—”

“Oh,” Wanda said, interrupting, “you don’t need to explain. I understand why it might have been hard for you, honey. What he put you through was just awful.” She dropped her chin toward her chest and gave me a pointed look. “He told me, you know.”

I felt Jack’s eyes on me, but I lifted my gaze and locked it on Wanda. I wasn’t ready to tell Jack the messy details of how my relationship with my father had ended. Outside of my family, Georgia was the only person who knew, and even with her I rarely spoke of it.

“What did he tell you about his life after he wasn’t with us anymore?” I asked Wanda.

“Well,” she said, “as I recall, he spent some years on the streets. Down in California, I think he said. Where it was warmer. David was a good man, but he had his problems, now, didn’t he? There were times I had to use my key to get into his apartment just to make sure he hadn’t done something stupid.”

I nodded. “He definitely struggled with his demons.”

“Don’t we all.” Wanda sighed. “He did good for a while there. Had himself a job at a little diner downtown.”

“What did he do there?” Jack asked. “Do you know?”

“He washed dishes during the dinner shift. The place is closed now, but back then, he claimed to like it since it left his days open to paint, but I never quite believed him on that point. He had his good days and his bad. The bad days got worse and then he was gone. Poof. Just like that.”

I swallowed before speaking. “How long did he live here?”

“Oh, not long, sweetie. About a year. But I remember that man. He had a way about him. So charming.” She tapped the side of her head with a veined and gnarled finger. “Haven’t lost all my marbles yet.”

“Did he happen to leave anything behind?” Jack asked. “Anything that might help us figure out where else to look?”

“A few things, I think,” Wanda said. “We can go check down in storage, if you want. I know I moved his paintings down there. I’m sort of a pack rat that way. Never want to throw anything away. Might be a box of his things there, too. Books and such. Just give me a minute to get my teeth in.” Using the arms of the recliner for leverage, she hoisted herself up, shooing Jack away when he stood up and tried to help her. “I can do it myself, son. Been on my own for going on twenty years now. I’ll probably carry my own casket.” She shuffled down a narrow hallway toward the back of the apartment.

Jack sat back down and took my hand in his. “You doing okay?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.” My pulse thrummed in my neck. I wasn’t sure if it was due to my nerves or the fact that Jack was holding my hand.

Jack squeezed my fingers. “Sounds like he loved to talk about you.”

I nodded. “She said there were paintings. I haven’t seen any of his work for years. I’m a little freaked out to think about what it might be.”

“You’ll be fine. If it gets to be too much, we’ll just leave, okay? I’ll have it picked up and sent to your house or something, and you can go through it a little at a time. Without an audience.”

“What do you mean, you’ll ‘have it picked up’?”

He looked away for only a second before answering. “I have a friend who owns his own moving company. He owes me a favor.”

“Oh.” I squeezed his hand, grateful for its warmth. “I appreciate that. A lot.”

“Not a problem.” He pulled his hand away and stood up as Wanda reentered the room.

“Let’s go, kids!” she said.

We followed her out of her apartment and down the hall to a padlocked door. She rummaged around in her pocket for a ring of keys and we both shifted back and forth on our feet as she tried at least ten before finding the one that opened the lock. A weak lightbulb illuminated a steep, narrow wooden staircase leading to a cement floor below.

“Why don’t you let me go first?” Jack suggested. “I’ll catch the cobwebs for you ladies.” He carefully edged around Wanda, who took his hand before taking her first step.

“Such the gentleman,” she remarked over her shoulder to me. “You better keep your claws in this one, sweetie. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

I caught Jack’s eye and gave him a small smile, which he returned with a wink.
Errand, my rosy-red heinie, Georgia. He likes me. Why else would he be here?
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was starting to like him, too.

We made our way down the steps. At the bottom, Jack let Wanda take the lead again.

“Down this way, on the end,” she said. “I keep a unit for abandoned stuff that I can’t quite throw out. I covered David’s paintings to make sure they didn’t get damaged, but after a while I had to toss the paints. They started to dry up. Like me.” She cackled at her own joke.

We waited another few minutes for her to sort through the keys and open the cyclone-fence unit. “They’re in the back,” she said. “Propped up against the wall by the couple of boxes of his, I think. I put his name on them, if I remember right. You don’t mind if I let you two get in there and root around? Instead of me?”

“Of course not, Wanda,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“T’ain’t nothin’. I’ll just wait right here.”

Jack and I made our way back into the unit. I sneezed a few times as the dust rose when he moved a few things out of the way. It didn’t take long for us to find the boxes Wanda had mentioned. Behind those, I saw the telltale white edging of canvas. The paintings were stacked in a row, maybe five deep.

“You want to look now?” Jack asked. “Or do you want to wait?”

My chin trembled before I spoke. “Maybe just one. For now. Okay?”

“Sure.” He bent over and pulled the boxes out of the way, then picked up the first painting. The light was fairly dim, but when he flipped over the canvas, I knew instantly it was my father’s. It was an oil of the last house he’d lived in with us, white and gabled with its small, square front porch. But the house itself wasn’t the subject of my father’s painting. What caught my eye was the flower bed planted out in front of the house—the glorious ocean of red tulips, sunny daffodils, and purple hyacinths. I had handpicked each one of the ugly brown bulbs that transformed into those blossoms. I would have recognized them anywhere.

“It’s the Garden of Eden,” I breathed, and my chest heaved and the tears spilled down my cheeks. “He remembered.” Jack gently set the painting down and rested a comforting hand on my back.

“Everything okay in there?” Wanda called out. “Is she hurt?”

I nodded as though she might see me do it. Yes, I was hurt, though I didn’t know to what extent. And standing in that basement amongst my father’s other discarded things, I wasn’t sure whether finding him was worth the price I might have to pay to find out.

David had no idea where he was going, but he drove like hell to get there. For a couple of hours, he headed south for no particular reason. The southbound on-ramp was closer to their house, was all. He could just as easily have been approaching the Canadian border. Instead, he and Eden had just passed through Olympia. If he kept going at this rate, they would be in Portland before lunch. There were lots of artists in Portland. There were grants he could apply for. Art schools where he could teach. He could make a home for his daughter there.

He didn’t know why he’d woken Eden and asked her to come with him. All he knew was he couldn’t take another minute in that house. He stewed for hours after he flipped over the dining room table. Lydia had asked him calmly to clean up the mess and then she stepped carefully through the broken dishware, going up the stairs and into their bedroom. She refused to talk with him when he came to check on her. She acted like he wasn’t even in the room, detouring around him to go to the bathroom before climbing back in bed.
Fine,
he’d thought.
You’re going to act like I’m not here, then I just won’t be here. Poof! Voilà! No more husband.
After he was sure she was asleep, he packed his bag, then went downstairs to load as many of his paintings as he could into the backseat of his Honda.

He’d never gotten violent around Lydia before. It scared him that he had. Sure, he’d ranted and yelled and said a thousand things he regretted, but he never lost control. His rage was usually directed toward himself and his failings. Always inward. Now that it had escaped and decided its own path, he had to leave. He needed to protect his family.

Eden’s soft snoring over in the passenger seat made him think of a purring cat. Her head lolled toward the window and a tiny drip of saliva hung in the corner of her mouth. Trying not to wake her in the process, David reached over and wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. She stirred but didn’t open her eyes. He knew he’d never hurt his daughter. Maybe he brought her along to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else. Eden was his inspiration. His reason to be the kind of man he knew he could be if he just could get a handle on the countless spinning tops in his brain. As long as she was with him, he could get himself together.

“Dad?” Eden spoke with her eyes still shut. “Where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?”

She lifted her head and turned to look at him with sleepy eyes. “I don’t know.” Her stomach growled and she clapped both her hands over it and smiled. “Breakfast?”

“Sounds good,” David said. He had about five hundred bucks in his wallet—money Lydia had stashed in what she thought was her secret hiding spot in the back of their closet. She put it in a box of tampons, thinking he’d never look for it there. How little she understood about desperation.

It was just starting to get light outside. He pulled off at the next exit and drove directly into a Denny’s parking lot. Inside, they ordered orange juice and pancake breakfasts.

While they waited for their food, Eden fiddled with the container of sugar packets. She was unusually quiet.

“What’re you thinking, Bug?” David asked her. “There’s a big cloud hanging over your head. We’re supposed to be on an adventure. You can’t have rainclouds on an adventure. They aren’t allowed.” He reached over and chucked her chin playfully, but she only gave him a wan smile.

“Did you take your pills, Dad?” she asked. She dropped her eyes to her lap. “In the mornings, I mean, in front of Momma and me?”

David sat back in the booth and blew out a heavy breath between his lips. “For a little while I did.”

“For how long?”

“A week or so.” He paused. “Why?”

“Well, if you weren’t taking them, it wasn’t the pills that made you throw the dining room table. Like you said.” Her voice quavered but she lifted her gaze to his. He saw the fear in her eyes, but it was laced with determination.

“I didn’t throw the table, Eden.”

She shrugged, a minute gesture that screamed she didn’t believe him.

“The thing is, the medicine stays in your body a long time, you know?” David explained. He was willing to do anything to take that look off his daughter’s face. He was willing to lie. “So when I had that little bit of vodka, it mixed with the medicine and made me lose control like that. You see, honey? That’s what I meant when I said it was the medicine and not me.”