« ^ » “
I couldn’t have been asleep more than five minutes when I heard a pleasant, if annoyingly persistent, voice in my ear, a masculine voice that told me that this was Friday and that I was listening to National Public Radio’s
I didn’t remember setting the alarm, but the radio was a model so like my own that I must have automatically flipped the switch. Sheer dumb luck that it was set for seven-fifteen. Otherwise, I’d have slept till noon. Even though I only had one custody case scheduled for ten o’clock, missing it would not endear me to the Guilford County Clerk of Court.
My head throbbed, my eyeballs felt as if they’d been dipped in sand, and it took a conscious act of will to push my stiff and aching body off the lumpy mattress and stagger to the bathroom when every muscle whimpered for another five hours’ sleep.
Ten minutes under a hot, pulsating shower head washed away some of the sand and part of the headache. Another ten minutes of stretching exercises got rid of most of the kinks in my body. The kinks in my wet hair were another matter. I toweled it dry, gave it an inadequate finger comb and put back on the clothes I’d worn last night.
There was moisturizer in the bathroom but no lipstick and I looked like Death’s grandmother.
Morning sunlight streamed through Pell Austin’s front windows when I stepped out into the hallway and I did a startled double take as I came nose to nose with a wall full of faces from floor to ceiling. Some were animal, some human, some other-worldly, but all were carved in realistic detail from various dark woods and they peered out through a trompe l’oeil jungle that was part painted background and part three-dimensional vines covered with green silk leaves.
Through the open archway was a living room far removed from anything I’d ever seen in Colleton County. Or in New York City, for that matter. The jungle motif continued in the dark green walls and leafy prints on the loveseat and chaise.
Pride of place, though, went to a life-size stuffed lion who stood frozen in mid-pace in front of the windows. Instead of a swag of drapery fabric, a well-preserved boa constrictor was looped over a hunting spear that acted as curtain rod. The snake’s head curved upward and seemed to have its eyes fixed on a porcelain monkey that gibbered from the top of a decoupaged chest, but I couldn’t be sure since it was wearing dark wraparound sunglasses.
The end tables came in the guise of two life-size ebony native boys who knelt in slightly different poses with thick squares of clear glass in their hands. Both were buck-naked except for matching white plastic sunglasses. (The boa constrictor’s sunglasses had red frames.)
“So what do you think?” asked Pell Austin from the kitchen doorway.
“Well, it’s certainly different,” I said.
“It’s all that’s left of my
His blue chambray shirt had mother-of-pearl snap buttons and looked freshly ironed, his red-and-blue neckerchief was crisply knotted, and his thick gray hair had been neatly combed, but from his bloodshot eyes and the lines of fatigue in his long thin face, I wondered if he’d made it to bed at all.
“People expect designers like me to live in larger-than-life settings. It’s part of the window dressing. Besides, Dix’s granddaughter likes to ride on the lion.”
He stepped aside to let me enter the tastefully designed kitchen and I glanced around with even more appreciation than I had given it last night, taking mental notes for my own future kitchen. “This room certainly doesn’t—”
I suddenly saw we were not alone. Seated at Pell’s breakfast table in front of a bowl of cereal was a young child who wore pink sneakers, jeans, and a Bugs Bunny T-shirt. Her hair was as thick and straight as Pell’s, the color of beach sand, and it was plaited into a single braid that hung halfway down her thin back. The shorter side wisps were held back by two plastic barrettes shaped like little yellow ducks.
“Well, hello,” I said.
Her two front baby teeth were missing and so far, only the leading edge of one adult tooth had emerged to fill the gap. She gave me an appealing lopsided smile. “Hello.”
“I just bet that you’re Lynnette.”
The child giggled at my unconscious rhymes and glanced at Pell. “She makes poems, too.”
“Judge Knott, may I present Miss Lynnette Nolan?” said Pell.
“Judge Knott/ got a lot/ of hot—” She ran out of rhyming words. “A lot of hot what, Uncle Pelly-Jelly?”
“Fudge?” I suggested.
“Judge Fudge?” She considered and then nodded. “That would work.” She cut her eyes mischievously at Pell. “ ’Specially since I’m not supposed to say snot.”
He ignored the bait and she grinned at me again.
I am always fascinated by the genetic repackaging of children. Whenever a new baby is born into our family, we can spend inordinate time deciding where he got his hair and eye coloring, skin tone, bones, the shape of his chin, the crook of his little finger and whether that sleepy burp indicates Knott patience, a Stephenson sense of humor, or merely the Carroll appetite.
The only time I’d seen Lynnette’s mother was when I once stopped past Dixie’s boarding house in Chapel Hill to drop off some study notes. Back then, Evelyn would have been a few years older than Lynnette was now, but I
