'And we slipped on patches of oil for a week afterwards,' came a voice from behind them. Lee stood in the doorway, wearing a long, thick white terrycloth bathrobe, her hands deep in the pockets. The tangle of her hair spoke of the pillow, and an angry red smudge on the bridge of her nose snowed that she'd fallen asleep with her reading glasses on again.
'I'm sorry we woke you, Lee,' Kate said, and made introductions.
'You didn't wake me,' she said, and looked at Vaun to add, 'I'm often up early.'
'Lee, would you finish giving her the five-cent tour while I run her things upstairs?'
'Glad to.'
Kate followed Lee's easy monologue with her mind while working the alarms, stilling the bell, and carrying the bags up from the garage to the recently furnished guest room. She then checked every window and door, every closet, and (feeling slightly foolish) under every bed, before joining the two in Lee's consulting rooms.
The suite of rooms where Lee saw her clients shared a front door with the rest of the house, but was entered by a door immediately inside the main entrance. The rooms were self-contained, with a toilet and even a small refrigerator and hot plate.
The first room was a large, informal artist's studio-cum-study, with a desk and two armchairs in one corner and an old sofa and some overstuffed chairs in another. Three easels, a high work table, a sink, and storage cupboards took up the rest of the room. In the cupboards were paper, canvas boards, watercolors, acrylics and oils, big tubs of clay, glazes, dozens of brushes, and myriad other supplies that might be called for by a client putting shape to an image from the depths of his or her mind. It was a comfortable, purposeful space, but the next room, the smaller sand-tray room, was Lee's pride and joy. Kate followed the sound of voices back into it.
She had not been in the room in two weeks, and she was struck anew at the enchantment of the place. Three solid walls of narrow shelves held hundreds, thousands of tiny figurines. There were ballerinas and sorcerers, kings and swans and rock stars, horses, dragons, bats, trees, and snakes. One long shelf held two entire armies, one tin with knights and horses, the other modern khaki. Tea sets, tiaras, and teddy bears, the walls for a castle and a gingerbread dollhouse and a suburban tract house, thumb-sized street signs, creatures mythical and pedestrian, men, women, children, babies, a tiny iconic crucifix and an ancient carved fertility goddess, a porcelain bathtub, cars, planes, a horse-drawn plow and a perfect, one-inch-long pair of snowshoes. There were even the makings for a flood and a volcanic eruption at hand, when destruction was called for. Vaun was standing next to the taller of the two sand-tray tables, drifting her hand absently through the silken white sand and concentrating on Lee's words.
'—exactly right. That's why I start nonartists out in the other room, and ask them to try the paints or a collage or a sculpture. But of course, an artist is used to forming things into a visual expression, and it's not as likely to be therapeutic as the sand trays are. Here, where all the objects are already available, not waiting for manipulation, the unconscious is freed from aesthetic decisions and judgments and can just get on with telling its story through the choice and arrangement of figures and objects. The statement the final arrangement on the tray makes can be very revealing.'
'Revealing to you?'
'Both to me and to the client. When they have finished, I usually come in and ask questions and comment, and I often leave it up for a while to study it, though I do have a couple of clients who do one by themselves and then put it away unless they have a question. If I know the person well enough to be sure he can handle it, I encourage it. It's all therapy.'
'Speaking of which,' Kate interrupted gently, 'do you think this is the best treatment for someone just released from a hospital bed?'
Vaun did look tired, despite the short sleep she had had in the car, and followed Kate meekly up the stairs, past Lee's room on the left and Kate's on the right, to the large airy room at the end of the hallway, the one with no nearby trees, no sturdy drainpipes, no balcony, and windows that framed an incomparable view of the world. Lee had put roses on the dresser, delicate, tightly furled buds of a silvery lavender color.
'Bathroom,' said Kate, opening a door and shutting it. 'Television,' doing the same with a cabinet. 'Alarm button,' handing Vaun a looped cord on which hung a small black square with an indented button. 'It's not waterproof, but other than in the bath wear it every minute or keep it nearby. Push it and I'll be here in ten seconds. That's my room there, if you need anything during the night. Lee's is on the other side. If you want a book, the door at the other end is what we grandly call the library.'
'Does Lee really get up at this time, or was she being polite?'
'Lee keeps even weirder hours than I do. A couple of weeks ago she spent several nights at the hospital until about this time, but when she goes to bed at a normal hour, she gets up early, yes. She doesn't sleep much. Don't worry about Lee, don't worry about me. You are welcome here.' To her own surprise, she realized that she meant it.
'Thank you, Casey.'
'Kate. Call me Kate, please?'
'Yes. Thank you, Kate. Good night.'
'Keep the button near you, and don't open the windows until I rig a way to override the alarm. And turn off the lights if you open the curtains. Please.'
Vaun looked suddenly fragile, and she sat on the bed. 'Oh, Casey. Kate. Really, I don't think I can go through with it. Let me go home and—'
'Oh, God. Gerry Bruckner said you'd feel like this. Please, Vaun, just turn off your brain for a few hours. You're tired and unwell and easily discouraged, that's all. Tomorrow the sun will shine. Even in San Francisco. Yes?' Lee would have reached out and touched Vaun, to soothe them both, but Kate did not.
'All right, yes, you're right. Al Hawkin is coming?'
'For lunch. Good night.'
'Thank you, Kate. Good night.'
Kate slept lightly, every fiber aware of the woman who slept down the hall. She woke several times, at the short rattle of a cup in the kitchen, a door opening, once a short cry of words, Vaun's dreaming voice. The doorbell woke her finally, and she lifted her head to listen to Lee's footsteps as she went to answer it. The clock by the bed said it was ten forty-two. Hawkin's voice came up the stairs, and she relaxed, lay back and stretched hard, and in a minute got up to put on her clothes and go down to greet him.
The burr of the coffee grinder pulled her down the hallway, and she found Hawkin ensconced at the little table eyeing Lee's back with an expression of uncertainty and slight distaste. Lee was wearing one of her typical eclectic outfits, in this case baggy, paint-encrusted trousers made of Guatemalan cloth, a long-sleeved blouse of smoky plum raw silk, the sleeves rolled up, a pair of moccasins Kate had bought her in the Berkeley days from a Telegraph Avenue vendor, a starched white apron Lee's grandmother had made, and a pencil holding back the knot in her hair. Nothing to inspire distaste. Perhaps the pencil?
At her entrance Hawkin's face was immediately amiable and workmanlike.
'Morning, Kate. No problems last night?' She had been given an escort to the door and had talked to Hawkin after Vaun went to bed, so he meant after that.
'Good morning, Al, Lee. You mean this morning, not last night. No. no problems.'
There had been on Saturday, though, and perhaps that was the source of the look of distaste. Hawkin had come to the house to meet Lee and explain to her why she should leave, and Lee listened attentively and then, when he had finished, told him in the politest of terms that he was a damned fool if he thought she would, and why on earth should the official police assume total responsibility for a human resource like Vaun? The two of them had circled each other warily for the better part of an hour, two fencers testing each other's psychic foil in feints and flurries, never quite committing themselves to outright combat.
Suddenly Hawkin had stood up and gone out the front door. After a minute a car trunk slammed and he came back in with a familiar armload: Mrs. Jameson's old curtain wrapped around Vaun's paintings. He undid the parcel on the dining table, set them up along the wall, and with a sweep of his hand turned to Lee.
'So. You're an expert. You tell me what sort of a person painted these.'
Lee's eyes were filled with the wonder of them, and with an air of tossing her sword into the corner she went over to the paintings and knelt down and touched them. She studied Red Jameson and his sweating son and the innocent temptress and the painful young/old girl in the mirror and the slouching young man. After a long time she stood back and ran her fingers through her hair. Her eyes on the canvases, she spoke absently.
