easel. The paint was still wet in patches. Just finished-if it was finished. He had no idea. It wasn’t anything. Just a mass of conflicting patches of color, subdued color: browns mainly and grays. A yellow seam livened up the canvas, but it was thin; he could see the canvas through it. Looked as if someone had pissed on it. He sure wasn’t going to tell her that. He glanced at the worktable and saw the wreckage of paint tubes and plastic jars, empty, lying on their sides.
Her point was pretty obvious.
“What about this one?” she said, her voice as thin as the stream of yellow on the canvas.
“You’re out of paint,” he said, tired of the game she was playing.
“Very good!” she said, and started clapping. “Three cheers for the art critic.”
“Mom,” he said softly, but it was no use.
“Congratulations to the boy too busy with his little smelly games to help his mother when she needs him the most.”
“I’ve been trying-”
“His mother who is working her fingers to the bone to find her way back to the good place where the art happens and the success happens and the happiness happens.”
“I will get you the money, honest, I-”
“Oh, good. When? When I’m dead?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Dead? You don’t want me to say ‘dead’?”
He tried to leave but she held on to him, dug her fingernails into the flesh of his forearm until he winced.
“I will die, you know,” she said, her voice tremulous. “Cramerthis is what makes it possible to live.” She threw out her arm to indicate the meager handful of paintings displayed around the room. “Without it, I’ll just rot away. That what you want?”
“No.”
“Because I’m this close,” she said. “This close!”
He peeled her hand away from his arm. “Stop it,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll stop, all right,” she said. “I have stopped, thanks to you. You want some ordinary mommy who drives into work at the Wal-Mart. Is that it? Is this your way of making me pay?”
“Shut up!” he said.
And the force of his voice stopped her, frightened her. It frightened him, too. He’d never yelled at her.
“I do have a plan,” he said. “ I have a plan. It’s hard to do anything while I’m working, but I’ve…” How was he supposed to put it? “I’ve talked to someone,” he said.
“Someone?” she said. “Is she the one who stinks like a whorehouse?”
Cramer’s hands curled involuntarily into fists at his side. And his face must have looked fierce, because Mavis backed off, lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I… I didn’t mean…”
She walked over to the easy chair and sat on the arm, her back to him, looking out at the sunshine. Very slowly, he regained his composure, but his voice was shaky now.
“I’ll get your money. I don’t want to discuss it till I know more. Okay?”
She could have given him something then: a thankful smile, a little slack. She could have acknowledged what he said in some small way. Was it so much to ask for? But there was nothing. When she looked at him, her eyes got kind of lost, as if she wasn’t seeing straight.
“I should… find out in the next few days,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”
Her eyes found his, but there was nothing in her gaze but disappointment. No. It was worse than that. There was nothing in her eyes but disenchantment.
He turned to go. Stopped when he heard her clear her throat but didn’t turn around.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “Yelling at your mother like that. I don’t hardly know you anymore.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mimi slept in late. It was eleven before she stumbled into the kitchen, where Jay and Iris were sitting with the remains of toast and orange juice and a school yearbook open in front of them.
“Iris is trying to find my stalker,” said Jay.
Mimi leaned over Iris’s shoulder as she flipped the pages. She got to the end with no luck.
“Told you,” said Jay. “He was a figment of your imagination.”
Iris shook her head. “No, it’s what I said last night. He wasn’t remarkable in any way. I thought maybe the yearbook would jog my memory.”
Mimi helped herself to coffee, which was all she could face. She had a headache, a serious one. She didn’t drink much normally, and last night had not been good for her. She wandered out to the screened-in porch and stared out at a gentle rain, felt the cool of it on her face. It helped a little.
Rain without exhaust fumes. Strange.
What was she supposed to do? She needed to get Ms. Cooper-that much was certain. But then what? Her laptop was out at the snye. Clean clothes were out at the snye. She would have to go and yet she didn’t want to. She leaned her head lightly against the screen. She didn’t want to do anything. She heard Iris giggle about something Jay has said. She wanted to go home. No. Yes. Hell.
Der ungebetene Dritte, thought Mimi. That’s what I am. It was something her German grandmother used to say: the uninvited third.
Then Jay came out on the porch. “You okay?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.
“Do you want me to rescue the car?”
“I guess,” said Mimi. “We don’t want Bob the traffic guy to have a conniption fit.”
Jay chuckled. He had a good-sounding chuckle. He seemed more relaxed. Self-satisfied, she thought. Lucky man. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
She turned to go, then stopped and shook her head. “You know, a walk might do me good.”
So she walked into town in the rain, with a borrowed black raincoat of Jo’s and a very large black umbrella. It took half an hour, and by the time she got there, the rain had stopped. The sky was moving again; clouds were scudding-wasn’t that the word for it?
Ms. Cooper looked shiny and new, as if maybe Bob had taken her to the car wash. The note, however, was still on the windshield, bleeding ink, indecipherable.
By the time she had driven home, there were even blips of sunshine, which helped to revive her spirits. But when she pulled into the driveway, Jay and Iris were on their way out. Iris was just about to phone her. They were going over to somebody’s-did she want to come? But she didn’t feel like it. It would probably be someone else who was happy, and she wasn’t sure she could take that.
When they were gone, she realized that she didn’t feel like hanging out at the big house, either, or driving forty minutes to the snye. So she decided to take the kayak and head upstream. That would clear her head, she thought. And even though the wind was high, it wasn’t cold and looked to be going her way, even if the current wasn’t. Battling the elements seemed a good choice for the afternoon. It would take her mind off her headache, if not her mind-ache.
She didn’t want to take her purse in case she flipped the kayak. She was halfway up the river before she remembered her precious canister of mace.
The trip upstream wasn’t bad, under the circumstances. She hugged the southern shore and took her time. Soon enough she reached the reedy place just beyond which there was the slightest hint of a bay, though you’d never know there was a sly small stream at its mouth. Tentatively, she nosed her craft into the tall weeds. And they parted before her.
“I’m the New Age Moses,” she muttered. “In a flashy Kevlar basket.”
She ducked, felt the soft willow tendrils trail across her back. Then she was in the open again, and there was a channel here, deep enough to navigate, as long as she stayed in the very center. It was magical, even with a
