It was from Mam. Sarah tore it open before the door closed behind Lutie. Margaret’s characters, round and thick, sprawled across the page, allowing only four or five words to a line.
There was more to the letter but Sarah didn’t read it. She read that last paragraph a second time. Then she stopped reading and rocked herself, Mam’s letter crumpled in one fist. Sarah set it carefully on the dresser and walked to the window.
Her toe struck the board to which her watercolor paper was tacked. Sarah snatched it up. “A self-portrait,” she said, and started to laugh.
It was after supper when Imogene came home. An untouched tray of food blocked the door outside the room. Imogene pushed it aside and went in.
On the windowsill a candle flickered in the draft, burning unevenly, a pillar of wax towering over the wick. Sheets of paper littered the floor. Pages hastily scrawled with paint, the water curling them into phantom leaves, were scattered over the bed and made piles on the chest of drawers. In the midst of this macabre scene was Sarah, bent over the parlor chair, her drawing board propped against the back. Her color box rested on the chair arm in a dark stain, with a cup of dirty water balanced precariously beside it.
Imogene lit the lamp. “Sarah?” Sarah looked over her shoulder at the sound and fixed Imogene with a blank stare, then turned back to her painting. In the lamplight her dress showed stains where the bodice and skirt had been used to wipe her brush. Lutie’s parlor chair was similarly streaked. Imogene watched Sarah for a moment, the little hairs on the back of her neck prickling with fear. She picked up one of the paintings from the floor, a picture done in purples and blacks. She held it to the light. It was a crude watercolor of a naked woman.
Imogene snatched up several more. All were depictions of women. Some were missing arms or legs or features. Most were nude.
Oblivious of everything, Sarah went on painting. Imogene quietly left the room and ran downstairs on tiptoe.
Everyone was gathered in the parlor, close to the fire. Lutie and Fred were engrossed in a game of checkers, and Evelynne, her party manners pitching her voice higher than usual and her thinning hair piled in a particularly intricate nest, was spinning her web for a distinguished-looking guest from San Francisco.
Imogene slipped by the open door unnoticed and, feeling her way through the darkened kitchen, lit the lamp on the pantry shelf. Back behind the applesauce she found the whiskey. Wrapping it carefully in a dishtowel, she hurried back up the stairs.
Sarah had finished another painting; she was trying to affix it to the mirror over the washstand with soap. The glass banged against the wall as she jabbed at it with the bar.
Imogene poured several inches of the whiskey into a tin cup. “Sarah?” She crossed the room and laid her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. The girl jerked convulsively, cracking the corner of the mirror.
“Sarah, put that down now, it’s time to stop.” She worked the soap bar out of Sarah’s hand. “Put the painting away,” she said gently. “We’re done with painting for today. I want you to drink this.” Imogene pressed the rim of the cup against Sarah’s lower lip. Most of the whiskey ran down her chin, but Imogene managed to get her to take a few mouthfuls.
“That’s the girl. We’re done with our work for today. Can you take a little more? Here, drink a little more.” Imogene spoke soothingly, pouring the whiskey down Sarah until nearly a quarter of the bottle was gone. The collar of Sarah’s dress was soaked and the room stank of whiskey, but at last the rigid muscles in the young woman’s face and back began to let go.
Imogene set aside the bottle and eased Sarah onto the bed. Sarah rolled her head on the pillow and smiled lopsidedly. “I been watercoloring.” Sudden tears drowned her eyes. “Don’t look,” she pleaded. “Promise me you won’t look. I think I’ve been crazy,” she confided. “I’ll be okay now. Don’t look.”
Imogene promised.
“A self-potrit,” her words were slurred. “Potrit-potrit-potrit.” She made a little song of it, wagging Imogene’s hand in time with the music.
“Gracie’s Matthew’s mamma now,” she murmured when she was near sleep. “Mam said.”
Imogene said nothing; the words came as nonsense to her, and she sat grim-faced and scared, her eyes never leaving Sarah’s face until the girl slept.
The wind buffeted the hotel, pawing at the eaves and setting the house to howling. Dry clouds raced across the sky, making ghostly shadows under a gibbous moon. Imogene spread the coverlet over Sarah and crossed to the window, taking the whiskey with her. With a chemist’s precision, she poured the cup one-quarter full and set the bottle on the sill. The ruined parlor chair still carried its share of Sarah’s artwork; pale legs and blood-black breasts leered obscenely in the silvery light. Imogene turned her back on it and, sipping her whiskey, watched the night. The dusty streets rolled away like white velvet, the trees silver and black. In the distance, a lone man leading a mule walked in from the sage. The desert hills behind him were stark and mottled in the moonlight.
Imogene finished her whiskey and turned from the window. She gathered up Sarah’s paintings, twenty-five or thirty in all, shredded them into the washbasin, and put a match to them. The paper curled and blackened, the flames leaping as high as the mirror. As quickly, it died away to nothing and Imogene scraped the ashes into the chamber pot.
Deep in a drunken sleep, Sarah did not stir.
Mam’s letter turned up the following morning when Imogene took the washbasin downstairs to clean it. Sarah was hung over, but Imogene made her sit up while they read the letter together. Finished, Imogene set it aside and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Margaret ought to have known better than to say what she did,” Imogene said. “Sometimes when people love you and you leave them, even when it isn’t your fault, they say and do spiteful things without meaning to. I think your mam was just missing you very much and her hurting made her mean. It may not even be true.”
“He doesn’t remember me,” Sarah said dully. “I guess it made me crazy for a little while. I’m okay if I don’t think about it. I’ll be careful.”
Imogene hugged her, her cheek pressed against the tangled hair. She held her, thinking. Mam’s letter stared up from the mess of blankets.
“We won’t let Matthew forget,” Imogene said suddenly. She lifted Sarah from her shoulder. “We will write every day. You write a letter to Matthew every day and at the end of every week I’ll post them.”
Sarah’s eyes brightened for a moment, then dimmed. “Matthew’s a baby.”
“Mam will read them to him. He’ll not understand much, but you’ll always be there with him. He’ll know he has a mother and when he’s older he’ll know you always thought of him, always loved him. I’ll help. We’ll start today.” She got ink and paper. “Sit up.” Pillows were pushed behind her and covers tucked around her until Sarah appeared upright and stable. Imogene spread the paper over a book and dipped her pen. “Dear Matthew?”
Sarah bit her underlip and then began, “My Dear Son Matthew…”
It was a short letter, filled with warmth and caring. When it was finished, Sarah signed her name, a shaky, spidery hand under Imogene’s sure black strokes.
The parlor chair and the washbasin were ruined. Imogene overruled Lutie’s protests and they were added to her bill. She replaced the broken looking glass herself, smuggling in the new one wrapped in a shawl, rather than face the same odd looks occasioned by the chair and the burnt basin. An hour’s scrubbing had gotten the worst of the soot off the ceiling above the washstand where the paintings had been burned.
Evelynne Bone, who had seen the paint-smeared chair and the charred basin, gossiped of it. One evening she made the mistake of cornering McMurphy while he waited in the parlor for his lesson. She told him what she had seen. “It smacks of necromancy,” she whispered with satisfaction. For her pains, the old miner told her she might put it in her pocket and ride on it; he didn’t know what “neck-romancing” was, but he’d bet the old bat had never
