used to help her-and we had roomers, nurses from the hospital and such.' He spoke as if having roomers was a privilege. 'The best times were before my father came home from Canada.' Fred looked past me at my hunched shadow on the wall.
'What was your father doing in Canada?'
'Working at various jobs, mostly in British Columbia. He liked it then. I don't think he and Mother got along too well, even in those days. I've realized since that he probably stayed away from her for that reason. But it was a bit rough on me. I don't remember ever seeing my father until I was six or seven.'
'How old are you now, Fred?'
'Thirty-two,' he said reluctantly.
'You've had long enough to get over your father's absence.'
'That isn't what I meant at all.' He was flustered and angry, and disappointed in me. 'I wasn't offering him as an excuse.'
'I didn't say you were.'
'As a matter of fact, he's been a good father to me.' He thought this statement over, and amended it. 'At least he was in those early days when he came back from Canada. Before he started drinking so hard. I really loved him in those days. Sometimes I think I still do, in spite of all the awful things he does.'
'What awful things?'
'He rants and roars and threatens Mother and smashes things and cries. He never does a stroke of work. He sits up there with his crazy hobbies and drinks cheap wine, and it's all he's good for.' His voice had coarsened, and rose and fell like an angry wife's ululation. I wondered if Fred was unconsciously imitating his mother.
'Who brings him the wine?'
'Mother does. I don't know why she does it, but she keeps on doing it. Sometimes,' he added in a voice that was almost too low to hear, 'sometimes I think she does it in revenge.'
'Revenge for what?'
'For ruining himself and his life, and ruining _her_ life. I've seen her stand and watch him staggering from wall to wall as if she took pleasure in seeing him degraded. At the same time, she's his willing slave and buys him liquor. That's another form of revenge-a subtle form. She's a woman who refuses to be a full woman.'
Fred had surprised me. As he reached deeper into the life behind his present trouble, he lost his air of self-deprecating foolishness. His voice deepened. His thin and long-nosed boyish face almost supported his mustache. I began to feel faint stirrings of respect for him, and even hope.
'She's a troubled woman,' I said.
'I know. They're both troubled people. It's really too bad they ever got together. Too bad for both of them. I believe my father once had the makings of a brilliant man, before he turned into a lush. Mother isn't up to him mentally, of course, and I suppose she resents it, but she isn't a negligible person. She's a registered nurse and she's kept up her profession and looked after my father, both at the same time. That took some doing.'
'Most people do what they have to.'
'She's done a bit more than that. She's been helping me through college. I don't know how she makes the money stretch.'
'Does she have any extracurricular income?'
'Not since the last roomer left. That was some time ago.'
'And I heard last night that she lost her job at the hospital.'
'Not exactly. She gave it up.' Fred's voice had risen, and lost its masculine timbre. 'They made her a much better offer at the La Paloma nursing home.'
'That doesn't sound very likely, Fred.'
'It's true.' His voice rose higher, his eyes were too bright, his mustache was ragged. 'Are you calling my mother a liar?'
'People make mistakes.'
'You're making one now, running down my mother like that. I want you to take it back.'
'Take what back?'
'What you said about my mother. She doesn't peddle drugs.'
'I never said she did, Fred.'
'But you implied it. You implied that the hospital let her go because she was stealing drugs and peddling them.'
'Is that what the hospital people said?'
'Yes. They're a bunch of sadistic liars. My mother would never do a thing like that. She's always been a good woman.' Tears formed in his eyes and left snail-tracks on his cheeks. 'I haven't been a good man,' he said. 'I've been living out a fantasy, I see that now.'
'What do you mean, Fred?'
'I was hoping to pull off a coup that would make me famous in art circles. I thought if I could get to Miss Mead, she could help me find the painter Chantry. But all I've done is make an ass of myself and get the whole family into deeper trouble.'
'It was a fair try, Fred.'
'It wasn't. I'm a fool!'
He turned his back on me. Gradually his breathing slowed down. I felt mine slowing down with it. I realized just before I fell asleep that I was beginning to like him.
I woke up once in the middle of the night and felt the weight of the mountains squatting over me. I turned on the light at the head of my bed. There were old watermarks on the walls like the indistinct traces of bad dreams.
I didn't try to read them. I turned off the light and fell back into sleep, breathing in unison with my foolish pseudo-son.
XXIII
When I got up in the morning, Fred was still sleeping. One arm was over his eyes as if he dreaded the new day and its light. I asked the deputy on duty in the substation to keep track of Fred. Then I drove my rented car into Copper City, guided by the plume of smoke over the smelter.
A barber sold me a shave for three dollars. For a similar amount, I got a small breakfast and directions on how to find my way to Southwestern Savings.
It was in a downtown shopping center, which looked like a piece of Southern California that had broken loose and blown across the desert. The little city that surrounded it seemed to have been drained of energy by the huge wound of the copper mine in its side, the endless suspiration of the smelter. The smoke blew over the city like a great ironic flag.
The sign on the glass front door of Southwestern Savings said that the building didn't open until ten. It was not quite nine by my watch. It was getting hotter.
I found a phone booth and looked for Paul Grimes in the directory. His name wasn't listed but there were two listings for Mrs. Paul Grimes, one for a residence and the other for Grimes Art & School Supplies. The latter turned out to be in the downtown area, within easy walking distance.
It was a small store on a side street, full of paper goods and picture reproductions, empty of customers. The deep dim narrow room reminded me of an ancient painted cave, but most of the modern pictures on the walls weren't quite as lifelike as the cave paintings.
The woman who emerged from a door at the back looked like Paola's sister. She was broad-shouldered and full-breasted, and she had the same dark coloring and prominent cheekbones. She was wearing an embroidered blouse, beads that jangled, a long full skirt, and open sandals.
Her eyes were black and bright in her carved brown face. She gave an impression of saved-up force that wasn't being used.
'Can I help you?'
'I hope so. I'm a friend of your daughter's.' I told her my name.
'Of course. Mr. Archer. Paola mentioned you on the phone. You were the one who found Paul's body.'
'Yes. I'm sorry.'
'And you are a detective, is that correct?'
'I work at it.'
She gave me a hard black look. 'Are you working at it now?'
'It seems to be a full-time job, Mrs. Grimes.'
'Am I under suspicion?'
'I don't know. Should you be?'
She shook her handsome head. 'I haven't seen Paul for over a year. We've been divorced for a good many years. Once Paola was out of her childhood, there was nothing to stay together for. It was all burnt out long ago.'
Mrs. Grimes spoke with a direct emotional force that impressed me. But she must have realized that she was telling me more than she needed to. She put her left hand over her mouth. I noticed that her red fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and I felt sorry that I had frightened her.
'I don't think anybody suspects you of anything.'
'They shouldn't, either. I didn't do anything to Paul except try to make a man of him. Paola might tell you different-she always took his side. But I did my best for Paul whenever he let me. The truth is-the truth was, he was never meant to be married to any woman.'
Her hidden life, the memories of her marriage, seemed to be very near the surface, boiling cold behind her smooth dark face.
Remembering what Paola had once told me, I asked her bluntly, 'Was he homosexual?'
'Bi,' she said. 'I don't believe he had much to do with men while I was married to him. But he always loved the company of young men, including his high school boys when he was a teacher. It wasn't a bad thing entirely. He loved to teach.
'He taught me a lot, too,' she added thoughtfully. 'The most important thing, he taught me to speak correct English. That changed my life. But something went wrong with his life. Maybe it was me. He couldn't handle me.' She moved her body impatiently from the waist down. 'He always said it was my fault that his life went off the track. Maybe it was.'
She lowered her head and clenched her fists. 'I used to have a bad temper. I used to fight him hard, physically. I used to love him, too, very much. Paul didn't really love me. At least not after I became his wife and stopped being his pupil.'
'Who did he love?'
She thought about the question. 'Paola. He really loved Paola-not that it did her much good. And he loved some of his students.'
'Does that include Richard Chantry?'
Her black gaze turned inward toward the past. She nodded almost imperceptibly. 'Yes, he loved Richard Chantry.'
