The Rainy Season (21 page)

THE GUEST BEDROOM
on the ground floor of the house wouldn’t have worked for Jeanette, so Phil had put her in one of the two empty rooms upstairs instead, and had moved his own stuff downstairs for the sake of propriety. The arrangement wasn’t ideal, but it seemed best to him, what with his new guardianship of Betsy and all, that he give the women in the house as much privacy as possible. And beyond that, the ground floor guest bedroom, which was accessed through the darkroom, functioned as Phil’s workroom. There was a cube refrigerator in it, full of film, and plastic bins of filters and lenses and pieces of tripods. There were four filing cabinets full of finished prints, and a computer that he had only recently bought with the idea of loading it with thumbnail-sized images of his slides, which he could categorize and access at the push of a button. So far he hadn’t put anything into the computer except the photo software program, but one of these days, when he had nothing better to do with his time than sit at a desk for a few days …

He hung some shirts up in what room was left in the closet, and moved photo magazines and books off the bed and onto the shelves, thinking about last night’s conversation with the nameless priest. Elizabeth had clearly invented the story about the madwoman simply to learn whether he was aware of
any
oddly dressed female stranger. And later in his conversation, when the priest had mentioned the blue glass curio, other things had become clear. Phil himself had mentioned Elizabeth’s advertisement to the priest—how much money was being offered for the piece of glass—but the priest already knew about it. Clearly there was nothing spontaneous about Elizabeth’s behavior, nothing innocent in her questions.

On the other hand, Phil couldn’t be
certain
that Elizabeth was merely using him, no matter what her motives were. She was an antiques dealer, and there was a fabulously valuable lump of ancient glass—or, as she insisted, sapphire—somewhere around town. Why
shouldn’t
she want to find it? It was her
job
to find it. And so what if she thought she had found him in the process? The priest’s motives seemed to be noble, but then it would be easy to cook up noble motives when there were hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake.

The back door slammed, and he heard Betsy’s footsteps crossing the kitchen floor. He went out through the darkroom and found her in front of the open refrigerator in the kitchen, and somehow the mere sight of her standing there made him instantly happy.

“Muffin?” he asked.

“Okay.”

He took out an English muffin, pried it in half with a fork, and put the halves into the toaster. “What do you want on it?”

“Honey and butter” she said, closing the refrigerator after taking out a carton of orange juice.

He was instantly reminded of Marianne, who used to put honey on everything—pancakes, cottage cheese, toast, cold cereal. “Honey’s in that cupboard over there,” he said. Betsy opened the cupboard and took it down, and when the muffins were toasted, she fixed them herself.

“I could make you one,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. He’d already eaten breakfast, but there was something in the offer that he couldn’t refuse. “You want to play catch later?”

“Okay.”

“So you never pitch?”

“Uh-uh. I’m first base or shortstop.”

“The school’s just down the road, on the other side of the neighborhood. We should probably go down there to play, where there’s a backstop. I’ve got a glove, but not a bat. We’ll have to buy a bat, and I can hit you some grounders. I think there’s a winter league that plays around here, but I don’t know when they start.”

“I think it’s too late,” Betsy said. “Can I play your piano?”

The shift in conversation made him smile. “Of course. Everybody always asks me to play, but they always want the same song.”

“Which one?” Betsy asked innocently.

“They always want me to play ‘Far Far Away,’ ”Phil said, grinning at her.

Betsy nodded. The muffin popped up in the toaster, and she squeezed margarine on it. “I never heard that one.” But then, before he had to explain his joke, she grinned at him and rolled her eyes. “That’s
dumb
,” she said.

Phil shrugged. “It’s the only music joke I know.”

“I’ll make one for Jen,” Betsy said, taking a muffin out of the bag and working at it with the fork. She found a plate, and when the muffin was toasted and buttered, she squeezed honey on it, too. Phil followed her upstairs.

“Jen?” Phil asked. “You call her Jen, not Jeanette?”

“She said she likes Jen. I was in there this morning already. I showed her where things were.”

“How did you know where things were?”

“I looked.”

“Good,” he said. “You’re taking good care of her.”

Betsy knocked softly on her door, then pushed it open a crack and peered in. “She’s awake,” Betsy whispered. “Should I go in?”

“Go in,” Phil said. “See if she wants company.”

Betsy tiptoed in, closing the door softly behind her. In a moment she returned. “She says come in,” she said, holding the door open now.

Jeanette was sitting up in bed. His mother’s nightgown and robe fit her perfectly, and she looked entirely at home in them. This morning he was once more struck by her beauty, by her full black hair and dark eyes. She was younger than he had thought she was last night, although there was something pensive in her eyes that suggested a depth of understanding beyond her years. She stared out the window now as if her mind were wandering in some less happy place. Outside, the day was windy and clear. The distant foothills stood out in stark clarity against the morning sky.

On the bedside table lay a scattering of objects including several small toys. There was a finger ring with a hologram eye on a plastic disk, and two Winnie the Pooh plastic action figures with moveable arms and legs. A dollar bill folded up into an origami bow tie sat tilted against the lamp, and it occurred to Phil that the lamp itself might be the most fantastic sort of magical lantern to her. Did they
have
electric lamps in 1884? Certainly they didn’t have hologram eyeballs. …

“I showed her these things,” Betsy said, sitting down in the chair by the bed. “She wanted to know about things when she saw my watch. They didn’t have watches like this.” She held up her wrist. The watch was digital, with the time simply stated in a box at the bottom of the face.

“Betsy has introduced me to her Pooh friends,” Jeanette said, “but I haven’t really been introduced to you yet. I’m afraid I was a little bit disoriented last night.”

“I’m Phil Ainsworth,” Phil said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. She hesitated, then shook it, smiling at him, and he wondered suddenly whether women from past centuries were in the habit of shaking hands at all.

“I’m Jeanette Saunders. I’d like to thank you for taking me in.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Phil said.

“This is an English muffin,” Betsy said to her, handing her the plate. “I had to tell her about granola bars, too. She knew about oatmeal, though.” She watched Jeanette eat half of the English muffin, then took the plate from her. “Good?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” Jeanette said.

They sat in silence for a time, and then Jeanette pointed toward the open window and the distant hills. “What do they call those hills?” she asked.

“The Peralta Hills,” Phil said.

“We called that higher one Robber’s Peak,” she said.

“We still do.”

“Can you see those big house-sized rocks on top, just to the right of the peak?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re bigger than they look.”

“What do you call those? We called them Robber’s Lair.”

“Those are called Hermit’s Rocks now.”

“Hermit’s Rocks,” she said. “Do you know why?”

“There’s a cave notched out of the rock there, a little room. Supposedly a hermit lived there. He cut some of the stone away, squared out the cavern in one of the rocks.”

“I knew him. Paul Dubois. He was French. But he didn’t live there. Nobody lived there.”

“Okay. I’ve never seen any reference to his name. There’s not a lot of history written down about this area, actually. Just a few books, and most of them aren’t very good. Most of them sound like they were written by Sunday school teachers.”

“I’m a Sunday school teacher,” she said. “I
was
.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to insult Sunday school teachers.”

“I could tell you a tragedy about Paul Dubois. He actually lived in a cabin on the other side of Rattlesnake Hill. Do you still call it that, Rattlesnake Hill?”

“Yes. On maps it’s Rattlesnake Peak, but old-timers call it Rattlesnake Hill.”

“Old-timers,” she said, pausing afterward as if to think about the phrase. “Paul Dubois worked for the people whose ranch I lived on. He was a handsome man.”

“Was he?” Phil asked, suddenly conscious of the strangeness of the conversation. His late-night chat with the priest had prepared him for this kind of talk, but he still found it incredible.

“For a couple of summers he put out fence posts,” Jeanette said. “He died in a fall up in the rocks, actually. He was a good man, really. He tried to teach me French, but it didn’t stick. There was a tragedy connected to his death, actually—besides the death itself.”

Phil considered how to ask the questions that he had to ask. He would take the priest’s word for it that being too candid in his questioning wouldn’t make Jen any happier. “There was an object,” he said finally, “a glass object. I have to ask you about it, since it seems to be important to a number of people, and these people, apparently, think that you might possess it, that you might have … brought it along.”

“The blue crystal,” she said.

“That’s the one. I was told it was shaped like a dog lying down. There’s some idea, apparently, that you were carrying it when you went into the water that day.”

“Then whoever has that idea can look in the water for it. That’s what I would advise. They’re welcome to the blue glass dog. If I had ten glass dogs, they could have them all. And they’re welcome to the water, too. All of it, with my blessing.” She began to cry then, and Phil pretended to look out of the window. This was turning out to be awkward as hell; if he’d known
how
awkward it would be, he would have let the priest ask his own questions.

“You want it, too?” Jen asked after a moment.

“I don’t want your glass dog,” he said to Jen.

“Good,” she said. “You’re right not to want it.”

There was a long silence now. Betsy rearranged the things on the bedside table, then picked up Jen’s hand and slipped the hologram ring over one of her fingers. Jen smiled at her and regarded the ring. “Tell me something truthfully,” she said to Phil.

“All right.”

“Swear to it.”

“All right.”

“Are you a member of any secret societies?” She looked straight into his face, as if watching out for a lie.

“No,” he said, relieved. “I’m not a believer in secret societies, actually. I’m not even a member of any service clubs.”

“Service clubs?”

“Charitable organizations. I was making a joke. I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him. “It’s going to take me some time to catch up on jokes, I guess. Anyway, I shouldn’t have asked. You’re not the type. Are you familiar with something called the Societas Fraternia, though?”

“Yes, I’ve read a little about them. They fell apart sometime in the early 1920s I think. They lived in an old house in Placentia, which was torn down in the thirties. I have a photograph of it, actually, a newspaper photograph that was taken before it was leveled. Do you want to see it?”

“See it? No, I guess I don’t want to see it. The Societas no longer exists, then?”

“No. Not for … seventy-five years.”

Betsy got up now and headed across the room toward the door. “I’m going back down,” she said, nodding at Phil.

“Okay. Stick around close, all right?” She nodded again. “And I guess I don’t have to tell you to stay away from the well … ?”

“Don’t go
anywhere
near the well,” Jen said to her.

“I won’t. I’m not that dumb.”

“I know you’re not,” Phil said. “But I myself am going to say one more dumb thing before you go. Just in case you see anybody around the house or out in the grove or anything, come tell me. Don’t talk to strangers. And if there’s two boys hanging around out there, or if you see them down by the creek, come tell me about that, too. I$#8217;m not sure they’re as smart as you are.”

“Okay,” she said, and slipped out through the door, leaving it open behind her.

“What were we saying?” Phil asked.

“You were saying that the Societas was gone.” She sat back tiredly against the headboard and closed her eyes. “But I was wondering who it was that wanted the glass dog, if it wasn’t them. It was stolen from them, you know, from the Societas, with the idea of giving it to the mission priests at San Juan Capistrano.”

“Really? The priests wanted it, even back then?”

“Yes. And they weren’t the only ones.”

“Then I guess there’s no harm in telling you that the mission is still interested in it. This house has been used off and on as a rectory for local priests. For a few years it was owned by the church.”

She sat silently, looking out the window now.

“You know what’s funny?” she asked.

“What?”

“Paul Dubois, your hermit? I can picture his face quite clearly. I last saw him over a year ago, a few days before he died. He had actually been prospecting for silver up on the hill. There was a natural cavern in the rock, and he’d chipped it out with some idea of making a camp, you might say, that was out of the weather. Anyway, he was a living, breathing man, more real to me than you are. His life and my life were mixed up together. Not that we were lovers. But do you know what? He and May … he and your mother were lovers.”

Phil nodded.

“She bore his child. He died several months before. I don’t think he knew he had fathered a child. I guess I shouldn’t tell you all this, should I?”

“You should, actually. I’d like to know.”

“Now the world has completely forgotten Paul Dubois, hasn’t it? He’s barely even a memory. The man himself is gone, time out of mind. And May, too. You remember her, and … and maybe a few others, but things, people, simply vanish, don’t they? That’s hard, isn’t it? I think that’s hard.”