Earth Colors Page 27

  “Father liked to paint,” he told us mournfully, slipping down another Mai Tai as full beers lined up in front of me and Jenny sipped a raspberry lemonade. “He was a wonderful painter, in fact; studied in Philadelphia, and even New York. His mother painted, you see … . It’s a family tradition, art. We like to think we’re like the Wyeths.”

  “You mean like N. C. Wyeth?” I indicated that I was very impressed. “Was he from around here? I’ve seen some of his paintings in a museum.” I didn’t mention that the museum in question was near his aunt’s ranch. I wasn’t supposed to know that yet.

  “Why, yes, my dear woman. The Brandywine School, you know.”

  Jenny chimed in, “The Brandywine School of art refers to a wonderful bit of heritage. It’s—”

  I held up an index finger, shushing her. “Hector was telling us about his father and grandmother,” I told her.

  He was in fact dramatically arching his neck and staring up into the beams of the ceiling, warming to a tale that would assure us that he was related to a noble tribe. Jenny nodded and fell silent again.

  Hector crooned, “Just one county east of here, you’ll find lovely Brandywine Creek, and its banks are fairly littered with men of artistic flair.” He took a capacious swill of his drink. “And a few women, I hasten to add. Grandmummy was able to persuade Granddaddy to let her study painting with Howard Pyle of the Brandywine School.”

  “Tell me more,” I said.

  Hector rolled his eyes, quite a show with all that mascara and eyeliner. “Heavens, my dear woman, the Brandywine was a regular mecca for artists, always has been … or at least, since its founding in the 1800’s, which by local history is really not all that old, but just the same … N. C. Wyeth was of the Brandywine School, and of course you’ll know his son, Andrew. And I think Andrew has a son, though I wonder at his sexual orientation … but Pyle was a very important illustrator of books.”

  It seemed time to sink the first probe. “I’ve seen some of his work in the Whitney Gallery in Cody, Wyoming.”

  “Ah, Cody … cowboys … Indians … and the domain of Miz Whitney and her royal court. She took Grandmummy under her wing. Whitney had a summer home there, you see, and she’d have all her artistic friends come out, and they all built homes nearby. So you see, Grandmummy eventually realized her girlhood dream and went west. She had the house here in Lancaster County and the ranch near Cody.”

  Hector’s monologue suddenly took a left turn. “But I did not inherit the family gene for the visual arts. No, I find the expression of my own dark soul in the theater.”

  “Does anyone in your generation paint?” I inquired, tossing the question in like I was only making polite conversation.

  Hector’s gaze was fixed in space some inches over my head. It seemed he found less resistance to his fantasies there. He pressed his lips together to silence a belch. “Precious William,” he drawled. “He went to art school, and learned all those brushy things, though he was never as good as father. Never. Father could paint as well as anyone. And Cricket, though what she’s done with it I cannot say. We never see her anymore. Little miss cutesy pranced away and left the rest of us with the work,” he whined, tipping his head from side to side in a burlesque of one child taunting another. I wondered whom he was imitating. “Or you could say she escaped,” he said more darkly. He took another sip. “More power to her if she did.”

  “Escaped what?” asked Jenny.

  “The family curse,” said Hector, with a flourish of his drinking hand. The Mai Tai slopped like a bathtub in an earthquake.

  I wanted to groan. He was talking, all right, but self-pity was a tedious topic.

  Jenny said, “Where did Cricket go?”

  Hector gazed briefly at Jenny from under veiled eyelids. “We don’t talk about Cricket,” he informed her coolly. “She left.”

  I signaled the waitress for another round of drinks, eliciting an indulgent smile from Hector. I asked, “Did you ever get out west on vacation when you were a kid?”

  Jenny gave me an inquiring look. I blinked my eyes to say, Just roll with this.

  “Yes,” said Hector. “Cowboys. Buffalos. It was up near Yellowstone National Park. My first love was a horsie named Gertrude. Ah, here’s my sustenance.”

  The waitress brought the drinks. I took tiny sips out of one of my beers while Hector got after it with his fourth Mai Tai.

  I said, “It’s cool that your family could afford two places like that.”

  “It was Grandmummy’s when we still went there. She gave Daddy the farm because it was close to Baltimore, and he was supposed to carry on the business. And dear Winnie liked the West, I suppose … .”

  “So you’d go and visit her during your summer vacations?”

  Hector lay a wrist across his forehead, smearing his greasepaint. “Oh dear, I’m getting a headache … .”

  Jenny signaled for the waitress. “I’ll get you another drink,” she said. Mai Tai Number Four was already almost gone.

  “Oh, that will help nicely,” said Hector, finishing his drink in one gulp. “They always mix them leaner when I start to put them away.”

  “What happened to the ranch?” I asked.

  Hector leaned forward onto his elbows, arching his back like the caricature of a fop that he was. “Oh, Winnie lived on and on. Outlived Daddy, even. Then suddenly … ooof! … she’s gone, too.” He put a hand to the corner of his eye, as if to brush away a tear.

  “What killed her?” I asked, emphasizing the second word ever so slightly. I hoped he was drunk enough now to pick up where he had left off on the phone the night he thought I was Faye.

  I had guessed wrong. He raised his eyebrows as if to express his horror at my asking such an indecent question. “Old age, I suppose.”

  “Was she good at art, too?” I asked, struggling to herd this sheep into the pen.

  Hector laughed unkindly. “She preferred puffy pink poodles,” he said, really laying into the p’s. “She was the only one in the family who adored things like Pennsylvania Dutch slogans painted on little plaques to hang in the kitchen. I always thought that Grandmummy sent her away in embarrassment. We used to think she was someone else’s baby who got switched with the real Aunt Winnie in the hospital. Except Grandmummy had her at home, and …”

  “And what?”

  “She was every bit as stuck to this damned family as the rest of us. Perish the thought any one of us should truly escape. Cricket tried … .”

  “She came back?”

  “Deirdre worked on her until she felt so guilty she had to come back.” He seemed to forget where he was for a moment, and then said, “And, having lured her back into the web, Deirdre sent her to live in the barrens. Our family gulag. She may as well have gone. I haven’t seen her in forever.”

  The new drinks arrived. Hector had to grope for his.

  “You can’t split the fortunes any finer,” I said.

  “No, you can’t,” said Hector, icing his words with bitter irony.

  Jenny gave me a What are you talking about? look. I turned to her and said, as if I were an old family friend who of course knew all this, “Hector’s family had a collection of very valuable paintings. Worth millions.”

  “Long gone,” said Hector. “Daddy sold them to pay for his … I’m so glad Grandmummy didn’t have to live to see it. I loved my grandmummy soooo mush … . She was a lovely woman. Art all around her and art within her.” He turned to Jenny. “You see, Grandmummy got to know all the artists, and began to trade in it, though you’d never hear her call it a gallery. She star’ out swapping pictures with friends, and before long, she was making stacks of money.” He swung out an arm to indicate grandeur, but it fell precipitously into his lap.

  “She built up quite a collection,” I said.

  “Yes. It wasn’t the land with her, it was the art. The land was Granddaddy’s obsession. E’cept the ranch. That was her thing. She bou’ it affer he died.”

  “It must break your hea
rt to see their estate fought over like this.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “How is Deirdre going to manage Cricket?” I floated this question past him ever so delicately, a butterfly of logic for him to follow with what was left of his heart.

  Something very dark passed across Hector’s eyes. “Deirdre …” He drawled the word, suggesting a deeply held rancor that was best expressed through innuendo, “ … says she can handle Cricket.” He looked away across the room, and this time the emotion was not the deceit of self-pity, but a very deep, abiding hurt. It was naked. It was raw. It required medication. He lifted his drink and swilled mightily.

  “I’m sorry, Hector. This must be very painful to talk about.”

  He was beginning to wobble.

  Jenny caught my eye. She mouthed the words, You’re good!

  The waitress came by to see if we needed more drinks. I shook my head. Hector certainly did not need another. He was the kind of drunk who got blotto all at once, providing only the narrowest interval of candor, and he would soon collapse. It was a pattern I had seen in many of the men who had sat near my mother in the bars she frequented before my father’s death forced sobriety on her.

  Hector’s was a sickening kind of drunkenness, but not as horrifying as my mother’s. She had grown meaner with every drink, moving toward cruelty, not honesty. She’d spit out judgments that could kill.

  But Hector’s lash was hardest on himself, and even in the depths of his decay, he still clung piteously to the defense of family. He wasn’t going to tell me anything that would hang his brother. I decided to use the last few moments before he passed out to see if, through ignorance, he might say anything that would indicate that Agent Wardlaw was on the right track. “Art,” I said. “So your family’s still in the business?”

  “Oh, yes, William carried on the tradition.”

  “Has he been successful?”

  “Oh, yes, very,” said Hector, momentarily bragging on anyone to whom he could claim relation, but he as quickly retreated to the vein of poison that so limited his soul. “He wiggled his way under the wing of all of Daddy’s friends.”

  Daddy’s friends. Were they the kinds of people Wardlaw had told me about? Cutthroat fancy boys who saw themselves above the law? “And Tert took over the gallery.”

  “In no time at all,” said Hector, his voice going into a lilt, as if he were telling a fairy story. He tried to snap his fingers. He missed.

  “So, your grandmother, your father, and now Tert—uh, William …”

  “Tert, Tert, Tert,” chanted Hector, demonstrating that he had been accurately named. “I don’t want to talk about Tert!”

  Okay, on to Jenny’s concerns. “Why hasn’t your mother seen a doctor?” I asked.

  “Deirdre says she won’t go,” he said dismissively, as if that explained everything.

  “What’s her diagnosis?”

  Hector sniffed and averted his gaze. This was clearly something one did not discuss in public. Drunks may not be able to keep track of whom they’re talking to, but they do have their standards.

  “And Aunt Winnie?”

  “We don’t talk about Aunt Winnie’s little problems,” he scolded, his voice rising to a falsetto of the old woman on the porch.

  Hector certainly was an actor. In the past few minutes, I had heard the voices of half the women in his family. Too bad he didn’t know that their castrating values had come to live in his head.

  I turned to Jenny. Any questions? I mouthed.

  She thought for a moment. “That’s quite an estate you’re telling us about. A farm here, a ranch in Wyoming. Who will inherit the land when your mother dies?” she inquired, straightening the saltcellar and lining it up with the mustard and ketchup, as if she were asking his preference among condiments.

  “Share and share alike,” he said, floating one hand up and away to evoke the diaphanous. As his hand floated down again, his face darkened with rage. “Mum-mums has not changed the will; just let it ride from Daddy’s take on reality.” He took a gargantuan gulp of his drink, then tried to set the glass down demurely, as if it were made of fine crystal. His pinkie even went up. I had to reach out and catch the glass before it tumbled. Almost whispering, he said, “The will was made so long ago that Cricket and I are listed as minor children.”

  Jenny said, “Is there a living trust, something that would spell out whether the farm should be kept a farm? The way land values are rising, I’d think that they’d have put in some sort of guidelines.”

  I shot her a cautionary glance. She was sounding too hopeful, her fishing line baited for too specific a catch.

  Hector made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, Daddy wan’ it kep’, sure. He applied for one of those developmen’ things … agricultural easements … wha’ever you call it.” He hiccuped, or perhaps it was a belch. “Cash on the barrelhead, and you get to keep your lands, or at leas’ your fucking pride!” He whipped his hand up suddenly, this time succeeding in knocking over his drink. It was no loss. He did not need another drop. Then he leaned forward and put a finger to his lips to indicate silence. “I can tell you this because I’ll never see you again, and you don’t give a shit who I am.”

  I said, “That covers the farm property. Who got the ranch after Winnie died?”

  “Taxes, mostly. She lef’ the res’ to charity. The poodle fanciers’ society, I suppose. Precious William went out to fetch the last few remaining family items.”

  “How sad,” I said, trying to match his mawkishness. “What was left?” “Oh, just some things that Grandmummy wanted to have stay in the family.” Suddenly he pressed his lips together to suppress a smile, but could not contain a snigger that burst forth, erupting fully into a guffaw.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Jenny.

  Hector squeezed his mascara’ed eyes shut. He was now cackling with laughter. “I c-can’t tell you!” he roared. “We have our little secrets!”

  I watched him snort and gasp, wondering if what amused him so was the knowledge that Tert had gone in search of a Remington but had come home with a fake. Did he resent his siblings as much as Deirdre did? Or did he simply resent being Hector?

  Jenny said, “Share and share alike. That’s not taking a whole lot of responsibility for how the estate gets divided, is it? That’s just leaving it for your generation to duke it out.”

  Hector’s laughter evaporated. He tried to focus his polluted gray eyes on her. It was a weird effect, seeing those eyes peering out of a face owned by such a different personality. “Tha’s wha’ Cricket said,” he informed her. “She kept telling Daddy, ‘Fix the will, or we’ll fight.’ But no one ever lissened to Cricket.”

  “So you’re fighting,” I said.

  “Not really,” Hector drawled, imbuing his words with a sloppy sarcasm. “Darling Deirdre is the executor, after all, so she parcels out the cash, don’t you know … or what little there is … .”

  Now I got it. Hector was getting a dole from Deirdre, and that bought his loyalty. He was under her thumb and willing to sell out his brother if that’s what it took to stay in good with his sister.

  He put his face into the crook of his arm and blubbered. “It’s hard, being … who I am.”

  Hector was about my age, and he had been a minor when his father had made his will. Tert was five or six years older, and had been in his majority, at least eighteen. That meant that the will had been drawn up, say … twenty-five years ago. What had happened about that long ago that prompted Secundus to write his will?

  A loud thump brought my attention back to Hector. I knew instantly that I wasn’t going to get any more information out of him: He was collapsed facedown on the table, snoring like a bear settled in for a long winter.

  The man who had played the Beggar—now showered and dressed in a shirt and chinos, his hair combed back to frame a surprisingly handsome face—moseyed over from the bar and got a hand under Hector’s armpit. “Come on, old lad, time to take you home.” I caught a noseful
of the Beggar’s wonderful scented oil and looked up at him. He gave me a very sober wink.

  “Thanks again for the shoulder rub,” I said.

  “It was my pleasure,” he said. “You ladies okay driving?”

  “She’s drinking lemonade and I’ve had about a quarter-ounce from each of these bottles,” I said.

  “Smart women. Hope to see you again.”

  “You, too. Who do we owe for the dinners?”

  “No one. You took the seats of two no-shows. Food may as well be eaten.”

  “Thanks.”

  I helped as he got Hector to his feet and spirited him out through a back door. It was just like old times with my mother.

  My mother. The ranch. For a moment, I considered settling in for a little bit of drinking, myself.

  Jenny reached across the table and put a hand on my shoulder. Without looking me in the eye, she quietly ran her other hand through the air in front of my face and chest. Like a paramedic working quickly over a fallen patient, she ran deft fingers down the inside of one arm to my pinkie, then reached around and touched a bottom rib just above the crest of my hip and nudged a toe up against my big toe. Then she reached out and yanked something unseen away from my heart, as if removing a thorn. Instantly, I felt better.

  “This next one is more difficult,” she said, reaching out to touch my temple. A sense of rage suddenly surfaced in me, and I found I needed to take a deep breath. She traced her fingers back and forth over the top of my head, then down the back of my neck, zigzagged down my side, and continued down the outer side of my leg to my second-smallest toe, ducking her head underneath the table to hold it for a moment, as if tacking it to the floor. Then she bobbed up and looked at me, her face lost in concentration. “You ready to let go of her?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Your mother. Or at least that’s what I’m getting. Wait, I need to run triple warmer, too. There’s a sense of betrayal.” She reached out and touched the outer corner of my eye, ran a finger around behind my ear, down my neck, along my shoulder, and down the outside of my arm to my third finger. “Yes, betrayal.”