Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

I found my sister standing in front of the bathroom at the end of the cluttered hall, looking bewildered. Boxes loomed over her dangerously, like the walls of the Grand Canyon. She raised both arms. ‘There’s a bedroom on each side. Nobody’s here,’ she reported, ‘but the TV is sure on.’

The television in the bedroom was cube-like and huge, a model so ancient that I expected it could receive Howdy Doody , I Love Lucy or Bonanza direct. On the screen, though, modern-day Lynx News social commentator Candace Kelly, every Titian hair perfectly contained, was nattering on about some girls who had been turned away from their homecoming dance because the school found their dresses unsuitable. ‘Does everybody watch Lynx News?’ I wondered.

‘Why don’t we turn it off?’ Ruth suggested.

While Ruth floundered around the bedroom looking for the remote, I watched the crawl at the bottom of the screen where I learned that ‘Hiccup girl’ had been charged with murder and L’il Wayne was ready to party after his release from jail; pseudo-news that ran the gamut from ‘What the hell?’ to ‘Who cares?’

‘You’ll need to send out a search party for the remote, I’m afraid.’ Ruth waved an arm, taking in the piles of clothing draped over every available surface, including the bed, some still wearing their price tags. ‘And good luck even reaching the TV. My bet? She leaves it on all the time.’

‘Where the hell does she sleep?’ I wondered, backing out into the hall and pushing open the door to the second bedroom. It, too, was chock-a-block with unopened boxes containing God only knew what. If there was a bed in the room it would take Lewis and Clark, maybe Sacajawea too, to find it.

I bent over, out of habit, to pick up a pair of red leather gloves, still connected at the wrists by a plastic clip, that lay on the carpet at my feet. I held them in my hand for a moment, then tossed them over my shoulder. Even if Ruth and I became overcome by an irresistible urge to pick up, where on earth would we begin?

‘Come on, Ruth. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Where does Lilith paint?’ Ruth wondered aloud, as we ran the gauntlet, winding our way out of Lilith’s pathetic cottage the way we had come.

‘Unless she’s given it up, she probably has a studio somewhere. Perhaps that’s where she is now. The Simon sisters told me she kept a separate studio when she lived in New York.’

Once outside, I breathed deeply, expelling the dark and the dust. Face to the sun, I inhaled the fresh fall air in grateful gulps. To our left, a narrow path led off through the trees. Through the branches, just now beginning to shed their leaves, I could see the late-afternoon sun glittering on the waters of what my map had told me was a little cove off Fishing Creek. ‘We’re so close to finding her,’ I said. ‘I just hate to leave.’

‘Hannah, for all we know, Lilith’s away on vacation, sunning herself on a beach in the south of France. Who knows when she’ll get back.’

‘But the house is unlocked,’ I reasoned.

Ruth snorted. ‘Why lock it? Any self-respecting thief would take one look at that place, throw up his hands and high tail it out of there.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘Maybe that’s Lilith secret plan to clear the place out!’

I laughed. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m going to leave a note. Ask her to call me.’ I tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook I keep in the glove compartment to write down important things like the license plate numbers of cars that cut me off in traffic and the vehicle identification numbers of negligent trucks that spew out gravel and pockmark my windshield. On it I wrote: ‘My name is Hannah Ives and I live in Annapolis. I have something that belongs to you. Please call me so that I can arrange to return it.’

I added my telephone number, stuffed the note into a Ziploc bag I had snitched from a box of one hundred on the floor of the kitchen, then tucked the note between the back door and the frame, closing the door securely over it.

‘What now, Nancy Drew?’

‘Now, we go home and wait.’

Three days later, early on a Sunday morning, Lilith called. I was charmed by her voice, Lauren Bacallesque, smooth, low and husky. ‘I got your message,’ she breathed. ‘Can you tell what this is all about?’

‘It’s something best discussed in person,’ I said. ‘Is there a convenient time for me to drive over?’

‘How did you find me?’ she wanted to know.

‘The Simon sisters in New York,’ I said, shading the truth just a little.

‘Oh, yes. Claire and Elspeth. They were very sweet to me. Are they well?’

‘Very.’

‘I don’t suppose Pedro… well, no, he wouldn’t still be alive, would he. It’s been… well, more years than I care to admit.’

‘Pedro’s moved on to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm in the sky, I’m afraid. They have a German shepherd named Bruno now.’

Lilith laughed out loud, a sound that bubbled out of her, overflowing like sparkling champagne. ‘Who is walking whom, I wonder? Oh, I was so in love with those women.’

I’d never laid eyes on Lilith, but I was falling in love with her, too. ‘When would be convenient for us to meet, Lilith? I’m fairly flexible.’

‘I keep busy with my painting, but otherwise I have very little on my schedule. Is tomorrow good for you? Around two?’

‘That would be perfect,’ I told her.

‘You know where I live,’ she said, ‘but please meet me at my studio. If you carry on past the house about a hundred yards down a little path, you’ll come to it. It’s right on the water.’

No surprise that Lilith didn’t want to meet me at the house. Where would we sit for our conversation? In the bathroom? Lilith on the toilet seat and me on the rim of the tub?

‘Two o’clock tomorrow, then. Your studio,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there,’

I hung up the phone and ran a little victory loop around the house, whooping like a rodeo cowboy.

I called Ruth at once, but she and Hutch had paid in advance for dance studio time and were locked into rehearsals. Paul was tied up teaching, and his sister, Connie, would be spending the afternoon waiting for the plumber to come repair her hot-water heater. My father, always game for adventure, was finishing up the last month of a year-long consulting job in Dubai. When the time came, I’d have to go alone.

What would I wear?

I opened my closet and reached reflexively for my favorite black and white paisley dress. My hand closed around the padded blue silk hanger where the dress normally lived. I pulled the hanger out of the closet. Empty.

Black and white and red all over.

My dress was ruined, I remembered with a pang, discarded, moldering in a landfill, soaked with somebody else’s blood.

I pawed through the remaining garments, trying to find something else to wear. It was too hot for this one, too cold for that. Too long, too short, too small, too big. No, no, no, no! Tears began to stream down my cheeks.

I tossed a perfectly good A-line skirt on the floor, followed by a blouse, a pair of slacks. One dress, then another – no, no, no! I didn’t stop, couldn’t, until I collapsed in the middle of the heap, buried my face in a hand-painted sweatshirt and bawled until my eyelids swelled shut.

Paul found me there an hour later, dry-eyed and gasping, the designer sweatshirt wrapped around my head. ‘I couldn’t find anything to wear,’ I sobbed.

Paul fell to his knees, drew me into his arms, held my head gently against his chest, and rocked me like a baby. Next to the beating of his heart, I felt warm and secure.

‘It’s PTSD,’ he said, stroking my cheek. He touched his lips to my ear and whispered, ‘There are people who can help you with that, Hannah.’