Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

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Cree was struck by the pleasure on Julieta's face, how lovely and rare. Despite his tension, Dr. Tsosie made a soft noise of satisfaction as he watched them.

And Tommy: Tommy looked almost happy. Maybe Mason Ambrose was wrong about this whole thing, Cree thought. Maybe the hospital doctors were right and the nagging buzz she felt was just Tommy Keeday, a relatively typical teenager with some normal-world issues that made him act out in an unusual way.

As if he'd read Cree's thoughts, Dr. Tsosie turned to her. The sunlight was almost gone now, and his face was lit with silver from the searing light on the house as he regarded her thoughtfully.

"Just wait," he told her.

9

You'd never know there was anything wrong with him, Lynn Pierce thought, watching Tommy. Good luck, Dr. Lucretia Black.

The boy was playing with the little marshmallows that floated on the top of his cup. He dipped his teaspoon and boated the white clots back and forth across the surface of steaming chocolate, then selected one and ate it. Some of it was an act; with the new psychologist there, he was working hard to play normal. Julieta sat at one end of the table, positively dripping martyred noblesse oblige, making quick insincere smiles whenever Tommy or Joseph looked her way and losing them just as fast when either male focused on anything else. The psychologist, who introduced herself as Cree, had alert hazel eyes and a neutral expression as she watched Tommy. Lynn wondered if she was perceptive enough to see just how bogus Queen Julieta was, how many secrets lurked below the surface here.

The five of them had settled in the infirmary's dayroom to drink hot chocolate and play cards, an exercise transparently thought up by Julieta to allow the psychologist to observe Tommy at close range. The wide, beam-ceilinged chamber was furnished with more institutional furniture than it no doubt had been when the queen was in her heyday here, but more than any other room in the building it retained reminders that this had once been a rich person's home: creamy stucco walls, huge fireplace with a step-shouldered mantel, brilliantly varnished old-board floors, built-in bookshelves, fancy light switches-something of a Santa Fe ambience. Right now the windows were hard black rectangles of night, and outside the temperature had dropped, but Lynn had lit a fire in the grate. It crackled behind its screen and made the place feel snug and pleasant despite Julieta's preening and that god-awful sense of latent menace in Tommy.

Joseph was shuffling the cards, not saying anything. He looked tired.

"So," Cree Black said, "your grandparents must be very proud of you. I haven't seen your work, but everyone tells me you're a talented artist."

Tommy looked embarrassed by the prompt and busied himself with stirring his chocolate. "I guess."

"Very talented," Julieta affirmed proudly, as if she were personally responsible for his abilities. "So much so that he won a complete private scholarship, just for visual artists, to come here. Tomorrow, you'll have to show Cree your work, Tommy."

Tommy looked into his cup and blew across the top.

"How did you start?" Cree asked. "Are there artists in your family?"

"Yeah. My dad was a potter and sculptor. In summer, he'd sell stuff to the tourists in Window Rock. He kind of got me going." Tommy didn't look up as he answered. Under the edge of the table, his right knee started to bob, and the taut, unconscious motion, so at odds with the false calm of his face and the controlled movements of his hands, frightened Lynn. Was that a sign of it? Kids bobbed their knees, but with Tommy you couldn't be sure. Was it an ordinary nervous knee, or the… the seizure, starting to kindle again?

"Okay," Joseph said at last. "Julieta, your turn to start."

They were playing rummy. Everyone took up the cards Joseph had dealt and looked them over. Cree's eyes moved to Tommy, who was scrupulously intent on his fan of cards, to Julieta to Joseph.

Julieta drew a card, slipped it into her hand, discarded.

"I was watching you with the horses," Cree went on. "Another talent, looks like. You must have spent a lot of time with them when you were growing up."

"Yeah. My dad liked them. He taught me to ride when I was a baby." The subject seemed to embarrass Tommy, and silence followed hard on his words.

"Well, my dad was no artist. He was a plumber," Cree said, as if she hadn't noticed the conversational stall. She took her card and considered it.

"He was from Brooklyn. I loved him to pieces, but I sure wasn't going to follow in his footsteps and set toilet bowls for a living. You're lucky you got the artistic influence. But Pop did have one thing in common with your father-he liked horses, too." She chuckled as if at some fond memory, discarded, and went on, "Probably in a different way, though. He liked to bet on the races. You have to understand, my father was the kind of Brooklyn guy you see in the movies who talks like this: 'So dis guy sez to me, he sez, "I got a sure t'ing for ya, put yaself a sawbuck on a win for Sugar Baby inna eight'."' Even I could hardly understand him half the time!"

Tommy flicked his gaze at her, a glimmer of appreciation there.

"You're up, Lynn," Joseph said, startling her.

She had a bad hand, of course, all low numbers and nothing to match. Like life, she thought savagely. She picked up and discarded.

"He died," Tommy said. "Killed himself." This time he raised his eyes to look challengingly at Cree. The words froze Julieta and Joseph.

"Who did?" the psychologist asked blandly.

"He drunk himself and my mother to death. Got into a car crash because he was so loaded he couldn't see cows on the road."

The psychologist didn't blink. "I'm sorry, Tommy," she said, with sincere but not excessive sympathy. "You must miss him terribly. I know I miss my pop every day."

Tommy looked to his cards again and shrugged his shoulders, doesn't matter or not really. He seemed puzzled and maybe put out by her response-clearly he'd been fishing for something more dramatic. He picked up a card, laid out three twos, discarded a six of spades. Meanwhile, Julieta was making heartbroken moon eyes and trying to hide the expression from Tommy. Joseph gave her a supportive, steadying gaze. It made Lynn sick. The craving for nicotine was beginning to gnaw at her in a way that couldn't be ignored, and she tried to remember which one she was on-number four? Or five? Whichever, she needed a cigarette.

"Alcoholism is one of our leading health problems," Joseph told Cree.

"It's the root cause of most crimes and accidents here. Native Americans carry a genetic predisposition for it, a difference in the way carbohydrates are metabolized. That's one reason liquor's illegal on the rez."

Cree nodded as she took her turn, keeping whatever it was she picked up, discarding but not laying out any cards. They went around again in silence, as if nobody was sure what to say.

The psychologist broke the quiet. "This is such a gorgeous room. I love the fireplace!"

"This was the main store of the trading post, and then it was my living room," Julieta said, deliberating theatrically over her hand. "I told you this was my house before we converted it, didn't I?"

"Yes. You must miss having it all to yourself."

Julieta shook her head. "Nope. Never once. Haven't had time to miss it since we got the school going. Anyway, I get so many rewards from my job, especially when I work with the kids and their parents. And I gave myself one indulgence, teaching one of the drawing classes. Beyond that, I don't feel any need for the luxury. Really, I wouldn't know what to do with this much space all to myself now."

How touching, Lynn thought. How very admirable of you.

It would be bad enough to have to listen to this crap, but it broke her heart to watch Joseph falling for it. He was a brilliant man in every other respect, but when it came to Julieta he seemed to have no brains at all. He took her posing at face value. Like just now, that decisive little shake of her head: the way her lustrous big black hair swung so alluringly, half covered one eye, got swept casually aside-she learned that one in beauty queen school for sure. Over the last three years, Lynn had seen her too many times around other men to believe it was unconscious. Board members, prospective donors, maintenance contractors, whoever-they all went knock-kneed around her. And she didn't hesitate to exploit the effect to get what she wanted.

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