Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

One morning there was a heavy dew, and Cramer boldly drew a message on the windshield of the Mini Cooper:

MIMI

She was late getting started that morning, and by the time she waded across the snye and put her Nikes on, the sun had more or less obliterated the message he had left her. She patted the car as she passed by and spoke to it-called it Ms. Cooper.

Look closer, he said under his breath, knowing that his message would not be entirely gone, would still be there, if she would only look.

The next morning he broke in.

The lock on the storm door surprised him at first but didn’t hold him back. The wood was punk; the screws in the hinges pulled away without too much effort. He needed to get inside. He needed to be sure about something. And, yes-yes! Mimi seemed to have taken over the bedroom downstairs; Jay’s mattress was up in the loft. Cramer wanted to shout his joy out loud but held it in.

He opened her laptop, a Mac PowerBook G4. There was no password. The desktop on the G4 was some picture from an old black-and-white movie: a guy with ridiculously curly hair and a funny face, wearing a baggy suit and playing the harp. There were too many icons on the screen. Cramer wanted to clean it up for her-such a waste of memory. He opened a folder called Screenplay. He opened something called Ideas. He checked her e-mail: a lot of messages from Jamila, the girl in the photograph. There wasn’t time to read anything now-he couldn’t concentrate. And anyway, all he was looking for were boys’ names, some boy’s name repeated too many times. There were two or three guys she chatted with, but nothing in the contents of those e-mails to indicate they were anything more than friends.

He checked iPhoto. There was a large library but no boys there, either, except the Asian guy in the documentary. Cramer didn’t think there was anything between them.

He checked iTunes, scrolled down a list of band names he had never heard of. He glanced out the window. He would see her coming from here; the way was clear. He clicked on a couple of tunes. He wanted to hear what she heard, like what she liked. He sat there for a few moments listening, noting the name of a group that was okay, though it wasn’t the kind of stuff he listened to. He would Google the band at the shop-get to know their stuff. He didn’t listen to much music, but he could learn. He toyed with the idea of leaving her a note on the screen, then he reeled himself in. Get serious, Cramer! This was not the same as leaving surprises for Jay. He closed down the computer, made sure it was sitting exactly as he had found it, then rubbed the brushed silver top clean with the tail of his T-shirt to remove his fingerprints. He was sweating like a pig.

He checked the window again, checked his watch. There was still time and he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t ever want to leave.

He wanted to leave something for her, a gift! There was a place he knew where there were wildflowers. He would leave her a bouquet on the little table in the kitchen.

No. Get a grip.

He checked out the bathroom, lovingly picked up her toothbrush, her hairbrush, a tube of lip gloss. He held everything to his nose, breathing her in. With his eyes closed, he could smell the same spicy scent that was on everything in her suitcase. It was so beautiful it made him swear under his breath and then bite down hard on his tongue for letting such a word escape him, here of all places. As if the swear word might linger in the air like a bad smell.

Tonight he started work again. There might be an afternoon or two he could get out here, but his nights were not his own for another eight days. How could he stand it?

He opened his eyes suddenly. Why hadn’t he thought of this before! He looked through all the clutter of cosmetics on the little shelf below the mirror and arrayed across the water tank of the toilet, but there was no bottle of perfume. He hurried back to her bedroom again and on his knees searched through her suitcase. And there it was. A squat brown bottle of perfume with beveled shoulders and an elaborate bronze-colored stopper. It was called Trouble. He opened the top and breathed in so deeply that the potency made him cough, made him dizzy. He wiped his eyes. He took the tail of his T-shirt and dabbed some of her perfume on it, then put the stopper back in the bottle. He was putting the bottle back in her suitcase when he heard the kitchen door open and close.

He dove for the hidey-hole, reaching up and pulling the top down as quietly as he could. There had been no time to put the perfume exactly where he had found it. Would she notice? He didn’t think so. She wasn’t very tidy.

He heard her enter the room and realized that the scent of the perfume would be strong. Would she notice it? He crawled up the tunnel to be safe. If she opened the trapdoor, she wouldn’t see him, unless she actually jumped down inside. The thought of her doing that made his heart beat so hard against his chest he was sure she would hear. He crouched there, scarcely breathing. He couldn’t leave through the storm door without making too much noise, so he waited, listening. He heard a thump and another thump. Her running shoes. She was stripping after her run. He closed his eyes tightly, seeing her in his mind’s eye. And he felt as though he might not be strong enough to hold himself together at all. She was humming, out of tune. Then he heard her leave the room, and in a moment he heard the sound of the shower. He turned to leave, and as he crawled up the tunnel to the door, he was shaking like a leaf.

Mavis was outside when he arrived home, out in the bedraggled patch of weeds near the kitchen, which had once been a vegetable garden. As he crossed the yard toward the house, he wondered if she was going to do something with it.

“Want a hand?” he asked.

She turned and he saw that she was smoking. She didn’t usually smoke except when Waylin was around. He looked but there was no truck.

“I was thinking of cooking up some of this madder,” she said, kicking lazily at a knee-high weed that had overrun the garden where she was standing. “You can make a good dye from it, I hear.”

Her meaning was not lost on Cramer.

“Course, I’d need some medium to actually make it into paint,” she said. She was going to go on, but she suddenly screwed up her nose. “What the heck is that?”

Cramer backed off. He stunk of Trouble. “I’ve got to change,” he said.

“What are you up to?” she called after him, but he headed into the house and up the stairs. He shoved the reeking T-shirt in the back of his closet. Then he headed to the shower, where he scrubbed himself so hard he was sure he was losing a layer of skin.

He dried himself off, wrapped a towel around his waist, and opened the bathroom door. Mavis was there, leaning against the wall across from the bathroom door.

“My, my, what an odor,” she said.

He headed toward his room, with her marching right behind him.

“Who is she, Cramer? Come on.” Her voice was teasing. “Don’t keep me in the dark, sunshine.”

“There isn’t anyone,” he said. And he closed his door on her. She knocked. Christ, why wouldn’t she leave him alone!

“I’m getting dressed!” he said.

“Well, when you get dressed, come on downstairs. I want to talk.”

“Mom, it’s not-”

But she cut him off. “I want to show you something,” she said. “If you’re not too busy.”

He took his time. Tried to think of what he was going to say, how he could explain away the scent. What was it she wanted him to see? Shit. He checked under his mattress. The picture of Mimi was still there, so it wasn’t that.

The first floor of the house was just the one room really, with the wide, deep porch converted into Mavis’s studio. Mavis was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs when he finally emerged from his lair. She turned toward the room, expectantly awaiting his attention. She glanced back at him and then again at the room.