Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“I don’t have anything valuable,” said Mimi.

“Oh, yes, you do,” said the woman. She was by now trying to tighten the drawstring of the pants but couldn’t do it with only one shaky hand. She carefully lowered her gun hand, though not her eyes, and tried again to pull the drawstring tight with two hands, but she was trembling too much.

“Can I help?” said Mimi. She wasn’t exactly sure why. Part of her said stay as far away from this madwoman as possible. But part of her said make nice. Make very nice. And what was it Pacino said in The Godfather? “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

The woman stared at her, and Mimi had the feeling that she-this woman-was seeing her and not seeing her at the same time. As if Mimi was in some other dimension that the woman had to concentrate very hard to keep in view. She nodded and waved Mimi forward, until she was standing directly in front of her.

“No fooling around,” said the woman, and placed the cold nose of the gun against Mimi’s temple. Mimi closed her eyes. But her fingers found the ties and pulled them together, carefully into a knot. Then the woman pushed her away, and Mimi retreated to her corner.

Now the woman reached with her free hand behind her back and undid the zipper of her dress, sloughed it off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. She picked up the sweatshirt and managed to slide into it, one arm at a time, only losing sight of Mimi for the split second that her head was lost in the neck hole. She smoothed the terry cloth against her wet skin.

“Are you… are you Sophia Cosic?” said Mimi.

“Who?”

“Nothing,” said Mimi.

The woman looked derailed. Then she seemed to come back to her senses, what she had of them. “My name is Mavis. Mavis Lee. Ever heard of me?”

Mimi shook her head. She knew it must be Cramer’s mother-the one who had lost her way on the Artist’s Journey. But pleading ignorance seemed the best bet. “I didn’t think you would’ve,” said Mavis. “But your father has, all right.”

“Pardon?”

“He might have forgotten me, but he sure won’t ever forget again.”

The look in the woman’s eyes was triumphant and clearly fanatical. Mimi felt faint. She leaned against the wall for support. It was all coming clear to her. M.L.-the initials and phone number on the wall in the other room. Her father’s lover and Cramer’s mother. Which meant… No. No way!

Mavis must have seen something of what was going on in Mimi’s head. She nodded. “Now you get it, don’t you, honey? Huh?” Mimi didn’t move a muscle. “He’s all I have left of Marc,” said Mavis. “That Page boy-oh, he’s got the world on a string, hasn’t he? And you-the same thing-everything money can buy. What’d my Cramer ever get? Nothing. Nothing! Marc Soto left us nothing.”

“Mrs. Lee-”

“Don’t call me missus. I’d be a missus if your father had done the right thing.”

“Mavis, you’re not the only person my father ever left.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. I just mean he left my mother as well.”

The woman sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “But he didn’t leave her penniless, did he?”

“He didn’t leave her a thing,” said Mimi. But the news only surprised Mavis for a second or two, before she recovered whatever insane sense of purpose she had come here with. She had been hovering at the doorway; now she entered the room, the fingers of her left hand gliding along the wall as if the room was in darkness and she had to feel her way into it. Again she looked around, and now Mimi understood that she was lost in memory. But she snapped out of it pretty quickly as she drew nearer to Mimi. She leaned her shoulder against the wall, lowering the gun, but holding it in two hands in front of her.

“I saw you out running,” she said. “Wondered who you were. Then I realized you were the same girl as in the picture Cramer had stuffed under his mattress.” Her eyes glinted. “I sniffed it out. It was wrapped in a T-shirt that reeked of your perfume.”

There was a low rumble of thunder. The storm was moving away. The rain went on unabated, but in the moment the thunder died, Mimi heard something. A car? Jay?

“What is it?” said Mavis.

“Nothing,” said Mimi, too loud.

Silence filled the space between them. Maybe the noise had only been wishful thinking. But she suddenly realized that she needed to keep Mavis talking. “Cramer had a picture of me?”

“You and some other rich bitch. I decided I’d better do some snooping,” said Mavis. “A mother likes to know what her boy’s up to. It didn’t take me long to find out. I’ve been here before.” She looked at Mimi, nodding, waiting for her to respond. Play dumb, Mimi told herself. The woman glanced again at the corners of the room. “I was here often enough,” she said.

“Mavis, I don’t know-”

“Shut up!” Mavis wiped her nose again, this time with the back of her gun hand. She looked nervous, suddenly, and Mimi didn’t think she wanted Mavis nervous.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I couldn’t quite figure out how he was getting in and out. Cramer, I mean. So, when the time was right, I found my own way in.” She nodded her head toward the window. Jay had replaced the glass, but Mimi still found broken pieces of it now and then. “And that’s when I found that movie camera of yours. Took it home to look it over. And there-there he was, older and losing his hair, but I recognized him, all right, even with the shades. Recognized the smile. The lying smile.”

“Does Cramer know?”

“Who knows? The boy’s not himself. I guess I’ve got you to thank for that.”

“But does he know about him and me-about us being-”

“I said I wouldn’t know what he knows,” Mavis shouted. “He doesn’t know his own mind anymore. Or who his mother is. Or what’s right or wrong.”

She stopped and made a face as if she’d just bitten into something bad.

“What about the guitars?” asked Mimi. “Was it you who took Jay’s guitars?”

Mavis shrugged. “Distributing the wealth a little. Those guitars are long gone.”

There was another noise. In the shed? Mavis didn’t seem to notice. Mimi spoke up in any case, but not so loudly this time as to create suspicion. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you here? What is it you want from me?”

“We’re going to make a phone call,” said Mavis, as if it were going to be fun-a party game.

“You said that. But I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to phone your daddy,” she said. Then she slid along the wall toward Mimi, stopping an arm’s length away. “We’re going to find out how much he thinks his pretty daughter is worth.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You aren’t stupid.”

Mimi swallowed hard. Her right hand was in her pocket where she had been trying to work the canister of mace free from its holster without drawing attention to the activity. Now, with Mavis so close, it was a little easier, since the woman’s field of vision was so much smaller. If there was somebody coming, she had to be ready for whatever happened. By now Mavis was face-to-face with her, staring directly into Mimi’s eyes. “You got the same eyes as him. I wished in that film he hadn’t had those dark glasses on. I’d have loved to see those eyes again.”

She seemed to go off into a daydream, and while Mimi wasn’t about to try anything rash, she managed to silently pop the top of the canister. Now it was just a matter of getting the thing out of her pocket. But Mavis had recovered from her reverie.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Liar. You’re thinking about getting away. But you can forget about it.”