Beloved (17 page)

"
That
'
s a good sign, Jane. If you like it, someone else will, too,
"
he said reassuringly.

Phillip had his hand on the front doorknob. Suddenly he turned to ask Jane if she
'
d decided on a realtor yet, and whether she had a ballpark figure in mind. Jane hadn
'
t talked to any realtors, but she had a price in mind and said so.

"
Too high, I think,
"
he said thoughtfully.
"
For these times, anyway. But I
'
ll tell you what: before you sign a listing agreement, let me ask around. I may be able to find you a buyer and save you the commission.
"

"
Would
you? Oh, that would be fabulous,
"
Jane said, her hopes beginning to soar. Phillip was just what she
'
d been missing
—
a disinterested, impartial advisor. She herself knew nothing about real estate. How else had she managed to buy a condo at peak, in a development that remained half-empty to this day?

"
No promises, now,
"
he warned, taking out a pair of calfskin gloves from the pocket of his topcoat.
"
But I
'
ll make a few calls. In the meantime, don
'
t go boxing yourself in by signing a contract with somebody.
"

Delighted, Jane walked with him to the door and waved him a friendly good-bye as he slid behind the wheel of his burgundy Mercedes.

Jane
'
s giddy optimism lasted all of thirteen minutes, which was when she picked up the wallpaper razor and lifted it to the next wall due to be stripped. The searing pain in her shoulder returned, and she was plunged into instant depression.

The antibiotics had done nothing. The wound was healing, but the pain itself was worse than ever. And yet she
'
d been told that her blood test results were within normal range. What
is going
on? she wondered, becoming frightened. Some form of premature arthritis? Lyme disease?
What?

Feeling frustrated and defeated, she threw on a jacket and a woolen cap and went out for a walk. It was cold; her breath came out in smoky billows. Inevitably, inexorably, her steps took her to the little burying ground behind the house and the rose that was growing on Judith
'
s grave.

Jane paused, her mittened hands jammed in the pockets
of her jacket, and studied the thorny shrub. It was very old, that was obvious. The shrub wasn
'
t tall, perhaps four feet, but it was dangerously thorny and sprawled all over the grave.

Was this rose the cause?

She circled the grave slowly, staring at the shrub. How could she have become infected by it? Just suppose that
'
s really what had happened
—
never mind that her doctor had laughed at her theory. Then where did the poison, or the fungus or the virus or whatever it was, come from?

The roots are growing on a grave.

That thought had first formed at Phillip
'
s dinner party, when the different versions of the Legend of th
e Cursed Rose got passed around.
Jane had pushed it to the back of her mind, and there it had germinated, probably in the dreams which seemed to trouble her almost nightly. Now it was emerging, fully formed, a frightening, demonic thing:
The roots are growing on a grave. Over it, through it, part of it

"
Oh, God,
"
she whispered, crouching down for a closer look. How deep did the roots of roses go? She was no gardener. How deep were bodies buried? She was no gravedigger. Was Judith buried in a coffin? Had the coffin rotted away? And Judith? How connected, in nature
'
s grand recycling scheme,
were
Judith and the rose?

She pushed herself away from her crouching stance and jumped to her feet, shaking violently.
This is dumb, this is stupid. You
'
re letting yourself fall under the spell of this
...
this
other
side of
Nantucket
. Just because a little bookcase goes bump in the night, you
'
re ready to call in an exorcist.

She wasn
'
t forgetting, either, what her mother had told her on the day of her aunt
'
s funeral: that when Jane was eight years old, Sylvia Merchant had spent the summer filling her head with
"
paranormal gibberish.
"
Gibberish. Yes. You are predisposed to gibberish.

And yet
....

She circled the grave again. Was it her imagination, or was the dull, ever-present pain in her shoulder easing? Or was it just the anesthetizing effect of the cold? She circled the grave once, twice more, trying to determine if the relief was measurable. When she looked up, it was to see McKenzie
'
s dark green truck stopped in the lane nearby.

Unfortunately, McKenzie was in it. He was sitting in the driver
'
s seat, watching her. The sun was slanting off the window, so she couldn
'
t see the expression on his face. Amusement, contempt, menace, bafflement, all four
—
anything was possible.

Oh, fine. Here I am, behaving like a puppy at a fire hydrant. What must the man think of me?
She decided to preempt the obvious guess
—
that she was insane
—
by confronting him. She walked boldly up to the car. He rolled down his window.

"
Hi, Mac, I see you
'
ve got your muffler fixed. How
'
ve you been?
"
she said in her breeziest way.
"
I haven
'
t seen you since
...
since
...
"
Since you walked out with a gorgeous woman hanging on your arm, you jerk
.

"
Since you got lucky,
"
he said with that ironic smile of his.

"
Funny; I would
'
ve said that described
you
to a T.
"

He thought about it a second.
"
You must mean Miriam,
"
he drawled.
"
Miriam
'
s one of my cousins. I would
'
ve introduced you, but I didn
'
t want to seem impertinent.
"

"
Oh, for
—! Why do
—?
"
She looked down at her shoes, suppressing a snort, wondering whether there was any way they could have a simple conversation without exploding into class warfare.

In the meantime it occurred to her that he could
'
ve done something on his own to level up the playing field. Something to put them on terms of friendly equals. He could
'
ve said,
"
That
'
s a pretty jacket you
'
ve got on.
"
Or,
"
You look nice in blue.
"
But no. He just sat behind the wheel of his pickup, watching and waiting. What was he waiting for, a work order? Why did he make her feel like an overseer on a cotton plantation?

"
Well,
"
he said at last, rolling up his window.

"
Before you go!
"
she said quickly.
"I wonder if ...
if you could give me some advice. About the two hollies on either side of my front door. They
're way
overgrown; I can
'
t walk up the steps without getting tangled up in them. Something has to be done.
"

"
All right,
"
he said with a look almost of concern.
"
An hour from now okay?
"

"
I
'
ll be there.
"

"By the way ..
.
."
He reached for something on his front seat and passed it through the open window to her: it was the rotary hand drill, with a brand-new wood handle varnished to a brilliant finish.

"
I once saw a woman break another woman
'
s finger at a flea market over a shoe rack,
"
he said.
"
I guess we stopped just shy of that last week. I
'
ve got other hand drills,
"
he added, rolling up the window.

Before she could respond, he was bumping down the lane toward his place and Jane was left standing in one of the sandy ruts, with the drill in one mittened hand, thinking,
Damn. He did that on purpose. To have the upper hand. Well
!
We
'
ll see who
'
s more gracious than who.

For the next hour Jane worked diligently on the wall of the parlor, ignoring the pain in her shoulder. By the time she heard the loud thunk of the old brass door knocker, she was more than happy to stop what she was doing and answer it. She
'
d made a pot of extra
strong coffee and defrosted the second half of Mrs. Adamont
'
s apricot coffee cake, just to show how gracious she could be.

But when Jane opened the door, she saw at once that McKenzie was on his way to a boat. Dressed in a heavy navy blue sweater and yellow oilskins over olive green rubber boots, he looked like the picture on a box of Gorton
'
s Fish Sticks.

"
Come in while I put on a jacket,
"
she said, oddly disappointed that this was just a pit stop for him.

As he stepped into the parlor, he pulled off his watch cap; she was struck anew by the almost boyish wildness of his thick, curled hair. A lot of men his age had begun to cling for dear life to what hair they had left on their heads. Jane felt sure McKenzie had never given it a thought.

Stuffing the cap into his pocket, he looked around the room.
"
It
'
s too bad she closed in the fireplace on this side,
"
he remarked as Jane slid her sore shoulder carefully into the sleeve of her jacket.
"
This was always a good room for a fire.
"

"
You
'
ve been here before?
"

"
Once or twice,
"
he said noncommittally. He was rocking back and forth on the heels of his boots, obviously in a hurry.

With someone as tight-lipped as Mac McKenzie,
"
once or twice
"
could mean once or twice a day, or once or twice in his life. She knew from Bing that McKenzie
'
s people had been farming the land behind her for two hundred years. In the forty years he
'
d lived there, McKenzie must
'
ve learned
some
damn thing about Sylvia Merchant.

"
When was the last time you were here?
" she asked him.

"
The day before your aunt closed down the house. When she gave me her cat.
"

"
She gave
you
her cat? I didn
'
t know that! Where is it now?
"

He shrugged.
"
Mousing, probably. You must have seen him around. Big, gray, yellow eyes. Kinda wild.
"

She remembered the creature in her basement.
"
Does he have a face like a Gremlin, from the movie? I was attacked by something gray downstairs a couple of weeks ago.
"

"
Could be Wicky. As I recall, he liked to squeeze through a missing piece of granite in the foundation and sleep on the furnace. Look, I don
'
t mean to press, but the tide is falling and I mean to do some clamming.
"

"
Sorry,
"
she said quickly.
"
Let
'
s go outside and have a look, shall we?
"