Kaleidoscope (14 page)

Laurie frowned. “Ten days, and then I can quit?”

“Of course. That would be the agreement.”

Cautiously the girl said, “So where is this job, can you tell me that much?”

“Actually I'll show you where right now, but only if you agree, first, to those ten days of your time.”

Laurie leaned over the table and poured thick Turkish coffee into a cup, took one sip, made a face and then, “Okay, if it's just ten days—like Russian roulette, isn't it? and I've nothing else to do.”

Madame Karitska nodded. “Then I'll take you there now.”

“All right, I've got my car.”

“I saw it,” said Madame Karitska, amused, a late-model convertible gleaming outside, and said gently, “I think it best that we walk.”

Locking the door behind her, she and Laurie began their stroll down Eighth Street, neither of them speaking until they turned into Sixth Street to face the clusters of idle men along the sidewalks, smoking, tossing coins and talking; if they had learned to be polite to Madame Karitska, the sight of Laurie produced a volume of piercing whistles, to which Laurie said, “What the hell is this? Are you crazy, this
slum
?”

“Patience,” said Madame Karitska, and guided her across the street to Help Save Tomorrow, where a truck had pulled up to the storefront and Daniel was unloading cartons of used toys and clothes.

“Daniel,” said Madame Karitska, “this is Laurie, and she is going to spend ten days with you helping.”

Laurie turned to look at her in astonishment. “Are you
serious
?”

Daniel smiled his broad friendly smile and said, “Never thought such a pretty girl would offer
help
. It's blessedly kind of you, miss.”

Since Madame Karitska reached for a carton to carry into the store, Laurie had no choice but to grasp one of them and follow her. “If you think
this
is where I work for ten days you're mad.”

“Quite mad,” agreed Madame Karitska. “Careful with that carton, I see it has some china in it.”

“But what does he do with all this . . . this junk?” she asked, shoving the carton onto the counter.

“Sell it for pennies or give it away,” replied Madame Karitska. “You've arrived just in time to help unpack these cartons if you'd care to begin now.”

“You really expect me to—” Cannily she stopped and said, “Would this count as one of the ten days? I mean, today's half over.”

“Why not? He can certainly use you,” and before Laurie could protest she said to Daniel, “Laurie's car is parked in front of my house. When you close at five o'clock would you mind walking her safely back to it?”

“My pleasure,” Daniel said, beaming.

Madame Karitska, envisioning just how much would be left of a late-model convertible on Sixth Street said, “You'd better take a cab here in the morning, Laurie.”

Daniel, slitting open a carton, shouted, “Man, look at this! A getting-married dress and nearly new! We're in luck
today
.”

Trapped, Laurie accepted the bridal gown he'd thrust at her and said, “So what do I do with it?”

“Hangers over there,” Daniel said, pointing, and Madame Karitska quickly left.

Once at home she put in a call to Faber-Jones at his office, and when she reached him she gave him her terms. “You recall there were conditions?”

He said eagerly, “You've seen her, then. All right, what are they?”

“For ten days no contact with her, my friend. She's consented to lend me ten days, and she has a job to do. No phone calls, no contact, no interference, no reminder of her previous life, you understand?”

“But that's horrible, Marina,” he said, “I'll worry constantly.”

“Let
me
do the worrying,” she told him; as she would, even though she utterly trusted Daniel to look after her.

“But what on earth did you . . . well, prescribe for her?”

“Shock treatment,” said Madame Karitska crisply, and hung up before he could ask more.

Nevertheless Madame Karitska could not help but wonder during the next days how this child of luxury would react to the challenge presented to her. She thought it possible that Laurie would keep her bargain, being a Faber-Jones, but nothing had been said about attitude, and eight hours at Help Save Tomorrow would be a challenge indeed, and yet . . . and yet . . .

Curiosity as well as concern had deepened by the fourth day of Laurie's indenture, and curiosity won. Madame Karitska walked over to Sixth Street and turned down it toward Help Save Tomorrow and stopped halfway down the street, startled by what she saw. Laurie was on top of a high stepladder outside Help Save Tomorrow with three teenaged boys below—skinheads, all of them—watching, laughing . . . taunting her? Laurie was hanging a sign over the store, a new one, and Madame Karitska stood very still, holding her breath, wondering if the boys were about to pull the ladder out from under Laurie—this was Sixth Street, after all—and then she realized they were not taunting her, they were steadying the ladder for Laurie. They were helping.

“Well, well,” murmured Madame Karitska, and quickly retreated before she could be seen, and as she made her way back to Eighth Street she braced herself for her next appointment, which would not be an easy one.

She found Betsy Oliver already waiting for her in the hallway, her eyes red-rimmed. “I've just come from the funeral,” she said. “Arthur's funeral.”

Madame Karitska, unlocking the door, said, “I'm deeply sorry, Betsy, do come in. We'll talk, shall we?”

It was doubtful that Betsy even heard her; she walked into the living room and sat down on the couch and buried her face in her hands. “I feel so guilty, Madame Karitska, I feel just awful.”

“Which is quite natural,” she told her.

“Yes, but you've heard that he deliberately . . . I mean, he
wanted
to die? He'd still be alive if—”

This was going to be taxing, acknowledged Madame Karitska, and said, “Do you mean he'd be still alive if he'd not chosen to move to the Guardians of Eden, or still alive if you went with him? Which?”

“I think—” She stopped and blew her nose.

“Think what?”

Betsy said helplessly, “He must have been so lonely without us, me and Alice.”

“Betsy, it was his choice to leave you and go, remember?”

“Yes, but he might—”

“Stop,” said Madame Karitska sternly. “There is such a thing as fate, and there is such a thing as character. We each have our own destinies to work through; he had his, you have yours. Haven't you been happy lately?”

“B-but I feel so
guilty
at having been happy, while he—”

Madame Karitska firmly interrupted her. “How
is
it going, your artwork?”

Betsy said miserably, “Last week they hired me full-time—to sketch for Easter and birthdays and Valentine's—and I've been going two nights a week to the Trafton School of Art to— Oh, how can we
talk
about this at such a time!”

Madame Karitska smiled faintly. “Because you've been creating a very good life for yourself and your daughter.”

“Yes, but Arthur—”

“Betsy, life
happens
. I, too, had a husband whose death was questionable. We had a very comfortable marriage and were relatively wealthy, or so I thought. I look back on it now with more perspective on how it ended.”

“Ended,” murmured Betsy, startled to hear something personal from her.

“Yes, he was killed in a car crash, and that, too, could have been deliberate, for he'd made some very foolish mistakes. I think he lacked the courage to tell me he was virtually bankrupt. He was an expert on diamonds, a diamond merchant, but
not
an expert on the stock market, or on options, in which he'd heavily invested without mentioning it to me at all. He invested not only carelessly but recklessly, and after my settling with his creditors there was almost no money at all. Only a handful of diamonds, very fine ones, fortunately. By selling them one by one, I managed to survive. When I arrived in this country and in Trafton I had just four diamonds left. And still have one,” she added, not without humor. “But a certain perspective is needed about tragedies, Betsy, for they happen to nearly everyone. Eventually you have to learn, try to learn, that it's the eternal things that matter, and among them courage.”

“But why?” demanded Betsy. “Why?”

“Because we're drawn to certain people, not always happily, and they to us, and not always by accident.”

“What do you mean, ‘not by accident'?”

“There are some philosophers—mystics,” said Madame Karitska, “who believe that we choose our lives before we are born. To learn what has to be learned.”

Betsy said desperately, “But what have I learned from Arthur except grief?”

“Well, for starters,” she said lightly, “you've come in touch with your own self, you obeyed something deep inside of you, which was new for you: an uneasiness about Arthur and the Guardians of Eden that brought you to me. And later, in spite of his fury, you did something very, very difficult. You took a firm stand and said no to him. You've been growing up, Betsy,” she said softly. “Think of it that way. And Alpha—Arthur—made
his
choice.”

“But he made the
wrong
choice.”

She nodded. “And that's what
he
learned. And there is nothing you can do except to mourn, accept, and make your own life without him.”

“And Alice with no father,” Betsy said sadly.

“He left
her
, too,” she reminded her softly.

Betsy sighed and rose from the couch. “You can't really think we choose our lives?”

Madame Karitska smiled. “It helps one over the bad patches,” she said lightly.

“I'll think about it,” Betsy said. “Maybe I should read some books. At least I don't feel so . . . well, hysterical.”

Madame Karitska said, “You may even stop hating yourself, given time.”

Betsy nodded. “I do hate myself now, don't I.”

“And the best antidote is your work, Betsy,” she pointed out. “And I see you've let your blond hair grow long again, and it's lovely.”

Betsy leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you—and I don't feel
quite
so guilty now.”

“Good,” said Madame Karitska, and saw her to the door. It had been a long morning and there were two appointments still to come, and there had been a mysterious long-distance call, a secretary making an appointment, late the next week for a Mr. Smith, about which she felt uneasy. She was about to close her door when Kristan pounded down the stairs—his hiking boots were always noisy.

He said, “I read about it in the newspapers, she just left you, didn't she? Is she okay?”

“She will be,” she told him.

“I just might give her a ride home,” he said. “She had to sell their car, you know, she couldn't afford to keep it.” He flew out of the front door and she heard him shouting to Betsy.

For anything to pry Kristan loose from his painting was certainly startling. For Madame Karitska this was the second surprise of her day—she
liked
surprises, and entered her apartment smiling.

13

The people who came and went on Eighth Street always interested Madame Karitska, and she soon became aware that a very attractive young woman had moved into one of Mrs. Chigi's unfurnished apartments diagonally across the street from her. The girl looked alive and interested in life and without pretension as she cheerfully carried groceries up the steps, usually in faded jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, her long golden hair swept into a ponytail. Since nothing was completely private on Eighth Street, Kristan reported that her name was Kate and she was rumored to be a writer of some sort, doing research, or so her landlady believed, and had rented the two rooms on the second floor.

Her arrival on Eighth Street was only three weeks old when Madame Karitska responded to a knock on her door one morning and opened it to find her neighbor standing there.

“Hello,” the girl said eagerly, “I'm Kate Margus and I'd like to make a two-hour appointment with you. Could you tell me how much you'd charge?”

A startled Madame Karitska said, “That's certainly unusual; may I ask why two hours?”

“Because I've just learned what the sign ‘Readings' on your window means. I hear that you're a psychic, and a
good
one, and I'm hoping you can help me.”

Both amused and curious Madame Karitska glanced at her watch. “I've forty-five minutes until my next client. Why don't you come inside—I won't charge you—and explain why a two-hour appointment.” The girl was, after all, a neighbor, but two hours would be taxing indeed if she understood what psychometry entailed. As the girl followed her into the living room she said, “Neighborhood gossip reports that you're a writer?”

“Embryonic,” she said. “I mean, I've had a few articles published, but . . .” Giving the wall of books a startled glance, as people so often did, she seated herself on a couch and said, “I guess I should first ask if you've heard of Charmian Cowper.”

This was unexpected. Madame Karitska, about to offer coffee or tea, abruptly sat down. “Charmian Cowper! Good heavens yes!” she exclaimed. “Surely the most brilliant actress of our time—of
my
generation certainly, or even of the last century. She toured Europe when I lived there, I saw her twice on the stage. Unforgettable!”

Kate nodded. “She sang, too, in one of the few films she made. . . . Wonderful throaty voice. That's why I'm here.”

Puzzled, Madame Karitska said, “Because of Charmian Cowper?”

The girl nodded. “She died in 1989 at the age of sixty-eight, only three months after her last performance as Lady Macbeth. And my mother, Ellen Margus, died a year and a half ago, and . . . and I inherited a small black trunk—”

“Trunk?” echoed Madame Karitska, thoroughly mystified now.

“Yes, and in my mother's will . . .” Here she burrowed into a pocket and brought out a slip of paper. “In my mother's will she left me—and I quote—‘a trunk that
I
inherited—as you will now, my dear— and on the interior of the lid inside I've glued an envelope explaining from whom
I
inherited it. You'll find the key to the trunk in the china cookie jar in my kitchen. I believe you will find its contents of interest, and since I can leave you so little money I feel a few of the objects can be sold now. With discretion.' ”

Thoroughly puzzled now Madame Karitska said, “And what did you find?”

“I opened the trunk and in the envelope was a copy of Charmian Cowper's will, sent to my mother by Charmian Cowper's lawyer following her death, and bequeathing the trunk to her oldest and dearest friend Ellen Winston Margus—that's my mother,” she explained, “ ‘with love and gratitude.' ”

“What a treasure,” murmured Madame Karitska.

With a mingling of anger and passion the girl said, “But my mother never told me—never
mentioned
— that she ever knew Charmian Cowper, and it sounds as if they knew each other since childhood. I mean, anyone else would have
loved
to brag about knowing such a celebrity, but my mother never mentioned it, not ever, even to me.”

Finding this strange, too, Madame Karitska only nodded and waited.

“Now I want—having adored her in films, and now
this
—I want to write her biography; I have to, I must, it's why I've taken a year off from my very good job in advertising, and why I've moved to Eighth Street before I run out of money doing research. I mean, here is this trunkful of old playbills and photographs, a few costumes, a gorgeous fan, a rather odd necklace, and I find I don't know what any of them mean. Or meant to
her
. There's never been a real biography written— lots of articles about her work, yes, but nothing of her personal life, and all I find are
facts
. She was always so private, you know, and my landlady said you can pick up feelings and reactions from holding things, and receive impressions?”

Madame Karitska said with relief, “At last I begin to understand.”

“Yes, and I so hope— But not even the facts agree. All the movie magazines say she was born in Hungary in 1923,
Who's Who in America
says she was born in Austria in 1922, but her obituary said she was born in Hopetown, Pennsylvania, in 1921.”

“In America! In Pennsylvania!” exclaimed Madame Karitska, remembering an exotic and inexplicably European charm.

“Yes,” said Kate, and added pointedly, “And my mother was also born in Hopetown in 1921.”

This met with a startled silence, until, “You've begun to interest me very much,” admitted Madame Karitska. “I enjoy mysteries—”

“It's more like detective work,” sighed Kate. “Also expensive. I've made two trips to Hopetown, and spent a small fortune on movie magazines; did you know they're considered collectors' items now? except I also found some in flea markets, mercifully. Did you know Charmian Cowper married four times?”

“No, I had no idea—
four
times?”

“Yes, and not until she was thirty years old, and then to a director thirty years older than she was. She was so beautiful and magnetic, there could—
must?
— have been love affairs, don't you think?” Returning to the practical she brought out a memo pad. “I've made notes about her husbands; I'll leave these with you. I looked them all up, it needed a whole month and wasn't easy . . . movie magazines again.”

“You
have
been busy,” agreed Madame Karitska.

“Then when—I mean, may I make an appointment for two hours with you? I can bring some of my mother's things over here; I've several boxes of
hers
, but I don't quite know how to get the trunk here.”

Madame Karitska smiled. “It might be much simpler if I come to your trunk.”

“Oh, would you?” she said eagerly. “My place is still a mess. . . . And you must call me Kate. I'm in apartment number two-oh-two. When are you free?”

Madame Karitska walked over to her desk to her appointment calendar. Some of her clients came in once a month, some twice a month, others she never saw again, but definitely there was a welcome block of time tomorrow. She had planned to visit her favorite thrift shop uptown, hoping that an old Chanel suit there was still in good repair, but definitely Charmian Cowper and Kate were proving far more interesting than Chanel.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “from one o'clock to three?”

Kate looked radiant. “Wonderful,” she said. “I can't wait to see what we can learn.”

Madame Karitska, watching this exuberant child leave, found that she, too, could scarcely wait to see what might be learned.

The next afternoon, a few minutes before one o'clock, Madame Karitska was buzzed through the front door of the apartment house where Kate lived. She was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. “I've gotten organized,” she told her, “I've been so busy researching Charmian that my mother's personal papers remained in storage until yesterday. My furniture's
still
there, as you can see,” she added, pointing toward a room furnished with only three filing cabinets, a computer, a typewriter, a desk and a small trunk, and, in a corner, a card table heaped with magazines and a box, with two straight chairs pulled up to it. “I thought—for your visit—I should pin that photo of Charmian on the wall; I bought it in New York. To inspire.”

Madame Karitska had already noticed it on arrival, for it dominated the room, a large glossy photograph with the remembered bone structure of the face, the subtle slant of her almond-shaped eyes with a hint of sadness lurking in them, and that passionate mouth that a million men had longed to kiss. . . . Yet how those eyes could flash, she remembered, and the lips part in a radiant smile.

“Tell me about your visit to Hopetown,” suggested Madame Karitska, “since you feel that's where your mother knew Charmian. Did you learn—”

“A lot about very little,” quipped Kate. “I spent four days searching through court records. No listing of any Charmian Cowper among the birth records for 1921. I found in the local library some very old 1928-to-1930 directories, and my grandparents were listed there, but no Cowpers. I couldn't even find the two-family house where my mother grew up; it's become a mall now, full of stores and restaurants.”

“A long time ago,” Madame Karitska reminded her, and added thoughtfully, “the thirties would have been Depression years. . . .”

Kate nodded. “I realized that when I remembered what my mother told me about my grandfather. I never met him . . . he was a minister, and Mother said rather tartly that he gave half his money to the poor, and intentionally lived in a poor neighborhood— positively saintlike, but a bit frustrating for my mother. My last bit of research before I left was to visit the Historical Room at the Hopetown library. I xeroxed the first two pages of each 1930 through 1931 newspaper—it was only a weekly in those days— and I included an old map.”

She placed the map on the table and they each sat down in a folding chair and she spread out the map. “I've circled where my mother grew up at 124 Speedway Avenue.” She grinned. “My mother used to call the street a Speedway to Oblivion, but it
has
to be where she knew Charmian Cowper, darn it. My mother lived there until she went off to college.”

“And what's this?” asked Madame Karitska, pointing to a large blank circle adjoining Speedway Avenue.

Kate referred to her notes. “It was a swamp until they filled it in; during the Depression they called it Camp Town. Before that—probably before any bankers ended up broke and retreated there—it was known as Shanty Town.”

“If no Cowpers were listed in the city directories they could have been renters and not listed,” pointed out Madame Karitska. “What do you have there?”

“Photos of Charmian's husbands. One, the director whom she first married, Vladimir Mirkov, and very distinguished, as you can see: white hair and goatee. Unfortunately he died five years later. Next the two Pretty Men—that's what I call them—very young actors, Hayden Marsh and Peter Hastings, but each of those marriages lasted only about a year, and then
much
later came Dr. Ralph Palmer, a cardiologist. Since she died of a heart attack, she may have met him because she went to him for treatment when she began to have trouble.” She handed the photographs to Madame Karitska. “She must have touched them, fingered them, can you pick up any hints of how she felt, any impressions?”

Madame Karitska reached for the photograph of the first husband, Vladimir Mirkov, and became very still, her eyes closed as she concentrated until, soon, she was filled with a deep sense of sadness.

“What is it?” asked Kate anxiously.

“She didn't love him,” said Madame Karitska, frowning. “Something very poignant had happened to her before this marriage when she was thirty; there is a vivid impression of her turning to this older man, this friend, for comfort. A sense of great loss haunted her; I'd guess that he accepted the little she offered and was grateful.”

“How awful,” Kate said soberly. “Then we must try the earlier years, go back to—”

Madame Karitska nodded. “—to before she married without love at thirty? This is your mother's box of personal papers?”

Kate reached over and lifted off its cover for her. “Feel free to explore, I've not had any real time to do that.”

It was not a large box, roughly sixteen inches by ten inches, and Madame Karitska first drew out a thick collection of Christmas cards bound in yellow ribbon. Untying the ribbon she spread them out on the table. There were no envelopes. As she opened one of them a faint scent of flowers assailed her nostrils; there was no signature inside, only a large
K
scrawled under the usual “Happy Holidays.” Opening each card—and there were at least twenty of them—she met with the same signature of
K
and the same remnants of what had been a dried flower. “I can identify this fragrance,” she said. “It's the herb rosemary taped inside each card,” and glancing at Kate she added, “ ‘Rosemary for Remembrance.' ”