Libby on Wednesday (9 page)

Gillian applauded, waking Salome, who mewed accusingly before she rearranged herself and went back to sleep. As Libby climbed back into her corner of the chair, Gillian regarded her thoughtfully for a moment before she said, “We might discuss it with Christopher. It seems that he might do something about the yard at least, since he enjoys gardening so much.”

“I know,” Libby said. “He loves to garden—in the backyard.”

Ever since Libby could remember, Christopher had spent a great deal of time out-of-doors, mowing and pruning and planting the three large terraces that stretched from the back of the house clear down to the river’s edge. And when he was finished, he often sat on the highest terrace in the garden gazebo—a Graham-built gazebo, large and ornate with a peaked and pinnacled roof and glassed-in walls—where Christopher wrote poetry or simply enjoyed the results of his hard work in the garden.

And the results were beautiful. The backyard of the McCall House was every bit as grand now as it had been in the days when Graham McCall was alive. It was only in front that …

“I wonder why Christopher never …” Libby began and found that Gillian was saying exactly the same words. They both laughed, and after they’d thought for a moment, they laughed again and nodded, because of course they really knew the answer. The backyard of the McCall House, sheltered as it was by high fences and hedges, was a secluded and private place. To work in the front yard, on the other hand, would invite the stares not only of chance passersby but also of the dozens of people who made special trips to stare over the fence at the famous McCall House, the enormous old stone mansion built by Morrison’s much-beloved or (depending on your point of view) despised author.

“Christopher couldn’t stand that,” Gillian said, as if she had been reading Libby’s mind.

Libby nodded. “Why?” she said after a while.

Gillian ran her hand through her pixie-cut gray hair. “Why, indeed,” she said. “He certainly didn’t get his retiring nature from his father—or from me. But he’s always been that way, quiet and shy except around people he knows well. But sometimes I think it was our fault, Graham’s and mine. When Christopher started to go to school, Graham’s books set in Morrison had just come out and, as you know, not everyone was pleased. Some of the local residents accused him of spreading slander and gossip, and for a while there was even talk of lawsuits. Nothing
came of the suits, and of course nowadays no one cares about such things anymore.”

Gillian smiled an ironic one-dimple smile and then went on. “I gather that some of the people who complained then that Graham had ruined their reputations are rather proud of it nowadays—now that ruined reputations are so much more popular.”

But after a moment even the ironic smile faded, and Gillian sighed. “However—Christopher did have a hard time for a while, and sometimes I think that to send a small, sensitive boy to school in a town that has a grudge against his family is a rather foolish thing to do. Christopher didn’t complain very much, but I know that he wasn’t happy for a long time.”

“Umm,” Libby nodded. She’d heard about it before, how much Christopher had hated going to public school, which was probably one of the reasons he’d agreed to having her taught at home for so long. Not that he’d expected her to have the same kinds of problems. “I was always such a shy, tentative child—not at all like you,” he’d told her before she started school. “I’m sure you’ll have no problems at all.” And Libby had pretty much agreed with him—until her first day at Morrison Middle School.

They went back to their books then and read quietly for several minutes before Gillian asked, “What made you think about it, the front yard, I mean? Was it just what someone said about bringing visitors by to look at the house, or had you been worrying about it before?”

“No. Not before. It was just what Tierney, this friend of mine, said, I guess, that made me think of it. I don’t think I thought much about it before that.”

Gillian nodded and opened her book. But before she’d had time to get really into the story, Libby interrupted again.

“What do you think people say about Mercedes? I mean, don’t you think people say it was wrong of her to go back to New York and leave Christopher and me here?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gillian said. “What do your friends say about it? About having a mother who lives someplace else most of the time?”

“Nothing,” Libby said. “That is, most of them don’t know. I don’t talk about it much. But if some of them came here, they’d probably ask where my mother was, don’t you think? And why she went off and left me?”

Gillian nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I imagine they’re quite accustomed to the idea of parents who live apart, in the case of divorce.”

“I know. But this is different, isn’t it? Christopher says he and Mercedes never considered divorce. He says they’ve always been very good friends.”

“That’s quite true,” Gillian said. “And it’s also true that they’ve been even better friends since Mercedes has been spending most of her time on the East Coast. But I understand what you’re saying. It is more unusual for a mother to leave her family in order to carry out her chosen career. But I think you know how I feel about it. Acting is a ‘calling,’ just as writing or dancing is a ‘calling,’ and I don’t think anyone can be blamed for following a ‘call.’ ”

Libby hung her head, studying her fingernails. She knew that was what Gillian would say—that she wouldn’t blame Mercedes. She herself had never blamed her, until recently. When she was younger, she had always felt it was a decided
advantage to have a mother who lived in an exotic place like New York City and acted on the stage, and came home suddenly at unexpected times bringing gifts and all kinds of exciting stories, and making up for being gone so long by being particularly full of good ideas about exciting things to do. But she blamed her now—for Morrison Middle School—but that, of course, was not something she could say to Gillian.

Libby sighed. “Well at least she didn’t leave until I was civilized enough so I wouldn’t be too much trouble for the rest of you to take care of.”

Gillian laughed and hugged Libby’s shoulders. “My dear child. You were never any trouble. And as for being civilized—at the age of three and a half you were in many ways the most adult member of the family—until we got Elliott, anyway. And besides, no one could say that Mercedes deserted us. Not when she always comes back between jobs.”

“I know,” Libby said. “I was just thinking about what some people might say.”

Gillian put down her book and took Libby by both shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What people might say?” she said. “Will you listen to yourself, child. You sound just like Cordelia.”

Libby smiled. It was true, in a way. True at least that Cordelia was always worrying about “what people might say.” But this was—different. “This is different,” Libby told Gillian.

“Different?” Gillian asked with her one-dimple smile. “In what way?”

“Well, it just is. It’s different because I’m not
worrying
about it the way Cordelia does. I’m just—thinking about it.”

And that night in bed she thought about it some more as the storm, still raging outside her windows, sent anxious shadows scurrying around the room and then into her dreams.

    9

During the next week Libby had something new to worry about—the fact that the discussion of her story would be the first thing on the agenda at the writers’ workshop’s next meeting.

Sometimes she felt confident. After all, Wendy had liked it, and Alex had more or less said that it was good enough to make a publisher believe that it was written by Graham McCall. That only left Tierney and G.G. ONLY? That was really ironic. That was, without a doubt, the largest only in the whole world.

At other times she felt—or tried to convince herself that she felt—unconcerned. After all, what if Tierney and G.G. were horrible? It would only be what one had to expect, considering the source. “Considering the source” was a favorite phrase of Cordelia’s. The sources that Cordelia usually had to consider were stupid clerks or rude taxi drivers, and what Cordelia obviously meant was that you simply couldn’t expect anything better from “such people.” And, Libby told herself, you certainly couldn’t expect anything
better from such people as Gary Greene and Tierney Laurent.

But in between the short spells of feeling almost confident or almost unconcerned, there were the other, longer times when small dark moments of dread whispered through her mind.

The week seemed much longer than normal, but Wednesday arrived at last, and Ms. O called the third meeting of the Future Famous Writers to order by announcing that the first event of the day would be Tierney’s reading of her prizewinning story. Apparently everyone, including the teacher, had entirely forgotten that there hadn’t been time to finish the discussion of
Rainbow in the Dust
.

To her amazement Libby found that she was as disappointed as she was relieved. Not to mention a little bit angry. By the time she’d gotten control of the confused tangle of dread, relief, disappointment, and anger, Tierney was well into her story. Frowning fiercely as always, she was crouched over her manuscript and reading fast, in a loud, threatening voice.

“The next morning I got to the office late, but not late enough. My head still felt like a bass drum in a Fourth of July parade. My footsteps thundered, the door hinges shrieked, and even the sunlight was too noisy. I eased into the room and pulled down the blinds. I was quietly lowering myself onto my swivel chair when the door opened fast and hard. The sound throbbed like a tin drum in an echo chamber. Holding my head with both hands, I opened one eye.

“She was tall, with a face that belonged on a magazine
cover and a body that rated a centerfold. Her smile was an invitation.

“I opened the other eye. ‘Hatchet,’ I said. ‘Rafe Hatchet. Private Eye.’ ”

At first Libby thought she had read it before. All those famous detective stories were in Graham’s library, books written in the thirties by people like Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. Libby had read nearly all of them and had taken some of the most famous upstairs to be a part of her thirties collection. But as Tierney went on reading, she wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t so much exactly like a particular story as quite a bit like a lot of them.

As the story went on, it turned out, of course, that the beautiful girl needed a detective. Her brother had mysteriously disappeared, or that’s what she said, at least. So Rafe Hatchet took the case and, right away, people started being killed. A policeman was shot, a mysterious man burst into Rafe’s office with a knife in his back, and finally an old friend of Rafe’s was strangled.

For a while Libby was busy asking herself which incident came from which book. Most of them sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn’t quite place them, since some of the original stories had blurred together in her mind. But when it came to the ending, there was one thing she was certain about. That was when it turned out that the beautiful girl herself was the murderer. That one was right out of
The Maltese Falcon
.

It wasn’t until the story ended that Libby suddenly realized that she’d been so busy listening and trying to remember where she’d read each part before that she’d forgotten to
think about some other important considerations. Considerations such as what constructive remarks could be made about Tierney’s story. And how in the world Tierney Laurent happened to have written a detective story that sounded as if came right out of the thirties.

She had just begun to deal with the question of what her comment would be when she noticed that Alex was shaking his hand in the air and grinning all over his face. “Mizzo,” he kept saying. (Everyone was calling her Mizzo now.) “Mizzo. Call on me.”

Ms. O laughed. “Well, Alex. Since you seem to have something urgent to say, I guess—”

But before she could finish, there was an interruption—a loud one.

“Hey, Laurent,” Gary Greene said. “Where do you get off talking about my stuff having too many killings? You got as many as I do.”

Tierney’s eyes narrowed, and her spiky hair quivered. “I do not!” she yelled. “You had a lot more. I counted. You had at least twice as many.”

“Yeah! Well, so what. Yours are at least twice as boring.”

Tierney’s jaw jutted and her eyes were down to slits, and for once she was sitting up straight. Unwound from her usual slouch, she looked amazingly tall, and angry and dangerous. “Oh, yeah! Well, let me tell you something. This—” She slammed her manuscript down on her desk. “—This happens to be a classical detective story, and in detective stories you have to have murders. And unlike the senseless gore in some people’s junk, my murders have something to do with the plot of the story. And besides that …”

G.G. was talking at the same time, yelling something about laser guns and disintegrators being a lot more exciting than out-of-date stuff like knives and guns, and Mizzo was shouting “Tierney! Gary! That’s enough.”

When they finally stopped yelling and were just sitting there glaring at each other, Mizzo shook her head and sighed gloomily. “I’m certainly glad that Mr. Axminster isn’t here to see what’s happening to this group that he had such high hopes for,” she said. And then she went off into another lecture about how sad it was to see five such
incredibly
talented and intelligent young people who had so much to offer and yet had so much difficulty relating to each other and each other’s work—and so on and so forth. It wasn’t until she’d covered the subject very thoroughly that she turned back to Alex.