Summer Of Fear (3 page)

Mother and I stood silent, listening to the sound of their footsteps in the upstairs hall. Then Mother sighed.

“Oh, it’s good to be home!”

“I’ll bet it is,” I said. “It must have been dreadful.”

“Painful,” Mother said. “That’s a better word. It was so painful, seeing that home for the first time, and Marge not in it. It was a lovely home, Rae, small and simple and rustic but perched on the side of a mountain where the breeze blew straight through one set of windows and out another. Marge had flowers planted everywhere, and her paintings were on all the walls. Her easel was set up in the bedroom with a canvas half finished, and her work smock was tossed on the bed as though she’d just run out for a moment and would be right back. And Ryan had left a page of his novel in his typewriter.”

We went into the living room and Mother dropped her purse on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa. I sat on the chair across from her.

“You said there wasn’t a funeral?” I asked.

“There was nothing to bury,” Mother said. “The car had burned. There was only a shell of metal left. At least, it must have been fast, it fell so far. Those winding roads—the sheer dropoffs—it’s incredible. And Julia wanted to leave as soon as possible. She said there was nothing to stay for.

“Dad went down to Pine Crest and listed the house with the man who runs the little grocery store. He seemed to be the one who handles all real estate sales in that area. And we left the furnishings in it. We packed all the personal things into boxes and left them at Springfield to be shipped. I think Julia will want to have them someday when the grief has had time to lessen.”

“How is she taking it?” I asked.

“Surprisingly well. Almost too well, actually. I think she’s still in a state of shock.” Mother shook her head worriedly. “It was a shattering experience for her. Her parents had left for what was to be only a couple of hours, just long enough to drive the girl Sarah back to the village for the weekend and to pick up some groceries and the mail. Julia had decided against going with them because she had a little headache and wanted to take a nap. She says that when she woke up it was getting dark and her parents weren’t back. She started dinner, and when it was cooked they still hadn’t returned. She sat up waiting for them all night.”

“Wasn’t there somebody she could call?” I asked, horrified at the thought of the lonely vigil. “Weren’t there neighbors?”

“They didn’t have a phone,” Mother reminded me, “and there were no neighbors for miles. That was the reason Ryan moved to the mountains, to be away from distractions. No, Julia just sat there all night long, becoming more and more frightened, and the next morning when the sun came up she started walking to the village.

“She said she had walked about five miles when she saw a car coming up the road, and it was the sheriff from Pine Crest. The wreck had been discovered. Some fishermen had been following the creek back through the valley and had come upon it and looked up and seen the passage it had traveled from the top of the ledge.”

“Then that’s why you weren’t notified sooner.”

“Yes. By the time they took Julia to identify the car and then back to the house to find our address, it was afternoon. The sheriff drove back to Pine Crest to send the telegram. He wanted Julia to go with him or at least to call in some of the women from the village to stay with her, but she refused to see anybody. She just stayed alone in the house and waited for us to come.”

“Poor thing,” I breathed.

“Seventeen is such a vulnerable age,” Mother said. “The adjustment will be hard. She doesn’t even know us. I hope so much we can make her happy here.”

“We will,” I said. “Albuquerque’s a nice place to live.”

“But to make a whole new life, to start from scratch among people who must seem like strangers! How lost she must feel! I’m afraid much of the responsibility will fall upon you, dear. You’re the one closest to her age, the one she’ll be best able to relate to.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of her. I’ll introduce her to my friends and take her to the pool and—oh, everything. It’ll be all right, Mother.”

“I surely hope so.”

There were footsteps on the stairs and my father’s voice called, “Leslie?”

“In here, dear,” Mother called back, forcing a little smile as he appeared in the doorway. “Did you get Julia installed in Rae’s room?”

“Well, she’s up there if that’s what you mean,” Dad said. “I didn’t know where to tell her to put things. As usual, the place looks like a cyclone hit it.”

“I was going to get it straightened,” I said hurriedly. “I didn’t know you were coming home so soon. I’ll go up now and clear out some drawers in the bureau.”

“We’ll get a second one,” Mother said, “as soon as possible. Take up some hangers.”

“Okay,” I said.

I went to Bobby’s room for the hangers because they seem to breed in his closet, and carried them upstairs and paused before the closed door of my room. I wondered if I should knock. I decided I should and rapped softly, and immediately Julia’s voice said, “Yes?”

“It’s Rae,” I said. “I’ve got some hangers for your clothes.”

“Come in.”

I opened the door. Julia was not lying down, as I had expected, but was seated on the edge of one of the twin beds, looking about her. Automatically I found myself following her gaze, seeing the room as through the eyes of a stranger—the pale yellow walls, the gay posters, the crowded bookshelf, the cluttered bureau top, the pile of clothing tossed on the wicker chair.

“It’s kind of messy,” I said.

“That’s all right.”

“I’m not very neat. I’ll try to be better now that you’re here.”

I went over to the chair and picked up the clothes. It wasn’t that much, really, just my pajamas and the shirt I had worn the day before and my tennis shoes. I crammed them into the top drawer of the bureau and then stood wondering which drawers I should empty and what I should do with the stuff.

“Mother says we’ll be getting another bureau.”

“I didn’t bring a heap of things,” Julia said. “I won’t need much room for ‘em.”

“Then I’ll give you the two drawers at the bottom. That is, unless you want the top ones.”

“I don’t care.” Julia was still gazing about her, those strange eyes moving in a slow, careful path, missing nothing. “Who’s the boy in the picture?”

“Mike Gallagher,” I said. “He lives next door.”

“Is he your solid feller?”

“My boyfriend, you mean? No—yes—I guess you could call him that. I don’t wear his ring or anything.”

“He’s good looking.”

“Yes,” I agreed with a touch of pride. Mike was good looking with his broad shoulders and easy grin and that mop of blond hair. “You’ll be meeting him tonight. We have a movie date. At least, we did have.” It occurred to me that it was not the politest thing in the world to take off with a date on the first night Julia was with us. “Maybe you’d like to go. It’s the early feature, and we’d planned on taking Bobby.”

“No, thank you.” Julia turned to look at me directly for the first time. It was the same way in which she had looked at the room, with a deep, penetrating gaze that took in every detail as though making a mental photograph that would be stored forever in the files of memory. Those eyes bored into me with such intensity that they gave me a feeling of having been caught and pinned in place by a physical force. I could almost feel their progress past the light skin and the sprinkling of freckles, through the hard bones of the skull, into the absolute core of my being. It was a strange feeling being studied so intently. I shifted uncomfortably and turned my own eyes away.

“How do your folks feel about having me here?” Julia asked.

“They want you,” I said. “They want you very much. Almost the first thing Mother said after the telegram came was ‘We’ll have to go get Julia.’”

“And your father?”

“Dad too, of course. He wants whatever Mother wants, always.”

“They get along well then, your folks?”

“Well, sure. They married each other, didn’t they?” It was such a strange question I wondered if I had misunderstood it. Some of the terms Julia used and the way she pronounced her words were disconcerting. Perhaps, I thought, she had meant something entirely different.

But my answer seemed to satisfy her. I felt those eyes draw out of me, and she settled back on the bed.

“Tell me about your family,” she said. “What are they like? I want to know all about them.”

It was my bed she was lying on. I wondered if I should tell her and then I thought, no, it doesn’t matter. I could take the other bed for one night. Preferring one bed over the other was simply a matter of habit.

“You must be tired,” I said. “I’ll leave you alone for a while so you can get a nap.”

“No, don’t. Stay and talk to me.” It was more a command than a request. “If I’m going to live here I need to know about everybody. Tell me about your brothers. Which one is the oldest?”

“Peter,” I said. “He’s eighteen, and hell be going to the University in the fall. He’s the musical one in the family. He plays clarinet and alto sax with a combo and in the daytime he works in a music store. Bobby’s eleven and likes to play baseball.” I paused. “Didn’t Aunt Marge ever talk about us? Didn’t you see the picture Mother sent at Christmas?”

“I must have,” Julia said, “but I don’t remember it. What about you? Do you go away to school like I do?”

“No,” I said. “I go to Highland High, right here In Albuquerque. This summer I’m not doing anything much, at least, not yet. I applied for jobs a lot of places, but so far nobody’s called me. I babysit for people and I help Mother in the darkroom, and I cook dinners and things when she’s got a job to get out. She does illustrations for magazines, you know.”

“And your father? Where does he work?”

“He’s an engineer and works for the government. That’s how we get to belong to the Coronado Club out on the base and use their pool and go to the dances. They have a lot of things going on out there for teenagers. I’ll take you to some of them when—well, when you’re ready. I know it’ll be a while before you’ll feel like doing things.”

I tried to picture Julia at the pool, laughing and splashing and joking around with Carolyn and me. It was a hard thing to imagine. It was equally hard to picture her at a dance. Those huge eyes gazing up at me from the pillow, the thin face half lost in the flood of raven hair, seemed to belong to someone from another world.

The words on Aunt Marge’s card came back to me—”Our angel Julie is home for the holidays and the house is filled with singing.” “Julie” was such a carefree nickname, it did not seem possible that it could ever have been used for Julia.

“Julia,” I said haltingly, knowing that I must say something, but what? How could I reach through the wall of grief that separated us and give comfort? Julia’s attempt at making small talk was touching, but I knew the effort it must be taking.

“Julia,” I said again helplessly, and was interrupted by the sound of scratching at the door. Relief swept over me. Here was the diversion we needed!

“There’s somebody here to see you,” I said. “Another member of the family.” I went to the door and opened it. “Come in, Trickle. I want you to meet a new friend.”

“Who is it?” Julia asked, pulling herself to a sitting position. Her voice went strangely flat. “Oh. It’s a dog.”

“Don’t call him that,” I said. “You’ll hurt his feelings. He thinks he’s people. He won’t even eat dogfood because he thinks he ought to eat the same things we do. Mother and Dad gave him to me on my twelfth birthday.”

Julia’s body seemed to stiffen. “I’m not very good with dogs. They don’t like me,”

“Trickle will,” I told her. “He loves everybody, even the garbage men. Other dogs all bark at the garbage truck, but Trickle just wags his tail.”

“Keep him away from me,” Julia said. “I mean it, Rachel.”

“You can’t be afraid of Trickle!” I exclaimed incredulously. “Why, he wouldn’t hurt anybody! He’s the sweetest natured dog in the world. There’s this man who breeds wirehairs up in Santa Fe—his kennel is where my folks got Trickle—and he said that he’d never sold a puppy who was as—”

“Get him out’er here!” Julia said. Her voice slashed through the room as sharp as a whip.

“All right,” I said, startled. “Of course, if you’re really frightened. But you’ll feel differently when you get to know him. You’ll love him, I promise.”

Then I heard another sound, low and gravelly. It was something I had never once heard in the entire three and eleven-twelfths years that Trickle had been with us. In amazement I turned and stared at my dog. His head was lowered and his ears were back and his lips were drawn away from his teeth. He was growling.

When I think back I realize that this was the moment I received my first hint that something was terribly wrong.

At the time I realized nothing. How could I?

“Trickle, you bad thing!” I said. “What’s gotten into you?” And to Julia—”I’m ashamed of him. I’ve never known him to act like this before.”

I took the poor dog by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out into the hall, growling all the way, and then picked him up and carried him down the stairs and put him outside.

“You just stay out,” I told him, “until you’re in a better mood.”

I re-entered the house through the back door and found Peter at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of ice cream and reading Down Beat. For a skinny guy, Pete never seemed to stop eating.

As I came in he lifted his head and tossed his hair back out of his eyes and said, “I see the folks got home. Mom was just pulling out of the driveway as I came in.”

“Probably headed for the grocery store,” I said. “The refrigerator’s down to nothing.”

“So I discovered.” He gestured toward the sink where he had tossed the empty ice cream carton. “Did they bring Julia back with them?”

“Yes. She’s up in my room, lying down. I mean, in our room,” I corrected myself. “Hers and mine.”

“What’s she like? Is she pretty?”

“No,” I said. “In fact, the opposite. “Very plain.”

“Nice?”

“I guess so. I didn’t talk with her very long. She doesn’t like dogs.”