But I was feeling better about Mommy because when I called the hospital, the nurse in ICU told me she had snapped out of the coma and was being moved back to a regular room. She said the doctor wanted to hold off visitors until the next day so she could get a full night's rest, but he was speaking with much more positive notes. It filled my heart with enough hope and warmth to even face my
grandmother and be civil. The end, after all, was in sight. The madness in the house would stop.
What happened with Daddy was something else, something to postpone, but in my secret heart of hearts, I prayed there was some explanation and some end to that betrayal as well. Funny, I thought, how good news could turn you into a child again, permitting you to believe in happy endings.
At eight o'clock, the doorbell rang and I hurried down the stairs to get there before Grandmother Beverly. Daddy, who had called earlier to tell her he was attending an important business meeting, was not home for dinner and wouldn't be until quite late.
"Hi," I said after I opened the door and found Clarence standing there, looking shy and afraid. Was I the first girl he had ever visited?
He turned to gaze down the driveway as if he thought he might have been followed and then nodded, smiled and stepped into the house. His eyes were like hungry little creatures gobbling up everything in sight.
"Those two bare areas were where my mother had her favorite paintings." I said nodding toward the wall where Mommy's New Orleans paintings once hung. "Grandmother Beverly is in the process of replacing them with something more cheerful," I said under my breath. 'When Mommy comes home, we'll put her pictures back."
He nodded and then stiffened and froze as Grandmother Beverly came out of the kitchen to see who had come to the door. The instant her gaze fell on him, her face expressed her disapproval: her lips stretching and flowing into the corners, her eyes flashing disgust. Clarence was wearing a ragged looking old bomber jacket and a tee- shirt with a picture of Bach and the words Fugue Me written beneath it.
"And who is this?"
"This is Clarence Baron, Grandmother, He and I are studying for a social studies test we're taking tomorrow. Is that all right with you?"
"Why didn't you ask before he arrived?" she countered.
"I couldn't imagine any reason why you wouldn't approve." I replied as sweetly as I could manage. "Maybe you've heard of Clarence's father. Michael Baron, one of the most prominent attorneys in the area."
She drew her head back as if she had flies in her nose and scrutinized Clarence as if she were considering him for a part in her play.
"Don't stay too late," she commanded. gave Clarence a threatening look of warning, and then returned to the kitchen.
I smiled at him.
"Now you see why she was the inspiration for the character of Freddy in A Nightmare on Elm Street," I said.
Clarence laughed and I hooked my arm into his and steered him toward the staircase.
"Quick, before she decides to take a sample of your blood." I said and hurriedly moved us up. I was embarrassed about the hasp on my bedroom door so I rushed him by and took him directly to the attic. I lit a stick of incense. while he waited in the doorway, gazing in nervously.
"Don't worry. There's nothing here that will hurt you," I promised. "I know that," he said, but not with great confidence, and entered.
"This was a favorite place for my mother and me." I began and then showed him the old pictures my mother had found, raffling off the names we knew and the names we had created, as well as a line or two about them, which was also mostly imagined.
"She is my favorite." I said showing him the picture of Jonathan Demerest's youngest daughter Belva. Clarence held it and studied her faint visage. Even awash in the sepia tint, her big eyes stood out.
"She looks so sad for a young girl," he said.
"Well, she fell in love with a young officer in her father's regiment. Captain Lance Arnold, and he fell in love with her even though she was only thirteen at the time."
"Thirteen? Really?"
"Yes. In those days women were engaged or married before they were twenty, you know."
"How old was he?"
"Twenty-three. Captain Arnold courted her and finally won her father's blessing. They were married when she was only fifteen and less than a year later, she was pregnant, but she and her baby died in a horrible birthing. Captain Arnold killed himself in pier"
"You're kidding?" Clarence said.
I wiped a tear from my cheek and shook my head. Then I took the picture from him and stared at it.
"She wrote exquisite but sad poems mourning the short life of beautiful things. She was a very sensitive person who liked to wander through the fields and forest and talk to the animals."