“Hello,” she said. “It’s Beth. Beth LaBrea.”
Beth LaBrea. In spite of the fact that our daughters had been best friends, that friendship had never expanded to involve our families. I could only recall a couple of times over the years that we had spoken, mostly on the phone to check on some plan the girls had cooked up. Permission for one to stay for dinner or overnight. That kind of thing. We never socialized, but as I have said, I’d never encouraged a social life, had, in fact, discouraged it. I had been completely satisfied with a life comprised of my family and my work. I dimly remembered a time just before Lucy and Rain were to start high school when Sophie had arranged a mother-daughter dinner out for the four of them, but if she had said anything about it after, I hadn’t paid enough attention to recall it now. “Hello.”
“You know my son, Duane.” She pushed the boy forward.
I nodded.
She barreled on. “Your wife got in touch with us several days ago. She said you wanted to talk to Duane about posing as a saint for the mural. Of course we are absolutely thrilled with the idea.” The boy stared at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes. The last thing Duane looked was thrilled.
“Is this something that might interest you, Duane?” I asked.
“Of course it would,” his mother said and pushed the boy a few more steps forward.
Duane shrugged his shoulders and continued to stare at the floor.
“Duane,” she said, her voice sharper. “Mr. Light has asked you a question.”
“I guess. I mean, I’m not sure.”
Thunder rolled, closer now, and again the lights flickered off, leaving the building dark for a moment before switching on again.
“Duane—” the mother began.
“I don’t know,” he stammered. “I mean, I have to go to work.”
“You could come after work,” his mother said. She turned to me. “Will you still be here later today?” she asked. “At four? He gets off work at four.”
I studied the boy, could see some of the mother in his features. The heart-shaped face tapering to the chin, the narrow shoulders. “I expect to be here. Unless we lose power.”
“Oh, the storm is just passing through,” she declared with certainty, as if she were personally charged with controlling the weather. “This will all clear up by noon.”
I found myself disliking her. The boy looked miserable, and as much as I would have liked him to pose I wanted to let him off the hook. “You don’t have to decide now,” I said. “If you want to take a few days to think it over, you can let me know.”
“Oh, no need for that,” Beth LaBrea declared. “It’s settled then.” Duane remained silent, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
I was puzzled by my reaction to the woman, my aversion. Even her bullying of her son didn’t explain it. I remembered that it had been Beth LaBrea who had initiated the idea of tying the green ribbons on tree trunks and utility poles, green being the color of hope, she had told Sophie. It had also been Beth who had taken up a collection for us, as if money could possibly compensate for the loss of a daughter. I had been furious when she had appeared at our door with an envelope thick with cash. “She means well,” Sophie had said. That night I’d tossed the envelope on our barbeque grill, soaked it with liquid fire starter, and set it aflame. I’d been aware of Sophie watching from the kitchen window, but when I went back inside she hadn’t said a word.
“You can expect him at four,” Beth said, and then they were gone as quickly as they had appeared, leaving only a puddle on the floor where they had stood as proof they had ever been there.
For the remainder of the morning, I occupied myself by sketching variations of the panel until I arrived at a scheme that satisfied. At noon, I locked up and, as had become my habit, walked over to the deli on Prospect for a quick lunch. As Beth LaBrea had forecast, the rain had ceased, and I found myself childishly pissed that she had been correct. Inside the deli, there was a long line at the counter, and I was resigning myself to a lengthy wait when the counter girl called my name.
“You here to pick up your order?” she asked with a wink.
I had no idea what “my order” was but recognized the gambit as her way of serving a resident before attending to the tourists on line, an acting out of the confliction many tradespeople felt at the influx of tourists each summer. On one hand they were grateful for the business. On the other, they resented the disruption in daily lives, the traffic jams and long waits at every restaurant in town, the squeal of air brakes on the tour buses that crowded the streets. The girl disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a brown bag. “Here ya go,” she said as she handed me the bag, then gave me change for my twenty, which I dropped in the tip jar.
“Hope you enjoy,” she sang out as I left.
“I’m sure I will,” I said, even as I wondered what she had given me.
The morning’s rain had soaked everything, covering benches and puddling walks, and although I often spent my lunch break at the park or by the beach, that day I headed back to the studio. I chuckled when I opened the bag. The clerk had been paying attention to my choices over the past weeks. A veggie wrap with ginger dressing.
At three, although it would be another hour before Duane was due, I pulled out the first book of saints Father Gervase had left for me and flipped through it until I found the portrait of Sebastian. I checked the index of another book. I located the page for the saint and compared it to the first. In each of the paintings, the boy was clad in a loincloth-like garment. I wondered if it would skew the composition if only one saint in the panels was not garbed in a robe.
At four, I put the books aside, oddly antsy. Four fifteen came and passed. And then four thirty. By five, I resigned myself that Duane was not coming and was disappointed beyond what I might have expected. I carefully stored my work in the folders and placed them on the worktable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT