had happened to her daughter, to them, had changed their lives at the fundamental core; any altered behavior was only to be expected, tolerated, then slowly, slowly modified.
“Kids know things. You can always trust a child’s instincts when it comes to…well, bad people,” Elise said in an even more hushed tone, as if Steven were capable of hearing her through the double-paned French doors and three-foot-thick walls and despite the reality of his standing a good fifty feet away.
Jillian didn’t bother to answer. The truth was, kids didn’t know things; they learned them. In Allie’s case, it had been the hard way. And thanks to that year-ago horrible morning on the way to school, this particular eight-year-old didn’t have a clue about what was good or bad and her mother certainly couldn’t tell her anymore. When it came right down to it, Jillian suspected that no human being, unless psychic, had an instant recognition of either good or bad.
“Have you checked to see if he has a gun?” Elise whispered.
Jillian couldn’t help it, she chuckled aloud. It felt good. “By doing what, Elise? Sneaking into his house and searching his things?”
Elise looked thoughtful. “It’s your house. Guesthouse, anyway,” she said, but she shrugged, as though acknowledging Jillian’s question and her own amended answer. “Well, you could ask him, couldn’t you?”
“I can just picture that. ‘Excuse me, Steven, but do you have a weapon you plan on using on my daughter or me?”’
Even Elise had to choke back a laugh. That choked sound was one of the things Jillian most dearly liked about Elise.
“Well, anyway, you have to learn to be more careful.”
Jillian’s smile felt frozen now. Being careful had nothing to do with survival. She’d been cautious and careful all her life. Dave had been careful. Even on his last awful morning, his seat belt had been fastened, the insurance current, Allie strapped in, the door locked on the passenger side and Allie’s school lunch neatly folded into her hand-painted lunch pail. But none of Dave’s anxiety, concern or even occasionally scattered solicitude had stopped the random bullet from that drive-by shooting. And not a single element of the loving regard that Jillian had poured into their marriage had prevented that .38 caliber thief from stealing Dave, or his music, his passion, his fathering, his soul, and so very much more.
Something in her rigid smile, or perhaps something lurking in her eyes, let Elise catch a glimpse of her thoughts, for her friend said quickly, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I know there are things you can’t foresee.”
Her voice dropped nearly an octave, and she nearly spit out an epithet before continuing, “Forget I said anything. I’m just a worrywart.” She patted the table, as if touching Jillian’s hand.
Jillian shook her head, trying to shake away the memory of that agonizing day, the worse-than-despairing year of days since.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Elise, ever the cheerleader, leaned forward slightly, her ruddy face free of any smile now, her mouth drawn into a serious line, her eyes urgent. “At least you’re painting again,” she said.
Jillian nodded. It was a true statement, but it made her feel guilty nonetheless. She was painting again, not the light, airy abstracts that had so delighted Dave. Instead, she was creating dark, angry, real and surreal accounts of the fury and confusion that reigned in her. And most of all, these new and frightening paintings all too often depicted the helplessness she felt upon hearing her daughter’s screams in the middle of the night. Surreal doorways, openings to terrible, evil places, horrific eyes darkly beckoning. Were these desperate paintings wholly representative of her life now?
Only yesterday she’d discovered that the pairs of haunted eyes in the roiling clouds beyond the jambs of the last three nowhere doors were the same exact color as Steven’s. What did that foretell? What did it mean? His eyes were the doorways of her own soul? That was too heavy and too complex even for Jillian’s present dark mood.
“So, that damned bullet didn’t get everything, did it?” Elise asked almost harshly.
Jillian looked up in surprise. Was this the secret to their friendship, that Elise was able to tap into some underlying empathetic emanation, or was it that she was nearly telepathic?
Elise nodded, as if Jillian had voiced these questions aloud. “I know, Jillian. Don’t you think I’ve been angry about it, too? It was bad enough to lose Dave, his gorgeous music. And to see what you and Allie were going through? But, my God, you stopped painting, too. It was like that murderer stole you also.”
Jillian nodded slowly, fighting tears that threatened to spill, to blur her vision. She blinked rapidly, willing them away. Elise was right, and too terribly on target. She had felt that way, still felt that way to a large degree. That bullet had stolen her joy in living.
“It’s okay, you know,” Elise said. “It’s just me here now. Not some shrink with nasty questions about your mother and your second cousin’s older brother. I know what hell it was to live with Dave sometimes. I knew him before you did, remember?”
Jillian smiled weakly, and then, almost to her relief, found herself saying, “Sometimes at night, when I wake up and remember that he’s not here, I’ve gone to sit at the drafting table, or maybe in front of the easel. And nothing would come. Not even a glimmer of an idea. All I could think about was, who would I show it to now that Dave was…gone. At least he kept me honest.”
“You could always call me, you know. I want to see your work.”
Jillian looked away from Elise, unable to continue while directly meeting her friend’s blatant sympathy. She half turned in her chair, profiling both Elise and the outside doors. She thought of the way Steven had stood so still in the courtyard, and drew on that image for some semblance of strength.
How could she explain to Elise that the paintings weren’t ‘work’? They were agony, despair, rage. They were the darkest, angriest part of her. The guilt over the marriage, which had been broken long before Dave’s death? The guilt over knowing that both of them, no matter how much they might have loved, had held some special ingredient back? Whatever they represented, whatever they displayed, Jillian knew they were the doorways to the ultimate torment in her soul.
“Anytime, Jill,” Elise said.
Jillian didn’t tell Elise that it wasn’t—couldn’t be—the same as showing Dave. She didn’t have to; Elise knew. But just yesterday, hadn’t she considered showing a recent piece to Steven? Somehow she’d thought he would understand it, perhaps even be able to explain it to her. Was it because he’d told her, only last week—when she’d said he didn’t have to call her Mrs. Stewart, but could call her Jillian—that someone had once told him that even “the prince of darkness is a gentleman.”
She couldn’t remember the context, why he’d said it. She only remembered being teased by the odd phrase, feeling it fit him somehow. A browse through Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations had revealed the quote as coming from Shakespeare’s King Lear. A man who quoted Shakespeare while cleaning out gutters was a man who might understand the dark side of life, she’d thought then, and remembered now, smiling a little.
She’d thought it a remarkably apt remark from him. “Child Rowland to the dark tower came…” That was what Steven reminded her of, a haunted man in search of himself, in search of some dark and terrible truth.
Elise,
