I hated this! The way he jumped from subject to subject! School, then my mother, and now back to Frances. And they say kids manipulate adults? What was he doing to me? I spun around to face him.
“Self-contained? Does that mean she doesn’t have a record for seducing fifteen-year-old kids? That’s good, isn’t it, then? It means you can get off her and you can get off me and leave us both alone!”
I went out, slamming the door, then shoving my hands into my pockets, stood at the bottom step. It was another windy day, which is all we seem to have here on the Cape in November, December, the whole damn winter. Why do people live out on this damn peninsula anyhow?
“Bay’s that way,” Jake said behind me.
I spun around, glared up the steps at him.
“That’s what you do when you’re mad, isn’t it, walk out to the end of the jetty?”
Okay, my next remark was completely out of line, but I said it right to his face. I told him where he could go.
“Yeah, that’s a good answer,” he said. “But if you’re trying to make me mad, it’s not going to work.” He folded his arms and stared down at me.
“What makes you think...” I was totally flustered, embarrassed, and a little bit ashamed. Truth is, I had such a rush of emotions just then I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why, and neither did I have a single clue as to how to control them. I just knew I felt like I was suffocating.
Then my fingers felt the small wooden object shaped like an egg that I’d tucked in my jacket pocket.
“Do you blame me for what your mother did?” Jake asked.
“This is a stupid time to talk about that!” I fired back. Finally something at which I could aim.
“You’re working your butt off, Herbie, day and night, making yourself so exhausted that you fall into bed each night without time to think about your mother, about what she did, about how it’s affecting you — isn’t that right?”
“You ought to change jobs, Jake. Become a — psychiatrist or something.” I turned around then, headed toward the driveway, the road, the water? I stopped short; no way did I want to fulfill his expectations. If he thought I was headed for the bay, I’d go in the other direction, toward town.
I felt his hand come down heavily on my shoulder. “No, I’m just happy being a — cop,” he said to me, and then in an entirely different tone of voice, casual, friendly, upbeat, said, “So, what have you got planned for the rest of the day? Track meet? Then what?”
“I’m going to...” I couldn’t look at him. “...Frances’s and I don’t know, reset the timers. I change them every few days.” I shrugged. “I got things to do there; it’s a big house.”
“You bill her by the hour, the day, the week? Or does she have you on salary?”
“I work for her, Jake,” I said in a rather small voice. I had my fingers wrapped around the wooden egg, tight in my pocket. It was cool and smooth. Slowly I felt my breathing even out. “That’s all I do.”
“Did you think I doubted you?”
I shook my head, managed to meet his eyes. Mine suddenly felt a little wet. “It’s a real nice house, too. It’s...” I looked over my shoulder at my own home; it had seemed so large to me, so safe and snug, and now...
“It’s not the same as your own house, is it?” Jake asked.
“My mother, she’s everywhere in my house, Jake,” I said, choking on my words suddenly, which was stupid, but I couldn’t stop. “She’s... you can’t pick up a salt shaker and not think about her.”
He slid his arm around my shoulders and said, “So, first the track meet, then you take me to see this Carter house, if that’s allowed?”
“Hey, you’re a cop.” I wiped my eyes. “If you can’t trust a cop, who can you trust?”
“I’m washing all the dishes,” I said to Jake, explaining the reason there were stacks of bowls, platters, and dinner plates on the kitchen counters. “Except those up there.” I pointed to the highest cabinets. “A lot of fancy stuff up there, you know, stuff you seldom use. And I’m relining the cabinets, polishing up the woodwork.” I showed him where I’d worked, cleaning off grease so thick it had taken several scouring pads to remove it. A pair of cabinet doors, their windowed fronts cracked or missing, were leaning against a table leg. “Those are going to be replaced. Frances is going to have a cabinetmaker come in, match them to the originals. I’ve also done the floor.”
And what a job that had been, too, to scrape away twenty years of wax, then clean down to the original black and white tiles. In fact, I’d done nearly all the work in this room: bleached out the sinks, scoured and polished the faucets, washed the walls and floor, removed cobwebs and grime in the molding. I’d carefully cleaned the Tiffany lamp hanging over the center table, but the wiring in it was bad, so it hung beautiful, but useless.
“She’s going to have an electrician in to do some work. Might put in some ceiling fans, some new light fixtures,” I explained.
From there we moved to the dining room where I’d done little more than dust and vacuum; the ancient hardwood dining set was pushed up against an inside wall and still covered with dropcloths. The multipaned windows were almost gray against the afternoon light. “I’ve got a lot to do in here,” I added with a shrug.
Then to the front rooms and the small side parlor, which faced directly west. I deliberately saved this room for last. It was here I had worked the hardest. It had been filled with musty, sheet-covered furniture, most of which Frances planned to throw out. I had vacuumed the rugs down to a near-perfect sheen, and even though they were faded in places, the ancient reds and greens of the old Persian carpets were now brilliant — you could actually step on them now without raising a cloud of gray dust.
The furniture, too, I had cleaned, dusted, polished. The room smelled of lemon oil, the windows were crystal-clear, and the afternoon sun was shining through each perfect square pane. With the steam clanking through the radiators, it was exactly as a room should be, inviting and safe. You could sit and watch the waning sunlight, or the fallen leaves drift lazily across the front lawn. You could look out, see what was coming, and then be prepared for whatever did come.
“Of course, there’s one other room,” I told Jake as he stood in the center, hands on his hips, surveying the results of my hard work. “And the upstairs — I haven’t even started up there. Do you want to see it?”
“Why not?” he said, seemingly well pleased by my willingness to bring him here.
“Why not,” I echoed, then said, “Frances calls it the trophy room.”
What word did Jake use, which I had used myself on first seeing this room? Weird? Yes, though I had only thought it, never wanting to insult Frances. Dust-covered bookshelves laden with musty, mildewed volumes; African masks stacked in a neat row to either side of the red-brick fireplace; rolled-up Persian rugs reeking of mothballs; furniture covered with yellowed sheets. Only the black antique desk pushed against a far wall was bare, but it was covered with thick dust that rose in a cloud when the cat jumped up on top of it, before nestling down into a snug fur ball.
But the most distinguishing characteristic of this room — and the one that astounded everyone on entering it for the first time — were the animal trophies. They were everywhere.
“That one’s an oryx, and here’s an impala, a nyala, and a sable antelope. Water buffalo, addax, kudu. We even have a bongo.” Frances had walked beneath a long line of animals frozen in time and recited all their names. “And waterbuck, eland, blesbok, and even a springbok.” She’d taken a huge breath and smiled at me across the dimly lit room. “Over there,” she pointed, “an ibex and mountain goat, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, white-tailed deer, and a moose. Did you know there is more than one kind of moose and more than one kind of white-tailed deer? And that one over there is an American bison, which many people call a buffalo. Oh, how he hated us to call it a buffalo.”