She left the room without waiting for an answer, and after a brief hesitation Devon followed her out into the kitchen. Mrs. Osborne poured water into the percolator and measured the coffee with a plastic scoop, humming to herself in a loud nervous monotone intended to cover up awkward silences, discourage awkward questions. It was like the piano playing Estivar had told Devon about during the noon recess: “She’d start playing to cover up, a piece with good firm chords like ‘March of the Toreadors’... ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’... Bang bang bang... Sometimes I swear I can hear the sound of that piano, though it isn’t even there any more, I helped the movers take it out of the house myself.”
Suddenly the humming stopped and Mrs. Osborne turned, frowning, from the window. “I don’t see your car in the driveway. How did you get here?”
“Leo brought me.”
“Oh.”
“He had no trouble finding the place,” Devon said in a careful voice. “Apparently he’d been here before.”
“I sent for him two or three weeks ago to discuss a personal matter.”
“Ruth.”
“He told you, then.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Osborne sat down at the table across from Devon, one corner of her mouth hooked in an iron smile. “He probably repeated that ugly story about Ruth and Robert.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you didn’t believe it. Why, Robert could have had dozens of girls, young, pretty, rich. It’s unthinkable that he’d have bothered with a woman like Ruth who had nothing. It simply doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Devon said, “No,” because it was expected of her. She no longer knew what to believe, what made sense and what didn’t. Each new piece of information cast a shadow instead of a light; Robert was gradually disappearing into darkness, and the months they had spent together were losing their outlines, changing shape like clouds on a stormy day.
The coffee had begun to percolate and for a time its cheerful bubbling was the only sound in the room.
Then Mrs. Osborne spoke again: “After she died, the gossips had a field day, of course. The funny thing was, they didn’t blame Leo for neglecting his wife, or Ruth for seeking the company of another man. They blamed Robert.”
“Why?”
“Because he was young and vulnerable.”
“That’s not reason enough.”
“His very existence was reason enough for some people. Wherever Robert and I went, we stepped into the midst of whispers. The phone would ring and there’d be no one on the line, just the sound of breathing. Letters arrived, unsigned. I finally called the Sheriff’s office and they sent Valenzuela out to the ranch to discuss the situation. Well, we talked but there was no communication. He was carrying around in his mind a picture of Robert as the neighborhood seducer and destroyer of women, and I couldn’t shake it loose. He’s been prejudiced against Robert right from the beginning, that’s why he never really tried to find him. He didn’t want to. Oh, he put on a good show, taking all those trips to the labor camps and into Mexico. It fooled his superiors for a while but they caught on eventually and fired him.”
“I heard that he quit because he got married again and his new wife didn’t like him being in police work.”
“Nonsense. He’d never have given up the power of such a job, let alone his seniority and his pension, for the sake of some little tramp.”
“How do you know she was a little tramp? She might—”
“Word gets around. Valenzuela was fired. I heard it on the valley grapevine as well as the Mexicans’ parra grande.”
“I talked to him this afternoon,” Devon said. “He apologized for the way things have turned out. He seemed very sincere. I can’t believe he didn’t do his best to find Robert.”
“Can’t you...? How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
“I’m afraid it’s rather weak.”
“That’s all right.”
Mrs. Osborne poured the coffee, her hand steady. “What else did he have to say? Surely he didn’t just walk up to you and tell you he was sorry.”
“He said the case is over.”
“As far as he’s concerned it’s been over for a long time.”
“No. He meant that I — you and I — shouldn’t go on hoping.”
“Well, his advice was wasted on both of us, wasn’t it? You never really started hoping, and I don’t intend to stop.”
“I know that,” Devon said. “I saw the cartons.”
“Cartons?”
“In the bedroom closet. The ones you told me you were going to take to the Salvation Army.”
“I made no promise. I agreed to take them because I didn’t want to argue with you. You were so anxious to get them out of the house. It seemed the natural move to make, bringing them here instead of giving them away to strangers. Some of the things in the cartons were very personal. His glasses.” Her voice tripped over the word, fell, rose again. “How could you do that, Devon — give away his glasses?”
“They might help someone to see. Robert would have approved.”
“It saddened me terribly to think of a stranger wearing Robert’s glasses, perhaps using them to see ugliness Robert would never have seen because he was such a good boy. No, I couldn’t bear it. I put his glasses away for safekeeping.”
“What are you going to do with the rest of his stuff?”
“I thought I’d fix up the front bedroom, just the way his room was at the ranch, with the kind of things boys like — college pennants on the walls, and surfing posters and, of course, the maps. Did Robert ever show you his old maps?”
“No.”
“My sister sent them to him for his birthday one year. They were framed copies of early medieval maps showing the world as it was presumed to be then, flat and surrounded by water. At the edge of one map there was a notice saying that further areas were unknown and uninhabitable because of the sun’s heat. Another said simply, ‘Beyond this point are monsters.’ The phrase appealed to Robert. He printed a sign and taped it outside his door: BEYOND THIS POINT ARE MONSTERS. Dulzura hated the sign and wouldn’t go past it because she believed in monsters, probably still does. She refused to clean Robert’s room unless I stood in the doorway to protect her, just in case. Dulzura’s lucky. The rest of us have monsters too, but we must call them by other names, or pretend they don’t exist... The world of Robert’s maps was nice and flat and simple. It had areas for people and areas for monsters. What a shock it is to discover the world is round and the areas merge and nothing separates the monsters and ourselves; that we are all whirling around in space together and there isn’t even a graceful way of falling off. Knowledge can be a dreadful thing.”
Devon sipped the coffee. It was like hot water, slightly colored, barely scented. “How old was Robert when he was given the maps?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Jaime’s age?”
“A little more than that, I think.”
“Fifteen, then.”
“Yes, I remember now, it was the year he grew. He’d been rather small until then, not much taller than the Estivar boys, and he suddenly started to grow.”
He was fifteen, Devon thought. It was the year of his father’s death and she sent him away to school. He never really came back. She’s still waiting for his return to a room decorated with school pennants and surfing posters and a warning sign on the door.