Trevor finished his whiskey and put down his glass.
“Do you want another?” Molly asked him.
“I’d like to, but I need a clear head for this.”
Molly said, “Whatever decision you make, honey, you know that I’ll respect it.”
“I know. But I don’t have a choice, do I? Not after seeing all those people butchered.”
“So you agree we should do it?” Sissy asked him.
“On one condition. That Dad really wants to help us. If it distresses him too much — or if anything else goes wrong — then we send him back to wherever he came from, and that’s an end to it. We leave him in peace.”
“Of course,” said Sissy.
Now that Trevor had actually agreed to them resurrecting Frank, she herself was less than sure that she wanted to go through with it. It had been one thing to fantasize about it, but to do it for real.
“I think I need a cigarette,” she said.
“Dad’s not going to like it when he finds out that you’re still smoking.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t need a cigarette.” She hesitated, and then she said, “Goddamn it. Yes, I do.”
She went out into the yard, where the cicadas were chirping more raucously than ever. She lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled.
It had been nearly twenty-five years since two young troopers had come to her door with their hats in their hands, telling her that Frank had been killed. She had said, softly, “Oh, dear God,” but she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t even cried at his funeral.
The first time she had sobbed, it had come upon her quite unexpectedly, when she was sitting with her friend in Aurora’s Café drinking coffee and they had played “Pretty Woman” on the jukebox. Frank had always sung it to her — not that Frank could sing in key. He had always found it difficult to pay her compliments, and so he let Roy Orbison do it for him.
She sang it now, under her breath. “Pretty woman. walking down the street. ”
Molly came out, carrying a leather-bound photo album. “I found plenty of reference,” she said. “That’s if you still want to go ahead with it.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see the warning in the cards,” said Sissy. “The twentieth of May, at a quarter after ten, on a bridge. It was all there, if only I could have read it. I could have saved all of those people’s lives.”
“Sissy, you tell fortunes. You talk to dead people in mirrors. You’re the most amazing sensitive I’ve ever known. But you’re not infallible. Nobody is.”
Sissy turned around to face her. “I used to be. I used to be infallible. But — well — maybe Trevor’s right. Maybe I am losing it. Maybe I am going bananas.”
Molly had bookmarked the album and now she opened it. Inside was a large color photograph of Frank standing on the shore at Hyannis. Sissy had taken it herself, only about two weeks before he was killed. His hair was ruffled by the ocean breeze, and he was grinning at her. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were.
“That’s good, that’s a good one. I like that.”
“I won’t draw him at the beach, though. I’ll draw him here.”
“Okay. Under the vine trellis, how about that?”
“I could draw him anyplace. In the living room, if you like.”
“I know. But when he materializes — if he does — it seems like something he should do without us all staring at him. Something private.”
Molly nodded. She understood what Sissy meant. She couldn’t guess what it would feel like for Frank, being resurrected through a drawing of himself, but she imagined that it would be momentous, both physically and emotionally.
“What are you going to say to Victoria?” asked Sissy, as they went back inside.
“I don’t know. We haven’t done it yet, have we? But if we do — I guess I’ll simply tell her the truth.”
“ ‘Victoria, this is your grandpa, who died long before you were born? Come and say hi!’ ”
“Sissy, you’re such a cynic.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a jelly, if you must know. I’m just trying to protect my feelings.”
Molly sat at her desk, and Sissy sat close beside her. Trevor stayed on the opposite side of the study, pacing up and down. Every now and then, he nervously cleared his throat, as if he were waiting for a job interview.
With the photograph of Frank at Hyannis propped up in front of her, and three smaller photographs showing his right and left profiles and a three-quarters view, Molly began to sketch. She had never met Frank, of course, but Trevor had told her so much about him that she felt she knew him well. His matter-of-fact attitude to life, his dry sense of humor. But she also knew that he had been dedicated to helping other people, particularly those who were helpless and down on their luck — and that didn’t only mean those who were victims of crime, but also the criminals themselves.
Frank Sawyer had done everything he could to help a nineteen-year-old drug addict named Laurence Stepney to turn his life around. One morning he had seen Stepney and another youth trying to break into a car in the parking lot of the Big Bear Supermarket near Nor-folk. He had walked up to Stepney and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Without hesitation Stepney had pulled out a.38 revolver and shot him in the face.
“That’s it,” said Sissy, as Molly started to shade in Frank’s cheekbones. “You’ve really got him, you know? When you come to the eyes, though. I always thought that Frank looked a little long-sighted. like he was focused on something way behind you. My friend said that he always made her feel transparent, as if he could see right through her.”
Trevor came halfway across the room, leaned over to peer at Molly’s sketch pad, and then went back to his pacing. “This is not going to work, is it? I can’t see how this is possibly going to work.”
Sissy said, “Trevor. even if it doesn’t work, we’ll still end up with a very fine portrait of your father, and I can’t complain about that.”
“The whole thing’s nuts. I’m nuts for going along with it.”
“Trevor, I like you when you’re acting nuts. You’ve been so serious all your life. You were even serious when you were potty training.”
“For Christ’s sake, Momma.”
“Do you know why your father married me? He told me once. He said, ‘Sissy — you are the most irrational person I ever met. You’re completely crazy, and that’s just what I need in my life. A little bit of crazy.’ ”
“I’m sorry if I didn’t inherit any of that.”
“You don’t think so? I think you did. I think you’re more like me than you care to admit.”
Now Molly was filling in the shadows under Frank’s cheekbones and the lines around his mouth. She really was a remarkable artist, thought Sissy. Her portraits weren’t at all like photographs. In a way, they were much more real than photographs. They breathed life, and character. As she highlighted his lips, Sissy almost expected Frank to start talking to her. And as the drawing came nearer and nearer to completion, Trevor came back across the room and stood right behind her, staring at his dead father in fascination, but also in deeply suppressed pain.
“Okay,” said Molly, at last. She held the portrait up so that they could see it better. “All we can do now is wait and see if anything happens.”
“Well, I suggest we leave it for a while,” said Sissy. “Let’s sit down and have a drink, and say a prayer to whatever gods we happen to believe in.”
Molly washed her paintbrush and put it back into its jelly jar. Before she stood up, she sorted through her necklace until she found the brass and garnet ring, and squeezed it tight between finger and thumb.