Lora Dell Blake was the sort of person who delivers statements with an air of inviting contradiction. But, tall, rangy, restless, belligerent, she was not the sort of person most people wanted to contradict.
Indeed, Aunt Lora had never encouraged Sybil to ask questions about her dead parents, or about the tragic accident that had killed them; if she had photographs, snapshots, mementos of life back in Wellington, Vermont, they were safely hidden away, and Sybil had not seen them. “It would just be too painful,” she told Sybil, “—for us both.” The remark was both a plea and a warning.
Of course, Sybil avoided the subject.
She prepared carefully chosen words, should anyone happen to ask her why she was living with her aunt, and not her parents; or, at least, one of her parents. But — this was Southern California, and very few of Sybil’s classmates were living with the set of parents with whom they’d begun. No one asked.
An orphan? — I’m not an orphan, Sybil would say. I was never an orphan because my Aunt Lora was always there.
I was two years old when it happened, the accident.
No, I don’t remember.
But no one asked.
Sybil told her Aunt Lora nothing about the man in the park — the man who called himself Starr — she’d put him out of her mind entirely and yet, in bed that night, drifting into sleep, she found herself thinking suddenly of him, and seeing him again, vividly. That silver hair, those gleaming black shoes. His eyes hidden behind dark glasses. How tempting, his offer! — though there was no question of Sybil accepting it. Absolutely not.
Still, Mr. Starr seemed harmless. Well-intentioned. An eccentric, of course, but interesting. She supposed he had money, if he could offer her so much to model for him. There was something not contemporary about him. The set of his head and shoulders. That air about him of gentlemanly reserve, courtesy — even as he’d made his outlandish request. In Glencoe, in the past several years, there had been a visible increase in homeless persons and derelicts, especially in the oceanside park, but Mr. Starr was certainly not one of these.
Then Sybil realized, as if a door, hitherto locked, had swung open of its own accord, that she’d seen Mr. Starr before... somewhere. In the park, where she ran most afternoons for an hour? In downtown Glencoe? On the street? — in the public library? In the vicinity of Glencoe Senior High School? — in the school itself, in the auditorium? Sybil summoned up a memory as if by an act of physical exertion: the school choir, of which she was a member, had been rehearsing Handel’s Messiah the previous month for their annual Christmas pageant, and Sybil had sung her solo part, a demanding part for contralto voice, and the choir director had praised her in front of the others... and she’d seemed to see, dimly, a man, a stranger, seated at the very rear of the auditorium, his features distinct but his grey hair striking, and wasn’t this man miming applause, clapping silently? There. At the rear, on the aisle. It frequently happened that visitors dropped by rehearsals — parents or relatives of choir members, colleagues of the music director. So no one took special notice of the stranger sitting unobtrusively at the rear of the auditorium. He wore dark, conservative clothes of the kind to attract no attention, and dark glasses hid his eyes. But there he was. For Sybil Blake. He’d come for Sybil. But, at the time, Sybil had not seen.
Nor had she seen the man leave. Slipping quietly out of his seat, walking with a just perceptible limp, leaning on his cane.
3. The Proposition
Sybil had no intention of seeking out Mr. Starr, nor even of looking around for him, but, the following afternoon, as she was headed home after her run, there, suddenly, the man was — taller than she recalled, looming large, his dark glasses winking in the sunlight, and his pale lips stretched in a tentative smile. He wore his clothes of the previous day except he’d set on his head a sporty plaid golfing cap that gave him a rakish, yet wistful, air, and he’d tied, as if in haste, a rumpled cream-colored silk scarf around his neck. He was standing on the path in approximately the same place as before, and leaning on his cane; on a bench close by were what appeared to be his art supplies, in a canvas duffel bag of the sort students carried. “Why, hello!” he said, shyly but eagerly, “—I didn’t dare hope you would come back, but—” his smile widened as if on the verge of desperation, the puckered skin at the corners of his eyes tightened, “—I hoped.”
After running, Sybil always felt good: strength flowed into her legs, arms, lungs. She was a delicate-boned girl, since infancy prone to respiratory infections, but such vigorous exercise had made her strong in recent years; and with physical confidence had come a growing confidence in herself. She laughed, lightly, at this strange man’s words, and merely shrugged, and said, “Well — this is my park, after all.” Mr. Starr nodded eagerly, as if any response from her, any words at all, was of enormous interest. “Yes, yes,” he said, “—I can see that. Do you live close by?”
Sybil shrugged. It was none of his business, was it, where she lived? “Maybe,” she said.
“And your — name?” He stared at her, hopefully, adjusting his glasses more firmly on his nose. “—My name is Starr.”
“My name is — Blake.”
Mr. Starr blinked, and smiled, as if uncertain whether this might be a joke. “ ‘Blake’—? An unusual name for a girl,” he said.
Sybil laughed again, feeling her face heat. She decided not to correct the misunderstanding.
Today, prepared for the encounter, having anticipated it for hours, Sybil was distinctly less uneasy than she’d been the day before: the man had a business proposition to make to her, that was all. And the park was an open, public, safe place, as familiar to her as the small neat yard of her Aunt Lora’s house.
So, when Mr. Starr repeated his offer, Sybil said, yes, she was interested after all; she did need money, she was saving for college. “For college? — really? So young?” Mr. Starr said, with an air of surprise. Sybil shrugged, as if the remark didn’t require any reply. “I suppose, here in California, young people grow up quickly,” Mr. Starr said. He’d gone to get his sketch-pad, to show Sybil his work, and Sybil turned the pages with polite interest, as Mr. Starr chattered. He was, he said, an “amateur artist” — the very epitome of the “amateur” — with no delusions regarding his talent, but a strong belief that the world is redeemed by art — “And the world, you know, being profane, and steeped in wickedness, requires constant, ceaseless redemption.” He believed that the artist “bears witness” to this fact; and that art can be a “conduit of emotion” where the heart is empty. Sybil, leafing through the sketches, paid little attention to Mr. Starr’s tumble of words; she was struck by the feathery, uncertain, somehow worshipful detail in the drawings, which, to her eye, were not so bad as she’d expected, though by no means of professional quality. As she looked at them, Mr. Starr came to look over her shoulder, embarrassed, and excited, his shadow falling over the pages. The ocean, the waves, the wide rippled beach as seen from the bluff — palm trees, hibiscus, flowers — a World War II memorial in the park — mothers with young children — solitary figures huddled on park benches — bicyclists — joggers — several pages of joggers: Mr. Starr’s work was ordinary, even commonplace, but certainly earnest. Sybil saw herself amid the joggers, or a figure she guessed must be herself, a young girl with shoulder-length dark hair held off her face by a headband, in running pants and a sweatshirt, caught in mid-stride, legs and swinging arms caught in motion — it was herself, but so clumsily executed, the profile so smudged, no one would have known. Still, Sybil felt her face grow warmer, and she sensed Mr. Starr’s anticipation like a withheld breath.