Most mornings she walked past the painting without seeing it. Some days she chose not to see it. But she wasn’t up at three a.m. most mornings, anxiously polishing furniture, her eyes turning often to the security monitor by the door telecasting the main entrance below.
She stared at the painting now. From time to time, in an unguarded moment, she would see it anew and be struck again by its power to fling her backward and sideways into girlhood. Clay assumed her purchase, years ago, was out of a sense of maternal obligation to support his work. She was fine with this, preferring that he not guess how personal the portrait – of a young woman she’d never met but felt she knew intimately – was to her. But now he was forever offering to take it off her hands, “It’s not one of my best works, Mother.” “Better that it stays out of circulation then and not mar your reputation,” she would snap. Which reminded her: What was she going to do with the charcoal he’d given her last week?
“Maureen’s Garden.” It still leaned against the sideboard where she’d set it after he’d left. She hadn’t found a suitable spot for it, nor did she think she ever would. Now there was maternal obligation. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she didn’t like the portrait, that it frankly irritated her. She wished he’d drawn the rock garden and all its peaceful spareness without imposing her face into it. Fine for young people to feel that the aging process ennobled one; these days she felt only its betrayal and restrictions.
She glanced again at the security screen. Nothing.
This was ridiculous. Ridiculous to think that Clay, at his age, would turn to her in his grief, however ominously her former husband had tinged the circumstances. It wouldn’t be the first time Snow had exaggerated his own role in random occurrences, his sense of self-importance often reaching mythic proportions. She was going back to bed.
But as she turned down the hall to her room, the buzzer sounded, a long, amplified insect’s drone. She hurried, as much as one bad hip would let her, to the monitor by the door, in time to see the gate swinging closed against a bent, leather-jacketed arm. Clay? Who else would have a key?
As she waited anxiously for the sound of the elevator’s arrival in the hall outside, another figure appeared on the screen. Hooded, huddled and furtive, it approached the entryway and leaned in – perhaps to peer nearsightedly at the names on the plaque. The camera registered only a blur of dark clothing. The figure backed away, head turned so only the hood was visible, then seemed to meld into the narrow darkness between street lamps. Maureen shivered.
A rapping on the front door and a female voice called out her name. It was a voice she recognized but was confused to hear again. Through the keyhole she could see her son’s slack body held up by a woman, the reporter who’d interviewed her some weeks previous.
Her fingers fumbled with the locks; her heart pounded unsteadily. At last the door was open and she stepped back as the reporter – she couldn’t recall her name – shouldered her son in through the entryway. “Spare room?”
Maureen pointed down the hall. “First door on the left. Is he hurt?”
The reporter, Bishop – her last name suddenly latching itself to the forefront of Maureen’s brain – shook her head and grimaced. “Drunk mostly. But his hand needs some attention.”
Together the two women laid Clay’s binge-weighted body out on the bed. Maureen retrieved a first aid kit while Bishop examined his knuckles for remnants of the tavern mirror with which he’d obviously battled.
She watched the reporter wrap a bandage around Clay’s hand and wondered at the relationship between her son and this woman. How did they know one another? It didn’t seem to be a romantic attachment on the reporter’s part – if indeed she was a reporter. Maureen confessed to herself that she’d only half believed the woman’s story, even with her press card and self-assured reference to a local monthly. Were they friends? How had they met? Was Clay another assignment?
Ultimately, what obligation did she have to this woman?
Doctoring done, Bishop was at the front door, pulling on the jacket she had shed earlier.
“Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?” She knew her offer sounded half-hearted
“No, I should take off. I’ve got work to finish.”
“You shouldn’t leave.” There, she’d said it.
“I’m sorry?” Bishop turned carefully, not attempting to mask her impatience.
“There’s someone down, or there was. I think you were followed. He might still be there.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. I saw him on the screen after you and Clay came through the gate.” She pointed to the monitor. “My ex… Clay’s father called. Before you and Clay got here. He was looking for Clay, he was worried, almost...” She let the sentence dangle, not wanting to admit aloud the anguish she’d kept herself from hearing.
“Snow called. Looking for Clay?”
Maureen nodded. “I tend to think he overdramatizes everything, but maybe this time… He seems to think, this accident, the woman who was killed -- he seems to think it wasn’t an accident. And I think, I’m afraid, well, he didn’t say this, but he hinted…”
“He thinks Clay’s next.” The reporter closed her eyes, leaned against the wall, shoulders slack in sudden weariness, and Maureen’s chest constricted. She shivered again, couldn’t stop shivering. This woman knew things. Things she didn’t want to know. What had Snow gotten her son into?
