The Uninvited Read online

  “He didn’t care?”

  “He didn’t dare! He’d have been crazy to take her on! Anyway, he never spent a dime on support. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t think my mom would have accepted his money.”

  “But he’s part of your life?” asked Jay. “Now, I mean?”

  “Yeah. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly a typical father-daughter relationship.”

  She looked down. How strange it would be, thought Jay, to feel as if you always had to distance yourself from someone. But stranger still, that the someone Mimi was distancing herself from was his father, too. Someone he didn’t even know.

  “He was never a part of my life,” said Jay.

  “Well, don’t be too sad,” said Mimi.

  “I’m not really sad.”

  “Wistful?” asked Jo.

  “I guess.”

  Jay looked at Mimi. “It’s weird-I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  Mimi has been slouching, tired, fading. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. “I can fix that,” she said. “I’ve got footage of him on my camcorder.”

  And so Mimi went out to the car for her camcorder. And when she came in, everyone was clearing the table, but they stopped as she opened the JVC.

  “Nice unit,” said Jay.

  “Lots of memory,” she said, and found the documentary she had made. “ A Murder of Good-Byes, ” said her recorded voice.

  Mimi scrolled to the restaurant scene.

  “Well, I never,” said Lou. “Even the glorious Marc Soto is getting old.”

  Jay stared at the screen. Jack Nicholson came to mind, but it was probably just the dark glasses and the what-me-worry grin. He glanced at Mimi; she seemed to be waiting for him to say something. But what could he say? He took the camera from her and looked at the stranger who was not a stranger and saw in him… what?

  “You’ve got his forehead,” said Lou.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mimi. “And his long tapered fingers, too. See?”

  Jay saw fingers wrapped around a wineglass.

  “I’ve got way more hair,” said Jay.

  “He’s pretty self-conscious about hair loss. He had this jet-black rug for a long time.”

  “He was going prematurely bald when he was in his twenties,” said Lou.

  “Well, he’s now pretty much bald,” said Mimi. “I’m not sure how mature he is.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” said Jo. “Or should I break out the Scotch?”

  Apparently, she was only kidding. She drifted back to cleaning up.

  Jay just stared at the moving image before him, as if in a spell. “This is so freaking weird,” he said.

  His mother slipped her arm around his waist. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen. He rewound the bit and watched it again. Lou joined Jo at the counter and started loading the dishwasher. It seemed to Jay as if they had tacitly agreed to give him some space-some privacy.

  He looked at Mimi. “Chill,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I think I’m nervous because I want you to like him. And I’m trying to figure out why.”

  Jay reached out and touched her arm. It was maybe the nicest thing she’d said all evening. But her eyes wouldn’t hold his gaze. This was hard for her, too, he realized. As if her life was somehow under scrutiny. He examined the camera. “Very cool,” he said.

  Mimi looked relieved. She showed him the features of the HDD. She showed him the rest of the film, too.

  “Who is that?”

  “Jamila. Hot, huh? Well, stand in line,” said Mimi. She fast-forwarded.

  “This is my mother,” she said. She tilted her chin up and did an impression of her mother raising an eyebrow. Jay laughed.

  The women came over to look and said how intelligent Grier Shapiro looked and what a beautiful color her pashmina was, and Lou marveled that anyone could walk with such style in high heels. “I never mastered that,” she said. Then they went back to cleaning up and Mimi joined them, but Jay didn’t. He’d made dinner, and anyway he was distracted. He sat on a stool at the kitchen island, playing with the camera. “Hey,” he said. “Here’s the house at the snye.”

  Mimi was carrying stuff in from the porch. “What?”

  He held up the camera for her to see. She put down the plates and bowls and took the camera from him. She frowned.

  “I don’t remember shooting the house,” she said. The camera zoomed in on the upper gable. Someone was standing in the window, looking out at the garden.

  It was Mimi.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Half a mile upstream from McAdam’s Snye, the mouth of Butchard’s Creek opened onto the Eden. But you had to know it was there to find the creek’s mouth. Passing by on the river, you’d see nothing but swamp, dense with soft rushes, water lettuce and arum, arrowhead, loosestrife. Cramer knew where the seam of water ran deep. He had an eye for the creek’s current and a craft responsive to his every demand. She was a fifteen-footer, cedar covered with red canvas, modeled on the old prospector trapper, the Bunny model. Bunny was a good name for her, too, the way she leaped to his response.

  The creek opened out about fifty or sixty yards up from the river-too far away for any casual boater to discover it by chance. There were too many mosquitoes, anyway, and the fetid smell of rotting vegetation turned back even the most intrepid explorer. The result was that Cramer had never seen a soul on the creek. It was his private highway. He was its lord and master.

  The sun was behind the trees by the time he passed under the Upper Valentine Road Bridge. Just ten minutes from home. The road continued for another couple of kilometers where it used to cross the Eden, but that bridge had been washed away years ago and never been replaced. The road beyond their place had gotten tired of waiting to be repaired. It petered out to a rutted and overgrown trail. The Lees’ box was the mail lady’s last stop. Cramer would watch her drive on up the road to a better turnaround spot to avoid using their steep and pitted driveway. The oil truck wouldn’t deliver to them, either, so they’d had to stick with wood heat. Mavis wanted to convert to electric, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, not with the money Cramer made. He was supporting the two of them.

  The last house on the road, the last place up the creek; that’s where Cramer Lee was heading, filled with emotions he couldn’t put a name to. There was jealousy in there, resentment, too, but something else-something deeper. A shifting.

  There was a quiet and deep pool just past the bridge, where he could pause for a moment without having to fight the current, where he could catch his breath, though his final destination was hardly any distance now. He stopped and laid his paddle across the gunwales. He closed his eyes and could feel the calm of the water rise up through the canoe’s hull. He breathed deeply, tried to block from his mind Mimi Shapiro’s Cracker Jack voice-a voice like some comedian on Saturday Night Live. He tried to block the vision of her naked bottom, her cleavage, her shiny eyes and defiant smile. And he tried to get out of his head the thought that she might be Jackson Page’s girlfriend. What had happened to Iris? Was he two-timing her? Cramer shook his head at the unfairness of it all.

  The worst thing was that it would be awhile before he would see Mimi again. God, what if she left! What if she was only there for the weekend? No, there had been things in the back of the car-a box of dishes, kitchen stuff. She has to stay until I’m free again. He worked the nightshift, eight out of twelve days at the 3M plant just outside of town. That started up again tomorrow. He might sneak in an early afternoon trip to the snye, but he also worked part-time at PDQ Electronics, and Hank Pretty had extra work for him. Cramer couldn’t turn down extra work.

  It was more unfair than anything.

  He opened his eyes and stared down at his hands gripping the paddle. The veins stood out in high relief. He breathed deeply again but couldn’t get the calmness back. He imagined himself in Mimi’s documentary. “This is Cramer,” he could hear her say it. “My
good friend Cramer.” And in the film he smiled at her and winked. Then he said something clever like her clever friends to make her laugh. Yeah, right.

  He dug his paddle deep into the creek’s dark water, and the canoe shot forward, rounding the last bend.

  Up ahead, to his surprise, he saw his mother down by the shore. She was sitting on a granite boulder that poked out into the creek. She had her bare arms wrapped around her knees, and her head was tipped back to catch the very last of the sun. She saw him and waved.

  He waved his paddle at her, tentatively, wondering what had happened to bring her down here. She didn’t venture outside all that often. Hardly went to town anymore, had a friend or two she seldom saw. She didn’t look agitated, as far as he could tell.

  Cramer’s eyes scanned the hill for a white panel truck. Nothing. Thank God.

  She stood as he neared his docking place. She was in a white T-shirt and her torn-up work jeans, stained with paint. Her hair was tied back in a red ribbon. She was wearing the emerald necklace. She looked beautiful. Happy.

  “Isn’t this some kind of day?” she said, bending to catch the nose of his canoe.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Are you good?”

  She reached out her hand to him, and when he took it, she pulled him and the canoe toward the shore as if he hadn’t done this a thousand times by himself. Still, it was a nice thing for her to do.

  “Is Bunny behaving?” she asked, patting the curvy side of the canoe, the tumblehome, as if it was the neck of a faithful horse.

  Cramer climbed out onto the grassy bank, nodding.

  “Remember that old canoe you found in the barn?” she said. “I was scared shitless of you going out in that thing, but there was no stopping you. No, sir.”

  “It’s still around,” said Cramer, pointing toward the drive shed. “Still seaworthy.”

  “Yeah, right!” she said. “Seaworthy. That’s a good one. Hey, maybe I should haul her down here? Get out on the creek myself?”

  Cramer smiled encouragingly, but he couldn’t quite imagine his mother doing anything like that. They had canoed together in Bunny, when it was new, and she’d been good at it, as if maybe there had been canoes in her life, when she was young. Her arms were strong enough, but still. He couldn’t see it.

  He hauled the canoe out of the water.

  “We love Bunny, don’t we, Cramer? Remember when I got you Bunny?” she asked, her voice as excited as a kid’s.

  “I do,” he said.

  “And it was the best birthday present ever, wasn’t it?”

  He balled his fists on his hips, arching his back to stretch after the upstream voyage. “It sure was, Mom,” he said. In truth, it was the only birthday present he could remember receiving. The last few years there would be a card-handmade. He kept them all. They were works of art. But Bunny was the only actual present. She was every birthday present rolled into one.

  He gave his mother a smile. She had been right about the emerald. It was exactly the color of her eyes, and those eyes were gleaming now, with sharp glints of yellow sunshine in them. He knew what was going to happen. She was going to tell him the story about when Bunny arrived in their lives, how surprised he was.

  “You were just bowled right over,” she said.

  How she had led him, blindfolded, out to the drive shed “Made you open that big old door yourself to show me how strong you were getting.”

  And there was the canoe sitting on two sawhorses, brand-new and glistening red. Red as -

  “Scarlet lake,” she said.

  I was only ten -

  “You were only ten,” said his mother, shaking her head back and forth at the bright happiness of this memory.

  And it was a good memory. She’d been painting well-painting up a storm! And somehow she’d attracted the interest of a gallery in Ottawa.

  “I hightailed it down there in the Taurus one day, when the Taurus was new, and damned if Simon Whiteside didn’t offer me a show.”

  A one-woman show -

  “A one-woman show.”

  And every piece sold -

  “Every damn piece sold, Cramer. Can you believe it?”

  He looked at her, her face shining, as if the show had happened that very week instead of half his lifetime ago. She never knew-he’d never told her-how terrified he had been arriving home on the school bus that day to find the house empty, no note-no nothing.

  But it was all water under the bridge now. He didn’t mind. She could tell him this story every day, if it made her happy. Her contentment helped to ease his mind, distract him from the other things he was thinking, feeling.

  She reached out for him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and held him tight. She only came up to his chest. He rested his chin on her head.

  She sniffed. Sniffed again. “What’s that pretty smell?” she asked.

  Cramer gently pushed her away. “Must be some new flower come up,” he said, looking all around, hiding his face from her scrutiny.

  She grinned at him, one eyebrow raised. “Smells like a girl to me,” she said, in a teasing kind of voice. “What are you getting up to on these jaunts of yours?”

  Cramer dug his hand deep into his pocket, trying to keep what was there out of sight. He looked down at his bare feet. He never wore shoes in the canoe.

  “I do believe you’re blushing,” said his mother.

  “I am not blushing,” he said.

  “Yes, you are. Why, maybe I should get that old canoe down from the shed and follow you one of these days. See what kind of trouble you’re getting into.” He looked out toward the creek. Saw a kingfisher skim the surface. Mavis poked him in the ribs. “I hope whoever she is, you won’t be bashful about bringing her home.”

  “Mom.”

  “Or too proud,” she said, her voice teetering a bit now. It didn’t take much to deflate her.

  Cramer wished there was something he could do to drive her demons away. “I promise when there’s a girl, you’ll be the first to know.”

  She gave him a hug. “‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,’” she started to sing, her voice muffled in his shirt. She swayed back and forth, trying to lug him around with her on a dance on the uneven shore. He held on to her lest she slip off the bank into the water. Something was up.

  She must have sensed what he was thinking, because she pulled away and held him at arm’s length. She was still smiling to beat the band.

  “You think your mother’s gone cuckoo on you?” she said.

  “No, Mom-”

  “It’s okay, Cramer, honey,” she said, and then she tipped her head back and laughed out loud. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay!” She looked into his face, her own suddenly composed and sober. “I know how difficult I can be,” she said. “I’m not famous for being levelheaded.”

  “Mom-”

  “And I know that if it weren’t for you, I’d’ve been toast a long time ago.”

  “Ah, Mom, it’s not like-”

  “Shhh! Yes, it is!” she said, gently pounding his chest with her fists. “You really are my knight in shining armor.”

  He swallowed hard, proud and self-conscious.

  Then she smirked and said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  The painting stood on the easel, still wet in patches but remarkable in its energy. His mother didn’t speak. She just let him gaze upon her work.

  It was an abstract piece, all in lavenders and ochers and blue-veined greens, so that it looked like a garden seen in a cracked but bright mirror. Cramer didn’t know much about art, but he knew this: the painting before him contained all of the excitement and enthusiasm and sparkly-eyed optimism that his mother had revealed to him down by the stream.

  “It’s so good,” he said.

  “Do you think?”

  “I know!”

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “I do, too. ‘I have found the key to my courage locker,’” she said. He recognized it as a saying from The Artist’s Path, and he had
to admit it was true. This painting was courageous-it seemed to shout at him across the room.

  “Now I know why you’re so happy,” he said. And she squeezed him tightly and pressed her head against his chest as if trying to smother a scream or stop herself from bursting into tears.

  “It’s back,” she whispered. “I am recovered.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Mom,” he said, drinking in her excitement.

  Then she pushed him away again, though she held on to his hands tightly. Unconsciously, he rubbed his thumb along the scar on her left hand. Then he stopped himself, lest it set her off. But she seemed happily oblivious of her painful past. She gazed at the painting, the way he’d seen people in movies gaze through the window at a baby in a maternity room. Then she looked up into his eyes. “There’s more where that comes from,” she said confidently. “I mean it.”

  “That’s good news,” he said.

  She turned around to give the painting her complete attention. “We’ll be rich again,” she said, and laughed because they had never been rich, but they had once been happy, for a while.

  “I know it,” he said.

  “There’s just one thing,” she said.

  He could hear the hesitation in her voice. He braced himself.

  “I’m going to need more paint and more canvas,” she said hurriedly. “A lot more paint, a lot more canvas.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. Hardly breathed. She felt the change in him. She turned. “It will be worth it,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve made a list,” she said. “I phoned the supply place in Ottawa.”

  “Good,” he said, not wanting to lose her.

  “Five hundred dollars ought to cover everything,” she said. “For now.” She held his eyes for a moment longer, then her gaze skittered away.

  “Okay,” he said quickly, not wanting to let her down. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Of course you will,” she said. Now she looked up at him again, and her eyes went all coquettish, the way she’d get with Waylin when she wanted something from him. She rubbed Cramer’s upper arms, squeezing his biceps. “God, when did you ever get to be so strong?” she asked.