Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 26

Calling Mrs. Bates . . .

Matt sat by the phone in his Circle Ritz apartment.

The fact that he kept it in the bedroom, rather than in a more public room, was mute testimony to how seldom it rang. And he seldom called anyone himself, so no wonder that his telephone seemed more like an ugly modern sculpture than a home appliance.

He wondered how different his life was from that of Cliff Effinger, who was supposed to be dead, maybe.

He thought again about the body he could not positively identify while it lay static in a morgue viewing room, his to contemplate for as long as he wished. Then he resurrected the image of the walking man he had glimpsed with such certain instinct. Matt knew he had to make the call he most wanted to avoid.

The number came to his fingers by heart, after all this time, and after infrequent use.

Perhaps "dutiful use" would describe the situation better. Holiday dialing.

He checked his new-old watch that he had run across among the contents of a packed box, a gold-edged rectangular face on a black leather band, a parting gift: from the parishioners of St.

Rose of Lima. At the time, it had been a touch of luxury in a minimalist life. His life today, however altered, was still minimalist, but the leather watchband was worn shiny, and the watch face looked genteel and old-fashioned, as if it should belong to his great-uncle Stash.

Was Uncle Stash still living? He hadn't asked about him in over a year. Should. Matt jotted the name down on the notepad next to the phone. Like a cue. A cue for calling home.

The phone rang several times. He kept checking his watch, though he knew the time perfectly well: seven forty-five p.m. in Chicago. There should be an answer.

There was.

Her voice sounded distant. Midwestern. Flattened. He hadn't noticed that until he had left the Midwest and heard other accents.

"Hi, Mom. It's Matt."

"Matt! Are you--I didn't expect... is something wrong?"

She always expected the worst, his mother. In the past, she usually had been right.

She spoke again quickly. "Let me turn the news down."

The phone on the other end clunked as she laid it down. She didn't have a remote control, which had even come with the small color TV he had bought for the living room here. Not for himself, he noticed. "For the living room," as if it were a person in need of placating.

A faint bleat in the background suddenly stopped; the phone thumped again as she picked it up.

"Nothing's wrong?" she asked.

At least this time she phrased it in the negative. Matt smiled.

"No, Mom, nothing. Are things okay there too?"

"Fine."

Fine. It said nothing, and said volumes. It was his mother's period to everything. Say no more. It's fine. You don't need to know. It's fine. None of your business. Fine. It's my problem.

Fine.

Of course nothing had ever been fine.

"Good," he said. His usual answer to the finality of "Fine."

"Are you still ... in that place?"

She could have meant the Circle Ritz, which he had told her about, with details intended to enhance its zany vintage attractions. Or she could have meant Las Vegas.

"Same city, same job."

"It seems a shame ..."

She left: it for him to fill in the blanks: with your education and training, to be just a telephone counselor, to be a low-paid layman, when he had been Somebody once. A man with a vocation, an ancient role ... a low-paid priest, Matt added as he finished the faultfinding litany.

If having a son or daughter enter the religious life is the crown of a Catholic parent's life, having that same child leave the religious life is a disappointment beyond telling.

"Have you found a Polish parish there?" she asked anxiously.

"No, Mom. Not too many Poles in Las Vegas. But"--he knew he was about to mislead, knew he shouldn't, couldn't stop himself-- "ah, I've been involved with a Hispanic parish. Our Lady of Guadalupe."

"Oh. The lovely holy card. Do they still have a statue of the Virgin in church?"

"Yes, it's an old parish."

He could almost see her nodding, slowly, her face the same faded gold color as her gray-streaked hair, both coarsened by time, by... circumstances. She looked at least a decade older than her fifty-two years, and nothing like the only youthful photos he had seen of her, as a young girl in her parents' house on Tobias Street.

"That's wonderful," she said, no joy in her voice, only the same, resigned monotone he had heard all his life.

"Yes." He made his hands unclench on the telephone receiver. "Everything's fine here. And I met one of my old teachers, from Saint Stan's, at OLG."

"Oh?"

"Sister Seraphina from seventh grade. Do you remember her?"

"A little. That's nice. Is she all right?"

"Retired now, but fine. Still a dynamo."

"We have all lay teachers at the school now. I thought of being an assistant, but--"

"Why don't you? It'd be a great idea. And I'm sure the school can use all the help it can get."

"Oh, I'm too old to deal with all that grade-school clatter."

"You're only fifty-two, Mom. Just a kid."

She laughed, flattered despite herself. "Not when you get to be my age. I do all right, but the winter is coming on again, and everything aches."

Matt ground his teeth. He remembered Chicago winters and the bone-chilling blasts of wind that blew off the great cold lake until the city crouched around it like a bum. He also remembered other reasons his mother had to ache in every bone.

The parquet floor at his feet became use-scuffed linoleum. Cliff Effinger was laid out on it like a corpse, definitely Cliff this time, and only unconscious, not dead. Matt looked down into that slack face of memory now as he did then, amazed, thankful that he had done this, exploring a universe of what he'd like to do next....

But he hadn't, and that had been seventeen years ago. His mother should have forgotten by now, moved on, joined a folk-dancing class, met new people, maybe even remarried. But she hadn't. And Cliff Effinger still lay outstretched on the kitchen floor of memory, down but not counted out. Out cold but not out of their lives. No longer strong enough to cow a sixteen-year-old boy, but still potent enough to leech the life out of a woman past fifty.. . .

"Mom, I've got to ask."

"Ask what?"

"Have you got... anything? A photo, a belonging, anything of Cliff left that I could have?"

"What are you asking?"

"I need ... something concrete that was his. It's part of ... my therapy." True enough, if truth stretched all the way from Chicago to Caesars Palace.

"He left nothing." Her voice was even duller than before, and Matt blamed himself. "He just left, after you . . . made him. Took what junk he valued and went."

"And you never heard from him again?"

The silence was long and wounded. Matt began wondering how he could backtrack, change the subject, avoid the consequences.

"A postcard a couple of times."

"Did you keep them?"

"Are you crazy? Matt, I was glad when you went into the priest-hood, I thought at least the boy'll be safe from now on, but you left. Why did you leave? It was sanctuary. Now you're in that horrible place, where he went."

"So the postcards were from Las Vegas?"

"I suppose. I don't pay attention to that kind of thing. Gaudy. Corrupt."

"Do you remember the pictures?"

"What do you want?"

"I need to know this. It's our past."

"It's not past."

She was right about that. Matt relaxed, let his breath ease out. "I have to understand my own past," he said.

Another silence. "A ... tall tower. With a bulb on the top, like in Russia."

"Russia?"

"One of the postcards. That's what it showed, night. There were all those little colored lights."

"And the other one?"

"I crumpled it and threw it away the minute I saw the bright lights. I never got another one."

"What did he say?"

"On the first one? He was bragging how great it was. Saying I should come out and see the sights. You know how he could be when he felt... like Somebody. Las Vegas." She snorted derisively.

"He was Nobody then, and he's Nobody now, Mom. He isn't in our lives anymore."

"Isn't he?"

"Look, one last, crazy question. Just think about it. You don't happen to have anything--

anything--he might have left his fingerprints on, no matter how unlikely?"

Another long, long silence. "Just me," she said.

Matt wished he had followed his vengeful sixteen-year-old instincts and killed the man when he was still certifiably living.

****************

Temple was caught between her bedroom and the living room when the phone rang, and she didn't really feel like answering it.

She had a lot on her mind: what Max Kinsella was doing to Gandolph's computer; where Midnight Louie might be; what Matt Devine would think if he found out that she was consorting (provocative word!) with the Mystifying Max.

Temple's biggest qualm was Matt. Poor baby, he had depended upon her so much lately.

Who was rattling his cage now that she was otherwise occupied? Who was providing him the feminine advice and comfort he so badly needed? Sister Seraphina? Please . .. more old nuns and Catholic cats Matt did not need.

So when the phone rang, Temple considered ignoring it.

But . . . she finally skittered across the slippery floors to the kitchen phone and swooped up the receiver.

"Temple?" The voice was female and familiar, yet out of context.

"Righto."

"You sound .. . flustered. I didn't interrupt anything?"

"Just dealing with a few loose ends." Who was this? One of the psychics ready to confess?

"You'll never guess who sent me a long, gossipy letter."

Temple stopped fretting about absent problems to listen to the phone, to really listen.

"Mom! Why are you calling? Is Dad okay?"

"Fine, honey. I was trying to tell you. Honestly, Temple, will you ever slow down long enough to hear what anybody is saying? I got this long letter from Ursula just the other day."

Ursula? Wasn't that a nun-name? Why would somebody at Our Lady of Guadalupe be writing this Unitarian lady in Minneapolis?

"Oh, you mean Kit. Aunt Kit."

"That's not how she signed her letter, or ever has. Anyway, she says she met you in Las Vegas."

"She did. We did. She was here for a convention, and I ran into her."

"Convention? What kind of convention would Kit be attending? Doesn't she still work for that antiquarian bookstore in New York City?"

"Maybe so, but I didn't really hear much about that. Like I said, we literally ran into each other, and she recognized me, can you believe it?"

"Yes, I can. You've changed very little from the time you were in your teens, Temple. Never even grew. Your aunt Ursula was always a keen observer."

Temple had not wanted to hear--again--that she was Tammy Teen, so cute, so clever, so immature.

"Anyway," Temple said, "we had ... lunch and--"

"Funny. She says dinner."

"Dinner too. Later. And we hit it off. She's really kind of neat."

"For somebody who lives in New York City, I suppose so. Are you still planning to stay out there?"

"Here? In Vegas?"

"Vegas. It sounds like the name of a gas cloud, or something. Not like anywhere normal people live. I wish you'd move back home, and get a good job like you had before."

"I have a good job. In fact, I have a better job. I've just been ... hired to supervise the repositioning of a Strip hotel."

"Repositioning? Why can't it stay where it is, and why can't you come back home where you belong? All your brothers and sisters miss you--"

"And I miss them, but I can visit."

"You haven't."

Temple was silent.

"You can't imagine," her mother went on in her pleasantly singsong Minnesota voice, "how odd it is to get more news about you from my sister that I haven't seen in twelve years, than from you, my own daughter."

"What news?"

"Well, I didn't want to ask right out... but Ursula never mentioned Him."

"Him?"

"You know, That Man."

"That man?"

"The magician," her mother said grudgingly. "The cradle robber."

"I was hardly in the cradle, Mother."

"Temple, you like to think you're mature, but no one really is until--"

Thirty-five, Temple filled in the blank.

"--at least thirty-five."

"You had three kids by then."

"How do you think I got so mature so fast? You don't have any kids--"

"I have a cat." Temple threw in the child substitute. "Did Aunt Ursula mention that?"

"Nothing about a cat. I hope it's .. . sanitary. You did get all the proper shots? Cat scratch fever--"

"He's fine! He's shot up from one side to the other. He's safe. Pure as the driven snow, except he's black as coal."

"Temple. You haven't been out with some fast crowd that's ... you know, drinking?"

"I'm of legal age, Mother."

"Chronological age means nothing."

Temple rolled her eyes and ground her teeth, and thanked God and Ma Bell that TV-phones were not common yet. Every mother on Earth would have one.

"About this magician," her mother went on. "Did you happen to get rid of him?"

He got rid of me, Mother! But Temple didn't say that. It would be more evidence that her darling daughter was not capable of running her own life.

"Max is fine," Temple said, so calmly she almost looked around to make sure that it was she who had spoken.

"Urn. Well, I was surprised to hear from Ursula at such length. She says the bookstore is fine, though one wonders how much money she can be making on what selling books can pay."

Oodles, Mother. If you happen to be a best-selling author named Sulah Savage, which you aren't, because your baby sister is! And your baby daughter isn't doing too badly either!

"I'm sure Aunt Ursula's doing all right, Mom. And so am I."

"Are you sure? Temple, your father and I--and all your brothers and sisters--are very worried about you. You are our baby, you know."

I know, I know!

"Thanks, Mom. But I'm fine."

Temple sighed, realizing that she wasn't fine at all. But she was surviving, which was enough for her, and ought to be enough for them.

"You sound--"

"Harried, Mom. I've got a lot on my mind."

"Working late? You shouldn't let people take advantage of you."

"I work for myself, so if anyone's taking advantage of me, it's me. Actually my main project right now is ... an eminent magician I'm hoping to interview."

"Another magician! I hope you're not going to see him alone."

"No, I'm not. A slew of colleagues are sure to be present. And this eminent magician is very elderly."

"Oh?"-- Like a hundred and twenty-four, Temple was tempted to reply, and the name's Houdini --"Who is he?"

What a web we weave when we attempt to twist the truth into an origami ostrich. Temple heard herself saying something even more unlikely. "Orson Welles. Bet you didn't know he was a magician, too."

"Orson Welles? The Napa Valley wine man who used to write science fiction movies? He is old. But, Temple dear, isn't he ... didn't I hear someplace that he ... died?"

"Not permanently, Mother. Now I really have to run. I'm late. Talk to you later. Bye."

"Bye-bye, sweetie. Make sure you cover your head now that fall is here, and wear those mittens we sent you for Christmas three years ago--"

"Yes, Mother. Thanks for calling. Say hi to everybody."

Temple heard a disconnecting click and breathed again. What had Kit said in her letter?

Nothing to give away her own game, you can bet your best Minnesota muffler!

Still, she paused, rerunning the conversation. She hoped she hadn't been too abrupt. Mom was used to her frantic public relations lifestyle, but she would have been alarmed by the slightly flaky idea of reviving Houdini. Mom only meant well. It was hard to let go of the youngest, because then you were older than you wanted to be. Someday her mother wouldn't be around to call her, or to call, and then Temple would be sorry. She sighed. Guilt was a terrible thing to waste.

Hey, maybe she underestimated the Afterlife. Look at Houdini and his devotion to mama from both sides of the grave. Maybe, with a little help from her new psychic friends, including Karma and Louie, she could always dial up the Beyond for the usual dose of maternal fussing.

****************

"Son, son," the shade called in a voice of longing, which happened to be broken English with a strong German accent.

"Mother!" The man's voice was strong, but emotion-laden.

"So long, Ehrich. And I have wish to tell you . . . "

"I've waited for a word, a single word. If Yd only been there when you passed on, Mother.

You know you are the Queen of my Heart. I've told the world you are. I've wept on your grave at twelve-fifteen in the morning, the time you died. You know of my devotion, don't you? Don't you?"

"Always, my boy. Always my boy."

"But I must know, the word you meant to tell me when you died, and I an entire ocean away.

I came back, sick though the waves made me. I would not let them bury you until I had come to lay my head on your heart, your life, one last time. You were silent, Mother, through no fault of your own. I was a madman. I sought mediums to find you. What were you going to tell me?"

"You are with me, Ehrich. Always."

"But the message? I have lived in torment, needing to know what word you wanted to give me. I tried to chase down Death, and he finally slowed enough that I could catch him. But even Death did not know, nor poor Bess who survived me. What would you have said to me, Mother, had I come in time?"

"A word, Ehrich. No one hears enough, that word"

"Now! Can you say it now, in this vast emptiness that still is my heart?"

"Yes, dear one. One word. 'Forgive.' "

"Forgive. I was not sure, so I could not."

"Now you can, son."

"Now . .. is not then."

"Forgive, son. Forgive."

"And then I will forget?"

"Yes."

"But will they forget Houdini?"

"Not now."

"No?"

"Not... yet"