The Color of Light

Chapter 4

It seemed to me that the woman from University Housing, Evelynne M. Sanchez according to the card she gave me, had a bit of an attitude, as if she were put upon by the chore of this visit. I did not understand why she would be. It seemed to me, and to the people Mom had spoken with at the housing office, that Mom was doing the university a favor by leasing the house for their use.

The cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is wickedly high, a problem whenever the university wants to recruit talented researchers and faculty. In recognition of that problem, and as a sort of memoriam to Dad who always put up visiting colleagues, the rent Mom was asking covered property taxes, insurance, a reserve account to cover repairs and maintenance, and little else. The bite was far below the going market rate for a house its size in the area. I did not expect Ms Sanchez to bow down in gratitude, but I thought a certain level of professional politesse was called for.

“How much of this furniture will remain?” she asked, running her hand over the surface of a very old table with a marquetry-work top that Dad had found left on a curb by a student who was moving out of an apartment.

“The house will be fully furnished,” I said. “But exactly which pieces will be here and which won’t I can’t say until Monday. A family member is coming to decide on things she might want.”

“The pianos?” Ms Sanchez asked.

“Mom is keeping the baby grand, but the upright in the sun porch is staying if you want it.”

As she opened kitchen cupboards stocked with crockery and cutlery and pots and pans she said, “You know to expect wear and tear. If any of this-” Ms Sanchez turned over a dinner plate and checked the trade mark on the bottom before putting it back on the shelf. “Things do get broken.”

“Mom expects that families will live here,” I said, stowing Beto’s food containers into the refrigerator. “And that they will make themselves comfortable for the duration of their stay. She isn’t leaving anything that is particularly valuable or irreplaceable.”

I walked her upstairs and showed her the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

“As far as I know, the house is in good repair,” I said as we toured. “Mom put on a new roof late last winter and repainted all the rooms upstairs. The water heater is only a couple of years old and the gravity heater in the basement has always been more than adequate. The house is within the university’s Wi-Fi umbrella, so residents will be able to connect online using their Cal accounts.”

“Is there a full basement?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “The gravity heater is in a big cement-lined hole under the house. There’s an access hatch in the dining room.”

I saved the master bedroom for last because it was a mess. Mom had left her wardrobe rejects in a heap on the bed for me to bag and deliver to the women’s shelter thrift store. Stacks of books on the floor were waiting to be boxed and taken to the library’s used book store.

A muslin garment bag hanging on the closet door caught my eye. Mom had debated whether to take the dress inside with her, or to leave it. In the end, she decided that she could no longer bring herself to wear something that plunged in the back. She could also not bring herself to throw that particular dress onto the heap with the others. For decades, the dress had been her favorite to wear out on special evenings. It was a genuine couturier designed and crafted floor-length gown, made originally for some San Francisco society maven; her initials were embroidered into a side seam. Mom bought it at an Opera Guild rummage sale, but even at rummage sale prices it had been a splurge for her.

While Ms Sanchez was looking through the en suite bathroom, I took the dress out of the bag and gave it a careful going-over, thinking that I might have something to wear to Jean-Paul’s reception after all.

The dress was as timelessly elegant as I remembered: long sleeves, a ballerina neckline, the lines kept from being severe by an almost daring plunge in back and the graceful way the skirt swirled around the legs. The fabric, a tissue-thin black silk and wool knit, had some benevolent give. Cut on the bias, the dress was narrow through the midriff and then gradually flared; a wonderful dress to dance in. I hadn’t asked Jean-Paul if there would be dancing.

The dress did show some signs of age, but who doesn’t after forty? The cuff end of the right sleeve was a bit frayed, but I could turn that under with a couple of stitches. If the lighting at the reception was subdued, as it should be at a party, who would notice a couple of tiny moth holes here and there? If the dress fit, and didn’t fall apart on me, it would be better than just fine.

“I remember that dress.”

I wheeled around, startled. I hadn’t heard Ms Sanchez come back into the room. “You do?”

“Your mother wore it to a couple of concerts,” she said. “My mom said it came from Paris.”

“Originally, I think it did,” I said, looking at her more closely; why did she seem so cranky? And who was she to recognize the dress? “Mom bought it at a rummage sale.”

With her knuckles on her hips, she challenged me: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

This was not the first time someone had asked me that particular question. Because I work in television, I meet a lot of people. Frequently those meetings consist of little more than a handshake and a comment about the weather or something just as impersonal and noncommittal. But sometime later they might see me on the living room TV and the nature of that glancing acquaintance changes in their minds. Generally, when I encounter them a second time and nothing familiar registers, I apologize for my memory lapse and ask for help. But because we were in my home town and I had once known a goodly number of its inhabitants, I gave Ms Evelynne M. Sanchez another looking-over before saying anything.

Through the open window, I heard someone shake the back gate hard enough to make Mr. Sato’s padlock knock against the wood. The racket jarred me, but it was also a welcome interruption. I folded the black dress over my arm and went to the window to look down into the yard.

“What is it?” Ms Sanchez asked, standing close behind me.

I couldn’t see who was out there, but I had my suspicions. Through the open window I called down, “Hello there.”

Whoever it was stopped shaking the gate. There was a pause. Then I heard running feet.

“Who is it?” Craning to look over my shoulder, Evelynne M. Sanchez pressed against me. A bit too familiar, I thought. And that’s when enlightenment came: Evie Miller. She sat behind me in fifth grade and was on the same swim team in middle school. What I remembered most about her was that she was forever leaning forward in her chair to see what I was doing or to talk to me, demanding attention.

“I don’t know, Evie,” I said, turning back around and edging away from her. “Maybe just some kids. With luck it’s someone who wants to steal zucchini. If it is, I hope they come back.”

“So you do remember me.” She sounded sarcastic, though she smiled. “Took you a while.”

“It’s been a long time,” I said. “Middle-school graduation, maybe?”

“We doubled to the prom,” she said, scolding. “Junior year.”

“So we did.” Did we? All I could remember about the other couple in the backseat of Kevin’s dad’s car the night of his prom-I went to a different high school than he and Evie-was a lot of fluffy pink satin, frothy blond hair and the sounds of some serious groping going on back there. Was that Evie and her date? Guess so.

I showed her around the yard and she filled me in on her life so far: married a boy she met in college, had one daughter, now in college like my own. Her husband got caught fooling around with someone else I was supposed to know but could not place, so here she was, single again and on the prowl.

“Know any available guys?” she asked. “I married cute. Now I want rich. You must know plenty of rich guys in Hollywood. Age doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said as I walked her back through the house.

“You always had the cute boyfriends,” she said.

“Only one boyfriend, ever,” I said. “Kevin.”

“Have you seen Kevin recently?” she asked, snooping, I thought.

“I have,” I said because there was no point equivocating about it, not after Karen Loper had made her rounds. The old home town was a tough place to keep secrets.

“You know about him and Lacy.”

“We didn’t talk about Lacy.”

“She’s really jealous of you.”

“She has no reason to be.”

“Oh, Maggie,” she scoffed. “Think about it. Even Larry Nordquist had a crush on you.”

“Bullshit.” And it was. As a kid, I was a scrawny nerd.

“Remember the day you made Larry cry?” she said, grinning. “God, I thought I would plotz when he took off running.”

Was she there? I studied her face, trying to picture her among the dozen girls walking to school that day. It took a moment, but I could place her in the film, a profusion of brightly colored ribbons in her curly hair.

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“For you maybe.” Looking up at the house, she repeated, “For you.”

“Good to see you, Evie.”

She stood inside her open car door, chin on fists resting on the car’s rooftop.

“Maggie?”

“Yes.”

“Our childhood wasn’t always like a dance in an opera, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I mean, Beto’s mom, bullies-well, Larry-boys who always wanted…” She looked down the street toward the house where her family had lived. “But we made it, didn’t we?”

“So far,” I said, repeating one of Mike’s expressions. “So far.”