Whisker Of Evil

28

Silvery mist enveloped the sleeping countryside. A faint gray light on the eastern horizon announced dawn, dragging in its wake a new day, bright as a freshly minted copper penny. Church bells would not call the faithful to service for hours on this Sunday morning.

Alicia Palmer learned to awaken before dawn when she lived with Mary Pat, who was a happy early riser. This chore became a habit, one that served her well in her glory days in Hollywood, where she’d be ensconced in the makeup chair at five-thirty in the morning.

Fence lines hugged rolling terrain and rambling roses spilled over road banks as Alicia walked down the long curving drive toward the graceful brick pillars, whose twelve-foot wrought-iron gates stood open.

If Alicia reversed her walk, the drive, lined with majestic pin oaks, would fork, one half twisting toward the outbuildings and barns. The other half of the Y, the left prong, swung to the main house.

Alicia stopped at the juncture of the Y, the house and barns enshrouded in mist. Although beautiful, a ghostly aura permeated St. James: it was never the same without Mary Pat.

The cool tang of the morning, of the rambling roses, filled her nostrils. She’d loved St. James as much as she’d loved Mary Pat. She’d been young here, full of energy, pride, and naïveté. She wondered that she could ever have been that young, and yet here she was standing at her favorite spot, standing where she stood at age twenty-five. What a trickster time is.

Tears filled Alicia’s luminous eyes. She leaned against the white fence and thought if she closed her eyes Ziggy Flame would gallop over to her. Ziggy, being surprisingly tractable for a stallion, favored Alicia.

The untractable creature was Mary Pat, a woman who lived at full blast. During her life Alicia had met the rich and powerful of Hollywood and, by extension, the political hangers-on eager for vote magnets, yet none of them ever measured up to Mary Pat. The sheer raw energy of her could become an irritant as people tried to keep up physically and intellectually.

Alicia realized early on she could keep up physically but not intellectually. She didn’t mind. She’d never thought of herself as particularly bright, but she was sensitive.

“A thorn was given me in the flesh,” Alicia mouthed the words from Second Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 7.

Miranda had quoted the Scripture to her in relation to the Japanese beetles currently invading her garden.

Alicia felt that the thorn in her flesh was the memory of Mary Pat. If she’d been more attentive, if she’d been less ambitious, she knew in her heart all would have been well. She felt a vague and growing guilt. If she’d stayed, she believed, Mary Pat would never have been killed. She left for her screen test and returned to desolation and accusation.

She could prove nothing. Not her innocence nor lack of complicity. She had only her own sensitivity for a guide, that same sensitivity that had made her one of the best actresses of her generation. The star part of her life meant nothing to her. Being a fine actress meant something.

Nostalgia overwhelmed her. A slash of pink illuminated the eastern sky. Mary Pat used to say, “Live each day as though it were your last.”

Echoes from the past seemed louder in the fog. Alicia felt the fog would lift in all respects.