Little Girls(3)

Laurie paused at the foot of the stairs. She felt Lorton hovering close behind her. A cool sweat rose to the surface of her skin and the nape of her neck prickled hotly. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out and grasping the decorative head of the newel post for support. “I just need a minute.”

Ted asked if she was okay.

“It’s just a bit overwhelming, that’s all.”

Frightened, Susan said, “Mommy?”

Laurie offered the girl a tepid smile, which Susan returned wholeheartedly. “Mommy’s okay, sweetheart,” she said, and was glad when her voice did not waver.

Ted came up behind Laurie and squeezed her shoulder with one firm hand.

“It has been a while since you were last here, Mrs. Genarro?” Felix Lorton asked.

“It has, yes,” she confirmed. “I spent my childhood here but haven’t been back in many years.”

Felix Lorton nodded. “Understandable.”

After Laurie regained her composure, Felix Lorton led them into the parlor. The walls were drab, the paint cracked and peeling. A comfortable sofa and loveseat sat corralled on a threadbare oriental carpet before a dark stone hearth. A few books stood on a bookshelf, while an ancient Victrola cabinet squatted in one corner, its lacquered hood raised. Beside the phonograph was a small upright piano, shiny and black. A tarnished candelabrum stood on the piano’s hood. At the opposite end of the room, a liquor cabinet with a mesh screen for a door displayed a collection of antediluvian bottles. The windows in this part of the house faced a green yard and, beyond, a wooden fence that separated the side of the house and backyard from the neighboring property which, from what Laurie was able to glimpse, looked overgrown with heavy trees and unkempt shrubbery. The whole room smelled unsparingly of Pine-Sol.

“Strange,” commented Ted. He was staring at a large gilded frame on one wall. The frame held no lithograph, no portrait, though bits of it still clung to the inside of the frame. Aside from that, it framed nothing but the blank wall on which it sat. “What happened to the picture?”

Felix Lorton cleared his throat and said, “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“Did you work for my father as well, Mr. Lorton?” Laurie asked as she walked slowly around the room. Beneath the cloying smell of Pine-Sol, she could detect the stale odor of cigar smoke, and for a brief moment she was suddenly ushered back to her youth. Her father had often smoked the horrid things. The parlor had been arranged differently back then, her mother having brought to it a domestic femininity it now sorely lacked. Cigar smoking had not been permitted in the house, and Laurie recalled a sudden image of her father standing just beyond the windows of this room, firmly planted in the strip of lawn that ran alongside the fence while he puffed away on one of his cigars. The vision was so distant, Laurie wondered if it was a real memory or some nonsense she had just conjured from thin air.

“No, ma’am, I did not. My sister was assigned to take care of your father from the service. When things got . . . more difficult. . . the service brought on another girl to assist with the caretaking responsibilities. A night nurse. You’re aware of this, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“I had been coming around on occasion in the past few months, Mrs. Genarro, mostly to do minor repairs. Old houses like these . . .” There was no need for him to complete the thought. “When Dora said the locks needed to be changed, I came and changed them. That sort of thing.”

“Why were the locks changed?” she asked.

“You’ll have to speak with Dora about that.”

Laurie frowned. “If it was necessary to have someone maintain the property, I wish the service would have told me. I don’t like the idea of you having to take care of my father’s things for free.”

“It wasn’t like that at all, ma’am. My sister had simply requested I come with her so she wouldn’t have to be here alone.”

“What about the other girl?” Laurie asked. “The night nurse?”

“They were never here at the same time. They worked in shifts. Toward the end, your father required around-the-clock care, as I’ve been told. I presume you were kept up to date on all of this?”

“Yes. I was aware of my father’s condition.” Then she frowned. “Why wouldn’t Dora want to be here alone?”

“You’ll have to ask her, ma’am,” said Lorton. It was becoming his automatic response. “If you don’t mind my asking, where do you folks currently reside?”

“Hartford, Connecticut,” Laurie said. She feigned interest in the crumbling mortar of the fireplace mantel. As a child, there had been framed photographs and various other items on the mantelpiece. Now, it was barren. “It took us longer to get here than we thought,” she added, as if the distance excused her absence from this place and her father’s life.

What do I have to feel guilty about? she wondered. He was never there for me; why should I have been there for him? Anyway, what business is it of Felix Lorton’s?

“Understandable. Please have a seat and I’ll go fetch my sister,” Lorton said, extending a hand toward the sofa and loveseat. “Would any of you like something to drink?”

“Ice water would be great,” Ted said. He was examining the spines of the few books on the bookshelf.

“Do you have any grape juice, please?” Susan asked.