Cast a Pale Shadow(47)

No one thought it strange when he slipped off for naps. They encouraged him to take it easy, take his time. No one knew that he seldom slept at all. Trissa, Fitapaldi, and Augusta had laid the groundwork for his forgetfulness by magnifying the extent of his head injuries. If he lost his train of thought in mid-sentence, or mistook May for Beverly, or forgot Maurice's name all together, they blamed it on the beating, patted him on the shoulder, and prompted him patiently.

Nobody seemed worried that they might harbor a homicidal maniac in their midst. They simply refused to believe that possibility. No one knew that that was one of the worries that kept him awake at night.

Trissa, more than Fitapaldi, seemed to be in charge of his recuperation and therapy. Though Fitapaldi would walk with him each evening in the garden and talk about the old days as if they were old chums and not psycho and head shrink. But Trissa was the one who sat and talked with him hour upon hour, kissing and touching him as if he were Nicholas and nothing had changed. She would bring down his portfolio of photographs and use them like flashcards, drilling him on memories. After three or four times through she began marking them with tiny pencil scratches on the back corners. He saw later that the marks were N's or C's according to his response.

When he tired of the game or had nothing to say, she would read to him, newspapers and folktales. The newspapers included not only the current one but others she had somehow collected from days that were gaps in his memory, of plane crashes and elections, of the Viet Nam War and the War on Poverty and the roller coaster stock market, of overthrown governments, baseball games, celebrity marriages, divorces, and deaths.

"Ladd? Alan Ladd died?"

She nodded solemnly, "Of undisclosed cause, January twenty-ninth. I saw him in Shane on the Late Show once. Was he a favorite of yours?"

"I liked him well enough. He had a struggle growing up, I heard. Like me. In This Gun for Hire, he acted madness better than most of us can live it."

The folktales she chose at random, letting the thick, old book from Augusta's library fall open in her lap where it might and delving into it backwards and forwards from the page she'd found. Why folktales, he never asked. It was enough to listen to the lilting cadence of the words in her sweet, soft voice, to laugh with her at the humorous ones like Lazy Jack or The Pig-Headed Wife, to hear her sigh at the romantic ones like Beauty and the Beast, to see secret tears sneak from her eyes when the stories told of estranged fathers and daughters, or lost loves never found again.

"I know it's silly. I'll read something else tomorrow, something more manly. Ernest Hemingway? Ian Fleming? Non-fiction maybe?"

He took the book from her lap and leafed through it. "Actually, I'd prefer Finn MacCoul and the Fenians of Erin, followed by The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, if we have time." He closed the book and winked at her, not knowing that it recalled Nicholas to her so sharply that she had to look away for a moment. "Trissa, you could read the telephone book and I would enjoy it. I like the sound of your voice."

"Do you? Finn MacCoul it is then. By special request. Good night, Nicholas I mean, Cole." She kissed him as she always did before they parted for the night, then left him behind in dizzy shambles to lie awake all night, or if he slept, to dream of her in ways that went beyond kisses. It couldn't be that he was falling in love with her. That was something that Cole just could not do.





Chapter Eighteen





Augusta lifted the black linen pillbox from Trissa's head and tried the felt cloche. She pursed her lips and frowned at the hat's reflection in the mirror. It had a large onyx and rhinestone hatpin and rhinestone-clustered netting that was all wrong for someone so young. "Are you sure you won't listen to reason and stay home?"

"Augusta, I'm not going to miss my father's funeral just because we can't find the right hat." Trissa angled the cloche forward making the net dip past her chin. She grimaced and removed the hat and handed it back. "Maybe no hat at all would be okay. Or I could just wear a scarf."

"There has to be something here that's appropriate. But why in the world..." Her voice grew muffled as she burrowed through the hatboxes in the deep recesses of her closet. She emerged in a moment with three more boxes balanced precariously in her arms and two hats perched atop her own head. "A mother who would abandon her own daughter is beyond me."

"Please, I've already explained. My mother and I were both victims." In the long, dark hours while they waited at Nicholas' bedside, Trissa had confided a bit of her own story to Augusta, a condensed version that did not include the truth about how she and Nicholas met, nor the fact that they were not really married. Now that Nicholas, himself, did not remember this little detail, Trissa was the only one in the world who knew for sure. She intended to keep it that way.

"Hmmmph, if you ask me I'd say she was more accomplice than victim. What does Nicholas say about you going?"

"He doesn't know. He's meeting with Dr. Fitapaldi this morning. I thought I'd just go and not bother them."

"I bet he won't like it. Not one bit. Lorenzo wouldn't either, if he knew." She brushed Trissa's hair behind her ears and tried a beaded French beret. It gave her a Continental look that was interesting but inappropriate for a funeral. "At least, let me go with you."

"You know Roger needs you this morning. He's more worried than he lets on about those heart tests"

"Yes, poor Roger pretends to be brave, but underneath he's such a softy." Augusta flicked her fingers distractedly through Trissa's hair, smoothing it for the next hat. She was worried too and trying to hide it.

"Anyway, Beverly is going to drive me. I'll be all right."

"Beverly? Well, I guess she does have the experience being she's a whatchamacallit."

"Grief consultant." Trissa opened one of the boxes and discovered a broad-brimmed black straw sailor with a stiff grosgrain bow in the back. Augusta nodded enthusiastically as she lifted it out and placed it on her head.

"Perfect. I knew we'd find something." She opened her closet door wide and steered Trissa toward it. There in the full length mirror was a portrait in black that Trissa had difficulty recognizing as herself. Augusta had outfitted her in a prim, black challis dress with a crocheted ecru collar. She had lightly brushed a bit of color on Trissa's cheeks and lips to relieve the starkness of her fair skin against the black. The effect added a dewy look that drew attention to her eyes, which sparkled a deep ultramarine blue today below the brim of the hat.

In sheer black stockings and new trim pumps still shiny from Nicholas' care, Trissa turned left and right and all around to marvel at the young woman in the mirror. "Yes, I'll be quite all right. I doubt that my mother will even recognize me," she said at last.

"Ahh, shame on the mother who doesn't know her own daughter, that's what I say."

"And what about the husband who doesn't know his own wife?" asked Cole in a low, solemn voice from the doorway. "May I come in?"

"Oh, Nicholas, look at you," Augusta said. She took his hand and drew him into the room, making him turn for them so they could see all sides of his sharp, black suit and crisp white shirt.

"It's Maurice's tie," Cole said with a grin that was both pleased and boyishly bashful.

"Honey, that tie never had it so good. It will refuse to be seen around Maurice's neck again. Too much like slumming after this." Augusta adjusted the handkerchief in Cole's coat pocket slightly, then patted his shoulder and turned toward Trissa.

She stood silently by the mirror, her hands fidgeting at her sides. She didn't know what to say. Her heart was so flooded with love and worry for him that it closed her throat. She couldn't let him go with her, yet she remembered that when she first started dressing this morning, she had doubted her legs would support her without him there to bolster her.

"I overheard Beverly in the kitchen. I told her I would take her place."

"No."

"It's a husband's duty, Trissa."

"But, you have no car." It was an unsolved mystery, where Nicholas's car had disappeared to since the night he'd gone to meet her father.

"I asked Fitapaldi to drive us." He shrugged and smiled wryly. "It may start a new trend. Plan ahead to avoid emotional distress. Take along your own personal psychiatrist."

Trissa looked past Cole to see Augusta nodding. "I think it's a very good idea. Quite the best solution I've heard all morning for this sad business."

Trissa sighed her defeat. "All right. If you're sure you feel up to it." She spoke little as the plans were made. They joined Fitapaldi in the kitchen, and the two men discussed the various times they could join the funeral services -- at the funeral parlor, the church, the graveside. Trissa absently buttered the toast which was the least Augusta would allow her to eat before leaving the house. The brim of her hat shadowed her face so they could not see her eyes as she followed their conversation and nibbled at the crust. When they seemed to have decided on the cemetery, she dabbed her lips with the corner of her napkin and stood.