Duma Key(187)

I flipped to a clean sheet. "Do I have to use one of her pencils?" I asked.

"Not no mo. You be fine with any."

So I rummaged in my pack, found my Indigo, and began drawing. I drew the Eastlake swimming pool with no hesitation it was like giving up thought and allowing muscle memory to punch in a phone number. I drew it as it had been when it had been bright and new and full of clean water. The pool, where for some reason Perse's hold slipped and her hearing failed.

I drew Nan Melda, up to her shins, and Libbit up to her waist, with Noveen tucked under her arm and her pinafore floating around her. Words floated out of my strokes.

Where yo new doll now? The china doll?

In my special treasure-box. My heart-box.

So it had been there, at least for awhile.

And what her name?

Her name is Perse.

Percy a boy's name.

And Libbit, firm and sure: I can't help it. Her name is Perse.

All right den. And you say she can't hear us here.

I don't think so...

That's good. You say you c'n make things come. But listen to me, child -

ix

"Oh my God," I said. "It wasn't Elizabeth's idea. It was never Elizabeth's idea. We should have known."

I looked up from the picture I had drawn of Nan Melda and Libbit standing in the pool. I realized, in a distant way, that I was very hungry.

"What are you talking about, Edgar?" Wireman asked.

"Getting rid of Perse was Nan Melda's idea." I turned to Noveen, still sitting on Jack's knee. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Noveen said nothing, so I passed my right hand over the figures in my swimming-pool drawing. For a moment I saw that hand, long fingernails and all.

"Nanny didn't know no better," Noveen said an instant later from Jack's leg. "And Libbit be trustin Nanny."

"Of course she did," Wireman said. "Melda was almost the child's mother."

I had visualized the drawing and erasing as happening in Elizabeth's room, but now I knew better. It had happened at the pool. Perhaps even in the pool. Because the pool had been, for some reason, safe. Or so little Libbit had believed.

Noveen said, "It din' make Perse gone, but it sholy did get her attention. I think it hoit dat bitch." The voice sounded tired now, croaky, and I could see Jack's Adam's apple sliding up and down in his throat again. "I hope it did!"

"Yes," I said. "Probably it did. So... what came next?" But I knew. Not the details, but I knew. The logic was grim and irrefutable. "Perse took her revenge on the twins. And Elizabeth and Nan Melda knew. They knew what they did. Nan Melda knew what she did."

"She knew," Noveen said. It was still a female voice, but it was edging closer to Jack's all the time. Whatever the spell was, it wouldn't hold much longer. "She held on until the Mister found their tracks down on Shade Beach tracks goin into the water but after that she couldn't hold on no longer. She felt she got her babby-uns killed."

"Did she see the ship?" I asked.

"Seen it that night. You cain't see that boat at night and not believe."

I thought of my Girl and Ship paintings and knew that was the truth.

"But even before the Mister rung the high sheriff on the s'change to say his twins was missin and probably drownded, Perse done spoke to Libbit. Tole her how it was. An' Libbit tole Nanny."

The doll slumped, its round cookie-face seeming to study the heart-shaped box from which it had been exhumed.

"Told her what, Noveen?" Wireman asked. "I don't understand."

Noveen said nothing. Jack, I thought, looked exhausted even though he hadn't moved at all.

I answered for Noveen. "Perse said, 'Try to get rid of me again and the twins are just the beginning. Try again and I'll take your whole family, one by one, and save you for last.' Isn't that right?"

Jack's fingers flexed. Noveen's rag head nodded slowly up and down.

Wireman licked his lips. "That doll," he said. "Exactly whose ghost is it?"

"There are no ghosts here, Wireman," I said.

Jack moaned.

"I don't know what he's been doing, amigo, but he's done," Wireman said.

"Yes, but we're not." I reached for the doll the one that had gone everywhere with the child artist. And as I did, Noveen spoke to me for the last time, in a voice that was half hers and half Jack's, as if both of them were struggling to come through at the same time.

"Nuh- uh, not dat hand -you need dat hand to draw wit'."

And so I reached out the arm I used to lift Monica Goldstein's dying dog out of the street six months ago, in another life and universe. I used that hand to grasp Elizabeth Eastlake's doll and lift it off Jack's knee.

"Edgar?" Jack said, straightening up. "Edgar, how in hell did you get your-"

- arm back, I suppose he said, but I don't know for sure; I didn't hear the finish. What I saw were those black eyes and that black maw of a mouth ringed with red. Noveen. All these years she had been down there in the double dark under the stair and in the tin box waiting to spill her secrets, and her lipstick had stayed fresh all the while.

Are you set? she whispered inside my head, and that voice wasn't Noveen's, wasn't Nan Melda's (I was sure of that), wasn't even Elizabeth's; that was all Reba. You all set and ready to draw, you nasty man? Are you ready to see the rest? Are you ready to see it all?