The Black Painting. Neil Olson

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СКАЧАТЬ said bitterly. “Keeping track of everything I ever did wrong. And not only me, all of us.”

      “So we’re all behaving erratically?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. The things he said should have disturbed her, but she had witnessed such behavior when they were children. She knew what Grandpa Morse was getting at, but she also knew James. He did not understand people, didn’t get their jokes, became easily frustrated. Instead of taking that into account, friends and family taunted him. For their amusement, maybe, or simply because it’s what people did. James’ own father, Fred, was a terrible tease. Miranda, too. And of course Audrey was the worst. She knew how to send James into a fit with just a few words. He would cry and yell and break things. Hurt himself, perhaps. But never hurt anyone else. She had never heard of his doing so, and could not imagine it.

      “Kenny argued with him, too.” James spit the words out, as if ashamed of speaking.

      “He told you that?”

      “Yes. He left before I got here, but after my talk with Grandpa I went to the city to find him. He was staying with a friend, in the place he rented when he used to live there.”

      Which answered a question that Teresa had been meaning to ask. Why had James arrived with Kenny from New York instead of coming from Boston?

      “I couldn’t remember where it was,” he went on, “so I wandered around for a long time. It’s a big city.”

      “It is,” Teresa agreed, imagining James wandering Manhattan’s late-night streets. He was lucky he didn’t get mugged.

      “I slept on a bench. When I woke up I remembered the address, so I went there.”

      “In the middle of the night?” she laughed. “I bet he was thrilled to see you.”

      “It was morning, but yeah, he wasn’t happy. He had someone with him.”

      “I bet she wasn’t too happy either.”

      “It was awkward,” James concurred. “Once we started talking, I could see he was upset, too. That his conversation had been as bad as mine.”

      “What was Grandpa’s problem with him?” she asked. Curious to know what flaws Kenny could possibly possess.

      “The thing is, he had a problem with all of us. He was calling us in one by one to tell us our faults. What we had to fix. The old jerk.”

      “Jerk” was about as harsh as James got. But she heard more hurt in his voice than anger. They cleared the last corner of the house and the sun struck them full in the face.

      “Why?” Teresa brought them to halt short of the circular drive. “Why was he doing it?”

      “Because he didn’t think his heart was going to last much longer.”

      “So?” she said, exasperated. “He had to tell us the errors of our ways before sailing off into eternity?”

      “I like how you put things,” he said. “I should read more.”

      “It rots the mind.”

      “It’s about money, Tay.” James shifted uncomfortably. “We had to change these things about ourselves if we wanted to get any money. In his will.”

      She looked to see if he was joking, but of course he would never make such a joke.

      “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s what it was about?”

      Could he be lying? Not lying, James would not consciously lie, but telling a story he believed? Why would he come up with this? No, it was a sad revelation, but all too credible. And yet more proof that she had never really known her grandfather. What would her own flaw have been? She could think of many, but what would have seemed important to the old man? And what about Audrey? Drinking, drugs, sleeping around? A list too long to consider. It did not matter now; they would never know.

      A hundred feet to their right, the front door opened. And there she was, as if Teresa’s thoughts had conjured her from the mist. Audrey. She wore the same clothes from yesterday, but with an old green coat over her T-shirt. They waited for her to look in their direction, but she skipped down the steps and toward her car without a glance left or right.

      “What’s she doing up at this hour?” Teresa wondered.

      James shrugged, but he watched his sister carefully.

      Audrey jumped into the Lexus and gunned the engine to life. Without waiting for it to warm up, she spun around the drive and out through the opening in the rhododendrons and was gone. It was only then that Teresa realized Philip’s car was also missing. Philip had gotten Miranda from the train yesterday, and James and Kenny had taken a taxi, so the drive was now empty of vehicles. Despite James standing beside her, Teresa had a panicky sensation of being abandoned on this foggy point of land. In this house of the dead.

      “Where is she going?”

      “It’s no use trying to figure out Audrey,” James said in resignation. “Be happy she’s gone for a while.”

      His words raised questions about the sibling relationship, but a more urgent question nagged Teresa.

      “How does that stuff about Grandpa make you to blame for his death?”

      “I didn’t say I was to blame.”

      “You said you would be blamed. Why?”

      “Because,” he said, then said no more. A crow shambled from one pine tree to the next, a blue jay shrieking after it. She waited him out. “Because I was there,” James finally continued. “Every time something bad happens, I’m around. Grandma falling on the terrace. The painting vanishing. Now Grandpa dies right after I argue with him.”

      “Oh, James,” Teresa said, grabbing the lapels of his coat and shaking him. “No one thinks you’re responsible for any of that.”

      “Maybe you don’t,” he mumbled.

      You’re the Angel of Death. Everyone you touch dies. Who had said that? Where had Teresa just heard it?

      “Has anyone accused you of something?” she asked.

      “They don’t have to. I can see it in their faces.”

      “Grandma fell because she had a stroke,” Teresa said patiently. “It was, like, her fourth. One of them was going to kill her. Audrey was there, too. And she and I were both there when the theft happened. As for Grandpa, well, it sounds like he started the fight. With Kenny also. It’s not your fault.”

      It was like talking to stone. He was still as a stone, too, his whole body gone rigid. He stared at the ocean with absolutely no expression. Teresa was good at reading people, but could read nothing in that blank visage. Despite the sun, the damp had penetrated her clothes and she began to shiver.

      “I’m sorry, I have to go inside.”

      “I saw someone,” James said then. “Or I thought I did. In the pines.”

      “Just now, when you were walking?” Philip and Audrey had clearly been СКАЧАТЬ