“Well, I’m glad it did,” Edwin said, slapping me on the knee. “Because then you thought of me, and I’ve always been ready to help you. No, sir, Dan, there’s nothing like having a family to back you up!”
It took me a while to get to sleep that night, even though Edwin had given me a large, comfortable room overlooking a pleasant garden, with the ocean murmuring not far away.
I still hadn’t recovered from the awe I felt at the sight of Edwin’s manor-sized house, set amid acres of greenery, and my first meeting with the “family,” all of whom lived here in the big house with Edwin, and had done nothing to make me feel I was welcome.
“Will you be staying long?” Edwin’s daughter, Linda, had drawled when Edwin brought me into the library to meet — them. She was a slim, well-molded blonde, doubtless she of the sexy voice on the phone.
“He’s come to join the family, Linda,” Edwin said pointedly, as he warmed himself before the big fireplace.
Linda looked me over coolly, then turned and laid her hand on the arm of her brother, Fred.
“Maybe he can help you in the studio,” she said.
Fred, small and dark like his father, and sporting a Hitler-type moustache, gave me a fishy look.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“He writes for a newspaper. We’ll find something to suit his talents.”
I could see Edwin was angry, even though he winked at me. “You see, Dan, we’re a very talented family, and we’ve all found — outlets. Linda is a model, Fred is a fine photographer, and Philip, at the piano there, is a musician, although he has other talents as well.”
Philip Ordway, Edwin’s nephew, was close to thirty, pale faced and sulky looking. He gave me a glance over the music rack that one might expect from a life-long enemy and executed an eloquent glissando. Then a gleam came into his eyes, and following his gaze, I saw a white-uniformed nurse enter the room, pushing a wheel chair in which sat an old woman.
“Ah, and here is Grandmother Owen,” Edwin said. “She wouldn’t remember you, Dan. She doesn’t know any body. She’s over ninety now, you know.”
I looked at the old woman sitting with a vacant smile, clearly senile, her hands plucking aimlessly at the white stole that matched her hair, and remembered her dimly.
She was my own grandmother on my mother’s side, no blood relation to anyone else in the room. All I could recall of her though, was that she’d given me a bag of licorice candy when I was very young. Now, even though her eyes were out of focus, they did not look away like the others as I smiled.
Suddenly a book which the old woman held loosely in her lap, slid with a thump to the floor, and as the nurse and I bent over to pick up the volume, our heads touched. I was aware of shining chestnut hair tucked neatly under a nurse’s cap, cool green eyes and a piquant, alert face.
“You’ve just bumped into Miss Fox,” Edwin said laughing. “She lives with us, and takes care of Grandmother. Miss Fox, my stepson, Dan.”
She smiled, and her friendly eyes warmed me hugely. The book the old lady had dropped was still open in my hands, revealing a signature written on one of the end papers — Maud. Owen.
The next moment, Edwin took the book from me and put it back into the old woman’s lap.
“Maud never lets go of that book,” Edwin said. “It contains reproductions of the paintings of Grandma Moses. She was absorbed in the work of Grandma Moses when she began to lose contact. That book seems to be the only object she’s clearly aware of.”
“I often think she’s painting pictures in her mind,” Miss Fox said, and I thought her speech fitted her — gentle, feminine, and clearly articulated.
“Maybe she’s not robbed of self-expression at that,” Edwin said. “She used to like to write, you know. Poems and things like that!”
Philip Ordway sounded a chord, as if to attract attention, and I saw he was watching Miss Fox, his face grinning like Pan, an open, libidinous gleam in his eyes.
Then Edwin clapped his hand on my shoulder.
“We want to make you feel welcome here, Dan. In time, we want you to become one of us!”
But listening to the pulsing surf now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be one of them. I knew that Linda, Fred, and Philip didn’t want me to be.
I must have dozed. A clock in the hall below chimed three, and then I heard the creak of the floorboard outside my door.
I slipped out of bed and tip-toed to the door, where I stood listening. Then I swung the door open as I flicked on the switch. The hall was empty, but from somewhere I heard the click of a latch.
The note was on the floor inside my threshold. It was folded and the message was block-printed in pencil on a piece of lined paper. It said:
Leave this house — don’t tell them where you’ve gone — for your own safety do this at once!
For a moment I got panicky. Then I took myself in hand and counted my money. I had a little over ten dollars, and I asked myself where I would go, what I would do.
And after thinking about it awhile, I got back into bed and tried to go to sleep again.
The next morning I had breakfast with Edwin and his nephew, Philip Ordway, in the big paneled dining room.
“My own youngsters like to sleep late,” Edwin said as he cracked his boiled egg. “Phil, here, of course, works with me at the office, and he has to get up.”
In the morning light, Edwin did not look as young as he had the night before. His hair was just as black, but his skin looked pouchy, and his eyes had that glazed, jellified look that one associates with over-indulgence.
“I spend the greater part of the day downtown,” he said, “but I want you to feel free to go and come as you please. I’ll give you a key.”
“What is your work, Edwin?” I asked.
There was a little noise on my left, and Philip’s egg cup went rolling across the linen tablecloth, the egg with it, leaving a thin trail of yellow yolk.
“Damn it,” Phil said, his pale face turning paler. “My knife slipped.”
The look of disgust in Edwin’s face as he glanced at his nephew set me talking to cover up the breach.
“Aunt Kate was never specific about what you did, except to say you were pretty well-to-do.”
I looked appreciatively around the luxurious dining room, the windows of which looked out on a sunken garden.
Edwin chuckled. “I’m just a merchant, Dan. I have — outlets — in all major cities in the far west, and at the moment I’m considering expansion to the east. Phil is working on that plan now, aren’t you, Phil?” There was a goading malice in Edwin’s tone.
Phil’s face got red again. He nodded, his mouth full of toast, and favored me with his vendetta look.
“Phil, I’m sure you’ve noticed, lacks a certain amount of charm,” Edwin went on. “But up to now he’s been reasonably efficient. Now I must leave you, Dan, but tonight you and I will go out on the town, and I’ll show you a San Francisco that’ll make you wonder why you wasted your years in Portland.” He slapped my shoulder and put down a fifty dollar bill in front of me. “For expenses, in case you want to wander.”
“But I can’t—”
“Go ahead! If your stepfather can’t give you a little present, who can?”
When he and Phil had gone I stared down at the fifty, still wondering how he’d earned it. Then I put the bill in my wallet and went out on the terrace that overlooked a lovely formal garden. On the far edge was a high, redwood-stake fence and beyond that, sand dunes, shining yellow against a misty blue sky.
Down near the end of the garden I could see Grandmother Owen sitting in her wheelchair, with Miss Fox beside her, on a bench. I went down to them.