Warpaint Page 21

  “Will you mind?”

  She did, but she said, “No.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave and let you get unpacked. Mother’s a bit old-fashioned and we will serve a tea in about an hour. Please join us.” And with a shy smile she left.

  Alone, a buzzing thing started to zip around inside Quiola. She hung her spares in the closet, laid out her flannel on the single bed, and so on, coming last to her watercolors and traveling sketch-book and all the while the buzzing thing kept at her until she realized it was exultation, a confused high, like fizz off the top of a champagne bottle: she was being uncorked. She sat down on the bed with a thump, landing like a hot air balloon with a whoosh, and surveyed her nest – the place was cozy, the wall to wall indoor outdoor, oatmeal in color and both soft and durable, made her want to take her shoes off. And the child-like writing desk beside one of the two windows seemed to beckon, sit here, post a letter, sketch a little, stay with me.

  Beth Moore’s afternoon tea was not an elaborate affair – Earl Grey with a plate of flat, ginger cookies. Dinner was equally sensible: broiled walleye, which Sara had caught. Conversation was direct and simple: Quiola’s trip, the weather, and the house, and some politics – feeling out new territory. But once the two younger women finished clearing the table, and Beth had laid another fire, Quiola sat down in a chair and asked,

  “Do you have any idea why Liz wanted me to visit Treetops? I mean, I would’ve liked to attend the funeral –”

  “I know,” said Beth. “But that’s not what she wanted. Hated funerals. I did my best not to have one. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all,” but she didn’t expect a pipe.

  After sucking at its thin, graceful stem, getting the shag to catch, Beth said, “My aunt was very particular. I didn’t argue with her. She left instructions. Detailed, exacting and a bit mystifying. But she’d lived a long time and kept her secrets, secret.”

  “Not all of them,” said Sara.

  “Really?” her mother countered, smiling. “Such as?”

  “She liked to tell me stories about her childhood. You know she did. So I don’t think she kept every secret she ever knew.”

  “All right, then. But she didn’t always confide in me.”

  “No because you thought her a bit odd.”

  “Well? Wasn’t she?”

  Sara turned to Quiola. “Gran wanted you and I to get to know each other. I’m not sure why, but she said we should meet, after she’d passed.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Games.”

  “Just Gran’s way. She told me to invite you up here, and that I should tell you –” She stopped herself.

  “Go on,” said Beth. “Tell her what?”

  “Mom, please. I just remembered I’m supposed to tell the story out by the Cauldron, near the farm where they found him. Where they found Gus.”

  Beth Moore took another pull on her pipe. “You’re supposed to tell her about Gus? I see. As I said, she was always an oddball. My father loved his kid sister, but she did get wearisome. Quiola, you seem to be in for a hiking expedition.”

  “I’m just supposed to tell the story out in the open, on the river.”

  “How much fun! A hike up the Temperance for an old, sad story!” Beth set her pipe down on the mantle. “Aunt Liz also wanted me to give you this –” she took a small white carving off the mantle, along with a notebook. “Honest to Pete, why you had to truck all the way up here for these things I don’t know when UPS would’ve been more efficient.”

  The carving was about two inches tall, an inquisitive otter upright on his tail, as if about to give an address. Quiola smiled. “It’s lovely.”

  “It’s made of ivory walrus tusk,” said Sara, “by a native artist, from Alaska. Gran found it in a local gallery. If you look inside the notebook you’ll find some information about the artist and his work.”

  Quiola opened the large yellowing notebook, or rather a sketchbook of Liz’s, one from the early 1960s, to find the card about the otter. “But this is too generous,” she said. “One of Liz’s notebooks must be worth a pretty penny.”

  “It’s what she wanted. I have to say, Sara always understood Aunt Liz better than anyone, and I must confess I’m not one for art. I simply don’t understand it. Well, except as a picture to warm up a wall – I like that one, over there, for example, her last. But most of Liz’s work doesn’t warm up anything.”

  “No, that’s not how I’d describe it. Most of it.” Quiola walked over to the small canvas of a girl turning wild or a wild thing, turning girl.

  “Oh, Mom. You just don’t give it a chance.”

  “Waste of my time. I just don’t get it. That one at least tells a story I know, or at least it seems to.”

  “Series B,” said Quiola, “told stories.”

  “Series B?” said Beth. “Something she did, I gather – like I said, I wouldn’t know. But it’s getting late, and I should be off. I’ll see you both tomorrow, for breakfast?”

  “Sure, Mom, that’s fine. Quiola, would you like to go upstairs now? Pardon me for being so forward, but you look tired. I know traveling always takes me down a peg.”

  Quiola smiled gratefully. “I am tired. Very.”

  But she woke in the dead middle of the night, out of a dream where she seemed to be searching for a lost animal, not Amelia but something dearly beloved and despairingly lost; and woke into a thunderstorm that shook the eaves of her nest. Lightning illumined the blinds in the window as if someone had turned on an arc. Percussion rumbled up the mountains and back down. She watched the play of light and sound, dozing, now dreaming of a bear which looked more like a wolf or a dogbear, and it followed her quiet and dangerous; when next she woke, the thin light of morning paled her room. At five, she sat up, got out of bed. She could still hear a terrific wind as she pulled on a robe and ruffled her hair into something better than it was. She had to pee, and she didn’t want to use the chamber-pot, so, quiet as she could manage, she cracked open the door to her room, to go downstairs. Not even a breath of a breeze blew. Yet the sound, terrific, boomed on.

  It was the Lake.

  The Lake was throwing herself about like a despairing lover in a tawdry romance, anguished, wave after pounding wave; Quiola could feel the power of water shake the earth as she padded across the wooden plank porch, and quietly opened the kitchen door, thinking that way in less intrusive than the front door. Inside the pantry and laundry room, darkness and silence, the concrete floor cold, and the air earthy, mingled with fabric softener and fruit. She moved quickly past cabinets, stove, and hearth to the bathroom and back, hoping she had not disturbed her host.

  Once again in her bed, she let herself think for a moment that her grandmother might still be alive, and that David Novitsky had not been a crank. It seemed as fantastically improbable as Sacagawea’s reunion with her brother in the company of Lewis and Clark, a story she carried around with her, like the creased old post-card she kept in her wallet of Indian Symbols And Their Meanings. The Snake Woman, or Boat Pusher, or whatever name she knew herself by, burdened with a mixed blood boy, ignored until useful, had fortitude. The idea she might also have had kinship ties never seemed to have occurred to either Lewis or Clark until she stood before her brother, a man now and responsible for his people – or so it seemed to Quiola, who’d once read the journals as if she were a detective, looking for clues to this long dead Indian woman.

  Soon, she could hear someone moving about in the kitchen below, and the sound allowed her to rise, stretch, pull on the robe again and go back downstairs. The aroma of coffee embraced her as soon as she opened the kitchen door.

  “Good morning,” said Sara. “Did you sleep through the storm?”

  “I slept fine. Coffee smells great.”

  “Mom will be over soon. What would you like for breakfast?” But Quiola wouldn’t let herself be treated, and so the two women made the meal together, silent until the eggs set. Then, Quiola said, “Do you know David Novitsky?”


  “I know the family. His youngest sister went to high school with Mom. Why?”

  “I met him yesterday. I got here early so I drove into Grand Marais for lunch. He introduced himself because I reminded him of – someone.”

  Beth knocked, then she stepped into the pantry. “Good morning.”

  “Mom. Quiola met Mr. Novitsky yesterday.”

  “Really? From what I hear in town, he keeps to himself, mostly. Where did you meet him?”

  “He came over to my table and said – you see, I – I was actually born here, in Grant Portage, but my mother left and never came back. Anyhow, David Novitsky said I reminded him of my grandmother. Marjorie Otter. Do you know if –”

  “Wow,” said Sara. “Mom –”

  “Yes, I know. I see. I told you she was a witch!”

  “Beth? Sara?” said Quiola. “What do you know? What have I said?”

  “Family,” said Sara. “We’re family – second cousins or something. No wonder Gran – no wonder – I can’t believe she never said anything to me – or to you.”

  “But I don’t understand –”

  “Maybe,” said Beth, “Aunt Liz thought it best to protect your mother’s wishes, Quiola. And Marjorie’s as well. Rose Otter left, as you said, and never returned. If you ask, Marjorie will say that she has no children.”

  “Ask? She’s really alive, then?”

  “Why of course – I mean – oh dear –”

  Quiola had started deep breathing: in, out. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s just – I just can’t – Mom told me Marjorie Otter was dead. I had no reason to doubt –”

  “Sit,” said Beth, pulling back a kitchen chair. “Now, please. You look like you’re about to faint.”

  Quiola sat. “All these years, all my life, I thought she was dead!”

  “Mom –”

  Beth crouched next to Quiola, to be able to look her eye to eye. “Quiola, listen to me. Your mother made a choice, didn’t she? Not you. You were a baby. If Rose Otter closed that door, and left her own mother in the past, I guess she had her reasons. It may be best to leave the matter alone. Do you hear me?”

  Quiola started. “I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

  “That maybe it might be best to leave this thing alone. Leave it in the past.”

  ♦

  “Here’s the cauldron,” shouted Sarah, gazing down into the rush and roar of a place on the Temperance River people called the Devil’s Kettle. Quiola gazed too, dizzied by the water’s furious revolving ride until Sara turned away and walked a little distance, and sat on a boulder. Quiola followed, leaning against a slender white birch, her arms folded across her chest. “So, Sara, what happened to Liz’s brother?”

  “Gran found the cradle empty, as she’d feared. A Novitsky, a white Novitksy, had stolen the baby, and he did it, we think, for revenge. He’d lost his half-sister, then that sister’s baby girl, to Parker Moore, and he was a drunk, anyway, a no good, my father used to say. They tracked the man and found him, but both he and the baby were dead.”

  “Oh, God, that’s awful. You know, I lost a child I loved, once. Not my child, but I loved him, all the same. And C.C. lost her own baby brother, in a fire, a long time ago. All of us – I wonder just how much Liz knew?”

  “She knew this much: she was Marjorie Otter’s kin. My grandmother, Paulette, she was the younger sister and they were the daughters of Elizabeth Novitsky, who was part-white, and Ralph Otter, a full blood, as they used to say. Grandpa Sven was about sixteen years older than Gramma when they married, but that wasn’t unusual, not in the forties. Still isn’t, really. Of course Parker Moore never forgave his son, Sven – Grandpa – for marrying, I mean actually and legally marrying, what my great-great grandfather would have called a half-breed, even if Parker Moore was willing to share his bed with one. Or rape her. No one really knows what went on between Parker and that other Novitsky girl, Elizabeth’s sister, except that Gran was the result, so I guess it’s a lost history, now.”

  Quiola closed her eyes. “I can’t quite believe this.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So – tell me, what is she like? Marjorie Otter?”

  “She’s ancient, of course!” said Sara lightly. “And you want to know the truth? The more time we spend together, the more she reminds me of you. Or you remind me of her. Whichever. She’s intense. Quiet. But she has something in her I envy – a certain joy, a way of being with others and the world oh, I can’t explain it, but I can feel it, whenever I’m with her. Do you think – would you like to meet her?”

  Quiola shrugged, and silence pooled between the two women inside the roaring of the cauldron, until Sara said, “Otters are full of it, that same joy, you know, they’re impish, inquisitive. Silly, even. Perhaps Marjorie has been taken over by her name. Does that make sense? Or does it sound – I don’t know, like magical thinking?”

  “Magic?” Quiola laughed. “My mother would have said power, not magic. And it makes sense, too.” She brushed her palm across that spot just above the heart, where her flesh bore the sleek, undulating silhouette of a river otter at play.