Something Beautiful

What if Allie’s right and Steven’s not a real person? Elise had asked, her voice hushed with possibility, conjecture and, yes, even a tinge of excitement. The white witch at work, apparently forgetting that she was talking about strange things in her best friend’s house, not some bizarre event in the abstract.

Jillian shook her head. Milton was a writer of fiction, and hard-to-read fiction at that.

A series of noisy thunks and rattling of shower-curtain loops from down the long, arched hallway flanking the kitchen told her that her daughter was finished with her bath and would soon be ready for the nightly ritual of story and cup of cocoa before bedtime.

She found herself tensing again as she set the milk to heat. Before Dave’s death, this had been the best time of the day, the three of them curled up on the sofa, Dave’s deep voice bringing a story to life. And even after, it had remained the one sane constant in a world gone awry.

But ever since Lyle had arrived in their lives—or had it come later than that, when Steven had moved into the guesthouse, bringing with him that unusual sense of recognition?—storytime had become something of a torture. She had to share the sofa with Allie and Lyle, and had to endure Allie’s whispered explanations to the invisible creature—or his to her—and, worst of all, Jillian was all too often asked to blow the imaginary friend a kiss good-night.

The first few nights hadn’t been so bad. But one night, just a week ago, Allie had told her that Lyle wanted to kiss her back, that he found her very beautiful. What should have been amusing, even sweet, considering it came from Allie, only made her slightly queasy.

But Allie hadn’t said, “You’re beautiful, Mommy.” She’d worded it differently: “Lyle says he finds you beautiful. Especially when you wear that nightgown.”

Something in the peculiar wording, and everything about the adultlike nuance, made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She’d taken to wearing her thickest robe after that, never tucking Allie in while wearing the sheer negligees Dave had so loved, had needed. And she had taken to covering up, not because of Allie, but because of Lyle.

She shook her head and shoved the cordless telephone onto the counter without replacing it in the cradle. Maybe the battery would wear down and she wouldn’t have to listen to any more ridiculous speculations.

That was exactly what Elise’s suggestions were, she thought. Ridiculous. Foolish. And she was the most ridiculous, foolish person of all, for listening to Elise, thinking fantastic and scary thoughts about an imaginary creature. About a gardener who might be unusual, but was still a man for all that. Allie wasn’t the only one with a wildly vivid imagination.

She made short work—anger at herself a tremendous spur—of cleaning up the supper dishes, and by the time Allie appeared in her footed pajamas, book in hand, looking like a sleepy-eyed angel, Jillian had her mask of cheer in place. She didn’t even wince when Allie stopped the story to point out a few of the more interesting facets of the context to Lyle.

She was even able to answer Allie almost truthfully when she suddenly asked if Jillian was afraid of Lyle. “As long as he doesn’t ever hurt you, I guess he’s okay in my book.”

Allie seemed to accept that, but it made Jillian think. She was frightened of Lyle. Not because he came across as sly—which was how his comments often struck Jillian. Nor was it because he seemed too inventive for an eight-year-old—which was most certainly true. She distrusted him because he represented a quasi-tangible problem…another manifestation of Dave’s loss, Dave’s final abandonment. And every time Allie mentioned him, Jillian was torn between guilt and anguish.

And Jillian felt scared of him because he represented the dark and torturous unknown, an intangible problem existing in her own home.

It was only thinking all this that made her realize what scared her most about Lyle: She thought of him as real, as if all the comments were truly coming from him, and not Allie, as if Allie’s newly acquired destructive streak were supernatural, and not the willfulness of a little girl.

Scary stuff, indeed.

She held all this in, as she had every day since that day when Allie had “found” him. With Allie asking if Jillian was afraid of him, however, she had great difficulty keeping her thoughts inside. She wanted to simply admit that the invisible creature gave her the “creeps” every bit as much as he did Elise. She wanted to draw Allie into her arms and tell her daughter that she didn’t need some imaginary friend telling her what to do…that she had a mother, for heaven’s sake.

But when Allie hopped off the sofa, calling for Lyle, asking Jillian to come tuck “them” in, Jillian remained silent, however chilled. After she managed to blow a kiss to Lyle, she secured the house for the night, and poured herself a rather large tot of brandy. She walked to the French doors and first stared at her reflection, then forced her eyes to see beyond it and into the darkened courtyard.

Steven was nowhere in sight, though if she craned her neck she was able to see the lights on in the guesthouse and the thin trail of smoke snaking upward from the kiva chimney. She could picture him sitting in the old oak rocking chair by the fire, a lamp’s glow on the book in his hands. She could imagine his long, work-callused fingers turning the yellowed pages, and wondered what classic, and in which language, he would be reading tonight. What was it about the man that seemed to affect everyone so? Except her.

But that wasn’t quite true, either. He did affect her, she just didn’t have a name for the feelings he inspired. Gratitude didn’t seem to cover her reaction to his dedication, and acceptance of his presence didn’t enter into it, either. For she realized now that she always felt aware of him, seemed ultrasensitive to his comings and goings. She had the unusual sensation of seeming to know when he was present, when he wasn’t.

Rather than being indifferent to him, as she’d tried telling herself, she was all too conscious of him. Was this due to that odd sense of recognition she felt about him? Or was it far more dangerous than that? Was her awareness of him what troubled both Elise and Allie? Were they concerned that Jillian was aware of someone outside her immediate family circle for the first time in a year?

She realized that her fascination with him might be much darker than any of those suppositions. She might deliberately be blinding herself to things her loved ones could see. She might be a textbook case, a vulnerable widow actually falling willing prey to a fortune hunter.

She flicked on the outside lights and studied the courtyard, as if it offered proof of Steven’s benign intentions. How different it looked now from the way it had only two weeks ago. Steven had trimmed the trees and evened the lilac hedge, and had gone so far as to rehang the tall wooden gates in the even taller adobe walls. He had seamed cracks and even whitewashed the creamy thick walls surrounding the courtyard.

What was not to trust about a man who did such careful work without even needing direction? Especially a man who took the money she paid him and, without looking at it, folded the bills and casually shoved them in his back pocket? And did this with an apparently deliberate avoidance of touching her.

“I only wanted a place to stay,” he’d said that first time, but he had given in to her insistence that he be paid, as well. That sort of indifference to money didn’t seem to indicate a fortune hunter. Unless it was part of an elaborate scheme.

The huge flagstones gleamed with some sort of wax or sealant he’d applied, and now looked as though they’d been designed as interior flooring rather than as an exterior patio. The flower beds were turned, mulched and ready for a long winter’s nap. The narrow strip of grass had been mowed, the hammock shaken and rolled up and stored for the cold season and all the light fixtures painted and repaired, fitted with new energy-saving bulbs.

Even the pile of leaves Steven had so carefully been raking that afternoon was already gone, scooped out of sight, almost out of memory. He seldom spoke, hardly seemed to move, and yet had managed to make his presence felt in every inch of her property.

She shivered, remembering how their eyes had linked that afternoon…

And how many times in the unknown past?

…but her reaction wasn’t based on fear, unless it was misgivings about that odd trembling that seemed to snare her still.

Allie materialized at her side and pressed her silky, still-damp head against her. Jillian ran her hand over her daughter’s warm, soft hair, down over her thin, rounded shoulder, and pulled her even closer. This was a moment of total affirmation, of acceptance, of that all-too-elusive concept of “bonding.”

Though Jillian knew she should send her daughter back to bed, she couldn’t make herself spurn this evidence of Allie’s need. And she couldn’t possibly have denied herself this precious gift.

“It looks a lot different, doesn’t it, Mom?” Allie asked.

“Yes,” Jillian said. “A lot better.” She felt her chest tighten with love for Allie, love for this fragile child, grateful for Steven’s handiwork, grateful that tonight Allie could see good in things again.

“Like when Dad was here.”

Jillian forced a smile. “Better, sweetheart,” she offered.

She felt Allie tense slightly, and wondered if Allie would ever be able to accept that anything in life could ever be better than the days with her daddy.

“Remember that day when I first found Lyle?”

Lyle. Jillian felt herself stiffen. Was the invisible creature with Allie now? Was Lyle standing behind them at this minute, hovering too close, looking at her curves, eyeing her back?

Jillian craved a moment with Allie, devoid of the ever-present fantasy-inspired companion. And she desperately wanted a second or two when her shoulder blades didn’t itch or her skin didn’t tighten against that ridiculous, if pervasive, feeling of being watched.

“I remember,” Jillian said. Did her voice sound as tightly wound as she felt?

“The grass was really deep, and there were weeds everywhere.”

Jillian patted Allie’s shoulder. “Quite an improvement, eh, kiddo?” Was she trying to sell Allie on Steven, or to convince herself?

“I was dancing,” Allie said, her voice dreamy with memory, her reflection revealing a wistful smile.

Jillian tried to smile, too, remembering.

On that afternoon, Allie’s mouth had been working as she sang some melody Jillian couldn’t hear. Her hands had been crammed with fading yellow dandelions and dull orange calendula blossoms and had wavered on the air in counterpoint to her peculiar-rhythmed dance.

Totally unaware of her mother’s troubled gaze, she’d sung and danced in that neglected garden, a tiny nymph performing a haunting rite of passage on that last day of summer vacation. Jillian recalled how a single tear had carved a hot trail down her own cheek, scalding her with her own inability to stem it, making her thankful her daughter wasn’t seeing that fresh evidence of the unassuaged wounds in their lives.

But at that moment, on that afternoon a little over a month ago, Jillian hadn’t been crying because Dave was absent. She’d cried because Allie looked so normal, dancing in the grass, petals and blossoms in her hands, her hair swaying in rhythm, a song on her full, delicate lips.

Jillian had felt that sense of wonder steal over her and had known that anyone watching Allie, anyone spying that farewell-to-summer homage, would never have guessed the tragedy that had swept through her daughter’s world. And the realization of how rarely she’d seen Allie simply being a child had made her almost ill with pain. And the hot tear on her face had carved the first trail of hope Jillian had felt in months, a hope that recovery was finally within their grasp, that Allie would be okay.

Now she thought that her own reflection looked confused, even abandoned, as she—and Allie—replayed a mental tape of that ethereal, unconscious dance.