It isn't what I want to believe
That there's... It isn't what I want to believe
That there's something with a reach so long
with eyesight keen enough to see youGod
knows who or what else
"I don't like it either," I said, but that was far
from the truthThe truth was I hated it"I don't
like the idea that something may have actually
reached out and killed Elizabeth - maybe scared
her to death - just to shut her up
"And you think you can find out what's going on
from those picturesHow much I won't know until I try
"And then?"
"It dependsAlmost certainly a trip to the south
end of the KeyThere's unfinished business
there
Jack put down his tea-glass"What unfinished
business?"
813
I shook my headHer pictures may
tell me
"Just as long as
coco chanel handbags you don't get in over your head
and discover you can't get back to shore," Wireman
said"That's what happened to those two little
girls
"I know it," I said
Jack pointed his finger at me"Take care of
yourself
I nodded and pointed back
15 - Intruder
i
Twenty minutes later I sat in Little Pink with my
sketch-pad on my lap and the red picnic basket
beside meDirectly ahead, filling the westernfacing
window with light, was the GulfFar below
me was the murmur of the shellsI had set my
easel aside and covered my paint-splattered worktable
with a piece of towelingI laid the remains
of her freshly sharpened colored pencils on top of
itThere wasn't much left of those pencils, which
814
were
omega seamaster replica watches fat and somehow antique, but I thought
there'd be enough
"Bullshit I am," I saidI was never going to be
ready for this, and part of me was hoping nothing
would happenI thought something would, thoughI
thought that was why Elizabeth had wanted me to
find her drawingsBut how much of what was inside
the red basket did she actually remember? My guess
was that Elizabeth had forgotten most of what had
happened to her when she was a child even before
the Alzheimer's came along to complicate things
Because forgetting isn't always involuntary
Sometimes it's willed
Who would want to remember something so awful that
it had made your father scream until he bled?
Better to stop drawing completelyTo just
rolex watches ladies go cold
turkeyBetter to tell people you can hardly even
draw stick figures, that when it comes to art
you're like wealthy alums who support their
college sports teams: if you can't be an athlete,
be an athletic supporterBetter to put it out of
your mind completely, and in your old age,
creeping senility will take care of the rest
815
Oh, some of that old ability may still remain -
like scar-tissue on the dura of the brain from an
old injury (caused by falling out of a pony-trap,
let's say) - and you might have to find ways to
let that out once in awhile, to express it like a
build-up of pus from an infection that will never
quite healSo you get interested in other
people's artYou become,
knock off chanel earrings in fact, a patron of the
artsAnd if that's still not enough? Why, maybe
you begin to collect china figures and buildings
You begin to build yourself a China TownNo one
will call creating such tableaux art, but it's
certainly imaginative, and the regular exercise of
the imagination - its visual aspect in particular
- is enough to make it stop
Make what stop?
The itch, of course
I scratched at my right arm, passed through it,
and for the ten thousandth time found only my ribs
I flipped back the cover of my pad to the first
sheet
Start with a blank surface
816
It called to me, as I was sure such blank sheets
had once called to herBecause white is the absence of memory,
the color of can't
miu miu clutch reme