Out Of Control

The waitress arrived. Nick ordered huevos rancheros, described on the menu as fried eggs, chopped tomatoes, chili peppers, Manchego cheese and tortillas. It sounded exotic enough that he’d probably regret it later. Martin ordered half a grapefruit and a slice of whole wheat toast. Dry. They both had coffee, Martin’s decaf.

Martin cleared his throat. “Regarding my brother.” He aligned his knife and fork with the pale yellow linen napkin, studied the effect for a moment, then looked up, fixing his sight on a spot somewhere beyond Nick’s right shoulder. “I should preface this discussion by saying that my brother had detractors. I assume you’ve read the…” He pursed his full lips as he appeared to seek the right word. “The piece of spiteful, slanderous garbage that his first wife threw together in an attempt to cash in on his name.”

Nick nodded. This was the woman who’d written that Truman was given to raiding the bins behind supermarkets for edible discards, this after he’d amassed considerable wealth with his art.

“You’re suggesting that what she wrote was untrue?”

“I’m advising you that if, as you stated in your letter, you intend to write a sympathetic, well-researched and objective biography of my brother you’ll forget every word you read in that book.”

“What was her motivation for writing such a book, do you suppose?”

“A woman scorned. Frank, finally seeing the light, divorced her and—since she’d already been through half his money—saw no reason to provide for her any further.”

The waitress brought the food. Nick eyed his tray-sized platter. The huevos rancheros came with a small mountain of rice, bits of broken tortillas and something pale brown topped with cheese. He investigated it with his fork and glanced up at the waitress.

“Refried beans.” She smiled. “Enjoy.”

“You’d mentioned detractors,” Nick said. “Plural.”

Martin was working on his grapefruit, running a table knife around the rim of the fruit with the meticulous attention of a brain surgeon. “Amalia, his widow, while not precisely a detractor, isn’t always completely truthful.”

Nick looked at him.

“She has a drinking problem.” He set the knife down. “Do you know about her recent accident?”

“Yes. We were supposed to meet for lunch and when she didn’t arrive, I called Daisy. How is she?”

“Physically? Improving, I gather from my niece. Mentally?” He shrugged. “It all depends. She’s a very flamboyant, emotional woman. Given to embroidering the truth. When Frank met her she was singing in a café in Portugal. I’d take what she says with a grain of salt.”

Nick grinned. “Sorry,” he said when Martin gave him a puzzled look. “Usually when I write biographies, I have access to the subject’s papers. Letters, diaries, that sort of thing. In your brother’s case, everything was lost in the fire. Since he was somewhat reclusive, the number of people available to me to interview is somewhat limited. His first wife’s book is apparently a lie and now you’re saying his widow can’t entirely be trusted. It just struck me suddenly as funny. Although I should probably be gnashing my teeth.”

Martin smiled faintly. “Yes, well, Daisy will be an invaluable resource. She was closer to Frank than anyone, although Amalia would have you believe that only she held the key to Frank’s innermost thoughts.”

“How is your relationship with Daisy?” Nick asked. “Good?”

Martin patted the napkin against his lips. “Excellent.” He shrugged. “Her naïveté troubles me, but for the most part we get along.”

“Frank became a father quite late in life,” Nick said, moving on.

“He did. Like myself, he was focused on his profession.”

“And Daisy’s mother?”

“Daisy was adopted.” Martin glanced around for the waitress. “More coffee would be most welcome,” he muttered.

“Adopted between Frank’s first and second marriages?”

Martin frowned. His thoughts seemed suddenly elsewhere. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “You were asking?”

“Just trying to understand the chronology. He was divorced from wife number one—”

“And then he traveled to Portugal, where he met Amalia and brought her back to Casa Athena, his home. She was here for a number of years, supported by my brother, before returning to Portugal. In the interim, my brother adopted Daisy. Just after Daisy’s tenth birthday, Amalia came back to Laguna and she and Frank were married. She was with him until he died.”

Nick had stopped eating as he listened to the recitation. He watched now as Martin cut a slice of toast into precise triangles, full lower lip jutting. “Were you and Frank at all alike?” he asked.

“Very much so,” Martin said.

Nick tried to keep the surprise from his face. “In what ways, for example?”

“Honesty, integrity. A passion for our respective professions that precludes almost everything else.”

“But Frank had a daughter,” Nick said. “I know in my case, my former wife constantly complains that I put my work first. Was it difficult for Daisy, do you think? Being the daughter of a respected and prolific artist?”

Martin, having eaten his toast and grapefruit, folded his napkin and placed it on his plate. “I know nothing of your personal situation, of course, but Frank had a unique ability. I’d said his passion for art precluded almost everything else. The almost being Daisy. My brother had the unique ability to…how shall I put it, integrate the love he had for his daughter into his art.”

Nick thought of seeing Truman’s artwork for the first time. The rainy, London street outside, the sunlit cliff and the smiling girl on the canvas inside. “Yes. I saw that in his work,” he said truthfully. “Which is why I’m writing this biography.”

“TODAY’S LESSON in self-improvement, in case you’re interested, is about not feeling resentful and put-upon,” Daisy told Kit. “But Toby’s doing his usual shtick, Amalia’s calling every five minutes from the hospital, Emmy’s being impossible and I’m supposed to drop everything and sit patiently while some guy I don’t know from Adam asks me to reminisce about my father.”

“You sound resentful and put-upon,” Kit said.

“I guess I need to work a little harder, huh?”

They were drinking guava-flavored iced tea and watching for the school bus as it lumbered its way up Laguna Canyon Road to drop off their daughters. Daisy was wearing a shirt that read, I Live In My Own World, But It’s Okay, They Know Me Here. She and Kit were both wearing flip-flops. Daisy’s were a pink-and-white candy-striped rubber version with a pink daisy on the toepiece; Kit’s were lime-green translucent plastic. They’d picked up four pairs—a pair each for them and for the girls—the day before at the end-of-season sale at the Village Drug Store.

Daisy looked at their feet side by side on the wooden deck rail. Kit’s were a dark olive color, her toenails painted deep burgundy, which, in the dappled shade, looked almost black. Her own feet were freckled, her toes unpainted, although Emmy was always offering to paint them, or encouraging her to get a pedicure. Emmy, to her perpetual disgust, had inherited Daisy’s tendency to burn rather than turn lusciously caramel like every other kid in Laguna, or golden-brown like her father.

“So how is Amalia?” Kit asked.

“Doing okay, I guess.” A broken wrist and a cracked rib, but her alcohol level had been above the legal limit and a social worker had suggested counseling, which Amalia would never do in a million years because, of course, she doesn’t think she has a problem. “I’m trying to talk her into coming here for a few days. If she goes back to that cottage, she’s going to drag out all those old pictures of my dad, drink, get maudlin and…”

Kit looked at her. “She’s not suicidal or anything?”

“No, but when she drinks she starts thinking about my dad and… I mean, really, that’s one of the things that really irritates me about this whole biography thing. Not that I don’t have my own reservations, but Amalia knows damn well she can’t mention Dad’s name without getting teary eyed. But she and Martin voted me down when I said we should tell the guy no. Martin starts doing his psychiatrist shtick and telling me I need to confront my fears or some garbage and Amalia tells me I’m selfish. Even Toby gets in on the act and Emmy—”

“Hey.” Kit leaned over to wrap her arm around Daisy’s shoulder. “Deep, deep breaths. Everything happens for a reason. Remember that. Listen, I’m going to walk up to the road to meet the girls. Want to walk with me?”

Daisy shook her head. “I’m just going to stay here and veg…I mean breathe…. Meditate is what I’m trying to say.”

She watched as Kit made her way through the grove of eucalyptus and down the dirt road that led to the highway. It was warm for early November, even by Southern California standards, and the dogs were sprawled in whatever patch of shade they could find: under the thick growth of the pepper tree, beneath the steps of the cabin. Little brown Allie, Daisy’s favorite, was curled up beneath the Adirondack chair. The goats, five of them, had retreated to their shed, and the three cats were off somewhere doing their own inscrutable cat thing.

The wind was picking up. The Santa Anas, hot dry winds that blew in from the desert and made everyone feel cranky. They’d been linked to industrial accidents, lower test scores, kids misbehaving in school, heart attacks, all that sort of thing. They also whipped up wildfires like the one burning a few miles to the north.

The Santa Anas had been blowing the day her father had died in the fire that destroyed Casa Athena and everything in it.

The boom box on the deck was tuned to a country-western station. “I can feel it in the wind,” some guy was singing. “There’s trouble blowin’ in.” Weird, it had been playing on the truck stereo when she had driven home from the hospital last night. Signs are all around, she’d read in the Forgiveness book. You just have to be observant.

The winds freaked her though. She’d lived in California her entire life, and they were as much a part of the state as the ocean surf, but it was the same every year. As a child, she’d lain awake listening to them beat against the roof. Things would pry loose and blow away in this terrifying orchestra of sound that would send her shaking and sobbing into the safety of her father’s room where she’d burrow quivering beneath the blankets. The next morning, the sky was as innocent and blue as a child’s eyes, but the torn tree limbs and hurled garden furniture were witnesses to the nocturnal rampage.