18 After waking from a hard, drug-induced sleep, I sit at the kitchen counter and write out my to-do list for the new day: go online to order my new bed linens and carpet; ask Aunt Clara about art prints to match whatever bedding I select.
It’s the twelfth of November, so I also need to do an online search for a master’s program. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d like to study, and I’m feeling good about a graduate degree in English literature. If I never find the courage to step out of my building’s lobby, at least I’ll enjoy the two years of study.
I’m feeling pretty confident on the Internet, and Google is my new best friend. I love the way Philip uses the word as a verb, and when I sit down at the computer, fully intending to search for bed linens, I find myself googling another name: Theodore Norquest.
Last night I slept with Shadowed Sanctuary on the nightstand, and no ghosts rose from those pages to torment my dreams. My trip to the rooftop did more than take my mind off the haunting story—it focused the cold light of reality on the scene I observed across the street. I’ve been trying not to think about the woman in the penthouse, but I keep seeing her in that man’s arms. She is Beauty and the Beast, both personalities encased in a slim, golden-haired package.
Any woman who can do what she does for a living has to be a calculating actress. How can a person look so delicate and be so manipulative?
After chasing that thought around and never coming up with an answer, googling my father’s name seems an innocent diversion.
I type his name into the box and click enter, then sit back in stunned amazement when Google returns hundreds of entries—“hits,” Philip calls them. Each of my father’s books is listed on myriad pages of online booksellers; I also see dozens of fan forums devoted to his work. He is on the recommended reading lists of scores of libraries; teenagers cite him as their favorite author on their “all about me” pages.
I find a photograph of my father on another site—a black-and-white photo that appears to be more recent than the shot featured on the back of Shadowed Sanctuary. In the Web site photo he is wearing a dark coat over a light turtleneck sweater, the garb of a professor. He has a white beard, salt-and-pepper hair, and dark eyes that seem shadowed . . . either that, or this is an expression the photographer urged him to exhibit. He looks like a brooding horror writer . . . and something in me desperately wants to find a smiling picture to balance this melancholy image.
Before I can look further, the buzzer sounds. I groan, then hurry to the door and find Clara wearing an apologetic smile.
“You’re going to think I’ve taken leave of my senses,” she says, keeping her head low, “but my bridge club is coming over tomorrow and I want to make a chocolate chess pie.”
I stare at her, unable to understand why I should be alarmed.
“Trouble is”—she folds her hands—“I don’t have the recipe, and Beverly Piper absolutely refuses to share hers—she says it’s a family secret. So I went to the library and spoke to the woman at the reference desk, who assured me I could find it on the Internet much more easily than digging through cookbooks. She pointed me toward a computer.”
It’s all I can do to keep from laughing. I know Clara would never admit that she doesn’t know how to type or use a computer, but still, I have to ask: “So? Did you look it up?”
“In a public place?” Clara’s hand clutches the lace at her throat. “Of course not. But then I remembered you have a computer and the Internet, so if you could look it up for me . . .”
A warm glow flows through me—vindication, however small, is sweet. “I’m sure we could find something.” I step aside to let her in, then lead the way to the computer room. She follows, babbling about Beverly Piper’s culinary snobbery, but when I touch the mouse to deactivate the screen saver, the flow of her words sputters and halts as if someone has turned a spigot in her throat.
My father’s face fills the screen. The air in the room thickens with the sound of silence.
I put my hand on the mouse, but I’m nervous and I can’t remember what to click to make the photo go away.
“Aurora,” Clara whispers, her voice ragged with pain. “How could you?”
I click the green arrow next to the back button, which removes the picture but takes me to the Google page. My father’s name occupies the search box, bearing mute testimony to my disloyalty.
“Your mother would be crushed if she knew.”
Why? I want to scream. Why should curiosity about my father equal disloyalty to my mother?
I clear my throat as questions push and jostle in my throat, but she lifts a hand to silence my protests.
“That man cares nothing for you. He cared nothing for your mother. You are nothing to him—why can’t you leave the hurts of the past alone? Move on with your life, Aurora. Forget about him, because I’m sure he’s forgotten about you.”
I exhale in exasperation and highlight that traitorous name. With a jab of the delete key, it disappears.
I can’t look at Clara.
“What was it you wanted?” I ask, my voice clipped. “Chocolate pie?”
“He hates you,” she says. “Oh, I know it looks like he was being generous when he set up that trust fund, but he only did it so he wouldn’t look like a heel to his public. You’ve never met a man more concerned about his image than Theodore Norquest.”
I grit my teeth. What public image? I have been reading versions of his biography for the past half-hour, and I’ve read nothing about the man’s personality, philanthropy, or family life. Apparently he guards his privacy.
But to say more would only invite trouble. “Was that chocolate pie?”
“Chocolate chess pie.”
I type the words into the search box and click enter; the screen fills with a list of links. Clara leans over my shoulder and peers at them through her glasses until one suits her fancy: “That one looks promising.”
I click the link and give her a moment to skim the ingredients. When she nods, I hit the print key and send the recipe to the printer, where it appears on two crisp sheets of paper. As Aunt Clara pulls the pages from the tray, I know this diversion will not hold. In a minute she will launch another attack on my father.
“If you are planning to run to the grocery,” I say, standing and moving toward the kitchen, “would you mind picking up a dozen eggs for me?”
She follows, a question in her blue eyes when I glance back at her.
“I thought it’d be nice to make a bowl of egg salad. Philip’s been helping me with the computer, and I’d like to have something ready so I can offer him a sandwich.”
She pauses outside the kitchen doorway. “I do like that young man, you know.”
“But you told me to be careful around him.”
“You should always be careful, Aurora, because the heart is a fickle thing. But while some men make good husbands, others are best kept as friends.” She smiles as she meets my eye. “And if you disagree with what I’ve said about your father, ask Philip what he thinks about a man who ignores his flesh and blood for thirty-five years. I’m sure he’ll agree that sort of person is not a parent worthy of a daughter’s attentions.”
I don’t argue but walk through the foyer and open the front door. She would have a fit if she knew my neighbor has been encouraging my quest for information . . . but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
When she is gone, I return to the computer and defiantly retype my father’s name in the Google search box. On a Web page sponsored by his longtime publisher, I find an article that sparks my attention:
Born at the foot of the Catskills, horror novelist Theodore Norquest lived the early part of his life in New York City. At the age of thirty-six, however, he moved to London, where he began writing novels of far greater intensity.
“Despair sent me to London,” he once told a reporter. “And there I found the faith to hope for complete healing. I consider my writing before that time an apprenticeship of sorts—a man in search of what life and love are all about. And if a novelist improves with age—as all writers should—then I hope to produce my most meaningful work in my latter years.”
Swallowing hard, I wrap my arms about myself. So he found his life in London . . . and that’s where he discovered what love was. Which means that while he lived here with Mother, he did not love, he did not live.
Jealousy wells within me, hot and black. I want to be part of his present family, born when he knew how to love, born to a woman he could cherish and support.
What am I doing? Despite the warnings of a woman I have always known and trusted, I am yearning for a relationship with a man I do not know. It’s illogical. It’s crazy.
But I have never claimed to be mentally robust.
I press my hand to my mouth and look away from the computer monitor. It’s not fair. But Mother always said most things in life were either miserable or horrible . . . survivors learned to make silk purses out of sow’s ears.
After a moment, I look back to the computer, braced for whatever terrible things I might read, but the rest of the material is an advertisement for Norquest novels. One bulleted note, however, catches my eye. The quote from Theodore Norquest, it says, was taken from an interview that appeared in Ten Top Authors Talk about What Makes Them Tick, published by Writer’s Marketplace Books.
Without hesitation, I click on the link, then smile in satisfaction when it takes me to a Web page with the actual article. The interview’s been done in the Q&A style, and one series of questions practically leaps off the screen:
Q: You have four sons—
A: Actually, I prefer not to talk about my family in print. My children have not chosen public careers and I respect their choices.
Q: All right then—shall we talk about your books?
A: By all means.
Q: Some have said there’s a common theme to your work—a “missing piece.” You seem to feature characters who need something to make their lives complete.
A: Isn’t that the way life is? We all have a particular empty spot in our souls, and few of us find the proper way to fill it. My characters, like people in real life, experiment with all the things you’d expect. In the end, however, they find what they’re seeking.
Q: Have you found what you’re seeking, Mr. Norquest?
A: As a creative being, yes. As a husband, certainly. As a father—well, children are never quite finished turning out, are they? Like all parents, I pray that my children will make good decisions . . . and I wait for them to complete their course. As long as we are living, none of us is finished.
I sit back and exhale a deep breath. So—my father never mentions his children in interviews. He doesn’t need to, for apparently his life is complete and satisfying without me.
Wincing, I click away from the page. I don’t need to think about the aloof man in Britain—I have a fantasy father who loves me completely. I will make silk purses out of this sow’s ear.
I will also continue to read Theodore Norquest’s novels. Despite my initial dislike of horror, I finished Shadowed Sanctuary between breakfast and lunch. By the time I closed the book, good had firmly triumphed over evil, equipping the protagonist to face the future with a sense of hope . . . a quality I yearn for myself.
After finishing the book, I went to the computer and ordered several other Norquest novels—so many the UPS man may develop a hernia from lugging so many packages to my apartment.
I hope he delivers when Aunt Clara is away from the building.
That thought reminds me that I need to find a place to hide my collection of Norquest novels. Carpentry is more than I want to tackle in my renovation project, but perhaps I can find a carpenter . . .
I reach for the yellow pages to begin my search, then laugh when I remember that the yellow pages are on the Internet. With a few clicks of the mouse, I find a carpenter who works the Upper West Side, and within seconds I am dialing his number.
As the phone rings, I look around my sunny office space. I’ll have bookcases built—with closet doors. I’ll keep all my Norquest novels in this room, my personal retreat, and the closed doors will protect them from the decaying effects of dust, light, and Clara’s opinion.
The carpenter doesn’t answer, so I leave a message on his machine. I have no sooner lowered the phone to the desk when it rings again. I pick up, thinking that somehow I’ve managed to call myself, but Clara’s teary voice fills my ear: “Aurora, darling, I can’t stop thinking about what I saw on that computer of yours. If your mother were living, she’d be crushed, heartbroken by your ingratitude. In the face of all she’s provided, I can’t believe you could still be interested in that man. Is it his money that’s driving you? I never thought you were the avaricious type, but if it’s his fortune you’re after—”
“I’m not after anyone’s money.” I cut her off, my voice hoarse with frustration. “Can’t you understand that I’m only curious?”
“Curiosity can kill, dear; don’t you know that? You don’t have to put your hand in a fire to know it can scar you for life. And you don’t have to know Theodore Norquest to know he can hurt you. Whatever you’ve been doing, Aurora, please stop.”
I draw a deep breath and lift my gaze to the ceiling. “The man is my father, Clara. I’ve never had a chance to learn about him.”
“Because your mother wouldn’t approve, you mean. Well, I’m the closest thing you have to a living relative, and I don’t approve, either. I love you, Aurora. I don’t want to see you hurt, and if you persist in this, well, I—”
Her words are cut off by a choking cry, and I don’t have to see the tears to know she’s weeping. Part of me wants to be irritated with her; another part of me wants to beg her forgiveness for even mentioning my father’s name.
After ten minutes of assurances, I manage to convince her that I’m not going to do anything foolish or run off to England. I’m not sure she believes my promises, but she hangs up.
I lower the phone and look at the computer, but my attention has drifted away on a tide of fatigue. Weary of the room and the apartment, I head toward the stairs.