Out Of Control
“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.
The phone rang. She decided to let the machine pick it up.
From where she sat, she could hear the English accent. Nicholas Wynne.
“I hope your stepmother’s on the mend and, of course, I still very much want to talk to you. It’s quite incredible being here in Laguna, actually seeing the places your father painted. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.”
A fly buzzed annoyingly around her face and she swatted it with her hand, then she got up, took the iced tea pitcher inside and stuck it in the sink. In the fridge, she found a carton of leftover Chinese takeout. She carried it into the living room and flipped on the TV.
Dr. Phil was talking about emotional eating, of all things. Of using food as comfort. Daisy feigned surprise. People do that? She watched as he reduced a fat woman in a red dress to tears, then decided watching other people’s pain when there was nothing you could do to help them was a sick kind of voyeurism. Kind of like being a biographer, when she stopped to think about it. Maybe she’d suggest a quid pro quo. “I’ll tell you about my life, if you tell me about yours.” But then what did she care about Nicholas Wynne or his life?
CHAPTER THREE
“WITH RISING TEMPERATURES and Santa Ana winds stoking fires throughout Southern California, the question on the minds of many in Laguna Beach is, Can it happen again?”
Nick slumped on the sofa, and gazed bleary-eyed at the TV. Late morning sunshine poured in through the French doors, heating the room to tropical temperatures. He sneezed, then sneezed again. He wore the white terry-cloth robe that had been in the bathroom, along with other niceties, such as shoe-cleaning cloths and lavender-scented body wash—compensation, he supposed, for the small fortune he was paying for an oceanfront apartment. A justifiable expense since this would be his definitive work. The work that would earn him a vast quantity of money, enough to take Bella on holidays to exotic destinations, indulge her every whim and, possibly, buy himself the silver Porsche Carrera GT he’d salivated over in the showroom window of Laguna Motors yesterday.
I should get up and open the doors, he thought. I should turn off the TV and start work. I should try to reach Daisy Fowler again. He was starting to feel mildly rejected by Daisy Fowler and just a bit disappointed in her.
He sneezed again. And again.
He’d awakened just before dawn, sneezing his head off. Allergies, apparently from the winds that blew like demons and kept him awake half the night. At one point, he’d been certain someone was breaking into his apartment. Grabbing a shoe, the only thing remotely weaponlike he could find, he’d crept into the living room. The noise, he’d discovered, was a plastic plate, probably blown from somebody’s rubbish bin, hitting the glass of the French windows.
On TV, a reporter was interviewing a fire chief.
The current weather, Nick learned, was eerily similar to conditions fourteen years ago when flames ravaged the local scenic canyons and hills, destroying hundreds of homes in and around Laguna Beach.
“It’s not a question of if fire will revisit Laguna Beach,” the fire chief was saying. “It’s a question of when.”
He would have to remember to tell Bella. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come, darling. No really. Fires burning everywhere. Entire hillsides blazing. No, no, the beaches haven’t burned up, but still…”
He sneezed. He got up from the couch, sat down at the table where he’d put up his computer. He thought about Daisy. Perhaps he’d built up an image of her that no actual woman could live up to. The golden-haired child basking in the sunlight of her father’s love, grown into an ethereal goddess…who had an ex-husband, a fourteen-year-old daughter and goats. And who didn’t return his phone calls. He mulled this for a while, tried to come up with plausible reasons why she might not want to talk to him. He sneezed. Difficult to think while sneezing. He returned to the couch.
He had lined up some other interviews over the next few days. A woman from the Laguna Historical Society who knew Frank from years ago; another breakfast, this one with a gallery owner who had worked with Truman. All peripheral to the biography, though. Truman’s relationship with Daisy as reflected in his art was the central theme of the work. Truman was dead, so no one else really mattered but Daisy. He would give her until this evening and if she hadn’t called, he’d leave another message. Sending more flowers might be overdoing it. He thought about driving past her house. He sneezed.
He was considering spending the entire day on the couch watching the telly when the phone rang.
Valerie, his girlfriend in England. She had also wanted to come with him to Laguna, but things with Valerie were rocky. Actually the entire six-month relationship had never been anything but rocky, rooted mostly in sex and a mutual fondness for tandoori takeout. He listened as she complained at length about the dreary weather in London and her life of late, also dreary.
“It’s horrible, Nick. I’m honestly not sure how much more I can take.”
“Maybe it would help if you got away for a bit,” Nick said. Actually, driving by Daisy Fowler’s house might not be a bad idea. He could be casually passing by just as she happened to walk out. Although her uncle had said something about her living in a compound off a dirt road, which might make casually passing by difficult to explain.
“D’you think so?” Valerie’s voice had brightened. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Absolutely.”
“Brilliant. Well, I’ll get started on it right away. How are things with you?”
Nick sneezed.
“Is that a good thing?”
“Allergies,” Nick said. “Wind’s stirring up dust and pollen and God knows what. It’s having a rather debilitating effect on me.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t read the review of your Bongiovanni book, then,” Valerie said, a note of hesitation in her voice. “It ran in this morning’s Times.”
Nick stared, unseeing now, at the TV. He steeled himself. “Favorable?”
“Shall I read it?”
“Broad strokes will do.”
“You’ll get angry…”
“I won’t get angry, damn it. Do you have the review there?”
“I’m looking at it right now. It’s not bad exactly.”
“For God’s sake—”
“It just says that you…it, the biography, doesn’t add anything to what we already know about Bongiovanni. That was a quote. It also said you held him, Bongiovanni, at arm’s length, that you never really got to the heart of who he was. Inconclusive, that’s another quote and, hold on, here it is. Shallow and superfici—
“Right.”
“More?”
“No.”
He carried the phone into the kitchen, took a carton of orange juice from the fridge and set it on the counter. He’d had his hopes set on definitive. Wynne has written the definitive biography of Bongiovanni. In this uncompromisingly honest work, Wynne has captured the soul of the tenor. He decided he didn’t want orange juice after all. He went back into the living room and collapsed on the couch.
“Nick?”
“What?”
“You’re not sulking, are you?”
“Don’t be so stupid,” he said sulkily. “Sulking about what?”
“The review.”
“Already forgotten about it.” Already mentally composing the vituperative letter he would write to the Times railing about the sheer idiocy of the reviewer who…or maybe biting sarcasm would be more the ticket. He’d think about it later.
“How’s the current project?” she asked.
“The daughter could prove to be something of a roadblock. I sense resistance.”
“The daughter?”
“Daisy. The child in the pictures, except she’s now about forty, has a daughter and runs a restaurant here in Laguna with her ex-husband.”
“Why is she resisting?”
“Well, I’d have to ask her, wouldn’t I? Which I would if she’d answer her bloody phone. I’ve lost count of the messages I’ve left. Ignored every one of them. Apparently she lives in a wooden cabin on the outskirts of town and keeps goats.”
“Goats?”
“Hires them out to homeowners who live in the hills.” He’d learned this from Martin, who had called earlier to check on his progress. “The goats eat the brush, which works to keep the fire danger down. That’s how Truman died. Burned to death in his home.”
“How ghastly. Maybe that’s why the daughter doesn’t want to talk. Maybe it’s all too painful for her.”
Nick considered. “It’s been fourteen years.”
“It was her father, Nick,” Valerie said reprovingly.
He sneezed again and blew his nose. He felt like hell.
“Would it be better if I booked to San Diego?” Valerie was asking.
“Sorry?”
“When I come over. Would it be better if I book into L.A. or San Diego?”
“I thought you were talking about going to your sister’s in Kent.”
“Which sister?”
“How many sisters do you have?”
“Two. Neither of them lives in Kent.” She sighed. “Do you ever listen to anything I say?”
“I heard you say you needed to get away.”
“You said I needed to get away. That was your suggestion.”
“My suggestion?”
“Nick, have you been drinking? You sound…odd.”
“I’m unwell.” The television was showing pictures of orange flame rolling like molten lava down a hillside. The sight momentarily distracted him. “You should see this,” he told Valerie. “Houses burning all over the place, sheets of flame shooting up into the sky. It’s incredible. They’re showing someone leading horses down a hillside, and the fires look as though they’re just a few feet away.”
“That happens in California, doesn’t it?” Valerie asked. “It seems there’s always one disaster or another. The price of living in paradise, I suppose.” She paused. “Still, at least it’s warm. And it’s not raining, is it? There’s a lot to be said for nice weather. What are the beaches like?”
“Covered in ash.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”
“Look Val,” he said. “I told Bella she couldn’t come because I needed to work, and I’m telling you the same thing. I’m trying not to be superstitious, but I get here on the day Truman’s widow lands in hospital, so obviously I can’t talk to her for a while. Then the daughter, who’s central to the whole book, is proving difficult…..” He sneezed. “Excuse me. Let’s talk about something else, all right?”
But there wasn’t much else that Valerie wanted to talk about, and after they’d said their goodbyes Nick picked up the phone and punched in Daisy’s number again.
“My mom?” a young girl asked. “Sorry, she’s not here.”
Of course she isn’t. “I’ve left several messages,” he said. “She must be very busy.”
“Yeah, she is, kind of.”
“You must be…”
“Emily. Except everyone calls me Emmy.”
“And you’ve attained the ripe old age of fourteen.”
A beat of silence. “How d’you know that?”
“I’m omniscient,” he said. “It just came to me in a flash of lavender-colored smoke.”
“Seriously.”
“I’m a biographer. I snoop for a living.”
She laughed. “I’ll tell my mom you called.”
“Thank you, Emily. I enjoyed our little chat.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Bye.”
Nick was smiling as he hung up. He called Bella but got her mother.
“She’s next door at her friend’s,” Avril said.
“Isn’t it past her bedtime?”
“Not for a couple of hours. Anything else about your daughter I can fill you in on?”
Ran out of mood stabilizers, did you? “Just tell her I called, please. I’ll try again tomorrow, or she can call me here.”
“Actually, while I have you on the phone, Bella’s in love with this little cottage in Devon. We took the train down there last week just to get away from the city for a bit and—well, her disappointment about you know what—and lo and behold, there it was. A sweet cottage that we could use on weekends and school holidays…I did put in an offer, but now I’m having second thoughts. I haven’t broken the news to Bella yet, she’ll be devastated.”
Nick’s left eye had started to itch uncontrollably. He sneezed. Now his right eye was tearing. “Why are you having second thoughts?”
“It’s rather a stretch financially, I’m not sure—”
“Go ahead,” he said impulsively. “I’ll make up whatever you need.”
“Nick. My God, are you absolutely sure?”
“I got a decent advance for the Truman book,” he said.
“Bella will be over the moon. She was terribly disappointed about the Laguna thing—”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “Well, I hope this helps.”
THE VAGUE SENSE OF DOOM he’d felt after making the offer stayed with him for the rest of the morning. Daisy Fowler had no idea of course, but she had the power to make his life very, very difficult.
Later that night, he wandered down to the Hotel Laguna and had a couple of beers on the balcony while he watched the sun set over the Pacific. Instead of uplifting him, though, he found himself sinking into a morose gloom. The words of the Bongiovanni review lingered like an ill-digested meal “Arm’s length,” indeed. He sipped his beer. Gloom gave way to anger. He’d show them arm’s length. He was going to write the definitive biography of Frank Truman, and he would take no prisoners in the process. Darling Daughter Daisy be damned.
“YOUR GRANDFATHER, he was a very handsome man,” Amalia was telling Emily. “All the girls, they fell in love with him because he was so funny and so big and strong.”
“Dinner’s almost ready, you guys,” Daisy called from the kitchen of Amalia’s cottage. “Emmy, get those pictures cleared off the table so we can sit down.” She and Emmy had brought Amalia home from the hospital that morning. Predictably, Amalia had insisted on coming back to the place where she said Frank still lived in the walls and the shadows, and where the ocean that crashed onto the beach brought gifts of pale pink seashells that were also from Frank.
Daisy sighed. How could you argue with that? All you could do was case the cabin for booze bottles and accidentally on purpose hide the keys to the dune buggy so she wouldn’t take it into town until she’d recovered completely.
She set the enchilada casserole under the broiler in Amalia’s yellowing enameled stove, washed up the dishes she’d used in the deep, square sink, chipped and stained from years of use. On the draining board was a jelly jar of purple statice Emmy had picked to welcome Amalia home from the hospital.
As she took the plates from the cupboard, she spotted the fifth of vodka. She set the plates down, uncapped the bottle, poured it down the sink and stuffed it to the bottom of the trash can.