Inside, a rubber-banded pile of scallop-edged photographs were piled in one corner. A long cardboard tube lay diagonally from end to end.
She withdrew the pictures first. There, on the top of the heap, was Mama. She was sitting on the porch swing, wearing pink pants and a flowery chiffon blouse with small cap sleeves and a Peter Pan collar. Her legs were tucked up underneath her; only a bit of bare feet stuck out. Her toenails were polished.
She was laughing.
Not smiling, not posing. Laughing.
A cigarette dangled from her right hand and a half-finished cocktail was at her feet. She looked marvelously, wonderfully alive.
For the first time, she saw her mother as a real woman. Someone who laughed, who smoked cigarettes and wore pedal pushers, who polished her toenails.
"Shes beautiful," Elizabeth said.
"Yes. "
The next picture was of a different woman. Someone with intense, flashing eyes and curly black hair that hung in a tangled curtain to her heavy hips. She looked like an Italian peasant, earthy and hot-tempered. In every way the opposite of her delicate, aristocratic mother.
All of the remaining pictures were of the other woman. At the beach . . . on a white-painted porch . . . at a county fair . . . flying kites.
Elizabeth frowned in disappointment.
At last, she picked up the cardboard tube, uncapped it. Inside was a rolled-up canvas. She eased it out, spread it on the coffee table.
It was a painting of the dark-haired woman, done in vibrant acrylics. She was reclined on a mound of red pillows, with her black hair artlessly arranged around her. Except for a pale pink shawl that was draped across her ample hips, she was nude. Her breasts were full, with half-dollar-sized brown nipples.
The detail was exquisite. It reminded her of an early Modigliani. Elizabeth could almost feel the angora of the shawl and the velvet softness of the womans tanned skin. There were hundreds of pink and yellow rose petals scattered across the pillows and on the womans flesh.
There was a sadness to the work. The womans black eyes were filled with a desperate longing. As if, perhaps, she were looking at a lover whod already begun to leave her.
Elizabeth glanced at the signature. Marguerite Rhodes.
Time seemed to slow down. She could hear the thudding of her own heart. "Mama was an artist?"
"Yes. "
There it was, after all these years, the link between them, the thing that had been handed down from mother to daughter, a talent carried in the blood. Elizabeth looked up. "Why didnt Daddy tell me?"
"Thats the only painting there is. "
"So? He knew I dreamed of being a painter. He had to know what this would have meant to me. "
Anita looked terribly sad. For a frightening moment, Elizabeth thought her stepmother was going to draw back now, too afraid of what shed revealed to go forward. "Remember when I told you that your mother had run away from Edward? That was in 1955. "
Elizabeth noticed the date on the painting: 1955.
Anita sighed heavily. "The world was different then. Not as open and accepting of things . . . as we are now. "
Elizabeth looked at the painting again; this time she saw the passion in it. The falling-snow softness of the brushstrokes, the poignant sorrow in the womans eyes. And she understood the secret that had been withheld from her all these years. "My mother fell in love with this woman," she said softly.
"Her name was Missy Esteban. And, yes, she was your mothers lover. "
Elizabeth leaned back in her seat. Dozens of vague childhood memories made sense suddenly. The closed door to Mamas bedroom; the sound of crying coming from within. "Thats why she was depressed," Elizabeth said aloud. Her whole life seemed to settle into place, a puzzle with all the pieces finally where they belonged. It felt as if it should matter more, as if she should feel more betrayed. But shed never really known her mama; that much was painfully clear. "Thats why Daddy wouldnt talk about her. He was ashamed. "
"You know your daddy; he thought he was better than other men. The whole danged town treated him as if he owned the patent on fresh air. To have his wife run away was one thing. He could handle that because she came back. He could laugh with his friends about how spirited his little filly was, but when he found out that shed fallen in love out there--and with a woman--well, there was no handlin that for Edward. So he shut it up tighter than a drum. Pretended it had never happened. "
"How did you find out?"
"Twenty-year-old bourbon. Your daddy got liquored up one night and spilled the beans. "