The Seeing

Chapter Four

Jessica Mallory collected her belongings from the bedroom in Mrs. Farr’s home and began to pack them neatly in a red vinyl suitcase. Sweaters and socks and nightgowns, a pair of patent leather shoes with straps, a Raggedy Ann from her bed, a gray flannel coat with a black felt collar — she carried these to the table where the suitcase rested and stacked them beside it, wondering how she could fit them all into one small piece of luggage. Perhaps he could carry the doll and the box with the tea set.

Jessica was humming as she went back and forth from suitcase to closet and chest of drawers, content and secure because the colors she had learned to trust were comforting now — a gentle blue suffused with yellows that spread warmly in the area located directly behind her smooth forehead and bright eyes.

The colors had long been companions to the little girl, many of them bright and cheering, some that made her somber and thoughtful, while others frightened her — the brilliantly radiant ones with edges like flashing diamonds, searing illuminations that warned her of coming dangers — the colors she had seen the night of the crash that took her parents’ lives.

The packing finished, she went to the window and pulled back the curtain, looking up and down the street, watching. The Farrs lived in an old section of Philadelphia, a suburb called Jenkintown, an area of red brick houses with white wooden porches and sidewalks lined with dogwood trees, whose branches arched so close to second-floor windows that young Jessica often watched for minutes at a time while the birds hopped within arm-reach from twig to twig and pecked at black, wintered bark.

The child still thought sometimes of her father and mother, but in a fond, almost dream-like fashion. They were like pictures in her story-books, familiar faces she could now recognize and study for as long as she wanted to without feeling any hurt at all.

She could remember the white coconut cakes her mother had baked and one of her father’s dress-up ties, the one with red hearts. She remembered being quiet and patient in the afternoon when her mother was at work and her father was at his big desk in the corner of the bedroom. These were the times when she played writing games at the windowsill, using the graph paper and big felt-tipped pens he gave her, drawing moons and suns and faraway stars she had just begun to know.

He had never minded if she’d interrupted him with questions. In fact, she couldn’t remember that he had ever been cross with her, even on that dreadful afternoon that she had begun to cry, sad and helpless, as faint patterns had begun to form in her colors.

Standing at the window now in Mrs. Farr’s home, she thought back to that time (another winter when she had been smaller) when her mother came home with snowflakes on her coat collar, a shine of cold winds in her hair. They had played together that afternoon a favorite game called “Guess what I saw today.”

“You saw ladies,” Jessica might say, vague pictures of her mother’s experiences forming in her mind. “You saw taxis, you saw a kitten, children and a little red wagon with a wheel off.”

But she had brought a terrible stillness to her mother’s face that day when she said, “You saw the old man hit by the big car and the policeman running. You saw all that!”

Just then Mrs. Farr stopped in the open doorway of Jessica’s room and looked with a mild frown at the open suitcase on Jessica’s bedside table.

“Now what’s all this?” she said.

“I thought I’d get ready,” Jessica said.

As a foster parent, Mrs. Farr was accustomed to the frequently moody and confused behavior of lonely, disoriented children, and so she nodded and said matter-of-factly, “Well, that makes sense, I guess, Jessica. In the meantime, I just took gingerbread out of the oven. Would you like a piece and a glass of milk in the kitchen with me?”

“Could I have them up here, Mrs. Farr?”

“All right.”

Later, Jessica placed the tray on the table beside her suitcase, closed the bedroom door and lifted tea things from their grooved box — tiny cups and saucers and spoons which she set out in a service for two, carefully breaking the gingerbread into halves, placing the sections neatly on the gilt-flecked saucers. Then the girl went to the window again to look down into the street where the thin sunlight slanted through the trees to brighten the old sidewalks.

That same afternoon, Stanley Holcomb turned into Rittenhouse Square, a park in downtown Philadelphia, checking his watch as he walked past the elegant townhouses with their white marble steps and brass doorknockers. Holcomb, a tall and leanly built man in his thirties, with a mustache and rimless glasses, wore a conservative business suit and dark topcoat and carried a briefcase which he shifted to his left hand to push through the revolving door into the lobby of the Barclay Hotel.

Holcomb took an elevator to the fifth floor and let himself into a three-room suite with windows facing the trees and park pathways of Rittenhouse Square. Hanging his topcoat in a closet off the drawing room, Holcomb removed several bulky files from his briefcase and tapped on the oaken doors of his employer’s study, waiting to open them until Andrew Dalworth’s muffled voice told him to come in.

Dalworth, seated at a desk near windows, was wearing flannel slacks and a white shirt with an open collar. Without looking up, he said, “Well, what did they tell you over at Keystone, Stanley?”

“The new position is — and this is from Norton — they don’t feel they can include their reps in Tokyo on the present terms.”

“Well, they’re not paid for their feelings, Stanley. They’re paid for yes or no answers.”

“What it comes down to, sir, Norton wants more time...”

“I don’t want any more ifs and ands. Give Norton an extension we can live with, say — at the close of business, Tokyo time, Friday.”

At fifty-nine, Andrew Dalworth was an impressive figure, over six feet in height, with the firm and still-powerful body of an athlete. Flecks of red glinted in his graying hair and his face was so tanned from sailing and bill-fishing that his eyes seemed almost unnaturally blue under the thick wings of his dark brows. His nose was jutting and authoritative, its bent conformation stemming from a fight he had won in a Golden Gloves tournament against a light-heavyweight brawler almost two generations ago.

Dalworth turned and stared out the windows of his suite, absently watching the city’s pigeons and starlings rocking along the sidewalks or skimming through the thinning crowns of dark trees. Something was bothering him, he realized, distorting the normally routine order of his thoughts, but he couldn’t for the life of him determine what it was. Frowning at the neat files of paper on his desk, he saw that he had covered a half page of a legal tablet with sketches of small airplanes.

Then he glanced up at Stanley Holcomb, realizing with some embarrassment that his aide had asked him a question.

“I’m sorry, Stanley. What’s that again?”

“I have the specifications on that property in Ireland, sir. It’s a fine old mansion, thirty rooms or more, called Easter Hill. With it comes about six thousand acres of good hunting in Connemara, and, of course, solid barns, stables, kennel runs, and so forth. A promontory with splendid views is also part of the estate. I have aerial photographs here and a breakdown of the price with local taxes computed in. Perhaps you’d like to glance through them now, sir.” Holcomb checked his wristwatch. “We’ve got almost half an hour before the meeting with DuPont.”

Andrew Dalworth stood and paced restlessly in front of the windows, staring out at the park with its dramatic backdrop of tall buildings and glittering skeins of traffic. After a moment or so, he turned and said to Holcomb, “Tell me something, Stanley. What was the name of that couple who came to see us in Detroit last month?”

Holcomb drummed his fingers on the back of a chair and then shrugged and said, “I’ll have to check, sir...”

“Wait a minute. Wasn’t it Mallory?”

“That’s it, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Mallory. The wife’s name was Monica, I believe.”

She had waited for her husband in his outer office at the Detroit plant, Dalworth remembered, flipping through a magazine for the scheduled ten-minute interview which had stretched out to almost an hour. Dalworth had been introduced to Monica Mallory at the end of this session. He had liked that couple, admired their handsome buoyant manner, the husband’s intelligent, scientific imagination and his wife’s warm and understanding support.

Young Mallory’s plans, which involved a new concept of solar physics, had not been ready for laboratory research. Brilliant as they were, the plans still required experimentation and finalizing at the drafting board, Dalworth had decided, but he agreed to meet with the young scientist in six months for a progress report on his work...

He had proposed a grant or subsidy but to his surprise (and silent gratification), Daniel Mallory had refused it. The young couple was quite willing to continue on their own for the next half year of research. And Dalworth, although he suspected the Mallorys might be on financially thin ice (they had a young child, after all), had reluctantly allowed them their way in the matter. In fact, their independence and idealism had struck a surprisingly pleasant note with Dalworth, reminding him as it did of his own early enthusiasm, the fierce pride in performance which he had shared with his young bride, Anna. They, like the Mallorys, it was apparent, had only an academic compassion for handouts, advance payments, and the self-indulgence of credit cards, preferring in actuality to put their full energies into their work and then let the world judge its worth. And yet, and yet, Dalworth thought, drumming his fingers nervously, he wished he’d been allowed to make some payments to the Mallorys, if only for the child...

That was what was bothering him so deeply, marring his concentration, Dalworth realized, his memories of those vibrant people starting home so confidently on that fatal Flight 61 to this very town of Philadelphia and their little daughter. He recalled Monica Mallory saying something about the child — that she liked seashells, was it? — and that she was with a sitter and they would see her in the morning...

“About the DuPont meeting, sir, I suggest that we—”

“I’d like you to postpone that meeting, Stanley. Tell them that something came up and we’ll get back to them. Assure them we’re still interested.”

Holcomb nodded without expression and made a notation in his small leather engagement book. “I’ll take care of that, Mr. Dalworth.”

Dalworth resumed pacing, rubbing a forefinger over the jutting bone in his nose, remembering with a faint smile the name of the fighter who had done it to him — Mace Torrio — and the sudden humiliation, worse than the pain, of landing flat on his green satin trunks, of staring at Anna, rigid in her ringside seat, eyes wide and startled, hardly knowing whether to laugh or burst into tears. He needed Anna now, he had always needed her, and the five years since her death had been a desolate stretch of time which he had tried to conquer with the only therapy he trusted, a furiously escalated work program that had pushed his business interests into dozens of new markets halfway around the world.

“Stanley, I’d like you to find out where that Mallory child is right now. If it’s at all possible, I’d like to see and talk with her.”

“Yes, sir. When would you want me to set up that meeting?”

Dalworth watched a squirrel stowing a walnut in a small burl of a sycamore tree. “Let’s make it as soon as possible, Stanley. This afternoon, if you can.”

“I’ll get right on it, sir.”