The Talisman

ended the turmoil of their months in New York. In Arcadia Beach there were no lawyers employed by Morgan Sloat popping out of cars and waving papers which had to be signed, had to be filed, Mrs Sawyer. In Arcadia Beach the telephones did not ring out from noon until three in the morning (Uncle Morgan appeared to forget that residents of Central Park West were not on California time). In fact the telephones in Arcadia Beach rang not at all.
    On the way into the little resort town, his mother driving with squinty-eyed concentration, Jack had seen only one person on the streets – a mad old man desultorily pushing an empty shopping cart along a sidewalk. Above them was that blank gray sky, an uncomfortable sky. In total contrast to New York, here there was only the steady sound of the wind, hooting up deserted streets that looked much too wide with no traffic to fill them. Here were empty shops with signs in the windows saying OPEN WEEKENDS ONLY or, even worse, SEE YOU IN JUNE! There were a hundred empty parking places on the street before the Alhambra, empty tables in the Arcadia Tea and Jam Shoppe next door.
    And shabby-crazy old men pushed shopping carts along deserted streets.
    ‘I spent the happiest three weeks of my life in this funny little place,’ Lily told him, driving past the old man (who turned, Jack saw, to look after them with frightened suspicion – he was mouthing something but Jack could not tell what it was) and then swinging the car up the curved drive through the front gardens of the hotel.
    For that was why they had bundled everything they could not live without into suitcases and satchels and plastic shopping bags, turned the key in the lock on the apartment door (ignoring the shrill ringing of the telephone, which seemed to penetrate that same keyhole and pursue them down the hall); that was why they had filled the trunk and back seat of the rented car with all their overflowing boxes and bags and spent hours crawling north along the Henry Hudson Parkway, then many more hours pounding up I-95 – because Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer had once been happy here. In 1968, the year before Jack’s birth, Lily had been nominated for an Academy Award for her role in a picture called Blaze. Blaze was a better movie than most of Lily’s, and in it she had been able to demonstrate a much richer talent than her usual bad-girl roles had revealed. Nobody expected Lily to win, least of all Lily; but for Lily the customary cliché about the real honor being in the nomination was honest truth – she did feel honored, deeply and genuinely, and to celebrate this one moment of real professional recognition, Phil Sawyer had wisely taken her for three weeks to the Alhambra Inn and Gardens, on the other side of the continent, where they had watched the Oscars while drinking champagne in bed. (If Jack had been older, and had he had an occasion to care, he might have done the necessary subtraction and discovered that the Alhambra had been the place of his essential beginning.)
    When the Supporting Actress nominations were read, according to family legend, Lily had growled to Phil, ‘If I win this thing and I’m not there, I’ll do the Monkey on your chest in my stiletto heels .’
    But when Ruth Gordon had won, Lily had said, ‘Sure, she deserves it, she’s a great kid.’ And had immediately poked her husband in the middle of the chest and said, ‘You’d better get me another part like that, you big-shot agent you.’
    There had been no more parts like that. Lily’s last role, two years after Phil’s death, had been that of a cynical ex-prostitute in a film called Motorcycle Maniacs .
     
    It was that period Lily was commemorating now, Jack knew as he hauled the baggage out of the trunk and the back seat. A D’Agostino bag had torn right down through the big D’AG , and a jumble of rolled-up socks, loose photographs, chessmen and the board, comic books, had dribbled over all else in the trunk. Jack managed to get most of this stuff into other bags. Lily was moving slowly up the hotel steps, pulling herself along on the railing like an old lady. ‘I’ll find the bellhop,’ she said without turning around.
    Jack straightened up from the bulging bags and looked again at the sky where he was sure he had seen a rainbow. There was no rainbow, only that uncomfortable, shifting sky.
    Then:
    ‘Come to me,’ someone said behind him in a small and perfectly audible voice.
    ‘What?’ he asked, turning around. The