by Tricia Dower
“My pleasure. Here, let me help you.”
Buddy was struggling to get the cake in the box.
“Yeah, thanks,” Tereza said. “It was a real surprise.”
“How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“My birth certificate says seventeen.”
“Oh my, you’ve got a lot of living to do.”
Bert walked them to the front. “A couple pointers,” he said to Buddy. “Get yourself a pair of wingtips. Watch for a Florsheim sale. And when someone asks you to call him by his first name, oblige him, okay? Give my regards to Jack.”
Outside, a safe distance from the store, Tereza said, “Bert’s a yoyo. Your boots are your trademark. There are other A&Ps in New York.”
Buddy kept walking, gripping the box with the cake in it. They’d gone at least six blocks before he spoke, trying to keep his voice calm, Tereza could tell. “If we move to New York it will ruin everything. You don’t know how hard it is.”
“What?”
“Keeping the bubble in the center.”
“What bubble?”
“Ever see a carpenter’s level?”
“Yeah. Jimmy had one.”
“Pastor Scott told me to imagine a level inside me and try to keep the bubble in the center. He said it’s all a matter of balance.”
Tereza was sure you could find a carpenter’s level in New York. She thrust her arms out to her sides and pretended to walk a tightrope. “Look at me!” she said. “I’m balancing.”
TWENTY - THREE
JUNE 14, 1958. Doris waits in the car with the children as Miranda, in flowered sundress and sandals bought for the occasion, climbs the veranda steps, a dream about a dark and fearful manor in her head. Not her dream. One from a book she read years ago.
She slept fretfully last night, anticipating she’d find her childhood dwelling as eerie as that manor, the shrubs all about it monsters. But the house she left three years ago appears bright and harmless, garbed now in yellow and white paint, surrounded by grass so green it looks wet. Pansies, petunias and begonias bob their heads in greeting on either side of the steps—young plants with space between them to grow, like the herbs Doris allowed Miranda to sow back of the house on condition she not give Carolyn and Mickey any “funny teas.” Miranda created the patch a few weeks ago. Mickey and Cian lay in the hammock watching her, wrapped around each other like vines. So far she’s planted only parsley, oregano, mint, thyme, sage and dill, all herbs Doris can find at the grocery store and therefore trusts. Miranda hopes to persuade Doris to drive her down country roads one day in search of chamomile, nettles and mullein.
Mother Alfreda was gracious when Miranda, upon turning eighteen last month, brought in the grimoire and shared her decision to forgo convent life in favor of the still-faint whisper of a calling to heal with plants. Mother told her that monks once kept similar books of folklore, using the abundance of God’s garden to supplement the healing power of the risen Lord. Should Miranda change her mind Mother would welcome her at the convent. She sent her off with a leather bookmark imprinted with Catherine of Siena’s “Whether in the cloister or the world … ever abide in the cell of self-knowledge.”
A young woman with raven hair pulled back into a ponytail opens the door. She wears red-and-white checked Bermuda shorts, a white sleeveless blouse, canvas shoes with short white socks and an easy smile on a heart-shaped face. “Miranda?”
Doris has set up this meeting but Miranda insisted on approaching the door alone.
“Mrs. Wilkes?”
“Oh, please, call me Peggy.” She has warm brown eyes behind pink-framed spectacles shaped like butterfly wings. “We didn’t find the harp, but come on in. Want to look around?”
Miranda hopes Doris hasn’t told Peggy too much. She wants to be more to others than some pitiful girl deflowered by her father. She steps into a hallway bathed in light, transformed. The wallpaper is gone, the walls are painted white and a clean-smelling breeze flows through. She once thought the wind, unable to escape, lived in these walls. “If it’s no trouble.”
“Not at all. I love showing off the place. We’ve worked on it non-stop for two years. My hubby’s a carpenter. He’s not here right now. He took our little Cindy to the Flag Day parade.”
“Oh, you’re missing the parade because of me.”
“Happily, yes. Parades bore the pants off me. Want to start in the living room?” She turns left. Miranda follows, her eyes trying to take in everything at once.
“How old is little Cindy?” Doris says it’s polite to ask such questions.
“Three.”
“My son is four,” Miranda says. She can no longer picture Cian in this house with only her and “Da” to amuse him, so at home is he at Doris’s. It’s Nicholas her heart senses here.
The room she knew as the library has aqua walls, two black leather sofas, a television in a white cabinet and a gold starburst clock above the fireplace. It could be a magazine ad. She can just make out the shadows of the old claw-footed sofa, stuffed chairs and tables that James claimed a short, round, apron-wearing faerie caused to appear before they moved in, a faerie charged with watching over them and the house forever after.
James claimed to see all sorts of faeries: a small, bald man with pointy ears and long teeth who protected the big tree outside their house, walrus people who appeared in the river at dawn and dusk and rat boys who made their home in the river marsh—fat and ugly with dark, hairy skin, long snouts and tails. She smiles to herself: how effective those tales were in keeping her very young self from even wanting to peek at the seductive river that reached out in her dreams, promising freedom and adventure. But who is to say James did not see faeries? That Miranda can’t differentiate between the healthy and unhealthy light surrounding people? Or that Cian doesn’t enter a story as she does an object, reporting on things the book doesn’t? (“Dat river was cold,” he’ll remark, or “Dat ant bit me.”)
Seeing differently might be the truest gift James left them.
“It took weeks to strip the wallpaper before we could paint,” Peggy says. “Then we sanded the floors and stained them a lighter shade. Everything was so dark, worse than a funeral parlor.” She smothers her mouth with her hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. You lived here a long time, didn’t you?”
“Twelve years.” The heavy blue drapes are gone. In their place, filmy white curtains. How sunny the room is. Miranda still can’t get enough sun. “You kept the bookcases.”
“Yeah, but there are more toys on them than books. Cindy’s taken over the house.”
Peggy leads her through the room in which Miranda and James took their meals. It seems to be another Cindy playroom. Peggy’s kitchen is even prettier than Doris’s, with white metal cabinets, green countertops and a cat-shaped clock. The wood stove is gone in favor of a gas range with a shelf above it containing small tins of spices from the grocery store. Miranda leans over the stove to read the labels.
“You like to cook?” Peggy asks.
“I like to make different kinds of tea.”
“Sticking a bag in hot water is the extent of my tea-making skills.”
Miranda describes her garden and her tea experiments: grinding leaves and crushing seeds using a mortar and pestle, carefully recording measurements and each tea’s effect on her.
“Gosh,” Peggy says. “I thought I was hot stuff for sticking a few posies in the ground.”
Miranda peers out the kitchen window at the river—a onceforbidden vista. “Would you mind if I walked along the riverbank behind the house? My father used to gather marshmallows there.”
“Come again?”
“Plants with small, pale flowers. If I can find any, I’d like to come back in August for leaves and in October or November to harvest the root.”
“What’ll you do with them?”
“Dry the leaves for tea to drink for colds or indigestion. And the root’s good for sore throats, so they say.”
Peggy smiles. “A
h, so they say.” She moves through the house with confidence, claiming space that once was Miranda and James’s. Miranda thought she’d most want to peer out the attic window again, but she doesn’t. The soft spring air in her garden, Mickey and Cian’s hammock laughter and the cool, damp earth in her hands are more real to her now than any recollections of this place.
The house has moved on without her. And James is no longer here. She wonders if the voice she heard in her head was really his. If, all along, she hadn’t been hearing her own thoughts and replaying memories.
Where James still does reside is in the grimoire, in the recounting of his treatments for her and Cian: the weak tea of mashed dill and fennel seeds he fed Cian through an eyedropper when the lad had colic; the clove paste he made when Miranda cut herself with a kitchen knife; the lemon balm tea for her menstrual cramps; the ginger tea for her morning sickness; goldenseal tea to stem her bleeding after Cian’s birth; yarrow leaves steeped in water for her sore nipples; thick, salted honey for Cian’s teething gums; cod liver oil to make up for lack of sunshine. Once, his remedies seemed like magic. Now they feel like love. By testing the formulas in the grimoire she knows she’s testing him. If what he said about plants is true, perhaps some of what he taught her about gods and goddesses, rituals and spells, this life and the Other Life is true too.
She doesn’t want to keep Doris and the children waiting any longer. She invites Peggy out to the car to meet them. Peggy invites Miranda back for marshmallows, anytime.
A mournful diesel horn on the highway punctuates their words—a sound Miranda used to hear when the World meant “out there” in the parallel universe she’s part of now, however shakily. She feels released from the orbit of James’s sorrow, at last. Free to turn to the sun.
TWENTY - FOUR
JULY 8, 1958. Linda wasn’t thinking right when the pale green convertible drew up beside her. Even if she had been, she wouldn’t have been able to report the year and make. She was hopeless at that and wasn’t wearing her glasses. They made her look like such a square. Plus her mind was replaying her disastrous date down the shore with Lonnie. How babyish she’d looked in her ruffled polka dot bathing suit next to Arlene and Dee in their two-pieces!
“You didn’t bring any money?” Lonnie had asked. He’d grudgingly paid for her boardwalk rides and bought her pizza. Nobody had told her to bring money. Wasn’t the boy supposed to pay? Then in the fun house he’d pulled her hard against him and grabbed her breast. She’d pushed him away, of course. He was sullen on the ride back and didn’t offer to see her home, even though it was starting to get dark when Arlene’s date dropped her off at the rec center, in the part of town where people locked their doors. It was a good half-hour walk to her house.
Her parents had driven to Boston yesterday and would stay while a clinic ran tests on Mom. Linda would be free of them for two more days. She’d practically prostrated herself for permission to stay alone and agreed to all sorts of conditions she’d already violated. They wouldn’t have allowed her to go down the shore. She’d left after their daily call this morning and told Mr. Houseman next door she was spending the day at the library where it was air-conditioned. Now she was hurrying home in time for the nightly calls from people who’d been commandeered to keep an eye out for her when, like sweet manna from heaven, the guy in the convertible called out, “Looks like you could use a ride.”
It had to have been ninety degrees all day. Her lavender sundress was wet under the arms and her sweaty feet were stinking up her white sandals. The back of her knees were sunburned and stiffening up. The guy’s smile was boyishly sweet and she didn’t want to be rude. Besides, she’d never ridden in a convertible. He got out, walked around and opened the passenger door like it was a gift. “They call me Georgie Porgie,” he said. He had a crew cut, blue eyes and a big lower lip. He wore a Marlon Brando shirt and tight black pants. His upper arms were bulgy thick. His aftershave had a fine woodsy smell.
“I’m Linda.” She dropped the canvas bag with her wet suit and towel in the back seat and climbed in the front. “Nice to meet you, Georgie.”
“Where to, sweet Linda?”
“Just a straight shot down this road, not more than a mile. You live around here?” Just a straight shot. Where had that come from? Some cornball thing her mother would say.
He didn’t answer, just drove, drumming on the steering wheel with his fingers in a calypso-like rhythm: day, me say day, me say day, me say day-o. Too bad Lonnie couldn’t see her now. When he turned off Grove onto Route 1, she said, “No, no, keep straight,” thinking she hadn’t given clear directions. He didn’t say anything. As they approached the White Castle, she said, “Turn left here. Then a couple blocks, left and left again.” He still didn’t say anything. When he stopped at a traffic light a few more blocks away she tried to leave the car but the passenger door handle was missing. He reached over and wrenched her to him. Her dress hiked up and the back of her thighs made a sucking sound against the leather seat.
“Where are we going?” she asked. He said nothing but kept his arm around her.
She forced herself to speak calmly. “I’d like to get out, please.” He kept driving, steering with his left hand, his right arm painfully tight around her.
She wrestled away and pushed against the car door. He dragged her over again.
Route 1 was busy as usual. She shouted “Help!” but the wind swallowed her words.
He turned off the highway and onto a street with no houses, only a factory and a nearly empty parking lot. Linda had no idea where they were. Georgie looked lost in himself, unaware of her even as he crushed her to his side. She’d never known anyone so strong. Her neck and side felt the strain of trying to twist away from him.
He turned onto a bumpy side road leading to a woody patch, surprising in its sudden appearance. He stopped in a small clearing. Took his hand away to turn off the car. She stood on the seat to climb over the side but he forced her down. He held both her wrists in one hand and with the other scrabbled at her hem, pushing the dress up to her waist. His breath smelled like sour milk. She kicked and pushed. He yanked her dress off over her head, squeezing her ears, pushed her back down on the seat, held her with one hand and unzipped his pants with the other. Then he lay on top of her and rocked back and forth, his weight pressing the air from her lungs. When she felt something sticky on her leg she twisted her head and bit his shoulder hard.
He jerked away. “Fucking bitch. You want to die?” He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a knife. “Beg for your life.”
For a moment she thought she’d lose control of her bowels, but an image of Tereza’s defiant eyes of all things came to her. She shook her head so hard it made a rattling sound.
“Scream,” he said, holding the knife to her throat. “Beg for your life.”
She spat in his face and braced for the cut. But he shuddered as though waking from a dream and looked at her with pained blue eyes. He plucked her dress from the car floor and handed it to her. Started the engine while she got dressed. Retraced their route to the corner of the highway and Grove, across from Tony’s Garage. He stepped from the car, walked slowly around the front and opened the passenger door from the outside. He reached in the back seat for her canvas bag. Gave her a little bow and that same sweet smile.
She made it across the highway and ran to her house, praying she wouldn’t encounter any neighbors, amazed her trembling legs held her upright. The ground beneath her feet heaved like the Staten Island ferry deck. She took a bath, scrubbing herself sore, day-o playing in her mind like a stuck record until she had to scream and scream.
TWO DAYS LATER she stepped out the side door that opened onto Mr. Houseman’s driveway, keeping one hand on the knob in case she needed to jump back in. She peered left at his garage and then right toward the street. She smelled newly cut grass and saw the clippings on the drive. Minutes ago she’d heard the whooshing slice of his push mower. She couldn’t hear it now, but he could be doing the
other side of his house, within sprinting distance, if she needed to scream for help.
She hadn’t been outside since it happened. But Mom would come home tonight expecting food in the house and Linda had eaten nearly everything in the pantry, including two jars of maraschino cherries, four cans of metallic-tasting green beans and the single can of white asparagus her mother was saving for the company they never had. During her parents’ calls yesterday and this morning, she didn’t mention she’d shoved the settee against the front door, bumped the kitchen table down four steps and upended it to block the side door. She didn’t say she’d shut and locked the windows despite air so hot and humid the saltines had gone soft. Mr. Houseman had knocked on the side door yesterday. She’d opened a window and told him she had a sore throat, was staying in until she got better. Sitting cross-legged in bed, she’d wrapped the phone extension cord around and around her finger and told her parents everything was fine. She told Mrs. Judge, Mrs. Ernst and Aunt Libby the same when they called to check on her.
She locked the side door behind her and crept down the footpath, her back pressed against the scratchy siding. Once she reached the stoop, she scanned the street. To the left she could see across the highway to Tony’s, to the right as far as Tereza’s old place and Rolf’s store. A car on the highway backfired and she nearly wet her pants, but nobody drove down Grove Street. There was no sign of Georgie’s car, but he could be waiting anywhere. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her in glasses, a plaid kerchief and Betty’s hideous flowered housecoat.
Even if she could bring herself to venture into Rolf’s, he wouldn’t have white asparagus. She’d have to go into town. She darted across the highway, her mind sprinting ahead. If Georgie suddenly appeared she’d take refuge in Tony’s Garage and use his phone to call the police. But they might say she’d been asking for it by getting in Georgie’s car. They’d tell her parents, who would have a fit about her going down the shore. Mom would ask what she’d done to encourage the boy. Daddy would say she hadn’t really gotten hurt.
