The Eyes of the Amaryllis

by Natalie Babbitt

  A skirt, with lace. People always talked about the sea as if it were a “she,” while Father Neptune was a “he.” But the sea was real, and Neptune only a made-up figure, silly, really, with his trident and his curly beard. Silly to think of a trident, a fork—for that was all it was—as a weapon for a ruler of the sea. You couldn’t calm those waves, or stir them up, for that matter, with a fork. Gran had called the sea an “it.” Yes, that was better. It was far too big to be a he or a she. It was beyond such small distinctions. And it did not have a ruler; it was a rule all by itself.

  She opened the window, and the cool, wet breeze rushed in. Behind her, in a sconce above the bureau, the flames of the candles leaned and flickered, so that her shadow shifted. She sighed and, closing the window, wandered over to the washstand. There was a mirror there, with a bone frame and handle, and she picked it up and stared at her reflection. It, at least, looked just the same as always. “I’m ugly,” she told herself, studying the heavy brows, too heavy; the narrow nose, too narrow; the pale white skin, too pale, with too many freckles. She had always gone along content with her face. It hadn’t seemed important in the least. But lately she had begun to suspect, with sorrow, that a face might be very important. And hers, her face, was ugly. Would always be ugly. There was nothing to be done for it.

  “Still, my hair is all right,” she allowed herself. “It’s the only nice thing about me.” She had decided that she would never cut it. Not a single strand. Someday, when she was sixteen, she would be old enough to twist it up, away from her neck, and wear it in a heavy coil on the back of her head. Like her mother. Like Gran. Gran’s hair must have looked like this when she was young. There was lots of red in it still. Red was unusual. Special. Like Gran herself.

  From somewhere downstairs, a clock chimed ten. Jenny struggled out of her clothes—her rumpled dress, her stockings, her petticoat, her bloomers—and pulled a cotton nightgown over her head. “My father slept in this bed when he was little,” she told herself, climbing in, but it was impossible to see him as someone her own size, so she gave it up and snuggled down under the covers. After all, he had always been a man to her, always old, always married to her mother. It was impossible to imagine him young, growing up, falling in love like someone in a play. Of course they loved each other, her father and mother. Of course they did. But they didn’t talk about it, as Gran had. Gran had declared, “Your grandfather fell in love with me,” and later, on the beach, she had said, in a different sort of voice, “For thirty years I’ve waited for a sign from my darling.” My darling! Jenny’s father and mother did not call each other “my darling.” Jenny lay staring in the candlelight, and all at once decided that she would do anything for Gran. Whatever she was asked to do. And then, with the music of the sea in her ears, she fell asleep.

  It seemed as if she’d only dozed a moment before she woke to hear Gran calling her. “Geneva! Get up! High tide.” Dazed, she stumbled out of bed, found her shoes, pulled them on without thinking, and shrugged into her dressing gown. Downstairs, Gran waited at the door, a lantern dangling from one hand, the other gripping her crutch. She was still dressed, and Jenny said, “Gran! You haven’t been to bed!”

  “I slept in my chair here,” said Gran, “in the parlor. Come, quickly. You must get down to the beach.”

  Outside, the noise of the water was deafening, and Jenny could see in the dimness that the waves were high now, surging forward, tumbling over with a crash that flogged the beach, almost made it quake. The foam spilled up and slid away in a rapid rush of bubbles, spreading nearly to the foot of the little bluff, so that the beach was narrowed to a slender strip of damp, cold sand.

  It had been gentle and playful before, this ocean, but now it was dark, magnificent, alarming. Jenny hesitated, apprehensive, but Gran did not seem to notice. Instead, she moved on firmly, out to the wooden bench. “Quick!” she urged, over the roar of the wind and water. “There! Along the tide line! Now, before Seward comes! Search all along the edges of the foam. Anything you find, anything, bring it to me at once.”

  Jenny took the lantern and slid down the bluff to the beach. She paused as the rolling water seized her feet and dragged at them, and for a moment she was filled with dread. But then, in her ears, the wind rose up distinct from the noise of the water. It called to her, and a strange new rising feeling of excitement filled her, driving out the fear. She plunged off through the foam, her shoes a sodden wreck at once, her nightgown and wrapper soaked and plastered to her legs. The lantern, swinging high from her lifted hand, rocked a golden arc of light across the streaming sand, and she forgot to notice how cold the water was, how rasping when it flung its load of broken shell and seaweed round her ankles. She was aware only of freedom and exhilaration. Springfield—what was that? Buggies and school and being careful—what were they? Gran did not say, “Be careful,” because Gran was not afraid. Here they were all one thing, she, and Gran, the wild, dark, rushing water, and the wind. Up and back she went along the beach, passing the bluff a dozen times, searching through the fringes of the tide. She wanted now, more than anything else, to believe in the sign and to find it. For Gran.

  But there was nothing. And at last, spent and disappointed, she waded back to the bluff and stood below it, shivering now from cold. “There’s nothing, Gran. Nothing at all.”

  “Yes,” said Gran. “The tide is turning back. Might as well come in now, and go to bed.”

  Inside the house, Gran paused and looked at her and Jenny saw that her concentration had shifted back. Gran was her afternoon self, her usual self, again. “Why, bless me, child, you’re soaked to the skin! And your shoes—why ever did you wear your shoes? But, of course. You didn’t realize—how foolish of me. Go and towel off. Have you another nightgown? Put it on, and I’ll go light the fire and make some tea.”

  Upstairs, Jenny piled her dripping clothes thoughtlessly into the basin on the washstand and rubbed herself dry. And then, warm again, wrapped in the towel, she picked up the bone-handled mirror once more and peered at her face. The pale white skin was rosy now, and the eyes that stared back at her under those heavy brows were shining. “Gran isn’t mad,” she reassured this new reflection. “She’s just—well, she’s got the sea in her, somehow. I can feel it, too. Everything feels different here. I’m different. Oh, I wish I could stay forever!”

  When Jenny woke up in the morning, she climbed out of bed and went at once to the window. The beaming sea lay far out, at low tide, much as it had the afternoon before, and it sparkled in the early sunshine, flicking tiny, blinding flashes of light into the air. The horizon, impossibly far away, invited her. The soft breeze invited her. This was a mermaid morning—a morning for sitting on the rocks and combing your long red hair. She was enchanted by it, and found that the feeling of freedom was stronger than ever. Why, she had walked on the beach last night, when the sea was up and roaring, and no one had said, “You mustn’t.” No one had said, “It’s dangerous.” Imagine! Gran was taking it for granted that she could take care of herself. And all at once she felt stronger here, at the edge of this other world, than she ever had in Springfield.

  But what about the Amaryllis and the sign? What about the man on the beach? All right. There were things she didn’t understand. But this morning they didn’t seem to matter. It was enough that Gran understood them. Gran needed her to do the searching now. Well, she would do it. In Springfield, to get up in the middle of the night on such an errand would be outrageous. But this was not Springfield. This was a different place. Gran’s place.

  And so, as the pattern of her days and nights took hold, Springfield receded to a distant blur. It began to seem that she had always lived here by the sea, had always watched for the turning of the tide. She had come to this house on a Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday she could run as free along the beach as her father had those long, long years before, shoeless, joyful, and at home. These first few days were bright and hot, the sea a wide green smile. She collected little shells and, once,
a sturdy clam who lived for a day in a bucket of sand and sea water, spitting occasionally like a miniature geyser, before she put him back.

  Each day the tide came in a little later, advancing slowly, so that by Thursday she was out with Gran long after midnight and again late in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the wind was up, the waves were tall, and sometimes they rolled in gently, like breathing, deep and slow. But there was never anything to find, nothing whatever washed up except the seaweed and the outcast pebbles. And soon the search began to seem to her to be a sort of game she played with the sea, she and Gran, twice every day, the way some people play at reading cards for prophecies, caught by belief and disbelief like a pin between two magnets. But believing didn’t matter with games, and anyway, by Thursday, the night sky was turning to dawn when the time came for the search, and the high tides of the daylight hours were frothy and warm with sunshine. The sea was a good-humored presence, a playmate, and not at all mysterious.

  In between, they talked, she and Gran. Gran took her through the house and showed her everything, opening drawers and chests and wardrobes. For the house was full of treasures: a fluffy boll of cotton from Antigua; a brittle red lobster’s claw from Maine; a huge, rough, curling shell from Puerto Rico that had a flaring ear lined with shiny pink as delicate as china; a little pig from Haiti, carved from satinwood; a length of gaudy cloth from Trinidad; a snuff box from New York City with a picture on it of Martin Van Buren, an old campaign souvenir. And with each treasure came stories from Gran that filled Jenny’s head with rich, exotic pictures of the color and slow heat of the Caribbean, the noise and bustle of the northern American ports.

  In one of the trunks there was a miniature tin trumpet and a wooden cannon, toys that had been her father’s when he was young. She lingered over them, delighted to find that the trumpet still gave out a reedy bleat when she blew it. But Gran had no stories to go with these treasures. She only said, “George was such an active child. How he loved the sea when he was little!”

  “He doesn’t love it now,” said Jenny. “Why not, Gran?”

  Gran’s face took on a shadow. “He was there with me the day the Amaryllis sank. He adored his father, and I suppose he just never got over it. He went away to Springfield soon after, and didn’t even try to understand.” She put the trumpet and the cannon back into the trunk and took out an object wrapped in paper. “Here. Look at this. Isn’t this remarkable?”

  The object, unwrapped, turned out to be a plaster sea gull, its wings arched, ready for flight. But as Jenny turned it round in her hands, it looked like a wave, too, with dipping curls of foam. “Is it meant to be a bird,” she asked, “or…”

  “Good for you!” said Gran. “It’s both. It’s lots of things. Nicholas Irving made it. It was a model for a bigger piece, a statue he tried to carve once from marble. Poor Nicholas! Bring it downstairs if you like. I haven’t looked at it for years. Anyway, it’s time for lunch.”

  This had been Friday morning. The first week was coming to an end, and Jenny, stuffed with wind and sea, was sunburned and deeply contented. The days had been richer than any she had ever known, and except for occasional reminders of some old quarrel between Gran and her father, she was completely happy. But after lunch on this Friday, the sky turned heavy. It began to drizzle, and as so often happens when the weather changes, the mood changed, too, helped along by a visitor who soured the calm of Gran’s house like a drop of vinegar in cream.

  Jenny answered the knock at the door, and was surprised to find, instead of the egg man or the greengrocer, a woman dressed in the very height of fashion: a tailored suit of dark, ribbed silk, its skirt draped in rich folds over her hips, and ending in an underskirt of pleated yellow that just brushed the tops of smart black-leather boots. “And who have we here, I wonder?” said the woman, as if all outdoors belonged to her and Jenny had just knocked at her door to be let out into it.

  “I’m Geneva Reade,” said Jenny, suddenly aware of her own bare feet and untidy gingham pinafore. “Did you want to see my grandmother?”

  “Grandmother!” exclaimed the woman. She laughed, tilting her head so that the yellow plume on her black felt hat bobbed and waved. Her face, though it was no longer young, was extremely pretty: a round face, dimpled, framed in becoming waves of gray-brown hair drawn back over small, neat ears. “A grandmother? But, of course. It has been that long.”

  “Who’s there?” called Gran from the kitchen.

  “Hello, Geneva,” the woman called back, as she came in, furling her black umbrella. “You’ll never guess! Come here at once and see!”

  Gran came stumping into the parlor and stopped dead. “Isabel! Heaven help me, it’s Isabel Cooper, isn’t it?”

  “Right and wrong,” said the woman gaily. “Isabel Owen for a good long time now. What have you done to yourself, Geneva? Sprained your ankle?”

  “Broke it,” said Gran. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “We’re on our way down to Greenville, my dear. But Harley had some tiresome business or other to do in town, so I said, ‘Harley, I’ll just go and see some of my old friends,’ so he dropped me here. He’ll only be a short time, but I did so want to see you, Geneva, before we went our way. Why, it’s been ages and ages!”

  “Sit down, Isabel,” said Gran without enthusiasm, lowering herself into her own chair. “This is my namesake, George’s daughter. Geneva, this is Mrs.—uh—Owen, did you say? I used to know her long ago, when she lived here in town.”

  “How do you do,” said Jenny, bobbing a small curtsy in her best Springfield manner.

  “George’s child!” said the woman. “I declare! I can’t imagine little George all grown up. Geneva, she’s the image of you, the very image.”

  “Yes, she is,” said Gran complacently. “She’s here to help me while my ankle mends.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Owen, and instantly lost interest in Jenny, who sat down across the room to watch this fascinating visitor. “Geneva, you’ve hardly changed at all. I’d have known you anywhere. Why, it’s amazing how well you’ve kept over the years.”

  “One foot in the grave,” said Gran. “You’ve kept well yourself, I see.”

  “Yes, but, my dear, I am a ways behind you, after all. Twenty-five years younger, at least, if my memory serves.”

  “Twenty,” said Gran, “but never mind. We’re both past our prime.”

  The woman frowned briefly, and then turned sunny again. “Oh, well,” she said carelessly, “whatever that may mean. I’m sure I don’t think of myself as one whit different from what I used to be. Happy times, Geneva, the old days here!”

  “Yes, you were quite a belle,” said Gran dryly.

  The woman dimpled. “I was, rather, wasn’t I! But, Geneva, here you are still, while I’ve been out and doing. How ever have you kept yourself amused in this boring old place? I’m sure I couldn’t wait to get away!”

  “Why should I leave?” said Gran. “This is my home.”

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Owen, turning solemn on the instant. “The Captain. Forgive me. You know, I was just sure you’d never marry again. Here you sit, and unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t changed a thing in this room since the Captain…that is—”

  “No,” said Gran. “Nothing’s been changed. Why should I change it? I like it this way.”

  The woman rose from her chair and wandered about the room, picking things up, looking at them, putting them down again. “I remember that teapot,” she said, pointing to the china on the mantelpiece. “You let my mother borrow it once, and I came down to get it for her. Remember? It was the day of my sixteenth birthday party, and the hired girl had broken our teapot that very morning. Dear me! It seems like yesterday.”

  “Close to forty years ago,” said Gran, “if it’s a day.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know why you keep harping on exact numbers of years, Geneva,” said Mrs. Owen. “It’s such a tiresome habit. Dear me, what’s this?” She paused at a side table where, before
lunch, Jenny had set down the plaster sea gull that looked like a wave. “Geneva, what in the world is this old thing?”

  “Do you mean to tell me, Isabel,” said Gran, her ironic enjoyment of this visitor drying up on the instant, “that you don’t remember? Of course you do. I can’t imagine why you bother to pretend you don’t. That’s Nicholas Irving’s work, as you very well know—the model he made for the statue.”

  “Nicholas Irving? Oh. Dear me. Of course. Now I remember. What a funny duck he was. Yes, I do remember something about a statue.”

  “I should think you would,” said Gran. “Don’t try to play your little games with me, missy. You remember it perfectly well, and now that I come to think of it, I dare say that’s why you came here today—to see if you’d been forgiven at last. A guilty conscience can be very troublesome, I’ve heard.”

  “Well, you’re entirely wrong about that, Geneva,” said the woman resentfully. “I don’t in the least feel guilty. But I might have guessed you’d still be blaming me for what happened to Nicholas.”

  “He loved you, heaven help him,” said Gran, “and you let him think you loved him back. He was making that statue for you, and then you laughed at it, Isabel. You laughed, and broke his heart.”

  “Well, I’m sure it wasn’t my fault if he cared for me,” said Mrs. Owen, her round face puckering a little. “I couldn’t help it. Lots of boys cared for me, and they didn’t go and drown themselves.”

  “Nicholas wasn’t ‘lots of boys,’ ” said Gran. “Nicholas was special.”