by Mary Rickert
“You can see me?”
“It isn’t that dark.”
She sits up slowly, patting her hair made curly by lying on the grass. “You can hear me?”
Bay nods, then, wondering if she’s obscured by shadows, says, “Yes, I can see and hear you.”
“Can you still hear me?”
Bay thinks Stella is probably a lot like the mean girls at school: someone able to smile as she ridicules, someone who knows how to make alliances but not how to be loyal, someone who drinks too much at parties. Not that Bay ever gets invited to those parties, but she hears about them, even as she keeps her face averted, not wanting to be caught watching the people at school who say she has an evil eye.
“Yes. I hear you.”
“You actually hear me?”
Nana is right, Bay thinks. Drunk people are so annoying.
“You see and hear me?”
Bay almost feels sorry for Stella, she seems so confused. What is she wearing, anyway? Why did she take off her beautiful dress and put on this ugly thing instead? “How come you changed?”
“Well, now let me see if I can answer that. I haven’t had to answer to anyone for so long. It isn’t easy being here. I’m sure that’s part of it. At first I was sad all the time. Then I was angry. And now I’m just—wait, you can hear me? I have been wanting to talk to you for so long! I used to watch you play here.”
Bay rolls her eyes. She doesn’t have to be polite. Stella won’t remember any of this when she’s sober. Bay wonders if she had too much to drink herself, though she doesn’t remember taking more than a few sips of the merlot. It must be the combination of moon and candlelight, and not an alcohol-induced illusion that creates the aura around Stella, almost as though she is its source. “Listen, Stella—”
“Stella? Stella? Oh,” she says, and the light around her dims.
A bat must have crossed the moon, Bay thinks.
“Oh, changed! You mean my dress.”
“When did you watch me play here?”
“Oh, that.” She moves her hand, a bright flash of white.
Is she flickering?
“I didn’t mean it the way it sounds. I didn’t mean I used to watch you. How could I? We only just met, didn’t we?”
Bay nods.
“I meant to say I imagine. Yes, that’s what I meant to say. I imagine you played here as a child.”
Stella sounds an awful lot like Ruthie right now, Bay thinks, realizing that Ruthie, who hasn’t drunk a drop of wine since her arrival, sounds like she’s drunk most of the time.
“You want to know why I changed? My dress?” She plucks at the skirt but picks up nothing, her finger and thumb pinching air. “I guess I changed because I wanted…that is to say, this is more comfortable.”
The dress reminds Bay of the sort of thing her Nana sleeps in. It appears to be quite loose, a dismal shade of brown splotched with red, which Bay assumes is a rose pattern on the skirt. It looks comfortable but ugly and too warm, with its long sleeves, for summer.
“Why don’t you sit with me, Bay?” She pats the ground. “What did you think of the party? Did you have a wonderful time? I used to love parties!”
There is something about the way Stella is behaving right now; she seems so lonely and strange that Bay sits, letting her dress with its full skirt spread out in such a pleasant fashion, forgetting for a moment, how unhappy she is. “It was an amazing party. Ruthie did a great job.”
“Oh, Ruthie. She is something, isn’t she?”
The sudden infusion of honeysuckle that passes in the space between them quickly becomes cloyingly sweet; combined with the bad smell, the effect is sickening. “Ruthie’s great,” Bay says. “Not at all the way you think.”
“But I think Ruthie is—wait—did I say something unkind about Ruthie?”
This is the weirdest conversation Bay has ever had. Can Stella be so drunk she doesn’t even remember her accusation?
“I don’t know why I would have said something unkind about Ruthie, unless it was, you know, under duress, but let’s talk about something else. Something happy. I heard you like to swim?”
“Yeah,” says Bay, though she hasn’t gone back to the river since the day after her birthday. She thought her Nana would worry about that, but she believed Bay when she said she had too many things going on to go swimming. “I used to like it,” Bay says. “I’m not sure anymore.”
“Well, that happens. I was quite a swimmer myself for a while, which reminds me, Bay, I have something important to tell you, okay? Something you have to tell Nan, and Mavis and Ruthie too.”
Bay shrugs, not willing to fully commit until she hears what it is.
“Say I’m not angry. I never was. Not at them, at least.”
“Why would you—”
“You have to tell them. All of them.”
“But—”
“I know not everything makes sense right now. Believe me, I remember when everything stopped making sense, though your situation is different. My goodness, yes. There are times when things just don’t make sense, but that doesn’t mean—”
“No.” Bay shakes her head. She isn’t sure what they are talking about, but she’s sure about this. “You’re wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you mean I’m wrong? I should know, I think. I should know whether I’m angry or not.”
“You’re wrong. You can’t call someone a murderer and make it better by not being angry about it.”
“Well, my goodness, of course not, whatever would make you say such a thing?”
“Not me, you. You’re the one who said it.”
“Well, I, goodness. Who knows what I said at the end? I hope I didn’t say anything like that, but I was entirely unprepared. I was only a few years older than you are now. I don’t remember what I said. I was sad. You have no idea. It wasn’t… I wasn’t ready. I had, why I had dreams. I had so many dreams! Ruthie knows. We were going to leave together. Move to the city. Can you imagine what Ruthie would be like if I hadn’t… I wanted to get away from there. I was going to get a job. Any old thing. I had an idea that I would save up for teacher’s college. That probably sounds strange, considering. I loved children. What happened to me was… Tell them, Bay, tell them I never blamed them at all.”
Bay wonders again if she might be the one who has had too much to drink, though she doesn’t recall more than those few sips. Her Nana is always serving wine so it won’t be tempting to overindulge at teenage parties. Poor Nan still hasn’t noticed that Bay doesn’t get invited to parties, which is all right for the most part. Who wants to drink so much they throw up? Bay doesn’t understand the attraction.
“Can you still hear me?”
“Yes. I hear you.”
“I know you’re confused. I’m sorry, but I can’t wait for you to understand. I’ve waited long enough, and who knows, maybe this is the only chance I’ll get. I need to ask you to do this while you can still hear me.”
“Yes. I. Hear. You. Fine.”
“Well, you don’t need to shout, dear. I’m not deaf just… Tell them, okay? Tell them I was grateful they were there. They were a comfort to me. I don’t really like that ‘Did not the whole earth sicken when she died?’ I don’t want to be the cause of so much sorrow.”
Drunk people never make sense, Bay thinks as she pushes against the damp ground to stand. “You’re not going to wander away or anything?”
“No, I can’t. I depart for brief periods of time, but I always end up back here. Wait, you aren’t leaving me? Don’t go. We can talk about other things. Happy things. You can tell me about happiness.”
Bay can’t explain her desperate need for escape, how the smell she has been insisting all day is not so bad has now become unbearable. Maybe I am angry, she thinks as she pushes through the pampas grass, determined not to stop even at the sound o
f Stella’s drunken pleading.
Stepping into the yard scented pleasantly of citronella, Bay glances back to see if she is being followed, but while the grass rustles as though someone passes through, no one does. Bay decides she’ll sit on the porch and—what’s that thing her Nana says?—she’ll “gather her thoughts.” Yes, she just needs to gather her thoughts.
But there really is no place left. Even the porch is occupied. Nan sits with a stream of moonlit drool dripping down her chin. Mavis sleeps in the other rocker, her head back, her mouth open beneath the lavender hair oddly askew.
Bay decides to take a little walk. So what if it’s the middle of the night? It’s not like she lives someplace dangerous. As soon as her bare feet touch the warm pavement, she wonders why she’s never done this before. It’s such a pretty road, lined with tiger lilies and wild phlox bowed beneath the moon. She answers her own question by remembering all the stories she’s heard of kidnapped children then tells herself to calm down. Nothing happens here. Is that all there is to it, the lies her Nana told (if they were lies, that is), an attempt to keep Bay close?
Because if Nan is a witch, Bay thinks, she’s a liar as well. Did she really find me in a box? Was I really left on her doorstep? Or is there some other explanation, something sinister? What a ridiculous story, found in a shoe box on the porch!
Bay stops on the side of the stone-pitted road to inspect her foot. Tiny spots of blood blossom on her heel. She can still see her house. She can’t see her Nana or Mavis on the porch, but she thinks they are still there; they didn’t look like they were waking any time soon. She sees only a glimpse of the backyard, the candle jars flickering. She imagines Stella sleeping in that mysterious moonbeam, Howard and Thalia talking within that aura of light.
Who am I? Bay turns away. Where am I going?
She walks on the grassy bank, pushing through the tiger lilies, parting the tall grass, safely out of the way when a car comes too fast around the curve, headlights briefly monstrous before it passes, leaving Bay once again in moonlight, and alone.
CARNATION A girl who wears carnation blossoms in her hair will learn her fortune. If the top one dies first, the last years of her life will be difficult. If the bottom one dies first, she will have misfortune in youth. If the middle one dies first, her entire life will be marked by sorrow. The white carnation is a symbol of love; the red, a symbol of an aching heart.
Nan wakes on the moonlit porch, thinking that Mavis’s appearance is a little frightening beneath the strange wig, her face ghostly pale, eyebrows archly drawn over lashless eyes, and just like that, Nan understands. How had she not seen it sooner? It steals her breath. Mavis is dying!
How did she know, how did that young Mavis know we should celebrate our bodies while we can?
Nan closes her eyes and leans back against the rocker, remembering.
She was only supposed to be taking care of Fairy, the cat, but how could she resist the opportunity for a freedom they had all gotten used to that past summer? When she showed them Miss Winter’s book with those pictures of naked women, Eve and Ruthie covered their eyes, but Mavis said they needed to stop acting like bodies were embarrassing.
Perhaps it was the dandelion wine that made them wild, because it seemed one minute they were drinking out of the bottle and the next they were standing in Miss Winter’s parlor, almost naked, their skin brushed with light from the fireplace flames. When Mavis announced it was time, they dropped the towels. Eve, who had protested the plan most vehemently, was the last to do so, revealing her distended belly, lightly veined blue against pink skin, like a blossomed watercolor.
The flames crackled and wavered in the peculiar stillness that shrouded them, until Mavis spoke. “Are you pregnant?” she asked.
Eve picked up her clothes and walked out of the room. The three who remained, suddenly self-conscious, even Mavis, turned their backs to dress.
“I don’t understand,” Ruthie said, over and over again. “I thought she made him up. Didn’t she say there was no James?”
Mavis and Nan didn’t bother trying to explain the obvious. They spoke in hushed voices. Things could be done. This didn’t have to happen. They spoke in code, without ever saying exactly what they meant.
“Miss Winter,” Nan said. “It’s what she does.”
“Are you talking about witchcraft?” Ruthie whispered.
People said Grace Winter was a witch; something Nan’s father called preposterous, though Nan watched her own mother hang a rosary from the kitchen window facing their neighbor’s porch.
“Come,” Nan said. “I’ll show you.”
Miss Winter’s basement was not filled with tools, broken tables, terra-cotta pots, cobwebs, and clocks. What did the witches do here? Nan wondered when she came to feed Fairy that first night, creeping around the house like a criminal. She went upstairs before she went down. Attics were the place for secrets, love letters, wedding dresses, feathered hats, and fur coats. She didn’t know anyone with anything important in the basement, but when she found the locked door, she immediately thought of the key Miss Winter removed from the ring. “Now this here one is for the front,” she’d said to Nan. “And this one for the back. This one you don’t got to worry about.” She frowned at the skeleton key even as she worked it off, waiting until Nan’s back was turned before dropping it into the desk drawer, which Nan spied quite by accident in the mirror, not really thinking much about it until her curious search led her to the locked room. It didn’t take long to find the key in the desk, which is where she returned it and found it again. She unlocked the basement door, turned on the light, and with a flourish of hand, like the magician when they were little girls, presented the room with all its surgical furnishings.
“What is this?” Ruthie asked, but a moan brings Nan back to the present, where Mavis frowns at Nan as though she were a source of indigestion.
“What are you looking at?”
“Your hair,” Nan says.
“What about it?”
“Crooked.”
Mavis grasps the lavender wig, and with a few tugs, makes an adjustment, though it still isn’t right. Nan mimes moving her own hair (which suddenly seems abundant) and, following this example, Mavis adjusts the wig to rest more realistically on her head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nan asks.
Mavis pats the slithery boa and picks at the drape of her leopard-print dress. She finally lifts her chin to face Nan, who observes the amazing matter of Mavis with tears in her eyes.
“Are you getting better?”
“Haven’t you noticed? I keep getting better all the time.”
How strange, Nan thinks, to feel so entirely the loss of a friend she lost a long time ago. What a waste, what a terrible waste. She starts to say this, but Mavis raises her hand, palm out. “Don’t. Pity buries me alive,” she says, turning away to stare into the dark.
***
It was Mavis, of all people, who insisted they take Eve to a “real” doctor instead of Grace Winter with her strange instruments in the frightening basement. But when they went there (and they all went with Eve, of course, “What’s this, girl’s day out?” the nurse said) it wasn’t a doctor’s office at all.
They took the train, which would have been exciting under other circumstances, watching their familiar world flip past the dirty glass, meadow to broken corn stalks, to dark trees reaching long branches, to dilapidated houses, to smoke-spewing factories, the landscape suddenly comprised of gray towers, metal, and people rushing past. The four of them, ejected in their Sunday best, wandered the terminal like summer flowers tossed in the wind, until Mavis, who acted like she knew what she was doing, led them down a frightening hallway, strangely empty, though populated with the feeling of being watched. Her confident retreat brought them to a giant room of beveled glass as beautiful as it was confusing. They found the exit; immediately hailing a taxi, wh
ich took them into a sorrowful neighborhood of dismal buildings, one with a plastic red carnation stuck oddly in the dirt by the front stairs, like a wound. Nan tried not to be superstitious about the chill that crawled up her spine when they opened the creaking door into a dark hall that smelled sour and salty.
The “office” was furnished with a desk, several uncomfortable straight-back chairs, one small table with an unlit lamp, and an ashtray filled with stubs of cigarettes shaped like tiny bones, some with red smears of lipstick. The three of them sat, waiting for Eve, who was taken behind a screen into what she later said was “just a kitchen.”
“It was dirty,” she said. “Maybe Nan was right.”
Mavis, Ruthie, and Nan never saw him, though they heard his voice, a low, scratchy sound like sandpaper. “Take it off. Why are you crying? You want this, don’t you?”
Nan, who had neglected to bring a book or knitting, searched for something to occupy her mind and remembered the afternoon she came upon Eve reaching for the honeysuckle her mother trained to trail around the door before she died. Eve was standing on bare tiptoes, reaching, when Mr. Leary stepped outside, and spoke softly to her bowed head, then brushed something from her face, though Eve’s hair was short and always neat. They both jumped when Nan called out. At the time she found it strange, but didn’t linger over the thought.
Mr. Leary turned away. Well, he wasn’t known as a demonstrative father. Eve looked, for just a moment, like a stranger, but the moment passed so quickly Nan thought it must have been a trick of the light, the terrible expression on Eve’s face replaced with that odd smile she had, her eyes perpetually sad, as if she were bifurcated.
In the dismal apartment meant to be Eve’s place of salvation, Nan shifted in the chair, still not sure why the memory made her so uncomfortable. Trying to find something happy to think about, she recalled that Halloween when Mr. Black sawed the lady in half. She smiled the whole time that bloodless blade severed her, and just like that, the way inspiration or divine knowing is said to arrive, Nan understood what happened to Eve. While Ruthie sat with folded hands and erect back, oblivious, and Mavis paged through her Isak Dinesen, Nan arched forward and vomited a splash of putrid yellow mush that splattered Ruthie’s white shoes.
