Dust of Eden

by Thomas Sullivan

  So she scuffed down the roof to the chimney and made her leap to the pipe and then down to the lightning rod and the window to the sewing room, and it was all pretty quiet in the house. Scrambling inside, she slowly lowered the sash. No problemo, she thought. And there wasn't. Except that when she turned, her mother was sitting there in the dark in the high Queen Anne chair.

  "Is that where the paintings are?" Ariel said. "Up on the roof?"

  Amber was too shocked to answer. She was trying to figure it out—how her mother knew—and of course it must have been when Amber shouted down to Mrs. Novicki in the barn. Her mother had probably been upstairs and could tell where the shout had come from. And once she knew, she had responded to the fire and never looked up at the roof, Amber was sure of that. That's how smart her mother could be. You might fool her for awhile, but never forever. And when she stopped being fooled, you wouldn't know it. Worst of all, you couldn't tell what she would do about it.

  "I can't go up there, of course," her mother said. "None of us can. Except you," she added with a hush of magic in her voice. "It's too bad you don't remember your previous life past the age you are now. Then you might have learned your lesson about climbing dangerous things. It's no fun being in a wheelchair, Amber."

  "What do you care?" Amber said petulantly, trying to gain the upper hand.

  "I care."

  "You killed me," she asserted breathily. "You killed your own daughter."

  She could make out her mother's face in the gray light now. The "dead-on look" her father used to call it. No one could look straight at you like her mother. Eagles looked like that. Burning eyes and everything just sort of aimed at you so you knew you couldn't escape.

  "I made you better."

  "You made me dead. You showed me my grave in the cemetery."

  Ariel plucked something from her skirt in the gloom, a thread perhaps. "I should have known you would eventually accuse me of this."

  "It's true!"

  "What's true is that you're alive—young, healthy, and impertinent. I didn't know what was going to happen when I gave you life again. In fact, I didn't know I was giving you life. I just painted you as my last act."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind. You've succeeded in putting me on the defensive, because I'm a caring mother and I dwell on my mistakes. But a caring mother tries to keep her daughter from making the same mistakes. I want the pictures you have, Amber."

  The dead-on look. All silhouette except for her eyes and a little bluish gray on the left side of her nose, cheek and brow. Demanding in that way she had that made you feel that all the right was on her side. All the right and all the might. She had made the people in this house—made them!—like she was God. Only she had done some awful things too. Making people go away and come back, and maybe, like with Mrs. Korpela, she shouldn't have made them come back at all

  "Right now, Amber!"

  "I don't have any paintings. I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I don't have them. They all blew away when we had the storm, except for two that I found in the fields, and one of them was no good and the other was almost no good, but I tried to fix that and . . . and that's how the barn got burned down. The red scarecrow went in there and he had Mrs. Novicki, and I saved her—I did, Mom. I painted fire and that made the scarecrow burn up, only the barn got burned up too."

  She was crying now, the final punctuation of a child's confession, because while the appeal was exhausted, the fear of punishment remained.

  "So you still have paint," Ariel said quietly.

  "'What?"'

  "If you painted fire, then you must still have my paint."

  "It’s—I think it’s all used up."

  "Bring me the empty jar."

  "You said not to climb on the roof."

  "I'll make an exception.”

  “But you just got through telling me how dangerous it is. Like I said, you don’t really care about me, do you, Mom?”

  “Well. If something happens to you, I can always bring you back, can't I?"

  Terrifying words. Especially the "can't I?" A question that implied If I want to. Even the child could hear the thrill of power in the mother’s voice. Ariel Leppa nonchalantly twirling an umbilical cord that now stretched over two births, assessing whether it could possibly extend to three. And her daughter-of-the-moment felt the centrifugal pull of this. So it really was dangerous – what Amber did next. But she had to do it. Because she feared what her mother would do once she had the paint back. Then Amber would have nothing to bargain with. And no one could imagine the things her mother could imagine, being an artist and all.

  “I threw the jar at the barn when it was burning," she said.

  "Ah. The burning barn. I see. Well. That takes care of that. You can go now."

  Danger, danger. Why was she talking that way? What was she going to do? Amber couldn't let it go. Couldn't walk out of that room not knowing if her mother really was satisfied with the way things were, or whether she had just given up persuasion in favor of something more subtle.

  "Aren't you going to punish me?"

  "Do you think you need it?"

  "No."

  "Good."

  Amber took a couple of quick steps toward the door, then pivoted on one foot. Her mother's face caught a little more light from this angle. She was no longer looking dead-on.

  "Maybe just a little," Amber amended about the punishment.

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Um…I shouldn't get any dinner."

  "Done. No sauerkraut and sausage for you."

  "No dessert either."

  "Good. I don't think Molly had time to make any anyway."

  "No dessert all week."

  "My, my."

  “Stop making fun of me.”

  “I’m not making fun of you, Amber.”

  "And I shouldn't listen to music or watch TV."

  Silence from the Queen Anne chair. She was overdoing it, and her mother was no longer amused. Nothing had changed. The danger was still there. Better to shut up and just go to her room.

  "We won't be using this window anymore," Ariel said when Amber got to the doorway. "I'll have Paavo nail the sashes together. You'll want to make sure he doesn't do it while you're up on the roof."

  Amber lay awake in the massive bed frame her grandfather had supposedly hewn together for her mother before he went off to fight in WWII. White oak corner posts as big around as water heaters and sideboards thick as curbs. You lay in it and you felt like you were anchored to the center of the earth. In her imagination Amber had survived storms and stampedes in its embrace, earthquakes and a direct meteor hit from outer space. But tonight it felt like a coffin. Tonight it paralyzed her with dread. Physical movement seemed impossible. When the sheets got hot and her legs itched, she didn't roll to a cool spot, she thought about rolling to a cool spot and then she just lay there. She didn't even get up when she heard old Mr. Bryce passing in the hall, his hand hissing along the wallpaper the way it did whenever he was unsteady. But later, hearing shuffling outside her window, she dragged herself up on one elbow and saw him standing in the moonlight in front of the still-smoldering barn.

  His arms hung limply at his sides, and he seemed to lean a little, as if he were listening to something. What could he hear from ashes? Maybe he was hungry, she thought. Maybe she should take him some nice lemony yogurt. But if she got caught, her mother would think she was getting it for herself despite her declaration that she should go to bed without eating. So she flopped back on the pillow.

  She heard Mr. Bryce come back in and then go out again. She lost count of the number of times he went out to stand looking at the ashes of the barn. But at some point she began to cry for him—or maybe it was for herself—because he was looking for her, wasn't he? His Tiffany. And in a way she was just as doomed as if she really had been in that burning barn. Because when she went to sleep, she might wake up ancient. In fact, she might not wake up at all, if her mother decided to d
estroy the portrait that had brought her back. So maybe it was better to just let old Mr. Bryce think she was already gone.

  A little later it occurred to her that what her mother had said about having Paavo nail the window shut was good, because it meant that she expected Amber to be around. If she didn't, then it wouldn't matter about the window. And if Amber really needed to get up to the roof, she could probably still do it. Because her mother didn't know exactly how she got up there—that she used the lightning rod and the side of the house—and if she had to, she could do that right from the ground, she thought. She could climb up using the brackets probably, even though she wouldn't have the gutter to relieve some of the weight until she got to the sewing room window ledge. Like her father said, the trick was to pretend you were on the ground. You could dance and jump on a two-by-four on the ground and never fall, so climbing with hands and feet should be no problem. If the lightning rod held.

  But her mother had also said that about Paavo nailing the window shut while she was up there, which meant that she expected her to try, and also that she didn't believe Amber had used up the paint and thrown away the jar. Not that it had been a very good lie. But any lie—even a transparent one—was better than just defying her mother to her face. Whatever happened, she had to hang on to the paint in the jar, Amber decided. Her father couldn't protect her anymore, couldn't tell her mother to lighten up, couldn't coax his little girl through her darkest feelings in that fade-away voice of his:

  I hate Mommy.

  No, you don't.

  I do. I wish she was dead.

  No, you don't. Your mother loves you.

  Hah.

  And you love her

  Double hah.

  Someday you're going to have to work this out—you two. Someday you're going to have to find a way to communicate. Your mother doesn't know how to tell you she loves you. She thinks so much of you that she wants you to be perfect. But you just want her to love you.

  Triple hah. Like I could care.

  You want that more than anything else in the world.

  Her parents had fought a lot, and you could think they hated each other, but if anyone knew her mother and could make her change her mind about anything, it was her dad. That's what Amber wanted to believe. But now her mother had done all these cruel things, brought her dad back in a wheelchair even—why? And she was checking people in and out like they were clothes in her closet. Trying to get them to fit perfectly too. So maybe her father had been right, and maybe now her mother had gone over the edge.

  He was wrong about her wanting her mother to love her, though. She didn't care anymore.

  Not at all.

  At last, reluctantly, she drifted off to sleep while Mr. Bryce stood watch outside the ashes of the barn, unaware and unable to save her from extinction. The last thing she thought before sleep claimed her was that she was going to wake up dead.

  Which is why, as soon as she heard the barking, she thought she really was dead. Because no dog barked like Sir Aarfie, and no dog came skidding down the hall on the wood floor and then windmilled his nails on the seam of her door as fast as a gerbil's paws on an exercise wheel. So she must be where Aarfie had gone when he died. But then she heard Molly holler, "Where did that dog come from?" So then she knew she wasn't dead but that somehow, some way, Sir Aarfie had come back to life. And by the time she was sprawled on her bedroom floor, laughing and trying to keep him from licking her lips, she was already thinking that it had to be her mother. Her mother had painted Sir Aarfie back. She had found a photo somewhere and made the painting last night after their big confrontation in the sewing room.

  And Amber didn't know why, but that made her start to cry again.

  How could she have thought her mother would really hurt her? Hadn't she given her life twice? And even though she had caused her first death, it was because she wanted to bring her back, wanted her to be okay again and not in a wheelchair. Her mother had stayed up all night probably, looking for a photo of Aarfie and doing the painting, and now he was back! (Your mother doesn't know how to tell you she loves you.)

  So what could she do to show her mother how thankful she was? Because neither one of them was any good at saying how they felt. (Someday you're going to have to find a way to communicate.) And she guessed she knew what she had to do, even though now that the first wave of relief had passed she felt just a tingle of doubt, as if maybe her mother had known all along how it was going to turn out.

  But she got dressed anyway, putting on her Skechers and giving Aarfie one of her ragged felt-top boots from last winter. Then, while he was chewing industriously on the sole, she closed her bedroom door behind her, so that he couldn't follow and betray her intentions by barking. But the old floorboards snapped like a whole pack of barking dogs as she darted quickly through the house. Molly and Beverly were in the parlor, though they only nodded and smiled as she raced past, as if they were thinking she was going upstairs to thank her mother. Which she was, of course. But she was going to do it not with words but with the thing her mother wanted, even though it meant she would have to trust her now, because she would have no more leverage. The jar of red paint was up in the cupola, and she would get it and bring it to the studio, and her mother would understand and they wouldn't have to say a thing.

  That was what she intended to do.

  And she would have done it too, except that when she got to the sewing room and tried to raise the window sash, two slotted screws stared out of the wood at her like silver dragon's eyes.

  Chapter 18

  Get Amber!

  When had she last said those words? 1968? 69? Before Woodstock but after Kennedy and King were assassinated, Ariel thought. The year of the three deaths. Like the rest of the nation, they had been traumatized by all the madness, and then—that summer—Sir Aarfie ran out in front of the pickup on the curve, and that third death was childhood's end as far as Amber was concerned. But until then Ariel could say Get Amber! with an intonation of excitement to the eager toy collie, and he would look up at her, half understanding, and she would slap her hands on her thighs, making him flinch and scamper off without so much as a sniff, as if he knew by telepathy where his young mistress was. He always found Amber, always barked when he did.

  So now he was recalled for duty as a sleeper saboteur, a mole, a plant who would perform his Judas act at the proper time, because Ariel absolutely could not risk everything on a child's perspective! If her daughter managed to retrieve the paint from the roof, or if she had more hidden elsewhere, or if she was holding back some monster painting like this scarecrow of hers, then she must find it. She would watch for Amber's furtive exit, leaving Aarfie behind, and then when Amber had time to reach whatever hideaway she was visiting, Ariel would free the dog.

  Get Amber!

  The thirty-six-year-old painting of Aarfie she had used as a model stood side by side with the new one, virtually identical except for the brightness and the subtle densities in color that she achieved now with brush strokes rather than pigments. She had found the canvas flat in a drawer where she had left it after reclaiming the mount board for another project. It wasn't until she finished the new painting and noticed the shaky crayoned inscription MY DOG on the back of the old canvas that she remembered the circumstances of that year. Benchmark events came flooding back: explaining assassination and war to Amber; the accident with Aarfie in August; the Beatles "Hey Jude" for a dirge that fall because its lyrics and slow recession at the end seemed to sustain them; and then the movie "Oliver" at Christmastime for consolation and new beginnings.

  They had taken their chances in a world that was falling apart back then and had somehow survived. Why was everything going wrong for her now that she had control? It was backward. Hope and trust had never been her allies. Should she risk everything, put Amber in school, send everyone back to the families who had buried or cremated them? The world would overrun her if it knew what she could do. She could paint back saints and prophets, presidents a
nd Elvis Presley. It would be chaos if she did, of course. And yet, her little circle might be grateful to her then.

  Another possibility was that she could simply destroy the paint and scatter her father’s ashes, freeing the occupants of her little Eden and trusting that she would not be forgotten again. But they would still be discovered for what they were and surrounded with sensationalism. She would be derided by the world for throwing it all away—the Elvises and Gandhis. Her "friends" would feel pressure to ridicule her too.

  She stood at the window while the alla prima was drying sufficiently. She didn't watch—not watching had become a superstition with her—but just stared out as the night thinned away, shuddering a little at the sounds behind her. At one point she cried for the living Ambers she had lost, but the tears formed so slowly that there was no relief, and when at last dawn came and she heard the spasm of paws on the studio floor, her brittle mood annealed into something less vulnerable.

  "And where have you been?" she asked Aarfie when he stretched his paws up to the windowsill.

  She waited until the room filled halfway with light, like a bathtub full of sunrise, and then she led Sir Aarfie across the studio and opened the door.

  "Get Amber," she said.

  Later, she asked Dana to bring some coffee up to the sewing room for both of them. Of all the household, Dana was the least likely to lie or talk behind her back now, she thought, and if she did either of those things, they would show on her face like a slap. One on one, Dana read like a diary.

  "You have a little sunburn," Ariel said when the coffee was poured. "Or is that from the barn fire yesterday?"