"We must all invent God for ourselves."
—Ariel Leppa, New Eden, 2001
Not that she believed a scintilla less than what she had always believed about God. But she had finally separated it from man's inhumanity to man. Need a war? God will provide. Need genocide? God will provide. Hate, intolerance, dominance, insecurity, greed, fear, ego—all sanctified through the next prophet. Or the last, if you were too lazy to start your own reformation. God on the dashboard. God in plastic icons. God made real by accumulated dust. (We are proud of our humility, and absolutely obstinate about our open-mindedness.)
The only way you could really know anything about God was to be ostracized from the marketplace of divinity. Blessed are the alienated. Blessed are those upon whom derision and cruelty are heaped by their so-called friends for the first seven decades of their lives. That was how you came to know God. And if you happened upon the dust of creation, well, my, my, but it could be fun! So Ariel was over the sentimentality. One Amber. Ten Ambers. Count them on Sesame Street. No matter. A commodity now. All the same. So let the two Ambers downstairs sort it out for a while. No chance they would get along with each other. And the dynamics of not getting along would be instructive to Ariel.
But she was dead wrong about that. Two little girls, each inhabiting the other's life, not quite united, not quite independent, were like hostages to each other. Hostages and captors. So don't forget the old Stockholm syndrome. Make your captor into your friend. And that is why, as soon as the dual screams were uttered, the two Ambers immediately registered the fact that the other one was afraid.
It was reassuring, if only marginally. It meant that some robotic assault by a mindless impostor of themselves was not under way. Each was tensed for whatever came next, but when nothing came, the edge of alarm dulled. The insatiable stares softened. Anxiety ebbed.
An imagined dialogue went through each of their minds, questions that seemed to be answered before they were asked. Who are you? Where did you come from? What are you doing here? The answers would obviously be the same for both of them. So when the first words were actually spoken, the question was not about themselves. It was about the person who had created them.
"Why did she do this?" Amber One murmured breathlessly, sinking back to her knees on the bed.
Amber Two let go of the doorknob and for the first time dared glance around the room. It was no longer yesterday's room, but a new one. Different paint, different pictures on the wall, everything out of place except the bed and the dresser. Her glance darted back. "How long have you been here?"
"A year."
"A year? Then it must be true. She said I was gone for a long time."
"Did she tell you about before? About the climbing accident and being crippled and all?"
"She said I died. She said I was forty-four when I died. It was scary. I thought she was crazy or kidding me, but she looked so old, and . . . and everything really is different." She edged into the room, puzzling at the CDs piled on the floor. "But I can't believe this."
"Believe it. It threw me for a long time too, because you feel the same way you always did. You keep thinking it's going to go back the way it was. But you can't go to school or anywhere now. Mom's afraid of what will happen if people come here, so you can't make friends. I've only been shopping twice, and both times she drove me straight there and straight back and wouldn't let me talk to anyone when we went in the stores."
"Freaky."
"Freaky is uncool."
Amber Two looked stricken. And the look only deepened over the next half hour as too much of thirty-six missing years replaced too much of yesterday too fast. The cassette player was a boom box, John Lennon was dead, beads and bell-bottoms were ancient history, tattoos and body piercing were in, shoes looked funny, hats were plain, cars looked like trucks, cells were phones, songs were videos, and TV shows had funny names like Malcolm in the Middle—all this coming from her mirror image in a blur of words and magazine pages.
Amber One was getting frustrated too, because how could you explain karaoke and a dubber to someone who only knew vinyl records? But she couldn't restrain herself, and she scrambled on and off the mattress, retrieving Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books and makeup with glitter until she saw her twin's face flag hot with tears, and then she stopped.
"You can't go back, you know," she said.
"Yeah." Big sniff, pressing the back of her hand to her nose.
"Just about everyone here was dead, and now at least they're alive. We're alive. So we must be better off."
"Yeah."
"Except . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing. You didn't see a painting of me up in the studio, did you—I mean, like a second one of you?"
"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "Just the one. And a bunch of Mom's friends. I guess I met some of them down here. Weird."
"They're old, but they're not that bad. Except for Ruta—she needs to take a chill pill. Sometimes they're grouchy, but they give you stuff."
"What's a chill pill?"
"I mean she's all hyper and all."
"Oh." She touched the dresser. "Are there any other kids here?"
"No. Just us."
A speculative look passed between them, the thinnest bridge, swaying with uncertainty.
"I guess . . . in a way . . . we're sisters," said the Amber on the bed.
“Yeah.”
"Maybe that's why she made you."'
"I don't know. It's hard to know what she thinks. She's so old now, so different. It's spooky to see her like that."
"Did she tell you what she can do with the pictures?"
"What d'you mean?"
"She can paint them out. She can make us disappear. She can make anyone disappear. In fact, she already has."
Renewed fear flashed green in her counterpart's eyes.
"She's done it to people in the house. And Dad is in a wheelchair—did she tell you that?"
“No.”
"And Aarfie's dead."
"She said he ran out in front of a pickup truck."
"That was a long time ago. She brought him back, and then he was killed again."
"How?"
"By . . . by something else that got painted."
The newly incarnated version of herself looked sicker and sicker as these revelations unfolded, but Amber One continued on. She had a full year of her own disorientation to unload, a year of loneliness, a year of gossip, a year of pent-up freakish isolation from any kind of peer. And that single year had thirty-six more years of lost time in it. Zipped up like a compressed computer file ("Oh yeah—I haven't told you about computers. We don't have one, but everything is computers now.") And almost in the same breath she was telling her about the red spider in the bathtub and the thing that killed Paavo the first time. Amber in Horrorland. Incomprehensible stuff. And it wasn't just family history. By definition the dawn of the twenty-first century carried its own estrangement. So to the newly arrived child the fantastic aberrations brought about by their mother were hardly distinguishable from the realities of cargo pants and spiked hair, and naked people right on television, and herky-jerky music shared through ear buds by the two Ambers—"That's Britney Spears, only you gotta see the video." And the re-education went on until the ancient munchkins beyond the bedroom walls crept out of their rooms again and the household began to rustle and sigh with movement, with cautious conversations, with water running and the smell of tomato soup and tuna fish from the kitchen. The two girls ended up side by side, looking at their twin reflections in the dresser mirror: Amber One with slightly darker skin from the summer's sun and faint scratches on her cheek; Amber Two with slightly darker hair for lack of a summer's sun.
"So if we're sisters, then it's share and share alike, okay?" said Amber One. "It'll be spifferific, you'll see. You'll get used to everything, and I'll help you. Okay?"
"Okay."
And they played and shared for six days, and God looked down from Her studio at Her han
diwork and saw that it was good. . . . And She was furious! So on the seventh day She called Amber One up to her studio and said, "You've certainly taken to your little soul mate, haven't you? I'll bet you've shared all your secrets by now. But it's so confusing. I thought I'd be able to tell you apart, and here you are, so alike that you might as well be the same person—which, come to think of it, you are." And then She rummaged through the stack of canvases leaning against the wall and pulled up two, and Amber began to tremble because they looked exactly alike. "Just like these paintings of you, my dear. Can you tell which is which? I can. I suppose I'll have to paint one of you out, if it gets too confusing. But which one? What a dilemma. Let's see, what kind of test could I use? I know. The paint. Whichever one of you brings back my paint, that's the one who stays."
Chapter 24
Martin Bryce saw flames before he woke up. Saw flames and smelled smoke and heard Tiffany screaming for him. So when he opened his eyes, he was already agitated, already trying to swing his shoulder across his body to sit up.
He blinked at the room, yellow in the glow from the night-light. Beth was dead, and this was the place where his son had brought him. There were old people here, mostly women. He knew these things, but that didn't quiet the other impression. The fire. Tiffany. He could no longer trust the evidence of his senses.
On his second try he rolled to a sitting position and sat breathing hard, waiting for the dizziness to subside. He coughed once, and when his heart had been given ample notice of what was to come, he felt around with his bare feet for his slippers and stood up. A smaller wave of dizziness was accommodated by another rise in blood pressure, and then his heart was thudding strongly and steadily. He reached out for his robe on the chair, fell a few inches short, took a step, reached again. His arms felt like plumb bobs, but the act of swathing himself invigorated the muscles somewhat. Fitting on his glasses with both hands, he wandered into the corridor.
Without pondering why, he took the small fire extinguisher off the wall and lugged it with him through the house to the parlor. There he turned around twice in the gloom before locating the shadowy front door. When he stood in the front yard a few feet from the porch, he looked around again and took stock. He didn't specifically remember his previous midnight forays, but he felt a familiar imperative. This was right: coming outside . . . the path around the side of the farmhouse . . . the big pile of rubble that smelled of smoke out back. The barn fire had affected him profoundly. Like a long-awaited beacon on a dark journey, it linked where he had been with where he must go. Shuffling through the dust in his slippers, he passed around the side of the house.
Something wide-winged and jagged, like an animated kite, glided to the top of the basswood, but he didn't see it, didn't feel it when it swooped down from behind and passed within six feet of him. He was too absorbed with the charred remains of the barn, and he just kept padding through the soft perimeter of ashes, searching for a way in. The smell of smoke was damp and acrid; there must be flames in there. And he didn't know, but maybe this was where Tiffany's screams came from at night. Lifting the extinguisher and aiming it at the debris, he tried to squeeze the handles together, but nothing happened.
The kite-like silhouette lifted off the roof of the machine shed for a second ponderous attack, beating its ragged asymmetry, lifting its talons, arrowing straight for the upright human being.
Martin fumbled with the extinguisher mechanism, twisting, pushing and finally catching his finger in a plastic loop. He pulled out the pin and squeezed the handles again. This time the extinguisher gushed foam, and the prolonged hiss drove the swooping silhouette away. When the extinguisher sputtered its last, Martin dropped it and listened hard for a cry.
"Tiffany?" he called.
Then he shuffled back to the house, head down—a line of steps, a pause, a quarter or a half turn to reorient himself. Inside he passed through the parlor, but the inky darkness threw off his balance and he grasped a wooden post that suddenly appeared on his left. For a few seconds his chest lifted effortfully. Why couldn't he find Tiffany? He glanced to the side, saw that he was leaning on a newel, looked up a staircase that led to darkness.
He didn't remember the staircase, didn't think he had ever climbed it. That must be where she was. Where the fire was. He hoped he wouldn't be too late this time. She would be horribly scarred if he was late. He started up, pushing on one knee, sliding his elbow along the banister and winching himself to each successive step. But he made only a few before he had to sit down. There were days (or nights) when he could climb this staircase, but this night wasn't one of them. He felt lousy. And he couldn't remember why he had started up now. He was tired, and he knew he had a bed here somewhere. Downstairs. Wearily, he stood.
"You there," came a whisper.
He looked to where the whisper had come from; saw nothing.
"Mr. Bryce? Come up here."
Martin peered wide-eyed in the gloom. "Who are you?"
"I can't come down. I'm in a wheelchair. I've got something for you."
"What is it?"
"Something that belongs to . . . Tiffany."
And that galvanized him a little. His focus came back, and he climbed one slow step at a time, hesitating to strain up at the darkness until he could see the face peering through the balusters on the landing. He reached the second floor, and there was the man, a shaggy man with a huge head. But he wasn't in a wheelchair. He was sitting on the carpet.
"I've been waiting for you, Mr. Bryce. My daughter told me you walk around at night, so I knew if I could just get to the landing, sooner or later I'd catch you."
"Where's Tiffany?"
"She hasn't been up in a while. I think her mother is keeping her away. But I've got something for her. It's a secret, and there isn't anyone else in this house I trust. Can I trust you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come and I'll show you." He began to drag himself up the next flight. "Come on, Mr. Bryce."
They weren't that different when it came to climbing stairs—octogenarian Martin Bryce, legless Thomas Leppa, sighing like steam locomotive pistons working in tandem up a steep grade. At the very top the wheelchair was outlined in dim light cast from an open doorway. With his farmer's biceps and a little dexterity not unlike a gymnast's on a pommel horse, Thomas Leppa stiff-armed himself onto the foot stops and hauled himself onto the seat. Releasing the brakes on the wheels, he spun silently through the open door.
"Under the cedar chest," he said when Martin caught up.
Maneuvering slowly, he brought the chair alongside a brass-bound chest and adjusted the green shade of the lamp that sat on its lid. With the light spilling squarely on the floor, he reached down again and slid out two objects.
"You see?" he said. And Martin Bryce saw. "I want you to take them to Amber—to Tiffany. Hide them until you get a chance to show her in private. Will you do that?"
Chapter 25
So now Amber knew. It was in her mother's icy eyes, wide and staring like a cat's. She had even sounded like a cat, purring when she offered a test to see which of her daughters would survive.
And that was why Amber had to get the paint out of the cistern now, no matter what the risk from the thing that lived in the woods. She had to move it far, far away this time, so that her mother wouldn't follow her. The creek that wound through the property and came out at Crookshank Road had a culvert there with cattails and mud on either side, and that's where she thought she would go. Aarfie had gotten into that mud once, and it had taken them a couple of hours to reach him. Her father used to joke that he was going to leave the family jewels there, because no one would touch them in all that muck. So she would take a spade with her and dig a hole near the culvert and bury the paint jar there.
But it had to be now. Only, she was afraid to go at night because of the spider. And anyway, the other Amber would know because they slept together in the big bed.
The other Amber. She didn't know what else to
call her. That was the one big awkwardness between them.
They talked so intimately and shared everything else, but they couldn't decide about the name. Did that mean they were competing? She had been thinking about it and she was going to suggest that they both pick different names. She would be Christina, or maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The other subject that they had never talked about in the week before her mother made her threat in the studio was the stolen paint. She hadn't been able to bring that up either. A couple of times she had been on the verge of telling her twin, and something had interrupted—
Alicia Keys singing "Fallin’" on the radio, and another time Ruta glaring cow-eyed at them from the porch. But now that her mother had threatened to make it a test between them, how lucky was that? She would have revealed the hiding place today or tomorrow. Lucky but sad. Because when her mother told her twin what the deal for survival was, it was going to change everything.
When she came back from the studio that night and got into bed, she started to cry.
"What is it?" came at her shoulder. "Was she mean?"
"Sort of."
"What did she say?"
"She wants to split us up."
"How can she?"
Hesitation. "She can't."
But she could. She would. One way or another. Amber wasn't crying because her mother didn't love her. She was crying because yet another dream of having a companion had been shot through the heart.
Which may have had something to do with why she procrastinated going for the paint the next day. It was like admitting that she couldn't trust her only friend, ending their friendship, in fact. So she didn't move the stolen paint right away. After all, as long as they were together, she would know if their mother called her twin aside to tell her about the stolen paint and the test.
There were other excuses to delay her trip back to the cistern. Everyone in the house was watching them out of the corners of their eyes, as if something was going to happen, so it would be hard to slip away. And late in the afternoon they got into some boxes in the cellar filled with stuff from their childhood, and that was really strange—
Dust of Eden Page 23
