by Dianne Dixon
But Grace is insistent. “No. I need you. I need you to stay. Always.”
Livvi is holding Grace, telling her—“I will, Grace, I’ll stay, I promise”—and having no idea how to keep that promise.
David is pushing the checkerboard aside, asking: “What’s in New Jersey that’s so important you have to go right now?”
“My father,” Livvi says. “He’s dying. I need to see him before it’s too late.”
Grace is clinging to Livvi so tightly that it’s making it difficult for Livvi to breathe as she’s explaining to David: “I have to go. I have to go there tonight.” She’s gazing down at Grace while she’s adding: “And I don’t know how to do it.”
During this exchange between Livvi and David, Evelyn has reached across the table and picked up the red felt-tipped marker lying beside the checkerboard.
Evelyn is leaning close to Grace’s ear—her voice infinitely gentle as she’s whispering: “Do you remember I told you that Santa and I are old friends? And that’s why he asked me to be the one to make sure your butterfly wings were waiting for you, right in the middle of your bed, when you woke up this morning?”
Grace nods—but doesn’t look at Evelyn.
“Well, I’d like to show you something. It’s magic. The same as Santa is. I learned how to do it a long time ago when someone I loved needed to go away for a while to fight in a war, and I was afraid to be apart from him. Do you want to see the magic?”
Grace buries her face against the side of Livvi’s neck and shrugs. “Maybe…”
“I need you to open your hand wide and hold it out to me.”
Grace does as Evelyn asks.
Evelyn then moves the red felt-tipped marker in slow, sure strokes. When she is finished, she says: “Look, Grace. Look at the magic.”
Grace hesitates. Leans away from Livvi just the slightest bit and turns her head. Curious to see what has happened.
In the cup of Grace’s hand is a rounded, delicately shaded heart. One that is absolutely magnificent—so skillfully executed it seems almost three-dimensional.
Grace is gazing up at Evelyn. Evelyn’s silver hair is shining in the soft light of the kitchen—she’s wearing a red-and-white striped apron over a Christmas sweater patterned in snowflakes. And Grace is asking, in a voice full of wonder: “Are you Santa’s sister?”
Evelyn is folding Grace’s fingers so that the heart is hidden within Grace’s grasp. And she’s telling Grace: “This isn’t any ordinary heart. It’s the magical part of Livvi where she keeps all her love for you. And now you’re holding it right in your hand.”
There’s an awed excitement in Grace. “Really?”
“Yes,” Evelyn says. “And that’s why it’s all right to let Livvi go away for a little while tonight. Because she’ll come back to you, Grace. She’ll always come back because you have her heart. You’re where her love is.”
Grace is fascinated—gazing down at her palm—murmuring: “Don’t worry, Livvi. While you’re gone I’ll take very good care of your heart.”
And David is asking: “Where in New Jersey do you need to go?”
***
Livvi’s father’s apartment is nothing more than three narrow rooms on the top floor of a sagging, wood-sided house. A house at the dead end of a bleak street in Passaic.
Livvi is loosening the top button of her coat, trying not to inhale too deeply. The air is overheated, stale with the smell of fried eggs and sickness.
A man in a baggy sweater and cantaloupe-colored corduroy pants is leading Livvi through a maze of clutter—piles and towers of mildewed, dust-covered books. He has introduced himself as Albert and is scarecrow thin: an assemblage of skin-covered bones. Livvi is following him along a path that winds across the living area, and spans the short distance between the front door and the apartment’s bedroom.
Calista is nearby in a shallow alcove that contains a pitted sink and small refrigerator. And, incongruously, a brightly lit aluminum Christmas tree. She’s hunched over an electric griddle that’s caked with grime, scraping up bits of burned food, and informing Livvi: “You might as well leave. You’re too late. You waited too long.”
Albert shoots Livvi a sympathetic glance and says: “Your father’ll be happy you’re here. He was happy when he heard you were coming. I know he was—I know the signs.”
It’s obvious that Livvi is confused, and Albert explains: “I’m your father’s hospice worker.”
Hospice. The cushioned good-bye. Before the final breath.
Livvi is stumbling against a stack of books. They’re banging onto the floor like crumbling stones falling out of a fortress wall—raising puffs of dust and the odor of decay.
David is waiting outside in the clean, cold air. Ready to take Livvi back to Grace—to a house where the rooms smell of fresh pine and ginger cake. Livvi wants to turn and run.
But Albert has already ushered Livvi to her father’s bedside and discreetly left them alone.
The room is not much bigger than a closet. And has only a single dim lamp, on the floor, near the bed. When Livvi’s eyes adjust to the gloom, she discovers that the walls are stacked with books. And with old cardboard boxes sealed with yellowed strapping tape, brittle with age. And wedged into a corner, among the books and boxes, is the little pine table that was her desk in Santa Ynez.
In the bed, lying on the hammock-shaped mattress, under a colorless blanket, is Livvi’s father. His hair is thin; Livvi can see that his scalp is mottled and flaking. His eyes and mouth are closed. His arms are at his sides, on top of the blanket, motionless. He is slender and fine-boned.
Livvi is astonished.
She had remembered her father as being so intimidating. So dangerous. So much larger than life. For all these years she has been remembering and fearing a lion—and now she’s looking at the remains of what, must always have been, a gazelle.
“Can you hear me?” she asks.
Her father says nothing.
Livvi is about to repeat the question but changes her mind and looks away. She sees that on the other side of the bed there’s an open door. Beyond the door is a miniscule bathroom. A sink, a toilet, and a cramped shower stall. Above the sink is a glass shelf neatly stocked with bandages and cotton balls and a pair of needle-nosed, stainless-steel scissors.
Livvi is recalling the skill and attention with which her father handled her cuts and scrapes when she was a child. The bandages always pristine. Snug and precise. The touch of his hands was light and sure.
The memory of this is making Livvi’s voice gentler as she asks him again: “Can you hear me?”
No response.
“It’s Livvi,” she tells him. “Olivia.”
He doesn’t move. The tempo of his breathing doesn’t change. He remains uncannily still.
And there’s a flash of fury in Livvi.
She knows that her father knows she’s there. She understands he’s choosing—deliberately—to die. Without giving her answers to the questions she has been asking for a lifetime.
Her tone is matter-of-fact when she tells him: “I think I hate you.” But then without warning, she’s strangling on the words she has just spoken.
Livvi leaves the bed and walks to the little pine table. It is stacked and crowded with her old schoolbooks and papers. All these years, her father has kept them—and Livvi wants this to make a difference. She wants the idea that he might have remembered her, and cared about her, to change everything. She wants to be overflowing with daughterly love.
But there is only the raging desire to be finished with him.
Livvi leans toward the pine table. And in a rapid series of swift, strong sweeps, she begins.
When she is finished. She has sent every dusty book. Every warped, moldering story from her childhood. Every relic of Olivia. Slamming onto the floor.
And when she straightens up and steps away—the tabletop has been wiped clean.
For a fleeting moment Livvi is bereaved.
And then she
is set free.
She tells her father: “I hope you can hear me. I want you to know that you are a horrible, horrible man. And even if it’s true that there’s something more than just what happens in this life…if it turns out that even people like you can be redeemed in the end…I don’t care. That’s God’s business, not mine.”
Livvi walks back to her father’s bed and stands beside him. “I want you to understand that I hate you. I hate all the mean, cold-hearted things you did to me. And the hate is making me tired. There’s no point to it. There’s no point to carrying the burden of you around with me anymore. I need to let you go.”
Livvi has lifted her father’s arm from its resting place on the sheet. She is pressing her lips to the delicate flesh on the inside of his wrist. His skin is wet with her tears.
She’s heartbroken.
“It’s over,” she’s telling him. “You’re on your own now.”
***
And then within seconds Livvi is outside. In the cold night air. With the sagging, wood-framed house, and her father, behind her.
She’s running across the patch of frozen, scrubby ground that separates the house from the curb. Where David is waiting—with open arms.
***
His beach cottage is weathered and small—the wood-lath walls of the little front room have been sanded to a pearly beige, but not yet painted. The furniture is draped in white sheets. And on the floor, David has spread a thick, soft, heather-blue blanket.
Moonlight is streaming through the open door—shimmering and silvery bright.
Livvi and David are sitting, in their coats and gloves, side-by-side. On the heather-blue blanket. Looking out at the water. Listening to the waves rush toward the beach then pull away again.
In the time that has passed since Livvi left her father’s apartment, she and David have spoken only a few words: David asking, as they were driving away from New Jersey, “Do you need to go somewhere and just be quiet for a little while?” and Livvi answering, “Yes. Please.”
For the better part of an hour they have been here, shoulder to shoulder. Gazing out at the moonlit ocean. David—gently, steadfastly, holding Livvi’s hand. Livvi—silently, slowly, coming to terms with what has happened tonight. The finality of the loss she suffered. And the powerful sense of freedom she found.
Now Livvi has told David: “I’m okay. We can go.”
Together they have gathered up the heather-blue blanket. They’ve folded it and put it onto a tabletop.
Moonglow is glimmering on the pearly walls and white-sheeted furniture.
The only sound is the rush of the ocean.
Livvi and David are in their own private dreamscape.
And Livvi is being swept into David’s embrace. Being wrapped in his honesty, and his unwavering devotion.
“I love you,” he’s telling her. “Do you think you could ever love me?”
And Livvi’s answer is: “Yes. Yes, I do.”
David’s sigh is a combination of elation and relief.
Livvi gives an involuntary shiver. The night air coming in from the beach is growing colder.
“It’s getting chilly,” David says. “Do you want me to take you home?”
Livvi nods—there is nothing she wants more.
Yet she doesn’t move out of his embrace.
The boards beneath the soles of her shoes are numbing her feet with cold. An icy night wind is beginning to slip over her coat collar and bite at the back of her neck.
And Livvi is continuing to hold on to David.
Deliberately postponing—for as long as possible—the moment of letting go.
***
On this second night spent tucked in the four-poster bed, with Grace beside her, the hours have passed slowly for Livvi.
There were long spaces in which she wanted to linger forever in the quiet of Evelyn’s sleeping house—and the newfound bliss of David’s love. There were other places in the night where she was frantic for daylight to come. For noon to arrive. For the door to the shop in Oyster Bay to open, and solve the riddle of the woman in the pearl-button shoes.
Now the hands of the clock in front of the real estate office on Main Street are clicking together—right beneath the twelve.
And Andrew is on the phone, saying: “I’ll be at the airport when you and Grace get back. I can’t wait to see you. Can’t wait to hold you.”
Livvi is walking toward the store window where the portrait is—her pulse racing.
While at the other end of the phone Andrew is insisting: “I need you. You’re my life, Olivia.”
Livvi can’t take her eyes off the painting, the image from her nightmare. And as she’s looking at it, Livvi is also seeing the image of the cluttered tabletop she swept clean last night, in her father’s New Jersey apartment.
She switches her phone from one ear to the other and tells Andrew: “Don’t do it again—ever.”
“What are you talking about?”
Livvi’s gaze is still on the portrait. “Don’t call me Olivia. Olivia is from a place that’s gone. I don’t live there anymore.”
“What’s going on with you?” Andrew asks. “For Christ’s sake, talk to me, Olivia.”
Livvi is seeing that the Closed sign has disappeared from the door of the shop. “Andrew, I need to go.”
“I’m sorry, Olivia. It was a slip. I meant to call you Livvi. From now on I’ll try to remember. It’ll just take some time—”
“Andrew, I need to go.”
“No, wait. Listen to me.” His tone is insistent, determined. “I love you. I intend to do whatever it takes. Stand up to whoever I need to. I will put an end to the craziness.”
Livvi knows how far the distance between Andrew’s intentions and his accomplishments can be—she knows, in spite of how much he wants to, that he probably won’t be able to keep the promise he just made.
She also knows that, no matter what happens, or where she goes from here, there are places in her heart that will belong always, and exclusively, to Andrew. The “first” places. Places that will never exist again.
The series of places where only Andrew went.
Where, piece by piece, he opened the world to Livvi.
The place where Livvi received the gift of her first birthday party. The place where she was first shown the power and beauty of sex. The place where, while sailing skyward in a hot-air balloon, she was introduced to unbridled excitement for the first time.
And most important of all—the sacred shining place where she first found Grace.
“Livvi, talk to me,” Andrew is demanding. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Her heart is too full—her nerves too raw. All she can tell him is: “I have to go now.”
Livvi has opened the shop’s wide, green door. And she is stepping inside.
***
The store’s interior is chic, with walls lacquered in cinnabar red and edged in black. In the center of the room, there’s a Buddha carved from translucent green stone. And the Asian woman who is coming toward Livvi is slim. In her mid-forties, ethereally beautiful. She’s saying: “I’m Rebecca Wang. How can I help you?”
Livvi’s mouth is dry and the pulse in her temple is pounding as she answers: “I need to know about the painting in the window.”
“Oh, a lot of people come in and ask about it. The woman in the picture was the daughter of a wealthy family in the Hamptons. Her name was Miriam Moran and the painting was done in 1922, shortly before her twenty-first birthday. But I’m sorry, it isn’t for sale.”
“I don’t want to buy it,” Livvi explains. “I need to know where it came from.”
Rebecca Wang smiles apologetically. “All I can tell you is that it belonged to a friend of my grandmother’s—I don’t recall the woman’s name—but my grandmother acquired the painting when her friend’s house was being sold. I keep the portrait in the window because my grandmother loved it and this store used to be hers.”
Livvi feels like Alice cartwheeling
down the rabbit hole. “Please. There must be somebody who knows.”
Rebecca Wang stays silent—for several long, agonizing moments. Then says: “Wait. Yes. There is someone.”
And Livvi can breathe again.
Rebecca Wang is pulling a faded address book from a desk drawer, quickly paging through it, then using an ebony pen to enter information onto one of her store’s small note cards.
Livvi is shaking as Rebecca Wang hands her the card and says: “If the person is still at this address, you should be able to find out everything you need to know.”
Micah
Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
Micah is drifting in and out of consciousness. Gliding through a parade of flickering images:
A wonderful summer garden. Surrounded by soft green grass and a sea of coral-colored lilies.
Her mother. Stroking the fur of a smoke-colored cat while the light from a window is dancing across the rings on her fingers.
Jason. On the office steps of the Justice of the Peace. Mutely begging Micah, who is walking away, to stop. And come back.
A slant of sunlight. Painting a piece of copper wire with a fiery glow. Turning it into a trail of liquid light. While it’s moving in Micah’s hands. Smoothly and easily. Like embroidery silk.
A warm embrace. And AnnaLee’s voice, sounding like music. Saying, “Believe that I love you…won’t you please?”
Now the music of AnnaLee’s voice is becoming the South Boston cadences of Micah’s assistant Jillian, and Micah is opening her eyes.
Jillian is in the bedroom with Micah, leaning over Micah’s chair. And Micah, for the first time, is noticing that Jillian is pretty—younger than Micah had always assumed.
Jillian is telling her: “Miss Lesser, there’s someone—”
“Wait,” Micah says. Now she’s noticing the concern Jillian has for her, realizing that it has always been there, and she has never taken the time to see it.
“Miss Lesser, I need you to listen.”
Micah is remembering the doctor’s question, “Is there someone we can call, someone you’re close to?” And she’s begging Jillian, “Please. No more Miss Lesser. It’s time that we—”
