The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin
Page 1
The
Peculiar
Miracles
of
Antoinette
Martin
A NOVEL
Stephanie Knipper
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2016
For my daughter, Grace.
People always say you’re lucky to have us as parents, but I know the truth. We’re the lucky ones, because we have you.
Hug. Tap, tap, tap.
I love you too.
Contents
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter One
Chapter Two
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Eight
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Twenty-Five
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ROSE’S JOURNAL
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About Algonquin
ROSE’S JOURNAL
April 2013
MY DAUGHTER, ANTOINETTE, whispers in her sleep. Real words. Tonight when I hear her voice, I rush upstairs, but I’m too late. She is quiet. And the sounds could have been anything. The wind. An owl. Crickets.
She lies on her side. Her right hand stretches toward the doorway, toward me, as if even in sleep I’m the sun she rotates around.
I reach for her too. But I don’t enter her room.
When she sleeps, I can pretend I don’t notice her eyes, a finger’s breadth too far apart. Her arms are relaxed, not held tight against her shoulders as they are much of the day. Her white-blonde hair, still newborn fine, fans out behind her like a dandelion puff, or as if she were running and the wind caught it.
The window is open, and a breeze flutters the sheer white curtains. It’s the first week of April, but already the air is so warm the tulips are sprouting. Kentucky is like that. Unpredictable. Tonight is dark, but here in the country, street lights don’t obscure the stars.
I close my eyes and summon a dream. In it, Antoinette sprints through the farm, fingers brushing the daffodils and tulips. Her legs are strong, pounding the dirt like any other ten-year-old girl. But this image ignores the child she is. In a more accurate vision I see her walking toward me, marionette-like, arms cocked, hands curled toward her chest, knees bending and popping with each step.
I move into the past, pulling up memories of us sleeping curled into each other as if still sharing the same body. Swaying in time to field sparrow songs. Dancing under a shower of lavender petals in the drying barn.
She shifts, turning toward the window. Outside I envision the fields bursting with white tulip buds. It’s too early for them, but stranger things have happened.
My sister, Lily, used to be fascinated by the Victorian language of flowers, memorizing the meanings for each plant we grew on the farm. It was a game to us. She scattered bouquets around the house, and I tried to guess her message. Daffodils represented new beginnings. Coneflowers were for strength and health.
And white tulips were for forgiveness and remembrance.
My heart stutters, and a familiar pressure builds in my chest. I breathe deeply, counting each beat. When my body calms, I look at my daughter.
A strand of hair sticks to her cheek. I walk into the room to free it, but she turns away from me and curls into a ball. I stop, unwilling to wake her, letting her linger a bit longer in dreams, safe in a place where I can’t hurt her.
That will come soon enough.
Chapter One
Antoinette Martin stood in the kitchen, staring at the alarm above the back door. The red light was not on, which meant it wouldn’t scream and wake her mother if she opened the door. She could walk in the garden.
Pops of joy burst through her body. She bounced on her toes, bare feet slapping against the old oak floor. The smooth wood felt like creek water in July. A happy thought. She bounced again.
When her body calmed, she reached for the doorknob, then hesitated. She and her mother lived on a commercial flower farm in Redbud, Kentucky. Though most of their fifty acres were cleared and given over to flower fields, thick woods rimmed the back edge of their property. Antoinette was not supposed to go outside alone. It was easy to get hurt on a farm.
She mashed her nose against the cool glass of the kitchen door window. Outside, she didn’t need music or art to block the white noise that engulfed her. The groan of the refrigerator; the swish, swish of the washer; the hum of the air conditioner. Outside, the land sang, and that was better than the Mozart and Handel compositions their neighbor Seth Hastings played on his violin.
At night, Antoinette would sit on the back porch of their farmhouse listening while Seth played the violin, or she would page through her mother’s art books. She could name Bochmann’s Lark Ascending from the first trill of the violin. She could close her eyes and re-create the crooked grin of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or the slope of the hill in Wyeth’s Christina’s World, brushstroke by brushstroke in her mind.
Unusual for a ten-year-old, but then very little was usual for Antoinette.
The sunlight shining through the door was sharp. Tears filled her eyes, and she screwed them shut. She felt tied up inside, as if her muscles were too tight. The sun still glowed red behind her eyelids, but the hurt was gone and that helped her decide. She needed music to calm down.
With her mind emptied of everything else, she forced her arm outward until her fingertips brushed the flaked paint on the door. It felt sharp against her skin, and she almost recoiled. But when would the alarm be off again?
Summoning control, she flapped with one hand and pushed the door with the other.
The door opened with a sigh, and the light fell harder on her face. With her eyes closed she leaned into the sun, wishing it could draw her outside. Controlling her body was sometimes difficult, but that morning she moved like a ballerina, swiveling her hips and sliding through the door like a ribbon of silk.
On the porch she threw her arms open, ready to fly to the sun. Then she listened. The land sang to those who stood still long enough to hear it.
People had songs too, but Antoinette needed to touch them to hear their music. Sometimes she grabbed her mother’s hand, and the low, sweet sound of a pan flute filled her body. When that happened, Antoinette felt like she could do anything. Even speak.
Today the outside world sounded mournful, like the oboe’s part in Peter and the Wolf. Antoinette wiggled. She almost opened her eyes, but she thought better of it; if she did, she would be lost. Her brain would lock on to the blades of grass, and she would start counting. One, two, three . . . four hundred, four hundred one, four hundred two. The counting would trap her
for hours.
She kept her eyes closed as she climbed down from the porch. A breeze snaked around her ankles, making her nightgown dance. She laughed a high-pitched giggle that bubbled up from her throat. If she raised her arms, she might be light enough to fly. She lifted her hands, then brought them down hard enough to clap her thighs.
The flagstone path would lead her to the flower fields, but today she wanted more than the feel of stone beneath her feet. She left the path and pushed her toes into the soil. The ground buzzed, a tingle of electricity that vibrated up her legs, calming her muscles so that on the way to the garden she didn’t bounce or flap, so that her legs didn’t fly out from under her.
She walked until her feet bumped against a ridge of soil that marked the start of the daffodil field. From her bedroom window she could see the bright yellow heads nodding in the sunlight, but out here she could feel them.
She squatted and pushed her hands into the loamy soil. It slid from her fingers, coating her nails and the creases of her small hands. She inhaled, filling her lungs with the scents of the garden: soil, compost, and new green grass.
With her hands in the dirt, the music was louder. A chorus of woodwinds flooded her body: clarinets, flutes, and bassoons. But the tempo was too slow and some of the notes were off. Sharp in one place, flat in another. Her heart pounded in her ears, and her arms tensed. She needed to flap, but she forced herself to stay still while a picture formed in her mind, a picture of a bulb bound by clay soil, and a plant weakened by root bores.
Antoinette hummed, increasing the tempo and correcting the notes. When everything was right, she stopped. Her body was calm now, but she slumped to the ground, exhausted. Bits of mulch pricked her cheek, but she didn’t move. She breathed deep, listening to the robins calling from the nearby woods.
“Antoinette?”
At first she didn’t hear her name; she was lost in the sensations around her. Then a rough hand fell against her neck. The touch sent a jolt through her body, and she fell back, her eyes wide with fear.
“Sorry. Sorry,” a man said as he snatched his hand away.
She tried to sit up, but her muscles weren’t working yet.
“Antoinette.” The man was calm. “Antoinette. What’s wrong? It’s Seth. Look at me. Are you okay?”
He touched her cheek and turned her head toward him. When she leaned into his calloused hand, her heart stopped racing and she relaxed. Seth was as much a constant in her life as her mother. Like her, he understood that speaking wasn’t the only way to communicate.
He crouched in front of her, the tips of his long dark hair tickling her cheek. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked.
Her arm felt heavy, but she pointed over his shoulder, back home where the blue clapboard farmhouse rose beyond the sea of daffodils.
“Home?” he asked. “You want to go home?”
She pointed and opened her mouth. Home. That’s what she wanted to say. The word would be whisper light if she could get it out.
Seth slid his arms under her body. She picked a daffodil before he lifted her. The commercial fields weren’t for home flower picking, but the yellow daffodil would make her mother happy.
Seth cradled her as he walked back to the house, and she melted into him. He smelled like green grass and tobacco. Through his thin T-shirt, she felt the steady thump of his heart, which was its own form of music.
THE KITCHEN DOOR popped open with a thud. Antoinette raised her head from Seth’s arms and saw that the room was empty. Her mother was probably still asleep.
“Rose?” Seth called. There was no answer. The air inside the house was heavy and quiet. He started down the long hallway that led to the bedrooms.
Through an open door, Antoinette saw her mother, sitting in one of the two blue chairs by the window overlooking the back field, her journal open on her lap. She turned when Seth knocked on the doorframe.
Focusing on faces was difficult for Antoinette; they changed every second, tiny muscles shifting with each smile or frown. One person could wear hundreds of faces. But Antoinette forced herself to study her mother’s face. Her lips were rimmed with blue, and deep circles sat under her eyes. Her short blonde hair stuck out in all directions and shadows highlighted her gaunt face.
“I found her outside in the daffodil field,” Seth said.
Her mother closed the journal and stood. “She’s been wanting to go outside, but I’ve been so tired.” She leaned over Antoinette who was still snug in Seth’s arms. “You always were persistent.”
Antoinette held out the daffodil.
Her mother smiled when she took it. “Daffodils symbolize new beginnings,” she said to Seth. “From Lily’s flower book. I can’t believe I remember.”
Antoinette felt Seth flinch. “Hard to forget.” His rough voice was tinged with something that sounded like regret. “She carried that book everywhere.”
Antoinette was sandwiched between the two of them. Content. The word floated up from somewhere inside her. Her entire body felt warm. She stretched toward her mother, wanting to hear her song.
Her mother drew back. “You need to sleep,” she said, her lips forming a sad smile.
“She was lying among the daffodils,” Seth said. “Last night, I noticed some of them had browned around the edges. I planned to harvest them today, but then this morning they were fresh when I got there. Antoinette was half asleep in the middle of them. She didn’t hear me until I was right next to her.” He spoke slowly and his voice was heavy with meaning, but Antoinette was too tired to figure out what he was trying to say.
He sat in one of the chairs and shifted Antoinette so that his arm was behind the crook in her neck.
“She’s so tiny,” her mother said as she sat across from Seth. “It still surprises me how heavy she gets after a while.”
Seth laughed. Antoinette liked the sound. She closed her eyes and let the noise wash over her. She was too tired to flap her hands, but she twitched her fingers against Seth’s arm. Happy.
She usually was happy around Seth. He could be abrupt with others, but he was always kind to Antoinette and her mother.
Once, some boys at the farmers’ market had giggled at Antoinette as she stretched up on her toes and walked in circles under the Eden Farms tent. When Seth heard them, he stopped unloading flats of impatiens, walked over to Antoinette, and put a hand on her shoulder. In his presence, the tension left her body, allowing her to stop walking and stand still.
Seth didn’t say a word. He just glared at the boys until they started fidgeting. Then one by one, they apologized.
“They’re kids,” he said after they scattered. “They don’t know what they’re doing, but it hurts anyway.”
He had been right. It did hurt. Every time someone stared at Antoinette a little too long or crossed the street to avoid her, a small, bruised feeling bloomed in her chest.
Knowing that Seth, along with her mother, understood how she felt eased the hurt a little.
Thinking of her mother, Antoinette cracked her eyes open, and watched the slow rise and fall of her mother’s chest. Despite her fatigue, she struggled toward her mother. If she could hold her mother’s hand, everything would be all right. She imagined her mother’s song—the notes of a pan flute, smooth and round as river rocks.
“Not now, Antoinette,” her mother said.
Antoinette didn’t stop trying. As she struggled to sit up, she stared at her mother’s tapered fingers. At the green-and-purple bruise on the back of her mother’s hand. It was from the IV she had in the emergency room last week.
Seth wrapped her tight in his arms and leaned back. Now she was even farther from her mother. “Your mom needs some rest.”
Antoinette shook her head hard, making her hair lash against her cheek. Mommy! If she could say the word, she was sure her mother would respond.
“She can’t do this much longer,” her mother said, her voice cracking. “And I . . . well, it’s not like I’m going to get better.”
Seth sighed. After several long seconds he said, “It’s time to call Lily. You can’t keep avoiding her, Rose.”
Antoinette strained against his arms, but he was too strong. The exhaustion that stole through her body trapped her, making her eyes shut as if tiny weights were attached to her eyelashes. She was tired. So tired.
“I don’t know,” her mother said. She sounded small and scared. “It’s been six years. Antoinette was too much for Lily as a four-year-old. It’s not like things have improved. And the way I left things with Lily . . . what if she won’t come?”
Antoinette fought to open her eyes but couldn’t. Her body grew heavier and heavier.
She heard Seth: “The three of us aren’t kids anymore, Rose. Lily’s your sister. The girl I know will come if you ask.”
Antoinette couldn’t fight it any longer. She sank into Seth’s arms as sleep overtook her.
Chapter Two
Lily Martin lived a cautious life. She looked to numbers. Math was consistent: two plus two equaled four. Always. There was no way to make it something else. Rearrange the numbers, write the problem horizontally or vertically, and the answer was always the same. Four. Equations had solutions, and their predictability made her feel calm, settled.
Except today.
She had spent most of the day reformatting death tables for the life insurance company she worked for. They weren’t really called death tables. Life expectancy table was the correct term, but what else did you call a collection of data that predicted when someone would die?
Lily headed the actuary department, and it was her responsibility to know when someone was likely to die. A healthy, male, nonsmoker could expect to live 76.2 years, whereas a smoker’s life expectancy was reduced by 13.2 years. A thirty-two-year-old woman with congestive heart failure—well, she was uninsurable.
The death tables fed the rating engine that supplied price quotes for insurance policies. Over the weekend, the rates for smokers and nonsmokers had been switched until someone in the IT department realized that a worm had slipped through their firewall and flipped the data.