The Ebony Swan

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Even as Susan handed her the envelope, a look came into her face that Alex recognized. It was stubborn determination—a look she’d seen often enough in her own mirror.

  A sudden, silent tension held them both—Alex, however, was older and her will even stronger. After a moment Susan threw up her hands in surrender, a gesture that was as graceful as Alex remembered in the small girl she’d been.

  “I can’t be angry with you,” Susan said. “It’s your letter and your right to do what you like with it. I just hope you’ll answer my questions sometime.”

  “I’ll try to,” Alex promised. Susan was not like Dolores. Still, she must never again make the mistake she’d made with her daughter. First, they must go to Tangier Island. She must face that ordeal, though she’d been unwilling to until now. While the trip could no longer be avoided, nothing must be done impulsively. She needed to see John Gower and Susan together. Only then could she decide. Somehow this must be arranged soon.

  She nodded toward the trunk. “Are you going to empty that?”

  Susan took out more toys, and several little dresses, a few of them exquisitely handsewn by Alex herself, even to the touches of embroidery. A neglected art taught to her as a little girl by Peruvian nuns. Susan held each one up in turn, admiring the work, a little tearful—perhaps as she recognized and remembered.

  The next article she lifted from the trunk was a carved black box, perhaps eight inches square. But before she could open it, Alex stopped her sharply.

  “No! Put that back. It’s something I never want to see again!” Alex could almost hear the thumping of her own heart at the sight of that box whose contents she could hardly bear to think about.

  Her tone allowed for no argument, and Susan pushed the box into a corner of the trunk and asked no questions. She reached instead for something large wrapped in an old dressing gown. When Alex saw what she’d lifted out, she sat very still, waiting, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. This she dared not stop. It was better for Susan to face what had happened than to be forever shielded.

  Susan lifted the heavy object from the trunk and unwrapped it, to reveal a huge brass jardiniere tarnished with age, but still a handsome piece. Perhaps she wouldn’t remember, Alex thought. She could only leave the matter to fate.

  But Susan remembered. The horror with which she regarded the object showed in her face.

  “This is what killed my mother! This is what she fell against when she went down the stairs.”

  Alex controlled her voice carefully. “You were there, Susan. You saw what happened.”

  Susan sat back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. “No—I don’t really remember. Sometimes bits come to me about something frightening and terrible, but never anything really clear. I never see her fall.”

  “Then how can you recognize that brass pot?” Alex asked.

  “I just know. Grandmother, tell me what happened. Please tell me.”

  “How can I? We never knew exactly what happened. I came home to find Dolores lying at the foot of the stairs. You were sitting beside her, and her blood was on your hands and your dress. You were crying hysterically.”

  It was inevitable that this brass “weapon” would reappear now—with all its ramifications and questions. Alex had forgotten that it was here. Why had she saved it?

  Susan covered her face with her hands, and Alex left her chair and touched her granddaughter’s shoulder gently. She could hardly endure what was happening, but she managed to speak firmly. “We must let this go for now. You can come up here another time, Susan, if you like.” By which time Alex would have the brass pot given away, disposed of—buried!

  Susan made an effort to wipe away her tears, and Alex went on, her voice well under control. “Until all these dusty memories are swept away, we can never get on with our lives.”

  “But how do we do that?” Susan asked miserably.

  How indeed? “I’m not sure. By standing up to them, I suppose. Once we know they are there, we pull them out of our own dark corners so that floods of daylight can expose and cleanse them. But we must approach this slowly and do nothing reckless.”

  Susan looked up at her grandmother, and Alex saw in her eyes something that was no longer as young as she’d thought.

  “Because there may be monsters hiding in the dark?” Susan asked. “Will we be able to deal with monsters?”

  “We must deal with them. We can deal with them together.”

  Why had she said that? She had always dealt capably with her problems alone. The sudden flash of Susan’s smile rewarded her.

  “You’ve been fighting dragons all your life, haven’t you, Grandmother? I only hope I can be as brave as you are.”

  “Brave” was not the word she would have chosen for herself, and Alex drew back from dangerous emotion. She could not lose control now, when so much was at stake. There were so many more dragons than Susan ever dreamed existed.

  She spoke briskly. “Peter will be here soon to take you to lunch. Do you want to get ready now?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Susan looked doubtful. “I’m not sure I want to go to lunch with Dr. Macklin. You should have asked me first.”

  “You might have refused, though I don’t know why. You do need to get away from this house for awhile. And there’s another reason why I’ve suggested this. Peter has been terribly depressed since his wife’s death, as you can imagine. Perhaps you can cheer him up a bit, or at least furnish something outside his own troubles for him to think about.”

  Susan gave in, as Alex knew she would. She left her granddaughter in the tower bedroom and went down to the second floor, where she stopped at the open door of Theresa’s workroom.

  Theresa had turned the big, unused room that had once been Susan’s playroom into her studio. Though she had shown promise as an artist, Dolores, who was so much older, had been more gifted, and Theresa had finally given up, not wanting to compete with the dead. Now she kept busy painting her “Russian” eggs. Each egg took great care, time, and creative talent. Her decorations were bright and original in their intricacies, and they had been selling well, both to local people and to visitors who came to the Northern Neck. Though when Alex tried to praise her work, Theresa shrugged off her words.

  At the moment she sat before a long table covered with rows of egg cartons, some filled with painted eggs, some with white ones from which the contents had been removed. Her pink smock brought a touch of color to her dark, brooding face.

  “May I interrupt?” Alex asked.

  “Of course.” Theresa set down her brush.

  “I wonder if you will do something for me? It won’t take long.”

  “How did your morning go with Susan?” Theresa countered.

  “I think it went well.” Alex could hardly repeat all that had happened.

  “What would you like me to do?”

  “Make a phone call for me, please. To Emily and John Gower on Tangier Island. Just ask if I may bring my granddaughter over for a visit tomorrow.”

  Theresa raised expressive black eyebrows. “Why don’t you make the call yourself?”

  Alex drew herself to her full, impressive height, and Theresa, who had seen that look before, let the question go.

  “Of course I’ll phone the island for you.”

  They went downstairs to the living room together, and Alex waited while she made the call. Sitting nearby, she could hear a woman’s voice answer. If she had been sure of reaching Emily, she would have phoned herself. But since John no longer went out crabbing all day, he might easily have answered the phone. When she spoke to him again, she didn’t want it to be on a telephone.

  Theresa turned to Alex. “Mrs. Gower wants you to come to lunch.”

  Alex held out her hand for the phone, and Theresa passed it to her. Emily wouldn’t think it strange that Theresa had called. Sh
e would expect Alex Montoro to have a secretary, and that was one of Theresa’s roles.

  “Hello, Emily. I’m glad I caught you. We’d enjoy coming for lunch, if it’s all right with you and John. Though I’m not sure how we’ll get there. Perhaps the tourist boat—”

  “We can send over a plane, I’m sure. I’ll let you know.” Emily’s response seemed careful and not altogether welcoming, which was natural enough after the years of silence that had been mostly Alex’s fault. Their coming over was John’s idea, not Emily’s, Alex was sure.

  When she hung up she found Theresa watching, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Thank you,” Alex said and walked out of the room, her dignity intact. Theresa didn’t follow.

  In the kitchen Alex sat down at the table and asked Gracie to fix her a sandwich. As she waited, she began to muse aloud.

  “Since my granddaughter came, I’ve been thinking back over the years, Gracie. A long way back. How old were you when you came to work for us?”

  “Seventeen, Miss Alex. I didn’t marry George till I was nineteen.

  “We could never have gotten along without you and George.”

  Gracie was only a few years younger than Alex, and she was a closer friend than Theresa had ever been. She probably knew more about this family than anyone else, and Alex wondered whimsically what secrets Gracie might be keeping.

  These days younger help came in part-time to take care of the heavy work, and someone assisted George in his yard chores. They were all growing older together and comfortably dependent on one another. That was good in some ways, difficult in others, since Theresa seemed to be putting herself more and more in charge, and Gracie and George weren’t happy about that. Lately, Alex hadn’t felt strong enough to oppose this less-than-subtle takeover.

  Theresa didn’t need the money she made from her painted eggs. Juan Gabriel had left her a good income. And Alex’s will put almost everything in Theresa’s hands. Though that might change, now that her granddaughter had come home. She would wait and see.

  “Gracie, your mother worked for Marilyn Macklin’s parents, didn’t she? Did you know Marilyn well when she was a little girl?”

  Slicing a garden tomato, Gracie nodded. “Guess I was kind of a mama to Miss Marilyn after her mama died. What happened to her still makes me cry—like I lost one of my own.”

  Gracie and George had two grown children and were grandparents to three. All had moved north and seldom came home to visit. Alex recalled how often Marilyn had dropped in just to see Gracie. Yet no one had thought to ask Gracie questions after Marilyn died.

  “Gracie,” Alex said, “did Marilyn ever talk to you about the book she was working on? The one about Juan Gabriel?”

  Gracie added cucumber and lettuce and too much mayonnaise—a sign that she was thinking of something else.

  “Take some of that off, please,” Alex said.

  “Sorry, Miss Alex. I forgot.” Her eyes met Alex’s across the table. “Miss Marilyn was upset about something for awhile before she died. She said once that what she was writing was important—things that ought to be told.”

  “Did she tell you what she meant?”

  The sandwich took on a less juicy appearance and was cut into neat triangles, then placed on a blue plate. For a moment she stood, plate in hand, before giving it to Alex.

  “All I know is she was scared to tell you about what she was going to write. She said maybe she’d figured something out, but she never said what it was. I just had a feeling that it was something Mr. J.G. said or did before he died.”

  Alex was unhappy to find that her hand trembled slightly when she took the plate from Gracie. She had never understood Juan Gabriel’s last words before he died. Perhaps hadn’t wanted to understand. There were some things it was better not to know.

  “Thank you, Gracie. I’ll take this outside.” She glanced at her watch as she went down the back steps. There was time to get something for Susan and still catch Peter before they left. She wanted to tell him what Gracie had told her. Perhaps Peter knew some piece of the puzzle that he hadn’t recognized as such.

  A certain excitement began to build in her as she crossed the lawn to Juan Gabriel’s study. It grew from her decision to take Susan to Tangier Island. Of course it was difficult to remember that John was old now, as she was old. The picture in her mind still belonged to a vigorous young man who no longer existed. She was not yet sure whether she could ever admit the truth to him. She could only decide when she saw John and Susan face to face.

  Right now she must concentrate on what she had come here for. She wanted to find a copy of The Black Swan, the novel Juan Gabriel had written during his early years in Virginia. When his main character of Tamara, a famous ballerina, had danced in Swan Lake, he had used Drina for his model and he had described her dancing so beautifully that the scene might give Susan a glimpse of what her own dancing had been like. However, it might be better if Susan didn’t go on to read Juan Gabriel’s description of the black swan’s dancing.

  Inside the boathouse study, Alex set the sandwich down on Juan Gabriel’s desk—never dreaming that it was something she might regret in the hungry hours ahead.

  Standing back from the wall of bookshelves, she studied the long rows, reading titles as she had not done for so many years. They were all here, the collection complete. Many posthumous editions had appeared—new reprints that were still read widely. As each new edition was published, she sent Gracie here to add to the collection, not always wanting the hurt of coming here herself.

  Of course the fiercest pain of Juan Gabriel’s death lay far in the past, but pangs of guilt over her betrayal could still rise to cut at her unexpectedly. Nevertheless, she could not regret those brief, glorious hours with John Gower. So there was still at times a disturbing ambivalence about the past.

  It was time, she knew very well, for her to forgive herself, and she longed for Juan Gabriel’s wisdom to guide her. Wherever he was now, he would be beyond anger or blame, and would harbor no ill will about the past.

  “Help me to know what to do,” she said softly as she moved on.

  The Black Swan was the one novel Alex had never been able to finish reading. Not after she realized how cruelly Juan Gabriel had treated his ballet dancer. He had written about the white swan so beautifully, but the rest carried an undercurrent that frightened her, even though she knew this was fiction.

  In the past Juan Gabriel Montoro’s novels had often released anger, moral indignation—a desire to right what was wrong in society. Only in this book had he seemed to express a private anger. When she’d read it—that part of it she could stomach—she had been terrified that he had guessed about John Gower. But when it was published and he had seen how wounded she had been by his words, he had tried to reassure her.

  It was then he had confessed to his long-hidden jealousy of Rudy Folkes. He had fallen in love with Drina, the dancer, while Rudy was still alive. Not until he had met her and then married her had he begun to know Alex, the woman, but even then his jealousy had lingered. He had not been able to reconcile himself with the past until he had poured his angry feelings into the novel.

  He had made her understand, but Alex was still hurt that he had set down his feelings for the world to see. Not that many of his readers had known what he was saying. And none of this mattered anymore, except that it was not yet released from her own consciousness.

  Now only one memory still tugged at old pain—that carving Juan Gabriel had done of the ebony swan. A carving which he had shown her only once, but which she had found in his hand after Dolores’s fall. In a way, she had understood why he had done the carving. It had been another medium for releasing the same feelings that had driven him when he wrote the novel. His use of woodworking was not unusual. Working with his hands seemed to help the creative process, and there were examples of such carvings that she’d placed in a glass case in the din
ing room. Each one had been connected with some novel he’d been writing at the time.

  Nevertheless, he must have known how wounding that particular carving would be to his wife, and he had hidden it from her in his safe. Had he meant for her to find it after his death? Or had he simply waited too long to destroy it?

  Today in the tower, when Susan had brought out the box that contained the ebony swan, Alex had prevented her from opening it, but now she wondered if she should challenge Susan by showing her the carving. She had a deep wish to know how her granddaughter would react. But she could decide about that later.

  Once more she turned her attention to the titles on the shelves beside her. Titles that were as familiar to her as members of her own family. Perhaps she would sit in Juan Gabriel’s great armchair for a little while and open herself to whatever might come through to strengthen and guide her. She would need this before she returned to Tangier Island.

  She put out her hand, touching the spines of the books as she went past. The titles were arranged according to the year of publication, with all of one edition placed together—book clubs, paperbacks, foreign translations. The American edition of The Black Swan would be with those books written after their move to Virginia.

  She read a few titles aloud in Spanish, and when she came to the right place, she took the book down, and found that it felt thick and solid in her hand—dense with Juan Gabriel’s words and thoughts. She had always marveled at her husband’s ability to pour out more and more stories—all those millions of words, telling his tales to the very end of his life.

  The heaviness of the book seemed to add immeasurably to her own weight. An illusion, of course. With full assurance she set her foot on the next floorboard, and heard an ominous cracking sound. She clung to the book as though it might save her as the wood splintered beneath her weight. There was no way to prevent herself from falling, however, and searing pain ripped through her leg as the broken floorboard slashed her flesh.