by Sarah Bryant
2:00
Eleanor, I looked for you, but you’re nowhere to be found! The Trevozhovs were late coming in to Baton Rouge, and the car they’d called never came. I’ve gone with Jean-Pierre to get them. We shouldn’t be longer than three hours.
Mary
I went to stand by the long windows that looked over the lake. No wind stirred, no sound broke the insects’ drone. Between the cypress’ fluted columns, the water looked thick and smooth as mercury. I lay down on one of the couches facing the windows, gazing out at the drowsing afternoon. I only meant to rest for a while, then perhaps to practice, but within minutes I was asleep.
A full moon hung low on the horizon, its pallid light pouring through the open ballroom doors. The air was warm and still, saturated with the smell of roses and honeysuckle.
In the shadows, the fabric of my dress was the color of blood. Its heavy skirt crackled and dragged as I walked toward the piano in the centre of the room, sat down, and began to play. What emerged was a soft, dark melody that my ear didn’t recognize, though my fingers knew it well, as if I’d played it all my life. It was lyrical and repetitive—nearly, though not quite, a set of variations over a basso continuo. In its lack of resolution, its superficial regret, it was not unlike the ballade’s first theme. Yet this unnamed music reached deeper, calling up real, raw sadness and longing.
When it ended, I looked up. Alexander stood beside the piano. Everything about him was dark, except for his face, which was luminous as the moon. He smiled at me, then held out his hand. Standing up, I accepted it. It was surprisingly warm, seeping heat into my own cold fingers.
We stepped outside, into a small rose garden with a fountain at its centre. Water spilled from level to level, drops distinct as ice chips falling through the languid air. I wanted to isolate each facet, yet couldn’t focus on any of them, and Alexander was urging me on, toward the ivy-covered wall at the far side of the garden. He let go of my hand and, reaching around my neck, pulled something over my head. It was a small silver key on a fine silver chain. He lifted the curtain of ivy to reveal a door in the wall underneath, which he unlocked with the key.
Beyond the door was another garden, circumscribed half by the wall, half by a high hedge, with a break at the far side marking the beginning of a path. Behind the hedge stood a row of trees, black and blue in the shadow and moonlight. The garden’s only tree, standing at its centre, had the weeping branches of a willow and slick, dark, heart-shaped leaves interspersed with tiny pink flowers that smelled faintly of lemons. Beneath the tree stood a statue of a boy playing a flute. Except for his whiteness, he was not like a statue at all; he seemed a real child, caught out of time on the verge of a gesture. At his feet was a pool dotted with water lilies.
The heavens blazed with more stars than I had ever seen, so many that the sky was ultramarine, like the firmament in a Renaissance fresco, reflecting in the pool by the statue’s feet. Alexander knelt by the lily pond and cleared a space among the blossoms. As I looked into it, the stars began to change their configurations, spinning and zigzagging until I could not watch them anymore. When they stilled, they had arranged themselves on the dark mirror into two faces, which looked up at us like a distorted reflection.
I recognized the one beneath me at once: she was pale, with onyx eyes and a passionate look that distinguished it from the other so like it. The reflection beneath Alexander was like him as well, but for the fair coloring and the expression on his face. Yet something was wrong with the images. Eve looked sad and defeated, the man beside her bitter and calculating.
As I watched, Eve’s eyes filled with tears, though her face remained inert. Then my own vision blurred, and suddenly I was crying too, weeping bitterly for something I could not name. Eve moved her hands to her throat, removed the ruby that hung there, and held it toward me. I reached into the water. As my hand closed around the hard little object, Eve’s image faded, and the lilies moved back in to cover the space Alexander had cleared.
I held the jewel up to the moonlight. It glinted in shades of heliotrope and plum. The prism fractured Alexander’s face like the Braque or Picasso of my childhood, sad and schismatic and, somehow, accurate. When I lowered the jewel I found him looking intently at me. He said, “Remember.”
The moon was low now on the horizon, its chalky light fading fast. The stars held my eyes magnetically. They began to spin again, but this time I could not look away. The sky turned faster, so fast that the dark and the moon and the scatter of stars became a single blur. They were something terrible, something from which I knew that I must run and also that I could not. I felt the cold of complete and inexplicable terror.
I reached for Alexander, but he was gone. The sky had gone black. I began to fall, tried to scream, but I had no voice. I caught a flickering image of two figures standing together under what looked like a tree circled by a ring of light, holding something between them. Then they were lost in the darkness, and far away but clear, I heard the unmistakable wails of a brokenhearted woman.
I sat up, gasping. For a moment I didn’t remember where I was. Then I saw the piano in the corner and realized that I had fallen asleep in the music room. From the slant of the sun through the window, I knew that I had slept at least a couple of hours. My head pounded viciously, and every muscle in my body ached. I felt wretched, confused, and frightened. I was aware that I had dreamed, that it had been a nightmare, but what little I could remember flitted in and out of my muddled consciousness in unrelated fragments.
My right hand ached dully; it was clenched shut. When I opened it, the diamond that had been my mother’s, the one I always wore, fell into my lap. I could not remember having removed it, but I was certain that it had been a part of my dream.
I rubbed my eyes and aching forehead. I knew that I was supposed to remember the dream, and the fact that I could not was infuriating. Alexander had been part of it, though I couldn’t think how. There had been a piece of music—neither a nocturne nor a serenade, but like both—and a boy playing a flute. A rose garden, water in the moonlight, two faces I couldn’t quite recall . . . I gave up. I fastened the diamond again around my neck, then went to find Mary.
The front hall was silent. I called for her, and then Colette, but no one answered. The hands of the grandfather clock stood at half past six; the silence between its ticks stretched thin. For a moment my eyes fixed on the paper on the wall behind the clock: a strident red Nouveau affair of vines and roses I had always found rather garish, and not at all in keeping with Eden’s otherwise faded palette. It, too, seemed for a moment to remind me of the dream; but the feeling slipped away again as quickly.
I turned away and continued down the corridor, looking into the series of empty rooms until I reached the library. There, finally, I heard Mary’s voice behind the closed door. She sat inside at the long table with Alexander and Tasha, an array of books spread before them.
“Eleanor!” she cried. “I was beginning to wonder whether you would sleep forever.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I thought that you must be tired, to sleep in the middle of the day. Did you go for a walk this morning?”
“A bit of one.” I tried to smile, but Alexander fixed me with a penetrating look, and it faltered.
“I’ve just been acquainting Alexander and Tasha with the library,” Mary said. “Jean-Pierre and a couple of the others are moving the Trevozhovs’ things to the cottage.”
“I wanted to help them,” said Alexander, “but Mary wouldn’t hear of it.”
“She certainly shouldn’t have,” I said. “I hope that we can also convince you to stay to dinner. You can’t be ready to cook at the cottage yet.”
“I asked them already,” Mary retorted.
“And they accepted, I hope.”
Alexander smiled. “It didn’t take much convincing.”
“We usually eat at eight,” Mary said. “That leaves time for Eleanor to give you a tour of the closer gardens, if you like. T
he rose garden is as old as the house, apparently.”
“I’d love to see it,” Alexander replied, so sincerely that I couldn’t bring myself to decline.
When I turned, his eyes lingered below my face for a moment. I felt self-consciously for the necklace I had just put on. Simultaneously I remembered the beginning of the dream: Alexander had stood by the piano in the house on the hill, looking at me as intently as he did now. Then he had led me to a garden, where a child played a flute by a mirror. After that, the images became confused again.
“Eleanor?” I heard Mary say tentatively.
I looked at her for a moment and then smiled. “I’m sorry, I was daydreaming. Well—would Tasha like to come to the gardens, too?”
“Perhaps Tasha would be more interested in your mother’s old dollhouse,” Mary said.
“Which will it be, love?” Alexander asked her.
“I’d like to see the dollhouse, please,” she answered, with a visible glow of excitement. Mary held out her hand, and the little girl took it readily.
“We’ll be back in an hour,” I told them, and Mary waved us on our way.
Alone in the hallway with Alexander, I was suddenly shy. “I’m sorry if Mary seems forward,” I said, carefully avoiding his eyes. “She’d like to see me married off, I think . . .” I trailed off, realizing how coarse I sounded.
“Oh?” Alexander replied, obviously amused.
I blushed. “I didn’t mean that as it must have sounded.”
He had begun to smile. “Of course not.”
I cursed myself and quickly changed the subject. “Actually, I’m glad of the chance to talk to you.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I looked at him. “How do you know something happened?”
“You must stop jumping at your own shadow, Eleanor. I am not psychic, if that’s what you’re wondering. I am not even especially talented at guessing. But when you walked in here a moment ago, you looked as if you’d just seen a ghost. You still do. What happened to frighten you?”
Once again I found that I could not meet his eyes. “Let’s not discuss this here,” I said. I turned and began to walk. He followed me to the end of the corridor and out the open doors of the solarium, into the most expansive of the rose gardens.
“You won’t believe me,” I said as we strolled through the arbor of white climbing roses that ran along one side of the garden.
“How do you know that?”
“Because if the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe it now if I could think of any way to talk myself out of it. But it’s hard not to believe something you’ve seen. Heard, I should say.”
“So where did you see this ghost, Eleanor?” Though he smiled, I could not tell whether it was in encouragement or derision.
“I haven’t seen a ghost,” I began, wondering how to explain something to him that I could not begin to explain to myself. “Or if it is a ghost, I haven’t seen it, only heard it. Her, rather. I’m not making sense, am I?”
The more I tried to explain myself, the younger and less coherent I felt. He must have seen or sensed a bit of this, because he said gently, in the tone I had heard him use with Tasha, “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” At that moment I wanted nothing more than to turn back to the house and leave him there with his condescension; at the same time I realized that I had come too far now to turn back.
We stepped out of the arbor, onto the pebbled path that circled a fountain at the farthest end of the garden. The basin was white marble, its sides low and wide for sitting. The falling water had dampened the seat; Alexander took off his jacket and spread it out, gesturing for me to sit down. I looked at him in surprise. The beginnings of a smile played around his mouth and eyes, and there was nothing in it of the mockery I thought I had heard a moment before. I smiled back, and his own widened. Another shadow of the dream flickered mothlike across the boundary between conscious and subconscious, and I felt something far from fear twist a knot in my stomach.
I sat down. “I don’t know when the beginning was,” I said, aware that I was speaking too quickly and without thought, in the panicked urge to hide Alexander’s effect on me. I lowered my gaze to my hands, took a breath, and forced myself to concentrate on answering the question he had put to me. “Maybe it was the first time I saw Eden’s Meadow, or the house on the hill. Maybe it began the morning I met you. But there’s something telling me that none of this is a surprise, that I’ve known it . . . well, all of my life.” I finally looked at him, but he was looking intently at the water’s broken surface, his face unreadable as stone. “Do you understand?” I asked hesitantly.
“I think I’m beginning to.”
His expression had not changed; I tried not to think too much about the portent of his words. “I suppose what you want to know is the immediate beginning,” I said. “That was this morning, when I decided to go and see the house on the hill.”
He looked at me quickly. “You went up there? Alone?”
I couldn’t tell whether or not the words were meant as a reproof. “I had to know,” I said defensively.
“So, you did find a ghost?”
I smiled feebly, wishing that I could read him even half as easily as I had been able to read the young men I knew in Boston.
“A lunatic, maybe. Even if she’s that, though, I don’t think she’s particularly dangerous. Possibly tragic. What kind of madwoman would she be if she wasn’t?” Alexander smiled back, but it faded quickly, leaving his face sad and myself inexplicably anxious. “I have a feeling she may have something to do with my aunt, Eve. My mother’s twin.”
This time his tone was openly incredulous. “Eve, of Eden’s Meadow?”
“Granted, it’s a bit theatrical.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Perhaps only religious.”
“Mary tells me my grandmother was religious.”
“You didn’t know her?”
“She died the year I was born, and by that point my mother had left her family.”
He paused before he continued. “What makes you think that your aunt is connected with that house?”
I plunged into the story of how I had learned of Eve’s existence, the troubled relationship between my mother and grandfather, my grandfather’s comments to Mary concerning the house. I described the house on the hill, the pristine tower room, the piano that had made me play forgotten music and then seemingly played by itself. Finally I told him about the footsteps I’d heard in the hallway and the hairbreadth escape from my phantom.
When I finished, Alexander looked at me intently. This time his eyes moved quite clearly over the diamond at my throat.
“Are you certain that you’re not simply being visited by a tramp?”
“It seems unlikely,” I answered, thankful for something to say. “First of all, the tower room was meticulously neat. Not a tramp’s room, as far as I have the authority to say. Clearly, she knew where all the keys were kept. And she played the piano too well.”
“Tramps come from all walks of life, and anyone could happen upon a key ring or a hidden door. It doesn’t mean that the person in the house today was your missing aunt.”
I looked at him, and he looked back at me. Nothing in his expression belied suspicion, but I sensed that he was waiting for me to tell him something more. I watched the spread of ripples on the pool’s surface where drops fell from the fountain. All was still but for that falling water.
Again the dark moths stirred, fragments of the dream trying to settle into place. Then, all at once and without apparent impetus, it flooded back. The sneaking shiver began to creep up my spine. Like the twist in my stomach when Alexander smiled, it was rapidly becoming a sensation that was both familiar and unnerving.
“I know it’s no coincidence,” I finally said, clutching the rim of the fountain for courage, “because of the dreams.”
“Dreams,” he repeated, with the slightest catch in his voice.
�
��I’ve always had them.”
“What do you mean?”
I looked at him to try to judge whether he asked the question with interest or scorn, but his eyes were on the water, and as opaque. “I dream of Eve. I’ve dreamed of her ever since I was a child. Ever since I can remember. Until a few days ago, when I saw the painting in your cottage, I thought that she was a confusion of my mother, who died when I was very small. I dreamed of Eve the night my grandfather died. The night I first saw you.”
“Have you . . .” Alexander began warily, then paused. “Have you dreamed of her since then?”
I shook my head. “That was the last time. It was strange, because I hadn’t dreamed of her since I went away to school, but I used to quite a lot.” I paused again, searching for the words to explain it to him. “She warned me sometimes. About things . . . dangers . . . before they happened.” Alexander was watching me steadily. “Once there was a boat,” I blundered on. “My grandfather and I had been traveling in Europe and were on our way home from England. The night before we planned to leave, she told me not to go, because . . . Alexander, do you know of the Titanic?”
“Of course I do,” he answered, looking at me in disbelief. “You mean you were meant to be on it?”
I nodded. “I still can’t believe I managed to convince my grandfather to give up those tickets. Another time something similar happened with a train.”
His eyes remained calm. “Are you saying that you have a guardian angel?”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “Then I had a different dream,” I continued, determined now that he should know all that I knew myself, “different, but in the same vein. Just this afternoon, after I came back from the house, I fell asleep . . . as you know.” I paused, looking again at his scattered reflection. “I dreamed I was in the house on the hill, in the ballroom—I mean, the room where the piano is. It was nighttime, and there was a full moon. I began to play the piano, a piece I knew well in the dream, but nothing I’ve ever heard before. At least, I don’t think I have. When the song ended I looked up, and you were standing there, by the piano. You were . . . you looked like . . .” I stumbled, looked at him, and knew that if he were telling this story, he would speak the truth.
