And then, as if they had always been there, Jasmine and Tara arrived, and everyone found their seats. All the guests sat in a circle in the drawing room, the buffet tables behind them, a large empty space in the middle. If they had drinks or plates balanced with food, they placed them at their feet. A few of them shuffled uncomfortably, looking from face to face for a clue of what was expected of them. The town had blown the top off of many of its secrets the night the snakes had emerged, but Helena could tell by looking at Claudette that there were many more below. That sort of thing is always a process.
But before the second level of secrets could be reached, Helena had a surprise for them all, and it arrived just on time.
“I’ve got it,” Helena said in response to the doorbell. She hoped the fear wasn’t apparent in her voice.
Chapter 12
“Greetings, Meredith!”
‘Greetings’ was an odd word for Helena to use. She was nervous. She hadn’t seen Meredith since the night she’d perched her on her shoulders and teetered into her home. She’d helped Meredith to her living room, averting her eyes as they passed Michael Baum’s sleeping form on the couch, the smell of alcohol rolling off of him in visible waves. At Meredith’s request, she’d gotten her a glass of water, and then she’d left and never spoken to anyone of the incident, also at Meredith’s request.
She stepped aside to allow Meredith and her two guests to enter. She recognized Burt Winters, who sat on the city council. Helena guessed that the other woman, her back so stiff she could have balanced a book on her head, was an attorney.
Meredith shuffled in, her arm hooked inside Burt’s, her free hand extended in front of her to feel the air. It pained Helena to see Meredith’s dark sunglasses. She imagined the woman must be entirely blind in the one eye and only able to sense light or dark in the other.
Yet, she maintained an attitude of arrogance, somehow. An arching eyebrow appeared over the top of her dark glasses. The equinox party was out of sight, but the breath and soul of forty people in the house was unmistakable. “Having a get-together?”
Helena’s knees knocked. Today was thirty days after Meredith had first delivered the papers. She was here to take the house away, and the store. Helena had, in fact, invited her over the phone just yesterday. She hadn’t told Xenia or Ursula or anyone. She also hadn’t thought this plan through thoroughly. “Yes. Care to join us?”
Meredith’s head drew back, and she barked an incredulous laugh in the direction of Burt and her female companion. There would be no quarter given for the fact that Helena had helped her out of the tree, her knees clamped around Helena’s neck. If anything, her shame at someone seeing her husband passed out drunk and the fact that she had had to accept help worked like gasoline on her fire. “Don’t pretend you don’t know why we’re here. Vicky, deliver the papers.”
The house cracked with the sound of ice snapping. The attorney glanced up, startled.
“Spring thaw,” Meredith said. “Give her the papers.”
Vicky set her briefcase on the entry table and popped it open. Ursula strode into the foyer, followed by Xenia, both coming to check on what was taking Helena so long.
“What the hell?” Xenia asked. “You have a fine nerve coming here.”
Ursula’s eyes glittered. She was built sturdy, like Helena, but lacked her softness. “All are welcome. Even Meredith Gottfridsen.” She indicated the drawing room.
Xenia’s mouth grew tight. “I don’t think she can see what’s right in front of her eyes. Can you, Meredith?”
It was a cruel question. Meredith began to shake with fury, the smell of sulfur and heat leaving her in waves.
“Please,” Helena said, reaching for the tray of equinox candies that she’d been saving for this exact moment. They were shaped like diary keys, each no larger than a thumbnail. It was early to serve them, but this might be the only chance she had. “Take one.”
She thrust a candy into Meredith’s hand. The woman stroked the smooth milk chocolate with her thumb. A tear rolled from under her glasses, a single water drop tinted pink with blood.
“What is it?” she whispered. She sounded suspicious. Helena believed she had every right to be.
“I made it for you.”
It may have been the clear blue truth of Helena’s words, or the power of the house, or Meredith’s blindness giving her the power to smell the cure for her loneliness.
Or maybe she was just hungry.
Whatever it was, she placed the chocolate in her mouth.
She chewed vigorously, brown foaming the edges of her lips.
She swallowed, the ball of chocolate sliding down her snake throat.
Her head fell forward and her glasses followed, sliding off her nose and onto the floor. Her eyes were horrible, wicked yellow crust rimmed with red sealing all but the edge of one.
“In middle school, I was called horse face.” Meredith covered her mouth as if she had just burped in public. The eye that was not entirely sealed widened a hair. “Get it? ‘Mare-edith?”
“Are you all right?” Burt asked, ignoring her words, horrified by her face. “Your eyes.”
Helena held the key tray toward him. He grabbed a candy with something like desperation. Vicky followed suit.
“Come in,” Helena offered tenderly. “Please. All the way, I mean.” She pushed Ursula and Xenia toward the drawing room, hoping the three in the foyer would follow them, knowing there was nothing more she could do if they didn’t. She passed around the tray of key candies to the seated guests, her eyes traveling toward the drawing room door, her hands shaking.
Burt, Vicky, and Meredith didn’t follow.
The Catalains were going to lose this house, and the store. Her candies must not have been strong enough.
The equinox candy keys were her most secret recipe, concocted of the rarest cacao, candied prunes, the essence of rose petals, and the lightest dusting of moonflower pollen. They tasted of royal jelly, the color purple, and a sweetness so pure that it made a popping sound when swallowed. The noise signaled a deep and deliciously painful healing in the cracked land between hearts and mouths.
Tears flowed freely down Helena’s cheeks. She had tried, in the best way she knew how, to help Meredith. It hadn’t worked, and she was going to lose everything. She should have asked for help so much earlier, but she hadn’t, and so here she was. All she could do was heal those in front of her. She continued to pass around the chocolate keys.
Then, quietly, Meredith walked in, Burt and Vicky immediately behind her.
Helena cried out in relief. “Please, I’ve saved you chairs.”
Burt and Vicky glanced in awe around the drawing room but followed her without protest, leading Meredith. Helena believed the thumping of her heart could be heard all the way over in Alexandria.
The fire was crackling. When Xenia spoke, an explosion of wood sent a glowing orange spark to her feet. She stomped it out without glancing down, saving an angry stare for Meredith. Still, she spoke. She couldn’t help it. She’d eaten one of the chocolate keys. “I’m afraid Helena will die before me.”
The warm tears bubbling up in Helena’s eyes doubled, and she set her tray down and rushed over to Xenia, grabbing her hand. “I’m afraid of that, too. Who will take care of you?”
And so it began, the releasing of secrets.
Leonardo nodded. “I’m worried that none of you will see me, and if you do, that I won’t measure up.” He glanced down at his feet. “And I’m worried that if I do measure up, I’ll never be able to let down my guard, because you’ll always expect that much of me.”
Cleo shook her head, and her jewels and metal rings jangled like fairy bells. She glanced over at Xenia. “I took one of Ursula’s spells. I think that’s the only reason I met you.”
“What?” Xenia asked. Helena couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or cry.
Cleo glanced down at her hands. “Ursula gave me a tiny ruby-colored glass bottle the week before I came into Se
ven Daughters. She told me to warm it with my body and then drink it. I held it in my hand and found myself across from the store. I drank it. It tasted like crushed aspirin and ear wax. I started coughing, and so I went into Seven Daughters for water. And I’m afraid to be a lesbian,” Cleo continued. “But I am.” Her chair rose a hair’s breadth off the ground.
With every secret told, a tattoo faded from Claudette’s flesh. First the cross went from her cheek, and then the horrible ferret demon began to erase itself from her neck. She sat taller.
Seeing this, the second grade teacher cleared her throat. “I’m…um, I’m grateful you invited me to this party.” Her eyes raced around the circle, almost hopeful someone would contradict her. “I think, if I’m reading this right, that the hostess gift is to tell a story? Well, I don’t remember this well, but I want to share the story of Hewitt. It’s one of the very few things I keep my mouth shut about. People I work with will tell you I’m a talker,” she added, a sad smile introducing her face.
“Hewitt was my 5th grade classmate and the poorest kid in our class. We always teased him about smelling like manure. You know how kids are. That winter was really snowy, and when the temperature dropped below zero, our teachers had us spend recesses in the classroom. One of these frigid days, all three of the 5th grade teachers were together a room or two over, leaving us alone for… how long I’m not sure. What I remember is that by the time they returned to the classroom, we’d strung up Hewitt by his neck and were hanging him using the door as a fulcrum.” She gasped, as if she was listening to someone else tell the story. Her eyes had locked on Ursula’s, whose gaze didn’t waver.
“Hewitt was trying to get a grip on the rope around his neck, his feet scraping at the air. He hung up there like a trussed pig, with two kids on the other side of the door holding the end of the rope. His hand-me-down shoes were inches from the floor. I think what alerted the teachers was the class chant. Simple, loud. Hang Hewitt. The first word was longer than the second. Haaaaaang Hewitt … haaaaaang Hewitt.”
She coughed. She glanced at her trembling hands, then back at Helena, her voice tight. “I don’t know if I was chanting too, or if I was silent, but that’s not why I’ve never told this story to anyone. I don’t tell it because I don’t know whether we never saw Hewitt again or if he was back the next day.”
The man next to her, whom she’d never met before she’d entered the house, patted her shoulder. Tears were running down Claudette and Helena’s faces and seeing that, the second grade teacher began to cry as well. Her tears smelled like sage.
A man who had entered through the back door recognized himself in that secret. “No one knows who I really am. I don’t let them.” He appeared apologetic. The air around him turned red, then faded to peach.
“Me neither,” Meredith whispered. And then she jumped up, knocking her chair over. “Me neither!”
The Queen Anne sent its thanks to the moon.
The Catalain Book of Secrets: Celebration with Strangers
Certain alchemy needs to happen in the company of others. The flame of communion can burn away even the deepest of suffering. Reach out, and you will be rewarded.
Chapter 13
A month after the equinox party, Xenia stepped tentatively across the threshold of Immanuel Lutheran Church.
“You won’t really burst into flames,” Helena said. “That’d be ridiculous.”
The music inside was glorious, a chorus of angels with a single, gritty thread running through it that made the rest of the voices even more pure by contrast. Still, Xenia’s discomfort was palpable.
Helena grabbed her sister’s elbow and pointed with her chin. Ninety percent of the women inside the church were wearing a Xenia dress. The woman in the pew nearest them wore a lemon-yellow sleeveless poplin sundress with a red sash that Xenia had sewn two summers ago. It was brilliant, crisp, and the woman wearing it shone brightly. Next to her was a lady wearing another of Xenia’s creations, this one a cap-sleeved, 40s-style cotton dress with tiny white polka dots on blue cotton. Its cut accented her tiny waist and large hips and imparted on her an overall aura of capability. The whole church was lit up by women looking their best and feeling their strongest in Xenia’s dresses.
A grateful smile flooded Xenia’s face.
But the most amazing creation of all was worn by Cleo, who stood in the front of the congregation, lead soprano in the choir. She looked like an exquisite ocean queen in her muslin dress hand-dyed so ingeniously by Xenia that undulating blue ran into shades of green to create the effect of flowing water across Cleo’s flat stomach and round hips.
The dress was both modest in its coverage and powerful in what it implied by revealing the strength of her forearms, the intelligence of her hands, the quickness of her ankles. She didn’t move as she sang, but such was the power of the dress that it made her shimmer like she was the music itself, her beautiful tiger eyes closed, her thick jungle hair falling off her shoulders. The music that rippled out of her mouth matched her glory. Her voice was pure crystal that entered behind one’s heart.
Xenia was spellbound looking at her, as was much of the congregation. Helena tapped her lightly on the shoulder and pointed toward the usher.
“Welcome,” he said. “Would you like to sit up front? We have a seat near the choir saved especially for you.” He was a young man whose smile seemed far older than him. “You too,” he said, smiling at Helena.
Helena was grateful for the guidance and followed her sister toward the front of the church, taking the last seat in the wooden pew directly across from the choir. At this vantage point, she was able to identify another person in the choir.
Meredith.
The two women nodded at each other, Meredith’s eyes bright and clear but her mouth still tight. Helena was okay with that. She knew these sorts of things were a process. At least Meredith had shut down the eminent domain process and stopped picketing the store.
For now.
The entire sermon was beautiful, about love and hope and learning from mistakes. That night, Xenia finally made love to Cleo, or more accurately, they finally made love to each other. Xenia was hiding secret folds under flowing clothes, and she took Cleo into them, loving the warm, wet musk of her body, the firmness of her breasts. She had an acute sensation of wanting to be everything to Cleo, simultaneously embracing her and inside of her. Cleo was as flexible as a ribbon, her mouth warm and yielding. They twined in the bedsheets until dawn, bringing each other again and again to exquisite heights of ecstasy, and finally fell into a dreamless sleep, cozy in each other’s arms, their glorious dresses pooled on the floor where they’d first tossed them.
Helena awoke the next morning with the glow of her twin’s experience. Her heart danced with the joy of it. Xenia was in love, and the commitment was being returned to her in full.
Helena was quiet as she got ready for work in the rumpled dawn light. The store wouldn’t open for three hours, but she’d agreed to meet Claudette early to work on a new chocolate recipe.
She knew Claudette was trying to drag her back to her former self. Though she still refused to peek below her neck, the equinox party had helped her to make peace with the fact that she could never celebrate her body again. That felt something like healing, enough to let her look for joy elsewhere. A consistent delight was found in mentoring Claudette.
Claudette had the gift, and she’d brought a younger flair to the Seven Daughters sweets, introducing transparent, cinnamon-flavored hard candies that changed color in your mouth depending on your mood and licorice bracelets and rings ingeniously designed to look like authentic jewelry and deliver a treat in a pinch. Helena’s classics were still the bestsellers, but customers were sampling Claudette’s creations and coming back for seconds.
Her mirror candies were a crowd favorite. No longer than her pinky and poured into an elegant mold she’d created herself, the dark chocolates were shaped like old-fashioned hand mirrors with a sugar-glass reflection. She dusted them
with crystallized ginger and specks of rock salt. The ginger bits were at first hard in your mouth, but as the chocolate melted, the ginger blended with the salt, which then popped before melting into your tongue. Eating them imbued the person with the courage to face themselves.
Claudette had told Helena that she’d discovered the power of her new candy the day after the equinox party, when she’d sampled her first mirror out of the tray, not even waiting until it cooled. It tasted so incredible—the perfect mixture of sweet and salty, crunchy and creamy—that she ate the whole batch. Rather than getting a stomachache, she was overcome with an abundance of unwanted clarity. She’d realized she’d been hiding in her own flesh, adding on layers so she would never face the world unprotected.
With the awareness the candy mirrors brought her, she changed her eating habits, though not dramatically. There was too much good food in the world, and too much pleasure in enjoying it. She altered her patterns just enough so that she began to feel comfortable in herself. Then, she began to claim her body. Once she did that, there was no looking back. She started walking to work, and soon, she no longer grew short of breath on busy days or when she mounted a flight of stairs.
The post-mirror-candy Claudette was only 15 pounds lighter than the previous version, and she discovered she loved herself at that weight. And she wanted to pass that gift onto Helena, whose post-mastectomy depression was written in the slump of her shoulders and the dullness of her eyes. Yet, Helena refused to eat a mirror.
Claudette might have let it go at that if not for one batch of chocolates that Helena had crafted yesterday. They were plain truffles, shaped like tiny eggs. Not knowing that Helena had meant to toss them in the garbage and bury them under paper, Claudette had popped one in her mouth. The sense of loss was immediate, powerful, the pain in her chest almost unbearable, like she was being sliced in two. Claudette spit out the candy, scouring at her mouth to remove any trace of it, gasping for breath. She began crying for reasons she couldn’t explain. Claudette realized what she had eaten: unfinished, bodiless breasts.
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