“Hey,” Tony said. “I don’t know what you two are fighting about but I think I see a cave.”
Errol’s arms relaxed.
Tony shone his light on a portion of the rock wall that was a bit farther down the creek. I ran. My heart in my throat, I ran to the cave. Its entrance was wide but low. Ducking, I stumbled inside, my hand aching as I clutched the flashlight.
The beam landed on a puddle of periwinkle blue.
Belinda Amorous, the ex-Queen of Romance, lay in the middle of the cave in her bathrobe and slippers. Her breathing was steady, her eyes closed, her head rested on her arm. At her side lay a spiral notebook.
“Mom?” I could barely say the word, for in saying it I invited a response that I feared with all my heart. Would she be lost to her depression again? Would she be incoherent and confused? Would she stare at me with vacant eyes? I knelt beside her. “Mom?”
She stirred, then raised her head, her blond hair falling around her shoulders. “Alice?” she asked, shielding her eyes from the flashlight’s beam. “Is that you?”
I lowered the beam. My hand trembled. “Yes. It’s me.”
“Alice,” she said again, the way she used to say it. Then she sat up and held out her arms. I fell into them. “Alice,” she whispered wrapping her arms around me. I closed my eyes and I was three years old again and we were simply on another one of our wondrous adventures.
“You’re soaking wet.” She tightened the hug. “And you’re shivering.”
A flash of lightning lit up the world outside the cave. My mother pulled out of the hug and looked sternly at me. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know how dangerous it is to walk in a storm?”
“Me?” I said, once again feeling like the parent. “What about you? Everyone’s looking for you.”
“They are? But I haven’t been gone that long, have I?” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep but this medicine makes me feel so drowsy.” Then she ran her hand over my dripping hair. “You look beautiful. You’ve got layers in your hair. When did you do that?” I opened my mouth, a million things waiting to be spoken, but my mother startled and looked over my shoulder. “Who are you?” she asked.
Tony had crouched behind me. “I’m Tony,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Tony’s my friend, Mom. He helped me look for you.”
“You brought him here? To the hospital?” Her face tightened. “Alice? You told him about me?”
I took a deep breath. “He’s knows all about you. He knows everything.”
“You told him? But …”
“I needed his help,” I said, looking right into her eyes. “And I don’t want to lie anymore. This is who we are.” I got to my feet. “Look at us,” I said, opening my arms as if I’d just stepped onto a stage and was presenting our little play to an audience. “You’re in a bathrobe and slippers, in a cave, in the middle of a storm. And I’m in a pair of shorts, in a cave, in the middle of a storm.” My arms fell to my sides. “You came here to do research for your next book. I came looking for you because I was afraid you were stumbling around the forest like a zombie. I’m the daughter of a mother who does weird things, who’s been sick for a very long time but I’m not ashamed. I’m soaking wet but I’m not ashamed.”
“You’re not ashamed of me?” she asked, looking up at me.
“I’ve never been ashamed of you,” I said. “I’ve just been confused. And sad. And lonely.” My jaw trembled with that last word.
My mother got to her feet. She hugged me again. “I never wanted to be this way. I never wanted you to feel sad or lonely.”
“I know,” I said, my cheek pressed against the soft blue terry cloth. “I know that now.”
“Alice?” Tony said quietly. He stood next to me and ran his flashlight beam around the cave. “Where’s Errol?”
There’s a moment just before tragedy strikes when you can sense its impending arrival—an unnerving sensation before it swoops down like a bird of prey. I’d felt it just before opening the bathroom door on that morning when my mother was hospitalized. And I felt it right then, stronger than the jolt of Errol’s arrow. I stumbled from the cave.
Errol lay on his back in the creek bed.
“Errol!” I cried, flinging myself onto the rocks. “Oh my God! Errol!” Water trickled around his head. His drenched hood was wadded beneath his neck. Tony shone his light on Errol’s face and I gasped. His hair had turned completely gray. I put my hand on his cold cheek and his eyes fluttered open.
“I’ve run out of time,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, you haven’t. You told me you still had time. You told me—”
“Alice, listen to me.” He grimaced.
Tony knelt next to us. “Did you fall?” he asked. “What happened? Is anything broken? Can you move?” He felt along Errol’s legs.
I held on to Errol’s arm. “You said there was still time to finish. We have to finish your story. And the rest of your stories. I want to hear the rest of your stories. The whole world wants to hear them.” Rain rolled into the corners of my mouth.
“Alice—”
“I promised to write your story.” I gripped his arm tighter. “You can’t die. I want you to read it. I want you to know that it’s good and that everyone’s going to love it and …”
His eyes closed and he moaned.
“What do you mean he can’t die?” Tony asked. “What’s going on? What’s the matter with him?”
I leaned over Errol, blocking the rain from his face. “He’s dying. He’s got cancer and he’s dying.”
“Cancer?” Tony said. Understanding spread across Tony’s face and he nodded slowly. “That’s why you’ve been trying to get the book finished.”
My mother had followed us out. “We need to get him out of the water,” she said. “Let’s move him into the cave.”
Tony slid his arms beneath Errol’s and we both helped get him to his feet. Then Tony picked him up and carried him, bearing his weight with slow steps across and out of the creek. Errol’s pale face looked almost unnatural next to Tony’s tan arm. Once inside the cave, I helped Tony lay Errol on the ground. Tony took my flashlight and set it upright so the light bounced off the cave’s ceiling. My mother took off her bathrobe and bundled it up, placing it under Errol’s head. Then she wiped his face with the sleeves of her cotton nightgown.
“I’m going to get help,” Tony said, wiping condensation off his glasses with his dripping wet shirt. “I’ll tell them to bring a stretcher.”
“Yes.” I nodded frantically. “Bring a stretcher. And some blankets and some …” What else did we need? How do you keep a contract of servitude from expiring? I looked desperately at Tony. “Are you sure you remember the way?”
“Yeah. I’m sure I can find the trail. It’s not far.” He leaned over Errol. “Hang on,” he told him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, with help.” Then he dashed out of the cave.
Thank you, I thought. Please hurry.
My mother settled next to Errol. “He’s very cold,” she said. She moved his head to her lap and placed her bathrobe over him. “Alice, what’s going on? How do you know this boy?”
I tucked the bathrobe around Errol’s shoulders. “He’s my friend,” I said. Drenched to the skin, I began to shiver.
“Alice.” Errol grimaced again, then opened his eyes. I leaned close. “In the back pocket of my jeans. Get it.”
He must have brought his medicine. It would help take the pain away. Rolling his hip slightly, I reached into his pocket but only found a piece of paper. “This?”
“Yes.”
Heavy drops of water fell off the ends of my hair as I unfolded the paper. It was the photograph, the one of me and my mother at the romance writers’ convention. I must have left it in Errol’s room. It was wet along the top edge and the ink had begun to smear. “Um, thanks,” I said, shoving it into my own pocket. “Errol, where are your pills?”
“Don�
�t lose it,” he said.
“I won’t. Errol, did you bring your pills?”
“Be sure to look at it.”
Why did he care about a photograph? He was dying. Dying!
A realization came to me, rising out of the panic and desperation. I knew what Errol needed. Not a stretcher, not a blanket, not a doctor or a hospital. “Mom, there’s something I need you to do.” I reached out and grabbed my flashlight. “I need you to hold this light so I can see what I’m writing.”
“Writing?” She hesitated, then took the flashlight.
I crawled a few feet to where the spiral notebook lay. A pen was tucked into its wire coil. Then I sat next to Errol and opened the notebook until I found a blank page.
“What are you—”
“There’s not much time, Mom. Please just listen to me. This is Errol and I’ve been helping him write his story. He wants to finish it before he dies.”
“Psyche,” Errol whispered.
“That’s who the story is about,” I told my mother as I pulled the pen from the coil.
“Psyche? The woman who married Cupid? That Psyche?”
“Yes,” I said, clicking the pen. “Psyche was Errol’s love, his true love. And the mythology books tell the wrong story. They tell that she lived a long and happy life with him. But she didn’t. She was killed and Errol wants the true version written so everyone will know. I think it’s …” I looked down at his still face. “I think it’s his way of apologizing to her. He feels responsible for her death. It’s his confession.”
“Psyche,” he whispered again.
“But, Alice …,” my mother said, leaning close to me. “Psyche lived a long time ago.”
“I know.” I bent my knees and set the notebook, open faced, on top of them. My desk was ready, but my mother wasn’t. She needed to know. “Errol is Cupid and he’s asked me to write his story before he dies.” I smiled, sad and joyous at the same time. “Mom, this is Cupid. He’s Cupid. The real Cupid. And he needs our help with his story.”
Who would have judged my mother if she’d laughed? Or if she’d started crying because she thought I was crazy. Or if she’d looked around and asked if we were on some sort of hidden-camera show. But she did none of those things. This was my mother—the Queen of Romance. A woman who’d spent her entire adult life writing stories of love. A woman who’d used her stories as a way to deal with the chaos that swirled around her. If anyone understood the healing power of a story, it was she.
She gently touched Errol’s cheek and inhaled a long breath of dank cave air. “Hello, Cupid,” she whispered. Then she aimed the flashlight’s beam at the notebook. “How’s that?”
“Good.” While the rain beat a steady rhythm outside, I gently shook Errol’s shoulder. He’d stopped shivering, which struck me as a bad sign. He was drifting away. “You went home and Psyche was gone. What happened then?” I shook him harder, time pressing in on us like the cave’s darkness. “Errol, I’m here. I’m here to record your story.”
His eyes opened, and though his voice was quiet, it filled the small space the way the reverend’s voice filled his church. “I knew they’d taken her.” He stared up at the ceiling. “To punish me. I knew they’d kill her.” His breathing was shallow. “I went to Venus’s temple. No one was there. It was silent, except for the scratching.” He grimaced. I wrote his words, my hands trembling.
“They’d built a tomb in the center of the temple. Made of stone walls. The scratching came from the tomb.” He closed his eyes. I knew what was coming next and it chilled me more than my rain-soaked clothing. “I called her name. And she answered. She was inside.”
My mother gasped.
Errol’s eyes flew open. He raised his hands and clawed weakly at the air. “I dug with my bare hands but the stones wouldn’t move.” His arms fell to his chest. “I went to the village asking for help, but Venus had cast a spell over the villagers and my arrows couldn’t sway them.” He turned his head and looked at me. “Psyche,” he whispered.
“What happened next?” I asked, turning to a new page.
His words were slow, his voice heavy. “I kept trying. I dug until my fingers bled. I used every tool I could find. I begged the gods. One day passed. Then another and another.” He kept looking at me. “And then you stopped scratching.” He’d gone back to that place and time. The cave became the tomb, and I was Psyche, once again. “Before you died I told you that I was sorry. But you could not hear me.”
The flashlight’s beam drifted away from the notebook as my mother, caught up in Errol’s sorrow, wiped a tear from her eye. I set the notebook and pen aside and lay next to Errol, my head on his shoulder.
“I heard you,” I said. “I heard you.”
“I told you that I loved you. I promised that we would be together again.” His voice vibrated against my ear. “I asked you to forgive me.”
I sat up and looked at his face, once so handsome, now slack and frail. “I forgive you, Cupid,” I said. “I forgive you.” And I pressed my lips to his cheek.
Errol closed his eyes and the cave fell silent. My mother pressed her hand to his chest. “He’s still breathing,” she said.
“I wrote it all down,” I told him, tears spilling out. “I won’t change it. I’ll write it just like it happened. I won’t give your story a happy ending. You don’t have to worry. I promise.”
“But it has a happy ending,” my mother said, stroking Errol’s forehead. “It has a very happy ending.”
“No, Mom, it doesn’t,” I said. Couldn’t she see what was happening? Psyche was long dead and now Errol was going to die.
“But it does.” She smiled down at him. “When he dies, he’ll see her again. Just as he promised.”
Errol’s eyes opened and he turned them up at my mother and smiled—a beaming, brilliant smile, and for a moment his face was young and handsome and strong. And his hair was white and brilliant. He glowed with happiness.
Then he turned his eyes to me. “Thank you, Alice. Thank you for writing my story.”
Right after Errol died, the storm abated. The thunder and lightning ceased. The rain stopped falling. A gentle breeze blew outside the cave. My mother and I held each other—the last two women to have known Cupid.
“What was that paper he gave you?” she asked after I’d stopped crying.
I took the photo from my pocket and showed her. “I remember this day,” she said. “I was so tired and I signed so many books. You were such a help to me.”
I looked at the photo. There I stood, behind my mother at the book-signing table, fake smiles plastered on both our faces. But now I could see what I couldn’t see before. Around my mother’s head was her sparkling aura and it had reached out and had wrapped itself around me.
It had never gone away.
She’d never stopped loving me.
Seven Months Later
February in Seattle is usually cold and clear, and so it was that day at Forest Lawn Cemetery, a vast landscape of headstones and rolling hills. Bundled in a jacket, scarf, and mittens, I stood at Errol’s grave. The crisp air tickled my nose and some of the guests might have thought I was sniffling because I was holding back tears. But I wasn’t crying. I was happy. Okay, so visiting someone’s grave on Valentine’s Day isn’t usually an occasion for happiness, but I had called everyone there for a special unveiling.
My mother, who stood to my left, looked beautiful in her green coat with its white faux-fur trim. She’d come home a few days after we’d found her in the cave, that night when Errol died. And she’d been home ever since. Life as we now knew it, which was very close to normal, meant a pill every day. Sometimes I had to remind her to take it, but that was easy.
Brain chemistry is sort of like one of Mrs. Bobot’s recipes—you never know what you’re going to end up with. Add a little of this and you’ve got a person who can see auras. Take away a dash of that and you’ve got a person who is so depressed, she can’t speak or move. Sprinkle in something else and yo
u’ve got a person who’s in love for a lifetime.
Thanks to the medication, my mother’s career was back on track too. Heartstrings Publishers never stopped sending her royalty checks, nor did they ask for the one hundred thousand dollars. It turned out that after my mother held a press conference, during which she acknowledged her mental illness, her book sales went wild. And she got hundreds of letters from readers thanking her for calling attention to a condition that many people suffered from. Her thirty-first book, The Lumber Baron’s Wife, the story of true love in a Pacific Northwest forest, was scheduled for a May release.
Next to my mother, holding a Tupperware container of cookies and wearing a new crocheted hat, was Mrs. Bobot. Realm and her parents had also come to the unveiling. I hadn’t seen Realm since she’d gone away to a center that treats eating disorders. Her hair was longer and she looked a million times better. I’d kept my promise to read Death Cat. Guess what? It wasn’t so bad. My mom read it too and she called her publisher and Realm got a contract. Everyone agreed that Realm was a much better name for a horror writer than Lily. So the name was staying.
Reverend William Ruttles towered next to Realm in his official collar and robe. Archibald stood at his side in an elegant cashmere coat, a treat he’d bought himself after getting a raise at work. Many members of the Magnolia Community Episcopalian Church crowded behind them. Back in July, a week following the reverend’s interrupted sermon about neighborly love, he brought Archibald to church, where they sat together in the front row. Later, during the social hour, he introduced Archibald to as many people as he could find. What Reverend Ruttles did not realize was that the congregation had long been aware of his living arrangements. They secretly adored Archibald, because his arrival had brought a merciful end to the exhausting year following Mrs. Ruttles’s death. Even the most well-intentioned church lady has a limit to the number of salmon loaves she wants to bake.
Mad Love Page 23
