Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Noelle shivered. “All those little gray sabers of leaves—with tiny hairs all over them!” She shook her fingers, as though to free them of cobwebs.

  “You’re being silly,” Marla told her. “They are beautiful.” She went on to explain to me. “There used to be thousands of them growing wild up there—until feral goats nearly wiped them out. They grow in large rosette shapes for ten years or so, low to the ground. And then the plant shoots up a great stalk covered with purple flowers that can grow as tall as a man. It blooms once in its lifetime and then it dies.”

  Noelle flung down her napkin and jumped up from the table. “I don’t want to listen!” she cried, and ran out of the room. For once something had come through to her strongly.

  “I’ll go after her,” Marla said.

  I got up too. “I’ll go with you.” She didn’t want me, but she couldn’t stop me, and I followed her out of the house in Noelle’s wake. I wondered if Marla had upset her sister deliberately—and if so, why?

  She turned toward the rose garden, and I hurried beside her.

  “Is it because of what happened in the crater that talk about silverswords upsets her?” I asked. “Your mother said she was sitting beside one of those plants tearing up its leaves when they found her.”

  Marla stopped with her hand on my arm. “Maybe you’d better let me handle this alone. You can’t take her to Ahinahina. Just hearing the name sends her into a frenzy.”

  Perhaps that was what Marla had been trying to prove to me. She stood beside me on the path, looking plump and inscrutable—and determined.

  “Please,” I said. “I want her to come back to me, Marla. Is that so terrible?”

  “Maybe it is.” She hurried ahead of me, moving easily in flat-heeled shoes, her usual muumuu floating as she ran down steps into the tangle that had once been the rose garden.

  I followed her to where Noelle sat once more on the bench of lava rock, turning a rose she’d plucked in her fingers. She looked perfectly calm and happy, and I realized that she had no recollection of what had just happened, or why she’d run out here. As quickly as that her agitation had vanished.

  “Hello, Marla,” she said, and looked at me. “Tell me who this is. Have I met you before?”

  I wanted to reach across the chasm between us and snatch her back to reality. I wanted to tell her exactly who I was, but Marla’s hand restrained me again. “It won’t do any good, Caroline. She’s already lost her way again.”

  Nevertheless, there was something she might understand and I moved from Marla’s touch. “David is driving me over this morning, Noelle, and we’d like you to come with us. We’re going to visit an interesting house, and you might enjoy the trip. It’s not far away.”

  She smiled readily—that empty smile, with none of the gaiety I’d loved in my mother as a little girl.

  “Of course,” she said, “I’d love to go.”

  Marla sighed. “Okay—it’s on your head, Caroline. At least David will know what to do if she gets upset. He’s pretty good with her and she likes him. Anyway, she won’t even know where she is unless you tell her.”

  It seemed to me that her words carried an undertone of malice, and I began to wonder about Marla’s “kindness” toward her sister.

  “I plan to tell her.” I knew I sounded grim, but Marla was clearly part of the whole plan to keep Noelle exactly where she was.

  On impulse I told her about David’s analogy of the pressed Japanese flowers. “She’s one of them, Marla. I want to see her open again—I have to try.”

  “There’s something you aren’t considering,” she told me. Sometimes Marla could gaze off into space in a way that seemed to remove her from the scene around her—but not in the absent way Noelle took flight. There could be a sort of—mysticism?—about Marla, as though she could see beyond veils. “Those water flowers—I had them too as a little girl. Only mine were different. Mother got them from an elderly Japanese friend who made them himself. His flowers were especially beautiful—but sometimes they weren’t flowers. They would open into snakes or toads, or wicked little Japanese foxes. Just the heads grinning up at you, instead of the flowers you expected. So be careful, Caroline. David’s flower idea could bring you monsters. Let’s go back to breakfast now.”

  I had thought too that the flowers, once opened, might not be beautiful, and David had said the same thing.

  Marla took Noelle’s arm to raise her from the bench, and guided her back to the house. I followed soberly, wondering if I might really be the insensitive blunderer my grandmother and aunt thought me. At least, there was one reassuring element. If I upset Noelle, she possessed her own escape mechanism that would return her to a world she seemed to prefer. But there was no one left but me to find, not just my mother, but a woman who was still young enough to have years of life ahead of her, and whose state cried out for rescue.

  In any case, arguments for or against didn’t really matter. I had to try.

  6

  Before we got into David’s car, Joanna took me aside for a moment. “I don’t like what you’re doing, Caro. You see your own imaginary goal, though it’s one that can’t be achieved. Don’t you suppose we’ve tried? Now you’re ready to ignore all the possible disasters along the way.”

  When I didn’t answer she went on. “At least be gentle with your mother. She’s suffered enough.”

  “Of course I’ll be gentle. Why wouldn’t I be?” I knew I sounded impatient—perhaps because I couldn’t entirely reassure myself, let alone my grandmother.

  “She’s much more easily disturbed than you realize. And you haven’t seen what can happen. She goes to pieces in quite an alarming way. You might at least take Marla with you.”

  “No! I want to have a chance with her alone. That house must be filled with happy memories for her. Even I can remember happy times there.”

  “Were they happy, Caroline? Perhaps not always, so do be careful.”

  There was nothing more she could say, and she stood watching as we went out to David’s car.

  I’d put on a wraparound khaki skirt with a yellow flowered blouse, and as Noelle walked with me, happy enough now, and interested, she pleased me with a comment.

  “That’s a nice outfit you’re wearing, Caroline. You’re very pretty. I hope these jeans are all right—I thought we might be walking around a lot.”

  I thanked her and told her she looked fine. She had topped her jeans with a white shirt, tucked in to show the figure of a girl. Her short honey-blond hair was tied with a blue ribbon, though locks of it escaped across her cheeks. She’d tucked a yellow ginger blossom over one ear, and I could catch the familiar scent. She seemed so normal, and so much like the young mother I remembered. But that was one of the things that was wrong—that she should seem in some ways younger than her daughter.

  Noelle got dreamily into the back seat, while I sat in front beside David. By this time I’d made the transition from old memories of our trip to the Needle and had returned to the present where he was merely a man I’d just met and knew very little about. Though I liked the look of him. If I were honest, I had to admit that.

  He’d brought along his camera equipment and said that while he was taking pictures we could wander as we pleased. The art society members were out on a field trip today, so I could take Noelle around inside and watch to see whatever might spark her recognition.

  It was less than a mile to Ahinahina, and we parked near a grove of monkeypod trees, their wonderfully symmetrical branches forming a feathery green canopy overhead. The long pods hung down like black exclamation marks amid the green. I’d always loved these trees when I was little. I could lie on the grass and look up at the pods and make up stories about them. Until insects, or pineapple bugs, began to bother me. I hadn’t thought of pineapple bugs in years, but I knew what it was as one batted my face when I left the car.

  I opened the back door and Noelle got out. Ahinahina had been created grandly in the Italianate style by its builder, and
it was an enormous rectangle in shape, with a red tiled roof, white stucco walls, and arched doorways. The front door was unlocked and we stepped into an anteroom at the foot of a graceful, curving stairway that rose along the wall and was guarded by a wrought-iron rail.

  I recognized the staircase at once—remembered my beautiful young mother drifting down it as though she floated. In my memory she was always laughing, and it seemed eerie to stand here and recall that light laughter that had sounded so joyously in this very place. Now the same woman stood beside me, dreamy and wistful, with a vacant smile, but no laughter to bubble over.

  She drew away from me, as though something stirred in her, and walked to the foot of the stairs. There she stood looking up, and for a moment seemed puzzled, as though searching for something. Then she put her hand on the rail and started up.

  David had come in behind us. “Better go with her, Caroline. I want to take some shots down here, and I’ll come up later. Don’t push her—I expect they’ve warned you that her emotional balance is always precarious.”

  I nodded and started up after her. A stained-glass window shed jeweled spangles upon the stairs, and I stopped to look up at the marvelous bird of paradise in the glass. For me, it was a moment of recognition that held me enchanted. The bird was an old friend, about whom I’d made up fanciful stories.

  Noelle too was staring at the bird, and I saw that her smile had become more real, more aware—though hers was a different enchantment from mine.

  “Keith always calls that bird Turkey,” she said. “He likes to give things silly names, and he was talking to it just this morning. He said, ‘How would you like to have your feathers taken for the king’s cape, Old Turkey?’”

  The present tense she’d used told me her confused time sequence hadn’t changed, but at least the house had made her recall something amusing from the past.

  “I remember his saying that,” I told her gently. “Do you remember what you said to him?”

  “Of course. I told the bird up there that he didn’t need to worry because only the underfeathers of the iiwi birds were used for those cloaks. Beautiful red feathers—used only for the alii. It took the royal feather pluckers years to collect enough for one cape.”

  “Wasn’t there an o’o bird too—?”

  “Yes!” Her eyes were bright with remembering. “The o’o bird had tufts of yellow feathers around its tail. When my mother told me about this I cried, until she explained that those birds weren’t hurt. They just flew off to grow more feathers.”

  Now she was remembering back to her own childhood—farther than I wanted her to go. She seemed not to have noticed that I’d put myself in the picture.

  She gestured toward the jeweled colored bird in the window. “Linny likes to make up stories about Old Turkey. She calls it a magic bird.” For the first time since I’d returned, she laughed softly, echoing her own long-ago laughter, and went on up the stairs. She was simply taking this house for granted as part of her present world. There was no time warp here—time for her had simply stopped.

  When we reached the second floor she stood still, looking down the long hall that fronted the house running almost its entire width. Doors opened on one side and big windows on the other. The spaces between the doors held tall cupboards and tiers of drawers, all painted white clear to the high white ceiling. There had been some changes here and they seemed to disorient my mother, so that she stood bewildered.

  “It doesn’t look right. Something’s changed,” she murmured.

  I gestured toward the first corner room. “Let’s explore this one, shall we?” It had been the bedroom she had shared with my father, and my nursery had been next door. How clearly it all came back to me—and so far, pleasantly.

  She walked willingly enough into the corner room and stared about. It was unfurnished now, except for turntables in use by the sculptors who worked here. There were a few stools, and a long table covered with tools in disarray. On two or three stands clay models stood covered with damp cloth to keep them moist.

  Noelle looked even more bewildered. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “This is Ahinahina,” I told her. “You used to live here a long time ago.”

  She dismissed my words. “No! Of course it’s not Ahinahina! I picked out the furniture for our bedroom myself, and you can see that it isn’t here.”

  “Isn’t the chandelier the same?” I asked. “And look out the windows at the view—you can surely recognize that.”

  We walked to a corner window, where I’d been held up by my father so I could look out at the tremendous sweep of the mountain on one hand, and the distant sea on the other. In between, over lower treetops, the West Maui mountains stood up clearly far across the plain that had once been water, making this two islands. Haleakala’s less craggy slopes rose nearer at hand, though it was still a long way up to the elusive summit.

  I remembered. I could almost feel my father’s arms holding me, loving and protecting. Such a safe place to be. My mother stood close and I put my arm about her, needing her in that moment of loss.

  For Noelle, however, these views were familiar, so that she took them for granted as though they had no connection with this house.

  “Did you ever go into the crater?” I asked softly.

  “No—I never did.” Her rejection was complete. “It’s a terrible place. I never want to go up there. Not among all those silverswords!”

  She ran away from me into the next room and stood looking around, growing more disturbed.

  “This is Linny’s room—it must be! But what has happened to it? Where are all her darling things? She loves this room—and it’s empty now. Just a lot of easels and stools that don’t belong here. And those paintings on the walls—I don’t like them. I picked lovely Hawaiian scenes for her to look at. Something is terribly wrong—what is it? What have they done with my little girl?”

  She’d begun to shiver, and this time I put both arms around her, trying not to shiver myself. I was taller now than she was, and stronger. She felt slight and frail in my arms, as though anything at all might break her. The scent of ginger blossoms was just as I remembered, but now she was the child and I the adult, holding and soothing her.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You’ll find Linny. I promise you’ll find her. Though she may be different by this time, you know.”

  She rested her cheek trustingly against mine for a moment, responding to loving touch as she always had. Then she pulled herself away. “Of course I’ll find her! Perhaps she’s in one of the other rooms. Let’s go and look!”

  Before I could stop her, she darted off, running down the long hall toward the far end of the house. I went after her more slowly, watching to see where she would go. Many of these rooms had remained empty when we’d lived here. Except for guest rooms, and rooms for the housekeeper and my Japanese nursemaid, my parents hadn’t needed them. I remembered how the empty rooms had fascinated me, and how I’d loved to play in them, pretending I lived in a castle. There was one special room at the far end—a room with a balcony.…

  This was the room Noelle had run toward, disappearing through the door. I followed and stood still to watch her. It was a corner room that opened upon the balcony I remembered.

  “Linny?” Noelle called. “Linny dear, don’t hide from me!”

  “I don’t think she’s here right now,” I told her gently.

  Noelle paid no attention but ran onto the balcony to look down upon the wide rear lawn. I went to stand beside her. A small fountain in the garden near the end of the house was no longer in use, but there were still tennis courts beyond, though now they were overgrown with weeds. A strange feeling touched me—a strong anxiety that was close to panic. Something had happened down there in the yard—something I’d shut away all these years because I didn’t want to remember.

  My mother stood at the iron rail, her gaze fixed, as though she had once more lost herself in time. Because she too was remembering?

  “T
ell me,” I said. “Please tell me what happened down there?”

  She shook her head—not in denial but as if to clear away the mists. “I can remember moonlight—after a warm day. I wore a white dress—an off-the-shoulder dress that floated when I walked. There was music …” Her words died away, her expression puzzled, searching.

  “Yes—go on!”

  “There was a party we gave down there one night, Keith and I. With Hawaiian music and singing.”

  Her voice faded out, because I too was remembering—moonlight. And Japanese lanterns hanging from the trees. The air was like velvet on my skin. My mother had told me I could watch from this balcony for a little while before I went to bed. That night my father had been more wonderful-looking than any other man, just as my mother was more beautiful than other women. He’d worn an embroidered shirt of pineapple cloth from the Philippines that hung outside his silky black trousers. I’d loved to see him in that shirt. I could pretend that he smelted of pineapples, just as my mother did of ginger blossoms.

  Grandma Joanna was there too, and my Aunt Marla, both wearing fine holokus with little trains that swished as they walked. Chairs had been placed informally around on the grass, and some of my grandmother’s Hawaiian friends had come to entertain with songs of their islands. I could see them down there—hear them! A man with an ukulele had sung a funny song in his own language, and then translated, so that everyone laughed.

  But most of all I remembered a tall, beautiful woman in a muumuu printed with flame-colored flowers, and a wreath of scarlet blossoms around her dark, flowing hair. A lei of red and white hung about her neck, and she was even younger than my mother, and almost as beautiful.

  The song she sang was of love that would never end, even when one of the lovers went far away across the sea. Her hands moved gracefully to the accompaniment of a steel guitar, and there was a drum picking up the rhythm in the background. When the woman finished her song the drum kept on throbbing—like a heartbeat. The beat of a heart that was breaking.