Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Zenobia was not only Julia's age but, he felt sure, of similar background. Her silk paisley tunic was a little more fey than Julia's button-front skirt and linen blouse, and her hair, gray and permed into long frizzles, gave her a touch of the aging hippie. New Age or old, Zenobia had the ease and poise of a woman who'd never had to ride a bus in her life and who still paid the dues at her country club. Oh, yeah. He'd seen the type.

  Zenobia and Julia finished up a conversation they were having about how much peanut butter to put in chili, which gave the moment a kind of hopelessly surreal quality, and then the innkeeper turned off the lights and the psychic got down to business.

  Zenobia had a wonderful voice, that was the first thing Wyler noticed: warm and relaxed and completely reassuring. She had a way of making all of them, including him, feel as if they were puppies in an animal shelter and she was looking to adopt. You wanted her just to pack you up and take you home.

  "I want to thank our hostess Julia Talmadge," Zenobia began, "for making our first day here so delightful. Really, it's been so nice. Bar Harbor is a charming seaside town, and we look forward to exploring Acadia Park tomorrow. But ... for now, for tonight, I'd like us to just take a moment and think: why is it that we are all here?

  "Why is it," she continued in that wonderfully kind voice, "that each of us is here, in the Sunset Room of the Elm Tree Inn, on this particular evening of our lives? What events have led us to be here? Is there some significance to them? Do we exist in some particular alignment to one another, like the stars in the universe? Or are we merely specks in random collisions, glancing off one another like dry leaves on a windy day?"

  She let the questions sink in, and then she said, "I for one believe that we are here because each of us has behaved in a particular way up until this moment. We've made a series of decisions, some big, some small, motivated by either reason or emotion, which have led us to be sitting right here, right now.

  "We know, for example, that last summer Sylvie had a life-altering experience in Thunder Hole. Since then, she's managed to convince us all to take the time and spend the money to see for ourselves what greater force may hover there. We all know that as a result of her experience in Thunder Hole, Sylvie left a job she hated as comptroller in a ceramics import company, and opened her own pottery shop. We all know how happy she's been since she took control of her fate.

  "Let's think about that for a few moments. Let's think about the events that have led us to be at this place, at this time.''

  Zenobia smiled on them all, a smile that even Wyler had to admit was positively radiant.

  Yeah, he thought. Charisma. Aura. Bedside manner. Call it what you like, all group leaders had it, from preachers to presidents.

  He glanced around the room. Everyone was following Zenobia's advice in his or her own way. One of the squatters had folded herself into the classic lotus position and sat with her eyes closed, thumbs and middle fingers touching. The guy standing at the mantel was staring at a pattern in the Persian rug. The elderly woman with the knitting in her lap, the one he'd dubbed Miss Marple, was busy clicking her needles in what he supposed was the rhythm of meditation. Some of the others simply looked blank, each in his own little trance.

  And Allie? Head bowed, absolutely earnest. It surprised Wyler when she reached for his hand, probably in violation of the rules, and held it. Was it a plea for him to get more involved? Or simply a gentle reminder that a series of decisions, rational and emotional, had indeed led him to be at this place, at this time?

  He didn't want to think about that. He shoved the thought aside. No gunfire allowed; this was a bullet-free zone. But the image persisted: sweet, dead little Cindy with the bright blue eyes. Four years old. Shot dead. Her killer dead. Wyler wounded. And all for what? For nothing. It depressed him unutterably. If he was here for any reason at all, it was because he was burned out, emotionally and intellectually. If he was here, it was because he was trying to hide. He stared at Zenobia, resenting her gentle prodding, resenting her kindness.

  Dammit, he thought. I won't let her bring Cindy back.

  He'd learned a trick of his own for clearing his mind of negative thoughts. A sergeant had taught him, when he was new to homicide, that a negative attitude was the kiss of death to an ongoing investigation. It closed you off from avenues of possibilities. The sergeant had shown him how to clear his mind by meditating on a single syllable, any syllable. Clancy's own choice was the classic "ohm." Wyler had laughed when Clancy first said it; but you only got to laugh once at a two- hundred-twenty-pound cop who could toss back a quart of Jameson's and still beat you at arm wrestling.

  As it happened, tonight Wyler didn't need "ohm." The memory of Clancy was good enough to banish negative thoughts.

  He glanced at Zenobia. Her eyes were closed. She looked as if she might be asleep. He was wondering how rude it would be if he just slipped away, when suddenly Zenobia tensed up. The next words out of her mouth — high-pitched and feisty and nothing at all like her normal voice — jolted him.

  "Hey! Sylvie! About this Thunder Hole business!"

  A shudder of awareness seemed to ripple through the group. They were expecting this, that was obvious. It seemed to bother them not at all that Zenobia was slumped over with her eyes closed and speaking to them in another dialect. Sylvie, in fact, seemed downright pleased to be the first one addressed.

  "Yes, Arnold?" she said in a thrilled, hushed voice.

  Sylvie was a thirtyish woman with the face of an artist, pale and ethereal, with wispy reddish hair roped into a long braid that hung down the back of her flowery, flowing dress.

  "Tell us again about Thunder Hole. For those who don't know."

  Wyler looked around. Who didn't know about Thunder Hole besides him?

  "Oh!" said Sylvie. "Well, it's a place on the west shore of Acadia where the waves crash against the rocks into a small cavern near the path. On the day I was there, the wind must've been just the right direction, because the waves were huge. Crashing, and just huge. There was a group of schoolkids with their teacher there before me, and they were so noisy I thought about moving on.

  "But for some reason, I stayed. Eventually they left, and I was alone. The waves just kept on crashing and crashing, and each time, I felt this spray of salt, like they were slaps, you know, across my face?

  "And every wave, every slap, screamed the same thing to me: 'Wake up! You're sleepwalking through life! Wake up!' So I did. I went home, quit my job, and rented a little studio."

  She was sitting alongside the buffet, and in the flickering glow of the candles Wyler could see her hands as she gestured through her little story. They were the hands of an artist, graceful and expressive; the hands of a potter, dry and cracked and with the nails trimmed short.

  "You think you couldn 't have figured this out without the waves?"

  "Oh, no, Arnold. I'm sure I couldn't."

  "You think the waves have some mystical power?"

  "To communicate? Yes, of course. That's why we're all here."

  "I beg to disagree."

  A collective gasp of shock echoed around the room. Wyler began to perk up.

  "How do you mean?" asked Sylvie in a faint voice.

  "I mean, you're from Cincinnati! What do you know about salt spray? No more than me, a dust-bowl farmer from Kansas. Is there any doubt you'd be impressed by pounding seas? Sure you would. And you should. But that don't make it mystical, not in the way you mean."

  "I don't understand ... I don't even agree, Arnold. Why would you let us come, in that case? Why are we all here?"

  "For pity's sake — to have a good time. To relax and hike and take in the salt air. To let yourself go. But don't expect the sea to hold no conversations with you. It ain't gonna happen."

  Wyler tried very hard not to laugh and failed. It came out in one short whoop, just loud enough for Allie — still holding his hand — to yank his arm nearly out of its socket. He made a wincing face of apology to the scandalized company, a
fraid that he'd offended Arnold too deeply for the session to go on.

  No such luck. After a moment Sylvie said, "I'll try to take your words to heart," and the conversation moved on to other, less provocative ground.

  Arnold had lots of advice for everyone; Wyler found him an opinionated but likable son of a bitch. The farmer wasn't the least bit shy about telling an elderly widow to place an ad in the personals; about warning a couple to pull out their money from a financial planner they disliked; and about urging Julia to seek a zoning variance to build an addition to the Elm Tree Inn.

  It was surprisingly specific and mundane stuff. Wyler had always had the impression that séances were more cosmic than this. Obviously the "metaphysical" in this meeting didn't refer to the subject matter.

  After it was over — after Zenobia groaned softly and opened her eyes and began speaking in that reassuringly warm voice of hers — Julia turned on the lights, and the group dissolved into spontaneous pockets of conversation.

  Wyler turned to Allie and said, "Arnold seems pretty savvy for a dust-bowl farmer. Although, personally, I think he gave the retired couple bum advice; they should stick with bonds and utilities."

  "You're horrible," Allie said, exasperated. "Meg is right about you."

  "Oh? And what does our Meg have to say about me?" he asked all too quickly. The fact was, he didn't give a tinker's damn what Meg Atwells had to say about him, because he already knew: She thought his heart was hardened. He remembered quite well their exchange on the town dock. The memory made him clamp his teeth.

  "My sister said —" Allie bit her lip and looked away, then looked back to him and took a deep breath. Wyler had the sense that this time she wasn't playing up to him, wasn't acting.

  "You really want to know?" she asked, lowering her voice. "My sister said you're the worst of all worlds: You're from a big city, and you're a homicide cop. She said you've seen too much violence, too much evil in men, to be able to care about anything any —"

  "Well, Mr. Wyler. What did you think? I found it all quite fascinating."

  It was Julia Talmadge, smiling and diplomatic, ever the perfect hostess.

  Wyler was mad enough just then to tell Julia the truth, that he thought it was a scream. Where else would you get a voice from beyond warning people not to listen to voices from beyond?

  "As a matter of fact," he said, "I, too, found it fascinating. Where else would you get a voice from beyond warning people — ow!"

  "Oh, dear; it's your leg again, Tom, isn't it?" Allie asked with a concerned look, taking his arm.

  "It's more my foot," he said with a thin smile. The spot where she'd jammed her little spike heel was throbbing in pain.

  "We'll just say our thank-yous, and then you can give me that novel, Tom, and I'll get out of your hair," said Allie with the smile of an angel and the grip of a steelworker.

  In lockstep, they said good-night to everyone. Zenobia turned away from her admiring circle and gave Wyler a look unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Irritation, amusement, condescension — you could find anything you wanted to find in those gorgeous green eyes. The look stayed with Wyler as he and Allie strolled back to his rooms. He shivered, then shook it off. He took down the novel from his well-stocked bookshelf and handed it to Allie with a look of contrition. "Stay for coffee?" he asked. He wanted to apologize more thoroughly for being such an ass.

  He'd been careful so far not to linger in his rooms with Allie, mostly out of deference to Julia and Meg and Uncle Billy and the twins and God knew who all else; but enough was enough. It wasn't his fault that Bar Harbor was such a fishbowl.

  He was amazed when Allie said no.

  "How could you do that?" she said, flinging the novel on the couch. "How could you embarrass me like that? Didn't you get any sense that something special was happening in that room? Is it possible that my sister is right and you're so ... so —"

  "Hardened?"

  "Hardened, that you saw nothing but a bunch of flaky people grasping at mystical straws? Well, I felt something. How could you not? There were such wonderful vibrations in that room. But you! You could've ruined everything! God, Meg was right. Meg was right."

  "Meg is always right," he said laconically. "That goes without saying. But I'm curious. Just how much time do the two of you spend picking apart my neuroses?"

  "Don't flatter yourself, mister," Allie said, folding her arms across her chest and firing a scathing look at him. "It's not all that much."

  But her cheeks darkened as she made the claim, which interested him very much.

  "My sister said that homicide for you is nothing more than a game of chess. She said you're involved in the cases, but you're not really involved. You know? You can't let yourself care. You could lose that cool detachment that probably makes you very good at what you do. But —"

  Now there were two of them pounding his heartlessness into him. He couldn't stand it; without thinking, he took Allie by her shoulders and kissed her, hard, to prove something, he didn't know what. It caught her completely by surprise. He felt her yield beneath his kiss and return it with a small moaning sound, felt her slide her hands up along his arms, to his shoulders.

  He felt her push him away.

  "No!" she said sharply. "This isn't what I want!"

  She was standing there, breathless, her lips parted, her eyes wide with emotion.

  "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "Truly. I ... well, I thought you were sending signals ... have been sending signals. Well!" he said, plunging his hands into his pockets. He let out a short, ironic laugh. "I see now that I was a fool."

  "That's another thing," said Allie with a reproachful, glistening look. "The first time we laid eyes on you, Meg warned me not to get excited about you. And what d'you know? She was right about that, too!"

  ****

  When Meg came home that night Allie was waiting, red-eyed and woeful, in Meg's big iron bed.

  "Where were you?" the younger woman wailed. "I looked everywhere." She blew noisily into a big white handkerchief.

  "I was out walking. Why? What's wrong?" Meg asked, sitting on the side of the bed. Obviously it couldn't be too tragic, or Allie would've had the whole family out searching for Meg. It wouldn't have been the first time.

  "Everything's wrong!"

  "What's he done?" said Meg, absolutely certain who "everything" was.

  "He kissed me!"

  Three words; they were like three quick blows to the throat. Meg didn't know what to say. "Ah," she finally remarked. "Then you got your wish."

  "That's just it," Allie said, dropping her head to her chest. "I didn't just wish."

  She sighed and lifted her head back up; a tear rolled down her face, reminding Meg of another tear, another face. Her time with Orel Tremblay had left her bereft of emotion. She had nothing left to give her lovesick sister.

  She had to force herself to continue the conversation. "You mean you kissed him first?"

  "Worse. I practically forced him to kiss me. I threw everything you said about him being cold and remote in his face. Naturally he had to kiss me then. To prove he wasn't."

  "Allie! For God's sake — can't you at least make up your own insults?"

  Allie moaned and twisted the top sheet around her fists, then began rocking from the waist up, like a child who feels she's been punished by mistake. Her hair was half up, half down, adding to her forlorn appearance.

  "I don't know why I did it," she said in a singsong wail. "He was just so irritating, at the séance. You were right. He is irritating. He had the most wonderful chance to reflect on the turn of fate that brought him to me, and instead he just blew it! So now we have to start all over." She closed her eyes. "Oh, God ... I can still taste his kiss, Meg," she whispered. "How I hate this."

  "Yes. Well." Meg stood up and began unbuttoning her blouse, still damp from her own tears. "Orel Tremblay died tonight," she said abruptly. She threw the blouse on a nearby chair.

  Stunned, Allie stopped mid-rock. "Oh, no. Oh,
Meg." She climbed out of her sister's bed and put her arms around her. "I'm so sorry. Here I'm — oh, Meg. I'm such a selfish pig."

  "Sometimes." Meg disengaged herself and stepped out of her skirt and tossed it on top of her blouse, then stripped off her underthings. She slipped a cotton nightgown over her head. "I'm tired, Allie," she said to her sister, who was hovering solicitously. "I just want to go to bed."

  "No! Not alone. I'll sleep here tonight."

  Allie ignored her sister's protests and climbed into the side by the wall. Meg turned off the light and the two women lay side by side in the darkness without speaking.

  Allie broke the silence first. "Did he suffer?" she asked in a hesitant, sad voice.

  "I don't see how someone can not suffer when he knows he's dying," Meg said with a shuddering sigh. "He was leaving so much behind. Not just the dollhouse, not just his unfinished business. But everything. Family ... friends ... music ... babies ... the sea ... books ... trees. The stars, the moon. Everything."

  After a moment, Allie said, "He didn't really care about most of that, though, did he."

  "But I do," Meg answered with a catch in her throat. "I do."

  They were quiet again, until Allie asked, "Did he say anything more about Grandmother?"

  Meg shook her head in the darkness. "It was too late for that."

  "What will you do now?"

  "I think I'll go see Gordon Camplin," Meg said, voicing a decision she'd made earlier.

  She sighed, and then Allie sighed, and Meg felt her sister's pain over Tom Wyler, as well as her own sadness. "He's a jerk," Meg said, reassuringly. "They all are, sooner or later. They really can't help it."

  "I guess."

  "I'll go see him, too."

  "Would you, Meg? I have no right to ask."

  "And I have no right to meddle.' Meg rolled over on her sleeping side. "So what else is new?" she said with a weary sigh.

  ****

  Morning came, and with it, bright sunshine. After a night of troubled dreams, Meg was happy to be awake, happy simply to be alive. She was quite determined to move forward on her plan to pursue Gordon Camplin. There was something about a deathbed promise that simplified everything. A deathbed promise left no room for caution, or even common sense. A deathbed promise had to be kept.