“I didn’t say I didn’t notice.”
“You didn’t have to. You’re oblivious.”
Israel rolls his eyes. “Quit hinting for compliments and take the ones people offer you of their own free will.”
“Well, if you’d offer one occasionally I wouldn’t have to beg!”
“Children! Knock it off; you’re giving me a headache.” It’s difficult to see in the relative dimness of the cab, but I can hear the scowl on Prue’s face. “And here I was thinking I had missed you two. Stubborn, quarreling, argumentative little brats.”
“He started it,” I object.
I have to strain to catch Israel’s reply and I may have imagined it, but it sounds like he mutters under his breath something about him being the one to finish it.
The cab jerks to a halt and we all pile out, ungainly in our unaccustomed finery. My dress catches on the door and I nearly plow down Dad and smack into Israel, who catches me with a groan.
“Oh that’s nice on a girl’s ego,” I grumble. “I’m not that heavy.”
“I meant to say, was that a fly that landed on me? A mosquito? A feather?”
“Just your little wife. And I twisted my ankle, blast it!” I blink back the tears.
“Here, sit down a minute. Let me take off your boot.”
He undoes the laces of my boot and removes it as painlessly as possible, but even so, I wince and bite my lip to keep from crying out like a baby. It feels red hot and I’m sure it’s swelling.
“Help me up and we can hobble in the house,” I pull hard on Is’s arm and stand.
He sighs. “I suppose this is the part where I offer to carry you?”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Prince Charming. I can make it, but you’ll probably have to fetch all sorts of things for me all evening.”
“Like what, Princess?”
“Oh, you know! Ouch! Cookies and ham and drinks and the paper and my pipe and cookies and mashed potatoes and my slippers and cookies…”
My list continues on as he loses patience with my slow motion shuffle the way I knew he would and he sweeps me up intolerantly in his arms.
Several hours later I have officially eaten more cookies than Joe, I am pleasantly relaxed by a glass of hot spiced wine, the fire is burning nicely in the tiny fireplace in the tiny two room home, and we are about to open gifts.
“To Emme from Sonnet,” reads Prue. As usual, being our matriarch and also the most bossy, Prue hands out the presents and we all wait obediently and quietly. As a little girl, the more I clamored and begged, the more she ignored me. We have all learned that lesson and so we sit, hands folded meekly on our laps and not a peep crosses our lips, not even Joe’s, who of course, has the most gifts.
Emme opens her package to reveal a large sugar cookie in the shape of a high heel shoe that I cut out painstakingly with a knife, cursing the lack of easy cookie cutters. I have given everyone the same thing, though a message written in icing on each is personalized and so is the shape of the cookie. Emme’s says ‘You’ll always be my Fairy Godmother,’ and it’s a sort of homage to the night she dressed me up and made me wear her pretty shoes. Emme smiles at me and promptly eats the stiletto.
Our assortment of gifts is silly and simple. No one has money to buy anything real and so it is food or something sewn or written on paper for everyone. Dad has homemade cards that are surprisingly poetic. Mine is a poem about a little blue bird that flies away but never strays too far. I think it is a metaphor for me and the sweetness of the sentiment chokes me up a moment.
Prue hasn’t gotten anything for anyone but she barks out an order to come see her at Sir Halloway’s and she will have homemade cake for everyone. Just be sure to come in the back and wait until dark, she says.
Our lovely time is momentarily interrupted by a tantrum by Joe, who evidently had gifts in mind the size and description of the ones he got for his birthday not so long ago, but so many years in the future. Suddenly a typical little boy, he is unimpressed by large sugar cookies and a tiny set of marbles and a homemade card. Red faced and snotty and finally worn out from crying, he falls asleep with his head in Emme’s lap. We all remember being Lost at such a young age and no one minds his temper and anger.
Dad opens his cookie from me, which is in the shape of a bow tie and Prue opens her which is shaped like a teapot. Bea’s is shaped like a sewing machine, although it’s terribly done because it was an impossible shape to make and she holds it upside at first, while smiling at me ever so politely. I am suddenly anxious for Israel and his cookie but he laughs long and loud when he sees it.
“’To my favorite husband,’” he reads, holding up the ball and chain shaped cookie.
Everyone laughs and I don’t even blush, but revel in our contentment and joy of the night. All too soon, it is nearly midnight and we have to leave. Israel will be up at the crack of dawn and Prue says Sir Halloway’s favorite meal is breakfast so we have to get her home. And so we do.
Before I know it, I am snuggled up in bed and thinking of Rose and how I can get to her. In spite of being what I think of last, I do not dream of her and I sleep peacefully without stirring at all, even with a throbbing ankle to keep me up.
********************
The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, dawns bright and uncharacteristically sunny. I limp down the stairs and still full from our holiday feast the night before, decide to skip breakfast and instead resolve to find Rose again. If it takes all day and if I have to pound on every door I pass, I will find her and bring her home. Dad deserves to know his daughter is alive. And if she needs help, we will help her. My will resolved and my mind made up, I set out.
My familiar barking fish man is not around today – perhaps it’s too early in the morning for anyone in their right mind to be thinking of fish, or perhaps they haven’t been caught yet – and I am nearly alone in the streets. To keep my ankle from swelling and to keep the pain at bay, I stuff my boot with snow every block or so. Whenever I do pass someone, I make it a point to ask if they’ve seen anyone who matches Rose’s description. Person after person shake their heads no, until finally a girl around my age nods her head which is bonneted in some sort of hat that looks like a blackened mushroom. It bounces as she nods.
“Yes, miss, I think I seen her. Real yellow hair? Pretty but needing some tending? Sure, she’s been around here a bit. Wanders by at around two o’clock every day she does. Comes outta that there doorway, in that house over there. See the one there? With that bush in front? That one? That’s old man Tate’s house and no one seen him in a month or two. She his daughter or something?”
“Something like that.” My, but she’s good at finding abandoned homes to call her own, I think. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Have I now?” the girl holds out a grubby gloved hand, expecting payment for her information. Her fingers poke out and I don’t know whether the gloves are designed that way or if they are simply falling apart and full of holes.
“Not that helpful,” I reply, wryly.
The girl leaves in a huff and I approach the door behind the bush. Though not as frightening as the old abandoned house where I had originally thought Rose was hiding, I am still wary and cautious. Frightened of what’s behind the door, or frightened of being shut in behind it, I don’t know the answer.
Just frightened. That’s all.
I knock, at first lightly and with no conviction. Then, harder and with a take-no-prisoner thump.
I don’t know whether to be surprised or relived or a little of both when the door swings open to admit Rose’s beautiful face. Her hair is combed and draped over one shoulder, she looks bathed and clean, and her face is smooth and free of any emotion at all. She does not smile, she does not speak. She looks, with all intents and purposes, like she does not know me at all.
“Hello, Rose, it’s me. Sonnet. Do you remember we spoke the other day? You invited me for tea?” I will my voice to not shake, to not quiver with the emotion that is behi
nd my words, to be strong and unfussy.
Rose wrinkles her forehead. “Did I? Was it today? Oh dear. I am dreadfully sorry to have forgotten. Come in, come in.” Her face wreathed in the most stunning smile I have ever seen on a person, she opens the door wider and beckons me in.
“Please excuse the mess. I’ve been busy, you see. I do like to keep busy. I find it relaxes the mind, don’t you?” She gestures to the area inside, probably the parlor if I’m not mistaken. It is strewn about with paper. Paper everywhere, paper with drawings and paper with words and paper with nothing at all but blank whiteness. They are piled willy-nilly here and there and everywhere.
“I don’t like the words, you see.” Rose sighs very loudly. “The words and the photos. He keeps them from me because he knows they upset me, but sometimes I find them. The doctors used to write things down and I hated that, I hated them. Words, words, words! Stupid letters, stupid pictures. I hate them all. They all have to burn.” She glares at the offending piles and kicks one. The pages flutter to the floor like autumn leaves. Then she turns to me and it’s as though the last moment hasn’t happened. Her face is cherubic again and she claps her hands together.
“But we must have our tea, sister! I will fix it. Is it four o’clock already? I don’t know where today has gone…really I don’t. But the civilized ladies take their tea at four o’clock every day. You stay here and I will be ever so quick.” She bounds out of the room like a little rabbit.
Emotionally exhausted already, I sink down into a nearby chair. Will I have the mental stamina, I wonder, to be able to deal with this on a daily basis? The mood swings and the memory lapses are intense and disturbing. I do not know the best way to go about this. Do I agree with everything she says? Do I gently correct her when she’s wrong? It’s nowhere near four o’clock but that seems to be the least of our worries.
Rose enters the room again with a tray.
“I put lots and lots of sugar in your tea, sister. But no milk. Just the way I’m sure you like it. I’m never wrong about how people take their tea.” Rose hands me a chipped teacup very gingerly. “It’s very hot now, take care. We wouldn’t want you burned, would we? Here; I’ll blow on it for you.” She leans down and puffs a cool breath on my tea and for a moment our hands our wrapped around the cup together before she lets go.
I raise the cup to my lips as she does with hers, but it is as I feared when my hands first grasped it: the cup is empty and the tea does not exist.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I hold my imaginary tea gingerly, as though the fragile cup holds a steaming brew that could tip. I even find myself bringing it to my lips as Rose daintily sips hers across from me. I don’t know what to say her, this girl that is my sister. Fragile and wounded, yet fierce and alarming, she bewilders me to no end. It turns out, I don’t have much opportunity to speak at all, because once she is finished with her pretend tea, she hugs her knees to her chest like a little girl and begins to talk. Her voice is melodious, sing-song like, in a higher range that is unlike my own raspy, deeper voice. She speaks lightly, tripping over the words carelessly, like a babbling brook.
“When I left the hospital there was so much to do. I needed to find you, needed to find Mother and Father. I knew you were all Lost, you see; just like me, only you were always traveling without me. I was awake, did you know that?” Rose doesn’t wait for me to answer. She is no longer looking at me but seems lost in her meanderings. “I was awake most nights. I couldn’t sleep. And when the traveling got near, I would get the most terrible headaches. So bad I would cry and cry and then of course I couldn’t sleep. Mother should have known that would be the night we were to travel and she slept anyway. Without me! You all left without me. I just sat there, crying and alone until Old Babba came.” Rose pauses. I want to speak, to comfort her, to say how sorry I am, but my throat feels sewn shut. Rose continues. “There were plenty of Lost in the hospital and Old Babba knew things too, things she told me when I made her. So I figured things out eventually. But anyway, that doesn’t matter now,” she finally turns her liquid blue eyes on me and smiles brightly. “More tea?”
“No, thank you.” My throat and lips are working again, yet this is all I say.
“Suit yourself. How is Father?”
“He’s well,” I choose my words carefully. “That is, well enough. He misses you so much, and Mother too. He is sad much of the time.”
“Is he?” Rose shrugs. “He shouldn’t be. He’s alive, isn’t he? I’m alive.” She smiles, almost mischievously. “That must have been quite a revelation for you, Sonnet. Seeing me the first time after all those years. Did you think you’d seen a ghost? You looked so white in that coffee shop when you saw me in that chair. I wanted to laugh when you tripped like that. You’re a silly girl, a silly, silly girl. I wasn’t sure you’d know me, but you did, didn’t you? You knew it was your poor missing sister, come back to haunt you. It was easy to get into your room and crawl into bed with you. Did I hurt your arm? You’re very easy to frighten, by the way.”
“I wasn’t frightened. I was confused. I’m still actually very confused, Rose.”
“Of course you are. You’ve been confused this whole time. Maybe you’re like me. The doctors used to tell me all the time how confused I was!” Rose laughs. It’s high pitched and terrible sounding. I cringe. “Maybe you’re just like me!” She stops laughing abruptly and leans forward. She is so close to me now and I will myself not to tremble when she raises her small hand and strokes my cheek. “Are you like me, sister? Are you mad too?”
“Stop it!” With a sudden movement, I jerk back from her touch and stand. “Stop playing with me. I came to take you back with me, to get you help. Come back and let us help you. Please, Rose?”
Her eyes narrow and she regards me with suspicion. “You’re worse than Mother. I don’t like you at all.”
“You don’t even remember Mother; you were only four years old.”
“Don’t I? I don’t remember the songs she used to sing, the way she made soup, her hair, her hands, her everything? I don’t remember, do I? The way she looked when I would cry, the way her arms made me feel suffocated and imprisoned, the way I knew she loved you more than she loved me?”
“That’s not true. Mother was devoted to you.”
“Devoted to her crazy little girl… I don’t think so,” these words are spat out forcefully. “She was scared of me. Even when I was small she was scared of me. She used to hide from me. Don’t you remember?”
I falter. What do I remember? What’s real and what are dreams?
“You should have seen her face that night,” Rose puts her hands up to her mouth as though covering a smile. “She looked like you at the coffee shop: so shocked. I tried to talk to her, tell her what she did to me by leaving me the way she did. I guess I didn’t go about it the right way. She wouldn’t listen. She never listened.”
A terrible feeling begins to dawn on me, one so horrible that I push it from my mind as hard as I can. Yet, the words bubble up out of me in spite of myself. “What night, Rose? What are you saying? Mother is dead. She’s been dead for years and years.”
“Of course she has been, pet. She’s quite, quite dead. I was there, so I should know.”
“What do you mean, you were there?” I feel very cold and such a large tremor goes through me that my body shakes like a leaf.
Rose smiles again. “Didn’t I tell you? I know how to travel on purpose. I can go wherever I like, whenever I like. Such a pity the rest of you haven’t figured it out. Maybe you have to be like me. I’m very special. Very, very special.”
Ordinarily such talk would fascinate me: haven’t I wanted to know the meaning of the Lost? The cause and effect, the purpose, the goal, the ability? But I can only focus on one thing now and that is Mother.
“You were there when she died?” I keep my voice even though my body still shakes.
“She kept backing away from me,” Rose scowls. “I only wanted to tell her things, that�
�s all. That’s all at first. But she was scared of me; I knew that look on her face well enough. Haven’t I seen it often enough on others? She was no better than some of those nurses at Bedlam. They wouldn’t look in my eyes, like what I had was catching. Don’t get too close to the Gray girl. You might catch her madness, they’d whisper. Mother was no better. She made me so angry.”
“So angry and then what?” I whisper.
“I pushed her,” Rose replies, in a matter of fact tone. “I pushed her. I suppose I shouldn’t have. Now you’ll want me to apologize, won’t you?”
I want to curl up in a ball and find someplace inside myself where I can be alone and I don’t have to hear these things. I am torn between wanting to flee this house and the desire to pick Rose up and shake her like a rag doll, yet I cannot find the courage to do either one. All I can do is not breathe. I am getting adept suddenly at not breathing.
“Oh, don’t be such a spoil sport!” Rose frowns at me. “You’re upset with me now and after all the lovely tea and talks we’ve had!”
“Yes, I’m upset. You just told me you murdered our mother.”
“Oh, that! You’re making a big deal out nothing! Stop judging me! I’m sick; you aren’t allowed to judge me!” She picks up her tea cup and throws it at my head. I see it coming and duck and it shatters on the floor behind me. “I don’t like you at all, Sonnet! You’re a mean sister!” She makes a grab for my cup as well, but I slap it out of her hands and it too, shatters.
Rose makes a sound like she is screaming inside her head but cannot let it escape through her clenched teeth. She stomps her feet like a child and her eyes well up with tears. Without another word, she whirls and marches back into the kitchen. I hear another piece of china shatter, and then another.
I am left standing there, surrounding by shards of glass that may as well be the pieces of my heart. I want to leave, I want to stay, I want to sob, I want to shout, I want to hurt her, and I want to love her. This wounded shell of a girl who has done these horrible things. What am I to do with her?
Shadows Gray Page 21
