Evenfall

by Liz Michalski

  When Gert walked away that last time, it was as if she’d taken what was left of me with her. I was sliding back into the nothingness again, plunging down and down, when the dog barked. Not a loud sound. A conversational kind of woof, but it stopped me from sliding and let me focus again. She was sitting outside the screened porch, and somehow I was there, too.

  I stayed there, not fighting for breath, exactly, but something like it, until the space around me fell into some kind of sense. Like I was concentrating myself into being one cell at a time. It was exhausting. The dog stayed with me all that afternoon, and all the night, too. She didn’t move, just stayed where she was and watched me, her head resting on her paws.

  I never believed in ghosts before, and I’m not sure if that’s what you’d call me now, but I’ve had some time to think about the old stories. The ghosts who wail and mutter and bang things aren’t trying to scare the living off; they’re trying to reach out, to connect, maybe in the only way they can. Without some kind of a connection to this world, they can’t survive.

  There are other rules, too, other ways to exist, although none so important as the first. As time passed and I grew stronger, I took to exploring the house, room by room, in a way I’d never been able to see it before. The dark, cool molecules of wood; the smooth, slippery atoms of china. Always, I felt strongest in the attic. I learned to control my energy, to keep some in reserve—like a runner in a marathon—so that after the dog left I could continue to exist without her for a bit. It was easier there, as if the room itself were a power source.

  One morning, after the dog had left me, I was in the attic. The dust fragments were drifting through the beams of sunlight coming from the eastern window. In and out, a slow dreamy dance to the floor. The movement captivated me, made me want to follow. If I concentrated hard enough, I thought I might be able to influence their path. I drifted with them, from one end of the attic to the next, and then I felt it—a white-hot burst of energy. A tiny whirlwind of dust motes traveled across the room and vanished over the rocking chair.

  It was the ring. I’d left it there more than half a century ago, hidden under a loose board, and I hadn’t touched it in all those years. At times I’d thought about it almost daily—its cool, silver shape; the spidery engraving that encircled the inside—and then weeks or months would go by and I’d forget until something jarred my memory, brought the bitter taste of disappointment to the back of my mouth. But in all that time I’d never touched it, and the ring stayed where it was.

  The first time I’d seen it, I was about eleven. Even then, I was drawn to the attic—the dry, woody smell; the still air and the quiet. I’d come up during the beginnings of an afternoon storm. Storms always seemed louder here, the thunder closer. There was lightning just visible over the woods, and the sky was beginning to darken. From its spot at the top of the hill, Evenfall had seen its share of close calls, but this just made the storms more exciting.

  I was waiting in that heavy, suspenseful time just before the rain started, and I had my marble bag. I was too old to really play anymore, but I still liked to hold them when I was alone, the cool glass globes pouring through my hands. But one slipped from between my fingers and rolled across the room, disappearing beneath a floorboard. I thought about letting it go, but it was a blue aggie, one of my favorites. The board was against the attic wall, and there was a hole, just large enough for a marble. I hooked my finger underneath the board and pulled up.

  The marble was there, but so was something else. A faded square of cotton, folded and tied at the corner, too neatly done to have been placed there by accident. I picked it up, unfolded it, and caught the ring as it fell out. Cool and silver, polished to a bright sheen after all this time. It was a tiny thing, too small to slide over the knuckle of my little finger. I held it up in the darkening room. There was writing inside, and I had just enough high school French to make it out. Je rêve que j’espère que j’aime.

  I jumped at the first crack of thunder. I could hear my mother calling me—she worried about my being in the dark of the attic by myself, afraid I’d light a candle that would burn down the house. I thought about taking the ring with me, but no hiding place I could think of was as secure as where it had been resting. I wrapped it back in the cotton—a handkerchief, I saw, embroidered with the letter W—and placed the bundle back under the floor. It stayed there until I was seventeen, when I took the ring out and kept it in my pocket every day for three months.

  Love, rage, bitterness, betrayal—the power behind these emotions is enormous. We feel them in our hearts, in our bones, in the very atoms of our being. A metal object, cool and untainted by human hands, could remain the bearer of those emotions, could contain the energy within it for years. A portable power source, if you will. One made more potent by its history and its hiding place, by the storms and the seas through which it was carried.

  Even when I was alive, there were times I thought I could hear the ocean from this attic, landlocked as it is. But now that I’m dead, there are spells, particularly during storms, when the waves seem to crash so loudly I fear the house will wash away.

  This house was built by my grandfather, a sea captain whose last voyage took almost two years. During his absence my grandmother’s hair turned white, though she wasn’t more than thirty. When he finally returned, he swore it was his last trip. He’d had enough, he said. He wanted to sleep in his own bed, feel solid ground beneath his feet, and eat apples plucked fresh from the tree, not dried and hardened into leather.

  But the house they lived in then was in New London, just a few streets away from the Long Island Sound. My grandfather awoke in the mornings with his eyes already searching for the ocean. The smell of the salt air was like the perfume of a lover, intoxicating him from across the room.

  My grandfather was torn. To go to sea again meant the risk of losing all. Even if he navigated his way safely through the storms that surely lay ahead, there were no guarantees for what he would find when he returned home: He could read the perils there each evening in my grandmother’s eyes as she brushed her long, white hair and gazed into the fire. Yet living so close to the sea was torment.

  To escape, he moved his wife and young family as far inland as he could bear. To my grandmother, the new house must have seemed like a reprieve, a testament of her husband’s love. She planted peonies and roses, grapes and apples, filled the house with cut flowers and fruit. She named the farm Evenfall, for the space between the day and the dark. She lived as a happy woman and no trace of her remains, unless you count the harvest the land yields every summer.

  But my grandmother was wrong. This house was built not for her, but as a shrine to her rival. My grandfather hired many of the same men who built his ship to construct the house, and their careful reminders of the sea are everywhere, if you know where to look.

  I know where to look, now. I rest my hand against the beam that runs the length of the attic and feel it vibrate, like a mast in a high wind. The floorboards creak and slant as if they were at sea. The round window at the peak of the roof is no more than a porthole, really, and in storms I’ve almost seen him sitting there, brought out of the darkness for a split second during flashes of lightning.

  My grandmother took one sea voyage herself, the summer her eldest daughter turned sixteen. They traveled to Europe on one of my grandfather’s ships, bringing with them the girl’s two sisters but leaving the baby, a boy of two, at home. My grandfather also stayed behind. The women filled trunks with the latest fashions, wrote letters describing the salons and dinner parties they attended. They set sail for home on a calm August night, eager to return.

  But a storm blew up three days out from land. It savaged the boat, turned it around, tossed it upon the shoals. The captain survived, as did a handful of crew members. My grandmother and her children did not. Her body was found more than a week later, in what state the captain did not say. He buried her remains quickly, saving only her ring, which he returned to my grandfather hi
mself. I dream. I hope. I love.

  IN summer the trees are full, but in fall they drop their leaves, and the valley and surrounding land crouches below the house like a cat before it springs. If someone searched very hard, they could just see, from that attic window, the things they hold most dear: the faintest glint of sunlight on water; the white, circling wings of gulls; the remote, unreachable face of the woman they love, telescoping away into darkness.

  Andie

  IT’S ninety degrees and Andie can feel the sweat dripping down her face as she lifts a stack of newspapers tied with twine. She and Gert are in the shed, a euphemistic name for the small building behind the house. In Andie’s childhood it was used to store wood; today the shed is cluttered with old magazines, clay pots, and glass jars filled with screws and nails.

  Andie drops the newspapers in the pile she’s designated for recycling and wipes her hands on her shorts. She lifts her hair off her neck in hopes of a breeze. None comes, and with a sigh she turns to her aunt.

  “Is there somebody we could call to come pick up this stuff?” For years, Andie knows, Gert has driven once a month to the town dump. But the flotsam and jetsam that’s collected in the shed over the past forty years is beyond the capacity of one ancient vehicle.

  Gert, who is eyeing a box of canning jars, is noncommittal. “I don’t suppose you’ll ever use these?”

  Andie just looks at her.

  “Fine,” Gert says. “Maybe we can donate them for the church fair. Let’s start a pile for that.”

  The shed has a damp, earthy smell. Inside, despite the heat, a coolness comes up from the dirt floor. Andie remembers playing hide-and-seek here, the thrill of waiting in the dimness to be discovered, the almost erotic excitement. And once, the summer before college, she and a date snuck into the shed to escape Clara’s eagle eye and make out.

  “Andie!”

  She starts and looks at Gert.

  “Where were you? I was saying that perhaps we could pay Cort McCallister to take some of these things away. That truck of his is big enough.”

  “Maybe.”

  Cort isn’t on Andie’s list of favorite topics this morning. She came home from the grocery store yesterday to find Nina curled by the front steps, reeking of manure. It took several scrubbings with Andie’s salon shampoo—the only kind in the house—before the dog was clean enough to come inside. And since Nina vigorously protested, howling and attempting to run every time Andie lost her grip on the dog’s collar, the bath took twice as long.

  At the end of an hour, Andie was soaked, her shirt spotted with muddy paw prints. An indignant Nina bolted into the house the second Andie opened the door, taking cover under the kitchen table and refusing to come out even for the sticks of jerky Andie waved under her nose.

  By nightfall they’d reached an uneasy truce. Nina curled on the foot of the bed, her brown eyes watching Andie’s every move. This morning when Andie awoke, the dog was gone. And seeing how the door was locked, Cort McCallister has some explaining to do.

  But Cort breaking into the house to free a dog Andie’s not supposed to have in the first place isn’t something she wants to discuss. Especially this morning, when her aunt is already more cantankerous than normal. Despite the heat, Gert insisted on starting with the shed today, even though they both knew it would be a good ten degrees cooler inside the house.

  “No sense putting it off,” she’d said, stepping off the front porch and disappearing around the back of the house, leaving Andie no choice but to follow.

  It’s like being fifteen again, Andie thinks, except now she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut. She takes a deep breath, moves the box of canning jars to the spot Gert has indicated, and starts sorting through the piles of old magazines.

  They work in silence for a while, each careful not to bump the other in the small space. The floor of the shed is about a third clear when Andie glances at her aunt. Gert’s face is pale despite the heat, and beads of sweat are rolling down her forehead.

  “Let’s take a break,” Andie suggests, and for once Gert doesn’t argue. They make their way past the neatly stacked piles of junk and exit the shed, blinking in the bright sun.

  At the house, Andie is halfway to the kitchen before she realizes that her aunt isn’t behind her. She retraces her steps and is relieved to find Gert gently rocking on the porch swing.

  “Aunt Gert?”

  Gert looks up. Her cheeks look pinker, although her brow is still dotted with sweat.

  “Just thought I’d ask if you wanted water or lemonade.”

  “Water, please,” Gert says. A breeze brushes past Andie, lifting the stray tendrils of Gert’s hair and smoothing them off her forehead. Gert leans back and closes her eyes.

  In the kitchen, Andie washes her hands, then fills a glass from the tap, gulps it down, and refills it with lemonade from a carton in the fridge. She fills another glass with water, then dampens a paper towel and drapes it over her arm.

  Outside, she hands Gert the glass of water and the paper towel. “I thought you might want to clean up. It was pretty dusty in there.”

  Gert wipes her hands before bringing the towel to her forehead and neck. The water seems to revive her, and she sits more erectly on the swing. She takes a deep breath before speaking.

  “I had a phone call last night.”

  “Who from?” Andie asks, but really she’s wondering if she should hire someone to help clean out the house. Maybe Cort knows someone, she thinks. Or she could place an ad on the church’s bulletin board, although if Gert saw it she’d kill her. Andie’s so busy scheming ways to help her aunt rest that she almost doesn’t hear her next words.

  “Richard. Your father,” Gert adds, as if there could be any doubt in Andie’s mind.

  There’s a silence. Gert sips her water and looks off into the distance. The breeze has picked up, and Andie watches it swirl bits of grass and leaves near her feet. When she finally speaks, she keeps her voice carefully neutral. At thirty-three, she’s old enough to know she no longer needs a parent, but that can’t undo the years she spent wishing for one.

  “What did he want?”

  “He’d like to come for a visit. He’ll be passing through in a few weeks, and he asked if you would still be here.”

  “He did?” It seems impossible that Gert could be talking about her father, who hasn’t visited the farm since Andie learned to drive. So far as she knows, he still lives in New Hampshire, in the same two-bedroom condo he bought when she was a child. “What did you say?”

  “I told him yes, of course. No matter what his faults are, Andie, he’s still your father. And my brother, I might add. That makes him family. And as such, he’s always welcome here.” Gert puts her glass down by the side of the swing. “Now, I think I’ve sufficiently recovered to tackle the rest of the shed. Shall we?”

  And with that, she stands and marches away. There’s nothing for Andie to do besides collect the empty glasses and trail behind.

  She’s still thinking about the phone call three hours later, though, after they’ve called it quits for the day. Under Gert’s direction, the dirt floor of the shed has been swept, the magazines and newspapers neatly sorted, the rubbish bagged and set aside. A shelf below the shed’s only window holds jars filled with nails and screws. And, armed with a hammer and ladder, Andie has even hung the rakes, brooms, and shovels that littered the floor. Her uncle, Andie thinks, wouldn’t recognize the place.

  “Well, I believe we’re finished here.” Gert brushes her hands together to rid them of dirt. There’s a faint smudge under her left eye and a few stray bits of spiderweb in her braid, but no other signs of the afternoon’s exertions, and no trace of her earlier fatigue. “Shall I pick you up for church in the morning?”

  “I don’t think so, Aunt Gert.” By contrast, Andie’s T-shirt is smeared with dust, her hair is unraveling from its ponytail, and she’s so tired she can hardly stand. Her head is throbbing, both from the heat and from thoughts of Richard’s vis
it, and she’s in no mood to humor Gert any further.

  “Sunday is the Lord’s day, Andie.”

  “Yes, and on the seventh day even He rested. That’s what I’m planning on doing tomorrow.”

  Gert’s nostrils flare slightly, but whether in anger or amusement Andie can’t tell. “Very well. Perhaps next week.”

  “Perhaps.” And perhaps pigs will fly, Andie thinks but does not say.

  She sees Gert off along the path that leads to the cottage, then heads around the corner of the house. All Andie wants to do is sink into a cool tub of water. She’s concentrating so hard she can almost smell the bubble bath, which must be why she doesn’t notice Cort until she’s just about to trip over him.

  “Hey, there.” He stands up from his seat on the front steps and stretches. Nina, sprawled in the house’s shadow, wags her tail but doesn’t get up. From the wary look in her eyes, it’s clear she hasn’t quite forgotten her own experience with water last night.

  “Hey, yourself.” A trickle of sweat runs down the side of Andie’s nose. She swipes it away with her thumb, and when she glances at her hand, she’s mortified to see a smear of dirt.

  “Nope—you missed.” Cort shakes his head. Before Andie can protest, he carefully wipes her face with the bottom of his T-shirt. He’s standing so near, Andie can feel the heat radiating from his body.

  “There. Got it.” He smiles, and suddenly all Andie can think about is how bad she must smell.

  “Wow, I guess it’s time for me to hit the tub. Thanks for dropping off Nina,” she says, and tries to squeeze by him without actually getting any closer.