Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  She has forgotten to feed the cat, Stella. Although Stella is black, she’s hardly a familiar. A familiar should be utterly feline and Stella is more like a dog. She will retrieve a ball if you throw one for her; she follows along on walks; she doesn’t mind the water and has been known to jump into the marsh, after a duck or Canada goose twice her size. Laurel goes to the pantry for a pack of Tender Vittles and Stella follows, rubbing against Laurel’s white kimono. Outside, it’s brutally hot, but the cottage is backed by tall pine trees that always keep it cool; not a plus in November or in the heart of February, but today the linoleum against Laurel’s bare feet is wonderfully cold. As long as she’s up, Laurel gets an egg, fills a blue tin pot with water, and sets it to boil. She had a husband once who said she could not even boil an egg. Clearly he was wrong.

  He was wrong about a lot of things. Laurel never tricked him into marrying her. He fell in love with her all on his own; he chose to ignore how shy she was, how ill at ease with people, including, it’s true, himself. He accused her of so many things, Laurel can no longer remember the list, although she certainly remembers how often he insisted that she was in love with death. He was more wrong about this than anything else; Laurel is, and always has been, terrified by death. When a baby cries, she hears a death rattle. The branches of a white birch are crossbones. She cannot look at spaded earth, even if it is only a corner of a suburban lawn dug up for a new rhododendron.

  She never wanted to receive messages, it just started to happen to her when she was twelve, beginning with what she thought was a dream. She was walking down a long corridor, which became more narrow as she went along, the walls and ceiling curving until the corridor became a tunnel. She stopped. Everything around her was cold. In the distance she could see her grandmother falling. Laurel’s grandmother wore a blue silk dress and a long rope of pearls, and she was falling downward, as though the tunnel were vertical, straight down from sky to earth. There was no pull of gravity, so every path was a slow circular spiral.

  In the morning the call came that Laurel’s grandmother was dead. She had been at a wedding and had fallen; she’d had a stroke and never regained consciousness. Laurel received several other messages from her grandmother; she was terrified, but she told no one. The messages that came through her dreams grew more and more specific, as if someone were trying to prove something to her. She dreamed her grandmother was winding the chiming clock in her kitchen, and the following day the clock arrived, airmail. She dreamed her grandmother led her to an angel with his wings folded tightly against his body, and when her parents took her to the cemetery there was the angel, carved into her grandmother’s headstone.

  When she was thirteen, the messages began to come to her during her waking hours, messages from people she had never known in life. She could close her eyes in math class and hear a child’s voice, a classmate’s sister lost at birth. She dreaded the cold, clammy way her hands felt whenever she was near someone who had suffered a recent loss. While other girls her age were thinking about shades of lipstick and Saturday nights, Laurel could not stop thinking about the brevity of a human lifespan. At night her dreams were terrifying things filled with cemeteries, silence, full white moons.

  When she was seventeen Laurel made a huge effort, and, with the help of a prescription for Valium, she nearly succeeded and stopped thinking about death. She finished high school, went to college, married when she was twenty-two. For a while her husband didn’t mind her odd habits. He overlooked it when she hid in closets during thunderstorms, when she refused to leave the house for three weeks after their cat was run over by a car, when she couldn’t accompany him to his father’s funeral. It was true, he had plenty to complain about, everything she did she did halfheartedly. She’d start the laundry but never finish, so that her husband wore damp clothes to work. The frozen dinners she cooked were always icy in the middle. She was still receiving messages, but they were jumbled now, as though she had a crossed connection, and she had a constant, dull headache. What Laurel could never understand was why, when he started to notice and list her faults, her husband seemed so surprised.

  After her divorce, she moved to the cottage in Morrow and began to give readings. At first the messages came through with piercing clarity, but lately she’s found herself drifting and she’s taken to lying. It’s easy; her clients give themselves away in a thousand ways. All she has to do is pick up on their clues, listen for their breathing to quicken, see if they’ve been biting nails. She has a new client today, at eleven. It’s a bad time of day for a reading, dusk is better, or at least late afternoon, but this client’s husband disapproves of séances and he’ll be home from his golf game by two.

  Laurel makes the bed, showers, and dresses in a white shirt and a denim wrap-around skirt. She brushes her long hair, her one vanity, just as coffee is her one vice. In her bookcase there are mostly cookbooks and novels, and, hidden in the back, some detective stories. Nothing about the occult. Laurel avoids psychic gatherings; she cringes when she reads about channelers who hold public meetings with audiences of hundreds of followers. There are no candles in her cottage, no crystal balls or baskets of herbs. The furniture is mostly wicker and oak collected at auctions and secondhand stores. Her newest, most prized acquisition is a tall brass lamp that has a pink silk shade. She paid too much for it. She had planned to keep it beside the window, behind the wicker couch, but when she got the lamp home Laurel hid it in a dark corner in her bedroom. She didn’t understand why she’d done this until the photographer who’s been coming around spotted the lamp. Polly found it so charming that she wanted the lamp included in any photographs she took and asked if it could be moved beside the table where Laurel did her readings. Laurel had insisted that the lamp would be too distracting. She had realized, all at once, that she should never have bought it. Pink silk and death did not go together.

  It is the last day of August, and the last day of any month depresses Laurel. She remembers now that she dreamed about her childhood, and she never dreams anymore. Her sleep is usually empty and deep, as if she used up all her dream time during her waking hours. In less than an hour, Betsy, whom Laurel always thinks of as “Bossy” ever since she managed to talk Laurel into being the subject for her book, will arrive with the photographer. Stupidly, Laurel has forgotten to mention the presence of a writer and a photographer to her new client, who is so nervous and secretive she may bolt and run as soon as she sees a camera. It will be hard enough to concentrate on a reading in this heat.

  Outside, the sunlight is thick, like a swarm of yellow bees. It used to be easy for Laurel to resist sunlight like this; she doesn’t even think she noticed sunlight before she moved here to the marsh. She cracks the brown shell of the hard-boiled egg she has on her counter, then eats standing up. She’s edgy; something’s not right. Laurel goes to let the cat out; then for no reason she follows Stella out onto the wooden deck. The deck, which juts out from the house, is built on stilts right over the marsh. At night, Laurel can hear crabs clattering in through holes, burrowing in the damp basement, which is often flooded at high tide when there’s a full moon. Once, she found a starfish on the cellar stairs. She leans on the railing and feels the sun through her cotton blouse and on her bare legs. Before she came here, Laurel Smith had never seen a kingfisher; she couldn’t tell the difference between a cardinal and a wren. In a few minutes Betsy Stafford and the new client will both pull into the dirt driveway, but Polly will not be coming to photograph the reading. It doesn’t matter, there will be nothing to photograph and Laurel Smith knows it. She feels a pressure on her forehead, like a hand pushing against her.

  Out on the marsh, two egrets take flight, struggling furiously for distance, as if frightened for their lives.

  CHAPTER 3

  Charlie makes himself French toast. He leaves the eggy bowl on the counter and the burned frying pan on the stove. Summer is so boring, but he dreads the thought of school. Ten more days of freedom. Today he and Sevrin are going to sneak down
to the pond, which both their mothers think is too far for them to bicycle to, and look for specimens. They have a theory that not only can sugar not harm you, it is actually good for you, and they intend to set up an experiment that will prove them right, down in Sevrin’s basement, where no one ever goes. Charlie’s backpack is bulging with the Mason jars he’s pilfered from the pantry. He hopes his mother won’t notice they’re missing until next June, when she wants to make strawberry jam. Maybe, when the experiment has been completed, Charlie can set the newts free and replace the Mason jars so that his mother will never know anything amphibian was ever in them. He makes himself laugh thinking about what his mother could find on the shelf: strawberry jam, orange newt, pickled cucumbers, little green frogs in vinegar.

  If Charlie catches whatever his sister has, and misses out on this last week of freedom, he will commit hara-kiri. He has a million things to do in ten days. The door slams as Charlie is pouring syrup on his French toast. Ivan has already been to the drugstore before setting out for the institute.

  “Hey, buddy,” Ivan says to Charlie. He eyes the French toast. “Looks good.”

  Polly comes down from upstairs. She’s been sponging Amanda down with cool water, just as the doctor told her to do when she phoned during the call-in hour.

  “Did you get the Tylenol and the Gatorade?” she asks Ivan.

  Ivan produces the Tylenol. “No Gatorade at Larson’s,” he says.

  “That’s all you tried?” Polly says, furious. “One damn store?”

  Charlie feels bad for his father; he tends to forget things, too, especially when he runs errands.

  “I’ll go back out,” Ivan says.

  Polly knows he is supposed to prepare for the upcoming seminar in Florida; he wanted to get to work early and try one more rewrite.

  “Don’t bother,” Polly says. “I’ll go.” She turns to Charlie. “You.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Charlie quickly says.

  “Stay with Amanda,” Polly tells him.

  “I can’t,” Charlie groans. “Sevrin’s waiting.”

  “Let him wait,” Polly says.

  Polly doesn’t kiss Ivan good-bye, and she doesn’t look at either of them as she grabs her car keys. Charlie and Ivan exchange a guilty look.

  “She’ll cool off,” Ivan says.

  Ivan grabs his backpack and follows Polly out, hoping to make up in the driveway. Charlie finishes his French toast, then goes upstairs to look for the net he and Sevrin will need. Amanda’s door is open and the room is dark. All the shades have been pulled down. Charlie stops at the door and looks in.

  “Hi,” Amanda says from under the quilts.

  Charlie comes into the room and switches on the light on the night table. “Mom is so crazy about keeping things dark whenever anyone’s sick.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda says.

  “I’m going to look for my net,” Charlie says. “Me and Sevrin are going collecting.”

  “Good luck,” Amanda says.

  She’s whispering because her sore throat is really bad, the worst she can remember. She feels cold no matter how many quilts are piled on top of her. This is worse than when she had the chicken pox and couldn’t sit down, not even to go to the toilet. Worse than when she cried all night because her skin itched.

  “Well, go ahead,” Amanda tells Charlie. “Go meet Sevrin.”

  Her throat hurts so much she may start to cry, and she doesn’t want Charlie to see.

  “I’ve got to stay with you,” Charlie tells her. “Mom,” he says apologetically.

  “Oh,” Amanda says, understanding completely. Her mother’s done the same thing with her, forcing her to spend time with Charlie when she doesn’t even want to be in the same room with him.

  Charlie sits down on a chair near the bed. “Want me to put on a tape for you?” he asks. “Duran Duran?”

  Amanda tells him no, she has a headache. They can hear kids down the block, enjoying their freedom.

  “Just don’t blow your germs this way,” Charlie says. “Only ten more days till prison.”

  That makes Amanda smile. She can’t wait for school to start; she’s been looking forward to sixth grade all summer. With Helen Cross graduated and Evelyn Crowley getting sloppy, Amanda will be the best gymnast on the team.

  Charlie sits next to her, thinking about horseshoe crabs. If he bikes the long way, and rides along the marsh, he may find some on his way to meet Sevrin. Horseshoe crabs are endlessly fascinating to him, since they were here before the dinosaurs. He cannot understand why no one has discovered the secret of how they managed to survive. Charlie is already half an hour late and Sevrin is probably mad at him by now. His mother does things like this to him all the time, and to Amanda, too. She doesn’t understand when they have appointments to keep or phone calls to make. She forgets they have lives of their own.

  “I could bring you back a newt,” he tells Amanda. “You could keep it in a terrarium.”

  He realizes then that his sister has fallen asleep. She’s holding onto the quilt his mother always covers them with when they’re sick. It is blue and white with a border of stars and a few boxes of red in the center. They used to believe it was this quilt that made them well, and if both of them were sick they fought over it. Charlie reaches up and turns off the lamp on the night table. He sits in the chair, his hands on his knees. He finds himself counting the minutes until his mother comes back. In the dark he can see the white stars in the border of the quilt, whiter even than bones.

  When twenty-four hours have passed, and Amanda’s fever has not gone down, Polly takes her in to be examined. Ed Reardon has been the kids’ doctor for seven years, ever since they moved to Morrow. He does a routine throat culture, takes Amanda’s temperature, examines her ears, and then, concerned mostly with the swollen lymph nodes he’s found all over her body and the girl’s weight loss, decides to run some blood and stool tests. He tells Polly they’ll have the results back from the lab by tomorrow or the next day, and in the meantime Amanda should continue taking Tylenol. Absolute bed rest, even though Amanda puts up a fight and insists she’s feeling better. He would never mention that the first thing he thinks of when he sees symptoms like Amanda’s is cancer.

  Ed Reardon has seen nearly a dozen kids in the past week with a virus that combines a high fever and vomiting, and he thinks, once again, that he needs a partner and at least one more person on his office staff. He has tomorrow off, and he needs it. He knows he should have longer office hours and spend less time with each patient, his accountant has told him this. But finding a way to see more bodies per hour is not why Ed chose pediatrics. He has three kids himself, a two-year-old son and two daughters, five and eight.

  “It’s not fair,” Amanda says as she gets dressed.

  “She’s worried about practicing,” Polly explains, as she quickly signs the permission slips for all the lab tests. “Gymnastics.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ed Reardon tells Amanda. “I can tell just by looking at you. You’re better than Mary Lou Retton.”

  Amanda ducks her head, suddenly shy, but Polly can tell she’s pleased. “Thanks,” she says to Ed after Amanda has gone to the bathroom to leave urine and stool samples. “She seems better already.”

  Polly does not add that Ed has made her feel better too. He always does. High fevers make her crazy with fear. Ivan thinks she overreacts, but Ed Reardon listens to her; he seems to trust her instincts.

  “She’s a great kid,” Ed tells Polly.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the mothers,” Polly teases him.

  “I most certainly do not,” Ed tells her. “Ten to one her fever subsides by morning.”

  He’s right. Amanda’s fever breaks sometime in the night, and by breakfast time her temperature is normal. She’s still too tired to do much more than sit on the couch and watch TV, and that suits Charlie since she might have wanted to come to the pond with him and she always wants to go swimming. Amanda doesn’t have the patience to watch for sp
ecimens.

  Charlie and Sevrin filled all the Mason jars with newts yesterday, and last night they sneaked into Sevrin’s basement. Half the newts were given sugar-water; the control group had only lettuce and water. But now the boys meet again, back to look for something that got away yesterday. At least Charlie is. Sevrin was busy eating a sandwich and he missed it. He doesn’t quite believe that the turtle was at least three feet across.

  “Bullshit,” Sevrin says now. He is belly down, his hands in the cool water, his knees and bare feet dark with dust. He’s brought his dog, a golden retriever named Felix, whom they have to keep on a leash so he won’t make a dash for the water. “No turtle could get to be that size in a pond this small.”

  “A mutant,” Charlie suggests. “Maybe someone’s been dumping radioactive waste in here.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Sevrin says, echoing his mother’s cynical tone. “The one that got away.”

  “We’ll see him,” Charlie says. “We’ll sit here all day if we have to.”

  Charlie reaches into his backpack and pulls out two cans of orange soda and two Almond Joys. Sevrin leans back and takes one of the sodas. He snaps the top open loudly.

  “Quiet!” Charlie whispers, annoyed.

  Sevrin wrinkles his nose and guzzles his orange soda.

  It’s hot and Charlie takes off his Red Sox T-shirt. If they weren’t waiting for the turtle, he’d dive right into the pond. Instead, he holds the cold can of soda against his bare skin. Blue dragonflies skim over the surface of the water. There’s a new housing development through the trees, but the boys aren’t aware of it. Small deer still come to the ponds and marshes in Morrow; Charlie knows you can see them at dusk if you’re quiet enough.

  “Just think, tyrannosauruses might have hung out here,” Sevrin muses. “They could have attacked a brontosaurus right here where we’re sitting.”