MARTHA HAD LEFT THE ruined house that first day not at all sure she ever wanted to go back. What she didn’t at all suspect was that she herself would be the first one to urge that they return.
It happened because Martha’s mother had made plans to take both her daughters to the city to an afternoon performance of the ballet. Cath, who was a Sophomore in high school that year, was still taking ballet; but she was beginning to complain that the lessons were taking up too much of her time. And it turned out that that particular Saturday afternoon she had no time at all. Pretty much at the last moment she told her mother that there just wasn’t any way that she could fit the matinee into her schedule. And so Mrs. Abbott asked Martha if she would like to bring a friend. Mrs. Abbott suggested that since Kelly Peters was also a ballet student, she might be delighted to see the performance. Martha was pretty sure that Kelly wouldn’t be delighted to go anywhere with her, but at her mother’s insistence she called to find out. Kelly’s mother answered, and she must have stayed within earshot because Kelly was ickily polite.
“Well, thanks a lot, Martha,” she said. “It sure is nice of you to ask me, and I’d just love to, but today is the day that Janine is having her big roller skating party, and I already said I’d go to that. Da-a-rn!” she drawled with exaggerated regret, and the word phony leaped into Martha’s throat in such solid form that it almost choked her. But, like always, she didn’t say it.
Then Mrs. Peters must have left the room because Kelly’s voice crisped, and she said, “I thought you knew about Janine’s party. Nearly everybody is going.”
So Martha reported to her mother that Kelly had another date and suggested, not too hopefully, that maybe Ivy could go. Somewhat to Martha’s surprise, Mrs. Abbott agreed.
Martha had known that Ivy would want to go, but she was really surprised by the extent of Ivy’s enthusiasm. She arrived early, combed and dressed so carefully that she hardly seemed like Ivy for a moment. On the way into the city Ivy told Martha and her mother that she had never seen a real ballet before—and not even very much on television. Aunt Evaline had no T.V., and the Carsons’ set was always either broken, or being used by someone else.
“But I know a lot about it,” Ivy told Mrs. Abbott. “I took lessons the last time I was in Harley’s Crossing from a friend of my aunt’s. And I’ve read books about it—and I know in other ways, too.” When she said the part about “other ways,” she looked at Martha and grinned. Martha grinned back, knowing that Ivy meant about having been a ballet dancer in another reincarnation.
Ordinarily, Ivy probably wouldn’t have bothered to leave out something just because it might sound too unusual for an adult. Martha had heard her say some pretty fantastic things, even in front of teachers. But that day Ivy was on her most careful behavior, at least until the ballet started. From the moment that the first dancer leaped on stage, Ivy forgot about proper behavior and everything else.
Not that she did or said anything shocking, it was just that she stopped doing or saying anything at all. She just sat in her dusty red plush seat, pushed way back so far that her feet stuck almost straight out, and barely moved during the entire performance. In fact, she hardly seemed to breathe. During the intermission she managed to say, “It’s wonderful,” when Mrs. Abbott pressed her for a comment, but then she sank back into silence. She stayed that way all the way home.
As soon as they got home, Mrs. Abbott had to leave again to pick up Cath from where she was decorating for a dance at the high school, so Martha walked with Ivy as far as Bent Oaks. When they were almost to the grove, Ivy began to run. Martha ran after her, and when she caught up Ivy was sitting flat on the ground in the middle of the grove in her only good dress—taking off her shoes. Then she tucked her skirt up inside the legs of her underpants and began to dance.
Martha had seen Ivy dance many times before. She was always making up dances for a ceremony or ritual, and Martha had always loved watching her. Ivy danced with a wonderful kind of unity—as if no part of her existed outside of the dance—no part of her stood back to wonder how she looked. But this time the dancing was not as much fun to watch. This time, instead of just dancing, Ivy was trying to do some of the things she had just seen the ballet dancers doing. And, of course, she couldn’t.
She kept trying things over and over, sometimes stopping to clench her fists or stomp her foot. Finally she came over to where Martha was sitting and dropped down beside her. Her face was flushed, and her voice sounded almost as if she were about to cry.
“It was so beautiful,” she said. “And I was so sure that I could do it. I could just feel how in my arms and legs. I could feel just exactly how it would be to do such perfect—perfect—things, so easily and—”
“But you do beautiful things,” Martha said. “The way you dance is beautiful.”
“But it’s not right,” Ivy said. “It’s not anything. I can’t do the things they can do.” She looked at Martha as if she were very angry. “But I’m going to, though. I’m going to learn how.”
For the next few weeks it was almost as if Ivy had gone away again. Actually she was right there at Bent Oaks Grove every spare minute; but she wasn’t much fun to be with. All she wanted to do was practice her dancing or read the books about ballet that she had checked out of the library. Martha and Josie waited patiently for a while, and now and then Martha even tried out a few steps herself, but after a week or two she began to get rather violently bored.
It occurred to Martha to ask Cath if it were possible for a person to teach herself to be a ballet dancer, and Cath said it wasn’t. In fact, she said, most teachers didn’t even like students to do much home practice between lessons because they would probably teach themselves bad habits. Martha relayed that information to Ivy, but it didn’t stop her.
Ivy just nodded and said, “But that’s right at first, and this isn’t right at first for me. I had those lessons in Harley’s Crossing, you know. And besides I remember a lot from when I was a dancer before. Not in my head, so much, but my arms and legs remember, and they’re remembering more all the time.”
Martha sighed and then asked resignedly, “Couldn’t you take some lessons, then? Cath’s teacher is supposed to be a very good one.”
“No,” Ivy said. “It costs too much.”
“Well then, I guess you’ll have to go on teaching yourself, but anyway, don’t you think we could do something else for a change? We never did finish about the sharls.”
“Yes,” Josie said. “Let’s do about the sharls.”
Ivy agreed and said that maybe they could do the Tree People again the next day, but when the next day came she still wanted to dance. That was the day Martha, in desperation, started talking about the burned-out house. She remembered very well how it had made her feel, but she also remembered how intrigued Ivy had seemed by it—and it was a time for extreme measures. She talked about the strangeness of the place and the sad silence, and finally she saw that Ivy was really beginning to listen. The next day they went back to the burned-out house.
As soon as they were back beneath the black edged walls, Martha wished they hadn’t come. Somehow it seemed worse than before. Maybe it was the weather, cold and gray and threatening, that made the sadness of the place seem bitterer and less intriguing. Even Ivy seemed a little uneasy at first.
But they had come to explore and so they did. They poked around for a while in a dry fishpond and grotto fashioned out of large rough rocks and agreed that if it were only closer to home it would be a wonderful place for the Lower Level. Then in what seemed to have been a kind of kitchen garden, they discovered a weathered trash heap, that when prodded by sharp sticks yielded old purpling bottles and a rusty dinner fork. Not far from the trash heap there was a stone bench, and Martha and Ivy sat down on it facing the house while Josie wandered around digging little holes with the bent fork.
Staring up at the ruin, Martha imagined what it must have looked like once. A tall old-fashioned house with fancy carved trim and two or maybe three stories of high thin windows. Then without planning to, she started imagining it another way, with thin tongues of flame licking out of all the windows and springing up through the roof in huge red hands against the sky.
Suddenly Ivy asked, “Do you know the story of what happened here?”
“No,” Martha said. “I asked my mother about it, and she said it happened a long time ago. She said she’d heard something about it, but she couldn’t remember just what. Except that the same people own it who own the land around Bent Oaks. There’s an old man who won’t let anything be sold or changed.”
Ivy was quiet again for a while longer, and then she said, “Well, I know about it now. It belonged to a beautiful lady named Annabelle and her husband. It was a long time ago, and they were very rich. Annabelle had been the most beautiful girl for miles and miles, and she married a very handsome man and he built this house for her and gave her all sorts of beautiful jewels and clothes and servants and everything she asked for. After a few years they had three beautiful children. But Annabelle wasn’t happy because she was used to going to dances and parties all the time, and now she had to stay home with the babies while her husband went away to work. One day there was going to be a very important party at the king’s palace—”
“The king’s palace?” Martha said. “Here, in Rosewood Hills?”
“Well, maybe it was at the mayor’s house. Anyway, Annabelle wanted to go, but her husband had to go away on business, and he said she shouldn’t go without him.”
Martha interrupted again, “Who told you? Did your mother know about it?”
“No,” Ivy said. “My mother didn’t tell me. I think I heard about it somewhere a long time ago and I just started remembering. It just sort of came to me. Don’t things just sort of come to you sometimes?”
Martha considered. “Yes, I guess they do. I think it just came to me what happened next—to Annabelle, I mean.”
“What?” Ivy said.
“Well, Annabelle went off to the party without telling anyone, and in the night the fire started and—” she stopped, not quite sure she wanted to end it the way she was thinking.
“—and then Annabelle came back and the children were all dead, and the next day her hair turned snow white, and the next day she died.”
Martha nodded slowly, and they went on sitting there staring at the ruin for a long time. They came back, finally, through time and tragedy, to the sound of Josie’s chatter and the realization that the gray cold had reached almost to the center of their bones.
Martha turned to Ivy, and they both said, “Let’s go home,” in perfect unison.
But this time Josie didn’t want to go. She sat firmly on the ground with her chubby legs out in front of her, clutching the old fork and a bouquet of dead flowers. She scowled at them and refused to stand up. At last Ivy took the flowers and fork by force, and, grabbing her hands, Martha and Ivy pulled Josie to her feet and started down the hill. Josie wailed and struggled.
“I want my pretty flowers,” Josie sobbed.
Ivy sighed and looked back up the hill. “What do you want those old dead things for?” she asked.
“They’re not your flowers,” Martha said, trying another tack. “They don’t belong to us.”
“Yes they do, yes they do,” Josie said.
“They belong here, to this house. They belong to a beautiful dead lady.”
“No they don’t,” Josie said. “They belong to me. The lady gave them to me.”
Martha looked at Ivy, and Ivy’s nod meant that she was wondering the same thing.
“What lady, Josie?” Ivy asked.
“The lady you said,” Josie said. “The beautiful dead lady.”
“How do you know she was a dead lady?” Martha asked in a stiff voice that tightened into a gulp before she finished the sentence.
“She said she was,” Josie said. “She said she was the beautiful dead lady.”
“Did she have white hair?” Ivy asked.
Josie thought a minute and then nodded. “White,” she said, putting her hand on top of her head.
“What else did she say to you?”
“She said she was the beautiful dead lady, and I could have some flowers,” Josie said.
So Martha and Ivy went, very quickly and watchfully, back up the hill for the flowers; and then, all the way home, while Josie trudged happily along carrying the little dead bouquet, they walked just behind her, watching and wondering.