5.
I fall into a dream of my garden, full of roses, the fountain whispering, the sky soft with spring light. Everything is young again, the land naïve. Time has not yet learned of its own passing. I open a door in the trunk of an oak tree to find a rainbow of silk. Hidden there are all my favorite dresses. But when I press a pearl number against my body, I realize that I’ve grown far older than this early season of the world. And then the rose blossoms brown and shrivel. Spring and then summer are gone. That cold November hue, its last cry of red, consumes all the trees. It is all so quick, so horrifying.
Once I am awake, it is still spring, and the wind has knocked from the bureau my mother’s ceramic doll, the one she famously carried with her all the way across the ocean to America from Russia. Mina the cat is already attacking the shattered remainders and a bottle of pills that fell alongside it. I draw up the doll’s pieces, the blue petals of her dress, the remainder of her limbs, her pathetic, fragile fingers.
Out the window, I see Simon in the garden, where I left him hours earlier, now in the company of my daughter. Their voices scale the wall to my room, animated or agitated, I cannot tell.
It is just May, and already even walking in the sun is like brushing against the devil’s flesh. I’m not sure whether it’s the oppressive heat or my poor mind, but as I cross the lawn toward my family, I can’t locate the name my mother had for the doll. I almost hear my mother’s voice pronounce it—that voice I have not heard since I was a child.
“We’ve already finished lunch,” Simon announces to me.
“And I’ve got to get going soon,” my daughter says. “Gordon’s gotten into a bit of trouble.”
Blue Rose is older than your own old mother. Blue Rose will live forever. Blue Rose, Blue Rose—
“When is your husband not in trouble?” Simon asks.
But will you live forever, Mama?
My mouth goes to greet my daughter, but her name blurs beneath Blue Rose the doll, and the oak and its rainbow trunk of silk . . .
“Elle, it’s Zelda,” she says, taking my hand.
“Why do you insist on this first-name business?” Simon asks angrily. “That’s your mother. Is this something Gordon taught you, too?”
“Of course I know it’s you, you silly girl,” I reply.
But then my mother’s name returns to me: Sanya. My mouth moves over its sounds. My father whispered it in his sleep after she was dead of an otherwise unextraordinary seasonal flu. Sanya Sanya Sanya.
“Sanya?” Zelda asks. “Who’s Sanya?”
Simon looks at Zelda. “I assume she’s referring to your long-dead grandmother.”
“I’ve just come to visit with you both,” I say. Zelda wraps her arms in mine as if to escort me somewhere. “There was an accident and Blue Rose—”
“We sold the ship, Elle,” Simon says. “Remember?”
“The ship from Russia? No, Simon, that’s long gone,” I say. “I mean the doll in my room. She fell to the floor, and is broken to pieces. I dreamt and I woke up and—”
“Mother, isn’t it time for your nap?” Zelda asks.
“But I’ve just woken up. I just told you that.”
“Well, you must be a bit chilled. Why don’t you go on up and get a shawl,” she says, pushing me back toward the porch, even though it’s absolutely scorching. Once they have me back inside, Zelda slams the garden door in my face, and within moments they are shouting again.
“Simon, you’ll die on this stupid island. All alone in this big house with no one to help you. Not even Ray.”
“The business isn’t dead yet,” Simon shouts back. “And please stop calling me Simon!”
“With all due respect, Simon, which business are you speaking of? Your treasure hunt that died thirty years ago? Or that pharmaceutical hoax—”
“How dare you, Zelda,” Simon growls. “Repeating those accusations. That tabloid trash. I am your father. That husband of yours has made you forget your class.”
“Leave Gordon out of this. It’s not just the media. Joe and Deb told me about the recall, Dad.”
“Caeruleum is as safe as water—when it’s pure, Zelda. It was Joe’s crew of geniuses who got us into this godforsaken mess.”
“We are going in circles,” Zelda shouts. “My question is, why do you still need all this?” She gazes up at the house. “Why don’t you sell the place, get out of here before the island turns into a ghost town?”
“And I suppose Gordon wouldn’t mind gambling away the proceeds of our estate, too?” Simon shouts back.
I almost scream: But who will sit in the parlor at the grand piano if not Simon? Whose portrait will hang in the living room, if not my own, that twenty-three-year-old face gazing into the distance, the garden, the woods, into the opaque future? Whose china will quiver in the seconds before a hurricane makes landfall, our own sirens of late summer? I want to tell Zelda I can hear her still, scrambling up and down the staircases, sliding on her knees. Every birthday party, every holiday, the aroma of cocoa, of popcorn, of roasted meat. Come Christmas, we lit up every tree in the yard. This house is all that remains of time for me. There was some happiness here, after all.
But I say nothing. I tiptoe down the front stairs. Spider mites have finished off the rosebushes that once adorned the path from the drive. Their ghostly webs brew a temporary fog. My house is passing away with me. I go farther, leaving my daughter, my husband, my garden, for the relentless oak. There is always a moment in the woods when I wonder if I will ever see it again, the ocean—and then there it is, that shimmer. I make my way to the top of a dune to rest, and just for a second I close my eyes. Sometimes it is too much, the sea. Sometimes I can’t bear to look at it all at once.
When I open my eyes again, it is as if he has been waiting there all afternoon. Gabriel looks at me frankly, hand on his hip, his stance either agitation or boredom. That old emotion returns: I am riotous with desire. My pathetic veins burn with it. Gabriel walks toward me, his hand stretched out for mine. I am all over again young. I pinch his ear with my thumb and pointer finger, to greet him. It was our way on Lyra. We could pretend we were truly cousins inside such a small gesture.
“Elle Bell, how long have you been stranded here?” Dusk falls, and its palette lingers, intimating the halls of eternity. The ocean is thin and sweet as a lake. It is the water of some other place and I want to swim in it at last. Gabriel looks at me expectantly. Beyond him I see a boat, waiting there for us to board. He cups my chin affectionately in his hand, those large, rough fingers I haven’t seen in so long, nails mired with grime. His eyes swirl as if they’ve consumed the stars. “As always with dreams,” he says, “you can’t take a photograph of this.”
Then he sweeps his arms out at the view.
“Elle, Mayor Clarke’s wife is here!” The music stops. The afternoon resumes in its bright, casual light. I am not on the beach but lying in my own bed.
“Did you see him?” I shriek.
“Simon is in town,” Ethel says. “Mrs. Clarke insists y’all have an appointment together. It’s half past three now.”
“With Zelda?” I ask.
“That was yesterday Miss Zelda paid us a visit,” Ethel replies. “Zelda left yesterday.”
Downstairs, Mrs. Clarke talks into a phone that has no cord, the technology of which I presumably should understand but do not. Whoever is on the other end apparently cannot hear her very well, as she is screaming into it like a ghoul in a nightmare, swatting her hands around her wedding cake updo, which has drawn to it a few of the season’s largest lovebugs.
I sit at the table across from her for some time before she hollers: “Goodbye! I have to go now. I’m sitting here with Elle Ranier. I said I have to go now.” After several minutes more of this, she disconnects the call.
“Now, Elle, I’m here to talk business, girl to girl. Like we used to do.”
There are two cups on the table. I reach for one hesitantly. Mrs. Clarke reaches for the other and puts it to her mouth. I don’t know if I should hold mine, set it down, or do as she has done. What is to be done with the cup? I want her to be quiet, and I hope this is the way it is done, with the cup affixed to her mouth.
“Your tea will get cold,” Ethel whispers to me as Mrs. Clarke keeps talking.
“You know it’s not Christian to indulge in gossip,” Mrs. Clarke continues. “If you recall, the last time I came to you about anything unseemly, it was when Ray got his hands into too many liquor cabinets and was becoming a proper devil to our island. Well, that’s all water under the bridge—we hear Ray’s found the Lord’s righteous path at last. Oh, shame on me for digging up old wounds. To get right down to it, Elle, the reason I’m here is there’s been a little worm about this business of taking the Caeruleum off the market. But the mining will go on still, right? There’s got to be some other use for the site. Pay was a week late last month and we very nearly had a riot—”
I raise the cup and hold it out over the table, signifying my turn to speak. “Excuse me, dear,” I cut in. “Did you happen to see a young man come through here? He was just there on the beach—”
“Oh, my, do you think one of ’em was trying to rob you? You know how they turn heathen when they don’t get their pay, Elle.” She looks quickly at Ethel, then away.
Ethel interrupts her. “The missus hasn’t been feeling like herself today. Maybe you ought to come back another time.”
“I certainly will.” Mrs. Clarke sets her cup back on the table, puts her handkerchief over her mouth, then plugs her nose. “These lovebugs are spreading a plague that comes from Mexico, you know. I heard it on the radio today. Folks are falling sick and dying. At first it just feels like the flu. . . .” Before departing, the cordless telephone reattaches itself to her cheek. Half talking into it, she says: “Oh, Mary Louise, you heard about these damn Mexicans, right?” and then to me, her voice trailing off at last: “You’d better make certain to see the doctor, Elle, just in case you caught it.”