Six Months after the Accident
SEPTEMBER 1983
I had not realized the depth of my exhaustion until I fell onto my childhood bed and slept for the better part of a week. Verona stayed home from the Pied Beauty antique market and doted on me, leaving tea and toast by my bedside during the day and bringing me hot toddies at night. By mutual, unspoken agreement, neither of us asked questions. Jude was not mentioned. Mnemosyne stayed on her shelf.
On the eighth morning, this morning, my mother decides I have recuperated enough. I awaken to find her standing at the door, a plate in her hands. She hopes I slept; we have an incredibly busy day ahead of us and an equally busy night, considering we’ve made only the slightest dent in catching up on our lives. “I went on a rigorous expedition in the fridge and came up with enough eggs for an omelet,” she says. “Eat, and then we’ll head to the market. When you were a girl it was like your second home, and you’ll see so many familiar faces and sights, and you’ll start feeling like you know yourself again.”
After I shower, I stretch the phone from my mother’s bedside to her bathroom, the cord fully unraveled and taut. I lock the door and dial Sab’s number. It’s early, around six in the morning, and I hope I’ve caught him before he’s left for work. One ring, two, three, and then his familiar hello, soft but hurried.
“Hey,” I whisper. “It’s me. Did you get my message? This is the first chance I’ve had to call since I found out that—”
“Kat,” he says, “I don’t know what sort of epiphany you’ve had this time, but I don’t have time for it. You’re in, you’re out, you’re in, you’re out, back and forth. And it was never just me and you. It was me and you and Jude, and I don’t like crowds. Take care of yourself and all that, but now I’m out.”
“What?” I ask, but the dial tone drones in my ear. His words settle, and I feel the cold weight of them, their depth and heft. Quickly I call back and get nothing but rings; he must have disconnected his machine just to avoid hearing my voice. I begin to cry, a crying that is wrapped up in both Sab’s shocking words and Jude’s list of lies, and I wonder if she had something to do with his change of heart, if there are betrayals of which I am not yet aware.
“Katherine?” my mother calls. “Are you okay?”
I wipe my eyes and blow my nose and try to sweep Sab’s words away, rewinding our relationship back to the beginning, to the time when he was just a prop in my performance as a normal twenty-two-year-old, a tool that helped me recalibrate myself. Jude’s old advice creeps into my mind—reject and release, reject and release—and silently I thank her for that gift, the very last one I’ll allow her to give.
One hour later I’m inside Verona’s stall at the market, arranging the new merchandise, preparing to sell. She hands me pieces and directs me with adamant specificity: No, that chandelier must hang this way, to catch the light. Do put a pillow over that tear in the leather club chair, will you? Someone will fall in love with it before spotting its flaws. We do not arrange the jewelry by gemstone, but by era—do we want people to think we’re heathens? And on and on, until every item is displayed to maximum brilliance, and the trickle of shoppers turns into a bustling crowd.
“Where does the name ‘Pied Beauty’ come from?” I ask. “And did you always work here?”
“From a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem,” she says, “praising God’s beautiful creations. But the name was here long before me. I much prefer Hopkins’s Terrible Sonnets—‘O what black hours we have spent,’ ‘cries like dead letters sent’—et cetera, et cetera. All those dark images just illuminate how bright my own life has been. And yes, when I came back to the States, I started to work here, and continued to do so until you enrolled in your special school. Pied Beauty is the state’s oldest and largest collection of fine antiques, mostly curated from markets in Europe, and it’s an honor to be here again.”
Come in, come in, she tells prospective buyers. Try out this velvet settee, isn’t it marvelous? According to lore it once belonged to Gertrude Stein during her heyday in Paris, and that chandelier over there once hung in the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in the world, and here is a mirror that once belonged to Gladys Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who ruined her flawless face with botched plastic surgery and became a recluse. Tell me, ma’am, tell me, sir, how can I make your life a bit more interesting today?
After two hours of steady traffic the crowd thins again, breaking for lunch.
“Are you hungry?” I ask her. “I can walk down to Main Street and bring something back.”
She reaches for her wallet but is distracted by someone or something over my shoulder. “Richard!” she calls, and waves her hand. “Come over!”
I turn to see a man walking toward us, handsome in the opposite way to Sab. He’s my mother’s contemporary but a few years younger, or maybe he works hard to appear as such, and even from a distance I can appreciate the beauty of his features, all the angles and curves fused in perfect symmetry. He moves with the bold assurance of an exclamation point, torso bent forward and arms swinging, the gait of a man who has never been lost in his life. He wears a white linen suit over an aqua T-shirt and a vintage sort of hat, pulled low enough to shadow his face. Up close, I can see his eyes are a startling, nearly translucent shade of blue.
My mother grips his shoulders and kisses him on both cheeks. “Richard, mon loup, surely you remember my brilliant daughter, Katherine?”
Remember? I think, and then the obvious hits me. I’ve met him before; I’ve known many people at this market for years.
“Of course I do,” he says. He has a sandpaper voice, low and pleasingly rough. “Although the last time I saw you, I was going by a different name. It’s been, wow, how many years—four or five? I know you’ve had your mother worried sick for quite some time.” He shakes my hand, squeezing before he releases it.
“As I mentioned, she only just came back,” my mother says, and pets my head. “So let’s be a bit easy on her. She has been through quite an ordeal.”
“What my mother means is that I was in an accident,” I say. The crowd is gathering again, and I take a step closer to make myself heard. “I have suffered some memory loss, so that’s why I didn’t recognize you.”
“So I’ve heard,” he says. I shoot a silent question at my mother—when and why did you tell him this, instead of leaving it up to me?—but she is looking only at Richard, smiling an oddly bright smile. “What a shock,” he adds. “I truly don’t know what to say … Perhaps I’ll be of some help, as I have some vivid memories of you and your sister.” He turns to my mother. “Did Judith come back, too?”
“She hasn’t,” I say quickly, before my mother can respond. “It’s a difficult situation and I’d rather not talk about it right now, if you don’t mind.”
“My apologies,” he says. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore spot.”
“You didn’t know,” I say, and change the subject. “What do you sell in your stall?”
“A variety of antique bric-a-brac,” he says. “But mostly rare magazines, rare coins, rare guns. If you ever want to time-travel back to the Wild West or start a new life as a Prohibition gangster, I’m your guy.”
I smile. “Well, it seems I have a thing for self-reinvention, so I’ll keep that in mind.”
“As do I,” he says. “And you’re always welcome to stop by.”
As I talk I realize I’ve been staring intently at his left eye; there’s something peculiar about the way it sits in his face, as though it’s leaning forward slightly in its socket, and the color is one shade darker than his right.
He senses my question. “I had a terrible altercation,” he says. “I’m lucky this is all I lost.” I don’t understand what he means, until I do. He rolls his right eye vigorously in its socket while the left remains immobile, fixed intently on my face without seeing it at all.
That night, my mother sets the statue of Mnemosyne on the table and we play the game she now calls Mind Fishing: as she provides a memory, I use her words to cast about in my brain and hope something bites.
“You used to love to ride on your father’s bicycle built for four,” she begins, lighting a cigarette. She takes a drag and twirls the sleek holder between her fingers.
Nothing.
“You begged me to read to you every night, sometimes two or three books in a row.”
Nothing.
“Once you used the power of your mind to try to make the toaster fly and ended up with a broken toe.”
Nothing. I can watch her descriptions as though they’re scenes in a movie, but they remain flat and one-dimensional. I push the statue away and say, “Let’s talk about something more interesting.”
She stabs out her cigarette and takes a sip of scotch, itself an antique opened just for the occasion. From a distant corner of the room comes the ah, ha, ha, ha refrain of “Stayin’ Alive,” apparently my favorite song around the time I disappeared.
“I’m listening,” she says. “Pitch me.”
“Tell me about Richard.” I refill my own glass. “He made it sound like I’ve known him for years. Where did we meet him?”
She closes her eyes. “Richard,” she repeats. “We met when you girls were about eleven, I think. He inquired about opening a stall at Pied Beauty, and you eventually made friends with his niece.” Her voice has picked up a languid quality, taking its time with her words, and I can’t tell if she’s remembering or inventing. “We had the same interests—antiques, philosophy, psychology, the miracle of the human mind. We shared a goal of creating a different ideal.”
“So he wasn’t Dad’s friend, too?” I ask. Wallis comes strutting in from the kitchen and drops herself onto my mother’s feet.
“Your father didn’t have friends,” she says, and reaches down to scratch the dog’s ears. Wallis yawns, baring scissorlike fangs. “Well, he did when we first got married, but then he disappeared into himself. He would rather go toil and tinker in the basement than engage with a live person. I could go down to that basement and tap dance naked—in fact, I believe I once did—and still he would not look up from his portable masticator or whatever the masterpiece du jour. There should be a law against that, taking vows as one person and then changing into another.”
As someone who’s changed in ways that remain unknown, I don’t know how to answer. I feel a peck of sympathy for Jude, imagining the divide between who I’d been and who I’d become, the hard work required to bridge the two. My mother extracts another cigarette from her case and waits for me to light it, giving me time to respond.
“So did you…” Some strange allegiance to my father prevents me from asking the question.
She sucks on her cigarette, making her cheeks go concave, and puffs a trio of smoke rings that linger like crowns over her head. “Did we what?” she asks.
“You know…” I say. I mash my hands together in a sad attempt at X-rated puppetry.
“Make the beast with two backs? Engage the services of Venus? Dance the Paphian jig?” With just the slightest shift of tenor and tone, she transforms our chat into an interrogation. She takes another drag, smiling as she puffs.
I give up, letting my hands rest on the table. “I don’t know what any of those things mean,” I tell her, “but I’m sure you know exactly what I’m asking.”
She tilts her head back, laughs her hungry laugh. “They’re just historical euphemisms, darling. There’s no reason for you to know what they mean, at least not now. You used to love sophisticated wordplay, but I suppose I must get used to the fact that you’re now a different you.”
My face goes hot. I want her to talk to me in her familiar old patterns. I do not want to require edits and deletions. I don’t want reminders that I’m a second draft, hastily rewritten. I focus on the grandfather clock ticking behind her shoulder, on the far side of the room, keeping my eyes wide open so the tears don’t fall.
“Oh, Katherine,” she says. She drags her nails along the top of my hand, tickling my skin. “I was just having some fun. I know I should ease into things slowly, but forgive me, that’s never been my style. And I owe you an answer, and the answer is yes—but only after your father left for good. Things were different a decade ago, people were freer. Rules were more lax, or didn’t exist at all. But those years are long gone now, and Richard is just a colleague and friend. He changed along with everyone else.”
I blink and let the tears fall and decide I don’t care. Her nails dig harder, finding the grooves in my knuckles. I can’t let myself think of that long, empty stretch of time, now cluttered with other people’s memories, and I pivot again: “What happened to Richard’s eye? Did they catch whoever attacked him?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “He’s as private as you are about certain things.” She reaches for Mnemosyne and pulls the statue to her chest. “You’re tired, darling,” she says. “Let’s not end the night with unpleasant thoughts. Let’s go to bed and start fresh in the morning.” She kisses the top of my head. “I love you, my angel.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” I tell her.
She pads off and starts up the stairs when I remember one last question: “What is Richard’s old name?”
She answers without turning around, her robe trailing behind her. “Sebastian. We called him Bash.”
Bash, I whisper to my head, hoping the name might jostle an old memory.
Nothing.
I hear water splashing, cabinet doors banging, the click of Wallis’s toenails against the wood floor, and then, finally, my mother’s rattling snore, the one that signals she’ll be dead to the world until sunrise.
The house has two staircases to the third floor, one traditionally used by household servants and the other by the residing family, and I take the one farthest from my mother’s bedroom. I pull a chain by the attic door and a dim light fills the space. It resembles one of the markets at the stall, with long tables covered in jewelry, each piece tagged and labeled: country of origin, era, price. A congregation of mannequins wears mink stoles and brimless hats stippled with rhinestones. One treasure chest preserves a host of medical instruments and random curiosities which, too, are labeled: antique syringes, walking sticks, leech jars, dental pliers, a vaginal speculum. Another holds what I assume are antique sex toys—small devices with cranks and motors and bullet-shaped tips and one contraption that looks like a baking mixer. At the bottom there’s stacks of a vintage magazine titled Sexology, each issue encased inside a plastic sheet. I find nothing that will answer any of my questions.
I want photographs. I want irrefutable proof of a moment from my life that hasn’t been altered by anyone’s subjective memory or grudges or desire to edit history.
On my way out of the attic I pick up a flashlight hung on the wall by the door. I lift and lower my feet as lightly as possible, not wanting to disturb either my mother or Wallis, but then sneeze a cloud of dust. I stop halfway down the stairs, waiting for my mother’s voice, but her snores continue without pause. I sense another sneeze coming on, and clamp my mouth together until I venture back through the kitchen and reach the rear door of the house.
The air makes me feel alert and alive, free from the house’s heavy history. I decide to take a walk along the vast property and let myself get lost, eventually coming to a small grove, the branches of the tallest trees scratching at the moon. I count fifty more steps until I reach a row of high hedges that form a fortress wall. I walk around and find a gash in the hedges, just wide enough to fit a simple wooden gate, set off the ground by two stone steps.
For some reason I think of Jude at our old window, speaking our private language. The words she scream-whispered just before Wallis came bounding after her, the words of warning she begged me to heed: “Okol ni het des…” Look in the … Her last word was cut off, and my mind spins the possibilities, trying to finish her thought.
My heart quickens as I approach the steps. Dingy strips of cloud hustle to obscure the moon. An owl hoots encouragement, and I lift the flashlight above my head.
The gate is rough against my palm and creaks as I open it. On the other side is a large windowless shed, cool and plastic to the touch, its door secured by three padlocks.
Look in the … shed? I think. Could this be what Jude meant?
“Katherine?” I hear my mother call. From this distance her voice sounds almost delicate. Wallis follows up with a throaty bark.
A quick tug of the lowest padlock yields nothing. I turn around and head back the way I came, reminding myself that Jude’s words—in any language—no longer mean anything to me.