She said this with no trace of the cruel and sullen girl who had been a terror to her sister. In that instant Meridia realized how far they had traveled to stand this close to each other.
“You did hate me once, Malin,” she said.
The girl made no pretense at denial. “Mama used to tell me the most dreadful things about you, even before you were married. She said you bribed the spirits to capture Daniel’s attention, and once you had him under your spell, you wouldn’t stop until you took control of the house and broke up our family. At one point she filled me with so much hate I thought you were the most despicable creature who had ever lived. To this day she looks for every opportunity to do you ill. I’d be careful if I were you. You never know what someone like Mama has got cooking in her head. She’s been fuming every day since your mother moved in with you.”
Malin’s eyes filled with concern as they reached the lone figure on the bench. “How is your mother?”
It was Meridia’s turn to shake her head. “No better, no worse. I don’t know if she won’t speak because she misses my father or because she’s angry with me.”
“You did what you had to do.”
“My mother doesn’t seem to think so.”
Malin stood still and gave back her full gaze. “You’re the strongest woman I know. I want you to help me when the time comes.”
Meridia did not hesitate. “What do you want me to do?”
“I can’t say just yet. But will you give me your word?”
The two women shook hands and went their separate ways, Malin to the frozen silences of Museum Avenue, Meridia to the bench where her mother refused to recognize who she was.
“Come, Mama. It’s time to go.”
The second her hand landed on Ravenna’s shoulder, the whispering pitched to a deafening level. It was armed with fire and brimstone.
Why does Malin still speak to her? If she hadn’t shown her the dead baby, Malin wouldn’t be so haunted by it. She did it out of spite, you know, to break the girl’s womb because her own is broken. Now she’s gone ahead and wrecked her mother, too. Do you know she let Gabriel die while he still had plenty of breath in his lungs? Oh, yes! Her mother tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen. That’s what broke her. Look at that poor widow, sniffing flowers like an idiot and not knowing her face from her own behind. Just be thankful you don’t have a daughter like her.
Meridia shook with fury. She wheeled around and marched straight toward the women, certain that Eva—wasn’t that her new coat flashing in the sun?—was among them. “Say it to my face, you coward!” Her scream cut through the air and scattered the golden swans in the fountain. Angry tears burned and blurred. The women wobbled, the children shifted. The whispering became fainter and fainter. When she reached the place where her assailants were gathered, hot blood instantly drained from her face.
There were no mothers, no children, no Eva. It was winter and the Garden was deserted.
Her breath came unglued in her throat. Her stopped heart pounded like a storm. Where had they gone? What had she heard? Those voices had sounded so real, so near. Was it possible that she had imagined them? Finding no answer in the frigid air, Meridia slowly walked back to her mother.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Eva announced that the shop on Lotus Blossom Lane would be closed for remodeling. The whole place would be gutted, she said, additional windows put in, along with new carpeting, curtains, and handsome cases made from teak. She enlisted Daniel to supervise the work, and he agreed with a hearty enthusiasm, calling it “Mama’s big shot.” As the weeks passed, he began spending all his spare time on Lotus Blossom Lane, skipping meals and working late even on weekends. Unwilling to risk a further quarrel, Meridia showed no opposition, but she noticed that the stink suffocating the house would become stronger the instant he stepped out of the door. It was understood that Ahab had supplied the money for the remodeling.
The shop reopened in the spring on an auspicious day chosen by the fortune-teller. Dressed in burgundy silk and starred with diamonds, Eva was at her warmest and most hospitable. She entertained the guests with endless stories, skillfully urging them to shop as she fed them champagne and crab cakes. A very pregnant Permony glowed at her right, while at her left, Ahab had never looked more distinguished. Everybody remarked on how loving Eva was with her family—she massaged Permony’s swollen fingers, called Daniel “the dearest son a mother could have,” and made sure Noah had plenty to eat. Her dazzle was such that it outshone even the splendid new inventory, so fiercely blinding no one noticed that neither Malin nor Jonathan was present.
Meridia paid Eva little attention, for a young and pretty assistant who was to replace Permony in the shop had caught her eye. The girl had pure alabaster skin, a laughter of tinkling silver bells, and mesmerizing eyes whose color alternated between green and gray. Ahab was clearly enthralled—he kept glancing at the girl when he thought no one was looking. His behavior brought Meridia’s suspicions to the forefront—it was the same appraising stare he had given Permony at Malin’s wedding.
“Her name is Sylva,” said the expectant mother herself, noticing Meridia’s gaze. “She’s pretty, isn’t she? She’s been working here a month, helping with the remodeling. Mama highly approves of her. She thinks she will be good with customers.”
“She’s certainly attractive,” said Meridia. She noticed that Sylva was smiling at Ahab in return, clearly relishing the attention given to her.
Later that evening, a banquet for thirty took place at 27 Orchard Road. With exceptional care Eva had selected the catered dishes, which ranged from glazed oysters to roasted quails and crusted tuna rolls. For dessert, she served a towering chiffon cake decorated with lemon sprinkles. Long into the night she kept the guests up with coffee and laughter, and even facilitated an impromptu dance in the narrow hallway. Shortly after midnight, Meridia excused herself and Noah, but Daniel decided to stay. “Don’t wait for me—I’ll help Mama clean up,” he said, loud enough for the whole room to hear.
Early the next morning, an unbearable loneliness pierced Meridia awake. She fumbled in the gossamer dawn, sat upright, and nervously reached her hand toward Daniel’s side of the bed. There was no fortress, no fence, no wall. In fact, there was no Daniel. Meridia rubbed her eyes and something else hit her. The air no longer smelled of rotten things, but breezed with a familiar coldness that chilled her marrow. The room did not feel real; neither did the pale light that seeped in from the window. This was not her house, her family. Her heart was tapping anxiously when an animal-like howl ripped through the house and yanked her to her feet. In an instant, she was rushing down the hallway to Ravenna’s room.
“Mama! What is it?”
She was surprised to find Noah already there, pale and stricken, with his arms tight around his grandmother.
Ravenna was standing in the middle of the room, shaking and howling without meaning. Her dimming eyes were flashing anger and disgust.
“What is it, son? What is she saying?”
Noah pointed to the window and clung tighter to his grandmother. The curtain had been torn off the rod, and the smudged pane gave out to a drab and dreary morning. Meridia ran to the window and looked out. In the distance, stealing its way swiftly toward Magnolia Avenue, was a bright blue mist, Daniel in the center and a cloud of bees at the rear.
THIRTY-FIVE
Meridia did not know how she got on in the first few days. For the longest time she could neither scream nor cry, could only watch and sigh as her world crumbled. The initial shock gradually hardened into disbelief, then from there sunk rapidly into denial. Night after night, watching the great wall of Daniel’s back lengthen in her face, she tried to convince herself that everything was as usual, that the blue mist was but a trick of the mind—a hoax, a glitch, a memory from Gabriel’s time she would be wise to discard. Anxious for an explanation, she turned a blind eye to Ravenna’s agitation and Noah’s puzzlement, and when Daniel still did not open his lips, she recriminated herself
beyond measure. It was she who had allowed the stench to possess the house, she who had permitted the fence to spring between them. Had she learned nothing from the cold wind that turned Monarch Street upside down? She had been so consumed, so obsessed with her suspicions of Ahab that she had missed the shadows slithering in her own house.
It was not until the yellow mist appeared, six days after Eva’s banquet, that she felt the first rush of anger. An hour after closing time, Meridia was sitting upstairs in the parlor with a stack of invoices when the window rattled. She looked up from her work and froze. The knowing eye of the mist was staring right at her. Her hand jerked; the invoices poured like flour to the floor. Footsteps hurried down the stairs, a door slammed, and a minute later, the mist coasted back down the avenue. While the window hissed, Meridia sat still. In her blurred vision the glass vase on the desk seemed to have leapt into midair. A violent impulse tempted her to grab it, to slam it against the wall and let burst the heaviness in her heart. But she stood up instead, walked to the window, laid her palm against the pane. For a moment she felt it bucking before quieting. She returned to her chair and picked up the invoices.
AT THE START, THE blue mist appeared no later than the stroke of midnight. But as the days passed, its delivery of Daniel inched closer and closer toward dawn. Meridia waited for him, trying her best to remain calm, though his excuses were feeble and insulting. He had to entertain a customer, close a deal, meet a friend, or, most frequently, help his mother with “a pressing problem.” Her eyes searched him, but her mouth did not. She had no proof. If she voiced what she deep down knew, he would pounce on it as “yet another of your crazy suspicions.” How was she to explain the coming and going of the mists as her only evidence of his unfaithfulness?
Then she discovered things that for a moment confirmed the deep-down feeling. One night it was a rouge-stained tie, the next the smell of perfume on his undershirt. One morning she found a love note in his pants pocket. These marks of betrayal, however, had the gall to change nature as soon as she held them up as evidence. The tie was spotless in the morning. The undershirt odorless when she waved it in front of Daniel. The love note turned into a receipt from the barber. In spite of herself, she felt her baffled mind begin to question if she was imagining it all. Perhaps she had been too overworked, running the house, tending the shop, nursing Ravenna, caring for Noah. Nobody would believe her; Eva, for one, would jump upon the opportunity to crush her. “It’s a fact that insanity runs in her family,” she could hear her mother-in-law saying. “Son, I’ve always known it would come to this.”
Many times she thought of following the yellow mist, just as Ravenna must have done many years ago for a glimpse of Pilar. But her tremendous pride rebelled against it. Even as she suffered, she promised herself that she would not become one of those women who eviscerated their rivals with curses, dragged them by the hair to the ignominy of a public square, and exposed them to the judgment of others. Still, the harder she resisted, the more she was haunted by ghosts. Both male and female, they strutted before her in the most lavish clothes or nothing at all, each and every one clamoring to be Daniel’s lover. These vibrant phantoms tormented her at all hours of the day, shattering her sleep, breaking her concentration, reducing her to such a state that she drew concern from the maid and the customers, from Leah and Rebecca and from half her neighbors, but not a word from Daniel.
Her condition affected especially Noah, who regarded her with startled incomprehension. “What is it doing out there, Mama?” he would ask whenever he saw the yellow mist fetch his father. Meridia would not answer him. Though words were bubbling to her lips, words she knew would cast an eternal shadow between father and son, she always checked them from spilling. “Nothing. We’re having another cold day is all.” Noah would stare at her in such a way that she had to turn her head quickly. For the first time since his birth, she feared that the bond between them, unwittingly forged for eternity by the enchanted cockatoo in her seven days of illness, would rip her apart and crush her. The son she could not bring herself to look at would turn ten next month.
But Noah was not fooled. He sensed the uncertainty beneath her bravery, the sadness lurking in her smile. During this time, his sensitive nature became almost clairvoyant, a feature that would set him apart for the rest of his life. Without a word, he would take her hand before it actually trembled; he would push her to keep going on their walk to school before her feet stopped. He began to follow Daniel everywhere, to inspect the papers he had been reading, the letters he wrote, the food he had not eaten, just as Meridia had done with Gabriel many years ago. He did not tease his father anymore, did not laugh at his jokes. The look he gave him grew increasingly distant. He refused to speak to him unless necessary.
Once again Meridia found solace in Ravenna. To take her out on a walk, read to her, dress her, bathe her in lemon water and almond milk—these were the only things that could quiet her anguish. By then, Ravenna was no more than a column of bones, still not speaking a word, her eyesight gone, her gait stilted, her gestures imprecise. Yet her presence worked like an amulet against the apparitions. Her room was the only place in the house where the persecuting phantoms did not dare trouble Meridia. For this reason, Daniel came home one dawn to an empty bed. When he discovered that his wife was sleeping in the room at the end of the hallway, he lost his temper and quickly left the house again.
Things went on in this fashion until Eva showed up one evening, one hour after the yellow mist whisked Daniel away. Without asking for Meridia, she handed a package to the maid. “Give this to my son,” she said loudly. “And tell your madam that Sylva, my assistant, sends her regards. She really should get to know that lovely girl better.”
Upstairs in the parlor, Meridia was balancing a checkbook with the window open. The name Eva had let slip so casually hit her like the blow of an oar. She dropped her pen and jumped out of her chair. She wondered how in God’s name she had not guessed it before. Those stolen smiles and drifting glances at the banquet, gestures she thought had been aimed at and provoked by somebody else…Along with this realization came another that turned her blood colder still: it was Eva who had engineered the union between Daniel and Sylva, Eva who had lured Daniel away from home under the pretense of remodeling the shop. Eva who had come to Magnolia Avenue for no other purpose than to explode Sylva’s name in her consciousness!
Meridia’s head grew light, and her hands were shaking. She met the maid at the head of the stairs and took the package.
Back in the parlor, she examined the large brown envelope. It was unsealed, which told her that Eva had no intention of hiding the contents from her. For a second she wavered, wary of falling into the woman’s trap, but her curiosity was too potent to resist. Like a beast famished, she tore the envelope and shook it upside down.
A batch of bills rained upon the desk. Copies of checks dating as far back as four months earlier. The bills originated from several hardware stores and a decorator, requesting payments for various labors and materials. Each bill had a corresponding check; all fourteen checks had been signed by Daniel and drawn from an account Meridia did not recognize. The signatures were all authentic. It was Daniel then, not Ahab, who had financed the reopening of Eva’s store. Knowing how she felt about his mother, knowing everything his mother had done to them and their son, he had gone ahead and deceived her, had lied and concealed and used their money to betray her. What else had he done? And why? To punish her for caring for her own mother? It was too low, too spiteful, this double blow. Her love, her trust, discarded like refuse. All of a sudden the damning papers flew from her hands; with a single intent to wreck and demolish, Meridia picked up the glass vase and hurled it against the wall.
She fell back into the chair shaking with anger. She tried to breathe, but the air had turned thick with bees. All this time Eva had been watching and listening patiently, storing her opportunities and keeping her insects silent. She was the one who had been careless, the one who had been
too sure. Permony and Malin had warned her and she had not listened. Now Eva had struck and gotten Daniel where she wanted him—on her side and hateful to his own wife. Meridia closed her eyes and slumped against the chair. She felt weak and sick to the bone. She could not lift her hand to scatter the bees. She wished the crying in her breast would stop before it choked her.
Some time later, she opened her eyes and saw a figure shining in the doorway. Half horrified, half resigned, she thought it was one of the persecuting phantoms, loosed at last from the region of nightmare to confront her in the flesh. But then the figure approached, and the bees scattered in fear. Meridia’s breath caught in her throat. It was Ravenna, handsome and magisterial as she had not seen her in years. Her hair was again swept into that implacable knot, the luxuriant black pierced by a single white lily, and her slender figure was made momentous by a billowing white robe. Her shine came from inside, from that inexorable fire that had kept her chin up and her back straight through the long years of loneliness and humiliation.
“Mama.”
The cry broke from Meridia with equal alarm and wonderment. There was no blindness in Ravenna’s stare as it shot through the air like a current, drying Meridia’s tears, stiffening her spine, pulling her to her feet. Under that unflagging gaze, Meridia felt hurled back into the midst of things, no longer frail and confused but braced with courage. She ran to the doorway, putting her arms out to embrace her mother, but all she met was air and vapor. Her heart stopped suddenly, and with a chill she understood what sacrifice was being performed for her sake. She ran down the corridor with a single thought burning in her head: She must stop her mother before it was too late.
She burst into the room at the end of the hallway and saw her fear turned into a reality. Ravenna was missing. Somebody had made the bed immaculately, and the smell of verbena no longer scented the air. Meridia tore open cupboards and drawers, only to discover that all of Ravenna’s belongings were gone. Dashing to the open window, she peered up and down the length of Magnolia Avenue and startled the evening crowd with her frantic inquiries. No one had seen Ravenna. Meridia turned and looked about the room, and every object there, from the lyre-backed chair to the silver washstand, disputed that her mother had breathed among them. A hundred terrifying thoughts were swarming her brain when she spotted a single white lily lying on the carpet.
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