by Rose Szabo
She flipped it over and onto the table, but withdrew her hand quickly as though she’d been stung.
“Ahh,” she said, her voice faint.
It was a card I had never seen in a reading before. It was a mass of dim shapes, hard to discern—spewing, spiraling outward from a central mass, where lurked a pair of glowing yellow eyes with slit pupils. When I looked at it, I was entranced. It was ugly, but I wanted to stare into it forever.
“Grandma,” I said. “What does it mean?”
I looked up and realized she was clutching her arm. She slumped back in her chair, her white hair streaming back from her rigid face.
“I didn’t draw this,” she said. She could barely open her mouth.
“What do you mean? Where did it come from?”
“This is very bad,” she said, through clenched teeth, shuddering as she fought to speak. “Listen carefully. I’m dying. You have to take over for me. Don’t let any strangers in this house after I’m gone.”
“But I can’t. I don’t know—”
“Shut up. You know what you can do. Make them listen to you. Keep them safe. Promise me!”
“I—”
Her whole body stiffened, and then sagged back against the chair.
“Grandma?” I said. And then again, louder. She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes looked empty.
And then lightning split the sky and struck some point almost directly overhead. Saint Elmo’s Fire sizzled down the glass walls, green and flickering. It was like the light under the ocean, filtered through water, and in it Grandma Persephone looked like a drowned creature.
I killed her, I thought. She read my fortune, and whatever she saw was so bad that it killed her.
I didn’t know where I would go, as I sprinted down the wooden corridor that led from the greenhouse. I would have kept running if I hadn’t bumped into Margaret in the scullery. She took one look at my face, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me back the way I had come, into the greenhouse. When she saw Grandma Persephone in the chair she lifted her and put her on the floor, and then got down on her knees. She pinched Grandma Persephone’s nose shut and started taking big breaths and breathing out into her mouth. She turned up to me and gave me a wild-eyed look, which I thought at first was hatred, and then realized was some kind of order. She jerked her head toward the door, and I nodded. Get the others. I forced my legs into a run, took the back stairs through the scullery up to the second floor, and started pounding on doors.
My mother came dripping from her bathtub, Rhys shirtless and matted from his room. He grabbed my mother up in her towel and carried her down the back stairs. I went to Grandpa Miklos’s room, Father’s, Luma’s. When I told them what had happened they all took off running without saying a word to me. And so running around, I was the only one who didn’t go to see her last moments alive.
Eventually I was alone on the stairs, the thunder outside the only sound. One by one the lights in the hall fizzled, flared, and went out.
FOUR
Standing alone in the hallway, I waited for a long time, shivering. And then the noise began: screaming, crying, howling—laughing? It washed over me like a wave, filling the house, echoing into every quiet corner and reverberating back at me. So I fled, down the great front staircase and out onto the lawn.
It was early morning, the sky gray and thick overhead, and I felt cold to my core. I stuck close to the house until I reached the back garden. The greenhouse jutted out on the garden’s far side, but the windows were so fogged over that I doubted they’d see me. Still, I kept low until I got to the rickety staircase that led down to the beach. It shook under me as I scrambled down. When I got to the water, I let myself take a deep breath.
The red haze of the sun was just beginning to spread across the horizon, making a thin line between the dark water and the dark sky. The wind blew off the water in gusts that sent a sticky salt spray over everything. I sat down in the sand with my back to the cliff, huddled up between two boulders, and watched the water. It rolled in large, blue-green waves.
I cried ugly sobs that the water blotted out for me. It had all happened so fast. For a long time I didn’t think, didn’t feel anything, just cried like I was trying to feed the sea.
The waves were dark in the early morning, and layers of water made strange colors and shapes just beneath the surface. It reminded me of the card. What had that thing been, in the image? And the light had been dim, but I could have sworn I saw it moving. It had been an omen of something bad coming. Something bad enough that Grandma Persephone had died seeing it, and had tried to warn me. What had she said? Don’t let any strangers in the house? And more frightening still: make them listen to you. And now they were all up there together, and of course, I’d run away. What were they going to think? Maybe that I’d done something to her. Not that I could have. I wasn’t like them: strong or powerful. I was just me. Just Eleanor, who was supposed to protect them.
That got me to my feet at last. A gust of wind off the water hit me as I stood up, and I shivered in it. I’d fled the house without any shoes on, I realized; my feet were almost blue from the cold, although I hadn’t felt a thing.
I climbed the stairs, my feet so numb and clumsy that I nearly slipped a few times. At the top, I stared at the back door of the greenhouse, listening for the noise that had sent me running earlier. It was gone now, but from inside, I could hear soft voices. I steeled myself and opened the door.
Everyone had clustered around Grandma Persephone’s rigid body, but no one had closed her eyes or loosened the grip of her hand on her own arm, so she still looked stiffly awake and terrified. Margaret had collapsed, and Rhys lay half sprawled on top of her, bawling. Father had moved into a corner far from the body, and Mother sat on the floor beside him, the hem of her dressing gown sodden, trying to coax him toward her. Grandpa Miklos lay curled up in a ball, clutching at the hem of Grandma Persephone’s dress. And Luma sat cross-legged on the floor with Grandma’s head in her lap, braiding her hair. She was the only one who glanced up when I came in.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“I went to think,” I said. Grandma Persephone’s dead eyes were looking at me. “Can you close her eyes?”
“They keep popping open,” Luma said. “So we stopped trying.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked.
“We’ll need to get some wood for a box,” Mother said. “And then we’ll bury her. In a few days or so.”
“What are we going to do with her until then?” I asked.
Luma sighed. “What did they teach you at school? We’ve got to clean up the body, of course.” Father turned white, and Grandpa Miklos started howling in a pitch that made my blood run cold. “We’ll keep it in the laundry where it’s cool and dark so it doesn’t go off, and then we’ll bury her when Grandpa says it’s alright.”
“But what about a funeral?”
Luma looked confused. “Like in books? Don’t be silly.”
She stood up, and Grandma Persephone’s braided head slid from her lap and thudded sickeningly on the floor of the greenhouse. “Alright, enough sitting around,” she said. “Rhys, Father, help me, please? Mother, we’d better show Eleanor how it’s done. We’ve helped Grandma do it for old people,” she said to me. “It’s not so bad; you just have to get used to it.”
Father listened to her, I realized. He unwound himself from the corner, and he and Grandpa Miklos picked up Grandma Persephone’s body and carried it into the house. Luma trotted after them. Mother crawled along the ground toward me until she got to the chair, and then used it to drag herself to her feet.
“Are you alright?” she asked, when everyone else had left the room.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying not to look too closely at Mother’s face.
“What happened?” she asked. “You know … I won’t tell the others. Not if you don’t want me to.”
“She was reading my cards,” I said. “And she saw something that frightened her. And
she told me…” I thought about how to say this, how not to sound bizarre. “She told me that she wanted me to look after the house and keep it safe. And then she died.”
“She had a heart attack last year,” Mother said. “Margaret caught it in time. We thought she was doing better. I suppose it was the shock of it all.”
“Of what all?” I asked.
“Well, you coming home,” she said, and then hurried to add, “I mean, with the cards, too. I wonder what she saw. Did she tell you?”
I didn’t want to tell Mother about what I’d seen. She seemed so fragile, clinging to Grandma Persephone’s chair to even stay upright. I was supposed to protect them, wasn’t I?
“Are we really just going to bury her in the yard?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we get a priest at least?”
“I suppose we could,” Mother said. “Can you help me back inside?”
She was my mother, I reminded myself, as she slipped an arm around my shoulders that was slick and covered in little polyps. I put a hand around her waist to help her walk—her whole body was clammy, pressed up against me.
“Shouldn’t we invite people?” I asked. “Why shouldn’t they know? I know she did work for some of them. She said a big part of her job was to keep them happy.”
“She did dirty work for them,” Mother said. “Dressing the dead and doing secret things. Here, the dining room.” I led her in and helped her step into the barrel at her place at the table. “They don’t want to mourn her if they don’t have to.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “She was a good person. I’m sure they’d be sad. And besides, they’ll notice she isn’t around. It’ll be better if we tell them.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “We don’t socialize. It’s not our way.”
“Mother, I’m serious. We need to do this.”
Mother looked at me strangely then. But she nodded.
“I can write some invitations,” she said. “Can you get my stationery from the trunk in my room? It’s next to the … bed, I think.”
I nodded and then climbed the stairs and went into her and Father’s room.
I hadn’t been in it since I was little. It was neatly kept, but dust floated through the air, caught on beams of sunlight, and the room smelled strongly of Father’s aftershave, not of her sage or rosewater. There was no washtub propped up by the fire or filled next to the bed, no indent in the carpet where one had been. She’d never slept here, I realized.
The trunk she’d mentioned was so dusty that when I opened it I left handprints on the lid.
The inside of the trunk was divided into compartments, and the compartments held mostly different types of stationery. I pulled out some black-edged cards with black envelopes that looked right, and underneath was an old cigarette box stamped with CIGARETTES GITANES, REGIE FRANCAISE. Didn’t our other grandmother live in France? I fetched it out, then went to the door and pulled it shut behind me before returning to open the box.
The letters inside were still in envelopes and addressed in strange, loopy handwriting. The return address and the stamp were French. I opened one of them. My French was a little elementary, but I could read most of the letter:
My dear Aurora,
After having heard so much about your family over the years I would love to come and visit. I know that you have previously denied me, but your daughters are growing up, and I would welcome an opportunity to meet them. I hope that you and your husband are very happy. Please write me again soon even if it is only to tell me no again. I love to hear how you are, my darling.
Best,
Mere
I sat on the floor for a moment in silence. So this was my other grandmother. She was French. She sounded gentle. She wanted to meet me.
I folded the letter back up, and then on impulse, I sniffed it. It smelled like lavender. Why had Mother never let her come and visit?
“Eleanor?” Mother called from somewhere downstairs. “Did you find the stationery? Check the trunk!”
“Coming!” I tucked the letter back in its envelope and returned it to the cigarette box. I hurried downstairs with the black-edged stationery and found Mother at the dining room table in her barrel. She took the invitations from me with a sigh.
“We’ve never had a funeral before,” she said.
“Grandma Persephone meant a lot to the people in town,” I said. “Father Thomas can come and say a few words.” I keep the town happy, she’d said. “And if we don’t tell them, they might think something happened to her.”
Mother looked up at me.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?” she said. “Eleanor, you know I’d love you no matter what, right?”
I tried to figure out what she was saying. “Of course.”
“So…” Oh. That was what she was wondering. My own mother.
“She got really scared,” I said. “And she died.”
“Did you—”
“I didn’t do anything!” I said, startled by the force of my own words. “What could I even do?”
She shook her head and looked away.
“Alright,” she said. “Who should I invite then?”
“Anyone in the village who Grandma Persephone helped.”
“That will be a long list.”
“Then they should all come,” I said.
* * *
I went in search of Luma, but when I found her, she was going from the kitchen into the laundry, helping Margaret carry a huge cauldron of water. I glanced past them for a second into the laundry, and saw Grandma Persephone laid out on the floor before Margaret slammed the door in my face. I should be in there, I thought, helping with … whatever it was that happened with dead people. But my stomach was already turning, just thinking about it. Margaret must have heard me hesitating at the door, because she thumped her hand against it: bangbangbang. I jumped back and scurried away.
I was in charge. She’d left me in charge. What came next? I wandered out into the hall in a daze. I’d barely slept last night, and now my grandmother was dead. I found myself standing in front of the wall of pictures. I stared for a long time at the portrait of Grandpa Miklos looking devilish, holding the pair of horses by the reins. The artist had painted flecks of foam flying from their open mouths. He’d captured the wet gleam of Grandpa Miklos’s canine teeth. All of these pictures, and not a single one of me, at any age. It was like she’d tried to erase me.
Behind me, someone coughed. I turned around. Arthur stood by the door, hanging an umbrella on the stand. I hadn’t heard the door open.
“Oh,” I said. “Have you heard?”
“I have.” He looked at me. “I spoke to your father outside.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
“It’s more yours than mine.”
He crossed the floor toward me and stood beside me, looking up at the portrait of Miklos. “Hm,” he said. “Not my best work.”
I turned to him, a little astonished. “You did this?”
“He didn’t like other portraitists’ work on him,” he said. “He said they never got his eyes right.”
I looked at Miklos’s eyes. They were stunning: filled with animosity and glee. I glanced back at Arthur, who had his hands tucked behind his back, as though he were at a museum.
“Miles said you were with her when she died,” he said. “That must have been a shock. Are you alright?”
“I’m … trying to be,” I said. “She told me to look after things, actually. I thought she wanted me gone, but when she was dying she grabbed my hand and told me to take care of everyone. And to make them listen to me. I wish I knew what that meant.”
“Did she, now?” He turned slightly. “What did she say you had to … do?”
“She didn’t tell me much of anything,” I said. “She said … she said that she runs the extracts business, tries to make the town happy, keeps the family safe.”
He turned and looked down to face me. I couldn’t see his eyes, so it wa
s maddening to have him staring into mine. “Just because a dying woman told you to do something doesn’t mean you have to. You can refuse.”
I shook my head. “You don’t just refuse someone’s last request.”
“This house isn’t a nice place, Eleanor. If you can leave it, you should.”
“What does that mean?”
There it was again: that set in his jaw, that little click that told me he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I shook my head. “I’m sorry if that was rude,” I said. “But I can’t really think about leaving. There’s too much to do, with the business, and the funeral—”
“You’re planning a funeral?”
“She left me in charge, didn’t she?”
I grinned at him, hoping he would smile. His eyebrows furrowed.
“I don’t expect she said anything about me?” he asked.
“No. Is there something I should know?”
He opened his mouth but didn’t speak. His jaw clenched, and he looked away.
“I suppose not,” he said.
“Well, I’m taking it seriously,” I said. “So if you have any problems, you bring them to me.”
He nodded slowly. “Maybe I will.”
My mother called to me from the dining room. “Eleanor?”
“I have to go,” I said. “Lots to do now.”
“I can see that.”
I ducked into the dining room. I was still thinking about all the things he hadn’t said when Mother plunked a stack of invitations into my hands.
“Here you go,” she said. “Are you sure about this?”
“It’s the right thing to do.” I glanced out into the hall to see if Arthur was still there, but he’d vanished. And I could see our old farm truck idling on the front lawn already. Not Arthur’s car, though; strange. “I’d better go,” I said, and ran outside.
The truck had wood-slat sides. Margaret had been sitting in it for several minutes by the time I went outside to meet her, but she didn’t even look at me when I got in. She drove us in silence down the hill, along the dirt track that led through the birch forest. I thought for a second I saw Grandpa Miklos between the trees, but then we rounded a corner and I could see nothing at all.