by Rose Szabo
All my love,
Your Grand-mère
I sniffed it and held it close for a long time. And then I took it down to the waterline and tore it into pieces. I was almost crying, but I told myself it would be alright. She was coming. She loved me, and she was on her way.
And a few days after that, Mother got a letter of her own. I brought it upstairs to her, and she opened it in the bathtub. The human half of her face contorted into an expression of deep concern.
“It’s your grandmere,” she said at last. “She says she’s coming to visit for a while.”
SIX
Weeks went by with no word: no telegrams or letters or phone calls to the post office in town about when Grandmere was coming. In that time, I was delirious with impatience. I tried talking to Mother again, I was so desperate to know anything at all about her.
“France,” she said, when I asked where she was from. She was scrubbing at her skin as though angry at it.
“I know that,” I said. “I want to know what she’s like.”
“Honestly, I barely remember.”
“But you write to her. You must know something.”
She frowned. “How do you know I write to her?”
Oops. “Well, you must write to her,” I said. “How else would she have our address?”
“Believe me, she’ll come soon enough,” she said. “In the meantime, just go about your life.”
“I do need to check on the drakondia,” I said.
“So do that,” Mother snapped.
I jumped; she’d never been testy with me before. She sighed, then sank into her bath until all that was visible was the top of her head, and the little bubbles that came from the side of her face that wasn’t human.
I left her alone and took myself, along with a book on exotic plants, down to the greenhouse. I wondered what Grandmere would be like, when she came—just another sensible old woman in black, an immigrant from the French countryside with a headscarf and a battered horsehair suitcase? Or something like Mother, a living reef? I thought sadly of little Junia. No, surely this grandmother had eyes. How else would she see to write a letter? How else would she have read mine? Lost in imagining, I didn’t notice Rhys until he leaped on me out of the shadows in the portrait hallway.
He knocked the air out of me and for a moment I shut my eyes, not wanting to see my own death. I clung to the paneling, waiting for a blow to my head or chest that never came. After a moment, I opened my eyes.
He had straightened up and was bobbing up and down on his feet like a boxer while I struggled upright. I tried to collect my book from the ground, but then I realized I’d have to either bend over or break eye contact. I slowly lowered myself into a crouch, picked the book up by its spine, and stood up, my eyes darting from his hands to his eyes to his teeth.
“Be careful with me, please,” I said. “I’m not as strong as you.”
“Where’s Arthur? Why haven’t I seen him lately?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound dismissive. “Why don’t we play cards?”
He ignored me and looked left and right, up to the balcony and down the long, dark hallway. “I haven’t seen him,” he said. “But I can smell him.” He closed his eyes. “The whole house smells like him.” The look on his face hurt me. Maybe it was like love, I thought, but twisted, violent. I would have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t been so afraid.
“I’m going to go read,” I said, and tried to edge past him. But he caught me by the arms. Close to him, I could smell the phenomenal stink of young man.
“If he comes by,” Rhys said, “tell him I’m looking for him.”
He let me go so abruptly that I nearly fell over, and then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows the way he always did, the clacking of claws on the floor the only evidence he’d been there at all.
He was getting more and more uneasy. For a while he’d been distracted by offers to play chess or cards, although we both played very badly. Well, at least I didn’t have anything to hide from him. Arthur hadn’t been to the house since the funeral. But sooner or later he would come back, and all of Rhys’s pent-up anger would have to go somewhere.
In the greenhouse, the snake lilies were drooping, yellow leaves falling to the floor. I’d scoured the library for a book on their care, but all I could find was one guide to orchids, and I was doing everything the orchid book told me. I was going to ruin this family if I didn’t figure something out soon.
In the meantime, I was trying to be sensible about things. I looked through the financial records of past years. They seemed more precarious than I’d expected, but then, I wasn’t sure how much money it was supposed to take to run a business. And I’d found in the personal ledgers some money going to a woman named Katherine McCloud, who I thought might be Sister Katherine, but no matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find any letters from her in the file boxes. I wondered if Grandma Persephone had burned them.
Arthur continued not to visit. I had a thought, one day, that maybe he was letting me ruin my family, maybe to get back at Miles. But I dismissed that as silliness. He was my grandmother’s accountant, my sister’s boyfriend, my father’s best friend—what reason could he possibly have to do that?
And I was having dreams.
In the first one, I had been cornered by a group of boys and had stabbed one of them with his own knife—a long one, like the one Margaret used to fillet fish. I fled up a hill into a scrubby forest, and the dream went on for hours: walking, tripping on rocks, none of the smoothing that dreams, or memories, usually give to the passage of time. Heart pounding in my chest, I stumbled out of the forest and into a ring of standing stones. As I entered the ring, I realized too late that the ground was teeming with snakes, except for the narrow path leading me to a flat slab at the center.
I tiptoed along the path, clambered up onto the stone slab. And all at once I was ringed in darkness, and voices, asking me over and over again what I wanted. And I wasn’t sure if it was me, or the girl I was, who thought, just to understand, all I want is to know why—
And then, I woke up, and tried to have a day where I didn’t think about what I’d seen in the dream, where I stumbled around exhausted, and then went back to bed. And it happened again and again.
In most of them, I was not myself. I was some other young woman, living in places I’d never seen. None of them made any sense or resembled anything that had ever happened to me. I was placidly chopping the heads off of fish for hours while women around me yelled in a language I didn’t understand, or rocking a baby in a house that looked like ours but cavernous and unfurnished. I started dreading going to sleep at night—the dreams were miserable, like being trapped in someone else’s life, just behind her eyes, powerless to do anything but watch as time slipped past me.
And even those were better than the night I dreamed about being me.
It started out normally enough. Somewhere in the night forest—I was young, I had a new ribbon tied in my hair that bounced while I ran. My feet were bare in the pine needles. To my left was Rhys, all sleek and dark. To my right, Luma, a blur of white. Up ahead, the boy. He smelled so good, his heart beat so fast in his chest, and I was happy, and hungry—
I sat up in bed and forced my eyes open, willing myself awake to make it stop. I’d been having this dream ever since I’d decided to come home—first on the train, and at least once a week since. Always the same, if I let it go long enough. Running between the trees, catching up to the boy, the terror in his eyes.
I looked out my window at the sky. Predawn, but just barely. I might as well get up, I decided. If I fell back asleep now, I’d sleep all day. I wanted to sleep all day. I’d felt sick and tired almost every day since Father had hit me: it was the first thing I remembered when I woke up. What had I ever done to him? I didn’t want to be in the same room as him, watching him act like everything was normal. So I decided not to be in any room. I’d go spend the day elsewhere.
The morning g
rass was cool under my bare feet as I made my way across the backyard to the rickety wooden steps that hugged the cliff and then down to the water. It was fifty feet from the cliff to the shore, and the staircase had to double back on itself twice to bridge the distance in the narrow little spit we owned. Our beach was only maybe twenty-five or thirty feet wide, and about as deep, although slightly longer at low tide. It was bordered on all sides by big boulders that, when we were younger, I liked to use to jump into the water.
A part of me wanted to scramble up one of those boulders and throw myself in. But as much as I wanted to, my legs wouldn’t obey me. I sat in the sand far above the lapping waves, watching the sun struggle up over the horizon, fat and red.
The nuns had always discouraged us from swimming. Too revealing, too dangerous. Currents and riptides and the rise of the two-piece swimsuit were their enemies. I imagined that they’d be better at it than they thought, though: that if a nun fell over the side of a boat, her habit would spread like a manta ray, and she would jet through the water, made new. I moved up into the wet sand near the water, my feet in it, but still not ready to dive in.
I’d missed this. When I was in school, I’d felt like a different person, and so I hadn’t known what I’d missed, or what I’d loved, but now the sorrow was catching up with me and making up for lost time. It felt like having my heart restored to me just to feel it breaking. Eventually it became too much and I retreated up the steps, disappointed in myself.
When I returned to the house I stood for a moment, scraping sand off my feet on the back porch. Margaret flung open the top half of the back door, nearly hitting me. She stuck her head out and jerked a finger inside.
“Wha—” I started, and then remembered. I tried a shrug. She only pointed more insistently, and walked away grumbling under her breath. Something was happening.
I went through the kitchen into the front hall. There were suitcases there, propped up against one another: a new set, floral tapestry with leather trim. Two steamer trunks, three hatboxes, and an upright valet trunk with wheels. She must be rich, I thought. Rich beyond even the Zarrins, who might not actually be rich for much longer.
Mother stood up from a chair in the parlor. She was fully dressed, which surprised me, and completely dried off. She came out into the hall, looking nervous.
“Eleanor,” she said.
“What’s going on?” Luma asked, sailing down from upstairs, dressed in a nightgown of yellowed lace. She flicked her hair back and then picked her nose. “What’s all the fuss about?”
Mother looked at Luma, and her eyebrow went up, and her mouth turned down. Was she sad? Embarrassed, maybe?
“Girls,” Mother said. “Come meet your grandmere.”
In the front parlor was a dim shape sitting in one of the wingback chairs.
Luma hung back, slouching against the stairs. She was nervous, I realized. I resolved not to be. Whatever Grandmere turned out to be, even if she was an eyeless horror, I would meet her head on.
When I saw the woman in the chair, I nearly gasped.
She was dressed in pale gray, with pink gloves. Her gray hair was swept up in victory rolls. She was short and plump, her face full and youthful, her only two wrinkles a pair of smile lines. As I came up to her she rose up out of the chair, tilted her head, and smiled warmly.
“Eleanor,” she said, “after all these years, how wonderful to finally meet you.” She spoke English, but with a lilting and light French accent.
“You know about me?” I asked.
“Of course!” she said. “Your mother wrote me years ago to tell me she had a child with my mouth!”
She did have the same mouth as me: wide and thin-lipped, accentuated with bright lipstick. When she smiled it almost split her face. She looked so friendly, so open. I felt a little surge of pride. My face wasn’t in the portraits in the front hall, but it was here.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I said.
“I’ve heard a good deal about you.” She lowered her eyes. “But I never thought we would have an opportunity to meet.”
“You must have been busy overseas.”
“Oh, not as much since the War. Terrible thing.” Her accent was so beautiful that I had to work to look sad. “I am so lucky to have survived. The things that happened in that war were simply … unbelievable.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“Don’t worry, child,” she said. “Come here and give me a kiss.”
I gave her a peck on the cheek, and she pulled me into a warm little hug that smelled of talcum powder, and something briny that I liked. She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face Mother. Behind her, in the hall, Margaret was trudging up the stairs, laboring like an ant under the weight of all of those suitcases.
“What a beautiful child, dear,” Grandmere said to Mother. “I love her already.”
And then she caught sight of Luma in the doorway.
“And who is this?” she asked.
“This is … Luma,” Mother said. Although I could tell she was trying to be cheerful, she sounded dismayed. “Your other granddaughter. I wrote to you about her, too.”
“Of course.”
“She’s twenty-one,” Mother said, “and quite the beauty.”
I couldn’t see Grandmere’s face, but I felt her hands dig into my shoulders a little, as though pulling me close to protect me.
“Do you speak, my dear?” Grandmere asked.
Luma nodded sullenly.
“Then please speak to me,” she said. “I do want to hear your pretty voice. Do you always … dress like that?”
Luma glowered. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business. I’m not a child.”
I was surprised. I widened my eyes at Luma, trying to insinuate to her that I needed her to mind her manners. If she frightened Grandmere off, I was going to kill her.
“Very true,” Grandmere said. “You’re a young lady. I am surprised that you are playing dress-up.”
Luma opened her mouth, and then shut it. She’d lost but she didn’t quite know how. Instead of saying anything else, she growled.
Grandmere tilted her head at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand why you are so upset with me.”
Luma looked as though she was going to cry. She shoved my mother out of her way and took off down the hall, out the back door the way Rhys had gone not that long before. We heard the door slam behind her. Mother stood there, shocked, unmoving.
“Interesting,” Grandmere said. “And there’s a … boy living here also?”
“Their cousin Rhys,” Mother said. “He’s probably outside.”
“Well, I assume we’ll all have dinner together?”
“Yes,” Mother said. She sounded relieved. “Of course, Mère.”
“Well, hopefully I can undo that terrible first impression,” Grandmere said. “I do feel bad that I spoke so strongly to her. I just know how important it is, as a young lady, to be taken seriously. It helps to avoid so much unpleasantness.”
“I’ll talk to her, Mère,” Mother said hurriedly. “I’m sure it will be alright.”
It was amazing to me to watch this woman cow my mother, and my sister, too. I couldn’t imagine her being able to hold her own against Grandpa Miklos, but perhaps that, too, was possible. She took up so much space for such an ordinary person. It was hard to imagine Rhys doing anything to Arthur with her here. She was a steadying presence, and I reached out my hands to the hands wrapped around my shoulders, and held them. I felt her head tilt down toward me, her warm breath on my forehead smelling like peppermint.
But something dug at me, in the back of my mind. She hadn’t needed to be so cruel to Luma, had she? I thought about what I’d said to Rhys at the funeral, how he’d looked at me like I’d bitten him.
“Why don’t we go upstairs?” Grandmere asked me. “I’m very tired, and all my things are still packed.”
“I can ask Marg
aret,” Mother said. She stumbled forward a little. “Or … I can help you.”
“No, no,” Grandmere said. “I want to get to know my granddaughter. We’ve lost so much time already.”
I led her out of the parlor, edging past Mother, trying not to meet her eyes. I could tell that she was disappointed with me, that something about this wasn’t sitting right with her, but I wasn’t sorry. What had she ever done for me? All she did was soak herself and moon about after Father, who didn’t even seem to care about her anymore—if he ever had. She’d never seemed to take much interest in me, or told me I was a beautiful child. She hadn’t even tried to find me when Grandma Persephone sent me away. Grandmere wanted to be my friend.
I helped Grandmere up the staircase by the arm. Her movements were graceful but stiff, like a tightrope walker or a ballerina. I wondered if she liked to dance. I wanted to know everything about her.
As I went up the stairs, a howl went up from the woods. Luma’s voice. And then Rhys’s. It sounded strange, particular. And then I realized that they were calling to me, beckoning me to the woods. But I had never been able to respond to their call. I didn’t have the voice. They’d all kept saying it would come in, like the teeth, but it never did.
“Are the others upset?” Grandmere asked. “Should you go see to them?”
“They’ll be fine,” I said. “Let’s get you settled in.”
We went looking for where Margaret could have put Grandmere’s things. We finally found them in a tiny bedroom near the front of the house, with few windows and a bed that hadn’t been used in probably centuries. I patted it and a cloud of dust rose up.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I don’t think anyone knew when you were coming.”
“It’s no trouble!” Grandmere said. “I believe, though, that having the spare bedroom always ready is one of the secrets of the perfect host. It is such a comfort to know that it is prepared.”
I nodded. I imagined what it would be like to be a family that was ready for company, or that even turned in our taxes on time.
“Well,” she said, “I brought my own bedding, as a provision. Will you help me? It should be in the trunk that says two.”