His bristling hairs on her cheek replaced the coolness of the tile. But that hadn’t really been her. The largest part of her remained on a swing as it lazily lost speed against the setting sun. She was aware in some small way that his hands were redressing her. She turned her face to the side and again felt the tile on her skin. The Dancer sat on a closed toilet, his flat cap resting in the hand that wore the rose-gold ring. He was crying.
We have to work on your dancing, don’t we Katie?
Her sleeping face stirred at the memory of the words. They repeated again and again in a disgusting exhortation until Danny’s voice returned.
Sorry mister, I’ve my orders to fetch her. There was power in that voice, how he would speak at twenty-five somehow conjured at fifteen. His face slipped away and she saw herself as a child once more—younger than ever— lying on a pallet of patchwork quilts. The air was stagnant, filled by the sleeping noises of strangers—then the rattle of the tea cart as it rolled by. Tea’s up ducks—drink it while it’s nice and hot.
Her father lay beside her, sleeping with his back to the ground. In the dark, she could barely make out his strained, sad profile—the wilted flesh around his eyes and the fatty rough skin of his chin. The ground shook beneath as a collision rang out from far way. A baby began to cry, but those around remained motionless in sleep. The cries flowed into a crescendo of sound that, it seemed, only she could hear. She was on top of him. He was smothering. She pulled him out from the pile of patchwork quilts. Flushed and crying, his tiny lips curled up over his gums. A trickle of blood dripped down over his nose, and she tore the fabric from her child’s nightdress to staunch the blood. When she did, she saw that the blood was her own, flowing from a gash sliced up her arm.
She woke.
She sat up in bed as her small breasts heaved back and forth under her nightgown. She cried until there was nothing left then laid her face against her pillow, wet strands of hair matted against her skin. At first, she didn’t mind the dreams. She breathed in the sweet smell of him, cupped his soft skin. The aching feeling in her arms went away as she held him against her chest. It was the only time she heard his laugh, saw his slick, candy-colored lips part to show his baby gums. His fair hair was soft and cool against her cheek. But the dreams had turned to terrors. They’d become twisted games of hide-and-go-seek. She followed her son’s cry down long hallways and forests, down alleyways and tunnels. He was found—then taken from her again and again.
She took two capsules from a bottle on the nightstand and swallowed them with stale tap water. She lay back and studied the ceiling while she felt the pills stick at first, then lazily dissolve in her throat. The residue of the dream remained until the drugs took their heavy hold.
Her eyelids wavered then closed, a feathery chain of lashes their lock against the world. As she slept, the world outside grew brighter and brighter. The sun hedged out the night with a blue glow, followed by streaming rays of pink and orange. A morning ray burst through the curtain’s gap and fell at a slant over her face.
When the phone rang, she groaned and shifted. Her hand fumbled to the receiver.
“Hello?”
There was no response. Glancing at the clock, she swung her bare legs over the side of the bed.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She heard a tiny but irrefutable sound at the end of the line. The clicking sound before words came, unique in its maleness, “Katie?”
"Who is this?” she asked after a pause and another glance to the clock.
“Oh god, Katie. It’s you, isn’t it?”
Her fingers curled around the telephone cord as she heard a glimpse of familiarity in the voice.
"Who is this?" she asked again.
“It’s—it’s me.”
The name felt rusty on her lips, “Danny?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
"Daniel what’s wrong?”
“Katie, I can't believe it's you. I didn’t think I’d reach you.”
“Danny, where are you?”
"Oh God, Katie—I woke you, didn’t I?" The voice became crystal clear—and that was worse somehow.
“Danny, just tell me where you are.”
“Oh jeez, Katie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
The line clicked.
Katie looked through the curtain’s gap. The beam of light that had covered her face now pooled over her warming chest. She listened to the sound of the dial tone in her ear then lowered the phone to her lap. When the light on her chest crawled across her collar bone and over her shoulder, she placed the receiver back on its cradle.
Chapter Four
Pacific Palisades, California
1949
She didn’t stay for just the night because there was no one else. Katie lived in Daniel Gallagher’s home for two months, nine days…and fourteen hours. She knew exactly because she’d taken to counting. The whim to count had struck her three days after she’d moved in. She counted trees, fox sparrows, and shiny cars along his pretty street. The night she arrived, she stood in the open living area, her small suitcase beside her feet where Daniel had dropped it seconds before. She heard his hulking footsteps up the stairs, followed by the slam of his bedroom door. She jumped at the sound.
It was dark outside, but the house somehow retained the memory of the day’s sun, if only through the artificial glow of the lampshades. She removed her hat and held it over her stomach, feeling woefully overdressed in the cozy setting. Her shoes tapped gently along the hardwood floor as she ventured further inside. She jumped again, hearing Mrs. Gallagher’s voice. The tallness of Daniel’s mother filled the archway linking the parlor to the dining room. She couldn’t bring herself to speak, but Mrs. Gallagher seemed to know, only nodding when Katie didn’t answer. She came beside her and took the suitcase her son had dropped. She spoke again, but in the thick accent she had yet to understand. Katie followed her up the stairs and to a room down the hallway. The bed was freshly made with powder blue sheets and a yellow chenille bedspread with pink flowers set around the edges.
She felt her hair being touched with the gentlest of fingers. She turned, but Mrs. Gallagher was gone, leaving only her cotton-vanilla scent behind. Katie removed her shoes, looking to a window alcove seat in the corner. She moved to the window seat, pressing her palm against the thick windowpane. Even the cold glass couldn’t jolt the eggshell numbness from her skin. She looked down at the houselights faintly warming the rock pathway. The branches overhead bowed gently with the breeze, and she kept her eyes on them while she got into her pajamas and slipped under the chenille cover. Sleep came quick, but so too did the nightmares. She woke at the worst part, looked around the strange room and began to weep. She pulled her knees into her chest and covered her mouth with the blanket to soften her cries. The blanket was soaked through when she smelled Mrs. Gallagher, felt her warm arms encircle her. Her body went limp as Mrs. Gallagher wordlessly stroked her hair until she fell asleep again.
When she woke she was alone and the room held a solid yellow light. She looked to the branches of the tree outside, motionless in the morning sun—not as eerie as they’d been the night before. She was rested, but still numb—like a specter haunting a strange house rather than a flesh-and-blood girl. She heard voices from the first floor and, not knowing what else to do in a house that wasn’t hers, walked towards the staircase. She stopped on the third step when she heard Daniel’s voice, deeper than usual and marred by the tongue of another language. There was a pause to his ranting before his English broke through again.
“They have laws about this sort of thing, don’t they for crying out loud?”
“Tys!” Mrs. Gallagher hissed, “she’ll hear you.”
“So what? God, I have to see her all the time. Now she’ll be living here for who knows how long.”
“Shame, Daniel. You should be kind. You know what it is to have a father gone.”
“Jeg beklager, Mama.”
“I don’t want to hear you sp
eak that way around her.”
“I won’t,’ he said, “jag måste gå.”
“Daniel!” she called behind, but he was gone—his exit underscored by the squalling bawl of the door’s hinges. Her ears went hot. She followed downstairs only after the thickness of her humiliation subsided. She stood in the light of the kitchen for several minutes before Mrs. Gallagher noticed her. She’d seen Daniel’s mother from time to time, but had never really looked at her. Her hair, which Katie had only ever seen pinned up, was now down and at her waist. The longest hair she’d ever seen. It was brown and wavy against her dramatic wide eyes. Even more, Katie was surprised to find her very beautiful.
“Is that Katie Webb?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gallagher,” she said, not knowing what to call her, not wanting to call her anything at all at that moment.
“Well it seems we are to dine alone this morning. My son, no longer eats. Do you eat, Katie Webb?”
She did eat, at the studio canteen or from room service carts at the right times. But here there was china laid out on the table and Mrs. Gallagher seemed to want to make a show of eating. She pulled up a setting, the one she supposed was meant for Daniel, and put food on the two remaining plates. Mrs. Gallagher sat and motioned Katie to do the same.
Hunger pricked at her when she saw the medley of meat and fruits. She ate quickly and silently. When her plate was empty, she looked up to see that Mrs. Gallagher hadn’t eaten with her but had only watched. She felt a flash of embarrassment, but there was a look of satisfaction in the woman’s eyes.
“It’s nice to have someone to cook for. Lately, there’s no one. As I said, my son no longer eats.”
Katie smiled and Mrs. Gallagher looked at her more closely with those wide, dramatic eyes. “I was told once I would have a whole house to cook for—four or five daughters. It was not to be, though. My husband and mother are gone. It is only me and Daniel now.”
“Why?” Katie asked, then recoiled at the thick sound of her question. Mrs. Gallagher only held her smile and leaned her head to one side.
“Why what, doodah?”
Katie looked at her hands in shame.
“I mean, well, why did you think you’d have daughters?”
“Oh that, well, I suppose it was my fortune,” she answered simply. “When I was a girl, around the age you are now, a woman came into my town.” Mrs. Gallagher looked down at her food and picked up a deep-red strawberry. She put the fruit in her mouth and chewed slowly. “I went away one night, against my mother’s wishes, to ask for my fortune. I was told I would have four daughters, three horses, and a home by the ocean. But it did not happen of course.”
“But… you do live by the ocean.” Katie corrected in a soft voice. Mrs. Gallagher’s thick eyebrows lifted, her dramatic eyes delighted.
“Yes, I do—don’t I?” she agreed with a laugh. But as she glanced out the kitchen window, her smile softened into something close to sadness. “There is always the ocean.”
She plucked another strawberry from her plate.
“You are the only young lady to stay in this home. Did you know that, Katie Webb?” she asked, shaking off whatever had momentarily dulled her happiness.
Katie smiled faintly and shook her head.
“Don’t ever have your fortune told to you, Katie Webb. It is a waste for the magic of the world.” Her eyes lingered over Katie’s face. She rose, breaking the inventory, and began pulling up plates from the table.
“Come, you can help me with the dishes.”
Katie followed, stiff and inept—an empty plate in hand. Mrs. Gallagher took the plate from her hands and her eyes narrowed.
“You have done this before, Katie Webb?”
Katie looked at her feet, still in blue socks. She shook her head to the contrary, her soft hair falling like a curtain to hide the tears in her eyes. The tears she’d been holding back since she heard them talking from the staircase. They poured silently from her eyes and over her cheeks. Her wet chin was turned up by a single finger and Mrs. Gallagher’s eyes met hers.
“No tears for not knowing.”
Katie sucked in a tight breath and nodded.
“Take this, child,” she placed a rough cloth in her hand, “watch me and only dry.”
Katie did, watching each dish fall into the soapy lake of dishwater. She forgot about her tears. She forgot about most of everything watching Mrs. Gallagher’s elegant hands wash dish upon dish. Soon she was doing the work on her own, not knowing exactly how she’d taken over. Katie looked around the kitchen, surprised to find she was alone…until she heard Daniel’s mother humming dimly from the next room.
Katie sighed at the sound and dried her hands. She looked over to the plates resting in the silver wire rack. They were the first bit of honest cleaning she’d ever done. She wondered how it had been so easy when she was so slow to learn everything else. She stared at the stark bone china as it dried in the sun, hearing Mrs. Gallagher’s faint humming again from the parlor. The downy hair rose on her arms as she heard Mrs. Gallagher’s voice become clearer. Now, she could hear the words of the strange song. She listened keenly, but the words were as foreign as Daniel’s had been that morning. Katie turned, expecting Mrs. Gallagher in the doorway. But when she looked, there was no one. The floorboards squeaked above her head, and she realized with a thud in her chest…that Mrs. Gallagher hadn’t been downstairs at all.
Chapter Five
Pacific Palisades, California
1949
Mrs. Gallagher cleaned, cooked, and gardened in the morning, which meant for awhile that Katie did the same. She learned to flavor pot roasts with sweet marjoram and celery salt, allspice and clove. Heedful details were applied to every chore: a pinch of soda to keep the cream from turning, lavender and rosemary from the garden to keep the moths away. Katie learned it all, just as she had that first day— while Mrs. Gallagher had drifted like a ghost above her, spreading her uncanny song like perfume through the air. But by the time Katie had lived with the Gallaghers for a week and three days, what was uncanny about Daniel’s mother became simply bizarre.
They were small things at first, things she first ignored until they could no longer be denied. When she cried at night, too silent for anyone to have heard, Mrs. Gallagher always appeared to nestle in beside her until she fell asleep again. One night she woke horrified to find she’d wet the bed through the sheets, something she couldn’t remember doing even as a small child. Her panic turned from fear to embarrassment as she looked around the dark room. But then she saw something she couldn’t quite understand. She thought perhaps they’d been there all along, something unnoticed through the passing day. But there they were, plain as anything. She stood and walked to the dresser, each footfall calling up squeaks from the floor. She saw them clearly now: a set of sheets in crisp folds. Next to them, a laundered set of her pajamas. Katie stripped her bed, muttering thanks when the mattress was still untarnished. She balled the soiled sheets in her arms and traveled quietly down the stairs and into the laundry room. She piled the sheets and pajamas into the hamper next to the dry, single-tub washer.
When she woke the next morning, the crumpled piles of sheets were no longer there. She struggled through the morning in a state of mortification, waiting breathlessly for Mrs. Gallagher to make some note of it. She couldn’t bear the thought of those dramatic eyes pouring over her, asking the one question she couldn’t answer. The question she didn’t want to answer. How could she tell Danny Gallagher’s mother about the secret inside her. That burning pain in her stomach that came night after night? How she couldn’t urinate without the burning, horrible pain. They were oddities inside her that no one could understand—and no one would believe the cause for. The day passed and Mrs. Gallagher said nothing. It happened only once more—another night she’d gone to bed early with that horrible pain in her belly. She woke up and saw again the clean sheets folded on the chest of drawers. That was the last time it happened, and Mrs. Gallagher never so much as cast
a fretful look in her direction. The subject was scoured away—the same way Mrs. Gallagher scrubbed tarnish from the copper pots or currycombed the scales from codfish before plopping them into the pan.
There were other things. Mrs. Gallagher cut the ingredients of every recipe in Katie’s favor: no nutmeg in the apple pie, no onions in the minced meat, no lemon in anything. When the duress of her mind spurred her to count the cracks along the sidewalk or the cars lining the street, Mrs. Gallagher never interfered. Most of all, when they worked in the garden against the morning sun, Mrs. Gallagher never left her alone—not to replace a gardening tool or pull compost from the shed. One morning while Katie deadheaded irises past their blossom, her breath stopped as the phone rang out from the kitchen. Her body paralyzed, she fought back tears before looking up. She looked at Mrs. Gallagher’s face, and her expression was something she’d never seen before—and something she’d not seen since. Her eyes were spectral and edged with an unearthly knowledge. Katie watched as her mouth slid from a concentrated pout—and then to sly half-smile. Mrs. Gallagher held Katie’s eyes for several moments while the telephone’s bitter call continued to ring out in the morning air. When it stopped, her eyes softened and her expression returned to placidity. She wiped her brow before plunging her hands into the dark soil. And then she said something very strange: “Neither ship-shape nor Bristol fashion.” A very English phrase, something Katie swore she’d heard her father say when she was very young. They returned to the task at hand without speaking further, and the phone stayed silent for the remainder of the day.
Bells of Avalon Page 3