Alice At Heart

by Deborah Smith

  Mara hesitated, breaking down inside, telling herself to go, now that she’d made her point. But she moved helplessly toward C.A., trembling, sat down just as slowly beside him, and fought an urge not to touch his hand. Controlling him was her second nature. Her first, unfortunately, was loving him. I’m going to take him to bed tonight. He’ll never turn away from me then. “I’m sorry,” she whispered sincerely, and then laid a warm, stroking hand on his. “Maybe this time God will care.”

  Soon, we will learn whether our kind can survive into new centuries, Lilith wrote in her journal. Everything they were, everything Bonavendiers had fashioned of themselves on Sainte’s Point, defying the accepted course of nature, hung in the balance between facts and faith.

  Pearl went to Bellemeade with Barret, nervously frittering at management of their shops to distract her worries. The sales clerks adored Pearl and listened politely to her suggestions. Even the most ordinary people sensed her sweet songs and were lured into the Bonavendier enterprises. Pearl was very good for business, and she needed something to keep from wringing her hands over the growing drama of their lives.

  Mara had not returned from Savannah, where Lilith knew she was manipulating C.A. Randolph’s assistance against all of Lilith’s counsel. Only Alice and Griffin would determine the outcome of this old heartache. In a matter so fundamental, peace would come from the wellspring of Alice’s and Griffin’s souls, or not at all.

  “Yes, my dear Judith Beth?” Lilith said, without turning from her writing desk.

  “Lady Lilith, hurry. You have a visitor. Oh, my. Oh, my.” The Tanglewood sister fluttered her hands. Her blond hair looked electrified, and her plump face was flushed deep pink with excitement. “It’s him, Lady Lilith.”

  Lilith frowned and left the room at a quick walk, striding down the main hallway and out of the mansion. Immediately, she saw the large white sailboat slipping into the cove’s docks. A crew of several lithe men, all dressed in white, altered the tall sails and threw heavy ropes around the dock’s pilings. She gathered her dignity and walked down the path with her head up and her hands swinging calmly by her sides. A simple white top moved smoothly on her breasts, and a long, pale skirt whispered about her jeweled feet. She lifted a hand to a long onyx comb at the crown of her head, and her silver hair tumbled down her back.

  Suddenly, she stopped.

  A tall, olive-skinned man dressed in dark trousers and a flowing white shirt stood on the bow of the yacht. His thick silver hair flowed to his shoulders. He stood with his hands by his sides, his dark eyes never leaving her.

  A flood of shock and emotion lifted Lilith’s senses like a tide. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t imagine him here. Her stride slowed. Dazed, she picked out the last few steps to the edge of the dock as his crew lowered a gangway. Her visitor walked from the luxurious vessel onto the very boards of her own home. His face, lean and handsome, creviced with lines at the eyes and mouth, could still steal her breath. His full name, a lengthy and traditional Arabic one, was far too formal.

  “Riyad,” she whispered.

  He slid off soft leather slippers in the tradition of their kind and stood barefoot before her. “Lilith,” he answered in the voice of pharaohs.

  The spring sun haloed him, reflecting off the water and casting his shadows across her face, then flashing its brilliance into her eyes. She sheltered her gaze. “The sunlight,” she protested and smoothed tears from her lower lids. “It has a voice of its own.”

  He nodded, unable to say more himself. She held out her arm. He took it, and she escorted him up the path toward the house. Alice stepped onto the veranda. Lilith studied her expression, a look of bittersweet understanding. And Lilith realized the amazing truth.

  My dear young sister, have you learned to sing for love? Did you call him here for me?

  Alice nodded.

  I sang a song for my sister, and the song was heard.

  Now I feel the full impact of the sisters’ peculiar, cocooned lives, and my own. For every beauty there is a tragedy, for every superior talent, a loss of ordinary comfort. Maybe they’ve only designed a marvelous legend for themselves, weaving colorful family stories into a fabric of supernatural purpose and claiming special knowledge to right the wrongs of their world—though they never can, any more than the driest of land-lovers. If I want to be practical and cynical, I can reduce the sisters’ belief system to that. They are just oddly endowed women who have sugar-coated their troubled lives and usurped a queendom of illusions. Sad creatures, struggling to make sense of it all, like me. But I’ve sung now, and I’ve loved. And I realize how afraid I’ve been to send my voice into the world.

  And how much I have changed.

  “Where is Lilith’s and Riyad’s son buried?” I asked Pearl that night.

  “In Mother and Father’s crypt, alongside Mara’s two children. Their bodies lie in three small marble coffins with just their precious names etched on them.” Pearl looked at me wistfully. “There’s something you should know. Lilith named her baby son Griffin.”

  I stared at Pearl. She nodded. “And years later, Undiline named her son Griffin, too, in honor of Lilith’s lost boy. Lilith was so pleased. Undiline asked Lilith, Mara, and me to be Griffin’s godmothers. We accepted with true joy.” Pearl pressed a hand to her heart. “So do you understand what Griffin means to us? He is, in so many respects, our only son.” She paused. “Just as you, darling Alice, are like a daughter.”

  “Does Riyad know about his and Lilith’s child?” I asked Pearl wearily.

  Pearl sighed. “He will soon. She’s telling him tonight.”

  Lilith and Riyad stood before the crypt in the moonlight. Her heart rose in her voice. She struggled to put the story of their son into spoken words. Riyad riveted his gaze to her face. Lilith moaned. Her legendary discipline deserted her. The truth poured in psychic waves of grief and regret. Riyad stepped back as if struck. He bent his head into his hands, then dropped to one knee before the crypt.

  Lilith cried out as she sank down beside him. “I’ve never doubted that you would have loved our son.”

  Riyad dragged his hands from his face and tilted his head back. He shut his eyes as if even the moonlight were too bright. “All these years I’ve sensed a secret between us, but I shut it from my mind. I tried not to imagine what it might be.” He shuttered and looked at her with tears on his face. His expression was tortured and tender. “Please, forgive me.”

  Lilith hugged herself. “I’m the one who must ask for forgiveness. You had a right to know.”

  He held out his hands. “Let us mourn together.”

  She took his hands and bowed her head to his. They grieved for their lost son and lost love without sound, without pride, without artifice. Slowly, they slipped their arms around each other and clung tightly.

  The tide made a low murmur in the distance. Out in the depths, the souls of all the knowing creatures listened and sighed with relief. Mercy was fluid. Sorrow ebbed and flowed.

  Love returned with the moon.

  I sat outside in the deep curve of the tree limb in my dark garden. My heart twisted when I glimpsed Lilith and Riyad in the moonlight. They walked side by side, their hands tightly clasped, along the path out of the forest. They had made peace over the body of their son, the first Griffin.

  Griffin, I sang urgently to that child’s namesake. Do you realize what you mean to Lilith? She and her sisters couldn’t possibly have harmed you or anyone you loved. Griffin, please listen. Please talk to me. We can’t hurt them. Where are you?

  Silence.

  20

  Stalwart and true, by Ta-Mera’s princesses enslaved

  Devoted lovers, bound to earth yet fulfilled in water,

  We shall whisper their mortal names on shores

  Kissed by eternal tides,

  And forget them not in fluid rhyme:

  Beckrith, Padrian, and Salasime.

  Ode To Mermaids And Men

  Emilene Merrimac Revere

>   Victorian poetess and singer

  “I found him this way when I came by to check my menus for a dinner he’s givin’ tomorrow,” the stalwart housekeeper told Griffin as she led him up the dark marble stairs of C.A.’s home that night. She dabbed tears from her face. “Lord, I’ve never seen Mr. Randolph drink himself into such a state. I know he thinks the world of you, and I figured you’d come see if he’s all right.”

  “Thank you. I’ll take care of him.” Griffin stepped ahead of the woman as they reached a landing. He halted, shocked. The marble floor was strewn with broken liquor bottles. Paintings and nautical charts had been ripped from the walls.

  “He did all this damage,” the housekeeper moaned. “His hands are all tore up from hittin’ things and rippin’ his own house apart.”

  “Don’t tell anyone. We’ll get this cleaned up tonight.”

  “Yessir.”

  Griffin held his breath as the housekeeper led him into C.A.’s large bedroom, which was equally destroyed. His elder cousin was stretched out among the jumbled dark sheets of a tall mahogany bedstead. C.A. was naked, though he’d had the presence of mind to pull the end of the bed’s comforter over his belly and thighs. He lay on his back, his eyes shut, his bloody fists unfurled by his sides.

  “Some woman was here with him,” the housekeeper whispered. “When I picked up his clothes I could smell fine perfume, and there was lipstick on his shirt . . . on his shirt front, down low, Mr. Griffin.” The housekeeper blushed. “I don’t know what that woman did to him, but I hope she never does it again.”

  “You can leave us alone now. I’ll try to talk to him.”

  “God bless you. He sure does love you. You’re like a son to him.”

  She left the room. Griffin slowly picked his way through broken lamps, tossed chairs, and ripped paintings, to C.A.’s side. Griffin set a small bedside lamp upright and flicked its switch. As he bent over C.A. and pressed fingertips to the pulse in his throat, Griffin inhaled the scent of liquor—and more. The raw scent of sex.

  C.A. stirred lethargically, opened bloodshot eyes, and recognized Griffin. C.A. groaned. “What are you doing here?” He slurred the words.

  “What happened, C.A.?”

  “My own weakness. Goddamn furious . . . with myself. No one hurt but me. That’s all I want. No one hurt but me. Leave me the hell alone.”

  “Who was the woman?”

  “My business, not yours.”

  “You didn’t tear up the house in front of her, did you?”

  “No. After she left.”

  Griffin reached past him, staring at mounds of hair twisted in the sheets, a river of tresses. His hand shook a little as he pulled it free. It filled his hands and spilled over, dark, luxurious, reddish brown, wavy, and nearly six feet long. Mara Bonavendier. “What was Mara doing here? Why did she do this to you—and to herself?”

  “You own her heart when she gives you her hair. Not that she’ll stay with you. Not that you own her.”

  Griffin straightened. “You get some sleep. Tomorrow you and I have to have a talk. I don’t want you involved in my problems with the Bonavendiers. You can’t handle whatever goes on between you and Mara. That makes it my business, C.A. Not just yours.” Griffin pulled more covers over him. “I’ll be here all night. Get some rest.” He turned to go.

  “Griffin.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have no idea . . . what you’ve gotten into. With them. With Alice.”

  “C.A., take a break. I said we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Your father didn’t know, either. But I know. I accept what they are. But your father couldn’t. I tried to tell him. I loved your father . . . like a brother. But he was stubborn.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He was as strong as any Randolph can be. Strong-minded. A hard man, sometimes. Your mother almost convinced him . . . anything is possible. He loved her like his life. But there was no room for imagination in him. Or . . . faith.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, C.A?”

  “I don’t want you to hate . . . your father for what he did to your mother.”

  After a stunned moment Griffin said evenly, “What did he do to her?”

  But C.A. turned on one side, groaned, and fell asleep. Griffin stared at him a long time, then finally turned out the light and left him alone. Griffin sat in a downstairs library in the dark the rest of the night. He heard Alice calling to him but didn’t answer. She would feel the worry and confusion around him. She would know it involved her family and some connection to his mother he didn’t understand. He rose and paced. What had his father done to his mother?

  In the morning, bandaged and sober and ashen, C.A. sat across from Griffin in the tall leather chairs of the dining room, drinking coffee. C.A. only shook his head when Griffin asked him what had happened between him and Mara. Griffin said with strained patience, “All right, let’s pretend you don’t owe me that explanation. But you do owe me something else. Tell me what you meant about my parents.”

  C.A. laid his head against the chair’s high back and looked at him through slitted, resigned eyes. Griffin’s stomach twisted as C.A. gave him a bleak smile, as if expecting Griffin’s reaction already. “Porter realized your mother was a mermaid, and he lost his mind.”

  “A mermaid.” Griffin stared at him, got up slowly, and bent over C.A. until their faces were close. “If you can’t tell me a better lie than that,” Griffin said softly, “then stay the hell out of my life.”

  C.A. said nothing else but held Griffin’s gaze with unrelenting sorrow and that same, chilling smile.

  Griffin slammed a hand on the table. “If that’s how you want it, then.” He walked out of the house.

  C.A. shut his eyes. Mara was right. All he could do was be there when Griffin and Alice learned the truth in their own way. And believed it.

  Lilith and Riyad lay together in the water of a quiet cove. “Why is this all happening now?” she whispered. “How can we go along for years, decades, sometimes even centuries, and then suddenly everything converges? Those years—when I returned here, when our child died, then Mara returned, heartbroken, widowed, her children dead. And Pearl, of course, refusing to leave Barret, spending her life here as she lost one child after another. All those things make no sense, Riyad.”

  “Because random sorrows never do.” He stroked her hair. “Our lives are drops of water. Yet each helps fill the ocean. I quote some dusty cleric writing in thirsty sand. To be blunt, Lilith? Perhaps we bring many of our sorrows on ourselves. The talent lies in bringing many joys on ourselves, as well.”

  “If there is an answer beyond any hard journey, it is joy.”

  “The answer may lie in children yet to come. Children that would never be born without your guidance, my love.”

  Alice and Griffin’s children, she thought. She lay back with Riyad in the water, placing her head on his chest, as he took her in his arms.

  21

  To sing is to charm the soul with illicit lures, said the churchmen of old. And so the songs of Water People, male and female, were designated a form of witchcraft. How sad, to turn love into darkness.

  —Lilith

  Chaos. This morning the Tanglewood brother who drove Mara to Savannah is in tears because she disappeared without ever returning to the car. He is convinced, with cherubic devotion, that the evil denizens of that city have had the nerve to harm her. This despite the fact she’s more than capable of terrorizing any urban miscreant short of Godzilla. Riyad and Lilith have cloistered themselves somewhere in the ocean to mourn their son together, and Pearl is frantic over it all. Barret has tried to soothe her by heading to Savannah in search of Mara. I find myself in an unsettling position of leadership, as Pearl and the Tanglewoods are suddenly asking me, the Alice, what to do.

  “Mara is more than a match for any city on the face of the earth,” I told them with feigned certainty, “and Lilith requires a period of time in prayer and meditation with the
father of her child. Her solitude is very understandable. Both Mara and Lilith will return home when they are ready. I have no doubt.” And since I could think of nothing better to offer, I added, “Now let us make some creamed shrimp with sherry for breakfast, drink a tall vodka, and be calm.”

  After a moment spent in staring at me, Pearl and the Tanglewoods exhaled as one. “Oh, good. All right, then,” Pearl said.

  “The Alice is wise,” a Tanglewood proclaimed.

  They went off to prepare breakfast, leaving me stunned by their faith in my command.

  Because I am so afraid of every new moment, and Griffin is still silent.

  You’ll know when it’s time to open your mother’s keepsake box, Lilith had said.

  It was time.

  Griffin carried the box upstairs and out onto a captain’s walk. The narrow balcony looked over Bellemeade Bay, its boards worn by wind and weather. He had loved playing there as a child. He sat down on a weathered bench with the box on his knees under a sun-washed blue sky. The lock clicked easily when he inserted the slender, feminine brass key into it. He laid the key aside and opened the box’s lid. His heart pounded. On top were yellowed handkerchiefs with his mother’s maiden initials embroidered on them, as if she’d put away all symbolic evidence of her family’s name when she married his father. His throat tight, Griffin gently laid the items beside the key. He curled his callused fingers beneath a stack of aged albums and dried flowers from his parents’ wedding. When he removed them, he saw what was his mother had stored carefully beneath.

  Memories flooded him.

  Mother, why do you and me have to cut our hair every day?

  Oh, we McEvers are known for our hair growing as fast as seaflax in a strong current. Mother laughed as she spoke in her gentle Scottish brogue and continued to snip several inches of new growth from her shoulder-length mane. Griffin sat in the floor or her dressing room, watching her, fascinated by the flow of her, the way her silk robe clung to her soft, strong body, the salty scent of her skin after one of her morning swims, the soft, golden slippers she loved to wear. Once he crawled beneath the tasseled bridge of her vanity chair and deftly, playing, snatched a slipper from her foot. She gasped and curled her toes tightly together, but not before he glimpsed the terrible scars that lined their insides. Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?