“You had every right.”
Down the walk, Jilly had found the Poe room and stood on the steps looking through the glass door. Her imagination would be working overtime and that was good.
“Oriana is leaving me,” Stephen said.
That shocked me. I’d heard a deep sadness in his voice, and suddenly all my unresolved emotions were choking me as I sat down on nearby steps leading into a Pavilion and braced myself with my hands about my knees.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not trying to lean on you. I just thought you ought to know. It’s been coming for a long time. I can’t blame her. I’m not the man she married—and she didn’t bargain for any of this. I’ve told her about Everett’s plans and the changes ahead, and it’s all too much for her to deal with. As long as we could hold to our pattern—with Oriana flying in for an occasional visit—she could put up with the way I am now. But when the house is closed it will make for a different sort of life. There’ll be no real place for her with me.”
Now I felt angry with Oriana, as well as Stephen and myself. “What about Jilly?”
“I’m not sure. Oriana can’t take her along on tour. She may have to stay with Meryl and Everett for a while, until we find the right school for her.”
I couldn’t bear to think of Jilly sleeping in that room at the back of Everett’s house, moaning in her sleep, with no one to hold and comfort her.
“Why can’t you stay at The Terraces and keep her there?”
“Everett thinks it’s not possible to hold on to the house, the way things are.”
“Is that really up to Everett? Can’t you get back into your own work in the firm? You don’t design houses with your legs, and you’re getting stronger all the time. There’s nothing wrong with your brain or your imagination—if you put them to work again.”
I knew I sounded angry and challenging, and I hadn’t any right to be either. Not anymore.
He smiled, almost in the old way. “Don’t think I haven’t considered that. But it has seemed too steep a hill to climb, on top of everything else. And I’m not sure Everett wants me back.”
“If he doesn’t want you, couldn’t you start your own firm? You would bring in the sort of clients who like your work. People you’d enjoy building homes for. If you get rid of Paul and Carla, and let Jilly go back to school, I’ll bet Julian and Vivian could still run the house.”
“It takes fire to fuel the imagination, Lynn. And the fire has gone out. I don’t know how to rekindle it.”
That made me impatient. “You’ve got it the wrong way around. First you furnish some sort of fuel. You do something to light the spark. It doesn’t even matter in the beginning if you really care. The fire comes later.”
He was watching me again, but in a different way. “You’ve changed a lot, Lynn.”
Of course I had changed! I had nothing to say to that.
He pushed out from the wall on his crutches and started after Jilly.
I felt pleased with myself for upsetting him, and guilty at the same time. It wasn’t fair to strike out at him because of that other Stephen Asche whom I had loved. It was certainly unfair to strike at the present man, whether I approved of him or not. I still cared about what would happen to him, and perhaps that was what hurt most of all.
We both reached Jilly at the same time, and Stephen told her curtly that we were returning to the bookstore. Jilly looked disappointed, but too quickly resigned to what was only to be expected.
“We can’t keep Vivian and Julian waiting there for us too long,” I told her, trying to soften Stephen’s words. It didn’t do much good, and we were all three unhappy as we returned to my car.
The drive back to the Quest was long enough for resentment to fester, perhaps in all of us. When we reached the store, however, Stephen made a decision. He told Julian he would return home in the van with him and Vivian. I was to take Jilly back to Everett’s and then we were to pick up our things and drive to The Terraces.
Julian offered no objection, and of course Vivian went along with whatever Julian decided. No one consulted either me or Jilly, and I drifted along with the arrangement, feeling both helpless and apprehensive. How safe was Jilly in that house? At least she wanted to go home now and be with her mother, having no idea of the change in her life that might lie ahead.
Meryl was home when Jilly and I arrived, and she didn’t like this switch in plans. However, since Everett was restive about having us in his house, she offered no resistance. Neither Jilly nor I talked about our trip to the university with Stephen.
By the time Jilly and I could be alone on the drive back to Nelson County, she had returned to her turtle shell and sat beside me in the front seat with that look on her face that shut everyone out.
I tried to talk to her. “I’m sorry your father got tired so quickly, but it was better for him not to do too much all at once. If you like, we can go back again sometime—just you and me.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I dropped that subject and asked a question. “When you’re at home, Jilly, do you have those bad dreams—or only at your Aunt Meryl’s?”
“Carla doesn’t like me to have nightmares. Sometimes she gives me a pill to make me sleep.”
This was appalling—not just because of Carla’s actions, but because nobody apparently knew or cared. Perhaps it really would be better and safer if Jilly went to a good school, where she might make friends and where, at least, she would be safe from indifference and direct harm.
We didn’t talk after that, and I thought for the hundredth time of the boulder that had come tumbling down from the cliff, and of those spade marks I had seen in the dirt. But I couldn’t picture the hand that might have wielded that spade. If Jilly had any suspicion about this, I didn’t know how to break through the barrier she’d put up against me.
For the first time, I began to consider Oriana. Not as Stephen’s wife, but as Jilly’s mother. I had no real knowledge of her, except as a hazy, unreal figure dancing on a stage—a woman of great beauty and fascination who drew men to her. Men who had included the young husband of Lynn McLeod Asche. But what Oriana’s deeper relationship with Jilly might be, I didn’t know. Or what she was like as a woman.
When we reached the house I saw Julian’s van parked near the double garage—so they were well ahead of us. From the top floor I could hear Rimsky-Korsakov music and knew where to look for Oriana. Jilly’s face lighted up and she rushed off toward the stairs at once. Carla didn’t come looking for her, as she usually did, so perhaps she was upstairs watching her friend dance.
Sam carried our bags inside, and as I started up to my room, Paul came down.
He stopped beside me. “Home so soon, Lynn? I thought you’d have a long visit with the Asches. You and Jilly.”
I didn’t believe that he’d thought much about it at all. “I see you are still here,” I said.
He grinned. “Everett thinks it’s best if I stay on until Oriana leaves. Not to upset the status quo and all that.”
“Because Oriana might interfere with what Everett wants?”
“Not likely,” Paul said, and started past me down the stairs. Then he turned back. “If you see Carla, tell her Stephen wants her.”
“Isn’t she upstairs with Oriana?” I asked.
Paul shook his head. “There’s a dance session going on, so I backed off from asking for her. Nobody interferes when Madame is rehearsing.”
Nevertheless, I was going to interfere, whether anyone liked it or not.
I ran up the stairs and stood in the same place where I had watched Jilly dance. The music’s minor tones swelled, filling the long room. At the moment, Oriana, in a black leotard that displayed her lean, muscular dancer’s body, stood listening, her dark head tilted back, showing the clean line of her throat. Her hair had been pinned out of the way—not flowing as she wore it when she danced on a stage. Jilly was nowhere in sight, so perhaps she had been sent away.
> Oriana was deep in concentration, perhaps creating her steps in her mind before her body moved. Her back was toward me, and I could stand in shadow for a moment watching, wondering whether I had better break in after all. The process of creation could be fragile and it took immense attention and concentration. Stephen had taught me that about his own work.
Slowly, as I watched, she began to move, her arms reaching high in supplication. Oriana had never had ballet training; in fact, she’d had very little dance training of any kind. She had watched and learned and trained herself, going her own way—though she was not one of the great originals. Traces of Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham crept into her dancing—all tuned to her own pseudo-oriental theme—so that in the end she danced herself, Oriana Devi.
I was about to steal away and wait for another time, when she made a swooping turn and saw me. For a moment she stood perfectly still, staring down the room, her arms held high and wide, palms turned up. Then she seemed to return to the everyday and spoke to me.
“Hello, Lynn. It’s time we talked.”
She flowed toward the tape recorder on the piano and stopped the music in the middle of a note. Then she picked up two cushions and placed them on the wide stones of the hearth. No fire burned there now, though logs had been set for the next use. This was where I’d sat so recently talking to Stephen. I sat down and she drew her cushion a little way off, so we wouldn’t be too close.
“I am going to leave Stephen,” she said.
So we were to be direct. “Yes, I know. He told me.”
“Of course you will go back to him.” She spoke calmly, with assurance.
All the resentment I’d been so foolish as to think I’d overcome surged up in me. Her words seemed outrageous, utterly callous. For Stephen’s sake I hated this—yet in the same instant hope that I’d never expected to feel again warmed some corner of my heart. Hope I dared not believe in or think about.
I simply stared at her.
She actually looked sad, regretful. “It would be so right. He still loves you—you must know that, Lynn. I was a—delirium, from which he’s recovered. As I have recovered.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. She couldn’t speak for Stephen.
“You moved in and took him. Deliberately. Just like that!”
“He was there to be taken. Life happens, and sometimes there’s very little we can do to change anything. It was written that Stephen and I would come together for a little while, and it was lovely while it lasted.”
“What about Jilly? Are you tossing her aside too?”
Oriana’s beautiful, long-fingered hands lifted in a gesture of helplessness. “What am I to do? If Stephen can’t keep her here—as apparently won’t be possible—then it’s best that she be placed in a good school. Everett will see to that.”
“Placed—as though she were a tape recorder you can place on a piano!”
She shook her head at me sadly. “Anger only destroys us, Lynn. Jilly will always be my daughter and that contact will never be broken.”
I hated the word she used—“contact.” But she was right that as usual my ready anger never did me any good. I tried to speak quietly, reasonably.
“What Jilly needs is love and understanding and a home. Everett’s about as loving and understanding as a shark, and he can’t be trusted to do what’s best for her.”
“If you would listen, Lynn, I could teach you some rhythmic movements that would relax you and quiet all those turbulent feelings that can destroy you.”
Reason came from a cool mind. The emotional part of me wanted to be angry. And she was helping me along! “Has anybody told you that Jilly and I were nearly killed yesterday?”
“You mean because of that rock that fell?”
“Someone used a spade to loosen it and roll it down to where we were. Someone who was watching and knew where Jilly would go. We barely escaped being crushed.”
“The gods were with you,” she said serenely.
My instinct was to get up and shake her. “How would you have felt if Jilly had been killed? What would you think of the gods then?”
Tears came into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks in great shining drops, astonishing me. “I would have grieved, of course. I grieve to even think of such a thing. She is very dear to me—my daughter. But it was not meant to happen. You were both protected.” Her tears stopped as quickly as they had fallen, and dried on her cheeks. There were no traces, no grooves, since she wore no makeup on her beautiful, clear skin.
I wouldn’t be deflected. “How could you send a woman like Carla Raines to take care of Jilly?”
“Carla is my friend, my protégé.”
“Did you know about her tie to Luther Kersten?”
“I remember Luther—a strange man. I never liked him. But I don’t try to choose friends for other people. Carla knew what he was like, but she loved him anyway. It can be like that sometimes, when we choose the wrong man.”
As she had chosen Stephen?
“Carla believes he was murdered,” I told her. “That’s why she wanted to come here to work—so she could find out the truth, if possible. Did you know about this?”
“I’m afraid not, Lynn. Truth is such a strange word—meaning so many different things to different people. I was here when Luther died, when Stephen was hurt—and Jilly. The karma was very bad then, and there was nothing I could do. It was all—”
“I know—all in the lap of the gods! They certainly let everyone down that time. So you ran away?”
“I returned to the solace of my dancing—where I could be healed and freed of all evil influence. Dancing, for me, requires a calm and lifted spirit.”
“Were you here when Larry Asche died?”
“Up at the Singing Stones? Yes, I was home at the time. That is a beautiful, sacred place. He must have brought something evil into it so that the Stones had to punish him.”
“Do you think it’s possible”—I was wondering out loud—“to get so deeply involved with psychic beliefs that everything can be turned around? So that even evil deeds can be excused?”
Her eyes widened as she looked at me, and she answered with a new uneasiness. “I’ve thought about that, Lynn. It’s something I must consult with my swami about.”
Dealing with Oriana was like dealing with thistledown. I’d had enough and I stood up. “I hoped that you might help with Jilly. You are Stephen’s wife, and you could oppose Everett. You must have some say about what happens in this house.”
“Everett says there isn’t enough money to keep up The Terraces. So it must be sold. Though he will pay for Jilly’s school, if I am not able to. My dancing entails great expense—musicians, a troupe, travel. I do well enough, but there’s not much left over. The movie I’ve been working on is being done by a small independent company. I signed the modest contract for the sake of future exposure.”
“Where will Stephen go?”
“Everett and Meryl will take him, of course. He’ll always have a home with them.”
Which I knew very well that Stephen would hate. If I stayed with Oriana a moment longer I might explode disgracefully. I didn’t want to be calm and resigned and accepting. I wanted to get out of hand and tear things apart!
“Maybe Stephen will surprise you,” I said. “Maybe he will choose a different course.”
Her expression didn’t change, and as I rushed off down the room, I heard the music start again, stirring the air with its exotic strains. When I glanced back, Oriana was moving once more with grace and confidence, as though nothing I had said had upset her deeply. How wonderful to be like that—to shed everything that might be unpleasant and return to a calm world where only the movements of the body mattered.
Or was it wonderful? It wouldn’t be for me. I’d rather go blundering along making a mess of things, even if I had to suffer for all the mistakes I’d made and was going to make. At least, I would be alive, and they would be my mistakes—not somethi
ng that happened because I sat back and let fate take over. It was even possible that I might learn something from all those mistakes—though at the moment I wasn’t sure what.
16
My next stop had to be to see Julian. Even though he’d apparently given in to Everett’s edicts, he didn’t seem quite ready to move out of the house. He had been my early anchor here, and he was the only one I could turn to.
I heard the typewriter as I neared his study, but the door was open, so I looked in. At a glance I could see how absorbed he was in his work—as lost as Oriana could become in her dancing. Vivian sat nearby reading a book, and when she looked up and saw me, she put a finger to her lips and came to the door.
“Don’t interrupt him now,” she whispered. “The words are pouring through, and he must follow wherever they lead. Come outside, Lynn—it’s a lovely day.”
She led the way through a sliding door to the sunny deck, and we sat together on a bench near the rail.
“Tell me about your visit to the university with Stephen,” she said.
“There isn’t much to tell. Jilly enjoyed having her father show her the Rotunda, the Lawn and the Pavilions. But Stephen tired quickly, so we came back to the bookstore.”
“He wouldn’t talk on the way home,” Vivian said. “Something must have happened.”
“Perhaps old memories got in the way.” I didn’t want to discuss Stephen with anyone. “Vivian, I’ve just seen Oriana. This was the first time we’ve ever talked together.”
“She doesn’t live in this world, does she? I wish I could run away as easily as she does.”
“Apparently she leaves everything up to fate.”
“In the end, I suppose that’s what we all must do. At least, that’s what Julian believes. I expect it’s more comfortable for Oriana to sidestep responsibility that way. But never mind about her, Lynn. That will all take care of itself. What I’m excited about is Julian’s book. He found something at the Quest shop that has helped his direction, and he’s really moving ahead.”
The Singing Stones Page 21