Widow's Tears

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “I think,” she said slowly, “I think we’re here because Rachel is ready to let go of all this.” She spoke as if she were hearing the words, weighing and measuring them, wondering, even as she spoke them, if they were true. “She’s ready to leave—if she could. But she can’t.”

  Once more, for the record, I do not believe in spooks, and the rational, legal-eagle part of me—if I’d let her—would have jumped straight out of her chair, announced that she had heard enough of this mystical claptrap (to use one of McQuaid’s favorite phrases), and stalked out of the room. That’s exactly what I would have done if this were anybody else but Ruby.

  But the fact of the matter is that I believe in Ruby. Which means that I believed that she believed in what she was saying—that she wasn’t imagining it or making it up. For her, Rachel was real, which made her real for me, as well. (And then, of course, there was that inexplicable bell and that writing on the menu board, neither of which were produced by the power of suggestion.)

  I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I prompted her with a question. “Why can’t she leave?”

  Ruby didn’t answer for a moment, and in just that narrow space of time, I felt the temperature in the room drop by several degrees. There seemed to be a draft coming from someplace, eddying around us. My bare arms broke out in goose bumps. I shivered—and not entirely from the cold. I’m the kind of person who likes to know what’s happening, and right now, I didn’t have a clue.

  Ruby’s fingers were laced tightly together as if she were praying. Her knuckles were white and in the lamplight, her face was strained and intent. “She wants to leave but she can’t because she’s held on too long, too tight, too…”

  Her voice trailed off, blurred, as if her lips had gone numb. She pulled in a ragged breath, then let it out in a lengthening sigh. “She built this house to indulge her grief. She wanted to create a place to live with it. And now she’s a prisoner of it.”

  “A prisoner of this house?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Ruby drew out the word in a long sigh.

  Claire was frowning. “Really, Ruby, I don’t understand any of this. How could a house indulge her grief? What about those graves? Her kids, her husband? Did she have something to do with their deaths? And how do you know all this, Ruby?”

  There was a silence, as if Ruby were asking herself these questions. At last, she shook her head. “I don’t know, Claire. I don’t know. I just—” Her voice was now low and uninflected—the voice of a sleepwalker, trance-like, not Ruby’s voice at all. Her shoulders were slumped, her hands loose in her lap, her eyelids half-closed. She looked and spoke as if she’d been hypnotized.

  “Ruby?” Obviously frightened, Claire started to get up. “Ruby, are you all right? What—”

  I put out my hand to stop her. I couldn’t even pretend to guess what might be happening here, but I’ve occasionally seen what Ruby can do when she puts her mind to it—or rather, when she connects with the intuitive part of herself, the knowing part that doesn’t have anything to do with her mind. Before, I had seen it happen with the help of her Ouija board or as she read the tarot cards. Once, I even watched her read a Honda Civic in a parking lot in the little town of Indigo—and what she learned led us to the body of the car’s owner, hidden in the basement of an abandoned school. It was happening again but without any help, except perhaps from the entity that Ruby thought of as Rachel.

  And while there’s not a wisp of the psychic in me (and a very healthy hunk of the cynic), I knew that if I were to ask Ruby, she would say that the three of us were not alone in this room. Rachel, or whatever collection of energies wore the name of Rachel, was with us, speaking to us.

  And Ruby was giving her a voice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Galveston

  Night, September 8, 1900

  Sweet and low, sweet and low,

  Wind of the western sea,

  Low, low, breathe and blow,

  Wind of the western sea!

  Over the rolling waters go,

  Come from the dying moon, and blow,

  Blow him again to me;

  While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

  “Sweet and Low”

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  At St. Mary’s Orphanage, three miles west of the city, the sisters and their charges sang and prayed while they waited for what was about to happen. The boys’ dormitory was completely gone now, and the front of their building was going, too, devoured in huge bites by the ravenous waves and the roaring wind. The windows were blown in, the roof fell in pieces, one brick wall after another collapsed with a thunderous roar, and at last all was swept into the churning maelstrom.

  The three oldest boys, left untethered to fend for themselves, were flung through a window and survived by clinging to a tree that was lodged in the masts of a four-masted wooden schooner, the John S. Ames. “The sisters were very brave,” the boys said later. Their bodies, still lashed to their children, would be buried where they were found.

  * * *

  SISTER Elizabeth would likely have been no safer had she listened to Mother Gabriel and stayed at St. Mary’s Infirmary, on Avenue D in Galveston. This imposing brick building, another one of Nicholas J. Clayton’s fanciful designs, was no match for the winds. Once the windows and roofs were gone, the brick walls were next. Of the many, perhaps hundreds, who had taken refuge there, just eight survived.

  Only a few blocks away, another of Clayton’s projects was coming to pieces. The fantastic Victorian towers and turrets and chimney pots of John Sealy Hospital were raining down in showers of brick and slate. The nurse letter-writer added one last frantic paragraph to her note:

  “Darkness is overwhelming us, to add to the horror,” she wrote. “Dearest, I reach out my hand to you—my heart—my soul.” Her letter was unsigned.

  Nicholas Clayton declared bankruptcy three years after the hurricane. He never received another major architectural commission.

  * * *

  AT Twenty-fifth and Q, Weather Bureau chief Isaac Cline and his family—his heavily pregnant wife, Cora; his daughters Allie and Rosemary, twelve and eleven; and six-year-old Esther—had taken refuge on the second floor, together with a large group of refugees who had banged on the front door, pleading for entry. The water had risen to the height of the ceilings of the first floor, but Cline still believed that his house was built high and strong enough to survive any amount of battering by wind and wave—and he might have been right. He did not, however, reckon with the mountain of debris that was being shoved north and west through the city like a gigantic scraper blade, demolishing every structure in its path.

  Joseph Cline no longer shared his brother’s confidence. As assistant weatherman in the Galveston Bureau, he remembered and resented Isaac’s self-assured prediction that the city would never be inundated by a storm surge, and was now certain that the house was no secure refuge, either. As Joseph later told the story in his book, When the Heavens Frowned, he urged Isaac and the others to gather in a room on the windward side, the Gulf side, so that when the house tipped over (as he was convinced it would), they would not be trapped beneath it. The best hope, he said, was to jump out of the building as it went over and grab and hold on to whatever pieces of debris could be found.

  And that is what he did. The moving mountain of debris, topped by a long section of broken trolley track, finally reached Q Avenue. It struck the two-story Cline house so hard that the house was knocked off its piers. For a few terrifying moments, the building listed sharply to leeward like a stricken vessel, as the people and the furnishings in the room slid down the sharply tilting floor to land in a heap against the opposite wall. As Joseph told the story, he seized the hands of his nieces, Allie and Rosemary, and lunged backward through the front window, crashing through casement and glass and storm shutters and landing on the outside wall of the capsized house, now lying on its side.

  It was dark now and the wind was still a wild gale, lashin
g the waves into a seething frenzy. But the clouds had broken and the moon’s fleeting glimmer was enough to show Joseph and the girls that they were alone. None of the others in the room with them had managed to escape when the house went over. The raft on which they rode, it seemed, was also a floating coffin.

  * * *

  ON the other side of Q Avenue and a few doors up from the Cline house, Augustus Blackwood’s house was still standing firm, a bulwark in a black expanse of wind-tossed water. The wind still shrieked like a banshee and the waves thundered against the house, with the occasional reverberating crash of a large piece of wreckage like a cannonball against a wall. But it seemed to Rachel, listening to the deafening din with the ears of hope, that the storm was at last abating.

  When the water reached the second floor where the children could see it, they were frightened and began to cry. So Rachel and Colleen took them with Patsy to the third floor, where they all cuddled together on the bed in the back bedroom, on the side away from the Gulf. It was night now and late, although Rachel was so dizzy with fatigue that she had no idea of the time. Outside the window, the moon was beginning to flicker through the clouds, shining fitfully on the plunging seas and pitching wreckage around their refuge. But inside, in their small oasis of a room, there was the warm glow of the kerosene lamp that Colleen had brought upstairs, along with the plate of sandwiches and cake left from the party and even a jug of lemonade. The wind had blown out the windows in most of the other third-floor rooms and was shrieking madly through the hallway and pounding against the closed door so hard that it would have buckled and burst open had it not been for the chiffonier wedged against it. But even though she could feel the walls shuddering around her, this room felt safe, and she let her mind drift to tomorrow and the work that would have to be done when the storm had passed. She knew that some of the slates were gone from the roof, because she could see large damp spots in the ceiling and the plaster was beginning to sag. But let it fall, she told herself. When this was over, a little fallen plaster could be easily mended.

  The children had eaten the rest of the sandwiches and cake and then, exhausted by the excitements of the day, had fallen asleep, Ida and Matthew close against Rachel, Angela in her arms, and the twins in Colleen’s lap. Their sleep was a blessing, Rachel thought, smoothing the damp golden curls from Angela’s forehead. When they woke to the bright sunshine of a new day, all these nightmare horrors would be gone. After a little time, they would forget—especially when their father managed to get home from the bank (surely one of the most secure buildings in the city) and they were all together at last. She was glad that she had forced herself to follow Colleen’s example and stay calm, keeping the little ones busy. Even Patsy, hardly more than a child herself and terrified at the thought of never seeing her parents and sisters again, was dozing now. The lamp cast shadows on their peaceful faces. Somewhere, there was a crash of glass. Another window had gone.

  “’Twon’t be long now,” Colleen said softly, and reached for Rachel’s hand.

  “I’m sure it won’t,” Rachel replied, almost giddy with relief at the idea that this ordeal would soon be over. “The storm has to pass soon and the winds will die down. And then the water will recede.” She had faith in the house that Augustus had built for her. Now, more than ever, it felt like a dear and constant friend, a sturdy sanctuary in the center of an unimaginable hell of wind and water. It sheltered her and the children within its loving walls, and even though the stone lions at their door were underwater, they still stood watch.

  Of course, there would be a terrible mess when the water went down. Augustus would be appalled when he got home and saw the damage to their beautiful home. The first-floor furnishings and draperies and carpets were doubtless a complete loss and would have to be replaced, and the carpets and some of the furniture on the second floor. The Tiffany windows were utterly smashed, she was sure, and the Steinway and Ida’s harp and Augustus’ favorite leather chair were ruined, although the crystal chandelier in the dining room might be salvaged. But whatever had been lost could be replaced, and replaced exactly. It was just a matter of money. They would all be together, she and Augustus and the children. And Colleen, too, of course—what would she have done if kind, strong Colleen had not come back to help? Rachel wasn’t sure she could have managed. No, she was quite, quite sure that she could not have.

  Smiling, she began to rock Angela, holding the child’s warm, sleeping body against her breast. “Sweet and low,” she sang. It was the sweet, soothing lullaby that the children always begged for when they were sick or very tired. “Sweet and low, wind of the western sea. Low, low, breathe and blow, wind of the western sea.” She touched the tip of Angela’s sweet, turned-up nose and smiled at Matthew and Ida, close beside her. They were all together now, and safe—except for Augustus, who would be with them when the storm had passed, soon now, very soon. “Over the rolling waters go, come from the dying moon and blow, blow him again to me. While my little ones, while my pretty ones, sleep.”

  Beside her, Colleen bent over the twins, cradling them in her strong, freckled arms, dropping kisses on their sleeping faces. “Sleep well, my angels,” she whispered. “’Twon’t be long now.”

  And at that moment, the mountain of wreckage that had toppled the Clines’ house hit the Blackwoods’ with an implacable force, jolting it completely off its foundations. The house tilted sharply to one side and began to topple, the bed and the chiffonier and Rachel and her children and Colleen and Patsy sliding with it. And in that one last, eons-long moment, Rachel realized with a burst of bone-freezing horror what Colleen had known all along.

  ’Twon’t be long now, my angels.

  ’Twon’t be long now.

  Chapter Seventeen

  At one time the holy water was sprinkled from brushes made of Rue…for which reason it is supposed it was named the Herb of Repentance and the Herb of Grace.

  A Modern Herbal

  Maud Grieve

  Here in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace;

  Rue, even for ruth, shall shortly here be seen…

  Richard II

  William Shakespeare

  What savor is better, if physicke be true

  For places infected than Wormwood and Rue?

  Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry

  Thomas Tusser

  In the language of flowers, rue represents grace and understanding, repentance, and forgiveness.

  China Bayles

  “Herbs and Flowers That Tell a Story”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Claire whispered apprehensively, looking at Ruby.

  I nodded (although I wasn’t so sure myself), and Claire sank back down in her seat.

  Ruby sat silently, her eyes half-closed, her head fallen a little to one side against the chair’s wing. Outside the window, a wild quicksilver flash lit up the sky and an almost-simultaneous crash seemed to reverberate in the floor beneath my feet. Startled, Claire and I both flinched. Ruby didn’t move. Wherever she was, she wasn’t with us—at least, not entirely.

  We sat, silently watching her in the flickering light, while the wind howled like a mad thing around the house. Claire and I seemed united in a strange and heightened awareness that was centered on Ruby, as if all three of us had slipped into a world of different dimensions than our own, a world that had shrunk to our small circle of chairs around the flickering lamp. Ruby’s eyes were completely closed now, her breathing almost imperceptible. Her carroty hair was disheveled, her face as still as carved marble and so white that each sandy freckle stood out distinctly.

  “She wants…” Ruby said. Her voice was flat and low, whispery, almost inaudible, and I remembered my thought: she was giving voice to Rachel. There was another long silence. Then: “She’s been waiting. Waiting a long time. Waiting for…” Her voice died away, as if the energy that powered her was waning.

  Claire cast a questioning look at me. I read h
er glance and nodded. Somebody needed to ask a leading question or two, and Claire knew a great deal more about this situation than I did. I wouldn’t know where to start.

  Claire leaned forward. “What’s she been waiting for?” Her voice was soft and neutral, and I nodded my approval.

  Ruby shifted in the chair as though the question made her uncomfortable. Her answer came slowly and with a frightened reluctance. “For…me.”

  Claire and I traded startled glances. It wasn’t the answer that either of us expected.

  “For you?” Claire asked. At my slight head shake, she gathered herself together and smoothed out her voice. “Why was she waiting for you, Ruby?”

  “Because of…because of Colleen.” When she spoke the name, Ruby turned her head a little and her muscles tensed, as if the sound of the name puzzled her, or perhaps troubled her. “Colleen.” She murmured it again, testing, questioning, probing. “Colleen. Colleen.”

  I leaned toward Claire. “Who’s Colleen?” I asked in a low voice.

  Claire was frowning, trying to make the connection. In an answering whisper, she said, “Colleen O’Reilly. She’s buried in the graveyard at the edge of the woods. We saw her gravestone this afternoon. We were thinking that she might have been a servant in this house back in old Mrs. Blackwood’s day, but we really don’t know who she is.”

  Ruby, or Ruby/Rachel, had heard us. “Not in this house,” she replied indistinctly. “The house in Galveston. The house Augustus built.” She sighed, and there was a musical jumble of words, in what sounded to my untutored ear like Gaelic. Then, clearly and distinctly and almost in wonderment: “Colleen O’Reilly was my grandmother’s mother. Gram Gifford’s mother.”

  Now I was really surprised. I knew about Gram Gifford, Ruby’s favorite grandmother. She had lived in nearby Smithville, and Ruby and Ramona had stayed with her during the summers until Ruby was ten and her parents divorced. But I had never heard Ruby mention her great-grandmother’s name, and I couldn’t even begin to guess why Colleen O’Reilly was buried in the private cemetery here. Obviously, Ruby’s connection to this place went very deep into the past, perhaps even deeper than Ruby herself could comprehend. And what was this about a Galveston house?