She rested her head on my shoulder. “I wish I’d been this much better yesterday,” she said quietly. “I should have been at your father’s funeral today.”
“He never stopped loving you,” I said. “He was here every day.”
“I know,” she said. “Even when I was deeply sleeping, I knew he was here, felt his hand holding mine, his kiss on my cheek.”
She stiffened then, holding back her sobs. Her face was against my shoulder, and I couldn't see the pain there. I felt it, though, thrumming though me the way the clang of the biggest, deepest-voiced church bell echoed inside you long after the ringing had stopped.
Mother drew in a deep breath, straightened, and took a step back to look me in the eyes. Hers were dry and clear. And firm—the eyes of a person who’d mapped out her future.
“We should move back home,” she said.
“The big house?” I shook my head, not wanting to think of the implications but needing to ask. “What about Jimmy? You made yourself sick standing in the cold and the rain so that when he came home, he would know we’d never stopped waiting. Now you want him to return and find the beach house empty?”
Mother sank back onto the bed, sitting on the edge, her hands folded one over the other in her lap. “It’s time for me to move forward, Cassie.”
“Why this change?” I said.
She held her breath a moment before answering. “I learned things while I was ill. I can’t tell you yet. I need time to think it through, to understand.”
I stared at her.
She smiled weakly. “Let’s go home. Both of us. To the big house.”
I rubbed the side of my face with my hand.
Mother continued before I could answer, “Both you and James were conceived and born in that house. I loved your father and you and Jimmy there for years longer than our time in Hermosa. I’ve never felt at home at the beach the way I do on Cicada Lane.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said, drawing the words out slowly while my mind spun.
“As for that woman, Belinda—” Mother snapped her fingers, a loud cracking sound. “She’s as gone as some housecleaner that came in once or twice when you were young. She means nothing.”
There was no point in protesting. Mother was going back to the big house, and that was that. First Father and now she seemed to be drawing me back there as well, but it wasn’t where I wanted to be. Still, I could stand it for a while, since it seemed to mean so much to her.
I cleared my throat. “Let’s focus on getting you out of this hospital. I’m sure you’re ready to be shut of it.”
“I am that,” Mother said. “My bag is already packed and the bill paid. Let’s go home.”
*
Mother threw herself into being Dr. Goodlight’s widow the way she’d thrown herself into the hunt for the gremhahn. She joined the Friends of the Library and plotted a charity event for children orphaned by the Great War. She tore out the rose bushes in back that we both guessed Belinda had planted, since Mother hadn’t and neither of us saw Father as a rosarian. She replaced the rose bed with a vegetable garden filled with rhubarb crowns and started strawberries in the greenhouse. Evidently pie would be on the dessert menu in the future. And while I knew Mother could throw herself wholeheartedly into whatever cause or quest she chose, I couldn’t help feeling that she, like Father, had come back from her illness changed. Even if it was for the better, she was someone else now.
*
Two weeks before Christmas, Mother and I piled into Father’s pea-green Lincoln sedan for the short drive to Father’s lawyers for the reading of the will. I hadn’t known she knew how to drive—Father had always taken the wheel—but she drove now with evident relish and a bit more wild abandon than I would have hoped for. I thought I understood her carelessness—the pending division of Father’s possessions made his death more solid and final somehow.
Mr. Grayson, the head of the firm, sat with Mother, me, and three other lawyers around a long walnut table. I’d known that as a family we were comfortably well off, but not so well off as the reading of the will revealed. Father had collected properties and buildings the way some men collected stamps. And, true to Father’s precise nature, he’d been very specific as to what percentage of the banked savings were to go to Mother, to me, and to be held in trust for Jimmy, along with which properties each of us received. Mother was named executor of Jimmy’s portion until he was either found or declared dead, at which point Jimmy’s share would be divided equally between Mother and me. A small bequest, which I didn’t begrudge, went to Belinda with his thanks for the comfort and companionship she’d provided him. Mother inherited the big house, as expected, but I was surprised that he’d left the beach house to me, free and clear. I supposed he’d known how much I loved it, and he didn’t want it sold away from me.
On the drive home I said, “Did you know Father was leaving the Hermosa house to me?”
Mother nodded as we skidded around a corner, and I held tight to the hand rest to keep from tumbling into her.
“I knew how the will was set up,” she said once we were going straight again. “Except for the money to Belinda, of course.”
She pulled to a stop at a Red Car crossing and said, “You should take what’s yours and move back to Hermosa.”
Her words so surprised me, I couldn’t reply.
“I know what you’ve been thinking,” she said, taking off again once the trolley had passed.
“You do?”
Mother nodded. “You think that since my illness I’ve changed. And of course you’re right. I lost my husband suddenly to an accident while I myself lay near death in the hospital. Things like that change a person. Puts things into perspective. I was wrong to drag you around searching for the sea goblin and Jimmy. I had no right to pull you into it.”
“I wanted to find them as badly as you did,” I said. “It’s my fault the gremhahn even knew Jimmy existed. He saw us on the beach and came that night to steal him away. If I hadn’t been so anxious—”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mother said. “It’s no more your fault than it was mine or your father’s. The fault lies with the thief, not with those stolen from.”
I knew she was right, but it didn’t lessen the guilt I felt. What I said was, “I’m glad you took me with you. I’m glad I was there to see you beat the sea goblin with a steel bar. I know that’s wrong, that vengeance belongs to the law and to God, but really, Mother,” I laughed slightly, “you were magnificent. It felt lovely to hear him cry for mercy.”
“For all the good it did,” Mother said, turning onto our block. “We lost Jimmy a second time that day.”
“In our minds, at least,” I said, broaching a subject I knew was tender. “But what if Jimmy was lost when the goblin first took him? What if the thing with the shell was a cheat, a game the goblin was playing?” The words were tumbling out, coming faster and faster. “And the curse he laid on me, that could be nothing. Probably is nothing. I know the goblin is real. I know we saw him change into that big ugly fish and dive into the water, but the rest of it could just be cruelty on the gremhahn’s part. Jimmy’s—”
“Dead,” Mother said as she pulled into our driveway. “But he’s not.” She turned the car off and laid her hand on top of mine. “I have changed since the illness. I see things now with a clarity and certainty I’ve never known before. I know Jimmy is in the sea. I know I should live here, in the home I shared with my husband and children. I know you should live by the ocean, have your own life. You might think it would be the other way, you should live here, with all your old friends around, and I should live at the beach and hunt for my son. But that’s not what fate has in mind. We each have our part to play, and we cannot take the other’s role.”
“Mama,” I said, and stopped. She was rambling and her words didn’t make sense. Maybe I should call her doctor. Ask him to come to the house, see if she was all right, really all right. I couldn’t think about her being sick that way, in the
brain.
“Cassie,” she said, “I’m not losing my mind. When I was ill I fell, one day, into a sudden, no-reason-for-it unconsciousness. While I was unconscious I had a dream. Not a dream, actually, but a vision. Everything that will happen was laid out in front of me.”
My breath caught in my chest. It was one thing to use tools like the compass and the ring to find the gremhahn—quite another to start seeing the future in fever dreams.
“Do you remember,” she said, “what I told you just before we left the hospital? That I’d learned things but couldn’t tell you until I’d had some time to think about it? The vision is part of what I was talking about. I needed time to determine if it was a function of being sick or a true thing. I know now it was true.”
“Okay,” I said. “Can you tell me the vision?”
Mother hiked one shoulder in a bit of a shrug. “I was under a tree on a green, grass-covered hill. The day was warm but not hot. A man walked up and said, ‘Don’t worry about not finding your son. He’s waiting for you, but his sister will find him, not you.’”
“And then?”
“Nothing. That was it. But I knew more than what the words said. I knew I should move here but not keep you with me forever, as much as I want to. If you’ll be the one to restore Jimmy to us, you need to be in the sea goblin’s territory, and that’s the ocean.”
“Who was the man?”
Mother shrugged again. “A fairy? A guardian angel? His wasn’t a face or voice I knew from this life.”
If I hadn’t seen the gremhahn turn into that giant fish with my own eyes, I might think my mother was completely insane. As it was, what she said sounded like truth. Her words settled over me like a robe that grew heavier the longer I sat and thought about them.
“It’s not your responsibility,” Mother said. “It’s something that will happen in the course of your normal life. If you searched for the gremhahn now, it would be wasted effort. You need to live your life and give it no more thought. Finding Jimmy and bringing him back to us will come naturally, if you let it.”
That was a relief at least.
“Am I right that you’d rather be at the beach house?” Mother said.
I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
She waved my concern away with a flick of her hand. “Cassie, you’re nineteen, a grown woman. I was engaged to your father at your age. It would be selfish of me to keep you from stretching out into your adult life. You can visit, of course.”
“I will,” I promised. “All the time. I’d miss you too much if I couldn’t see you, talk to you like always.”
Mother opened the car door on her side. “Good. It’s decided then.” She paused. “Aren’t you and Moira going to the movies tonight?”
Guilt twinged in me but I nodded. Moira and I had plans, but not for the movies. She’d convinced me to come with her to a jazz club called Mimi’s, where she said the music was hot and the young men sublime. That the club served illegal alcohol and could be raided at any time didn’t seem to worry her.
*
“You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Moira said when I walked into her room. She eyed the blue dotted Swiss middy blouse and white skirt with knife pleats I’d changed into at Mother’s.
“I’m supposed to be going to the movies, remember?”
“Good thing we’re about the same size,” Moira said and threw open her wardrobe doors. “Pick something.”
Moira’s father was a banker and her mother high society, and Moira dressed the part. My own wardrobe wasn’t lacking, but Moira’s put mine to shame.
“You pick,” I said.
Moira grinned. She loved clothes and had firm opinions about what worked best on all our friends. She rifled through the nicer dresses, segregated from the everyday frocks, and pulled out a sleeveless rose-pink chiffon dress with a handkerchief hem and handed it to me. She looked down at the plain black pumps I was wearing.
“Nothing we can do about the shoes,” she said. “But you wear that dress and no one will be looking at your feet.”
Moira and I had shared clothes all through high school but never shoes, since I wore a size larger than she did.
She was already wearing the gold shift dress she’d chosen for the night, and as soon as I had changed, she hustled me out the door for our night out. Her parents had gone out earlier for some society do, and neither the maid nor the cook had popped her head out of the kitchen when I’d come in. Neither did now as we left.
The club was in a nondescript gray building in downtown Los Angeles. The windows were covered as if the building were abandoned. Moira knocked, whispered something to the man who opened the door and slipped him some money. He stood aside, allowing us to enter a dark hallway that gave me the shivers. Moira obviously knew her way, and I followed her to another door that opened into the club itself.
The light dazzled me. The sheer number of people squeezed into the large room made me feel a little queasy. On a small stage at the back of the room, a mixed band of Negro and white musicians were playing “Home Again Blues,” and many of the people, mostly white but some Negro couples, were dancing. Those not dancing sat at small round tables covered in white tablecloths, set around the perimeter of the room.
This is a mistake, I thought, liking the music but not the rest. Too loud. Too bright. Too much color and laughter and women with cigarettes in long holders, men in tight-fitting sacque suits, everyone trying to impress everyone else. Father would have hated this place, too.
I sighed. Maybe if Father hadn’t died so recently I’d see Mimi’s with different eyes, curve my mouth into smiles, let laughter flow from between my lips.
Moira grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling me toward the bar at one side of the room. “Geeze, you look like I dragged you to school on exam day and for once you’re not prepared.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as we came to the long dark-wood bar. Mirrors ran the entire length of the back, visually doubling the number of people dancing, drinking, posturing.
“A gin rickey, please,” Moira told the bartender, a hard-faced man in his forties who glared at her a long moment before turning his harsh gaze to me.
“Champagne,” I said.
The man turned to get our drinks.
“Champagne?” Moira said. “Since when do you drink champagne, my teetotaling friend?”
I shrugged. “Since tonight.”
Moira huffed out a breath. “Good for you. I hope you feel like dancing. A few of the gents are already looking our way.”
I glanced around the room again. There was a number of young men who seemed not to have dates, and I thought dancing might be nice. It had been a while since I’d had fun and, dammit, I was here for a good time and I would have it. I might even laugh if a young man said something witty and amusing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really laughed, and I very much wanted to.
The band swung into “Hot Lips” and I found myself tapping my foot to the music as I looked around.
My perusal of the room stopped when I spied a man standing by himself near the stage. He was the most beautiful human I’d ever seen—brown hair, brown eyes I thought, but it was hard to tell at this distance, tallish, and he filled out his suit quite well. There was something rugged about him that put me in mind of the sea, but of course he could easily have been a ballet dancer or office clerk for all I knew. Maybe he felt my eyes on him, because he suddenly looked up, straight at me. I looked away and busied myself watching the bartender fill my glass with champagne. When I glanced over again, the man was no longer by the bandstand. I surreptitiously looked for him, but he seemed to have vanished.
The band was launching into a Dixieland piece and I’d barely sipped my drink when a tuxedoed man with a pencil moustache jumped onto the stage and motioned the band silent with his hand.
“Ladies and gentleman,” he called in a loud voice. “I do apologize, but we’ve just been notified that some uninvited guests of the law enforcement type ar
e on their way. If you would kindly exit.” He swept his arm to indicate another man, who pulled a curtain aside to reveal a door. The door wasn’t far from the bar. Moira swallowed down the last of her gin rickey, grabbed my hand, and with the rest of the crowd we sidled out of the building.
We found ourselves in an alley. People were scattering in both directions away from the club, like bats from a cave. I have a pretty good sense of direction and after a moment’s orientation knew which way to go to retrieve Moira’s car. I nudged her and began moving the way we needed to go.
“Can I offer you a ride?” a man’s voice behind us said. A voice as smooth as melted butter and honey.
I turned and saw the beautiful human. Up close he was even more breathtaking. Older than me, but not by much. I’d been right that his eyes were brown, a color so rich and deep they seemed almost unnatural. My throat was suddenly very dry and I swallowed hard to relieve it.
“Paxton Yeager,” he said, with a small dip of his head as he introduced himself.
Moira seemed struck dumb. She stared at Paxton Yeager, her mouth a little open, but no words came out.
“Thank you, but our car is nearby,” I said.
He dipped his head again, turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Moira grabbed hold of my upper arm.
“Why did you say we had our car?” she said. “He would have driven us home, or maybe to another club. We could have come back and gotten my car tomorrow. My parents wouldn’t even have noticed.” She glanced back at the place where he’d stood. “Did you see him? That is the most dreamy man I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
I frowned. “I didn’t know that your parents wouldn’t notice. My mother would have a fit if I took the car out and didn’t return with it. Besides, he could be anyone—a murderer of silly women who get in his car, for all we know.”
Moira rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Cassie. Have you no adventure in your soul?”
We drove home with Moira singing “My Man” a few times through, as if she were Fanny Brice, followed by “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “There’ll be Some Changes Made.” I sat quietly through the songfest, thinking of the beautiful human and how, if the law had come, Mother would have been more upset because I’d lied to her than that I’d been arrested. I thought, too, about her vision that I would be the one to find Jimmy. Now, how was I to do that?
The Girl with Stars in her Hair Page 8