Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

by Barbara Hand Clow

  “My mother, Rose, supervised the restoration when I was a toddler. She is a decorative arts fanatic, so she researched the original décor and then copied it as closely as possible. It was a wreck when they bought it more than thirty years ago, but most of the original features were still there, hidden in grime. The work was constant for a few years. We treasure it because she did it so well. It is aging gracefully like fine wine, and all we have to do is repair the exterior occasionally. Would you like a tour?”

  Warm and inviting feelings flooded her heart as she looked around the front parlor. Highly polished dark woodwork and bright blue-and-white Minton fireplace tiles carried her back to the nineteenth century. Afternoon sunlight dappled the wavy glass set in high round-topped windows and framed by mauve velvet drapes. The mantle was crowded with intriguing photos. One was Simon when he was around twelve with thick and wavy chestnut hair, standing by a friendly-looking border collie; another an old white yacht with a blue Norwegian flag; another of a happy young couple by the beach; and one a picture of a strikingly elegant young woman in front of Notre Dame in Paris. Simon loved seeing the curiosity and excitement in Sarah’s face as she examined his family pictures.

  “What a wonderful house,” she exclaimed as he took her arm again and led her into the library behind the parlor. The small, intimate room was suffused by soft light coming in through tall windows above a green leather window seat. The windows admitted good light even though the red brick building next door was quite close. Dark wood bookcases lined the walls, and the fireplace was tiled with small red-and-blue checks. She asked, “Were the original owners Dutch? Were they early New York Dutch aristocrats?”

  “Ah, very astute of you, Sarah. But how do you know?”

  “Well, anybody might have Minton tiles on a fireplace like yours back in 1860, but I think only a Dutch person would have chosen red-and-blue checks in New York at that time.”

  Simon grinned. “Boy, are you and my mother going to get along or what? Sounds like you two have been dipping into exactly the same books! Actually, my parents had a fight about these tiles because my father thought they were corny. So she dug up an original pastel drawing of this room that was sketched by the architect,” he said, laughing. “And there they were, just as she said they would be!”

  He led her through the library into the dining room with more rounded tall windows, a room in the back of the building with a view out into a small walled garden. A gleaming dark cherry table for eight was set for two at one end with china, crystal, and silver. “I really had fun getting this stuff out for you, and now you are in for a treat, the kitchen garden.” They passed through a door into a small galley kitchen and then out the back door and down a few steps into a walled patio with an outdoor brick oven. “As you would know, the kitchen would have once been in the basement for servants; however, my mother designed a small butler-type kitchen in a maid’s room on this floor for convenience to the back patio where we pretty much live when it is warm enough. We’ll see if we ever make it back into the dining room tonight!” He led her to a seat by a small table and went back inside for a moment.

  She crossed her legs and settled back in the chair, letting her senses take over. Slightly acrid aromas exuded from old brick walls still warmed by the fading sun. Irises and daffodils in a mason jar on the table blended their scents. He returned with a martini shaker and an ornate Portuguese clay dish filled with cheeses, crackers, and olives. Proudly putting it all in front of her, he sat down. “This sure is more relaxing than the daily chaos and rancor of central Jerusalem!” Simon held the shaker aloft and tipped it, its contents cascading down into two long-stemmed glasses. As he handed her a brimming glass, she reached for it with both hands. He sat down and reached his hands out to encircle her fingers on the glass. “First you drink, then me because I’m so happy you are here right now.”

  She tasted it while his fingers enveloped hers. Then he tipped her glass to his mouth, drawing in the cool intense liquid through his lips while looking into her startled eyes, thinking I feel like a satyr. He put her glass down, and then picked up his own.

  The silky coolness of the garden stimulated Sarah. She knew he was eyeing the lines of her neck. He asked, “Do you ever view a garden as time-lapse film growing through the spring, summer, and into fall? Do you ever feel like you’ve been in a place just like this before, a hint of times long ago? Of course, it is a primordial garden.”

  A subtle shift is occurring, she mused. Tonight his eyes reveal his feelings instead of just his thoughts. He scanned her face as she thought about what he’d just said. I could sink into his eyes. His voice settled down lower into a new intimate tone. “I will just say it. I have missed you so much this past month that I’ve forgotten who I am or ever was.”

  As he spoke, she moved backward through a tunnel that opened out into a landscape of dry yellow soil and ancient medium-green dry trees, a pale blue sea visible far in the distance. Her inner eye sought the meaning of this scene as her lips became sensitive, and she absentmindedly touched her lower lip with her index finger. Where is it? I see this place again, southern Portugal. Snapping back into current time, she felt his hands firmly cupping her face as he rose up and kissed her for the very first time. She did not resist him, yet she saw him through a distorted-looking glass. Warmth suffused her lower body. Her face tingled as his fingers lightly stroked her cheek while his lips sought hers. She drew back wryly, smiling, and said, “Do you remember our agreement in Rome?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I intend to keep it, but first . . .” And before she realized what he was doing, he firmly stood her up and drew her to him. “You need to know what my body feels like with yours, just like this first kiss. Whatever happens with us, we must know what our bodies feel like together.” He held her very closely but respectfully as he carefully fitted his body to hers while enjoying her long back with his sensitive hands and arms.

  Sarah was amazed by his gentle control, not knowing that just before she arrived he’d stopped time by sitting at this very same table and visualizing this exact embrace. Feeling the joy of his touch, she cascaded rhapsodically back through a wall of water edged with warm flames. The exquisite early evening summer breezes fluttered through the long hair falling down her back as she surrendered to his hands exploring the back of her waist and moving down. She felt free because she felt his respect for her; he would not invade her. He’s worshipping me just for the sheer joy of it! He’s asking me for my feminine power from long ago. Then she laughed and said, “Well, now do you feel like you know my body? I hope so, because I’m serious about our agreement.”

  She needs to draw away. I don’t mind, since I have gone where I intended to go. I’m surprised she has so much self-control. He ran his right hand through her hair while kissing her forehead, released her, and they sat down. Eventually they went inside and enjoyed steak and salad in the dining room. Before she knew it, she was back in a cab driving into Manhattan to her hotel where she drifted into the twilight zone. What is it—the cork forest in Portugal with the blue sea in the distance? Once asleep, she dreamed of a stocky, well-formed man wearing leather overalls and a rough linen shirt walking up a hill carrying an iron tool that was used for scoring the year dates on cork trees. As she drifted into deep sleep, she saw he had Simon’s dark eyes.

  During the long drive to the eastern end of Long Island to reach the ferry to Shelter Island, Simon and Sarah talked and talked. As if nothing unusual had happened the night before, they shared all their experiences of the past couple of months. While she prattled on, he was thinking about something else. I want her. We became lastingly connected last night and she won’t go away. She knows my body. I’ve planted a garden in her heart.

  Walking off the ferry, they saw his parents standing there. Sarah first noticed Simon’s father, David, who was exceedingly distinguished and urbane with silver hair, an animated angular face, and quick movements; his darting incisive gray eyes drew her right in. His wide
smile, showing even teeth, was genuine. He extended his hand to Sarah while Rose stood back watching. Sarah responded warmly to his handshake and avid welcome. Rose was surprised Simon had brought home such a beauty. I’m amazed by his deep intention. I’ve never seen this look in his eyes before. Discreetly appraising Sarah’s white sandals and loose blue dress, she thought the attire complemented her long, beautifully-shaped legs. Rose felt challenged by Sarah’s startling grace until Sarah turned to her, smiled tentatively, and shyly offered her hand. Her warmth and strength grabbed Rose, and she found herself welcoming Sarah with her own genuine warmth.

  As they drove out to the Gardiner’s Bay side of the island in an old gray SUV, waving tufts of sea grass bent against the salty wind flooded with noisy sea gulls, herons, and crows. Simon told the story of Rose and David finding the house more than twenty years ago, and how they spent every summer here. “Appel” painted on a driftwood sign caught Sarah’s eye as they turned into a crushed rock driveway snaking through small pines that struggled to grow in the sandy soil and constant wind. They pulled into the back of a weathered gray-shingled house with medium blue trim and went inside. Rose showed Sarah to a large airy room on the second floor with a balcony looking out to the sea and made her comfortable by telling her to enjoy the run of the house and rest for a while.

  A few hours later, Rose found Sarah in the library buried in a pile of large books. Sarah was so absorbed that she didn’t even hear Rose’s footsteps in the hallway, which gave Rose a moment to stand quietly and observe her. Sarah had pulled out a pile of out-of-print, nineteenth-century decorative art books, and she was engrossed in one of Rose’s favorites—Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture: Buildings that have Disappeared or been so Altered to be Denatured by John Mead Howells. Rose studied Sarah’s face in its most concentrated mode. Her eyes danced and gleamed, and her mouth moved expressively while she read, drinking in the compelling images. Rose was charmed by Sarah’s total absorption in a subject that meant a great deal to Rose. Now I see why Simon is so taken with her.

  Sensing Rose’s presence, Sarah looked up and said, “Simon made dinner for us in your Brooklyn Heights home, and I love your restoration. It is one of the most authentic and charming that I’ve ever seen. I also love beautiful old buildings, although I’m concentrating on ancient history right now.”

  Rose responded, “Nothing gives me more joy than saving something from the past, houses and antiques that express the true essence of a period. I feel like we’ll lose touch with each other and our family lines without retaining our feelings for the past. These days, things are going so fast that nobody seems to care about beauty. So, maybe it is even more important to save things than it ever has been? The intensity of the destruction is ferocious with developers consuming material reality like carnivores. When I can’t take the modern world, I sit in this library poring over my collection of books for hours. I time travel with them, which restores my hope in the future. Or at least it keeps me from going crazy.”

  “I know exactly what you mean, Rose,” Sarah responded. “Maybe you can empathize with my need to study the early Church? Instead of wanting to save antiques or old buildings, I want to salvage and help restore the real story of the life of Jesus. I know it may seem like an odd and futile quest, but the Catholic Church is just as bad as a developer that trashes old treasures for money. Because of modern scholarship and remarkable archaeological discoveries, we can now reconstruct the true story of Jesus. Many people want to recover what was lost two thousand years ago.” She gestured to the book in her lap, where she’d been paging through photos of the Boston Custom House, the Franklin Crescent, and daguerreotypes of front doorways. “I’ve never seen this book before. These photographs show what we’ve lost—the remnants of America’s early days. The lost voices of people who believed in Jesus long ago speak to me as the haunting buildings in these evocative photos do.”

  Rose perched on the edge of a leather settee. “What an intriguing comparison, one I never would have made. Of course, I haven’t thought much about Jesus, but I’ve always felt something big must have been going on in his life because his imprint is still so potent. Actually his imprint is very much like the psychic imprint of destroyed buildings; one just knows he was important.” She paused, searching Sarah’s eyes. “Do you ever feel like a house, building, work of art, or an antique actually emits personality, memory, and presence? This is not something I discuss with most people. But from what you are saying and your response to Lost Examples, I think I can ask you.”

  Sarah studied Rose’s strong Middle Eastern features, a prominent nose and an expressive mouth boldly accentuated by red lipstick. Her body was strong, forceful, and slightly stooped. Simon’s delicate facial features and physique came more from his father, but Simon has his mother’s dark eyes. I see the same mysterious deep blue flashes in her eyes. And, like Simon, when she’s making a point, she moves her hands in wide sweeps. Searching for the right words to describe something she almost never shared with others, she said, “When I go to an old neighborhood, such as lately in Rome, I stand in front of old houses or buildings that still have many original features. By relaxing my hold on current time, I can feel my way back into the probable timeline of the structure; this is palpable. Then something amazing happens: a whole movie unfolds in color of it being built, families living in it, the history of time flowing through it. When I’ve researched a building, I’ve found I did see the correct season and year of the building and the flow of events that came in time. My read on events is so accurate that I must be detecting past imprints. In other words, I think I read buildings similar to how some say they can see ancient battles at battlefields. I volunteered for a local historical society in Boston when I was a teenager, but I spooked them! This skill is quite useful to me now because I use it in my historical research. I feel past events. Have you ever felt anything like this?”

  Rose nodded. “Yes, I have, Sarah, and I’ve used these feelings to guide my restorations and to figure out where to put things. I’ve found objects that were in houses in the past and then put them back where they were before! Luckily, there were a few relics in the attic of the Brooklyn Heights home, and I had some uncanny experiences with them. Look at the daguerreotype of the West Gate of the Salem Common by Samuel McIntire on the opening page of the book you are holding.”

  Sarah flipped to the front of the book and looked back up at Rose.

  Placing her finger on the page, Rose continued, “I found that same daguerreotype in the attic. I suppose it was a popular tourist souvenir in its day. I just knew it had been on a certain wall in the parlor of our home, so I put it there. A year later, I found an early photo of our furnished parlor in the Peabody Museum in Salem.” She gestured excitedly with her arm. “There it was on exactly the same wall!

  “Then one day when I was alone in the parlor on a rainy afternoon, I studied it for a long time, feeling energy being drawn to it from around the parlor. The thoughts of people looking at it in the past came into my mind as if they were reaching me through a veil while I enjoyed the image. So I invited them back into the parlor for a visit and they came!” She smiled broadly, and then her face grew thoughtful. “It was wonderful to feel connected with the people who had lived in our home in the past, yet as their thoughts precipitated in my mind, I found myself overwhelmed with how different I am from them. I’ll never know them or their times, never understand their minds. Knowing this has reduced the intensity of my quest to recapture the past, which was getting obsessive. Maybe this primary realization might be useful for you? What I mean is, millions have tried to figure out who Jesus was and what he meant to the world. Seems like the more people go down that road, the more he recedes. How can we ever bridge that gap, the great chasm?”

  “Your experience sounds fascinating!” Sarah replied. “And I understand what you mean, but that gap is exactly what I’m trying to understand. Have you thought much about how quantum physics might explain what’s really go
ing on in our world, especially regarding time? For example, what if potent feelings and beliefs imprint photons or light particles in places and things? Do they switch back and forth between particles and waves according to whether we tune in to them or not? What if ancient things that people feel so strongly about are especially loaded with these photons? Maybe we liberate particles when we access memories? What if we can, in a sense, bring things back into the current moment or field if we have the capacity to feel things like this, such as you and I do?”

  “It is intriguing to hear you put it that way,” Rose replied. “I do know that nobody ever feels alone in our parlor. It’s as if presences from the past are all around.”

  Simon walked into the book-littered library to find Sarah and Rose engaged in animated conversation. I can’t believe I’ve found a woman my mother likes so much. Sarah didn’t notice Simon was there as she said, “I think that’s why I don’t like new buildings. What I feel in Tuscany and Rome is amazing, the glow of antiquity. We don’t have these profound feelings here because we are such a young country.”

  Simon cleared his throat, and the ladies realized he was in the room. “Dad is waiting for us on the porch. It’s almost six o’clock!”

  13

  Simon Magus

  There was something unique buried deep inside Simon, and his father was the only person who knew the whole truth about him. Simon and David shared their deepest thoughts during times together on Shelter Island, a tradition that had begun when Simon was seven years old.

  After both Sarah and Rose retired to their bedrooms for an evening of reading, Simon and David took a walk on the beach and then went into David’s study, his very private and favorite room off the back hall behind the kitchen. Before David had chosen it, it had been the summer cook’s suite. The cook’s suite may have seemed an odd choice for a study, but it had a large window with a view of the sea. David loved looking over the tall yellow grass and through the scraggly pines out to sea. Years ago Rose had lain out there on the sand in a faded denim dress with her rich brown hair blowing in the wind just like the young woman in the sand dunes by Andrew Wyeth. What could be better than a window where he could sit at his desk and gaze out to the sea, a lovely contrast to the intimate interior with its cozy fireplace.