Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack

by Heidi von Palleske

  Elaine stood, back to the door, pouring flour into a bowl, followed by the other dry ingredients, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of baking powder. Yorkshire pudding was a very easy recipe and the results always brought smiles, as if it were more of a task than it actually was. She could make them more often, but then they wouldn’t be special, and the family would catch on that, perhaps, it wasn’t a magical recipe, after all.

  “Yorkshire pudding! My favourite! Is Tristan home?”

  Elaine turned, milk bottle in hand, and saw Jack with two girls. Two white, pale, thin, almost ethereal girls. She felt she was looking at a spectre, or rather two identical spectres. Here they were, the girls whose mother had sacrificed herself to the waves. Was it a test, a message, or a sign, perhaps? Elaine believed in signs, even though she prided herself as a woman of science. She would, for instance, never admit to anyone that she always stepped over every crack in the pavement. Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.

  “This is Clara and Blanca, friends of mine. I met them at the concert with Tristan a few months ago. They came in second.”

  “Nice to meet you.” The taller one extended her hand.

  They do not recognize me. Or are they pretending? Should I say something or just hope for the best? I was the messenger, the one who told them the truth and broke their little hearts.

  Elaine glanced at the painting in the living room. There they were, sirens in the water, as younger girls. And their mother, walking into the waves. She would have to devise a way to remove it before they noticed it. But how?

  “Jack, why don’t you go upstairs and see Tristan. I know he is dying to see you. Bring the girls, too.”

  “Okay, if you say so. Should I tell him dinner is almost ready?”

  “Sure.”

  They passed by her, went to the stairs, and seemed not to notice the painting over the fireplace. Before Elaine could get to it, Gareth was there, lifting it down and stashing it behind the sofa. He frantically looked for something to hang in its place, but his mother waved him off.

  “Go on upstairs, I’ll find something.”

  “Thanks, Mom. You know I didn’t paint it to upset them.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “But I did have to paint it. And I can’t hide it forever.”

  “Give me five minutes, then it’s dinner. I’ll go find the macramé. That couldn’t offend anyone.”

  “Well, really, Mom, it does offend anyone with good taste.”

  Elaine shooshed him out of the way with her tea towel. She opened the smoking oven with its fat-melted cupcake trays, plopped in her doughy mixture, then looked for the macramé wall hanging.

  And all that time she thought about the woman with the red hair who walked into the lake and never returned. How she had planned it secretly and all they thought was that she collected rocks. How naive! How trusting! Elaine wished that there were such a thing as a time machine. If she could go back, she could change things. She would listen harder. She’d pay heed to every word said after each and every treatment, knowing that there were always clues. But she was only a nurse. A caregiver and not someone with power.

  As she lifted the ugly macramé, she knew that one day the girls would have to see her son’s painting. But not today, she thought, not today. Today there would be a perfect Sunday meal.

  Tristan was lying on his boyhood bed, surrounded by his old movie posters. He opened his drawer in the bedside table next to him. There it was, the patch he had tried so many times, covering his good eye, willing the lazy, substandard eye to perform better. Had he not tried hard enough? Not wanted it badly enough to suffer through the exercise? He was just too vain to cover the good eye. Or maybe he just gave up too easily?

  School was getting tough. All the deconstruction of old films and the overcomplication of examining why the director chose a particular shot or lens was a constant frustration for him. Because it looks cool. But that didn’t cut it with his professors, they wanted essays and a thesis on the effect German expressionist films had on modern-day American cinema. Well, of course, he knew that they affected film. Hadn’t he seen every Fritz Lang film available to him? Even the early ones like Die Spinnen, and Der Müde Tod, films he had made before he met Thea von Harbou, his collaborative partner, his love, and his writer till she died. And what a looker she was, with wide-set intelligent eyes, a full mouth, and that perfectly coifed hair coming off her face, away from her high forehead! Wasn’t that a sign of intelligence, a high forehead? Everything about her said, Here is a woman who is as smart as she is beautiful. Surely she had been his great muse. And why not, a woman like that!

  Tristan tried to conjure the perfect muse. A woman like Thea von Harbou, smart and insightful. But even she did not inspire the feelings he desired. He popped his top button on his jeans, keeping his seeing eye focused on the door and his blind eye focused on his fantasy. He reached inside, beyond the soft denim, and imagined the perfect V-line, like an arrow pointing southward. Then he thought of jeans falling away to reveal a young man’s hips. A trail of downy hair from the belly button downward like a sacred path. He yearned to follow that pathway with his mouth, while his hands traced the V-line of his imagination. And then jeans would fall away from his body, revealing an equal excitement. Yes, this is his muse. Someone who could meet him in every way as an equal. Someone to mirror him. His hand was now his muse’s hand, stroking, touching, and stroking again …

  “Trist? Hey, it’s Jack!”

  Tristan leapt from his bed.

  “Just a minute,” he called out.

  “I have some friends here.”

  “Okay, give me a sec!”

  Tristan took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He sat on the edge of his bed and did the only thing he could to quiet his excitement. He shut his seeing eye and, as the world ceased to exist around him, his erection ceased, as well.

  He opened the door, happy to greet his brother’s best friend.

  “Ta-da! Remember the twins?” Jack asked, presenting the girls with a flourish.

  Clara and Blanca entered Tristan’s bedroom. The space seemed tight and cramped with the four of them, but perhaps that was because of the many movie posters pressing down upon them. Clara approached one, The Quiet Man, because she thought Maureen O’Hara looked like her mother. Or at least the way she would like to remember her mother.

  “What’s this one about?”

  “About a boxer who kills someone then runs away to Ireland, but falls in love with a crazy redhead.”

  “Did he kill him on purpose?” Clara asked.

  “No.”

  “Why Ireland?” she persisted.

  “His family was from there originally. And then there was some argument about land and this other guy hates him, but then he falls for the guy’s sister.”

  “Sounds like every star-crossed romance. Misunderstandings and then it all works out,” said Blanca. Clara knew that Blanca was just showing off again. How many movies had they actually seen?

  “I guess it does,” laughed Tristan. “But this is the one that really made John Wayne a star.”

  Blanca shrugged. No big deal. She’d never seen a John Wayne film.

  “By the way, I thought you should have won. You know, that night at Massey Hall? You two were the best. But second prize is pretty good, right?”

  When they came in second that night, when the emcee called their names and said “Bleach,” the crowd cheered for them. They had been the favourite. They had stepped forward, leaving whomever would be the winner standing alongside the unnamed losers. They were set apart, no longer in that nerve-wracking position. They were told to stand beside the third-place Bowie lookalike, on stage right. There were some “bravos” shouted out. But all that Clara could think was, We’ve lost, we didn’t come in first. There is first place and then there is everyone else. As they stood there, Blanca took Clara’s hand and squeezed it hard. So hard that Clara could only think of her fingers and not about
coming in second.

  “It was a great night. We got lots of exposure and I am sure something will come of it,” Blanca replied politely, but deep down she was just as disappointed as her sister.

  “Dinner’s ready, we’re just waiting for my dad!” Gareth shouted up the stairs.

  “Better wash my hands,” Tristan said. “Don’t be touching my stuff while I’m gone.”

  “Oh, Trist, you know I’ll have my hands all over your stuff.” Jack smirked.

  The boys started laughing and, for the first time in their lives, the twins understood what it was like for other people to be on the outside when they were together and in sync.

  “Did this movie win any awards?” Clara asked, indicating The Quiet Man poster.

  “Yes, it won the Academy Award for best direction,” Tristan replied.

  “Oh.” Clara smiled. “And who came in second that year?”

  They came in second in a music contest. So what? The judges probably felt sorry for them. Pathetic little things! Couldn’t have won first prize because that would be too encouraging, but a second place was just right. It was just a bit of kindness toward those ugly little ducklings. Yep, that’s what they were, all right. Noisy little ducklings with white, uneven feathers, struggling and fighting to get their share of the stale bread.

  Still, those big notions should never have been put into their heads by that woman downstairs in the first place. Singing and playing the piano and all that talk about how to behave if the Queen invited them to tea. It was fine when they were nine and ten, but it should have stopped ages ago. The best they could hope for would be to get jobs as checkout girls at the grocery store. This was all just tomfoolery! Musical tours and audiences and all that crap!

  The old man sat on the edge of his twin-sized bed. He really should slide the rest of the way down to the floor, to kneel and pray before God, but everything ached. Pancreatic cancer was a bitch. He was half his usual size, shaky and disoriented much of the time. Of course, his self-medicating cure, half a bottle of cheap cooking sherry every morning to chase down the two heaping tablespoons of curry powder, did leave him just a bit off-kilter for the whole day. Note to self, he thinks, no tricycle-riding today and maybe three tablespoonfuls of the curry powder.

  He knew it was working. He could feel the cancer being beaten down by the curry and sherry. Like they were attacking where the doctors with their medications and cures could not. He might beat this bugger yet. Sherry, curry, and faith in the Lord. There would be no chemo for him.

  “Oh Lord, forgive me for not getting onto my knees. I fear I would never get up again,” he spoke out loud, but then regretted it. Surely the Lord would give him the strength to rise up after his little talk.

  “I got a few things on my mind. Ya see, my awkward little granddaughters … well, ugly, really … but I shouldn’t say that since ya made ’em. But hey, ya can’t hit it out of the ballpark every time, can ya? I mean, look at all those sunsets ya do, night after night! Ya can’t be on all the time. Now, look, they are sweet, even though they are hard on the eyes, God. But that’s the thing, right? If ya let me die, who will they have, eh? Who else could bear lookin’ at ’em? Even my son, Bob, is starting to find them … well, you know, creepy. He thinks it’s a sad thing the freak show don’t exist no more. Heh! Said we could’a sold ’em to them. Now, you know he was jokin’, right? So, anyhow, ya gotta let me live, because someone’s gotta take care of your failures and I am that man. Your humble servant. Amen.”

  That should do it. Give the big guy in the sky an unselfish reason and surely he would let him live a while longer. Although there was a bit of truth in his prayer. He was worried about the twins being at their uncle Bob’s if something happened to him. Not that he believed the stories (no, lies, all lies!) from the devil-tongued daughter of his. She weren’t evil, though, he knew that much. But evil had penetrated her and she’d suffered for it. God rest her troubled soul.

  Besides, if there was something to it, she silenced herself, didn’t she? And wasn’t that a sin? But who was to know what really happened? All in the past now. Now his concern was to keep gossip away and make sure the girls were safe. They needed him, after all. Just to watch out and keep an eye on them. Keep rumours and threats away from them.

  But these crazy ideas that they could be famous singers! Sure, there were some freaky-looking singers these days, but they wouldn’t last. Didn’t they know what real singers looked like? They looked like Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Emmylou Harris. Women with big hair, fresh faces, and healthy bodies. Women without pink rabbit eyes.

  “Lord have pity on my granddaughters” he added to his prayer. “Let them down easy. And stop that Jew-woman downstairs from filling their heads with nonsense. Singing contests. I’d be damned! Amen.”

  The old man reached for some painkillers and washed them down with the last few ounces of the leftover sherry from the morning’s bottle.

  Esther was cleaning up the evening meal plates, stacking the white dishes one on top of the other, largest to smallest. It had been a simple meal, the heat stopping her from cooking and heating up the apartment. Even with a cross-draft, it could get hot in there. So it was cold plates with a beet salad, greens, and some smoked fish from the delicatessen. Weird food, the twins had proclaimed the time she tried to introduce them to smoked fish with sour cream and dill on the side. Well, you cannot change Rome in a day, as they say. And they had learned some manners; they’d learned to fold their napkins and which fork to use at the right time. They had come a long way. They had come so far that they would soon be far away from her, as well.

  Esther had seen how the old man was suffering upstairs. Cancer eating away at his body, leaving him weak and dizzy. Twice last week she had helped him upstairs to his third-floor apartment, the air growing hotter and more stale with every step. It was the first time she had peered into his flat with its low ceilings, stained carpets, and general debris. There were dirty clothes and linens in a pile on the floor, dishes with half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches and ketchup beside the TV, which was on and blasting. The bed was unmade with stained and faded sheets. What could have been a sweet apartment, a quirky place like so many she had lived in during her youth, was a mistreated home, smelling of smoke, grease, and dirty feet.

  “Where do the girls sleep when they are here?” she had asked.

  “On the bed. I sleep on the sofa when they’re here. It’s a big sofa so I’m okay with it.”

  “Both of them? In a single bed?”

  “Well, they are skinny little things and they’re used to it. Been their bed since they were toddlers. When they weren’t at their uncle’s. We used to share them. Now they’re here mostly.”

  “I see.”

  Used to it doesn’t make it right, she thought to herself, but her demeanour did not betray her. She simply supported him with her arm and helped him to his disgusting little bed with its one lumpy foam pillow.

  No wonder the girls were her constant visitors throughout the years. She had always thought the visits were solely because of their love of music and their desire to learn about the world, but no, it was as much about escaping as it was about glimpsing what was possible. Escape could be as good a muse as love or misery or heartbreak and, if anyone knew about escape, it was Esther. Annihilation can come in many forms. A holocaust. A smothering of identity. The killing of dreams. The erasing of the soul.

  Self-preservation is strong in the young. It has to be. When others have perished around you, there is the thought you carry all your days, that any life thrown away is a mockery to those lives that have been lost. If you survive then you have to live life harder, with more love and forgiveness in your heart. You cannot waste a day on hate or revenge because, if you do, then evil wins and your survival means nothing. She had an obligation to survive for everyone who didn’t and so she ran faster than reason, faster than duty, and faster than the love that bound her. Only when she caught her breath could she take i
nto account what had been lost.

  If her hair had been dark like her sisters’, if the guard hadn’t turned a blind eye because she was good-looking, if a letter hadn’t arrived from a long-lost uncle and found her in Switzerland … all of these ifs brought her into the life of these two girls. Their birth into abuse was as arbitrary as her survival had been.

  Esther looked for her stationery, a cream-buff paper with a gold edge. A request always demanded style and reverence. She fetched her address book. A proper apprenticeship was what they needed. She still had some contacts in Europe, after all.

  When Jack came home from dinner at his friends’ house he was careful not to be noisy, tiptoeing in, quietly removing his shoes, slipping past his mother’s bedroom so as not to wake her. But there was no reason for it; he could hear the soft, stifled crying on the other side of the door. Surely it wasn’t about his father, that had been ages ago now and she was better off without him.

  “Mom?” He knocked on her door. No answer, but the sniffling stopped abruptly. “Mom?” he called out again. “I know you’re awake.”

  “You were out late. You had a good time, yes?” She did pretty well, but there was still a small crack in her voice, giving away the night of tears.

  “Can I come in?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, he walked in and sat at the edge of the bed. There was a heap of tissues piled on the bedside table, evidence that it had been a long night of tears.

  “What happened, Mom?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. That is the point.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sometimes it is better not to have a taste of something new because then you want a whole meal of it, and perhaps deep down you know that it isn’t good for you. You know you will never be satisfied with the food you normally eat. The food you need for survival.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think that for once you could just tell me what’s going on instead of always speaking in food metaphors?”