But when I come to myself, I am not on the plaza as I expect to be. I am lying prone on a broad stairway with my arms wrapped around a wooden post—a communion rail, I slowly realize. I look up. I recognize the shape of the vaulted arches above my head and the stained glass depictions of the stations of the cross. I am inside the chapel.
I stumble to my feet, dizzy and disoriented. Beyond the rail, the altar stands bare. The altar cloth lies on the floor beneath it, a heap of embroidered laundry. A huge Bible lies beside it, stricken from its stand, pages bent and torn, spine broken. I turn and face the pews. Missals lie scattered in the aisles. Smoke rises in ghostly ribbons from the wicks of a dozen extinguished votive candles.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope. O remember that my life is wind. The words echo inside my skull.
A cold draft moans through the nave, ruffling the pages of the scattered missals; or is it someone laughing? The hair on the back of my neck stands up. My heart quickens, a hundred beats a minute, a hundred and ten, two every second. I bolt from the chapel, through the double doors, and into the sunlight.
I am halfway across the quad before I can overcome my panic enough to stop running. I pant and glance around to make sure no one has seen my windmilling flight. After a moment, I force myself to walk slowly, deliberately toward the cafeteria, repeating in a low whisper, “I am tired. I must have imagined it all. I am tired …”
When I reach the cafeteria, I buy a sugar doughnut and black coffee. While I stand in line at the cash register, a hundred wild thoughts jostle against each other in my brain, trying to dislodge my careful concentration on the mundane matters of napkins and correct change.
It doesn’t matter what I tell myself. I know what I saw was real. The chapel looked as if a gale had been set loose inside it. It looked as if my nightmare had come to life. But this is childish nonsense, and I am not a child anymore. I am twenty years old, twenty-one in November—too old to be frightened by dreams, especially dreams like these. I have never been on a ship in my life. And as for the wind, I have always loved being out in it—flying kites, or even just walking, wrapped up in a snug coat and hat. I cannot recall any reason to fear either wind or ships.
But while I count out two quarters, a dime, two nickels, and place them in the cashier’s hand, the great fact of my life runs its bony fingers up my spine, as it has countless times before. I will never be an entirely known quantity to anyone, even to myself. I may never know where the nightmare came from. I am no ordinary person. I am not even an ordinary orphan. I am, in fact, a foundling.
I sit down at one of the tables outside and watch analytically while tears splash into my steaming coffee. I can’t bring myself to look up and see who is pulling out the chair across from me.
“Hey.”
It is Fairfax. She places the palm of her hand on my forehead and pushes gently, until my face is tilted up toward hers.
“What’s the matter?” she says.
I shake my head. I’m not sure I can talk yet, not even to Fairfax. But an instant later, the words come out in an unexpected rush.
“I … I was walking across the plaza. I had the dream.” My voice cracks and I stop, feeling helpless.
Fairfax wrinkles her forehead. Is it concern or incredulity? “About the wind? In the middle of the day?”
I nod miserably. “I had the dream and when I woke up I was inside the chapel. It was a mess. Fairfax, the wind had been blowing inside. It blew out the candles. It tore the cloth off the altar. What am I going to do?”
She smiles. It is incredulity. “Naw,” she says. “It’s just a dream. How could a dream do that? Come on, now. You know you were imagining things.”
“But I wasn’t. You don’t know what it was like. I couldn’t have imagined it.”
Fairfax presses her lips into a thin, determined line and takes me by the arm. “All right. Show me,” she says.
Tension arcs between us as we walk silently back toward the chapel. When we reach it, Fairfax pulls open the big wooden doors, and we peer into the nave. Even before my eyes adjust to the dim light, I know I was right. The chapel is alive with voices—high, angry, frightened. “You’re certain you didn’t see anyone? Who would do such a thing?”
Fairfax’s eyes grow huge as she surveys the damage. She grabs my arm and hustles me back across the plaza to a bench beneath a palm tree. “Electra, I think we should talk,” she says.
“I told you,” I say. “It really happened.”
She shakes her head violently. “This couldn’t possibly have any connection with your dream. Be rational. There’s got to be some other explanation.”
“No. It has something to do with me. I know it.”
“Don’t be crazy. It’s just a coincidence. Maybe it’s vandals. Or somebody playing a practical joke.”
“No. It’s me. The wind is trying to get me.”
“Fine. If that’s really what you think, then you should go see a doctor.” She almost shouts it.
“A doctor can’t help me!”
Fairfax closes her eyes and silently mouths the numbers one to twenty. Her temper is quick and terrible. Sometimes even the counting doesn’t keep it from getting out of control.
When she reaches twenty-one, she gets up, still red-faced, and slings her book bag over her shoulder. “I’m late for my class,” she says, biting the words off and spitting them out. She spins and stalks off across the plaza, leaving me alone beneath the tree.
I don’t see her again till after dinner, when she shows up at the trailer dorm with a familiar grin on her face. I have seen this grin before—the broad one that means she is pleased with herself and bursting to tell me about it.
“Sorry about this morning,” I say. I am sitting cross-legged on my bed, working proofs and watching a talk show on my television, an old black-and-white with all the dials missing.
She flounces down beside me. “Oh, forget about that. I’ve got a great plan.”
I look at her warily. Her last great plan was for me to sell my collection of comic books and put the money down on a used Alfa Romeo.
“I’ve spent the whole day getting all the details worked out. Look, this flimsy trailer is a terrible place for anybody who’s having nightmares about the wind. I think we should both get out of here.”
I frown. She is so impulsive. “Where would we go?”
Fairfax opens her book pack and pulls out a folded sheet of binder paper with a message neatly printed on it in soft pencil. “Room and board, reasonable rates. Dr. and Mrs. Axelrod Desmond, 713 Melville Street, 322–1732.”
“What’s this?”
“You know my physics instructor, Tony DiMarini?”
I nod. She has mentioned him once or twice, mostly in connection with his niceness. Fairfax, a music major, is in the midst of struggling through a required physics course. She told me when she signed up for it that she thought summer would be the best time to take it because instructors have more free time to work with students then.
“Well, I ran into him after class today,” she says. “He mentioned that there are a couple of rooms open at the place where he lives. It’s an old house near campus. Interested?”
I chew on my pencil eraser. The whole thing sounds to me like some kind of ploy on DiMarini’s part.
“It belongs to a retired English professor and his wife. They rent out the rooms on the top story for practically nothing, to any students who are willing to help with chores and yard work.”
“Sounds suspicious,” I say. “It’s probably a real dump or something. Either that or the yard work’s a full-time job.”
Fairfax breathes loudly through her nose. “Electra! Don’t be that way. I wouldn’t get you into anything like that. It’s a wonderful place.”
I squint at her, suddenly aware that she’s holding something back. “How do you know it’s a wonderful place?”
“Look … uh … I telephoned Mrs. Desmond. I went over to see it this afterno
on. Oh, Electra, you’ll love it! It’s huge. It’s made of solid stone. And the Desmonds are terrific. They didn’t want to take the deposit at first, not till they’d met you …” Her voice trails off. “Uh-oh,” she says. She touches her lips with her fingertips.
“You mean you rented it? Without even asking me?”
“I knew you’d love it, I just knew it, and if I didn’t take it right then, somebody else would. Tony had to put in a good word for us, as it was. Oh, Electra, won’t you at least try it for a while?”
Fairfax is glowing with excitement. Her eyes shine like the sun on a green sea. At times like these, she is practically irresistible. I don’t suppose I can really blame DiMarini for trying to get closer to her.
I look at the address again, trying to be critical. 713 Melville Street. In spite of myself, I picture a high, bright room with a view. 713. Seven for good luck, thirteen for bad. I think of the way our dingy, cramped trailer shudders in the least breath of wind. I really do hate it. Fairfax is right. It is a very bad place for someone with dreams like mine.
“Oh all right,” I say at last.
Fairfax and I spend the next morning at the university housing office, getting out of our dorm arrangement. In the afternoon, we make the short trek to Melville Street, up a hill north of campus. True to Fairfax’s description, number 713 is a three-story house with thick fieldstone walls and a broad porch. An ancient willow tree guards the front yard, its roots buckling the sidewalk into tilted plates. We walk up the steps and rap on the heavy front door but get no answer.
“I guess the Desmonds aren’t home, but trust me,” says Fairfax. “You’ll love it.”
I nod. “Probably right,” I say, with a faint sense of discomfort. I don’t like being pushed into such a big change. But as far as I can tell, Fairfax has been completely truthful about the house. It looks huge, sturdy, and inviting. Besides, now that the paperwork with the housing office is finished, it will be easier to move than to stay in the dormitory.
The following Saturday, Fairfax and I collect cardboard cartons from supermarket trash bins and pack our belongings in them. She fills six boxes; I fill fifteen, even after I have thrown away everything I can bear to part with. I wish possessions were not so important to me. Sometimes I suspect myself of trying to build a past with them, article by article.
Fairfax sits on the floor, tossing items from my “must keep” pile into the open cartons, stopping now and then to examine something that catches her interest. She tries on a sequined black glove, crooks her little finger as if she were drinking tea, and laughs.
“Where’s the mate to this?” she asks.
“As far as I know, it’s never had one,” I reply.
She opens an old cigar box and holds up one of the many sand dollars she finds inside it. “I remember the day we gathered these!” she says. “On that beach up north where Sister Michael and Sister Mary Rose used to take us camping.” She half smiles and tilts her head. “We were just little girls. You’ve saved them all these years?”
I smile and nod. Though I’ll never really know, I imagine that Fairfax and I are a lot like blood relatives.
Tony DiMarini has offered to help us move. I’ve been thinking about him off and on, in a cranky and distrustful way. I imagine him as a handsome young professor in his thirties, neatly attired in an Oxford-cloth shirt with the sleeves rolled up just so, like the men in aftershave ads. Someone suave and unscrupulous who is probably after the body of every pretty redhead on campus.
It is late afternoon when he taps on our open door. He clears his throat, says, “Hi, is this the right place?” and trips over something invisible as he walks into our room. While Fairfax and I help him up, my rakish image of him dissolves into one of herons, mostly their legs, knobby and impossibly fragile. He has frizzy blond hair, and there are holes in the seat of his jeans, through which I catch a glimpse of plaid boxer shorts. The collar of his rumpled shirt is buttoned, and his Adam’s apple jumps up and down above it like a skinny, hairless mouse every time he speaks. I like him almost immediately, perhaps because he is not at all what I expected. If he is attracted to Fairfax, he will have to work hard to get her.
Tony’s car is a convertible with a dangling front bumper and an engine that sounds like a freight train. “Nineteen sixty-four Bonneville. They don’t make them like this anymore,” he says, proudly tapping the hood. The car is so huge that all twenty-one of our cartons fit easily into the backseat and the trunk. There is plenty of room for the three of us, and Fairfax’s cello, on the bench seat in front.
When we reach the new house, Lavinia Desmond, tiny, platinum-haired, and dressed in summer woolens, greets us at the door.
“Roddy. Roddy!” she calls, as she leads us through the vestibule. “Mary Fairfax and her friend have arrived.”
Roddy pokes his head around a corner, plucks a briar pipe from his purplish lips, and waves it gleefully. “Hello, Mary.” He gazes in my direction and lifts a bushy eyebrow. “And you must be …?” he says.
“Electra Thorpe.”
“Of course. Lovely, lovely,” he cries, clasping my hand in his.
“I’ve already listed the house rules for Mary, my dear,” says Lavinia as she leads us up the polished hardwood stairs. “But for your benefit I’ll mention them again. No parakeets. I can’t stand cleaning the little doo-dahs off the walls. Try to keep the noise to a minimum after two in the morning. And no group baths.”
“Lavinia, my dear, you’re so priggish,” says Roddy.
Lavinia rambles on, unperturbed. “Clean sheets and towels once a week, meals included, $250 a month, cash please, and we’ll probably ask you to do a few things around the kitchen and the garden.”
We have reached the third floor. We stand in a narrow hallway with two doors on the right and two on the left. It is a warm day, but even this close to the roof the house is cool. Through a small, round window at the far end of the hall, I can see the branches of the willow tree shifting in the afternoon air, dappling the walls with green shadows.
“Bathroom is the last door on the right,” says Roddy. “This is Tony’s room.” He raps his knuckles on the first door to our left, grins at Fairfax and me, winks broadly at Tony.
Lavinia clucks, rolls her eyes, and says, “Men.”
She points out the remaining two rooms, one on either side of the hall. “These are yours, my dears, though you’ll have to decide for yourselves who gets which.”
She holds up identical keys, the old-fashioned kind with a hollow handle and a wide, intricate prong at the bottom. “House keys,” she says, and hands one to each of us. Then she presses her index finger to her cheek. “Let me see. What have I forgotten?”
Tony smiles. There are prominent dimples in his pale cheeks. “The list of hours, maybe?” he says.
“Ah yes. Breakfast at seven, supper at eight. You’re on your own for lunch. But there’s tea in Roddy’s study every day at five. You’re invited, of course.”
Then she plucks at Roddy’s shirt sleeve. “Come along now. I need you in the kitchen to open some jars for me.”
“Lovely, lovely,” he says, waving as she tugs him toward the stairs. “So nice to have you here.” His voice bounces off the hardwood as he disappears. The sound of it fills me with the same kind of pleasant warmth I used to feel at the orphanage when Sister Mary Rose rocked me after bad dreams.
Tony and Fairfax and I stand grinning at each other in the dusky hallway. Maybe everything will be all right.
I choose the room next to the bathroom, which is just as high and bright as I imagined. The walls are pale green, and the ceiling is slanted. The window is made of small, square panes of beveled glass and has a wide wooden seat beneath it. If the room has any disadvantage at all, it is a view of the sea. In past years, I would have liked nothing better. But since the dreams began, the ocean makes me uneasy at times. I would rather take the other room, the one next to Tony’s, which faces the street. But I’m afraid that if the nightmare comes a
gain, I’ll disturb Tony, and I would rather he never found out about it.
At first, I live on edge, waiting for the first bad night, anticipating it every time I turn out the lights. But days flow past, and the dream does not return. I begin to relax in spite of myself. We help Roddy patch the roof. I laugh and hammer shingles. I stand square-shouldered and look down on Las Piedras, feeling like the queen of the mountain.
As August turns to September, we help Lavinia pick pomegranates. We crush half the berries in sterilized stone crocks, and Lavinia adds yeast and sugar to start them fermenting into wine. “The finest ritual of the year,” she says. We stand in a row at the sink, all of us spattered with crimson juice, tapping feet, knives, and wooden spoons to the beat of rock music from Lavinia’s portable tape deck. Tony grins wickedly as he reaches over to dab my nose with his dripping red finger. The kitchen is filled with delicious steam and the smell of boiling stoneware.
The fall semester begins at school. I embark on predicate calculus and non-Euclidean geometry, once again eager and excited by the elegance of mathematics. Time softens the edges of my recollections. Perhaps the nightmare has gone forever; perhaps it wasn’t really so bad after all. Only once in all this time does a faint echo of the old terror rise up. One afternoon as I walk home from classes, I notice street names impressed in the concrete curb at the corner just before the house. I’m surprised to discover that the name on the Melville curb does not say Melville. It says Loma de Viento. I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t know what the words mean. Yet as I stand looking down at them, a tingle runs over my scalp. I shake myself and walk home quickly, feeling foolish.
On a chilly evening in mid-October, Tony and Fairfax and I don sweaters and drag wicker chairs from the porch to the front lawn. Warming our fingers around mugs of hot chocolate, we watch an eclipse of the moon. Through shoals of broken clouds, the moon shifts slowly from silver egg to red fingernail, and Tony talks. In a low, drowsy voice, he tells about his work at the physics lab, where they are experimenting with niobium balls, trying to prove the existence of free quarks. We argue, smiling, about whether physics is a field of mathematics, or mathematics is a field of physics. Fairfax asserts that music is the essence of them both.
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