The Ebony Swan

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “I’m not sure that’s a good choice,” she said. “I wouldn’t want that place to haunt your dreams the way it once did mine. My parents took me there when I was about eight, and I remember it clearly. All that grandeur—an entire people lost in the centuries, leaving a mystery behind. Do you see that black peak that towers over the ruins in the picture? That mountain used to haunt my dreams and frighten me. Before adolescence children are closer to whatever came before. What do we know about where we came from, or where we will go later on?”

  Susan felt herself withdrawing. “Do you mean reincarnation? My father always dismissed that completely.”

  “Of course—Lawrence would!” She moved toward the balcony door. “But what about you? I have an idea that you think for yourself.”

  “I haven’t thought about it at all,” Susan said, not liking the mystical turn this conversation was taking.

  “Never mind. You have years of change ahead of you. Right now you have no notion of the person you’ll have become by the time you’re my age. Some people manage to stay in one spot all their lives, but I don’t think you’re like that. Now let’s go and find your mother.”

  Alex walked out onto the sunny balcony, but her words had stopped Susan in dismay. This was what she had come to Virginia for—yet confusion seized her, and a dread of what the locked room might hold.

  Alex extended a reassuring hand. “It will be all right. This may hurt us both a little, but it may also help you to remember some of the things you’ve forgotten. Gilbert is worried about your remembering. He wanted me to send you away before anything came back to you. But I can’t do that. You’ve just had a remarkable vision which can’t be denied. No, Susan, I can’t tell you about what you saw, but I have to consider it an omen. Whether it’s good or bad, I have no idea, but I know we must go ahead.” She held out her hand. “Come, please.”

  Like a child, Susan took her grandmother’s hand, sensing her strength—even her protection. Alex’s fingers were cool, but a sharing of courage came through to Susan. Now it was the older woman who supported the young one.

  They rounded the tower and stood before the locked door. Alex brought out a key and slipped it into place with a click.

  “If you really want to turn back, I won’t stop you. But perhaps there are truths one is better off facing. If we confront them together, we can put a great deal behind us. This look into the past is for me, as well as for you. I’ve never been able to do this until now. Dolores was your mother and my daughter. We both loved her. So if we can deal with what’s in this room, perhaps we can get on with our lives.”

  Tiny sparks of memory had been flashing through Susan’s mind ever since she had come to Virginia, but they were seldom clear enough to be grasped. Nevertheless, she was deeply afraid of what she might learn.

  “Was I alone with my mother on the day she died? Please tell me.”

  Alex paused with her hand on the knob. “Not exactly alone. Your father was down near the water in his workshop shed, making something or other. He liked to work with his hands. I believe that Gilbert was with him.”

  Susan waited.

  “Juan Gabriel was in his wheelchair in his bedroom on the second floor. We believe that you and Dolores were together in your playroom on the same floor. You were the only person who might have seen Dolores fall. You are the one who really knows what happened. Though afterward you could remember nothing.

  Some warning gripped Susan: Stop while there’s time. You don’t want to know what happened. She held back, ready to resist.

  5

  The key had been turned, unlocking the door, but Susan’s hand tightened on Alex’s arm.

  “Wait, please. Give me a minute to get ready. Let me walk around the tower first.”

  Alex watched her go. Susan moved slowly, delaying, postponing, and Alex wondered if she dared to open this door. Her own memories held her in an unwelcome grip, bringing back vivid pictures she’d suppressed for too many years.

  She had come home that day to find Dolores lying at the foot of the stairs, her head crushed against the brass jardiniere that had belonged to the Montoro family for generations. If that pot had not been there, perhaps Dolores would have lived. It was the huge brass pot that had killed her. Why had she fallen, when she was young and surefooted? It was the unanswered question that had haunted them all.

  Theresa was still convinced that Dolores’s small, angry daughter had pushed her mother at a moment when she was off balance at the top of the stairs. The child had often shown a temper when she was crossed, and Theresa claimed that when she’d gone out that morning, Susan had been throwing a tantrum. All children threw tantrums, and Alex had told herself a thousand times that no small child could be blamed for consequences of an action she couldn’t understand. If it had really happened like that in the first place. Theresa, at twelve, had been a jealous girl. Until Susan was born she had been close to Dolores, like a younger sister.

  In any case, Alex didn’t believe Theresa’s theory and had frightened her into silence. There had been one other person who might have seen what happened. Juan Gabriel had somehow struggled from his wheelchair—where he’d been confined since his stroke—as though he’d tried to reach Dolores. When they found him, he was unconscious, in a coma that lifted only in the few moments before his death. He’d uttered strange words in those moments, words she had never been able to understand.

  When Theresa learned that the grownup Susan was coming home, she’d said, “Perhaps she will remember. Perhaps then you will believe me.”

  Alex had told her sharply that she didn’t want Susan to hear this story Theresa had concocted. Even if the story were true, so young a child could only be held blameless—unless Susan began to blame herself. That was the risk in what Alex was now doing—the tower room might rouse a slumbering past from which Susan might never be free. But was one ever free of suppressed memories?

  Of course, there was also the possibility that what Susan remembered might prove her own innocence. Alex longed for this to be true, although if it were true, a great, unanswered darkness remained, since Alex had never believed that Dolores’s fall was an accident.

  Susan completed her walk around the tower, and Alex saw new purpose in her eyes and courage in the way she moved. She had made up her mind.

  “Before we go in,” Susan said, “tell me what to expect. I don’t like shocks.”

  “There’ll be no great shocks, I think. Only dusty memories. Some of your toys and clothes are in there. Some of your mother’s dresses. I gave a great many away, but there were a few I didn’t want others to have, so I stored them up here. Then I locked the door and never set foot in this room again. I no longer remember what I kept, so if there are any surprises, they will be for me as well. If you’d rather not do this—”

  “Let’s go in,” Susan said, and reached past Alex to push open the door.

  The room was formed in the shape of a half moon, rounded on the balcony side, flat on the wall it shared with the bedroom beyond. Dust rose gently as the air stirred, and Susan sneezed.

  Suddenly nervous, Alex snatched at an excuse to postpone what no longer seemed a good idea. “We can never do this until the room has been cleaned. Let’s close the door and leave it for now.”

  Susan shook her head. “We’d better do it while we’re feeling brave. It’s not dust and cobwebs I’m afraid of.”

  Nor were dust and cobwebs what Alex feared, but she gave in reluctantly, wishing she had never suggested this.

  The room contained piles of cartons, an old trunk, and various odds and ends of discarded furniture, including a faded blue armchair that stood against the flat stretch of wall. Alex lowered herself into it.

  “My mother used to sit in that very chair and hold me!” Susan said with amazement. “She used to read me stories while I sat on her lap. Wonderful stories!”

  Alex closed h
er eyes; unwilling to watch Susan’s bright face—so beautiful at times, so terribly young. Her eagerness broke her grandmother’s heart. How could such innocence survive the truth—whatever it was. The last thing Alex wanted to talk about was the stories Dolores had read to her small daughter. She had written them herself and it was best if they were lost forever.

  Stiffening her own resolve, Alex gestured. They had to get this over. “You might as well start with that clothes rack over there. You’ll find a few of Dolores’s favorite dresses—I had them stored in bags.”

  Susan slid down a zipper on the first bag and drew out a long frock of filmy golden chiffon, with trailing velvet ribbons to match. Alex closed her eyes. “Your mother wore that for her birthday party when she was twenty-eight. Your father didn’t care for parties, but he could hardly forbid one, when this was my house. Your mother always resisted Lawrence when he brought up the subject of moving away. She wanted to stay near Juan Gabriel, who was growing old.”

  “She was three years younger than I am now,” Susan marveled as she tucked the material back into the bag. “I wish I could really remember.”

  A child who had never known her mother had probably built fantasies around an imaginary figure. Fantasies that a real woman might never live up to.

  “Perhaps you can look into the trunk,” Alex suggested. “I think some of your things are there.” At least toys might bring more joy than hurt.

  The brass latches were open, and dust and cobwebs stirred as Susan lifted the lid, along with a spider that scurried off. Susan uttered a cry of pleasure as she reached into the trunk to pull out a stuffed toy—a dirty, dilapidated white rabbit.

  “Petey! That was his name, wasn’t it? I must have named him after Peter Macklin.” She nuzzled her nose delightedly into the limp body of the rabbit, and then sneezed again at the smell of camphor. “I didn’t want to leave him behind, but my father was so angry that I didn’t dare ask to take him with me.”

  Alex winced. Dolores’s death had given Lawrence an excuse to get back at his wife’s mother in the cruelest way he knew. If Juan Gabriel hadn’t been so ill, Alex might have fought for Susan with any weapons she could use. Lawrence was far from being a loving father, but at the time there’d seemed nothing she could do.

  Susan went on with her exploration, delighting in new discoveries, reacquainting herself with her earliest years. Alex watched her dark head bent over the trunk, the look of that long-ago child shining in her face. Susan was recalling only happy times with each new discovery, yet Alex had a sense of foreboding. There was the vision Susan had seen in the church, which had frightened Alex badly, and now she didn’t know what might turn up in the trunk.

  As Susan pounced and pulled out the shabby notebook with a cry of pleasure, she knew what it would be.

  “I remember this!” Susan’s delight broke her heart.

  Of course it would turn up here—that collection of stories Dolores had set down for her small daughter. Disturbing stories, somehow dredged out of Dolores’s own subconscious.

  Juan Gabriel, unfortunately, had praised them—they were kin to his own dark side.

  As Susan flipped the pages, Alex glimpsed her daughter’s distinctive writing.

  “These are stories my mother made up, aren’t they?”

  Alex nodded silently. There was no way to stop Susan, any more than she’d been able to stop Dolores from reading these stories aloud to her child.

  “I always thought they were unpleasant stories, Susan. Too Grimm! Should you bother with them?”

  “I want to read them again. I remember they could be scary, but then she would hold me and keep all the bad things away. When my father took me to Arizona there was no one to keep the bad dreams from coming. He spanked me a few times for screaming at night. Things were a lot better after he married Connie. She was good to me, and we do love each other. Perhaps I can get a little closer to my mother through her stories. Did she write anything else?”

  “Nothing. She stopped writing a little while before she died.”

  “The way you stopped dancing?”

  Pain struck fiercely, deeply. She hadn’t believed she could feel the old wounds all over again like this. That terrible mistake she’d made! No inner voice had warned her to avoid the impulsive step she had taken with Dolores. Her own longing for her daughter to know about her true father had been so strong that she wouldn’t have listened to inner warnings anyway. She had told Dolores about her love for John Gower and something of what had transpired. She’d confessed that Juan Gabriel was not Dolores’s real father. Now that he was so ill, she’d felt it safe to tell John’s daughter, since Juan Gabriel would never know.

  Not in her wildest imaginings had she expected what would happen. Or had she merely been stupid and insensitive, blinded by her own emotions? Dolores’s devastation seemed shattering. She had never wanted any father except Juan Gabriel—no matter how austere, remote, and sometimes irascible he could be. He was forever exciting in her eyes—a famous, distinguished writer. She had believed that her own writing talent came from Juan Gabriel. He’d appreciated her stories and praised them as no one else ever did.

  Given a little time, Dolores might have come to her senses. Though this was seldom a characteristic of the young—as Alex herself knew very well. Perhaps Dolores had stopped writing as a way of punishing her mother for the terrible thing she had done, but Dolores’s love for Juan Gabriel had only deepened. She had written one last terrible, devastating story that Alex could only hope Susan would never read, and then she had stopped writing altogether.

  She told her mother how angry she was. How hurt. John Gower was no one she could ever accept as a father. He was nobody—a fisherman! How could her mother, with all her own fame, and her marriage to so remarkable a man as Juan Gabriel, have been so foolish, so depraved? The fact that Dolores would not have existed if it hadn’t been for John Gower, meant nothing.

  Alex, listening to her daughter in pained astonishment, had realized that Dolores had begun to sound more like Lawrence than like herself. And then she had understood the bleak truth—Dolores had told Lawrence and she was taking her lead from him.

  Slowly Alex returned to the present in this quiet tower room. The only sound was her own harsh breathing.

  Susan looked up from the trunk, concerned. “Are you all right, Grandmother?”

  This was the first time Susan had called her by that name, and she was surprised by her own pleased emotion.

  “I’m sorry about what I said,” Susan added. “You had every right to stop dancing, if that was the way you felt. I didn’t mean to upset or hurt you.”

  Susan wasn’t Dolores, Alex told herself. Susan was different, kinder, and more courageous and independent. She had never really known Juan Gabriel. He’d been too old then to pay much attention to Dolores’s little girl.

  “Of course you haven’t hurt me. It was just that I was remembering—too much. I’ve often wondered what my life would have been like if I’d been stronger and gone on dancing. Sometimes I have very little sympathy for Drina.”

  The flash of Susan’s smile flung gloom away. “I’m glad you gave up being Drina! I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

  At least Dolores’s daughter saw what her mother had chosen to ignore.

  Susan dropped the notebook on the floor and came to where Alex sat. She put both arms around her grandmother and kissed her cheek warmly. Perhaps the gesture surprised them both, for at once Susan moved away and went to sit on a carton, looking uncertain.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Alex said. “I’ve wanted that to happen.” And she really had, though she hadn’t known it until this moment. “I used to teach you dancing, you know. Do you remember that?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps.”

  “You were such a delight. You had so much natural grace—the way you used your arms, your hands. The quick way you l
earned the simple steps I showed you.”

  A dreamy look crossed Susan’s face. As though she moved without volition, she stood up and held her arms curved over her head in a remembered fifth position. Her feet moved rapidly, leaving streaks in the dust as she crossed the floor in a creditable pas de bourrée, one foot before, then behind, over and over, clear to the balcony windows. So lightly and gracefully she moved!

  “That was a pas de bourrée,” Susan said, marveling aloud as the name of the step came easily to her tongue.

  Once more Alex realized how much she hated Lawrence Prentice for taking that little girl away from her. But she could no longer allow herself the luxury of anger. Such feelings would alarm Susan, and they were not good for her own health, as Peter Macklin often warned her. She must appreciate Susan for what she had become, in spite of Lawrence. Susan had been much loved when she lived in Virginia and at least that good early start must have served her well. Alex wanted to learn all the ways in which Susan differed from her mother and father. Perhaps John Gower’s traits—something of his basic goodness and natural wisdom—had skipped a generation to turn up in his granddaughter. Though she hoped his darker side, his heritage from Tangier Island, had been lost, or at least diluted.

  As Susan picked up Dolores’s notebook, something fell from between the pages. From where she sat, Alex could see the Santa Fe postmark on the envelope.

  Susan was already examining it. “This is from my father! It’s addressed to you, and the date is soon after we reached Santa Fe. But it’s never been opened—so you didn’t read it?”

  Alex held out her hand. “May I have it, please?”

  Susan hesitated, but then surrendered the letter. “Perhaps it will answer some of the questions I’ve wondered about. Will you read it now?”

  “I’m sure it answers nothing,” Alex said. She remembered when the letter came; she had debated with herself about opening it. In the end she had slipped the envelope into Dolores’s notebook and packed it away with the stories. Reading it would only have upset her further, as she’d known very well. But now it must be read. Only then could she decide whether to share it with Susan.