“Tell me what you want to know,” she said.
He hesitated, then took the cards she offered. “I guess … I guess I just want to know how to get Julie back. Otherwise, I don’t see how I’m supposed to go on.”
Savannah sighed. Just once, she’d like to hear someone ask how to change the world. She’d like a man to come in hoping for swords, or the Voyager’s Seven of Worlds, the card of breakthroughs. She’d like someone to ask her how he could be free of caring, so she could find out for herself if it was even possible.
The man shuffled nervously, then handed her back the cards. Sweat speckled his forehead. He sat with his hands in knots on his lap while she laid them out.
Instead of the Celtic spread, she now used an old gypsy layout, a simple fifteen-card design that wasn’t nearly so threatening. No crossing cards, no destiny. Just three cards to define the questioner, three for the past, three for the forces beyond his control. Then the last six for the future—three for the natural future, if nothing was done to change it, and three for the possible future, if he chose to get involved.
She liked it. It gave fate an out, and a man some alternatives, if he’d only take her up on them. This man got Art in his natural future.
“You’ll be ruled by creativity, if you decide not to change anything. The Art card often means putting things together, using your artistic side to make yourself whole. Are you a painter, maybe? A writer?”
The man went pale. “No, but Julie wants to be a novelist. She’s been writing something for the last seven years or so, a romance I think. I’ve been after her to send it out to publishers, but then yesterday … Yesterday, she said she couldn’t work in our house anymore. Said it was stifling. She left me this.”
He reached into his pocket and handed her a piece of crinkled paper. She opened it and smoothed out the wrinkles.
There once was a man named Ned,
dumb as a rat and no good in bed.
His wife was no dummy,
she took all his money,
and found a young lover instead.
Savannah thought of her father’s poetry. Every night, she put his poem to her between the Star and the Moon, then tucked them all beneath her pillow. Sometimes, though, she imagined she felt the rough edges of the paper poking her. Sometimes, she had to take them out so she could sleep.
“Oh dear,” she said, handing back the poem. “But look at this.” She pointed to two cards in his possible future, the Seven of Wands and the Emperor. “The Seven of Wands is courage. The Emperor builds an empire with planning and logic. Are you a businessman?”
“An electronic salesman, at Circuit City.”
Savannah was getting a headache. “Have you ever dreamed of something more?”
“Like what?”
She stood up and walked to the door. She wondered what would happen if she just started making things up. If she took out all the cups, and started talking about the joys of solitude.
There was clanking going on in the kitchen. Ramona had come by for dinner and was bustling around, slicing cantaloupe and toasting bread she would eat without butter. She’d lost thirty-five more pounds since Savannah had been gone. She’d dyed her hair jet black and taken to wearing Cleopatra-style eyeliner.
“As I see it, you can let this woman rule your life,” Savannah said. “Or you can be brash. You can be daring. You can be a whole new person, if you choose to.”
The man looked up. His eyes were dark brown and round. He was like a puppy she wanted to take into her arms to stop its pitiful whining. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Of course. And this.” She pointed to a card in the events beyond his control, the Ace of Cups. “That’s ecstasy.”
He just sat there, staring at the card. “Well, I can’t imagine where that’s coming from.”
“It can come from anywhere. It comes from everywhere, Ned. Let the novelist go and see where life takes you. Think about what it is you really want to do and do it. Whether you want it or not, you’ve got a good fortune.”
“I just don’t think …”
Savannah didn’t hear the rest. She was making money like crazy, and every dollar felt dirty. It turned out she couldn’t say anything; the only fortunes that got through were the ones a person wanted to hear. It turned out she wasn’t happy here, either.
She and Ramona sat up late drinking the latest Sonoma Merlot. Sometime after midnight, Ramona tucked her newly sleek legs beneath her.
“So are you going to tell me about him or not?”
Savannah was not surprised. Ramona had always known everything. She was the real fortune-teller. “Not.”
“You know what I think?” Ramona asked.
“I really don’t care.”
Ramona laughed and went on, regardless. “I think it’s easy to be happy when you have no life. It’s love and marriage and jobs and babies that screw everything up.”
Savannah got up and walked to the small window. Even from there, she could smell Ramona’s scent of caramel. Whenever Savannah kissed her cheek, she swore the rouge that came off was made of powdered sugar.
Ramona came up beside her and took her hand. “You loved him that much, huh?”
“He’s got a bad heart. His father died at forty-one.”
“Ah-ha.”
“He killed a man. The police could be picking him up right this minute.”
“Well, sure.”
Savannah yanked her hand away. “You could act a little shocked.”
“Oh, honey, come on. A bad ticker, homicide, whoop-de-do. This is Ramona you’re talking to. This is San Francisco, for crying out loud. When I first moved here, I lived in the Tenderloin. We had three murders in two weeks, I kid you not.”
Savannah just stared at her.
“It’s true. Don’t be taken in by those sunny days in October, Savannah. It’s as vicious here as anywhere else. You know Monty Wells, the healer over in Berkeley? You know those scars on his arms he said were from a car accident? Ha! That was no accident. That was a knife blade from his ex-wife. When he fought back, he pushed her beneath a moving van.”
“You’re not serious.”
“The hell I’m not. Shit happens everywhere, that’s all I’m saying, and it skyrockets when love’s involved. Just wait. Johnny Pells might be giving his lover roses now, but I’ve seen him checking out women. He’s thinking of switching sides, and he’s crazy enough to do it too. Next door, Sarah Alder is into freebasing, so it’s really just a matter of time before something explodes around here. If you’re not careful, it could very well be you.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Why not? Life’s dramatic, and if it’s not, let’s all just shoot ourselves now and be done with it.”
Savannah hugged her friend fiercely. When the phone rang, Savannah squeezed tighter, because it was late, and the ring sounded fierce and impatient, just like her mother.
“Sweetheart?” Ramona said.
Finally, Savannah pulled away and went to the kitchen phone. She didn’t need tarot cards or shadows to explain the panic that went straight down to her gut. She only needed her mother to say honey.
“Honey, it’s Mom,” Maggie said. “Your dad’s in the hospital. You need to come home.”
SEVENTEEN
THE STAR HOPE
The mountains had been playing tricks on them. Savannah should have known thin air would cause hallucinations, in their case conjuring what they wanted least and most, a mean-spirited ghost and all the signs of remission. When Doug had collapsed in Jake’s garden, Maggie and Jake had rushed him to Yavapai Regional Medical Center in the flatlands, where people were thinking straight and not mistaking suntans for cures. Now, when Savannah stepped into her father’s hospital room, she found Doug lying flat and still, his arms sticking out of the blanket like half-buried bones. He finally looked like what he was—a man who did not have the energy to open his eyes.
Savannah’s gaze whizzed past the gadgets and IVs and ominous monit
ors to her mother, who sat on the edge of the bed holding Doug’s hand.
“Begonias,” Maggie was saying. “Rhododendrons. Azaleas. Bougainvillea.”
Savannah leaned against the wall. She banged her head against it once, just hard enough to see stars, but not a single one of them was red.
“Purple coneflower,” Maggie went on. “Black-eyed Susans. Lilies of the valley.”
Savannah squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered a few years back when a good friend, Carol Deidrich, had come to her after her mother died of heart failure. Savannah had held her and told her that death was a release, a beginning. She was surprised now that Carol hadn’t hit her, that she’d had the grace to simply walk away and never speak to her again.
Savannah walked to her mother’s side and put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder. Maggie stiffened, then sagged. She was wearing cotton pajama bottoms and a raincoat. There were tears in her eyes.
Savannah sat down next to her. She leaned over her father and kissed his cool, moist forehead. What she should have told Carol was that death was indeed a beginning, of learning how to live with less, often without the very sustenance of your life.
“Chamomile,” Savannah said. “Winter honeysuckle, golden trumpet trees, magnolia grandiflora.”
Maggie nodded and leaned against her. She took a sip of water. For all Savannah knew, she’d been naming plants all day.
“Jacaranda,” Savannah went on, choosing only the flowering trees now, the ones her father had always grown best. She called on whatever magic a daughter had, and maybe it was all in her imagination, but she swore the air around them swelled with the scent of orange blossoms, and her father’s breathing evened out, the way it always had when the plants in his garden had bloomed.
* * *
Doug saw colors. Exotic variations on green. Lime, jade, emerald, green so green it blinded him. His entire field of vision was a landscape of grass and well-tended perennials. Begonias. Rhododendrons. Azaleas. Bougainvillea. Then suddenly a grove of navel oranges just coming into flower. Plants shot up and bloomed in seconds. It was the most amazing thing.
Somewhere beyond the garden, though, he heard his wife and daughter crying. He wished he had the strength to open his eyes and tell them it was all right. All the pain was gone. Every thought in his head was a poem.
Maggie Sweet
Sugar treat
Around the bend
We will meet.
He was going to die with dirt beneath his fingernails, and that was a good thing. That way God would know what kind of man he’d been. He wondered if he’d planted enough flowers. He wondered if any of those gladiolus he’d sneaked into the soil around his neighbors’ yards had come up yet. He wondered if he’d done enough.
After a while, he heard the slapping of cards in the corner. He could smell his daughter’s sweat and Juicy Fruit gum. He swam through the green grass, laughing when it tickled his stomach. He forced himself up through the top of it, and was suddenly gasping for air.
Maggie was above him, trying to get him to drink, but he pushed the cup away. Savannah leapt off the floor and came to his side. They both moved so fast they were blurs to him. He wished they would slow down so he could see them clearly. They spoke in some language he could not understand.
He shook his head and said:
“The air is clear,
the end is near.”
Or that was what he thought he said. Maggie and Savannah only looked at each other. He concentrated hard, until he could make out a little of what they said.
“—doesn’t know … for the … pointless now.”
“How can … please.”
Doug took a deep breath. “Green,” he said, and they both looked at him.
“Green?” Maggie said.
He smiled. With all his strength, he squeezed her hand, but she must not have felt it, because she pulled away to stroke his head.
“Rest now, love,” she said. “You don’t look green. You look fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
The green was misting over his eyes, but he managed to keep them open for a few seconds more. He looked straight into his wife’s eyes. He spoke the truest thing he knew.
“Heaven is right here.
Heaven is the one you hold dear.”
He thought he’d reached her, and he closed his eyes in relief. But just before the grass closed over his head, he heard Maggie crying. “What’s he saying?” she said. “I can’t understand a word he’s saying.”
Maggie had insisted on sleeping at the hospital, so the next morning Jake packed her clothes and brought them to Doug’s room. The blinds were closed, the room dark, and Maggie was not there. According to the machinery, Doug was still alive, but Jake could see no sign of the man’s chest rising and falling. His eyes were closed, his skin blue. A tube went into his nose, another into the bruised vein on his wrist, feeding him the things he needed to survive, but there was no doubt in Jake’s mind that Doug Dawson was already somewhere else. If he wasn’t, Jake pitied him. Though there were fresh bouquets of roses and carnations in his room, there was no scent of soil here.
He heard cards slapping, then finally noticed a black-dyed Panama hat bobbing in the corner. Savannah didn’t even look up when he said her name. She sat on the floor, laying out her cards again and again. Once, she began to flip over a card, then placed it instead on the bottom of the deck and picked another.
He had known he would deteriorate without her, but he hadn’t realized to what extent. First, he’d lost his concentration and sawed through the headboard of a two-thousand-dollar bed. A few days later, he’d thrown away a bottle of Digoxin, so now his heart was skipping beats regularly, and he was always gasping for air. Yesterday, he’d forgotten to feed his dogs. When they jumped up on the table to snatch his steak, he felt so light-headed and awful, he just let them have it.
Rufus and Gabe were no better. The dogs had gone into mourning, pacing the floor where Savannah had lain at night, howling from dawn until dusk. Even Roy had not been able to stand it; since Savannah had left, Jake hadn’t seen him once.
He stepped forward, but couldn’t think of anything to say, except that he’d been stupid enough to hope she would come back for him.
Maggie arrived a few minutes later. Jake heard her barreling down the hall, arguing with a security guard.
She carried an armload of Doug’s plants, their roots hanging clear to her knees, spilling fishy soil. It was obvious the guard would have to tackle her to get her to stop, and finally he simply stepped back and let her through with her contraband.
She brushed past Jake and dropped the flowers on the chair beside the bed. She picked up a cutting with small leaves and red tubular flowers. She laid it on Doug’s chest.
“Beard tongue,” she said, and Jake watched the man’s eyes. Not a flicker. She grabbed the next three. “Bitterroot. Honeysuckle. One of the fans from the ensete.”
She piled the plants on Doug’s chest. When he gave no response, she twined a strand of fragrant blueberry climber around his ear. She crushed the chamomile leaves in the palm of her hand and held them beneath his nose.
Jake saw it from clear across the room. Doug’s nostrils flared for a moment, then went still. Maggie dropped the leaves on his chest and leaned forward to kiss him.
“Now go,” she said. “Stop dawdling. You’re driving me crazy.”
Jake walked across the room and put his hand on her shoulder. She was trembling, but her eyes were dry. She leaned against him a moment, until Savannah slapped down another round of cards.
“For God’s sake, stop that,” Maggie said. “What’s it going to prove?”
Savannah said nothing. Where she’d parted her hair, Jake could make out the pink line of her scalp, and his chest tightened. The problem with devotion was that it was bad for the heart. It clogged major arteries, took years off his life, but the alternative was a long, healthy life without ever getting worked up at the sight of someone’s tender skin. The alterna
tive was a life with dogs.
He crouched down beside her. “Any luck?”
She slammed down the cards in answer. Then she picked them up and shuffled again. “I don’t accept this.”
“Savannah.” He took the deck from her hand. She tried to snatch it back, but he held on tight and waited until she looked him in the eye. “There’s no good fortune here.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know it’s no challenge to lay out cards and come up with a good result every time. That’s just a circus trick. Anyone could do it.”
“You couldn’t.”
Jake leaned back. She reached out to him, then drew away her hand before even getting close. She was not going to love him; that was clear as day. He was everything she couldn’t accept—unhappiness and guilt intensified by years of neglect. He was the Three of Swords.
“Well, I’m another story,” he said, standing up. He tucked her cards into his shirt pocket. He was keeping something, even if it was only that. Maggie was sitting at Doug’s side, holding his limp white hand. He walked to the door.
“I was wrong about Sasha,” Savannah called after him. “There was no reason to thank God.”
Jake breathed in deeply. He put his hand on the door. “In a rich and beautiful world, there are still horrors. The real challenge is to find a way to be happy anyway.”
Emma had wanted to come to her grandfather’s funeral, but now she couldn’t figure out why. As far as she was concerned, sitting in a church didn’t prove your devotion to anything except ritual and what people thought of you. If anything, once they closed the thick double doors and started the funeral hymn, whatever trace of Doug Dawson had been lingering in the air vanished. No doubt her grandfather’s spirit had escaped through a stained-glass window and was out in the church garden right now, trying to figure a way to get solid enough to rip out the rows of junipers and replace them with those outlandish giant allium he’d adored.
At least she wasn’t crying. She had promised herself that much. After two weeks of doing nothing but that, she’d finally given it up. Tears and prayers changed nothing. Probably, if it was this easy to lose the love of her life, God wasn’t even there.
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