The Fifth Petal

by Brunonia Barry

  “Interesting,” said Callie, looking around.

  “This wasn’t carved with hand tools, though. Granite is not soft, like tufo stone; these are a natural phenomenon. The structuring of the floors and the passageways—what you saw from the elevator—was done later by construction crews.”

  “The more money, the bigger the house?”

  “Exactly. Though the original Whiting wealth was amassed almost entirely from ill-gotten gains.”

  “Bootlegging,” she said. She’d also heard gunrunning.

  “Among other things. Cocaine and heroin in the early seventies. We were quite the family before my father married my mother. Thanks to her, fame, fortune, and respectability are our new métier.”

  Callie walked over to what appeared to be an open well in the stone floor surrounded by a polished wooden rim. She could hear water lapping. “What’s this for? Bathtub gin?” Now she could hear the sound of the ocean.

  “One would think,” he said. “We call it the sea well. Actually, it’s an early attempt at a hot tub, for seaweed baths. There’s kelp lining the walls, and when the water is heated, it releases its oils.”

  “Seaweed baths? That sounds kind of…slimy.”

  “It’s great for the skin.”

  “How do you heat the water?”

  “There’s a gas heater a few feet down that warms the water in the upper level.”

  “It has levels?”

  “It’s very deep. The water goes in and out with the tide.”

  “Are there seats?”

  “About three feet down, there’s a rim you can sit on.”

  She ran her hand along the top of the well and then tested the water. Her left hand had been burning since Northampton. Probably from the roughened quartz surfaces of the bowls. Or the encounter with Sister Agony. The warm water and the oils were soothing. “It’s quite warm.”

  “Only when the tide is high.” He laughed. “When I was younger, this place was off-limits, so it was, of course, the only place I wanted to go. I used to sneak down here. And I loved the sea well. I got stoned one night and decided to stay in longer than I should have.” He shuddered. “Not such a good idea.”

  “Did you turn into a prune?”

  “The tide was going out. Below the pipes and the heater, the walls are slick with kelp. There’s no way to climb out. And it’s much colder below the heater. I was in there for six hours before the tide came up again.”

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Almost died of hypothermia. And sufficiently scared the hell out of myself. Amazing the things you experience as the body is shutting down. It was like some kind of limbo between life and death.”

  I can understand that feeling better than most.

  “The colder I got, the more I imagined I was dead already, that bony fingers were grabbing me and trying to pull me under. It was lucky I knew that putting up a struggle would just send the blood to my extremities and kill me faster. Otherwise, I would have fought those hallucinations, and I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “God. That’s horrifying. Did your parents rescue you?”

  “The tide came up, and I crawled out. They hadn’t even known I was down there.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  “I made it to the phone,” he said, pointing to the house line. “I had to be hospitalized for several days. As soon as they were certain I was going to live, they grounded me for a month and forbade me from ever going in this tub again without their supervision. Which was totally unnecessary. I haven’t been in it since.”

  He led her away from the sea well to the middle of the room. “Anyway, this room, and not the hot tub of horror, is what I brought you to see. The acoustics in here are a lot like those in the healing caves in Matera,” he said. He sang a note, and the sound circled the room, vibrating against the granite. She listened, then added a note in harmony, and the echo circled the room.

  “The sound is amazing,” Callie said, impressed. “We could be inside one of my singing bowls.”

  “There are veins of quartz running through the granite,” he said, pointing to one. “Limestone as well. I think this would be a great place to treat my mother. I’d be glad to set up the room for you.” He took the bowl off the couch, carried it to the middle of the room, and carefully placed it on the floor, motioning for her to play.

  She hit the bowl once with the rubber wand to prime it, then slowly began to pull the wand around the perimeter. The sound was even richer and deeper than she had imagined.

  “This is unbelievable.”

  She played it again. The sound moved elliptically, circling both from left to right and then from overhead to the floor. She listened, her eyes following the pattern. “It needs to be cut back a bit. The sound is supposed to circle clockwise, but it’s moving this way as well.” She indicated overhead and along the floor.

  “Would a blanket on the floor fix that? Maybe a rug?” Paul said.

  She hit the bowl one more time, listening intently, nodding.

  “You think it will work?” Paul asked.

  “It should work well for her. Your mother’s resonant frequency is strong.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “Everything and everyone vibrates to a certain frequency. Measured in tone and sound waves. If you can match it, the tone acts like a soothing massage on her cells.”

  “Will that stop the pain?”

  “Pain is interesting,” Callie said. “It has a particular frequency that’s as unique as that of the individual, but our pain receptors can only handle so much information. If we can match the vibration of the pain frequency, making the same sound it makes, the receptors get overloaded, and the pain often just disappears.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “I listen,” she said.

  Paul looked at her oddly.

  “You think I’m crazy,” she said.

  “I don’t, actually,” he said. “There was a sound study done in some of the healing caves around Matera. They were trying to discover the caves’ frequency. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I know they all came out with the same number.”

  “Do you remember what the frequency was?”

  “I think it was ten something.”

  “That’s impressive,” she said. “Very low. Ten and a half herz is supposed to be an ideal healing frequency.”

  “I’m not sure I’m right. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I might have.” Then he remembered something. “They’re using sound in medicine now, aren’t they? I know they’re breaking up kidney stones with ultrasound. My father had that done just last year.”

  “They do that by discovering the vibrational frequency of the stone, then pumping up the volume of the same tone, overloading it until the stone explodes.”

  “Sounds violent.”

  “It is. And it’s the choice of allopathic medicine. Chemo, which targets the specific tumor with a blast of medicine in an effort to destroy it, works by the same sort of violent principle. It battles the cancer. My approach is a little different. First I try to locate the cells that contain the illness. Then I discover what is healthiest about the patient: love, compassion, gratitude, et cetera, and I try to determine the resonance of those healthy emotions. Then I play that healthy frequency back to the cells that are suffering, in an effort to vibrate them back into harmony. They’re opposite approaches to sound medicine, but they both work.”

  Paul looked at her strangely.

  “You’re skeptical,” she said.

  “Emotions have corresponding sounds?”

  “I’ll give you an example,” she said. “If you’re open to it.”

  “Sure,” Paul said.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Paul closed his eyes, listening while she sang and held a note.

  “Anything?”

  “You have a very nice voice.”

  “Thank you. What else?” She sang the note again, holding it for twice
as long. “What do you feel right now?”

  He hesitated, listening for a minute before answering. “Relaxed. I have to say, it’s very calming.”

  She nodded. “Good. What about this?”

  This time she didn’t sing but drew the wand around the bowl a few more times, letting the sound build. “What do you feel now?”

  “That’s calming, too, but more than that. It makes me feel really good, actually.”

  “That’s the universal tone for love.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “See how calming it is when I add this.” She played the tone again, then sang a diminished fifth, the tritone or blue note.

  “Not as calming,” he said, opening his eyes and staring at her. “Agitating, actually.”

  “That’s love in a different form,” she said.

  “Sex,” he said, getting it.

  “You got it.” Now it was her turn to grin.

  “I think I need a drink,” he said.

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  She’d never seen a real speakeasy, hadn’t taken Finn’s tour of it on Thanksgiving.

  She followed Paul up to the second level, which featured the same soft lighting illuminating the racks of wine that lined the walls of the hallway. After walking a long corridor that wound around the elevator shaft like a corkscrew, they came to the heavy oak door she had seen on their way down. Near the top was a tiny hatch that could be opened from the inside to check the identity of those who were entering.

  “This was a hot spot during Prohibition. Boats came in at high tide, and customers climbed through a hidden tunnel to get to the bar. My father recently had the whole room done over to house his collection of port—and other exotic liquors. That’s why he was giving so many tours on Thanksgiving. He wanted to show it off for the holiday.”

  “He doesn’t enjoy showing off generally?”

  “Not all the time.” Paul grinned.

  “That looks authentic,” she said, pointing to the hatch. “Is there a password?”

  “Nope. But there probably should be. This is my father’s pride and joy.”

  Paul reached for a large brass key hidden among the wine racks. He opened the door, replaced the key on the hook, and then switched on the lights. The walls inside were mahogany. Around the perimeter of the room were some polished brass steampunk-looking items similar to the ones she had seen in the boathouse.

  “The bar was imported from a pub in London.”

  The only visible stone in the room was the floor, which tilted slightly.

  “It feels like we’re on a ship,” Callie said. She imagined she could feel the rocking motion of the sea beneath them.

  “Thank my father. The walls and fixtures came from an old Salem ship, one that served the China trade during the early eighteen hundreds. That table was from the captain’s quarters.” A decanting candle and bottle sat in the middle; the candlestick holder was bolted down. “That rug was brought back on the same ship after one of its voyages to the Orient.”

  Paul picked up the decanter, crossed to one of the barrels, and gently opened the spigot. “This is what you missed on Thanksgiving,” he said, bringing it back to the table, pouring her a glass of deep red-brown liquid. “A hundred-and-thirty-year-old port. Stolen off a Portuguese ship.”

  He held a glass under her nose. She took a whiff. It smelled of earth, molasses, leather.

  “So the Whitings were pirates as well?”

  “Did I forget to mention that?”

  She laughed. “Your mother really did clean up your family’s reputation.”

  “Told you,” he said. “They dealt in illegal spirits, some ancient brandies, and absinthe when thujone was outlawed here. Prohibition and scarcity create great business opportunities, if you’re willing to take the risk, which my family was. How they got seven barrels of antique port all the way across the Atlantic without them being ruined, I’ll never know. And it’s pre-phylloxera port at that.” He placed the glasses on the table, taking a seat opposite her.

  “Thujone? Phylloxera? You’re losing me here.” Reflexively, she’d been rubbing her palms together off and on all evening. She saw him notice.

  “Thujone is the active ingredient in absinthe, and phylloxera was a tiny insect that destroyed the grapevines of Europe in the eighteen hundreds. This port, thank God, predates that tragedy.” He looked at her seriously. “There’s a reason my father keeps this place locked: Wine lovers have killed for less. They’ve also tried to counterfeit the stuff.”

  “Counterfeit port? Never heard of that; another illicit family hobby?”

  “Not us that time. That was Marta’s father. Some kind of get-rich-quick scheme to sell the phony stuff. But he worked for us and managed to take down our whole business with the scandal.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the business model.”

  “If they’re lucky enough to find it, the great houses use pre-phylloxera port as a starter for the ports they produce today,” Paul explained. “My dad sold two barrels a few years back, and the new blend they made from it sells for a thousand dollars a bottle.” He pointed to some cases in the far corner. “Which is how he was reimbursed, of course.

  “Go ahead, try it,” he said, lifting his glass to her as if to toast.

  Callie sipped slowly. It didn’t taste at all the way she’d expected. Instead of earthy, it was sweet, with just a trace of maple syrup and honey.

  “Marta’s father didn’t have the real thing but thought he could fake it. The people he sold to knew the difference and exposed him as a fraud, and us by extension.”

  “Thus the scandal,” she said, sipping. Though it was cool in the room, Callie could feel the heat from the alcohol.

  Paul shrugged. “The Whitings and the Hathornes don’t mix well. Too much history.”

  They sat for a long time. She asked about his studies in Matera, and just about everything he said intrigued her. He told her the history of the area, and of the Sassi district, where he’d been living. And she found herself watching him speak as much as she was listening to him. When he went behind the counter to get some water, she watched him cross the room. His jeans were worn but tight; she noticed his thigh muscles flexing as he moved. Whether it was the port working its magic or Paul, she couldn’t look away.

  He poured them each another glass, and then a third. She declined the last one, but he insisted, holding up the decanter. “I can’t exactly put it back in the barrel.”

  Finally, the decanter was empty. He took it along with the glasses and walked behind the bar, turning on the water and waiting until it ran hot. She watched his hands as he cleaned the glasses, placing them carefully back on the shelf.

  He held the door for her, turning off the lights as she moved past him into the corridor. She waited while he locked up and replaced the key. Then he led her back down the corridor toward the spa, where the creaky elevator waited. “Can’t we go up this way?” Callie asked, pointing to the winding walkway they’d just taken.

  “The passageways don’t go all the way to the top,” Paul said.

  “What about that tunnel the speakeasy customers used?”

  “Well, that exit supposedly leads down to the ocean, but I’ve never been able to find it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. So the only way back is the elevator. It’s really very safe,” he said, taking her arm as if to reassure her.

  They rode the elevator in silence, listening to its moans and rattles. The space was tight, forcing them close together, and she was aware of his breath and body. She hadn’t minded on the way down, but she felt self-conscious now.

  They stood on the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Good night. Thank you for the port.”

  She started for the steps, but Paul made no move toward the front door. She turned back. They stood facing each other for a long moment, and then he took her left hand. He held it for a minute, turned it over, and gazed at her palm. She had
told him about her scar, but she hadn’t shown it to him the way she had to Rafferty.

  “It’s amazing,” he said, as if surprised. “Almost perfectly symmetrical. Do you know what it symbolizes?”

  “I’ve been told it’s the five wounds of Christ.”

  “Before that.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Rosa rugosa, the five-petaled rose. It’s Roman and was used by navigators to chart their way. It’s sometimes called the Rose of Venus because its shape traces the planet’s pentagramlike path in the sky. It first represented the goddess of love and later the Virgin.” He looked at it for a long time, then looked up at her. “It’s beautiful.”

  She scowled. “Not to me.”

  He was still holding her hand, running his index finger over her scar as if reading braille. “It’s bewitching,” he murmured.

  “Stop,” she said, trying to pull her hand back.

  Paul didn’t let it go. “Look at it, Callie,” he said. “It’s a work of art.”

  Then, keeping his eyes on hers, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the scar.

  That night her dream images were of Paul. Paul kissing the scar and kissing other places, too—her neck, her arms, her breasts, and torso—moving slowly and deliberately downward. Paul looking up at her with the blazing eyes from her vision. Her desire turning to anger and then to fear, seeing Paul on the bed and blood running down the walls behind him, pooling and deepening and finally threatening to drown them both. His eyes piercing and hypnotic. “Dad,” her mother called, and then Leah called, too. And finally, she saw Paul, wide eyed and dead on the cold stone floor, blood trickling from the corners of his open mouth.

  By 3:00 A.M., she was agitated. By five, she was up and showering.

  It was a cold morning. The fire she’d lit in her fireplace had died to embers, and the large ocean-facing room was drafty. She turned the shower to its hottest setting, fogging the tiles and mirrors. When she opened the door to the bedroom, a cloud of mist swept her into the suite, growing thicker in the colder air outside the bathroom. She dressed hastily and started her morning meditation, but she couldn’t rid her body of the electric pulse that had begun the moment Paul kissed her scar.