‘Yes, please.’
Sitting at her kitchen table in the golden light of early morning, I watch Mrs Finkle busy herself, putting cream in a little jug and sugar in a bowl just for me, and then setting it all out on the table.
She sets a cup of steaming black coffee in front of me, in which I put both sugar and milk because it seems rude not to. We sit in silence, neither one of us speaking, just enjoying the early warmth of the day and the peace and stillness of the kitchen. ‘Maybe you need to see someone,’ she says at last. ‘Someone who can guide you. Not a doctor or a shrink, but someone who understand mysterious ways.’
‘Mysterious ways?’ I look at her.
‘I’m an old woman, but I’m not a stupid one,’ she says. ‘You’re here for more than the sale of that building. There’s something else. Something haunting you, I think. I don’t know what, or how. But I know you’re here looking for answers, about your mother, about you. And all I’m saying is that sometimes you can find them if you’re willing to open your mind.’
I laugh, scalding my mouth on the coffee that I gulp too fast.
‘You know, I think it would be difficult to open my mind any further,’ I say.
‘Then, you think about it; I can point you in the right direction.’ She nods her head once. ‘I know people.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Finkle,’ I say. ‘Thank you for the coffee, too, I needed that. And I’m so sorry, but I broke your statue. I’ll replace it, of course.’
‘I expect no less.’ She nods, and, of course, I realise belatedly, she already knew. She had probably watched me do it.
‘You know,’ she says, as I reach the bottom of the stairs, ‘sometimes in this life you think you’re going to break, you’re certain of it, you think there is no other possible outcome. And yet somehow you don’t. You just remember that.’
‘I will,’ I say. But just as I begin to head up the stairs there’s a knock at the door.
It’s Stephanie.
‘I had to say something,’ she says, sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa bed in our apartment, leaning forward, her palms pressed between her knees. Pea sits curled up in an armchair opposite her; she looks like she hasn’t slept at all, and when I had come in through the door, she had grabbed me and hugged me so hard, I’d felt my ribs creak.
‘I couldn’t just go back to Florida pretending like none of this happened and just take the money from the building. I couldn’t, not unless I told you the truth. It’s not right not to. I’m afraid to, but … well, it’s about time I did the right thing.’
‘What is the truth?’ I ask. A deep disquiet gnaws at my gut.
‘You got to understand,’ she says. ‘That man – he was, he still is, protected. And there are times in life you have to understand that some people, they’re untouchable. You could try and stand up to them, you could try and fight them, but it’s never worth it. Because of the organisation that protects them. Nothing matters more to them than their reputation, what people think of them; you got to understand that. Whatever you do, they’ll just raise up one big giant foot and squash you down under it.’
Her balled fist comes down on her knee, hard.
‘What does it matter? She killed him. Not even God protected him then,’ Pea says, fiercely.
‘I thought … I thought it was best for her, I truly did, knowing he was gone from the world; that’s what I thought was best, for her. Because he was never going to pay, he was never going to jail, she would never have got justice, she would have only got the blame, and her life would have been even worse. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that.’
‘What are you saying?’ I can barely speak.
Stephanie draws in a ragged breath.
‘Riss, she hurt him real bad, real bad. And he could have died, but he didn’t. She didn’t kill him.’ Stephanie hesitates, still unable to say his name out loud. ‘Your father, he’s still alive.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
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There has never been fury like my fury, never anger like I feel as I surge to my feet, and grab her arm, pulling her up and propelling her towards the door.
‘Luna, please …’ She tries to disengage my grip but what little is left of my strength is still enough to tear open the door and start half shoving, half dragging her down the stairs.
‘Get out, get out, GET OUT!’ I shout, dimly aware of Pea behind me, crying out my name.
Finally, I rip open the front door and return Stephanie to the steps, and not even the sight of her red-raw face, streaked with tears, or how she trembles and cowers, diminishes how I feel.
‘Of all the things she couldn’t live with,’ I told her, ‘it was knowing that she took a life. And you did that to her.’
‘I thought it was for the best, I did. Something happened to him, when she hit his head. He was a different man after that; he swore he’d never hurt anyone else again, in front of me, and I believed him. And Curtis put the fear of God into him. And the powers that be, they said they’d keep him in check, that he was too important for them to lose. They struck a bargain. That’s the kind of thing that happened then. As long as it all looked good on the outside, it didn’t matter how much evil was done behind closed doors. But he never should have touched Marissa, they told him that. You don’t hurt your own, that’s the rule we all lived by. He knew that if he hurt another Bay Ridge girl he’d end up in the Narrows weighted down by rocks.’
‘So they let him leave? You all let him get away with it,’ I sob.
‘I thought it was her I was letting get away,’ Stephanie pleads with me. ‘You got to see that? Please – I’m not supposed to say, I made a promise, it’s dangerous to break it but … if you want I’ll tell, I’ll tell you where you can find him.’
‘I know where to find him,’ I tell her. ‘And as for you, I never want to see you again.’ I slam the door shut behind her and stare at Pea, both of us breathing hard.
Mrs Finkle stands hesitant on the threshold of her dining room behind us. The wispy thin strands of sunlight shoot through the tiny holes in her lace curtains, cutting across us in a crisscross cathedral of light.
Neither my sister or I are able to articulate what we are feeling. Fury, yes, regret, yes, hurt, yes, fear, yes, and somewhere, buried very deep and almost hidden, something more for me, at least.
If our mother had only known she hadn’t murdered a man, she would have had the strength and courage to heal, to live properly, I know she would have, I’ve seen it. Marissa Lupo would not have let her attacker ruin her whole life; she would have fought back and found a way back to the woman she was, despite what she had been through. It was his blood on her hands she couldn’t live with, no matter how long and how hard she tried. She couldn’t stand the sickening guilt that greeted her every morning.
Stephanie thought she was helping her sister, but really she had condemned her.
‘I won’t let her go through this,’ I say, my resolve strengthening, as Mrs Finkle watches us curiously with her light-grey eyes.
Pea nods. ‘I know.’
‘There’s only one thing left I can think of to do,’ I say.
‘You need to talk to him, show him who you are,’ Pea says.
‘Yes, how do you know?’
‘Because you’re part of him, whether we like that or not; maybe you can reach him, scare him – maybe even change him, change what he’s about to do.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I suppose I’m going to find out, and it has to be today. Tomorrow will be too late.’
‘You make it sound so final,’ Pea says. ‘As if the day after tomorrow the world will end.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘maybe it will, this version of it anyway.’
Mrs Finkle clasps her long, fine hands together. ‘When are you two girls going to tell me what’s going on here?’ she asks.
‘I don’t think you’d believe us if we tried,�
� I say.
‘So try me, won’t you?’ She takes a step towards us. ‘I loved her too; we all of us lost something the night she left.’
I look at Pea, and she shrugs.
Between us we fill Mrs Finkle in on some of my mother’s secrets – and my own. We save the impossible for last.
‘Since the night I arrived in Bay Ridge, I’ve been able to step through time, to nineteen seventy-seven, to see Riss and, I think … I think if I can find a way, I can stop what happened to her, change everything that happened on that night.’
‘I see.’ Mrs Finkle thinks for a moment, turns on her heels and disappears into the kitchen. It seems she isn’t as open-minded as she’d thought.
‘So where do you start?’ Pea asks me.
‘Church.’
‘Church.’ She nods. ‘Seems like as good a place as any.’
‘Not yet though.’ Mrs Finkle returns and in her hand she is holding a dog-eared and faded business card. ‘Before you go, you need as much armour, as much power, as you can get. Go and see Lydia, she’ll tell you all she can, and it might help.’
‘Mrs Finkle …’ I wonder how to tell her that whatever she thinks we are doing, a back-street psychic won’t help us. ‘I don’t think you understand exactly what we’re doing …’
‘Maybe I don’t, exactly, but I believe you,’ Mrs Finkle says, pressing the card into my hands, her grey eyes searching mine out. ‘Like it or not, I’ve been on this earth a long time, I’ve seen things that men in white coats would cart me away for. I’ve heard them. I’ve talked with my darling Bill every third Thursday of the month for the last forty years, and don’t try and tell me it’s a scam, I know it ain’t. I know what I’m looking at, Luna, when I look at you. I seen it before, in Lydia.’
She clasps my face with both her hands, her long fingers feeling for the bones under the skin.
‘You’ve got the same look Lydia has when she’s been talking to the dead, like some of you has blown away in the wind. So I know, wherever you are going, it’s somewhere people made of blood and flesh ain’t meant to go. And if you’re intent on going, don’t go without making yourself as strong as you can.’
Releasing my face from her grasp, she puts her thin arms around me, and I hug her back, feeling the frailty she hides so well, her bird-light bones and papery skin. And yet, although her body has begun to fail her, her spirit, her soul – whatever it is that makes us human – radiates from her, and I know that whether she is right or wrong about Lydia, she has chosen to love both Pea and me, and I can’t help but be grateful for that.
Taking the card, I turn it over in my hands, Lydia La Castillon is only a couple of block away. ‘Spirits contacted, psychic blocks cleared, futures foreseen’, her card reads in spidery hot-pink print against a faded and creased, black background.
‘I wonder if she knows we are coming,’ I say.
CHAPTER FORTY
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Lydia La Castillon is not at all what we were expecting, or not what I was expecting anyway: some mysterious old lady, perhaps with dyed, red hair and hooped earrings, sitting in a dim back room, lit only by lamps covered with tasselled shawls. In fact, she greets us with a smile and a professional handshake. She seems to be somewhere in her seventies; her crisp, white shirt worn over pale-blue jeans is something I could wear. She has silver hair cropped close to her head, and kind, soft, amber eyes.
If this was like the movies, I’d expect some kind of horrified gasp as she takes my hand and recoils in horror at my marvellous powers, but nothing like that happens; she just tilts her head slightly to one side as she looks at me, her expression remaining completely impassive.
‘Come and take the weight off,’ she says, showing us into a brightly lit kitchen. There are peonies in a blue jug on a freshly washed table that still glistens as it dries. The window is open, and the sounds of the street drift in, snatches of conversation, a car horn.
‘Take a seat,’ she says to me. ‘I can only do one of you only at a time, I’m afraid, although I feel that what holds true for one of you, holds true for both.’
‘Sort of a two-for-one deal, then.’ I smile weakly.
The anxiety I carried with me, as Pea and I walked over here, has faded at once in this pretty but plain room. This pretty but plain woman can’t hold the secrets of the universe in her hand; she can’t know how to contact a realm that doesn’t even exist. Mrs Finkle might know things and have seen things. And I might have known things and seen things, but there’s light years between this woman’s beliefs and what I know.
Lydia regards me from across the table, and as I look into her eyes I feel a kind of calm.
‘I can’t tell you what your future holds,’ she says.
‘Why, are you having an off day?’ I ask her.
‘You don’t have a future, it seems.’ She says it with a regretful smile, and so simply that it takes me a moment to understand what she means.
‘You mean, I’m going to die?’ I ask her, but she shakes her head.
‘Not quite, no.’ Her hands fall from the table to her sides. ‘When I look at people, I see their colours; some people call them auras. And I can see, just by how intense or what shade their colours are, what it is that troubles them, and what it is they need to know.’ Leaning forward, she reaches for my hand, and holds it loosely in hers. Her skin is cool, smooth. ‘Your colour has been stripped away, and there are only a few things I know that do that. A very serious illness, a visit with the spirit world or … for you, it’s something else. You’ve been reaching into other universes, I think, or something like that. Seeking vengeance, and forgiveness.’
‘Did Mrs Finkle call you?’ I ask her, withdrawing my hand.
‘No, dear.’ Lydia folds her cool, white hands neatly on her lap, but her eyes don’t leave me. ‘It’s just that you and I are a lot alike. What we do is very similar; the same really. I reach into other dimensions and make contact – although I can’t travel to that dimension myself, I can hear the voices there, the voices that want to talk.’
‘So when you are telling Mrs Finkle what her dead husband is up to, you are really talking to him in the time before he died?’ I ask her. ‘Is that how it works?’
‘Oh no, he’s dead,’ Lydia says. ‘You see, there is time, all of time before and all of time after, all at once, divided up by us into neat little packets …’
‘I get time,’ I say. ‘I’m a physicist.’
‘I bet you don’t know time as much as you thought you did.’ She smiles, and I have to concede she is right.
‘There’s that sea of constant tidal happenings that you seem to be travelling through. And then there is the spiritual realm.’
I sigh with frustration.
‘It’s OK.’ Lydia shrugs. ‘You don’t have to believe in what I do for me to be able to help you. All that matters is that I believe in you, but I would say one thing … There’s more to any one of us than just blood and bones. And when the dark times come, and they will for sure, you are going to want to hang on to the part of you that isn’t flesh as hard as you possibly can, or risk losing it forever. Be careful of your soul.’
‘So how can you help me?’ I ask her.
‘By preparing you, telling you what I know. If you choose to believe it, well, that’s up to you.’ She takes my hand once more. My first instinct is to pull away, but there is something there, when I’m touching her. A sense of anchoring that I haven’t felt since we arrived in Brooklyn, or maybe ever. I feel fixed to this one spot, and safe.
‘Like you, I didn’t choose my path at first, it simply claimed me,’ Lydia says. ‘As yours is claiming you. But in time I was able to choose how to navigate my own way. You, though, your path reaches its end very soon. No future. Your path is very dangerous; when you reach the end, you may not find a new path.’
‘I know that,’ I say. ‘I’ve accepted it.’
Lydia
nods. ‘You’re very brave. This might not work if you aren’t willing to travel a little way with me, but take my hand, and we will see what we can see together. How far I am able to travel where you go, I don’t know.
Once more I reach for her hand, and seeing her close her eyes I do the same.
The sound of traffic rushes on; a slight breeze rattles her blinds. A pigeon coos somewhere nearby, and soon a deep tiredness washes over me, trickling through my pores and into my blood. I can’t remember the last time I slept, because I only know this moment and it’s heavy with fatigue. Lights flicker and dim behind my closed lids, and I feel myself drifting away, snatches of dreams flashing before me as I struggle to stay awake.
‘You’re doing well,’ Lydia whispers, and it seems like her voice is inside my head. ‘You’re doing really well. Now, open your eyes and what do you see?’
The kitchen is the same, but painted a different colour; at the sink a woman in a white, lace apron washes dishes; a chubby baby sits at her feet playing with a spoon. Lydia still sits opposite me, and I know that, although her eyes are closed, she sees exactly what I do.
‘Again.’ Her voice sounds like a bell, and between one blink and another the scene has changed; now there’s a bed in the corner, and no sink. A man in a dirty shirt grabs a young woman, as thin as a whip, and kisses her as hard as he can; her lily-white arms wrap around his neck.
‘Further still,’ Lydia says.
And then the building is gone; there is nothing but a mottled sky above and long grass around our feet, around the legs of the kitchen table that seems to have come with us. Beyond the horizon I can see water rising to meet the sky and nothing else, perfect silence except for the wind in the grass and the chirrup of crickets.
‘Thank you.’ Lydia takes her hand from mine, and her kitchen is restored around us. I twist in my seat to look at Pea, who seems unmoved by what happened. For her, it doesn’t seem like Lydia, the table or me disappeared into thin air.
‘That was interesting. I’ve never seen such things before.’ Lydia smiles. ‘Never met another like you. Someone who can move through the living, in the same way that I can move through the dead; quite amazing.’
The Summer of Impossible Things Page 23