“Did you ever tell anyone about Irma Loman?” my father asked me. “About what you thought would happen to her?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone anything about her at all, not even that I had seen her.”
“Thank heavens for that,” my mother said. “Finally, at least this once, anyway, you listened to us.” She looked relieved.
But by then, it was too late for lots of reasons.
1
Our house had a wide but short entryway with a narrow closet for hanging up coats and jackets. The floor was a grayish white slate, and there was a large hanging lamp of clear hammered glass in a detailed black finish. The two curved metal hooklike decorations at the base of it always seemed like two cat eyes to me, especially when the lamp was on and the yellowish glow bounced off the light brown front door. They looked like frightened eyes, hinting of danger and not suggesting any of the warmth and security I should find in the house that was my home, something everyone should find in his or her home.
Periodically, my mother would hang a small garland of garlic just to the right of our front door. She would dress it up with some artificial flowers. I never thought it was that pretty. In fact, I hated looking at it and wondered why it was so important to her to do it. When I asked, however, she grew very angry.
“Don’t you ever touch it, and don’t ask me about it again,” she said. Then she paused like someone who had just thought of something important, narrowed her eyes, and asked, “Why? Does it bother you? Make you feel sick?”
“No,” I said, and shrugged. “I just wondered. There are nicer things to hang outside a house.”
Her shoulders and neck seemed to inflate with rage. “When you have your own house, you’ll hang what you want. That’s what I want,” she said, and walked away.
The garland of garlic wasn’t the only odd thing that drew my curiosity. I remembered, one afternoon when I was seven, seeing my father go out to the front stoop, loosen one of the steps, and slip a knife under it. He saw me watching him and said, “Don’t ever tell anyone about this, Sage. Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I said.
He nailed the step down, gave me another look of warning, and went into the house.
I never forgot it, but I didn’t mention it again, either. There were too many things like that around our house and too many other strange things my parents did to concentrate on just one. The doorbell button outside, for example, was housed in a circle that had a black side and a white side, with the button in the white side. I think few people who came to the house and pressed it understood they were pressing on yang, for the circle was the symbolic yin-yang, yin being the black side and yang the white.
My mother explained it to me when I came home from school one day and remarked that our front doorbell button looked like a yin-yang picture we had been studying in art class.
“That’s exactly what it is,” she told me. “Yin and yang are the two energies believed to exist in everything in nature and in human beings.”
I nodded, eager to show off my new knowledge. I was just thirteen at the time, a year away from entering high school, and despite everything, I wanted my parents to approve of me. “Yin is the female energy,” I said, “cold, passive, and wet, and it’s associated with the night, the winter, and the moon. Yang is male, hot, active, and fiery, associated with daytime, the summer, and the sun.”
“Exactly,” my mother said. “And you understand one cannot exist without the other. Light can’t exist without darkness. They are always moving energies, and neither is good or bad in and of itself.”
I wanted to ask why she had never explained the doorbell button before, but there was really nothing unusual about her withholding information. It seemed she always waited for me to bring home something that would permit her to tell me more, and until I did, it was better if I lived in the darkness of ignorance. It was almost as if knowledge was dangerous for me, especially if it had anything to do with good and evil.
I was even more afraid to ask questions about such things when I grew older. My questions usually caused my mother to look at me more intensely, just as she had done when I had asked about the garland of garlic. Her eyes would search my face, looking for some underlying evil reason for why I would dare to ask, no matter how innocent the questions were. She would often follow one of my questions with “Why do you want to know that? Why did you ask? What gave you the idea to ask?” Or she might ask, “Did you dream about this?” This was especially true for any questions about her or my father, their families, or their pasts. They never seemed to want to talk much about those things, so I stopped asking years ago. But wasn’t it normal to wonder about your own family?
Although I rarely heard them talk about their families even when they were with dinner guests, I couldn’t help wondering why we didn’t have pictures of their parents or grandparents on our shelves and walls like other people had. Whenever my parents and I went to their friends’ homes, that was the first thing I looked for and asked questions about. In the house of one of my classmates, her family had two rows of pictures of her grandfathers going back generations, with one picture taken around the time of the Civil War.
How different we were. Wouldn’t you think so if, from the day you could talk, comments and questions about almost anything brought intense scrutiny, if not some sharp reply, a warning to you not to think about something or ask about something? Surely, like me, you would tend to go elsewhere for answers, even about the most common things. Maybe that was why I became such an avid reader. There were times when I felt the air go out of the room after I had asked about something, times when I would find myself tiptoeing around my parents and retreating to the silence in my own room to read and to learn.
I used to wonder if maybe I was too inquisitive after all, whether there really was something wrong with me for thinking so much and wondering so much. However, it was pretty obvious that my classmates and friends knew a great deal more about their families than I knew about mine. Of course, almost all of that mystery could be attributed to my being an adopted child and that I knew nothing about my biological parents, but the truth was that I didn’t know all that much more about my adoptive parents, either.
I could summarize what I knew about them on a single page. Both of them had lost their parents years ago, but I wasn’t sure exactly when. To explain why their parents were gone even though they were still so young, they told me their parents had married late in their lives. They made it sound as if their mothers had them at the very last possible minute.
They both said they had lived in Massachusetts all their lives. My father was from Boston, my mother from Salem. My mother was an only child, so there were no aunts or uncles on her side, but my father had a younger brother, Wade, who fascinated me. He was a professional magician who went under the stage name the Amazing Healy. He lived in New York City, but he traveled a great deal because of his performances, not only in America but also in Europe and even Asia, and he always managed to visit us when he was anywhere nearby.
Uncle Wade had a reason for not answering my questions about himself, a reason I could accept and understand.
“A good magician never reveals the secrets of his tricks, Sage, nor should he tell too much about himself. He must guard the mystery as he would guard his life. One can’t be separated from the other when you’re a magician. There’s an aura about you that enables you to say, ‘Now you see it; now you don’t.’ And people are hooked, amazed, and fascinated. That’s how I earn a living. You wouldn’t want to hurt my doing that, right?”
His eyes twinkled when he said it. Of course, I wanted to ask why I had to be like everyone else. Wasn’t I a little special? I could keep secrets so locked up that they’d gather dust in my head. We didn’t have a blood relationship, but I was his niece. I should be trusted.
When I muttered something about this to my parents, my mother said, “Even we don’t know all that much about Wade. He wants it that way, and you should respect his wi
shes. Don’t go poking that nose full of curiosity into everything and everyone you meet. Some people want their privacy respected.” Her words were sharp and hard.
I didn’t argue with her. I never would. I certainly didn’t want to do anything to upset Uncle Wade. I just wanted him to like me, to love me at least like any uncle loved a niece. I thought he could. He didn’t seem as uptight about everything I said and did. There was always an amused twinkle in his eyes when he was with me. Shorter than my father and just a little stouter, he had light brown hair and vividly electric blue eyes. He never visited us without amazing me with the way he could make things disappear, move them from one place to another just by staring at them, or change colors and shapes and make things float by moving his hands a certain way.
Supposedly, he was also a great hypnotist, but he could never hypnotize me. I loved the soft sound of his voice, and I did see twirling snowballs and multicolored drops fall out of a rainbow, but I never lost awareness. He laughed at his failure, claiming I had too strong a mind, but I did notice that when he looked at my parents afterward, they would all seem to nod and agree about something—something else they would never tell me, of course. That list of secrets seemed to grow as I did. If it continued, I was sure I’d be covered in mysteries as thick as tar.
So because of this and so many other things, I sensed that we weren’t alone in the house, that living alongside us were gobs of secrets caught like flies in a spider’s web, struggling to break free to reveal themselves. I dreamed of sleepwalking through them, shattering them, and releasing them all. The secrets fluttered about me, whispering the answers to one mystery after another in my ears until I knew everything I should know about myself and my parents.
I suppose that was why I was so excited, one afternoon when I was fourteen, to discover the dark gray filing cabinet in my father’s office slightly opened, a cabinet that I had never seen unlocked. Like everything else that was locked, it was surely full of answers. But I was forbidden ever to enter his office without him present and especially warned not to touch anything, move any papers, or look in any drawers. When I was little, my mother had convinced me that if I did try to open a forbidden drawer anywhere in the house, the handle would burn my fingers.
Sometimes I would tempt myself. When neither of them was looking, I would bring my fingers inches from a forbidden drawer handle. Almost always, I felt some heat and pulled my fingers back quickly. What would I do if I did burn my fingers and my mother saw it? She would know I had disobeyed a very strict order. It wouldn’t be pleasant. She could lose her temper over lesser things and go into a small rant if I decided to wear something other than what she had put out for me, pummeling me with questions. Why had I chosen that? Why did I want to wear that color today? What made me decide? Did I look into a mirror and see something unusual? Before I could answer, she would rattle off, “What? What?” Even if I swore there was nothing, she would look at me suspiciously. It got so I was nervous about turning left when I thought she might want me to turn right.
Now here I was with a chance to disobey again, but in a much bigger way. And I was fourteen, so I couldn’t fall back on the excuse that I was too young to know better, not that that excuse ever worked for me. It was as if my parents expected me to be ages older mentally than I was chronologically. When they said, “You should know better,” they meant it, even when I was only five or six.
I looked back to the front door with trepidation but also with excitement. If someone came through the entryway and didn’t walk into our living room on the right, he or she would reach my father’s office on the left before turning the corner to get to the dining room and the kitchen. The bottom of the stairway was just between the living room and my father’s office. The office door was rarely open when he was away. This particular Saturday afternoon, it was, and no one but me was home.
I had glanced in as I was passing, and that’s when I had seen the opened filing cabinet. For a long moment, I just stood there looking with fascination and curiosity at it. I didn’t think this overwhelming attraction to an opened but forbidden file drawer was that unusual. My mother had told me people were born this way. She told me that all we had to do was read about Eve in the Garden of Eden to see it was true. Don’t do this and don’t do that only made you want to do those things more. She said most religious leaders believed that was our fatal flaw and that God put flaws in us so we would have something to overcome, some way to prove to Him that we were good and deserved a place in heaven.
“Which makes no sense to me,” my father quipped. This conversation occurred during one of those evenings when the three of us were reading in the living room together without the television on. “If God is God, why can’t he know in advance who will be bad and who will be good?”
“Maybe that’s his flaw,” my mother replied.
My father laughed. “Blasphemy,” he declared. He pointed at her and playfully twirled his right forefinger in small circles the way Uncle Wade did when he was going to make something move magically.
“Stop that,” she demanded. I saw she wasn’t kidding. “I mean it, Mark.”
His smile fell off his face, and he pulled his hand back quickly. Why was that so terrible? He wasn’t aiming a gun at her. I think I moaned, and the two of them looked at me as if they both just realized I was there. They didn’t look embarrassed so much as suddenly frightened. I quickly returned my eyes to the book I was reading.
The most intriguing thing in my life at this time was listening to them when they spoke as if I weren’t in the room. Sometimes it seemed they actually did forget I was there or, worse, wanted to ignore me. Maybe that gave them some relief. They were both so nervous and intense about every move I made and every word I said. I knew from listening to my classmates when they talked about their parents that mine were on pins and needles more than most parents. But why? What had I ever done to cause them to treat me this way? Was it simply because I was adopted? Did that really make everything so different from the way it was for my friends? Was this true for most adopted children?
I had read stories about parents who regretted adopting a child after a while or couples who would never consider it because they didn’t know enough about the child’s family background. Maybe the child had inherited some evil tendencies or something. In a way, it made sense. The adoptive parents might not know enough about a child’s genetics. It was natural for them to be nervous about that, but if all of them were as intense about it as mine were, no one would ever be adopted. Why did my parents decide to adopt me anyway? I wondered more and more.
Why, why, why echoed in the house. It dangled off me no matter where I was, like some loose thread, but something much stronger than just curiosity was drawing me to the open cabinet that day. It was almost as if the winds that brought the whispering voices were at my back, urging me forward. My heart began to thump as I stepped deeper into my father’s office. All of the figurines he had on shelves—the owl, the eagle, and the bat in particular—seemed to turn toward me, their eyes tracking my every move. I paused. The silence in the house seemed to pound in my ears. It was as if everything in it was holding its breath. Would I dare?
I glanced at myself in the antique mirror on the wall to my left. An image flashed across my eyes. It was quick, but I couldn’t help gasping. I saw a woman, dressed in clothes from colonial America, suddenly burst into flames. Around her, men and women were all smiling. The image disappeared as quickly as it had come, but I almost turned and ran out of the office. I caught my breath, and the chill that had washed over my chest dissipated. Whenever an image like that occurred, I was frightened or shaken for a moment but always recuperated quickly.
There was no getting away from how wrong it felt to be spying on my father. However, I told myself that this wasn’t simply disobedience; it was defiance strengthened with the belief that I had a right to know everything. Why should there be such a cloak of mystery around things that others my age clearly had spread out before them
, especially children who were part of the family? Cabinets weren’t supposed to be locked to keep them out. They were supposed to be locked to keep out strangers and thieves.
Determined now, I knelt beside the open cabinet and began to sift through the files in the bottom drawer, the one that had been pulled open and left that way. In front of the files was a small wooden box. I took it out slowly and set it on the floor, where I turned it around and around, because at first, I couldn’t see how it could be opened. Then I realized there were two small indentions for fingertips, one on each side. I pressed into them, and the box snapped open.
What strange contents, I thought. There were what looked like human bones, fingers and the nose portion of a small skull, maybe a child’s skull. Mixed in with them were tiny leaves of shrubs and a piece of frankincense. Why was that in there? What did it mean? I closed the lid softly and put the box back. I thought I could feel two strong hands gripping my shoulders, trying to pull me away, but I resisted and looked at the first file that seized my attention.
The file had a college logo at the top of the first page. It was a bachelor of science diploma from a liberal arts college in Boston. This was no special discovery, I first thought. I knew my father had gone to college, but I believed he had gone to a business school. I shrugged and started to put the page back into the file when I noticed the date. It made no sense.
This diploma had been issued in 1908. How could my father have been in his early twenties in 1908? Was this his grandfather’s diploma? Did his grandfather have the same name, Mark Healy? That was obviously the only answer, but why keep something like this under lock and key? Why wasn’t it framed and on his office wall? Wasn’t he proud of his grandfather?
I took out another document in the same file. It also had a university logo at the top of what was another diploma, a juris doctor degree from Cornell Law School in New York State. This, too, had the name Mark Healy, but the date was 1925. That couldn’t be my father, either, and the date was wrong for it to be his grandfather. Maybe it was his father’s, I thought.
Gypsy Eyes Page 3