by Zeller, Jill
A rush of pity filled me. I could understand why Jeff Nash kept silent all these years. Reading on I found he had kept a journal, and on the advice of his therapist, took a look at it. I have to forgive myself, more than anything. I can’t keep up hating myself. It takes too much energy.
I read on, knowing these words would exonerate Mae. I wished there was a better way, keep Jeff’s name out of it, because it made him out to be a gutless conspirator in his wife’s maliciousness. But if it would save the life of some poor depressed teenager looking for an excuse, it was worth it. He was willing, by giving us the testimonial, to take that risk.
And Jeff Nash alluded to that. He had added something to the file, probably while he was upstairs so long getting it for me and Sawyer. I know did the wrong thing. God knows I have suffered for it. But now I do something right. Mae is innocent. This tragedy is over, done with. There is no point in giving it any more importance.
A heavy acrid odor puffed in my face. We were sitting out on the back patio. I stared around the yard, my eyes straining to find the source of the smoke. Moving toward the doors I peaked inside, but the source was definitively not the house itself.
Bruce, who had been lying next to Libra beside the pool, was up on his elbows now, looking over his shoulders at us. Ivy sipped her iced tea. Zoe was buried in a book.
"Stay here," I demanded, walking through the breezeway toward the street, Pepper on my heels. As I neared the driveway, I could hear a cackling noise, like a snake laughing. A hot wind brushed my face, combined with a glow from the street that hadn’t been there last night.
I stared at the most remarkable sight I had ever seen. The ash tree in the parking strip was alight. Flames, blue and green at the tips, molten gold at the base, spiraled around the tree’s crown and shook sparks into the sky. It looked like a girl shaking out her hair. If it reminded me of the way Mae shook out her hair, before she cut it all off; it was no coincidence. The heat of it forced me back a few steps. A burning branch fell onto my car.
Standing in awe of Mae’s spectacle, it took me a few seconds to think to call 911, but summoning the authorities had already occurred to someone else. I could hear distant sirens.
The fire stayed to the tree. It did not try to leap onto a nearby roof (ours) or stray into the dead grass. Neighbors poured out of their houses to watch. The man next door tried to spray it with his garden hose—he probably thought I was insane to just stand there, but I knew the fire wouldn’t spread. Mae had a point to make only to me, and Ivy.
Ivy, Zoe, Bruce, Libra and I stood together as we watched the fire personnel put out the flames. The fire was stubborn, burning for more than twenty minutes before the final ember was quenched. The tree stood in the golden streetlights, surrounded by black puddles, a dripping ebony sculpture.
The fire inspector wanted to know if anyone had seen anything. He also asked if we had enemies. I wanted to laugh, but Ivy and I kept straight faces as we denied knowing anyone who would want to harm us. We were all, of course, at a total loss to explain it. If they wondered why our tree of all the trees on the block, they didn’t say. The file on Ivy Olds had just grown thicker.
Ivy watched me, her opal eyes turning rainbow colors in the fire truck’s strobing lights. “You’d better go talk to her.”
Nodding, I folded my arms and faced her. “But not before I talk to you first.”
“What about?”
“Hollis’s Bijou. Where is it?”
Ivy gave me a sideways look, glanced at the fire fighters loading their hoses into their rig. Watching them, she said. “I told you. I don’t have it. Ask him where it is.” And she waved a hand in the direction of her son.
Bruce, standing next to Libra as she punched a text into her phone, didn’t move an inch. I couldn’t see his face well in the dimness, but I thought I saw him jerk in a slight, modest way. As interesting as Ivy’s statement was, I wasn’t through with her yet. “So you admit to taking it.”
Turning to face me, Ivy swayed a little. But she steadied herself. “We need money. Bruce needs money for college, and then there’s medical bills. I saw the opportunity. I took it. I had a moment to decide about it and so I did.”
I swallowed a surge of grief, for Hollis, pathetic asshole that he was, and for Ivy, because she looked so vulnerable, bluster and bitchiness her only defense. “Were you certain he was going to die? Absolutely certain?”
She wouldn’t look at me. Her gaze followed the firefighters as they milled around the truck. The night cooled rapidly, and a chill skipped over me. “Yes. Of course. He wasn’t breathing.”
Sighing, I moved to face her. She turned her head away. “Ivy, did you check his pulse? Did you wait until there wasn’t one anymore?”
Putting her hands on her hips, Ivy glared at me. This much was clear in the streetlight. “Yes. There wasn’t one.”
Her voice sounded forceful enough, but I still doubted. An untrained person might not know how to verify a heart beat or not. It would be very difficult to distinguish between plain Bijou and Bijou Xtra. But I doubted that Dominique Delphine would care if Ivy had one ordinary Bijou. But if she had Bijou Xtra, that would be another story all together.
I knew I wasn’t going to get any admission of doubt from Ivy about anything. I motioned Bruce over. Libra had earphones in, and I was relieved she would not overhear us.
He came toward me, huge, but graceful. But instead of his hapless smiling face, he looked sullen. “So, your mom says I should ask you about where Hollis’s Bijou got to.”
Shrugging, in that way teenagers have, Bruce said nothing. I continued, “Did you help her get it? What did you put it in? A jar, a special vial, a baggie?”
Giving me a look of disgust, Bruce rolled his eyes. “We used one of Grandpa’s old bottles. Mom poured it in.” Then he blinked. “I’m going to miss Hollis. He had just bought a new Harley. He was going to teach me how to ride it.”
Of course. I wondered how close Ivy and Bruce were to Hollis. Ivy knew him, of course, since he was one of my high school friends. So Bruce had come to know him, too. Sawyer said he was seen all over town on his bike, knew everyone, showed up at every gathering, party or bar.
“Why did you take it away from her?”
He looked vaguely startled by my question. “She wants to sell it. Pay off our debts and give me money for college.” He folded his arms. Libra sidled near, but she bobbed her head in time to her music, which I could hear spilling from the earphones. “I want her to use it to get well.”
Of course. Stunned, I had to think for a moment. Why not? If Bijou could convey youthfulness, and Bijou Xtra could prolong life, why couldn’t they reverse chronic disease?
Bruce gazed at me as if pleased that I appeared shocked into silence.
“Mom, I think Aunt Ivy needs some help.” Zoe’s voice sounded behind me. Ivy leaned heavily on Zoe, who had wrapped her arms around her.
“Bruce, bring her wheelchair.” It stood folded up alongside the house under the eaves, where it had been drying out after Bruce rescued it from the pool. Going back to Ivy, I took her by the arm and she tried weakly to pull away, but I gripped tighter. Bruce opened up the chair and without a protest or a look at either of us, Ivy sank into it. My heart broke to see her weaken, but biting back tears I pushed her into the house to her room.
Before I started to push, I looked directly at Bruce. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to talk to you.”
She let me take her to the bathroom, undress her, put her to bed, all in stony silence. I stood by her bed and waited. Glowering, she pulled the cabinet key from around her neck and threw it at me. When I closed the door, I heard her whisper.
“Bitch”, was the word I heard. It was a relief to hear it. Ivy must be feeling better.
Chapter Nineteen
Unfinished Business, a Warning
When I got back Bruce and Libra where no where to be found. I wondered how they had gotten out of sight so quickly. Damn.
Having no other c
hoice, I went to the cabinet and unlocked it. Ivy had implied that she had learned the process for obtaining Bijou from somewhere in Charlotte Novak’s rambling notes. I had been through these shabby, dog-eared portfolios any number of times, but had never seen anything remotely resembling anything like a recipe. Except chocolate cake, pear pie and steak Diane.
Zoe watched me from the couch as I spread the scrap books out on the floor. As I opened the first one and began running my finger along it, removing scraps stuck in the binding and setting them aside, she began to sort them by size.
Letters, notes, doodles. Records of births and deaths. Greeting cards, ribbon, pressed flowers. Endless photographs of people whose names had long been lost to memory; a couple’s formal portrait, man’s hand on woman’s shoulder. A baby in lavish christening. Endless white clapboard homes and people arrayed out in front in costumes from all the decades of the 20th century.
Zoe ranked them according to subject. Soon we had the entire living room carpeted with black and white snapshots. Then to the small notes on lavender paper, or lace-bordered parchment, or yellow lined-foolscap.
Love notes we placed in a discard pile. Anything that looked like notes for a procedure we placed in a priority pile. Business cards, playing cards, greeting cards went in a maybe pile.
Journals I stacked beside my knee. Spiral-bound notebooks, lesson books, diaries. There were even a couple very old floppy discs; data now irretrievable. These I tossed in the waste basket.
The large scrap books—there were seven of them—I ordered chronologically. Opening the oldest one, nicely dated on the first page by a well-disciplined cursive, July 10, 1889, I began to skim, training my eyes to look for certain words: soul, Jewel, Jazz, earlier names for Bijou.
Zoe helped. She found more references than I did—I was certain I missed some. But none of the writings we found contained the recipe for obtaining and making Bijou.
It was nearly midnight before we realized we had gone through everything. Zoe was wide awake, while my brain had turned to mush. I had not gotten a full night’s sleep in two days. And the night wasn’t over for me.
Angry, too. Ivy had let me and Zoe pour through every item in the cabinet, knowing we wouldn’t find the recipe. I had to stop myself from unreasonably marching into her room, waking her up, and withholding her Vicodin from her until she told me where the recipe was.
Zoe hugged me around the neck. “Mom, maybe we just missed it.”
I shook my head. “It’s not here. Maybe it never was. How Ivy learned it, she’ll have to tell us.” I turned to look at her. “I have to go summon Mae.”
She smiled, jumped up, got her jacket. Pepper, asleep on a mat of photographs, raised her head, wagged her tail. I should have been a good mother and made Zoe go to bed, but after my meeting with Dominique this afternoon, I didn’t want her out of my sight.
Cricket-song filled the air at the old railroad crossing. The offering pile near the closed-off road had grown exponentially. Balloons, huge expensive bouquets—where did these kids get that kind of money?—stuffed animals, copies of Fateful Flowers lay in a dimmed display of angst and memory. Around us, summer night air moved softly in a breeze. Above, stars looked down on us in a vague way.
I made Zoe wait with Pepper at the car. She insisted on getting out so she could see better. Scattered on the cracked tarmac were several half-sheets of paper. I picked one up and read to my dismay;
Mae Meet F.O.D.
Chapter Twenty
A Recipe
I slept 10 hours. When I got up, there was fresh coffee and an envelope on the counter. Zoe was in the pool, Ivy on her chaise, eyes closed. Her color was better, but I saw her walker beside the chaise. I was glad she was using it, but it signaled that she felt far worse than she wanted to let on.
I had three messages on my cell. Even though it was on the bed beside me, I must have turned the ringer off. But first coffee. I carried this and the envelope out to the patio.
“Where’s Bruce?” I sat down in the S-chair beside her, in my robe.
“He went off somewhere with Agnes.” Ivy responded to me without opening her eyes.
Picking up my phone, I texted that I urgently needed to see him. “What’s in the envelope?”
Opening one eye, Ivy didn’t bother to answer, simply raised an eyebrow. I slit the envelope with my finger.
In my hands lay the formula for capturing Bijou, printed out on printer paper. I read it, astonished at how simple it appeared to be. Bijou was obtained by placing a drop of the essential oil of a particular rare fruit—sort of like an olive from what I could make out, obtained only in Macedonia—on the person’s forehead as they take their dying breath. A cloth, preferably pure silk, is placed over the nose and mouth. When the soul emerges, its absorption into the universe is slowed by the cloth, is attracted to the oil. The soul cleaves to the drop, solidifies into a hard substance, and becomes Bijou. Charlotte claimed this can only be successfully done by a family member. The practice, sent down to us from our ancestors only worked for someone with Novak, or Delphine, blood.
Could the Novaks and the Delphines be related? I was stunned to think so, but there was a certain logic to it. We had the same abilities. We had come from the same part of the world. It sickened me to think that Dominique and I could be cousins a thousand times removed.
My mind whirling, I read on. The very next page told how to restore Bijou. It was difficult, as it involved transporting the Bijou to Phantom City and locating the restless wraith whose soul has been stolen. They will do anything to get their Bijou back if they know it’s close. You get their attention with a talisman of their life—something important to them: a photo of a loved one, a smell they adored, a favorite song. Once you produce the Bijou they want to seize it immediately. But if this all happens too fast their Bijou can shatter and the wraith might attack at that point. But if you can slowly place the Bijou in their hand, they can become true ghosts of their former selves.
Nervousness shuddered through me as I gazed at Ivy, her eyes closed again. What would Hollis need more than anything else? The growl of his Harley? The music of Flipper? Hollis had never married, Ivy said. He left no children behind, at least that we knew of. He had lots of girlfriends, but which one was his favorite?
Perhaps Mae could tell me. Mae and Hollis had been close, at least until he betrayed her by blogging that her gypsy poem was a lesbian love song. She got unreasonably mad about that. Mae should have forgiven him. But he never acted remorseful. Indeed, he was resentful of her for shunning him that summer. Sawyer and I never could figure out why they were so angry at each other.
I had so many questions, and I couldn’t get at the answers until I went back to the City to see Dad.
I had to admit, after seeing how ill Ivy was becoming, I wanted to explore the idea that Bijou could be used to cure disease. I hated to think the only source I had for getting it was my sworn enemy. And besides, it was unconscionable to use a person’s soul in any way, even to make an ailing person well. My heart fell heavily in my chest. I didn’t want Ivy to die.
And what if Hollis’s soul had been taken before death was irreversible? My recipe made no mention of how to assess how close someone was to dying. How would Ivy know Hollis was as good as dead? She had no medical training, as Dom and I had. Could you tell by looking at the Bijou whether it was plain old rejuvenation juice or the fabled elixir of immortality?
“You have this oil?” I leaned toward her, my hands damp at how close I was to a terrible secret.
Nodding, Ivy opened both eyes this time.
“How did you get it?”
Before she could answer, my phone buzzed with a message, Bruce responding he was on his way home. I wondered how long that would take. 5 minutes or 5 hours?
“Ivy, I have to go back.” My stomach sank at the thought of it, and worse, whether to take Zoe with me or leave her here with Ivy. I knew Ivy wouldn’t willingly let anything happen to Zoe, but Ivy could get distracted an
d one-way about anything, and drag Zoe right into it with her.
Ivy didn’t even ask what I was talking about. She knew.
I continued, not so much to let Ivy know what was going on, but to order everything in my mind. “I saw Jack yesterday.” Ivy gazed at me, and I saw her lips tighten. I told her about Baby Justin haunting him, and my experience at the water temple.
“Water guardians,” Ivy said, nodding. “Makes sense.”
“Meth freaks at our old house, dogs at the Sanatorium, floods at the water temple. I wonder what is guarding the old VA hospital.”
“Marines?”
We laughed at this, and I felt a little better. Then my heart slid downward again as I told Ivy about meeting Dominique and her veiled threat against Zoe.
Ivy sat up. She gazed over my shoulder, as if at the hole Mae had punched in the wall. “Think she’ll trade the Bijou for Zoe’s safety?”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d expected Ivy to ignore the problem, hope it would go away. But she was taking this seriously. Fear rattled up my spine. Dominique was serious. She would really do it. I moved my chair closer to Ivy, lowered my voice. “Why does she want Zoe? Why would she even hint at such a thing? I thought it was just to threaten me.”
Ivy’s eyes narrowed, their gorgeous blue darkening to cobalt. “I’m not sure. But I remember a story someone used to tell, maybe Grandma, who I barely remember. The only way to open a portal permanently, allow all ghosts and wraiths and spirits to flood the earth, is with blood, Novak or Delphine, spilled at the portal entrance.”
A vague memory of this information swam up from a deep place. Maybe Ivy had once taunted me, telling me I was to be the one sacrificed.
We had to force Bruce to give up the Bijou. He would do it, if we told him the reason. Wouldn’t he?
“What if I could get Bijou from Dad?” I didn’t even know I had the idea. He’d had all those ampules. Certainly he would give me one to help Ivy and to protect Zoe. We were family, after all.