by Steve Cash
“Is it true?” she asked before I’d said a word. “Have you found her, Z? Have you really found Star?”
She spread her cape on the floor beside me and sat down cross-legged. She wore borrowed clothes — a man’s sweater and trousers, and some kind of all-weather boots that were coming undone. In the center of the red cape was a red cross on a white background. It was the symbol for the International Red Cross Society and explained her cape, but not the rest of it.
I watched her adjust her sweater and run her hands through her hair. She was eighteen years older, in her late forties, and the years had not changed her beauty, they had only made it sharper and more permanent. Her hair was shoulder length and the color of winter wheat, with a few strands of silver among the gold, and the gold flecks in her blue eyes literally danced in the firelight. There were lines and creases around her mouth and eyes, and even they seemed sculpted and natural. She picked up one of my hands, keeping her eyes on mine, and held it gently between hers. I had not yet said a word. I glanced at her hands and after eighteen years and a thousand scenarios played out in my mind of what I would say to her, all I said was, “Freckles.”
She looked down, puzzled at first, asking “What?” Then she looked up and began to laugh, saying, “Yes, yes, yes, they’re everywhere. I’ve got families of them now, Z. You should see them, they’re everywhere.”
“Carolina, how did—”
She cut me off and put her fingers to my lips. “Shhh,” she said. “You must tell me, Z, is it true? Have you found Star?”
“Yes, but—”
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it was true. I told Owen I knew it was true the minute we heard. I told him, I’m going to meet them, I’m going over there.”
“Carolina—”
“Just a minute, Z. I want to tell you first that I am still angry about you and Ray leaving the way you did. You promised me—”
“I promised you I would find her.”
“But you never wrote or wired or anything, not a clue. not to me, anyway.”
“It’s complicated.”
She put her hand to her face and rubbed her eyes. She was exhausted and pushing herself to the brink. “Where is she, Z?”
I reached behind me and pulled Mama’s glove off the couch and handed it to her. She smiled and held it close to her face and was about to say something, then opened her eyes in surprise and started to cry. I knew she was sensing Star’s presence, touch, scent. something. Anyway, I’m not sure there is a name for that feeling either.
With more hope than truth, I said, “She’ll be back soon.”
“Oh, God, Z, can it be true, finally? So much has been lost. So much time and. so many other things.” Carolina exhaled and drew in a breath slowly, trying to gather herself, then suddenly sneezed violently several times, almost uncontrollably.
I panicked. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“No, no,” she said, wiping her nose and eyes with her sweater. “It’s those damn cats outside. How many are there?”
I laughed and reached for Mama’s glove and she stopped me, grabbing my hand and turning it over until my thumb stood upright. I’d forgotten about the ring.
Her face went blank and her eyes glazed over. She slipped the ring off my thumb and held it in her palm, staring down on it as if it were the most curious and precious thing on earth. Then she closed her eyes and made a fist around the ring, holding it so tight her knuckles showed white through her skin.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“He was in St. Louis, at the house, at the moment Sailor’s message arrived. He. he had to come. he wouldn’t wait. He must have caught this strange virus on the way. He got here before us. He was sick, no, they were sick—”
“They?”
“Nova and Eder were with him.”
“They were all sick?”
“No. It is impossible for Nova to get sick. remember? It was Eder.”
We stared at each other in silence, then the tears started down over her freckles and I couldn’t stop them. I watched them drop and fall off her chin as they ran their course, gravity pulling them on, forcing them downward through space until they hit the ancient hearthstones in front of us, in front of the fire. All the new wood I’d tossed in earlier had caught and the fire was blazing. The tears didn’t last a second on the hearthstones, and each one disappeared faster than it had taken to fall.
“My God, Z,” Carolina said. “My God.”
Death is a mad seamstress, a drunken messenger with no plan or sense of order — no pattern. Life is nothing but patterns and patterns are everywhere where in life, or seem to be. Geaxi finds them everywhere; rock gardens are her favorite because the patterns are oblique and subjective, but ultimately she pays them little mind. Sailor thinks they are absolutely essential and depends on them as he would wind and waves. Opari finds them darkly mysterious and yet useful — the trick, she says, is in discovering their interconnectedness, their weave.
Death is different. It has no pattern, no weave, no design. Death can go where it wants.
I propped pillows up against the couch and pulled all the blankets around us. Carolina lay with her head in my lap and held my hand next to her cheek. If there had been people outside instead of Caitlin’s cats staring in at us, they might have thought they were seeing something very odd — the grandmother in the lap of the grandson perhaps — but it was never that way for us. It never had been that way and never would.
I asked if she wanted to sleep and she said, “Not now, not yet.” We watched the fire and talked. She wanted to know everything about Star and I told her everything I knew, leaving out some of what I’d seen in New Orleans. When I told her she really was a grandmother, I thought her response would be wild and exuberant, but she only held my hand tighter and quietly said, “Good.”
She asked about Eder, if she’d been in pain at the end and I said, “No, not at the end.” She never asked any details about Nicholas — how he looked, what he said, none of that — and I never asked what had happened between them, but I found out anyway in so many words, or the lack of them. I could hear in her voice that whatever had happened was still a mystery to her. I could also tell she was deeply in love with him; she had never lost that.
Nicholas suffered from what she called “madness of loss” and it consumed him. She said Eder was familiar with the condition, knew it herself and, though she said it was rare, admitted to Carolina that many Meq had been destroyed by it or destroyed themselves because of it. From what she told me, “madness of loss” sounded just as deadly as the virus that actually killed him, only slower.
After the Fleur-du-Mal kidnapped Star and after Ray and I had gone chasing them, Carolina said Nicholas became more affectionate and caring than he’d ever been. At first, she enjoyed being waited on and pampered, but it was not his true nature, nor hers. He was trying too hard, and after Jack was born, he tried even harder. He bought things for both of them impulsively, things they would never need or use. He began remodeling Solomon’s old room himself, though he knew nothing about carpentry. It was supposed to be Jack’s nursery and eventually his bedroom, but Carolina said the room took on the size and smell of a gymnasium. He worked obsessively for months until one day he simply stopped. Nothing was finished and he left the room as it was, tools and all, and walked away. Carolina said he gave no reason and never discussed it. When she asked about the room, he told her there were many more things to do. “Too many,” he’d said, “too many.” He began to forget other things — birthdays, appointments, deadlines. His health deteriorated and he developed odd eating habits when he ate at all. His mood swings were wide and dramatic and he began drinking heavily to find a balance or forget there was one. Carolina said he withdrew from company, even hers, and as the months passed his only mood was not even a mood — he simply quit feeling. “His heart was not broken,” she said. “It was frozen solid.”
And it only got worse. In his lucid moments, he was aware of his
downward spiraling life and spirit and hated it. He cried often and promised to change, staying sober for weeks at a time and teaching Jack to play baseball, even taking him to watch games at Sportsman’s Park. But Star’s absence haunted him like nothing ever had, Carolina said. It was a nightmare he locked inside himself with ever-changing keys, but none of them worked. The keys always dissolved or disappeared and the nightmare would spill out again, worse than before and obvious to everyone he loved. Nicholas was not stupid or insensitive and in his lucid periods he realized the toll his behavior was taking on those he loved, especially Carolina, and on Jack’s seventh birthday Nicholas himself disappeared. Carolina said she sent Mitchell to look for him and he tracked his movements as far as New York before he lost all traces of him.
“Mitchell?” I asked. “Do you mean Mitch Coates?”
“The very same,” she said. “He’s been a life saver in many ways for us, Z, particularly for Jack.”
I smiled and thought back to my favorite memory of Mitch. He was winking at me and catching the double eagle that Solomon had tossed him. I could still see the gold piece turning over and over in the air and the easy way he caught it, almost without looking.
“Where is Mitch now?”
“He’s in St. Louis and doing well,” she said, then she saw the smile on my face. “He’s a good man, Z. You would like him.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“A little of everything, I’m afraid, but his real passion is music. He owns three clubs downtown and the music is wonderful.”
Talking about Mitch seemed to bring Carolina back to the present, except for one more statement.
“I wish I could have kissed him, Z,” she said. “Just one last time.”
I knew who she meant and I knew how much it broke her heart to think it, let alone say it.
“You did,” I said without explanation. “You did.”
Just then, the biggest log in the fire broke into pieces and shot several live coals and sparks in all directions, one of which landed on my forearm. I jumped, then brushed it off, howling in pain. Carolina rubbed the red mark it left, then blew on it gently and kissed it once for good measure.
“Do you remember, Z, when you cut yourself on purpose right there in that same place and made me watch until the wound began to close? We were in Forest Park and you had to prove to me who you really were. who you are. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” I said, “and it hurt then too.”
“But do you remember what I said?”
“Yes, I think so. You said it was like something out of the Bible.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind.”
“What do you mean? How?”
“I mean after all this time and all these years, I’ve changed my mind. I was wrong.” The mark on my forearm had completely vanished, but she kissed it again and said, “There is nothing like you in the Bible.”
In England, during the last days of 1918, the number of deaths from influenza was staggering and yet no one seemed to be paying attention. The end of the Great War and labor disputes in London and elsewhere took precedence over the death dance of the Spanish Lady.
A cartoonist was the first to give the virus the nickname “Spanish Lady,” probably because the first reports of death in great numbers had come from San Sebastian, Spain. It was an inaccurate assumption and cruelly ironic. The source of the virus was not in Spain and the chaotic nature of its appearance in all parts of the world among all parts of every population was anything but ladylike. The Spanish Lady killed roughly twenty million people worldwide in just seventeen weeks, then disappeared.
As Carolina and I finally fell asleep on the floor of Daphne’s living room, we heard no castanets or sad guitars, but everywhere else in the world the Spanish Lady was still dancing; fast and silent, without rhythm or mercy, she was still dancing.
The fatigue I’d felt earlier overwhelmed me. I went deep into sleep and found myself in an old dream. I was standing on the mound in Sportsman’s Park and everyone was waiting for me to pitch the ball. I looked down at Mama’s glove and the ball was no longer there. I could feel it in my hand, but it wasn’t there. I glanced up in the grandstands and saw Nova sitting between Nicholas and Eder. All three stared back at me in silence, then Nova lowered her head and closed her eyes. I heard footsteps and turned toward home plate. There was no batter or catcher and the umpire was walking toward me, taking off his mask, just as he’d done in the old dream. I knew him, I knew him well.
“Z,” the voice whispered. “Z, wake up.”
I opened my eyes and Willie Croft was standing over me, motioning silently with his finger and pointing toward a sleeping Carolina. I rose at once and followed him back to his “quarters.”
Willie walked quickly and pushed the heavy curtains back from the windows just inside and all around the odd-shaped room. He bent down near the fireplace in the corner and for a moment I thought he was going to fall in, but of course he didn’t. He stacked kindling inside and then backed away, lighting the fire with a long match and old newspapers. His red hair was wet and so were his clothes. I turned to look through the leaded windows and it was raining. I could barely hear it falling, but it was steady and gray, and I could only guess at the time of day. There was no sign of the limousine and I assumed it was in the garage. With or without my “ability,” I never heard the big car return.
“Where’s Tillman?” I asked.
“He dropped me off and drove back to Falmouth,” Willie said and paused slightly. “To wait for the coffins.”
“There’s no quarantine?”
“Quarantine?”
“Yes,” I said. “On Caitlin’s Ruby. Opari was right, wasn’t she? It was a virus.”
“Yes. The Spanish flu. quite nasty, that.”
“Daphne thought there might be a quarantine imposed.”
“No, no, there is no quarantine on anything or anyone. There is too much indecision among the powers that be for that. But tell me, Z, where is Daphne? And where are the others? Where is Star, for God’s sake, and Caine? And who is the woman sleeping in the living room?”
“You didn’t recognize her?”
“No, should I have?”
“Well, let me just say that Star will look something like her in a few years.”
Willie blinked once, then started to speak and stopped. He took in a quick breath and held it. He looked at me the same way he had years ago, in China, when he was still my size and leaning out of the window of a train. He was a boy then and it had all been a practical joke to Geaxi, but the look of wonder is ageless.
I nodded to him and confirmed that it was true and said, “They haven’t seen each other since Star was a child.”
He cleared his throat. “How. how did she get here?”
“I don’t know yet, at least not all of it. I do know in some way or another she used the Red Cross.”
“Is she aware that Star is here, or was?”
“Yes.”
“Does she. I mean, have you. ”
“Yes, if you mean Nicholas and Eder. I told her.” I sat down on the side of the bed nearest the fire and something occurred to me. It had bothered me all along. I now knew why no one had seen Nicholas before; he had disappeared from everyone, and I knew why Star was a surprise — she’d been in Africa — but why was Carolina a stranger? It made no sense. “Willie,” I said, “I’m going to ask you something straight out and please, if you can, give me an honest answer. Why, if you know about us, about the Meq, and you know about Solomon, tell me why you and Daphne don’t know Carolina? In all this time, how could you not?”
Willie paused only a moment and never blinked. “We do and we don’t, Z. It goes back to Owen, really.”
“Owen Bramley?”
“Yes, well, what I mean is we knew of her. When Owen first came to Caitlin’s Ruby and told us of Solomon and Mowsel’s family. the Meq. he also spoke of a remarkable woman who owned the house where Solomon lived. We knew there had b
een some sort of family tragedy there, in St. Louis, but he never went into any depth about it, and as the years wore on, it surfaced less and less until he never mentioned Carolina at all. Both he and Sailor, who I saw rarely, became obsessed with the future — property acquisition, communication, Solomon’s ‘Diamond’ plan. Owen always said, ‘We can’t look back.’ And Sailor would only say, ‘It will work itself out in time.’ I simply left it alone. So did Mother. But now. now it’s quite different.”
“Quite,” I said.
I was even more confused. Had Owen been protecting Carolina or was it something else? Sailor, on the other hand, I could understand. But what did he mean by “work itself out?” I was sure that Sailor, more than anyone, would have kept Carolina involved, because of her closeness to Eder and Nova, if nothing else. The past was unraveling with the present. I looked at Willie and he was not only confused, he was anxious and worried. Then I remembered Star.
“Daphne said you would know where she’d gone,” I told him. “She loaded Star and Caine and Nova in an old milk truck and took off before I could talk her out of it.”
“The Falcon.”
“The Falcon?”
“Yes, it’s a pub in Penzance. We own the apartment on the top floor. Mowsel lives there at times. I’m sure that’s what she meant. I only hope Star and the baby are”—Willie paused and his eyes moved from mine to a point directly over my head, toward the door—“all right,” he finished.
“So do I,” a familiar voice said from behind me. It was Carolina. I had no idea how long she’d been there. She was looking straight at Willie. “Are you the father by any chance?”
“No,” Willie said. “I’m the husband.”