The Ebony Swan

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  The cart rolled over what Emily called the “New Bridge” that crossed the canal—a long bridge that spanned swampy ground as well as water. On the other side it turned into a narrow lane that ran from north to south, with a single jog around the Methodist church.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Alex saw Susan’s lively interest in these surroundings. The graves hadn’t come into view yet, and she wanted to see Susan’s reaction when she got her first glimpse of them.

  “We still live in John’s old family home,” Emily was explaining. “John wouldn’t give it up for anything, though we’ve modernized a bit.”

  Listening to this narration, so formally given, Alex suddenly longed for the friend she’d loved and lost so long ago—not this stranger who was doing her best with Susan.

  Along the lane that followed, the white picket fences she remembered had mostly been replaced by chain links. No doubt a protection against damage from golf carts and motor scooters, and certainly cheaper to maintain. Wild roses grew everywhere—she remembered those.

  The first yard came into view. It was crowded with tombs, set aboveground and almost touching one another, and Alex turned again in her seat to watch Susan. The shock of recognition that came into her face was evident, and she looked at her grandmother with amazement.

  “This is what I saw when I was in the church!” she cried. “This was my vision!”

  Alex spoke soothingly. “Yes—I knew what you were describing. This can happen, you know. It isn’t necessary to understand.”

  The first time she’d come to the island Alex had been shocked by the crowded tombs in so many front and side yards. They had both fascinated and disturbed the young Alex. Since the island was water-logged, families had buried their dead in graves built aboveground in the only available space—their yards. Cremation was a modern solution that not everyone accepted.

  Alex had been startled at the church when Susan had related her vision, but she had accepted the fact that not every experience could be explained by left-brain logic. Whimsically, she had wondered if some blood memory had been imprinted in a granddaughter, whose real heritage came not from Juan Gabriel, but from John Gower.

  Emily was explaining casually. “John always says that it’s comforting to have one’s departed family members so close at hand. Though there are no graves in our yard, since his family used the small island cemetery. Now burials are often on the mainland. We islanders take our graves for granted and hardly notice them.”

  On either side of the lane stood handsome white clapboard houses of good size, all well kept and freshly painted. Many of the houses were built with a peaked front roof in an architectural style that had been adopted by early carpenters. Where there were no graves, small, neat yards lay open to the sun, with rare clumps of trees here and there. Once the entire island had been wooded, but over the centuries most of the trees had been cut down for building material and heating. Hurricanes had taken the rest.

  Emily talked as the cart bumped along, and her words sounded faintly defensive. “I’ve come to love this island, Alex, though it frightened me at first. I wasn’t used to such isolation—especially in winter. There’s a wind they call the ‘freezing fire’ that comes off the bay. In the old days, when the bay froze, we could be cut off from the mainland for months at a time, since few boats could venture out. Now we have our small airport and there are always planes.”

  Susan shivered and Alex knew she hadn’t fully recovered from having her vision connect with reality.

  “It must be terribly lonely in the winter,” Susan said.

  “Oh, no! The men still sit around at the Double-Six—and talk man-talk. Women aren’t much welcome there. Did you know that islanders are called Tangiermen, but there’s no name for the women? During the winter, we have lively parties and we do things we can’t do when our lives are bounded by our husbands’ work on the bay, and the regular visits of tourists. Of course, everyone on the island knows everyone else, and most of the islanders are related. You’ll meet certain names over and over again.” She broke off. “Look who’s coming, Susan.”

  A young woman in shorts, riding a motor scooter marked POLICE, and with a small child perched on the seat in front of her, went slowly past. She smiled at Emily, who waved back.

  “Our only police officer is a woman,” Emily told Susan. “She does a very good job. In a small community like this we all keep an eye on our kids, and there’s not much in the way of crime. Of course, we hold our breath over what can be brought back by young people who go off to school and come home with ideas that don’t fit into our quiet life. It’s a good life—better than you out-landers can imagine.”

  How thoroughly she had integrated herself, Alex thought. “There can’t be many jobs for young people.”

  “That’s the biggest problem. They can either become watermen or serve the tourists in some way. So a lot of kids grow up and move elsewhere. A number of babies were born this last year, so perhaps we’re growing a little. We’re about 750 in population at present.”

  “I admire you for adapting,” Alex told her a little dryly.

  Emily continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “We’ll drive you around, Susan, and show you some of our special sights. Then we’ll have lunch at Hilda Crockett’s Chesapeake House, where the food is good home cooking. Your grandmother and my John will want to talk about old times, so we’ll leave them to that for a while. Here’s the house now.”

  So this was what John had planned, Alex thought uneasily. There would be no respite, after all. The old woman and the young girl were once more at war, and the young girl had never had much sense. Panic and an urge to flee were in opposition with her foolish eagerness to see him again. Her knees felt weak, so that when Ginny helped her down from the cart, she leaned heavily on her cane.

  “Just go on in,” Emily directed. “If John’s back, he’ll be expecting you.” Her voice seemed carefully neutral. As always, she would do what John wished. Could Alex Montoro ever have become so compliant?

  The cart pulled away, but Alex did not go in at once. They had turned off the main road, and this was a parallel lane, with fewer houses and no graves. She stood on the walk inside a gate in the chain link fence and stared at the house she might have called her home.

  A wide porch ran across the front. Above, set back from the porch roof, were three windows with dark green awnings. Over the center window rose the peaked roof common to the island. A red chimney stood up boldly on either side, promising warm fireplaces in winter.

  Alex went up the steps and hesitated before the screened door. This was the moment for courage, for suppressing emotion of any kind. She tapped lightly, and when there was no response she obeyed Emily and stepped inside. A narrow hall ran toward the back, and a door opened on her right. After brilliant morning sunlight, Alex blinked in the dimness as she went through the parlor door.

  For a moment she stood looking across a room in which the morning sun had been mostly closed out by shutters, so that the interior seemed cool and dim. A single reading lamp burned near the end of a couch where a man sat with a book in his hands. An old man. Her breath caught in her throat as he looked up and saw her. At once he set the book aside and got to his feet, moving far more easily than Alex was able to do.

  She could only stand very still, staring at him, feeling more at a loss than she had in a long time. This man was as tall as the John she remembered, lean and wiry, not at all stooped, but with a face that had been lined and weathered by his trade on the bay. A stern face. This was no one she knew, and she could think of nothing at all to say.

  When he spoke his voice sounded querulous and not at all like the voice she remembered. Had her own voice changed that much?

  “Hello, Alex,” he said. He turned on another lamp, and his eyes seemed never to leave her face. When he had looked for a time that seemed forever, his expression softened. “You’re beaut
iful,” he said in wonderment.

  Beautiful? He was mocking her, of course. She tried to remember how she had dressed that morning. A bit much for a plane trip, perhaps, but with a vanity she couldn’t help indulging. She had put on her favorite turquoise silk jacket with embroidered white chrysanthemums. Slim white trousers. Pearls in her ears—pearls Juan Gabriel had given her, and that she’d put on as a sort of protective charm. She stayed where she was, stiffening in defense of that girl who had begun to whimper inside.

  “Come and sit down, Alex.” John came to take her hand, drawing her across the room. “I know how strange this must be for you. For me too.”

  She gave him another quick look as she sat down, hardly touching his hand, holding herself proudly erect. When she sat down carefully on the sofa and set her cane aside, it promptly fell on the floor in its own perverse way. She ignored it and looked at this man whom she didn’t know. Her eyes had adjusted from the outdoor glare, and now she could see him more clearly. He had been such a tenderly good-looking young man in those days when she’d loved every contour of his face. Now the myriad lines, even the weathering, expressed character and a quality of toughness she didn’t recall. This was a far more interesting face than that of the boy she remembered—but it was the young face she had loved. Thick white hair gave him dignity, and he seemed far more assured and comfortable than she managed to feel.

  He sat down beside her, though not close. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Alex?” he said.

  The question made her heart skip a beat because it came out of the past. That was a question he had often asked. She told the fool of a girl inside to be still, and managed an uncertain smile.

  “I’m thinking right now that I’m two different women, and I don’t know how to bring the two together.”

  “I know.” The querulous note she’d first heard was gone, and the old resonance had returned. So he had been nervous too when he saw her. “I feel that in myself too, and it’s not easy to deal with.”

  “But I don’t want to be two people!” she cried, and now the querulous sound cracked in her own voice, undoing her further. “I’ve earned the right to be the woman I am. An old woman!” Her words defied him to contradict.

  He turned his head away for a moment, so that she saw the carving of his profile, with all the young softness gone. He had, indeed, turned into a Tangierman, yet all those years away from the island still tempered him.

  “We’re both a lot more than two people, Alex. We can look back on an assortment of lives we’ve lived. More for you than for me. When I knew you, you were still very close to that young dancer you’d been. I’d never seen anyone so magical. When you moved you hardly touched the ground. You were vitally alive—and how could I not have been enchanted? But when you walked in just now I saw the woman you have become. You wear your years with grace, and there’s still a magic about you. Somehow I knew there would be. An old man can remember, Alex.”

  Pain thrust deeply and suddenly, so that she could hardly endure what she felt. In that instant she could think only of all she had lost. He must have seen her betrayal of emotion, for he went on at once.

  “When videos came in I bought one of Swan Lake. It wasn’t you dancing, but I could half-close my eyes and see you on the screen. And I knew—in spite of the anger I felt at the time—that we had been right to separate. No one can tether a swan. You’d have molted and lost your feathers. That long, proud neck would have bent in the winds of Tangier’s freezing cold. Of course I raged at first because of the choice you made, though I knew later it was the right one.”

  You never came after me! The words sounded in her mind with remembered hurt, though she didn’t speak them aloud.

  “It took years to learn a little wisdom, Alex. Emily could turn herself into a waterman’s wife, as you never could have.”

  Silence grew between them, as though there was no more to be said. Yet nothing had really been said, and she sat very still, waiting.

  “You know why I wanted you to come here, don’t you, Alex?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Then will you tell me the answer? Is Susan my granddaughter? Was Dolores my daughter?”

  Tears came so suddenly that she couldn’t stop them. She felt the wetness on her cheeks and made no effort to conceal the emotion that shook her so unexpectedly. He touched a finger to one cheek, catching a shining wet drop. He had done that very thing before—when she was young and desperate. Even her cheek remembered. But tears could no longer be allowed, and she moved from his touch.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, to both your questions. That’s the reason I’ve come. Because you have a right to see your granddaughter. I grieved for you and Emily when I learned about your son’s death. I wished that you could know you had a daughter, John.”

  “I felt a deep hurt when Dolores died. That is the only time other than at my son’s death that I can remember crying real tears. In our day men weren’t allowed to cry. But I’d never known her and when I knew I never would it broke my heart.”

  There was too much emotion here—in both of them. She tried to close herself against it.

  “Does Emily know?”

  “She knew what you and I meant to each other before I married her. I’m not sure whether she had ever guessed about Dolores.”

  Of course he’d had every right to tell Emily, but she still wished he hadn’t.

  “Emily is strong and tough and capable,” he went on. “She didn’t waste any time bleeding. And after all, she is the one I married. She knows that my loyalty to her has never wavered.”

  He didn’t use the word “love,” and it was ridiculous to feel this surge of jealousy.

  He had once been sensitive to her feelings, and he startled her now by taking her hand and holding it with a kindness, a tenderness that could easily undo her all over again.

  “We can never lose those two young people we used to be, Alex. Nothing like that has ever happened to me since. I’ve never run with Emily on the sand.” He smiled faintly at the thought.

  But he had lived with Emily in a house they shared, and all these years had been spent with her. Years that she had chosen to spend with Juan Gabriel. So who was to blame?

  “You’d have been bored,” he told her, the tenderness gone. “You’d have hated being a waterman’s wife. I could never have given you a fraction of what your husband did. You were married to a distinguished, gifted man who adored you. I was wrong to ask you to leave him.”

  At this particular moment she no longer knew what was right or wrong. In her jacket pocket she found a handkerchief and dried her eyes, blew her nose.

  “They’ll be returning soon,” he said. “I told Emily not to take too long. Are you going to tell Susan?”

  His words recognized that the choice was hers.

  She shook her head. “Not now. Perhaps never. I’m afraid to tell her because of what happened with Dolores.” She paused and then went on, since he had a right to know. “Dolores was devoted to Juan Gabriel, who was the father she knew. And of course he was proud of her; she was his daughter. But the time came when I wanted her to know the truth. Perhaps I was blindly foolish, but I even felt that I owed it to you to tell her. I never expected her to go to pieces as she did. She was angry with me, and broken-hearted because Juan Gabriel was not her father. She even began to blame him and be angry with him as well. I’m still afraid that she may have exploded in Juan Gabriel’s face that day she died. I don’t know what happened, but I’ve always wished I could have talked to her again, made her understand what it was like when we were young—and—and—”

  “Desperately in love? The way only thwarted young love can be desperate. But, Alex, it’s different with Susan. She knew Juan Gabriel only as a small child. So perhaps—”

  Alex caught the wistful note in his voice and went on. “She grew up out in Santa Fe knowing about Juan Gab
riel Montoro only through his books. Probably feeling a little reflected glory at the fact that he was her grandfather. Her father never told her about us, though I know that Dolores told her husband before she died.”

  “Of course it would be hard for Susan to put me in his place.”

  “I don’t know that. Susan is more like me than she’s like her mother. Yet I’m still afraid to risk telling her at this late date. Susan and I have only just met. She hasn’t even fully accepted me as yet.”

  John still held her hand and his fingers tightened on hers. “You’ll know what to do when the time comes. If the time comes. For now, wait and see.”

  His understanding that put aside his own longing seemed more generous and giving than what she felt—more like the mother who had raised him. She had nothing to offer in return.

  “I kept our secret,” she told him. “I think my husband never suspected. He said nothing—ever. I do know how much I was loved and cherished.”

  John seemed to withdraw into himself. Clearly he didn’t want to hear about Juan Gabriel, and it was a relief when the golf cart appeared outside.

  Susan and Emily came in together, and Susan looked happy and interested.

  “I’m glad you brought me here, Grandmother. This is a fascinating island. I almost feel that I have a connection with it. I’ve told Emily about my vision in the church.”

  Emily stood back a little, still wary and cautious, and Alex felt a sudden sympathy for her old friend. If Emily suspected that Susan was John’s granddaughter, she might fear losing a little more of him to Alex.

  “Susan,” Alex said, “John Gower is an old friend whom I knew when I first came to this country. Such English I spoke! He gave me a few lessons.”

  Susan held out her hand to John warmly. “Your wife has been telling me about the watermen of Chesapeake Bay. A life that sounds exciting, but dangerous as well.”