The Cabinet of Earths

by Anne Nesbet

  Because now she knew what it was about the dullness of this dull old woman that seemed so familiar: She was another one of them. She was another (though older) Cousin Louise.

  “They come in and go out and don’t even notice me now,” said the old lady. “No one notices. I am invisible.”

  “Not to me,” said Maya. Fifteen seconds ago: yes. But not anymore.

  “Ah, ma fille,” said the old lady. “I once was a child like you. Perhaps just a little younger than you, back then—1954, it was. Long ago. Be careful, little one. Keep your life and your bright colors. Stay outside.”

  “Why?” said Maya.

  “Such a charming child, that’s what I was,” said the old lady. “Come in, they said. Why? Why did I go in?”

  She sat still on her bench, waiting, it seemed, for Maya to answer her old unanswerable question.

  “Why did you go in where?” said Maya. “This building? When?”

  The old lady shrugged.

  “I was hit by a car, you see, to start with. Yes! A car came rolling over me, right here in the avenue Rapp. And yet—miracle!—I was fine. They saw it happen. They had a camera in their hands. They brought me inside and put me in their beautiful chair. Things carved into it, you know. Creatures. Birds. Was I frightened? I don’t remember. And then they took it from me.”

  “What did they take?”

  “It, it,” said the old lady. “All I don’t have now. I was charming, before. People saw me, you know, and smiled. I was very lucky, ma fille. Like you.”

  “I’m not so lucky,” said Maya, but the old lady shook her head.

  “The car rolled over me, and I stood up and laughed! A miracle, a little miracle. But then they took me in and sat me in the chair and took it from me and put it in a box,” she said.

  “Took what?” said Maya.

  “I told you that already,” said the old woman, and her face seemed vaguer again. “Didn’t I? What I had then, before. All the charm and the luck in me. What you still have, you fortunate child. What excellent anbar this will be, they said to each other. How a little dose of this will brighten our endless days! Truly, anbar is the food of the gods! Oh, why did I go inside? And ever since, my dear—”

  Horror prickled its way down Maya’s back.

  “Anbar! she said. “Oh my God! But I thought it was something to make sick people well.”

  The old woman just shook her head again.

  “Wicked people. Wicked people. It was long ago, when they ate me up that way. I was Amandine then, you know. And now who am I? Tell me: Who am I now?”

  In that one awful second, Maya lost all of her French: It just went away. She had been wrong. She had been terribly, terribly wrong. Anbar saved nobody. It was just the food of the gods. A treat, a drug, a snack. But the price of it! Oh! She took a step away from the old woman on the bench, a step toward the door of the Salamander House, because by then she was remembering another thing, the most terrible thing of all.

  “They took it from those children! But Cousin Louise! And you were Amandine! But—I put it in the honey! Oh my God, my mother!”

  Her lungs, her heart, they were filled, at that moment, with a cold so deep she could have screamed from the sheer pain of it: That is what fear feels like. She had gotten mixed up. She had been wrong. It had never been anbar that made people immortal: It was always only the Cabinet of Earths. And she turned away from the bench and ran, as fast as she had ever run, down the avenue Rapp, across the rue Saint-Dominic, as fast as she could, all the way home.

  Chapter 13

  An Island for Lavirottes

  In French the word for picture is tableau (noun, masculine).

  And when Maya came bursting into the living room of her apartment (five minutes and thirteen seconds after leaving the old lady on her bench outside the Salamander House), this is the tableau she found:

  — Cousin Louise, sitting very straight on the plain, gray couch, a napkin dangling from her hand;

  — Maya’s mother, leaning forward from one of the hard-backed chairs, just starting to pour out a glass of tea;

  — the faces of both Cousin Louise and Maya’s mother, turned toward the crashing entrance of Maya and frozen as if by the flash of a camera, all surprise and alarm;

  — the gray tangle of steam threading its way up from the teapot’s spout;

  — a plate of cake, all in slices;

  — and the opened honey jar.

  “Stop! Don’t!” said Maya, and she flung herself forward toward the coffee table so violently that a lurching arc of tea splashed right onto the sleeve of her coat. It didn’t burn at first; the fabric just sagged against her skin. “You can’t! Don’t touch it! In the honey—anbar!”

  She was not fast enough. While her mother set the teapot back down with a clank and grabbed for Maya’s damp sleeve, Cousin Louise whisked the honey jar off the table and brought it up to her nose.

  “In this?” she said. “Is what?”

  The back of Maya’s hand was beginning to sting, but she reached out with it anyway, making a desperate grab for the jar. But for all her dullness, Cousin Louise could move very quickly when she wanted to. The jar in Cousin Louise’s hand stayed just out of Maya’s reach. And then Cousin Louise did something so shockingly unlike herself that Maya and her mother both gaped at once: She stuck her papery finger right into the jar, scooped out a glob of honey—oh, the smell was sweet, even from where Maya stood; her heart galloped a little, just to have that thin tendril of sweetness reaching out to her that way, and her mother, next to her, gave such an odd little sigh—and Cousin Louise pulled her honeyed finger out of the jar and stuck it right into her mouth. Like a child. Not just any child. Like a badly behaved (as the concierge might say) American child.

  But she kept her back very straight as she did it. Her back was straight and the expression on her face was entirely unreadable, her finger in her mouth all the while.

  “Hey, I want some of that, too!” said James, appearing in the living room so suddenly it seemed like he must have teleported himself there from his bedroom. “What’s that? I want some, too!”

  “Oh, don’t!” said Maya again to Cousin Louise, but her voice was already not much more than a worn-out croak. “Don’t do that!”

  “You don’t even like honey,” said Maya’s mother to James. And then: “Louise, are you sure you’re all right? Maya, calm down!”

  Cousin Louise stood up in one sudden motion, a stern column of Louiseness, with the honey jar still open in her hand.

  “This came from where?” she said.

  “From the organics store on rue Cler,” said Maya’s mother.

  “From the Salamander House,” said Maya, under her breath.

  Cousin Louise shot her a sharp look.

  “I’ll take it along with me, then,” she said. “So sorry, Sylvie. I am late.”

  They had shown a movie like this in art class, once: the vague pencil sketches to start with, and then the artist’s hand coming to ink things in, to make them definite. Every possible edge of Cousin Louise seemed one notch inkier than Maya had ever seen before. And then the new, ever so slightly more definite Cousin Louise screwed the lid back onto the honey jar and started walking to

  the door.

  “How much of that honey did you have?” said Maya to her mother, though she had to run after Cousin Louise before her mother could answer, had to catch up to the swiftly retreating Louise and put her hand on her arm to slow her down.

  “Wait, Louise—I put anbar in it,” she said, in a desperate muddled mumble. “Don’t eat it. Don’t. The way those people all want it so badly—I think it’s addictive. I think it’s a drug. And it comes from—oh, you mustn’t eat it. Please don’t.”

  “I remember the scent of it,” said Cousin Louise. “How extraordinary! I remember everything now.”

  And with that she went out the door into the hall and away.

  Maya looked after her for one puzzled, miserable second and then went back
to the living room, where her mother was toweling up the puddles of tea and letting James eat two pieces of cake at once.

  “Maya!” said her mother. “What on earth is wrong with you?”

  “That honey,” said Maya, still drowning in miserableness. “How much of it did you eat?”

  “Maya!” said her mother again. “You come barging in like a crazy person, nearly break the teapot, practically throw yourself at Cousin Louise—”

  Maya sat down on the couch with a resigned thud. The back of her hand was really smarting now, where the tea water had scalded her.

  “I just wanted to help,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Her mother gave her a very odd look and then reached forward and took her hand in hers.

  “I’m sure the honey was fine,” she said. “It’s not something that goes bad, you know. Not with all that sugar in it. And anyway, I never even got to taste it, the way you came storming in.”

  She gave Maya’s hand a squeeze meant to be reassuring, but Maya had old ladies on benches and Cousin Louises and her mother’s odd look swirling around in her head and was not exactly reassured.

  With good reason, as it turned out. Because there are certain rules followed by Thoughtful Mothers around the world when you let something slip (and nearly breaking the teapot while shouting incoherent warnings about honey did count, Maya had to admit, as letting something slip): They take you somewhere, that day or the next, to have what they like to describe as a nice, comfortable talk. They say things like, “We haven’t had a chance to catch up in a while, have we?” They mean well. And if there’s really nothing at all in your life going on more serious than tomorrow’s history quiz or needing new shoelaces, who knows? Maybe your heart doesn’t sag right into the pit of your stomach when your Thoughtful Mother suggests going out somewhere, just the two of you, right now or possibly Saturday. To a museum, said Maya’s mother. To the Louvre. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  “I’d like to show you what I’ve been doing with myself, all these weeks, while you’re at school,” said her mother.

  “All right,” said Maya. What else was she going to say?

  So Saturday, right after dropping James off for his half day of school (only the little kids had school on Saturdays), Maya and her mother took the métro across the river to the Louvre, which turns out to be connected to an immense underground mall, with record stores and clothing shops and everything you can imagine, so that by the time they came to the entrance of the museum itself, Maya felt just a little bit encouraged. Surrounded by shoppers, it’s hard to think your happiness hinges on some bottle filled with earth in a cabinet somewhere. And so far her mother was chatting about this and that, more like a normal person than like a Thoughtful Mother, though her movements were slower than they once had been.

  But then they were riding escalators up past statue after statue, and the crowds thinned out, and the air became quieter, and Maya could almost hear her mother steeling herself up for full-on thoughtfulness, for indirect questions, for everything that makes comfortable talks such, well, torture, usually.

  But instead her mother sighed and smiled. Almost a mischievous smile, to tell the truth!

  And she said,

  “There’s a painting here I want to show you.”

  The wooden floors squeaked underneath as they walked: squeak squawk squeak squawk. It would be hard to sneak into the Louvre and steal even a little statue or an enameled plate without anyone noticing. Well, they probably have all sorts of modern alarm systems up every-

  where, too, but the floors do a pretty good job on their own. Maya took two or three steps on tiptoe, just to see if that helped, but the floor squawked underfoot all the same. And then her mother stopped before a medium-sized square painting on the wall in front of them and pointed.

  “This one,” she said. “Do you see?”

  Maya rolled onto her toes and back down (squeak), catching enough of a look to get the idea: cute baby Jesus bouncing on his mother’s knees; lots of rich red cloth; some man kneeling before them with about the worst haircut the Middle Ages ever saw.

  “Believe it or not, I grew up with this picture,” said her mother. “My mother had it in a book. She was always showing me the river, the garden—”

  Maya took another look: There was a river there, winding into the background, between vineyards and hills, towns and cathedrals. All cleverly framed by those three arches at the back of the room or chapel. And two magpies in the garden.

  “The little people walking over the bridge—do you see them? In my mother’s book you needed a magnifying glass to make them out. Tiny little people walking to heaven. The other side of the river, where the pretty churches are. Left bank, earth; right bank, heaven. See? But my mother said—”

  Maya’s mother stopped to take an extra breath or two, and Maya made a note of that in the secret record book she was keeping inside her head: how her mother was winded by the trip up to the top floor of the Louvre, even though it had all been escalators, just about. Not even stairs.

  “She said what she loved about this picture was that even the world in it was beautiful. Not just heaven, she meant. The other side of the river, the mortal side. See, look, Maya! The green, green vineyards sloping down to the water. The mountains far away. It is beautiful, isn’t it? I hope those little people appreciate it all properly.”

  Maya put her nose closer to the painting, but the little people remained very, very tiny, carrying their tiny flags over that faraway arching bridge. Hard to tell whether they were appreciating the scenery properly or not.

  “There’s a boat on the river,” she said, now that she could see it all better. “And an island with a castle on it. How’d he paint it all so small?”

  She looked at the name on the label: Jan Van Eyck. c. 1390—1441. Well, that was ages and ages ago. Days probably felt pretty long in the fifteenth century. Not all that much to do. Time enough, anyway, to spend hours dotting paint onto your canvas, one hair’s worth at a time, until the little banners could be carried into the heavenly city.

  “The island,” said her mother. “Yes, I know. What’s an island doing there, in the middle of the river? You know what my mother used to say?”

  Maya remembered certain things about her grandmother very well: the feel of her dark blue sweater, the pearls that hung from her ears like tears, the slight smell of lavender and thyme that made her different from other people’s grandmothers. And when she laughed, she used to tip her head right back and become, by some trick of the voice, about a hundred years younger, just for a second.

  “She used to say: That’s ours; that’s where we live, the ones in our family. A little bit of us always not here, not there: on the island in the middle. Between the worlds. An island for Lavirottes, she used to say. That was her family, you know. Ours, too.”

  Maya looked at the little island rising up so gaily above the winding river that was apparently supposed to be death, and she felt an odd twinge of resentment. Maybe not every Lavirotte was happy being not here, not there! Maybe some Lavirottes just wanted to be normal!

  “It’s just a painting,” she said.

  “Yes,” said her mother. “But I like it very much. When I was sick, I used to think about that island in the river, and how a person could climb the tallest tower and look out at the beautiful fields on one side, and the golden towers on the other side, and the tall mountains in the distance all around. And then, who knows, maybe go down and find a boat and just row yourself right over to one bank or another.”

  She paused.

  “And now I like it because it’s beautiful.”

  Sometimes you have to barge in, thought Maya. Sometimes you can’t just wait for the hints to fall crumb by crumb into your outstretched hands.

  “Mom, if you were sick again, would you even tell me?”

  Maya’s mother made a funny sound, a little hum of surprise, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t think you would,” said Maya. “You
never tell me anything. Why can’t you just tell me? I really need to know. I’m old now. You can’t just keep me in the dark forever.”

  “But, Maya,” said her mother. “All those tests, remember? As far as I know, I’m fine.”

  Still, there was something veiled in her expression. Those lucky-unlucky Lavirottes on their islands! How could you ever tell with them?

  Her mother looked at her watch.

  “Oh, look at that: We have to hustle if we’re going to get back in time for James,” she said. “Let’s just loop back downstairs past the Italians on our way out.”

  By the time they were on the métro again, Maya’s mother looked pale enough that a man offered her his seat. Maya stood next to her, swaying as the train wound its way back under the Seine, and her heart felt raw somehow, as if it had been scalded by spilled tea or exposed slightly too long to an open flame.

  They took the escalator up to the street level when they got to their station, and still Maya’s mother needed a few seconds at the foot of rue Cler to catch her breath.

  “Want me to go pick up James?” said Maya. “We’ll meet you back home. Maybe I’ll even take him to the park or something. No need for you to rush around.”

  “Good idea,” said her mother. “Go!”

  So off Maya ran. But she went the slightly longer way, through the park, to look at the bare trees, to help her heart get itself back into order. And then when she came racing up to the door of James’s school, there they all were, the parents, the children with their after-school pastries and cookies, the boys running around and shouting, the dour old guardian at the door, who would have looked entirely in place perched on a barrel at harbor’s edge by the sea somewhere—there was even a dent in his nautical frown where a pipe was clearly meant to go. The only thing missing from the scene was one brown-haired

  five-year-old in a steam shovel sweater. James was not there.

  She waited a while, picking at an old callus on the ball of her left hand: Sometimes the kindergarten class came down late, if they had painting supplies to put away. But as the knots of children and parents began to dissipate and wander away, Maya saw she had no choice. She went up to the guardian with his dented frown and asked where her brother was: James Davidson, Kindergarten B.