Blue

by Lou Aronica

  “You’re my heart,” Polly said, the words coming out haltingly. “You know that, right?”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “You’re the most perfect thing that ever happened to me. I’ll have that forever.”

  Becky started crying and the two held their faces together, tears intermingling. Chris hadn’t heard Polly say, “You’re my heart” to Becky in years, since well before the divorce. He flashed on an image of Polly rocking their infant daughter after feeding her and saying those words. The future had turned out so differently from the one he’d anticipated back then.

  Polly held Becky’s face in her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. “Go lean toward your father,” she said. “That’s how it works, right?”

  Becky moved toward him and he took her in his arms. “Want to tell one more Tamarisk story before you go?” he said.

  Becky sniffled. “I don’t think I can.”

  He tightened his hold on her. “Is it okay if I tell one myself every night before I go to bed? They’ll all have you in them, of course.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Chris kissed her and pulled her even tighter. “I love you, babe.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  He buried her head in his chest and held her there for a long time. He knew he had to let her go, but it was proving even more difficult than he’d expected. At last, he pulled back and let her lean against him without his exerting any pressure on her.

  “Dad?” she said softly.

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Always, Beck.”

  She didn’t say anything else and Chris assumed she’d begun the darkening process. He had no idea what to do if Becky had trouble making the transit. His having her lean on him these past few weeks served no purpose, really, except perhaps to the degree that she thought it served a purpose. The thought came to mind that he would have no idea if she’d succeeded. How would he know the difference between Becky’s safe transit to Tamarisk and something else entirely? What if she got pulled back? How would he help her in her final days to reconcile that Miea’s theory was wrong?

  Several minutes passed and Chris felt Becky’s body grow slack. He didn’t want to move her in case she was still traveling, but his thoughts raced. Was it too late to call an ambulance? Was it possible the hospital could keep her alive long enough to seek one last miracle? Was there something that science could do for her that Tamarisk couldn’t?

  Chris felt the change before he saw it. The panic that had begun to rise within him subsided, as though a soothing wave had washed over him. He breathed deeply and then did it again, exhaling slowly and evenly. The wave of feeling covered him, but rather than crashing away, it embraced him.

  Chris looked down at the bed and his soul stirred.

  “She’s there,” he said to Polly. “She’s made it and she can live there permanently. Miea was right.”

  “How do you know that?” Polly said, running a hand over the face of her daughter’s lifeless form, tears flowing freely.

  “Look at the bedspread.”

  Polly turned away from Becky and her breath caught. “This was the old comforter, right?”

  “It was.”

  It was, but it wasn’t the same any longer.

  Becky’s white bedspread had turned the deepest shade of Tamariskian blue.

  25

  Gage absorbed the presence of this fully alive world and felt a heightened level of joy. Centering, Gage dreamed of the possibilities. This story was so unexpected, so deeply enriched that Gage had only begun to consider the implications. It was a new home. A home for those with the wrong homes. At least those who could imagine it.

  There were new gifts on this world. Maybe new chances for gifts because of this world. This was something to explore.

  It would be a welcome journey. The newest chapter in Gage’s own story.

  Gage marveled again at the wonder of potential.

  Becky closed her eyes and listened to the music that was always in the air in Tamarisk. The sounds were always interesting, as though constantly being reinvented, but unlike when she had been a visitor, there was nothing discordant.

  She looked up at the turquoise sky. Was her original home out there somewhere? Was it somewhere else? She’d stopped to consider this at least once every day, wondering what Dad, Mom, Al, Lonnie, and her other friends might be doing. Miea had told her about a trick where she imagined conversations with her father, and Becky had started doing that. It was amazing how real those conversations felt. Now Becky had a “talk” with her father every night, catching him up on what was going on in Tamarisk and asking him about his life.

  She knew he was doing okay. Everyone was. In her last moments before she left for Tamarisk forever, Becky realized that they would be. Still, she missed them.

  “Looking for those invisible birds again?” Rubus said, bumping shoulders with her and craning his head upward in an exaggerated way.

  “You really don’t see them? I’m very worried about you.” She grinned and pushed him playfully and they continued their walk.

  The Thorn boy was one of the first big surprises she received right after she started living here. She was walking down a hallway with Miea when she saw him coming in the other direction carrying a stack of books.

  “Rubus,” Becky said brightly when she saw him.

  He stopped, studied Becky’s face for a moment, and then his jaw dropped. “You’re visiting here ?” he said.

  Becky smiled at Miea. “Actually, I’m not visiting anymore. I just moved in.”

  “To the palace?”

  “This is Becky’s new home,” Miea said.

  Rubus seemed to give this an unusual amount of thought and then his eyes widened. “You’re . . . the girl?”

  “Well, I’m a girl.”

  Rubus smacked his hands together. “I knew there was something about you.”

  Becky laughed awkwardly. “I’ll try to take that as a compliment. So now we know what I’m doing here. But what are you doing here?”

  “I’m working for the queen,” he said, nodding deferentially toward Miea. “I’ve denounced my homeland and defected to Tamarisk. I wasn’t meant to be a Thorn. I belong here.”

  Becky rocked back on her heels. “Wow.”

  “Rubus is studying our culture,” Miea said. “It is my hope that once he gains an unbiased perspective on our people that he can help us in the diplomatic corps.”

  “Most of the Thorns are good people,” Rubus said. “Except for those in the government like my parents. This might be crazy, but maybe I can help bring us all together.”

  Becky smiled at him broadly. “That doesn’t sound crazy. That sounds like a great dream.” She hesitated and her face felt warm. “So you work in the palace?”

  Rubus pointed back in the direction he came. “Just down the hall.”

  “Wow. Cool.”

  Rubus smiled. “Maybe we can get together again after all.”

  As it turned out, they got together quite a bit, but reaching that point required some work on Becky’s part. At first, Miea tried to coddle her. The queen told her that her only responsibility was to get used to the Tamariskian schools and do well there. Becky made it very clear that she had no desire to be a pampered little member of the palace. For one thing, she had so much energy that she needed to expend. She was only sleeping four or five hours a night but she still felt wide awake all the time. Becky had no idea that it was possible to feel this good.

  More important, though, there were too many things to do. The blight had disappeared quickly, but people, flora, and fauna all over Tamarisk had suffered greatly during the bad times and they needed help with recovery. Then there were other things to do, like assist Miea with some of the ideas she had that she’d never had time to do herself. Tamarisk was an amazing place, but it could always be more amazing. All it took was imagination and conviction, and Becky had huge amounts of both.

  Miea got the
message pretty quickly, telling Becky she’d known someone who was just like her at her age. On the weekends, she sent Becky on aid missions to the microfarms. During the week after school, she worked with Rubus, helping him to learn the culture and develop a way to appeal directly to the citizenry of Gunnthorn. At first, they did most of their work in one of the palace offices, but lately they’d taken to going for long walks in the meadow.

  They’d been walking now for about twenty minutes when they heard some rustling a few dozen yards ahead. Becky expected to see an animal bound out or a bird take flight. Instead, two painfully slim young boys—maybe six or seven years old—dressed only with cloths around their distended waists rose from the wildflowers. They looked at each other, then at the sky, and then at the landscape around them before looking at each other again. They seemed mystified.

  “I don’t feel the same,” one boy said, moving his arms and stretching his sticklike legs.

  “Neither do I,” the other boy said. He took a deep breath. “I feel . . . easy. Where are we?”

  “It’s like the place in my stories.”

  “It’s nothing like the place in your stories.”

  “You’re right; it’s not. It’s like nowhere else in the world.”

  They laughed loudly, with abandon. Becky and Rubus looked at each other and then stared again at the boys, speechless.

  One boy plucked a wildflower and ate it.

  “You can eat them?” the other boy said.

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  The other boy also took a flower and bit into it, chewing more carefully.

  Becky approached them slowly. “Hello?”

  The boys turned sharply toward the sound of her voice, throwing down the flowers as though they’d committed a terrible crime.

  “It’s okay,” Becky said. “You don’t need to be afraid.”

  “We didn’t mean to steal. We’re just very hungry.”

  “We can fix that. We’ll take you to get food.”

  Rubus stepped alongside Becky. “Food that tastes much better than those flowers.”

  The boys seemed fascinated with this information.

  “The flowers tasted good.”

  Becky reached out a hand. “Then you’ll really like what the kitchen can whip up.”

  One of the boys tentatively took Becky’s hand while the other took Rubus’s. The four began walking toward the palace.

  “This isn’t Awassa, is it?”

  Becky shook her head. “It’s Tamarisk City.”

  “Do we have to go back?”

  “I don’t know yet. I guess we’ll find out.”

  “You said you have food here?”

  “We have lots of food.”

  The boy thought about this for a minute. Then he threw his head to the sky and laughed even more boisterously than before. “It is like the place in my stories. Amare didn’t believe me when I told him there could be something more.”

  Becky turned to Rubus. He looked like his eyes were going to pop right out of his head. He leaned toward her. “What’s happening here?”

  “I don’t have any idea. Apparently, you’re not the only one who has a lot to learn about this culture. Isn’t it great?”

  Fridays were always the biggest challenge. Chris spent every Friday out in the field—which he loved— but the work took him down to Fairfield and Westchester Counties, which meant contending with rush hour traffic most of the way back to Standridge, including an interminable stretch on 95. He knew he shouldn’t complain, considering his commute the other four workdays consisted of twenty pleasant minutes up the Connecticut River, but it was difficult to remember that when traveling fifteen miles an hour twenty miles from home at 6:15 with a 7:30 dinner date.

  By the time he got home, he realized that, if he left the apartment in the next five minutes and there was no traffic going over the bridge, he’d only be slightly late. He’d call Nigella as soon as he got back into the car.

  In the past year, Chris had developed something of a reputation as a plant doctor. He’d returned to work a month after Becky made the transit and suddenly found it surprisingly easy to do something he should have done years earlier. The first time his boss implied that his trimmed department was underperforming because of his extended absence, Chris cleaned out his desk. Chris didn’t want special treatment because of what he’d been through, but the complete lack of empathy illustrated how soulless his office had become and how completely he didn’t belong there. It would have been hard enough to be a suit for a company he believed in. Under these circumstances, it was impossible. He made a number of calls to contacts he’d developed over his years of quasi-job-searching and it turned out that a farm in southern Connecticut needed help curing, of all things, a blight affecting its tomato plants. A few freelance months working for a number of growers led to a full-time position with the area’s largest network of nurseries. Plenty of dirt under his fingernails and absolutely no budget reports.

  The only downside was that cleaning up for Friday dinner dates required extra time—time he didn’t have tonight. As he finished scrubbing, the phone rang. Chris glanced at the caller ID, saw it was Lisa, and answered.

  “I can’t talk,” he said by way of greeting.

  “If you can’t talk, why did you answer the phone?”

  “After all this time, I still find you undeniable.”

  Lisa chortled on the other end. “I wish I could train Ben to feel the same way. Six months into this marriage, he decides he needs to go back out on the road. Looks like I’m going to be a part-time wife.”

  “You were complaining the other day that you thought the two of you were spending too much time together.”

  “I wasn’t actually serious about that.”

  Chris chose a fresh shirt and wrestled it on while still holding the phone. “I promise to be more sympathetic tomorrow. I really have to run.”

  “Another sultry evening with Nigella ?” Lisa extended the second syllable of Nigella’s name to make it sound especially exotic.

  “That’s definitely the plan. Assuming I ever get off the phone with you.”

  “She’s too perfect for you, sweetie. Life without adversity is boring.”

  “I’m willing to try it out. And, really, you’re just upset that I met Nigella on my own.”

  “Guilty as charged. I fixed you up with plenty of terrific women. If you had told me you were ready to try again, I would have fixed you up with plenty more.”

  Chris put his shoes back on and grabbed his car keys. “Probably true and completely beside the point— not to mention the fact that I had no idea I was ready to try again.”

  “Well, go have a fabulous date and try not to think about me pining away over here.”

  “Ben’s gone already?”

  “He’s not going on his first trip for another couple of weeks, but I’m pining in advance. Give Nigella a kiss for me.”

  Chris clicked off the phone and headed for the door, remembering as he grabbed the doorknob that he’d left his cell phone in his other jacket. As he went to the bedroom to get it, he heard a knock.

  I’m never leaving here tonight.

  He got the phone and then answered the door.

  Polly was standing on the other side. “Oh, you’re going out. I’m sorry, I should have called.”

  Chris opened the door further and stepped aside to let Polly in. She pecked him on the cheek as she passed, something she’d started doing a few days after the event that Chris would never think of as a funeral. “No, it’s fine. What’s up?”

  Polly tilted her head to the left. “I just felt one of my overwhelming urges to spend some time in her room. You know, to feel that thing that we feel when we’re there. Do you think I can just have a few minutes?”

  Nigella would understand. If he called her cell right now, he could probably catch her before she got to the restaurant and just reschedule for 8:00. He probably should have done that from the start. Some of the nuance
s of dating still eluded him.

  “Yeah, of course. Come on in.”

  The vision of the blue bedspread the moment Becky made the transit had established a renewed level of communication between Chris and Polly. Polly had never come right out and said that she believed Becky was living happily in Tamarisk, but maybe she didn’t need to. They spoke at length in the days that followed, sharing stories of the girl they knew together for ten years and independently for the last four. While Chris missed Becky horribly, Polly seemed to be having the harder time coping, and Chris felt his heart go out to her, wanting to find some way to ease her pain.

  It dawned on Chris that he had the benefit of Becky’s room at his apartment. He’d spent time in that room nightly and the “conversations” he held with Becky were extremely vivid. Details sprang to mind that he couldn’t possibly have imagined. Chris realized that some version of the path to Tamarisk must still be open. It wasn’t enough to get him there—he’d tried on several occasions—but it was enough to maintain the cosmic equivalent of a phone line. This gave him a sense of peace and connection with his daughter and, while it couldn’t possibly substitute for being with her, it provided much more solace than a photo album, a DVD, or one of her favorite board games. Knowing that it would take her longer to reach the same link but that she could get there eventually, Chris invited Polly to spend some time in Becky’s room herself and told her she could visit whenever she wanted.

  Chris called Nigella and then went to Becky’s room to join Polly. The air was different there, warmer and with the faintest scent of chocolate and raspberries. As happened every time he entered, Chris felt his muscles loosen and time seem to slow down. He spent a good part of every day wondering what Becky was doing, imagining her holding court with Miea, soaring on a waccasassa, or studying tone poetry at school. Here, though, he knew he was doing something more than wondering.

  Watching Polly sitting on the blue quilt, he realized that she’d begun to feel some of the same things. He sat next to her, closed his eyes, and let images flood his mind. Something about a norbeck symphony. Something about a harvest festival. Something about a royal wedding.