by Juliet Bell
“You spoke to your mother earlier, I believe?” the GM asked. “How is she?”
I was surprised Grandmother mentioned her: in all this time, she had kept references to my mom and her health crisis to a minimum. I thought of Mom’s minuscule, scratchy voice on the phone, and my stomach clenched. I gave the GM my standard response, though: “Good.” It was the easiest thing to say, and usually kept people from asking any more questions I didn’t feel like answering. Besides, I wouldn’t know how Mom was really doing until I saw her myself.
Grandmother pushed open the Librerery’s heavy door, and we were greeted by the familiar smell of infinite words. She turned on the lights and surveyed the terrain.
“Did I ever tell you,” my grandmother said, “about showing the Library to Amy?”
My mother? “No.”
“Ah.” She started walking up and down, gazing at books, taking out titles here and there as if to check on them. It was like Rosie or Carlos in the stables, saying hi to the horses, handing out Life Savers. These books were just as alive to the GM. “It was shortly after she and your father married. They came out for a visit.”
I held my breath. I had seen their names written on my bedroom wall when I arrived, but the number of stories I had ever heard about my mom and dad when they were still together was practically zero. I always had a hard time remembering Amy and Walter Mackenzie had even been married. It just seemed so unlikely. The only good thing that ever came out of the disaster, it sometimes seemed, was me. If you considered me a good thing.
“I liked Amy, very much,” the GM continued. She paused, holding a book called My Family and Other Animals. I liked that title. “I felt it was a shame when your father and she split up. Amy was amusing, and nicely mannered, and had a good brain. I kept skunks still, at that time … Have I told you about the skunks?”
Chanel Number 5 … “You mentioned them once,” I said.
“They were charming. A much maligned species. Though having to de-gland them was quite a business. In any case. your mother was sweet with the skunks. Didn’t bat an eye, just petted dear old Arpege as though he were a kitten.”
That sounded like my mom. It was pretty hard to faze her.
“One day I offered to take her around the Library. Walter was rude about the place. ‘Mother’s mausoleum for dead authors,’ he called it. He felt my collecting was a waste of money, and essentially frivolous. Unlike fishing, of course.” Her voice soured; then she cleared her throat and carried on. “In any case, I’ll never forget your mother, Ella. When she came into this room, her eyes grew wide and she said to me, ‘Oh, Violet, it’s like a chapel!’”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
My grandmother looked around the room, as if trying to see it. “Perhaps it is. In which case, Kepler’s Dream was my prized relic.” She sighed. “Your mother certainly understood the spirit of that book, Ella. I could see that.”
Mom had handled the Killer Dolphin? This was news to me. “You showed it to her?” I asked.
“Well, not here,” the GM answered, as if that were obvious. “No, no. By that time they were getting divorced. But right after I bought it, from Christopher. I made the mistake of returning via Washington. To see all of you.”
All of us? Joan had told me about this before, but my brain still short-circuited, trying to imagine all of us in the same room. It was like a violation of natural laws. And my mom had never mentioned it.
“Your mother was properly reverent about Kepler’s Dream, which I appreciated. I had just acquired the copy, and was terribly excited. Amy knew about Kepler from a different angle—she told us that his work with lenses and vision is still used to this day in the field of optics. This fascinated me. We had quite a conversation about Kepler together, before your father intruded with his”—her face darkened—“disparagements.” I had the crazy idea that the GM herself had to delete an expletive there. “Of course, they were in the midst of separating, so there were fumes in the air. That acrid scent of divorce.”
My grandmother did have a way of putting things. She was still gazing at her shelves, by now in a different patch altogether, in front of a line of slim green volumes. “Good heavens,” she said suddenly. “Where on earth did this come from?” She took out a small book. “This has been missing for years. It’s my old battered copy of Hamlet. I thought it had quite disappeared.” She opened it, read for a moment and nodded. “Ah yes. ‘One may smile, and smile, and be a villain …’ Your father always liked that line.”
“I spoke to him the other day, too,” I told her. “Dad, I mean.” I didn’t see why I shouldn’t tell my grandmother the guy had called. He was her son, last time I checked. “He was trying to tell me about July seventh in case I hadn’t known.”
“Yes. It was a terrible, unforgettable day, for all of us.” Her voice was heavy. Then she frowned. “I beg your pardon. Did you say you spoke to your father?”
“Yeah—yes.” I still slipped up sometimes with my language, especially when she sounded stern.
“Where was he?”
“I couldn’t really hear. It was a bad connection. Some river, somewhere.” I shrugged. “He was supposed to come here for a visit, you know,” I told her sideways, as if I didn’t think there was anything wrong with mentioning this.
She looked alert. “And would you have liked that, Ella?”
I nodded.
There was a silence. For once, Violet Von Stern didn’t have any ready words at hand.
Luckily Joan, my movie godmother, made an appearance soon after this and offered to take Rosie and me off to the mall for some distraction. The three of us piled into her VW and went off to see some funny spy movie together in a big outdoor mall that could have been in Santa Rosa or anywhere. For an hour and a half I giggled like an idiot, drank soda, listened to Rosie smacking her gum and didn’t have a single thought in my head about parents or grandparents or book thieves or cancer.
It was bliss.
Then, to top it all off, Miguel and Joan agreed to meet up at Casa de Estrellas, this cheerful outdoor Mexican restaurant with colorful lanterns hanging and that kind of peppy accordion music that makes you want to kick up your feet.
We ordered plates piled high with fajitas and arroz con frijoles, and Rosie and I were just retelling each other our favorite jokes from the movie when suddenly she looked up and her face jumped into bigger life.
“Uncle Ignacio!” she called, and before I knew it, we were surrounded by Miguel; Rosie’s mom, Adela; and a shorter, lean man I didn’t know, who all went into a warm group hug.
Joan and I watched from the gringo sidelines. When they pulled apart from one another Miguel explained that this was his big brother Ignacio, visiting from far away. Rosie’s mom and dad were close—touching, not fighting!—and Miguel’s face was lit as bright as I’d ever seen it, heart-of-the-fire bright, like the part that keeps the flames going. Ignacio was smaller than Miguel, with the same warm eyes but more lines around them, like dry creek beds running along the sides of his cheeks. He had weathered, darker skin that made him seem as though he had traveled to distant places and seen great, strange things. Both brothers had a quietness about them—I guess Carlos, in the middle, had to be noisier—but you could tell that Miguel was still in some kind of awe of his older brother.
Ignacio turned to me and did a double take. “You’ve got to be Walt’s girl. Amazing. You’re just like him!” His mouth cracked into an angled grin.
It was weird to suddenly be Walt’s girl everywhere, when I hardly ever saw “Walt” in real life. And like I’ve said, around my mom, looking like Dad wasn’t something I felt a hundred percent thrilled about. With the Aguilars at least it was a point in my favor.
“Ella, huh?” He shook his head, still with that wide, diagonal grin. “Your dad and me, we had some times together when we were kids.”
“Yeah, they were the real pair,” Miguel said as they all settled around the table. “Carlos and I were just the annoying
little guys, tagging along.”
“Well, Walt was nicer than me, more patient. He taught you how to bait a hook, anyways, Migo.” Ignacio looked at Rosie and me. “And Carlos was good in the stables, even as a kid. Saddling up for your grandparents.” He said a grateful yes to a beer Joan offered him. “How is your grandmother, Ella? She still ride?”
I shook my head, nearly choking on my frijoles. I still couldn’t picture the GM on horseback.
“Violet is no horsewoman nowadays.” Joan did a softer version of her car alarm laugh. “Airplanes and cruise ships are her preferred mode of travel.”
“Things have changed at the hacienda, bro.” Miguel sipped his beer. “Wait till you see it in the light. I was amazed when I first went there again after all this time.” He stopped, as if wondering whether to go on, and Joan nodded to encourage him. “It’s not the place it was. The animals are all gone; she got rid of ’em years ago. Now there are just a hundred peacocks, and souvenirs from her travels. And books of course. A million books.”
Ignacio nodded. “Well, that makes sense. She and Dr. Mack both loved books.”
“She had a whole library specially built after Edward died,” Joan told him. “An amazing place. I tell her: ‘Violet, a family of five could reside in there!’ But no, it’s just for her precious collection.”
Ignacio listened with a distant look in his eyes. “Yeah, Dr. Mack and his books. It was your grandpa, Ella, who first got me excited about reading. And the stars, of course. Las estrellas.” He pointed at the restaurant’s wall, where there was a dark, star-spackled mural tracing out shapes and signs of the zodiac. “The stars, and the human stargazers, too.”
“Like Kepler?” Rosie asked pointedly. “Did he teach you about Kepler?”
Rosie’s uncle tilted his head in a teacherish way. “Sure. Kepler was his hero.” Ignacio traded a look with Miguel. “But also Copernicus, and Galileo. They aren’t the only ones who made discoveries, though, you know. The Mayans knew all sorts of things about the constellations. They made remarkable astronomic discoveries of their own.”
“Are you,” I asked him shyly, “the uncle Rosie told me about who’s been to Peru?”
He smiled. “Yeah, that’s me. I’m the one.” He stroked Rosie’s hair with a gentle hand. “You girls should see what the heavens look like from those mountains.”
He turned back to me. “Your grandpa, Ella—the stars were alive to that man. Dr. Mack enjoyed fishing, he and our papí had that in common, but he loved the stars even more. I sometimes think he loved them too much.”
I asked him what he meant.
Ignacio sighed. “All I’m saying is, if he hadn’t been so eager always to see the stars, he might have kept his eyes more on the ground.” Seeing my confusion, he said, “I’m sorry, Ella. I’m talking about the accident. You know about that.”
“Sure.” I remembered what my grandmother had said, when she’d told me about it. “When they were all farther up on the Rio Grande, fishing, and my dad was being a daredevil, like usual. Messing around near the water. And then my grandfather had to jump in …”
“Well, no.” Ignacio frowned and shook his head. “That’s not how it happened.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, no.” He waved a hand, as if to brush away the idea. “Walt was asleep when the whole thing started.”
Ignacio looked around, as if wondering whether he should really go on. Miguel gave a silent nod.
“Our dads were out on the bank in the early, early morning, drinking coffee they’d brewed on the campfire. Your grandpa—he wasn’t a grandpa then, of course, he was just Dr. Mack, Walt’s dad—was gazing up at the sky, like he did. It was probably four or five in the morning. You know how sometimes the best time to fish is before it’s light out.”
“‘Catch the fish while they’re still dreaming,’” I said, quoting my dad. “Before they’re all the way awake.”
Ignacio gave a sideways smile. “That’s right. When any normal person is asleep in their bed, that’s when you get fishermen out on the water, trying to fool the fish into swallowing a hook.” Ignacio may have been smiling, but somehow it was the sadness lines that lit up on his face. “So Dr. Mack and Papí were getting ready to do some early a.m. fishing. I wanted to get Walt up, too—I figured we could see if our dads would let us join ’em. Dr. Mack was tilting his head back and talking about something in the night sky, as usual. Then he heard Walter’s voice.”
“Calling him?”
“No, not calling. Mumbling, talking in his sleep, I don’t know what. Dr. Mack turned toward the sound and then he—stumbled over something in the darkness. And fell, backwards.”
“Into the water?” I whispered.
“Into the water, over some rocks that slipped from under him. And then he got turned around, with it being so dark, so instead of climbing back toward the shore he went deeper, and the current was so strong it swept him in.”
Ignacio took a deep breath. “And our papí, he dove right in after him and tried to pull him out. I was out on the bank, too, by then. I’d gotten out of my sleeping bag and was about to jump in, but my papí yelled at me to stay on shore, because the current was strong, and the water deeper than they’d realized—”
I knew how the story ended.
“And the Rio Grande,” Miguel finished, “took both men.”
The faces all around the table were somber. Beers were sipped. Rosie and I stared at the remains of rice and beans on our plates.
But meanwhile, an idea formed in my mind. “So does that mean the accident wasn’t actually my dad’s fault?”
“Your dad’s? No, no.” Ignacio shook his head, like a dog clearing its ears. “Walt was barely even awake yet. By the time he really woke up and stood next to me, it was over. Our dads were gone.”
The creek beds around Ignacio’s eyes were grooved deep with the old grief.
“Then why,” I asked in a quiet voice, though I didn’t know who I was even asking, “does my grandmother blame my dad?”
Joan reached across the table and held my hand. “It’s like I told you once, hon,” she said. “Everyone in a family has a different story about what’s gone on.”
“But she wasn’t even there!” I protested.
“You’re right,” Joan said. “Who knows how she got that idea in her head? Maybe it was easier for her to think it was someone else’s fault.”
“Also,” Ignacio added, “I think Walt did feel somehow responsible. Like he’d somehow made his dad fall, even though he didn’t. He was a kid, we both were—just about the same age as you girls. He felt like if somehow he had acted different, or not been there at all, we might have had a different outcome.”
“Plus, he didn’t want his mom coming after Ignacio,” Miguel said. “He didn’t want any trouble of that kind.”
“That’s true, too.” Ignacio looked at Miguel, and you could see years and stories move silently between the brothers. “The rest of our family hit the road pretty soon after that.”
“And the road Ignacio took,” Miguel said, trying to lighten the mood, I think, “turned out to be a lo-o-o-ng one.”
Walter too, I thought: Spokane wasn’t exactly around the corner. Neither was California.
It seemed like the GM had been so upset about Edward dying that she had convinced herself that his death was my dad’s fault. That had to be one huge reason she had been a dragon to him ever since. A few other things came to my mind: the ashes in the Librerery fireplace, and the fighting phone call I had overheard, and a Hamlet book reappearing on the shelf. The pieces started to arrange themselves into an order that made sense.
“I know who took Kepler’s Dream,” I announced suddenly. A table full of people turned to me: Adela, Miguel, Ignacio, Rosie and Joan. In my mind had opened a clear space, full of light. Right at its center there was an image—of a penciled boy. “I have a feeling,” I said, “that it was my dad.”
Then, as if my words had been some kind of spell, con
juring him up from the restaurant’s spicy air of pepper and pork and tortillas—there he was. Walking toward us.
My dad.
TEN
“BeLLe, OLD GIrL, HOW’re YOu DOinG?”
My dad enclosed me in a monster hug. There were a lot of things that Walter Mackenzie was clueless about, but the guy did know how to give you a good hug. He was tall, big and brown bearded, and he wrapped his arms around you like a bear, making you feel safe and warm and only slightly suffocated. I hadn’t had anyone much to hug that whole time, except Lou, who tended to squirm out of my hands after a quick slobbery kiss. The GM was a hand shaker, an eyebrow raiser—not a hugger.
So, though part of me was wondering why he hadn’t told me he was coming there, finally, so I’d have known—or was that what all that CrxxxxZZxxx was about?—on the other hand: what can I say? I was glad to see him. He was still my dad.
After hugging me, he turned and shook Adela’s hand, gave a big old back slap to Miguel—“Casa de Estrellas, here I am, like you told me to be, Migo,” then leaned in and said to Ignacio, “Nacio, Yo todavía no puedo creer que sea usted, hermano.” My dad tried an awkward, I’m-not-so-good-with-kids wave to Rosie and introduced himself to Joan, who said in her honeyed voice, “I’m so glad to meet you, finally, Walter, I’ve heard so much about you,” to which my dad replied, “Yeah, well, I hope not too much of it was from my mother.” Everyone laughed.
It was kind of like a reunion. The grown-ups celebrated with more beers, and being kids, Rosie and I celebrated with sugar—doughnutty churros, hot and delicious. My dad settled down at the table with us, and I spent a moment just looking at him: that cute penciled face in the Haitian Room, all bearded and grown up.
“First things first,” Dad said to me. “Ella, your mother sends her love.”
“My mother?” This was bizarre. Since when was he a messenger for my mom?
“Well, yes,” he answered. “You know, I’ve visited Amy in the hospital in Seattle when I could.”