Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  Hurrying made her dizzy. She came down the main stairs slower, with one hand on the rail, and her mind buzzing with excitement. She would paint more portraits like the one in the attic. Not copies of faces but inspirational works, trying to imagine and capture the essence of a person’s highest, not-yet-realized divinity. The world was saturated with lavish imagery of the saints, angels, and gods, which humans were trained to venerate. Didn’t un-realized gods also deserve spiritual images? Weren’t they still gods, the way a sapling was still a tree?

  She had another task before she joined the others in the kitchen. She went into the den and took up the paper where Mable had written Derrick’s number. Using the phone there, she dialed, counting five rings before she heard his voice, “Hello.”

  “You’ve been trying to reach me?”

  “Willow?”

  She wished she had a cigarette to light and thumb down into a groove on an ashtray. Just how quickly could she be done with him? “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s fine. She’s found a church.”

  “How’s Mary?” She was fishing. The pictures of Clay proved Mary wasn’t there with Derrick, but how much did he know? And before he could answer. “Did you hear about the fire? About Papa?”

  The pause was long, and Willow began to think they’d lost their connection. When she heard a muffled, “See you later,” she knew he’d put his hand over the receiver and waited for someone to leave. “Mary, actually, is pretty pissed,” he said. “Totally pissed. I think she believed that with Mom coming down here I’d be sending her an invitation.”

  “I think you should.”

  “Ha. Not a chance in hell. Ever.”

  “You’ve told her that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve told her. And to quit calling. I hope I never see her again.” He paused, and she could hear him draw in a breath. “She’s a psycho, but it’s hard to believe she’d kill your old man.”

  “Well, believe what you want. Why did you call?”

  “There’s this girl. I think she’s the one. And Mom’s hooked up with this priest, okay. They both think I should get an annulment.” He swallowed the word, and he repeated it with more force, “An annulment. I wanted to warn you about the papers coming. Will you sign them?”

  The proposition sounded wonderful to Willow, the severing of another tie, but it also tracked old regret, even fear, through her stomach. She took her time. In the kitchen, Clay was with Tory and Prairie eating dinner. In the attic she’d touched something holy, and Derrick had yet to ask about Prairie. This wasn’t a conversation about him wanting to share custody. She should be shouting, Halleluiah. She’d sign the papers the moment they arrived, but she’d also make him squirm, “And if I don’t?”

  “The annulment will still go through.” He sounded apologetic. “I’m sure Steinhouse will throw in his two cents, but if you just sign the papers and answer the questionnaire, the church tribunal will push it right through.”

  It was hard to believe how calm she felt. “You sound like your mother. If I do, will you sign a form for me? I want to have Prairie’s name legally changed to Starmore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Crat rhymes with brat and rat, and it’s a horrible name.”

  “You mean give up my rights?”

  “You have no rights. Sperm have no rights; only fathers do. I could probably put your ass in jail for lack of support.”

  “I never wanted a baby.”

  “I’ll tell her. I wish it wasn’t true, but at some point, she may want to meet her sperm donor.”

  “Like when she’s thirteen or fourteen?”

  “Yeah, when she’s thirteen or fourteen.” Willow felt like laughing. Derrick had twigs were there ought to be brains, and he couldn’t hurt her. He wanted an annulment and had no interest in Prairie. As the wonderful news fitted itself over her, she thought of what he’d said about Mary being pissed. With Mrs. Crat gone, Mary had no sounding board, and now, she knew there was no hope of getting Derrick back. More desperate than ever, she had nothing to lose.

  44

  “Get up,” Tory said, her voice taut as wire, the hour on her thin watch alarming her. “We have the appointment. I’ve been waiting for you, and I supposed you were getting dressed.”

  “I’m coming,” Willow said, her response half groan. “How’s Jonah?”

  “He’s expecting us.”

  “Jonah?”

  “My lawyer.” She wore a black skirt reaching to mid-calf, a white blouse, and a rope of pearls twisting around her neck. “I’ve never missed an appointment, or been late for one, in my life.”

  Willow had slept soundly, one of the deepest nights of sleep all summer. So soundly, she felt groggy and slightly disorientated. Dreams, like pieces of winter clothing, weighed on her mind and didn’t want to be shrugged off. She pushed back the sheet and Mother Moses, stood, and gained her balance before heading into Luessy’s adjoining bathroom. “Is Mable back? Are we taking Prairie, too?”

  “Of course not. Mable will stay with her.” She watched Willow take a faltering step and bang a hip on the doorjamb. “You shouldn’t have painted so long yesterday.”

  “That’s not it.” She sank down in front of the toilet and gagged. Fragments of the dreams, or dream, tapped on her awareness. Had she been in Tory’s room?

  “I’m disappointed in you,” Tory hadn’t moved from beside the bed. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “I can’t go. I feel terrible. Call Dr. Mahoney.”

  “You’ve been to him half a dozen times. At my expense. That’s over now.”

  Willow wretched over the toilet.

  “My lawyer might not have another opening for days.” Anger plied Tory’s face. “I’ve had this appointment for months, and I’ll be charged if we miss.”

  “Can’t you go alone? Not postpone the whole thing? Today was just to draft the will. You can still have it drawn up. We agree on what it needs to say, and I’ll sign it once it’s typed.” Was she being too adamant? She took a breath and gagged. “You’re right. You will be charged, and it’s my fault.”

  Tory continued to mull and fume. “I don’t know how you were raised, but I was raised to keep my appointments.” Willow was right though, and the two of them agreed on all the particulars. The will needed to say that in the event of Willow’s death, Farthest House would remain under Tory’s care until Prairie came of age. Maybe there was even a benefit in going alone. There were questions she wanted to ask in private.

  Willow remained on the floor, as Tory scowled another long minute before leaving the room. Her loud steps on the stairs and through the foyer contrasted with her weightless climb in the middle of the night. Only then did Willow congratulate herself and sink back on her heels.

  Just as I sank back on my emotional heels. This was my Tory, and I had a huge hand in her upbringing.

  Before Willow could try and concentrate on the dream, she hurried across the hall to Prairie’s crib. Empty, always a startling sight. She listened at the top of the stairs, then relaxed when she heard Mable’s voice in a sing-song patter. Both she and Prairie were happy. Jonah was surely better.

  Back in Meme’s room, the dream hunted her again, and she picked up her robe, slid her arms into the sleeves, and went to the window. Tory’s car, a two-toned green Chrysler passed under the canopy of late August trees, peeked in and out of the leaf cover, and through the rusted-open gates at the bottom of the drive. Now that Tory was gone, Willow wanted to go back to bed. She wanted another chance to wake with her breathing steady, her heart beating at a regular pace, and with the belief that her aunt cared about her.

  The dream followed her down the stairs. Tory kept her bedroom key in her sewing basket but then left the basket unattended, which made no sense, unless she only pretended to lock her room. Cinching her robe again, tighter than necessary, Willow forced herself on. Bluebeard handed his wives the key to his room full of skeletons, telling them they were f
orbidden to enter, guaranteeing they would, not so different from dangling a red apple in front of Eve. Maybe Tory’s room was also a method of entrapment.

  Tiptoeing across the foyer, she heard Mable coaxing Prairie into eating. It wasn’t Mable’s job, and surely, Mable would much rather be with Jonah at the hospital, which meant Tory refused to give her the time off. Likely, Tory couldn’t tolerate for one more day the idea of her white housekeeper sitting by a black man’s bed.

  “Choo, choo,” Mable said, “here comes the train.”

  Fear gripped Willow. That’s what she should be doing, caring for Prairie, and regaining her health and painting. She could stop right now, forget all the flashes of dreams, and soon enough the terrifying images would fade away. But, if dreams carried messages—especially dreams as lucid as the one she’d had—she needed to pay attention.

  The sewing basket sat beside a stuffed chair and in front of the den window. To Willow, it looked placed. Tory was half witch, could appear whenever she wanted, and even sitting in a lawyer’s office, she could keep one lurid eye on her possessions.

  “I thought I saw you sneaking around.”

  Willow wheeled. “Mable! God! Don’t scare me like that.”

  The housekeeper stood in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on her apron. “Only thing shaking your knees is guilt.” She stopped wiping her hands, but she kept hold of the apron, gripping it, looking at the basket in Willow’s hands. “I don’t have to ask what you’re looking for, and I suppose it’s not my business.”

  “You’re right. It’s not.” Willow’s hand fished down through billowy tufts of batting, short stiff tubes of arms and legs, and she flinched at a pin or needle prick. “I don’t want to get into it with you.”

  “I owe her.”

  “I know. Just as I owe you for taking care of Prairie.” The sound of a plastic bowl hitting the floor made Mable frown and glance back. “I’ll clean that up,” Willow said. “I just need one minute, and then I’ll be back.”

  “You suspect Tory of something?”

  The question and the tone were surprising. “Do you?”

  Mable let out a small harrumph, and her apron settled down over her caftan. “If you ask me, you’re all acting strange. Jonah has been in a stew all summer long, and look what’s happened to him. Tory’s not herself, and she just left here with her mouth in a pucker. She may fire me still for riding with Jonah to the hospital and missing a day of work. Now, you’re sneaking around like a dang fool.”

  Willow held the skeleton key in the air. “Bingo.”

  From the kitchen came the sound of Prairie slapping her wet highchair tray, a sure sign she poured her cereal onto the tray before tossing the bowl over and now entertained herself by splattering the milk.

  Willow’s nerves urged her on. She’d ask about Jonah when she returned. She headed for the stairs. “It’s my house.”

  “I want you to know something,” Mable said, raising her voice over Prairie’s banging, the bottom of her apron back in her hands, “Jonah wouldn’t sic his bees on you.”

  “I believe you.” Halfway up the stairs, she leaned her head over the banister to say more, but the span of open space made her rear back with vertigo.

  “It’s because of him that I don’t see this happening,” Mable said.

  Willow peered over the banister again, slower, less far. Mable’s face held pain, and her eyes were damp. “You talked about the bees with him. Why did he do it?”

  “He does want you gone, but I couldn’t say why. He’s fond of you, no doubt about that, but there’s a bee in his cap, if you’ll pardon the pun.” Prairie was banging now, and Marble turned toward the sound. “It wasn’t all for you, either. He needed to prove something to himself.”

  “By practically killing himself?”

  “Do you know a man that’s not a dang fool?” She headed back to Prairie. “Don’t you touch one thing, and hurry, I’m not watching out for you. I have enough to do running a nursery at my age.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  “No, I’m not,” she called over her shoulder, “I don’t know this is happening.”

  “Five minutes, and I’ll take Prairie, and you can go to the hospital.”

  At the door of Tory’s room, Willow stopped and tried for a deep breath. Only a fool would invade Tory’s privacy because of a dream. If it had been only a dream, not that she could talk herself into that, but if it had been only a dream, there was nothing to fear in having a look. Tory wouldn’t even know.

  The key slid into the lock. A soft click and Willow gave the door a tiny push.

  Closed-up air rolled into the hall, wafting over her in soft, but ripe arboreal, woody odors. She thought of a hundred-year-old potpourri shop, something out of a Dickens novel. The curtains were drawn, and she could make out only indistinguishable shapes, including what looked like ragged swags hanging from the ceiling. One smell drifted above the others, and she wondered where she encountered its muskiness before.

  She stepped only a little way in, letting her eyes adjust. Her uneasiness grew. Tory’s bed was the old-fashioned sleigh bed from Willow’s dream. A graying chenille spread had been kicked to the bottom, also as she’d dreamed. Her heart gripped. She had, somehow, been in the room the night before. She’d stood exactly where she was standing now, looking at Tory sleeping slack-mouthed, the hair she kept pinned tight in the day, still fastened.

  Along one wall, a wide desk held a mortar and pestle. Not the small kitchen variety for grinding cloves or cinnamon, but a large wooden mortar in dark wood and with the capacity to hold as much as a cup or more. Against the opposite wall was a narrow, cafeteria-length table, one end piled with books and the other with doll parts. In the room’s dim light the limp muslin arms and legs held the tincture of bruised corpses. Willow’s own legs felt as boneless.

  She reached for the switch, hoping the light would give her courage. What she saw had the opposite effect. Clusters of plants tied together in fist-sized sheaves hung from the ceiling. Mushrooms, too, were strung like rosary beads, in all sizes and shapes. Some had round caps, some conical and some with spotted or dark scales. Most of the overhead swags were so old the colors had faded to parchment and become furry with dust, lint, and cobwebs. On the desk were constellations of tiny jars of powders and dried seeds, old prescription bottles with yellowed labels looking like the dregs of medications and pills Tory had been prescribed through the decades. Plant leaves and stems were in rows, as if placed for drying and identifying. As many as forty or fifty cardboard filing boxes sat stacked in a thick, almost ceiling-high block. She peered into one through the opening on the side. Dolls were crammed inside until the box bulged, and the lid was kept on only by the weight of the box on top of it. Decade’s worth of dolls and none of them passed on to children. The number of boxes stunned Willow. How could one person, even sewing every day, make that many dolls? Because they hadn’t gone to needy children, they felt kept from needy children.

  Fighting nausea, she continued exploring, wondering how Tory could sleep in the room with the grime hanging over her? But in the morning, even after nights under the riot of fiber-shedding plants and dust mites, she appeared pulled together. The room explained why she kept her clothing across the hall.

  Papa once told Willow everything was about money. Looking around the room, she felt everything was about fear. But what did Tory fear?

  She moved cautiously, as though even the floor might hold traps. Many of the plants on the desk still had pigment and less dust than those overhead. Did that explain Tory’s nighttime walks? Willow recognized only one plant with its long, distinctive leaves, jagged teeth, and host of names: Loco weed, ditch weed, mad apple, and datura. She was positive; she’d copied my watercolor. She stretched out a finger, touching the prickly surface.

  What Willow didn’t know was how much time, starting in childhood, I spent collecting and painting plants. When freed of Le Bête and not clawing through a cave trying to cleanse myself,
I collected, learning the secrets of plants by gathering them and their lore from the old scullery maid and cooks in the kitchen. Mme. Francoise taught me that something taken straight from the garden could cure and relieve pain. Once in America, whenever possible, I learned from the tribes Thomas and I spent our first summers photographing. When the women walked up our hill for help, they often brought me the gift of some herb. Now, here was Tory, meddling in the same practice, believing herself knowledgeable and capable of handling the drugs, as though an understanding of plants and pharmacology were something she inherited as she had my hair color. The blame was mine. After her tribulation, I began taking her on even more hunts, trying to make our woodland treks as healing as entering a cave. I wanted her to feel nature’s wonder and beauty. She’d already used poison successfully, and I wanted to teach her to respect it.

  “This is it,” Willow said aloud. This was the moment in her dream when fear sent her flying back to her own bed, but she wasn’t dreaming now. This was happening in real time, and she couldn’t hope to wake up and find herself elsewhere. The plants, the mushrooms, and her summer-long illness—she let out an involuntary cry. Tory was poisoning her.

  The realization echoed through her, doubled back, and had to be realized again. Tory was poisoning her. She was putting bane in the soups and teas and everything else she served up. Datura, yes, but mushrooms, other plants—roots, stems, seeds—maybe even shavings from morphine pills prescribed in the 1940’s for toothaches. Tory likely didn’t even keep a record of her ingredients, and the combinations could be nearly fatal. Maybe they were only accidentally non-fatal.

  This explained the invitation to Farthest House. It explained why Tory sent Mable to the apartment to befriend Prairie. Most hurtful was the realization that Tory used even her brother’s death to her advantage.

  Staying in the room, given all she knew, was impossible, and Willow rushed back into the hall breathless. An all too-familiar pain of rejection burrowed through her. She needed to pack up Prairie and be gone by the time Tory returned. Leave Nebraska altogether. Flee the way Derrick had and find a new life.