Swoon 02 - Swear

by Nina Malkin

  When it comes to me, Ruby always knows . . . knew. I’ve found the goddess within—all of them—and by their guidance and their grace, I can go it alone. And Ruby can be free.

  As to the demon in my house—it’s still my house—I feel no fear. Is that her silent tread on the stair, come to hold me down, drown me dead? Let her try. Music is my aura, my amulet, my armor—music my sword and shield. So I finish my ablutions, deliberate and lazy, giving myself to the blues. Sing low, sing strong. Know it, mean it, make it my own. “Just a little spoon of your precious love satisfies my soull. . .”

  LXIV

  Date details? Sorry, no. Suffice it to say it starts with an equine whinny at my door and ends at the same place a little after dawn. A final kiss and then I tra-la-la traipse inside. My house. My stuff. Too bad the redolence of roses lingers, even with an early breeze and every window wide. Fortunately, I catch a whiff of something else and follow it. Mmm . . . much better . . . butter.

  Marsh in the kitchen, making toast. At one point last night, Sin and I showed up at the Double K and she fixed us a caloric peccadillo that’s not on the menu and probably illegal in several states.

  “Hey . . . ,” I whisper.

  The knife clangs against the plate. “Dice!” I hold a finger to my lips.

  “You were gone all night!” She takes it to a hush. She doesn’t ask if I’m okay—she sees me beaming.

  “Don’t be freaked if Black Jack seems a little out of it. We put some miles on that bad boy.”

  Marsh grins. “I’ll give him a lump of sugar. Did you guys have fun?”

  “Yeah.” I crick my neck as the fun catches up to me. “Lots of it. Now I’ve got to crash.”

  She considers her toast, then me, struggles to keep her voice steady. “What about later? Are you planning to . . . you know. . . attend?”

  “The Swoon social event of the year? I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Oh, Dice.” Marsh nibbles her lip. “How can you be so . . . so . . .”

  What is it that I am? Insouciant? Fatalistic? Wasted on afterglow? This afternoon at four, my absolute worst-case scenario is set to kick in, and I won’t be doing a damn thing to stop it. Which is actually all right with me. Because sometimes you can follow the questions till you hit a brick wall—or a stone wall with an iron gate in the middle. Sometimes you can be up to your eyeballs in blessings and still blunder around like a babe in the woods. Sometimes you have to let hope and faith and trust do their thing, relinquish the control you never had in the first place, and accept what’s going to happen like a wave coming in from the sea. Pure love is stronger than promised love. I believe that, and belief is all I need. It’s all anybody needs.

  “I don’t know,” I finally reply. “The universe is a whacky place.”

  “The Universe.” Capital implied. “Like the tarot card.”

  “That’s right. The end is the end, and whoever’s left standing dusts off and starts again.” Which probably sounds more ominous that I want it to. Really, I’m good. “Look, I’ll see you there.” Then I add, “Crane, too.”

  The alarm goes off. The shades are drawn and the house is silent. The bride and her attendants must all be across the road, primping at Pen’s. Flower girls Charlotte and Willa chattering excitedly, my cousin painting brave faces with the magic of her makeup kit, Antonia . . . whatever she’s feeling, if she feels at all.

  With a stretch, I decide to revel in Sin all day—his essence, his taste, all over me. I fling back the summer blanket; drink in my naked self. Fresh and tender, throbbing before I can trace it with a fingertip—it’s back, my blue bruise. I marvel at it for a minute. Then I force myself to break the daze, get dressed, and dash.

  The first thing that hits me at Forsythe Manor is the Cutlass parked in the drive. Guess Kurt got it fixed just in time; threw in a wax job, his gift to the groom. At least he didn’t attach tin cans and a just married! banner to the rear bumper.

  Here’s Pen’s ride, of course, and the Pinch Me Round van. An unfamiliar vehicle that must belong to the justice of the peace; who else would drive a Buick sedan? I’m not late, but clearly everyone’s here. I dump my bike—better hustle.

  Except for the JOTP in pinstripes and Marsh’s sisters, clad to be cute, everyone else is beyond causal, like we got together for a Bruise Blue rehearsal and came outside for a break. Pen defiant in shapeless black; Tosh still sporting cook pants. Kurt, the unlikely best man, oleaginous as ever. Me in comfort clothes—ancient cargos, skinny-ribbed tank. And the groom?

  The groom is the groom. The groom is in jeans-boots-PWT, mirrored shades and shaggy hair and that scruffy, silky beard (that does tickle . . . divinely). In other words, the groom is gorgeous.

  The sight of him stuns me. A few hours ago we were together, in every definition of the term. Now some old guy in a suit will drone mumbo jumbo and by the powers vested in him by the great state of Connecticut pronounce Sinclair Youngblood Powers and Antonia Forsythe Powers husband and wife.

  I beseech Sin’s shades; he removes them and sends his gaze into me.

  Do I make the sound of timber falling? I don’t know, but Pen and Tosh trot up.

  “Hey . . .” My cousin administers a quick hug. Then she and her boy each take a flank and link arms through mine.

  The judge starts to sneeze. And sneeze and sneeze. The breeze has picked up, scattering pollen like talcum powder—poor geezer must be allergic to roses. He pulls a linen square from his breast pocket and blows.

  Marsh steers her sisters our way. Another bout of wind swirls up, stealing the petals from their baskets, lofting them like paper scraps, letters torn up in a rage.

  “Heyyy!” cries Willa.

  “Noooo!” cries Charlotte.

  “Girls, please don’t fuss,” Marsh scolds. Then she gasps and nudges me.

  Duck resplendent in twin tails, ruffled shirt, cummerbund like a satin hammock, pointy patent-leather loafers. Did I mention the hue? Baby blue. On his arm, the bride wears white. The bouquet gargantuan, every flower on earth must represent. The gown is a full-on fairy-tale parody that falls unevenly across her body and jerks rather than billows with her gaffe of a gait. The hair—though Pen was no doubt tempted to botch it—is sleek, upswept, and amply sprayed, but no amount of bronzer-blush combo could correct the atrocious tint to her complexion. She totally should have gone for the veil. Antonia is every inch a zombie bride. I can’t suppress my giggle.

  Then the judge sneezes six more times in succession, honks into his hankie, and opens his book, which is clearly a prop. He could deliver this no-frills oration in his sleep. Then he begins.

  “Dear friends . . .”

  The JOTP is a professional; he officiates as such. Yet this has got to be the weirdest wedding of his entire career. The bride is gruesome, the fellow giving her away far too young for the fatherly role, the best man anything but, and the groom, by all appearances, is entering martyrdom, not matrimony. Still, he carries on, sallies forth—till he reaches the “forever hold your peace” part, and it’s clear that the preceding weirdness was merely a warm-up.

  Stopping midsentence, the JOTP removes and wipes his glasses, replaces them, and continues to stand there agape. We turn and see why. A patch of taupe, like a bald spot on the lawn, scurrying toward the garden gate. Closer it comes, and I realize the rapidly moving swatch of landscape is . . . furry? That’s right, furry. An infantry of field mice, four-legged foot soldiers, and running alongside, leading the charge, the field-mice field Marshall, is a cat. A calico cat. My calico cat. Who must, in some way, deliver a command, since the mice—dozens and dozens of them—split formation to make a semicircle around us, and then stand fast.

  Someone cries, “Eek!”

  I think it’s Willa. Or maybe Duck.

  Now, from above, a terrible scream, along with a whirring dense as a military helicopter. The airborne squadron is a murder of many, blue-black iridescent wings battering the sun.

  Crows wheel and swoop in unison, then all at o
nce swerve away, leaving just one of their ranks—small but feisty—to drop something from his beak between the judge and the nuptial pair.

  Sin says, “What’s this?”

  Everyone wonders the same thing. Me included—and then all at once I know. A little bird didn’t have to tell me. My psychic sense didn’t have to tell me either. This is faith, hope, and trust in action, made manifest, come to our rescue.

  A fragile, yellowed bundle, tied with ribbon, once red, now the palest blush. As Sin bends to retrieve it, the crow roosts on the uppermost bar of the gate. In my head he hails me, and when I meet his eye, he winks.

  “It’s . . . they’re letters,” Sin tells our small assembly. “Letters addressed to me.”

  Recognizing her own calligraphy, Antonia says, “Why . . . indeed they are—my letters to you. Sinclair, my dearest, had you mislaid them?”

  “Mislaid them?” Sin riffles the envelopes. “What are you talking about? I’ve never seen these letters.”

  “But of course you have—I had my maid deliver each one.” A flare of anger in Sin’s eyes—he remembers that maid, all too well.

  “You mustn’t pretend, Sinclair.” Antonia scans the faces around her, then returns to his. “After all, when first we wooed, I did not speak.” That titter. Thin, cracked. “If you hadn’t read my letters, we’d not be exchanging vows this day.” Pushing the aviators to the crown of his head, groom regards bride with absolute earnestness. “Antonia,” he says, “I never received these letters. Nor did I read them. Look here: the seals are all intact.”

  Antonia drops her mammoth bouquet to examine, one after the other, where her wax monogram remains. “But . . . but, Sinclair—this is a mistake . . . a cruel prank . . .” She presses the envelopes against his chest. “You . . . I . . . after alll. . . the gate!” Reels toward his masterpiece. “Right here in the center, my iron rose!” Pets the metal madly. “In my very last letter, I implored you to give me a sign of your sworn love, and here it is!” Tinny and shrill, her voice scales several octaves into hysterics. “Here it is! Here it is!”

  Now Sin passes the letters to his grease-monkey groomsman and with one purposeful stride faces the ashen abomination. With sadness. With sympathy. With, at long last, comprehension. “Antonia, I’m truly sorry,” he says. “This gate was built to your father’s specifications. I drew several plans; the one with the rose centerpiece is the one he commissioned.

  This is the gate I was set to create all along, before you and I ever met.”

  For several frozen seconds she is silent, the gray eyes spent bullets, the mouth a grommet. Then she begins to keen—a frightful wail of refusal. The promise she’d clung to through centuries, through incarnations, falls away, proving false, and all that’s left is the grain of doubt. The simple sorcery that aided Antonia once fails her now. What comes from the earth belongs there in the end. So her bouquet withers where she let it drop.

  Then her hands—so adroit with the trowel, so secure in the soil—shrivel like autumn leaves. The malnourished rosebud lips release their final epithet and are sucked inside, her entire visage a sinkhole now. Flesh peels back from limbs; breasts and belly reduce to peanuts; bones go brittle as twigs. Then there is just a white dress on green grass, fluttering in the dying breeze.

  Sin gazes at it, dazed, then hunkers down. He means to gather it up but can’t seem to complete the task; the gown across his knee, he turns to me. I go to him, picking up an end, and together we fold the garment like a flag draped on a soldier’s casket. He takes the dress, together with the envelopes, and lays them on the altar. The crow flies from his post on the gate to land on the stack, observing Sin and me with an unblinking stare. At that, relief begins to beacon from my boy’s eyes.

  The briefest glance at his left wrist and then, “We’re free,” Sin says in front of everyone, and only to me. “Dice . . . we’re free.”

  Not just us. From the house we can hear shouting. A bit weak, but utterly joyous. We hear, “Marsh!” And we hear,

  “Duck!” Dozens and dozens of field mice scatter as Crane Williams comes tearing up the lawn toward the garden gate.

  LXV

  New England beach communities are beyond busy at the peak of summer. Even a remote island off the coast, the kind of craggy rock with one hotel and two restaurants, will be popping. Yet with persistence, if one trawls the Internet machine, one can sometimes find the rare, last-minute reservation.

  Sin and I stay a week. The most glorious week of our lives.

  When the sun is out, we swim far beyond the breakers—as natural as breathing to me now. We lie in the sand, walk on the shore. He gets so brown; I get a few freckles.

  When the moon is out, we have a meal on the veranda at one restaurant or the other, and then it’s back to the beach.

  Me riffing whatever trips off my tongue, him answering on blues harp. Waves are our audience, crashing approval, or just crashing, since that’s what waves do. Occasionally, we catch a falling star. We don’t wish on it, though.

  And when it storms—as it will, with unpredictable regularity come summer in New England—we make thunder and lightning of our own.

  Until we return to the real world. In three days, the house at 12 Daisy Lane will officially belong to Sinclair Youngblood Powers. He’s going through with the sale, since after all, real estate is a solid investment. Not as solid as gold, maybe, but Antonia’s dowry weighed nearly eighty pounds (translating to some 1.3 mill in cold hard cash), so Sin’s pretty much established for a while. He didn’t want to leave my parents in the lurch. Besides, to him and to me, 12 Daisy Lane is our house now. These last few days and nights, as we putter in the yard, play with the cat, pounce on each other in bed—normal, ordinary acts—mean more than our idyllic island escape. Even boxing up my crap has the special bittersweet flavor of dark-roast coffee.

  “You want to keep these?” Garnet-colored cordial glasses my mother flipped for at a flea market. “I doubt Momster remembers buying them. She’s an impulse-purchase person.” Sin’s up on a stepladder, taking down my Nana Lena’s “old” set of “good” china, used at this address exactly twice. “A bit dainty for my needs,” he says.

  Shrugging, I swathe them in Bubble Wrap. “What about these?” A pair of champagne flutes.

  “Those stay,” he says decisively. “For your visits.”

  “Oh, okay—that ought to give me incentive.” He makes me a face—half-up, half-down. Then I hear someone call my name. Inside my head. Out on the porch. If it isn’t Edgar Allan Crow on the wicker table, behind a stack of woebegone letters.

  “Special delivery,” he says. “In all the hubbub, you forgot them.”

  Yeah—accidentally on purpose. I fiddle with the edge of an envelope. “Thanks . . .”

  “Don’t mention it. They were in the nursery, by the way. A slotted panel under the dormer window. Hermetically sealed, practically. But you know mice.”

  “Actually,” I say, “I don’t know mice.”

  “For future reference, then: As rodents go, they’re completely single-minded and can get in anywhere. No chink too small, that’s their motto.”

  “But how—”

  “R.C. recruited them.” He anticipates me. “Guaranteed feline protection across her territory.”

  “But how—”

  “I told her the plan and she was all, ‘Ooh! Yay! Good bird!’” the little mastermind explains. “She’d been going bonkers wondering how to help you. Not exactly bright, that one—but she loves you.”

  She does. And I love her. That’s why she won’t be relocating.

  This country cat would climb the walls of an Upper West Side apartment—literally, on Momster’s drapes. I look at her, a-snooze on her cushion; then I look back at Edgar. “So anyway,” I tell him, “I’m pretty much out of here. College . . . in the city.”

  He gives a shriek, beats his wings, cocks his head at me.

  “You’ll be back,” he says, and then takes off. Not big on mushy farewells, apparentl
y.

  But I don’t sweat it. Since he’s right, I will be back, and I will see him. I did my research. Crows live about seven years, assuming they avoid oncoming SUVs. One thing I envy about other animals: They have no concept of their own mortality.

  Humans are the only creatures that know we’re going to die.

  I flip through the letters. Seven in all. This must be the first one, formally addressed to Mr. Sinclair Y. Powers, Swoon, CT.

  This must be the last, to My Darling—.

  Sorry, Antonia, I think. He’s my darling.

  I swivel to see him standing in the doorway. Lofting the letters, I say, “Mail’s in.”

  Sin shudders. “I don’t want them.”

  I don’t either, really. Yet I can’t see torching them, after all we’ve been through. Plus, they probably have some historical significance. Maybe tonight, when we head to the Williams place—our last Bruise Blue jam for a while—I’ll excuse myself.

  Slip up to the nursery, find the panel under the dormer, put the letters where they belong.

  The Williams place. That’s what it is—forget Forsythe Manor. With Duck and his parents heading to London and then Madagascar next month, Crane will be squire and Marsh—already halfway moved in—his lady. They’re officially engaged, Crane pulling out the ring within minutes of his reappearance that fateful Saturday. A spontaneous betrothal blowout ensued, so the goodies Tosh brought for the “modest reception” didn’t go to waste.

  If I can’t accustom to calling it the Williams place, maybe Swoon Sounds will catch on. That’s the school Crane’s starting up—a rock ’n’ roll conservatory for Connecticut rich kids.

  He’ll be headmaster, Pen will manage, and Tosh will drive himself nuts between cooking and teaching. Marsh will stay out of it—vet tech training will have her up to her eyeballs in anatomy. Maybe she’ll go all the way and become a veterinarian.