After making notes in the bedroom, I begin the second part of my day—scouring the house for papers, letters, diaries, anything that might help me put things together about Veronica’s past. As I’d already discovered, the bedroom had been cleared out and never used again, and the study had proven to be no help at all. In Helen’s suite of rooms, I find stacks of magazines, some dating back to 1960, carefully stored in plastic bins stacked to the ceiling. I mark them TRASH with a Sharpie. In a closet, I discover heaps and heaps of yarn, every color and variety and weight, which I note on my clipboard will go to the charity shops, along with most of the paperback books, mostly a very old-fashioned form of romance, and the kind of thick novels about the upper classes in England that seems to go over well with a certain set here. I’d never seen them in America, though glitz novels probably fill the same need.
I scan the books carefully, one title at a time, but after several tall stacks realize there isn’t going to be anything I need to save. It’s hard to turn my back on such a wealth of reading material, but I learned early in the flipping game that I’d rue carting home a lot of books. My own reading threatens to bury us, so I don’t need to bring any in from somewhere else. On my clipboard, I note “used bookseller,” who often pays me a sum by the yard just for the chance to find anything important.
The rest of the rooms have even less to offer. They contain the last modest possessions of a reclusive old woman. Her television is from the ’90s, and the desktop computer that sits in one corner is a behemoth of yellowed plastic. I turn it on just out of curiosity, and it takes a while, but the screen finally comes up. It doesn’t appear to have an internet connection and boasts very few programs—a word processor I haven’t seen in use for quite some time and a few old-school games. I smile, thinking of Helen in her flowered dresses, playing FreeCell.
I click on the word processor, and while it readies itself for the enormous job of opening, I check a text that has come in on my phone from Nan.
Got your message. Meet for early dinner?
I leap at the distraction from my empty house. Yes! The usual?
5:30?
Yes.
I’ll make a reservation.
Pleased at the social prospect, I tuck my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and scan the list of files on Helen’s computer. It’s tidily arranged, with a file for letters, one for daily tasks that I quickly discover is a list that can be printed, and one for “Other.” I click on that.
Journal entries. I open a handful of them, just to see if there are instructions or anything in there. It makes me feel guilty—journals are very, very private things, and you never know, going in cold like this, what you’ll find.
In this case, however, it’s a simple accounting of her day. She knitted a pair of socks for a neighbor’s child. Ate toast and jam for breakfast. Needed to leave an envelope for the cleaners. I close it up again, but I’m not letting the computer go. I feel protective now of Helen’s privacy.
The rooms are sunny, with good light and views toward the sea. Simon will be very comfortable having his study here. Maybe we can turn one room into a little kitchen.
As is my habit, I stand quietly in the center of the big room and let it speak to me in color and style. Here, as everywhere in the house, the bones are excellent. The windows are the star—rows of squares, each framing the view in a new way. I’ll leave them uncovered but maybe on each end hang some heavy drapes to pull across on rings.
No. Bare, clean. That’s what Simon will like. A masculine shade of green and the carpet taken up. Bookshelves that Rose will want to decide upon. The good wood detailing stripped and restored.
As I’m heading downstairs with my notes, it occurs to me that Helen must have kept journals all along. What did she do before computers? And where did she stash them?
There must be an attic or other storage. I walk along the open upper gallery, peering at the ceiling, and at the end, there’s the loop. Glancing at my watch, I realize I’ve been at it for hours, and if I’m going to make my dinner with Nan, I’ve got to get down to the CBD. If I time it right, I can capture a parking spot from a departing office drone.
Rose is cataloging the items in the pantry. “Find anything interesting?” I ask.
She nods, gesturing with her pen toward the glass-front shelves. “Somebody collected Coalport cups and saucers. They’re amazing.” She takes a cup out, dark blue with gold interior and a pattern of stars or dots on the outside.
“Breathtaking. Are they worth anything?”
“Some, definitely. Some maybe not. Beautiful, though.” She shakes her head as she returns the cup, picks up another with a wide background and elaborate, colorful enamel work in red and pink and yellow.
She loves vintage everything, and I don’t always see the appeal, but these cups are amazing. “They’ll inspire you.”
“Yes. Are you leaving?”
“I’m going to meet Nan in the CBD. Do you want to stay?”
“No.” She makes a face, looking upward. “This one feels a little more alive than I like.”
I nod. “I get it. Nearly scared myself to death the other day.”
She settles the cup in its place and closes the pantry door. “I’ve got heaps of notes I’ll type up later and send over to you, but I got a pretty good start.”
“Tomorrow or the next day, I want to get into the attic. I’m looking for things like papers and anything that might have belonged to Veronica. Clothing, jewelry, notes, scripts. Any of it. Might be a museum that’ll want them.”
“No doubt.”
“Want some feijoas?” I ask, smelling them on the breeze as we walk out. “There’s a ton of them around.”
“Uh, no. My mum has two trees, and I’m already ducking her.”
I laugh. “See you tomorrow.”
Chapter Eleven
Kit
The harbor tour allows us to disembark at any number of stops. Javier and I wander into a little village with thick shade beneath the trees and rows of Victorian-like houses. The air is hot and still, the mood very quiet along the streets. Peaceful. He points at things now and again but seems content to simply take it in. I like that he doesn’t feel the need to fill every silence with words.
A bookstore draws us both in, and I lose him within two minutes when he dips down an aisle of moldering history books. I wander on by myself, looking for light reading to bring back with me, but there isn’t much in that category. I content myself with leafing through a book of botanical drawings, then a history of flowers. I wind down a few more aisles, turning this way and that, until I’m somewhere in the deepest heart of the place, surrounded by the hushed whisper of the books and the faint dusty smell of them, in front of a deliciously huge collection of children’s books.
I pick up a couple, open them at random to read a page. Nancy Drew and the Boxcar Children, Harry Potter in many different formats, some regional work I don’t recognize and that intrigues me. I shoot a photo of their spines to look for them later.
And there, in the middle of it all, is a battered copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I gasp a little under my breath, as if someone dead has come back to life, and pull it out, holding the weight gingerly in my hands for a moment. It’s the same edition we owned, a book Dylan brought home from a trip to San Francisco. I open the cover, flip to the first page, and fall back in time.
To a cold afternoon long ago, me and Josie with Dylan between us. I leaned into his hard ribs, smelling the soap he used to scrub his hands of garlic and onion. “I can’t wait to read this to you,” he said. “It’s such a good story.”
“I can read it myself,” Josie said, and it was true that at eight, she could read anything she wanted.
“But if you read it,” Dylan said, “then we don’t get to sit here like this, together.” He dropped a kiss to each of our heads. “Doesn’t that sound better? We can read a chapter a day before you take showers.”
“Why do we have to take showers every
day?” I asked, falling across his lap. “Mommy doesn’t make us.”
He pinched my side, tickling me a little, and I giggled, shoving his hands away happily. “Because you smell like little goats after you’ve been out there playing in the sand all day.”
“We take showers in the ocean,” I yelled, and he laughed, putting a finger to his lips.
“A boy in my class told me I had disgusting ankles,” Josie said, holding one skinny leg up for inspection.
“It’s kind of disgusting,” Dylan said, grabbing her leg. “Scrub it tonight.”
“Scrub it how?” Josie asked. She licked her thumb and rubbed at the grime, and it started to give way.
“Quit it,” Dylan said, slapping her hand. “It’ll wait until your shower. You can use soap and a washcloth.”
I liked lying across his legs, looking up at him. I could see under his chin where little shimmers of blond whiskers caught the light and his ponytail hung over his shoulder, bright and messy. It was safe with Dylan, warm. Although I complained about the shower, I liked having someone who knew when our clothes needed to be washed and who made us follow a system—shower, brush and braid hair, brush teeth, lay out clothes for the next day. My sense of worry had calmed a lot since he’d arrived. “I can see up your nose,” I said, giggling.
Dylan laughed. “Get up, you monkey. Let’s read.”
I scrambled upright. Josie crossed her legs and leaned in, her long, long hair falling like straw over her skinny limbs. Dylan took a breath and turned to the first page. “These two very old people . . .”
Twenty-five years later, in the dusty bookstore with a copy of the same book in my hands, I hold very still to let the cactus spines in my lungs settle. From experience, I know it will get worse before it gets better, that I can’t move, only breathe with the shallowest breaths possible, and it will still be like a hand brushing back and forth against the spines, creating waves of deep pain. Each spine is a memory—Dad, Dylan, Josie, Mom, me, them, surfing, s’mores—and all of them ache at once.
As I stand there, breathing shallowly, I can sense a person coming down the aisle, but if I move, it will take longer for the ache to disappear, so I stand there, head down, as if I don’t know the person is there. Maybe they’ll turn around and go back.
But they don’t. He doesn’t. Javier touches my upper arm lightly. “Are you all right?”
I nod tightly. Lift the book to show him I’ve been looking at it. With a sensitivity that’s rare, he settles one warm palm against the very center of my back and holds out the other for the book. I let go of it.
When I can speak, I say, “Did you find anything interesting?”
He gives me a wry grin, one that lights a dimple in his cheek. “Many things, but I have learned to just carry one book, or my bag starts to weigh too much for me to lift!” He shows me a book of Pablo Neruda poetry. “This one for now.”
“But you already have a book.”
“No, I have finished that one. I can leave it behind for someone else.”
The ache has eased enough that I can laugh a little. “I’m taking that one, but I do know what you mean.”
He hands the book back to me. “You’ll have to tell me about it. Shall we find lunch?”
“Absolutely.”
At the counter, he sets his book down and holds his hand out for mine. I think about arguing that I have the money, but it’s a small kindness, and I don’t have to push it away. “Thank you.”
The village is geared toward tourists—at least it is by the waterfront. I know from experience that the town itself will have normal homes and people and schools and supermarkets. It bemuses me that this tourist town is much like my own, that everywhere the land meets the ocean there is probably some variation on this idea.
We have a wealth of options, but I love the look of a sandwich-and-tea shop situated in an old building, and we’re shown to a table by the window overlooking the harbor and islands and bluffs. Somewhere out there is my sister. Now that I know it for sure, I feel a renewed sense of urgency. How will I find her?
“You are troubled?”
I half nod, half shrug, trying to dislodge the emotions the book raised. “A little. I don’t know how I will find her. I mean, how do you do that in such a large city?”
“You could hire a detective.” He gives the word a Spanish inflection.
I’ve thought of this. “Maybe I will if I don’t find her another way.” Then I straighten. I’ve agreed to this day trip with Javier because I didn’t want to be lonely, and I owe him my attention for the afternoon. “This is an insanely beautiful place,” I say.
Javier, holding the menu lightly, admires the view along with me. “It’s restful to look at it.”
A note in his voice pricks my curiosity. “Do you need rest?” I ask lightly.
“I needed time to”—he gestures to include the room, the table, the view, me—“enjoy the world.”
A youth with a tumble of black curls asks us for a drink order. I’m not sure yet what the local standard drinks are—what’s an L&P?—so I order sparkling water.
Charmingly, Javier orders lemonade. We study the menus. “I keep seeing kumara on menus. Is it a squash or something?”
“Sweet potato,” he says. “Miguel explained to me.”
Eyeing the kumara soup and a whitebait fritter, as well as classic fish and chips, I decide to go for the adventure—the fritter and soup. Javier orders oysters.
As he hands the waiter his menu, he’s framed against the light from a window behind him. It haloes his hair and the square solidness of his shoulders, casts his profile into relief—high brow, powerful nose, full lips. I like the elegance of his shirt. His ease in the world.
He taps the book, cradled in a paper bag. “Tell me about this.”
“Oh, that.” The ache of memory comes flooding back. “Did you ever see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?”
“I know of it.”
“This is the novel it was made from.”
He nods, his hands loosely clasped in front of him. “And?”
I sip water. “My parents sort of adopted a runaway who worked in the restaurant. Dylan.” How long has it been since I’ve spoken his name? A faint ache runs along my ribs. “He lived with us for years and years. And this”—I smooth a palm over the cover—“was his favorite book. He used to read it to my sister and me.”
“What is the story?”
“A poor boy in the slums of London finds a golden ticket in a chocolate bar and is given a tour of a chocolate factory run by an eccentric man.”
“Why did your friend love it?”
I consider the question. There is so much I don’t know. What his history was, though he’d clearly been beaten within an inch of his life, who his family was. All he ever said about his mother was that they used to go to Chinatown sometimes. Aloud, I say, “Charlie is a poor boy who finds the winning ticket. There’s magic in a candy factory, right?”
“You miss him.”
“Not just him.” How to explain such a tangle of loves? My mother smoking in the kitchen as Dylan read aloud, the smell of coffee thick in the air, my sister chewing on the end of her hair, my dad singing somewhere as he engaged in some physical task. “All of them, really. Maybe even my little-girl self.”
His big hands reach over the table to take one of mine, engulfing it completely. “Tell me about them.”
Oh, I do not want to like him so much. Lust, yes. Not like. I don’t know him at all, but in this gesture I feel the heart of a lion, big and inclusive and wise. It tips open the closed doors of my life.
I take a breath, think of those days, and again find myself telling him the truth. Maybe it’s him, or maybe it’s just time to tell someone. “We were wild children, all of us, even Dylan. He must have run away, because he showed up like a ghost one night when he was thirteen or so and just stayed. My mother took him under her wing.” I shake my head. It’s still a mystery that she did that, but she loved him as
much as we did, right from the start. “My sister and I adored him.” I look out at the water. Even my dad, who was kind of a hard man in some ways, loved him. “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to Dylan.”
“Why?”
I remember his scars, some small and pale; others long, thin lines; others fat and red. “I didn’t realize it then, you know, but knowing what I know now, he must have been abused physically.” It makes my skin hurt to think of it, of his small gentle self, so heartbreakingly beautiful, being punched or cut or burned. His body bore the evidence of all those and more. For a moment, a wave of loss and longing threatens to swamp me, a longing for that time, for Dylan himself, for the terrible things he suffered. “He took care of us, Josie and me.”
“Why didn’t your parents care for you?”
The answer is so complicated and so intimate after everything else that I’m relieved when the waiter brings a basket of bread and Javier releases my hand. Offering me the basket first, holding it with courtly manners while I select a round brown roll, he selects a seeded one and lifts it to his nose. “Mm. Alcaravea,” he says.
I gesture for it, and he offers the roll so I can look at it. “Caraway.”
“Delicious.”
Every gesture he makes, every expression, is as smooth and graceful as every other. Nothing is hurried or overly considered. He flows moment to moment in a way I don’t remember ever noticing in a human before. I smile and butter my bread.
And as if he senses I’ve reached a wall, he turns the conversation. “Tell me, Kit—is it Katherine or something else? Were you like a fox kit, and your father gave you the nickname?” As he speaks, his gaze is focused intently on my face, as if whatever words drop from my mouth will be endlessly fascinating. I had a professor once who looked at me this way. She was a nun, and I knew her in my third year of undergrad. I bloomed in her presence. I’m blooming now.
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 11