Читать книгу Seeking Carolina - Terri-Lynne Defino - Страница 8

Eleven Pipers Piping

Gunner was already on his way out the door by the time Johanna found her way to the kitchen. Dashing about, stuffing things into his duffle, yanking his cell phone charger from the wall-socket, he called out to her as he hurried past.

“Nice seeing you, Jo. Keep Nina out of trouble. Ha, look who I’m asking. I’ll see you at Christmas, right? We’ll celebrate.”

And out he went, snatching a kiss from Nina as he blew through the door. She watched him, her arms crossed against the cold coming in. Johanna went to stand behind her, rested a cheek to her sister’s arm.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” Johanna asked.

Nina stepped back and closed the door. “If what you think is that the gallery sold? Yes. They made us an offer we’d be insane to refuse.”

“Woohoo!” Johanna grabbed her sister’s hands, bounced up and down. “How fantastic.”

“I suppose.”

“Nina, you’re rich.”

“I had plenty of money without selling it.”

Johanna let go her hands. “I thought this is what you wanted.”

“I did. I do.”

“Then?”

Nina sighed, pulled a chair away from the table, and flopped into it. Johanna sat opposite her.

“I feel this…loss.” Nina’s lip trembled. She would not cry. Tears were Johanna’s thing. Her elder sister had no patience for them.

“Is it Gram?”

“Sure. Of course. But it’s more. We’ve sacrificed everything but one another to this dream of ours, and now it’s gone. Poof. I think this must kind of be like what a mother feels when her kid goes out into the world.”

“But like kids, you can still visit.”

“It just won’t be mine anymore.” She shrugged, and like that, it was settled. “Gunner’s happy, that’s for sure. He’s already planning what comes next.”

“Of course he is.”

“The man is perpetual motion.”

“You married him.” Johanna reached for her sister’s hand. “Congratulations, Nina. I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks.”

“We should go out tonight and celebrate, just the four of us.”

“I’d like that.” Nina squeezed Johanna’s hand, and let it go. “My treat. I’ll ask Emma what’s good in town these days.”

“D’Angelo’s.” Julietta swept into the room. Hair piled on top of her head, two crossed pencils holding it in place and glasses slightly askew, she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Why?”

“The gallery sold,” Nina answered. “We’re going out to celebrate tonight. And pizza isn’t appropriate celebration food unless it’s for a winning soccer season.”

“Pizza is always appropriate.”

“Only in your world, Jules.”

“I live in the same world you do, and pizza is the perfect food.”

“What makes me think that now Gram’s gone, you are going to live on D’Angelo’s pizza?”

Julietta only sipped her coffee. The fear was not a new one. Johanna had been thinking thoughts along those lines since she got the call that Gram was gone. Old as she had been, none of them expected her to die. Ever. She, Nina and Emmaline had lives outside of the old house, outside of Gram. Julietta worked from home, via the internet, as a freelance researcher. Gram cooked, cleaned, laundered, made sure her youngest granddaughter actually got dressed on occasion. It had been a running joke among them for as long as she could remember—without Gram, Julietta would be another Howard Hughes, toenails and all.

“How about Moose Tracks?” Julietta suggested. “It’s a new place in Great Barrington. Opened up where the Thai place used to be. Remember it?”

“Vaguely,” Johanna answered. “What kind of food?”

“Americany-bistroish.”

“How do you know the place?” Nina asked. “Did you go with Gram?”

“Gram?” Julietta snorted. “No.”

Johanna leapt off her chair to grasp her sister by the arms. “Did you go on a date?”

“Jo! You made me spill coffee on my sweatshirt.”

“It’s a sweatshirt, and it looks like it should have been washed ages ago. Come on, Jules. Spill it.”

“You spilled.”

“Don’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about.”

Her youngest sister dabbed at the coffee on her shirt with a dishtowel. Red splotches spread across her cheeks.

“I’m not that hideous,” she murmured. “I’m thirty-two. A date was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You are beauti—”

“I’m not.” Julietta’s unblinking eyes met hers. “I’m smart. I’m occasionally funny. I’m weird. I am not beautiful.”

Silence fell. Johanna knew better than to argue. So did Nina. Their youngest sister never understood the social niceties that required people to lie, even if it was to be kind. It made no sense and thus, she had no patience for it.

“So he took you to this Moose Tracks place?” Nina asked. “And you liked it?”

Julietta blinked, releasing Johanna from that piercing blue stare, and turned instead to Nina. “They have really good pizza.”

* * * *

Moose Tracks was exactly the sort of place Johanna expected. Upscale, spare but with a nod to the outdoors—a pair of antique snowshoes on the wall, duck decoys on the rafters, a collection of hunting horns hanging over the bar. The food was of the artisanal variety, plow to plate and local. It gratified her to see Julietta’s pizza was thin-crusted, oil drizzled, and loaded with arugula and goat cheese.

At least it was real vegetable matter and dairy.

“No, that’s where Efan works,” Julietta was pointing to the castle-like building across the street. “He’s a teacher at the prep-school, not a waiter.”

“I didn’t mean to imply Evan is a waiter,” Emma answered. “If you would tell us something about him—”

“It’s not Evan. It’s Efan. With an F.”

“Okay. So what does he teach?”

“History, but he’s an expert on Welsh folklore.”

“Kind of a narrow expertise, isn’t it?” Nina sipped her wine. “How did you meet him?”

“Why do you need to know all this?”

“We’re curious,” Johanna intervened. “Sisters are allowed to be. Required to be, in fact. Let’s hear it.”

Julietta put down her pizza. “Fine. You want details? I came up here because I needed a series of books I could only find available in the academy’s library and ran into this guy. Efan. He saw the books I was pulling out and we started talking and got into a big discussion about The Children of Dôn and it got late and there are no visitors allowed on campus after seven so Efan suggested we come here and finish. He paid for dinner, even though I told him I could get it covered on my expense report. He laughed and said my candor was refreshing but he hasn’t contacted me since so I suspect he got over it quick. Okay? Enough? Can I eat in peace now?”

Johanna exchanged glances with Nina, then Emma.

“Darling.” Nina touched her sister’s hand.

Julietta frowned but did not look up.

“Jules, does he even know your full name?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I think so.”

“Do you know his?” Johanna asked.

Julietta shook her head.

“So you are both Cinderellas waiting for someone to show up with a shoe.” Emma picked up a piece of Julietta’s pizza, took a bite. “Oh, Jules.”

Julietta’s shoulders slumped, and the red splotches of her cheeks deepened. She was shutting down to process troubling information. It might be days before she spoke to any of them again.

Johanna, at least, no longer tasted the food. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. No one eat my food.”

She checked her watch. Almost seven. She had ten minutes. Hurrying past the ladies room and out the delivery entrance, Johanna braced herself for the cold. She ran along the back of the businesses, past dumpsters and skids and a couple of guys smoking. She crossed the street at the corner and kept running straight through the wrought-iron gates of the castle-like academy. Leaning against the directory, she caught her breath.

Dining Hall? Or Library? Johanna took her chances with the library. It was closer, close enough for her to see the image of George Washington carved into the grey stone over the great doors. She made a shivering dash for it.

Warmth, and the papery-leather scent of books. Johanna had never frequented libraries, but the scent always made her think of September and school starting and those hopeful days when the academic slate was clean. She had another year to prove she wasn’t a C student. By Christmas break, she’d always be lagging, all desire to catch up firmly behind her social life and the upcoming school play she always aspired to but never got a part in. Nina studied hard. Julietta didn’t have to. Emma was hit or miss. Johanna was mostly miss and, come senior year, had simply been happy to graduate.

“Excuse me.” She caught a librarian stacking books. “Do you know a man named Efan? He’s a history teacher.”

“Everyone in the library knows Efan,” the young man said. “He practically lives here. What do you want with him?”

“Well, ah—you see…” Johanna blew out a breath. “Okay, I’ll be straight. My sister met him here a couple weeks ago and they hit it off. Apparently, neither one of them gave any contact information.”

“That sounds like Efan.”

“They’re a pair, I’m sure,” Johanna said. “We, my sisters and I, are having dinner across the street, and I thought I’d take the chance of finding him, give him my sister’s info. Is he here?”

He tilted his head, grimaced a little.

“I swear I’m not stalking him.”

“How about you write down your sister’s contact info and I’ll give it to him?” He fished a pencil out of his pocket, handed it to her along with a scrap of paper from the pile on his cart. Johanna wrote down Julietta’s email address, website address, and cell phone number. She handed it to the librarian.

“How do I know you’re not going to chuck that the minute I leave?”

“How about I promise I won’t?”

“How about you pinky-swear me?” She stuck out her pinky.

He laughed, and hooked his little finger around hers.

“Pinky-swear. But I can’t promise he’ll call or anything. Efan is…a little strange.”

She let her hand fall. “So is my sister.”

Johanna didn’t bother taking the circuitous route back to Moose Tracks, but entered through the front door. Julietta didn’t even look up. Emma and Nina gave her a look that said they knew exactly what she had done. Dropping into her chair, she barely picked up a French fry before the door opened again and into the restaurant rushed a tall young man with dark hair and an intense expression focused immediately and solely on Julietta.

Efan, Johanna mouthed. She was certain. Gratification warmed her through, though it could do nothing about the cold hamburger and fries on her plate. She picked up the burger and took a bite, trying to pretend she didn’t notice Efan’s ungraceful descent to one knee beside Julietta’s chair.

He took her hand, drawing her out of shutdown with a perfectly-Prince-Charmingly accented whisper, “Julietta?”

* * * *

Night two in her old bedroom, in the farmhouse on County Line Road. Night four since Gram’s death. Night five since sleeping last in the room above the bakery, blissfully unencumbered by the memories and bonds so much easier to pretend did not exist. Johanna turned onto her side, pulled the locket free of the nightgown she took from Gram’s drawer. She traced the engraved letters, clicked it open to run a fingertip over her mother’s face she could not see for the darkness.

“I wish,” she whispered. “I wish…”

Her throat tightened. So many wishes. How did one choose which regret to obliterate, and which were too familiar to let go?

Tucking the locket back into her nightgown, Johanna got out of bed and padded across the hall to Nina’s room. She did not knock, but opened the door as quietly as she could, peeking around the edge to see her beautiful sister asleep on her pillow. Alabaster skin ethereal in the moonlight, her blond hair braided to keep it from tangling, Nina looked like a princess in a fairytale, deep in enchanted slumber.

“Come in and close the door, Jo.”

She jumped but was able to stop herself from squealing. Darkness beckoned, and the familiar comfort of Nina. Johanna slipped into the room, closed the door softly behind her, and snuggled into the blankets beside her sister.

“How did you know it was me?”

“You’ve been sneaking into my bed since you were a baby. Who else would it be?”

“It’s so cold in here. Why is your window open?”

“Because I like the fresh air. I don’t get much of it in the City. Hush, now.” Nina took her into her arms. “Go to sleep.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“Because you had a bad dream. Because there is a monster in your closet. Because you wet the bed. What does it matter? Come on. I’m tired.”

“Okay.”

Johanna cuddled in close. Even as teenagers, she and Nina sought one another’s comfort, just as they had when they were very small, and frightened, and too often left alone. Days and days alone in the buttercream-yellow house, with only a bucket of water, a loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter to sustain them.

“It was really sweet, what you did for Julietta.”

Johanna picked up her head. “He’s adorable, isn’t he? All that messy hair. And his accent is sexy as hell.”

“He is apparently brilliant, too. They are perfect for one another. Julietta needs a man as intelligent as she is.”

“And a man who understands what it is to be…different.”

“That too.”

Nina turned onto her side so they were face to face. For all her talk of going back to sleep, her sister’s eyes were wide and glittering.

“And what about you, my little sister?”

“What about me?”

Nina waggled her eyebrows. “Charlie? He’s still got it bad for you.”

“Oh, stop.” She tried to turn over but Nina pulled her back.

“Okay, we won’t talk about Charlie. How about Emma and Mike?”

Johanna giggled like the girl she had once been. “This is so bad. Gossiping like old ladies at the laundromat.”

“It’s only bad if our intentions are mean-spirited, which they aren’t. I’m worried about them.”

“You think there’s a danger of them splitting up?”

“That’s been a danger for a while now.”

“Really? Why? What’s gone wrong?”

“This time?” Nina bit her lip. “Mike had a vasectomy without telling her. She’s devastated.”

“What? How do you know?”

“She told me when we were all here at Thanksgiving.”

The twirling of Johanna’s stomach hit a sudden stop. She lowered her gaze, unable to meet Nina’s. “I should have come home. I wanted to, but it’s such a busy time at the bakery and—”

“Jo.” A finger under her chin, a slight tap. The familiarity of this gesture released the tears always too ready to fall. Johanna looked up and Nina smiled. “You couldn’t have known it would be Gram’s last.”

“It has been eight years. I’m a horrible granddaughter, after all she did for me. For us.”

“Gram understood, and so do I. Coming back here is a huge effort for me. If not for Gunner, I might not come home at all. It’s why Emma stayed. Leaving means to risk never coming back.”

“We had a happy life here.” Johanna said. “Why is it so hard?”

“Because we had a happy life here without them.”

Johanna was not as certain. Yes, it felt like betrayal, and happiness did not banish the ghosts that had followed them to Bitterly, but there were other factors, at least for her.

“What about Julietta then?” Johanna asked. “She seems content to stay here forever.”

“Because for her, familiarity is necessary. Bitterly is what she knows.”

“Do you think she remembers?”

“The accident?”

“That, and Mom and Dad.”

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

“Then why wouldn’t she? You were younger when you last saw them.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Johanna thought back. She had been almost four when the house in New Hampshire burned. Julietta had been just over when they cut her from the car wreck that killed their father. Johanna still remembered Gram leaving her and Nina with Poppy, returning to Bitterly with the little sisters she didn’t know she had, and news none of them wanted. Johan was dead. Carolina had vanished again. Emmaline was six, skinny, and always scared of the government men coming to get her in the night. Their grandparents assured her again and again, it was Johan’s illness that kept them always running from a non-existent government conspiracy. Their father had loved them, and so did their mother, even though…

After a time, Emma forgot about the government men, or at least came to believe they were indeed a figment of Johan’s paranoia. Julietta had come to them a banged up, but mostly cheerful child. Johanna always hoped it meant she hadn’t been scarred by the life she’d been living, or by the accident that changed everything.

“When she was little, I’d hear her crying in her sleep.” Nina’s trembling whisper broke.

Johanna resisted the urge to touch her sister’s face, to wipe away the tears she would not let fall. “I never heard her.”

“Her bed was, is still, right here.” She tapped the wall above their heads. “It wasn’t every night or anything, and it got less and less as the years went by, but over Thanksgiving, I heard her. Gunner did too.”

“Really?”

“I used to go in and calm her. It usually worked. Once in a while, it didn’t.”

“You never told me.”

“What is there to tell, really? Julietta had nightmares. We all did.”

“Do.”

“Still?” Nina asked.

“Don’t you?”

Nina only stared at her a moment, those pale, unblinking eyes almost eerie in the moonlight. She had their father’s eyes. Johan. Johanna got his name, but Nina had inherited his beauty, his striking eyes, his stature.

“It’s usually of fire,” Nina said at last.

Johanna tried not to react, but she felt her body tense, the tears sting, the apology form on her lips—the one she had never uttered. The one no one knew she owed.

“I wake up certain the apartment is on fire. That’s pretty much it.”

“Pretty much?” Johanna coughed as the words struggled to get around the truth.

A tear finally slipped free of her sister’s eye. She nodded her lie. Now Johanna was the one gathering her sister into her arms. She held her close. “Remember,” she whispered, “picking wildflowers with Mommy?”

“I do.”

“And playing in the snow with Daddy?”

Another nod.

“He used to say the snowflakes were fairies?”

“Willies,” Nina corrected. “Like in Les Sylphides.”

“Sylphs.”

Nina laughed softly. “Yes, sylphs.”

Hush, Jo-Jo. Shhh. The sylphs are sleeping. If you wake them, they will make you dance until dawn.

She remembered the cold. She remembered hiccupping in the silence, and being held in strong, trusted arms. The clarity of that moment remained. Johanna never doubted the veracity. Eyes closed, she pulled his image out of baby memory. Daddy. Johanna was certain she remembered him bigger and more handsome than he actually was. “He loved us, Nina. He loved us so much.”

“Of course he did. So did Mom. They couldn’t help what they were. Even today, treating mental illness is such a crapshoot. Can you imagine what it was like for them?”

“Especially when they were separated. When they lost custody of us.”

“And then again with Emma and Julietta.” Nina sighed. “At least we didn’t know we were desperately poor and squatting in an abandoned farmhouse. We ate. We were mostly warm.”

“And we were constantly left all alone and unsupervised for days on end. Every child’s dream.”

“While they hunted, or picked through dumpsters. I believe nowadays they’d be called freegans.”

Both sisters laughed. Gallows humor had its merits.

“At least we had a home,” Nina said. “Jules and Emma didn’t.”

“Mom and Dad were pretty deep into the crazy by then.”

“Jo, that’s unkind.”

“Oh, come on, it’s true. I don’t have to pretend with you, do I?”

“No. You don’t.” Nina settled. “How did we all escape it, whatever genes made them…you know…”

“Crazy?”

“Mentally ill.”

“Same thing.” Johanna answered. “Maybe just stupid luck.”

“It does seem that way. I still worry a little about Julietta, but I don’t think she’s like they were. She’s just Julietta.”

Johanna stroked her sister’s hair. None of them had ever doubted the extraordinary love affair between their parents. It was all in the letter Gram kept in her jewelry box. She told them the story as if it were a movie script, a dark comedy, or a tragedy of love blooming in a mental facility and culminating in a high-speed chase that left their father dead. But the story never included their mother dying too, only vanishing so completely, she might as well have.

“Do you think she’s dead?”

Johanna opened her mouth to answer, and discovered it was she who had asked the question.

“I have no idea.”

“Do you wonder? Or have you stopped?”

Nina turned onto her side again. Her brow furrowed. “It’s like the nightmares,” she said, “we all have them, and we all wonder. How can we not? She’s our mother.”

* * * *

My girls, look at them sleep. Like babies, in one another’s arms. They whisper truths and hide them. They lay bare their souls and conceal them. They console and they hurt. Words are ever like that, never quite saying what is meant. Golden seraph. Wild sylph. Reasons one and two I wish for the locket, for the wish inside, and to have back my painful life.