Chapter XII
XII
And what about now? Does Persephone still wander the earth for half the year, does she still perform her seasonal tasks, or is she able to instead rest, to recede into the background, to retire comfortably in the halls of the dead, where aubergine skies spread out above you and in Grand Central there is endless, fevered dancing under the twinkling lights of a thousand real stars… ?
I like to think that she visits us, yes, but not because she has to anymore, rather, because she wants to, because she misses the feel of the grass and the scent of the jasmine and the places she once wandered.
I like to think that she retraces her steps, placing her feet in the same spaces she once stood.
Her footsteps deepening, widening, remaining …
It stopped snowing, but it was so cold outside that the world remained covered up in a white, unmelting blanket all week.
The city seemed paused; time seemed to stand still. We had fires, watched movies, read books.
It was easy to forget about the tear in the sky, even as it continued to get bigger, even as it continued to weigh more heavily upon our shoulders.
Aunt Bea paused one morning before Christmas (who knew what day it was, all days melting together in that no-man’s-land of snow), and smelled at the air near the front door, her nose crinkling in sensory concentration.
“Do you smell something … floral?” she asked my father, who happened to be closest, dusting the mantelpiece (boredom leading to household chores; he’d finished three books in three days and didn’t know what to do with himself anymore).
“Floral?” he questioned. “I sprayed some Fabulosa earlier.”
“No, it’s definitely not that,” she said.
“It’s flowers, a specific flower, a creamy, rich, heady, earthy—Bernadette, what am I thinking of, you’re the flower expert.
” Because Bernadette had just come down the stairs to the first floor and even though I was there, I was practicing not moving, the art of becoming invisible in clear view of others.
Bernadette hesitated a moment, shot a look at me (invisibility cloaks rarely worked on sisters), weighed the pros and cons, decided it was harmless to tell her—
“It’s jasmine,” she said.
“Jasmine! That’s it!” said Aunt Bea. “But where is it coming from?”
“It’s Evelyn’s perfume,” Bernadette said, and this made me snort, and this made my father look over at me, his eyes widening in pleasant surprise.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” he said.
That was the point, I wanted to say, but instead I said, “Ta-da,” rather lackluster.
“It doesn’t smell like perfume,” Aunt Bea persisted. “It doesn’t smell artificial at all.”
“It’s a very expensive perfume,” Bernadette said. “Like, you know. An essential oil.”
“I mean, okay,” Aunt Bea said, very obviously not convinced. “If you say so.”
Henry himself didn’t materialize all that much, but I smelled jasmine everywhere, so he was a constant presence, anyway.
I did catch him once, the night before Christmas, sitting by himself at the kitchen table in the middle of the night.
I’d woken up to Clara elbowing me in the ribs (Aunt Bea was sleeping in her bed) and I’d gone downstairs for a glass of water.
When I turned the kitchen light on, it took everything in me not to scream out in fright.
“Henry, holy crap, what are you doing sitting here in the dark?” I hiss-whispered.
“You don’t really notice it,” he said in this super dramatic, low voice. “The dark, the light. It makes no difference when you’re dead.”
“Okay,” I said, my heart still beating like a timpani drum. “Creepy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m glad it’s you. Your aunt came down a little while ago and just stood here in the dark, sniffing.”
“She has a great sense of smell, apparently.”
“I used to love the smell of jasmine. I can’t smell it anymore.”
“You can’t?”
“I can’t smell anything,” Henry admitted sadly.
“They’re my favorite flower. All my life, walking into a room, I’d know if you were there or if I’d just missed you or if you hadn’t been around in a while.”
“If I wasn’t a ghost, your favorite flower might have been … I don’t know. Lilies. Bluebells. Amaranthus.”
“Sure, maybe? What’s going on?”
“The tear is too big now. If I wait any longer … I won’t be strong enough to close it. And I still haven’t told her. I’m scared to tell her. And now it’s here. It has to happen tomorrow. I’ve waited too long already; I can’t wait any longer.”
“But tomorrow’s Christmas,” I said.
“Is it?” he asked. “I’d lost track.”
“Oh, Henry,” I said. “I wish there was another way.”
“I know,” he replied, not looking at me, looking out the dark windows to the backyard instead. “Me, too.”
The next morning—Christmas morning—it snowed again.
We woke up early, thanks to Clara, who hadn’t yet outgrown the urgency of Christmas morning, the anticipation of the presents under the tree.
“It’s just like Narnia,” she breathed, standing in thick wool socks, peering out the front windows of the house at the street beyond.
“It’s been like this all week,” Evelyn said.
“Right, but in Narnia, it’s never Christmas and then it is Christmas,” Clara argued. “And now it’s Christmas!”
It was too snowy, too gray, to see the tear in the sky, but I felt it deep inside me. It had a heavy pulse to it, like listening to music with the bass turned up too high.
No one else was up yet, just us, not our parents, not Aunt Bea.
Bernadette made hot chocolates, carried them into the living room balanced carefully on a tray. She took the mug with the chip on the rim and faded photos of puppies. She’d made whipped cream the old-fashioned way, with heavy cream and our mother’s older-than-us hand blender.
“What are you watching?” she asked, sitting on the couch as the three of us remained by the window, looking out.
“The snow,” Clara said.
Evelyn went and sat next to Bernadette. I couldn’t look at Evie, couldn’t bear to see her face. I didn’t know where Henry was but I knew today was the day and that secret felt too heavy to carry by myself.
Clara took a mug of hot chocolate and sat down, and I followed her so I wouldn’t be the only one left at the window. I stared at the floor as Bernadette tapped her phone and started Harry Connick Jr. on the speakers. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
“It is snowing,” Clara said, her voice filled with so much wonder and happiness that it made us all laugh.
Then Evelyn said, “I have something for you all,” and from her thick, plush robe, she pulled out three identically sized boxes. She handed one to each of us.
“It’s not much,” she said, but we knew even as we were peeling off the wrapping paper, opening the boxes, that it would be the most thoughtful and meaningful presents we would receive all day because Evelyn had always been, this will surprise no one, the best at gifts.
She saved up her money all year, whatever she got from the few long-term piano students she tutored during summer afternoons, from the music lessons she gave on weekends in the spring and summer, from saving pennies and hoarding dimes, she would buy us each a gift that was guaranteed to make at least one of us cry.
Clara, who had no money to her name at all, usually made us something homemade and personal and sweet, coming in second place in the unspoken Farthing sister gift contest.
Bernadette, who had a job but saved everything until last minute, usually got us something we wanted but which wasn’t a surprise (because she asked us): an expensive sweater, new paints, a vintage cashmere scarf.
And I, having sometimes money from various allowances and odd jobs and birthdays, and sometimes good ideas, usually got my sisters books. Books I had loved, books I knew they would love, books I thought might be meaningful to them in whatever their current struggle was.
The three of us took care to unwrap Evelyn’s gifts at the exact same speed, so no one would spoil it for anyone else. Under the paper was a small cardboard box and inside that was a beautiful evergreen velvet jewelry box.
We opened it together, our movements in near unison. Clara gasped, Bernadette sucked in a sharp breath, and I was silent as we pulled the necklaces out.
They were gold, twinkling, circular discs set on delicate gold chains. The discs had lines emanating from the middle outward, like the rays of the sun. In the center of the lines was a raised heart. On the other side, in the middle of the disc, were all of our initials: BEWC.
“I thought it would always connect us. Remind us,” Evelyn said, moving aside her robe to show us that she had bought one for herself, too.
What I wanted to say was—I don’t need a reminder that I have sisters.
What I wanted to say was—This is so, so beautiful.
What I wanted to say was—I’m so sorry, Evelyn. I don’t deserve this. If I could use this to patch up the hole in the sky, I would. I would in a heartbeat.
What I did say was, “What about the rest of the note? What was it going to say? I know why you did it and I—what? You what, Evie?”
Evelyn’s face was hard to read, and she didn’t quite look at me when she replied. “I didn’t know you saw that.”
“We looked everywhere for you, we were so nervous,” I said. “What was the note going to say?”
She closed her eyes for the length of four heartbeats, one for each of us, then she opened her eyes again and looked at me and said, “… and I love you always.”
… and I love you always.
And she would always love us, love me, no matter what I did, no matter what terrible decisions I made. Wasn’t that what it was to be a sister?
“This is too much, Evie,” Bernadette said, hooking the necklace around her neck.
Clara held up her own necklace so it caught the weak, gray, morning light from the window, and let the pendant twirl and twirl around. “It’s so beautiful, Evelyn,” she said, and she caught the still-spinning pendant between two fingers, then brought the whole thing to her chest, hugging it.