Chapter Thirty-Five #3
She regarded me thoughtfully. “That’s not an answer. That’s an evasion. So you didn’t throw it over the wall.” She gave me a chance to lie; I could not. “When you found the meat, there was only the one chunk you brought to us as evidence, not three.”
Although I had lied about finding all the poisoned bait before Rafael had eaten any of it, my deception harmed no one and was for the purpose of keeping the secret of my newfound gift for healing. Nevertheless, a blush of embarrassment warmed my face.
“Rafael ate the first two,” Mrs. Symington surmised.
“But then he would have been poisoned. He would have died.”
“Should have died,” she agreed. “Just as sweet Gertie should have died. But Rafael didn’t. And neither did she.”
I tried but failed to find a way to deflect the arrow of her inquiry. “Obviously, ma’am, you’ve read at least as many Agatha Christie novels as I have.”
“I love you, Addie. I don’t want to cause you trouble. What you tell me will go no further. I’m here only because . . . because I’ve been waiting all my life for some sign.”
“Sign?”
“Evidence. Proof. A reason to believe there’s more to the world than what we can touch and see. Maybe it’s you, the evidence.”
“It’s not me.”
“Did Rafael die?”
“No.” Mrs. Symington’s gaze was a starving beggar’s gaze, and her face a portrait of spiritual yearning that would have served as a poster advertising the radio broadcasts of Bishop Fulton J.
Sheen. I had never seen this aspect of her.
I couldn’t pretend to be what she wanted me to be.
I also couldn’t disrespect her desire to find meaning in the weave of the world.
I gave her the truth to make of it what she would.
“Rafael wasn’t dead, but gravely ill and dying. ”
“And you, did you . . . ?”
“Yes. I brought him back.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I held him.”
“Just held him?”
“And he stopped dying.”
“This has happened before?”
“No.”
“You were surprised.”
“Very.”
“You told no one.”
“Not then.”
“Until Gertie . . .”
“Until Gertie. I was afraid I’d fail her.”
“You held her like you held Rafael.”
“Yes. The infection passed from her blood to mine.”
“But here you are.”
“I don’t know how or why.”
“It’s because you aren’t of this world.”
“But I am. I wasn’t born on Mars.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. But I’m not heaven-sent, either.”
“What else could you be?”
“I’m a freak, Victoria.”
“Don’t say that.”
“From a carnival freak show.”
“Where we’re from is not what we are.”
“People paid to see the monster—me.”
She bit her lip, shook her head.
“They never wanted their money back. I was every bit as much a monster as advertised.”
“Hush. You’re a beautiful child.”
“And you’re sweet. I will miss you.”
“It’s only true. You’re lovely.”
“The marks pitied me, feared me.”
“No one could.”
“The sight of me sickened others.”
“I’ll never believe that.”
“I was billed as ‘the horror with a pretty face.’”
“Carnival foolishness.”
“For years, you’ve laundered my underthings.”
“They aren’t that different.”
“They are. You haven’t wanted to think about it.”
“Monsters don’t raise the dead.”
“And neither did I. Rafael and Gertie weren’t dead.”
“Raise the dead, heal the dying—it’s the same.”
I rose from my chair, went to her, and held out my right hand, which was as always in a custom-made glove. She got up and took my hand. I led her to a window with a view of the gardens.
Across its breadth, the noon sky was cloaked in clouds as dark as ashes marbled with soot. The air pooled so still that even the laciest trees with the most delicate leaves did not tremble.
Although I knew the answer, I asked, “Why do you insist on my being something that I’m not?”
“Maybe you are what you think you’re not.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s an evasion.”
She smiled, aware that those were words with which she had earlier chastised me.
“Why do I insist? My stubborn heart. I have no faith in anything until I’m given evidence faith is warranted.
I was married to Julian years before I could believe he loved me.
Life has taught me to require proof or suffer the consequences of blind belief in anyone or anything. ”
Her inbred and all but implacable doubt in all things saddened me even as I understood that it was a reasonable response to this world of deceit.
I said, “If I could command the clouds to roll back and the sky to be blue from horizon to horizon, I would do it for no other reason than to change your stubborn heart forever. But I can’t do that because I’m not a citizen soul of New Jerusalem come down to Earth on a holy mission that might also make a nifty storyline for a Paramount movie.
I’m just a freak both physically and in some ways mentally.
If you’d rather call me an oddity, a nonesuch, a weird duck—that’s okay.
I won’t be offended. I’ve come around to calling myself a freak without dismay.
To deny that humbling word would also be to deny the talents and the gifts that came with my physical deformities.
It’s all part of my birthright. Do you see? ”
“I do not see. Why should you be born with terrible burdens, even if you’re willing and able to live with them? And why should Julian and I be unable to have children in a world full of them?”
Every person is a puzzle. I had just been given a corner piece of the puzzle that was Victoria.
I let go of her hand in order to hug her.
“When you get bored with retirement, please come visit me for as long as you like. Me and the children. Everyone will be so happy to see you. As long as there’s a Bram, you belong here.
And as a guest, you won’t have to make your bed. ”
Her heart might have been stubborn, but it was not hard.
She kissed my cheek. She couldn’t speak.
In silence, we walked together through the house.
As we entered the foyer, she found her voice.
“It will be a blessing to sleep in late, never again be required to herd you little savages to breakfast and off to school.”
As I opened the front door, I said, “We’ll miss being able to exasperate you to the point where you sputter.”
“That sounds like an admission. I always assumed the morning chaos was the consequence of an excess of youthful energy. Am I now to understand that it was scripted?”
“We often stayed up well past midnight, planning every detail. Precisely timing each spill. Deciding exactly when the door would be left open to entice a squirrel into the kitchen. Determining which of us would roll a piece of sausage across the floor to send Rafael on a wild scramble that would incite the maximum disruption of your routine.”
“Hellions,” she said as we descended the steps to the driveway.
“And proud of it, ma’am.”
Everyone in the Bram had said their goodbyes earlier. Only Julian waited by their Ford. He helped Victoria into the front seat and closed the passenger door. He half bowed toward me. “Miss Adiel Fairchild, it has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life.”
I offered him my hand. “Mr. Symington, sir, the pleasure has been all mine.”
He took my hand. “I did not bother to tell the family that from now on you are the majordomo who will keep this place from tumbling down. I was sure they already understood.” His voice broke only when he said, “Goodbye, dear,” and shook my hand precisely three times.
I watched the Ford dwindle down the palm-lined driveway as thunder rumbled and rain began to fall.
It was Christmas Eve. We would be going to church in the rain. The staff was on vacation. Chef Lattuada left us a week of feasts. On New Year’s Eve, with sparklers, we would paint bright but short-lived patterns on the darkness.