15. The Peppermint Palace （Ryan）
Chapter fifteen
The Peppermint Palace (Ryan)
T he little girl I had left in the hole in the chalet was long gone.
In her place, an elegant stranger sat in a wheelchair, a streak of silver running down her hair.
Mom’s old shawl was wrapped around her shoulder.
At first, I thought it was Mom but then, when she smiled at me, and the tiny dimple appeared on her cheek, I knew in my heart that it was Sara.
“Bunny?” I asked.
“I haven’t been called that in ages,” she said. she did something that left me transfixed. She got up from her wheelchair and walked to me slowly.
How?
When they had pulled her out of the pit, she was unconscious.
She had been in a coma for weeks. When she regained consciousness, the first thing she said to her mom was that she couldn’t feel her feet.
They had tried everything to fix her. I knew all that because everyone knew.
They had tried to keep it under wraps, but when the Hellerman daughter got injured and the brother was mysteriously involved, it became a matter for the front pages of the newspapers.
My father had given a statement to a TV channel.
I remembered watching it, six months after the accident.
I was in the dorm of the boarding school.
Kids my age were playing cards, reading books, or playing games on the computer.
There I was, all but ten years of age, glued to the screen, watching the pain in my father’s eyes as he said that despite the doctors’ best efforts, Sara was not going to be able to walk.
“What? Did you expect me to stay seated and not greet my absconding brother?” Sara said and put her arms around me as she hugged me tightly. “Not a moment has gone by when I haven’t missed you.”
“I…”
“Yes. You, brother dear.”
I let go of her, and as I did, the very tangible sensation of her arms unwrapping around my body brought home the realization that this was no ghost. This was no trick. This was my sister. Somehow, she was standing on her own two feet without any support.
“And you must be Melissa. Griswold was just telling me about you. My, my, you are a beautiful woman, aren’t you?” Sara said, gleaming at Melissa and shaking her hand.
“Not more than you. I mean, holy crap, you look like the reincarnation of Marylin Monroe,” Melissa said. Her mouth hung open as she shook hands with Sara.
“You are far too kind,” Melissa said. She turned and nodded at Griswold, who brought the wheelchair forward. Sara sat down and took a deep breath.
“I can only stand for so long, you understand,” she explained.
“Until recently, I could not. But then, one day, these Swiss guys approached me; their research and case studies were so fascinating that I couldn’t help but say, yes.
A sizeable donation to their research and an eighteen-hour surgery session later, I have this thing on my spine, an implant of sorts, that lets me walk, stand up, and even bend over.
It does have its limitations, but you never know how precious it is to stand on your own two feet until you can’t. ”
“Sara,” I said, kneeling in front of her wheelchair, holding her hands in mine and gazing at her earnestly. “You don’t know how sorry I am…for…for everything.”
“We never really got a chance to talk after the whole thing. I never got to tell you what I found at the bottom of the Peppermint Palace. I was conscious for the first fifteen minutes, even though the pain was unbearable. But the sight I was beholding down there was fascinating enough to make me forget the pain,” she said, wonder and excitement all over her face.
“I regret that evening. What was I thinking, taking you there?”
“Ryan. You are my beloved elder brother. Let me tell you the same thing that I kept telling Mom and Dad until the very moment they died. It was not your fault. None of it was. Even if it was, which it wasn’t, you and I were kids.
Stupid kids who are bound to do stupid things.
You are blaming yourself needlessly. If anything, you should be proud of the way you tried to stop me from going in there.
Eventually, when I fell, you did the responsible thing, called for help, and assisted in getting me out.
Did you forget all that? I am not even dead, so we can’t even call it survivor’s guilt.
I don’t think that this was reason enough for you to cut yourself off from the family and live in self-exile.
Even though there is nothing to apologize for, I will still say the words so your soul is at peace.
You are forgiven. It was not your fault.
I accept your apology. Now, is that good enough? ”
Warm tears clung to my face as I hugged my sister — tears of joy, relief, and reconciliation.
Damned be the alpha male podcasters, the meninists with their pervasively toxic worldviews, the boomer book writers who had embedded into the psyche of billions all over the world that boys don’t cry.
Well, men could cry, and it was okay. Damned be all who think that it is a sign of weakness to weep.
If anything, now in the arms of my sister, crying and letting it all out, feeling her tears on my skin, I felt stronger than I had ever been in my entire life. Melissa put a consoling hand over my shoulder as I became a vessel of raw emotions.
“I am so sorry that I didn’t come back,” I said.
“Well, you should be. I was alone and bored; there was no one to tell me my favorite stories. I had to make do with Martha and Griswold telling me strange German fables where Cinderella chops off her toes so that the shoe can fit,” Sara said and laughed.
I laughed at the top of my lungs at the image of Griswold hunched over Sara’s bed, telling her the original Grimm tales — the ones we had never heard of thanks to their Disneyfication, meaning always ending happily ever after.
“I carried that shame everywhere with me. Mom, Dad. I could never meet them after what I’d done,” I said.
My knees were killing me. I got up to my feet slowly, feeling them creak as I exerted my entire body weight.
Melissa was right. I had been suffering more in my imagination than I’d ever done in real life.
Now that I had met Sara, had seen her stand up and walk, I felt like I had been set free.
“Mom and Dad never really understood what had happened. The trauma of it all was too much for them. Later on, as they grew older, they realized that they had been rather harsh. Dad even tried to get in touch with you. Hell, I remember one time both of them drove down to New York. I think that was the first time you received a Grammy. Say, how many of them do you have now?”
“Six,” I said. “But none lately, because I’m not producing music anymore.”
“Well, I am proud of you, and they were too. You may not have spotted them that night, but they were in the audience when you received your award. I had seen the smiles return to their faces,” Sara said.
“Now, enough talk. I believe you two have had a long drive and are tired. I asked Griswold to prepare the guest room. You remember the guest room, don’t you, Ryan?
It’s the one where we used to huddle at night, afraid the boogeyman would get us. ”
“Oh, am I in for a stroll down memory lane?” I mocked as we left the drawing room and into the sprawling corridor.
It was just like I remembered. Nothing had been changed.
Not the busts of the oldest Hellerman forebears…
not the paintings on the wall. Maybe the carpets were new, but who could tell?
The last time I was here, I was a little too young to worry about carpets and drapes.
Still, in the last thirty years, the house had lost none of its grandeur.
“You most definitely are,” Sara said. “I never told you what I found in the Peppermint Palace, did I?”
“I believe we skimmed over it in the heat of the moment,” Melissa said from behind.
“Melissa, I have been meaning to thank you for talking some sense into him. I know a smart woman when I see one, and I think Ryan should hold onto you for dear life,” Sara said. “Sometimes, only a woman can know what another woman thinks.”
“Please, no thanks needed,” she insisted.
“Ever since I found out that Ryan had a sister, I’d been dying to meet you.
And you know what, now that I have seen you, I can say it.
You guys do look alike. Just slap a wig on top of Ryan’s head and shave his stubble, and the resemblance would be uncanny! ”
That made Sara clap her hands and laugh. Griswold, who was pushing Sara’s wheelchair, chuckled.
“So, what did you find there?” I asked.
“Oh, Ryan, it was the most spectacular thing. It was a cave and not just any cave. It had this big hole in the top where the moonlight shone through. At the bottom was this ethereal lake with shimmering blue water. Later on, when I told Dad, he sent someone down there. They found that the pond could sustain life. It was a full-on self-sustaining ecosystem with a very rare pikeperch subspecies. Now, everyone was baffled, because the pikeperch were native to Eurasia, not America. Dad became so obsessed with the discovery that he called a team of biologists. They confirmed what he had suspected. It was indeed an undiscovered species. So my fall that night wasn’t in vain.
I discovered the Peppermint Luciopercinae, and yes, that’s what I named them.
” Just as Sara finished telling the story, we reached the guest room.
“What happened next?” I asked, my mind still trying to comprehend what she’d just narrated.
“Well, what do you think happened? We tore down the big chalet, conserved the area under it and declared it a freshwater habitat. Every few months, biologists from Boston fly over and make sure that the fish are thriving,” Sara said.
“It’s not me that has a riveting tale to tell.
It’s you. How did you make it all happen? ”
“I had a lot of help,” I said, taking the wheelchair from Griswold and pushing it into the guest room. “And you are right. I do have one hell of a story to tell.”
“I’m all ears,” Sara said.
“Melissa?” I asked.
“It’s just…umm…we were in the car for a long time. Could Martha whip something up for me?”
“Say no more,” Sara said, then nodded at Griswold.
“Follow me, ma’am,” he said, waving his arm, beckoning her towards the south wing.
“I’ll see you soon?” Melissa asked.
“Just don’t get lost,” I said, grinning.
“I have Griswold,” she said, looking approvingly at the butler.
“And he has me,” Sara said, peeking out from behind the door. “Come back in your own time. I wanna hear the tale of how you two met.”
“Will do,” Melissa said, then walked behind Griswold as he took her to the kitchen.
“Now how did a devil like yourself get himself such a sweet, innocent girl?” Sara grinned.
“Devil? I prefer handsome debonair,” I grinned back.
For the first time in thirty years, I stepped back into the guest room. For the first time in thirty years, I stayed up for hours, sharing tales with my sisters like the good old days.
All felt right with the world.