Rain Village (37 page)

“Actually, that name does sound familiar,” she said, wrinkling her forehead. “Finn. I know that name.” She held the name out on her tongue, then shook her head. “There was this girl I vaguely remember, a sad, thin girl who lived in the woods. I don’t remember anything else about her really. I think she disappeared or something.”

“Do you know anything about a boy named William who drowned in the river?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s all I know. I’m not even sure if I’m remembering right.” She smiled the same vague way she had before and left us to our breakfast.

Outside, the mud collected at our feet like coffee grounds. We followed the river down the line of stores. Most of the stores were raised off the ground, with wooden steps leading up to them and awnings keeping the steps dry. I was quiet as Costas took photo after photo.

“They were both just girls, so many years ago,” I said. “Maybe we do want too much from this, from coming here. But someone must remember.”

“It’s this place, part of why my mother left, I think. The rain wipes everything out,” he said, and I realized that something more was bothering him, something bigger than what was happening right now. “Who we live next to, who dies, what they meant. No one should vanish without a trace.”

I laughed at that, brushing past leaves dangling in front of me. Trees hung all about us. “Oh, I bet you could walk through Oakley today and it would be like I was never there. That’s what it was like when I
was
there.”

Costas stopped, turned to me.

“What do you mean? In Oakley everyone remembered you.”

“They did?”

“Yes,” he said, giving me a funny look. “Did you think people would forget someone like you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and suddenly feeling self-conscious. I thought of the kids who’d pointed and laughed at me in the town square. I thought of Geraldine, how astonished I’d been to learn that they had seen me in the papers when I thought I’d been able to vanish into thin air.

“People talked about you at the library, how sweet you were, and smart. How you could look at someone and know what kind of book they needed to forget all their troubles.”

“Really?”

He laughed at my surprise. “Of course.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking about what he had said. It didn’t make sense to me, but then I remembered that what Geraldine had said hadn’t made sense either. That she had envied my lightness, my book learning, my friendship with Mary. It was frustrating, knowing we could be so wrong in the way we saw the world.

We had almost reached the end of the street, where a large white building marked the beginning of the woods, which spread out in front of us. Just leaves and wet, wet earth, running up against the river. I almost imagined I could hear the movement of the water, shifting and becoming more intense, ominous. These were her woods, her river. I squinted, thought of Mary barefoot, wading into the river, carrying a basket full of herbs.

“Look,” Costas said, pointing.

His voice startled me. I looked back to what he was showing me. It took a second to make out the black letters stamped over the door of the white building.
Librar
y. I almost gasped out loud.

“I need to go inside here,” I said, my voice trembling.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said, taking my hand. “Are you okay, Tessa?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “But please let me go in alone.”

Costas looked at me and nodded. “Should I come back for you in an hour? I’ll just keep talking to people around here.”

I nodded, grateful.

With quick, nervous steps, I walked up to the front door and pushed my way in. It felt exactly like being a child again, back in Mercy Library. For several long seconds I just stood there, taking it in. Feeling the past and present run up against each other.

I could feel it in my skin and bones, Mary’s presence, more vividly than I’d felt it on the street or the riverboat or by the river. I hadn’t been
in a library in years, I realized. The musty smell of old books, the shelves rising toward the ceiling, the piles of books on the front desk.

I walked down an aisle of books, fingering the spines, peering through the space in the shelves, and I almost expected to see Mary sitting there with Mrs. Adams, the other woman’s palms in her hands. I wondered why I had never thought to visit libraries in the towns we’d passed through with the circus.

It was coming back to me slowly, the numbers we had arranged the books by, the way we had kept an order to the library even as the library itself was pure chaos, and I made my way to where I knew the poetry would be shelved. I turned down the aisle, felt a calmness fall over me as I saw volume after volume line the shelves, as I’d known they would. The book was right where I knew it would be. I hadn’t even known I was looking for it until I saw its old cracked leather binding, the gilded pages. I turned the pages, and for a moment I was sure she was right next to me, her black hair curling down and tapping my shoulder.

I felt suspended. Thinking of Mary as a girl, bent over this book, and remembering the two of us in Mercy Library, the words of the poem making everything in the world drop away.

She was like me,
I thought, and it was less a thought than a feeling of recognition I had never had before. And then:
Why didn’t I tell her about my father?
That day, by the river eating strawberries. I had come so close. I winced, thinking of it, the two of us sitting by the water, occupying different worlds utterly.

“May I help you?”

I looked up, startled, slamming the book shut as if it contained something forbidden. I had almost forgotten where I was.

“I am just reading a bit,” I said, looking up at the old woman standing over me. I was struck by her pale pale skin and light-blue eyes, the white wispy hair pulled back from her face.

She looked down at the book in my hands. “You like poetry,” she said. A strange expression came over her face, and she knelt down beside me. Her body was surprisingly graceful and agile. “Tennyson,” she said, her voice growing soft.

“Did you ever know a girl named Mary Finn?” I asked. “She was from here and became a librarian in the town where I grew up.”

“Why, yes.” She looked at me carefully, surprised. “Where are you from?”

“Kansas,” I said.

“Ah.” She stared at me for a moment, then smiled and shook her head. “So she ended up in Kansas, did she? And she’s a librarian?”

“She was, yes. A great one.”

She kneeled down next to me. “I shouldn’t be so surprised. She spent a lot of time here. I’d be ready to close up, thinking the library was empty, and then I’d find her off in some corner buried in a book. She would just be lost in it. I’m glad to hear that she went and made a life for herself.”

“Oh, she did,” I said. “She was in the circus, too. She became a trapeze star.”

“The circus,” she repeated. Her face became girlish, soft. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes,” I said. “She was called Marionetta. She wore red sequins and people lined up outside her door to give her flowers.”

She nodded, her face wondering. Her eyes moved over my fingers, my hands. I clasped them together. “You are a bit like her,” she said. “How she was. Do you know that?”

“Me?”

“Your expressions and gestures,” she said. She fingered my long skirt, the little ribbons hanging off it. “Your clothes.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling myself blush. “She was like the perfect woman to me, a movie star. I always wanted to be like her.”

“Well, some people just blaze through the world,” she said. “Mary was always like that. I just can’t get over it, though, hearing about her now. We always wondered what happened to her.”

“After the accident, you mean?”

“Yes,” she said. “After William died. Her lover. No one ever really knew what happened, whether it was an accident or not, what she did after. Did she tell you about it?”

I shook my head. “She said that he drowned, and that she left shortly after. I know it broke her heart. I was hoping to find out more by coming here.”

“Ah,” she said. “I’m not sure you’ll find what you want here, then. When it happened, this place was crazy. There were all kinds of rumors about what had happened. Some people swore Mary came running out of the woods with a bloody rock in her hand, screaming about murder. Some said William had betrayed her, had another lover. Others said that she just went mad one day for no reason at all. Most believed it was just a tragic accident—they were arguing and he fell, they stayed under too long, he got a leg cramp. We all know the river has a strange way of taking its own. And then there was a whole slew of people who swore that Mary and William were attacked by some crazy man passing through. People claimed all kinds of sightings. Our doors were bolted shut for months after. I know I had a nightmare or two myself.”

I listened to her, my heart heavy, dull.
I will never know what happened.
The thought moved through me with a sickening clarity. “I wish I’d asked her more about it, when I had the chance,” I said.

She was silent for a moment. Her hands were like bird’s wings on her knees. So delicate and thinly boned. “So she passed, then?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Some people said she ran away, but I think most of us thought she’d died back then. That she wouldn’t have been able to go on
with William gone. He was her whole future, people said. Of course, plenty of people just thought she couldn’t live with what she’d done.” She looked at me and smiled sadly. “There have been so many versions of the story over the years. You’d hardly even recognize her if you heard one of them now.”

“Well, thank you for talking to me about it,” I said.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I was always real fond of that girl. Always felt a bit bad for her, growing up the way she did, in that house. The way she always needed to escape into these books. I’m glad to hear she had a good life for herself after she left here.” She stood then, smiled down at me. Her pale eyes and skin seemed translucent.

“What do you mean, that house?” I asked.

“It just seemed bleak there. Grim. Nobody cared much for her father, I know that. She sure didn’t want to be at home. I would tease her that she read too much, that her mind was getting so crammed with words there would be no room left. She’d say that was impossible, that there was so much room in her she’d have to read every book, go to every city, meet every single person to fill it.”

“Do you know Isabel?” I asked. My mind leapt and grasped. If anyone could tell me what had happened that day, I thought, it would have to be Isabel.

“Her sister?” She squinted. “I guess. She must still be around. I don’t really know.” She paused, looked down at me. “Mary was always partial to that book. I don’t know that anyone else in this town has ever even read it.”

I smiled, clutching the book in my palms, and watched her thin, elegant body walk away. I leaned back against the shelves. Pulled the book to my chest. I might never know what had happened to Mary, I thought. What she’d witnessed that afternoon on the river. What she had done. The thing that had made her leave me.

Closing my eyes, I imagined myself back on the floor of the library, sixteen years old, with no idea what the world had in store for me. Me with the smell of my father on my skin, the familiar ache in the center of my body, thinking only of the rope and the swing-over and the trapeze. And she, the whole time, putting one foot in front of the other, moving out of my life forever, walking toward the river and her fate. Taking all the answers, all her mystery, with her. Over and over I imagined myself standing up and running to the back door, past the herb garden with its buried silver key, into the grass beyond that led to the river. Coming upon her as she dipped her foot into the water, felt the cold of the river soak into her shoes.

“Tessa?”

I looked up, startled. I had almost forgotten where I was.

Costas stood over me, looking confused.

“I waited and waited for you,” he said, leaning in. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” I said, standing up and shoving a book back into the shelf. “Let’s go to the river. Let’s find Isabel.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. What about you?” I looked up at him then and saw that he looked more than fine. His face was open, alive. There was an energy to him that hadn’t been there before.

“I am great,” he said. “I was just waiting outside, talking to people. You know, the river, it’s so beautiful. I feel as though I could stay here forever. We could stay here forever. It’s where we belong. Don’t you feel it, too?”

I stared at him, not sure how to answer. I gently touched his arm. “Let’s go find Isabel now,” I said. “You need to meet your family before you start thinking too much.”

He placed his palm under my chin, stared at me intently. I felt a shiver run through me. I was so full of emotions, desires, I overflowed with them. I felt almost as if I had seen Mary, and now I wanted the world to be as stark and raw and real as possible. I wanted to touch Costas’s skin, I realized. Feel him over me and inside me. I moved my face against his palm.

Then I caught myself. A pang of guilt passed through me, and I came to my senses. “Let’s go,” I repeated, lifting his hand away.

Outside, the rain was hammering down. It was afternoon already, I realized with surprise. The whole world seemed washed through with gray and silver, and the woods stretched out in front of us in a tangled mass. Costas walked easily through the thick mud while I kept sinking into it, pulling out my feet with loud sucking noises, feeling the mud fling up and slap against my leg. As we moved into the woods, the whole world seemed to change. The leaves simmered against the dusky afternoon. Flowers sprouted from the ground, spreading out like jumbles of curls.

I pushed my way past a tree branch hanging in our path. The river rushed to our left, the rain pummeling it and making it wild. “The librarian knew Mary when Mary was young,” I said.

He nodded.

The leaves overhead were like a canopy; when they opened up we could see the sky and the splinters of rain. When they closed again the world became dark and hushed, the earth solid beneath us. I prayed Isabel would be home, that we could find her. Just a little bit more, I thought. Right into Mary’s heart, into that memory, us at the riverbank. I wanted to burst it open. How many times had I dreamt of it? Going back in time to tell Mary that I understood her, that I loved her, that I knew what had happened to her and that bad things were happening to me, too. This is exactly who I am, I would have said.