Authors: Mary Rickert
“Go ahead, open it.”
Bay removes the lid, for a moment disappointed by the pink tissue; the excitement returns as she parts the soft paper.
What
can
it
be? What is it?
she thinks, lifting from its nest some kind of animal-skin balloon, an ugly, flattened thing.
Bay once went through a very short period of eating dirt. Who knows why? Little kids do things like that. But the feeling she has now, looking at this ugly thing, is as though she just swallowed a pile of dirt. It sits in her gut like mud.
“Careful,” her Nana says, “it’s fragile. You mustn’t tear it. That would change everything.”
Bay holds it up in front of her face, pretending to inspect it as a way to hide her disappointment. She peers through the dried, fleshy mess at her Nana, who is blurred, like someone reflected in water. With a shudder, Bay lets it fall back to the box, flooded by the memory of being pulled under, as though the river intended to keep her.
“Bay, I told you to be careful. You can’t just go tossing it around like that. If it gets torn, your whole life will be different. I know it doesn’t look like much now, but the morning you arrived, it was quite lovely. I knew right away what it was.”
Bay can’t decide if she wants to roll her eyes or throw the weird thing across the room. She tosses the box toward the foot of the bed, which causes her Nana to gasp and lunge as though it were explosive.
“Aren’t you listening? Am I speaking Urdu? This isn’t something to be careless with. This is your life. You need to understand. This is important. No matter what happens, you are going to be all right.”
Bay wishes she could start over, go back in time to this morning. She wishes she would have stayed home and finally learned how to make the lavender soap. In fact, Bay wishes she could go back to last night to make a different wish over her candles. She hadn’t thought it would really work. What had she been thinking? Why wish for the future? It always comes, and here she is, about a million times sadder than just a day ago.
“Are you listening? Have you heard anything I said?”
Bay nods, though why, she has no idea. Her Nana always knows when she is lying.
“It’s called a caul, Bay, and you were born wrapped with it around your head and face. I assume. Well, with recent developments, I’m actually quite certain.”
“A cowl?”
“Caul, a caul. C-A-U-L. I don’t know if she, your birth mother that is, knew what it was. I’ve always wondered if she did. It’s nothing to be afraid of; in fact, it’s quite a good thing.”
“I don’t understand,” Bay says, though she thinks she might. It’s too terrible to consider, really. All this time she’s had this secret place to go to in her mind, the solace of believing her birth mother is normal. It never even occurred to Bay that her birth mother could be weirder than Nan. Bay realizes this has been incredibly stupid. After all, what normal person leaves a baby in a box on a stranger’s porch?
“To be born with a caul is extremely fortunate. The person born with a caul has no fear of drowning.”
“You don’t think—”
“Wait, Bay. Let me finish. You can’t drown. It’s impossible. You didn’t need some boy to save your life.”
Bay can’t believe this is happening. Her Nana stands there, petting that scarf, looking like she’s just presented Bay with something wonderful.
“Also, you are possessed of a talent for predicting weather, which, Bay, I’m sure you’ve observed, you do have a flair for.”
Bay remembers the way Mrs. Nellers, her kindergarten teacher, looked at her as though she’d wet her pants, which she had not, when she said she smelled lightning. Thalia always asks if she’ll need a sweater or umbrella, or if they’ll have a snow day or not. Even Mrs. Desarti recently pulled out her iPad to check possible dates for her niece’s outdoor wedding next summer. Bay just shook her head and said she had no idea what the weather would be in a year. It’s not like she can tell the future. So what if she can look at a blue sky and know a storm’s approaching? So what if she can smell snow before it falls, and so what if she didn’t drown?
Well, not so what about that, but is she really supposed to believe that this ugly thing, this caul, is what saved her, when it was actually Wade Enders?
“You also have a talent for healing.”
Is
this
it?
Bay thinks.
Is
this
the
great
secret
of
my
life, an ugly thing kept in an old handkerchief box? Is my Nana really nuts?
“All talent comes with challenges, Bay, but at times like this, you will find yourself held up by your talents. Not everyone is so fortunate. If something should happen, I’m not saying it will, but if it did, you have all you need to survive.”
“I don’t want to be a doctor.”
“Who said anything about being a doctor? Oh, you mean the gift for healing? You don’t have to be a doctor, Bay. There are many ways to heal. You can choose how you want to do it. These are gifts, not burdens.”
“I’m going to be a chef. Maybe a lawyer. I haven’t decided.”
“Of course!” Nan says. “Be a lawyer, if that’s what you want, though I can’t imagine why you would. Or a chef. Heal with cakes! I, personally, have often found cake to be quite healing.”
“Heal with cakes?” Bay says, not wanting to admit she sort of likes the idea. She can’t take any of this seriously. Obviously her Nana is, well, maybe not nuts, but not realistic, that’s for sure, even if some of her strange ideas do work. That stupid wreath she wears, for instance. Bay refuses to wear one, but she has noticed the way flies pass over Nan in the garden, and flies don’t pass over anything. Bay herself has enjoyed the benefits of cramp bark, which provides her with relief during her period when nothing else does, and she enjoys the way they celebrate birthdays, lighting the tea candles and not blowing them out, but this is too much. Her Nana stands there with her head slightly tilted in that way she has, as if the world can be made to look right only at a slant.
What
am
I
, Bay thinks,
some
kind
of
freak?
“Maybe I don’t want to heal with cake.”
Nan sighs. “Bay, you don’t have to heal with cakes. It’s a talent. The healing, I mean. You don’t have to do anything with your talents at all, though believe me, it doesn’t make things easier. All talent comes with challenges. All life does.”
“I get to choose?”
“You get to choose what you do with your talents. You do not get to choose what those talents are.”
While Bay’s been sitting on her bed, pretending everything is normal, the dark mass of disappointment in her gut has started to quiver in a terrible way, as though wasps have begun building a nest there, though of course they haven’t. It’s just an expression. It’s not reality.
I
almost
died
today
, Bay thinks, shaking her head at her Nana. The wasps build so fast, so furiously, Bay is storming out of the room before she even makes up her mind to do so.
“Bay, wait, there’s more.”
More? Bay runs down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door, into the lavender dusk.
***
Nan calls it the blue hour, this time in a summer day when the sky seems to fall, casting everything in its net. She looks at the yard below, watching Bay run to the small clearing behind the lilacs and pampas grass. The trail to Bay’s special place was once so well-traveled there was a path leading to it. Nan used to leave little presents: a pretty stone, seashells, a marigold, a child’s shoe. Occasionally, Bay found things Nan had no memory of leaving—a ribbon, a button, a scrap of lace.
Nan gasps at the painful realization. “Also, you will see ghosts,” she whispers. How can she have been looking so carefully and not seen what was happening right before her eyes? Do other people see clearly? Somehow, Nan must explain everything. Where will she find the courage to do so?
There have been many moments, over the years, when Nan has thought of calling Mavis and Ruthie, and each time she came to the conclusion it wasn’t necessary. That first morning, fifteen years ago, when she opened her door and found a baby there, she vacillated between wanting to call and hoping they would not hear the sensational news. Nan worried about it quite a bit, actually, until she became preoccupied with feedings and diaper changing, all the burdens of being a new mother at an age when most women were enjoying the freedom of grandparenting. More than once Nan thought of calling for advice, solace, celebration, friendship, especially after the trouble with that boy, but then she’d remind herself of the secret they shared, as dangerous as the
Ithyphallus impudicus
she’d rooted out of a crack at the side of the house, the nasty fungus said to portend death, and quickly decided that one secret was enough between friends whose friendship had not survived it.
Nan clutches the box against her chest. The hallway is too warm, the way it gets in summer. She feels a little woozy, suddenly realizing she has only had wine for dinner. She decides to make chicken sandwiches. She and Bay can eat on the porch, sitting in the rockers, watching the fireflies.
She shuffles into her room, trying not to be distracted by the fluid nature of space after wine on an empty stomach. Pulling the stubbornly resistant dresser drawer, she almost drops the box, which gives her an idea. She could take care of Bay’s trouble (and some of her own) by executing one great tear. Rip up the caul, and Bay will be in no danger of ever hearing the accusations of ghosts. Is that too much to ask? That Bay not suffer Nan’s consequences? Isn’t it enough already, the things people say, and the things they will say when Sheriff Henry arrests Nan for murder? She shivers at the terrible word. With a resolute tug, the drawer finally opens, and Nan returns the box to its usual spot. It wouldn’t be right to interfere in Bay’s life on such a profound level. Truth be told, Nan sadly admits, her attraction to the solution might have been mostly for her own benefit. Nan enjoys the glide of silk as she pulls the scarf off to drop it into the drawer, which closes so easily, she entertains the fleeting idea that the dresser has blessed her choice.
Nan walks slowly down the back stairs into the kitchen, thinking how she needs help. A little wine would be a good start, or maybe just a diversion. Eyeing with disappointment the empty bottle, she sits before the computer. Is she trembling? Yes, she is. What if
this
is the wrong thing to do? What if she is seeing this all wrong now?
They are well past the Facebook generation, and women of Nan’s age changed their last names when they married, but she quickly finds Mavis. At least Nan thinks it’s her. There is a woman in Arizona selling antiques, but when Nan clicks on the bio page, she thinks for a moment she’s mistaken.
Of course, even Mavis has aged, her once-beautiful dark hair now dyed a frightening black, but it’s her, all right, her lips bright red with her signature lipstick. Though she is no longer beautiful in the traditional sense of the word, Mavis still looks like someone who doesn’t mind causing trouble. It is almost enough to make Nan reconsider. At the bottom of the page there is contact information, an email address, a post box, and, incredibly, a good old-fashioned phone number. Nan calls before she loses her courage.
“Hello?”
She would recognize that voice anywhere; they used to call it a smoker’s voice, deep and throaty.
“Nan?”
She considers hanging up, but instead finds herself nodding into the telephone, feeling, much to her surprise, happy. “How did you know?”
Mavis cackles. “Caller ID.”
“Oh.”
“What? You think I have some kind of superpower?”
Nan isn’t sure how to respond. It is her hope that Mavis has retained some of the power of her youth.
“It’s been more than sixty years.”
“Oh? Has it been that long?”
“Cut the crap, Nan. You keep this up, I’ll be dead before you get to the point.”
“I have a daughter.”
“You said you never would.”
“She just turned fifteen.”
“What? That’s the age of my grandchildren.”
“Oh, you know me, I always was ponderous.” Mavis cackles, and Nan closes her eyes. The headache has returned with a vengeance. She can’t believe she’s doing this. She swore she’d never speak to Mavis again. “We’re getting old.”
“This is a revelation?”
“I was thinking we should get together.”
“Ruthie too?”
“Yes,” Nan says.
“Just like old times.”
“Not really,” Nan says, remembering Eve lying in the bed of blood. “I hope not.”
When Nan says they will be having guests, old friends staying overnight, Bay wonders what else she doesn’t know about her Nana. “Why?” Bay asks, but Nan never settles on an answer. She makes vague references to an anniversary of some kind, yet later acts like she doesn’t know what Bay is talking about. Another time Nan alludes to a ceremony, but when Bay presses for details, says that all the cleaning they’re doing in preparation for her friends’ arrival is a kind of ceremony in its own way. Bay has to focus on her Nana when she talks like this; she doesn’t like it when Bay rolls her eyes. Once, when Nan is half-asleep in the rocker on the porch, she mumbles something about blood. Not for the first time, Bay wonders what Nan dreams about.
Now it’s happening to Bay. She hasn’t told her Nana or Thalia—she hasn’t told anyone—but ever since that day at the river, Bay’s been having nightmares. When she finally struggles to surface, she opens her eyes into another dream world: the shadowy figure of a woman standing at the foot of her bed.
But that’s not all that bothers Bay these days. She worries about her Nana, suddenly weird about the phone, not letting Bay answer it, often allowing it to ring without answering it herself; or, one minute staring at Bay as though expecting her to morph into something frightening, and the next giving her big bear hugs. Thankfully, Nan does not bring up the subject of the caul again. Bay hates to think about it, born with that thing wrapped around her, like a caterpillar or some kind of insect, strange from the start.
She has mostly stopped checking her Facebook page. It was always bad anyway; she’d regretted almost immediately begging her Nana to let her join, but ever since the day at the river, it’s gotten worse. Now they call her “the drowned girl,” “water bug,” and “witch.”
“Well, ’cause, you know, witches can’t drown,” Thalia said.
Bay has not told Thalia about the caul. Thalia is Bay’s only friend, and she doesn’t want to lose her. Thalia has been acting different lately, strangely distant, busy when Bay phones. Yet, when Thalia invites Bay to go to the river again, she holds the phone against her heart until she thinks enough time has passed to make it seem she really did ask before she says her Nana won’t let her go. They have a lot of work to do, preparing for the guests. Thalia actually believes Bay, which she finds strangely disturbing. Doesn’t Thalia notice how Bay has changed?
I
almost
died
, Bay thinks.
Doesn’t anyone care?
Nan has been so preoccupied lately that Bay hasn’t found the right time to discuss her plans for not returning to school. She’d like to have a solid idea of what she is going to do, but it’s been hard to figure one out. She’s made a few Internet searches, though that’s not easy, since she doesn’t have any privacy with the stupid computer in the kitchen. So far, all she’s found are places for troubled children and drug addicts. Bay does feel troubled, but she’s pretty sure that’s not what they are talking about.
“If I started smoking crack or beat someone up, I’d have lots of options,” she mumbles.
All this, combined with the days of cleaning, washing windows, dusting furniture, changing linens, and trimming loose strings off old towels is ruining Bay’s life. They usually have such nice summers: planting flowers, reading under the elm tree, eating tomato sandwiches, watching fireflies, and sleeping on the porch! Besides all the distraction and disappointment of having such sublime activities replaced with housework, there is the added factor of the boy in the forest. If things were normal, Bay would tell her Nana about him, but there never seems to be a good reason to bring it up, and after a while, Bay realizes she enjoys keeping the mystery to herself, a secret she shares with no one; a pleasant secret for once.
The first time Bay saw him, she was gazing out her bedroom window at the unusual sky, that shade of light peculiar to some August evenings when time seems temporarily stuck, feeling like she might cry, though she couldn’t imagine why, when she became aware of an odd movement among the lilacs. She leaned closer, expecting to see a bird or squirrel causing the stir, but what she saw instead made her step back.
Staring up at her from the midst of green was the pale face of a boy. Bay’s heart fluttered in a most alarming way; she wondered if it was an attack of some kind. She leaned closer to the screen, smelling the heavy scent of flowers, the grass, the aroma of citronella. Was this boy created out of her longing, the way she used to have imaginary friends when she was little? Did he really just smile, revealing dimples she could see even at this distance? Was a boy staring up at the house like this the beginning of something good, or something terrible?
Bay ran to find her Nana, who was asleep in the parlor, a dust rag in her hand. By then, Bay thought maybe she’d imagined him; after all, she used to imagine seeing people all the time when she was little. Besides, her Nana looked so old that Bay decided not to disturb her. Instead, Bay went to peer out the kitchen window. Seeing no sign of him, she walked into the backyard where the strange light had already returned to ordinary dusk. She worked up all her courage to walk over to the lilacs. There was no sign of anyone having been there, no broken branches brushed aside by reckless hands, no footprints in the dirt. The only thing unusual was how the air smelled sweet, as though the lilacs were in bloom, when in fact, they were long dead.
The next time Bay saw him was in the clear light of day. She was reaching into the basket at her feet for a sheet to hang on the line when she thought she spied him out of the corner of her eye, but as soon as she turned, he was gone.
Bay began leaving sandwiches tucked among the shoes in the garden: tahini with orange marmalade, basil and tomato with vinegar dressing (she couldn’t risk the mayonnaise, which everyone knows becomes poisonous in the sun), goat cheese with a black-olive tapenade, cheddar and mustard on a seven-grain bun. At first Nan encouraged the kitchen experimentation, but after a while, she began complaining about all the missing Tupperware. He never took the sandwiches anyway; they were blue with mold when Bay retrieved them. Annoyed that he’d wasted all that food, she decided she couldn’t risk arousing her Nana’s curiosity by tossing them in the compost bin. Bay threw them into the forest instead, something she regrets now that the yard has begun to smell sour.
After long hours of walnut-oil furniture polishing and vinegar-scented window washing, she is so miserable she thinks she almost could go back to the river, in spite of what awaits her there. Thalia doesn’t ask again, though, and Bay wonders if her Nana said something strange to her.
Bay always thought a solitary nature was something she shared with Nan. Of course other adults have friends; Bay just can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t really make sense that her Nana’s old friends, who Bay has never heard of before, are suddenly coming to visit.
“Why?” she asks Nan, who is on her hands and knees, polishing floorboards in the dining room.
“We haven’t seen each other in years. We thought now would be a good time.”
Bay nods, pretending to understand, until she thinks maybe she really does. She can’t believe that she and Thalia would lose touch for sixty years, but if that did happen, well, of course they would want to get together again. Bay watches Nan in her brown dress and clogs, her gray hair in an untidy bun, the flesh on her arm shaking as she polishes.
“Let me do that.”
But Nan says she likes polishing wood. “You know what would be a big help? Why don’t you put together the menu?”
Is Nan trying to get Bay excited about the idea of healing with food? She frowns, trying to sort it all out. There’s a chance she is being manipulated; on the other hand, Bay really does enjoy planning menus.
“What do they eat?”
“Oh, everything,” Nan says, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Mavis loves spicy food: hot peppers, garlic, cayenne, and chocolate. She loves chocolate. She loves chocolate so much that she used to send it to herself in pretty boxes with a gift card, and lucky for her, it had no effect on her figure. She loves red wine too. Don’t worry. I have that taken care of. Ruthie, well, Ruthie has a hearty appetite. I don’t think there’s anything she doesn’t like to eat. Which reminds me, we better make sure to put her in the story bedroom. The bed in there is good and solid.”
All of a sudden they are living in a house with titled bedrooms. The pink bedroom is Bay’s old room, and it isn’t pink at all, though the bedspread is. The story room has a bed, a small closet, and a desk, but it is mostly filled with Nan’s books, old-fashioned hard covers with gold-trimmed pages and watercolor illustrations, which Bay was given the task of dusting. It took longer than it probably should have. She managed to confine herself to a paragraph or two for the most part, until she lost a whole afternoon to Hans Christian Andersen. She’d forgotten how sad the stories were, how much love was lost.
When the boy starts appearing in the garden, Bay wonders if he is the wonderful thing she’s been waiting for. Perhaps this is the beginning of a love story of her own, and if so, she wants it to be good. The boy keeps disappearing though, which makes a difficult start to any relationship. How can love grow with someone who doesn’t even want to be seen?
Sprawled across her bed, Bay pages through the cookbooks, paper-clipping recipes. Mavis, the frightening-looking antique lady with the dyed black hair and bright red lips (Nan showed Bay the photo online), is due around nine the next morning. Ruthie, of the hearty appetite, will arrive just before lunch.
“I bet she planned it that way,” Nan says. “Why don’t we eat on the porch?”
Bay loves the idea and has already carried the card table up from the basement. She marks a page with a recipe for something called “chocolate lasagna” (there is a small amount of dark chocolate in the sauce), then pushes the stack of books aside. She stands to stretch, her fingers scraping the slanted ceiling as she walks to the window, inhaling the green scent of summer. All she has to do is get through the next day and a half with her Nana’s friends, then things can get back to normal. After making such a production out of all the cleaning and preparation, Bay thinks it’s strange that they’re not staying longer, but her Nana says it’s long enough.
“We want to see each other again,” she says. “But there’s no reason to go hog wild.”
Bay spends all her spare time in her bedroom, staring out the window; hoping to spy the boy again, she spends a great deal of time staring at the shoe garden instead. Many people love it, even slowing on the curvy road to take photographs, while others think the old shoes, aged by sun and weather, mud-splattered, breaking open at the toes with roots boring out of them like worms, are an eyesore. She wonders what her Nana’s friends will think.
Tiny white flowers rise like clouds from above a purple heel, a man’s old work boot holds black-eyed Susans, an assortment of ladies’ boots compose the hollyhock and mallow garden (though the flowers are beginning to look a little sad), the hostas have blossomed their strange, stalky white and purple flowers, the leaves covering the shoes that contain them, and the boy’s feet are bare.
Bay raises her hand. She doesn’t expect a response, not really—she’s not even sure he’s not just something leftover from her little-kid imagination—but after a moment, she sees a pale wave of light, like the reflection of sun on water, or a small bird taking flight, the boy, waving. Bay spins out of her room and down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door, which she lets slam shut behind her. “Sorry,” she calls. Her Nana hates it when she slams the door.
It is a perfect summer day. The sky is cloudless blue, and the air is fresh, but the boy stands in the hostas as though rooted there, looking sorrowful.
“So, it’s true,” he says at Bay’s approach.
“What’s true?”
He shrugs.
An odd boy
, Bay thinks, though she can’t figure what it is about him that makes her think so. His hair maybe, dirty blond, cut long at the front, parted on the side. He flicks his head like a sparrow at a birdbath, though it does little good; the hair continues to fall in his eyes, which are watery blue and small. The sprinkle of freckles across his face doesn’t make him look friendly, nor do his thin lips. Bay reconsiders.
This,
she thinks,
is
probably not a love story.
“What’s your name?”
He hesitates, as if doing some reconsidering himself, then shrugs. “Karl.”
“So what’s up?” Bay asks, and when he only looks at her quizzically, “Are you a runaway or something?”
“Don’t tell her I’m here.”
“Who?”
He juts his chin at the house. “The old lady. Or any of her friends.”
“How do you know about them?”
“Kind of common knowledge, ain’t it?”
Bay supposes this is true. Nan hired a college boy to transport her guests from the airport. She paid Stan to come clean out the gutters, which turned out to be a massive undertaking, neglected for years. Stan said there were trees growing up there, which Bay thought an exaggeration until he started tossing down saplings.
No wonder people think we’re so weird,
Bay had thought, while her Nana had fretted about killing “the poor things.”
Bay didn’t know why they needed to do all this work for guests staying a single night. When Thalia sleeps over, the only preparation they make is to be sure there is toilet paper in both bathrooms. Up until this summer, Bay considered dusting a winter activity, like shoveling. In spite of the little forest produced by the gutter cleaning, Bay thinks her Nana is overdoing it.
“Hey! Hey, you!”
Bay frowns at the boy. “What?”
“You’re one of them thinking girls, ain’t you? I once knew a girl kinda like you.”
Ever alert for information about anything that might be interpreted as familial reference, Bay’s heart lurches. “You did?”