"The first time I drove up here, I knew Kenneth had felt the energy and that had brought him here. Remember, Kenneth? Remember how we just sat for hours and hours holding hands, soaking up the twilight and feeling the vibrations?"
"Yes, Holly," he said in a tired voice. "Why don't I help you with your things?"
"Oh, yes. It's so wonderful to be here again. You don't know how something like this can recharge your batteries, Melody, until you're away in the world of chaos, drowning in tension."
"I think she has some idea," Kenneth said with that inscrutable smile of his.
Holly turned back to me.
"Oh? I can't wait to get to know you, Melody. Kenneth hasn't told me very much. You're like his little secret," she said.
I glanced at him, wondering what that meant, delighted that he'd mentioned me to Holly. That meant I was important to him. But then, why had he invited her here? Who was she?
"He hasn't told me anything about you," I said. "You must be his other little secret."
Holly laughed and for the first time, I saw Kenneth Childs blush deeply.
"Your things?" Kenneth reminded her firmly.
"Oh, yes, my things." She uttered another little musical laugh and went to the trunk of her car. It was stuffed with small, battered suitcases. "Let's just take in these for now," she said pulling out the two largest. Kenneth took them from her and started toward the house. She opened the rear door of the car and something rolled out. It looked like a large, clear stone. The back seat was filled with clothes, books, and art supplies, and a lamp lay on the floor.
"Can you take this for me, Melody," she said, lifting the stone object. "I'll get the other things."
"What is it?"
"My crystal," she said. "The energy is drawn into it and then I draw it into myself. I never go anywhere without putting it alongside my bed. Kenneth doesn't mind," she said.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, you'll see. We have so much to tell each other," she declared.
"How long are you staying here?" I asked.
She paused, gazed around a moment, took a deep breath, and then nodded, before closing and opening her eyes.
"Until I stop hearing it," she said.
"Hearing it? Hearing what?"
"The voice that called me here." She smiled.
"You'll understand. I promise," she said and reached down to pick up a packet of incense off the floor in the back of the car.
She closed the door and we started toward the house.
"I only know a little about Kenneth's new work, but from the way he talks, I can see it's the most exciting thing he's done in years. I'm glad he found it. He was beginning to worry me," she said with a serious face, her eyes darker, her lips tighter. "I was beginning to think the shadows of the past were overtaking his bright light and dimming his spirit. I'm so happy for him, and if you had anything to do with it, I'm grateful to you," she added.
I just looked at her, failing to find the words to respond to all this. I turned to carry her crystal to the guest room and she stopped me.
"Not that way, dear. I told you," she said, "that has to be beside the bed." She nodded toward Kenneth's bedroom and smiled.
I hesitated,.. my chest feeling hollow, no heartbeat, no blood, no lungs, just an echo chamber full of surprise and disappointment.
Kenneth appeared at the bedroom door.
"I put your suitcases by the closet. Anything else you want brought in right now?"
"No, Ken. Thanks."
"Okay. I'm going back to the studio." He turned to me. "Are you sure you don't mind staying the whole day?"
"I think I'm getting a little stomachache. But I'll be fine. I can stay," I said.
"Oh?"
"Stomach ache? Don't you worry, Ken. I'll help her. I have just the herbal medicine for stomach aches. Come along, Melody," she sang.
Reluctantly, my legs feeling like twin sticks of lead, I followed her into Kenneth's bedroom. She took the crystal and placed it beside the bed on a night stand and then she turned to me and smiled.
"Time of the month?" she asked.
"What? Oh. No," I said.
"Did you eat something nasty this morning?"
"No.'
"Just stress then," she concluded. "I have just what you need."
"I doubt it," I said harshly. She stared at me curiously.
"You have a lot of negative energy coming out of you, Melody. If you let me,I'll help you."
"No thank you," I said. "I'll just walk it of That usually works. ' I turned and fled the bedroom.
Outside, I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to walk home or walk on the beach.
Why hadn't he told me she was coming? Why hadn't he told me anything about her?
"Is every man a liar?" I shouted at the sea and the sea roared back what sounded like a resounding yes to me.
Just when I had gotten to the point where I thought I knew Kenneth, I discovered he was more of a stranger than ever. Perhaps we never get to know anyone, I thought, not even people we love and people who claim to love us.
I took a deep breath and walked toward the sea, hoping that the roar of the waves I heard would grow louder and louder and drown the angry voices chattering away inside me.
9
It's in the Stars
.
I took a long walk down the beach toward
where I could see the Point's end and the vast North Atlantic. As I let the sea spray wash over me, I wished I could just drift away with the tide, away from Kenneth, away from the Logans, away. How could I have been stupid enough to think that Kenneth could love me? Holly and all her eccentric, exotic ways were what an artistic man like Kenneth wanted. I was just a silly teenager who bored him. But I hadn't bored Cary, Cary who truly loved me, Cary whom I rejected to follow my childish dreams of Kenneth and his love for me.
I felt awash in self-pity as I continued down the beach, noticing that the seaweed was thicker on this part of the Point. It looked like the ocean had been in a rage here, tearing up the underwater vegetation like a madwoman might rip out her hair. There was driftwood everywhere, made shiny from the constant scrubbing of the salt water. I spotted something that had washed ashore. As I drew closer, I realized that it was a doll, her hair matted, her face bleached by the sun so that even the black button eyes were a dull gray. The lower half of her body was embedded in the sand where the tide had deposited her and would no doubt return to carry her back out to sea.
I plucked the doll from her temporary grave and brushed her off, imagining how this had once been a little girl's prize possession. In my mind's eye, I envisioned the little girl as sweet and as innocent as May perhaps, preparing a fantasy tea party with the doll seated at a toy table, the teacups and teapot set out. Surely the little girl had told her doll all her wishes and secrets. In the beginning, when she first had been given this doll, she probably slept with it beside her and carried it everywhere. It had become her precious little companion in which she had trusted her love and her dreams.
For whatever reason --maybe the girl had just grown up and left it at the bottom of a toy chest--the doll drifted from her private world and was forgotten, discarded, to take her place among all the other forgotten toys. Later, there might have been a house cleaning and toys were thrown away to make room for other things. Her mother might have held it up and asked, "Do you want this anymore?"
The little girl thought for a moment and remembered her childhood best friend fondly, but she was older now and her eyes had turned to boys; dolls were as embarrassing as an annoying little sister giving away intimate family secrets. Who wanted her new boyfriend to know she used to whisper I love yous to a doll instead of to him.
"No," she said, and sentenced her precious friend to the dump. How it came to be in the ocean was another story, but it had, and it had found its way to this beach. Even with her eyes bleak, her face lackluster, I thought I could hear the tiny doll's plea. She looked up at me, begging not to be left alone, condemn
ed to this horrible fate.
I brushed her off and carried her back with me, really not sure what I would do with her. I wished someone would find me on the beach like this and brush off my grains of sadness and salty tears before carrying me off to a new and better home. Like this doll, I felt discarded and perhaps with even less fanfare. But hadn't I done the same to Cary? Was Holly's arrival my punishment for treating Cary so selfishly?
As I rounded a bend and approached the beach in front of Kenneth's house, I saw Holly seated on a blanket, her legs curled in a lotus position, her arms folded under her breasts, her head back so her face was awash in the afternoon sunshine. She was barefoot and wore a light green and white tie-dyed tank dress that came barely to her knees. She also wore different earrings. These looked like jade and glittered along with whatever she was wearing around her neck.
Ulysses hadn't come out with her. I imagined him pouting in the studio with Kenneth because I had rushed away without so much as glancing at him and beckoning for him to join me.
I was going to ignore Holly and go into the house, when I heard the exotic, Far Eastern-sounding music, and drew closer. Somehow, she sensed me and turned.
"Hi," she called. I stepped closer and saw the small stream of smoke rising from a tiny bronze pot.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Greeting the zodiac. I've got to get in tune with the vibrations, the energy here, as soon as possible. Come," she said, shifting on her blanket to make room for me, "join me."
"To do what?" I asked with a smirk.
"Plug into the universe," she replied as if it were the most obvious thing. "All the answers to your questions and your problems are in here," she said, pointing to her heart, "but you have to find the way to reach them, unlock the doors, and to do that, you have to strip away the worldly confusions, the tensions and the turmoil. You've got to lift your spirit from this bondage and free your inner self. I'll show you how if you want," she said.
I started to shake my head and laugh at her. Did she really expect me to believe these things?
"It won't cost you anything but a little of your time and energy," she said quickly. "And it might be just what you need, Melody."
"How do you know what I need?" I snapped back at her.
She smiled softly.
"I know you need some peace, some strength, some light. I know you have to rid yourself of your burdensome anger, and I know you're looking for meaning and love," she added.
I couldn't deny it. My face must be a window through which anyone could see my troubled heart, I thought, if someone who had just met me already knew all this.
"How can sitting on a blanket and staring at the sky and the ocean help?" I asked disdainfully.
"I'll show you if you give me a chance," she promised with friendly eyes.
"Why should you care about me?" I challenged.
"Why shouldn't I?" she responded quickly. "Come on. I don't bite." She patted the blanket beside her. I drew closer.
"What's burning?"
"Incense," she said.
"It smells funny. What is it?" I asked, grimacing. "My own recipe of frankincense, styrax, and cascarilla bark. You've never smelled incense before?"
No.
"It's really very pleasant. What do you have in your hand there?" she asked, leaning to see what I was carrying at my side.
"Someone's old doll. I found it on the beach," I said unashamedly and more possessively than I had expected.
"All my dolls were handmade for me when I was a little girl," she said. "My mother was a tailor and very talented. She made all my clothes and all my brother's and my father's clothes, too. She learned it from her mother. I don't know how far back the skill went, but it was something they brought over from Europe. Of course, all my friends made fun of my clothes because they knew practically everything I owned was homemade."
"Where did you live?" I asked, unable to prevent myself from being interested in her, especially when she talked about her mother. She seemed so open and free, revealing intimacies about herself without any fear. After living on the Cape for a while, I thought she was a breath of fresh air.
"Yonkers. It's just outside of New York City. My mother worked for a manufacturer in the Bronx. Ever been there?"
"No," I said.
"I haven't been back in ages, even though I live only a train ride away in Greenwich Village," she explained.
"I don't know where that is exactly," I said. "I know it's in New York City."
"Yes. It's where a lot of artists and writers, folk singers and musicians live. I have a shop there on Christopher Street. I do readings, sell candles and crystals."
"Readings?"
"Astrology," she said. "Personal horoscopes."
"Oh. My uncle Jacob thinks it's mumbo jumbo, even heathen. He's always bawling out my aunt Sara for reading her horoscope in the paper, but she does it anyway."
"It's not mumbo jumbo," she said softly. "Astrology was studied among the ancient Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese, Etruscans, and the Chaldeans of Babylonia. It all started with the Chaldeans about three thousand sc. It was very logical to them. When they noticed how the sun and the heavenly bodies affected seasons, crops, they just assumed it all affected human life as well."
"I don't really know all that much about it," I said. "Just that it's like fortune telling."
"Yes, in a way. Your destiny is dependent upon the sign of the zodiac under which you were born and the relationship of the planets at the time and throughout your life, but more depends upon the position and power of the sun and the moon at birth than upon all the planets of our solar system combined. The sun and the moon are the transmitters of the stellar forces. I make charts on a horoscope, working out the location of the sun, the moon, and the planets within the twelve segments of the zodiac known as houses," she continued. "Each house is named for a constellation and each takes up thirty degrees of space, the whole making the three hundred sixty degrees of a circle. That's why the number three hundred sixty is the symbol of completion," she lectured.
"It all sounds silly," I said. Why would Kenneth like someone who believed in these things? I wondered.
"Oh, but it's not. It's all logical. Listen," she insisted. "We all have five positive points of projection and four positive centers of energy. Four plus five makes up the mystical nine, the symbol of deity. The head, hands, and feet are the five points of projection from which streams and streams of vital force are constantly radiating. We symbolize that with the fivepointed star," she added and showed me her wrist where she had a five-pointed star tattooed.
"The positive centers of energy are the brain, the spleen, the heart, and the generative organs, while the great center of reception is the solar plexus." She held her hand against her stomach. "Just think about it. When trouble or anxiety crosses our path, the first place we feel it is here, right? Usually we have no appetite. We have butterflies."
I nodded. That did make sense.
"Mental and psychic goodness depend upon the perfect freedom of the body. Anything that cramps, binds, or twists us out of natural proportion is fatal to real spiritual progress. That's why people in India, Chaldea, and Egypt wore loose-flowing robes and why the high priests did the same. It's why I dress like this, too," she explained. "Does that help you understand it a little better?"
I nodded:
"I can do a chart for you while I'm here, if you want."
I didn't reply. In a real sense I was afraid of knowing what was in store for me. The future seemed far more terrifying than the present, and I was also afraid that if she told me good things, it would only give me false hopes. I had had enough of that.
"Aunt Sara is impressed with the fact that my twin cousins were born under the sign of Gemini," I revealed.
"Yes. Castor and Pollux represent the twin souls. See?"
"No," I said sharply.
"I can explain it," she said.
"I'm not interested."
She just smiled.
r /> "Well, if you change your mind, I'll be here."
"Who's watching your store while you're here?" I asked.
"A friend of mine, Billy Maxwell. He's paralyzed from the waist down, the result of a bullet wound he got when he was fleeing from a mugger. The mugger shot him in the back," she said without sadness or tragic overtones. "Billy's a poet so it didn't stop him from doing what he loves to do."
"Isn't he still bitter and unhappy?" I asked.
"He was in the beginning, but I helped him find a new wavelength, a new highway to travel
spiritually, and he's become a happier, more beautiful person."
"Was he your boyfriend?"
"We loved each other, but it wasn't boyfriendgirlfriend in the way you mean."
I nodded and looked away.
"You're Kenneth's girlfriend though, aren't you?" I asked, my voice shaking.
She laughed.
"As much as anyone could be Kenneth's girlfriend. Kenneth is like a comet. He can't be chained to anything or anyone, except his art, of course."
"But you're here, living with him, aren't you?" I practically spit back at her.
"We touch like two meteors passing in the universe when the stars are lined up correctly, but he knows and I know it's not permanent in the sense you mean. It's permanent in our universe though. He and I will be this way for eternity, our two spirits touching," she said.
She saw the look of confusion on my face.
"You'll understand if you let me open a door for you."
"What door?"
"The door to yourself," she said. "First, you have to free your mind of turmoil, rid yourself of negative energy."
"How do you do that?"
"I'll show you how. First, close your eyes and concentrate on your own breathing. Don't breathe fast or slow. Just tune into yourself. Go on, try it," she urged. She patted the blanket again. "Come on."
I lowered myself slowly to the blanket, still looking at her skeptically.
"Concentrate on my breathing?"
"Every time a thought tries to enter your mind, drive it away, and the easiest way to do that is to concentrate only on your breathing. Go on." "This seems very silly," I said.
"Everything new seems silly at first. It can't hurt you to try, can it? Just stare at the water and concentrate on your breathing. Go on," she urged.