Now, there were dinner guests, quite a large gathering. Jenny stepped closer to the window, edging through the straggly phlox. Matt and Will were at dinner with a red-haired woman and two girls. Jenny had her nose pressed against the glass before she realized it was Stella and that horrible friend of hers, Juliet Aronson. Will was at the table, offering up a toast. He’d had a haircut and he’d shaved, but he still looked tired and far too thin. He looked nothing like the boy she used to wait for in this very place. She would remain here, hidden, until at last he appeared and they could sneak out to Rebecca Sparrow’s shed, or, when the weather was fine, to the cool, flat rock formation called the Table and Chairs, which they rested upon in order to look up at the stars, kissing until the stone beneath them grew so hot mosquitoes lighting on the granite burst into flame in an instant.
The red-haired woman in the dining room at the Averys’ was Liza Hull, although she looked quite changed. She looked pretty in the candlelight; prettier still when she threw back her head to laugh. Maybe it was the vantage point which altered things, or perhaps the night air, the dark, the scent of phlox, the aroma of something old and new twisted together. Liza had brought a cake, and there was a bottle of white wine. Even the girls had splashes of wine in their glasses. They were most likely toasting Will and his return; they were actually applauding him. Only Matt stood in the background, leaning against the hutch that had belonged to his grandmother. It was here that Catherine displayed her prized Minton pottery. There was a dish which resembled stalks of asparagus, a plate which appeared to be made out of starfish and mollusks, a pitcher that seemed to be lily pad after lily pad, with a frog for a handle. Matt looked up, past the dining table, past the celebration, out into the yard where Jenny stood beside the holly.
Perhaps a branch moved, perhaps it was something else that caught his eye. Whatever it was, Matt seemed to spy her, and as soon as he did, Jenny took off. She ran because of the mistakes she had made, because she’d been so foolish as a girl and so dead wrong as a woman, because she hadn’t known one dream from another, because she had finally fallen in love. She ran until she was forced to stop, then doubled over to catch her breath before jogging the rest of the way home, through the common that now seemed far too dark, through the shadows the plane trees cast into twisted shapes on the walkways, all the time thinking: I’ve thrown it all away. Now I have nothing at all.
ON SUNDAY, when Stella had gone off to walk her friend Juliet to the train, and Cynthia Elliot had pedaled off on her bicycle to write her final English paper on her chosen poet, Sylvia Plath, due the following morning, Liza Hull closed the tea house and locked the doors. The handyman didn’t work on Sundays and neither did Jenny, and that was just as well. Liza Hull was embarrassed by what she was about to do, although not so embarrassed as to put the thought away. She drew the curtains and then she sat down at the counter and took a photograph of herself with one of those Polaroid cameras she’d picked up at the pharmacy.
She breathed lightly while the film developed right before her eyes, magicking her into existence. Was that really Liza Hull? The woman with the red hair, the shining eyes, the smile that transformed her face? Where was her white coat, her kerchief, her stained clothes, her sacrifice, her sorrow? None of it had developed on this square of film. There was only a woman smiling on the first day of May. It was Liza, it truly was. Liza, who had fallen in love.
Liza Hull’s grandmother had operated the tea house until her ninety-second year; she had known Elisabeth Sparrow when she was a little girl and Elisabeth Sparrow’s hair had already turned white. Granny Hull had once told Liza that, long ago, baking bread was referred to as a “mystery.” Mystery it was, much the same as turning straw into gold. Flour and water and yeast became sustenance. One thing became another, transmuted, as Liza Hull now understood she herself had become. It was alchemy, nothing less: pieces to a whole, straw into gold, flour becoming bread, she who was ordinary made beautiful, overnight.
Liza went upstairs to her bedroom and opened the closet. There was a full-length mirror hung on the back of the door, one she’d always avoided in the past, artfully draping scarves and shawls over the glass. Now she removed all of the fabric. She took off her clothes and stared at herself. She saw the mystery of one thing becoming another right there in the glass.
Liza reached for a green dress that had always made her think of spring, and slipped it on. She had always been resigned to her own bad luck, but that was about to change. She knew it Friday night, when Will had walked her and the girls home from dinner at the Averys’ house. The girls had run on ahead, giggling, racing toward the common. Liza had told Will he should turn and go home; an escort wasn’t necessary, not in Unity. But Will had insisted; the walk would do him good, and besides, he joked, this way he could leave his brother with the cleaning up. As they strolled, Will didn’t bother to try and charm Liza. He was too tired for that, and he was comfortable with Liza Hull. He’d known her forever, after all, since kindergarten, not that he’d ever paid her the least bit of attention. She was simply there, good old Liza; why, he’d never even noticed that her hair was red until tonight.
“I made a right mess of everything,” he said.
They were walking toward the old oak, the one that would have to wait to be cut down, since Matt had already begun spring cleanup for most of his customers. They stopped and looked at the huge branches; the ones wired to the trunk so they wouldn’t crack off in a storm looked especially sad.
“They call these trees of mercy,” Liza said.
“Really?” Will looked over at Liza, ready to make a joke, but, no, she was serious.
“Maybe if you ask the tree to forgive you, you won’t feel so bad.”
“Forgive me?”
Liza had smiled and nodded. She’d come here often; she knew what it was like to feel that you’d done everything wrong.
Will approached the tree. He was sure he wouldn’t do such a foolish thing, it just wasn’t in his nature, but then he looked over his shoulder at Liza. He got down on bended knee. “Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive me for being a fool, for placing myself above all others, forgive me for all of my lies.”
He realized that Liza had come to kneel beside him. They were on the concrete sidewalk, on the corner of Lockhart and East Main, but it was as dark here as any woods. There was only a sliver of moon in the sky. They could hear the girls up ahead of them, making whooping noises as they ran across the green. It was a starry night, and although Will never noticed such things, he noticed now.
“You are forgiven,” Liza said. “At least by me.”
The external world had maps and signs, but none of these would do for a man who’d lost his way as thoroughly as Will had. A man like Will needed absolute faith, in something, in someone. He needed peace of mind and someone to believe in him, and that was not so easily found.
“I’m forgiven?” He tested the words to see how they might feel in his mouth. He’d never even looked at Liza Hull, and now he couldn’t get enough of her. Now, he believed every word she said.
Out on the green, Juliet was sneaking a cigarette. The orange light of the ash burned with every intake, a single firefly. “Well, I was wrong. Your uncle’s not the one Liza has the hots for. It’s your father.”
The girls had perched on the Civil War monument.
“You think Liza’s in love with my father?” Stella had laughed out loud. “Oh, my God, you are so wrong. Liza? She’s like his exact opposite.”
“Thereby proving nothing. Opposites attract, honey pie. Don’t you know that? It’s some scientific fact, like the way magnets work.”
“Polar opposites.” Stella could feel the cold of the monument right through her jeans, dyed black that very afternoon in the tub in Liza’s bathroom, along with all the rest of her wardrobe. Even her underwear was black now, along with her socks, her T-shirts, her flannel bathrobe.
“Exactly. That’s why they’re drawn to each other. Each makes up what the other lacks.”
Juliet had stubbed out her cigarette on the ledge of the monument, leaving Stella to clear away the ashes with the palm of her hand.
Stella was still thinking about polar opposites on Sunday, while Liza was studying herself in the mirror, while Juliet smoked the last cigarette in the pack taken from her aunt’s purse. Stella and Juliet were headed to the train station and for once they hadn’t much to say.
Polar opposites. Definition: a magnetic force that was uncontrollable. Stella knew that magnetic fields could affect human behavior; there were cases of unusual strength during storms, for instance, of women who lifted cars off their baby’s carriages, of men who picked up ponies and carried them to safety when rivers rose. But could such things affect love? Or was it another case of the pin and the candle, a foolish test to measure a phenomenon that could never be understood?
Stella recalled a case Hap showed her in a science journal, the story of a man who could set things on fire with his breath. He was tested again and again. Each time he held a cloth to his mouth and breathed, the fabric would burst into flame. Were some people made of fire, others of water, or earth, or air? Were there those a person was drawn to, no matter how much she might fight her attraction, and others that repelled, no matter how they might try to please?
“This is truly one of the bumpkinest places I have ever been to,” Juliet decreed. She was looking down the road. Hap Stewart had said he would try to meet them, but he hadn’t showed up. “It wins the prize for most hicks contained within a square mile.”
They could hear the whistle of the train in the distance as they approached the station. Juliet fished her return ticket out of the bag. There was still no sign of Hap. For once, the sun was shining. The air was so clear it nearly hurt to breathe.
“I’ll bet good old Hap thought I was a freak,” Juliet said.
“No. He liked you. He told me so.”
“Yeah, sure.” People had started to congregate on the platform, and Eli Hathaway’s taxi pulled up to deliver Sissy Elliot and her daughters, Iris and Marlena, all headed for the ballet in Boston. “Actually, I am a freak,” Juliet said quietly.
“So what? Hap likes freaks. He once showed me an article about a man who could set fires with his breath,” Stella said. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“That’s one really bad case of indigestion.”
Juliet and Stella started to laugh.
“The worst ever recorded,” Stella gasped.
They laughed so hard people could hear them inside the station, but when Stella stopped, Juliet didn’t. In no time her ragged laughter turned into tears. Stella took a step backward. She hadn’t even been sure that Juliet could cry, and now here she was, sobbing.
“This isn’t about leaving, so don’t think it is.” Juliet wiped at her eyes; black eye pencil and mascara had begun to leak. She was tearing little chinks out of her train ticket. “I don’t even like this place. I’m a city girl.”
“I know. You are. Completely.”
“I’m happy to leave. I’d go nuts in a place like this.”
In all the time they’d known each other, Stella had only been to Juliet’s apartment once. It was a one-bedroom, so Juliet slept on the couch. Here, Liza Hull had made up a bed for her with clean white sheets scented with lavender. She’d slept till noon on Saturday and said she couldn’t remember sleeping so peacefully before.
Stella hugged her friend. “Maybe next time you can stay longer.”
“Don’t forget about me,” Juliet whispered, close, so that Stella could feel the heat of her breath.
Once she’d gotten on board, Juliet probably couldn’t see Stella out on the platform, waving, but Stella stayed anyway. She lingered until the train had pulled away, until the whistle was so far off it echoed past the corner of Lockhart and East Main. Juliet had confided that she had left her aunt’s apartment without so much as a note; she suspected that when she got back to Boston her aunt wouldn’t have noticed her absence.
It was the worst of fates, to be forgotten. On one hand there were those who became part of history, their birthdays celebrated, their lives remembered; on the other, there were those who had been erased. At dinner the other night, Matt had been talking about his thesis to Liza; Stella had overheard him say that the Sparrow women had written the town’s history in invisible ink. All he was doing down at the library was holding certain pages up to the light.
Hap was running toward the station, cutting across the common, a rain poncho flapping out behind him. He looked worried; he looked as though he’d been running for miles.
“What happened to you?” Stella asked, angry on Juliet’s behalf. “Where the hell were you?”
“It was the horse. He’s sick or something. I had to wait with my grandfather for Dr. Early, walking Sooner around in circles. I’ve got to go back and keep on walking him. I just came to say good-bye.”
“Well, you’re too late.”
“Shit.” Hap looked down the tracks.
Stella probably should have been jealous; instead she felt a wash of relief. “Does this mean you’re in love with Juliet?”
“Don’t be an ass.” Hap turned to leave. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to talk at all. “I’ve got to go walk the horse so his stomach doesn’t clinch up.”
“Maybe it’s time for him to die.”
“You really have a morbid hatred of equines.”
Stella laughed and waved as Hap took off. “Just don’t ride him,” she called.
The rain had begun in earnest, sure to be fish rain, for it was already spilling over the rooftops. It was because of this torrent that Stella ran across the common and ducked into the library. By the time she entered the front vestibule, her shoes were soaked, so she slipped them off and left them under the coatrack. Outside, the whole world was wet, and the wind was moving across town in fits.
When Stella hesitated at the threshold, the librarian, Mrs. Gibson, signaled for her to come in.
“Looking for your uncle?”
It was very odd indeed to live in a town where most people knew your family history better than you yourself did. What Stella wouldn’t give to know more about her ancestors. She went where she was directed, past the stacks to the reading room. The glass door was marked UNITY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. It was here all town papers, diaries, newspapers, announcements, journals, medals, and trophies were stored, along with Anton Hathaway’s uniform, an ink-colored homespun that was dyed with a mixture culled from the indigo reeds that once grew beside Hourglass Lake.
Matt Avery was at the table inside, typing the last page of the last chapter of his thesis. Because Matt was a pet of Mrs. Gibson’s, he was allowed to eat an orange, which was set out in neat sections, along with a cup of tea Mrs. Gibson had fixed herself, black, no sugar, with a sliver of lemon affixed to the rim. The oak tree would have to wait another day before it was taken down. Most of Matt’s scheduled spring cleanups, the Elliots, the Quimbys, the Stewarts, the Frosts, would have to wait as well. Why, Matt was so set on his thesis, he hadn’t even begun the plantings on the town common; usually, at this time of year, he had put in most of the annual beds, dozens of marigolds and zinnias and petunias. He had the past on his mind, and it took up a great deal of space. He wore a set of headphones, he liked to listen to Coltrane or Dylan as he worked—his musical taste being the single thing he had in common with his brother. He was so engaged in finishing, he hadn’t even bothered with his orange or his tea. If he hadn’t been imagining the last moments of Rebecca Sparrow’s life, he might have heard Stella open the door.
Stella herself had a strange cold feeling, the same sort of shivers she’d had whenever she and Juliet stole makeup or jewelry from Saks. Is this the way badness was formed? A cold pebble that begins as a tiny speck? An impulse that couldn’t be resisted? A desire that can’t be denied? Stella didn’t think, she didn’t plan; it was like reaching for the sparkly hoop earrings behind the counter, like holding her breath and diving underwater. One minute she was stand
ing there watching her uncle type, and the next instant she was folding the thesis into her backpack.
She tiptoed out, closing the door carefully; she waved to Mrs. Gibson, then hurried to slip on the soaking pair of shoes she’d left beneath the coatrack. Doing something so bad made a person hot: a coal in the palm of her hand. An arrow set afire. All her life, people had been hiding things from Stella, but not anymore. The rain was slowing, fish rain good for nothing but the old catfish in Hourglass Lake, for when such a rain dissipated there would be clouds of mosquitoes and mayflies. As Stella jogged through puddles she thought about the cancerous growth she had seen on Mrs. Gibson’s lung; if Dr. Stewart was alerted, and treatment was given, perhaps Mrs. Gibson would die of old age rather than of cancer; she’d pass on while asleep in her bed, or surrounded by the books in the library.
Since the accident when the young man on the highway had survived liver damage, Stella had become far more hopeful, even though Dr. Stewart had told her that there was no cure for some ailments. Hope was a good thing in most cases, but when it came to Elinor Sparrow, hope was out of the question, no more likely than snow in May, and that in itself was a good thing, since that was what Stella had seen, a snowy blanket covering her grandmother, drift after cloud-white drift. Thankfully it was too warm for anything like snow. The last of the rain sizzled when it hit the pavement. Stella darted inside when she reached the tea house. She hung up her jacket and kicked off her shoes, which were downright squishy. Her blond hair was drenched, like sleet falling down her back.
“You’ve been gone so long,” Liza called. “Did Juliet get off all right?”