Spencer starts to follow her, still carrying the baby.
"No," I call out. "Spencer, I want to hold her."
He stares at me for so long that I imagine he is seeing our history like a movie, looped to lead up to this point. His eyes shine with tears. But then he pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits in it, holding Lily so that I can see her face. He smiles a little, and for just a moment I let myself believe that Spencer might come to understand it is not blood that connects a family, but the love between its members. "You rest, Cissy," he tells me. "I'll take care of her."
We pay full price for the virtues our culture develops at any particular period. . . . The very ethnic and religious prejudices which still live in the community may be forged into the tools by which a demagogue can further divide the population and stultify human development.
--Elin Anderson, We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an American City, 1937
In my mind's eye, I am running. The rain sluices over my face and muddies my feet and yet I know I have to get away from whoever is chasing me. When I look over my shoulder I see him--the same man who has been in my other dreams, with the long brown hair and quiet eyes. He calls out my name, and I turn again, and a moment later he trips and sprawls across the ground. I stop to make sure he has not hurt himself and then I see it--the tombstone with my name on it, the tombstone that I have run right through.
Jerking awake, I feel something heavy on my thigh. Spencer is draped across my lap. At first I think he is asleep and then I realize he is sobbing. His eyes are so bloodshot it frightens me, and his skin gives off the steam of alcohol.
"Cissy," he says, rising. "You're awake."
My body feels as if it has been beaten for days. My legs are too tender to shift on the mattress. Someone--Spencer?--has pressed cold compresses between my thighs to stanch the bleeding. "Lily," I ask. "Where is she?"
Spencer takes my hand and raises it to his lips. "Cissy."
"Where is my baby?" I push myself up in the bed.
"Cissy, the baby--she was too young. Her lungs . . ."
I go perfectly still.
"The baby died, Cissy."
"Lily!" I scream. I try to get off the bed, but Spencer holds me down.
"You couldn't have done anything. No one could have."
"Dr. DuBois--"
"He's doing a surgery in Vergennes. Ruby left word for him to come as soon as he gets home. But by the time she came back the baby was . . ."
"Don't say it," I threaten. "Don't you dare say it."
He is crying too. "She died in my arms. She died while I was holding her."
All I want is my baby. "I have to see her."
"You can't."
"I have to see her!"
"Cissy, she's been buried. I did it."
I throw myself out from beneath the covers and hit Spencer in the chest, the arms, the head. "You wouldn't. You wouldn't!"
He grabs my wrists hard, pulls me back, shakes me. "We couldn't have baptized her. We couldn't have buried her in consecrated ground." A sob rounds from his throat. "I thought, if you saw her, you would try to follow her. I can't lose you, too. Jesus, Cissy, what did you want me to do?"
It takes a moment for his words to sink it. We couldn't have baptized her, we couldn't have buried her in the church graveyard, because to Spencer she was illegitimate. Spencer gathers me into his arms while I am still stiff with shock. "Sweetheart," he whispers, "no one has to know."
My eyes burn, my throat aches. "How about the next time I have a baby, Spencer, and it looks the same way? How many Gypsies will you accuse me of sleeping with before you realize I'm telling you the truth? Before you send me off to an institution to be sterilized?" I shake my head. "My mother fell in love with an Indian. Blame her for that, not me. All I ever did wrong was fall in love with you."
How does it feel, I want to ask, to find yourself at the bottom of one of your own genealogy charts? But instead I pick up the swaddling blanket at the foot of the bed. "Take me to the grave."
"You're too upset. You need to--"
"I need to see my daughter's grave. Now."
Spencer stands up. He picks up from a tray beside the bed the scissors Ruby used to cut the umbilical cord, a knife she had sterilized just in case. He tucks these into his breast pocket, for safekeeping. "Tomorrow," he promises, and then he kisses my forehead. "Cissy. Let's start over."
I stare at him so long that everything inside me goes to stone. "All right, Spencer," I answer, in a voice that sounds much like the woman I used to be. My hands are shaking in my lap, but I can play his game. I am already thinking of my next move.
In the voelkisch State the voelkisch view of life has finally to succeed in bringing about that nobler era when men see their care no longer in the better breeding of dogs, horses and cats, but rather in the uplifting of mankind itself, an era in which the one knowingly and silently renounces, and the other gladly gives and sacrifices.
--Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, from Volume II, written in prison in 1924 prior to the 1933 "Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring" passed as part of the Nazi Racial Hygiene Program
Lily isn't dead. Now that I have thought about it, this is the only way it can be--why else would Spencer refuse to show me the body, the coffin, the grave? A hundred scenarios have run through my mind: he has hidden her until he has a chance to leave her on the steps of a church; he gave her to Ruby to bring to the orphanage; he is waiting for Dr. DuBois to come and spirit her away. Another reason I did not die in childbirth: it is my responsibility to find my baby.
I wait until I am certain Spencer has closeted himself in his study again and then I get dressed. It is slow going--my head is heavy with fever and my legs shaky. I slip Gray Wolf's pipe into the pocket of my dress and double-knot my boots-- above all, I have to be ready to run away. I turn the knob of the door with the care of a military spy and creep into the hall.
My first stop is the bathroom. Quietly I rummage through the clothing hamper; I check inside the tub. I even force myself to look in the tank of the toilet. When I cannot find her I go to Ruby's room on the third floor, and empty the insides of the closet and drawers, mess the bed, toss the shelves. By the time I finish I need to sit down.
Think, I command. Think like Spencer.
On the ground level of the house I sneak from small cubby to cornerhole, peeking in places too small to fit anything but a sleeping newborn. I take care to tiptoe around Spencer's study, where the clink of glasses places him at the sideboard. By the time I reach the kitchen I am on the verge of tears. She must be hungry by now; she must be cold. Cry, and I will find you.
I will carry her tight against my chest; I will keep her warm. On the way to Canada, I will tell her of the sights we pass--the cows marooned in fields, the violet fireweed exploding along the road, the mountains that curve like the line of a woman's body. We will stand beside Gray Wolf at the settlement at Odonak when he is asked, "Who are you?" so that he can point to the two of us.
I walk into the dark kitchen, thinking of the wine cabinet, the flour bins, the root cellar. There are twenty places alone to hide in this room. I have just taken a step inside the cool, black pantry when someone bumps into me from behind.
I stifle a scream and pull the cord above me to flood the room with light. Then everything comes clear. "Ruby, what are you doing in here?"
She is shaking like an aspen leaf. "Getting some . . . sometimes I can't sleep at night and I make myself a little cup of that fancy chocolate of yours. I'm sorry, Miz Pike. I know it's stealing."
I narrow my eyes. "Where is she?" My hands begin to run over the shelves, under stacks of clothes, pushing aside bins.
"Who?"
"The baby. You're helping him hide the baby."
"Oh, Miz Pike," she says, her eyes wide and wet. "There is no more baby."
"Ruby, you don't understand. She's fine, the baby is fine. I just have to find her. I have to find her, and I have to take her away from here."
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"But the professor, he said--"
I grab Ruby by the shoulders. "Did you see a body? Did you?"
"I saw--I saw--" Ruby's teeth are chattering. She cannot cough out the answer I want.
"Dammit, Ruby, speak up!" I shake her a little harder, and she wrenches away from me, her arm striking a shelf lined with canned beets and beans. One jar tumbles to the checkerboard floor and shatters. As the pungent stink of vinegar spreads, I push aside bins of oatmeal and biscuit mix, soap flakes and powdered milk.
Strong hands pull me away from the shelf, into the main room of the kitchen. "Let me go, Spencer," I say, trying wildly to free myself.
He turns to Ruby. "Call Dr. DuBois's service again. Tell him we need him here now."
"Let go of me! Ruby, he's lying. Let go of--Lily!" I scream. "Lily!"
It takes all Spencer's might to wrestle me out of the kitchen. Frozen, Ruby watches him drag me, screaming, up the stairs by my wrists. "This is not any of your business, Ruby," Spencer calls over my cries. "You can see that Mrs. Pike isn't herself now, and I'm going to make sure she calms down." He grunts as one of my kicks lands squarely in his shin. "Call the doctor. And then do what I asked you to do earlier."
"Don't listen to him, Ruby!"
She seems to shrink before my eyes. "Go," Spencer bellows. "Now!" Suddenly I go limp in his arms. He catches me before I hit the floor and carries me the rest of the way. I do not open my eyes, not even when he modestly checks the pad between my legs to make sure I have not hemorrhaged, not when he sighs like a man who has given up hope. Then Spencer tucks me into bed and removes my boots and locks the door firmly behind himself.
I do not consider this a failure.
After all, now I know that Lily is hidden outside.
Why not drop the whole works? . . . We have carried on for several years and what have we accomplished? It was good fun as long as we could afford it, but now it is a different matter. If Hitler succeeds in his wholesale sterilization, it will be a demonstration that will carry eugenics farther than a hundred Eugenics Societies could. If he makes a fiasco of it, it will set the movement back where a hundred eugenic societies can never resurrect it.
--Excerpt from a letter dated February 1, 1934, from Henry H. Goddard to H. F. Perkins, in response to financial assistance requests, ESV papers, Public Records Office, Middlesex, VT
The hardest part is breaking the glass. To do it soundlessly is nearly impossible; I have to wrap the chair in the blanket from the bed and hope that the fabric will muffle some of the sound. I pick the window closest to the ladder that Gray Wolf, and then Spencer, used to fix the roof. After that, it is almost too easy. To shimmy down to the ground level, to sneak beneath the light in Spencer's study window, to see by the midnight moon.
We have so many acres, and she could be anywhere.
I check beneath the shrubs that line the front porch, under the porch itself, around the pile of firewood to the east. In back of the house, I move through the forest, walking in circles, in patterns, until finally I sit down on the ground and let myself cry.
It's devastating, Spencer will tell Dr. DuBois when he gets here. I found her digging in the dirt. No, it's not the first time she sleepwalked . . . but this is the first time she could not snap out of it. I wonder if, at private mental institutions, they tie patients to benches or drown them, like they did at Waterbury.
But is it crazy to search when you know there is something to find?
I look back at the house. There is no light in Ruby's bedroom, no silhouette in Spencer's study. I close my eyes and think of whales and dolphins, bouncing sound off the bottom of the ocean.
When I blink again, the wall of the icehouse rises out of the black of the night. One sliver seems darker than the others--someone has left the door ajar again. I stand up, reeled by an invisible line into the chilled belly of the shed.
The soles of my boots slip on the sawdust. Luminous blocks of ice sit shoulder to shoulder, a glowing row of giant's teeth. There are Ruby's roasts, for the dinner party we will not have. And on a cutting block sits an old apple crate, with the top set off to the side.
Inside is the smallest, stillest doll I have ever seen.
"No. No. Oh, no." I grip the rough edge of the crate, tiny coffin, and look down at the face of my baby.
Her eyelashes are as long as my pinky nail. Her cheeks are a pale, milky blue. Her fist, impossibly small, is curled tight as a snail. With one finger I touch her dimpled jaw, her embryo ear. "Lily," I whisper. "Lily Delacour Pike."
In this frozen nursery, I lift my daughter from her cradle. I wrap her blanket tighter, to keep her warm. I rock her against my breast, so that she can hear my heart break.
Spencer cannot take her away from me. To do that, I would have to agree to let go.
Awani Kia, I think. In this other world, they will ask her who she is. "You tell them about your grandma, and your grandpa, who built a bridge out of love," I say against her skin. "You tell them about your father, who thought he was doing the right thing. And you tell them about me." I kiss her, letting my lips rest for a moment. "You tell them I'm coming."
Then I put my daughter back in her crib and press my fist against my mouth to hold in all the sorrow. I will spend forever wondering if Spencer told me the truth, or only half. If Lily stopped breathing in his arms, or if he made sure of it. Maybe one day he will explain: I only did it because I loved you.
"Me too," I say aloud.
Soon Spencer will wake and come looking for me. And I will make him pay for this. There are ways to show the authorities what really happened. I will do what it takes, even if it kills me.
There isn't much time. So I reach into the crate again, where my baby's face fits in the palm of my hand. Her nose and her chin push up against it, a memory to carry. "Sleep well," I tell her, and I move to the doorway of the icehouse.
I think of Madame Soliat at the Fourth of July, with her wolf dog and her tent. I think of her shaking out her many-colored coat on the banks of the lake where she lived for a summer. Don't be afraid, she told me. Among other things.
I do not need a fortune-teller anymore. I know what comes next.
PART THREE
2001
The dead continue to converse with the living.
--THOMAS HARDY
EIGHT
On nights that Az Thompson didn't work at the quarry, he spent hours cleaving through the barnacled facts that cluttered his head. Live a century, and you know a lot of things: how to navigate by starlight, what to say to a grieving widow, where bear hide in the winter. Under all this flotsam you could scrape down to the barest truths--that, for example, it was not blood you passed down to your children, but courage. That you might find love in the most unlikely places--under stones in the shallows of the river, at the bottom of a bowl of shelled peas. That even when you least expected it, you could go on.
Doctors called it insomnia, but Az knew better. He didn't go to sleep because then he didn't have to wake up and wonder why he hadn't died overnight. He'd read of Egyptian kings and Ponce de Leon and Tithonus, who had tried so hard to live forever. But what good was eternity, when you outlived everyone you loved? When you watched your body fall apart piece by piece, like a rusting automobile, even though your mind could snap like lightning? These fools with their elixirs and their golden tombs . . . he would shake his head and think, Be careful what you wish for.
Az was tired at the cellular level, but he didn't lie down on his cot. Instead he watched the raindrops charge the roof of his tent like an old-time picture show. In another four hours, the sun would rise, and he would still be here.
Suddenly, he heard a cry. It seemed to come simultaneously from both the distant forest and inside Az himself, an ache more than a sound. He wondered if it were possible to throw one's emotion so that it spoke back to you, a ventriloquism of pain.
There--the sound, again.
It wasn't thunder. It was too deep for a child, too guttural for a woman. N
o, this was the requiem of a man who had lost so much he could no longer find himself. Someone like . . . well, himself.
Az sighed. He didn't believe in a lot of mystical bullshit-- that was the province of New Age wanna-be Indians, in his opinion--but he also knew that your past could return in a number of disguises, from the shrill whistle of an owl to the eyes of a stranger that followed you down the street. And he knew better than anyone that turning your back on your own history only made it that much easier to be blindsided.
Then again, it could just be some guy who'd tripped in the dark and hurt himself.
Either way, Az thought wearily, he was going to have to go see.
Ross sat on the floor of the tent with Az Thompson's Hudson Bay blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His pants and shirt were thick with mud. His wet hair dripped into his eyes as he sipped the instant coffee the old man had made with a battery-powered immersion heater. He could not seem to stop shaking, although this had nothing to do with the dampness that soaked through to his core. No, that was due to a woman who smelled of roses. A woman who--say it, he demanded silently--he had fallen in love with. A woman who was not alive.
"You all right?" Az asked.
You look like you've seen a ghost.
Ross couldn't answer. He bent his head to the mug and took a swallow of coffee that burned his throat. It brought tears to his eyes.
He had watched as her skin went translucent, as the trees grew more solid than Lia herself. He had seen the shock on her face when she looked down at the gravestone and saw her own name. She hadn't been aware, any more than Ross had. Ross, who had studied the paranormal, who understood that a demon carried a rotten stench and that a poltergeist drew its energy from a teenage girl, had not known the simple fact that a ghost could kiss you back.
Ghosts were not the norm. They were the ones who, for one reason or another, still had one foot in this world and could not seem to shake it free. Ross had heard Curtis Warburton speak of ghosts who return to avenge their own demise, and ghosts who came back because they'd forgotten to pay the electric bill. Ross remembered Curtis telling stories about ghosts who'd returned for a love they'd left behind.
Could a ghost return for a love she had not yet met?