Ignoring Eva’s protests, Malin also sought to improve relations with her sister-in-law. Ever since Meridia caught her crying in her old room on the morning of Elias’s death, a tacit understanding took place between the two, and Malin no longer hid the admiration she had felt for Meridia over the years. Twice a week now she went to Magnolia Avenue for tea, always bringing a gift for Noah and sweet rolls for Daniel. As she sat in her sister-in-law’s newly decorated living room, she peppered her with questions about Noah’s birth. What did the midwife do to keep her calm? Were there crystals present to clear the baby’s passage? Had the knife been rubbed with consecrated oil, could the womb have been spared from destruction? Receptive to Malin’s conciliatory efforts, Meridia put the past behind them and answered thoughtfully. She became genuinely fond of Malin when she realized that the girl had found her calling as a mother.
One topic was off-limits to Malin—her father’s recent passing. Although she had a standing order with a florist to decorate Elias’s grave with gardenias every morning, she had yet to make an appearance at the Cemetery of Ashes. Whenever the subject came up, Malin clutched her belly and withdrew from the room. Bolstered by her faith in the fortune-teller, Eva tried to assure her that there was nothing to worry about. The expectant mother’s reply was short and to the point: “I’m not taking any chances, so back off.”
Malin’s water broke at the precise hour the fortune-teller had predicted. Despite a dire warning from Eva (“That woman will cause your womb to twist!”), the girl wasted no time in sending for her sister-in-law. As soon as Meridia entered the big house on Museum Avenue, she knew that Eva’s efforts to circumvent disaster had failed. Malin was screaming as if she were being hacked to pieces.
“Come! She’s waiting for you.”
Permony did not give Meridia time to take off her coat, but rushed her up the stairs and along the corridor where Jonathan was pacing. Drenched in sweat and panic, the young man jolted with every scream Malin hurled from behind the door. He lunged for Meridia the instant he saw her and seized both of her arms.
“You’ll try your best to help her, won’t you?”
“Don’t worry,” she told him while Permony pounded on the door. “It will all be over before you know it.”
There were three doctors in the room and two midwives, shouting instructions at one another in total pandemonium. The door had no sooner closed than Meridia recognized the mark of death looming over the bed. Everything reminded her of her own labor—the chaos and disorder, the pain, the confusion, the simultaneous yet separate battles for mother and child. Only the bees were missing. In their place was the clicking of prayer beads—fast, unwieldy, desperate. It was the first time she saw Eva afraid.
Feeble, Malin’s voice called to her above the din.
“You’ve lived through this before. Tell me my baby will be safe.”
Fear had the girl in its grip. Her brave eyes and enormous belly aside, she looked deflated, as if all her hope was hanging by a thread. At Meridia’s approach, Eva left the corner where she had been praying and placed herself in the way.
“Yes, tell her,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and abnormally dismal. “Tell her nothing will go wrong.”
Then Eva did something unprecedented—she stepped aside and let Meridia pass.
At once the noise cleared. For a moment there was only Malin and the two heartbeats inside her. Meridia had scarcely time to grasp the girl’s damp hand when a certainty flashed through her brain: Malin would live, but the baby would not. The same premonition must have also occurred to Eva, which then explained the hysterical clicking of her beads. Repressing a shudder, Meridia smiled and affected something of Ravenna.
“Nobody is dying today. Not on my watch.”
Relief surged through Malin. For the next six hours, the girl fought as if she were taking on the heavens. Finding the doctors and midwives at odds with one another, she threw out all but two from the room. She clenched her teeth like an animal at war, bold and determined through all the blood and pain. Every fifteen minutes, Jonathan lifted his knuckles to the door, only to receive the same discouraging answer. Permony waited on her sister with absolute devotion, impressing even Eva, who alternated between rallying her daughter and praying in the corner. In those hours Meridia did not let go of Malin’s hand, her strong grasp somehow giving flesh to the confidence she did not feel.
Eva’s scream was the signal they had all been waiting for. Permony gnashed her teeth. Meridia grabbed Malin’s shoulders and blocked her view. The midwife whisked the dead thing away…too late. Roused by her mother’s scream, Malin demanded to see it.
“No!” said Eva. “It won’t do you the slightest good.”
Weak and exhausted, Malin began to scream.
“It’s my baby! You can’t stop me from saying good-bye!”
Eva pleaded with her, and they bickered back and forth. The effort on Malin’s part caused blood to erupt from the womb, rapidly emptying color from her skin. The doctor was barking orders no one followed as he tried in vain to stanch the flow. Meridia, realizing this, made a quick decision.
“Show her the baby,” she told the midwife. “She’s strong enough to handle it.”
The force of her command stunned Eva for a moment, long enough for the midwife to approach the bed. In her arms lay what looked like a crumpled slab of stone, moldy with black pieces of meat wedged in for eyes. A network of clots covered the limbs and the genital area, from which they gathered it was a boy. Permony started sobbing. Malin took one look and closed her eyes.
“Take him away,” she said.
Recovering herself, Eva turned on Meridia savagely.
“Are you out of your mind? I know you’re mean and arrogant, but I never take you to be this cruel and thoughtless!”
Meridia did not dignify this. She gave Malin’s hand to Permony and hurried to the midwife.
“Don’t show it to the father,” she said. “He’s not as strong as his wife.”
Dodging Eva’s bees, which had suddenly filled the room with profanities, Meridia went out to the corridor. Flanked by his parents, Jonathan rushed toward her. As soon as he saw the look on her face, he realized that the bottom had fallen out of his world. He shook and staggered and crumbled on the spot. “There will be another, son,” said his mother. “You are both still young.” He tore from her angrily and folded in upon himself, the light swaying and then dimming on his private universe.
THREE DAYS LATER, EARTH rained on the baby’s coffin. The following morning, Malin took her place in the town’s annals as the 622nd mother to haunt the Cemetery of Ashes. The graveyard sweeper declared that she always appeared no later than dawn, and the flowers she carried—orange butterfly weed—set her apart from the other ghosts. Cloaked in a heavy robe the color of fall, she trudged up the hill without looking left or right, sliced through the bitter smoke that guarded the cemetery, and paused at her father’s grave long enough before heading to the smaller tomb in the back. Carefully she would replace the flowers that were still fresh from the last dawn, wipe the urn with the hem of her robe, and caress all the letters on the headstone as though they contained a message from another world.
The townspeople claimed that a completely different woman now lived inside Malin. Her dressmaker said she no longer had a taste for fashion, had stopped placing orders even though all her dresses hung loose on her. This observation was echoed by her hairdresser, who said that Malin had not been to the shop in weeks and could not be bothered about her hair. The maids from the big house on Museum Avenue added that their mistress no longer showed interest in her furniture, her figurines, her husband, or the rest of her family. The mother did not know what to do, the sister was beside herself with sorrow. The husband, suffering alone and intensely, alternated his nights between the two nurseries, pacing, sighing, hoping that her door would open to admit him.
“Is it true? But they look so lovely together!”
Having relayed all this to Meridia, Leah awaited her answer
with the hungry look of a compassionate gossip. Meridia looked away, did not confirm one way or the other.
TWENTY-NINE
Twenty-seven years after its first appearance, the blue mist arrived late at 24 Monarch Street. All morning long as she flayed carrots and admonished turnips, Ravenna nursed her fury. By the time the mailman completed his rounds in the neighborhood, there was still no sign of Gabriel. Ravenna threw away the carrots and attacked the pork rump, so viciously her maids did not dare come within ten feet of her. When at last the blue mist made its delivery, the sun was halfway up in the sky. Armed with a steaming plate of ham-and-paprika omelet, Ravenna entered the dining room and glared at the man seated at the head of the table. When she plopped down the plate in front of him, he did not appear to notice. Taking in his pale and exhausted color, Ravenna gave a righteous grunt, saying to herself that his mistress’s erotic antics must have finally caught up with him. She continued to watch him with disdain when the unimaginable happened: Gabriel pushed the plate away, stood up, and went off to his study. Ravenna reeled as if he had punched her. The pact was broken. For the first time in twenty-seven years, he had left the food she served him untouched.
That evening, the yellow mist arrived earlier than usual. As soon as Gabriel stepped into the vapor, the knot of anguish that had been sitting in Ravenna’s stomach since morning ruptured like a boil. She flew downstairs and tore into his study. She ransacked the cabinets and towering shelves. Smashed jars and flasks. Flung books into the air. She peered closely at his notebooks. Stripped the maps and charts off the walls. Rushing to the little closet where he kept his clothes, she yelped in disbelief when she found it half emptied. In rage, she turned out all his jacket pockets, netting two fountain pens, four buttons, and a handful of change. She prosecuted his remaining wardrobe next, but still could not extract an explanation for his change in behavior. Snatching a shirt from the hanger, she shredded it to pieces, took up another and another until a hill of sacrificial fabric mounted at her feet. At last, the smell of burnt meat snapped her to her senses. The pork roast! She ran to the kitchen, pushed aside the terrified maids, and put out the fire with her bare hands. That night, long after Monarch Street fell asleep, Ravenna charged up the stone steps and assailed the ivory mist. “Bastard! Coward! Son of a bitch!” she barked. The break of dawn found her standing on wet grass, grim and erect with the terribleness of a storm.
The blue mist did not turn up that morning. Ravenna waited until noon before she hurled breakfast against the wall. For the rest of the day, Gabriel neither returned nor sent news. When evening came, Ravenna stood at her bedroom window and stared far beyond the rooftops. A pale autumn sky stretched vast and benign, yet some unaccustomed movement among the stars convinced her that the blue mist would never again carry him home. All at once she felt it—the keen and irrevocable agony of loss. Closing the window and shutting the curtain did not lessen the feeling one bit.
The blue mist did turn up the following morning. But instead of releasing Gabriel from its union with the ivory, it held out a note addressed to the lady of the house. Ravenna stuck her hand into the beating heart of the vapor and plucked out the note. In the gray morning light Gabriel’s fastidious handwriting glared at her. I can no longer live under the same roof with you. You can have the house—I will send for my things. Ravenna dropped the note as a tide of pain knocked her back. Blinking and trembling, she looked up and realized that both the blue and ivory mists had vanished. A gust of wind snatched up the note and buoyed it dancingly, first across the street, then to the tops of trees and to the sky beyond. Ravenna slammed the front door shut. Back in the kitchen, she gathered all her cooking implements, her pots and pans and knives and spices and sacks of flour, and heaped them together in one corner. To these she added fresh meat and vegetables, fish, eggs, butter, fruit, rice, and oil. The two maids watched in horror as the iron knot on the back of her head sliced about the room like a rapier.
“Take what you want and leave,” she ordered them. “From this day forward there will be no more cooking in this house.”
She unlocked a drawer and dispensed their wages. Before either one could object, Ravenna had herded them away.
On the third night of Gabriel’s absence, she threw a thick coat over her shoulders and marched through the fog to Magnolia Avenue. A drizzle was falling, peppering the town with beads of liquid pearls. From the way the leaves bent in the wind, she predicted they were in for a season of thunder. The hour was not late; under the bright white lanterns, Magnolia Avenue was bustling with pedestrians and their umbrellas. When she reached number seventy, friendly voices drifted from an upstairs window. Ravenna hesitated a moment, not expecting others to be present, then pressed her finger to the doorbell.
“You’re an hour late, Rebecca!”
Meridia answered the door in a blue evening dress, her hair stylishly swept back and eyes bright with laughter. She started when she saw her mother but suppressed her gasp.
“Come with me,” said Ravenna.
It took Meridia all of one second to digest this. In a rush she went back up the stairs, and reappeared a moment later in a hooded cloak that fell down to her ankles. Daniel followed with daggers in his eyes. Before he said a word, Meridia gave him a kiss and swept out into the cold. “Go without me,” she said, hoping his displeasure was somehow lost on Ravenna.
Under the waning moon, they began their journey. Meridia had no idea where her mother was going, aware only that they were heading into the dark heart of town. The earth was damp and muddy, yet Ravenna walked as though her shoes touched nothing but brick. As the drizzle thickened into rain, they hustled past moldering huts and ramshackle tenements, past temples of abandoned gods and hotels tenanted by transient midnight souls. Eyes without bodies tracked them from the depths of shadows, howling, laughing at every turn of the wind. Crude letters blazed up dusty windows. For a few coppers, anyone could purchase a pill for oblivion, a curse for a cuckolding spouse, a brew to abort the unwanted. Through an open doorway, Meridia saw a toothless crone standing by a fire, calling in a loud, croaking voice, “Let me erase your past, hapless one! I can deflect the future and obscure the present!” Meridia shuddered and fastened her hood. Ravenna strode on as if she did not hear a thing.
The wind lifted in a violent gust when they entered the mouth of a certain alley. A hailstorm of flowers broke out, trapping them in swirling, shivering petals that beat their skin like frenzied wings. The rain came down hard and soaked them. For a long time they could neither see nor move. When the gust receded, Meridia brushed the petals off her face and noticed that Ravenna’s knot had come undone. Down her unbending spine the long strands of hair hung wet and heavy.
Mother and daughter swung into the alley. A modest cottage, which did not otherwise differ in appearance from the others, was marked by the familiar yellow mist. Seizing this, Ravenna flew at the vapor and pounded on the door. Meridia followed, her tongue coppery with panic and premonition. As soon as her skin brushed the cold mist, she understood that she had plunged into a world where men withdrew to hide their shame.
Despite Ravenna’s thunderous knocks, a long time elapsed before footsteps approached. A moment later the bolt turned and the door yielded a fraction. A woman’s tremulous voice reached them before her eyes appeared through the slit.
“What do you want?”
“My husband,” said Ravenna.
“He’s asleep. Come back in the morning.”
“Open the door now, woman!”
“He doesn’t want to see you. Please leave before you wake up the whole town.”
Ravenna’s fury suddenly found an outlet. “I’ve waited for twenty-seven years, you shameless old slut! Before this rain stops, that bastard will listen to what I have to say!”
Ravenna kicked the door open, smashing the woman in the face. There was a painful yelp, followed by a nasty tumble to the floor. Ravenna flung the door wide and charged into the house.
“Where is he?”
>
The woman had fallen on her backside, one hand supporting herself and the other clamping her nose. A shaded lamp lit the dingy parlor, spartanly furnished with worn leather chairs and a battered table. A stale yet familiar smell of lilac suffocated the air. The instant Meridia locked eyes with her father’s mistress, a deep tremor took hold of her bones. She needed no help to recognize who it was.
“Pilar!”
Sinking, Patina’s sister was hiding her face and weeping. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Meridia stared dumbly. Saw bright blood oozing from the woman’s nose but could not move to help her.
“Come out, you pig! You rotten, good-for-nothing asshole!”
Ravenna was already storming the narrow hallway. Two doors stood to her right, one to her left. She tried the first one on the right, which led to an empty sitting room, and slammed it shut. The second door she shut even more quickly—it opened to a cramped and smelly kitchen. She made for the last door and flung it open. A second later her scream vibrated the cottage to its core.
Meridia ran for the door and found herself in a large, dusky room. At a glance she made out a garishly ornate bed, huge and imposing in the center of the room, with Ravenna bending over it. The air here shimmered with heat, as if an invisible fire were eating its way slowly across the floor. As Meridia crept closer, she began to perspire, and noticed that the bed was surrounded by iron pails full of blazing charcoal. Why did the room require such excessive heating? The question had barely crossed her mind when she saw it: a pillar of ice lying in the middle of the bed. She drew back, nearly losing her balance. She stared at the face sealed by doom and felt its coldness slicing at her heart.
“Papa!”
Under the transparent ice, Gabriel’s elegant features were meticulously preserved. Thick gray locks swept across his forehead, skin unlined, lips flushed, jaws clenched in inviolate dignity. He was wearing one of his dark suits with a gardenia pinned to his buttonhole. His hands, long and well sculpted, folded regally across his chest. Only the eyes were restless, staring straight up with a bleak sense of unfinished mission. Meridia had no doubt she was looking at a corpse.