The Onion Girl

  “Why hasn’t she ever moved?” Mona asked as they folded away the last of Jilly’s clothes.

  The smell of turps still hung in the air, but the air circulation had helped, and it didn’t seem any stronger than it usually did when Jilly was working on a painting. The floor was cleaned and mopped, all the broken glass put away. Jackets and Jilly’s few dresses hung in the closet, books restacked on their shelves in as much order as Jilly ever kept them in, which was none. Knickknacks were back in their usual places, or at least as well as either Sophie or Mona could remember.

  “Surely she could afford a bigger place by now,” Mona went on.

  “For the same reason she works”—Sophie refused to say “worked”—“at Kathryn’s—she doesn’t like change. For all her spontaneity and love of the strange and unusual, there’s something comforting for her when things stay the same.”

  Mona nodded. “That’s true. She was really broken up about Geordie moving to L.A. Is that what you mean?”

  “Well, Geordie was special.”

  “An honorary member of your small fierce women tribe.”

  “That, too.”

  “They spent a lot of time together, didn’t they?” Mona said. “All those aimless rambles and late-night coffee klatches.”

  Sophie nodded. “And she was also sweet on him.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m sure.” Sophie straightened up and looked across the room at Mona. “Though you’d never get her to admit that, not even to herself. The kind of happiness that comes from a relationship is something that’s always eluded her. It’s the intimacy, I suppose. It takes her back to … well, you know.”

  Mona nodded.

  “So even if she did ever admit to herself that she liked Geordie in that way, she’d never have acted on it because she’d be afraid to spoil what they did have.”

  “And now he’s with Tanya.”

  “Mmm. So it’s a moot point, I guess.”

  Sophie had rarely been in the basement of the Yoors Street building that housed Jilly’s studio and Mona had never gone down there. It was a dark, cavernous space, with only low-watt overheads to push back the shadows and who knew how many years of clutter, making an adventure of the simple walk from one end of the room to the other. The old furnace was enormous, squatting in the corner like some drowsy dinosaur in comparison to the more sleek and contemporary models available now. Dangling from hooks attached to the tall ceiling were stepladders, snow shovels, coils of extension cord, as well as any number of less readily identifiable items, all of which made passage along the length of the room that much more hazardous.

  The tenant storage areas were all along one side of the wall, square cells constructed of tall chain-link fencing and wooden support beams, each with its own padlocked gate. True to Jilly’s haphazard ideas concerning security, the key to her area hung on a nail beside its lock. The small room was full of boxes as well as some furniture and two more fabric mâché sculptures from her art school days: a rather crudely rendered gargoyle that stood upright, rather than crouching in a traditional pose, and the seven-foot-tall, even more crudely rendered Frankenstein monster that Jilly used to haul out and place on the landing outside her front door on Halloween.

  “Whatever happened to the neat old bike Jilly used to have?” Mona asked as they moved boxes to make room for the damaged paintings, stacking them along the back wall.

  “She set it free.”

  “She what?”

  “It was after Zinc died. Remember how he used to cut the locks on bikes so that they could go free?”

  Mona nodded. “I remember.”

  “So a year or so later, Jilly just leaned her bike up against the wall of the alley under her fire escape and set it free.”

  “Did it really … you know, go off by itself?”

  “Oh, please. Someone just took it. The same way they took all those bikes that Zinc ‘freed.’”

  Mona paused with a box in her hand to look at her.

  “You don’t believe in magic at all, do you? Even with your dreamworld?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Not the way you and Jilly do. Mabon’s just that: a dream. I realize my serial dreams are weird, but they’re not impossible.”

  “I’ve only ever had the one magical experience.”

  “I know. I read about it in your comic. It made a good story.”

  “But it really happened,” Mona said. “This little grotty gnome of a man really did turn invisible and squat in my apartment.”

  “I believe in a different kind of magic,” Sophie said. “The kind we make between each other. The kind that comes from our art and how it can change us. The world doesn’t need any more than that.”

  “But what if it has it all the same?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Then I’m missing out on it.”

  “I don’t think so. Not with Mabon, and the way stuff goes wacky around you.”

  “Jinx is purely physiological,” Sophie told her. “It’s got something to do with the way my electromagnetic field interacts with that of clocks and machines and things like that.”

  “Maybe,” Mona said.

  Sophie smiled. “Well, it’s not because of fairies.”

  They went back to moving the boxes.

  Hours later, they were finally done. All the damaged paintings had been brought downstairs and stacked up in Jilly’s storage area and the apartment was tidier than it had probably been in months. Mona had put on a pot of tea. When it was done, the two of them sank down on either end of the sofa and put their feet up on the pillow that lay between them.

  “I think Daniel likes Jilly,” Sophie said.

  She looked at Mona over the tops of her knees, tea mug cradled on her stomach. Her fingers felt stiff and her back and shoulders were aching a little from the unfamiliar labor of moving all those boxes and paintings.

  “Who’s Daniel?”

  “You know. The hunky nurse in the ICU. He was asking me if she had a boyfriend last night.”

  Mona smiled. “Big surprise. Everybody likes Jilly.”

  “Not everybody,” Sophie said.

  They looked around, remembering the damage the studio had sustained. Sophie thought of what Lou had told them, his suspicions that the hit-and-run and the vandalism were connected.

  “What are we going to do about all of this?” she finally said. “How are we ever going to figure out who’s got it in for her?”

  Mona slowly shook her head. “Maybe the person we should be asking is Jilly.”

  “Except that means we have to tell her about the paintings.”

  “We have to do that anyway,” Mona said.

  Sophie turned away and looked around the loft. She missed the faerie paintings. For all that she couldn’t buy into the reality of fairyland the way so many of her friends did, she’d always liked the enchanted feeling she got sitting in Jilly’s studio, surrounded by all those impossible denizens of the dreamworld as they were portrayed in Jilly’s art. She sighed. Magical creatures and faerie were so much a part of Jilly’s life, so integral to how she viewed the world. How was she ever going to deal with the loss of all her paintings of them?

  It would kill her at the best of times, but now, stuck in the hospital and—please, god—temporarily unable to paint or draw because of the paralysis …

  “I mean, sooner or later, she’s got to know,” Mona said.

  Sophie nodded. “I know. And I guess it’ll have to be me that tells her. But I’m just dreading it.”

  “You don’t have to do it alone,” Mona told her. “I can come with you. Or I’m sure Wendy would.”

  “Or maybe Angel,” Sophie said. “She always seems to know the best way to give bad news without it seeming to be so completely devastating. And Jilly’s always listened to her.” She gave Mona a small smile. “I mean, Jilly’s always a good listener, but Angel’s like Joe. She can get away with telling Jilly stuff she doesn’t want to hear.”

  “I knew what you meant,” Mona
said.

  2

  Once upon a time …

  It’s a relief when I can finally fall asleep and see Joe again in the dreamlands. Everyone else’s been tiptoeing around me like I’m this fragile china teacup. And I guess maybe I was, considering how easily I broke. But all that’s left now are the broken shards of china that the doctors have bandaged and arranged in the shape of a body on my hospital bed, so there’s no need for hushed voices and concerned gazes anymore. There’s nothing left to break. My heart doesn’t count.

  My happiness at finding Joe doesn’t last. He’s in mild loco mode, the way he gets when his trickster side starts to swamp the wise man.

  “You know how we’d get along better?” he says. “If everybody’d just remember how we’re all related. White, black, Asian, skin. No difference. All the bloodlines go back to that one old mama in Africa.”

  The idea of blood relations isn’t high on my list of things to care about.

  “Your point being?” I ask.

  “No point,” he says. “I’m all smooth edges.”

  “I just need a break,” I tell him. “That’s why I’m here. I know I have to face up to what’s waiting for me in that hospital bed, but can’t I get a little distance from it first? I need this. The cathedral wood. The enchantment. Air that tastes like it has weight and substance.”

  Joe looks at me and doesn’t say a word. He’s the only person besides Geordie who can make me feel guilty without even trying. And I know what he’s aiming at here. It’s the hurt that sits inside me; the hurt that first got born when I was a little girl.

  “The trouble with distance,” he finally says, “is that you always need more of it.”

  “You know it’s not like that,” I say. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to be a person who wouldn’t fit into the kind of family I grew up in. To care more instead of caring less. Or not at all.”

  “You have to work at that?” Joe asks.

  I nod. “I did at first. I was all the rough edges you say you don’t have.”

  That gets me a smile. Like he isn’t all edges himself. I’ve seen people pass him by on the street, their gazes quickly averted, troubled by the weird lights that can dance in his eyes.

  “I really do care about people now,” I go on, “but that’s something I had to learn. I had to let go of all the hurt and old baggage and teach myself to meet each day with anticipation and a smile. To look for the best in people, instead of the worst, because when you look for the best, you can bring it out in them.”

  “Not to mention in yourself.”

  I nod in agreement.

  Joe lights a hand-rolled cigarette that he takes from the pocket of his jeans. The tangy smell of tobacco and sweetgrass comes drifting over to where I’m standing.

  “But you never let the hurt go,” he says. “Not really. You hid it away inside instead.”

  Me and Geordie and all the other damaged souls that refused to give in to the darkness.

  “Same difference,” I say.

  “You really think so?”

  I’m about to brass it out, but this is Joe. I can never put anything past him.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. “It’s how I could deal with it. I could never forget.”

  I take a breath to ease the growing tightness in my chest, get a little sustenance from the air. All these years it’s been, and it still won’t fade or go away.

  “I can never forgive them, Joe.”

  Blue smoke trails up from his mouth as he exhales. He nods.

  “I know,” he says. “But you’ve got two things broken now, and the way the healers tell it to me, the new hurt’s not going to mend until you deal with the old one.” His gaze fixes on me, serious. “We’ve got to do something or you’re going to end up with nothing.”

  “I’ve got this,” I say, waving a hand to take in the trees of the dreamlands.

  “And if you don’t mend, back there in the World As It Is?” he asks. “See, that’s the problem with traveling here in the spirit—you need that anchor your body makes. Without it, your spirit’s got to move on.”

  He’s talking about me dying, I realize. The thought doesn’t really scare me—it’s hard to be scared in this place, where mystery already lies so thick on everything—but all the same, it wakes a nervous murmur that snakes up my spine.

  “Where do we go?” I ask.

  He shrugs, takes another drag. “That’s something nobody living really knows,” he says. “Not even here. And the dead don’t hang around to explain.”

  We fall silent. I’ve known Joe for so long that even our silences are companionable, but there’s a strain in the quiet today. Something pushing against the peacefulness. It’s my broken body and the old hurts that nobody can mend.

  “I’m going away for a while,” Joe says. “There’s a woman I know that can maybe help, but she’s hard to find and you know what time’s like in this place.”

  Not firsthand, but I’ve heard about it often enough from others. Time’s like water here, sometimes moving faster, sometimes slower than it does in the world where my body’s lying in a hospital bed and can’t even sit up, never mind walk around like I can here.

  “I’ll be okay,” I tell him.

  “I’ll get one or two of the cousins to look in on you,” he says. “Keep you company when you cross over here. Maybe show you around while I’m gone.”

  “Like the crow girls?” I ask, unable to keep the eagerness out of my voice.

  “What makes you think we’re related?”

  Just that you’re all three shapeshifters and tricksters, I think. But I only give him a shrug in response.

  “Maida and Zia will get you into more trouble than you’re already in,” Joe says. “They don’t mean any harm. It’s just the way they are.”

  “Well, I like them.”

  Joe grins. “What’s not to like? They sure do keep the world interesting.”

  He takes a final drag on his cigarette and puts it out against the heel of his boot. The butt goes into his pocket.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he says.

  “Thanks, Joe.”

  I give him a hug. It’s funny, I think. A hug is such a simple thing. We take it for granted along with everything else, like walking and picking up a pencil and breathing. Until we can’t do it anymore. Back in that hospital bed, I can’t even take a drink by myself.

  “Don’t spend all your time here,” Joe says as he steps back. “Promise me you’ll work hard when they start you on rehab.”

  “I will. But first—”

  “You need a little distance. Yeah. I hear you.”

  He puts his index finger against my forehead and gives me a little push.

  “Ya-ha-hey,” he says.

  Then he takes a sideways step and he’s not with me anymore. It’s like he stepped behind an invisible curtain.

  “Ya-ha-hey,” I repeat softly.

  I close my eyes and take a long, deep breath of this enchanted air before I let myself wake up again in the hospital bed.

  3

  When Sophie got to the hospital just before dinner the next evening, she discovered that Jilly had been moved from the intensive care unit into a regular room. She and Desmond had come straight from teaching at the Newford School of Art, so they arrived at the hospital lugging knapsacks of art supplies and portfolios. Once they had the directions to Jilly’s new room, they returned to the elevator where Sophie pressed the button for the fifth floor, two up from where they were. The elevator immediately took them straight down to the cafeteria in the basement.

  “Stupid thing,” Sophie muttered.

  She reached for the button again, but Desmond mouthed the word “Jinx” and caught her hand before she could touch it.

  “Better let me,” he said, “or we’ll be riding this thing all night.”

  Sophie sighed and leaned back against the wall. Desmond grinned at her, teeth flashing white against his coffee-brown skin. As usual, he was wearing n
othing more than cargo pants, a T-shirt, and a thin cotton jacket, even though the wind was brisk enough outside tonight to take the temperature almost down to freezing. But Desmond always dressed as though he were still living on the Islands. The woolen tam that was pulled down over his dreadlocks might be considered a concession to the cold, except he wore it on the hottest days of the summer as well. His tams were invariably in the African liberation colors of red, black, green, and yellow, but Desmond wasn’t a Rastaman. He didn’t even have a Jamaican accent, his family having emigrated to Newford when he was barely seven.

  They met Angel in the hall when they stepped out of the elevator. She managed a small smile for them, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “How is she?” Desmond asked.

  “If it was anyone else,” Angel said, “you’d think they were in pretty good spirits. But this is Jilly, and for her, it’s like a major depression. Don’t let the smiles and jokes fool you. She’s hurting.”

  Desmond sighed. “Makes you wonder about all these plans God’s supposed to have for us, doesn’t it?”

  “God doesn’t do anything to us,” Angel said. “He doesn’t have to. We’re too busy doing it to each other.”

  She lifted a hand, then stepped into the elevator. The doors whispered shut.

  “Angel’s hurting, too,” Desmond said.

  “We all are.”

  He nodded. “Amen to that.”

  The new room was a double, but the other bed was unoccupied, so Jilly had the space to herself for now. Windows took up the whole side wall. They started at about waist height and rose all the way to the ceiling, offering a wide view of the city’s skyline. From this height they could see all the way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Beyond its square finialed towers a jagged mountain range of tall office buildings hid the lakefront and Wolf Island.

  “Some view,” Desmond said.

  “They send tour groups through here a couple of times a day,” Jilly told him.

  She gave them the crooked smile that was the best she could manage these days, then her gaze dropped to what they were carrying. Sophie watched Jilly struggle to keep the smile in place.