In addition to selling his great-great-grandfather’s watch, Levi had been saving for this special night, working overtime at the pharmacy, delivering newspapers in the early mornings. Spying Levi from the cab was the best moment of Jet’s life. She was ready to fall in love without looking back. Frankly, she had already fallen. She paid, then ran out to embrace Levi. They kissed and barely noticed the world around them. Horns honked, and they were nearly run over by a bicyclist. Levi laughed and pulled Jet out of harm’s way. He was carrying her birthday present. An old edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
As Jet was about to open the book, as her heart was lifting and her life just beginning, her parents’ taxi roared up. They’d heard her tell the cabbie the address of the Plaza, and, suspicious, they had followed, up Sixth Avenue, turning onto Fifty-Ninth Street. Susanna opened the window now and called shrilly, using Jet’s rarely used given name. Bridget Owens, you stop right there!
Jet looked up at her mother and panicked. The cab was racing toward them. Before her parents could leap out and drag her away, before they could ruin her life, she took hold of Levi’s arm and cried out, Let’s run. He didn’t even know what they were running from, but he knew he was dedicated to protecting Jet. They headed for the park, and as they did, the parents’ cabdriver was told to step on it and not let them escape. There was an oil slick on the road, beneath the pools of spilled water used for the horses pulling the carriages that took tourists and lovers through the park. It was dark and the city smelled like freshly spaded earth.
Just across from the Plaza Hotel the taxi skidded out of control. Birds in the trees took flight and filled the ember sky. Levi leapt in front of Jet as the taxi came barreling onto the sidewalk. Time slowed so that she could see his eyes dilate when he realized what was happening. It was so very slow they might have been caught in a glass jar. She could hear his thoughts. Not yet. Not this. And then time sped up, it rolled up right under their feet and caught them off balance. The air was alive and pushed against Jet like a wave, but it was Levi who was pushing her out of the way. She lay on the cold ground as glass shattered and fell over her, like a hard rain. There was no other sound, no birds, no traffic, nothing but the sound of her heart thudding against her chest. There was nothing else beyond this moment when she heard the taxi hit Levi, the sound of the world cracking in two. And then she heard his voice, and he said only one word, and that last word was her name.
At Turtle Pond, Franny had slipped off her sneakers and was letting her pale feet dangle over the edge of the rocks. The night was perfect and she worried about perfect things, for there were often flaws seen only under a microscope, with a very clear eye. She felt a chill go through her, as if the wind had blown directly through her chest. All at once, there were tears in her eyes.
“I’ll swim here if you will,” Haylin announced, already stripping off his shirt. He always wanted to prove himself to Franny, yet he never exuded the same confidence. Hay had recognized that she had a strange sort of courage. She didn’t even seem to notice when she was in danger. Perhaps that was why he was driven by the need to be brave and why he stood on the very edge of the rock, his heart thudding, his emotions at a fever pitch. If courage was what she wanted, that was what he’d give her. “Seriously,” he said. “Let’s swim.”
Franny shook her head no. She felt nerves again, right in the pit of her stomach, as if the world was about to spin out of control. Another time she might have been thrilled by Haylin’s proposed leap into the muddy abyss. But she knew the warning. She must use caution. Plus, swimming with him was out of the question; she would only float and he would wonder why and there was no way for her to explain the reason.
The water was murky, filled with mysterious, mossy items. Still, Haylin didn’t back down. He pulled off his boots and unzipped his jeans, then took everything off. She’d never seen him naked. He was like a statue, perfect.
Haylin inhaled, then leapt into the pond. The turtles splashed away as he disappeared into the blackness of the surface. Water rose up and slapped against the rocks, then spilled onto the path. Though the pond was filled from a tap, trash left to sink to its depths made the water appear ominous and unclean, likely chock-full of strange debris and unknown pathogens. Franny’s heart was hitting against her chest. Haylin would probably need a tetanus shot.
He didn’t rise. Franny thought of bees, and ashes, and broken glass. But Haylin hadn’t been inside their house when the deathwatch beetle appeared, so surely he’d be safe. And yet there was a circle forming around the spot where he had disappeared. No air bubbles, no Haylin. Franny wanted to leap in after him, but she knew from the time spent in Leech Lake it was impossible. She would only float to the surface. Because she couldn’t be drowned, she couldn’t follow him into the depths to save him. She was frantic, her pulse pounding, fearing that the curse was happening right now.
When Hay suddenly reappeared, he broke the surface like some sort of enormous fish. He was sputtering for air, turning blue. He struggled for breath, then met her eyes. Franny sat frozen on the rock; a kind of terror had immobilized her. Caution.
Hay shook his head. “Jesus, Franny,” he said.
She’d never seen anyone look as sad or disappointed. He swam to the rocks with two strokes of his long arms and hoisted himself out. His hair was slicked back. His penis looked blue from the cold. Franny had a small shiver of what she thought was fear, but it was really something else entirely, what she didn’t want to feel for him and already did.
Hay reached for his clothes and pulled them on even though he was soaking wet. “There’s a shopping cart down there. My leg got stuck. I almost couldn’t surface. In case you care.”
“Haylin.” Franny spoke with emotion. “Of course I do.”
“There’s something wrong between us, Franny.” Hay cast his large, wet feet into his boots without bothering with socks. Then he came to her and put his hands on her shoulders; he was shaking from the frigid water and from raw emotion. “Were you going to let me drown? Seriously. Tell me the truth. You’re keeping something from me. What are we to each other, Franny?”
Before she could answer Everything and explain the curse of who she really was, Franny spied a figure weaving through the trees. He was headed straight toward them with a strange, shuddering gait. It was Vincent and he was barefoot. He’d run all the way down Eighty-Ninth Street and through the park and was now sprinting forward, crying out her name. Franny pulled away from Haylin. She could hear bees, the ones that had been there on the day when she and Vincent knew someone in their house was doomed. She looked up and spied the moon and instantly knew what this night had brought. She now thought one word. Her sister’s name. Jet.
“What is it?” Hay said, concerned.
When Vincent reached them, he was pale with shock. “They had an accident.” He looked so young standing there, barefoot, his bravado gone. Because Franny appeared to be frozen, he grabbed her hand. “I know what you’re thinking, but she’s alive.”
Which meant the others were not.
Franny and Vincent took off across the park together. Haylin called out, but Franny couldn’t answer; she was running too hard. She didn’t realize that she was also barefoot until they’d reached the pavement. She stood shivering on Fifth Avenue while Vincent hailed a cab.
They sat side by side in the ER at Bellevue, not speaking. The cold linoleum floor nearly froze their feet. When the doctor came to speak to them it was long past midnight.
“Your sister has a concussion and several broken ribs,” the doctor told them. “She’s quite shaken and we had to stitch up her face, but she’ll be fine.”
“And our parents?” Franny asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry. It was instantaneous. And the boy also just passed on.”
Franny and Vincent exchanged a look. They had completely forgotten that Jet had intended to meet Levi.
“You mean he’s dead?” Vincent asked.
“He was struck by the cab your parents were in.”
Franny had never felt so cold. “They followed her. They chased after them.”
Vincent draped his jacket over her shoulders. “Let’s go see Jet.”
She was in a small private room, her black hair streaming onto the white pillow. Her face and arms were bruised and bandaged, and there was a gash on her face that had been closed with thirty neat stitches. Her eyes were rimmed red. It was her birthday, her night, her parents, her beloved. Guilt was curling around her heart with tendrils of self-hatred. In one instant she had lost everything.
Franny came to sit on the edge of the bed. “There was nothing any of us could do to stop it. You can’t blame yourself, Jetty. It was an accident.”
Jet leaned into the soft pillow. She was doomed to lose everything, even her gift of sight. When they’d first brought her into the hospital she could hear the patients’ jumbled thoughts. Hearts that beat stopped with a shudder, men who were racked with pain. Then all at once she couldn’t hear a thing. The only sound that reverberated was the voice of the Reverend, who’d come to a room down the hall and set to wailing when he found his son, here in New York City, a place he had always believed caused ruination. He had been right about the curse, for this was what love had done to his boy, who never would have been struck if not for Jet. Although she’d never met the Reverend and he likely despised her, there was no one Jet felt she had more in common with than he, for the person they both loved best in the world was gone.
The furniture was draped with white sheets as Aunt Isabelle instructed they must do when they entered the mourning period. She had arrived late that night without a suitcase, though she carried a large, black purse. She had a black silk band around her right arm, and she wore a felted hat with one ember feather attached to the brim. She told them they needed to turn the mirrors to the wall. Then she had them sprinkle salt on the windowsills and leave sprigs of rosemary outside the doors.
“It was bad luck,” she told them. “Nothing more.”
She sat beside Jet, offering a cup of tea, which Jet refused to drink.
“It was bound to happen,” Jet said in a small, broken voice. “It was my fate.”
“It wasn’t fate. It was the interruption of fate. No one can control such things.”
Jet was thin and pale. She turned away from her aunt, tied up with guilt and grief. Isabelle knew right away that her niece had lost the sight, for her eyes were a dull dove gray without light or life.
Isabelle slept in the room where the previous family’s cook had cried herself to sleep every night. Franny had made up the bed with clean white sheets and had left lavender in the dresser drawers. Isabelle unpacked her purse, in which she had a nightgown and slippers and a bar of black soap.
“She never thought to choose courage,” Isabelle said.
“But she did choose courage. Didn’t she?”
“In life we don’t always get what we choose. I gave her what she needed.”
On the day of the funeral, Franny found two black dresses in their mother’s closet. She was surprised to see several pairs of red shoes in the back of the closet, something her mother had forbidden them from wearing. Franny helped Jet to dress, pulling her nightgown over her head, then slipping the prettier of the dresses on her, treating her as if she were a child. Jet still hadn’t slept or had a bite to eat. She thought of her parents, how she had often heard them talking late at night. If it wasn’t true love that they’d had, then it was a true partnership. She couldn’t imagine one without the other. Now she realized that she hadn’t spent enough time with them, or told them she loved them; perhaps she hadn’t even known. All she knew was that she didn’t feel safe with them gone. Anything could happen now. Whatever their world had been, it would never be again. She sat in a chair in the living room, wearing her black dress, hands folded in her lap as she watched the door, as if she expected their parents to walk through, maybe then time would have rolled backward, maybe then Levi would still be alive.
Vincent, bleary-eyed and ravaged, had on a black suit he hadn’t bothered to press. When he came out of his room barefoot, Isabelle insisted he go back for his boots. That was the way in which their family members were buried and it was disconcerting to see Vincent without shoes. At the funeral home on Madison Avenue the coffins were closed. The mortician had been instructed that both their mother and father must wear black and be barefoot. Franny had chosen a Chanel dress for their mother and handed over her favorite red lipstick and Maybelline mascara, for she never went without her makeup and Franny was not about to have that change. For their father, Vincent had taken a Brooks Brothers suit from the closet, along with one of the white shirts he had had tailored in London. Franny had straightened her own unruly hair with an iron and dabbed on pale lipstick so that she might look presentable. There was no way to hide the wound on Jet’s face, though Franny tried with some powder from one of their mother’s gold compacts. It looked as though blue flowers had been stamped on Jet’s skin. Even when it healed, a jagged line would run down one side of her face.
Not that Jet cared. Nothing would be punishment enough for having lived through the accident. She kept seeing Levi put his arm out and step in front of her, and then she saw stars, and he called her name, or maybe it was only a sigh, the last of his life and breath rising up.
“You know he was related to us,” Vincent told Franny.
“No.” She looked at her brother. “How so?”
He shrugged. “Isabelle wouldn’t tell me.”
“Jet has lost the gift,” Franny said sadly. “I didn’t know that could happen.”
Their sister was still sitting in the chair, though the car had come for them. She barely seemed to breathe.
“She’ll get it back,” Vincent said. “It’s in her blood.”
At the chapel in Manhattan vases of orange and red gladiolus were set onto the polished tables. Aunt Isabelle sat with them in the front row. No one in the family cried. Although they were crushed, crying in public was unacceptable. Several of Dr. Burke-Owens’s patients who were in attendance were inconsolable. After the service, Franny and Vincent shook the hands of those who had come to pay their respects, while Isabelle sat in the parlor with Jet. Hay was there, along with his parents, who were polite and distant and quick to suggest that Haylin hurry along. But he wasn’t about to desert Franny, even though a limo was waiting to take the Owens siblings to the cemetery in Massachusetts for the interment.
“She has to leave,” Mr. Walker muttered. “Their car is here.”
“Fuck the car. I want to go with you,” Hay told Franny. “I should be there.”
Aunt Isabelle had come up behind them. “I like him. He should come with us.”
“Impossible,” Franny said. She wanted to keep Haylin away from her family’s troubles. It was bad enough that she must now introduce her aunt to the Walkers.
“You’re quite rich,” Isabelle said to Mr. Walker. “And yet you seem to have so little.” Haylin grinned when he overheard her remark.
“You’re quite rude,” Mr. Walker said.
“My niece and her husband are about to be buried. Who’s the rude one?”
“I think we know the answer to that one, Dad,” Haylin said.
Franny took her aunt by the hand to lead her away. “Not here,” she urged. “Not now.”
“What do you think I would do to that horrid man?” Isabelle said. “Believe me, he’ll bring on his own bad luck. His son, well, he’s another story. He’s the real thing.” She waved at Haylin and he waved back. Unlike most people, he was completely undaunted by Isabelle Owens.
Franny went to explain that there would be only family in Massachusetts, and all of the Owenses gathered in one place was far too much for any outsider to deal with.
“I don’t mind,” Haylin said. “Especially if they’re all like your aunt.”
“I’ll phone as soo
n as I’m back,” Franny promised.
The burial was to be held in the small graveyard in Massachusetts, the one they’d once peered at through the mossy iron fence, not especially interested, not even when they realized the old headstones were all engraved with the name Owens. Now their parents would be there, even though their mother had spent her entire life trying her best to get away from her family. And yet this place had continued to have a hold over her. In the end she knew she belonged with her relations. Her will had stated that both she and her husband were to be buried there, side by side.
Driving along the Massachusetts Turnpike, Jet had to be sedated. She took Valium on top of the painkillers she’d been given for her cracked ribs. Even then, she continued to shake. Vincent had discovered the limo had a bar. He gulped down scotch with the intention of getting good and drunk. Isabelle had insisted on sitting with the driver so she could give him directions. When she heard the clanking of bottles, she turned and gave Vincent a hard look.
“Let’s not have a scene today,” she suggested. “There’ll be trouble enough.”
“People are dead. To hell with good behavior,” Vincent muttered, low enough so that their aunt wouldn’t hear, but of course she did anyway and she gestured to Franny.
Franny returned the bottle of scotch to its proper place. “We need to get through this without incident,” she said darkly.
“Franny, we’re not getting through anything without incident,” Vincent said. “Isn’t that obvious?”