When Venus Fell

  “I think I’m flattered. Or scared.”

  “Enough,” Gib said. He scowled at Kelly. “Apologize for that barrage.”

  Kelly lifted her chin. “I’m sorry, Ms. Arinelli.”

  “No problem. Apology accepted.”

  Unless I had lost count, the only ones missing were Gib’s sister Ruth and his great-aunt, Olivia Cameron. Somewhere beyond the doorway that other Camerons popped through like refugees from a time machine was the legendary Olivia. I gazed fixedly at what I could see of the room.

  A fair-haired baby scooted into the hall in his four-wheeled selfpropelled walker. A pacifier plugged firmly in his mouth, his chubby hands latched on to the walker’s tray, which circled him like a doughnut, he played bumper-pool with several sets of legs, including my own, before he darted through an opening and rolled up the hall, bouncing off furniture and the closed doors of various rooms. He reached a point where the entrance hall intersected a second hall.

  Ebb Hodger sprang into view and snared him. “I let him think he’s ex-caping,” she said, her big, streaked-brown hair bouncing in a tide of curls over her forehead. “He’s faster than a pinched rabbit.” She and the child scooted out of sight. I heard him rolling up the other hall with Ebb’s running footsteps behind him.

  “That’s my son,” Isabel confirmed. “Dylan.”

  “Dylan,” Ella echoed. “Like the poet or the pop singer?”

  “Oh, both,” Isabel said seriously, nodding.

  “And where is your sister today?” I asked Isabel nonchalantly. “Ruth.” I wanted to assess all the Camerons at once.

  Isabel looked embarrassed.

  “Come,” Bea said, planting herself between Ella and me then taking each of us by an arm. “Enough of us. Herself is waiting without a bloody shred of patience.”

  I glanced at Gib for an explanation. His eyes shuttered, he ignored me. Bea guided us into a magnificent room with high ceilings and library shelves, deep leather chairs, heavy reading tables, chunky brass and copper lamps, and the slight, musty scent of a thousand old, leather-bound books.

  Swords, daggers, and sinister two-headed battle-axes decorated a wall between bookcases, posed on thick brass hooks and wooden racks set on delicate golden fleur-de-lis wallpaper. A library table was adorned with lace and linen, bouquets of white roses in crystal vases, and two dewy bottles of champagne set in silver buckets.

  But all of that paled next to the tiny woman looking back at me. I forgot about the mysterious Ruth. With one fine-boned, mottled hand steadying herself on the back of a tall, ornate chair, the queenly, astonishing Olivia Cameron waited.

  She raised her hand and beckoned us. Bea gave me a small push. I moved forward. I was transfixed by the quality of Olivia Cameron’s eyes, misty-blue, still vivid, framed in a face as wizened as an ancient tree. Long gray hair flowed around her shoulders and down her torso. Her chest was a thin scoop above flat little breasts. She was dressed in a black jumper over an ivory blouse with a cameo at the throat. Her legs and feet were knobby and blue-veined below the dress’s hem. She was barefoot.

  I stopped in front of her, less than an arm’s length away. She tilted her head back, worked her mouth soundlessly, grimaced, shut her eyes, and reaching up, laid one small hand on the side of my face.

  “Hello,” I said softly. “Thank you for remembering my sister and me.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled. She crooked a finger at Ella, and when my sister stepped up tentatively beside me, Olivia touched her cheek briefly, and smiled again.

  “Aunt Olivia wants to write to you,” Gib said, behind us. “She doesn’t speak.”

  I didn’t have time to absorb that strange news. Doesn’t, not can’t? No one had bothered to mention this before. He handed his great-aunt a small spiral-bound notepad and a thin gold ink-pen, and she opened the notepad and wrote while Gib held the pad in his hands. When she finished he held the pad out for me to read:

  It’s about time.

  She might be filled with the sly humor of the saints, I thought, or just an old lady’s arrogant peculiarity. “Thank you for inviting us,” I told her stiffly. Olivia pursed her lips angrily then pulled something from her voluminous dress pocket. She handed me an old 45-rpm record of “Evening Star,” with a faded paper jacket. “A golden song for my golden girls,” was written on it in Mom’s hand.

  I stared at it. “How did you get that?”

  “It was with the money,” Gib said.

  A golden song for my golden girls.

  I faced him. Inside I was shaking. “Then the money didn’t come from the accounts my father used to bankroll his politics. It was part of a trust fund my mother set up for Ella and me. I thought the government had confiscated the fund along with everything else. But it’s the profits from song royalties on ‘Evening Star.’ ”

  “Oh, that’s true, Gib, it’s really true,” Ella cried. “I remember when Pop showed us this copy of the record and told us about the trust fund Mom and he created.” Tears streaking her face, she took the record from me and caressed it. “I can’t believe we have this back.” She looked at the gathered Camerons. “Our father sent Simon something much more precious than money.”

  “We understand,” Min said gently.

  I kept a neutral expression but almost sagged with relief. The money my father had tried so desperately to save for Ella and me had come straight from the last of his innocence—and our mother’s loving heart.

  Gib watched me a moment, obviously astonished. I recovered and held his gaze evenly. “The money’s clean,” I said. “It belongs to me and Ella, and we’ve got no reason to be ashamed of it.” Pride surged in me.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  We stood around the library table in the elegant old room, sipping champagne and making awkward attempts at small talk with Min, Bea, and Isabel, while Olivia sat in shrewd silence and Gib studied me as if I were an exotic animal he’d bagged. Eventually I met Olivia’s piercing gaze again. I felt light-hearted. “You want us to sing ‘Evening Star,’ I know. We’ll be happy to perform the song for you.”

  Olivia wrote fervently on her notepad.

  Don’t patronize ME. I’m crazy, but I’m not senile. This isn’t sentimental politeness. Now that we’ve dispensed with the discussion of your money, there’s work to be done. What have you learned in your world? What can we teach you from ours? I want more than one kind of music from you.

  For a minute she and I traded a prickly, unspoken challenge. I had underestimated her, while she had probably overestimated me. But I wasn’t there to play helpmate for her; I’d come to collect the only inheritance the U.S. government hadn’t been able to steal from Ella and me.

  Gib made a small, sharp movement with his head, and I turned toward him instinctively. “The engine key,” he said, holding out his hand. Murmurs of distress went up around me. Gib shook his head. “If we can’t go back in there, nothing will change for this family,” he said. “It’s what my brother would want.”

  Min gasped. “Gib, no. I thought we settled this discussion last night. You proved how impossible it is yesterday.”

  “I would have done the work if I hadn’t been interrupted.” Gib frowned at me as he spoke. “I intend to do it now.”

  “I can’t—” Min began again. Kelly clasped her mother’s shoulder and the boy, Jasper, looked on.

  “Mama, we’ve got to,” he said.

  “We do,” Kelly added, her voice cracking.

  “Uncle Gib,” Jasper said in a raspy voice. “You know Daddy wouldn’t want you to go there without me and Kelly.”

  “It’s my duty, and he wouldn’t want either of you to grieve for him there,” Gib replied gently.

  “I should get to choose where I grieve,” Kelly said loudly. “Shouldn’t I?” Her voice quivered. “I can’t let Daddy’s job go undone.”

  “None of us can,” Carter interjected, shoving his hands in his pockets and scowling. “And I don’t want to keep tracking you, Gib. You’re hard
to follow.”

  Ella gazed at Carter so rapturously that I reached back and grasped her hand in a viselike grip.

  Isabel said, “We have to try,” gazing from one person to another. “We should do it together, Gib.” She went to him and wound one arm through his.

  “You go back to that sawmill again by yourself with another bellyful of liquor,” Bea said flatly, “and you’ll end up a dead man. Except for Venus here, you’d no’ be alive today.”

  Min turned to me and grasped my hand. “You and Ella represent all the goodwill my husband extended to the outside world. All the goodwill this family offers. Aunt Olivia swore it would be a sign if Gib could find you and your sister and if you agreed to come here. I’m sure that sounds foolish to you, but we started to believe. We need to believe our family’s future here is as strong as its past. You’ve already inspired us. Please say something else. We need your objective opinion.”

  I stifled the urge to back away from her. These people were desperate, grasping at whims. They must be coming apart at the seams. Who in their right minds would trust strangers for such serious advice?

  But they all waited expectantly. My head buzzed with champagne and glorious relief over our money’s true origins. All right, I’d try to help them. With the desperate appeal of a spunky 1930s musical star—Judy Garland with braided blond hair and a navel ring—I spread my arms dramatically. Hey kids, let’s fix up the old barn and put on a show! “All right, then. How about—” I paused for emphasis, then “—all of you cut the boards together! And then you fix the chapel floor! You can probably finish the work today if you all pitch in!”

  Silence. Gib studied me with an intensity that made me look away. God—what was I getting myself into? I glanced at the others. Carter, Bea, and Olivia all looked at me and then at each other, as if they’d brought a carnival barker into their antiques-and-broadsword midst. I faced Gib again. “Did you think I drove all the way from Chicago just to sit?” I asked at last. “You invited me here. You wanted me to stir things up. You gave me good news today. Let me repay you with good advice.”

  “I thought you were about to break into song.”

  “Gib, you can count on me to help at the mill,” Carter announced proudly. “I’ve got a strong back and hands. She’s right. We can get those boards cut and trimmed today.”

  “More than that,” Bea said loudly. “There’ll be no backing away once we start, dearies. I say we go on to the chapel with the fresh lumber and fix the floor. Venus and Ella can come along for good luck.”

  I held my breath. Gib watched his sister-in-law, the forty-six-year-old woman who had become, over the years, a second mother to him and his sisters. I saw the emotions pass across his face—sorrow and amazement and hope. She went to him and took his damaged hand in hers. “I’ll try to walk back into that mill,” she said. “I can’t promise you I’ll make it.”

  He nodded. I pulled the key from the waistband of my skirt and placed it on Gib’s palm. His fingers closed around it, feathering my own.

  But he left it in my hand. “I trust you to keep it,” he said, with the slightest bow.

  Eleven

  Our small group stood in front of the sawmill door in the warm September sunshine, an hour before noon. Dylan had been assigned to a shady spot under a tree nearby. Ebb Hodger peered unhappily at the scene while she held him in her lap. Everyone had changed into work clothes, and we were armed with heavy gloves. I still felt like a fool but strangely exhilarated, too.

  Gib opened the door. The darkness poured out like a disease.

  “You okay, big brother?” Isabel asked with a gentle stroke of his hair.

  “Never wanted to walk into this hellhole again,” he admitted. He stepped inside. I followed along with everyone but Min. The wood-scented and oily sawmill air smothered all thought of victory. The mood was painfully intense.

  Gib pivoted like a general on large, dirty workboots. “The sawblade itself is off-limits,” he ordered to Kelly and Jasper, but they dodged him and went up to it anyway, drawn to what they feared most. They touched it gently, cautiously. Then both of them stepped back. “Mama can’t make herself come in,” Jasper said.

  Gib left to talk to her, then came back with his head bowed. “She can’t do it. It’s too much for her to take.”

  Olivia, who had not changed her dress or put on shoes, held Bea’s forearm lightly for balance. They advanced on me, Olivia’s bare feet scuffing a pair of unbroken ski trails in the sawdust. Olivia wrote on her pad.

  Speak for me. Do something.

  “Ma’am, I’m not a miracle worker. I’m not even sure your family really needs or wants me here. I’m a stranger.”

  She stamped a foot and looked at Bea for assistance. Bea scowled at me. “Of course we want you here, as long as you’re not going to stay a bloody useless complainer.”

  I walked outside. Two cars were parked there along with the large flatbed lumber truck. Min sat sideways in the open door of a large burgundy sedan, the kind little old Republican ladies drive to bingo-and-drinks at the club. Her face buried in her hands, she rocked slowly. Jasper and Isabel knelt beside her, and Kelly hung on the doorframe, one hand trailing along her mother’s bowed head.

  “Minnie Cameron,” I said loudly. “Look, I don’t want to be here. This isn’t my fight, really. But since I am stuck with this situation I want you to get up and go in there and make your husband proud. Or I’ll never forgive you for wasting my damned time.” She stared at me.

  Kelly said, wide-eyed, “You are nuts.”

  “Yes, but I recognize a debt of honor when I see one. Minnie, you owe your husband the honor of finishing the chapel floor. He wanted that work done. You have to do it for him. Your determination keeps his memory alive. Doesn’t it?”

  Min pressed her hands to her mouth. “You’re right.” She rose and staggered inside the building. She stared at the sawblade and then at Gib. The material of her work pants trembled around her thin legs as she shivered then hunched over. “Min, come on, Minnie,” Isabel begged, huddling with her pale, soft arms around her sister-in-law’s shoulders.

  “Leave her to settle herself,” Bea said from a corner where she stood beside a wooden stool Carter had fetched for Olivia. Olivia waved Isabel aside. Min hugged her stomach and retched water on the sawdust floor. Isabel crooned to her while Carter leaped forward with a red bandanna he pulled from his jeans pocket. He took Min by the arm.

  But Min straightened. She wiped her mouth then stood as if at attention. She nodded to Gib. He started the blade.

  Carter ran over to the towering stack of chestnut slabs and guided one onto the metal feeder track. Gib laid his hands on its peeled and flat-hewn surface. Carter and Jasper positioned themselves to catch the plank on the other end, where a second track waited to guide cut boards to a pallet.

  It wasn’t easy to watch their faces. Gib eased a slab of wood toward the blade. I shivered as I heard the deep, off-key whine of steel slicing hard chestnut.

  A fine yellow mist sprayed into the air. Sweat poured down Gib’s face, and Min stood rigidly, forcing herself to watch the blade. It sliced a single wide board from the square-hewn slab taken from a tree that had been cut by a Cameron before the birth of any of us except Olivia and Bea.

  The board fell neatly into Jasper’s gloved hands. Gib started the log back through in the opposite direction, never taking his eyes off its progress. And when the second board lay under his fingertips Minnie walked over to it and smoothed her fingers over the wood.

  Olivia wrote on her pad and pressed the pad into my hands.

  Exceptional miracle-working for your first day here.

  Darkness. The moon was up again. Things crept through the forest, small creatures and larger ones, whose eyes caught the light as they moved. No one seemed to notice except Ella and me. I was grateful for the dogs who lazed at the edge of the cemetery below the chapel, keeping all of us safe inside our primitive circle of light. Stacks of fresh-cut chestnut boards sa
t in the eerie glow of work lamps run by a large gasoline-powered generator outside the door.

  I drank in everything, the family most of all. I’d known these people forever and a day. Isabel was as fairy-fey as my own sister, divorced, easily fooled and hurt by men, eager to keep everyone happy. She glided about, dispensing nails and cinnamon cookies, humming gently to the sleeping son she carried in a brightly colored sling across her chest. Min kept to herself, stacking discarded old boards and policing the grassy chapel mound for bits of debris. Kelly and Jasper vied for her attention by competing with each other for buckets of nails and wheelbarrows of trash.

  Gib, his eyes like dull topaz stones in a face smeared with sweat and sawdust, directed the others with calm, quick instructions. He organized the stacked lumber and the tools, and he lifted his head from his own hammering duties each time the electric handsaw buzzed outdoors. He listened protectively, and he watched like a hawk as Carter cut lengths of the new boards atop a pair of sawhorses.

  I saw Gib order the irascible Kelly onto the chapel porch. “The area around the electric saw is off-limits,” he said firmly. “The perimeter intersects the door.”

  “Uncle Gib, I’m not the President and you’re not in the Secret Service anymore,” she protested. “I’m not even old enough to vote.”

  “Pretend, for my sake,” Gib ordered, frowning. His dedication to detail and methodical precision was obvious. He would have made a fine pianist, in that regard.

  “More’s the better,” Bea answered, as she passed around a silver flask of finely aged Scotch whisky. I took a large swallow then tottered inside the chapel. The night was pitch-dark outside the stained-glass windows.

  I carried a tall plastic cup of iced tea to Gib, who was on his knees hammering nails into a board. I tiptoed along the aisle across massive, exposed floor beams. Below the beams lay hard-packed black earth, the top of the ancient mound. I felt I was walking the backbone of some sleeping, mystical giant. Carter, Jasper, Kelly, Minnie, and Isabel were all working diligently at various spots. So was Hoss. Sophia handed him nails from a leather pouch.