When Venus Fell

  She brightened. “Life sucks.” She swaggered around to the passenger side. Her lower lip twitched nervously. After she took her place in the passenger seat I borrowed her cigarette and took a puff.

  “Man,” she said in an awed tone, as she studied me. “How come you’re only wearing a couple of little hoop earrings? I want to see you with all your holes filled up. Man, did it hurt when you got that one up in the top of your ear pierced?”

  “Yep, the needle went into the cartilage and it hurt like a bitch. I don’t recommend it.”

  “You’re not wimpin’ out, are you? I mean, you ought to put on all your earrings and be proud.”

  “My ears need a rest. The jewelry was for my act. It looked good onstage, but it’s no fun to hook it with a fingernail. I tore one of my holes, once. Had to have stitches. It’s no fun to have your holes stitched, either.”

  She giggled wildly. “Uncle Gib says you have a pierced belly button. When he came home from Chicago he told Aunt Ruth and Aunt Isabel all about it, and like, he was saying exactly how you had a little gold ring with a little gold chain that went around your waist, and how it looked like you’d sprinkled some gold glitter around your belly button, and how your belly jewelry reflected the stage lights and stuff when he went in that lesbo nightclub to see you the first time, and so he’s telling this story and all of a sudden Aunt Ruth said, ‘Good godawmighty, did you get out a magnifying glass? You’ve spent more time describing her navel than you’ve spent talking about the last five women you dated.’ Uncle Gib gave her this kind of one-eyed squint he does when he’s pissed off, and he got real quiet.”

  I should have laughed. I should have enjoyed knowing Gib was a secret slave to my allure. But a wave of intense longing went through me, and I was suddenly aware of my navel as if he’d kissed it.

  “Can I see it?” Kelly babbled on. “Your navel?”

  I pulled up my T-shirt and she peered at my stomach. “Hey, that looks like a little silver barbell. Can you feel it all the time?”

  “When my clothes rub against it.”

  “Is it sexy?”

  “To who? Me? Sure. And it makes me feel centered. That may sound strange, but—”

  “No, I get it. Chakras and shit. Center of your energy. I know. I read a Shirley MacLaine book once.”

  I took another long pull on the cigarette and blew smoke rings as I drove, then crushed the butt in my ashtray, among cold wads of chewing gum.

  “Not your brand?” Kelly asked.

  “I quit smoking a few years ago. Got rid of most of my bad habits. They catch up with you if you don’t. You have to weed them out. You ought to quit while it’s easy.”

  “What kind of drugs do you do?”

  “Aspirin.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Unh-uh. None. They cost too much, they’re bad for your health, and the world’s crazy enough without confronting it with your head all messed up. You don’t want anybody taking advantage of you because you’re wasted.”

  “But what about the, you know, the thrill of experimenting with your inner dimensions? All that sixties stuff. I thought you were some kind of hippie.”

  “You want to experiment with your inner dimensions? Write poetry. Write a song. Hug your mother. And for the record, I’m not old enough to have ever been a hippie. In fact it’s safe to say all the hippies disappeared by the time I was old enough to notice. Disco music and their own aging baby-boomer greed did them in.”

  “Shit.”

  “So tell me—do you like to scurry around the woods with this secret, gothic look or do you just like the excitement of leaping out of the bushes at visitors?”

  She blinked. “I wasn’t trying to scare you, I promise, I—” She halted, then quickly restored her apathy. She shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. I’m the queen of the Goth fan club. Wanna see the bruises from my needle tracks?”

  As I drove I glanced over at her. She looked as sinister as Cinderella playing dress-up for Halloween. “I could tell you some stories about musicians who shoot up,” I said casually. “They drool in their food and fall asleep in the middle of a conversation.”

  She puckered her black-lipsticked mouth. “I’m really not interested in that kind of nasty stuff, anyhow. But it’s cool to talk about—you know? People should walk the edge so they can really know what the abyss looks like.”

  “Trust me, you don’t have to walk up to the edge to know how evil it is. You can stand back and watch other people dive right in.”

  She gave an elaborate sigh. “You mean people you love?”

  I hesitated. Then, “That’s exactly what I mean. And I’m not just talking about drugs.”

  “You mean any kind of evil you can’t stop from happening?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like what happened to my dad and Uncle Gib.”

  “Right.”

  “Uncle Gib’s the big man around here now. Mama has abdicated all power. See, we got this real male hierarchy thing going on in our family.”

  “I don’t think it’s a matter of sexual politics. I think your mother needs more time to mourn and recover. And from what I’ve heard she’s never been the kind of person who felt comfortable as a leader.”

  “I wish she’d just be comfortable as a mother, you know. It’s like we can’t talk anymore. Like she’s shut up inside herself.”

  “She loves you and Jasper like a mother tiger. I’ve been watching. Just cut her some slack for a while longer.”

  She shrugged. “She told us to respect Uncle Gib like we did Daddy. But my dad was cool. I bet he wouldn’t have cared if I’d smoked some weed.”

  “I see. Hmmm. You’ve tried a more evil weed than tobacco, eh?”

  “Yeah, a guy at school grew a bushel of pot behind his grandpa’s pigpens. He gave me a bagful a couple of months ago, but Uncle Gib got wind of it. Like he smelled it on my clothes. You know, ’cause he got trained to know about drugs in the Secret Service, I guess. He didn’t tell Mama, but he threw my stash in the river and took me over to the sheriff’s house and made me watch a film on brain damage.”

  “Well, maybe he overreacted, but he’s probably worried about you. You know, when you’re feeling confused it’s too easy to make some really dangerous choices.”

  “But I wouldn’t! I told him it was no big deal! But he said”—she puffed out her chest—“ ‘Bad habits grow from small roots.’ Sometimes he’s got like this old-man righteous asshole attitude.”

  Teenage angst looks at every issue through the backward end of a telescope, reducing all outside concerns to a single effect on Self. I remembered how I was at her age and how crazy I was after Pop died, but I decided tough love was the best approach. “Look, if you imagine I’m going to let you come hang out with me so you can toke and smoke and get high, you’ve got another think coming. I mean, we can be cool, but we’re not going to be that cool. Okay?”

  She muttered obscenely for a minute. Then, “I just thought you could give me some advice. Nobody else around here has a clue. Nothing exciting happens around here. Nothing good. It’s haunted.” She shrugged, but her lip stopped twitching. “Would you teach me to sing?”

  I blinked at the sudden change of subject. “I’m not much of a singer.”

  “Yeah, but I bet you know enough to teach me how to breathe right and project my voice and all.”

  “All right. I’ll teach you what I can. Why?”

  “I sent in an application for a beauty pageant. Miss Teenage Eastern Tennessee. It’s in December. There’s a talent competition.”

  “Why do you want to be in a pageant?” She shrugged. I noticed the choker necklace she wore. Attached to the short, thick chain were a crucifix, a tiny, faded-gold bell, and a half-dozen car keys. “Quite a collection of stuff you’ve got on that chain there,” I offered.

  “This is junk from the bottom of my dad’s jewelry case,” she said, fingering the necklace and giving a shrug. “I just think it’s neat to wear it. You know—so when pe
ople look at me they’ll be looking at him, too, kind of.”

  Here was another heartsick Cameron soul. I understood too well. She wanted to represent her father to the world in every way she could dream up, even if avenues such as beauty pageants didn’t make much sense. “I know the name of that tune,” I said.

  When we arrived at the cottage I said darkly, “Your uncle Gib didn’t show me this place when we were touring the valley.”

  “Probably ’cause he figured you’d want to move there right away if he told you about it. I guess he was right.”

  “It’s a special place.”

  “Yeah. Dad used to rent it to people. Some people think it’s the supremo place to stay.”

  I exhaled wearily as I got out of the car. The woods felt like a humid green fortress. Kelly leaned on the car’s hood and extracted another cigarette from a crumpled pack in her jeans pocket. “Want one more?”

  I was feeling vulnerable and defeated. “Yeah.” We smoked in companionable silence. “Where’s that path go?” I gestured toward a pretty little sunlit trail that wound off through the forest.

  Kelly flicked ashes. “Down the hill. It’s a back way to the chapel. We got walking trails all over the valley. They were Daddy’s idea. His and Mama’s. Jasper and I used to go with Daddy and help him cut the blackberry briars back from the sides every summer. There’s miles of trails around here. We used to take a knapsack full of Cokes and candy bars, and when we got done with the briars we’d sit up on the eagle cliffs and Daddy’d sing.”

  “What kind of songs did he like to sing?” I asked gently.

  “Real bad country-western. Like ‘You Can Keep My Wife but Give My Truck Back.’ ” She smiled a little. “And he liked Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe ’cause his first name was Simon.”

  I gestured toward the cottage. “Your dad put up that historical plaque?”

  She nodded, fingering her necklace with the tips of her black-painted nails. “It was his idea to fix up Great-great-grandma’s schoolhouse and let people stay in it. It’s got a big tub with water jets in it.”

  I got dizzy and crushed the cigarette under the heel of my sandal. Camerons had trails and roads all over the place, too many buildings, houses, and historical markers, and I couldn’t imagine where Ella would fit in, much less me.

  Kelly followed me around like a lost puppy while I toured my new quarters. I ran my hands over the cottage’s handsome Adirondack-style wood chairs and tables. Touching soothed me. Ella teased that I always tried to coax music out of any object I laid my hands on.

  In the main room was a massive stone fireplace and a chintz couch that looked like it might pull out into a bed. I tested it and it did. I sat on the mattress and studied the wall across from me. It had been left in the original whitewashed planks, with an antique chalkboard set among landscape paintings of the valley and the grand, plain-spirited Hall.

  Make yourself at home, Venus, was written on the chalkboard in a feminine style I recognized already as Isabel’s handwriting.

  In one of the nearby paintings a Cherokee village of low huts stretched along the river, with a large, round council house at their center. I absorbed that past through my fingertips. I touched the chalkboard message, smudging it. Didn’t trust the sentiment. I scrubbed my hand over the words and erased them. The only bedroom was sumptuous with comforters and richly colored pillows and thick copper lamps, the bed, kingsized with tall log posts. Off the bedroom was a decadently luxurious bathroom with a giant whirlpool tub. The bathroom had a huge, low-set garden window that opened to face a small deck and the woods beyond.

  With Kelly right behind me I wandered into a small but modern kitchen, bright and cozy with gingham curtains and a red-checked table in front of a bay window. The kitchen was stocked with mouth-watering tasties and smelled of sweet, ripe peaches stacked in an earthenware bowl by the kitchen window. There were tins filled with what appeared to be fresh homemade cookies, and a basket of fat, soft muffins wrapped in gold foil.

  Home, sweet home, for however long it lasted.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow, if it’s okay,” Kelly said. “I’ve got to go get ready for church. I have to change in the woods. I left a knapsack.”

  “Sure. Come back and we’ll talk about that pageant business. Even if you change your mind about doing it, I’ll still teach you the basic techniques of singing.”

  “Great!”

  I walked out on the porch with her. “So tell me something, Kelly, because I’ve tried to avoid asking this. It’s not very polite.”

  Her face lit up. “Hey, I’m cool.”

  “Can your great-aunt Olivia hear okay? That is, she can’t talk but she’s not partially deaf, is she?”

  “Oh, she can hear fine. She can hear me say ‘goddamn’ a mile away under a bushel basket.”

  “What happened to her voice?”

  With a bored expression, as if telling a fact she’d repeated thousands of times at her tender age, Kelly explained, “She quit talkin’ after she killed her husband with rat poison. She put it in his dinner. He foamed at the mouth and died having fits.”

  The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Kelly noted my stunned expression and grinned. “Neat, huh? But it was fifty years ago. She hasn’t killed anybody since then. Besides, don’t worry, she really likes you. I can tell. I gotta go.”

  After Kelly loped into the woods with a wave good-bye I stood on the cottage porch, thinking about Olivia being a notorious husband-poisoning widow from decades past. My sister was somewhere in Oklahoma with a stranger she’d married. I was secretly falling in love with Gib, a disapproving, damaged man who scared and excited me with his hard loyalties. And now I was related by marriage to a psychologically mute old murderess.

  IN THIS VICINITY, FIFTY YEARS AGO, OLIVIA CAMERON PROVED THERE’S NO MARRIAGE THAT CAN’T BE A LITTLE MORE EXCITING. SHE DEMONSTRATED THE FINE ART OF COOKING TO PLEASE A MAN. OR POISON HIM.

  I wondered where they put the historical marker for that.

  Nineteen

  I stayed busy composing new duets on my keyboard and plotting career strategies for the future, when Ella and I would undoubtedly need them.

  It made no difference to me that each night, when Ella called me to chat, she sounded blissful. Not only was she having a wonderful time on her extended honeymoon, she was being treated like a queen. Carter had given her a diamond ring so extravagant that she couldn’t mention it without crying. Hoover Bird had presented her with an heirloom handwoven Macintosh family blanket, and he had also bestowed on her a Cherokee name that meant dove. She and Carter were heading to Chicago. He’d already lined up a buyer for our RV. They would be home soon.

  Home, she said easily. It rang in my ears.

  When I got off the phone one night I sat on the cottage porch in the dark and realized Ella Arinelli was now officially Ella Dove Macintosh. I was the only one left who bore the Arinelli name that Grandpop had brought to America so proudly.

  “I’m the last of the Mohicans,” I said out loud.

  My words echoed back at me.

  • • •

  One morning I sat in the cottage’s sunny kitchen nook, drinking breakfast tea and eating toast covered in apple butter. Giant acorns popped the roof like gunshots, and I looked out once to see deer in the yard and a fat woodchuck sniffing among wild muscadine vines. I rinsed my teacup three times out of sheer boredom and feared I might start talking to squirrels unless I found a routine to cling to, soon.

  Olivia and Bea arrived in a golf cart. They drove around the valley at odd times of the day and night in their cart, though I’d glimpsed them only a few times before. I went outside gratefully. A large tabby cat stood between them on a purple shag-rug bath mat on the dash of the golf cart. The cat leaped down and sniffed the hatchback’s left rear wheel, then turned and peed on the tire.

  “Good morning to you, child,” Bea shouted. She was dressed in pristine white overalls, a flowered shirt, and a large straw hat. “Have the wild beasties
and the ghosties not scared you back to the bosom of the family, yet?”

  “No, but that cat’s insulting me, and the huge kamikaze acorns around here are making me nervous.” An acorn pounded the cottage roof, bounced, hit the roof of the golf cart, bounced again, and nearly beaned the cat as it finished spritzing my car. Olivia smiled. I walked over to the cart and she laid one of her hands, like bones covered in thin yellowed paper, on my wrist. She handed me a note.

  Emory is coming today. He plans to make his final presentation about the Hall’s future. We vote today. You must come and help me.

  I held her gaze firmly. “Why should I help you?”

  She scowled then gestured to Bea, who was suddenly serious. Bea clicked her thick fingers. “If respect isn’t in your heart by now, your help will mean nothing. But Herself believes you have the knack for seein’ us as we need to be seen, for good or ill. We’re puttin’ our faith in you, dearie. It’s up to you whether you want it or no’.”

  “What if Emory’s right? Maybe y’all should go into partnership with his investors.”

  “Then perhaps we’re no’ regarding the situation with anything but our tired, wishful hearts. If you think our time here should come to an end, say so. For believe me or not, dear Gib sets store by your thoughts. He says you’re too honest for his own good, but he means that as a compliment.”

  “I’ll go just to see how the dastardly Emory operates. But I don’t intend to get involved. I’m only doing this because I want to study how this family reacts to stress without luring unsuspecting visitors into disastrous marriages.”

  Bea hooted. “We’ll turn you loose on Emory with that sharp sense of humor of yours and you’ll gut him like a trout!”

  “I hate to disappoint you but I and my sense of humor have to change clothes first. Excuse me.” I gestured to the black silk pajama top I wore with ragged shorts made from sweatpants. Olivia’s fingers tightened on my wrist. Her eyes gleaming, she glanced at the placid-looking Beatrice with silent communication. “Oh!” Bea exclaimed. “It’s slippin’ my mind.” Bea looked at me slyly. “She wants to see your belly jewel.”