When Venus Fell

  “Old Raymond Cameron, Emory’s father, he was tight with Herself’s husband, up in Knoxville. They were thick as thieves. Did business together. Kept rooms at the Greenbriar gentlemen’s club. But they were no gentlemen.”

  “I know about that place,” Min told us. “The Greenbriar Town Club. One of my grandfathers was a member. Bankers, judges, politicians—you know, every man who was prominent in Knoxville society back then. The club bought the old Marker mansion. It was very elegant and very private. Some of the members kept apartments or offices there. I grew up hearing rumors that my grandfather went there to drink and gamble.”

  “Aye,” Bea said, nodding. “Herself’s husband kept the letters locked up at that bloody club. And when the murdering bastard went to his bloody demise”—Olivia stared grimly at the floor when Bea said that, but Bea’s eyes glinted with sarcasm—“Raymond, Emory’s father, being a dear bloody friend and relative by marriage—Emory’s father went to the club and took our letters. Emory came into them later, by inheritance. We knew this, Herself and I, we’ve suspected for years he had them. But he ne’er quite had the bloody balls to admit it, before. Or to threaten Herself with them.”

  Silence. The implications and innuendo needed very little time to sink in. I’d often watched Bea and Olivia together, and wondered. What I’d wondered about them was no secret to Gib, his sisters, or Min. I could see years of quiet acceptance on their faces.

  Agony began to seep into Bea’s eyes. “I blame myself for provoking Herself’s husband to the worst of his mean nature.” Bea paused. “And so, when the jealous moods were on him, he shook her wee bairns to death.” She broke down then, and cried.

  “There was no one to blame but him,” Olivia said. “And me. I stayed with him out of shame and vanity and fear. How silly I was! He hurt our children because he was a cruel man straight to his soul. If it hadn’t been about your letters it would have been something else. I will not be afraid again. I will not allow shame to condemn anyone else I love. I will speak and be heard.”

  “I love you so dearly,” Bea said.

  Olivia leaned close to Bea, kissed her cheek, then sang a low, crooning sound to her. Such an odd, sweet, dovelike noise, the soft melody of old heartaches and redemption.

  I knew it well.

  While Gib and Bea helped Olivia back to bed, the rest of us looked at one another in quiet amazement. Ella sank onto the couch. “Lesbians,” she said gently. “We’ve certainly come full circle, haven’t we? There’s a symmetry in it. From playing a lesbian nightclub in Chicago to being taken underwing by two wonderful old ladies who love each other in that way.”

  “Hon, it took you this long to figure it out?” Carter teased gently. “I thought you knew.”

  “Yes, but all these years, Emory’s been trying to scare Aunt Olly into accepting his plan?” Isabel asked. “Isn’t that extortion?”

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed to predatory slits. “That’s blackmail,” she said softly. “All this time I thought he was greedy but honest.”

  “You’ve been known to be pathetically wrong about people,” I said.

  “Is there any doubt that we’re finished with him?” Min asked. “I could never sanction any deal with him now.”

  “We’re more than finished with him,” Ruth confirmed. She gazed at me. “And by the way, regarding that remark you just made, kiss my ass. Who are you to tell me I’m no judge of human nature? You’ve got so little sense you intended to take the rap for Aunt Olly. You’re supposed to hate us but you love us. You were going to run off into the night with Ella in tow, and donate all your inheritance to us. You’re a great one to lecture me about my judgment. Hell, there’ll even come a day when you’ll decide you like me.”

  “Anything’s possible,” I said. “When pigs fly.”

  • • •

  Gib carried me down the hallway. “You tote well,” he said.

  “You’re sure she wants to see me again tonight?” I fretted.

  “Her voice is so hoarse she can barely talk, but she keeps drawing a V on her notepad.”

  “Maybe she wants a vodka martini.”

  He smiled. When he carried me into Olivia’s bedroom I gazed down into her somber blue eyes. She lay in her bed like a queenly elf in a pale ivory robe, revealing a nightgown collar of ivory lace and ribbons at her throat. Her gray hair streamed down her shoulders in frizzled waves. A fringe around her face stuck up in singed tufts, like a halo, and red burn splotches peppered her dough-soft complexion.

  Bea sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. She patted my foot as I dangled in Gib’s arms. “Thank you for coming back, dearie. Seeing you is a comfort to Herself.” She gestured to Gib. “Just set Venus on the bed beside the old doll.”

  Gib lowered me carefully.

  “Hello,” Olivia said in a tired whisper.

  “Hello,” I answered.

  She began inching toward me. I watched speechlessly as she moved with painful determination, hunching down beside me until, finally, she laid her head on my shoulder. “Thank you,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to thank me for.”

  “The heart’s silence is a terrible burden,” she whispered. “Not a shield.”

  I laid one of my bandaged hands on her head, stroking her hair. “I know,” I whispered back.

  Allegra was curled like a black fur hat atop the delicate old lemon-colored chenille bedspread. It was so late the night felt ancient, and the room was shadowy. Outside the window there were no streetlights, no cars on any public road, no pinpoints of airplanes moving high across the night sky. Darkness in the mountains of Tennessee whispered that wild, dangerous animals still lurked close by. That only the good spirits inside a house could fight off the evil spirits hiding outside in that blackness. I drew a tight breath until I heard Gib moving around the room. He switched on a lamp.

  I was cocooned in pillows and swaddled in my mother’s gift. “You could lie down beside me,” I said to Gib.

  “You’re a mind reader now?” He sat down then gently traced my lips with the tip of his finger. He looked so good in a soft blue shirt, open at the throat, with leather suspenders and faded jeans.

  “I see all, I know all,” I whispered. “I am elevated to a high spiritual plane on narcotics and thousands of goose feathers.”

  With him close above me, looking down at me while I looked up, we were suddenly just simply studying each other. He kissed me. “I’ve been answering E-mail from people who heard about the chapel. Media requests for information. Historical societies wanting to know how they can help. Ruth’s working on that part of it, too. The reaction is a helluva thing. It confirms how many people prize this valley just the way it is.”

  “I could have told you that. The chapel didn’t have to burn to prove it. I’m so sorry.”

  He tilted his head and eyed me curiously. “Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?”

  “It seems a long time since you accused me of anything. I miss being a troublemaker.”

  “I can honestly accuse you of changing my life for the better. Of making me happy. Of making yourself such a special part of this family that I don’t know what we’d do without you. What I’d do without you. If you want to talk about something, then let’s talk about this.” He cupped my face in his hands. “On the day we finish restoring the chapel, you marry me. Marry me in the chapel, that same day. That’s the best luck we can bring to it.”

  “You may not want me, after I tell you the truth.”

  He drew back, frowning. “What?”

  I took a deep breath. In a slow, halting voice I told him about the fire, and Ella. What I’d seen, what I’d done, what I’d meant to run from. How I’d feared my own sister had set the fire that nearly killed Olivia and damaged the most cherished symbol of his family heritage. He watched me with no outward reaction. I was beyond tears. I wanted to touch him but felt I didn’t have the right to ask for or give simple sympathy.

  When I finished speaking he reached into his pa
nts pocket. “I meant to give this back to her tonight,” he said, “but in all the commotion, I forgot.”

  He held up Ella’s wedding band.

  I stared at the gleaming diamond-and-gold ring. I was afraid to ask, but finally forced the words. “Where did you find it?”

  “I dug it out of a melted candle at the chapel.”

  I shut my eyes. “You knew all along. You knew she’d been there. That she must be the one I was trying to protect.”

  “Yes. I was afraid that was the case.”

  I looked at him tearfully. “Why didn’t you say something, at least to me?”

  “Because I hoped you’d tell me yourself. That you’d trust me. It took a helluva effort to keep quiet tonight when you started taking the blame.” He bent over me. There were tears in his eyes. “Did you really want to leave me?”

  “No. Never.”

  “I just needed to hear you say so.” He pulled my letter from his pocket again, and read the rest of it aloud. “ ‘I loved you even before I met you, I love you now, and I’ll always love you.’ ” He folded the letter and laid it on the nightstand. Then he carefully gathered me in his arms and stretched out on the bed beside me. “Every time I think of all the reasons I love you,” he said, “what you did tonight will be at the top of the list.”

  Thirty-four

  I think Ruth saw the face of her parents’ murderers, the Irish terrorists who set the bomb, in every person she prosecuted, and Gib had seen them in every face in every crowd he worked as an agent. Isabel submerged the tragedy in her fantasy art. Only Simon had invited it into his life, by inviting strangers to Cameron Hall and making them friends, as if in some way he could transform the hatred and lunacy in the world by bringing it to the heart of the family.

  All four of the siblings had searched for sense and justice, but then Simon left them, refueling all that bewilderment and free-floating anger at fate and circumstance. I think I was welcome at first because I put a face on survival. But I was also the hard-eyed outside world personified. How does a person fight fate? Simon’s death and Gib’s injury, Isabel’s ill-chosen husband and Ella’s headlong romantic impulses, were evidence that fate chooses first.

  I was pondering all that when Ruth drove over to the Waterfall Lodge a few days after the fire. I rocked on the front porch, dressed in a sweater and jeans, warm enough for a mild winter afternoon. I was testing my newly unbandaged hands on my keyboard, which was set up in front of me.

  When I saw Ruth the hairs rose on the back of my neck. She was still an uncertain force of nature, Rubenesque in her combination of heft and delicacy, fashionably suited, with bright red power scarves peeking from the necklines or pockets of her deep blue pin-striped dress suits, and her brunette hair twisted up in elaborate knots. She always made me think of Wagner’s Valkyries. All she needed to complete the image was a pair of fat blond braids and a horned Viking helmet. She marched up the cottage walkway, a sleek alligator-skin purse bouncing on one hip. “Howdy, kin,” she drawled, scowling.

  “Howdy. What’s shaking in the Matlock business today?”

  She snorted. “You are some piece of work. Here I come to be nice and neighborly, and you bite me on the proverbial ass. Remember, my cousin sleeps with your sister. You’re sleeping with my brother. You’re going to be my sister-in-law.”

  “Go ahead. Ruin my day.”

  “Yep.” She pulled two corncob pipes from her purse. Real corncobs, with stems made from river cane. “Let’s smoke to a truce,” Ruth said. “I make these pipes myself. They’re the best smokin’ around. Sweet. I rub honey into the bowls and the stems. And the tobacco is local. Good Tennessee-mountain top-grade homegrown tobaccy. I’ve already packed the cobs for us. You up for the Tennessee equivalent of a peace pipe?”

  I stared at the pipes, took the one she thrust toward me, and nodded. “Will this give me any urges to slap my legs and yell hee-haw?”

  “Only if you’re lucky.”

  I was going to be sick as a dog. She handed me a sleek gold lighter. “Flick the flame and suck the stem,” Ruth ordered. “You’ve heard that before, I bet.”

  “Shut up.” Pop had smoked a pipe. Usually filled with marijuana, but a pipe nonetheless. So I knew the technique. I got my pipe lit then put on a good show of rocking and puffing while Ruth lit her pipe.

  “Here’s to treaties between the sisterhood,” she announced. She puffed on her pipe, then held it out to me. “Trade.”

  We traded. “Here’s to treaties,” I echoed, eyeing her warily.

  “Now, here’s the thing,” Ruth said contemplatively. “When you and Ella came here I said, They want that money. That’s all. When Ella married Carter I said, She wants more money.” Ruth hesitated. “Well, I’m here to say, Case closed. I was wrong.”

  “That’s a given,” I said coldly.

  “Oh, hell,” she went on blithely, “and about your daddy? We may all seem ready for sainthood around here, but the fact is we’ve got enough skeletons in our closet to keep us from being too judgmental. You already know about Aunt Olivia murderin’ her own husband—a morally justified killing, of course, but let me tell you, there are a lot of other bones in the closet that don’t rattle so kindly. There were Camerons who helped the government kick the Cherokees out—Camerons who turned their backs on our own Macintosh kin. There were Camerons in the Klan. There was a Cameron out in Texas who burned down a courthouse in the nineteen thirties and shot the county judge and five jurors as they ran out the front door. My point is, whatever your daddy did or didn’t do, it’s clear you and Ella aren’t going around burning any flags.” She paused. “Or chapels.”

  “But you won’t catch me saluting any flags, either.”

  She sighed. “If you stick around, and I do get elected president some year, will you say ‘No comment’ when reporters come to interview you and the rest of my colorful kin?”

  “Can’t make any promises.”

  “How’s about I let you visit the White House and scribble old hell-raising Joan Baez songs on the bathroom walls?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “All right.” I nodded. My head buzzed with the smoke. “If that’s an apology, I accept it.” I just wanted her to leave so I could stagger indoors and throw up.

  Ruth clicked her pipe to mine. “Here’s to smoke and mirrors,” she said. I nodded sickly.

  Pipe dreams and conversations with Camerons were hard on the stomach.

  • • •

  Imagine this scene, gentle readers. We witnessed it firsthand: Beautiful classical pianist Vee Arinelli—the newest addition to Cameron Hall’s fine entertainments—was trapped atop a picturesque farm shed with a terrified baby in her arms. Below her, a savage bear threatened to attack. To the rescue came Gib Cameron, brandishing an heirloom Scottish claymore, the proud sword of his Cameron Highland kinsmen.

  Risking his own life and limb, Gib refused to slay the giant, furious bear, but instead gallantly and gracefully thwarted the creature’s every vicious move, until finally—as both the man and the violent beast dripped blood from honorable wounds—the bear retreated.

  And then, his bloody sword propped proudly on his shoulder, and the rescued damsel in distress embracing him in gratitude, Gib Cameron walked humbly—as expected of a true gentleman warrior and former Secret Service agent—amid his cheering guests.

  Picture that, gentle readers, because that is what we guests at Cameron Hall experienced this winter. We cheered a modern battle as wild and exciting as any storyteller’s tale of the glorious Tennessee frontier.

  Cameron Hall, dear readers, is better than ever.

  When the Manchesters’ travel column began to circulate, Min took another hundred calls for reservations in one day’s time.

  “This is embarrassing,” Gib said as we all read the article. “Distorted, melodramatic, and way over the top. I poked an aggravated mother bear with the claymore, and she ran once her babies were free. It’s not as if she fenced with me for points.”

  ?
??At least they didn’t call you a damsel in distress,” I said.

  Min shushed us. “You created a fantasy. You made people remember how it felt to be part of something special here.” She paused. “You made me remember, too. Now I’m sure we’ll be all right. What happened to Simon is hard on guests who’ve been coming here for years, people who liked Simon. I was afraid this would never be thought of again as a happy place to spend time. But people want to see what’s new. They want to see Gib. They want to see you, Venus.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You’re new and fresh. Someone interesting. They won’t have to pretend nothing’s changed.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My whole life had changed.

  Olivia studied the Manchesters’ article. “As I told you once before,” she said calmly, “all we needed were one or two wise souls who looked beyond the insignificant.” She then resorted to her old silent habit, which seemed appropriate for the task. She scrawled across the top of the article:

  They saw bravery and loyalty. Hospitality and hard work. Everything they saw was true.

  Gib had already begun the restoration work on the chapel, with Bo Burton’s help. Bo opted for early retirement from his state forestry commission position. He came to Gib and Min with ideas for the valley’s preservation. He and Isabel and Ella had cooked up some plans for placing a few handsome, cozy log cabins in the lower hills, out of sight from us and each other. These wouldn’t be new structures; Isabel had been in contact with various Cameron kin throughout the south who had old cabins they’d donate.

  Bo and I were talking about a small music pavilion, nothing fancy, maybe just a covered outdoor stage at first. He had drawn up some modest plans for a small museum.

  The Simon Cameron Center. Not the elaborate, expensive operation Emory had promised us, but a good start. It could grow. Gib planned to use chestnut logs in the building. Simon’s museum would be birthed from the earth of the valley, built by his own loved ones, nurtured and promoted and cherished. Min had lovingly approved the plans.