Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (9 page)

Mr. Fairston convulsed in a cough. “She said you were caught with drugs at your workplace, and with thousands of dollars of stolen money.”

Fortunately her hands were busy, and she managed to keep her voice calm. “Well, she’s mistaken, isn’t she? I admit things have been difficult the last few days, but I haven’t been arrested. If I had, I wouldn’t be here with you, would I?”

“Is that the truth, Blanche?”

“Yes.” She sounded confident, but inside she was shaking.

 The man rubbed his head with his good hand, and stared at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I should be so suspicious. I guess it’s just that…I suppose I can blame the medication. Or the condition. You’re going to think I’m paranoid.”

“Well, sometimes it is hard to know what to believe these days.” The girl finished tidying up the magazines and put them in a stack on a nearby shelf, using the time to collect herself. Now even this friendship was in jeopardy.

“But my wife seemed so sure,” the man said wonderingly. “How could there be a mistake?”

“I don’t know,” the girl shrugged, glanced at the mirror on the wall, and saw that she was paler than ever. She quickly looked away. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” the man said with a half smile, trying to put aside the conversation, but she could see the doubt hovering in his eyes. “‘Not going gently into that good night…’” he quoted Dylan Thomas again and sighed. “I guess it gets closer every day. The realization that there’s not much time left for me. Before the tumor takes over and my brain goes blank. I—” he paused. “I was quite upset to hear this about you. But perhaps it was only a dream, after all. Some trick of my brain.”

“Perhaps.” She forced a smile.

“I don’t like it when that happens,” he said, his eyes looking up at the ceiling. “It’s been happening more and more often lately. I don’t like it when I can’t trust reality any more. It scares me. I wish I could stop it. But—”

She was reminded of how it had been to lose her own father to cancer, realizing that the gentle giant of her childhood memory had shrunken into a weak, dying man—a man who had eventually become a corpse, and then a memory. Suddenly, being here was like losing her father all over again.

And he couldn’t help her, after all. More alone than ever, she had to go beyond herself or risk cracking. “Would you mind if I prayed with you, Mr. Fairston?”

“Still berating me for being an agnostic?” he smiled at her wryly.

“Of course not. Just being myself.”

He leaned back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just listen. It’s—peaceful.”

She prayed, on the edge of that darkness and confusion. She prayed an entire decade of the rosary, feeling dry and barren within, hearing the faint reverberation of her voice on the walls in that cheerless sickroom. This was how it had been, for a long time now—comforting others, responding, smiling, going through the motions of her life, but inside feeling nothing but the echo of emptiness. The fear began to come upon her, and she struggled to keep her composure.

But as usual, the prayers seemed to soothe him. He stroked her hand as she finished. “You know, sometimes I think you’re like the daughter I should have had, if I had had a daughter. I’m glad you came by, Blanche.” His eyelids were growing heavy.

“I am too,” she said, and this was sincere. She had always enjoyed visiting the elderly, but Mr. Fairston had become more than a work of mercy. He had become a friend.

If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one life the aching
Or heal one pain
…I shall not live in vain.

“You left your book on Emily Dickinson here again,” he said, rousing himself and reaching shakily for the book on the bedside table. “I was looking at it while you were gone.”

“Keep it,” she said. “It’s a gift.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Keep it, until—”

There was a silence, the usual breaking-off of sentences. It was understood what the silence meant.

“I’m sure my wife will get it back to you. She’s been saying I shouldn’t see people, that it hastens my decline. But if you want to come, even if I’m not responding—I think I would like to hear you reading, still.”

“I’ll be back to read it to you,” she said. “I promise.”

He took her hand and squeezed something into it. “I know you will. In case you need it—” His voice grew faint, and she saw he was falling asleep.

Looking down at her hand briefly, she saw a door key.

“Thank you. I’ll come back.” She put it in her pocket—later on she would put it on her neck chain—and got to her feet, still stiff from her bruises. Gently she laid her hand on his forehead. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak again. Her eyes traveled over the untidy and inexplicably dirty room, and she wished she felt safe enough to stay and clean it more thoroughly. How did the nurse stand it?

She got down on her hands and knees again and picked up the used tissues, bits of plastic wrappers, and paper scraps that littered the carpet, and put them into the overflowing wastebasket. She packed it down to keep it neater, and while doing so found a medicine bottle, white with its label missing. It wasn’t empty—there were two ordinary looking white pills in it. At first she thought it had fallen from the cluttered bedside table, but as she looked at the medication and vitamins there, she could see this bottle was different from the others. Perhaps the white bottle was some sort of pain medication he had been taken off. After some hesitation, she thrust it into her pocket.
When I see my mom again, I’ll ask her,
she thought fleetingly. Then,
Mom has no idea what’s going on with me now.

Quietly she let herself out of the room. Alone, she glanced around the dim hallway uneasily. She didn’t like this house, as upscale as it was. At least she had managed to come during a time when Mr. Fairston was relatively alone. She didn’t want to meet—

At the base of the staircase was a huge mirror, trimmed in stained glass flowers, and dragonflies. Its vast glassy surface had the smoky gray look of an antique. After coming down the steps, she couldn’t help stopping to look at her reflection, and saw a girl with a pale face and unevenly-cut soot-black hair. Whose eyes were still red.
I look haunted,
she thought.
Not beautiful. Not any more. Surely no one would still think I was beautiful.

“This has been a looking-glass summer,” her sister had said flippantly, referring to the play she was in. “I feel like it’s taken over my life.”

Yes, that was how she felt—as though she had vanished through a looking-glass into a mirror-image world which seemed the same as normal life, but where everything was backwards. Where she wasn’t even sure who she was any longer. She didn’t even think she looked the same.

Blanche has been replaced by a fugitive from justice, a girl who’s too scared to tell others her own name.

She paused, as though she had heard something close to her, and stared into the depths of the mirror. Once again, she felt it—the sense of a malignant presence studying her. As though the mirror were alive, with a personality—a—

Just another doorway into madness
, she thought, and pulled her eyes away. Her imagination had become her enemy lately, and she hurried to the door and let herself out.

II

After the morning class was done, Leon had stopped by the vestibule to see Nora, but there was no sign of her.

“Hey, where’s Nora?” he called to Brother Herman, who was busy planning the renovation and repairs on the church.

Brother Herman held up a piece of sketch paper to the light and said, “Hm? Nora? She left some time ago. She said she had an errand to run and would be back soon.”

“Oh,” Leon said, and shrugged aside his suspicions.
Why shouldn’t she run an errand if she needs to?
he scolded himself. Brother George was sweeping the aisles with a broom, and looked over his shoulder at Leon. But seeing Leon’s noncommittal expression, he turned away.

Leon’s attention was distracted by a knock on the friary door. He started towards it, but Brother Matt, who was on porter duty, emerged from the refectory and got to the door first.

At the door was a tall, agitated black woman in a short denim skirt, holding a kid by each hand. Her scowl changed to relief when the friars opened the door, and she burst into a torrent of Jamaican
patois
mixed with English. Matt held up his hands with a confused smile.

“Hold on—let me get someone who can help you—Le—! Oh! Here you are,” Matt started to bellow as Leon elbowed him aside.

“Yeah, you need the expert here—Aay, Marisol!
Wha a gwan
?” Leon queried, hitching up his rope belt. “Aay Donovan! Aay Jacky!” The kids grinned and started reaching for the dangling knots and the rosary beads.

Marisol yanked them back firmly with a sharp word. “
Nu bodda di priest! Dress back!
Mi
granmadda a visit, an shi need fi
catch one flight tomorrow, but di taxi-man too tief! —”

Leon listened attentively. “Her mom needs a ride to the airport,” he relayed to Father Bernard, who had come out of the classroom. “They can’t afford the taxi.” The kids were reaching for his rosary again. “It’s all right,” he assured their mother, who barked, “
Mi seh no touch it
!”

“What time does she need to go?” Father Bernard asked, and looked at the woman.

“
Wha times yuh need fi leave ya
?” Brother Leon queried.

“Tomorrow. Two o’clock,” she said.

“I think someone can do it,” Father Bernard said, glancing at the novices. “How about you two take her tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Brother Leon said, glancing at Matt, who hesitated.

“Yes,” he said at last. Leon guessed Matt had something else planned, but as they were novices, they had to obey the novice master’s orders.

Leon, who had his hands full with the kids, said to Marisol, “
Nuh worry.
And where do you live again?”

While the woman talked and gestured, Leon found his eye caught by a white car driving slowly along the streets. Nice cars driving in this area usually were either lost or belonged to drug dealers. But the dealers he knew of didn’t drive white cars.

He focused in on what the woman was saying, and by the time he had gotten a sense of where she lived, the car had moved on.

“High school duty this afternoon,” Father Bernard said, closing the door after they had said their farewells. “Let’s go start Midday Prayer first.”

After praying Midday Prayer, the friars who were in the friary gathered for lunch. Leon noticed that there wasn’t much for lunch, just bean stew. And not much of it.

“We’re almost out,” Brother George said, scraping the last of the pan. “I think this was supposed to be dinner, too.”

“God will provide for His poor,” Father Bernard said easily. “Someone might send a food donation soon. And we can always fast.”

After lunch, Leon helped Brother Herman gather cleaning supplies and mops and started over to the high school to continue the massive project of cleaning the abandoned building. To Leon’s surprise, Nora emerged from the vestibule suddenly, wearing jeans and an oversized red shirt.

“Hey, there you are!” he exclaimed. “How’d your errand go?”

She seemed surprised at the question, and dropped her eyes. “As well as I could expect,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get so far with the vestibule. Can I help you now?”

“Certainly. Follow the train,” Brother Herman said, starting down the narrow hallway. “We’re working in the high school today.”

Leon gestured for Nora to go ahead of him. “You had lunch?” he queried as they walked down the aisle of the church.

“I’m fine. I had Danish and toast for breakfast in my room and I just had the rest for lunch,” she said. “Father Francis sent them down to me last night.”

“Day-old bread and pastries. We usually get tons of them from the bakeries,” Brother Leon agreed. “Pretty much a staple around here. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” she said, a bit distantly.

“You look fine,” he said, not believing her.

She glanced over at him. “I feel alone,” she said flatly.

“Ah,” Brother Leon said. “Well, give yourself a reality check. You’re not alone.”

That seemed to get through to her, and she said quietly, “I suppose you’re right.”

They followed Brother Herman out the back door of the sacristy, and walked down some steps into the courtyard linking the church, friary, and high school. Brother Herman unlocked the door to the high school.

“You said this was a new order?” Nora queried.

“We’re part of a reform movement of the Franciscans,” Leon explained. “I was in one of the established Franciscan orders before, as a novice. But when I heard about Father Francis and Father Bernard starting this new order, I left to join this one.”