The Book of Speculation (10 page)

Evangeline felt the moment life left her grandmother. What had been quick was no more. When Evangeline had been small, Grandmother Visser had taught her the basting stitch, blind catch stitch, and the featherstitch for seams. She remembered her grandmother’s hands wrapped around hers, a bone thimble balanced on her finger, guiding the needle through muslin, and the fresh smell of her skin after kneading dough.

Warmth seeped from Grandmother Visser’s body. Evangeline tried to take it into her own as she shivered against the iron stove. She wept. She’d thought her love for her grandmother tempered by anger, but it bit like a fresh lash.

The rooster crowed as dawn pinkened a crack in the kitchen door. With the sound came a single thought:
Run.

She left by a window and ran out the barnyard, through the tall grass and into the pines. She followed deer paths through the trees. When her stomach threatened sickness, she pressed her thumb to a bruise until the pain became an ember that burned away all but the need to run.
Find the water, follow the river,
she thought.
All will be well
. She ran toward the river, to the Hudson that flowed away from the body of the woman who had raised her. She ran until her feet begged she rest. When thirsty, she drank from the river and it filled her and gave her life.

She followed the Hudson south toward she knew not what, only that it was away.
Eva, Angel, Eve, I am a killer,
she thought, and the words became her name
.

*   *   *

Time and season ensured that Peabody’s menagerie and the mute fortune-teller’s apprentice moved northward. On this day, Peabody noted in the margins of his ledger that the goats gave sour milk.

7

JULY 14TH

There it is. No question. Drowned, July 24th, 1937.

Celine Duvel, aquatic performer with Cirque Marveau, found drowned Saturday in the waters off Ocean City, presumed to have taken her own life. Duvel is survived by a daughter, Verona Bonn. No service to be held.

It’s a tiny notice in the
Daily Sentinel-Ledger,
but the ramifications are shattering, because next to it is a microfiche printout of Verona Bonn’s obituary. The Diving Queen of Littles-Lightford Circus, my grandmother, drowned in a Maryland bay. July 24th, 1962. Survived by her daughter, Paulina. Two data points could be coincidence, but four?

Something is very wrong.

What began as a passing fascination with the book has turned into something darker, fueled by the startling discovery that the women in my family have a disturbing habit of not only dying young, but drowning on July 24th. The book’s original owner was more focused on profiteering and potential routes than detailing the lineage of drowning women, and there are many names: Amos, Hermelius Peabody, a girl called Evangeline, Benno Koenig, a fortune-teller listed as Mme. Ryzhkova, and more, but relationships are not remarked upon so often as wages. Dates are noted somewhat haphazardly, and nowhere is there mention of July 24th being of particular significance. Peabody only made note of things that struck his fancy, and clearly didn’t anticipate that more than two centuries later an unemployed librarian would be using this journal as a primary source.

Alice’s research has paved the way somewhat. She’s let me use her institutional ID from Stony Brook, which she was smart enough to not let lapse. It allows me access to records that I’d typically be barred from without a research request approval. It made sense to work backward, and so I started with my mother, the newspaper story with her picture at its top, sharp-faced with her unforgivingly black hair—an aloof beauty. Despite my memories and their flashes of warmth, the picture shows that my mother was not a happy woman. Not something on which I ever dwelled. It’s brutal to realize that someone might find a life with you in it unbearable. And so I’ve filled my days with digging through public records, searching folded newspapers and magazine scraps, until now I find myself staring at the
Daily Sentinel-Ledger,
and an alarming pattern.

It’s past ten. Alice should be in and already through the first layer of her to-do list. Now is when she usually pauses to reorganize her desk, puts the pens on the right side, taps her papers into a stack. I call.

“It’s me,” I say.

“Can’t talk long. Circulation glitch. Nobody can find anything and stuff on the shelves is showing up as checked out. Books are missing.”

I look at the two I stole. Were I a better person I might feel guilty. “Probably something with the bar code scanner.”

“Or the catalog. Anyway, what’s up?”

“Does it seem strange to you that I know almost nothing about my family?”

“Not really. Strange is relative with you guys. I mean, look at what your parents named your sister. Who does that to a kid?”

“I know.” Once I learned about the atomic bomb I was never able to think of my parents or my sister in quite the same light. I asked Dad about it once. His response was that Mom had ideas about reclaiming painful things; that if something terrible was made out of a beautiful thing there was an obligation to restore beauty, to reinstate meaning. The attempt with my sister failed; she exists like an explosion. I never had the guts to ask about my name. “I found something weird, though, even for us. You know the women I had you look up? They died on the same date as my mom. Women in my family have a way of dying on July 24th.”

There’s a pause. She shifts the phone to her other shoulder. Papers slide. I can imagine her neatening her letter tray.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Melancholy streak? That kind of thing runs in families. Add in a little seasonal affective disorder and it might make for a good coincidence or two.”

“Could be.” But seasonal affective disorder strikes in winter when the light is low.

“Are you going stir crazy?”

“Not yet. I’ve got applications out. I’m calling people.” The truth is that unemployment has a way of softening the mind and blending the hours together until the impetus to start at dawn fades into a listlessness that has me on the couch nearing noon. Having all the time in the world makes getting things done impossible. I’ve earned a rest; I’ve worked without breaks since I was sixteen—two weeks without work won’t kill me, and yet somehow it feels like it will. I’ve peppered every library on the east end with emails and calls to let them know I’m on the market, and to remind them of any small favors I’ve done across the years. An assist with grant language, a suggestion on tools for a specific repair. Nothing yet. Silence is its own kind of tension. There’s a directorship in Commack that could work—a little beyond me, yes, but there’s hope. I sent my r
é
sum
é
over last week, separate from the bulk. Follow-up call scheduled for tomorrow.

“The IT guy is here,” Alice says. “I need to go. Tonight at eight, right?”

“Right. Bye.”

Hanging up from Alice leaves me feeling anxious and strangely useless. I need work. I find myself checking on the position in Georgia. Sanders-Beecher still has the job posted. I’m dialing the number almost before I realize it. A woman with a voice stiff and sweet like meringue answers. She identifies herself as Miss Anne. I give her my name and ask about the library and the curatorship.

“Oh, well, we’re very small, Mr. Watson,” she says. “We’re devoted to what we call the region’s personal sociology, but we like to think of ourselves like artists. It’s our responsibility to take the materials we’re given and make them into a painting. That’s what our curators do.”

“I can’t vouch for my painting skills, but I can sort materials with the best.”

She laughs. “Pardon me. I tend towards the flowery, and I so love Sanders-Beecher. It’s a very special place.”

“Clearly,” I say, wishing I could add something smarter.

“We’ve got a draft of the Constitution, did you know? Not the actual one, but a beautiful fake. It’s part of a wonderful collection on a local notorious forgery ring. The Georgia Historical Society has one of the real documents, but I do prefer ours.” She pauses to clear her throat. “There is drudgery, though. We do get so very many donations. Everyone wants to feel important, and there are so many old families here. It’s difficult to explain to someone that their grandmother’s Woolworth’s receipts aren’t significant.”

And suddenly I know what to say. “Unless they’re receipts from the first purchase in the state’s first store, or if you were looking to document typical household expenses during a specific period.”

I can hear Miss Anne smile through the phone. “Oh, you just might paint, Mr. Watson. Where is it you said you’re from?”

“I didn’t.”

Miss Anne is stunned but delighted that a man from New York would inquire about their little archive. Her delight breeds the urge to exaggerate my credentials. I promote myself to curator of the whaling archive. Before the call is over, Savannah becomes a reminder of places other than Napawset, other than Long Island. But other places don’t have Alice. And Enola could come back to stay.

I’m hanging up when the sound of snapping wood cracks like a gunshot. I jump, sending papers flying, and take three, four, five heartbeats to calm myself. A walk down the hall finds pictures hanging crooked from their nails, but not the sound’s source. Everything looks fine until I reach my parents’ room.

A thin split cuts up the wall by Mom’s dresser and runs all the way to the ceiling, straight as a stud. When I put my fingers to it the house groans as if in pain. I have a faded half memory of running toy trains across the floor in this room while my mother sang something in French. I don’t remember the words, only that she was braiding her hair at the dresser. I should check the other bedrooms.

Enola’s room is unchanged. Iodine-stained quilt, a hole in the wall by her bed, a desk full of pencils chewed down to the leads. My bedroom door barely opens; it’s either swollen or the frame has jammed—no, it doesn’t hang straight either. Hell. I hardly spend time in there. Might as well keep my stuff in the living room until it’s fixed.

Three armloads of clothing from the dresser, a stack of books, two pillows, and the summer sheets make the living room both bedroom and office, and me a refugee in my house. There’s nothing else for it—I have to call Frank. I’d rather not, but Alice wouldn’t have said anything about us yet. I asked her to not tell him about my losing my job either, not when it’s temporary, not when I know how protective Frank can be. Alice and I are still being careful. We still don’t know what we are.

He picks up on the fifth ring and immediately starts in. “It’s not good to let the gutters go this long, you know. All the water straight off the roof can undermine your foundation.”

I almost blurt that I’m sleeping with his daughter. Excellent. Now when I talk to him, I’m going to remember her calf wrapped around my back.

“Yeah. I messed around with them a little, but it’s not straightforward. It looks like the eave needs work too. I think the house is settling. A crack opened up in the wall in my parents’ room.”

He lets out a low whistle.

“I’ll get someone over soon, but I was hoping you might know how to patch it.”

“Something tells me this isn’t patch territory.”

“I know, I need to hire somebody.” Out the front window the Sound is rough and high with whitecaps, a blue so angry it spits.

“Simon, I hate to see the place like this. You need to keep up on stuff, you’re damned close to the water. Houses don’t take care of themselves.”

It’s the condescension that gets me, as though I can’t see my own house, as if I haven’t been hanging off the roof or fixing leaks. Houses don’t take care of themselves, but they do need money. “I’m well aware.”

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Just tired. Maybe you can send somebody to check out the house? I don’t know where to start.” I glance down at Peabody’s book. It’s opened to a detailed half-page drawing of a tarot card. The Devil sketched in brown, dressed as a courtier, cloven hoofs sticking out of pantaloons, a curling beard. Smiling, in each hand he holds a chain—leashes around the necks of a man and woman.

The Tenets of the Oracle
has the card’s meaning not as simple evil, but secrets, a lack of knowledge, or unknowing bondage. The Devil in
The Tenets
is dark and frightening. The one in my book looks more like a fun kind of guy, somebody you’d like to have a beer with. It’s Peabody’s interpretation of Madame Ryzhkova’s card, but it raises the question—who was the person with such an interesting view of evil? It might be helpful to look into her, into the other names that pop up. Koenig, Meixel. The more complete the picture of the world, the more easily I’ll be able to see patterns, spot their roots. I trace the end of the Devil’s tail.

Frank says, “I’ve got a guy. I’ll see if he has time this week. Listen, I’m sorry if I yelled, it’s just that your folks loved that place.”

I’d believe him, except my father never lifted a finger on it after Mom died.

“I know.” I’m thanking him when I hear tires on gravel. They belong to a familiar rusted blue Oldsmobile. This is the sound of Enola coming home.