The Book of Speculation (21 page)

She waited for the Rusalka by the tub where the woman slept by night and drowned herself by day. Madame Ryzhkova saw Evangeline, flushed and breathless, and feared that she’d already stolen life and youth from Amos.

Evangeline froze at the sight of Madame Ryzhkova. The woman stood in the downpour, her clothing soaked, her face consumed by fury. They had been discovered.

“Madame, you must return to your wagon. You’ll catch your death.” She moved to put her arms around Ryzhkova’s shoulders.

“Do not touch me. You touch my Amos, you charm him and make him lie to me. I have seen what you do, your kind. You are a murderer, a soul thief—
Rusalka
.” Ryzhkova fought the urge to shout, to scream, but years of reading fates taught her that words were most powerful when spoken gravely. “You will go. You will leave this place and my boy. You will take no more from me.”

“Madame, I think you do not know your boy so well.” Evangeline walked past Ryzhkova and began untying the tub’s canvas. She glanced back at the old woman. “Nor me.” If her stomach heaved she forced it down. If her hands quaked, she squeezed them. “Go back to your bed, Madame. It would be a shame if you took ill. Amos would be heartbroken. I was when my grandmother died.”

Evangeline did not allow her eyes to water until she’d pulled the canvas down, and then only when she held herself, knees to chest, to muffle the sound. Whether it was fear or anger, she could not say.

Unhindered by her wet skirts, Ryzhkova flew across the muddy ground to Peabody’s wagon. When she threw open the door Peabody was bent over his ledger, carefully sketching the detail of a tentlike structure. The expanse of his stomach spilled over the small desk and obscured the writing at the bottom of the page. Startled by the unexpected arrival, his hand jumped, causing his plumed quill to scratch an ugly line through his sketch.

“Blast.”

“The girl must go.” Ryzhkova’s voice cracked.

“What is this?” Peabody turned the three-legged stool he called his ciphering chair. He regarded Madame Ryzhkova with a raised eyebrow.

She shook with violence. “Mermaid, you call her.
Evangeline
. She is warping my boy, my Amos. She makes him lie to me.” She smacked her palm firmly on Peabody’s desk, further smudging the sketch.

“Evangeline?” Peabody twisted the end of his beard to a thoughtful point, then wound it around his thumb. “I agree she has our Amos in a knot. Love, Madame, is nothing to worry oneself with overmuch. With time it will right itself.” He murmured something about the course of young love and returned to his ruined page. “Good for the profits, Madame. I see no harm at all. If you don’t mind, I’ve correspondence I wish to read.”

Ryzhkova’s eyes narrowed in such a way that Peabody’s levity died. “Stupid, stupid man. You love the boy, yes? You think of Amos like your son, like your Zachary?” Her voice rose. “She will kill him. Then what will you have? Money? No. You will have a dead son. And the girl? She will vanish into the river. No Amos, no mermaid—nothing.”

“Madame.”

“We must go away from the rivers. Away from water. You will turn her out and burn her things.” Her hands bunched in her skirts.

“Here now,” Peabody said, rising from his seat. “The girl’s been a draw since the day she appeared. If she makes Amos happy I am of the inclination to keep her.”

Ryzhkova charged forward, placing a knobbed finger on Peabody’s chest, marking each word with a stab. “He, who I have shown my secrets, he who I have loved like
my
son. He has lied to me. She will drink him, drown him. It has already begun.”

Peabody removed her finger from his waistcoat, pausing to right the pile. He attempted reason. “You might establish rules with him, perhaps. Give the boy latitude, a bit of forgiveness, Madame. Do remember that Amos was not always civilized. As for Evangeline,” he continued, “you might do well to try and know her. The girl has been nothing but amicable. Amos is not alone; I believe most of our men are half in love with her.”

“Tongue speaks, but head does not know,” Ryzhkova sneered. “You brought her to us, you must send her away. Or I will leave. I will go to my Katya.” Her smile was predatory. “I will take the boy with me. Without me, he has no work. No words. Without me, he is nothing. He will come.”

The ire clouding Madame Ryzhkova’s vision prevented her from seeing a hard look pass over Peabody’s face. “My dear Madame,” he said, “I believe you underestimate my concern for Amos. I am aware of both his strengths and his shortcomings. Though you named him, that does not give you claim. It was me whom he came to, I who first clothed him, from
my
son’s possessions.” He leaned close to Ryzhkova, using his size, until her back was pressed to the wagon’s wall. “Be certain that the lad is valued most highly and I, as ever, intend to look after his interests, romantic or otherwise—they are aligned with my own. While it would be unpleasant to continue without your esteemed services, I have discovered over the years that I am an intrepid soul and would assuredly make do.” He turned to take up his quill once more. “Madame, I find that I am no longer desirous of your presence.”

Ryzhkova backed away, taking the awkward step down from the cart. As she walked to her wagon to wait for Amos, she remembered a piece of something she’d heard as a child, when she’d still been Yelena. To Peabody, the words she muttered sounded like a madwoman’s gibberish; they were in fact the beginnings of a prayer, the prayer for deliverance her mother had whispered, rocking on her knees, while Stepan drowned.

15

JULY 20TH

“Wake up.”

I open my eyes to a pile of papers, some of which are stuck to my cheek, and Enola staring down at me.

I fell asleep at my desk, having spent the last day teaching myself about curses and searching for Ryzhkova. The National Archives were lacking in ship manifests pre-1800, but allowed me to track bibliographies that led to the New York Public Library’s archives and manifests from 1600 on. Access is by appointment only. I put in a begging call, asking for professional courtesy, though I’m no longer in the profession. I mentioned that I’m from Grainger, which is still almost true, and that we’d happily lend some of the whaling archive in trade. I’m a liar now; it doesn’t bother me as much as it might because five hours later I had the name
Yelena Ryzhkova.
A name that stuck out as a woman traveling alone in the mid-1700s, and because that name was Russian on a ship full of Englishmen. Going on that name I was able to find a daughter, Katerina Ryzhkova. From there things became difficult to track. Understandable; a revolution might have triggered an immigrant’s need to blend in and disappear. Genealogy sites have a way of making the eyes bleed, and so the rest of the day was spent on curses, hexes, and jinxed objects—printing articles, reading. Churchwarry’s title,
Binding Charms and Defixione,
is detailed and beautiful, and I’ve half a mind to keep it. I won’t, not when he’s been so kind. I spent the evening on curse tablets—words etched into stone and dedicated to a god to pray for an enemy’s demise. Interesting, but not immediately relevant, nothing to do with drowning or felling an entire matriarchal line. I moved to cursed jewels: the Hope Diamond, the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, the Delhi Purple Sapphire, things revolving around theft, homicide, and power. But there’s nothing in the book about jewels or theft, no suggestion of foul play in anything about the drowned. Most modern curses seem to be centered on holy objects, murder, or robbery, none of which seem to be a factor in the drownings. In the heavy night hours I delved deep into the 130s, the occult, and jinxed places. Lake Ronkonkoma—all my life living on this island and I never knew that the lake in the middle of it is cursed.

“Simon.” Enola stretches and pops her knuckles.

“So, Lake Ronkonkoma is haunted by the ghost of a Native American princess who drowns white guys.” My voice is thick with morning.

She blinks. “What the fuck are you reading?”

“I honestly don’t know.” My head is exploding and my eyes feel like I spent hours in the wind. If it’s possible to have a reading hangover, I have one. The desk clock reads 7:30; it’s early for Enola. I spent years dragging her out of bed for school, wrestling her as she kicked and growled. It’s possible she never went to sleep. “Why are you up?”

“There are horseshoe crabs all over the beach. Like crazy.” She smacks both hands hard onto my shoulders, pushing me into the desk and tipping over books—Alice’s books, the ones I should take back. I called her yesterday but she said she couldn’t talk. She can’t stay mad at me forever. Enola keeps jumping, and the floor squeaks with each bounce. “I went down to the water early. I thought I’d catch the tide when it was up,” she says. “They’re everywhere, just like before.”

“You went down by yourself?”

“So? Doyle was beat and you were asleep.”

It shouldn’t worry me, but there’s a new and persistent little fear. Not so little really. “Don’t go down there alone.”

“Stop parenting me. That doesn’t work well for us.” She rubs her feet against each other, sprinkling sand on the floor. She’s right. Much as I tried to look after her, it did end with her leaving. “Did you call Alice? Apologies are a good thing.”

I ignore her. “So, there’re lots of crabs?”

“A ton. It’s creepy. I thought they were dying out, but I guess not.” There’s the shuffling sound again—she’s playing with the cards. She looks at me and it hurts. I can feel her searching for the old me, from before she left, before Dad died. He’s in here somewhere.

“I remember you with horseshoes all over you,” she says.

“Me too,” I say, because it’s what you say. It was during the last days of Dad, the summer before he died. I’d seen the horseshoe crabs first, when I was looking down from the cliff, and needed to show her. I waited for her in her room—even then she’d snuck out, needing to get away from him, from me too, I suppose—she’d been out stealing change from pay phones and the quarters jingled in her pockets.

It was too late at night to go by Dad’s room, so I went through the window, folding up to squeeze over the sill, inching forward until my feet dropped to the ground. Enola followed. There’d been a tree then, a pine that had fallen in the winter and lay dead on the lawn. Ever the better criminal, she slid the screen closed to cover our escape.

We walked to the cliff, cutting through the yard’s tall brush, my hand pulling hers, no space between. I was barefoot. I remember stiff stalks of beach grass poking my feet. Looking into the yielding blackness, we decided against taking the stairs. I offered to piggyback her. She was smaller then and I could easily lift her, barely had to hold her. I walked down the bluff and she shifted each time I sank into the sand.

At the shore we let the waves bury our feet. After a few minutes something began brushing against our legs. Enola bent down to feel, discovering what I already knew: a cold shell, smooth and hard with ridges on the edge, and two bumps just there. Horseshoe crabs. I told her to look up, out over the waterline. Across the beach it looked like hundreds of glossy rocks had lined up by the shore. Farther out, dark shapes moved beneath the water, rising and falling. Before then I’d only seen a handful alive or come across the dead on the beach, carapaces hollow like cicada skins. There must have been hundreds of crabs, thousands, knocking into one another, their tails smacking and working like blind men’s canes.

Enola smiles and it wrinkles up her nose. I’ve missed that. “You told me they were old. Primordial. I remember wondering if they knew that everything around them had changed,” she says.

“They must.” From purposeless instincts, from the pieces of brick and asphalt they scurry around. They know because the giant sea monsters are gone. Only the crabs remain.

“I wanted to get Dad,” she says.

“It would have just made him sadder.” It wasn’t long before the end for him, when he spent all his time at the kitchen table, staring at an empty seat, imagining the woman who once sat there.

“I know,” Enola says. She’s back on the couch, picking at the arm. “I stayed on the sand, but not you; you walked out, horseshoe crabs all around your feet, laughing like an idiot.”

“You didn’t come with me?”

Her eyebrows lift. “I thought you remembered everything. I stayed on the beach. Those things scared the crap out of me. But you, you walked right into the water with the crabs. They crawled all up your legs, climbing you like a tree. I don’t think you thought for a second that you could get hurt, that they could just swallow you up.” Just now she seems younger, like her fourteen-year-old self. “The whole time you were laughing I was on the beach thinking, fuck, if they pull him under, what am I gonna do?”

Maybe I do remember her on the beach, shouting, begging me to come back in. But it felt good to be in the water with living things all around me, crabs crawling over my feet, tiny pincers scratching and tickling, the touch of ancient things. But nothing climbed me, no. Nothing like that.

“You were half covered in horseshoe crabs, like you weren’t all you anymore.” The soft flicking sound of cards is alive in her skirt pocket. I can almost see her running her fingers around the edges. “It looked like they were coming to pull you away. Like Mom was coming to get you.” A bridge, a fall, she tamps the deck in her palm. A card emerges—a man and a woman, nude?—and is quickly tucked away. The Lovers?

“They were mating. It happens every year.”

“I know that now, asshole,” she says. “I was just saying that I was worried about you. Fucking horseshoe crab whisperer.”

Then Dad died and there were no more crabs or beach nights, just us alone, and after that—much later—Enola left. As soon as she could.

“Why did you leave?” I don’t expect myself to ask it, am startled that I do. But it hurt. It had been just us for years; even before Dad died it had been the two of us.

“This house is a mausoleum,” she says. She looks out the window, over to Frank’s driveway. “A memorial to people who didn’t love me enough to bother staying alive.” She glances at me. “I know, I know. You were here and you still are. If anyone gets a medal for staying, it’s you. Mom didn’t bother; she offed herself before she knew me. What Dad did was almost worse. Did he spend a single second on us after she was gone? No. He didn’t do anything but pretend to be alive until he wasn’t.”