The Diviner's Tale (29 page)

Niles was not there, but Melanie was. So was Adrienne, who gave me and the boys a double take as if wondering where was her camera when she needed it to document a paranormal sighting. The twins stood next to me, eating glazed doughnuts topped with sprinkles and taking in the scene with mild impatience as my mother brought Melanie and her daughter over to say hello.

"Good to see you," I said. "Boys, say hi to Mrs. Hubert."

They mumbled something and stared at me, mutely imploring, Can we leave yet?

"Cass decided to give church a chance this morning," my mother explained. "What did you boys think of the sermon?"

They shrugged and glanced at me again for direction.

"Cass, can I have coffee?"

"Me, too," said Jonah.

"One cup each. Not another drop."

"I want some, too," Adrienne now begged, but was quickly and quietly told no.

The pastor walked straight up, took my hand in both his weighty ones, and greeted me by name. When the boys returned holding their paper cups of black coffee, he directed his fatherly compliments at each, to which they responded with suspicious nods. It was clear even from our brief conversation that Rosalie must have telephoned him beforehand and given him advance notice her wayward daughter and godless grandchildren were going to be in attendance, and to make sure to be a welcoming shepherd. There was little point protesting to her about it. I knew her purpose was to help me, and if in times past I would have groused about such blatant interference, these weren't times past. Everyone standing in this church was looking for help, and I was no different. We were all deeply tattooed by the most basic perplexities, I reminded myself, and my mother had sought her solace here from the days even before Christopher's death, surely spending hours now each week praying for Nep's health and my sanity.

"You ought to join us more often," the pastor said. "It's my understanding some of your friends from childhood are parishioners. One of them even asked after you recently. Seems he just moved back to our area. I told him your mother said you were going up to the family place in Maine a little early this year. He seemed eager to catch up with you."

"Who would that be?" I said warily, feeling ever less safe in this uncomfortable room. What childhood friends did I have beyond Niles and Hodge, neither of whom had moved away from Corinth County?

"I don't feel so well," Jonah interrupted.

"Me neither," said Morgan. "Maybe that coffee was rotten."

Appalled by their bravura performances, but also feeling I myself had now reached a new dead end, I said, "We'd best be going."

Rosalie naturally wanted us to linger but must have registered urgency in my eyes, so walked us outside where we said our goodbyes and fled. On the way home, the boys launched into a chorus of complaints.

"Please let it drop," I snapped, sorting through my memory for a childhood friend who would bother to ask about me. "It was a good idea for us to attend church."

"Well, I don't see what good there was in it."

"Trust me, it was good," I said, grateful neither of them pressed me for a reason why.

L
EFT BY MYSELF
that afternoon, Jonah having accompanied Morgan on bicycles to a pickup game over at the school grounds, I rummaged around in the garage and found some empty boxes. I knew what I needed to do if I was going to stay this course. Moving with the steady deliberation of an automaton, I went around the house and gathered my divining rods, my pendulums, my accumulation of geological maps, anything tangible that had to do with dowsing. I retrieved my favorite dogwood Y-rod from the shed out back where I had been soaking it in a bucket of distilled water and clove oil to keep it limber. Then I carefully wrapped all my virgulae, bobbers, and L-rods in remnants of sheets I kept in a rag bin in the pantry and layered them in the boxes, like little shrouded corpses placed in a paupers' graveyard. The pendulums I put into brown paper bags and noted down which one was silver, which was fabricated from stainless steel, which from brass, even one that was simply an acorn tied to a string. I unloaded the hatchet and other necessaries from my backpack and placed them in the cardboard boxes as well. Part of me wanted to linger over each of these precious old companions, but I knew I couldn't bear it.

Once I had everything crated, I sealed the boxes with packing tape and marked each in black ink on the lids with the Chinese symbol for divining—
—an ideogram that looked for all the world like a headless, armless dancing stick figure. With some effort, I pulled down the attic ladder, a wobbly wooden skeleton I never allowed the boys to climb and shouldn't have used myself, and hauled the boxes up under the rafters next to other paraphernalia left behind by former owners of the house. It smelled somehow of death up there. I couldn't move fast enough to finish the task.

As I folded the ladder back into the ceiling, I felt an overpowering, nauseating mix of grief and joy. It was nothing short of the burial of an old friend, an honored if wily muse. It represented the abandonment of one form of searching I trusted but didn't understand for another I understood but didn't necessarily trust.

In light of my mother's long tenure in the district and my own decent record on the job, I was rehired for the fall term. "You've always been a good teacher," Matt Newburg said, being far kinder to me than I anticipated. Given I had suspended my other occupation, he promised to try to move me into as full-time a schedule as he could manage. For no particular reason, I had never really connected with the principal. But here he was being unexpectedly generous toward me, a normal guy being nice. Granted, he was not the appropriate man to be forward with, but wouldn't a regular, normal Cassandra Brooks think Matt Newburg—who wasn't married like James Boyd or Niles; who held a responsible job; who wasn't unhandsome, but a sincere, solid fellow with large blue eyes—was someone to have dinner with one night?

"I appreciate your generosity."

"Just because you're going through a rocky time doesn't mean we're going to abandon you," he said, shaking my hand before I left.

That night, after sharing the good news with the twins and my parents, I found myself thinking, Why don't I put in a little effort to be less of a recluse, an overgrown tomboy dressed in the same worn jeans and faded flannel shirts I had become accustomed to wearing when not teaching? Revise my uniform of a tatterdemalion? At minimum I might ferret out a couple of blouses that would look presentable with unfrayed blue jeans. Wear some nice shoes instead of my dusty cowhide boots for a change. Present a portrait of a woman interested in being part of the world around her.

This phenomenon of the new Cassandra labored along in fits and starts through the balance of June. Dressed in what Rosalie deemed "a pretty outfit," I went to a midweek vesper service and even exposed myself to a small social afterward while the twins and Nep stayed home to watch a ball game on television. There was no further mention of this supposed childhood friend or any sign of him, and I chose not to ask more about it. For all my effort, I went to bed more often than not feeling like I had gone about my day as a woman in disguise, a woman I scarcely recognized. Not someone I necessarily disliked, but neither was this new Cass I had fabricated someone with whom I really wanted to spend much time. My experiment, undertaken to prove the hypothesis that a person who donned new garb and attitude might acquire a new direction in life, had already shown signs of failure.

For all their good intentions toward me, not to mention loyalty stretched thin, Morgan and Jonah weren't quite sure what to make of their mother. Morgan continued suffering the taunts of his peers, not just because his mother was different but now because she was "trying to act different from different." And Jonah existed in a limbo, even more friendless than I had been at his age. It was clear not just he but both of them preferred the earlier, divining Cassandra to this incarnation bent on assimilating, against all odds.

What I needed was a renewed sense of perspective. A strong dose of Nep. He, I had to admit as ever, was the one man I really did want to talk to, if he was lucid enough, and so arranged with Rosalie for me to drop by. I didn't tell her how alarmed I had been by my last encounter with him. Or how ashamed I felt for having broken the philosophical bond we shared as father and daughter. I remained as firm a nonbeliever—or more precisely, humble non-knower—as before, for all the brave face I had put on it for Rosalie's benefit. Indeed, I was conflicted enough after the church functions and the banishing of my rods and maps to the attic that I wondered more than ever what any deity possibly intended for all of us, large and little, down here on Earth.

Morgan was at practice—he was absent from dawn past dusk these days and, after the incident coming back from Binghamton, hadn't seen fit to invite me to any games—so Jonah and I drove over together. A sultry scorcher of a white sky had settled over the long low mountains. The faint wind that washed through the open windows felt good.

We pulled into the drive leading around to the back of the house, and there was Nep on the porch in a white Adirondack rocker he had built for himself years ago. Jonah jumped out of the truck and raced up the stone path to greet his grandfather. I lingered, wanting them to have a few moments together, and soon Nep rose from his rocker and they came down the steps toward me.

"Come on, Cass," said Jonah, mischievous, even defiant. "We're walking down to the pond."

"How are you today, handsome?" I asked, giving my father a delicate embrace, as light as his new frailty suggested I hug him.

"The pond—beautiful."

"It sure is. That's a good idea to walk down there."

Nep looked pretty clearheaded, his hand steady on Jonah's shoulder, more to keep himself in balance, I sensed, than as a display of affection for the boy. His white hair, as long as Morgan's these days, shimmered in the dazzling sun. With his sandaled feet, his untucked blousy white shirt over a pair of baggy white cotton trousers, he looked like an old sage, a homely monk drifting through nature guarded by pink spirea and powdery plumes of astilbe.

"Come on," Jonah cried out again, full-throated, then turned to me with his inquisitive eager eyes and said quietly, firmly, "I want to show him, Cass."

I opened my mouth to insist otherwise, but then thought, No. Jonah had the right. My quest wasn't his. Divining was a way of connecting with his grandfather. No harm in that.

"What have you been up to today?" I asked my father.

Today?

"Yes, what have you been doing?"

"Nothing. Not today."

"Well, it's a perfect day to do nothing. Don't you think so, Jonah?"

"Perfect," he agreed. "And a perfect day to show Nep something secret."

Another walk to the pond to disclose another secret. Though Nep was reticent, I believe we all knew what Jonah meant. I looked again at my father, more closely this time, and saw that some quintessence had departed. His self, once solid, had become porous. I had the distinct feeling of having filtered through these perceptions before, and the ones that were about to follow. Like I needed to remember back to what was about to happen ahead. In the end, no language was equal to expressing this quantum moment. My father was leaving me soon.

A great blue heron was startled from its motionless stalking as we came down past a low wall of broken stones. Jonah ran ahead, clapping his hands and shouting at the huge carnivorous bird as it rose unhurried from the shallow water on patient, nonchalant wings that were almost as wide as Jonah was tall.

"I need to talk with you about something," I said to Nep.

He followed the majestic bird's flight as it lifted away above the canopy of green leaves, heading south toward some other pond. Jonah descended into the woods, I assumed to cut himself a divining rod.

"I don't know whether you remember about that girl Laura they found in the forest?"

I gave him time to respond, but he said nothing. Tightening my hold on his hand for an instant, I felt him squeeze back. He was listening.

"It's just that I went to visit her and I think something's really wrong. The man, or whoever it is, who hung that mannequin you found at the lighthouse? I'm beginning to suspect he has something to do with Laura, too."

"I see," he said.

"And I think he hasn't finished with either her or me."

"I know how that is."

"How so?"

He didn't respond, so I continued into a realm of speculation I hadn't articulated even to myself before this moment. "This is very hard for me to talk about, and I don't want to betray a confidence, but I wonder if Rosalie ever told you about Christopher's involvement with Emily Schaefer's death. I've been thinking about it, and the place where she died isn't all that far from where I saw the hanged girl. I'm convinced she was a forevision, Nep. But the more I think about it I seem to have been looking backward and forward at the same time. Are you with me here?"

"I am."

"There was another kid there with Chris when Emily died. His name was Roy. You probably don't remember him."