The Time Between (18 page)

“Three candles?” he remarked. “I’m much older than that, I can assure you.”

“One for the past, one for the present, and one for the future,” I explained.

Helena leaned forward, her eyes reflecting the light from the candles. “There should be more than three,” she said.

Finn’s eyebrows lifted. “Two for the future? For the road not taken as well as the well-trod path?”

She shook her head, her eyes focused on the candles. “Two for the past. For the one we wish we had and for the one we have to live with.”

Finn stared at his great-aunt for a long moment and then blew out the candles, all extinguishing at the same moment as if an unseen hand had suddenly closed a door.

I stood in the grass outside the screened porch, the long blades tickling my legs. The sound of the old gramophone scratched out its music, a ribbon of sound that wove itself like a river into the night.

We’d listened to the Szarka Sisters album only once and not more—at Helena’s insistence—and their voices had been pure and clear, their harmonies as if sung by a single voice. Now we were listening to an old Bing Crosby album, one of his earliest. There was something about the music of the early forties that made one nostalgic for another time.

Helena had retired to her room and Teri rocked in one of the rockers, a sleeping Gigi on her lap. Teri’s head bobbed as she tried to stay awake.

I glanced over at Finn, who was fitting a lens onto the telescope. “Should I wake Gigi? She was so excited about seeing the stars.”

“It’s past her bedtime and it’s important that she gets her sleep. I’ll make sure that she gets a chance tomorrow night. We’ll just start a little earlier.” He peered into the eyepiece, then made another adjustment. “It’s better to wait until full dark, but not necessary.”

He moved his hands toward the stand and began to turn a knob, raising the telescope. “We should get a good view of Ursa Major—Big Bear.” He paused, studying the sky. “The best time to view the constellation in the Northern Hemisphere is in April, but we’ll still get a good view—and of Ursa Minor, too.” He looked through the lens again and began to move it slowly to the right. “I’m assuming you know the Big Dipper?”

“Of course. And the Little Dipper. But I’m afraid that’s where my knowledge of astronomy ends.”

He lifted his eyes away from the telescope to give me an amused look. After returning to his perusal of the sky, he said, “The handle of the Big Dipper is the Big Bear’s tail, and the dipper’s cup is the bear’s flank.”

Stepping back, he said, “Here, it’s your turn.”

I moved up to the telescope, lifting my hands to the wide neck to steady myself, but Finn grabbed them before I could touch the cool metal. It was the first time he’d touched me, and the warmth of his skin startled me, as if I’d dipped my fingers into sand and found water instead.

Our eyes met for a brief moment before he released my hands. “Try not to touch the telescope. It took a while to get it in the precise spot.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice to speak, and pressed my eye against the eyepiece. I felt momentarily dizzy as I tried to reconcile how close the constellation suddenly seemed, as if I’d been propelled into space and was floating weightless amid the moon and stars. “They look so close,” I said, resisting the temptation to stretch out my fingers to see if I could touch them.

“I have the lens set so that you can see the whole thing. With a stronger lens we could focus on individual stars, but I thought we’d start with this.”

I blinked my eye carefully, as if I were afraid the whole bright expanse of stars would disappear. But they were still there, waiting for me. “Tell me what I’m looking at. I’m guessing you probably didn’t need the beginner’s astronomy book.”

“A refresher couldn’t hurt,” he said diplomatically. He moved closer, close enough that I could hear him breathing, feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. “Do you see the Big Dipper?”

It took me only a moment to hone in on the familiar group of stars I’d once proudly pointed out to my father. “Yes, I’ve got it.”

“Follow the two stars at the end of the cup upward, and the next bright star you’ll run into is Polaris, which is part of the Little Dipper.”

“The North Star,” I said quietly, remembering another quiet night like this with Eve and my father on his boat listening to him explain the stars to us and their importance to sailors.

I heard the smile in Finn’s voice. “So you do know more about astronomy than you think.” He stepped closer, his voice very close to my ear, as if he was trying to see exactly what I was seeing. “The distance to Polaris is about five times the angle between the two stars at the end of the cup of the Big Dipper. Because they’re so useful in finding the North Star, these two stars are known as the Pointer Stars.”

He gently touched my shoulder. “Step back for a minute. I want to see if I can get closer to the North Star.”

I did as he asked, watching as he reached into a small box of lenses that had come with the telescope. Because I was preoccupied with what he was doing, his question came as a surprise, which was probably intentional.

“How is your sister?”

“Eve? Oh, you mean with the pregnancy? She’s doing fine.”

He nodded absently, moving the telescope slightly to the left. “I remember how sick Harper was the whole nine months with Peanut. It was exhausting for both of us.” He tilted his head to give me a wry smile.

“No, nothing like that. So far, anyway. It’s still early. But thanks for asking.”

He straightened and focused his attention on me. “It’s just that I know how much she depends on you, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making more demands on your time right now than you’re able to give.”

“Thank you, but I’m managing fine. Glen will be taking Eve to some of her doctor’s appointments, which will be a big help, and he’s been doing the grocery shopping since I started working here.”

His eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight, as if they held answers to questions I wasn’t ready to ask. “Glen—that’s your brother-in-law, right? The one who came to check up on you on your first day here.”

I was glad it was too dark for him to see my reddening cheeks. “Yes. He feels he needs to be the man of the house, since it’s only him with us three women.” My attempt to lighten the mood failed.

“I see,” he said, making it clear that he didn’t. He placed his eye over the eyepiece, keeping both eyes open as he’d instructed me to do. “It just seemed to me that his concern for you went a little overboard.” He paused. “And that you didn’t seem to mind.”

The air seemed too thin, my lungs unable to gather enough oxygen. I saw spots that mingled with the stars in the black sky and felt as if all of my deepest secrets had been laid out across the universe for the world to see.

“He’s Eve’s husband,” I managed.

“I know,” he said matter-of-factly. He stepped back from the telescope and motioned for me to come forward again. “Here’s a better look at Polaris.”

I stumbled, my feet feeling numb, but Finn caught my arm and positioned me in front of the telescope. I leaned forward and looked through the eyepiece. The North Star seemed huge, filling the lens with bright light.

He stood behind me. “If you can spot Polaris in the sky, you can always tell which way is north, and the angle of Polaris above the horizon tells you your latitude on earth. That’s why the North Star has always been important for sailors. It was the star that brought them home.”

I stepped back and looked up at him, wondering if he was still talking about the stars. The record had stopped, the scratching bump of the needle a steady percussion beneath the wings of the chirping insects and the night birds that flitted invisibly across the marsh toward the river.

“I need to go,” I said, my voice breathless. “It’s late.” I didn’t move, and neither did he.

“I was hoping you’d play the piano. Aunt Helena wanted to hear Debussy.”

I began walking back toward the sanctuary of the screened porch. “I’ll play for her when I come on Wednesday.”

I’d made it to the porch when he called out, “Thank you for the birthday cake. It wasn’t as bad as Aunt Helena said it was.”

I pressed my forehead against the wooden frame of the door, surprised to find myself smiling. “That’s a relief,” I said. “Good night, Finn.”

“Good night, Eleanor.”

I let the screen door shut softly behind me, closing out the night and the bright star that guided lost souls toward home.

Eleanor

I
t was barely ten thirty in the morning, but Glen’s car was at the curb when I pulled up. I quickly jumped out of the car, a sick feeling in my stomach, hearing Eve’s voice repeating itself over and over in my head.
If I die, you’d be free.

The door opened and Glen met me on the porch. Trying to quell my panic, I asked, “Why are you home? Is Eve all right?”

“She’s just resting on the couch. She seemed real tired this morning when I left. It was slow at work, so I decided to take an extended lunch break. What are you doing home?”

“I’m heading out to Edisto later, but Mr. Beaufain said I could take the rest of the morning off, too, when I told him I was going to the library first to return a book and pick up a few new ones for his great-aunt.”

I sank down on the porch swing with relief. “I think it’s natural for pregnancy to zap a lot of energy.”

“That’s what her doctor said.”

I glanced over at him, trying not to show my surprise. “Her doctor?”

“I called Dr. Wise. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t need to bring her in or anything.”

I bit my lip to hold back from blurting out more than I should. It was Eve’s life, Eve’s pregnancy, and not mine.

He continued. “She had me take Eve’s temperature, and that was normal.” Glen sat down next to me, rubbing his palms down the thighs of his pants. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through nine months of this.”

I studied his face, still seeing the boy I’d fallen in love with all those years ago. But something was different, too. Somehow his jawline didn’t seem right, his nose not as straight, and his hair too dark. I pulled back with alarm as I realized I was comparing him to Finn.

“Are you all right?”

His concern made it worse. “I’m fine.” I forced a smile. “You’re really happy about the baby, aren’t you?”

He nodded without hesitation. “Yes. I hope—”

An image of Helena, all alone in her house by the river, loomed in my mind, yet instead of her face I saw my own. I cut him off, not wanting to hear the rest of what he wanted to say, knowing it would lead me to the same dead end I’d been circling for years. “I know how much Eve wants the baby, too. Being wanted is a great place for a child to start out.”

“I still care for you—”

I held up my hand. “Don’t. Don’t say it. You and Eve have your life together, and I’m finding my own.”

He reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I wanted to lean into him, to allow him to make all the hurt go away as if I were still a teenager waylaying him on his way to pick up Eve for a date. I’d steal a single kiss as if that might make me happy until the next time. It seemed to me as if I were still waiting, and for the first time I couldn’t think of what I’d been waiting for.

I jumped off the swing. “Is Mama dressed and ready? I called to tell her I was taking her to the library.”

Glen looked at me oddly. “She’s in the den, watching television. I wasn’t aware that she was a big reader.”

I walked toward the door, remembering to keep my tread light so I wouldn’t awaken Eve. “She used to be, when my father was alive. When she became a single mother, it was a little hard for her to find the time. They have magazines, too—anything would be better than her sitting in front of the television set all day.”

A wide smile split his face.

“What’s so funny?”

“Remember that time you stole Mr. Grund’s television set so you and Eve could watch the premier of
The X Files
?”

“I didn’t steal it; I borrowed it. Ours was broken and Eve didn’t want to miss the beginning of the series. And I would have gotten away with it if Eve hadn’t taken her time raiding their refrigerator.”

“Because you told her to raid it. She wanted to leave as soon as the TV set was back on the stand.”

I clamped down on the inside of my cheek to stop smiling. Our mother had been livid—not that I’d taken the neighbor’s television but that I’d involved Eve in another episode of misbehavior. “Yeah, well, she didn’t have to do it just because I said so.”

He leaned back in the swing, placing his left arm over the back so that his gold wedding ring caught the sunlight. “You were the one bright spot for her. I don’t think she thought she had a choice to say no.”

I was about to ask him what he meant, but my mother came through the door. “Are you ready? I’ve been waiting all morning.”

I looked at my mother, the woman who’d once been so perfectly groomed, and wondered when she’d begun to wear sensible shoes and think that a housedress was acceptable to wear out in public. At least her hair was clean and brushed and she’d applied lipstick—the same shade of coral she’d worn ever since I could remember.

She looked behind me, her face lighting up when she spotted the Volvo. “It will be so nice to drive in a new car again.”

I said good-bye to Glen, then opened the door for my mother before climbing in behind the steering wheel. “I know it’s a bit of a drive, but we’re going to the Mount Pleasant branch. The book I have to renew came from there.”

She just nodded, clutching her purse on her lap like I used to when I rode the bus to work. Her hands reminded me of Helena’s, with the swollen joints and curled fingers, and I wondered absently if a lifetime of insensitivity could be a precursor to arthritis.

I glanced in the backseat to where I’d tossed
The Art of
Origami
. I’d forgotten to ask Helena if she wanted it returned, so I’d decided to renew it. I needed to visit the library anyway, hoping to find some kind of travel guides or coffee table books on Hungary to give me a better visual of a country I’d known very little about a mere month before. I also wanted to find a few books to read to Helena, and I knew just where to look.

While searching for piano music, I’d found a hidden trove of well-read historical romance novels. They’d been tucked behind literary classics on bookshelves as well as under some of the sheet music in Bernadett’s baskets. I thought they might have belonged to Bernadett until I’d noticed the penciled-in HS on the inside covers. I’d laughed outright at the thought of Helena reading the books in secret and then hiding them from her sister. I thought of Bernadett’s austere bedroom and the type of person who would have lived in such a place and felt a tinge of sympathy for Helena.

I glanced at my mother in the bright light, realizing it had been a while since I’d seen her in broad daylight. The fine lines around her eyes had become etched wrinkles, although her chin and neck were still firm. If she’d married the kind of man her family had expected her to instead of an Edisto shrimper, she would have been able to take care of herself better, been able to afford a good colorist and regular facials. But even the blue of her eyes seemed to have faded, as if her stolen dreams had leached the colors from her face.

I looked back at the road, eager to avert my thoughts. “I’m glad it’s a long drive, Mama. We haven’t spent a lot of time together since I started working for Miss Szarka.”

She sent me a perfunctory smile, then seemed to mull over something in her mind. Finally, she said, “I didn’t want you to take that job, Eleanor, you know that.”

Not again.
“I know you had objections, based on something you read in the paper, and gossip from an old friend who’s lonely now that both of her children have moved out. But it’s all been fine.”

“I know, but remember that I’ve known the Szarka sisters for years. There was always something odd about those two women.”

“They’re from another country, Mama. And they’re different—not odd. Even as a child I knew the difference.” I couldn’t believe I was defending Helena. I wondered if I should tell her—to get brownie points. Or if she’d even care.

“I cleaned for them once. Did I tell you?”

I whipped around to stare at her. “No. You didn’t.”

She clutched her handbag tighter. “It was a long time ago, when your father was still alive. We needed the money. When your father sold his second boat I thought it was to help with household expenses. But he bought that piano for you instead.” She waved her hand at me. “I’m not blaming you, or him. The local shrimping industry was just about dead, anyway. Eve needed new costumes for two big pageants in the spring, and you needed new school shoes—not to mention Christmas presents. The Szarkas were throwing their big Christmas party that they had every year and were looking for people to come in and clean before and after and to help at the party. It was good money, but I didn’t tell anyone except for your father.” She leaned closer to me. “And don’t tell Eve, either.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s okay that I know you cleaned somebody else’s house for money, but not Eve?”

Her chin wobbled a bit. “She’s always needed to be protected. But you . . .” She shrugged. “Even as a child, you seemed able to take care of yourself. That the outside world didn’t matter as long as you had your father and your music. I think that grounded you in ways that Eve’s beauty and talents couldn’t. That’s why I always made a big deal out of her. Somebody had to even the playing field.”

I had to focus on my driving so that I wouldn’t plow into anything. If she’d always felt this way, this was the first I’d ever heard of it. Is that what happened as a mother grew older? She saw her children as adults she could confide in, despite how painful or revealing the subject matter? It seemed, almost, that because I was an adult I’d suddenly ceased to be her child.

I looked down at my white knuckles on the steering wheel, all the old anger and hurt close to the surface, like I’d been underwater for so long that my lungs would burst from holding in all that air.
What about after Daddy died? Who was there to protect me?

I wasn’t interested in rehashing the past, which would never change, so I attempted to return the conversation to a safer place. “You didn’t think to mention that you’d worked for the Szarkas when I told you about the job offer?”

Her lips pressed together. “No. It was humiliating, and it still is. I’m only mentioning it now to tell you why I know things aren’t all right in that house and that you need to keep your guard up.”

“Well, you haven’t told me anything other than that they were different from everybody else, which makes sense since they’re not from here.”

She shook her head, her brows puckered together. “It was just odd—all those paintings hanging on the walls and all the drapes shut. They were nice paintings, too—old ones, and probably quite valuable. I grew up with nice art, so I can recognize the real thing when I see it.”

“They brought it from their home in Hungary—most people do bring along their possessions when they move. There’s nothing odd about that.”

“I didn’t think so at first, either, until I got in a conversation with the older one—Miss Helena—after I saw an old photograph of her and Miss Bernadett and the oldest sister, who was already dead by then. I told her they looked like the Gabor sisters. They were Hungarian, too, and all three were movie stars here in the States.

“But Miss Helena just shook her head and seemed angry, saying that she and Bernadett hadn’t relied on rich husbands to get them out of Hungary, nor were they raised with a lot of money, and that they were expected to work for a living.”

“That all makes sense to me,” I said, flicking on the blinker to turn onto Anna Knapp Boulevard.

I felt my mother staring at me, and I didn’t need to look at her to see her disappointment in my inability to think things through. “It didn’t make sense, then, if they didn’t come from a lot of money, that they would have all that expensive art.”

I pulled into a parking spot at the library but sat there for a moment with the engine idling, wondering why I felt so unnerved, as if my mother’s words had unlocked a box of my own unasked questions. “The three sisters recorded an album. That must have brought in a lot of money.”

She unsnapped her seat belt. “I remember that. Bernadett would play it over and over on her gramophone until Helena took it away from her. I told her I didn’t know that they were famous, and she said that they weren’t, that they’d only recorded the one album. I’m sure it’s not like it is today, where you can retire on just one album.”

“Well,” I said, turning off the ignition and opening my door. “They could have inherited the paintings from a relative, or they could be worthless. Helena’s never had them appraised. Maybe she knows they’re not worth anything but is too proud to admit it.”

Mama rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were chilled. “There was something about Helena that I didn’t like. Something secretive. And so protective of her younger sister, who was still so frail. Like Audrey Hepburn, who never recovered her health, either, after surviving near starvation during the war. I saw that on the Biography Channel not too long ago,” she said, nodding once as if to punctuate the veracity of her statement. “Anyway, I did like to hear her play the piano. I know your father said you were the best, but I think she was even better.”

I swallowed at the implied insult. “Bernadett?”

“No, Helena. Even I could tell her music was special. I’m guessing she doesn’t play too much anymore. As far back as that Christmas, she was complaining about how much it hurt her fingers to play—because of the arthritis.”

I leaned back against my seat, recalling Helena’s knotted fingers and wondering when she’d finally stopped playing—not because she chose to but because she had to. It made me a little ashamed to recall how reluctant I’d been to play for her, how selfish. Even in the last months of Bernadett’s life, there had been no piano music. A silent house for a musician would be a kind of death. I clenched my eyes shut, my internal voice shouting at me,
Yes, it is.

I realized my mother was speaking, and I concentrated on listening to what she was saying.

“I saw Mrs. Reed again at the craft store yesterday while I was picking up some beading for Eve. When I told her that you were working for Helena Szarka, she told me something she’d read in the local paper. She said they didn’t do an autopsy on Bernadett. And everybody knows that when somebody dies at home they do an autopsy. She said Mr. Beaufain’s father was good friends with the Charleston County coroner and maybe did the family a favor. I don’t like you being with those people, Eleanor. You are known by the company you keep.”