Homecoming (16 page)

Eleanora loved talking to her grandfather. She knew he didn't judge her, and he would never ever, under any circumstances, repeat what she said to him because he hadn't spoken a word since Eleanora was a child—but that wasn't the only reason. Before he'd gotten ill, he'd kept Mimi at bay, acting as Eleanora's protector when she was too small to look after herself.

It scared Eleanora to think of what Mimi would do if she realized how much “seeing” went on inside her head. She'd already endured so many scalding baths in her lifetime that just the thought of getting in a full tub made her skin burn.

“Let's put something better on the radio,” Eleanora said as she got up from the hard-backed wooden chair she'd pulled up next to Papa's bed and went over to the radio, fiddling with the knob until she found the classical music he liked.

There was static, and then the opening bassoon solo of Igor Stravinsky's
The Rite of Spring
exploded out of the beige Bakelite radio's tinny speakers, sweeping Eleanora into another world. She pirouetted away from the dresser, where the radio always sat, and skipped back to the bed. She was surprised to find Papa's eyes wide open, bloodshot sclera and bright blue irises fixed on her.

“What is it, Papa?” she asked, as the rest of the orchestra swelled to join the bassoon in a frenetic cacophony of sound.

Papa's eyes drifted away from her, over to the plain wooden dresser, and he began to blink furiously, eyeballs glued to the radio.

“Do you want me to turn it off?” she asked starting to move back toward the dresser, but the blinking stopped. “No? Then what?”

More intense blinking, and his right hand began to twitch.

“Wait,” she said, understanding dawning. “You want me to turn it up, don't you?”

Eyes and hand relaxed, almost as though they were sighing with relief. Eleanora smiled, then went over and turned up the volume, the chaotic music filling the room.

That was when she noticed the tear. It hung from the fringe of Papa's right eyelash. He blinked, and the tear dropped down the side of his weathered cheek, getting lost inside the folds of his nightshirt.

“Oh, Papa,” Eleanora said, rushing back to his side to grasp his hand and squeeze the soft flesh of his fingers. “Please don't cry.”

It happened so infrequently, she almost forgot it was possible, but every now and then Papa would just lie there crying. There was never a specific reason she could discern. After a while, she decided it must be something he was thinking about, a thought or memory she didn't have access to and therefore couldn't understand.

It was awful to watch him cry because there were no sounds or movements to accompany the tears. She was used to her own crying jags, silent sobbing that shook her body and made her head hurt. Sometimes, when she couldn't contain herself, she'd press her face into her pillow and scream, the sound muffled by the pillowcase and the delicate down feathers.

“What is it, Papa? I wish you could just tell me,” she said, hating that there was nothing she could do to help him.

The music had calmed, a false lull before the chaos began again, and she sighed, letting the music enfold them both.

“I wish you could talk to me, Papa,” she said, her voice low and melancholy.

His fingers twitched against her palm, and she knew he was trying to tell her he wished he could talk to her, too. The music danced around them, loud enough that if Mimi came home, she'd throw a fit and complain, saying,
What will the neighbors think about all this heathen music playing in our house?

Eleanora didn't think there was anything heathen about beautiful music, but what did she know? As far as Mimi was concerned, everything Eleanora liked came from the Devil—especially the “seeing.”

I wish I could take Papa with me, so he could visit with Mama again,
she thought, the idea absurd, but then something inside her told her that no, it wasn't absurd—maybe she
could
take Papa with her.

She didn't know why she'd never thought of this before. It seemed like such a simple, perfect idea.

“Would you like to go on a trip with me?” she asked the old man. “Come with me to see my mama again?”

He blinked rapidly, fingers twitching inside the cocoon of her hand.

He wants to go,
she thought as a fiery curiosity began to gestate in her belly.
Can I really do it?

She'd never tried to take anyone with her before—it wasn't as though there was anyone to take. No one outside Mimi and Papa knew about the visions, and she'd always been too terrified to share them with anyone else. Now she wondered how she could do it. How could she bring Papa along with her into the ghostly world of her “seeing”?

“I'm gonna try, Papa,” she said, smiling down at him, her words tinged with excitement.

She closed her eyes, still holding tight to her grandfather's hand, and focused on what she wanted to do. She pushed away any worries—like that Mimi would come home early from her Ladies' Auxiliary church meeting—and let her mind's eye wander.

“I want to see Mama,” she said aloud, putting her “want” out into the universe . . .

“. . . where is this?” Papa asked.

He was standing beside her, fingers laced between hers, but he wasn't the papa of now. He was the papa of before—before the stroke that silenced him and kept him trapped inside his head.

Instead of answering him, she took a moment to look around, unsure of when or where they were. All she could see was that they were outside in a field of summer daisies, the sun beating down as the wind navigated its way through the sea of white and yellow flowers with a soft hush. She turned her head, but all she saw behind her were more daisies.

“I don't know, Papa,” she said, finally. “I've never been here before.”

“It's so beautiful,” Papa said, lifting his free hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

He was a handsome man, and Eleanora saw that she resembled him more than she'd ever realized. New Englanders, both of them, cut from the same hunk of granite, sharing the same hawkish nose and flinty eyes, the same stern set of the mouth. Even though his hair was salt and pepper to her brown, and his skin wrinkled with age to her smooth, unblemished complexion—anyone who saw them together would know the same blood flowed between them.

“May?” Papa said, and he squeezed Eleanora's hand so hard she could feel her knuckles crack.

She followed his gaze, but all she could see ahead of her was an unending field of flowers.

“Where's Mama?” Eleanora asked, struggling to see.

He pointed into the distance.

“She's right there,” he said. “Can't you see her?”

But no matter how much she squinted, her mama did not appear to her.

“I'm sorry, Papa,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don't see anything.”

Papa tried to drop her hand, but Eleanora held tight to him, an alarm sounding in her head as she realized she didn't know what would happen if she lost hold of him in this place.

Don't let him go!
she thought, holding fast to his fingers while he fought to break her grip.
Whatever you do, don't let him go!

“Sister,” he said, sounding both disappointed in her and frantic to escape. “You gotta release me.”

“No,” she said, though her own hands were becoming slick with sweat, making the task of keeping him as futile as holding back the crash of the sea with a plastic bucket.

He stopped struggling and turned so he could look her right in the eye.

“Sister,” he said, his voice firm. “You've done right bringing me here, but now you have to let me go.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head violently.

“You've got to, sweetheart,” he said, eyes overflowing with love. “I know it. You know it. She knows it.”

He looked back into the distance. To the place where her mama—whom she could not see—stood, waiting for him.

Finally, she understood where they were.

“Papa, I don't want you to go,” she said. “Please, don't leave without me.”

He shook his head.

“It's not your time, sister.”

She didn't want to believe it, but she knew he was telling her the truth. She threw herself into her papa's arms, and he hugged her back fiercely.

“Good-bye, Papa,” she whispered. “Tell Mama I love her. As always.”

Then she let him go . . .

She knew he was gone before she even opened her eyes.

The Rite of Spring
was long over, and something else had taken its place, but her heart was broken, and that was all she could think about. In a daze, she got up and walked over to the radio, turning it off.

“The Devil has your foot, sister.”

Mimi stood in the doorway watching her, eyes flat and devoid of emotion.

“Mimi?” she asked, her mind bleary with exhaustion.

“The Devil has your foot, sister, and that's not all,” Mimi said. She shook her head and walked out of the room, the thump of her metal brace jarring in the silence.

Eleanora returned to her papa's bedside, the hardness of the wooden chair biting into her back and shoulders as she sat down again—as if she needed reminding of what reality she was inhabiting. She looked over at her papa. His face was still, the light of life extinguished from his eyes.

I have done something good,
she thought.
And there will be hell to pay for it.

*   *   *

The man arrived a week after they buried Papa.

Eleanora was in the kitchen fixing dinner when the knock came. She set down the knife she'd been using to chop spinach and wiped flecks of green onto the white apron tied around her waist. She pulled the clip from her hair, running her fingers through the tangles and smoothing down the wild bits before pinning everything back into place.

“Mimi?” she called as she left the warm kitchen behind her, walking through the living room and heading for the front door.

There was no response from her grandmother, but she hadn't really expected one. Since Papa died, Mimi had been frozen in grief—silent, even, where the Devil was concerned—but Eleanora knew this was only the calm before the storm. Things were brewing behind her grandmother's rigid façade, and Eleanora was already making secret plans to escape the house before things became unbearable. Besides, she wanted to travel, to see strange new places and meet people who were wholly different from the people she grew up with in Duxbury—and none of that would ever happen if she allowed Mimi to continue to control her.

Her papa's death had not been easy for Eleanora, but it'd brought with it the realization that there was no reason for her to stay in Massachusetts anymore. With him gone, she was free of her human bondage.

“Yes?” Eleanora said, as she opened the front door—unaware that this singular action was the beginning of the storm she'd been anticipating.

“Is this the Eames residence?” a man asked, taking off his black fedora and holding it between his hands, revealing a close-cropped head of blond hair.

He wore a light wool jacket over his dark gray suit, and brown horn-rimmed glasses perched back on the bridge of his nose—but the conservative attire and thick glasses did nothing to mask how incredibly handsome he was.

“It is,” Eleanora said, blushing. “How may I help you?”

He ran the brim of his hat between his fingers and gave her a warm smile.

“You must be Eleanora. I'm a friend of your grandmother's. From church.”

It was such an absurd idea—this man being friends with Mimi—that Eleanora almost laughed. Instead, she nodded politely and invited him in. The man followed her through the doorway and into the sitting room, where she indicated he should take a seat on the couch.

“Is Mimi expecting you, Mr. . . . ?” She let the question mark linger, wanting him to know she thought him a bit rude for not giving her his name.

“Mitchell R. Davis,” the man said, bowing his head in greeting.

“Nice to meet you, Mitchell R. Davis,” Eleanora replied. “I'll let Mimi know you're here.”

She turned to go fetch her grandmother but went only a few steps before she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Yes—” she started to say, but then a handkerchief covered her mouth.

She struggled against her attacker, a sickly sweet smell filling her nostrils, and the world faded slowly, painfully, to black.

*   *   *

Love is a four-letter word that can be as evil as any curse.

The terrible things done out of love—because the end somehow justifies the means—are innumerable to count.

Had Mimi done this to her out of love?

This was the question most often on Eleanora's mind, pondered without answer over the many weeks of her incarceration.

She once asked Mitchell (after hours spent in his company, she'd come to call him by his first name) if a person could love someone to death. He'd laughed but then proceeded to answer her question with the utmost seriousness:

“Human beings are fallible. They try to live as God would have them live, but they can only fail at this because of their imperfection. Man is made in the image of God. He is of God, but not a God.”

Mitchell was in his shirtsleeves. It was his turn to stay with her, to watch and see what incarnation the Devil would take. She hated the other men and would cry when they came to stay in the room with her. Their eyes were forever staring, waiting to see what evilness inside her they could testify to having witnessed.

Only Mitchell she could tolerate. In him, she saw something redeemable, and, unlike the others, he wasn't afraid to talk to her. This was the reason they hadn't broken her yet, though she didn't want them to know this. Having Mitchell was her saving grace.