Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (14 page)

Chapter XVI:

The W
indow

A
s the sun began to rise, Cassie MacAdam dragged herself to the chair before her little desk, and sat down heavily. She tried to rub the sleep from her eyes, but it was reluctant to depart after having been present for such a short time.

The
cause
of this brief presence, stunted in the early minutes of its formation, was of course: the one and only (thank Heaven for this fact; as Cassie did not think that the universe could maintain more than a single instance of her) Birdie Post. She had spent the entire night banging pots and pans against the kitchen walls, in reciprocation for a black eye that Tommy had given her. He was due to be up for work at seven in the morning; and Birdie knew full well that the man could scarcely operate on less than ten hours of sleep. So she beat and she bashed, and she slammed and she smashed, every item of metal cookware that the cupboards contained, till both Tommy
and
Cassie arrived in the kitchen, screaming for a cessation of the noise. But Birdie only tossed a skillet across the room, and with it knocked Tommy square on the forehead. He did not wake in the hours of night which remained; and even if he had, surely he would have had far too great a headache to bother with the gift of a matching shiner for Birdie’s right eye.

Cassie watched quietly while Birdie attempted the death of her husband with the skillet (for she could not judge overmuch, seeing as she had recently indulged in a similar activity with a table lamp); but after Tommy fell to the floor, and adopted a spread-eagle position by the front door, she begged again for silence. This time, Birdie directed a blow at
her
head – and, fearing for the intactness of her skull, Cassie fled the kitchen. But she turned back at the top of the stairs, just in time to see her mother snatch the front door from its jamb, and make use of it in the further beating of Tommy Wells’s defenceless head.

Now, the house was silent. Doubtless, Birdie had located a bottle of bourbon in the cabinet under the sink, and thrown herself a private party on the floor of the kitchen. Doubtless, Tommy still lay motionless by the front door, unfit in any case to report to work – even if Cassie had bothered to try and rouse him.

She glanced at the alarm clock on her bureau; read the hour of seven; and smiled to herself.

She went back to her bed, and crawled into it, determined to take for herself at least three more hours of rest. But when she shut her eyes, the darkness behind the lids was molested by the sun which streamed in through the curtainless windows.

She rose with a despondent sigh; walked to the windows (for it was already dreadfully hot), and pulled them open. Then she returned to her desk. She put her hands before her face for several moments, hiding in the blackness they created; but afterwards bent down over the desktop, and began to scribble away on a sheet of paper, an infectious melody which had only just squirmed its way inside of her brain.

Noticing nothing at all of what was taking place around her, just as she never did, when she had begun to write – she was frightened nearly half to death, when there came the sound of some sort of object, sailing in through the window, and clattering to the floor. She whipped about in her chair.

Her eyes fell upon a short, narrow stick, lying there on the floor beside the bed. She went to pick it up, and discovered that there was a small piece of paper, rolled up tight and attached to the stick with an elastic hair-band.

She rolled out the paper. On it were written two words only.

Look outside.

So Cassie walked to the open windows. Down in the yard, before the sparse line of brown hedges, stood a woman. Her long white hair fell down over her shoulders, and glinted in the morning light, shining with a radiance that bespoke of diamonds. She smiled, and waved.

“Nessa!”

“Hello, Cassandra MacAdam!”

Cassie frowned. “What are you doing down there?”

“Wondering if I might come in.”

“Well – I would say yes, but I wouldn’t recommend coming through the front door.” Again she frowned. “And that’s the only door we have, that actually opens.”

The incident of the back door (which stood now, duct-taped into the jamb) was the product of yet another of Birdie’s episodes. And, knowing what we know of the woman already – need we really recount it?

“That’s all right,” said Nessa. “I don’t need the door.”

“What do you –”

Cassie had no chance to finish her question; for all in an instant, Nessa ran towards the house. Cassie thought, of course, that she had lost her mind; that she would strike her head upon the wood, and render herself dead. But just when she was about to shout out – rather an amazing thing happened.

As Nessa drew near to the house, it seemed almost that she began to run

upwards
– directly through the air, for a second or two. Her feet connected first with the wood, and then she brought her hands down flat against it, using them to shove herself up towards the window. (She had once made frequent use of this tactic, in reaching her own bedroom window; but was reprimanded so very many times by her mother, who grew sick of having to hose the muddy prints from the side of the house, that she had not done any such thing since the age of thirteen.)

In less than four seconds, she was through the window, and standing beside Cassie.

“Good morning,” she said.

Cassie’s mouth fell open; but Nessa only laughed, and chucked her under the chin. She did not pause to think, that such a display should ever prove unwise; just as she had not once thought, that to embellish the cause for the brevity of her name should prove necessary. Not with Cassie MacAdam.

“How did you do that?” Cassie asked simply.

“What matter how I did it?” Nessa returned. “Only because I can do it, and some cannot – when others can do many things that
I
cannot. It’s all nothing, really.”

“Oh,” said Cassie.

“It’s good to see you,” Nessa added. She leant forward a little; seemed to hesitate for a moment; but then kissed Cassie’s cheek. Afterwards she drew back, much like a shy child, and took a step towards the window.

Cassie could not help but smile. She leant her shoulder against the wall, crossed her arms, and studied Nessa’s face for a long moment. But ever she kept her smile, and indeed could not refrain from keeping it.

“What brings you here at –” (she glanced at the clock) “– eight in the morning?”

Nessa shrugged. “I was up early,” she said. “I thought you might be, too.”

“And why would you think that?”

“Well, I don’t know. But you were – weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then . . .”

She averted her eyes, and rubbed the back of her neck with a nervous hand.

“Come and sit down, then,” said Cassie, pulling her towards the bed. She jumped onto it herself, and slid over to the other side. She patted the mattress; and Nessa sat down beside her.
             

“You know,” said Cassie, “it’s still a little strange. It’s not often a person visits someone, for no particular reason – at eight o’clock in the morning.”

Nessa raised her head. “Did I say there was no reason?”

Cassie looked into her eyes – and saw there a thing that suspended the beat of her heart, and slowed for a moment the flow of the blood in her veins. All movement within her was temporarily halted, and she could feel nothing but the penetration of those dark eyes, directly through her own. There was something in those eyes, that she had never seen before in any other pair of eyes. They shone brightly, like the surface of polished obsidian; and flashed with the heat of fire and lightning, in a way that made Cassie’s blood (which had finally started up again on its usual course) seem to bubble.

She knew that there was something different about Nessa. She knew this, she knew it – and had tried once to capture its essence in the notes of her guitar, but had come up empty-handed. She looked now into those dark eyes, and she saw something there; something that she had never before caught a glimpse of; something that she had never before felt the effects of. There was a wildness about her, despite the composedness of her face; despite the calmness of her movements, picking simply at her fingernails, while she waited for Cassie to answer her question.

“No,” said Cassie finally. “No, I suppose you didn’t.”

Nessa looked at her seriously, and asked: “Would you like me to tell it to you?”

“Very much, I think.”

Nessa leant back against the wall, and her face took on a deep and wondering look, as if she could not entirely comprehend what she wished to say – or that, she simply could not believe that she was
going
to say it.

“I feel very different around you,” she said. “I feel freer, as if a bond has fallen away; and I feel less confused, as if finally I had found the answer to some question. The answer I don’t know, of course, since I didn’t even really understand the question.” Her brows knitted together; and she put a hand to her head. “I suppose I don’t rightly know how to explain it, seeing as I’ve never felt it before. But it’s very different, I know that – and very wonderful, too.”

Again she looked into Cassie’s eyes, and seemed to be waiting expectantly.

“I suppose,” said Cassie, “that you want me to say something, now?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Well, I do.” She smiled. “And I would say it all right away, and just as well as I could – if I knew at all
what
to say. But here – let me try something.”

She got to her feet, and went to fetch her guitar from the closet. When Nessa saw her there, with the instrument in her hands, she smiled broadly.

“Didn’t you only tell me, the night before last, that you didn’t want to play?”

“I did,” said Cassie. “But I also promised you, that eventually I would. And I also said, that I didn’t know when that would be.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, and hefted the guitar in her lap. “Well, I suppose it’s now.”

Nessa sat forward a bit, and fixed her eyes intently upon Cassie’s face. But Cassie was not unnerved, this time, as she had been two evenings previous. She only smiled softly.

“There aren’t any words,” she said. “At first, that’s what I tried to do – but then I realised that you don’t make me feel words, because there aren’t any that would be right in the first place. There’s only a beautiful sound.”

She bent her head over the guitar, and began to play. She did not need the sheets of music she had written (and rewritten, over and over again), for the melody was fixed firmly in place, somewhere there between her head and her heart. Even now, as she sat with Nessa’s eyes on her, she could hear it – there in her ears, even before the strings had sounded the notes.

So she played the whole of her song; and then laid the guitar on the bed.

“Even if I tried,” she said, “I don’t think I could explain to you how much work I put into that.”

“You don’t need to,” said Nessa. “You’ve already said all I wanted to hear.”

Cassie watched her for a moment, this time in a sort of amazement. Amazed, she was – because Nessa had truly seemed to understand the words that lay beneath the music, words that had no words to explain in any language that Cassie had ever heard. She understood what Cassie did
not
say; and Cassie had never had that experience before, with anyone or anything.

Cassie went back to her place beside Nessa, but did not once take her eyes from her face. There was still that something there, that thing that she wanted to understand – because her heart beat a little faster each second, and she was beginning to think that it would simply beat on out of control, until she could discover the truth of that something, there in those dark eyes.

Nessa looked back at her, with a face utterly still. But then she took Cassie’s hand, and together they slid down the pillows, without once shifting their eyes.

“Might I tell you something?” asked Nessa.

Cassie nodded.

“That was the most perfect thing I have ever heard.”

Cassie would have laughed, or blushed, or done any one of a number of things, as a result of her disbelief in the truth of that statement – that was, if anyone else had said it. She looked at Nessa, and heard her voice; and knew that she spoke no lies.

Drowsiness came suddenly upon her, and she felt her eyes sliding shut, in spite of the bright light that filled the room. She saw Nessa watching her; and even after she closed her eyes, could feel that she was watching her still. She felt the cool hand, held in her own.

The light seemed to fade away, and the space behind her eyelids turned to black. She moved her head only slightly on her pillow, and felt a movement of response on the pillow beside it. Then a puff of breath, that was somehow both warm and chill at the same time, there against her cheek. She felt fingers brush the hair back from her brow, and in what seemed less than a moment, she was asleep.

Chapter
XVII:

Behind the P
avilion

W
hen Nessa woke, she found herself lying nearer to Cassie than she had before she drifted. Her arm was draped round her neck and shoulders, and her cheek was pressed to the top of her head. She made no movement at all, save for the opening of her eyes; but still Cassie came awake soon after she herself had done. She yawned, and stretched, and looked up almost in surprise at Nessa’s arm. But then she looked into her face, and smiled.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” said Nessa.

The room was nearly full dark, with a deep blue sky visible just outside the windows, not yet spattered with the stars of night, but decorated already with a round white moon. Seeing as it was the height of summer, this could only mean that they had both slept for some twelve hours or more, without one moment of consciousness in betwixt, of what lay outside the world of dreams. Perhaps this seems a time overlong? Well, no – or rather, at least it is not, when the sleepers are ones who have not slept very well at all, for rather a long while.

Nessa looked for a long while at the moon, which had waxed full several days before, but still maintained the greater part of its spherical shape. She recalled the bygone night when she looked out upon this same moon, nearly the same shape exactly, but only approaching its fullness, rather than departing from it. That night, the house had been empty; empty, save for all but she and Leyra.

She thought back on that night, as she looked at the moon; and then looked down at Cassie, and realised something, for what seemed the first time. Had she known in advance that this present moment should be snatched away from her, if she did not trade all of those nights of secrecy, in either Leyra’s room or hers – she would have traded them in an instant, without even having to ponder the exchange. She wrapped her arm tighter around Cassie, drew her near to kiss her forehead, and knew that it was true, even if she had doubted, ever so slightly, before.

“I take it that you didn’t have to work today,” she said.

“I most certainly didn’t,” Cassie answered. “And even if I did – well, I can’t say that I would have gone.”

“And have you any prior engagements, for this evening?”

“I most certainly don’t.”

“Then might I be so bold as to ask, whether you would like to spend it with me?”

The night was fallen; and Nessa knew that she was due back at Dog’s Hill. But suddenly the fact did not seem much to matter.

“You might,” said Cassie. “And I would.”

“Then what would you like to do?”

“Well – I don’t know.” Cassie laughed. “I don’t really know what
you
like to do.”

“But that’s not what I asked.”

Cassie sat up, and ran a hand through her hair. “Well,” she said slowly, “I suppose we could go down to the Red Pavilion. I go there sometimes for a drink with the girls from work, after the diner closes.”

“And where is it?”

Again, Cassie laughed – but then realised that Nessa was serious, and tilted her head to the side, in that way that she had. “You’ve never been there?” she asked.

“No.”

“Hmmm. Well – you’re going there tonight!”

She hopped off the bed, and took hold of Nessa’s arm, to pull her along. “Go on, then,” she said. “Fix your hair, or whatever it is that you do – and I’m going to take a shower.”

When she had gone, Nessa took the opportunity of walking all round the room, and examining the objects therein. The place had rather the look of being vacated, and then occupied again (perhaps only just recently). Everything except the desk was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were several places along the floor, where it seemed that things had been taken away; and now there were only large circles or squares there, inlaid in a space of even fuzzier dust, and slowly but surely taking on their own blanket of the stuff. The bed was made up with pink sheets, which looked the kind that lie usually upon little girls’ beds, and there was not even a coverlet. The bookcase held some newer-looking volumes, with titles such as “Advanced Music” and “Expert Guitar Playing.” But also there were many children’s books, and then all sorts of textbooks, ranging the spectrum of a student’s entire education, from elementary through high school. Nessa peered into the closet, and found that it was empty; and made rather almost the same assumption concerning the drawers of the bureau (though of course she had not actually the audacity to look inside them).

After having made a full circuit, she came back to the desk, and set herself down in front of it. There was a small mirror, streaked by many years of touching and fingerprints, hanging on the wall behind it, and a cup of pens and pencils on the right-hand corner. But on the left-hand there stood a photograph, housed in a handsome wooden frame. Nessa took the picture up in her hands, and discovered that it was free of dust. Therefore she drew the conclusion, that it was one of the only objects in the room handled with any manner of frequency. The subjects of the portrait were two small girls, sitting together on the bench of a redwood picnic table, arms thrown round each other and smiling widely. Nessa recognised one of the girls as Cassie – and, judging by the resemblance to her which the second girl bore, assumed the latter to be her sister.

Nessa was looking at the picture still, in some way transfixed by it, when Cassie reentered the room. Nessa looked up quickly, and set the frame down its proper place, fearful that she had touched something she was not meant to. But Cassie only came to stand beside her.

She stood silent for a long moment, drying her hair with a green towel. Her eyes were on the picture.

“I’m sorry,” said Nessa. “I shouldn’t have touched your things.”

“It’s all right,” said Cassie; though she did not shift her eyes. “I don’t mind.”

Nessa could not be sure, but she thought that she perceived Cassie’s eyes to grow moist, as she stared at the photograph. And so, though she said nothing in respect to this observation, she reached up to take Cassie’s hand.

“That’s my sister,” said Cassie. “Her name is Embie.”

Nessa breathed a quiet sigh of relief; for it is no surprising thing, considering the circumstance, that she had feared at first the girl in the picture may have been dead. Now she knew otherwise, but could not say with any amount of certainty, that Cassie looked any happier than she would have been, were that tragic assumption to have been the true case.

“She always hated her name,” Cassie went on. “Millicent Beaumont, our mother named her – no doubt one of her more drunken fancies. So I called her M.B., by her initials. But she told everyone that that was her name; and eventually, they started writing it as ‘Embie.’ She seemed to like that better, anyway.”

“You look almost the same age,” said Nessa.

“I’m nearly two years older. Everyone used to say that, though – that we looked like twins.” She tilted her head, and squeezed Nessa’s hand. “I suppose they were right.”

Nessa would have asked where her sister was, now – but on account of the pained expression on Cassie’s face, she decided it more prudent to let that question lie.

But quite suddenly, Cassie turned her face from the picture, and smiled brightly. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“If you are.”

“Well, then – let’s hit the road!”

~

The Red Pavilion was nothing at all what Nessa expected. When Cassie pulled into the gravel lot, she caught sight of a small wooden structure, almost like a sort of bungalow. Before it stretched, quite fittingly, a wide stone pavilion, strung all around with red paper lanterns.

They walked up onto the pavilion, which was strewn with about thirty tiny tables. It seemed that they were all occupied. People sat talking and laughing (in most cases rather raucously), and drinking fruity-looking beverages in tall frosted glasses, with little colourful umbrellas sticking out of the top. There was a neon jukebox in a corner of the pavilion, playing currently a two-decades-old Travis Tritt song; and over it all stretched a striped canvas tent.

Nessa followed Cassie to the bungalow, but was somewhat preoccupied with watching a fellow who was walking on the right rail of the pavilion, and so did not hear what she ordered to drink. Nessa looked on with wide eyes, as the fellow went strutting along the rail, quite like a tightrope walker – and could not help but wince, as he toppled off of the rail, and crashed down onto his party’s table. For the moment he was motionless; and all of his friends began to call his name (Jimbo), seemingly in pursuit of the knowledge of whether or not he still lived.

There were three windows in the bungalow; and the employee in the third window stuck his head out, so that he might shout across the pavilion at the tightrope walker.

“What in the Sam Hill is a’matter wi’ you kids?” he cried. “If you broke ‘at there table, mister, you better believe yer payin’ for it.”

The tightrope walker sprang up suddenly from the table (it seemed that he was not dead, after all), hopped over the rail, and ran laughing wildly into the darkness. A young woman tossed her drink into the air, and jumped along after him, clearing the rail even before her glass had had time to crash down to the pavilion, and shatter into a hundred different pieces.

“Don’ forget to bill ‘em fer ‘at glass,” said the third-window employee. “Great God, Frankie – those damn
kids
nowadays!”

“Don’ I know it,” answered Frankie, the second-window employee. “Been workin’ here fer ‘bout ten years now, Paulie. This used t’be a right respectable place!” He shook his head, and rinsed out a shot glass. “But would you jus’ look at it now?”

The first-window employee, who appeared thus far in his life to have gathered about five-and-twenty years to himself, took no notice of the older men’s conversation. Yet Nessa realised, when finally she looked away from the fray at the tightrope walker’s table, that he was gazing at Cassie in a manner that she rather resented; and when he went so far as to lick his lips, and open his mouth to speak to her, Nessa rushed forward and demanded a beer. He looked at her sharply, obviously perturbed – but puffed a squeaking little breath when he looked upon Nessa, made fearful by the feral look which had entered her eyes. She bared her teeth at him; and even with her Turin round her neck, she could feel the canines growing sharper, so that they pressed uncomfortably against her bottom lip.

“Well, s-sure, lady,” he stammered, pushing a longneck bottle across the counter. “H-here’s your beer.”

Cassie, who had seen nothing of the change in Nessa’s face, from her place at the second window, looked curiously at the first-window employee. When she turned questioningly to Nessa, Nessa simply shrugged.

They turned away from the windows. Nessa looked disdainfully towards the packed tables, and cringed slightly at the great many noises assaulting her ears. There was a pervading odour of perspiration and alcohol.

“It’s a little – crowded,” she said.

“I think you’re right,” said Cassie, reaching for her hand. “Come on – and I’ll show you why I like to come to this place.”

She led her down the side of the bungalow, and through a two-foot split in the rail of the pavilion. They walked through the grass into which the tightrope walker and the young woman had disappeared, and it seemed with every passing moment, that the noise of the pavilion was dying away.

Even more remarkably, there opened up behind it a wide view of the river, rushing black and swift between the banks. They went down to the nearest bank, and sat down beside a patch of reeds, which swished to and fro in the warm wind. Here, the only sounds to be heard were the faint song of the jukebox, and a few underlying shouts from the pavilion. But the light from the lanterns, which Nessa saw now were strung all the way round the back of the bungalow, permeated the air of the place, so that the darkness was not absolute, but filled, rather, with a soft red glow.

She turned her eyes from the tall reeds, swaying with their crimson stain – and looked to Cassie. She was staring at the river, watching as it flowed by and by. Nessa thought her attention so immersed in that body of water, that she needed not check the continuity of her own study; and so was somewhat startled by the turning of Cassie’s own face, which prompted her to swivel her head back towards the reeds, so that it might not seem that she had been looking at all.

“It’s very pretty here,” she said simply.

“It is that,” said Cassie. “Sometimes, when I come with the girls – I slip down to the river, while they drink in the pavilion. I’ve never had anyone sit here with me before.”

“Do you prefer the company?”

The question issued forth perhaps more seriously than Nessa wished it to; for, truly, she could not think afterwards of a way to explain it. She only raised her eyes to the moon, and focused upon it for a long moment, having felt a wave of sadness come over her, the likes of which she had never known how to express. It was very similar to the sensation she experienced, while looking out over the waves at the Bellman’s Cove. The vastness of the sea allowed, for a while, her heart to expand out of its bonds. But it could not remain as such forever, parted from her body and held vulnerable in the distance; and so it was forced to return to the dark space within her breast, where it grew so heavy again, and weighted her down with its terrible reminders. Reminders of home, and of Orin; reminders that she was not the captain of her own soul. If she were able, she might have asked Henley (who claimed that he was just such a thing), exactly how he managed it?