Sage's Eyes (34 page)

My father finally interceded, telling her that I should get to sleep. “Alexis will be here late in the morning,” he reminded her, but he made it sound like all her fears and concerns would be alleviated once my great-uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume arrived.

She relented, nodded, and sat, still looking a little stunned. I said good night and hurried up the stairs.
The moment I closed the door, I felt a great sense of relief but also the weight of my emotional roller-coaster ride from the moment I had met Summer to just now, when I'd finally escaped my mother's third degree. I was exhausted. It took me only minutes to get into bed, but I didn't fall asleep quickly as I had expected. Instead, my mind began to play back images like a slide show on the closed lids of my eyes.

Once again, I saw the dumb, stunned looks on the faces of the girls and boys at Jason's house after they had swallowed Summer's pills. It was truly as if their brains had been shut off. Their eyes were as glassy as the eyes of the dead, stone-cold still, blind to everything in front of them. After he had whispered in each one's ear, I once again saw the way they began to undress, slowly at first, moving robotically, and then suddenly in a frenzy to beat everyone else to nudity. When I had looked back from the doorway, the girls were already totally naked, and the boys were catching up and turning to face them. No one was touching anyone else. It was as if they had been turned into statues.

The silhouetted man I had seen in the dim light began to haunt me, too. He floated in and out, and then, in what was more like a nightmare vision, he was sitting right beside me in the pizza restaurant. I opened my eyes, and for a moment, in the glow of light seeping through my curtains, he seemed to be there in my room, standing just inside my door, looking at me. He had no face. I leaned over to flick on my side table lamp, and the image evaporated.

“Don't be afraid,”
I heard my voices whisper. “Sleep is your escape.”

I shut off my lamp and lay back.
Think of something pleasant
, I told myself. Summer's long kiss came to mind, but I shook it off. I wasn't aroused the way any other girl surely would be. I wasn't preparing to fantasize about making love to him. I was hurrying to go through the darkness of sleep to find another place, a comfortable, safe place in which I could curl up and forget. I heard another voice, soothing, loving. It came from a woman shrouded in a memory so old and thin that it was difficult to imagine her face. Her voice was enough. In moments, I was warm and comfortable and asleep.

In the morning after breakfast, I helped my mother prepare what would be a much bigger lunch than we usually had on weekends. Usually, we had a big breakfast, but today we had a small one. It was more like a day for a holiday luncheon. She had bought a turkey to roast. We made homemade cranberry sauce, creamed spinach, and sweet potatoes. My mother was a good pie maker. She always prepared her own crust and had a secret recipe for her mincemeat pie, something I knew was traditionally served during the Christmas season in England. My father once let slip that her recipe went back to the thirteenth century, handed down by her ancestors, but then she would answer no questions about her ancestors.

The first time I remembered eating it, I thought I had eaten it many times. My parents swore that wasn't possible. My mother made it only on very special occasions,
and my father said he could count on the fingers of one hand when they were. But it was like any of my other inexplicable memories, still true to me despite what he or my mother said.

Uncle Alexis and Aunt Suzume arrived a little before eleven. The first thing I thought was that a great-uncle should look much older than he did. Aunt Suzume looked only a little older than my mother, if that. My father treated them both with great deference. Someone would think that members of a great royal family had come visiting. I could see the adoration and respect in my father's face when he greeted them. They weren't embarrassed by it. In fact, they looked like they had expected the adulation and reverence.

Uncle Alexis was a little taller than my father and did have a stately and imposing posture, offering his hand with the august manner of someone imperial, almost pompous. Aunt Suzume was barely five feet tall, with exquisite facial features and a pearl-like sheen to her complexion. It was a face that looked lifted off a delicate, flawless cameo pin, and yet, despite her diminutive size, she, too, seemed to have been brought here in a royal horse-drawn carriage.

Of course, I understood that older relatives were supposed to enjoy some veneration and honor because of their age or wisdom or successful lives of which the family could be proud. Unlike most of my classmates, I had no grandparents who could visit and leave behind some pearls of wisdom that would help guide me to a more successful life. That was the way it should be. Sometimes I had the sense that it once was true for me.
It was simply another inexplicable memory of things past, a memory better kept to myself.

“Well, now,” Uncle Alexis said when I was introduced to him, “so this is the wonder girl who has captured everyone's attention.”

I looked at my father. Wonder girl? Captured everyone's attention? Except for Uncle Wade, whose attention did I capture? My parents weren't treating me like some wonder girl. What was I missing?

“She's very, very beautiful,” Aunt Suzume said, smiling at me. “No one exaggerated about her.”

Again, I was surprised. When were all these wonderful things said about me, and by whom?

My father took their coats and led everyone into the living room. Uncle Alexis was wearing a dark blue suit and a light blue tie. Aunt Suzume was in a navy-blue sleeveless lace sheath dress. Although there were strands of gray in it, Uncle Alexis had a full, thick head of hair, brushed back but not as trimmed as I would imagine someone of his age should have his hair. Aunt Suzume's ebony-black hair was pinned in a French knot. She wore the most interesting gold teardrop earrings. They seemed to pick up a bluish tint when she crossed the room. She wore a gold watch and a white gold wedding ring with diamond specks that looked like they were baked into it.

They sat together on the settee, not an inch apart. Mother brought them each a glass of her homemade elderberry wine and set a bowl of mixed nuts on the table. Dad sat in his favorite chair, and I sat on the matching settee facing my great-uncle and great-aunt.
For a moment, no one spoke. They were studying me so intensely that I shifted uncomfortably and looked at my father.

I was expecting to hear them talk about old relatives and family memories, but it was as if they had seen each other frequently and not years and years ago the way my father had described. It was quickly apparent to me that they were not interested in my parents and what they had done since they had seen them. All their attention was focused on me. Why?

“You're in the school chorus, we understand,” Uncle Alexis began, after taking a sip of his wine.

“Yes.”

“What instruments do you play?” Aunt Suzume asked.

“I don't play any,” I said.

They didn't look like they believed me. They glanced at my parents for confirmation. I looked at them as well.

“She doesn't play the piano?” Aunt Suzume asked my mother.

“No. Not yet,” she said.

Not yet? Years ago, when I was only six, we had dinner at the Blacks' house. There was a piano in the den, and while everyone was talking in the living room, I wandered in, sat at it, and began to play. Moments later, everyone was in the den watching and listening to me. It was a while before I realized they were all standing behind me, but as soon as I did, I stopped. Then Samuel and Cissy Black applauded, but my parents didn't.

“How long has she been taking lessons?” Mrs. Black asked.

“She hasn't,” my father said. “Ever.”

“Well, she has a natural ear for it. I've heard of that,” Mr. Black said. “You should think about having her study with someone. You might have a musical genius on your hands.”

My mother indicated that I should get up quickly and come to her. We went to the dining room, and nothing more was said about it until we got home, and my mother seized me by the shoulders in the entryway and told me never to do that again. I was not to play anyone's piano. If they wanted me to study piano, they would arrange for it when I was older, but they never did, and I never sat at one and played again.

“The piano?” Uncle Alexis asked my father now. He shook his head. “That was a little bit too much caution, don't you think?”

“We had reason, if you'll recall,” my mother said.

Caution? About what?

Uncle Alexis nodded, sipped some more wine, and turned back to me. “Tell us more about yourself, Sage. What are your favorite subjects in school?”

“I suppose English, history. I do enjoy being in the chorus. Actually, I like math and science very much, too.”

He smiled. “Your thirst for knowledge knows no bounds,” he said. He looked at Aunt Suzume, and she smiled.

“Do you still have dreams about people and places you've never seen?” she asked.

I looked at my mother and then at my father. I couldn't help it. I felt as if I had somehow been betrayed. Ever since I had been sent to a therapist, those things were never discussed, certainly never with anyone outside of our small circle, which only included Uncle Wade.

“Tell them the truth,” my father said sternly. For the first time, I wondered if they were really who my parents told me they were.

“Yes, that happens occasionally,” I replied, “but I don't speak about it to anyone.” I looked at my parents. Was this the answer they had hoped to hear?

“And these strange memories, they are usually about people being punished, burned at the stake, stoned, whipped, things like that?” Uncle Alexis asked.

“Not just that sort of thing, no. I remember being at ocean shores, riding in horse-drawn sleighs, being at prayer events with lots of candles and chanting. Things like that,” I said. “I could go on and on about it.” They wanted me to talk? All right, I'd talk. They'd be sorry.

Uncle Alexis smiled. “That's not necessary, dear. We also understand that you are in the prognostication business, a modern-day soothsayer.”

“I promised my mother I wouldn't do that anymore.”

“But you were successful as a prophet?” Aunt Suzume asked.

“Maybe not all the time,” I said.

“We understand why your mother might be a little nervous about such things, but you need not be
ashamed of anything with us,” Uncle Alexis said. He had finished his wine. My father rose quickly to pour him another glassful. “Thank you, Mark. Your uncle Wade thinks you are quite an extraordinary young lady,” he continued.

“I'm very fond of Uncle Wade. I'm sure he exaggerates a little,” I added.

Uncle Alexis widened and softened his smile.

“Modesty. That's good,” he said. He looked at my mother, who shifted as if she was uncomfortable. “And you have excellent school grades and have never gotten into trouble at school or outside of school?”

“Maybe I haven't had enough opportunity,” I replied.

For a moment, I thought my father and mother would tell me to go to my room or something. They looked as displeased as they used to when I said things that embarrassed them in front of their friends during my younger days.

“What do you mean?” Aunt Suzume asked.

“I haven't gone out much. I've been to a party, and I've met some friends, but I really haven't done all that much socializing.”

Uncle Alexis nodded. “Your parents have been careful. That's not a bad thing.”

I didn't reply. Why weren't they changing the subject? Why was it all about me? “Where do you live, Uncle Alexis?” I asked, hoping to change the subject myself.

“Oh, we're in transit at the moment. We've lived abroad for many years, but we're thinking about
returning to Boston. Wherever we are, we hope you'll come visit.”

“Of course I would,” I said. I wanted to add that I would go anywhere since I hadn't been anywhere. “What did you do as a profession?” I asked. I wanted to make it clear that I was told little or nothing about him or my great-aunt.

“I was a doctor, a therapist,” he replied.

“A very, very successful one,” my father added.

I almost asked him why he hadn't sent me to see him years ago, but Uncle Alexis quickly added that this was when he was living abroad.

“And you had no children?” I asked. I knew my mother wouldn't want me to be so direct and inquisitive, but Uncle Alexis didn't seem to mind.

He smiled, in fact. “I've had many children,” he said. “All clients. I specialized in child psychology.”

“But—”

“No. We were married late in life, and we didn't have any children of our own,” he said.

I caught a movement in Aunt Suzume's face, the way her eyes looked down. They weren't telling me the truth, but I would never dare say it.

“Your great-aunt Suzume was a well-known opera singer in Japan in her youth,” Uncle Alexis said. “She was very dedicated. It took a great deal of persuasion to get her to think of me with as much passion.”

Everyone smiled. Aunt Suzume looked a little embarrassed, suddenly like a little girl to me. I could hear her singing.

“I need to
get to our lunch preparations,” my mother said. She rose and looked at me, and I rose, too.

“I will help,” Aunt Suzume said, but my mother wouldn't hear of it.

“We're fine. You enjoy your visit with Mark,” she insisted.

Aunt Suzume didn't put up any argument. She nodded, and then my mother and I left to go to the kitchen. The others retreated to my father's office. I heard them go in and close the door.

My mother worked silently. I could see she was in deep thought.

“I like them,” I told her.

She looked at me as though I had no right to say it. Then her face softened, and she nodded. “Of course you do,” she said.