The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender (23 page)

The barren smell of the coming rain drove her to plug her nose with a clothespin. Viviane tried to remember what her mother had said about counteracting bad omens: a robin flying into the house was considered lucky. As was meeting three sheep or an itch on the top of your head. None seemed a very relevant (
or practical
, Viviane thought) solution until Viviane remembered the one about salt. Returning to the kitchen, Viviane hesitantly reached for the saltshaker, slowly spilled a bit of salt into her hand, then tossed it over her left shoulder. Tentatively, Viviane pulled the clothespin from her nose and breathed deeply, but, alas, the stench of impending disaster was still there.

Within that same hour, Viviane picked up a pin, dropped a glove, and turned her dress inside out and wore it with the pockets exposed and flapping at her sides. She knocked on wood until her knuckles ached and went searching through the house on her knees until she found a penny, since, apparently, picking them up was supposed to ensure some kind of daylong good luck. She turned around seven times clockwise. Crossed her fingers. Hopped backward over a broom. After all of these, she unclasped the clothespin from her nose and took a deep breath, waiting to be filled with a sense of relief. But it never came.

Finally, she surrendered and retreated to hide in the basement with the tumbling towels and the warm dryer and one of her mother’s cigars.

Tossing the clothespin aside, Viviane took a few puffs on the cigar. She felt calmer and was relieved to discover that the only thing she could smell then was the crude odor of the cigar. She rubbed her eyes.
Imagine, getting this unsettled over a smell
, she thought. Feeling somewhat embarrassed and silly, Viviane stubbed out the cigar and made her way back upstairs.

And that’s when the rain began to fall.

The rain increased steadily over the next hour, beating a staccato rhythm against the rooftops. People in the same houses had to yell over the noise to ask if there was a bucket to place under the leaks that were appearing in hallways, kitchens, bedrooms.

In the Lavender house, water leaked in around the poorly sealed windows, flooded the entryway with puddles, and filled the rooms with an unpleasant stink of fear.

Viviane made a mental checklist for Gabe — water damage to carpets, wood floors, and walls; leaking roof and windows — then climbed up the rickety stairs to check on the second floor.

Viviane knocked softly on my bedroom door. “Ava?” she called. “Cardigan?” Receiving no answer, she opened the door. Tufts of my long dark hair blew across the floor. The redolence of bleach stung her nose. The room, Viviane realized with stark dread, was empty. She stuck her head out the open window and peered into the rain. The bark of the cherry tree outside my room was spattered with wet brown and white feathers.

She closed the window and left. As she made her way back down the hall toward the stairs, her feet sinking into the waterlogged carpet, she paused outside Henry’s bedroom. On impulse, she pushed the door. His room was empty too.

She ran her hands through her wet hair. “Well, shit,” she said.

From the personal diary of Nathaniel Sorrows:

FOR THE FIRST TIME
, my mother understood how parents lost control. Through it all — the lonely pregnancy, fifteen years of sleepless nights — she’d managed to keep her bearings. She’d learned to adapt to whatever came along: Henry’s untouchable world, my wings. If she devised a plan and the plan proved impossible, she just created a new one. She’d never understood how other parents just
lost it.
Now she did; children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people. She’d never thought that could happen to her, whose children were so . . . strange. Could the strange survive on their own? Viviane hadn’t considered it possible until that moment.

The only telephone in our house sat atop on old forgotten bureau in the hallway along the stairs. The phone had been installed sometime in the early forties. It was heavy and awkward and rang so infrequently that when it did, Viviane hardly recognized the noise at all. It was out of sheer wonder at the sound that she stopped to answer it.

She was greeted by an old familiar voice — funny how, after all this time, he still sounded exactly the same — telling her he’d found her son walking along the side of the road.

“He must have walked nearly two miles in this rain. I’ve got him down here at the house. The dog, too. Tried to dry the boy off, but he’d have none of that.”

Viviane nodded at the phone. “Is he okay? Henry, I mean.”

“Ahh, well, you might wanna hurry over here. He’s acting a bit odd.”

“I’ll be right there,” she assured him, and hung up. She hadn’t the courage to tell him right then that his son was probably acting perfectly normally. For Henry at least.

Viviane threw open the hall closet and grabbed the first thing she saw — a red wool jacket from what seemed like a lifetime ago. Viviane fastened it with shaking hands, grateful it was long enough to cover the dress she was still wearing inside out for luck. By the time she reached the truck, the rain had already soaked right through the wool.
Who doesn’t have a rain jacket?
she thought.

The truck sputtered and began its slow ascent to life. As she waited, Viviane reached into her purse and pulled out her compact and a tube of lipstick. Holding the mirror close to her face, she slowly slid the red gloss across her lips. It was too dark to see about her hair.

Viviane attempted to back the truck down the hill but stopped when she felt the tires slip in the mud. Instead, she shifted the sliding truck into first gear and veered around the back of the house, driving right through the flower bed that once held the most glorious dahlias in the neighborhood.

As the truck slammed onto the road, Viviane pushed the clutch to the floor, threw it into second gear, and soared into the deluge.

When we left the solstice celebration, Cardigan, Rowe, and I noticed a change in the air. All three of us tipped our faces to the sky, puzzled.

“I think it might r-rain,” Rowe said.

By the time we got as far as the bakery, it was pouring and most people had escaped to their warm houses and cars, leaving the streets empty.

We ducked underneath the awning in front of the drugstore. Cardigan reached her hand behind her back and made a face. “I’ve ruined my shirt. It’s all gooey.” Cardigan’s wings had dissolved into a wet, sticky mess of feathers and glue. We all had puddles in our shoes.

The wind picked up considerably. It peeled the bark from the three birches in front of the store. The strips hung from the branches, whipping and twisting in the angry air. Though Rowe’s navy peacoat was wrapped around my shoulders, I shivered at the sight of the naked trees.

“It’s getting worse. You should probably get going.” Rowe squeezed my hand before letting it go. Rowe had to drive his mother home from work that night, and we all agreed it was too risky for me to hide in the back of the delivery truck. The chance of getting caught was too high, although I did find the thought of it a bit thrilling.

“Are you sure you’re okay to make it home by yourself?” Even standing right next to me, Rowe had to yell over the pounding beat of the torrent.

I put my hands on my hips and feigned annoyance. “Listen. I may be a bit strange, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of the dark.”

He grinned. “Just trying to be p-polite.”

Cardigan smiled knowingly and ran into the rain. She disappeared into the cascade of falling water. I turned to follow.

“Hey. Where do you think you’re going?” Rowe teased. I smiled as he put his hands on my hips and pulled me to him. He tenderly brushed the hair behind my ears and ran his fingertips over my face, as if trying to memorize every detail. I closed my eyes, and he kissed me again.

Then, with my lips still tingling, I ran into the rain after Cardigan.

Throughout the city, the rain was proving to be a disaster. Large puddles formed at blocked storm drains and took over yards, street corners, parking lots, playgrounds, empty flowerpots, and raised garden beds. Tree limbs broke and fell to the ground with sharp snaps. Cardigan and I raced toward Pinnacle Lane. Water coursed down my arms and legs, fused my newly cut bangs to my forehead. Cardigan’s makeup ran down her face. As we passed below the worn sneakers hanging from the overhead power line, we both watched with open mouths as the shoes twisted free and flew away into the night.

At the end of the Coopers’ driveway, Cardigan grabbed me and gave me a tight squeeze. “We’re going to be sisters-in-law!” she yelled over the rain, then ran to her house.

If not for a dim glow in the first-floor windows, my house would have looked like just another dark part of the sky. I glanced up at the black second-story windows. I smiled at the thought of sleeping Henry, his fingers curled around the edge of his quilt. I checked my pocket for the chocolate I’d gotten him, making sure it hadn’t melted. The woman at the booth had told me that chocolate came from the Mayans, an ancient people who believed that drinking hot chocolate could bring them wisdom and power. They considered it the food of their gods. I had laughed at the thought of the Mayan gods ripping open little bags of powdered cocoa to stir into warm mugs of milk, but the woman had said the Mayans made their hot chocolate from cacao beans and that they called it
xocoatl.
I didn’t know if Henry would actually like the sweet, but I knew he would appreciate the new word I’d learned.

The sound of a car door made me jump. At the side of the house, I saw the taillights of Gabe’s truck lit up, glowing red in the dark and the rain. Gabe hadn’t been home for a few days. I tried not to think about where he might be.
Whom
he might be with.

The truck disappeared around the back of the house. I ran to hide as it careened down the hill and into the road. I stayed hidden until it had driven away.

“Your mother seems frantic to find you.”

I whirled around.

Nathaniel Sorrows stood behind me, holding a black umbrella over his head.

“It can’t be my mother,” I shouted through the rain. My mother hadn’t left the house in fifteen years. She didn’t even know how to drive, did she?

“She’d probably say the same thing about you if she saw you out here right now.”

I blushed. He had a point.

“It is her, nonetheless,” he said. “I saw her leave the house and get into the truck.”

“But what makes you think she’s gone out looking for me?” I asked quietly.

Nathaniel shrugged. “Why else would she leave?”

As I thought of the few things that could motivate my mother to venture out from the security of the house on the hill, like discovering that her daughter had snuck out without permission, dread slashed through my chest like a knife. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I go home and wait for her to come back? Go to Cardigan’s? But then I thought about how angry my mother would be, the injured look on her face when she realized what I’d done. I wanted to avoid seeing that look for as long as possible.

As if reading my mind, Nathaniel said, “Why don’t you come inside? I have a fire going. You can dry off here while you wait for her to get back.” He smiled.

I chewed my lip and thought. I could always go over to the Coopers’ house, but as lenient as Cardigan’s father was, he probably wouldn’t be pleased I’d snuck out. I might even get Cardigan in trouble.

Nathaniel was watching me patiently. He seemed different, I noted. Less pious. More normal. Not nearly as attractive as I thought he was. With a twinge of shame, I remembered my infatuation of only a few weeks ago. What had I been thinking?

“There’s little point to getting reprimanded for sneaking out
and
the dangers of pneumonia. I know how mothers can be. I could be of some assistance,” he said, “determine some way you could explain your momentary disappearance.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said finally.