The Treasure Box (24 page)

Every minute detail of that holiday came back to Vita in a breathtaking rush. She and Hattie had motored into Wales and spent a rainy afternoon at the ruins of Tintern Abbey, quoting Wordsworth to one another. They had walked along the Avon River from Salisbury Cathedral to the little church in Bemerton where metaphysical poet George Herbert had served as vicar.

During their two days in Stratford, they had made rubbings of Shakespeare's epitaph and visited Ann Hathaway's cottage. Later, in London, they had spent three days taking in the British Museum, the Tower, and Westminster Cathedral. They had even managed to get first-row balcony seats for a rousing production of
Singing in the Rain
starring Tommy Steele.

Vita could remember it all. Most vividly, she could still hear the laughter they had shared, all those chilly nights by the small coal fire in the cottage as they played Scrabble and swapped dreams. And yet, in the midst of such clear and unnerving recollections, Vita could also remember empty, vacant years, years of missing Hattie and wondering whatever happened to her. Years of not knowing if she were dead or alive.

It was as if the fabric of her mind had been ripped at the seam, revealing another reality hidden behind the curtain—a reality, if anything, more real than what she had always known to be true.

Her cynical mind, like the Wizard of Oz vainly attempting to reassert his authority, kept shouting, “Pay no attention to what's behind the curtain!” But the damage had been done. The curtain had been torn, and Vita couldn't stop herself from looking.

And there was something else about Hattie . . . what was it?

Letters. Yes. Letters from Atlanta, where Hattie had gone to work for the Centers for Disease Control after college. Dozens of them, wonderful letters full of interesting tales about her career as a researcher.

Vita dropped the photograph into the oval of lamplight on her desk and pressed her fingertips to her temples. If there
had
been letters—if she and Hattie
were
still best friends—she might have saved them. Some of them, anyway. The ones which held the most significance for her. Maybe they could help her sort all this out, help her discern what was real. If she could only find them.

She rolled her chair back from the desk and began rummaging in drawers, pulling out file folders and manila envelopes.

Nothing. She went through the small oak cabinet in the corner, and then made her way across the room, systematically searching every cubbyhole and drawer. Nothing there. The only place left to look was in the box on the far bookshelf, where she kept a will and her life insurance policy and other important papers. Vita turned, and as she brushed by the table under the window, the hem of her sweater snagged on the corner of the Treasure Box.

She caught it, upside down, just before it hit the floor. The lid jarred open, and she gritted her teeth, anticipating a nerve-rattling clatter as CDs and computer disks hit the hardwood floor. Instead, a small packet secured with a rubber band fell out at her feet.

Vita set the Treasure Box back in its place and gave it a nervous little pat, then gathered up the packet and returned to her desk.

Her fingers were shaking, and she couldn't get her eyes to focus. The rubber band broke in her hands as she pulled it off.

There were six envelopes, legal size, in a soft cream color, with her name and address typed neatly on each one. In the upper left-hand corner, in a flourish of raised-ink black lettering, the name:

Harriet E. Parker.

Vita had never seen these letters before . . . and yet she had.

She recognized them, knew—without knowing how she knew— that Hattie's given name was Harriet, that her middle name was Eleanor, that in her adult professional life everyone called her Harry. But how had the letters come to be here, in her office, in the Treasure Box? She had a vague, transparent, dreamlike memory of putting them there herself, except that— She closed her eyes and exhaled forcefully. If she wasn't already crazy, she'd drive herself over the edge by trying to figure all of this out. Better just to read the letters, to find out what she'd been missing all these years.

Vita looked at the first one, bearing the earliest postmark, June 3, 1988. Her mind cast back to the late eighties. She would have been twenty-five, just out of graduate school. Mother and Daddy were both still alive. In 1988 Gordon and Mary Kate had been married two years, but he was still writing his dissertation, and she was finishing a B.A. and working as a secretary part-time.

They were planning their family carefully. It would be another two years before the twins came.

Vita opened the letter, smoothed out the pages across the top of her desk, and began to read.

Dear Vita,

By now you've probably decided I'd dropped off the face of the earth, and I wouldn't blame you a bit if you trashed this letter without even reading it. But please don't. You were always my best friend, and so for the sake of that friendship, please keep on reading.

After my accident in seventh grade, we drifted apart. All my fault, I admit. I was a mess. I wanted to die, and nearly did manage to kill myself on that Harley a couple of times. But I finally grew up, got my act together, and did well in college, although I felt pretty alone and isolated during those years. I ended up in medical research, got a master's degree in chemistry, and managed to land an entry-level research job at the CDC in Atlanta. I'm now living in a suburb called Stone Mountain—which is a joke to anyone who grew up in the REAL mountains the way we did. Stone Mountain is one big old rock sticking up in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, I'm writing to let you know that, despite our separation, the memory of your friendship has sustained me for a very long time. You said (or intended to say) that you would always be my friend, and when times got difficult, I remembered that—remembered how much we cared about each other once, and remembering gave me hope.

We're both grown now, and maybe we've gone in different directions, but your name is still the one that comes to mind whenever I hear the words “best friend.” I'd like to renew that friendship, if you're willing—to find out whether or not we have anything in common after all these years. I promise I'll never turn my back on you again.

Love,
Hattie

The letter began to blur in front of Vita's face, and she laid it aside and rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. She had the unsettling sensation of holding two contradictory memories. On the one hand, she felt as if she were reading this letter for the very first time, getting her first faint glimpse of hope that reconciliation with her best friend from childhood might be possible. On the other hand, she was aware that the reconciliation had already been accomplished ages ago. Theoretically, Vita believed in the existence of paradox, but she had never faced it except on the safe jousting ground of philosophical discussion. Now the abstract idea confronted her in a much more immediate, more threatening form. Both could not be real—could they?

The curtain inside her head ripped open a little wider, and she recalled how she had debated for three weeks whether or not to answer the letter. But she did answer it, and discovered that the friendship she had cherished as a child was recoverable in adulthood. Although she and Hattie had, indeed, gone in different directions, they still shared vital interests and values in common.

In the end, Vita's best friend had been returned to her.

As Vita scanned the other letters, additional memories arranged themselves in her mind. The argument that had ensued, years after Mary Kate and Gordon were married, when Hattie confronted Vita with the anger that still seethed under the surface and told her bluntly that she needed to let go of it. The pain Vita felt when she believed her best friend couldn't understand her. The emotional tension resulting from that fight, and the intense relief Vita had experienced when they finally made up.

Discussions—sometimes quite passionate ones—about life and death, about God and the nature of the universe, about music and art and literature, about ethics and integrity and ambition.

It felt good, this sensation of not being alone, of having someone in her life who had known her for years, seen more than the public face, the image of independence and strength she had worked hard to project. Here was someone who knew her—really knew her—and still loved her.

And Hattie wasn't the only one. Vita thought of Mary Kate and the twins, and her mind called up fragments of other recollections— times she had been impatient with Gordy and Mary V, occasions when she had let her sister down, and when her sister had been insensitive with her. Squabbles over insignificant differences of opinion, and silly quarrels based in pride or self-centeredness or insecurity. All the various dimensions of family love and dissension. They knew her, too—knew her perhaps even better than she knew herself.

Vita's mind drifted to the discussion she had just had with Mary Kate—the possibility that there are many potential futures for any one life, not all of which would come true. And it occurred to her that if there were many futures, it stood to reason that there might also be many pasts, many “roads not taken.”

Anyone else in Vita's situation might have asked, “What if Hattie hadn't written that first letter? What if Vita hadn't responded to it?” But Vita knew the answers to those questions, and hundreds like them. She had already experienced what her days would be like without a best friend, without a sister, without two energetic children in her life. She had lived that reality for most of her adult life and was beginning to realize that she didn't like it as much as she had always assumed.

Granted, there were disadvantages to being involved with other human beings. Personality conflicts, differences of opinion, vulnerability, the opportunity for experiencing pain and heartbreak as well as love and belonging. Vita had long been aware of these risks—the danger of being burned, the internal warnings about getting too close to the fire. But she hadn't realized, not until now, how cold life had been. How very, very cold.

Vita awoke at six the next morning from a strange dream. She had been in a high hedge maze, and—

No, not a maze
, Vita corrected herself.
A labyrinth.

Another new memory needled its way into her consciousness— her first glimpse of the famous thirteenth-century pavement labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, when she and Hattie had journeyed to Paris years ago. During the Crusades, when travel was dangerous, devout believers could not often make the journey to Jerusalem, the Holy City, without fear for their lives. And so the medieval eleven-circuit labyrinth provided an opportunity for pilgrimage without peril. Those seeking repentance would often walk on their knees; others took on the quest of the labyrinth as an exercise in reflection and prayer, with the hope of becoming closer to God.

A maze, the tour guide had informed Vita, was a puzzle to be solved, with dead ends and wrong turns. A labyrinth had no wrong turns, needed no map—it was an experience, not a test.

The point of a maze was to find one's way out as quickly and efficiently as possible; the objective of a labyrinth was to stay inside, to walk the path slowly and meditatively—to wait, to listen, to open yourself to new spiritual perspectives with each turn. If you just kept walking and listening and trusting, the labyrinth would lead you to the center and out again.

Vita propped her pillows against the headboard and settled back, thinking about the dream. There had been hedges all around, blocking her view—that must have been why she mistakenly identified it as a maze. At first she had experienced fear, and a bit of claustrophobia. But then she realized she was not alone. A small Sheltie was with her, nipping playfully at her heels, bounding back and forth, herding her down the path. And tugging on her hand, a child toddled along beside her—a small girl with dark hair and brown eyes and a intense, determined expression.

Someone else was in the dream, too—someone Vita could not see. From high above, she heard the voice speaking to her, encouraging her:
“Walk the path God sets before you. It will lead you where you are meant to be.”

Images confronted each other in Vita's mind: the dual, paradoxical memories of being alone, as she had always been, and being here, in the “new” reality, which included Mary Kate and the twins and, apparently, even Hattie Parker. This new world was much less orderly, much less controllable, subject to other people's whims and idiosyncrasies, marked with anguish as well as joy, with hurt as well as healing. In this new reality she had to deal with the painful rasp of heart against heart, mind against mind, soul against soul, as the people she loved sandpapered away her rough edges.

Yet even amid the pain and vulnerability, joy bounced at her side and nipped at her heels, urging her onward. Her own soul tugged her forward, that forgotten little spirit who had already grown from a neglected, silent baby to a determined toddler with a will of her own.

But what was behind this strange and inexplicable sea change?

Vita knew. For years she had ignored, denied, refused to accept the truth. But she could no longer turn away from it—she had seen it too clearly in the events spread out before her in the Treasure Box program, in Sophie and Cathleen and Rachel and tiny infant Sophia Rose. And she had to admit that even now she saw it in her own life, the new life, the one she urgently wanted to hang onto, despite all its complications and inherent difficulties. There was a Power beyond herself at work here—outside of her, and yet within her. Something she never wanted to face before, and now desperately longed to understand.

God.

She tried the word aloud, even though it felt foreign on her tongue. “God.”

It was an acknowledgment, an act of contrition, a prayer.

And no sooner had the word been uttered than Vita began to see something—not a vision, strictly speaking. More like footlights rising on the stage of her consciousness, a dawning awareness.