With One Look (40 page)

Victor stepped over to the bed. A hand came under her chin, lifting her face back up. "Is there something you'd like to say to me, sweetheart?"

She could not look at him. Emotions stirred, welled, cresting as she felt herself grow hot beneath his scrutiny. Her lips pressed to a hard line. She shook her head.

"That's strange, I could have sworn that look precipitated words. Well," He said. "No matter. I have a few things to say to you. Come, I want you to sit up."

The fierce struggle to control the avalanche of emotions coursing through her left no room to object to the hand on her arm, guiding her up and to a chair. Victor strolled to the mantel and paused briefly as he considered her. "Last night I visited my father. As a matter of fact, I've been visiting him all week after you've gone to sleep. As you know, it's my father's nature to listen

passively, to guide people to their own conclusions, understanding, solutions and so forth, but last night—either owing to his expansive mood or my desperation—he helped me understand what's happening to you better. He made me see that you're not getting any better, and that in fact it's dangerous to allow you this solitude—your withdrawal, if you will.

"I have to agree," he continued, ignoring the anxious gaze that just shot up to him. "And I'm afraid I'm going to insist on a few changes. I know you want to be left alone, but I'm not going to ask for very much. I want you to start dressing and joining us at the table for supper, and I want you to start taking walks during the day."

Jade shook her head.

Victor stepped quickly to her chair and leaned over. "That's another thing, Jade. No more nodding or shaking your head. From now on you're to answer me yes or no."

"No!"

Victor smiled at his triumph. "Yes," he corrected. "No, I won't! I don't want to! I can't!"

"Yes you will, Jade." The infuriating calm of his voice felt far more upsetting than his words. "If I have to dress you myself and carry you to the table, I will." He watched her comprehend the threat. Tears formed in her eyes, glistening like gems caught in sunlight. For a moment he was transfixed. Her lips trembled slightly with the effort to suppress words, all the unspoken words.

She remained silent.

He turned to leave. "Dinner is in an hour."

Anger, that pure and liberating emotion, welled inside her. Like a violent surge, it brought her to her feet and burst into sudden words. "I loved you! I trusted you! And you did this to me.

You hurt me, you—" She spun around, unable to look at him as she tried to put words to this sudden torrent of emotions. "Do you have any idea of what you've done to me? Of how badly you hurt me? Did you ever think of me at all?"

"Did I ever think of you at all? Oh, aye, I thought of you. Dear God, girl, only a hundred times a day. The mixed curse and blessing loving you had become! Loving you more every cherished day and being terrified, terrified of what that might someday mean. I'd look out the window at work and I'd see Tessie or Carl running up and I'd suddenly be gripping the table to stop

the shake of my hands. My hands, Jade! Shaking like an autumn leaf in the wind, so scared I was, so certain you'd had another accident, that you were lying unconscious or worse. Or worse!"

Her face tightened with anger, her fists clenched in the folds of her robe. Those accidents, all those stupid accidents, that's all he ever thought about. He couldn't stand not being in control, not being able to bend reality to his will. And for that, he had done this to her.

"This precious gift of sight has come at such a cost. My sanity, I have lost my sanity! A thing far more precious than food or shelter, the very breath one draws in one's body, and this precious thing is replaced by a madness that makes me live in terror. I live in a nightmare without end. I can't think anymore. I can't eat or sleep. I have fantasies of melting, melting away to nothing. I have fantasies of the mercy of death—"

The last statement drew a sharp gasp. "Jade, no. Dear God—"

"My only comfort is when I close my eyes, and still all of a sudden my heart and breath will start racing and I'll see her, my mother. Victor, I see my mother everywhere. ..."

"Jade," he said, gently now. "Jade, this terrible scene of your parents' murder is a shocking horror. All that has happened to you will take time to assimilate—"

"Really?" She turned back to face him. "How I pray this is so. That in time I will assimilate the picture of my mother and father washed in blood, though 'tis very hard for me to guess how it is possible to assimilate this terror into the daily pictures of our happy domestic life, how to set that scene alongside the flowers blooming in the garden, our friends gathered at the table, the pictures in the gallery. But perhaps you are right. Perhaps in time my sanity will return."

She turned away again as the worthless words cost her much. A hand went to her mouth as if to stop the torrent of emotion. He started toward her but she spun around, her arm shooting out to stop him. "No." She shook her head. "Oh no. Don't touch me."

For a long moment she stood there staring at him, her beautiful eyes shimmering with tears. "That day," she said in a whisper of words, her voice filled with a haunting sadness, "that day as I was lying on the bed, waiting like a chained pig for the slaughter, waiting for your torment and the pain, I must have fallen asleep and I had a dream. In this dream I was standing in a dark room.

There was the most lovely symbol there. It was a huge ball of transparent light. Rainbow light. Rainbow shots flew off it. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen....

"Then you appeared in this dream. You had a ... a club in your hands. You raised your arms and struck it... and, and ... it shattered in a thousand pieces....

"So now I've lost my sanity. And even if my sanity returns someday, and in time I learn how to look at the world without it changing into a room of terror, even then I will suffer the loss of the one thing, the only thing in the world, more blessed to me. Because you see ... that magical ball of rainbow light was ... Victor," she whispered as the tears gathered in her throat, "it was my love for you...."

The handsome face changed with the pain of these words, and she could not bear seeing it. She swung around and did not see his fist clenched with the effort he put to stopping himself from going to her. She heard the boots turn softly toward the door. The door open and shut. A wordless good-bye. For no words could make that magical symbol whole again.

*****

The bedroom was dark when Victor finally entered and found Jade sound asleep in the bed. One lamp threw soft light into the chamber. She was curled up at the very edge of the mattress, some unconscious display of her animosity and alienation.

He stepped to the side of the bed and knelt by her face. A troubled expression sat on her lovely features, even in her sleep. His hand gently brushed back a long wisp of her hair and he could only wonder at how beautiful she was. He could only wonder at how desperately he wanted to love her again.

The extent and desperation of her struggle alarmed him, alarmed them all. She still would not speak to him and rarely spoke to others. He insisted she go on walks, but someone always had to be with her. She suffered from random fears, an indescribable affliction where the world suddenly raced at her as if it were attacking her. At the end, the sight of the room washed in blood emerged, leaving her trembling and shaken. One never knew when it would happen.

This afternoon his father sent word that yellow fever had broken out in his parish. They had no choice but to close the house and leave for the country. Jade was not well enough to travel and had been visibly frightened when he told her of it, but they had to go. She, with her frailty and weight loss, would be particularly vulnerable to the fatal disease....

Despair hit him where he knelt, staring down at her. He stood up and turned quickly away. Within minutes, he was undressed and lying against the pillows. She started tossing and turning in her sleep. As the minutes ticked by, before the next bell had sounded, she was pressed against him, wrapped securely in his arms. It was only this curious sleeping progression from the edge of the bed into his arms that brought him hope. Hope that in time he would know how to mend the light to make that magic ball....

With the maddening tease of her scent, the soft curves of her slender form pressed seductively against his hard hot body, they slept and he suffered. Suffered from the effects of a thousand erotic memories playing through his dreams. He was filled with lust. He was dreaming of the sweet lavender scent surrounding him, those lips beneath his, her body warm and soft and maddening as he parted her thighs and slipped into a mercy—

She screamed loud and long, she screamed as the door slowly opened and a thirteen-year- old girl stared into a room washed in blood.

The new day had begun

"Everyone's leaving," Tessie whispered as the carriage moved through the still-dark streets.

As the carriage passed through the wealthy American district, servants were seen busily stuffing trunks and boxes into carriages. Anyone who could leave the city was going—within days the streets would be empty, the market closed.

Jade kept her head on Tessie's lap, her eyes closed against the world and its constant bombardment of details, fighting the panic threatening to engulf her. It would be over soon, she tried to tell herself. She had made the trip dozens of times. Dozens—

The reassurances crumbled beneath the escalating pace of her heart. Yet they had to go and she had to go with them. Yellow fever, like the bubonic plague of years ago, could rush through the city and take thousands of people to their graves. Deaths that separated mothers from children, husbands from wives, friend from friend.

The Reverend Mother suddenly emerged in her mind. The Reverend Mother had lived through countless yellow fever scares. Countless. She'd make it through this one—

A chill washed over her, frightening in its intensity. Jade never knew how she knew, but she did. As if it were a fact.

She slowly sat up. "Victor!"

Victor looked back into the carriage where Jade sat. "Yes?"

"I want to see the Reverend Mother before we leave. Please, may we stop at church?" He could hardly refuse. "She would be still sleeping—"

"No. She always rises before the dawn. She'll be at church for morning prayers."

She kept her head on Tessie's lap as they turned down Rampart Street to the church, not daring to look yet, though one could see little of the city when passing through at night: only shadows lit by the dim light of the two night lanterns swinging on each side of the carriage.

Sebastian and Victor rode alongside the carriage, Carl drove, while Mercedes slept with her head on Murray's lap, in the seat across from Tessie and Jade. Wolf Dog slept on the floor.

The carriage stopped and Jade sat up. Victor swung down to help her descend. "Shall I go with you?"

Jade shook her head as Tessie withdrew a modest cotton scarf from the traveling bag and handed it to her. Jade tied it neatly under her chin, the white of her pale skin nearly the same color as the cloth. They watched as she rushed quickly up the path and through the doors, swallowed up by the morning quiet and darkness of the vestry.

An inviting warmth greeted her in the vestibule. She stared into the huge hallowed darkness and understood the sanctuary of the church more than at any time in her life. Candles lit the tabernacle of the main altar far down the aisle, where she saw the lone figure kneeling in prayer.

She quickly dipped her fingers in the holy water, genuflected, and stepped quietly down the empty aisle, her eyes adjusting to the light. But she stopped as details of the familiar space flew at her: the darker color of the wooden pews, the old worn tiles of the floor, the impressive height and architectural design of the ceiling. How strange. She saw that it was different from the picture she had held throughout her blindness, and seeing it now sparked the memory of it that predated the accident. Memories of her mother floated through her consciousness: the day of her first communion, when her mother had come to church....

She was suddenly breathing hard and fast. The statue of Christ hanging on the cross above the altar drew a small inaudible gasp from her. She closed her eyes tightly against the assault, swallowing her panic as a shudder passed through her like a violent caress. It was just the church, just a statue. She forced herself to proceed, more slowly, careful to keep her gaze focused on her small boots as she went.

"Reverend Mother ..."

The older woman turned and beheld Terese. She wore traveling clothes, a plain green skirt and blouse, looking, dear Lord, so painfully frail and thin. The lovely ivory of her skin gleamed in the dim light and appeared translucent, its paleness accented by the bright flush on her cheeks and the feverish intensity of her eyes.

'Terese ..."

She did not seem surprised to find her here in the predawn darkness. They approached each other, one's hands reaching to clasp the other's. They kissed on each cheek as the Reverend Mother searched Jade's eyes, eyes filled with inexpressible sadness and anxiety.

"I came to say ... good-bye."

That was all she said and yet it was so much. Time seemed to stretch as meaning passed between them without words. The Reverend Mother closed her eyes for a moment, not realizing she clasped Jade's hands even tighter, not even aware that they still held hands.

"Yellow fever?"

She opened her eyes to watch Jade nod, slowly, her eyes bright with sorrow and anguish. Jade said, "We are leaving now...."

She was leaving. The Reverend Mother closed her eyes and withdrew her hand, reaching with it into the folds of her habit until she found the tiny statuette. She clasped it tightly, letting the blessing of her faith wash over her and sooth the pain of this good-bye.

"Here, I have something for you." She pressed the small statuette into Jade's hand. "A parting gift."

Jade's gaze lowered to the token she now held in her outstretched open palm, and when she saw it, her vision blurred. She had held it many times before, feeling its smooth lines as she contemplated the small miracle of Mary's appearing to an African savage from the dark continent, where no Christian walked. She had always imagined it to be beautiful, and so it was, but disconcertingly, it was far more beautiful than she had imagined. The revelation was carved into the tiny features staring back at her.