Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [98]
It was the full moon, and Jessica, who hadn’t played this rather pitiless game for many years, stood out under its barren amber in the field above the orchard, beside the old creamery, neither quite laughing nor crying. She’d learned the hollyhock trick from Ariel, who had learned it in turn from the boys at the bottom of the road, down at the dairy farm. Those boys had all of them grown up now, just like Ariel, and were gone, as was Ariel. Wasn’t it one of the laws of nature that everything runs down, moves away from its source? Was that Isaac Newton? Ariel would know. Jessica herself had once known, but memory runs down more precipitously than other things in nature. Law of forgetfulness.
She lay on the pond dock. Its grayed planks were still warm from the long day. Pressure-treated wood—it started out slime green but forgot its color. There you go. She could smell the algae carpet on the water’s stagnant surface, green foam teeming with photosynthetic life. The wise trout swam in the cold depths. The stand of cattails stirred, though there was no wind. A frog gulped. A thrush called, another replied. Jessica looked at the first stars, thinking, Families are supposed to last. Memories go, minds go, but family is family. What on earth remained with Ariel gone? Neither Jessica nor her husband, however much they loved their daughter, could have suspected how central she was to their ecology, their balance and sanity. Kip wouldn’t try to turn her against them, would he? Probably not, but the abruptness of Ariel’s departure, combined with her rare uncommunicativeness, did leave Jessica open to all kinds of bleak thoughts.
Her husband remained, though he’d drifted these last few weeks in the absence of his version of a norm. More white hair, she could have sworn, at his temples and filigreed on his forearms. An extra punitive glass or three of wine at dinner. His distracted morning face, new dark rings under his eyes, drinking coffee after intermittent sleep.
Jessica had come to the farm alone. She needed time away from the city. The only problem was this. The house was as if haunted by Ariel, her recent presence reflected in every room. This half-read book left on the kitchen bench. That pair of sunglasses in the pantry—had she forgotten to take them?
The man in the moon regarded Jessica with the same poker-faced insouciance he showed toward all who ever stared at that unblinking eye. Sure, he was aloof and self-composed, but he had no answers. Having revisited that not completely uncruel game with the fireflies and hollyhocks, Ariel’s mother had released them before coming down to the dock, flicking toothpicks here and there as she demystified the garden, robbed it of its faux Japanese lanterns. As for the man in the moon, he could take a flying leap.
Should she go to New Mexico to help Ariel? The idea seemed as threadbare as the cotton dress she wore in this drowning light. What else was left her? To wait and worry?
Her daughter, at that very moment, two time zones removed from Jess’s early glowing evening, was bringing Sarah Montoya into Granna’s room, where the elderly woman lay on her bed asleep in the dying afternoon. Whispering so as not to wake her, Bonnie rose from her bedside chair and told Mrs. Montoya how glad she was to see her again. They had met once before, Bonnie recalled, when Mother was admitted, though she didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about just now, as Sarah and Ariel quietly spoke of connections about to be made. Something was wrong. Ariel and Kip Calder? What was this all about? And what did it have to do with Mrs. Montoya? When Bonnie asked if they should wake Granna to let her know her granddaughter was off to Nambé, Ariel said not to disturb her—she’d be back soon. Bonnie looked at Sam, who was staring at Ariel wondering whether he had ever been alone in the same room with four women before.
Inside the farmhouse, walking its pearlescent rooms, Jessica thought about what life might have