Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [42]
“Tessa,” Mary soothed, “it is a burden, being young. I know it. Young, with the weight of family pressing down on you. But you will find your way in this one, Tessa. I just can’t do it with you. But you, you need to do it. To go. You need to make a life for yourself, my child, far away from here.”
I looked up at her and realized her eyes were wet, that tears were running down her face. It was the first and only time I saw Mary cry, but I hardly paid attention. I was so furious, and afraid, that I could barely see straight.
“You aren’t even my friend!” I shouted suddenly. I pulled away from her and leapt to my feet. “I hate you!”
I did not even think to ask what it was she had done, what the tea leaves had told her, what it was the fortune-tellers had seen.
Later, when I thought back to those moments, I would always wonder if Mary knew, even back then, how things would turn out.
The past remakes itself in hindsight. By now I can barely trust myself in my own life—I am so haunted, each moment, by the idea of what I will remember, what I will see when I look back, all the things I am failing to see now.
I should have known there was something wrong when Mary began closing the library in order to walk down to the river with me and spend long afternoons telling me her stories. People left angry messages on the door, having walked miles out of their way to catch a glimpse of her, smell her spice scent, or find out what herb to sprinkle in the dinner to make their husbands more kind, or passionate, or dull. But suddenly she didn’t seem to care. It seemed strange, too, I guess, that she told me so many new things that last summer, down by the river. That she talked so much, all of a sudden, of Rain Village and its pink fish, which writhed through the river and brought tourists from all over to sample their meat, and that her heart turned so often to William and her terrible, pounding sense of loss over his death. “He should not have died,” she would say, her voice so tight and full I thought she should have been screaming. One week Mary and I went to the river every single day, and, when we returned to Mercy Library, she didn’t seem to care about the notes on the door, the stack of books, magazines, and papers the mailman had left on the step. She just left them sitting there.
I barely took note of any of those signs, though. I was lost in my own fantasies. The yearning in my gut was so strong—the crazy excitement when I imagined leaving, the terrible fear when I thought of being alone, somewhere new, without her.
That summer seemed to last longer than usual. It was nearly October before the air began to crisp, the leaves started dropping onto the ground and into the water, and the air filled with the smoky, nostalgic scent of autumn. The sky grew gray and heavy and seemed to tap my head as I rushed down the road to Mercy Library, to help Mary rake the furious leaves that blanketed the library yard. The little chimneys of the houses I passed began sputtering wisps of smoke into the air, and Mary made crackling fires to heat bowls of apple cider with cinnamon sticks floating on top.
It had always been the perfect season for her. As soon as the leaves turned we pushed cloves into the skins of oranges and lined the windowsill with them. She put out bowls of nuts that we cracked