Alice At Heart (24 page)

Griffin
, I sang urgently to that child’s namesake.
Do you realize what you mean to Lilith? She and her sisters couldn’t possibly have harmed you or anyone you loved. Griffin, please listen. Please talk to me. We can’t hurt them. Where are you?

Silence.

20

Stalwart and true, by Ta-Mera’s princesses enslaved

Devoted lovers, bound to earth yet fulfilled in water,

We shall whisper their mortal names on shores

Kissed by eternal tides,

And forget them not in fluid rhyme:

Beckrith, Padrian, and Salasime.

Ode To Mermaids And Men

Emilene Merrimac Revere

Victorian poetess and singer

“I found him this way when I came by to check my menus for a dinner he’s givin’ tomorrow,” the stalwart housekeeper told Griffin as she led him up the dark marble stairs of C.A.’s home that night. She dabbed tears from her face. “Lord, I’ve never seen Mr. Randolph drink himself into such a state. I know he thinks the world of you, and I figured you’d come see if he’s all right.”

“Thank you. I’ll take care of him.” Griffin stepped ahead of the woman as they reached a landing. He halted, shocked. The marble floor was strewn with broken liquor bottles. Paintings and nautical charts had been ripped from the walls.

“He did all this damage,” the housekeeper moaned. “His hands are all tore up from hittin’ things and rippin’ his own house apart.”

“Don’t tell anyone. We’ll get this cleaned up tonight.”

“Yessir.”

Griffin held his breath as the housekeeper led him into C.A.’s large bedroom, which was equally destroyed. His elder cousin was stretched out among the jumbled dark sheets of a tall mahogany bedstead. C.A. was naked, though he’d had the presence of mind to pull the end of the bed’s comforter over his belly and thighs. He lay on his back, his eyes shut, his bloody fists unfurled by his sides.

“Some woman was here with him,” the housekeeper whispered. “When I picked up his clothes I could smell fine perfume, and there was lipstick on his shirt . . .
on his shirt front, down low
, Mr. Griffin.” The housekeeper blushed. “I don’t know what that woman did to him, but I hope she never does it again.”

“You can leave us alone now. I’ll try to talk to him.”

“God bless you. He sure does love you. You’re like a son to him.”

She left the room. Griffin slowly picked his way through broken lamps, tossed chairs, and ripped paintings, to C.A.’s side. Griffin set a small bedside lamp upright and flicked its switch. As he bent over C.A. and pressed fingertips to the pulse in his throat, Griffin inhaled the scent of liquor—and more. The raw scent of sex.

C.A. stirred lethargically, opened bloodshot eyes, and recognized Griffin. C.A. groaned. “What are you doing here?” He slurred the words.

“What happened, C.A.?”

“My own weakness. Goddamn furious . . . with myself. No one hurt but me. That’s all I want. No one hurt but me. Leave me the hell alone.”

“Who was the woman?”

“My business, not yours.”

“You didn’t tear up the house in front of her, did you?”

“No. After she left.”

Griffin reached past him, staring at mounds of hair twisted in the sheets, a river of tresses. His hand shook a little as he pulled it free. It filled his hands and spilled over, dark, luxurious, reddish brown, wavy, and nearly six feet long.
Mara Bonavendier.
“What was Mara doing here? Why did she do this to you—and to herself?”

“You own her heart when she gives you her hair. Not that she’ll stay with you. Not that you own
her
.”

Griffin straightened. “You get some sleep. Tomorrow you and I have to have a talk. I don’t want you involved in my problems with the Bonavendiers. You can’t handle whatever goes on between you and Mara. That makes it my business, C.A. Not just yours.” Griffin pulled more covers over him. “I’ll be here all night. Get some rest.” He turned to go.

“Griffin.”

“Yeah?”

“You have no idea . . . what you’ve gotten into. With them. With Alice.”

“C.A., take a break. I said we’ll talk in the morning.”

“Your father didn’t know, either. But I know. I accept what they are. But your father couldn’t. I tried to tell him. I loved your father . . . like a brother. But he was stubborn.”

“What are you saying?”

“He was as strong as any Randolph can be. Strong-minded. A hard man, sometimes. Your mother almost convinced him . . . anything is possible. He loved her like his life. But there was no room for imagination in him. Or . . . faith.”

“
What are you trying to tell me, C.A
?”

“I don’t want you to hate . . . your father for what he did to your mother.”

After a stunned moment Griffin said evenly, “What did he do to her?”

But C.A. turned on one side, groaned, and fell asleep. Griffin stared at him a long time, then finally turned out the light and left him alone. Griffin sat in a downstairs library in the dark the rest of the night. He heard Alice calling to him but didn’t answer. She would feel the worry and confusion around him. She would know it involved her family and some connection to his mother he didn’t understand. He rose and paced. What had his father done to his mother?

In the morning, bandaged and sober and ashen, C.A. sat across from Griffin in the tall leather chairs of the dining room, drinking coffee. C.A. only shook his head when Griffin asked him what had happened between him and Mara. Griffin said with strained patience, “All right, let’s pretend you don’t owe me that explanation. But you do owe me something else. Tell me what you meant about my parents.”

C.A. laid his head against the chair’s high back and looked at him through slitted, resigned eyes. Griffin’s stomach twisted as C.A. gave him a bleak smile, as if expecting Griffin’s reaction already. “Porter realized your mother was a mermaid,
and he lost his mind
.”

“A mermaid.” Griffin stared at him, got up slowly, and bent over C.A. until their faces were close. “If you can’t tell me a better lie than that,” Griffin said softly, “then stay the hell out of my life.”

C.A. said nothing else but held Griffin’s gaze with unrelenting sorrow and that same, chilling smile.

Griffin slammed a hand on the table. “If that’s how you want it, then.” He walked out of the house.

C.A. shut his eyes. Mara was right. All he could do was be there when Griffin and Alice learned the truth in their own way. And believed it.

Lilith and Riyad lay together
in the water of a quiet cove. “Why is this all happening now?” she whispered. “How can we go along for years, decades, sometimes even centuries, and then suddenly everything converges? Those years—when I returned here, when our child died, then Mara returned, heartbroken, widowed, her children dead. And Pearl, of course, refusing to leave Barret, spending her life here as she lost one child after another. All those things make no sense, Riyad.”

“Because random sorrows never do.” He stroked her hair. “Our lives are drops of water. Yet each helps fill the ocean. I quote some dusty cleric writing in thirsty sand. To be blunt, Lilith? Perhaps we bring many of our sorrows on ourselves. The talent lies in bringing many joys on ourselves, as well.”

“If there is an answer beyond any hard journey, it is joy.”

“The answer may lie in children yet to come. Children that would never be born without your guidance, my love.”

Alice and Griffin’s children
, she thought. She lay back with Riyad in the water, placing her head on his chest, as he took her in his arms.

21

To sing is to charm the soul with illicit lures, said the churchmen of old. And so the songs of Water People, male and female, were designated a form of witchcraft. How sad, to turn love into darkness.

—Lilith

Chaos. This morning the Tanglewood brother who drove Mara to Savannah is in tears because she disappeared without ever returning to the car. He is convinced, with cherubic devotion, that the evil denizens of that city have had the nerve to harm her. This despite the fact she’s more than capable of terrorizing any urban miscreant short of Godzilla. Riyad and Lilith have cloistered themselves somewhere in the ocean to mourn their son together, and Pearl is frantic over it all. Barret has tried to soothe her by heading to Savannah in search of Mara. I find myself in an unsettling position of leadership, as Pearl and the Tanglewoods are suddenly asking me,
the Alice
, what to do.

“Mara is more than a match for any city on the face of the earth,” I told them with feigned certainty, “and Lilith requires a period of time in prayer and meditation with the father of her child. Her solitude is very understandable. Both Mara and Lilith will return home when they are ready. I have no doubt.” And since I could think of nothing better to offer, I added, “Now let us make some creamed shrimp with sherry for breakfast, drink a tall vodka, and be calm.”

After a moment spent in staring at me, Pearl and the Tanglewoods exhaled as one. “Oh, good. All right, then,” Pearl said.

“The Alice is wise,” a Tanglewood proclaimed.

They went off to prepare breakfast, leaving me stunned by their faith in my command.

Because I am so afraid of every new moment, and Griffin is still silent.

You’ll know when it’s time
to open your mother’s keepsake box
, Lilith had said.

It was time.

Griffin carried the box upstairs and out onto a captain’s walk. The narrow balcony looked over Bellemeade Bay, its boards worn by wind and weather. He had loved playing there as a child. He sat down on a weathered bench with the box on his knees under a sun-washed blue sky. The lock clicked easily when he inserted the slender, feminine brass key into it. He laid the key aside and opened the box’s lid. His heart pounded. On top were yellowed handkerchiefs with his mother’s maiden initials embroidered on them, as if she’d put away all symbolic evidence of her family’s name when she married his father. His throat tight, Griffin gently laid the items beside the key. He curled his callused fingers beneath a stack of aged albums and dried flowers from his parents’ wedding. When he removed them, he saw what was his mother had stored carefully beneath.

Memories flooded him.

Mother, why do you and me have to cut our hair every day?

Oh, we McEvers are known for our hair growing as fast as seaflax in a strong current.
Mother laughed as she spoke in her gentle Scottish brogue and continued to snip several inches of new growth from her shoulder-length mane. Griffin sat in the floor or her dressing room, watching her, fascinated by the flow of her, the way her silk robe clung to her soft, strong body, the salty scent of her skin after one of her morning swims, the soft, golden slippers she loved to wear. Once he crawled beneath the tasseled bridge of her vanity chair and deftly, playing, snatched a slipper from her foot. She gasped and curled her toes tightly together, but not before he glimpsed the terrible scars that lined their insides.
Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?

Nothing, my wee love; my feet are just a little peculiar, hmmm? Nothing wrong with that.

He examined one of his own feet, prying apart his toes.
I have lines inside my toes, too, but they’re not so bad.

Well see, then, we’re alike—only your feet are much nicer than mine.

But Father doesn’t have lines inside his toes.

Not everyone is as lucky as you and I are
. Smiling, she lifted him quickly into her lap and slid her foot back into the slipper.
I say you’ve got fine, handsome feet. So much the better for you. Now don’t you be telling other people about my secrets, promise
?

I promise
.

She went back to her hair. The snipping of her scissors accompanied the soft copper fluffs as they fell into Griffin’s outstretched hands.
I’m giving you my heart, every time
, she told him.
Just as I gave my whole heart to your father on the day we wed. You take care of my heart, promise? Just as you must care for all the lovely gifts of the sea, but do no’ forget you’re a Randolph, and you live on the land.

I promise, Mother
.

Now, as a grown man, Griffin reached into the box. The memories suddenly had new meanings, possible and impossible. He lifted out a thick coil of copper-red hair bound with white ribbon at the cut end. He unwound it with trembling hands, held the ribboned end as high as his head, and let the stunning hair unfurl. It draped sensuously toward the floor, more than six feet long.

Mother’s hair.

His hands shaking a little, he carefully laid the long swath across his knees, then reached back into the box. He picked up a slender silver case about the size of a wallet, heavily figured and tarnished almost black. He closed the box, set the silver case atop the lid, and gently popped a tiny latch.

Inside was a folded note on fine, yellowed stationary, and beneath that, a mysterious silk bag. He opened the note and read in his mother’s hand:

My darling son, forgive me for what I did to you when you were a baby. You never knew, you never remembered. Your father accepted the idea that you had a harmless deformity, and a surgeon snipped it away before anyone else knew. If you are reading this, it is because Lilith feels you have no heart without the truth. Never forget your father loved you, and that I sacrificed small pieces of your soul because I loved you, too, and wanted you to be what you could never be.

Ordinary.

All my sorrows, and all my love,

Mother.

Griffin slowly picked up the small silk bag, which felt bulky but light. He untied its drawstring and poured its contents into his palm. Eight small, dark, curled bits of leather fell out. He frowned, touched them with his fingertips, and a jolt of understanding went through him with sick shock.