To My Sister (S) part II
Friday, August 24th, 2007Hey you all remember Children of Weir–that fantasy novel I started ages ago? Well it’s still brewing in the back of my mind–and occasionally I add a little here and there. But this was the very first chapter–begun as my part of a writing exercise with my students, and adapted and added to as the plot evolved. I decided to throw it up, becuase it’s always reminded me of Shobey. So here’s to you Montanna Cowgirl.
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Chapter 14 -The Day Face Down
For a moment the cottage felt familiar again; but it was only sunlight dancing through the window. Jane listened, eyes closed, for Nana — the coffee pot scraping across the stove, a page turning in one of the many unfinished books, steady breathing from the bed in the corner.
Rain had fallen nonstop for days, so sunshine pouring through the window was unexpected, magical. Jane turned to face the room expecting to see her, but as she moved clouds rolled over the sun, the brilliant light dissolved and she faced the empty, dusty cottage. It startled her how strange the things in that room looked now — mugs on the counter, paintings, the quilt on the bed, she had seen and touched them a million times before. The cottage made her uncomfortable, like she was an uninvited visitor at a home where she used to live.
“I don’t know why you keep going down there,” Owen’s voice sounded less sympathetic than he was, probably because of the food in his mouth. Jane pushed her sandwich away and rocking back on her chair smiled sadly at her brother.
“I don’t know why either. It kind of calls to me or something.”
She didn’t need to say that she thought she might find Nana there he knew what she meant.
“What I want to know is why all that stuff is still in there, anyway. They can’t just let the cottage sit forever like she’s away on vacation. She’s not coming back,” their youngest sister, Isabel, piped out as she entered the room, grabbed a sandwich off the table and leaned against the sink to eat it.
Jane looked around the huge table at the empty places. Even with just the three of them it felt cozy. Isabel’s comments did not irritate her, that was just Bella, matter of fact, feet on the ground, practical. It was true, of course, Nana would not return to her little house. Sooner or later, her things would have to be distributed to whoever wanted them or sold, and someone would have to be found to live in there. But her parents and her aunts and uncles had found one reason or another to put it off for well over a year now.
“Sensitive as always, I see, Bel.” Owen jabbed. He and Bella rarely agreed about anything. “I’ll be sure to come looking for you the next time I’m feeling down and out.”
Bella shrugged. “Where’s everyone else? It’s really quiet in here.” She was sitting on the counter now, swinging her legs.
“Mom and Dad are watching a movie. I’m not sure where anyone else is.”
Jane found keeping track of her entire family tiresome. Alistair was living with them while he finished his degree. Maggie didn’t seem to have any plan for leaving. Owen and Addy had come and gone all summer, visiting friends, and road-tripping here and there, so they both decided to live at home and work through the autumn to make a little money before they went back to university. Jane, Andrew and Isabel still had to finish high school and the old farmhouse was the only place they had ever lived.
As if the rest of the Weir children had heard them calling, they appeared in the kitchen doorway wet and laughing. Before, their jackets were off Bella was across the room.
“Where were you guys?”
Maggie rolled her eyes at Bella, “I had to pick Addy up, she was working, and Andrew wanted to get some things in town so he rode along with me. Is that Ok?”
Bella was not pleased. “You could have told me you were going, I might have had things I wanted to do in town too, you know.”
Andrew hugged Bella tightly, lifting her off the floor and making her wet with his rain soaked coat. “If you woke up before noon maybe you could have come along squirt.”
Isabel sputtered something about not being the only person in the family who slept late, feigned indignation at her wet sweatshirt and giggled over all the attention. “I thought I was the only person allowed to call you squirt,” Alistair cried in mock surprise from the stairway. “It’s hard to get any work done with the hole tribe of you down here. I guess it was time for a break anyway,” he said seating himself by Owen as Maggie started making more sandwiches, and Addy poured coffee.
Jane tried to recall her first cup of coffee. Nana had given it to them from the time they were little. Other memories filled in for the first coffee. She and Addy were sitting up in the bed in the corner. The wind cried outside, but they were happy. Shadows danced on the walls and flames danced in the stone hearth. Dry wood cracked and burst in the fire. The girls reclined against piles of pillows, covered by a flannel sheet, an old quilt, and a Scotch Tartan. From where they sat they could watch Nana working. A blue flame hissed under the old coffee pot. Nana sat three mugs on a small breakfast tray on the counter and poured thick white cream from a glass jug into each one. She opened a box of shortbread cookies and put them on a plate, humming to herself as she worked. Once the coffee had perked she poured it into the cream, added several spoonfuls of sugar and stirred. The girls ate cookies in bed, dipping them in the thick coffee. Twice Nana stopped to throw more logs on the fire but she kept reading late into the night — And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow…were the last words Jane heard before falling asleep.
“Janie are you Ok?” Addy was sitting beside her. She’d been complaining about her job, but stopped suddenly, “You look sad.”
Owen’s mouth opened to explain, but Isabel was already talking, “She was down at the cottage this morning. It always makes her like this—ya know depressed.”
“I’m not depressed”
“Sorry, wrong word, but sad is dumb, like nice. What else should I say you are?”
“Morose.”
“Melancholy.”
“Moody.”
“Blue.”
Alistair, Owen, Maggie, and Andrew chimed.
“I’m sorry I asked,” said Bella, but Jane smiled.
Addy frowned at them, “Before you guys get off on some synonym of the word sad tangent, why don’t we find out why Jane’s whatever it is she is.”
“Why the hell do you think she’s whatever she is Addy? She misses Nana. That seems obvious.” Owen looked around the table to see what the others thought of this insight.
“We all miss Nana Owen, but Jane’s the only one who keeps going down there. And she’s the one who’s sad.”
“I’m not sad anymore,” Jane smiled, “you guys cheered me up. So Andrew what was in town, that you actually got up early, I mean before 2p.m. to get it.”
Jane successfully changed the subject and her older sisters turned their hawk-like attention to Andrew.
The cottage called to Jane. After Nana died they all had felt the need to visit it, to sit alone watching the shadows, listening to the murmur of past conversations. But Jane kept returning long after the others had stopped. She would visit for a few minutes just to say hello, like she had all her life, it was a habit she could not break, and though she had never told anyone else, she was certain that Nana was there. Jane made a point of not thinking about the how or why of the situation. She had never seen a phantom and did not think Nana was a ghost. But the cottage hadn’t felt empty to her and once in awhile she could hear Nana’s voice or feel the brush of her hands.
Often she wondered if everyone else felt it too, and if that was the reason the cottage remained intact. Then, it started raining. The early September rain was unseasonably cold. It brought leaves down and chilled bodies used to summer sun. On the first rainy day Jane had to force herself not to run up the lane to the cottage on her way home from school. As she opened the door Jane knew something had changed. Nana was gone.
She returned to the cottage nearly everyday after that, but each time the room grew less familiar, and Jane began to think her imagination had run away with her. Of course Nana is gone she kept telling herself, in a voice that sounded distinctly like Bella’s, she is dead. Then she would hear her mother’s voice, sorrowful but confident, “the people we love never leave us, Janie. Never.” But now Jane felt like Nana had left her, abruptly. And as the rainy days drug on, a strange urgency and anxiety began to weigh on her. That morning, the brilliant sunshine had forced the weight to lift and she had expected to feel Nana again, but an instant later the clouds returned and Jane’s distress grew.
As she sat at the table, occasionally joining in the animated and noisy conversation, Jane became aware that she was cold. When her brothers and sisters began leaving the kitchen Jane left as well. “What I need,” she thought to herself, “is a nice hot bath.” She headed for the huge bathtub in her parents’ bathroom. In a few minutes sudsy water swirled all around, lapping gently at her chin. But rather than calming and warming her, Jane grew more agitated. Something was happening. She had no idea what, or where. But something was changing. Or had it already changed. Yes, that was it. “What has changed?” she said aloud. The answer seemed just beyond her memory, like a name that was stuck on the tip of her tongue. She lay there straining to remember, willing herself to understand.
Jane returned to her room and found Owen sprawled on the bed waiting for her.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked wedging her pillow under his head.
“It’s raining.”
“Come on, you won’t melt, and the fresh air’ll be good for you.”
They left through the back door and followed an overgrown trail past their aunt and uncle’s house and into the woods. Under the tree cover the light drizzle was barely discernable, allowing them to pull down their hoods. The trail made an sudden ninety degree turn at the edge of the property, running straight along the base of the mountain for nearly a quarter mile till it came to a gap where a small brook twisted and turned down from a spring far above. Owen and Jane walked in silence till they came to the gap and a bizarre assortment of stone cairns, wells and trenches known locally as The Improvement.
Jane drew her hood over her bent head and hunched her shoulders to avoid the drizzle. Her jeans were soaked up to the knees.
“I still can’t believe some people actually think this stuff was some kind of Colonial pig pen,” Owen scoffed pointing at a perfectly rounded stone well. Then turning to face a structure farther up the mountain he added, “They really do resemble those bee hive huts Alistair showed us, don’t they.”
Jane nodded. There was something jarringly familiar about this place she thought, a sense of deja vu returned as yet again she struggled to recall something just out of memory. Then the voice of reason intervened. Of course it’s familiar, you’ve been here hundreds, possibly thousands of times. Aloud she said, “Let’s get going.”
From The Improvement the path led up and down along the edges of hilly fields their uncle still farmed, through an old orchard, and across the cow pasture to a tiny pond beside the cottage. Jane peered at its dark windows, hoping to rediscover that something the rain had taken from her.
Owen put his arm protectively around her shoulder, “We can go in.”
Together they picked their way along the pond’s bank. Swollen with rain, it flowed over the path in places, making a second shallow pond in the cottage garden. Jane and Owen splashed though it laughing and opened the cottage door with bang.
“Where did the water come from?’
They stood in the small doorway looking at wet planks and a sopping pile of books beside the rocking chair. The air was chilly and the room smelled musty.
“Maybe there’s a leak. It’s been raining for days.”
Owen looked puzzled, “But the roof’s almost new.”
A head poked out from the loft, surprising both of them. “There doesn’t appear to be any leak in the roof, the rafters are dry and none of the drywall shows water damage,” said Maggie.
Addy appeared beside her. “The pipes seem fine too, we already checked them. What are you two doing here anyway?”
Jane had been wondering the same thing about them. She shrugged and Owen gave her shoulder a tiny squeeze. Addy nodded and Maggie smiled thankfully at her, evidently relieved that she hadn’t pressed the subject.
“But if the pipes and roof are fine what is this?” Owen sounded irritated by the mess.
“No matter what made it, someone ought to clean it up.” Bella pushed through the crowded doorway and Andrew and Alistair stepped in behind her pushing the door shut. “Why’s everyone down here?”
They all were suddenly aware that the synchronized arrival of all seven of them must have some purpose. Their mother was a firm believer in intuition and held little stock in coincidence, traits that had rubbed off on the children.
Maggie began climbing down the ladder, “Bella’s right. Alistair I think there are still a few towels in that cupboard,” she pointed to his right. “Aunt Betsy only took the newer ones.”
Alistair tossed a pile of towels to Maggie who dropped them onto the puddles, tapping them down with her foot to make sure all of the water soaked in. She gasped and pulled her foot back.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bella .
As Maggie opened her mouth, Jane felt a strange electric sensation run up her spine to the base of her head. From there the charge seemed to grow, sending tingling charges down her arms and legs and into her stomach, making her nauseous.
“Look at my shoe, it’s soaked. It feels like I stepped into a lake or something.
Owen, usually the ready for anything type, said in a terse voice, “I think we should go home and let Dad and Mom know. They can call a contractor or something to come check it out tomorrow. It’s getting dark fast and with no gas in the lamps anymore, it’ll be hard to figure any of this out or clean it up. The puddle just was deeper than we thought,” he added speaking directly to Maggie.
The Weirs children walked in silence up the lane to their own house, periodically steeling tense glances at each other. By the time they entered, tossing shoes and coats into the pantry, the strange unease they had shared at the cottage was gone, and there seemed to be a silent agreement all around that they had let their imaginations run away with them. At dinner they mentioned the visit and water issue casually, no one correcting their mother when she assumed that they had all gone for a walk.
“I wish you’d mentioned what you were planning, I would have enjoyed the air, and you could use the exercise Tom. The doctor said you should start walking regularly.” From there the conversation moved on, and none of them, not even Jane, felt the inexplicable unease they had shared earlier that evening.