Ivy of Our Hearts

Eighteen

I'd bought Margaret one of the dresses she'd taken down the other day. We'd left them hanging on the foot-board. They weren't suitable for nightwear, but we couldn't be picky, and I didn't want to go through the wardrobe. I'd save that for the morning.

When I'd brought it to her she'd held it against her nose and said, "Smells like your mom."

She passed it to me through the space in the door to take a whiff. There it was for the second time that day. White Gardenia. I couldn't deny it this time. Although I thought of my parents, they no longer comforted me as much as they should have. Anything that didn't involve Margaret and Phillip wouldn't comfort me. My mother's perfume on Nora's clothing seemed like an unkind coincidence.

Margaret held out her hand for it because I'd clung to it longer than I should have. I gave it back to her. Before closing the door, she asked, "Do you think it belonged to Nora?"

Nora, like I thought she would, had followed us from the lake. "Probably," I said. "Unless Phillip likes lace." Saying his name, I glanced into the sitting room where he'd collapsed onto the couch. His bare feet were propped up on the armrest.

It turned out Nora had a thing for lace. After bathing, I changed into the other dress Margaret had taken down, a white thing that fell way past my knees and had a green satin ribbon around the waist. I smoothed my hand over the skirt. It gave a lot of room, although the bodice clung to my breasts, the part of me which hadn't shrunk. Closing the wardrobe door, I turned away from my reflection in the mirror.

"Do you think she's dead?" I asked Margaret.

She'd been making the bed and tugged the covers straight. "I hope not," she said, sweeping her hand over the sheets to smooth out the wrinkles. "It would be weird wearing a dead woman's clothes."

It was weird wearing her clothes period if they were her clothes. I lowered my voice then. "Do you think she was a girlfriend?"

"Whoever she was he didn't want to tell us." She picked up a pillow and fluffed it. With a faraway look in her eyes, she stopped fluffing and said, "Whoever Nora was she obviously meant a lot to him."

I told myself I would not let a name haunt me, but while Margaret slept I lay in bed all night, my chin resting on my arm so I could inhale her perfume, my mother's perfume. It made her more familiar to me than I wanted her to be.

Maybe it was her I'd smelled in the air earlier, haunting us even before I'd learned her name.

***

I crept out of bed, out of the bedroom, past Phillip fast asleep on the couch, and out the front door. I made sure to close it with a gentle hand behind me, although the woods made enough noise, even at night, to mask any sounds I could have made.

In the night, everything had a heartbeat, a pulse, even the grass beneath my toes called out when I walked across it. In the darkness of this gathering wild, I could quiet my thoughts of Nora, my mother, father, Margaret, and Phillip.

I closed my eyes, almost swaying where I stood, and listened for it. Unlike my heart, my star didn't sing. It didn't babble like a brook or thrash like a river. But if I listened for it, its faint buzzing reverberated; reminding me that I'd birthed something as eternal as the North Star, a precious gift I could no longer live without.

Opening my eyes, I went to the fence, but changed my mind halfway to it. I went around the back instead because I'd never seen it.

It was there I saw it, the answer to me and Margaret's question: "Do you think she's dead?" It was a grave, marked by two twigs strung together with rope.