Ivy of Our Hearts

Twenty-one

My beloved.

In bed, I traced the writing with the tip of my finger. Although the picture was hard to see in the dark, I had stared at it long enough to memorize its details, down to the flyaways in Nora's bobbed hair, her protruding chin, and furrowed brow.

The plump youthfulness of her cheeks meant that she couldn't have been much older than me and Margaret. The way her fingers were clasped together, her pursed lips, it was almost as if she'd been hesitant to have her picture taken, like the photographer had gotten one shot of her before whatever she'd furrowed her brow at had called her away. I imagined she must have waved her hand, laughed, and said, "Would you take it already." Maybe the person on the other side had been her beloved.

And the cabin.

It appeared almost identical, except in Nora's photo there were more trees, sprung up on either side, birches, their leaves perfectly placed, as if someone had taken the time to arrange them, or the trees had arranged themselves for the photo. The fence surrounding the cabin hadn't been built yet, so the trees climbed the slopped ground like infringing houseguests, the cabin was its epicenter. It didn't concern me what lay on the other side of the cabin's closed door. I doubted much had changed from then until now. What had Nora been looking at? Who took the photo? Who was her beloved? How old had she been at the time? Those were my questions.

I hadn't shown the photo to Margaret. Once I'd found it, I'd tucked it beneath my pillow when she hadn't been watching. I felt like by finding the photo I'd stumbled across a secret, a hidden one, unlike Nora's grave. By the time I fell asleep, still clutching it, I hadn't decided yet if I would bring it to Phillip. I wanted to keep it to myself for as long as possible because, as I'd questioned before, you could be haunted by a name.

While I lay there in bed, listening to Margaret's soft inhales and exhales, I thought about twelve-year-old me and my obsession with names, how I'd wanted to find the meaning behind every person I met. Were they as bright or as funny as their name implied? It might've been another reason why I'd become so obsessed with Nora. The main reason being she'd been someone to Phillip and by figuring her out I'd be closer to him.

***

I folded the photo and tucked it into my boot where it stayed all through breakfast. Phillip had cooked again, whole wheat waffles drenched in maple syrup. He'd said that waffles were a first of the month tradition and we should get used to him cooking because he loved to, even Manderley forgo her diet of insects and spiders to pick the scraps off his plate. Margaret cleared the dishes and I charged myself with washing them.

Phillip had a small portable radio. He found a station that played classic jazz. Hearing Louis Armstrong sing, my mind flashed to Nora, as if I'd been struck by a premonition but from long ago. She had stood where I stood now, her hands beneath the sudsy water like mine.

The radio played and she hummed along to it off tune, although she knew the words, she was always off tune. It became hard to ignore the pressure of her photo against my skin. I could reach down to retrieve it, to stare at it to make sure I hadn't missed something. It would be so easy to. I might even be able to pretend it was a slip of paper, but instead I kept on washing the dishes, mumbling words from the song I'd caught.

Nora would have to wait.

"Ivy." At the sound of Phillip's voice, I turned from the water I'd been watching descend down the drain. He flashed me a bright knowing grin, a sorry I startled you grin. My heart fluttered. It was still learning how to use its new wings. This. He and I were foreign to it. He'd dressed warm for the day, in a brown button up thermal sweater. The legs of his dark blue jeans hung over the shaft of his boots; other times they would have been tucked in. I hadn't been outside yet, but through the window I'd seen the trees sway in a way that denoted that the weather called for thermal sweaters.

"If you guys need anything, I'll be around the side of the house," he said. He opened the door, Manderley, eager to once again be outside, swooped out of it. "Don't hesitate to use anything you need," he said, and he, too, went out the door, closing it behind him. The radio buzzed, in and out of song and static. Margaret sat curled up in a corner of the couch with a book in her lap and an expression on her face that said, "I'm too busy reading to join you in reality." I wouldn't bother her.

I lowered the volume on the radio and took myself to the line of books against the shelf, which sagged from the weight it carried like Nora's wardrobe. Most of the books were old, pages frayed and yellowed, their spines so broken that a few pages that no longer fit stuck out. With my eyes closed, I ran my fingers across one row. Letting them stop on one, I opened my eyes. They'd all been crammed onto their shelves, so it took much effort to take one down. I hoped that somehow my intuition had led me to another secret, another clue, pressed inside the pages of the book.

I flipped back and forth through the pages of Dracula and found nothing, except for a few underlined passages. Nora would have had more lighthearted tastes. I put the book back and took out another, flipped through its pages, and still nothing, not even her name scrawled across the inside cover. I took down book after book, as if there could have been a message in one of them left by Nora for a future person to find, maybe a note left in a margin, maybe a highlighted string of words which when combined would create a secret message that only I would have understood.

"Just choose one already," Margaret said, turning a page of her own book. She glanced at the copy of Jane Eyre in my hand. "You've already read that one."

Nora called out to me from her place in my boot. "It's a classic," I said, and with Jane Eyre in hand I marched past her to the bedroom. I'd found what I'd been searching for, on the inside back cover, in her handwriting read: Nora Elizabeth Callaway read this book on June 6th, 1951. Age sixteen.

It wasn't much, but still I removed the photo from my boot and tucked it in-between the book's pages. Like a towering wave, guilt washed over me. He'd asked me to trust him and I hid my findings from him. It was possible he'd never seen the photo. It was possible that seeing her again would make him happy. I wanted him to be happy.

I had more theories of why Nora interested me as much as she did, that it could have been Phillip's reluctance to tell me about her that spurred me on. It could have been my own inquisitiveness. Although I did trust Phillip enough to not mention her, I didn't trust that Nora Elizabeth Callaway would keep her distance. I didn't trust that I would.

A knock at the front door pulled me from my thoughts. I caught a flash of Phillip and Manderley as they went past the window. I left the book on the nightstand. In the front room, Margaret leaned out of the door. She heard me come up behind her and said, "There's someone here. I think he's lost."

I leaned around her and caught a glimpse of the stranger's back. Strapped around his body was camping gear, heavy duty, not the kind a newbie would carry. Phillip pointed towards the trees, so they both looked that way. The stranger scratched his capped head. "I think I know what you mean," he said. "I haven't been out here in a while. It's almost like it's changed somehow. I don't recognize any of it." He laughed. Margaret and I ducked out of view as he turned, although we stayed near the door.

"Do you mind if I rested here a while?" the stranger asked. "I won't be any trouble. I promise."

I didn't hear Phillip respond, but he must have said yes because the stranger's voice got louder. "It's crazy," he said. "It's like new trees sprung up overnight."

Phillip chuckled, and I got the sense that he didn't usually chuckle but did for this stranger. There must have been an air about him that made Phillip nervous, so I guessed Margaret and I should have been, too.