Chapter Twenty-One

chapter twenty-one

June 20, 2019

Iwoke up to the smell of coffee and bacon.

I’d been dreaming that Lexie came to my room and stood in the corner, dripping and smelling like the pool. We were telling each other riddles. My riddles were old schoolyard things: What has four legs and a body but can’t walk? A table!

Lexie’s were nonsense: What has gills and pink polka dots? The Brooklyn Bridge!

But her final riddle stayed with me as I sat up. Who is cold and dark and smells like rotten eggs?

And there she was, watching me from the painting propped up on the dresser, gazing at her reflection, her own version of Narcissus.

I glanced into the corner of the room, where she’d stood in my dream. Pig was curled up on the floor there, chin resting on his front paws, yellow eyes watching me.

I got out of bed and made my way down to the kitchen. My head felt thick and heavy, my thinking clouded as I pushed myself to come up with a logical explanation for what happened with the flashlight. Did I actually see it fall? I was distracted, frightened, so maybe I didn’t notice that the light hadn’t actually fallen into the water. Maybe, I told myself, it had been there on the edge of the pool the whole time. That must have been it.

But the blinking light I saw in the water, did I imagine that?

And the splashing?

“Morning, Jax,” my father called. He was standing in front of the stove, flipping bacon on the big cast-iron griddle my grandmother had used to make us pancakes: plain for me, chocolate chip for Lexie. Another large pan full of home fries sizzled next to it.

“Hope you’re hungry,” my father said. He grabbed two eggs. “Over easy, right?”

Lexie liked her eggs over easy, not me. “Scrambled hard,” I said. It wasn’t even nine in the morning. The Ted I knew rarely rose before noon. And I doubted he’d ever cooked me breakfast in my life. “I didn’t know you could cook,” I said.

“Ha!” he said jovially. “Well, then you’re in for a treat. Should we wake Diane up?”

“No way,” I said, pouring myself a much-needed mug of coffee. “Let’s let her sleep. You’re up early.”

“I had the most amazing dreams,” he said. He looked wistful, little-boyish. I sat at the kitchen table and noticed a sketchbook, an assortment of drawing pencils, an eraser, and a sharpener.

“I found your sister’s art supplies up in the attic and helped myself,” he said, following my gaze.

“The attic? When were you up there?” Growing up, it was off-limits to Lexie and me. When my mother and Aunt Diane were girls, their grandmother lived in the attic. Her brass bed was still up there, covered in a sheet like she might still be sleeping beneath it. The few times I’d been up there it scared me. I’d heard stories from Mom and Aunt Diane about their poor old grandma who’d gone senile and kept her teeth in a jar next to the bed. I was afraid of encountering either her or her teeth up there in the dark.

“I thought… I thought I heard something up there. I went up to check it out—must have been a mouse. Anyway, your sister had turned part of the attic into a studio. I started sketching some images from last night’s dreams,” my father said. “I’ve gotta tell you, it feels good to be working again. I haven’t done any real, honest-to-God authentic artwork in a long time. I started to think maybe the old creativity well was dried up—wrung dry from painting crappy Key West landscapes for tourists. But this may be the best work I’ve done in years.” Eggs hit the pan with a sizzle, and he stirred them with a spatula.

I reached for the sketchbook. I’d loved his drawings and paintings when I was a girl: He worked in broad strokes and used vivid patches of color. His heroes were the German Expressionists: Klee, Kandinsky, Marc.

“Uh-uh,” he scolded, wielding his egg-covered spatula. “I’m not ready to show you yet.”

“Okay,” I said, pulling my hand back. “Were any of Lexie’s paintings up there?”

“A few sketches and the beginning of a couple paintings; I had no idea she had such an eye.” He dumped the eggs, some bacon, and home fries onto two plates and came to sit down with me.

“What were your dreams about?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it when I show you the drawings. Until then, mum’s the word.”

Mum’s the word, Jax. Don’t tell a soul.

“Ted, what do you know about Rita’s imaginary friend?”

“Martha? Nothing much. Just stories your mother told. Rita said she lived in the pool, but she came out sometimes. Rita used to make your grandmother set an extra plate for her at the dinner table. Then, when she didn’t eat it, Rita would carry the plate out and leave it by the pool.”

“And Martha was a little girl, right?”

He nodded. “That’s what Rita said. A little girl almost her age.”

I nodded, remembering the drawings I’d seen of Martha, the little girl with pale blond hair in a blue dress, like the one inside the box of that old game, Snakes and Ladders.

“Why the sudden interest in Martha?” my father asked.

“Martha?” Diane said, coming into the kitchen and heading straight for the coffeepot. “Who’s Martha?” She was wearing old running shorts and a T-shirt of Lexie’s. Her hair was a mess, and the dark circles under her eyes were like purple bruises.

“Rita’s imaginary friend,” my father said. “Jax was just asking about her. But you’re really the better person to ask.”

Diane poured herself a cup of coffee and looked at me. “There’s nothing to tell. Rita had a very active imagination. She was younger than Linda and me, and when we lost patience and wouldn’t play with her, she invented her own playmate.”

“Did you ever think,” I began, “that she might be real?”

My aunt frowned at me. “A real girl who lived at the bottom of the swimming pool, who no one but Rita could see?” She chuffed out a laugh. “Um, no, that possibility never crossed my mind.” She took a sip of coffee, rubbed her bloodshot eyes.

“How did you sleep?” Ted asked.

“Not well.” She turned back toward me. “And how about you, Jackie? I’m hoping you stayed in bed and didn’t make any more middle-of-the-night trips to the swimming pool.”

My father looked from her to me. “Middle-of-the-night trips?”

“I couldn’t sleep last night so I went down to the pool.”

“She was taking measurements,” Diane said, peering at me over the top of her steaming mug.

“I just started thinking about how Lexie had divided the pool into a grid—you’ve seen the numbers in crayon out there. She had pages and pages of notes showing the depth of each coordinate—”

“She was checking to see if your grandmother’s promises of it being bottomless might be true. Clever girl! And what did you and she discover?” he asked, suddenly looking very excited.

“Well, it’s definitely not bottomless—obviously. It’s between 6.8 and 7.4 meters deep everywhere I measured.”

He looked disappointed.

“But Lexie’s notes tell a different story—”

“Oh?” my father said, excited all over again.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Diane interrupted. “Lexie once tried to convince us there were bees living in her walls and listening to her. How about the time we found her mapping all the sewer grates because she believed the lizard people were using the drainage tunnels?”

“But I just think—”

“It’s been a while since you talked with Lex or had to deal with her,” Diane said to me, eyes suddenly piercing. “You need to keep in mind—”

“I know what I need to keep in mind,” I shot back at her. “I realize the fact that I shut Lexie out this past year doesn’t give me any right to suggest what might have been going on with her, but—”

“I’m sorry.” Aunt Diane looked at me. “It was a shitty thing to say, Jax. I’m tired, hungover, and just wrecked by all this, but that’s not an excuse. Let’s back up.” She took a deep breath. “All I was trying to say is that your sister was obviously not well in the last weeks of her life. Putting stock in anything she said, did, or wrote is, frankly, a fool’s errand.”

We were all quiet, none of us making eye contact.

“There are home fries and bacon,” my father said to Diane at last. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “What kind of eggs do you like?”

“Just coffee’s fine for me now,” she said. “Sit down and finish eating, Ted, before your food gets cold.” My father did as he was told. Diane’s phone rang, and she picked up and had a short, terse conversation that involved the word “ineptitude” numerous times.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to go into the office for a while,” Diane announced once she’d hung up. “There’s a meltdown with a closing that’s supposed to happen. I need to iron things out. I was hoping we could do the trip out to the lake with the ashes—”

“Tomorrow’s fine with me,” I said.

“Fine by me, too,” my father said. “I have a ticket back home on Sunday. If I’m gone any longer, Duncan gets cranky and starts shitting all over the house. Vanessa won’t put up with it and will leave him out on the curb.”

Duncan was my father’s ancient, one-eyed orange cat. To be honest, I was a little surprised he was still alive.

“Vanessa?” Diane repeated.

“Dad’s girlfriend,” I said.

“Female companion,” he corrected.

“What about you, Jackie? How long before you have to go back to Tacoma?”

“My flight back is on Sunday, too.”

Diane set down her coffee cup. “This may not be the time to discuss it, but you do realize the house and everything in it is yours now, right? Did Lexie discuss her will with you?”

I shook my head, feeling like it was someone else’s body I was moving. “I didn’t even know she had a will.”

“She did. And she left everything to you. The house, whatever’s left of Mother’s savings, even the car. You certainly don’t have to make any decisions right away.”

I remembered how badly I’d wanted these things when they’d read Gram’s will. How deeply wounded and furious I’d been when I didn’t get a single piece of any of them. And now… all I wanted was to have my sister back.

“I work with an excellent property manager who can maintain everything while you decide. We could arrange to rent it if you’d like the extra income. We can put all of your sister’s things into storage until you’re ready to go through them.”

“Do you want the house?” I asked. “Gram was your mother. You grew up here. Maybe it should go to you?”

“I most certainly do not want the house. And my mother knew it. This house and I, and that damn pool—we’re done with each other, and have been for many years now.” She paused, looked away. “There’s also the trust.”

Our grandmother had set up the fund once it became clear that Lexie might never be able to support herself. I didn’t know the details but was always relieved to know that it wouldn’t be on me and my crappy human services salary to help my sister financially.

“At any rate,” Diane went on, “the trust was set up to be passed on to Lexie’s children, should she have them. If not, it was to go to you.”

“Oh,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Michael Knox, the attorney who oversaw it all, will be in touch soon.”

“The trust payouts are quarterly; it’s a decent chunk of change,” my father added. There it was again—the pang of guilt and regret that he knew facts about her life I was clueless about.

“I’m going to run back to my place, get cleaned up, and get to the office,” Diane said. “I’ll grab us some takeout and wine for dinner and stop by later.”

“Perfect,” I told her.

“Sounds good,” my father said.

“In the meantime,” Diane said, throwing us warning glances, “maybe you two should get out of the house for a while today. And stay the hell away from that pool.”

---

The stairs leading up to the attic were narrow and dark, and when I reached the top, I smelled dust, mothballs, and things long abandoned.

The floral wallpaper, yellowed with age, was peeling in places. The wide pine plank floors were once painted white but were now worn down to bare, splintery wood.

Immediately to the left of the attic door a rack held old coats. Beneath it, a heavy cedar chest. Opening it, I found it stuffed full of linens—tablecloths, curtains, a wool blanket, and a worn yellow-and-white baby quilt. I closed the trunk and turned to see the brass bed shoved against the wall, still covered with a white sheet. I held my breath as I whipped the sheet off, half expecting… what? A fossilized old woman? A jar of chattering teeth?

Of course, there was nothing but a stained old mattress.

Something moved behind me. I turned slowly. The coats were moving, swaying on their hangers. Someone was there behind them.

“Hello?”

Pig jumped out, and I screamed, stumbled backward.

“Damn it, Pig!”

He brushed up against my leg, purring, evidently quite pleased with himself.

Sunlight filtered in through a big half-circle window. I made my way to it, kicking aside stacks of paper and photos. Beneath the window was an old folding table Lexie had been using. Tubes of paint, uncleaned brushes, palettes caked with layers of crusty mixed colors. Abandoned teacups and small plates of crumbs. More joints stubbed out in saucers. And then, three objects I recognized immediately: an old cut-glass doorknob, a tarnished silver fork, and a porcelain faucet handle with the word COLD on it in black. The treasures from the old hotel that Lexie and I found in the woods when we were kids!

The day we found the doorknob, buried in leaf litter, we thought it was a giant diamond. Then Lexie had picked it up. “It’s a doorknob!”

“It must be from the old hotel,” I said. We looked at it, took turns holding it, wiping the dirt off. “What do you think it was like? The hotel? It must have been pretty fancy, right?”

Lexie looked around the woods, squinting. “Maybe,” she’d said with a smile, “maybe it’s still here.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe somewhere there’s a magic door leading to the hotel,” she said.

“What, like in another world?”

She nodded. “Like a fairy world, and now we’ve got the knob, so we’re the only ones who can open it,” Lexie said. “It’s in these woods somewhere, hidden. That’s where the peacock comes from!”

I laughed. “Right. A fairy-world peacock? Makes perfect sense, Lex.”

Now I picked up the doorknob from Lexie’s art table, turning it in my hand, watching the way the cut glass caught the light coming in through the window. I held my breath. The room was utterly still.

No magic door opened.

Pig mewed, looking up at me as if to say, What did you expect?

There was a pencil sketch of the doorknob on the table. I set down the knob and stepped toward the wall, where sketches and watercolors were tacked up: the silver fork, the faucet handle, flowers, a view of the garden, a sketch Lexie had done of her own left hand.

I reached up and lightly touched the fingers, tried to imagine it was actually her hand I was touching, not charcoal lines that my fingers left smudges in.

I pulled my fingers away, realizing I was ruining her drawing.

Maybe I shouldn’t have come up here at all.

It felt invasive, like I’d found a private corner of Lexie’s that I wasn’t meant to look at. If she’d wanted me to know about her painting, she would have told me.

I would have told you if you’d picked up the phone.

To the right, an easel was set up with a half-finished painting of a peacock, his body a vivid, almost iridescent blue, his tail feathers spread, the green spots on them terrifying eyes, his beak open in a scream. It was unsettling.

I reached for a beat-up-looking sketchbook and flipped through it. Though my father always said she had the soul of an artist, I never thought of her as one. When had she started drawing and painting? Had she mentioned it to me? Had I forgotten? Or worse, wasn’t really listening? How many things were there that had slipped through the cracks because she talked a mile a minute sometimes, while I drifted off, saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh”?

What else had I missed?

The trouble with you, Jax, is you don’t know how to live in the moment. You don’t appreciate the here and now.

My sister was right. She lived inside each moment, sucking all she could from it, while I was only half-present, preoccupied with how annoyed I was to be listening to her share some crazy theory when I had other things, important things, I needed to be doing. And it was too late to promise to do better.

Her sketchbook was nearly full of pencil and charcoal sketches, some dated, most not. Most seemed to be from earlier in the summer. A drawing of the kitchen sink with a china teacup in it, a used Lipton tea bag wadded up inside. Random scenes from around the house: the dining room chairs, the circle window in the attic, the old claw-foot tub, a dress hanging on the back of a door. Then the flower pictures began, some labeled with dates and the names of the flowers: forget-me-nots, bearded iris, sweet william.

I turned the page again and came to a drawing of a woman I didn’t recognize. She was in the pool, Sparrow Crest in the background. Her dark hair was cut in a bob, her large dark eyes had a mischievous light. She had a small scar under her left eye. It felt like she’d been teasing my sister, an inside joke that the two of them got, that seconds after the drawing was done, they’d both broken down in fits of giggles. In the lower right corner, my sister had penciled the date: June 10.

Who was this woman? I was sure she hadn’t come to the memorial service—I would have remembered such a striking face. I flipped ahead. Nasturtiums. Lilacs. Phlox. Roses. Page after page of roses. And another sketch of the dark-haired woman, this time reclining by the pool, naked. It was nighttime—the patio cast in dark shadows, the pool pure darkness behind her. Her skin seemed to glow, to radiate. Lexie had scribbled in the corner: A nap after night swimming. I stared at this drawing, at the woman’s closed eyes, the dark areolas around her nipples, the soft triangle of pubic hair. It felt voyeuristic. There was a certain intimacy in the drawing, and a sense of longing. Were Lexie and this woman lovers? Had Lexie shown her the drawing? Or had she kept it to herself?

I turned the page again. Here were close-up sketches of the front door and some of the windows on the house. The gate to the pool. The entire house as viewed from the bottom of the driveway. Lord’s Hill and Devil’s Hill looming behind it. The thick woods where we’d found our treasures from the old hotel and where Lex had insisted she’d seen the peacock.

When we showed Gram what we’d found, she warned us to stay out of the woods.

I turned the page to an odd drawing: There was Sparrow Crest, but underneath it (or perhaps over it?) was a lighter pencil sketch of a much larger building, three stories tall with a wraparound porch. The Brandenburg Springs Hotel. The two buildings seemed intertwined, tangled together—one more solid, the other, a ghost.

At the bottom of the page, she’d written: The key to understanding the present is to look at the past. Then, some words she’d scribbled out beyond recognition, followed by a name she’d circled: Eliza Harding.

The rest of the book was drawings of the pool, my sister’s obsession laid out on paper.

It reminded me of Declan’s drawing of the dark swirling water, the monster fish. The swimmer being pulled under. Not just any swimmer, but me.

I closed my eyes, tasted the mineral tang of black water, felt it fill my mouth as I sank.

“Shit!” I said, coming up for air, back to reality. Declan!

I had to deal with his mother, check in with Karen. I’d call as soon as I went back downstairs.

I hurriedly flipped through the rest of Lexie’s drawings. She’d captured the pool so well that I could feel the cold water, smell the sharp mineral scent of it. In some of the drawings, I thought I could make out a face in the water, the flash of a pale arm or leg. The dark-haired woman again? Or someone else? In one, I was sure I saw my own face looking up.

I shut the sketchbook, shoved it to the back of the table, rummaged through the stacks of papers on the floor, photocopies and journal entries.

May 17

Gram didn’t leave Sparrow Crest, because she COULDN’T.

She knew it would kill her.

She knew and she went anyway.

She’d never been anywhere. And she wanted to see the desert.

An old leather album was buried under the papers.

I picked the album up and opened it. There were old, yellowed photographs of my great-grandparents in Sunday finery. He looked like a man on the verge of laughing; she looked fragile, and it was impossible to imagine that she would one day become the senile old woman in the attic who terrified my mother and Aunt Diane.

I looked at them on their wedding day. Honeymooning in Europe. I turned several pages and came to an old advertisement pasted into the album:

We invite you to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel and Resort—Vermont’s newest elite destination for the most discerning clientele tucked away in the idyllic Green Mountains. Come take the waters and experience the legendary restorative healing powers of our natural springs! Vermont’s own Fountain of Youth and Vitality! Our luxury hotel features 35 private rooms, each piped with water from the famous Brandenburg Springs. Dining room with world-class chef, sunroom, tennis courts, immaculate gardens. Open May through November. Do not delay! Book your room today!

The ad showed a drawing of a large white three-story hotel with a wraparound porch—an exact replica of the building in Lexie’s drawing. Behind it, a landscape I instantly recognized: Lord’s Hill and Devil’s Hill.

I’d never seen a picture of the old hotel before. It was all just stories growing up—not even entire stories, only fragments, rumors. But here, in this scrapbook, was solid evidence that once, long ago, a grand hotel had stood right where Sparrow Crest now was. It took my breath away.

“You still up here, Jax?” my father called up the stairs, startling me.

“Yeah,” I called down, my eyes still locked on the old advertisement, the picture of the hotel.

The key to understanding the present is to look at the past.

“Come on down. We’ve got company.”

I hurried down the stairs, still clutching the album. “Look what I found. It’s the old hotel.” I held out the album. “Did you ever see a picture of it?”

“No. Totally wild. Your mom told me there’d been a hotel here once, but I had no idea it was so big.”

He flipped the pages to a series of pictures of Sparrow Crest being built, but we saw nothing more about a hotel. He flipped back to the drawing of the hotel.

“Do you know what happened to it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. All I really know is that the hotel was one of the many subjects off-limits with your grandmother.”

I nodded. Rita. The hotel. Old stories about the pool. All things we were warned not to bring up with her, things she didn’t want to discuss.

“Hello?” a voice called from downstairs.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” my father said. “Ryan’s here. And he brought us a bunch of goodies.”

---

Ryan was in the kitchen, a white paper box of scones and muffins on the kitchen table. He’d also brought a bag of espresso beans and a glass bottle of milk.

I gave him a hug, happy to feel how real and solid he felt. I looked beyond him, out the window at the pool. In the bright sunshine, it didn’t look frightening at all. I thought of telling Ryan and my father the story—The silliest thing happened last night. I freaked myself out big-time and thought there was something in the pool. I dropped a flashlight and thought it landed in the water. But obviously it must not have because it was right there on the edge. Isn’t it funny how the mind can play tricks on you?

I thought telling the story, making light of it, would make everything better. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

“How are you guys doing today?” Ryan asked, looking at my father, a hint of worry in his eyes.

“Just fine, right, Jax? We’re right as rain.”

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains, sang some long-ago version of Lexie. I could see her so clearly, dancing around the house with an umbrella open, me chasing her, telling her it was bad luck, her singing, Rain in Spain, does rain make a stain, right as rain, hold on to the reins in the rain. Get it, Jax? Reins in the rain!

I nodded at my father, my head feeling heavy, my neck tight.

“Glad to hear it,” Ryan said, still looking at my father, as though waiting for him to say more—to bring up the incident in the pool, to say thank you, maybe. My father shifted back and forth on his feet like a nervous boy, not looking Ryan in the eye.

He grabbed a muffin and took a bite. “Best muffins on the planet, hands down,” he said, mouth full. “Now, if we could only figure out how to work Lexie’s rocket ship of an espresso machine, we’d be in business.”

“I’m on it. What’ll it be?” Ryan asked, heading to the big espresso machine on the counter.

“I’ll take a cappuccino,” my father said.

“Make that two,” I said. I set the album down on the table. “Ryan, what do you know about the old hotel that used to be here?”

“Not much,” he said, dumping beans into the grinder. “It burned to the ground. The owner was ruined. He took what your great-grandfather offered for the land and ashes and got the hell out. Went back to New York, I think. Or wherever he was from.”

“How is it that I never heard this story?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Lexie knew about it. She was really interested in the hotel and what happened to it. She was asking my grandma about it not long ago, actually. My grandmother had a bunch of old photos, and Lexie was so excited to see them.”

“Do you think she’d mind showing me?”

He smiled. “Are you kidding? She’d be thrilled! She loves talking about all that old stuff. We can swing by today, if you’d like. She’s always up for a visit. Today’s Wednesday—no bingo or music, so we won’t be interrupting anything.”

I remembered my brief conversation with Shirley after Lexie’s service—the clear signs of dementia—and doubted she’d be a reliable source of information, but it couldn’t hurt to hear what she had to say.

“Sure,” I said, checking my watch. It was nearly one. “Let’s finish our coffee. Then I have to make a couple of calls.”

We drank coffee, stuffed ourselves on muffins, listened to my father tells stories about surviving Hurricane Irma in a high school gymnasium with his girlfriend and cat. He and Ryan got into a discussion about how global warming was affecting weather patterns, and the ramifications of living on a changing coastline. I excused myself to make my calls.

Once upstairs, I checked my phone—no new messages. I called Declan’s mom, again leaving both my cell number and the landline at Sparrow Crest. “Please call me back,” I said. “It’s important that we talk.” Then I called Barbara and filled her in.

“So you’re going through your sister’s papers, hoping they’ll help you make sense of what’s happened? You know what I’m going to say about that, right, Jackie?”

I blew out a breath. “I know. My sister was sick. Nothing’s really going to help me make sense of what’s happened. I know all that. I just want…” What? What did I want? “Looking through the papers, organizing them, trying to get a sense of what her life was like these last weeks and months, it’s like… like I can hear her voice. Like she’s with me again. It’s a way to feel close to her. It’s what I need to do right now. And it gives me something to do. Something to focus on.”

“I understand. Just try to watch your expectations. Don’t think you’re going to find answers.”

“I know,” I said. “Only a lot more questions. But right now, that’s enough.”

I didn’t tell her about what had happened last night at the pool.