Firebird (7 page)

“But the nuns have been so worried about you.”

“What a load of crap.”

“They care about you, darling.”

“I’m
not
your darling,” the girl lashed out.  “And you’re not my mother!  You can’t make me go back!”

“
There’s
the Juliet I remember,” said Alexandra gently.  “Stubborn and too independent for your own good.”

She looked down at her niece and shook her head.  A small amethyst sparked on the side of her nose.  One ear was pierced with a half-dozen metal cuffs and studs.  A single earring fell from the other ear in a cascade of tiny moons and stars.  High on Juliet’s cheek, just beneath her left eye, a blue butterfly tattoo spread its wings.  Not a schoolgirl’s collar in sight.

Huge tears rolled down the girl’s face, and Alexandra dropped to the floor and folded her niece in her arms.  “Hush, Jules.  No one’s going anywhere tonight.”

The teenager’s body was stiff and unforgiving.  “I called you and left you a message...”

Alexandra pictured the yellow stack of unread messages on her cluttered desk.

“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly.  “I’ve been tied up with work, I didn’t check my messages - and I thought you’d want to be with your school friends -”  The excuses sounded empty in her ears, and she stopped.

“My
friends
are a bunch of shallow rich snobs who are into vampires and use ‘like’ in every sentence!  As if,
like
, I care!” mimicked the girl.  “And I’ve blown it with Juilliard by now.”

“You can be back in your dance classes this weekend, if only you’ll let me help -”

“Dad left for South America!  Left me
alone
.  So what if I ran away?  No one missed me...”  The words dissolved into sobs.

Alexandra murmured into Juliet’s hair.  “That’s not true.”

“You abandoned me and my mom a long time ago, just like my dad did.  Why should I believe you?  You don’t care any more than he did.”

The too-thin shoulders were shaking uncontrollably.  Alexandra tightened  her grip, stung by the truth of the angry words and wincing as the smell of stale cigarettes and beer enveloped her. 

“Would I be here if I didn’t care?   I know I’ve made a mess of things, Jules, but I’m here now.  Let me help you.”

“I don’t want your help!”

“The pain won’t always be this bad,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s shorn hair.

Juliet smacked her hand away, her eyes accusing, inconsolable.  “No!  Nothing will ever be okay again.”

Once more the child struck out, but Alexandra ducked and wrapped her arms tightly around the resistant body.  Juliet felt as thin and brittle as winter branches, and Alexandra searched for the words.  But she could find no words for a mother’s suicide...

“Jules,” she began, “I need for you to trust me.”

“Why should I?”

“Maybe because I know how much you’re hurting -”

“You don’t know!”

“Yes, I do.  I was even younger, only seven, when my mother died...”

“Your mother didn’t jump off a bridge!”

“No, she jumped into a liquor bottle,” said Alexandra quietly.  “But it killed her, just the same.  One day she was playing the piano and singing.  The next day the singing and the music stopped.”

Silence.  Then, “Mom never talked about Grandma.  Maybe because of the drinking.”

“Your grandmother was so much more than the drinking, Jules.  I’ll tell you about her, if you’d like.”

“So was my mom!  More than the drinking…”

Oh, God.  Alexandra pressed her lips together and held out her hand.  “Please, come downstairs with me now.   There’s soup and hot water for a shower.  In the morning, we’ll talk, I promise.”

“
She
promised, too.  She
promised
, Aunt Zan!  Only...”  Again the sobs wracked the girl, and she sank to the floor.  “She
left
me!”

I’ll be there, Zan.  I promise
.  But she never was. 

“Oh, Jules.  We can’t go on being angry with her because she died.”  

Juliet raised her tear-stained face.  “Why did she leave me?  Oh, God, what’s wrong with me?  What did I do to make her leave me?”

Alexandra stared at the haunted face.  Terrible questions to hear a child ask.  
Young face, old soul
, she thought sadly.  What have we all done to you?  She set her hands firmly on the girl’s shoulders.  “You listen to me.  You did nothing wrong, Jules.  Your mother loved you more than anyone.  So now, we go on.”

Juliet leaped to her feet, graceful as a ballerina, all arms and legs like a colt.  The all-black man’s leather jacket and dancer’s leg-warmers were torn and stained.  Dark purple nails and Birkenstock sandals completed the look.  Alexandra sat back on her heels and stared at the stranger who was her sister’s child.

“You don’t understand,” the girl rushed on, “no one does.  You, Anthony, you all believe my mother took her life.  But she didn’t!”

“Your mom had a sickness, Jules.”

“Just listen to me!”  Narrow fingers closed convulsively around Alexandra’s wrists.

“My mother didn’t kill herself.  I can prove it.”

CHAPTER 7

“And for secrecy, no lady closer...”

Shakespeare, Henry IV

My mother didn’t kill herself
.

The words echoed in the cold air of the attic.

“Juliet,” Alexandra whispered.  “You’re wrong.  I’m so sorry, but your mother was drinking, she went alone to the river, she...  Oh, God.”

“No, Aunt Zan!”  Juliet shook her head from side to side, running her long fingers through the unwashed tangle of hair in a heart-wrenching gesture of denial.  “She was better.  Really!  I was going to spend my sixteenth birthday with her.  Next week, you know, in Washington.”

“I know that’s what she wanted, Juliet.  But she -”

“Stop it!” the teenager shouted.  “She wouldn’t have broken her promise to me.  Not this time...”

“It was the alcohol, sweetheart.  It was always the alcohol.  She couldn’t control it.”

“She was learning.”  The green eyes, so like her mother’s, were pleading and filled with need.  “She hadn’t had a drink in months, she told me so.  She
wasn’t drunk
that night!”

Alexandra gripped the child’s forearms.   Looking directly into Juliet’s eyes, she said, “There was alcohol in her blood when – when they found her.”  And anti-depressants, other drugs.  She swallowed, feeling the sickness well up in her throat.

“No!”

“Listen to me, Jules.  Maybe your mother didn’t know how to be there for you, but she loved you,
I know she loved you
!  But we both know that suicide
isn’t about
love.  It’s about fathomless loss and hurt, it’s about hopelessness, unbearable pain.”  She pulled her niece closer.  “And sometimes it’s caused by a chemical imbalance, Juliet.  Drugs.  Or alcohol.”

“Stop it!  Stop it!” shouted Juliet, fisting her hands against her temples.  “It’s about
running away from life
!  My mother wasn’t a coward, Aunt Zan.”  Juliet looked at her aunt with contempt.  “Mother was wrong about you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She always said that you had a fierce spirit.  That you had more courage than any woman she knew!”

Shock shimmered through her.  “She said that about me?”

“But now you’re turning away from her again.  You were
never
there for Mom when she needed you!”

Alexandra reeled as if she’d been punched.  “Your mother went her own way years ago.  She hasn’t
needed
my help in a very long time.”

“She called you, Aunt Zan, just before she died.  You had your shot and you blew it!”

Eve’s voice, crying out for help.  But she was drunk that night, I’m sure of it
.  “I didn’t believe she was really in trouble, Jules.”

“Good luck getting
that
off your conscience!”

“If I had known that she really needed help...”

“Well I’m telling you now,” said Juliet.  “
For
her.  I’m asking you to believe in my mother.”

“Believe what?”

Juliet swiped at the tears on her cheeks and took a sharp breath.  “Mom sent me a letter.”

“The letter Sister Joseph Maureen gave you?”

“She told you?”

“I’m not your enemy, Jules.  Tell me about the letter.” 

“She sent it to St. T’s, she must have mailed it that night from Georgetown, just before she...”

“Where is it?”

The girl bent to the comforter and searched beneath its folds, then held out several pages of pale pink notepaper.

Alexandra glanced at the postmark on the envelope.  It had been mailed in Georgetown on the night of Eve’s death.

“May I?”

The green eyes glittered with pain.  “I
want
you to read it.  I want someone to believe me.”

Alexandra dropped to the floor and unfolded the letter, her chest clutching tightly as she saw the familiar looping script.

Darling Jewel, an eternity since we’ve been together and just the thought of seeing you on your birthday - it absolutely cannot be sixteen years since I gave life to you, my darling, have I really been lying about my age this long??? -  knowing I’ll be with you has made these last long nights bearable.  I close my eyes and imagine us walking the fields at Foxwood, the joy on your face when you meet the foals and yearlings, you just can’t imagine how beautiful they are, with the morning sun shining on their coats, and of course there’s a special gift waiting for you in Lady Falcon’s stall, it is your sweet sixteen after all! I know we haven’t been together on your birthday in a long time, darling, but this year we’ll be together, I promise...

Alexandra raised her eyes doubtfully and looked at her niece.  Evangeline the Dasher of Hopes, she thought suddenly.  So damned poetic - but so many broken promises over the years.  And always, always excused or forgiven.

She looked down at the thin scented paper.  Now the words began to tip and scrawl, rushing across the page.           

But - just in case something happens before I see you again...
 
I need you to keep a secret for me, Jewel, just like we used to.

You remember, don’t you, that special hiding place I showed you when you were five?   I hid something there, for Aunt Alexandra, but don’t call her, my darling, you know how she is with phones, just go see her, and give her my message when you’re alone with her.  She’ll intellectualize all the reasons in the world to say no, of course, and give you all kinds of grief in her usual heartless-Zan way, but stay with her, the Snow Queen always comes around, head over heart not withstanding, and she’ll know what to do, better than I, I’m afraid - and then she’ll be there for us.

Always, always remember that I love you, Jewel, more than you can imagine, my dearest.   I never, ever meant to hurt you.  You are the one good true thing in my life.

It was signed, simply,
Your Mother
.

Alexandra dropped her head, ambushed by the sharp grief that rolled over her.  That’s how you thought of me, Eve?
  The Snow Queen
?  All ice and no feelings?  But… maybe her sister had known her better than she knew herself.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.  Eve had said it, more than once.

You’re all head and no heart, Zan.  Just once, go with your heart
!

“Aunt Zan?”

She blinked at Juliet, and locked the grieving away. 

“Mom said, ‘just in case something happens,’” said Juliet.  “She was
expecting
something to happen!  She was scared of something, Aunt Zan.  Or someone.”

Alexandra’s breath came out in a soft rush.

“No.  Your mom was alone.  The detectives found the note, in her raincoat pocket.  It was left by the bridge...”
Forgive me
. 

“No way,” said the girl scornfully.  Once more, Alexandra caught a glimpse of the young Juliet she remembered. 

“The newspapers lied, Aunt Zan.  Mom
didn’t write
that note.  She
never
called me Juliet!  It was always Jules - or Jewel, her special name for me.  And the note was
typed
!  Mom hated to type, always insisted she was computer-challenged, remember?  She couldn’t figure out how to use her BlackBerry!  She recorded her voice on her digital recorder, or wrote everything in long hand. 
Script
.”  The last word was thrown down as a gauntlet.

The green eyes staring back at Alexandra were filled with a fierce light.  “The ‘one good true thing,’ she called me.  Why would she leave me?”

The small voice, so wounded and raw, throbbed in Alexandra’s head.  Her niece’s thoughts mirrored her own.  There was no way Eve would have left Juliet.  Unless she had no choice…

Alexandra leaned toward Juliet.  “Your mother’s hiding place.  Where is it?”

“Downstairs.  In the nursery.”

“Here?”  Alexandra’s brows arched with surprise.  “Eve came all the way to Cliff House to hide something for
me
?”

“Go figure.”

Alexandra shook her head, still unconvinced.  “Why didn’t she just mail it to me?”

“She
was
right, you intellectualize everything!”  

“What’s so wrong with being reasonable?” asked Alexandra, stung.  “I still don’t understand why you came to Maine alone.”

“Mom had a secret.”

“She kept too damned many secrets.  That was her problem.”

“My mother needed help!”  Juliet’s glare was icy.  “You were too busy.”

 “I’m here now.  So what about this hiding place?”

“I found something.”  The words were low, defiant.

“Where?”

Juliet stared at her aunt.  “You really don’t know about the false wall in the doll house?”

“The doll house in the nursery?”

The long wind chime earring swung against Juliet’s cheek.  “A narrow space between two walls.  Mom showed me when I was little.”  There was a hint of pleasure in the words.