The Glory Hand (12 page)

With a sudden hum of the motor, Miss Grace edged her wheelchair forward until her forehead almost touched a photograph in a baroque gilt frame. 'Don't you recognize her?' Cassie studied the three girls in leotards sashed with chiffon scarves who were standing beneath a pagoda roof, their arms encircling each other's waists. The girl in the middle - Cassie felt as if she were looking at a photograph of herself. 'Quite a remarkable resemblance, isn't it?' Miss Grace chuckled. Cassie nodded: the high cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes, the long neck - a dancer's neck - were so like her own. 'You're mother danced the solo on Visiting Day that year . . .'

'A solo?'

'I don't think I can recall a more enchanting performance before or since,' Miss Grace said. 'I was the dance instructor then, of course.'

'You were?' It seemed impossible that this old lady could ever have danced. To be trapped in a wheelchair . . . For a dancer, Cassie thought, it must have been like a death sentence.

'I hear you're quite a ballerina too, Cassie.'

'I used to be. Since she died, I . . .'

'Think how proud your mother would be if you danced the solo this year, just like she did back then. Right in her "ballet slippers," so to speak.'

'No, I . . .'

'It won't be easy, of course. Several of the other girls are quite talented, I'm told. They ought to give you a good run for your money, competing for the part. But you, my dear Cassandra . . . it's in your
blood'.

Cassie studied her mother's picture again. Something troubled her about it. Her mother had always said that the expression on a dancer's face was as important as the movement of her body. Yet something about her expression in the picture - it seemed so out of harmony with her graceful pose . . . Was it a look of longing?

Or fear?

Before Cassie could be sure, the Tiffany lamp switched off as Miss Grace's wheelchair glided out of the alcove, denying Cassie a final look at her mother's face.

The grandfather clock chimed five times. '
Tempos fugit,'
Miss Grace sighed, her chair whirring over until it nudged the back of Cassie's legs. 'Your counselor will be cross with me if she finds out I kept you here during bunk-up.'

Cassie followed her to the door: 'I'd like to come back sometime. I'd like to talk to you about. . .'

'Your mother?' Cassie nodded, i knew her well, child. In some ways, I suppose you might say I knew her better than anybody. Come any time. Any time at all.' When they reached the door the old woman cleared her throat. 'Haven't we forgotten something?' she murmured in a coy singsong.

The way she tilted her head and closed her eyes told Cassie that the old lady was expecting a kiss. She leaned towards her, close enough to smell Miss Grace's hair. It had a strangely seductive scent, the odor of musk. How bizarre, she thought - how
wrong -
for so old a woman. Cassie forced her lips towards Mis Grace's cheek.

But the old woman's head twisted. Her mouth joined Cassie's and . :. was it only Cassie's imagination?

No, she could feel it. Taste it.

Miss Grace's tongue flicked into her mouth.

Cassie straightened up and Miss Grace smacked her lips as if she had just had desert. 'A pleasure to meet you at long last, Cassandra. And when you come next time, I'll tell you all about your mother.' Cassie was backing towards the door. 'Rest assured. You'll have a wonderful time at Casmaran. You'll love it every bit as much as she did. One summer with us and you'll be a changed girl!'

Chapter 9

Sunset stained the western sky scarlet, like a telltale smudge of Miss Grace's lipstick. In her breakneck dash through the woods from the cottage, Cassie glimpsed a swarm of bats spinning up from the eaves of the lodge, spiraling into the dark, a corkscrew of doubt twisting into her mind. The taste of Miss Grace's kiss soured in her mouth. How could her mother have loved the old woman with her scent of musk, and her horrible scarlet lipstick, and . . . How old had Miss Grace said she was? At her age it would be surprising if she
weren't
a bit unhinged, Cassie comforted herself, relieved to see the lipstick-red smudge in the sky fade to gray. But the gathering dusk brought an indistinct recollection. The dark scent as she ran from the cottage through the pines . . . The dark scent ... It was the smell of her mother's coffin.

Her father had only let her look inside after she had begged him - her mother wouldn't look the same as she had in life, he'd warned - but Cassie had insisted on one last glimpse, to seal the memory. When they opened the half-lid lined with quilted white satin, she had turned away quickly. Not because the embalmers hadn't done a good job hiding the damage. They had done their job too well. Lying on the satin pillow, with her hands folded over her chest, Cassie's mother had been reduced to a marble statue, hard and cold.

Her pace slowed. The pine scent permeated her clothes, her hair, and the smell was an unsettling reminder: nothing could free her mother from the pine box.

As she neared the lake, Cassie suspected that she had not left the Chill behind in Nantucket. It had caught up with her, ambushed her here. At least you knew the dangers when you plunged into the sea, she thought; the sharp horns of the whitecaps, the roar of the breakers gave warning. But the lake was deceptively innocent, concealing its own sea-chill.

And yet, what was she afraid of, really? A crippled old lady? She knew what her father would have said about Mis^ Grace: '
When you're poor, they call you crazy, but when you're rich, they just call you eccentric.'
Eccentric . . . that must be the word for Miss Grace, eccentric, and undoubtedly senile. But why should the kiss of a crippled old lady instill her with the Chill?

Cassie looked up to see that she had wandered away from the cabins and was standing at the lake's edge before an open-air pavilion painted Chinese red, with the upturned roof of a pagoda. One end jutted over the water, while the other thrust into the forest, where the pine trees provided a green backdrop. A woman in a black leotard, her legs bare, spun across the stage in circles, as if dancing to the rhythm of the waves that lapped at the pilings below. Cassie stopped to watch her, realizing that this was where the photograph of her mother had been taken. The openness, the lofty trees, the breathtaking vista of the lake . . . Cassie could understand why her mother had danced here.

When the woman saw her, she tossed her long white-blonde hair behind her shoulders and walked to the edge of the stage. Back-lit by the sunset, her lithe legs and slender arms seemed silvered with a faint layer of down. Her delicate features, her pearl-gray eyes that reflected the water, made her seem vulnerable, despite her confident smile. 'Cassie Broyles?' she called to her.

'How did you know my name?'

it's my job. I'm Sarah, your counselor.' She pulled on a baggy sweatshirt. 'Everyone else is already bunked up ... I thought you'd taken one look at Casmaran and turned around and hitched a ride home . . .'

'No, I . . .' Cassie decided not to tell her about visiting Miss Grace. 'That was nice ... the dancing,' she said.

'You think so? I dance at Bennington nine months a year. Up here I just fool around. But I figure I might as well take advantage of my last free summer. After I graduate, I'll have to head for New York and see if I can make it.'

'The ABT . . .?'

'Or the New York City ... or the Joffrey . . . whoever will have me.' She held out a hand and boosted Cassie onto the stage. 'Anyway, this is still my favorite place to dance.' She did a quick series of jetes across the polished wood floor. 'Maybe the reason I like it here so much is that I don't have to compete with anybody. I don't even have an audience if I don't want. There's only one problem,' she laughed. 'If you mess up on a sequence . . .' She stopped herself short on the brink of the lake.'. . . you end up doing
water
ballet.' Cassie managed a laugh, but kept her distance from the edge.

Though her feet were planted on the floor, Sarah's body was swaying, as if she were fighting the urge to dance. Her mother used to do that, Cassie remembered, her body responding to the rhythm of the music even when her legs could no longer perform with agility. Cassie ran a cautious foot across the floor and Sarah noticed: 'It's amazingly smooth, isn't it? At least the ice was good for something.'

'Ice?'

'This is where they stored it. The ice wore the floor down over the years.'

'I don't understand.'

'Before the Sisterhood started a camp here, Lake Casmaran was an ice settlement in the winter. That's why some of the buildings, you know, like the lodge and the other stone structures - this one, too - were built so high off the ground.'

'Why?'

'To be above the snow line. Some winters the drifts get five ... six feet deep.'

'But the ice . . . what did they want it for?'

'In the late 1800s, before refrigeration, there used to be a lot of money in it. Men would actually come all the way up here to live in the dead of winter. Can you imagine? When it was twenty, thirty below, they'd be out there on the ice, driving horses dragging these huge plowlike contraptions

. . The runners had jagged blades, like saws, to cut into the ice. They had to criss-cross the lines, slice deeper and deeper until the huge chunks finally broke apart. Then some poor guy had to go out there with a big hook, pry the blocks out, drag them across the ice and dump them into an insulated storage shack . . She pointed across the lake. 'You can still find a couple of the old shacks over there. When spring came, they'd stack the blocks of ice here, for shipping out.'

'To where?'

Sarah was squinting out at the water, as if trying to look; back in time. 'There's no telling how many poor souls lost arms or legs when the saws slipped, or how many drowned out there - or froze to death. Just so people in Boston and New York could have ice cream in the summer.'

ice cream?'

'Until somebody, I forget who, invented the refrigerator.'

'I think it was Eddison,' Cassie said politely.

it turned this place into a ghost town. The Sisterhood must have picked it up for nothing. To save money, they even used some of the original buildings '

'Like the lodge?'

Sarah nodded. 'All they had to do was put up a few cabins, with the appropriate gingerbread trim, and they had a camp for
proper
young ladies.' The way she emphasized the word made Cassie laugh. 'The old biddies who started this place were convinced that city life was corrupting the flower of America's womanhood, they wanted a camp to foster the right values . . . especially virginity.'

'I don't suppose they ever thought of making it coed.'

'Are you kidding? I don't think a man's set foot here since the last ice cutter left. No boys' camp across the lake, like every other camp in Maine. Not even a gardener. Miss Grace would never stand for it. Someone told me once that she's been here since day one. Anyway, she's ancient. . .'

Cassie laughed: 'Prehistoric!' Somehow, seeing how offhandedly Sarah dismissed the old woman reassured her.

Sarah put a hand on Cassie's shoulder as they climbed down the steps of the pavilion, it's not as bad as it sounds, though. The boy thing, I mean. When I was a camper here, it was a relief to get away from that kind of pressure for a few weeks.'

i know what you mean.'

'Do you dance?'

'I used to. Before . . .'

i know about your mother. I'm sorry.' Sarah quickened her pace, as if she understood the subject was a painful one, to be passed over briskly. 'I teach some modern dance, some ballet. Mostly it's just ... I guess you'd call it
"free expression
." That may sound hokey, but it isn't, really. This place seems to inspire it.' She glanced back at her. 'Maybe you'll join us . . . try out for the Visiting Day Show.' She laughed. 'It isn't exactly the Joffrey. But it's a pretty big deal in this part of Maine.'

'Maybe . . .' Cassie looked over her shoulder. The dance pavilion had already vanished among the trees, like another of her mother's memories. 'Maybe I will.'

Only one more cabin, its roof of blue slate, its tidy windowbox overflowing with geraniums, was left before the lake. 'Is this ours?' Cassie asked.

Sarah kept on walking. 'You're in luck. You're in Lakeside.'

The building that Cassie had guessed was a boathouse jutted over the water. Its planking had weathered gray and it had none of the gingerbread trim, none of the bright red flowers, that gave the other cabins their charm. As she walked up the ramp over the shore bristling with cattails, she could smell the rotting pilings in the lake-bed. Her stomach rocked with a sudden queasiness, an early warning of the Chill.

Sarah misread her discomfort. 'I know, Lakeside's not as cutsey from the outside as the other cabins. We don't have the fresh paint. But we've got
atmosphere:
The floorboards creaked underfoot as they stepped onto the porch, and Cassie grabbed the railing to keep her balance. 'In case you didn't guess, this used to be a boathouse.' Sarah held the screen door open for her. 'Another one of Miss Grace's bright ideas to save a few bucks, no doubt.'

The pandemonium inside the barnlike room cut her off. Half a dozen girls were cheering on a camper with a single blonde braid who was swinging from a rusty chain that hung from the rafters. As the chain reached the peak of its arc, she took a flying leap onto one of the top bunks.