Amber House: Neverwas (12 page)

deal. Tell me that Hathaway is actually
announcing
his candidacy at your gala party. You think I can’t keep a secret? Why is it

nobody thinks I can keep a secret?”

“
Perhaps
,” my mother said, “we worried you might start talk-

ing about it in front of your younger brother, who really shouldn’t

be asked to keep a secret this big.”

Sam put his head in his hands. “Not a
nother
secret I have

to keep.”

My father gave me a look.

I rushed past that. “
Perhaps
,” I said, “if you had told me privately when you
should have
, I would have known not to bring it up. I’m not a little kid anymore. I shouldn’t have to hear these

things about my own family from an outsider.”

“We’re doing what we —” my mother started, but Dad raised

his hand a little, and she stopped mid-sentence. Dad hardly ever

weighed in on the whole parent–child relations thing, so I

guessed Mom was as surprised as I was. He took a moment to

order his thoughts.

44 O

“Your mom and I had good reasons for moving to Astoria

when I finished at Hopkins.” He looked at me. “You were already

on the way. We wanted you to grow up someplace where women

were expected to” — he searched for the words — “to partici-

pate fully, to define them
selves
. A place, by the way, that had just elected a woman president when we moved there. But I want

you to know, honey, that part of me is ashamed for having gone.”

He looked it. It pained me.

“I’m glad I grew up in Astoria.”

“We shouldn’t have run away,” he said. “We should have

stayed here and fought to make things better. That’s what good

people have to do. Even when it’s hard. Even when you have

kids. Maybe especially then. So you can teach them how to do

the right thing.

“Maybe things would be better now if we hadn’t left. Maybe

the things we’re trying to accomplish at the last minute, at the

eleventh hour, would be more possible.” He looked at my mother,

and she smiled a little sadly.

“Senator Hathaway is trying to do something really neces-

sary,” my mom said. “He’s trying to speed up change in the

South so he can unify the Americas. The South is key, because

we have a common language and customs with New England and

the west, but we are also a bridge to Louisiana and Mexico,

and through them, all of South America.”

“We came back to try to help him,” my dad said.

My social studies teacher had talked about something like

this —
a Unification movement for the Americas. So that we’d be a
world power as big as the Reich or the Empire.
I was a little boggled at the concept that my neighbor and parents were working together

to try to
make that real
.

“Do you remember when the Hathaways came to Gramma’s

funeral?” Dad asked. I did remember them, standing off to one

side because they’d arrived a little late — the three of them

o45

handsome and solemn in matching black. Another surreal detail

in that bizarre and disturbing day. “They didn’t stay long, but

Robert had come to talk to us. He asked us to return to the ACS.

We discussed it with Maggie, and she said we should move in

here with her. So we came.”

“Why would Senator Hathaway want your help?”

“He thought that we could be useful to the movement. It

wasn’t just because our family and Amber House are prominent

in this area — Robert also knew I had ties to the president’s

advisors in Astoria.” I think my mouth must have dropped open.

Dad smiled a little bit. “I helped the surgeon general establish

new guidelines for surgical procedures, and oversaw a few things

for their Disease Control Department.” He shrugged.

I had no idea my dad had ever done anything important. I

mean, I knew he saved lives — he was a doctor. But working

with the government? It was one of those moments when I was

forced to see my parents as wholly separate people from me.

Interesting
people. People who would
be
interesting even if they hadn’t had the good sense to give birth to me. And the thing

that was really impressive was not that Dad was important

but that he’d never said anything about it before. He didn’t feel

it was something to broadcast. It was just part of his job

description.

I was a little ashamed, then, that I’d been so miserable about

moving. “I wish you’d told me before,” I said.

“I guess we should have,” my mom said.

The evening got better after that. Christmas was definitely

more enjoyable when I wasn’t trying to punish my parents. We

decorated the smaller family tree in the parlor, the one Gramma

had always saved for us when we came for our winter visit. The

parlor tree was all about traditions too, but traditions that

belonged just to my little family. Not to Amber House. There

was a comfortable feeling in that.

46 O

Mom draped the tree with spiraling chains of glass beads as

Sam and I unpacked ornaments. It was a completely random col-

lection, new and heirloom mixed, but they were all old friends.

When Mom finished the chains, we hooked the ornaments into

every available space. The tree became a glittering froth.

I poked through the packing material in the bottom of a box

and found a last little glass walnut, so old its gold paint was wearing thin. As if the air had become water, I was sunk in another

wave of déjà vu.

I could almost see a different pair of hands picking up the

same ornament and holding it out, light refracting off its surface

as it spun on its ribbon. I heard voices, far away but growing

louder: She, laughing — “Mistletoe, Edward? It’s not supposed

to be mobile, you know,” and he — “If the lady won’t come to

the mistletoe, Fee, then the mistletoe must come to the lady.”

My vision was frayed at the edges, like something was trying to

possess it, trying to squeeze into my head. I was dizzy. And then,

near my ear, so close I was embarrassed, the unmistakable

sounds of a kiss.

I gasped as the ornament slipped from my fingers and fell. It

hit the wood floor and shattered, in a single, sharp note.

“Oh, Sarah,” my mother said sadly, “please be more care-

ful, hon.”

I nodded silently and went to fetch the whisk broom and dust-

pan from the kitchen closet.
What was that? What just happened to
me?
A bubble of panic was rising in my throat, and I struggled to swallow it down again.
Is that what happens to schizophrenics?

Made-up stuff in their heads just starts blotting out reality?
My great-grandmother had spent time in an asylum.
Maybe I’m losing my

mind
. I bent to sweep up the pieces.

In the largest chunk of glass, I spotted a yellowed slip of paper

curled against the inside. I pulled it loose. It was brittle with age, shaped into a permanent O, its back pocked with the walnut

o47

pattern of the dead ornament. Someone had slipped it inside the

uncapped top of the gold glass long ago. I managed to flatten it

enough to read the pretty, spidery script that ran across it, spell-

ing out four words.

Make all good amends.

“What is it, honey?” my mother asked.

I realized I was staring, holding my breath. I said lightly, “Just

a piece of paper,” and dropped it in the dustpan.

But I took it out again on the way to the kitchen trash.

We all headed for bed after Dad lifted Sam up to crown the tree

with the star. I waited behind a little so I could fish the curled

slip of paper from the drawer I had tucked it into. Upstairs, I

put it with my other scrap of paper stowed in the library of the

miniature Amber House. I didn’t know why, but it seemed to

me that the two phrases belonged together. They
pulled
at me somehow. As if there was something I was supposed to understand. I swung the dollhouse closed. I didn’t want to think

about it.

On my way back from the bathroom to bed, I detoured out to

the second-floor landing. I stood at the balcony railing, looking

and listening.

My family was all tucked into their rooms. I could hear

Sammy snoring softly already. Amber House was lit now only

by the tiny Christmas lights glowing warmly in the trees and

evergreen swags. Hand-carved Magi adored a baby nestled in

cedar branches on the front hall table. Pineapples crowned the

evergreens on each mantel, in colonial style. Candles stood

flame-ready everywhere. My gramma’s traditions living on

without her. Christmas, the way it had always been, the way I

remembered.

But it felt —
wrong
, somehow.

Amber House was dressed to the teeth, but, I thought to

myself a little queerly, it was all on the surface. The house

48 O

seemed hunkered down beneath the greenery and glitter.

Separate. Patient. Waiting.

N

She — I — sat in the corner with my knees drawn up under my nightgown. Papa came in with the new maid, Lizzy, who was carrying a little
Christmas tree. I could see she was frightened of me. They were all frightened of me. The girl set the tree on the trunk at the foot of the bed and
hurried out.

Papa bent down to pick up a few of my wadded papers. He pulled one
smooth. “Choose it all again,” he read. He smoothed out the next one.

“Choose it all again.” He opened a third. “All of them exactly the same?”

He sighed. He shook his head, his voice a mix of anger and grief. “You
must stop this, dearest.”

“I want to stop it. I’m trying to stop it, Papa, only I don’t know what
went wrong.”

“ ‘What went wrong’?” He was perplexed.

“With time,” I said. Obviously. “How can I stop it when I don’t know
what went wrong, what changed?”

“Nothing went wrong, child.” He wadded my papers back up and

threw them in the fire. “Everything’s just the way it’s supposed to be.

That’s the only way it can be.”

I shoved up onto my feet, shaking my head, my back still in the corner.

“No,” I said. “Can’t you feel it? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

Something went wrong and that little girl has something to do with it.”

“What little girl?”

“The little girl who is half dark and half light. I need to find out who
she is and when she came from.”

He looked so sad. I knew he thought I had lost my mind, and I could
not prove otherwise. How could I prove the truth of something only I
could feel? And even if I alone in all the world knew the truth, how could
I stop trying to make it right? But I was afraid.

o49

He stepped closer and stroked my hair. “You’ve got to try to take hold
of yourself, Fee. Or we’ll have to go on to the next step. Please try, honey.”

I looked for words to explain. “Everything feels so wrong, Papa, it’s like
ants inside my skin. I need to make her fix what happened. To choose it
all again.”

“The little girl?”

“No, no,” I said impatiently. “The one who is always listening.”

“No one is listening! Nothing went wrong!” His face crumpled into
unhappy lines. “I’m sorry, child,” he said, and left.

I could feel her then. Could feel her listening to my thoughts. Maybe
I was not alone in all the world. Maybe she would understand.

I went to the tree and plucked a golden walnut from its branches. I
pulled off the ornament’s little tin cap, held in place by two metal prongs.

I rolled a slip of paper into a tiny tube and tucked it in the opening.

Replaced the cap. Rehung the ornament.

Then I sat before my mirror and looked for her in my eyes.

“Do you see?” I — she — asked.

CH A P T ER SI X

K

I woke remembering the dream, remembering the strange,

familiar feel of it. Almost like I’d been there. I had dreamed

myself Fiona Campbell Warren, my grandmother’s mother.

Slightly mad Fiona. I’d dreamed I left that paper in the walnut

ornament for someone — me? — to find. What would a dream

interpreter say about that? Maybe that the chaotic part of my

subconsciousness was trying to tell me to — what were the

words?
Choose it all again.

I wrote the new phrase on another slip of paper and put it

with the scrap from the walnut — “Make all good amends” —

and my scribbled phrase from the other night: “Seek the point

where past and future meet”. All three safely hidden in the doll-

house library. The phrases floated around inside my mind as

though they should come together in a rhythm, like a poem or a

song.
Something I heard before?
Fiona had been a poet — maybe I had read or heard something of hers and kept a memory of it in

some hidden corner of my mind. I wondered what missing words

would transform my phrases into the poem I imagined was there.

Perhaps that was what my dream was trying to say — that I

was like my poem: assembled with a few things out left out. The

missing words were missing pieces, perhaps the pieces Jackson