Impossible (12 page)

* * *

I put asterisks there on purpose. It is not because I don't remember the rest. I do.

But I can't write it down. I can't describe how it was that I ended up with that other boy, the one the beautiful man introduced me to. The boy was someone I had never met before and whose face I can't even recall. All I knew was that if I went with this other boy, it would please the beautiful man. I wanted to please him. I don't know why.

I knew what I was doing. At least, I think I did. But now I write it all down, and read it over, and think that this was how I got pregnant—because some gorgeous man I'd just met seemed to want me to—to—

It's really bizarre, isn't it?

How did I let that happen, exactly? Was I drunk after all? Maybe I was.

* * *

It is the middle of the night. I can't sleep, even though I ought to feel safe here at Leo and Soledad's. But I don't. I keep thinking about that ballad that Deirdre taught me and how she said that we Scarborough girls needed to always keep trying to do the tasks in the song, and that it was her job to teach me the song.

I also feel like there is something strange going on. My mother had me at eighteen, and then she went crazy. And here I am, pregnant at eighteen myself.

I just went downstairs and brought back the Child ballad book that belongs to Leo. I've read through all of the versions now, and some of them are very different from the one I know, though they also contain tasks and talk about true love.

But my version of the song is very clear. It lays out three tasks.

* Make a magic shirt without needle or seam.

* Find an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand.

* Plow the land with a goat's horn, and sow it with one grain of corn. (This is really two related tasks, not one.)

I was trying to think how to do the tasks, and I'm stumped I wish I'd taken that sewing elective at school. And I know even less about farming than sewing.

Oh, this is ridiculous. I wouldn't dare tell Soledad, even.

I'd better forget it. Maybe my mother tried to do these things for some crazy reason, such as because her last name was in the song. But I'm not crazy, and I won't.

* * *

I saw him today. The beautiful man. I don’t know about elves and faeries, but I also don’t know what else to call him. The Elfin Knight.

He’s not human. He is evil. He is—I don’t know, exactly. Powerful. Immortal. I don’t know.

I am in deep trouble and I am very afraid.

What happened was this. I had just left the nursing home where I help out in the kitchen. The cook is nice to me. She lets me sit down while I’m chopping vegetables.

I was walking down the hill toward Soledad and Leo’s. The sun was going down, but there was still enough light to see. And then I noticed this man about halfway down the hill, where it flattens. He was standing still and looking up at me. I could see his shape, see his shoulders.

Somehow I knew it was him, the beautiful man. And I was happy to see him. Thrilled, actually, and excited.

I am such a fool.

The baby started kicking like crazy. I knew from Soledad that babies did that, but mine never had before, not like this. I felt like my insides were a punching bag. It hurt, some, but I didn’t care. It felt to me like the baby knew, too, that something amazing was going on.

I could see the man still looking up at me, waiting for me. I almost floated all the way down the hill to him, with one hand on my stomach where the baby was having a tantrum inside me.

And then I was next to him.

He shines like the moon on a dark night. Even now that I know he’s evil, I have to say that.

But I didn’t know he was evil yet. I knew he’d be interested in the baby, since the baby only existed because he had introduced me to that boy, that night at the party. So I said, “My daughter is kicking.” And then I sort of lifted my shirt. I invited him to feel it.

So his hands were on me, on my bare skin under my shirt, on my belly. Just for a few seconds.

And that was when I knew I had been used. Manipulated. That was when I understood everything.

And I understood it because he wanted me to. As he touched me, he let me see his thoughts. And I saw the past. I saw my mother, when she was my age. And her mother, too. I can’t write it all out, not all of it. It’s too much, and it was too terrible.

He has cursed us. Me, my mother, HER mother, her mother. The Scarborough girls. It’s all in the ballad. It’s not just a song, it’s a curse. I saw it all; I knew it all in that moment.

He leaned in close. He whispered to me. “The three tasks. You must perform those three tasks. You will not be able to, but still you must try, just as your mother instructed you to. It is in your best interest to try. If you do not perform the three tasks successfully by the time your daughter is born, then everything that has happened to your mother will happen to you. And then to your daughter.”

And then he laughed. He said, “I will enjoy watching you try. I always do. I have enjoyed it ever since your ancestress, Fenella, chose to defy me.”

It was—it was—it was—

I can’t write any more.

But I have to do it. I have to! I don’t want to go crazy. I refuse to end up like my mother. I refuse.

And then there is my daughter.

My daughter.

My daughter.

* * *

I spent all this time today looking at fabric. All kinds of fabric. I looked at everything I own, which is actually a lot because Soledad got me heaps of hand-me-down and thrift store maternity clothes from the hospital, and she bought me some new things too.

Then I went and looked in Soledad and Leo is closet. I looked especially closely at Leo is shirts.

Here's the thing: It is all woven. All fabric is made up of threads, and those threads are woven together by machines that use tiny needles to do it. When you look closely, you can see it. You can't make a shirt, or any fabric, without needles. It is not possible. It's the simplest of the three tasks—at least, it looks to me like it ought to be the easiest one—but it's impossible.

Seams, though. It might be possible to make a shirt without seams. A few weeks ago, Soledad was working on an Icelandic sweater, and she was knitting it in the round She showed me; you use these special knitting needles with both ends pointed, and you use three of them, and somehow you work the whole sweater without a single seam that way.

What good does that do me? Even if I could knit a seamless shirt, I'd have to use needles to do it.

There must be a way. There must.

I just don't have a lot of time.

* * *

I can't do any of them. It's impossible.

Am I already crazy? Did I imagine all of this? I don't think so. But how would I know? Don't all crazy people think they're sane?

CHAPTER 29

Lucy's gaze had caught and held on a single word toward the end of one of the sections of pages.
Fenella.

Your ancestress Fenella.

She swallowed hard. For a second her mind whirled and she could almost see Gray Spencer again—the possessed expression in his eyes. And she could hear the strange stream of incomprehensible words he'd said. He had said this same word, the name
Fenella
.

She held her elbows tightly to her sides. Then she forced herself to keep reading. When she finished, she looked at Zach. She had told him about her experience with Gray, and her conviction that, on prom night, he had not been Gray, not exactly. She had told him about being called Fenella.

What would he make of what he had read? She watched him carefully until he looked up.

Meanwhile, Zach had finished reading Miranda's pages with a feeling of deep unease. Yes, he thought, this woman was crazy long before Lucy was born. Had to be! And it didn't matter that Soledad and Leo said different, said that Miranda had been fine before Lucy was born. Here was proof. Miranda had simply hidden her loosening grip from Soledad and Leo as her pregnancy progressed. She'd confined her ranting to her diary.

Still. That business about having a daughter, and then going crazy … given that Lucy was now pregnant with her own baby … well. It might frighten Lucy. Even level-headed Lucy. Zach wouldn't blame her if it did. Because there were some—he groped for the right word—coincidences.

In fact, he was fairly freaked out by the coincidences. He remembered very clearly the story Lucy had told him about prom night.

Also, there was Miranda's description of the night Lucy was conceived … the party … the older, beautiful man … that part, just by itself, was very disturbing.

He sneaked a look at Lucy, who had also finished reading. She was biting her lip. She said quietly, "I'm going to read it again now. But I want to read at my own pace and not have to wait for you. Okay?"

"All right," Zach said. And then: "But you want me here, right?"

"Yes." It was only a whisper, but it was clear.

"I won't go far," Zach said. "Just over here."

"Okay."

He sat down at the desk. From there he could watch Lucy as she bent over the pages. She began reading again, slowly, seeming to pause here and there. Often, she would go back a page or two and reread something.

While he watched her, Zach thought about the "Elfin Knight" bit, and Miranda's conviction that she had met a magical, evil being.

At college, he knew a group of kids who were obsessed with Tolkien and the whole
Lord of the Rings
bit. They went around dressed in vaguely medieval garments and greeted each other with names like "Lady Anwariel" and "Lord Hadreth." They read books on how to speak and write Elvish. They went to conventions. They played elaborate online and in-person games set in Middle Earth. And they talked about elves like they were real, just as Miranda did in her diary.

Now, Zach himself couldn't imagine flourishing a sword in public and yelling things like, "While I yet breathe, Minas Tirith will never fall!" But he had nothing against anybody who wanted to. Plus, those kids always looked like they were having fun.

What if, Zach figured, Miranda was like these Tolkien people he knew. So, when she talked about the Elfin Knight, she was really talking about, maybe, some guy in a costume or whatever. Maybe it was somebody playing a prank on her. A nasty prank.

And yeah, it could also be that Miranda had already been a little nutty at that point, like Lucy thought, so the line between the fantasy and reality had blurred. And she'd made up a story around it all, and around her pregnancy.

Maybe it just felt better to Miranda to write that she had been betrayed by an evil elf than to write that she had had an ordinary disappointment with some regular guy. Maybe it helped her cope, to believe that.

He even found himself wondering if it was possible that Miranda, like Lucy, had been raped rather than seduced. If that had been the case, perhaps she'd have needed, emotionally, to replace the ugly truth with an inventive story, one she could live with while she wandered the streets of Boston, alone and friendless and afraid.

Lucy could face her own truth because she had friends and family. But Miranda might have needed a fantasy. A delusion could be a kind of mercy.

He had almost talked himself into believing all of this when he remembered the cover letter that Miranda had written to Lucy, and what he himself had said about it. How rational it seemed. How well-written and clear it was. And how loving.

And it was a strange coincidence that Lucy was pregnant at the same age Miranda had been. And could it be true about Deirdre?

Then, of course, there was Lucy's story about prom night. And Fenella.

What would it mean if Lucy—or if he—chose to believe that Miranda was not crazy?

* * *

At last Lucy looked up from her second, in-depth reading of the pages from Miranda's diary.

She looked over at Zach. The information she had read had seemed to slide into her consciousness like an oddly shaped puzzle piece. Miranda's song was playing now, In her inner ear. The ballad. "Scarborough Fair." "The Elfin Knight." She could hear Leo's voice, hear him as he patiently taught her the song, years and years ago. She could hear him say it had been a gift to her from Miranda.

She thought: Miranda was afraid to tell Leo and Soledad the whole story. She thought they'd think she was crazy. But she could teach Leo the ballad, and she did. And told him to teach it to me.

It all made sense. Crazy sense, maybe, but sense.

Fenella. In the end, that was the thing that most convinced Lucy. Fenella.

Your ancestress Fenella.

"Stop looking at me that way," Lucy said to Zach. "The thing is, the thing you have to remember, is that I'm very rational. It's my personality; it's always been my personality. Mrs. Foster in the third grade even said it—she told Soledad that it might show a lack of imagination."

At this point Lucy became aware that it might be a good idea for her to stop for breath. But having the idea seemed to mean nothing. It was as if a talking machine had taken control of her.

"That's how it is and that's how it's going to be," she said. "I am who I am. Right? And you, Zach, you're very rational too. We're all rational here in this house. Except Soledad, sometimes. And Miranda, of course. Miranda's bats. The question is, was she always?"

"Luce—"

"Listen, Zach, I totally understand why you think I might be terribly, terribly upset. But I'm not. Not at all. You're not thinking about who I am. I expected crazy stuff. I told you that up front. It's really wacky, though, isn't it? Don't you think that? I mean, you couldn't make it up. She isn't just bats, my mom, she's bats in an imaginative way." She watched Zach carefully. "Miranda's not like me at all, Mrs. Foster would say. And the other thing is that her story, even though it's insane, has its own internal logic. You have to notice that, and you have to give her credit for it. Don't you?"

"Right," said Zach. "So, that's what you think? She's insane and we should burn it all and forget it?"

There was silence. Then Lucy finally took a deep breath. Maybe Zach would think she too was crazy to believe this.

But she did.

Lucy leaned forward. "No. Zach? I told you this once already. About that night with Gray.

"It wasn't Gray raping me. I know that sounds like something as crazy as what Miranda would say. But it wasn't him. There was someone else inside him. Someone else's—I don't know what other word to use, okay? Someone else's spirit. Someone … someone who was
amused
, Zach. And whoever that person was, he said things Gray wouldn't say. Used a language I never heard before."

Zach was silent. He was thinking again about the part of the diary where Miranda described the night of Lucy's conception, and the way the man she called the Elfin Knight had manipulated it, and her.

Evil, Miranda had said. And then, she said, he had laughed.

"You don't really suppose …" His voice trailed off.

Lucy wrapped her hands around her elbows. Her forearms protected her stomach. Then she picked up the pages, riffled through them, and pointed.

Your ancestress Fenella.

"Fenella is an unusual name, Zach. But I heard Gray—or whoever it was—say it that night."

Zach said, "You're sure?"

"Yes," said Lucy steadily. "I am. And now I want to show all of this to Soledad and Leo."

"Let's go," said Zach.