Queens of All the Earth (7 page)

“They’re from the South,” Marc said. “They don’t waste time when they think they’re doing good. The father is nice enough, but the son seems a little broody.”

“Broody? That’s putting it lightly. I found a question mark on my wall. I think Greg put it there.”

Marc only grinned.

“Oh, that’s the kind of thing teenagers do,” he said. “You were one, too. I bet you had something you wrote or wore or did to show the world how mad you were at it, right?”

After that, Miranda didn’t know what to do with her animosity. She stewed for a moment, then broke in with more questions.

“But what do they do?” Miranda said. “Why are they here?”

“Sightseeing, I assume. I think the father is some kind of preacher—not my church. Perhaps one of those large ones you see on American television. Evangelical or something. But he’s very well-meaning. The son seems like a follower. When I squint, I can see him leading a flock in about ten years.” Marc chuckled dryly. “They’re typical Appalachian. Very handy. They fixed the tap in the back bathroom the first night they arrived. Hugo offered them a discount and the father waved it off.”

“I’m surprised Hugo did that much. He’s out for all he can get,” Miranda grumbled, half to herself. Marc seemed amused.

“They’re really very nice people,” he said. “Painfully nice, you know? I think everyone’s a little too afraid. If they stand too close to them, eventually they’ll be thrown into a river and baptized.”

Miranda smiled and rolled her eyes with him. Marc was the kind of priest she liked best—cosmopolitan, not pushy, not too religious all the time. She couldn’t imagine a TV preacher being this urbane.

“I left your little sister behind this morning when she very much wanted to go out,” said Marc, standing. “Can I make it up by taking the elder sister to some tapas?” With obvious affectation, he straightened his shoulders.

Miranda was delighted. If Olivia came back while they were gone, she would probably just read her book until Miranda returned.

They settled on a tapas café down the block, and after Miranda’s cautions against sidewalk purse-snatchers and the late-autumn surge of
insects (which she had read about, and was sure would make itself felt anytime now), they sat inside.

“Now, you must tell me what brings you to this part of the world,” Marc said with a grin as he shook out his napkin.

“Well, I’d heard it was a beautiful place, and I’ve already done Madrid,” said Miranda. “And, well, you understand why people come to Spain.”

Marc nodded. “But why not in the spring?” he asked. “I would have come in the spring if I’d had the time. I came once when I was a little boy, and it was magical.”

Miranda explained her mother’s views on Thanksgiving—something about cultural oppression and nationalistic holidays—and the need to get Olivia out of the house. Something in her wanted to add how the whole house had seemed to remind Olivia of her childhood so strongly she hadn’t been able to let go of it—how she’d seemed obsessed with the ghost of the child she used to be. “I didn’t know how to appreciate it when I was little,” Olivia had told her with a weak smile, holding up whatever young adult novel she’d been rereading when Miranda stopped by the house for the weekend. Miranda always had the sense that Olivia hadn’t just been talking about the book.

But Miranda said nothing.

“And what do you do?” Marc asked.

“I do accounting at Friendly Neighbor Insurance. Their corporate headquarters.” Miranda paused. “My sister’s taking a year off before starting at Cornell. A lot of people do it, especially in Europe, I think.” Miranda thought again about what their mother had said when she’d mentioned her plan to go to Barcelona: that it would “culturally enhance Olivia’s interface with her surroundings.” Miranda had just hoped it would inspire, well,
any
interaction between Olivia and the world. She’d felt she was losing her sister somewhere inside her sister.

“You have a very prestigious family.”

“So you’d think. But some of our neighbors don’t like that Olivia is going north. I guess it can’t be helped—a lot of smart kids don’t get into Cornell, you know.”

“I see.”

“Personally, I think it’d be good for the Somersets to leave the South,” said Miranda. “I’ve always thought so. Maybe up there, Olivia can really learn about important things. Like politics.”

“Does she follow the issues much?”

“No, not at all. It’s embarrassing sometimes.”

“Well, she’ll grow into it,” said Marc.

“She’s old enough. She just needs to learn how to care about these things,” said Miranda. “At least our mom is progressive, even if she’s a little... eccentric. Better her kind of crazy than Stepford Wives, I guess. She married into the South, but she kept her name and supported herself.” She didn’t mention their father had split when Olivia was too young to remember him, or that he was now dead. The only thing he had left them was his name.

Marc made a politely interested noise.

“Well, she was a pioneer for her time,” Miranda said.

Their drinks arrived, followed by a plate of roasted peppers.

“That’s one thing I can’t stand about these tapas places—the food just trickles in,” Miranda said. “Can’t they fill an order all at once? It was the same when I went to Madrid two years ago.”

Marc’s best response was a sigh and a shake of the head, and then they toasted to Barcelona.

At the end of the meal, Marc reached for the bill and Miranda loudly protested, insisting they split it. After a few awkward moments spent calculating tip and exchanging big bills for littler ones, they rose and walked back to the hostel.

When they returned, Miranda noted with somewhat more alarm
than before that Olivia was not waiting for her. In fact, it was long past Olivia and Miranda’s usual lunchtime—she and Marc had eaten late and leisurely. When Olivia finally entered, followed by none other than Greg Brown, Miranda was bristling. It was late afternoon.

“Where the hell have you been? I was this close to calling the police!” Miranda began in a low but forceful tone, right there in the common room. Olivia slipped out of her shoes by the door. Her ears turned red while her sister continued. “How was I supposed to know you weren’t murdered on the street? You could have become one of those people you read about back home! I can’t believe this from you, Olivia!”

“I got lost,” Olivia said, wavering between statement and question.

“How can you get lost on one street that goes straight?” Miranda said.

“I saw something I liked,” Olivia said, sitting on one of the couches and looking at her empty hands.

“Well, from this moment on, you are going absolutely nowhere alone,” said Miranda. “If I see so much as the tip of your nose outside this hostel’s door alone, I’m calling Mom.”

Olivia looked up sharply.

“Are you going to tell her about today?” she asked.

Miranda turned away from her.

“No,” she answered at length. “Because I thought you’d be responsible enough to handle yourself. But that was my mistake, and now you have fair warning.”

Greg, who until now had lingered awkwardly and apologetically near the door, slid away to his dorm room without a word.

Olivia looked for something to warm the chill that had fallen over the room.

“Look,” she said. “There are flowers here. There weren’t flowers here this morning.”

There hadn’t been. But now, a tall vase with four graceful, succulent
lilies sat upon one of the two dining tables.

Hugo was washing dishes in the kitchen (though no matter how many lazy swipes he made with the cloth, no dishes seemed to leave the sink, and none appeared on the drying rack). Apparently, he understood English better when it was spoken by Olivia, because he pointed to the flowers and said, “Emery.” At their blank looks, he added, “Mr. Brown.”

He shook one dish and seemed to consider putting it on the drying rack, but then set it down on the bottom of the sink again, dried his hands, and dove into a box of crackers. “He gave them to Sophie,” Hugo continued when he saw Olivia still paying attention. “She said yesterday she wanted more flowers, and he asked which she liked.”

“He’s speaking English,” Miranda spat under her breath as Hugo wandered away. “Unbelievable. Is this just a game he plays with people he doesn’t like?”

Olivia didn’t reflect on Hugo’s spotty record of understanding or ignoring English speakers. Instead, she imagined Mr. Brown looking for lilies in the stalls on the street. She could even see him apologizing that they were only greenhouse flowers, as if, had he the power, he would cause it to be spring so she could have flowers grown in the full freedom of the sun. No, better yet, she imagined him placing flowers quietly on the table in the deserted room and wandering away, leaving them to be discovered.

Sophie, the blond girl who helped Hugo, was at her usual seat at the back computer. As Olivia looked at her profile this afternoon, she thought she saw something softer around her eyes, or the region of her nose. Her mouth remained compressed in a strict line, but she did flick her eyes once toward Olivia, and nodded to her almost imperceptibly.

Could the flowers have done this to her? Or was it Mr. Brown who wove these changes with gentle hands?

Olivia retrieved her book from her bag and planted herself on the
common room couch. Miranda paced in front of her, but she seemed to have lost the thread of her rant.

“Olivia!” Miranda snapped. “Don’t think this conversation is over.” Olivia looked up, sincerely contrite, but then her eyes returned to her book. “Go pick up your stuff,” Miranda said. She leaned forward and spoke a little lower. “That door is always open,” she said, tossing a glance over her shoulder at the front door, ajar and guarded by the empty reception desk.

Olivia sighed and set down her book. When she rose, Miranda took her place on the couch with a huff. Olivia gathered her purse, jacket, and shoes, and carried them obediently out of the common space, watched gravely by Sophie from her computer hideout in the back of the room.

Sophie pattered over to her lilies and straightened them in their vase. Then she drifted into the kitchen, where Hugo said something loud and friendly. She replied in dry, indifferent words, which Miranda recognized but could not understand.

In the cool eddy of her private room, apart from the noisy stream of the rest of the hostel, Olivia put away her things and breathed deeply, trying to recall the solemn peacefulness she found in
A Wrinkle in Time
. But it was impossible to think of flying horses and time monsters when reality lay so closely by. There were gargoyles in this city, and phantasms of musicians, and masqued balls, and great sleeping dragons. Free from Miranda, but still watched by Miranda’s looming suitcase, Olivia sat on her bed and removed the detritus from her bag. A ticket. A receipt. A few coins that looked the same.

On the floor, a bit of trash caught her eye, and she picked it up and uncrinkled it. A question mark stared back at her. She traced it with her finger—it was Greg’s. She knew just by touching it. She turned the sheet to see if there was anything on the back.

my father moved through dooms of love
, it said. Olivia rolled the phrase around in her mouth silently. It whispered dryly in and out of her lips.

my father moved through dooms of love

Following the sort of impulse she never shared with her sister, her mother, or any of her few friends (gone now to far-flung universities, like a peaceful population scattered by the appearance of an ogre), she folded the battered sheet carefully and tucked it into the bottom of her backpack. Searching the pockets of the jeans she’d worn yesterday, she found the handkerchief she had never returned and placed it there as well. She knew Mr. Brown would never ask for its return.

Olivia eased back onto her bed, and as the pressure lifted from the bottoms of her feet, she felt momentarily weightless, which triggered an instant and fleeting smile. She swung her legs up lazily, crossed them on the bed, and folded her arms under her head.

Across the hall, past a haphazardly open door at the end of the long rows of beds and beyond their hanging towels, Greg Brown reclined in the same position in the bunk by the window. He dreamed that the scent of lilies filled the air.

Miranda had told Olivia that one hour of jetlag is recovered each day of a person’s stay in a new time zone. Olivia calculated that she would feel perfectly rested by the day they planned to leave. Greg didn’t calculate, but simply dropped into a deep sleep.

When Hugo came by, whistling, his hands in his pockets, he softly closed each of their doors, knowing what commotion would begin as his guests returned and began making dinner and dinner plans. The silence germinated Olivia’s dreams and Greg’s, until they grew green tendrils which slipped under their doors and sinuously twined in the glow of the hanging lamp in the common room. His dreams and her dreams tangled in a jungle of fresh sensation, and from them grew lilies—lilies under the feet of Miranda as she sat on the couch with her guidebook, making small marks on places of interest; the feet of Marc, while he read from his small notebook and ate a fresh pastry at one of the tables; the feet of Sophie,
making coffee, pulsating lyrics in her head.

The only person who noticed the vegetation was Mr. Brown, and then only barely, determining that it was the lilies on the table releasing a lovely scent.

Behind Olivia’s eyes, the world was green. She tossed with the motion of her thoughts until the creaking of the springs below her woke her, horrified at what her mind had created. Struggling to shake free, she rose, headachy and discontented.