Splendor (8 page)

Another breeze swept through the tent and I shivered. The sun was setting.

Ziva had returned with my soda and a glass full of ice. The perfect hostess, she cracked open the can and poured the soda into the glass before handing it to me.

“Do you really live on an island?” she asked.

“I do.”

“And are you really Will’s girlfriend?” She sounded fascinated.

I cleared my throat. “I guess.… Yes, I am.”

“Lucky,” she said with a sigh. Then she wandered over to where her brothers were playing on the grass and joined in, tucking her long skirt into the waistband and attempting a handstand.

“Ziva is in a liminal space, as well,” Sabine said. Her voice was thoughtful. “She perches on that threshold between girl-child and woman. Her time grows close. But right now she’s free to flit back and forth between the two worlds as she pleases—playing the lady of the house and then joining again with the children.”

I thought back to the summer I’d traveled up the coast to visit colleges with my father and brother. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but I had already crossed that threshold myself.

“The meat is ready,” David called, bringing the steaming platter to the table. The kids cheered, and even Sabine and I clapped. When everyone was seated, we linked hands as David said a prayer over the food. I didn’t understand the words, but I recognized the language—Hebrew, the same language spoken by Martin to say his prayers.

Hearing David’s blessing made me homesick—not for my own home but for Will’s. For those evenings I’d spent with him and his father, listening to them bicker and laugh and, eventually, joining them in conversation. Now that they were gone it felt as if a black hole had opened on my island, a void I could do nothing to fill.

Dinner with the Rabinovich family wasn’t really all that different from eating at Lily’s; the boys fought over who got the last piece of bread, and the voices of all three children seemed to vie for their parents’ attention.

Along one of the canvas walls was a smaller table, on which sat a tall earth-colored ceramic vase. It held a strange arrangement: a group of tree branches, none with flowers. In front of the vase was what looked like a giant lemon.

“Those are nice,” I said, waving my fork at the plants.

“You like them?” said David. “That’s our
lulav
and our
etrog.
”

I nodded like that made sense to me. Ziva smiled, obviously pleased with my ignorance. In her best “teacher” voice, she said, “The
lulav
is made of the branches from the willow, palm, and myrtle trees. The
etrog
is a citrus fruit.” Then the tone of her voice changed, turning conspiratorial. “Mama says the
lulav
is symbolic of a penis and the
etrog
is shaped like a womb. But I’ve seen my brothers’ penises and I don’t really see the similarity.”

I choked on my soda and struggled not to spray it across the table.

“The
etrog
looks like a boobie,” Ari said, dead serious.

“Some people do interpret it as such, son,” David said, repeating Ari’s serious intonation. “But a nicer word is ‘breast.’ ”

“Boobie,” said Ari.

Now I couldn’t help but laugh, and the others laughed with me.

After the plates were cleared, which no one would let me help with, David and Sabine stacked wood for a fire in the round pit just in front of the sukkah and we pulled our chairs around it. Ari and Daniel fetched skewers and the makings for s’mores from inside the house, and then Ziva lit the fire.

Orange flames licked up into the darkening night, and I felt the warmth blaze up around me. As the kids set to roasting the marshmallows, it occurred to me that Ronny would have loved this place. The holiday, too, and celebrating the arrival of guests—that would have been right up Ronny’s alley. He loved playing host, making sure everyone was having fun, refilling trays, pouring drinks. How sad that he’d died without ever knowing about this tradition.

There was an empty chair in the corner of the sukkah. No one had told me what it was for, but I’d have bet it was left open in case any other guests showed up. The kind you
can’t
see or offer a drink to. Of course I didn’t believe Ronny was sitting in that chair, but we weren’t far from where he’d died. Maybe it wasn’t far-fetched to think a piece of him still floated around. At least I could pretend.

I hated that my eyes still filled with tears at the thought of Ronny. On the other hand, maybe it was better than the alternative—forgetting about him, hardening to his death. It
was
easier now than it had been a year ago. I could think about the fun things we’d done together, like the trip up the coast, like those hot summer afternoons in our yard as he and Dad dug the pond, without falling to pieces.

But I would never have what these kids had, ever again—a sibling: someone to fight with for the last marshmallow, as Daniel and Ari were doing right now, someone to remember with me our parents’ happier times, when they were still in love, before their marriage fell apart.

“Okay, kids,” David said when the fire had softened into embers, “upstairs to get ready for bed. Then we’ll bring the air mattresses out to the sukkah.” He followed the three children into the house, leaving me and Sabine by the fire.

By now the night was velvety and cool, and we both edged our chairs close to the embers. “How about one more log?” Sabine offered, and she retrieved one and added it to the fire pit. After a few minutes it caught fire and we were warm again. Above us a full moon filled the sky.

“So Martin sent you to me,” she said after she’d reseated herself, pulling her legs underneath her and wrapping her scarf around her shoulders. “He thought I might have answers to your questions.”

I nodded. “He said you know about Kabbalah. About experiencing God.” The words sounded stupid as I said them.

“Martin is a generous man,” said Sabine. “Actually, I am still a student myself. Most likely I will always see myself as such. But there is something in my nature, I think, a willingness to let go, that perhaps suits me to the ecstatic practice.”

Ecstatic practice. That sounded like a paradox to me. “How do you
practice
ecstasy?”

“The word
practice
can mean many different things,” she said. “Most commonly, it’s used as a verb, and means to work at improving a skill, the way one practices the violin. And that is always true of my ecstatic practice—I do try to improve and deepen my understanding, of Kabbalah, of God, of myself. But that is not the way I mean to use the word at this time. Scarlett, I am sure you realize that there is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, or even touch with our hands. My practice is to receive—and to receive, I must be open to what may come to me.” She leaned toward me, the fire gleaming two hot points in her eyes. “There is another world, Scarlett, right here in this one. Only we must search for it.”

“But how?”

“I want you to visit me again. Will you do that?”

I nodded.

“Good. But between this visit and the next, I want you to focus on opening yourself to the possibility that there is more than you know, more than you have experienced. Open yourself to the possibility that you may be wrong about the way you see the world. And try—try very hard—to say yes to new experiences, to listening to new perspectives. See what you can see.”

“All right,” I said, though it sounded like new age bullshit to me. “I’ll try.”

“But, Scarlett,” Sabine said, her voice growing serious, “be careful, also. For it is in those spaces—thresholds between old and new, inside and outside, known and unknown—where danger lurks.”

Mostly her warning sounded silly to me, but one word caught my attention. “You mention thresholds,” I said. “That reminds me, on your doorframe you have this little thing. Martin has one too, at his house—”

“A mezuzah,” she said.

“Mezuzah,” I repeated. “What is it for?”

“I’ve spoken to you twice tonight about liminal spaces—that union between two disparate areas. A door is just that—a liminal space. These points of transition, we believe, can be dangerous. Has Martin told you about the Zohar?”

“It’s a book, isn’t it? One of the central texts of the Kabbalah. He said it means ‘splendor.’ ”

“Good,” she said. “The Zohar is a source of much of our knowledge. It tells us that dark forces—demons—dwell in the area near a door, because that’s where they find sustenance. The Zohar goes on to state that by fixing a mezuzah to the doorway, those harmful forces will be denied entry into the home, turned away.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Dark forces? Magical tokens? But I asked, “These dark forces. The demons. Do they have a name?”

“Mazzikim.”

“And why does the mezuzah stop them, exactly?”

I thought Sabine heard my incredulity, but she continued just as seriously. “The mezuzah is not just a pretty piece of metal or ceramic. Inside each mezuzah is a rolled piece of special parchment. Traditionally it should be made of the skin of a deer, and the words it bears should be scripted under specific conditions. One set of directions about making a mezuzah instructs that the words be inscribed only on Monday, in the fifth hour, with the angel Raphael presiding, or on Thursday, in the fourth hour, presided over by Venus and the angel Anael.”

This was sounding downright freaky.
Deer
parchment? But I was curious. “What do the words say?”

“The scroll quotes twice from the Torah, reaffirming that there is one true God and that God has commanded us to write these words on the doorposts of our houses. Then there is a section from the Torah that tells us that our destiny is linked to our fulfilling of God’s will. Outside the mezuzah is written one of the names of God—
Shaddai
.”

I poked the dying fire with one of the spears the kids had used to roast marshmallows. Honestly, I felt more comfortable in Martin’s world of abstractions and book learning than Sabine’s world of demons and magical tokens. But then Martin, too, had a mezuzah on his door.

“As you pursue your own practice of Kabbalah,” Sabine said, her voice pulling my gaze from the fire to her eyes, “realize that the things we do matter. The things we
say
matter.” She was silent for a moment but didn’t look away from me. It seemed like she wanted me to know that what she was saying was important. Finally she spoke again. “Be careful which doors you open, Scarlett. And be careful of what you invite inside.”

T
he visit with my mom was pretty much exactly as I’d anticipated. Weird. Awkward.

I thought about what Sabine had told me—to open myself. But honestly I had no desire to do that with my mother. It was hard enough even to be in the same small apartment with her. I didn’t want to experience her point of view. I had tried that with her once already, after my accident on the trail; I’d forgiven her for disappearing into herself after Ronny’s death. I’d given her a second chance, and look what she’d done with it.

So the weekend was forced and strained, with me saying no to pretty much everything she offered—dinner out, shopping for new clothes (though I needed them, but I could always paw through Lily’s castoffs), going to the movies.

She got stiffer as the weekend went on, and by Sunday afternoon, when she took me to the ferry, she seemed as uncomfortable as I felt. We hugged goodbye, but there was no warmth, not from either side. And she didn’t ask how soon I’d be coming back, though she did say, with shining eyes, “Take care, Scar.”

When my phone rang mid-crossing, I couldn’t manage to answer without the quaver in my voice giving me away.

“Hey, Will.”

“Yikes. That bad, huh?”

“Yeah. It was pretty terrible.”

“I’m sorry, Scarlett.” Will was quiet for a minute, but it wasn’t uncomfortable the way the silence between me and my mom had been. It felt nice, knowing he was out there waiting, in no hurry, just there.

“She painted a wall in her living room
purple,
” I said. “My dad hates purple.”

“Ah. Must be a statement of independence.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. “How’s college life?”

“Good. Really good. Totally better than high school. I miss the island, though. I miss
you.
”

I smiled. “I miss you, too.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“What do you miss?” His voice grew soft.

“I miss your thumb brushing my palm,” I said.

“Anything else?”

I glanced around the deck to see if anyone was looking at me. No one was; everyone was fascinated by the pod of dolphins that swam alongside the boat, leaping and diving.

“I miss your lips,” I said. “The way they fit against my collarbone.”

“I miss that too.”

“I miss the way you pull me tight after we kiss for a while.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I miss the way it felt that day on the trail…the weight of you on top of me.”

He made a sound like a groan.

“What do
you
miss?” I asked.

“I miss your hair,” Will said. “The smell of it when you let it down, the brush of it against my arm.”

“Is that all?”

He laughed, throaty and deep. “If you only knew everything I miss.”

“Tell me.”

He was quiet, and this time I was the one who waited.

At last he said, “I miss your smile. I miss the way you look in those jeans of yours—the ones with the ripped knee—both coming and going.”

I was blushing now.

“I miss your eyes. The way they close partway when I kiss your collarbone. I miss the way you hold your breath sometimes, when you want to feel something deeply, when you’re really paying attention to my hands. I miss watching you ride your horse. I miss your laugh.”

“That’s a lot to miss,” I said at last, warm to the core and full of pleasure. “Maybe you should come home.”

“Maybe I should,” he said. “Or maybe you should come visit me.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure my dad isn’t putting me on a plane and sending me all by myself to my sexy boyfriend on the East Coast.”

“You think I’m sexy?” He sounded pleased.

“You’re all right,” I said.

“All right?”

I laughed again. “Come on, Will,” I said. “You know you’re dead sexy.”

“As long as you think so, Scarlett, that’s good enough for me.”

“I
know
so.”

The next day after school, I rode my mare to Will’s house. Martin had been gone from the island for more than a week now, and I hadn’t been over yet to check on things. That was kind of a joke, though, really; what was there to check? I knew everyone who lived on the island, and no locals were going to mess with the Cohens’ house. Tourists weren’t anything to worry about, either; barely anybody who visited Catalina made their way to Two Harbors, and those who did stuck pretty close to the beaches.

So I saw through Martin’s request that I keep an eye on his place. It was for me, not for him, that he’d given me his key.

Turning it in the lock was a strange feeling. The door swung open and then there I was, in their space, only without them. I didn’t stay long; I just looked around to make sure that nothing was out of place, which of course it wasn’t. The last room I checked was Will’s. I pushed his door open gently and stood in the doorway, looking in.

There it was—his neat single bed, its gray flannel blanket pulled tight and tucked underneath the mattress, military-style. His desk, cleared now except for his green-glass-shaded library lamp. His books, the paintings on the wall that his mother had made for him. I didn’t go into Will’s room, not that day.

Instead I browsed the bookshelves in the front room. I was amazed by the breadth of subjects: psychology, science fiction, popular culture, religion (of course), and a pretty staggering collection of Agatha Christie books. Maybe Martin had her complete works, even. This was a surprise; I hadn’t really considered Martin the mystery type, but then I thought about what his main goal had been for the past few years—to solve the mystery of Will’s abilities, to find an answer and maybe even a cure.

So I guess there was something satisfying about a book that told you the answer at the end, all neat and tied up with no loose strings, when in real life answers didn’t come so easily, if at all.

I had read a couple of Agatha Christie’s books, one because it was assigned freshman year, and a couple more because I’d liked the first. Now I found myself scanning the titles. I pulled a collection of her short stories from the shelf and tucked it—along with another book that caught my eye,
Kabbalah Magic
—into my jacket before locking up the cottage and retrieving Delilah from the backyard, where I’d left her to graze.

“Will would want us to.”

I shook my head, again. “No way, Lily.”

“Will’s a fun guy. He’d appreciate the opportunity.”

We were in Lily’s room, listening to music and weeding through her closet, trying to find inspiration for Halloween costumes. And Lily was desperately trying to convince me that it was a good idea to throw the party at Will and Martin’s house.

“Come on,” she said, sounding desperate now. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“It’s a
never
-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” I corrected. “It’s not going to happen, Lil.”

She sighed and balled up the yellow chiffon scarf she’d been arranging around her waist, then threw it. It drifted benignly to the floor, not exactly the impact she’d probably been hoping for.

There was a knock on the door.
“Entrez,”
Lily called grandly.

Her mom poked her head inside. “We’re going to start a round of Pictionary downstairs. You girls want to join us?”

I started to say “Sure” just as Lily answered, “We’ll pass.”

Laura looked disappointed.

“Hey,” I said, “maybe we could have the party
here.
What do you say, Laura? A Halloween party?”

Lily groaned and flopped back onto her bed. “Great,” she muttered.

“That sounds like fun.” Laura perked up immediately. “Can the boys and I help decorate?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

After Laura had gone downstairs, Lily said, “A party with the folks wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, Scar.”

It sounded just right to me. Honestly, no party at all would have been my first choice, but I knew Lily would never stand for that. After last Halloween, I was content never to see another costume as long as I lived.

But Lily loved parties. And I loved Lily. So I wasn’t about to wreck Halloween for her, even though Andy had come close to wrecking it for me. And ever since Lily’s Dutch guy had blown her off, she seemed kind of fragile, mopey. Not like her. Maybe a party
was
what she needed.

“It’ll be fun,” I said. “I’m sure your parents will stay pretty much out of the way.”

“It would have been way better at Will’s place,” she said, but I didn’t answer. Finally she brightened. “Well, if I’m the hostess, then I’d better have the most fabulous costume there.”

Two weeks before the big night, Lily came to my place and barged into my bedroom, her dark curls wild, breathing hard as if she’d been running. Of course this immediately got my attention—Lily never ran. (“It makes me sweat” was her rationale.)

“Brainstorm,” she said. “I’ve manifested the theme for our Halloween party.”

“Isn’t the theme Halloween?”

“Oh, Scarlett, there you go again. Always so
obvious.
”

“Okay,” I said, setting aside
The Thirteen Problems,
the Agatha Christie book I’d borrowed. “What’s the theme?”

Lily held her hands out as if she was framing a billboard. “Picture this: ‘Creatures of the Night.’ ”

“Isn’t that pretty much synonymous with Halloween?”

She shook her head vehemently. “You don’t get it. See, usually people dress up like all kinds of things: ballerinas, athletes, characters from video games. It’s all over the place. There’s nothing
unifying
about a party full of all that. No
harmony.
”

“Uh-huh,” I said, “so how will your party be different?”

“
Our
party. You have to help decorate.”

“Our party, then.”

“Everyone has to come as a creature of the night—you know, strictly things that don’t show their faces during daylight hours. Or things that get their strength from darkness. Like witches. And vampires.”

“Could I be an owl?” I was warming up to the idea.

“If you want to be a completely unattractive ball of feathers, I guess,” she said. “Or you could be a fox. They’re nocturnal, and way hotter.”

I have to give credit to Lily’s parents; they jumped in with both feet. Laura pulled Lily and me out of school on Monday to go shopping on the mainland for costume supplies and decorations.

“We can ask your mom to meet us for lunch,” she suggested, but I shook my head.

“She’s too busy right now at the office,” I lied smoothly, as if we talked on a regular basis and I was intimately aware of her schedule.

It was good to see Lily and her mom enjoying each other—shopping together and laughing—like old times. Since their return from Amsterdam I had watched Laura trying so hard, only to be shut down by Lily over and over again.

It took us two full days to decorate for the party. We did the whole downstairs—the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, even the bathroom—and both the front yard and the back.

Laura made Jack move out most of the living room furniture, and what was left we draped in white sheets. All the black frames on the walls that showcased family pictures were filled instead with creepy old-fashioned portraits with eyes that looked like they were following you.

We stripped the games from the shelves under the front window and replaced them with layers of spooky and amazing decor: black vases filled with beautiful flowers, little rubber spiders and snakes and worms crawling across their satiny petals; tree limbs, leaves and all, spray-painted black and silver and arranged across the shelves and in tall urns that flanked the fireplace; a row of heavy crystal punch bowls, each waiting to be filled with either a bloodred concoction or a bizarrely bright toxic-green punch; decanters stuffed with what looked like body parts preserved in formaldehyde (they were really rubber and plastic, of course, but it was almost impossible to tell); domed glass cloches perched atop antique pedestal stands piled with skulls and the skeletons of small animals.

In the dining room, we draped the chandelier in cheesecloth spiderwebs and wrapped each arm of it with tiny strands of connected spiders until the whole thing looked infested. We spread a heavy black velvet cloth over the table and made a centerpiece out of gourds we’d spray-painted silver and gold, then interspersed them with black-dipped branches and leaves. On the branches we perched creatures of the night: tiny owls and mice and more spiders, spiders, spiders.