Stone 588 (10 page)

"And?"

"She came out well within normal."

"Doesn't seem possible, getting better all at once like that."

"Mattie thinks she's probably a walk-in."

"A what?"

"Janet wanted to give up on life, so some spirit on the other side agreed to take over her body and everything."

"Like assuming a lease," Springer quipped.

"You might say. Did you know some guy in Sweden is Einstein's walk-in?"

"What about you?"

"Huh?"

"You're just the original you, aren't you?"

"Must be. I've never given up. Where did you go tonight?"

He told her.

"Thought you might be having a go with some local piece."

He got out of the shower. She tossed him a towel and used another to dry his back. She ran her lips over the knob at the base of his neck. When he was entirely dried off he yanked on the tie of the sash of her kimona. Slickly, willingly, it came undone, fell, and allowed the kimona to hang open in front. She merely relaxed her shoulders, and with a single shrug it dropped from her.

She had on pale peach tap panties of lightweight silk. A lingerie seamstress in Paris made them especially for her by the dozens. They were bias-cut, purposely full in the leg and crotch, and instead of elastic at the waist they were held up by a mere loop around one tiny pearly button. Her matching mules had narrow four-inch heels.

Springer rarely misread her at such times, her preference. He believed he recognized this one. He didn't touch her.

She turned, left the bathroom. Her walk was for him to steal from the trimness of her legs, the natural tightening motions of her buttocks. She opened the French doors, slipped off her mules, and stepped out into the night.

Springer clicked off the light and waited the required short while before going outside. It was a pure country night, the air a consistency that made it consciously a substance. The sky seemed not so high with more of it visible, cloudless except for a few wisps. The moon was only slightly elliptic. Audrey would be cold. Springer thought. It was something they had done twice before during the previous summer but it had been warmer then.

He looked to the field. The grass was nearly three feet tall, thick with the fuzzy heads of rye. The disturbance Audrey had caused was a line that could be easily traced. He waded it at a deliberate and quiet stalk.

Came upon her, captured her with his presence. Her bareness seemed luminous. She was lying on her side, arms wrapped, legs doubled up, possibly cowering. Springer loomed above her for a long moment. He reached down and found the waistband of her panties, yanked at it.

The button flew.

The silk tore down the side. The sound of tearing was a hiss. He tore the panties elsewhere and they were off.

He lay down beside her. She unwound her arms and straightened her legs, allowing him to be full-length close. His mouth, as though drawn by some invisible attachment, went directly to her mouth, a light, brief placement. His hand flat on the small of her back pressed her to him. They held like that for a while before his hand began traveling.

Her skin he found was wet, especially her lower legs and thighs, from having waded the dewy grass. His hand accumulated water as it skimmed her, and he felt the texture caused by the night's coolness that his touch could smooth away. His hand was both trespasser and owner as it circumspectly and yet surely moved over her surfaces, her rises and dips, slopes and turns.

Without interrupting she rolled to be front up.

He fingertipped across her abdomen and down along the fringes of her pubic hair. He burrowed a finger into the left and right creases created by the tangency of her mound and thighs, creases that disappeared, became sinewy sockets when she spread her legs and arched them up.

It was ritual, not tease.

He knelt up between her. He listened for her breath. She was holding her breath. She was already swollen and unfolded when he parted her more with his tongue. She was the fragrance of daffodils. Her hands held the back of his head as though it were a bowl feeding her.

She came twice that way.

Then, with her avidity primed, she wanted him in her.

There was no need to guide him. However, she wanted to take hold of his hardness. She appropriated it, stroked herself with it, ran its head up and down in her wetness, and he withheld entering her. When she could no longer bear having him out she heaved up suddenly and slipped herself around him. She wanted him all in, all at once. He pushed his pelvis hard against her, grasped her by her hipbones to prevent her from moving. She understood and remained still. A mere clench might spoil it.

Soon he stirred in her and his initial short thrusts became full length, which told her she could rely upon his control and it was liberating for her to be able to make contributions.

'I love you," he said into her.

She felt the breath of his words on the back of her throat.

"I love you," she said into him.

She had never been brought to feel what he made her feel. She shuddered whenever she thought how far short of her potential passion she would have spent her life without him. What tissue of inhibition there had been, he and his love and her loving response had easily broken through. They were, together, not subject to shame and therefore infinite.

That night in their nest in the high grass, down among all the tinier creatures who run brave and wild after dark, they loved one way or another and another for as long as it took the moon to move halfway across the sky.

The following morning Springer came up out of the kind of dream that needed the verification of touch. He reached with his legs for Audrey. She wasn't there. He opened his eyes, called out to her, and got no reply.

Her Cartier travel clock on the nightstand told him ten thirty. He noticed his knees were extremely grass-stained. Some of the stains had rubbed off on to the sheet. There were fragments of straw and dry grass on her pillow. He got up for the bathroom, decided he wouldn't shave. He had to scrub vigorously with a washcloth to remove the green from his knees and, as well, from his chin.

He went into the main area of the house, through to the kitchen, where he poured merely warm water into a mug and spooned in a couple of heaps of Folger's Instant. He heard voices from the side porch and decided he would go out to them.

Mattie, Audrey, and Janet were seated on faded yellow canvas chairs around a glass-topped table. Springer lifted the back of Audrey's hair and delivered a good-morning kiss to the nape of her neck.

"Tell your brother," Mattie said to Janet.

Janet looked Springer's way, smiled, and said, "Good morning."

"Something wrong?" Springer asked.

"No," Audrey said.

"Tell him," Mattie urged.

"He'll think I belong back in the nut bin," Janet said.

Audrey's Sweet 'n Swinging donuts were on a plate on the table. Springer helped himself to a couple. No matter how much he stirred his coffee the crystals wouldn't completely dissolve. He noticed a bordering bed of fat-headed zinnias enjoying the sun. He could have brought Jake along, he thought. He observed Janet. She was the same as she'd been yesterday, bright, relaxed, well in touch with herself. He recalled what Audrey had said about how thoroughly she'd been tested. Time would tell, Springer believed.

Janet met his gaze. She smiled, aware that she was being evaluated.

"What is it you're reluctant to tell me?" Springer asked her.

"No comment until I'm done?"

"Deal."

She related the circumstances and what had occurred during that afternoon and evening a month ago at High Meadow when she had gone off the manic end. She'd been over it time after time in her mind, hadn't verbalized it until that morning. Now, in telling it again to Springer, she was able to remember more details. She did not spare herself, was graphic in her description of her provokings and violence and how she had to be placed in restraints. She had almost total recall of the sensations that had passed through her as she lay bound and alone, her inability to resist during the process her body underwent, the degree-by-degree repair that resulted in blessed mental clarity. She told how she'd discovered the stone was in her hand and her impression that it was instrumental in her recovery.

Springer saw it now, resting on a paper napkin on the table. His father's reminder stone. He didn't quite know what to say. Perhaps he had misinterpreted Janet's words. Neutrally, he asked her, "Are you implying that you believe that diamond helped you in some way?"

"She's not implying, she's saying," Mattie said.

"It didn't help, it healed," Audrey put in.

Janet nodded.

Before joining them on the porch. Springer had thought perhaps their topic of conversation would be something only as incredible as, say, levitation. He asked Janet, "Have you spoken about this to Norman?"

"Not yet."

Springer picked up the diamond, held it up to the daylight as though seriously contemplating it. Actually he was using the time to decide how best to handle the situation. He knew the stone well, probably better than anyone. He knew it outside and in, because as a boy for practice he had examined it with a loupe countless times, gone over its surface and looked into it through its natural window, where one tip of its octahedral formation was chipped away. He had also used it to practice weighing, so, although over the years thousands of diamonds had passed through his mind and hands, it was still easy for him to remember this one weighed 56.41 carats. He put the stone down on the napkin and asked Audrey, "Have you tried your pendulum on it?"

That surprised her. Perhaps, finally, Springer was admitting that her use of a pendulum had merit. She pulled her chair close to the table. From her shirt pocket she brought out a drawstring pouch of chamois which contained her pendulum: a ten-inch length of linen string with a small rectangular piece of polished ivory attached to one end and an emerald bead that resembled a child's marble held by a knot on the other end. The emerald was hazed with numerous internal fractures. Audrey had made the pendulum from scratch. The piece of ivory had been pried from the inlays of an Asprey letter opener left behind by Tyler. The emerald had been found in one of Aunt Libby's boxes of bits and pieces. Audrey was not aware, nor did Libby remember, that the emerald had once come loose from a third-century Hindu dancing girl's ankle bracelet, a tangling arrangement of rounded emeralds and rubies that Libby had donated years ago to the Smithsonian through her personal foundation.

Audrey propped her elbow on the table and, holding the pendulum by its ivory end, suspended the emerald directly above the stone. She concentrated, seemed suddenly removed from her surroundings, as though she and the pendulum had become locked on some mutual frequency.

Springer, as usual, had mixed feelings about the woman he loved doing such a ridiculous thing. Not because she was doing it but because she took it so seriously. Audrey believed the pendulum could determine just about anything. It worked like an all-knowing divining device, a bob of sorts that she could rely upon for guidance whenever she came up against indecision. She claimed that the Egyptians had used pendulums to find out whether or not their wine was spoiled or their food fit to eat. Hundreds of years ago in England children had more easily found pennies and other valuables in the gutters using pendulums made of a thread spool, common string, and any small weighted object. During the First World War a French brigadier used a pendulum to locate German sea mines. There were countless substantiated instances, Audrey claimed. She had read and reread her copy of T. C. Leth-bridge's The Power of the Pendulum, annotated and underlined it so much it looked like a scribbled coloring book. She insisted that Springer read it. Inasmuch as it was only 138 pages he obliged, skimmed through it.

From what he gathered, an ultimate pendulum was precisely 40 inches long and worked on the principle of cardinal points and coordinates, like a compass. Every thought and substance had its particular coordinate, and, by playing out or winding up the length of string a fraction, the possibilities of determining things were endless. For example: The idea of love, according to Lethbridge, had the coordinates 20/20, which meant with love in mind and the string 20 inches long the pendulum always swung in the direction of 20 degrees. (That 20/20 also signified perfect vision occurred to Springer.) Sex was a 16/19 combination. The coordinates 29/29 were shared by femininity and danger, for some reason. Lethbridge contended that it all had to do with allowing a certain higher energy to flow and communicate through the super-conscious. So-called sensitives were supposed to be best at it. Springer knew for sure that Audrey was a sensitive, though perhaps not the sort Mr. Lethbridge had in mind. According to the book's jacket, the man had been Keeper of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge University.

Audrey's use of the pendulum was not nearly so complicated. She asked only a yes or no from it. (Should they go to see that play? Had the housekeeper nipped and then diluted the cognac? Was the crabmeat salad fresh?) Audrey was by no means too dependent on the pendulum but she always kept it handy, a backup.

Springer put no stock in any of it. Nevertheless he had to consider her pendulum his ally. No doubt Audrey had at various times asked it questions regarding him, and apparently so far it had responded in his favor. He hoped it never turned on him.

Now, holding the pendulum above the diamond, she swung it a bit to get it started. The emerald bead rotated slowly. It seemed to be indicating a no. But then its motion gradually became elliptical and even more so until it was swinging straight back and forth. A definite yes.

Audrey, satisfied, put the pendulum back into its pouch.

Springer wanted to know what she'd asked.

"I asked, Does this stone have the power to heal?"

"The power to make right would have been more precise," Mattie said. "To the old mystics a healing was a righting, a correcting of physical faults."