With One Look (44 page)

It was a quiet and reflective time for Jade, mainly owing to afternoons spent with Victor's father, who seemed to comprehend the turmoil of her heart, turmoil that oddly increased in Victor's absence, rather than diminished. Not that he was sympathetic to it all. Quite the contrary, he often shed a different perspective on her struggle, forcing her to see things differently.

Like now. "The sin of suicide is in its success," he replied finally. "I daresay, most of us have at one time or another contemplated that alternative. If you are not now among the majority, you certainly are in a large minority."

"Victor thought I wanted revenge. He called it the ultimate revenge, and I suppose there's some truth to that, too." She paused before leaning forward. "But that wasn't what I was thinking of then. I can't really say I was thinking at all, I was so distressed, but if I had to describe how I felt— what had motivated me—I would say it was hate."

"Indeed," he replied, taking a move he thought might finish the game.

Jade looked at the board, saw immediately his intentions and almost without any contemplation moved her queen and thereby placed both his bishop and a knight in jeopardy. Father Nolte smiled. The young lady was a far more menacing opponent now that she could see.

"Perhaps it sounds strange, but I feel as if I understand so much more about people now." "Oh?"

"I've changed so much; I'm not the same person. I used to never have, well—for lack of a better word—'bad' thoughts about people or things. I'm sure that sounds presumptuous, though it's nonetheless true." Her voice changed. "Now, not only do I think unpleasant things, I feel them."

"Yet these feelings are centered on Victor?"

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded. Victor seemed so different from before. Now when she looked at him she saw his strength and aggression, the calculation he put to everything: the men he hired, the bills he paid, the ships he built, the things he bought, even his friendships seemed calculated programs that related to an ulterior purpose.

He was so different....

Father Nolte's gaze focused intently on the young lady before him. Quietly, he asked, "What stops you from forgiving him, Jade?"

The question jerked her from her ruminations. "Forgive him?" Bewilderment appeared in her eyes. "You weren't there! He destroyed me! He destroyed the woman he loved and she is gone, alive no more—"

"No, she's not gone. She's just changed, different, in many ways better—" "Better? Because I can see?"

"No. Because you are not blind."

The words were not without impact. For a long moment, she stared at him, her eyes shimmering with heightened emotions. It was true, of course. She was not blind, and now she saw the world as it really was: the weathered chips of paint on the house, the broken shutter and the slipping tile, the muddy puddles in the lanes. She saw the dying blossoms in the rose garden, a spider's nest outside the window. There was no crystal-blue lake but rather a swampy green pond filled with snakes and mosquitoes and leeches. She saw the age lines on Murray's face, the thinning gray hair through which his scalp shone unpleasantly, the tired limp to his gait as he made his way from one room to the next. She saw Mercedes's crooked teeth every time she laughed. Everything and everyone she saw was changed, different, unsightly, where once it all was just... beautiful.

"Yes, I am no longer blind," she said very softly as she withdrew the small statuette from her skirt pocket, and she stared at the small worn crack. "You don't understand, though. No one does. Once I saw only a world made beautiful by my heart. Skies filled with rainbows. And it was this heart of mine that won the treasure of his love. That's why his betrayal is all the more painful and ... unforgivable.

"Now I am not blind, thanks to him, thanks to the sheer force of his will pressed upon mine. He opened my eyes and forced me to look upon the world as it really is. And now I see ... I see a world where my mother was hung in a blood-washed room....

"I never tell anyone but I often find myself thinking of my father lying dead nearby, shot by his own pistol. He loved me, you know. Very much." Her voice broke as the thought of her father's love brought emotion flooding into her consciousness.

Father Nolte tensed, leaping ahead to the place she led him.

"And yet, as much as he loved me, it was not enough to change what he had to do when he saw my mother like that." She looked up at him, her eyes livid with the accusation. "He did not save me, my father. He couldn't live with the sight of her a moment longer. Not even to save me from her. You say the sin of suicide is in its success, but I say that no merciful God would judge him harsh; because, you see, I saw it, too. And I know why he did it. I only wish to God Wolf Dog would have let me leap from that cliff—"

"Jade ..."

She withdrew in a rush of skirts. For a long while he stared at the black-and-white squares of the chess board, feeling hopelessly inadequate as his mind ran over her words again and again.

Not even to save me from her .

What did that mean? The sight of her mother?

Confused by it, he shook his head. He didn't know anything. He certainly didn't know any words that might take back the long dark night or make rainbows arch over the sky again...

*****

The beginning came in late August on a hot summer afternoon, the day after Tessie's fifteenth birthday, when Victor returned from the city. Samuel ran up to take Tarsman, his tall black horse, watching as Victor withdrew the large package peeking from his saddlebags. Agnes watched from the upstairs window and she called to Tessie, Mary and Carl. Mercedes and Murray rushed to the doors, and by the time Victor stepped into the entrance hall, the entire household had gathered to watch Tessie open her present.

Jade came down the stairs slowly. She had been going for a swim but she stopped to watch the fun, too, greeting Victor with a slight nod before her eyes looked quickly away.

He wondered when he would develop the necessary armor to protect himself from her. A year? Two? He didn't know.

Jade, how I miss you ...

He turned to Tessie, hanging behind the others, already embarrassed and excited by the package he held out to her. It was wrapped in red paper, decorated with gold ribbons. Colorful penny candies were tied to the ends of the ribbons. Tessie just stared with her mouth wide open, a look of childlike wonder on her face.

They all gathered around with chuckles and exclamations, Mercedes voicing Tessie's hesitation: "'Tis too pretty to unwrap! What could be finer than the box itself?"

"I'm as nervous as a goose at Christmas," Tessie said as she took it from him.

As if by accident, Jade's and Victor's eyes locked again. Just for a moment, then he looked away, as if it hurt to look at her now. Jade's gaze lingered a moment longer, a questioning bewilderment there. His attention had returned to Tessie and her present. A mild shock went through Jade when she found herself thinking how handsome he looked: his impressive height, the dark skin, the rugged shadow on his unshaven face, the piercing intensity of his gaze. She noticed a cut on his muscled arm and wondered how it had happened—

She looked away, knowing she would never ask him— she avoided anything remotely personal or intimate—nor would he offer the information. The contrast stuck her where she stood. For there had been a time when they spoke of everything; their intimacy went deep. He had been her confidant, lover, mate, and she his; they had kept nothing, small or large, from each other, and every exchange seemed marked by laughter and love.

An unexpected sadness welled inside and she tried to ignore it as she, too, turned to Tessie and her gift. Victor had adopted the satisfied smile of a well-pleased man, a man who knew full well what his present would mean. Chuckling, he said, "Go on, Tessie."

Jade watched as Tessie's delicate brown hands gently tugged at the ribbons, then carefully unwrapped the paper to reveal a plain box. She cast her brown eyes at the excited party before lifting the lid.

A collective gasp sounded.

Tessie lifted up a porcelain doll that was beautiful, delicate and fine. She had large brown eyes made of glass and long curled hair, a Negro's doll with darker skin. She wore a beautiful gown

made of layers and layers of pale green velvet and darker green ribbons over voluminous lace petticoats. Tiny green slippers covered her feet, and her, hands clasped a matching parasol.

Jade spotted the note. She lifted it up and read out loud: "Here before you, Tessie mine, is your last doll to mark the setting sun of childhood ...."

The sentiment was sweet—oh, so very sweet.

Tessie stared at this, her last doll, and when Jade saw the tears filling Tessie's eyes, she glanced up at Victor. He was watching Tessie with unmasked tenderness. Jade's own emotions rose unbidden in response.

"Jade—" Mercedes blurted as Jade fled from the room.

Sometime later Victor opened the door to her room. She stood at the window with her back to him. She tensed as she heard him. Still she kept her back to him.

He knew better than to go to her. "Jade." He said her name. "Something happened ... just now. The way you looked at me."

"No." She shook her head but it was a lie. "Yes ... I don't know!"

She closed her eyes and told herself she didn't love him, she couldn't love him again.

Never, and yet his tenderness, even now as he considered her in silence, reached across the space between them, beckoning, promising something she refused to believe.

"Please leave me. I ... I don't know what happened. I don't want to think about it; I can't think about it."

She never saw the anguish in his eyes as the door shut quietly behind him as if it had never been opened.

That night she dreamt of that tenderness expressed in a kiss. She dreamt of his warm firm lips on her mouth, a kiss that was reconciliation and celebration both, and with it her heart took flight, freed to soar like a winged creature through a sky made of blue....

The long stream of summer days continued, interrupted only by Victor's appearances and exits; his stays seemed to be ever brief, lasting no more than a handful of days before he left again. This was what she contemplated as she sat on the patio, peering up over the treetops to the sunset. The sky around the setting sun was painted in blood-red colors. Murray said 'twas a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world that made the sky turn red. She wondered if it could be true that a volcanic eruption halfway around the world had the awesome power to change the color of her sunset. It seemed so fantastic.

Two noisy squirrels clamored up a nearby cypress tree.. A lizard darted over the edge of the patio. She reached a hand to Wolf Dog at her side, stroking his head. Victor had promised that the visual world would stop hurting, and so it had. She had not told anyone of the other aspect of the change: seeing things, really seeing them and experiencing a pleasure so intense as to be almost painful....

Despite every effort to stop them, memories of the days of their love pressed on her mind and played in her dreams. She had been surprised, even shocked, the first night she had awakened to erotic yearnings so powerful they seemed another kind of madness. She had thought she buried that with the shattered glass of her love, only to see she was wrong. Erotic memories of his love surfaced like the sleepy long arms of the sun stretching over the cold and dark place of her heart.

They didn't mean anything, she told herself. They didn't matter. She did not love him and would never forgive him. Not as long as she remembered...

Victor still did not think she was ready to receive society, which seemed fine with everyone. In truth, she did not feel ready to take that leap. Though goodness, there were dozens of invitations. It seemed the whole city was hosting balls and soirees in honor of Madame Lucretia's return. The thought of rejoining society made Jade panic. Everyone would want all the details of her miraculous recovery of sight, and she still could not talk about it with anyone but Mercedes, Tessie and Father Nolte.

Wolf Dog perked up, his ears upright. He jumped to his feet and raced into the darkening forest. She sighed as she watched him run off. More and more he was leaving her for the wilds, and for longer and longer amounts of time. Victor had always warned her it could happen.

Tonight, she decided, she would retire early. Darkness fell quickly, and she had no desire to confront the well-meaning company of her friends.

She finally fell into an uneasy sleep. She tossed and turned as bizarre, sometimes unpleasant, visions played in her dreams until she finally found herself at the top of the steps and turning down the hall. Her hand went to the latch. She pressed down. She stood staring into the room washed in blood.

Jade woke with a long and loud scream.

She jumped from the bed and, choked with terror and tears, she parted the mosquito net and raced into his room. The curtains stirred eerily; the bed was empty and the bedclothes undisturbed.

The silence of the room seemed to resonate with her darkest fears....

She knew he was to return that afternoon, for he had to go over the monthly accounts with her before the bank statement went off die following day.

She went about her normal routine and the morning passed slowly. She kept watching the clock, waiting, concerned more that her hair remain neat than that her monthly figures were accurate. She kept glancing at her dress, wondering if he would notice.

It was one of the first dresses he had bought for her, a white cotton-silk with tiny pastel flowers woven into the thin material. The dress seemed just a bit too tight. He had once said it was his favorite, but that she wasn't to wear it unless she was asking for trouble.

Oh, why was she wearing it? She hadn't even thought of what he'd said until Tessie had finished the buttons and tied the sash. She should change, she knew, but—

Her head turned as the door opened.

Mercedes stepped inside with a sweep of her green cotton day dress. An amused sparkle lit her hazel eyes as she sat in the chair opposite Jade. "Jade, I just have to read you this letter from Sebastian's mother. Are you busy?"