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Chapter 8
Elsa awoke with a start, neck crimped and overwarm beneath a blanket. Icy rain lashed at the library window, the view streaked and murky. Martha moved passed, making her rounds, turning on lights against the storm hastened fall of darkness.
“You’re awake,” said Martha.
Not hardly. Elsa blinked stupidly, her limbs dead-weight heavy.
Martha continued moving about, plumping a pillow, squaring a lamp, and returning the items Peter had been instructed to move back to their rightful spots.
God. Peter. Nona. The Visit. After they’d left, after Granny went to her study and Martha went, she didn’t know, somewhere, Elsa remained in the library. She pulled an easy chair around and continued to watch from the window. Just watch. She felt struck dumb and mute, overloaded, unable to process a thought or sort a feeling. She registered color. In her mind’s eye a deep ocean blue, bottomless, boundless, hypnotic. In reality, greying skies and dull browns exposed by the last few days of warmer temperatures and snowmelt. A group of deer passed, foraging at the border between field and forest. Rain, then freezing rain, was in the forecast. She found comfort in this, that one or the other would obscure Lijah’s tracks, that nature was saving her the trouble.
She’d fallen asleep and dragged herself awake now, an onerous resurrection. She pushed the blanket off her chest. She wished to be rid of it altogether but kicking herself free would have required too much effort.
Martha left the room but was back in an instant with a cool glass of water.
“You don’t need to serve me,” said Elsa, grateful, wishing she said ‘thank you’ instead. She swallowed. It tasted of the Gods, like nectar, impossibly clear, sweet, and refreshing.
“Where did you get this?”
Martha looked at her askance. “Tap water. Same as always.”
Elsa took more, savoring the taste, the slide over her tongue, and only then, swallowing. “Water doesn’t usually taste this good.”
“The water here is spring fed. Surely you knew that.”
“I, um…” Spring fed. The Culfer. The Honey Brook. “No. I mean, yes, I knew we had well water, I’d just never noticed the taste.”
Martha narrowed her eyes at her. “Then you’ve never been properly thirsty.” She took the empty glass from Elsa and set it on the side table. Martha continued to regard her.
“What?”
Still she regarded her, worrying a lip, tilting her head, weighing a decision. “Your grandmother says the visit went well.” WHAT DECISION IS MARTHA WEIGHING
Yes, she had said that, although that hadn’t been Elsa’s impression. Pushing the blanket off her lap, she supposed she’d satisfied Granny’s request to be dull and disregarded. Nona likened her to carrion, too poor a meal for her picky son. Hard to be less regarded than that. Too bad she hadn’t been trying. Otherwise, though, Elsa felt Nona had left victorious. Granny had splashed her tea, after all. That phrase – what was it – ‘Not for people like us’. That had been the decisive blow, the tectonic shift, that caused the cup to rattle. Should have been laughable, that the two shared a likemindedness, that they were equally selfish in their motivations. Instead it proved the chink in the armor, a light shown on an Achilles heel that Elsa didn’t understand and hadn’t suspected. If only Granny had laughed, or parried, or even agreed in some trivial way to the likeness, then Elsa wouldn’t be second guessing Granny, her motivations, how true her altruism, how much pretense.
Elsa extracted a leg, effectively trapping the other from the knee down in a mounded heap of heavy blanket. She felt damp, fever hot, mewling. “What about you, Martha? Do you think the visit went well?”
Martha considered. “I think the jury’s still out.”
The wind had picked up, coming in gusts, slamming the rain at the windows like waves of pebbles. Lijah had to be long gone, dry somewhere, at least she hoped so. She didn’t tell Granny she’d seen him from the window. She’d had the chance but didn’t mention it. Peter, of course, had known all along. Her gut told her Nona hadn’t. Or maybe she had. Hell, maybe Granny had known too. She’d lost her bearings; felt certain of nothing. And her body limp, hot, heavy. Hiding out and playing the pawn were exhausting. Secrets and subterfuge were exhausting. Lijah should have been here with her. Why hover at the tree line; he might as well have been in France. France. Elsa smiled. A Montreul. Incredible. She was immensely proud of him. Assuming it was true. She really hoped for him it was true.
“You understand what I mean, Elsa?”
Elsa tugged again at her foot. Gave up. “Um…”
“You understand,” she repeated. “Whether the visit was a success or not depends on you. Not your grandmother. Not Nona. You. You have to choose between them.”
Elsa bristled. Martha never spoke to her this way, like a parent. In fact, she hardly spoke to Elsa period, not in any meaningful way. Martha was Granny’s. Her right hand. More like both hands, doing the work, managing the day-to-day. But to Elsa she was just there, sharing the space, orbiting the same sun. It was striking, now that she thought about it, how separate they were to each other and in relation to Granny. She rarely witnessed Granny and Martha together. One or the other was always just leaving when Elsa came in the room. Good God, thought Elsa, sitting upright, kicking at the blanket, finally freeing her foot. Martha may well be her grandmother’s partner, as in paramour, her lover. She’d never before considered it, all those years together, just the two of them, their shared lives plain to see if she’d been looking.
Elsa’s thoughtlessness embarrassed her. Granny’s life’s partner had been no more than background to her and she had no idea how to rectify that. Her sweat damp shirt clung to her back; where the sweat had dried, her skin felt salty, gritty. She reached for the glass forgetting it was empty. Thank God Martha didn’t move to refill it.
“Still a child, aren’t you,” said Martha. “Never noticed the water. Never knew there was a choice to make.” She shook her head. “Not your fault.” The next instant, she locked eyes with Elsa, resolute. “That time is at an end.”
“I choose Granny,” said Elsa, feeling a declaration was in order. “And you, too, Martha. I choose you and Granny. Not that you’ve asked, you know, for my blessing. But you have it. You know. My blessing.” God, what was she saying?
Martha said nothing.
“I know, you weren’t asking and it’s none of my business. I’m just trying to say, I choose Granny. And you.” Cringe. She smiled self-deprecatingly, trying to smooth over the awkwardness.
Martha didn’t react: no smile, no frown, nothing.
God, enough; Martha didn’t bond and she wasn’t going to start now just because Elsa had a revelation. She looked to the window. Still raining though the wind had slackened. “Look, Nona means nothing to me. Granny is… I love her. I wouldn’t be me without her. I’d never choose Nona over Granny.”
“Nobody chooses Nona,” said Martha dismissively. “And according to your grandmother she’s not chosen you. Yet. That’s good. The best we could hope for really.”
“You don’t seriously mean Peter? That I’d choose him? He’s a superficial cad. A handsome cad, I’ll grant you that. But he’s nothing to me.”
Martha looked annoyed, as if Elsa were being deliberately obtuse. Which maybe she was, but Martha couldn’t possibly know that. She’d told no-one of Lijah, of the confidences between them. What’s more, Elsa didn’t accept that those confidences demanded some sort of reckoning. Before she could say as much, that there was no choice to make, that she didn’t have to choose between Lijah and Granny, Martha continued.
“A letter’s arrived for you. It’s in the kitchen. As is your grandmother.”
Elsa hopped up, nearly tripping on the tangle of blanket at her feet. She scooped it up and threw it on the chair.
“For me? In the mail? When did it get here?” She rarely got mail. And never here. And the mail come early, first thing in the morning.
“It was in the mailbox with the rest of the mail, but there’s no postmark. As to when,” shrugged Martha, “What with one thing and another, I didn’t check until right before this deluge.” Martha tilted her head to the kitchen door. “Your grandmother’s not known for patience.”
Elsa agreed, Granny would open the letter without compunction. It was her home. Curiosity took precedence. In this, she and Granny were identical. Elsa hurried toward the door to the kitchen. Just before entering she scrubbed her face, ran her fingers through her hair and squared her shoulders.
“I understand I have a letter?” said Elsa upon entering.
Her grandmother held a manila envelope in her hand, the kind with the little folding metal clasp and official insignia. She was slow to acknowledge Elsa as she scrutinized the outside of the envelope. When she did look up, she studied Elsa with narrow eyes before reluctantly handing it over. Elsa tugged twice before her grandmother released it.
Elsa too studied the envelope, although she tried to be casual about it. No postmark or return address, just her name and grandmother’s address scrawled in Lijah’s characteristic handwriting: firm, sure and nearly illegible. Weird. Of all the ways he could have communicated this was the least like him, the least efficient.
She didn’t know how to retreat to privacy without answering to Granny. Better to pretend it was nothing. Which perhaps it was. He had a hundred better ways to communicate with her privately if that had been his intention. She went further into the kitchen, used a knife to slit the edge and slid the contents out onto the counter.
“Who’s it from?” asked her grandmother coming up behind her. “Are those drawings?”
Shit. Whatever she’d imagined, it hadn’t been drawings. She had no idea what Lijah was up to and regretted her decision immediately. “Um… Yes. They appear to be.” Elsa kept Lijah’s name to herself. She would have slid the drawings back into the envelope if she could have, but Granny was already pawing through them. She double checked inside the envelope. Nothing more, not a single word of explanation.
There were four drawings in total, each on a different and seemingly random scrap of paper. Lijah doodled all the time: in cafés, on the phone, during meetings, a tangible release for his restless mind. These drawings, though, were like none she’d ever seen; they were beautifully rendered images. She had no idea he was so skilled, but of course, he would be, wouldn’t he, the overachieving bastard.
“Bittersweet,” said Granny, holding up the one drawn on the back of a paper menu that doubled as a placemat. Black ink detailed a sprig of bittersweet in winter, the thin, straggly branch loaded with clusters of small, tight berries recently burst from their capsules and still hooded in the delicate remnants. The bittersweet itself was pen and ink, but he’d used watercolor to add a vague wash of background hues after the fact; a hint of red on the lower half of the paper, soft wavy shades of brown above and to the left, the remainder blended stripes of dark green, grey, brown and black. The result deserved to be mounted and framed if not for the coffee-ring stain and fold down the middle.
“Why on earth would someone send you a drawing of bittersweet?” asked Granny, handing it over to Elsa, reaching for the next one.
Good question, Lijah, why bittersweet? She held the paper up in front of her and moved it out to arms-length, blurring the detail. With a start she saw the colors for what they represented: the red, her cape, the browns, her hair, the rest, an impression of a forest around her. The bittersweet was the sprig at her lapel. He’d drawn a portrait of her en route to his secret cottage and he’d drawn it in such a way that only she could recognize. Clever, assuming she’d guessed right. Sneaky.
“There’s bittersweet in all of these,” said Granny, flipping through the other three.
Really? Elsa leaned in close to her grandmother, pulling at the edges to see for herself. Of course, Granny was right. And of course, she would notice. Granny was sharp as a tack and practically clairvoyant at sensing patterns or currents hidden beneath the surface. Considering Lijah and his ocean of secrets, Elsa really wished she had chosen to open the envelope in private.
“Elsa? Why bittersweet?”
“I, ah, was thinking about planting some?” She cringed, who was she kidding. She lived in an apartment. It was the beginning of winter. She’d never planted a thing in her life. “Or get some, you know, as decoration. The berries, they’re festive.”
“They’re poisonous. And you shouldn’t plant it; it’s an invasive.”
“Oh, ah, okay.” Elsa felt like an imbecile.
Her grandmother’s shrewd eyes bore into her. “If it’s decoration you want, you could commission a proper drawing. This artist is quite talented. I might be interested in commissioning something myself. Who did these?”
“Um,” said Elsa, stalling. She wasn’t an imbecile. She was a guppy in a tank with a piranha. Which was pretty much how it had always been. Her grandmother loved her, but once she caught the scent, she’d gnaw you to the bone to get her answers. For a fleeting moment Elsa seriously considered making a run for it, but for God’s sake, she wasn’t a teenager. She stammered something unintelligible, blushed furiously. Her fluster was as damning as her grandmother prescient.
Granny’s look slid to the envelope, dragging Elsa’s along with it. She tapped the departmental insignia printed on the envelope. “Just as I thought. That Morrison boy. Lijah.”
“He’s not a boy, Granny, he’s a tenured professor.” God, as if Lijah’s stature was relevant or in need of defending.
“So why is tenured professor Lijah Morrison sending you drawings? Of bittersweet? Don’t tell me he’s waxing poetic?”
Again, her first thought juvenile; why wouldn’t he wax poetic? He was capable; she was worthy. She shook her head, hating her need for Granny’s approval, and forced herself to address the question objectively. Could the drawings be Lijah’s version of a keepsake? Too haughty by half if she didn’t know him, but she’d seen his home chock full of nostalgic artifacts and she’d experienced a decade’s worth of quiet but thoughtful gestures. And there was occasion. A first date of sorts. A momentous kiss. For her, the memory burned bright and precious enough to outshine everything else, all the mess that came before and after. Lijah would agree, she thought, at least in spirit, his brain incapable of idling outside all other considerations. Perhaps then, inspired by love, driven to express his adoration…
“Elsa? Cat got your tongue?”
She bit her lip. Four highly specific, subtly referenced and carefully executed drawings sent to her via post to her grandmother’s house. No way. There was no way Lijah lavished that much effort for the sole purpose of a sentimental keepsake. It was too simple, meaning for Lijah, inefficient, a wasted opportunity. Romance, if intended at all, would be but one his purposes, and not the most urgent. God, if she could just get half a second to sort it out.
“Els…”
“Honestly, Granny, I don’t know. He has his teeth in a hundred pies. His research takes him in a thousand directions. I agree, bittersweet appears to have caught his attention. That was yesterday or whenever he sent these.” Elsa stalled, remembering the absent postmark. Today. He’d delivered them personally, or, possibly, had Peter do it for him. She became aware she’d stopped talking. “So, um, yeah, whatever. By now he’s probably moved on to Fortran, or foot binding, or something. Honestly, there’s no telling.”
Granny drummed her fingers on the counter. “It’s my experience, Elsa, that when someone says ‘honestly’, it’s rarely what they mean. You said it twice.”
“Well in my case, it’s exactly what I mean.”
“You honestly don’t know, or you’re honestly not telling?”
“God, Granny! They’ve only just arrived. I’ve hardly had a chance to look at them.” Elsa started to gather them up into a pile, but Granny pulled them back apart, spreading them in a row across the counter.
“This one appears to be a door. Graphite, I think. On butcher paper. No blood stains, thank goodness. So? Do you recognize it?”
“Um… No, not really,” said Elsa. Which was to say, she recognized it immediately as the front door to Lijah’s cottage, aside from a few glaring discrepancies. Both were tall, wide, windowless and rustic. Both were made of dark hued wood, unpainted but deeply carved. And both had hand-forged handles and hinges, although Elsa thought those in the drawing were less ornate, more barn-door traditional. The major difference between the drawn and real door, however, was in the detail of the carving. The drawing showed bittersweet, that wound and twisted over the entire carvable space within a bordering frame. The carvings on the actual door, however, was a tiled work in process, with multiple intricate scenes, none of which involved bittersweet. At least to the best of her recollection; she hadn’t had a lot of time to study it. Still, there could be no mistaking the likeness. The door in the drawing opened onto a porch that sat three steps above ground, just like at the cottage; Lijah’s ax, which she’d used to bar the door upon her escape, was shown leaning handle-up immediately adjacent.
“Maybe it’s not a real door at all,” said Granny to Elsa’s relief. “It has a fantastical or mystical appearance, like something you’d find in a fairy tale illustration. You two study that sort of thing, don’t you, old texts and whatnot? You’re sure you don’t recognize it from your research?”
Elsa shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. She didn’t dare say a word one way or the other, knowing how adept Granny was at detecting half-truths and misdirection.
“A metaphor then. Doors often symbolize change, new beginnings. Although this door is closed. And the bittersweet is rather ominous. Good heavens, have you two had an unhappy love affair? Is that why you’re here?”
“No! No. It’s definitely not that, I can assure you,” said Elsa, relieved to have an honest answer.
“Well I should hope not. Workplace relationships, very unprofessional.”
Elsa hated every single thing about this conversation. While her brain ran in a hundred directions, Granny shuffled the papers around, moving the third one front and center.
This drawing had the appearance of a traditional still life, except it was rendered in pencil on a horizontal sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook. The image depicted an old, round, wooden table, its surface where visible nicked and pitted. On top sat a baking sheet with half a dozen triangular-shaped scones; oven mitts suggested they were fresh from the oven. Pushed to the side on the table, but centered in the overall tableaux, stood three sprigs of bittersweet in a glass vase like fresh cut flowers. Also on the table waited a stack of two plates and napkins as well as open crocks of butter, jam and honey. Although the table and accoutrement were drawn with realistic precision, the remainder of the image consisted of a few scant lines suggesting floor, wall and doorway.
Elsa smiled, the scones reminding her of the banter they’d shared. Back when he’d extended his invitation. Back when his secret cottage was no more than an eccentric’s hideaway, the place where he did his baking. Her smile waned. How quickly that simple beginning had turned complicated, overwhelming, and burdensome. For now, his secrets were hers to keep, at least until she better understood them.
“This looks like an invitation,” said Granny, stooped over the picture.
“What?” said Elsa alarmed.
Granny looked up at her from over her shoulder. “You don’t agree? Pastry, fresh from the oven, plates at the ready, the vase a bit of decoration.”
“Could be, I suppose, or a study in domesticity. That’s one of his areas of expertise, the normalization of sacred or ritualized behaviors into everyday life.”
Granny straightened upright and tilted her head for a second look. “Your suggesting… Scones as sacrament. Tea-time a reenactment of holy communion.”
“Oh Granny. All I’m suggesting is that seeing an invitation in a picture of scones is a bit of a reach.”
Granny raised an eyebrow; no need to say aloud which of their respective explanations had been a reach.
Turning their attention to the final drawing, it depicted a forest scene and was by far the most colorful and elaborate. He’d drawn it on heavy, whitish paper that was crinkled and a little bit gritty, as if it had been rescued from the trash or, thought Elsa, catching a hint of wood smoke, the hearth. He’d used ordinary, colored markers and then cut-out the picture after the fact into an imperfect square, like a child’s art project, something you’d stick on the refrigerator. In contrast, the image revealed a deliberate and capable hand, combining realistic and impressionistic elements to achieve the dual perspective of a wide, thick, predominantly evergreen forest as seen close-up from within its midst and, simultaneously, from a bird’s eye remove. Bittersweet tied the perspectives together, appearing in the foreground in a gangly tangle, and then in tiny shocks of red and yellow subtly woven throughout the rest of the forest. Like a kid with a maze, Elsa wanted to trace all of the bittersweet in a single line from start to finish.
“Hm. Odd,” said Granny.
“What do you mean, how so?” Elsa scanned the picture avidly, trying to find what her grandmother had picked up on. And then she knew. The drawing was a map. The three large oaks his hidden cottage, the bittersweet sprigs Hansel’s breadcrumbs. Elsa’s heart pounded, panicked that Granny had figured it out too while at the same time immensely pleased that Lijah wanted and trusted her. It was in this moment of panicked relief that she understood the terrible fear she’d harbored, that Lijah had changed his mind, that he’d abandoned her. That realization gave her great clarity of purpose. She wanted nothing more than to simply walk out the door and go find him. There was, however, the matter of Granny.
“I mean,” said Granny, don’t you think it odd that the other pictures are closeups but this one is drawn from a distance?”
“I don’t know, one’s a table, the other a door, and this a forest. I don’t really see the difference.”
“You don’t recognize it? The location?”
“No. Why? Do you?”
Granny continued to study it. She traced along the edges as if trying to place the shape from memory. “No. I don’t think I do. Those trees there, a cluster of oak amongst the evergreen, they might be a landmark, although they are off center. You’re sure you don’t recognize them.”
“Honestly, Granny, I think it’s just a forest, you know, the concept, a representation, not an actual one.”
“Honestly,” repeated Granny vaguely.
To Elsa’s immense relief, Granny chose to end the discussion. She pushed the scattered drawings into a rough pile and resolutely turned her back on them. She scanned Elsa head to foot.
“You’ll want to shower. I have some work to attend to. Seems to me your time here is coming to an end. We’ll discuss the logistics at dinner. Martha?”
Granny left the room. Martha remained just long enough to gather the pictures into a neat pile and slide them into the envelope. She held Elsa’s gaze for a moment – communicating neither pity, nor gloat, nor question. If her expression said anything at all it was that Elsa should take her things as she would need the counter space for dinner prep.