Day 1

After they got home and paid the sitter, after Marion went to her room, and he knew she was asleep, he stepped out the front door.

Starting the car, he told himself, would wake his wife and child.

But that wasn’t the real reason he slipped into his fur.

He wanted to make a point. That’s what it was.

But how did one make a point to Grandmere? It occured to him that he really had no clue.

Maybe changing tonight was for himself. At times, four legs felt more solid than two.

When he had four legs, the very thought of standing upright seemed dangerous, unbalanced.

Probably not a healthy attitude, but there it was.

Her light was on.

She was awake.

He knew she had wards in place, but they weren’t for him, so he could not smell, feel, see or hear them.

Which bothered him, especially when he was furred. His animal side saw them as a danger more dire for being unsensed.

That’s what came of the dual nature, of the beast inside him talking to the man.

He always had to convince his bestial self to step into the house.

She was upstairs.

He would wait even if it took all night.

And then she was there, smelling of tallow and smoke and bitter herbs. She must have been at her work table.

“Leves-toi.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“There is trouble again, Grandmere.”

“Another priest? Another witchfinder?”

“Not a priest, but yes, a witchfinder of sorts.”

“He is a threat to my sister, her children. Especially to your great-granddaughter.”

“Hurt that weak little thing? Why? How?” Grandmere cocked an eyebrow.

“He and his men will seize her, perhaps?” she asked, her voice dry. “Crush her hands, violate her and carry her off to a dungeon?”

“No, Grandmere, of course not.”

Burn her? Hang her?”

“No,” he said. “Grandmere…” If only he could find the words that would make her understand. He looked down.

“Your great grandaughter is not talented as you are, as my father was, or all of your children. But she is talented in a different way. Her brains… Grandmere, she is gifted, brilliant. She wants to go to school on the mainland, a wonderful school, and she could, she has the chance. But these men will take that chance away from her. And that school, Grandmere, it’s a very special…”

“Yes. Harvard. I know all about that. Straighten up and look at me, boy.”

He looked at her.

“The troubles of the untalented” she said, “are none of my business.”

For a moment he couldn’t speak. She smiled. “Ah, now I have made you angry, yes? I once meddled often in mundane matters. It was necessary early on, when we were poor, and making pennies from love potions and palm readings but now…”

She made a gesture that encompassed the house. “No more. Never again. Not unless it affects true members of our family. And this is does not. No, boy, don’t bow your head again and genuflect. It will do no good.”

“Grandmere, it will break her heart if…”

“That is what hearts are for. If you feel responsible for your niece, and are so worried about the state of her heart, find her a wealthy husband. No magic would be needed for that. I’ve seen how men look at her.”

She turned away.

“Now go. I have important work to do.”

Day 2

Artiste’s voice was unbearable.

Once it had been rich, deep, and controlled. He’d used it like a musical instrument from his pulpit, and there had been a ring of confident intelligence that carried listeners wherever he wanted them to go.

Now it was faint and it shook as badly as his hands. Now it was uncertain and untethered to reality.

“I must go to New York,” he said again. “I can explain it to them. I’m sure I can make them understand.”

“No, Artiste, no, not yet” Laurette said.

“You must stay here until you are stronger.”

And Lucas said “That’s right Grandpa. Rest up.”

“No sense in going while you still feel bad.”

Artie said nothing. He didn’t trust his own voice.

His father would never again be strong. His father would never again be well, or the man Artie remembered.

Artiste had seen the article in the Island Beacon, the one with where that senator had said those things. Lately, Laurette had been retrieving the morning and afternoon editions and destroying them after a quick read, but somehow this morning’s paper had ended up in Artiste’s hands.

“How did this happen?” Artie asked Laurette.

“How did you let this happen?”

“Artie…” said Mimi quietly.

“I must have forgotten,” Laurette said, even though she was sure she hadn’t.

She was positive something else, something she couldn’t bear to tell her stepson, had put the paper in Artiste’s sight.

The senator had laughed at them. The senator had spoken of Touperdu as though it were an Island of unsophisticated natives who were putty in the hands of subversive reds.

The senator had implied that both Bill and Artiste were communist traitors. And lying cowards. “It would seem,” he was quoted as saying, “that the two principal witnesses we’d like to question have coincidentally fallen ill at exactly the same time.” There was a picture of the man smirking.

And Artiste had decided he would fly to New York, sit before that committee, and explain everything to them, make it plain he was no Communist. Go to New York when he walked in a tired, bent shuffle. Talk to those hyenas when he could barely speak above a whisper. Convince them and anyone listening when he so frequently became confused, so often could not connect ideas, command language as he once could.

He’d been so insistent Laurette had made some panicked phone calls to anyone she thought might help. Artie and Mimi and Lucas had come. And Marion and Judith.

And Kitty.

Now everyone was sitting around the patio. It occured to Laurette that she should bring something out on a tray, some lemonade perhaps, or cookies, but she couldn’t.

There were moments these days when the thought of just rising from a chair seemed impossible.

Judith hated to admit it, but along with being concerned about her uncle, she was intrigued. She had always thought of Artiste as Tante Laurette’s husband. Of course, she’d known he had a family of his own, and had seen them — all of them togther at St. Elmo’s on Sunday, Lucas and Ella at school, Artie and Mimi at The Rose, and Kitty Rose…. Well, she was usually someone pointed out from a distance, or a figure on a stage, a voice on the radio.

But now that they were up close, she could see how deep, how complex a family could be. She could see that Artie was very upset, and his wife was worried about him almost as much as she was worried about her father-in-law.

She could see that Mimi had a lovely smile…

…that could quickly, when she thought nobody was looking, fall into what seemed like well worn, familiar lines of worry.

She could see that Lucas resembled his mother, and, juding from the quiet conversation she’d seen shortly after she arrived, was used to providing emotional support to his parents, was more attuned to their moods and needs than most 19-year-olds.

And Kitty… She looked like an ordinary elderly woman except for those eyes — “Roselyn eyes,” she’d once heard Artiste call them, a strange deep blue, like Artie’s and Mayor Abbot’s.

There was something flamboyant and engaging about Kitty that made Judy remember something Artiste had said years ago. “Kitty never just comes into a room. She enters stage right or stage left.”

“So you’re the clever girl I’ve been hearing about,” Kitty said. “You must have your Uncle Greg’s brains.”

Kitty leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice, her smile suddenly bright with mischief. “He is a rascal, you know!”

“Really?”

“Oh yes! When we were in school Greg was always running off, always getting into trouble. And, oh, he was handsome as a young man!” She looked serious. “I prayed for him. Still do. Men like that can be so silly about their souls.”

“I don’t understand,” Artiste was saying to Laurette in his quavering voice, “Why you won’t let me go… You are standing in my way, Laurette.” He tried to smile. ” You are not being a good wife at all…”

“Oh Artiste!” Exclaimed Kitty. “Such talk!”

“Yes, really, Artiste,” Marion stood near him, bending over his shoulder. “You mustn’t say things like that.”

“But I just… Why is everyone here? Are we having a party?” his voice trailed off into a whisper and Judy could see Marion and Laurette bending even closer to him, hear them making soft, soothing noises.

“Prayers,” said Kitty quietly, “I’m saying so many of them these days.” She looked around and shook her head. “I never liked this place. Bad memories.”

Judy had forgotten. Artiste’s first wife, Kitty’s sister, had drowned off the stretch of beach nearby, her body lost, carried by strong currents out to the ocean. Many people believed it had been a suicide though everyone also said Kitty, who had been there, insisted it was an accident.

Judith willed her eyes not to go to the little stone a few yards away with the name “Peony” on it and the date, “1900.”

“Do you think,” Laurette said to Marion, “You could go into the house and fetch his tonic?”

“Of course,” said Marion, a little puzzled. She realized Laurette probably didn’t like leaving Artiste’s side when he was upset, but it was almost as if Laurette were afraid to go into the house. “Where is it?”

“Look in the refrigerator. A bottle with a greenish tint. Just pour it into a glass and stir it a little. He likes it chilled but…” Laurette hesitated, then said, as if ashamed. “If you don’t find it there, look around. Sometimes I think… I think he moves things. Puts them in places they don’t belong.”

Laurette turned back towards her husband. Artie had moved to her seat and was watching his father.

Marion stepped into the house and thought, not for the first time, that the family needed to figure out a way to pry Laurette and Artiste out of this pokey little place. It was depressing and it was damp.

Especially damp. Heavens, the place smelled like seawater.

She opened the refrigerator.

No greenish bottle.

Well, Laurette had said to look around. Marion opened some cabinets and drawers. No bottle. She turned, puzzled, and sighed, breathing in an unmistakeable whiff of the sea.

Was there a leak in the house? Could the ocean mist have condensed over the roof at night and trickled in?

Marion tried to figure out where it it was coming from. She went into the bathroom. No, the scent was actually weaker there. But when she stepped towards the bedroom…

Yes, it was especially strong there. She scanned the floor for puddles, looked at the ceiling and walls in search of stains.

Nothing to indicate a leak, but a dresser drawer was half out. On impulse, Marion went over pulled it all the way open.

She picked up the bottle, trying to decide if there was any point in telling Laurette where she’d found it.

Artiste was sipping his tonic, now. It did seem to Kitty that it made him feel better, more settled, and the fact that he didn’t merely drop off to sleep both suprised and reassured her. His voice still shook, but his eyes had a bit of his own keenness, softened with the resignation of an invalid. Artie was talking to him, and every now and then Artiste nodded.

“You’re right, son. Of course you’re right,” she heard Artiste say in his new, soft voice.

Kitty considered ordering Art to give Laurette the chair he commandeered, but now Laurette was deep in conversation with Leon’s wife.

The off-Islander. Marion. That was her name. A very nice woman, everyone said. (Men like Leon Duday always seemed to marry “very nice” women.) Marion looked like she was trying to convince Laurette of something.

And now that nice Scardino girl was talking to Lucas, asking him the usual questions about what he was studying at Kilkenny, and Mimi had moved her seat to be closer to Artiste and was putting her own oar in, saying something to him that had Artie nodding eagerly and saying “you see, Papa, Mimi agrees…” Nobody at the moment, Kitty thought, had time for an old chanteuse.

She could be alone with Pinny.

Kitty stood up and walked past everybody to the little stone with its rosebushes and posies. The voices behind her seemed to fade. Laurette, Marion, Judith, all were devout. They would know not to trouble her.

She had her rosary with her, as always.

She crossed herself. She bowed her head and closed her eyes.

“De profundis clamavi ad te Domine…”

The sound of her own voice, the reassuring smoothness and heaviness of the rosary, it was as if she could feel God’s arms around her. It was like when she was a little girl and frightened or upset. Papa would lift her onto his lap and coax her into saying what was wrong, and all the world would fall into place. When he was angry, Papa had terrified her, but at those moments, looking up into his dark eyes, breathing in the faint odor of garlic, sweat and pepper, she would know that, no matter what, her invincible father would never allow anyone or anything to hurt her.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus…”

How long had it been since she prayed over this little stone? Why, she must have been young the last time, unmarried, back in the days when her heart was more rebellious, back when her prayers were choked with sobs and disbelief.

Perhaps things hadn’t changed so much. Once again, she felt tears sting her eyes.

But, yes it was different. She was older and calmer. How she had thrashed about when she was young, struggling not to believe! She’d even dreamed up Pinny’s ghost, imagined she’d seen her washing dishes in the kitchen of Pond House. If Pinny had truly returned, back then, and they had talked, it would have been a duet of young voices, another girlish, bouncing conversation about men and the future.

Now Kitty’s old voice would be like a creaky violin playing slowly, out of tune with the musical chatter of a young woman. Some things could not be recaptured, even if the green that surrounded her, the sound of the waves striking the beach behind her, the smell of grass was unchanged. Even when she could smell the cool breath of the ocean as it touched her face…

But she was not facing the water.

Kitty looked up.

“Aunt Kitty,” It was Lucas. “Who was…?”

“Nobody was there!” she exclaimed.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just thought I saw someone. You seemed to be looking there too.”

“No. No, there was nothing,” she said.

“Nothing at all.”