Celeste Page 3

  Mommy looked at me. and I shook my head. How I wished I could say otherwise, tell her I had seen or heard something. but I hadn't. She closed and opened her eyes with that patient confidence that told me I would, Don't worry.

  "Can I. Mama? Can I?" Noble cried. "You promised if I sat still. You promised."

  "All right, We'll all go out and look until your father comes home," she relented, and Noble leaped off the sofa, out of the living room and down the hallway to fetch his flashlight, a present Daddy had given him on his last birthday. It was a long blackhandled one, almost as long as his little arm, with a powerful beam that reached the tops of trees bordering the lawn and meadow. He liked to surprise awls.

  Mommy and I followed him out, walking slowly behind him. It was a warm, relatively cloudless early spring night. Stars were twinkling so brightly they looked like they were dancing. Noble rushed around to the east side of our house. The half moon was already behind it so that the lunar illumination stretched the shadow of our home into the darkness.

  Mommy's great-grandpa Jordan had built a house that drew a lot of interest from passersby. We had a long driveway off one of the main highways.

  Sometimes. when I was alone or Noble was off doing something that occupied him completely. I'd look toward the highway to see cars. It was just far enough away so that I couldn't make out the people well, only shapes I imagined to be families, husbands and wives and children who surely wondered who lived so far off the road in that grand old house. These were people I longed to know. children I wished were my friends, but whom I knew I never would know. Even then I knew. Sometimes people would stop and look at our house. Occasionally, I saw some take pictures of it.

  It had a steeply hipped roof with two lower cross gables, but it was the tower at the west corner of the front facade that drew the most attention. I thought. The round attic space was used only for storage, but for Noble especially it made our home into a castle and a setting for his pretending,

  "Look!" he screamed, shining his flashlight on the anthill.

  Lines of them were marching up and down, in and out, busy and determined, carrying dead insects and pieces of leaves.

  "Ugh," I said, imagining them getting into the house as they did from time to time. Daddy had to spray and set traps.

  "You shouldn't reject Nature." Mommy chastised. "Noble's curiosity is healthy and leads to learning. Celeste," she told me.

  It seemed to me that she proudly pointed out Noble's best qualities whenever she could, but merely acknowledged mine or leaped upon my shortcomings.

  She went into her schoolteacher voice, as I liked to call it.

  "What you see, children, is cooperation at its peak. Every ant contributes to the success of the hive. They don't think of themselves as separate. They are like cells in our bodies, interacting, building, existing for the success of the whole and not themselves. When we're like that, we do the best work. A family is a team. too.

  "In fact," she said. "don't look at the ants as ants. Think of the whole hive as one living thing, and you will understand them better. Can you do that. Noble?"

  He nodded, even though I could see in his eyes that he had no real idea about what she had been saying. Nevertheless. Mommy ran her hand through his hair and squeezed him against her. Whenever she embraced him without embracing me. too. I felt as if I was floating in space. lost.

  We stood there watching the ants work. Mommy holding Noble's hand and I standing beside them, tears waking under my eyelids for reasons I didn't quite understand. I swallowed against a throat lump and took a deep breath.

  Mommy turned and looked at me. A long, thick cloud began to block out the moon, and the light on her face went out as if someone had turned it off in the sky.

  Mommy spun and gazed out at the now thickening darkness, her arms locking, her body so still. My heart began to pound. She hears something, sees something, I thought. The invading cloud had almost completely covered the moon. "Mommy?" I said.

  She waved at me to be silent,

  Noble knelt to look closer at his ants. He was oblivious to anything else.

  "We've got to go back inside," Mommy said suddenly and reached down to seize Noble's arm, forcing him to stand.

  "Why?'' he whined,

  "There's something evil out there, something dark and evil circling us. Quickly," she said.

  She started for the house. I followed, afraid to look back. Noble was near tears, his body turned so he could look back at his ants.

  "But you said we could look at the ants!" he moaned.

  "Just walk," Mommy ordered, practically dragging him along now.

  As soon as we were back inside, she slammed the door shut and hurried us to the living room, where she closed the curtains. Then she went to light one of her candles.

  Noble stood there looking disgusted and angry.

  "I'm going to sneak out and go back to my ants," he vowed. "Don't!" I said, fearing for him. "You heard Mommy."

  "I didn't see anything evil,- he said sharply and ran through the house and up to his room.

  Mommy returned with a candle and placed it near the front window, which she closed quickly.

  She looked at me and then at her watch. What was she so worried about? I wondered,

  And then I thought.,, Daddy.

  Shouldn't he be home by now?

  2

  Daddy's Amulet

  .

  Daddy was at a meeting with a prospective

  home builder. When he and Mommy were first married, he had his own construction company, but it was very small and Daddy actually only did work in conjunction with bigger companies. He didn't have the financing to do much more. Mommy remained a schoolteacher until we were born. She went on extended maternity leave and then decided not to return, but instead to spend her time raising us. She said she believed the early years were the most important when it came to bringing up children.

  For a while it was a financial struggle, but a little more than a year after we had been born. Grandma Gussie died and Mommy and Daddy inherited the house and the land and money left in an interest-bearing bank account that was from Grandpa Richard Jordan's life insurance policy. Little of it had been touched after he had fallen off the ladder and died. With that money Daddy and his partner formed a bigger construction company and began to build custom homes. Although he wasn't educated as an architect, his imaginative ideas attracted the interest of more discriminating home buyers, and soon he had three outstanding examples to show other prospective buyers.

  One of his homes was written up in a statewide magazine and brought him even more attention. Soon he had five men working for him full time in his offices, and then he was given the opportunity to build a custom home development with a very big firm out of New York City.

  Mommy was very proud of his

  accomplishments. I never thought of us as being rich people, but apparently we were doing so well we could afford expensive things like a luxury car, a company jeep, a company truck, better lawn tractors and tools, and nice clothes for Noble and me. although Daddy complained often that no one saw us dressed nicely because Mommy kept us at home so much.

  "I'm making all this money," he practically bellowed at her. "but you won't take an expensive vacation. You won't consider putting the children into private school. You hardly spend anything on your own wardrobe. You rarely ever want to go to a fine restaurant."

  "We must not let money change us. Arthur," she warned. "It can do that." "Oh." he said, nodding and pacing about the room when he argued with her. "And where did you get that tidbit of wisdom? One of the dead relatives?"

  "If you must know, yes," she said without hesitation. "I had a great-uncle. Uncle Samuel, who made a lot of money in the stock market. He forced his wife to do fancy things, dress fancy and go to balls and charity events, have her picture in the newspaper on the society pages, become friends with other wealthy women."

  "So?" "She met someone who seduced her, and she became pregnant again.
"

  Daddy looked at Noble and me. We were sitting at our little desks, doing our spelling

  workbooks. Actually. Noble was sketching insects in the margins. He was very good at it. I was listening to Daddy and Mommy, but pretending I wasn't.

  "And?" Daddy said.

  "And my uncle threw her out. Her lover disowned her as well, and she died when she went to a filthy place to have an abortion."

  "How come I never heard this story before?" he asked suspiciously.

  "I just heard it myself recently," she replied. He looked at her and shook his head.

  "Okay, Sarah," he said with a deep, tired sigh. "We'll pretend I'm not successful."

  "I'm not saying we have to do that, but we have to be sensible about what we do with our money and ourselves."

  He smiled.

  "Sorry," he said, digging into his pocket and plucking out a small box. "I couldn't help not being sensible this one time."

  He handed the box to her. and I stared in wonder. Noble continued to draw.

  "What is this?" she asked, not opening it. She held it as if it would turn into something too hot to hold any moment.

  "I told you. I couldn't help myself." he said. "I saw it. and I envisioned it on you. Complain to your spirits about me."

  She shook her head at him as if he were an errant child, opened the box, and then looked up at him without taking out what was in it.

  "Is it real?"

  "Of course its real," he said.

  Carefully, timidly, she took out the necklace. There was a pear-shaped diamond in the middle, almost as big as my thumb. It glittered so brightly. I thought it had a tiny bulb inside it.

  Daddy rushed forward and took it from her.

  "Let me put it on you he said, undoing the chain and going behind her.

  She let him. and then put her hand aver the diamond when he stepped in front of her.

  "Don't cover it," he said.

  "I wanted to feel it, feel its energy," she said.

  Daddy raised his eves to the ceiling and glanced at me to pull on his earlobe. I bit down on my lower lip. Mommy walked to the mirror on the wall and stared at herself for a long silent moment. Both Daddy and I were holding our breaths. I think.

  "If s beautiful," she finally said, and then added, "too beautiful."

  "Nothing is too beautiful for a beautiful woman. Sarah," he said.

  She relented, turned and smiled at him.

  "You're incorrigible now. Arthur Madison Atwell."

  "I hope so.' he said with a twinkle in his eye. "Maybe later you'll continue explaining all this to me in private," he added. and Mommy blushed, glanced at me, and shook her head, turning quickly to hide her smile.

  The necklace was the first very expensive gift Daddy ever gave Mommy. Spending money. enjoying their new wealth, really did seem to frighten her. She talked a lot about the evil eye and said it was something her grandmother had described and warned her about when she was a little girl. It always made Daddy angry to hear about it, so she rarely spoke about it in front of him.

  "Jealous spirits," she told us. "see your happiness, especially when you flaunt it, and then they do something, throw down a curse, a trap, and make you miserable. Never be too proud, too ostentatious, too showy about the nice things you have and the wonderful things that happen to you or you achieve. Always be modest, children." she warned us.

  Noble tucked in his cheek and stared at her blankly because there were so many words he didn't understand. but I knew enough to make my heart thump. How do you know when you're tempting evil spirits? I wondered. I wanted to ask. but I didn't like talking about them either.

  Anyway. Daddy's gift gave Mommy an idea. It was an idea that needed to be nurtured between her and her good spirits. She went out alone night after night and listened for advice, and then, one day, she told Daddy she wanted him to take her shopping. She knew exactly where she wanted to go, and she said she would take us to lunch, too, which surprised him, but he was so happy to take us all out for the day, he didn't question anything. He didn't have any idea what it was she wanted to buy either.

  She took us to a jeweler whom we would discover she had known for a long time. He had moved his shop to the main street of a village almost thirty miles away from us, which was where Mommy preferred to do most of our supermarket shopping anyway. Daddy complained about that and made her shop locally whenever he could. It was as if she never wanted local people to see us and ask her any questions about us or her. As soon as we arrived in the town. Daddy grumbled.

  "I don't know what was so important about driving this far. There's nothing much here for the children." he said.

  "Yes, there is," she insisted. "What's here is exactly for the children." she told him.

  Still puzzled, he drove along the main street until she told him to stop, and she got out, taking us both by the hand and leading us into the jeweler's shop called Bogart's Estate Jewelry, Daddy followed, scratching his head, amused, but also a little embarrassed. What was this all about? He wondered. I could see it in his face because the same look was in mine. Noble was disappointed it wasn't a toy store.

  When the store owner revealed he knew Mommy well, no one was more surprised than Daddy because Mommy never bought herself any jewelry, at least that he or I knew.

  "Hello, Sarah," he said. "It's been a long time." "Mr. Bogart, how are you?" Mommy asked him. He shrugged.

  "I don't ask myself so I don't have to worry about the answer." he said. smiling.

  About Mommy's height. Mr. Bogart had a mostly bald head but curly gray hair along the sides. His eyes were like Noble's and mine, blue and then green when he moved from the dimmer light to the bright sunshine streaming in through the small front window. He had soft, very light red lips and a slight cleft in his round chin. He was dressed in a black leather vest over a white shirt and a pair of black slacks, but wore what looked like black leather slippers with no socks. I saw how red his ankles were, as red as a rash.

  His shop wasn't very big. It was narrow with dark wood and glass cases on both sides. The cases were filled with all sorts of jewelry, including watches of all kinds. There was something burning on one of the counters. I recognized it to be similar to the in' cense Mommy burned occasionally.

  "These are my children," Mommy said, taking us both by the shoulder and pushing us forward to stand in front of her.

  Mr. Bogart looked at us carefully and nodded slowly. smiling.

  "Gussie's eyes," he said.

  "Yes," Mommy replied. smiling. That was the first time I had heard that Noble and I had our maternal grandmother's eyes. Why hadn't Mommy ever said so before? It was as if she needed Mr. Bogart to confirm it first and had brought us here to his shop just for that.

  Daddy cleared his throat.

  "Oh, this is my husband. Arthur Atwell, Mr, Bogart."

  "Pleased to meet you," Mr. Bogart said, extending his small, puffy hand.

  Daddy shook it quickly, nodded, and then looked at Mommy with an expression that said. "What are we doing here?"

  She turned away from him quickly.

  "I've come because it's time the children had their amulets, Mr. Bogart."

  "Of course,' he said. "I was expecting you,"

  "Huh?" Daddy couldn't help uttering.

  "Amulets?"

  Why was Mr. Bogart expecting us? I wondered. too. A little while ago, he didn't seem to have known who we were or that Mommy had a boy and a girl.

  "I know what I need." Mommy said.

  "I'm sure you do." Mr. Bogart replied with a twinkle in his eyes and stepped around to walk to the case on the left, closest to the front of the store.

  Mommy moved us toward it. too. Daddy, now looking more upset, stood back and folded his arms, which was something I knew he did when he was growing angry.

  "Sarah," he said through his clenched teeth. "what are you doing?"

  "Please. Arthur, this is important," she muttered and turned back to the jewelry case. She studied everything a
nd then nodded and pointed to a pendant on a gold chain.

  "This one is for Noble," Mommy told Mr. Bogart.

  "All yes, the Krona,'' he said, opening the back of the case and reaching for a round gold pendant. On it was a design that looked like a worm with arms and legs in the process of running. That was exactly what Noble thought, too.

  "A worm?" he said.

  "No. no," Mr. Bogart said. smiling. "It isn't a worm, young man. This is a powerful talisman." He looked up at Daddy, who was glaring down at the amulet, "The Krena activates psychic powers," he said.

  "What does that mean?" I asked softly, and he looked at me and smiled warmly.

  "It helps you focus yourself on your wishes, makes your dreams come true. Everyone has psychic powers, but most of us never use them," he said, lifting his eyes a little toward Daddy, who was embracing himself harder. The veins in his neck were becoming prominent. "The Krena absorbs the energy within your aura and focuses it on the wish of your choice."

  "What?" Daddy asked grimacing. "More gobbledy-gook magic?"

  Mr. Bogart looked at us and then at Mommy. "You haven't told them about this. Sarah?"

  "I- wanted them to see it and hear it from you. Mr. Bogart," she said. and Mr. Bogart smiled.

  He handed the pendant and chain to Mommy, and she turned to Noble, keeping her eves diverted from Daddy and stepping between him and Noble.

  "You need this. Noble. I want you to wear it always. Never, ever take it off. understand?"

  He looked up at Mr. Bogart. "It's a worm," he said firmly.

  "No, it's not, but you will understand what it is later. I'm sure of that," Mommy said, and she put it around his neck and fixed the clatch.

  He looked down at it and then at me.

  "What about Celeste?" he asked, now more intrigued with what I would be getting. So was I. For a long moment. I thought Mommy had decided to buy only Noble something. I was practically in tears already.

  Mommy turned to Mr. Bogart, and then she pointed to another.