Rain Village (39 page)

I threw her jewelry angrily back into the box. How could the memory be so fresh after so many years? No matter how far I went, how much I succeeded, it was always
this.
This anger, this loss. Everything circled back to it.

I felt I had grasped nothing, trying to piece together who Mary was, why she had drowned herself in the river, why she had picked me out of the crowd and seen something in me that no one had seen before.

I walked to her bed, bent down, and rested my head on the quilt. I breathed in, imagined the imprint of her body on the fabric. How could I get any closer to her than this? No matter what I found in Rain Village, it couldn’t change the fact that she had left me, that I could never get back to her, never love or know her more perfectly than I had. It could never change what my father had done to me. It could never change that there had been a sadness in her I couldn’t understand.

I might never learn the truth, I realized. But even if I could whirl back in time and stand right there next to her as she confronted her fate, standing by the river on that long-ago day, it wouldn’t change who Mary was. What she had meant to me. What I had lost when she left.

When I finally dragged myself back downstairs, it felt as though hours had passed. I thought how hard it would be to get back to the hotel, through the tangled wood. The stairway was so dark I had to feel my way down the banister, into the dim light of the living room.

Costas and Isabel sat side by side on the couch, barely looking up
when I entered the room. She was telling him stories, I realized, about his mother, about his grandparents, and as I walked toward them he looked up at me.

“Tessa,” he said, “are you okay?”

Isabel stopped midsentence and followed his gaze. “You miss her,” she said simply, her expression suddenly serious.

“Yes,” I said. I was crying. I brought my hands to my chest and realized the whole front of my shirt was wet with tears.

“I still miss her, too,” she said.

I wiped my face, sat in the chair she had occupied before. I looked at Isabel. Her hair glimmering in the dim light. Her blue eyes focused on mine, sparkling out at me. This must be hard on her, I thought. Learning so much in one day, having the whole world come hurtling through the front door after all the care she’d taken to keep it out. I looked at Costas. It seemed clear then that this was what he had come here for. To be with her, to help her. I wanted to remind him of his wife and son, to tell him not to forget them, but it hit me, right then, that he had left them long before now.

My heart ached. I thought of Mauro, missed him so much it was actually as if a part of me had been cut out.

I turned to Isabel. “Do you know what happened that day?” I asked, finally. “What happened between Mary and William on the river?”

Her face changed. I was surprised at the sadness there. It was clear that she carried grief within her, and now it was all right at the surface. In this old house, surrounded by dust and bones, the rawness of it was almost absurd.

I leaned forward. Met Costas’s eyes and then looked back at her. It didn’t matter to him in the same way, I thought. Knowing what had happened.

“Well,” she said. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it,
bringing her hand to her face. After a moment she tried again. “I haven’t spoken about Mary in years. All I remember is how wild she was that night. Wild with despair. I remember her and my father yelling. Him calling her names, her screaming back at him. I remember lying under the covers in my room with my hands over my ears, willing it to stop. And then she was just gone. I felt like it was my fault, as if I’d willed her away. The house was always quiet, every day after.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “She spoke of you, you know. How much she missed you.”

“She did?”

“Yes.”

Her face lit then, and I told her everything I could remember Mary saying about her. How smart Isabel had been. How terrible it had been to leave her behind, how Mary hadn’t had a choice.

The way she had left me, I thought.

“Thank you,” Isabel whispered, close to tears. I felt thankful then that I could give this to her.

“Did William give Mary a ring?” I asked, suddenly inspired. I didn’t need to be there anymore, I realized. In Rain Village.

“Yes,” Isabel said. “An opal ring. He said it would bind her to him forever.”

“The peasant girl,” I said.

‘Yes,” she said. “That old story the old folks tell. Mary always liked those stories; she was always repeating them to anyone who would listen.”

I smiled at her, genuinely then. “I’m going back to the village,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

I looked at Costas, but knew he didn’t want to leave. I had no idea what would happen to him. All I knew was that the Velasquez Circus was in the last weeks of the season and would be in the South by now, in Mississippi or Florida or some other state with trees that dripped and
dangled over swamps. It seemed strange to think about the planned-to-the-minute schedule of the circus train and caravan, when in Rain Village it felt like time had no meaning at all. But the circus was the world I knew. My world.

“I’ll stay just a little longer,” Costas said, smiling at me softly, wistfully. “Can I meet you back at the hotel? Will you be all right?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” I told him. I would miss Costas; he was something like a brother or a best friend.

On my way back down to the river, the rain had let up and the moonlight guided me. Something had shifted, and the evening was so bright I had to squint when the trees parted and the light shone directly in. I leaned against a tree and took Mary’s ring from my pocket, holding it in my open palm. I had considered, briefly, giving the ring to Isabel, but I thought the last thing she needed was to be bound to the past more than she was already. We had enough burdens, I thought, all of us. I couldn’t save Mary, I couldn’t change a damn thing, but I could do one thing more.

The ring sparkled and exhaled in the moonlight. I followed the soft path Mary must have walked down hundreds of times before. The ground was wet at my feet, covered in leaves.

When I reached the river, I knelt on the muddy bank and stared into the water. The moon had clouded over, making it difficult to see.

A terrible, piercing longing moved through me. An ache so powerful I could only clench my teeth and wait for it to pass. I bent toward the river, and it was just at that moment that the moon shifted, lighting the surface of the water so that it looked like glass.

I leaned forward, my heart in my mouth.

It was her, unmistakably, on the surface of the river. Mary Finn, just
as I remembered her. Her cat’s eyes staring out at me, her long black hair so wild it was like a field of weeds, her silver hoop earrings dropping to her shoulders. Her brown, freckled skin. Her lips the color of coral.

I felt a radiance inside me. A sense of pure light. “Mary,” I said, reaching out to the water.

She smiled at me with her crooked teeth, her full lips curving into a bow. “Did you know that stars die, Tessa?” she asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. I reached down to touch her face. I expected to feel her skin, which had always been soft and warm, like bread just out of the oven, and was shocked when my fingers dipped into the water. Her image scattered over the surface, then disappeared.

I stared into the water, barely able to breathe. As the surface stilled again, I sighed with relief, seeing the contours of her face and shoulders and hair returning. Her long coiling hair. Her blue eyes. Her strong shoulders that could hurl themselves over and under the bar, that could propel her body through air, slice right through it.

It took me a second to realize it was not Mary in the water, swaying slightly across the surface, looking out at me, but my own face coming into relief. My own long hair, my own wide blue eyes staring out at me. I looked up frantically, up and down the stretch of the riverbank, but I was all alone, just as I had been before. The only sound was the faint lapping of water, the dull wind fluttering over it.

I looked back at my reflection. What I saw surprised me. There was no shock or disappointment or heartsickness breaking over my face. Instead I looked luminous, even beautiful. Like a streak of light on the water. I thought, suddenly, about my thirteenth birthday. How I had stared into the mirror, my face covered with glitter and Mary standing behind me, and realized, for the first time, that I was almost pretty. Not like Mary but not so unlike her, either.
People try to shut out beauty wherever they can in this world,
she had said,
but it’s a mistake.

The moon shifted again, and I watched my image cloud over. I sat back. Stared at the leaves whirling on the surface, the puffs of mud that seemed to churn up from the bottom of the water.

I sat for what seemed like hours, running my fingers through pebbles and grass. I stared into the river and saw myself swinging over and over the rope, creating circles in the air, twirling and stretching into one gleaming white line. I saw my body arcing through the canvas tent, my starfish hands reaching for the bar. Suddenly I was so homesick for the circus, for Mauro, that I couldn’t see straight.
That,
I thought, was all mine. The circus, my husband, my family. Flight. That feeling of being unbound, of cutting right through the air. Mary might have given it to me, set me on this path, but it was mine after all.

I stood up and wiped gravel from my hands and clothes. The river seemed to rush in my ears, the smell of flowers and spices swirling around me. In one movement I dropped the ring into the water and watched it disappear. Then I turned back to the woods and began walking.

It was only in Rain Village that I realized my life had a shape to it, one that went beyond the outlines of Mercy Library, beyond Mary Finn and Rain Village, past the imprints my father’s hands had left on my skin.

What was all mine, I thought, was sitting with Mauro under the lemon trees, watching Lollie spread glitter across her skin, listening to José’s bitter denunciations of love and all its follies—those moments were as much a part of me and my story as Mary was and always had been, from the day she’d befriended me outside the courthouse in the center of the town square.

I understood, finally, why Mary had worked so hard to keep the names and numbers straight in Oakley, why she had to take life and pin
it down in the lists and charts she kept filed away in bursting cabinets. But I wondered what truth Mary had thought she was recording in all those charts and lists and clippings. Did she record the way a girl’s heart can gape open like a wound when her father comes in from the fields? Or the way the tears streamed down her own face as she fled Rain Village and everything she knew, the blood of her lover on her hands? My name was in those files she kept—
Tessa Riley
—right next to my father’s name, my mother’s name, and the names of my brothers and sister. But nothing about that name suggested the way my heart broke when Mary Finn died in the river, leaving me alone to my fate.

The train ride home seemed to last for months. I couldn’t stand being away from Mauro another minute. Anxiety gripped me, yet all I could do was sit, staring at the wedding ring gleaming from my finger. Waiting. Praying that he would still want me, that all of them would take me back. I was suspended between lives, as if I had just leapt off the trapeze and toward the catcher’s open hands.

I would like to express my love, gratitude, and eternal devotion to:

Greg Michalson, for guiding me through this process with such grace, intelligence, and generosity, and everyone at Unbridled, especially Fred Ramey, Caitlin Hamilton, and Cary Johnson. Elaine Markson, for believing in me for so long, through so many drafts, and her assistant Gary Johnson, for answering 5000000 emails without calling me a stalker. Paul West, in whose classroom I began this book over a decade ago, for opening up all possibilities of language and imagination to me, and for being an inspiration, then and now. Jennifer Belle, for helping me so thoughtfully with these pages, and for being so supportive in every way, at every point. My parents, Jean and Al Turgeon, and beautiful sister, Catherine Turgeon, for all their love and support, copyediting prowess, and general familial awesomeness. And for forcing all their friends to read this.

Massie Harris, who inspired Mary Finn in all her splendor, for being ferocious, devoted, and brilliant, and for writing teenage diary entries predicting this event. Eric Schnall, for all the Doma sessions and incredibly sensitive, thoughtful, spot-on
commentos
, which helped me see everything more clearly. Tink Cummins and Anton Strout, the Dorks of the Round Table, for all the support, feedback, advice, strategizing, and
cheese-filled dinners—for everything, that is, except the name Dorks of the Round Table. Joi Brozek, for all the writing inspiration as well as general fearlessness, brilliance, and glamour. Brenna Tinkel, for reading draft after draft in two seconds flat and giving much sparkling and brainy advice. Peter Schneeman, for setting me on the right path many, many moons ago.

And: Alfred Triolo, for those Italian stories; Richard Morris, for early support; Jonathon Conant, for trapeze stories; Sangeeta Mehta, for so much help and advice; Christine Duplessis, for going to bat; Rachel Safko, for fighting; Dr. Bernard Bail, for endless patience; and J.D. Howell, for talking to me about Washington. And to my gorgeous friends who saw so many drafts over the years, and even read them—Chelsea Ray, Heather Freeman, Barb Burris, Mark Berman, Rob Horning, James Masland, Erika Merklin, Pete Heitmann, Jacob Littleton, Tony Begnal, Robert Wolf, and everyone else—thank you.