The Light of the World, page 20
“We can’t give up,” Eva protested. There were papers strewn all around her, documents that meant little to their search but still might have some meaning. Liv was gathering a small stack of her own that she wanted to look at further.
“I know, but for me there’s no point. Liv’s got this crazy book idea—”
“It isn’t crazy, Al.” Liv looked up sharply. “Mrs. Talbot was a fascinating woman who did a great deal of work for the young women of the area. It seems a shame that outside of this room and the Brooklyn Historical Society, no one knows anything about her.”
Al shrugged. “I suppose. I just think this is boring.”
“It isn’t boring.” Eva met his eyes. “It’s just a slog. Like most things that aren’t fun are a slog.”
The clock on the wall ticked. It was the only sound in the room, counting down the minutes until Theo would usher them off home when the hour grew too late to read any further. They were pulling long hours, trying to get the most out of their time with the documents. Theo was only able to secure a temporary loan.
The silence stretched on. Al shoved his hands into his pockets.
Eva felt defeated. They had a name and that was it. There was no other mention in any of the hundreds of documents that they had spent the past several days reading through. It felt like a hopeless pursuit.
Well, not entirely hopeless.
“Liv’s book idea isn’t really all that crazy, you know.” Eva kept her voice deliberately mild. “She’s definitely got enough primary sources here that the rest of the research would be a breeze.”
An amused bark of laughter came from beside her, and Liv’s hand rested gently on her shoulder. She leaned in, eyes shining with repressed laughter. “I am sitting right here, Eva. I can defend myself.” Liv’s voice was dry, carefully filtering any of the humor she found in the situation out into a neutral tone.
Eva’s eyes narrowed. She was on to Liv’s game. “Everyone needs a knight in shining armor, Liv, even you.”
The hand on her shoulder squeezed gently, and Eva felt the breath leave her body. Her stomach was somewhere near the floor as Liv moved even closer, her eyes half closed and her lips twisting into that dimpled smile Eva found so charming. “That’s very sweet of you.” Her fingers brushed Eva’s cheek.
Al coughed. Loudly. “I am also standing right here.”
The warmth at Eva’s shoulder was snatched away and Eva glared at Al. “So you are.”
“You two are gross.”
“We’re adults, we cannot possibly be gross.” Liv stuck her nose up in the air. “And if you don’t want to help, that’s fine, Al. I know this is boring.”
He shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine. Someone’s gotta stay here and make sure you guys leave room for Jesus.”
“You’re Jewish.” Eva wrinkled her nose. “And we don’t need a chaperone.”
Al deposited himself back into his chair with a thump. “It’s an expression, Eva. And I doubt Kelvin would appreciate it if Dad returned his papers all wrinkled because you two decided to make googly eyes at each other.”
“I’m surprised you’re not offering to videotape it,” Liv said.
“Ugh, that’s even worse. You’re like my sister, Olivia.” He made a face. “Ew.”
“Thank god for small favors,” Liv replied. “Do you still have that accounting document? It might be interesting to look at the finances of the house. Maybe Catherine paid rent?”
“She shared a bed with my Gran, actually, when she did stay there.” Eva pointed out. They both looked at her. Her cheeks colored. “Like, platonically. For sleep.”
“Let’s be honest here, Eva. How gay was your Gran?” Al wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Eva groaned. “I’m not about to assign her a label that she didn’t choose herself.”
“Why not?” Al asked.
“Think about it, Al.”
“I mean, I get it, but it’s so obvious.” He frowned. “They were as into each other as you two and equally disinclined to talk about it.”
“Look,” Eva began, “there’s nothing wrong with claiming that such-and-such historical figure was queer in today’s understanding of the word, but I just get uncomfortable with the idea of it. I knew my Gran and I never knew about Wren. There was never another girl in her life, either. It was just this one moment in time. I wouldn’t call her gay. If anything, I think her feelings for Wren deeply confused her. She wasn’t raised in a time when queer women were visible at all and she certainly didn’t identify with them. It doesn’t make sense to give her a label like that.”
There was a warm presence on her knee. Liv’s hand was resting there, quietly reassuring.
“Huh,” Al said. “I’d never really thought about it like that.”
“I wanted to label her like crazy when I first stumbled into this mess, but it doesn’t really make any sense to do it. Seeing the subtext and calling it gay or whatever is one thing,” Eva agreed. “But it’s another to make a logical leap and start saying so-and-so was one way when they don’t understand the word the same way we do. We don’t even know if she was attracted to men or just married my grandfather because that was what was expected. I mean, she said it, but who knows how she really felt. She could have just hated my Grandpa.”
“Are you sure you never finished college?” Liv asked. “That was way more succinctly put than any of my women’s studies professors ever said it.”
Eva’s cheeks burned. “I mean, I didn’t. But I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like jumping to conclusions.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” Al leaned across the table. “Here are the accounts, Liv.”
“Thanks.” Liv’s hand left Eva’s thigh. “And you’re right, Eva. We shouldn’t do that.”
Eva smiled. “Thanks for being so understanding about it, guys.”
“I can still call them gross, right?”
“Oh definitely, they were disgustingly cute together. Totally gross.” Beside her, Liv laughed and laughed.
Inky blackness pressed at the corners of Eva’s vision. It was so thick she felt that she could reach out and grasp it. As if it were a solid thing that could consume her if she pressed on.
Turn back, her mind screamed, turn back, stay alive.
She was standing before a gate. It arched high overhead, so far up that Eva could not see its apex. In the center of it was a great seal, twisting and pulsating with darkness.
“This is the door to destruction.”
The girl with no face had returned. She reached forward and grabbed Eva’s head as Eva tried to twist away from her. Her fingers were like icicles, sticking to Eva’s flesh and pulling at the skin hard enough to rip the flesh away.
“This is the door to the end of the world.”
“Why am I here?” Eva tried to wrench her head away, but it was no use. The grip was too strong. It had her. It had her and it would not let her go. “What brought me here?”
“You seek the light of the world.” The girl’s face seemed to shift then, the face underneath the face warm and familiar. Liv’s face. Why was Liv in her dream?
“Liv!” Eva screamed. “Liv, let me go!”
“You seek the light of the world,” the girl with Liv’s face said in a voice so unlike Liv’s that it rattled Eva’s bones. “This is what happens when you get too close, seeker.”
Pain erupted across Eva’s ribs, twisting against her racing heart. The blackness around them pooled in Eva’s chest, blood seeping out and darkness seeping in—
Eva’s eyes flew open.
Her alarm was going off.
The nightly slog through the documents left Eva bleary-eyed and sleepy behind the counter of Mr. Bertelli’s shop. They had managed to get through the bulk of the collection the night before and she was exhausted. The late nights were starting to take their toll. Eva knew she looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, but a job was a job and she was dedicated to being there on time, even if she was half-asleep.
The little old ladies, the grocery’s most frequent customers, told her that it wasn’t right for her to look so sleepy on the job. “Be a professional, dearie,” one woman said after Eva counted back her change. “It’s not hard.”
“Have a good day,” Eva replied through gritted teeth. She knew what she was doing was important, even if they did not.
In the early-morning lull, Eva found herself sucked once more into her grandmother’s world, curling around the pages of the July 4 entry and the very feel of Roaring Twenties America.
July 4, 1925
Wren came by this afternoon with a basket full of food and invited me to come in to the city to have a picnic with her in Central Park. Despite all of her misgivings about Wren, Mrs. Talbot took one look into her basket and insisted on throwing in some wax-paper wrapped packets that we later discovered were freshly baked cookies. I think Wren is growing on her.
She’s been so reluctant to trust Wren that this is a huge step forward for her. I think she fancies herself my mother in a strange way. I’m the youngest boarder here by at least two or three years and Mrs. Talbot spends entirely too much time looking after me. Wren has been a thorn in her side since January, but I think now, after showing that she’s not trying to hustle me, Mrs. Talbot is starting to try to like her.
It isn’t just anyone she gives cookies to.
How she finds the time to bake is completely beyond me. Mrs. Talbot is constantly busy with her temperance meetings and events. She’s the one who does most of the work around the house, too. Wren almost burst out laughing the first time we saw her in trousers and a workman’s shirt, hammering away at the water heater. She’s an old maid, according to Wren. An old maid who sees all of us paying guests as her children.
I keep telling her to be nicer, especially if Mrs. Talbot is going to give us cookies. Wren just laughs and leans in closer and I completely forget what I was thinking about.
I am starting to feel hot in the face when I’m around her. What is she doing to me? How has she managed to wrap me so effortlessly around her finger and trap me in these feelings of unnaturalness? I have no name for how I feel about Wren. She has pulled open my ribs and settled herself right beside my heart, nestled in against my soul and I do not think I could ever carve her out.
Women do not love like this, this girlish love that feels like the first kiss at the end of a grand romance. I cannot feel this way, it isn’t right or natural, and yet I cannot stay away. There are times when I feel so silly, playing the lady to her gentleman, but I cannot pull away when she offers me her arm. I want it, and she wants it. Although I would argue that she looks far better in a dress than I do. Especially the shorter ones that are fashionable today. Legs for days, that one.
I think Wren was in a charitable mood today. She told me bit about her family today. It’s the most open she’s ever been with me about this sort of thing. We sat together in the park and she told me of her brothers. The older one died during the war, near where my father served. I told her of my father, how he came back but was not the same. She got quiet then, and turned away. At least he came back, she said to me.
At least he did.
We are not perfect, Wren and I. I think that we have more differences than similarities and we’re both scared to admit it. Wren spends half her time gone from my life. I don’t know what she does and I can only hope that she is doing a just and moral trade; I’d hate to think of the alternative. I’ve read stories of loose women in the penny papers aplenty. I know how that goes.
What’s almost worse is that she won’t tell me where she goes when I ask. I keep seeing that room full of light beneath the city when I close my eyes and I hope that that is truly her sanctuary. There should be only darkness there, darkness on the edge of void, but it is full of all the light and goodness I see in her.
She seemed to be on the verge of telling me something today. She started so many times as we sat in the sun in the park, started and stopped. Started and stopped. The words must have tasted like sandpaper, going off of the face she made alone. She wanted to tell me, and I tried to listen, even if I could not hear anything.
Wren has a secret, I know she does. Even a simpleton could see it in the way she hides behind bravado. I want to know what she’s keeping from the world.
How does one ask another to speak the darkest secret they hold? It must be dark, otherwise I’m sure she would tell me.
Wren comes to see me at night sometimes, long after Mrs. Talbot has turned off the lights. She looks so drawn then, and weary as if she’s been running, and dirty as if she’s been hiding. I let her wash by candlelight in my room and don’t say anything at all when she sheds her clothes and crawls into bed beside me.
There are things, Wren tells me, that go bump in the night. They want the light, and she’s trying to keep the light from them.
I have no idea what she means when she says that. I am scared for her, I truly am. A girl like her should not go out into the darkness like that; there are unsavory characters that are sure to be afoot.
But Wren promises me that she is protected no matter where she goes. I only hope that it is the truth, but I fear that one day she may not come back to me.
And I do not know what I will do when that day comes.
The love story between her grandmother and Wren was beautiful. Eva thought it had all the hallmarks of an epic romance, the sort that novels were written about. When she was younger, she loved those sorts of stories. There was a depth to them that captivated Eva. They drew her in and made her feel as though those experiences were her own. As she grew older, though, she found herself more and more caught up in the reality of situations.
Something was nagging Eva about Wren’s story. They had no idea who she was other than a girl from rural Long Island whose family was long gone. Eva supposed that they knew Wren’s secret. Her grandmother suspected that Wren wanted to tell her something, but so far there wasn’t any indication in the diaries that she had entrusted it to Mary.
There was something lurking in the hazy details of that room beneath the city, at the edges of the diary entries and in Wren herself. Something had consumed the light of this seemingly wonderful girl. Something had pulled her away from a happy life and she was never seen again.
Eva kept going back to the diary entry she’d read weeks ago now about the night her grandmother woke up screaming. Chronologically it took place after the July 4 entry, but it carried the same feeling that Eva picked up on, time and time again, in the diaries. Something wasn’t quite right with Wren. Something didn’t make sense.
Mr. Bertelli’s shop was deader than dead that morning. Eva had already straightened and prepped everything for the Tuesday rush. She was picking at the Sudoku at the back of the Village Voice when Al appeared with a grocery list and a rolling cart. Bored and maybe a little desperate for human interaction, Eva asked him to stick around.
“Is it always this dead on Sundays?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Mr. Bertelli just started opening on Sundays. It’s my only solo day. I’d rather it not be busy.” Eva put up her hands. “I’m still learning the ropes.”
Al hopped up on the counter. “It can’t be that hard.”
“There are spiders. On the bananas. Constantly.” Eva poked him in the side. “Get off the counter.”
“Fine,” he said, drawing out the word. “Do you need any help with anything?”
“Not unless you want to mop out the back room.” It was the one task Eva still had to do, but she had not started on it yet because she usually saved it for after she closed up shop for the afternoon.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t mind.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I haven’t got anything better to do. Liv and Dad are at it again, anyway.”
Eva made a face. “What now?” She led Al over to where the mop bucket and dump sink were tucked behind the door to the back room behind the freezers. “Don’t tell me that he suggested Liv’s book was a bad idea.”
“Nah, nothing like that. Liv just thinks he needs to remember why we’re working on this. I agree with her.” He turned on the tap and Eva threw in a dissolvable soap packet. “He’s too invested.”
Eva bit her lip and looked away. “He is too invested,” she agreed. “Almost scarily so.”
“I can see that.” Al swung the mop around the floor expertly as he spoke. Eva leaned against the doorway, a box of apples ready for the shelves pressed into her hip. He glanced up and met Eva’s eyes with a curious look on his face and clarified, “Like, in his motivations for helping you?”
Eva bent, setting the box down on the floor. “It’s a little weird, isn’t it?” She tugged a box cutter from her apron pocket and carefully cut away the packing tape. “He’s a guy who has so many other things he can do with his time, and yet he’s choosing to help me.” She started to unpack the box.
Al leaned on the mop, his chin resting on top of his hand. “You have given him a chance at his white whale, though, Eva.” He smiled almost fondly. “You’re the only person in my lifetime who has given him a solid, concrete lead to the light of the world beyond acknowledging that the cross-cultural concept exists.”
The two apples in her hands felt as though they weighed a hundred pounds. Eva turned to stare at Al as he went back to his task. The floor gleamed in the sunlight that streamed in from the front of the room, the racks of olive oil and vinegar that Mr. Bertelli stored toward the front of the store casting golden and red shadows across it as he worked. “So he doesn’t care?”
“About your grandmother? Probably not beyond the capacity of what her life experiences tell him about the light of the world,” Al said dejectedly, scuffing at a stubborn patch of the floor with his toe. “It sucks, but he’s spent his entire life being laughed out of research institutions because of his beliefs. You’ve given him a chance to find something more.” Al shook his head, a rueful smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Shame we can’t tell him about our adventure under the city.”
