Under Your Wings, page 6
With one fluid movement, Estella drew three photos from her purse, and I walked over to one of the garden lights to better examine them. Given our silence and how we had slipped away from the party, anyone would have thought we were engaged in espionage.
‘The first one is from London,’ she said, looking over my shoulder.
The large family excursions we took during our childhood tended to blend into each other, but I knew which trip she was referring to. Estella and I must have been seven or eight at the time. Our parents had allowed all of us children to stay by ourselves in our own suite. I remembered Christina accidentally tearing down a curtain during one of our rowdier games, and Ricky ordering sirloin steak and hot chocolate from room service three times a day.
And I remembered Tante Sandra. The image I held in my hands was instantly familiar, right down to the outfit she wore: blue velvet bell-bottoms and a high-necked blouse of emerald green. Her hair was long and wavy, and her make-up dramatic – smoky eyes and electric pink lips, complemented by large gold hoops in her ears. The photo had her standing in front of Buckingham Palace next to one of its iconic guards, and I could practically hear her voice lowered in a mischievous whisper, daring us to poke him from behind. A mixture of adrenalin and adoration flooded my body, as if I were a child again, reliving that moment.
‘Brings back memories, doesn’t it?’ said Estella. ‘She would’ve been nineteen. Take a look at the next one, from two years later. It was taken when she was twenty-one.’
Twenty-one – no mistaking that. The photo showed her about to blow out the candles on an enormous chocolate-frosted creation heaped with whipped cream, chocolate curls and maraschino cherries. Black forest, I surmised – one of Oma’s specialties. In the centre was a pair of candles, one a squat ‘2’ and the other a ‘1’. There were more candles, skinny and striped, staked around the cake’s perimeter, as if more flames meant more festivity. Our aunt seemed subdued, especially in comparison to the first photo, though she was still wearing make-up and had clearly taken the trouble to curl and blow-dry her hair. She was smiling, but there was the slightest trace of a furrow between her eyebrows.
‘I don’t remember this,’ I remarked. ‘Were we there?’
‘I don’t remember either,’ Estella admitted.
That was the problem with large families: too many birthdays.
‘Now look at the last one,’ instructed Estella.
I did. My eyes were immediately drawn to the photo’s bottom right-hand corner. Sure enough, it was as Estella had said: six orange numbers indicating that the picture had been taken on 21 March 1984. Well after Tante Sandra’s death, and yet there she was, beyond a doubt – standing against a backdrop of jagged, reddish cliffs. But something about her was off, though I couldn’t place what. It wasn’t that she looked older than she did in the second photo. In fact, she looked almost identical because of the angle of the shot – minimal make-up, hair around the same length but not overly styled, that same smiling yet faintly troubled expression on her face.
‘Where did you find this?’ I asked.
‘In one of the shoeboxes with a lot of other photos. Random ones – all taken at different times in different places. But it’s the only one of Tante Sandra like this. I looked through all of them.’
‘Where was it taken?’
‘I don’t know. A desert, from the looks of it.’
‘Have you shown it to Ma?’
‘Yes. I pointed out the year too. She said what you said: the date settings on the camera must have been wrong.’
‘It’s not unlikely. Did you ask Ba what he thought?’
Our father was more prone to lapses in discretion. As a consequence, he sometimes told us the truth.
Estella nodded. ‘He didn’t seem to think the date was any cause for suspicion either.’
‘So why do you?’ I asked, studying the photo again, and as I did so, I found myself answering my own question. The longer I gazed at our aunt, the more justifiable my sister’s misgivings seemed to become – as if I were being pulled into line with her way of thinking, her point of view. The sense that something was off about the picture strengthened, and I attempted to figure out exactly what was wrong with it, what was wrong with her. It came into focus, and I quickly articulated it, as if I were worried it would disappear once more.
‘What’s that mark on her neck?’ I asked, pointing to a purple blotch above our aunt’s left collarbone. I leaned in closer and squinted, trying to discern whether it was part of the photo or a flaw in the way the film had been developed. It was hard to tell for sure.
‘So you think it’s strange too,’ she crowed. ‘I noticed it only after I called you.’
‘Did you ask Ma and Ba about this? Did they have anything to say?’ I asked.
‘Ma said the film must have been poorly processed. Ba suggested it was a hickey and laughed.’
I squinted again at the blotch – a dark island in a sea of unblemished skin. ‘It looks more like a scar – a grease burn, maybe,’ I observed, noting the irregular borders.
‘That’s what I think,’ said Estella.
I frowned. ‘Tante Sandra didn’t have a mark there.’
‘I know.’
The blotch was like the date stamp – proof that our aunt had lived beyond her supposed expiration, and yet not really proof at all.
‘Photos aren’t always accurate,’ I said, trying to retreat once more. ‘Remember the family portrait that used to hang above the sofa in Opa and Oma’s house? Back when Oma was alive?’
A ray of levity pierced the clouds. ‘The one where Tante Margaret looks like she has a double chin?’ Estella said with a guffaw.
I nodded. ‘And where Om Peter is picking his nose.’
‘Of all the shots the photographer took, Oma insisted it was the best one.’
‘It was. By her standards. She said someone’s eyes were closed in all the others.’
‘Who hired that guy anyway?’
‘Who else?’ I laughed.
Estella groaned when she remembered. ‘Tante Betty. He was her sister-in-law’s son.’
We chuckled together for a while, but Estella wouldn’t be distracted. Taking the photos from me, she lay them side by side on one of the deckchairs so we could better compare them: no trace in the first two of any blemish on Tante Sandra’s neck.
The orange numerals in the corner of the last photo took on a diabolical glow. ‘I see your point, maybe,’ I conceded, ‘but I don’t know how it would be possible. Oma was there when Tante Sandra died. She saw her drown.’
It was why Oma forbade us grandchildren to swim in the sea, although, naturally, we still did so on the sly. I’ve lost one child already. I can’t lose another. That was what she would say whenever one of us begged her to change her mind, her voice hoarsening with grief, her eyes filming over with tears. Our clandestine frolics in the waves were hopelessly ruined; with each splash, we knew we were breaking our grandmother’s heart.
Supposing for a moment Estella’s suspicions were correct: that our aunt hadn’t drowned after all. How could it be explained? Did she fake her death? Had our family faked her death? And if either was true, then why?
‘I don’t know,’ Estella murmured, as if reading my mind. ‘But there’s more to this. I’m positive.’
‘There’s always more to everything with our family. What can we do?’ I attempted a casual shrug.
When she turned her eyes on me, they were strangely bright. ‘We could find her.’
I laughed. ‘Find her? You can’t be serious. Where? How?’
As the words flew out of my mouth, I realised how far downstream I’d been borne on the current of her speculation. ‘Assuming that she’s alive,’ I added hastily, ‘which she’s not.’
If she heard my addendum, she didn’t acknowledge it. ‘There must be some way,’ she muttered, peering into the water as if the answer lay in its chlorinated depths. The bluish glow from the pool lights turned her face the colour of a sick moon.
‘Even if we could find her, why go to the trouble?’ I reasoned, continuing to entertain her unlikely hypothesis against my better judgement. ‘What does it matter now if she’s alive?’
Estella frowned. ‘Aren’t you tired of all this, though?’ She gestured towards the house, the party still in full swing. ‘All the secrets we keep? Everyone acting as if everything is all right? As if we aren’t rotting away on the inside?’
I smiled. ‘It doesn’t bother me as long as I don’t let it. Detach! That’s what you tell me to do. You should take your own advice.’
‘I wish I could, but you know I can’t.’
I sighed. ‘And what’s the alternative?’
‘Redemption.’
The word startled me. ‘What?’
‘Redemption. You know. So we can change. Be better. Honest. Open. Like normal people.’
Everything she’d just said: it was all too familiar. Redemption – one of Leonard’s favourite words. I refrained from comment and tried to focus on the matter at hand.
‘So you think finding Tante Sandra, if she happens to still be alive, will somehow bring . . . change?’ I asked. I couldn’t bring myself to use that other word.
‘Maybe.’
‘How?’
Estella’s brow furrowed. ‘Tante Sandra was different. You know that. She was always better. More real. True.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Finding this photo – it’s made me wonder: maybe we wouldn’t have become this bad if Tante Sandra were still around.’
I knew by ‘we’ she meant the family. Opa’s demented shrieks seemed to ring in the air: Lies! Nothing but lies!
Estella gave a bitter laugh. ‘And who knows? If Tante Sandra had been there, maybe things with Leonard wouldn’t have turned out the way they did.’
I contemplated this. Perhaps my sister was right. I recalled the qualities of the aunt we had so admired as children: her candour and compassion, her refusal to pretend that everything was okay, the way she wore her heart on her sleeve, even around us kids. At the very least she would have been a moderating influence on the family’s tendencies towards secrecy and self-deception. And maybe she really could have prevented the tragedy that befell Estella and Leonard – she’d never have let things get so out of hand.
‘So you’re saying that if Tante Sandra’s alive, she’ll save us,’ I concluded, meaning to sound derisive, but with hope creeping into my words nonetheless.
Estella smiled. ‘If there’s anything left to save.’
‘Well, let me know when you find her address,’ I joked, shaking myself free of her spell.
She glared at me defiantly. ‘I will,’ she replied.
‘Tante? Tante?’
We turned around. It was Melissa, one of our nieces – Theresa’s kid. She was five, but liked to act younger because she thought it was cute.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked us as Estella swept up the photos and stuffed them back into her purse.
‘Getting fresh air,’ Estella answered.
Melissa broke into a gap-toothed grin. ‘Are you going to jump in the pool?’ she asked.
Estella smiled. ‘No, Melissa.’
But Melissa’s imagination had been kindled and her grin grew wider. ‘Are you going to drown yourself?’
This made both of us laugh. ‘No, Melissa,’ Estella said again, eyes gleaming. ‘I’m going to drown . . . you!’ She caught Melissa in her arms and made as if to drag her towards the pool. Our niece shrieked with delight.
Once we had tickled Melissa to within an inch of her life, the three of us walked back across the lawn to the house.
Family life had some high points, for all our faults.
Estella showed up with the letters a few days later. I was making my weekly rounds of the Bagatelle laboratories when my personal assistant escorted her in.
‘Bombyx mori,’ she murmured, glancing at the corpses lined up in petri dishes on the counter.
My eyebrows flew upwards. I hadn’t thought that Estella would have retained what we’d learned in those entomology classes so long ago. But then I recalled that she was, after all, in the silk-weaving business. If there was any scientific name she should remember, this would have been the one.
‘I suppose you see a lot of them at Mutiara.’
‘Some,’ she said. ‘Since we source most of our cocoons from China, we have no reason to keep large numbers. But we do raise some of our own, along with a local silkworm species – Cricula trifenestrata. It doesn’t hurt to experiment a bit.’
Her eyes roamed over the dead caterpillars, each trailing a long orange protuberance of similar shape and size. It was difficult to tell whether they were silkworms sprouting fungus, or fungus sprouting silkworms.
‘Collateral damage,’ I explained. Bagatelle had started a new project, the goal being to come up with a genetically modified strain of Cordyceps fungus that would double, ideally triple, the bagatelle’s lifespan. The way to do this, at least in theory, was to alter the way the fungus worked. In the current version of the serum, the fungus took over the bagatelle’s entire nervous system. But we wanted to place limits on the fungus: restrict it to only a portion of the brain.
Estella sped the train of thought to its logical conclusion. ‘Leaving part of the brain untouched will lessen the physiological toll on the bagatelle.’
‘And the mental toll too,’ I said with a smile. I often forgot how sharp my sister could be. ‘We’re dealing with the mind here, so the mental is the physical.’
‘Any success?’
‘Not quite yet. But we’re making progress. So they tell me. It’s more complicated than we’d anticipated.’
I showed her to another room, where we kept a few terrariums, and I motioned for her to look inside one of them. The floor was covered with mulberry leaves and silkworms engaged in the act of ceaseless chewing. You could hear the shredding and mashing of leaf membrane through the mesh tops of the glass tanks.
We peered closer and, without me pointing them out, they attracted Estella’s attention immediately: lone individuals who had crawled up the twigs propped against the terrarium walls. High above the teeming masses below, raising themselves up on their hind feet, they bobbed and wriggled, as if under the control of some invisible crazed puppeteer.
‘Cordyceps did this? Really?’ Estella asked, wrinkling her brow.
I nodded. ‘These are test subjects for the new serum. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close.’
‘Ah.’ The sigh escaped her, the satisfactory hiss of an opened bottle of soft drink, a balloon that had been holding its breath, the happy sound Oma used to make whenever we grandchildren would fling ourselves at her and hug her knees. Estella was home, and she had just realised it. I too realised something: it was the first time Estella had ever visited Bagatelle.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ I asked, sounding more hostile than I intended. I should have been thrilled to have her there, yet I was startled by her sudden appearance in what I had come to regard as my domain.
She beamed. ‘I found out where Tante Sandra lives.’
We retired to the leather lounge set in my office. My personal assistant brought us coffee. Estella placed the envelopes on the table – two of them, both opened, both addressed to our grandmother.
From one of Oma’s boxes, she explained. After she had finished selecting and scanning photos for the birthday slideshow, she’d gone to Opa’s house to return them. Opa had been napping. New Oma had been out. Tati and the houseboy had helped convey the heavy paper bags upstairs. Then, at Estella’s bidding, they had left her alone.
Once she’d returned the photos to the armoire, Estella had turned her attention to Oma’s boxes. The first one yielded a compressed wad of leather handbags spotted with white mould. The second, an assortment of ancient toiletries, among them a plastic bottle of lavender hand lotion, Oma’s signature talcum powder, a cracked heel of soap, and a glass vial of fluid that had separated into a heavy black goop and a buoyant amber film.
Estella had always possessed an instinct for the systematic: the arrangement of our stuffed animals according to height on our bedroom shelves; the transferral of equations and definitions onto colour-coded cards before tests, first during high school, then in our first year at Berkeley; and, when we volunteered at the Essig Museum of Entomology on campus, the memorisation of the scientific names of insects, all the species in a genus, all the genera in a family. I should have taken this into account when I’d made the joke about her letting me know once she’d found our aunt’s address.
I could follow her reasoning. Assuming that the photograph of Tante Sandra had been taken after her death – how would such a photo find its way into Oma’s collection? Who had seen Tante Sandra last and who had proclaimed her dead?
These questions yielded the same answer: Oma. And Estella had headed straight to the only logical place to look for proof of my aunt’s survival. In that room, Estella had set to work. Slitting open boxes. Unpacking. Examining. Re-packing. Setting to one side. Reaching for the next box. Repeating this process. She combed through women’s magazines and cookbooks, notebooks and receipts, birthday cards and letters with such great care it would have made any archaeologist proud. The sun yielded to night, the ashen daylight that streamed in through the window replaced by the miserly glow of a single low-watt bulb (all the other lights had burned out and never been replaced). New Oma returned home and poked her head in to ask if Estella wanted dinner. Upon having the offer declined, New Oma meekly withdrew. Minutes later – or was it an hour? – Estella finally found what she was looking for.
The two envelopes were tucked away in a spiral-bound notebook of handwritten recipes, between a steamed strawberry pudding and a Dutch-style macaroni casserole. They contained letters; if the term even applied to such short missives. The first read, I’m well. Sandra – followed by an address. The second was similar: I’m well. Have moved. Sandra – and gave another address in the same city in California.
