window dressing for the clinic, though.
Mack the Cat met Sam Taylor’s eyes, and Caroline saw that they knew each other all too well. Sam’s hand came to her elbow.
“Ma’am, we need—”
“Oh, be quiet.” But she followed him. No excuse needed to get away from Mack and his drool.
They went down some steel stairs and suddenly they were in another lovely room, back in the old house. It was large, glassed in, and full of sunlight. There were three patients there, each with an attendant. Two of them were in straitjackets, struggling and growling. The third paced back and forth, back and forth.
She sucked hard breaths, forcing herself to appear calm, but she was seeing Monty Offut who had been so strong and Carl Winston who’d read Greek and Latin, and pacing in a state of paranoid frenzy, Jenny Offut, Monty’s sister. They had swung together on the old swing that had been under one of the oaks out back, and dreamed the dreams of little girls.
“This is the old solarium,” Sam said.
“I know what it is!”
“You do?”
“I—of course. It’s obviously a solarium, you stupid jerk.”
She felt him tighten—felt a hurt, a disappointment come from him—and thought that she did not like playing this role of the testy, overwrought neurotic.
But look at the tile floor, at the walls painted with those vines, even the old sunporch couch over there—she’d lain on that couch and gazed out at the marching clouds.
The nostalgia was tremendous, and seeing her friends like this—it was also agonizing.
“I think we need to move on,” Sam said. Tough, gentle man.
“Yes…”
This had been the classroom, where Daddy had taught them the secrets of the old gods, and given them their ancient names. She was Citilalinique, the Lady of the Starry Skirt, and her work was to bring the light of understanding to an ignorant age. Light the bringer of light. Nominative determinism. Not funny, though. Funny was in the past.
Finally, she could bear it no longer and turned away. She went toward the living room, where you had been allowed to sit and read, but certainly not play or roughhouse, and not endanger the collection of Faberge eggs that was no doubt locked away upstairs somewhere nowadays.
She had curled up in that chair right over there and read—what had she read? Yes,
Her father had brought her out of her own amnesia ten days ago. Prior to that, he had been awakened by Mrs. Denman, who had come on a day and at a time that had been specified by Herbert Acton fifty years ago, and showed Daddy a glyph of Huehueteotl, the Aztec god of life and the polestar… also the symbol of guidance, but not to the current polestar, not to Polaris. No, when the time came, they would journey toward a new polestar.
“Miss, patients are requested not to use these rooms.”
She sat down in her old chair, regarding him with mild interest. Would he drag her out? He certainly could.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she said.
He inclined his head. The guardian servant, then. Fine, she could stay.
She let her mind seek back over the events of the past few tumbling, chaotic days.
When Mrs. Denman had shown Dad the image of Huehueteotl, his eyes had grown steady and hard, and he had set his jaw like the soldier that he was. Then he’d embraced the cadaverous old woman, who had left as silently and mysteriously as a nun under vows.
That evening, he had been very quiet, refusing to speak of what had happened. Eventually, he had gone to one of Granddad’s wonderful handmade books, the one called the
As she had looked upon Quetzalcoatl and Citilalinique, a whole hidden life had come flooding back. She recalled swinging in the garden at Mr. Acton’s house, and Daddy being their teacher, tall and rangy then, full of smiles and remembrance of Mother, and Mrs. Acton, incredibly ancient, looking down on them from the upstairs windows with appraising eyes. She had been the master behind the class, Daddy’s teacher, but they only met her once or twice.
Caroline had been ten, and Mom’s sudden death had then still been at the center of her life. The night before it happened, it was as if her parents had known—which, on a deep level, not then conscious, they indeed had.
The two of them had sat together in their private study into the small hours, talking in a loving way, touching each other and kissing, and Caroline had watched, and seen a kind of wonder between them, as if they were privy to a miraculous secret that was at once deeply serious and deeply joyous, perhaps the secret of life itself.
Mom had died of an aortal aneurysm, so suddenly that she had not even had time to cry out.
Mom had ascended, Dad had said. She would not be returning to earth again. Dad had explained, back then, that almost everyone who had ever been born was alive in the world now, every human soul returned to the flesh to experience judgment. And, he had added, by 2020—not 2012—they would all be here, all who needed to be.
Mom didn’t need to stay, she was finished here, he had told her.
All well and good, but it didn’t change a daughter’s grief. When there is a death between people who love each other deeply—husband and wife, parent and child—the relationship continues on in the heart of the survivor, and Caroline had told her dad that she wanted to follow Mom, she wanted to go, too.
He’d explained in his gentle way, “You and I are working-class, girl, we stay put. Only the saints and the sinners get to take off early.”
Since Mom’s death, he’d spent many an evening in that study, reading poems he had explored together with his wife, and Caroline had, in recent years, made a habit of joining him, and they had shared their grief and their love, enjoying their memories.
She recalled once again the images of Quetzalcoatl and Citilalinique, intricately painted, their seemingly bizarre faces going deep into mind and memory. The Mayan and Aztec gods were representations, among other things, of the human unconscious, the purest ever created by the mind of man… the unconscious in all its wonder and playfulness, and all its paradoxical savagery.
On softest wings, when she had first seen them, memory had come, bringing with it a love that had been hidden in her heart for years.
She had remembered David.
Now, she recalled watching him curse and, on the wide lawn, trying to fly a kite. She’d laughed until her sides ached. David was so clumsy and so sincere and so very dear to her, and she thought that they had known one another across many lifetimes.
“Daddy,” she said to her own secret heart, “tell me how to make him remember me.”
When he was awakened—if—he would become their leader, assuming the role and the power of protector and healer. The knowledge that the new world that was coming would rest on his shoulders made her proud of him, and proud to be his promised love.
Except, what if he did not remember? People change, even locked in the amber of amnesia. What if he had somebody else now? There were attractive nurses here and people under pressure form attachments fast. In war, whole lives are lived in days, and this was just like war. It was war.
“Miss, we have a lot still to see. I want to show you the dining facilities and the kitchen. It’s quite a wonderful kitchen.”
“Sure,” she said. The poor guy was practically dancing, he was so eager to get her out of the so-called restricted area. As if she’d somehow damage carpets on which she’d played Monopoly on rainy afternoons.
She followed Sam through a pair of double doors with mirrored windows in them, entering a spotless, magnificently appointed, but very busy kitchen—all of which was new. This had been the music room in the old days. Now, the piano was in what had been the old smoking room, opposite the solarium.
The new kitchen revealed a fine spread of marble countertops and high end appliances. She counted four chefs in toques, surrounded by rushing crowds of assistants. It looked like the kitchen of the
