creature’s eyes are kind and soft.
When his eyes meet her own, everything changes.
These eyes she once knew, long ago and not in dreams. These eyes she had once loved.
Malvina remembers.
The beautiful boy who Malvina Latour had loved when she was a young girl was a free man of color. The boy had returned her love in kind, had brought her the greatest joy of her life. But when she’d found herself heavy with child, the boy had disappeared, as tender loving, beautiful young boys often do. She carried the child to term, had seen him through the agony of birth-but shortly after the child’s arrival she found herself unable to provide for him. She had brought her child, a son, to the steps of a Christian church-with a note pinned to his perfect, white blanket:
“Please help my boy. I cannot care for him.”
She had lingered on those steps, his little hand encasing her thumb, pressing firmly, his dark brown eyes looking into her own. So trusting, so assured by her presence. Those eyes, those little brown eyes. She sang to him softly,
She’d hoped he would fall asleep before the time came for her to leave him, so that their parting might not be too painful. But her song had been too loud, had triggered footfalls from inside the church. With an acute agony of the soul, Malvina roughly pulled the boy’s hand from her thumb and ran to the safety of shadows. The sound of his cries pierced the night, pierced her heart. She sat and listened as a stern female voice called out to her:
“Come out and be seen! I know you’re there! I can hear you!”
Malvina didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. The wails of her son became muffled as the woman took him inside, away from her forever.
Here are those same eyes. Bigger, sadder, wizened, older.
“Thomas?” she asks, using the name she’d given him on the day of his birth.
The man remains on bended knee, no longer transparent, still staring. “They call me Beauregard now,” he says at last.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she says, then adding softly, “Beauregard.”
Beauregard stands, walks to her as quickly as he is able, takes her in his arms. “I love you, Mama,” he says simply. “It’s all right now. Everything is all right. Everything is as it should, and always has been.”
Malvina whispers in the ear of her child, her son, her divine burden, “I have to leave you once more, my Beauregard, my love. But I will be back very soon. There’s something I have to do above water. Something I need to finish.”
“I know.” Beauregard is smiling.
“Someone I need to say goodbye to,” she amends.
“Perhaps,” interrupts Noonday Morningstar, “‘goodbye’ is not the correct word at all. Perhaps the word you’ve been searching for all this time has been
Chapter fifty-one. Malvina’s Cure
Malvina’s first thought upon waking was that she’d forgotten to wind her clock. If the time it told was true, then she had slept in several hours past daybreak-a nearly unheard of luxury she’d not experienced in half a century.
Frances never allowed her such luxuries; always rising early with loud complaints, slamming doors and kitchen cabinets for maximum effect, doing everything she could to disturb Malvina’s rest. Out of spite-or so it seemed, or so apparent, or so was.
But this morning the curtains remained drawn, allowing only a single crack of light to pierce the warm dark of Malvina’s small bedroom. Pulling her old bones into a sitting position, Malvina flopped her feet to the floor with twin thumps. Instinctively, she kicked both feet forward before attempting to stand, then hissed as she’d hissed every morning for the last fifty-three years:
“Damn shoes.”
But her feet only kicked warm air, no shoes in her way on this morning. She squinted at the shadows, then squinted hard into the useless crack of light. Got to her feet, then yanked open the curtain to let the sun pour in.
No shoes. None. The floor was clear. This was very odd.
Fifty-three years of tripping over her sister’s shoes, placed maliciously, or so it seemed (or so apparent, or so was), underfoot in such a haphazard way-but suddenly today: Nothing.
There was something downright eerie about it. She almost called out her sister’s name- but that would be giving in. After fifty-three years of noisy silence she would be damned before calling uncle over a little thing like this. It was likely just a sign of Frances’ own mental deterioration; forgetting to remember to forget. In any case, Malvina was sure the problem would begin afresh on the morrow, shoes every-damn-where as usual. This unexpected bout of neatness was probably just a tease to punctuate what she’d be missing for the rest of her days. Days of tripping and cursing over those damn shoes. A dangerous thing at her age. Attempted murder, almost.
Malvina looked at the door to her sister’s room. Closed. There was a large basket near the door, a basket that had stood empty so long she’d forgotten its original assigned purpose. But the basket was informative today, different today, serving its assigned purpose today. The basket was full.
Shoes. Damn shoes.
Curiously, the sight of it made Malvina want to cry. Sometimes the simplest changes can bring about strange emotional reactions in dotty old women with deteriorating brains, she assured herself. Changes. Little changes. No such thing as little changes at this age.
Malvina cursed herself upon realization of her trembling knees, then got up to make her way carefully to the rocker by the window. Was looking to be a right sunny day, she guessed; a hot one, too. She bent down to pick up the needles and yarn kept atop the knitting bag near the rocker and resumed work on a blue patch she’d started last night; a square that was to be one of many, ninety-nine all told by the time she was finished. Squares that would join together to form a blanket in a week’s time, a blanket she didn’t need and had no one to give as present. Doing the work calmed her nerves. That was its purpose. Took her mind off the shoes. And now: The odd
Malvina didn’t hear her sister’s door creak open, but shoes did appear in the corner of her eye. Shoes with feet in them. Malvina looked up.
The eyes of the two sisters met then-the first time they’d done so in a very long time.
