The Last Will of Moira Leahy Page 3

  On said door, though, an interoffice envelope hung from a nail like a dictum. Papers and a half-eaten granola bar spilled from my briefcase when I dropped it to wiggle free the nail, open the envelope. Huh. A pocket-sized book on weaponry lay in my hand. I turned to a page bookmarked with a red scrap of silk, scanned, and found something interesting.

  The keris is another Javanese weapon made only after a great deal of preparation. First, the empu decides what he will craft. A keris may be made to protect against evil, preserve dignity or secure wealth, for example. The empu fasts, prays and makes ceremonial offerings sometimes days before crafting begins. Iron, nickel, steel and meteoric metals are heated. The empu layers and forges them together to form the pamor (design) of the keris. He then smiths the dapur (shape) by straightening the keris or creating an odd number of luks (curves) as desired. Finally, he chisels the base to form its many intricate details. A completed keris is filled with purpose. Some believe that humans easily succumb to its suggestive powers as inhibitions are stripped away.

  A keris. That’s what Lansing had called my new purchase, wasn’t it? As a child, I’d never known the name of the wavy blade I loved. I flipped through the rest of the book but saw no other passages related to the keris.

  I called Heather in the library to inquire about the book, but she said no such title existed within the university system. I checked the inner pages for stamp marks, any evidence that the volume had belonged to another institution or a particular individual. Nothing. The new interoffice envelope, barely creased and with nary a pen mark, was also devoid of clues.

  I reached for the phone again, let my fingers dance over memorized digits.

  “Time After Time. How may I help you?”

  I smiled into the receiver. “I wondered if you have any of that amazing hot chocolate in your kitchen cupboard. You know, the stuff from Venezuela.”

  “My dear girl!” sang the lilting voice of Garrick Wareham, the owner of the antiques shop Time After Time—not to mention Noel’s grandfather and my favorite Brit. “I’ve missed you!”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I said, then added just as honestly, “And Noel. I’ve even been scoping Lansing’s Block without him. How’s that for crazy?”

  Garrick laughed. “Have you made any buys he’d approve?”

  “Good question,” I said. Noel, whose business was finding valuable antiques in auction houses and estate sales throughout the country for Time After Time, would’ve taken the trouble to inspect the keris before leaping into a bidding war over it. Truth was, with Lansing’s weak provenance for the blade and a hole going straight through the metal, Noel might not have approved of my purchase at all. “I bought something, but it was mostly for sentimental reasons,” I said.

  I told Garrick about the keris, and answered his questions about why I’d purchase such a thing—even if it embarrassed me to admit aloud that I’d once wanted to be a pirate queen. He took everything in stride and suggested I bring the blade by the shop for an appraisal. I thought about my packed schedule, my commitments with the university. No trip to Time After Time was ever brief.

  “How ’bout I visit over Thanksgiving break?” I asked.

  “Splendid! When does that begin?”

  “Two days and four-and-a-half hours. Not that I’m counting.” The break was a glorified long weekend, but it would be enough. I checked the clock, knew I’d be late for my intermediate Italian class, but had to ask, “Will Noel be home?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Garrick said just as the sound of the shop’s entry bells drifted over the line. “Good God, my grandson must’ve shipped over half of Europe this week! I’ll have to sign for all of this, my dear, but you’re welcome to come by whenever you’d like. I have some Chuao cocoa on hand.”

  A NIGGLING SENSE of disquiet stalked me that night, as I drafted two tests, graded papers, then worked up a plan for helping a student on the edge of pass-fail. Marilyn, I wrote at the top of a note. Sighed, crumpled it up, tried again. Marion.

  Kit might chide me about needing an MRI, but having a book anonymously nailed to your office door had a way of messing with your concentration. I couldn’t deny wanting to learn more about the keris, and I knew Garrick would gladly pull up a chair with me tonight if I appeared at his door. Thanksgiving break was just two days out, though, and if I didn’t focus, I’d never jump through all the university hoops. I could wait to learn about the blade—and my displaced friend.

  Noel, my companion and ally since I’d arrived in Betheny eight years ago, had been in Europe for months, not just searching for antiques but for his only living parent: his mother. He hadn’t seen her since she’d crushed his little-boy heart by leaving him with her father, Garrick, and disappearing from their lives. The only time he’d really talked about her, he’d said they thought she lived in Europe now and good riddance. But a few months ago, on a sweltering August day, he’d changed his mind, said he had to search.

  How will you do it? You don’t even know where to look.

  I have some ideas, he’d said, evasive.

  I didn’t understand his sudden need, but I respected it, envied it even. At least some who were lost could be found.

  It always made my day to receive one of his postcards, picturing cobbled streets, majestic castles, white-capped mountains, or balconies of cut stone. I imagined the rest—the people and language, even the music. Nearly a month had passed since I’d heard from him, and the silence was wearing on me. I had no way of contacting him at all; Noel didn’t have a cell phone or an e-mail account, hated computers. In fact, he didn’t like anything that verified he lived in the twenty-first century.

  Is it me, Maeve? Or is it … just?

  Just. Just.

  Tension sprouted between us before he’d left. I’d pretended not to understand its root and then made a concerted effort not to think of it at all. I needed to do that again. Not think. Not miss him. Just wait. The Fifth Chinese Brother could hold his breath eternally, after all—though I wondered if his ribs ever cracked, if he ever longed to steal just a little air.

  I pulled the book from my briefcase and touched the red silk marker, lifted it and breathed a spicy, exotic fragrance, the scent of a foreign land. It lingered with me for days.

  I STOOD IN a park filled with decaying greenery. A hundred cranes flew overhead, but still I stared at the stone monument of a woman. Something seemed wrong with her, but I couldn’t say what. Then she turned her head to stare at me, water trickling and words rumbling from her ancient mouth.

  Nascer, nascer! she said. Rise. Get up.

  I startled awake and rose, stumbled to my cell. The dream-world message continued to punch at me as I made the call.

  Nascer, nascer, nascer!

  Six rings, seven. I looked at the clock; God, only 5:10.

  “’Lo?” my father said in his sleep-scarred voice.

  “Dad, sorry it’s so early.” I didn’t sound much better than he did. I cleared my throat.

  “Maeve? You okay?”

  “I just wondered … Is everything all right?”

  “Ayuh,” he said, “same, you know.” I let loose my breath. “Got the first snow last night. Wind’s up. Your mother—she’s not here or I’d put her on. Left for the day, I think.”

  Of course, at 5:10, she’d be off. Resentment pulsed in me, plain and ugly, though I wouldn’t let it leak into my voice. Then I realized. “Dad, it’s Thanksgiving.”

  “So it is. Forgot, just about.” An uncomfortable moment passed. “Sorry we couldn’t make it there, Mayfly. Sorry about all of it.”

  “I know. Me, too.” The act seemed simple enough—visit me, share the holiday. But nothing was simple with my mother.

  “You know,” he said, “if you left now—”

  “No, Dad.” I tried to look forward. “At least there’s Christmas, right? You’ll come then.”

  Silence. My stomach sank.

  “Your mother, she was going to call. She just doesn’t want to travel rig
ht now, and—”

  “But it’s not right now! It’s a month from now!”

  “We hoped you’d come here for Christmas this year. Come home. We’d love to see you.”

  “Dad, you haven’t been here since graduation, and Mom’s never been to Betheny at all!” I’d never forget the look on President Stephenson’s face when he’d asked to meet my mother at graduation and I’d told him she couldn’t make it. His expression had transformed from respect into something I detested. Her twenty-two-year-old daughter finishes a PhD program in record time, graduates with honors, is offered a position with the university, and she doesn’t show up? He pitied me. And it made me work that much harder—even now, nearly three years later.

  I knew it was no use arguing or even pleading with my father. She would never come to me.

  “If you don’t want to drive, we can buy you a plane ticket,” he said. “It’ll cut your time in half.”

  “It’s not that, Dad.”

  “Then drive, daughter. Get in the car and be with us. If not today, then for Christmas. Come home.”

  I shook my head, thinking of cranes and outstretched necks and chopped ones and Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner all at once, my mind a cornucopia of disjointed imagery. “I can’t,” I said.

  He seemed to be similarly incapable of carrying on. “Well. We’ll miss you, Mayfly. Good talking. I’ll tell your mother.”

  I knew sleep wouldn’t come again, but I stayed beneath my blankets for an hour anyway. I studied my room: the folded clothes, books stacked on my dresser, organized alphabetically. Neglect showed only in the slender mirror on the back of the door, dust-coated where there weren’t course curricula taped to the glass. I rose and approached it as one might a sleeping giant, then lifted a single sheet and looked beneath. Wary eyes regarded me before I let the paper drop.

  In the kitchen, I started coffee and pulled a carton of eggs from my refrigerator, along with some vegetables. I cross-sectioned a zucchini, then began slicing. Half-moon wedges puddled before me, as the noises started again.

  “Leave me the hell alone,” I said to my own head. Like a crazy person after all.

  I SPENT THE day babying a small turkey and half a dozen side dishes. Finally, Kit called.

  “It’s a rarity,” she said. “There’s a pregnant woman here with two uteruses. Surgery’s soon. I have to stay.”

  “Are you kidding? Where will you eat? The cafeteria?”

  “It’s not so bad, really. You could always …”

  She let the thought trail off, as if realizing how dismal it was to eat Thanksgiving dinner—by choice—in a hospital.

  “I’ll bring a plate for you,” I said.

  “Aww, thanks. But I don’t know how long this will go, and—”

  “They’re taking advantage of you. You work too hard.”

  “Pot calling kettle! Come in, kettle!”

  “Whatever. Eat when you get home, all right?”

  I hung up and poured myself a full glass of wine, sat by Sam on the couch. “Just you and me, bud.” I took a gulp and stroked his fur. “Merry Thanksgiving.” He snored faintly. “Sure, but you’ll be wide awake when the turkey’s finished.”

  I looked at the paperwork on my desk. I needed to plan the international outreach course I’d test online next summer. That’s what I should do. But my eyes turned back, snagged on the keris I’d left abandoned on the table. I could still conjure the scent from that red scrap of silk, even over that of a roasted holiday. I touched the sheath and felt a tickle of heat. Maybe it was warm because of the meteoric metals I’d read about. Was that plausible? There had to be more to the keris than what I’d learned in that book.

  I thought of Noel, touring European castles and museums, searching for dusty treasures and digging into a more personal kind of ancient history.

  It’d been a long time since I’d had any sort of adventure.

  Avventura.

  How easily that word had rolled off my poppy’s tongue, become the mantra for his life. I knew what he’d do with a mystery, no matter the size. Research. Dig. Figure it out.

  Why not shun work tonight? It was a holiday, after all.

  I turned on the computer and Googled, “What is a keris?” And when the screen lit with knowledge, I leaned in, took another swallow of wine, and gave thanks to technology.

  Out of Time

  Castine, Maine

  OCTOBER 1995

  Moira and Maeve are eleven

  “No humming at the table, Maeve,” Mama said as they sat down to Moira’s favorite meal of crab salad and corn on the cob and mashed potatoes and salad with ranch dressing.

  “It’s a new song about a hungry fox,” Maeve said as she reached for the corn.

  Moira grabbed an ear, too. “It’s sad, though.”

  “Yeah,” said Maeve. “The fox is trying to get—”

  “This had better not be about the baby again.” Mama clutched her small round belly and made her neck tall and taut.

  “No, it’s about gooses,” Maeve said. “The fox thinks they’re tasty, so he’s trying to get them all.” She bit into her corn. Butter dripped down her chin.

  “Geese.” Mama shook her head. “I’m sorry for being so jumpy, Maeve. It’s my hormones.”

  Daddy smiled but said nothing. Gorp, not as wise, barked. “Quiet, dog,” he said, but Gorp kept howling and then ran out. Daddy stood, followed the dog. Maeve followed Daddy, the corn still in her hand.

  Noise erupted—Gorp barking; the front door opening; Mama’s chair scraping against the wood floor; Maeve whooping; Daddy saying, “John, what a surprise,” as Mama exclaimed, “Dad! Why didn’t you tell us—?”

  Moira rounded the corner and landed beside her sister in their grandfather’s open arms, his coat sleeves scented with the unfamiliar.

  “Has my daughter been feeding you two magic growing beans again?” Poppy squeezed them, and they giggled and squeezed back.

  “You’ve burned yourself.” Mama touched his pink face. “Where did you come from?”

  “Oh, just Cairo. I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in having some real, ancient Egyptian papyrus?” He shrugged out of his coat, smiling, as Maeve and Moira squealed.

  “You’ve made it in time for supper,” Mama said. “I’ll fix you a plate.”

  “I’ll get your bags,” Daddy told Poppy.

  “Mama’s having a baby. Just one this time,” Moira said, when she and Maeve were alone with their grandfather.

  “Yes, I’ve heard!” Poppy ruffled her hair with his big hands. “Are you excited?”

  “Wicked excited!”

  “And do you want a brother or a sister, Moira?”

  “A sister.”

  “And you, Maeve? What would you like?”

  “I don’t know,” Maeve said. “I think something’s wrong with the baby.”

  Poppy’s smile drooped. “Wrong? Abby didn’t say—”

  “Shh!” Moira poked her sister with her elbow, and Maeve’s corn dropped to the ground. Gorp was out the door with it within seconds.

  “Thanks a lot, Moira. That was good corn.”

  “Sorry, but you know Mom doesn’t want you talking about your funny feelings anymore.”

  Poppy bent close to them and whispered, “Lucky for us those funny feelings don’t always pan out. Last year, you thought something might be wrong with me!”

  Maeve smiled. “I’m glad I was wrong about that.”

  THAT NIGHT, poppy told stories of lost cities and found pyramids. He showed them photographs of rediscovered passageways and dark-skinned people and old paintings. Maeve asked a relentless stream of questions: “What did you eat? Did the natives dance and make sacrifices? Were there poisonous spiders? Snakes?” Poppy answered between frequent outbursts of laughter.

  After dinner, while everyone recovered from big pieces of blueberry pie, Maeve played her saxophone. Moira closed her eyes and saw Egypt, felt it: the dance of a cobra in a minor-key melody; the whip of sand in
a brief ascension; the persistent hot sun in a wavering high note; the tension of a dig and maybe a fall in a quick-drop scale.

  Poppy applauded when she finished. “You never sounded like that, Abby.” He winked at his daughter.

  “No, all my squeaking probably sounded more like …”

  “Gooses?” Maeve set down the instrument.

  “Yes, Maeve,” Mama said with a smile. “Geese.”

  Poppy leaned back in his chair. “I’ve missed the Atlantic,” he said. “I hear you girls can handle the sails yourselves now.”

  They nodded in unison, said, “Yes, Poppy.”

  “Shall we go sailing tomorrow, bright and early?”

  “Ayuh!” Maeve said without even asking Daddy. “We’ll take you to a new spot on the island that has the best jasper ever!”

  Moira stayed in Maeve’s room that night, as she always did when Poppy came to visit. They cleared the floor of books and clothes and tapes, and made room for Moira’s sleeping bag.

  “You sure you don’t want to stay up here with me?” Maeve peered over the side of her creaky bed to look at her twin.

  “No, your bed’s broke.”

  “Just broken in, like a baseball glove.”

  “Because you jump on it too much. I’ll sleep here.”

  “Okay, but you’re missing a good bed.”

  Moira read Jane Eyre by moonlight until her eyes hurt, then fell into a fitful sleep as dream pythons squeezed her middle. She woke to her sister’s moan.

  “You’re sick,” Moira whispered. “You shouldn’t have had two pieces of pie.”

  Maeve groaned again, clasped her stomach.

  “Should I get Mama?”

  “No, if she finds out, she won’t let me have pie tomorrow. You go back to sleep. I’ll block.”

  “Don’t block. It’s not that bad.” Worse than pain’s shadowpart would be feeling cut off from her sister. The effort of blocking would make Maeve extra tired, too.