Sacred Time (14 page)

They grin at each other, raise their glasses, sip.

Leonora shudders. “The clear one has a medicine smell. The black one is like licorice.”

“They smell the same.”

“Okay.” Leonora lights one of her Pall Malls. “Since you believe they're the same, you may as well drink the clear Sambuca.”

“I'm drinking both.” Floria dips one finger into the yellow-and-black coffee can. Hers is a face Leonora would trust if she were to meet her now for the first time, a face that's angular without being narrow, plain without being ugly. And out of all that emerges an odd loveliness.

“You look lovely,” she tells her.

Floria makes her eyes go crossways, aims the tip of her tongue toward her left ear.

“How much tasting did you do before you got here?”

Floria takes a sip of clear Sambuca, sucks on her finger, sighs, and takes another sip. All at once her face is somber again.

“Hey…” Leonora tries to pull her in and away from herself, from the sorrow, from that window. She's good at pulling others to her when she chooses to.
Cold fire. Brilliant fire.
Equally good at keeping others out.
The cold without the fire.
She leans toward Floria. “Let me explain what's wrong with the clear Sambuca. It bites you after you swallow. Like the serpent of Eve's Paradise.”

“Now I understand where Anthony gets his creativity.”

But Leonora doesn't want Floria to mention Anthony. Not in this room. Because to mention him is to evoke Bianca even more. Already, she feels her niece's death rising, here, between Floria and herself, and she tries to keep it down, because she's terrified Floria will blame Anthony.
I would. If Anthony were the one who'd died, I would blame Bianca forever.
She feels the effort of keeping it down. Because, along with it, there is so much more she must keep down—not just Bianca's loss, but everything else connected to her.
Bianca and Belinda as infants, dark and tiny and lovely,
curled toward each other in one crib,
twin babies whose combined birth weight is to the ounce what Anthony will weigh at birth one year later. Eight pounds and six ounces.

One child to equal two.

To finally equal one.

With the last one Leonora didn't even realize she was pregnant until Floria and the twins moved in that Christmas. Migraines, she thought she had, and when Floria said, “Maybe you're pregnant,” Leonora said no, but felt it—that instant—the heaviness, familiar and frightening,
weighing you down, though you know that you're merely one week late and that the child forming weighs close to nothing. And though you picture yourself holding it, feeding it, you cannot feed yourself. Whatever you force down, your body heaves up. You vomit, hot and sudden. Feel nourishment shoot through you in a hot, dark stench. While you stay hollow. And yet, you believe there has to be room for whatever is forming in you, child or tumor or abyss, and so you hold yourself still, so still, a cradle for your child. You don't dare admit to your husband or his sister that you're pregnant because you don't want them propping you up, fretting you'll lose this one, too, already grieving, though you may be able to hold on to this child and watch it be lifted from between your thighs. You wave their concern away, tell them you have migraines. Gentle and safe you keep yourself. Because you want it, want this child. And you make yourself believe that you can. You order your body to contain this child. After all, it's not for long, your child's life within you, compared with the lifetime it will live outside you. Yet, already you feel your body refusing, hoarding its selfish heat for no one but yourself, though you want to give shelter to your child. Already something within you is shifting, closing off to anyone but yourself. You feel your child sliding away from you, exiled from your body, from life. Because you are too selfish. Though the doctor says that it's not so, that you have no control over this, you know in the depth of that dark nastiness how it's always about you. About your selfishness, that you can't turn around though you want to. The selfishness that caused your father to punish you. The selfishness that leads to yet another child falling from you. Falling just weeks after Bianca falls from your lives. Following Bianca on her bloody path. That's why you don't admit to anyone about losing yet another child. Not even to Victor. Because how can your grief possibly compare to his sister's?

Leonora can't imagine what it must be like to have your already-born child die before you. Out of natural sequence.

Now, she and Floria each have only one child: Anthony who has become timid and quiet; and Belinda who seems frantic as she watches over her mother, whose bridal gowns are no longer ready when promised, who is preoccupied with making dolls. It started when Floria made a large doll for Belinda to keep her from being afraid at night in a room set up for two. Although the doll was made from linen, it looked remarkably like Bianca. Its hair was brown yarn, and Floria embroidered the mouth and cheeks and eyes like Bianca's.

Creepy as all hell,
Leonora thought when she first saw the doll. But Belinda adored it. Named it Belinda-doll. Took it to bed. To school. To the doctor. Whenever Floria sewed an outfit for Belinda, she made a matching one for the doll.
Creepy as all hell.
Then Belinda's teacher, Sister Marguerite, wondered if Floria would enjoy making a doll for her niece. Floria worked from photos, made the doll skinnier and shorter than Belinda's doll. Yellow yarn for the hair, braided down the doll's back. Matching green dresses for the doll and for Sister Marguerite's niece.

Her payment: five weeks of prayers. The first customer who paid with money was Belinda's doctor, who admired the doll Belinda clutched while getting her sinuses examined, who asked if Floria would be interested in sewing dolls for both his daughters. Gradually, other inquiries came in from people who'd seen one of Floria's dolls. They gave her photos. Snips of hair to match the color. The doctor's aunt from Connecticut wrote. Asked if Floria ever sent dolls out of state. Someone else had relatives in Texas. In Wyoming.

So far, Floria has sent dolls to nine states, each different in appearance and age, depending for whom it is: toddlers, five-year-olds, even a twelve-year-old whose parents wanted to lure her back into childhood.

Leonora thinks making those dolls can't be healthy for Floria; but when she told Floria what everyone else in the family didn't dare say, Floria didn't want to hear. “It has nothing to do with Bianca,” she said.

Malcolm's the only one who's grown stronger, and he's been wonderful with Floria, except for encouraging her with these creepy dolls. He does all the shipping, decides on the prices. “Never give your talent away,” he told Floria. “Except to the church.”

Floria is sampling the black Sambuca with great concentration. Dips her finger into the coffee can. Licks it off and drinks again.

“What I was saying about this clear Sambuca,” Leonora explains, “is that it bites you after you swallow. And then it rises like fire into your brain. Try a sip of the black. Just to compare.”

Floria compares. Smacks her lips.

“Can't you feel that the black is more compact?”

Floria shakes her head. “Please, tell me I am hallucinating.”

“All right. You're hallucinating. Why?”

Floria motions toward the counter where Leonora's centerpiece sits in questionable splendor. “Whatever is that…thing?”

“An edible flower basket I made from vegetables.”

“Why?” Floria shakes her pack of Lucky Strikes. When nothing comes out, she crushes it and lights one of Leonora's cigarettes. They both have one. “Why would you do that? It's ghastly.”

“Not as ghastly as your creepy dolls.” Horrified at what she's said, Leonora gets up. Bends across her basket: nothing is what it seems to be, only more so now that her braids of bread have split and her scallions are wilting and her radish blossoms have turned scabby. “Quite ghastly,” she says. “You're right.”

Floria doesn't answer.

“I'm sorry.”

Floria nods.

“So then, to make this up to you, I'll send the basket home with you.”

“I couldn't.”

“It's yours.”

“I couldn't bear looking at it.”

“It's yours, along with all those pots and dishes and baking pans and napkins and tablecloths and glasses your brother dragged in here because he could write them off.”

“We could take the centerpiece to his party.”

Leonora starts laughing. “Let's. It's as fake as his promises.”

“Ultimately, though…that basket is too good for him.”

“True.” Leonora sits down and takes one long sip. Closes her eyes. “Feel how the black curls up behind your nose but doesn't go any higher, not into your brain like the clear stuff.”

“Your brain. Not mine.”

“I was talking brain in general. Not yours.” Leonora takes another sip, coats her fingertip with coffee, sings the Chock-f-o'-Nuts-is-the-heavenly-coffee jingle, “…better coffee millionaires' money can't buy.”

“If you had millionaires' money, what would you buy?”

“A new pope. New bishops. New
Fathers.”

“I would buy a house. With an extra room for my sewing. With a front porch and a garden.”

“And I'd buy black Sambuca. Because it goes through the roof of my mouth, and then curls back. It's like licorice.”

“More like anise, really.”

“So we're really agreeing. Because licorice comes from seeds of the anise plant.”

“No. From the licorice plant.”

“You don't ever want to agree with me. It's an attitude that has nothing to do with facts.”

“Get the encyclopedia.”

“What do I get if I'm right?”

“If you're right…I'll tell you about the worst lover I've ever had.” Floria covers her mouth. “Forget I said that. Have another drink. Then you'll forget for sure.”

“And here I thought you went into marriage pure as communion wine.”

“Wine is wine.”

Leonora hauls her chair to the cupboards, steps on it, and tugs the encyclopedia from her stack of cookbooks above the cupboards. “Licorice…” She flips pages. “Lic…lic…lic—”

“Get down before you break something.”

“Only if you tell me about your worst lover.”

“You first.”

“Who says I had a worst…” She teeters. Balances herself. “Worse than what?”

“Worse than other lovers.”

“Oh.”

“Every woman has at least one.”

“How many have you had?”

“Get down from there or I won't tell you about Leopardman.”

Leonora climbs from her chair and drags it back to the table. “Yes?”

But Floria is stalling. She is tilting the coffee can, is shaking it till she has a pile of coffee on the plastic tablecloth, is pushing a crater in the middle as if she were about to add yeast to flour.