Page 48 of Persephone's Curse
“Gosh, darling,yes. You’re a locked hope chest. A closed book. A flower before it blooms. But you’ll get there. I’ve no doubt of that.”
We spent two hours on Fifth Avenue, peering into each window and getting jostled by strangers and losing feeling in our extremities. Clara’s nose was so pink at one point that I cupped my hands around her face and huffed hot air at her.
“Sort of gross,” she said. “Sort of nice.”
We ate a late brunch at Sarabeth’s, a super-fancy diner onFifty-Ninth Street that was a solid part of our window-looking tradition. As usual, Dad grumbled about the prices. As usual, the food was actually pretty good. As usual, Mom and Aunt Bea got a little tipsy on mimosas and giggled so loudly together that surrounding tables shot us dirty looks and mumbled under their breaths abouttourists.
Evelyn sat next to me and stole french fries off my plate and we laughed about how much coffee Dad drank and Clara leaned back in her chair so far she toppled over backward and Bernadette laughed so much I thought she might actually have peed her pants a little.
Honestly, it was kind of the perfect day.
It would have been the perfect day.
And I didn’t know why I said it.
I didn’t know why I chose that moment.
But I leaned over to Evelyn and said, “I knew you’d be happy again.”
I didn’t even really think that was what I had meant to say, when I’d first leaned toward her. I really thought I’d say something about Dad, about Clara rubbing the back of her head dramatically, about Aunt Bea laughing so hard an enormous booger dripped out of her nose, about Mom’s cheeks turning the brightest shade of pink.
But I didn’t say any of those things.
I opened my mouth, and those six words came out—I knew you’d be happy again.
And Evelyn turned to me, her smile undisturbed and unfaltering, her eyes wide and clear, and said, “Itwasyou, wasn’t it?”
And I didn’t respond.
I didn’t have to.
Because I was a terrible liar, and I knew the truth was written all over my face.
Although I knew Evelyn was avoiding me, it was an incredibly subtle avoidance, a gentle evasion that absolutely no one else was able to detect.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bernie said a few days later, when Aunt Bea had gone back to Vermont and we’d gone back to school and life had returned to its usual rhythms.
I didn’t want to tell her what Evelyn had said to me at brunch that day. It felt like the biggest admission of guilt, the truest conviction of my sins.
So I dropped it.
Evelyn and I walked to school each morning. We exchanged idle chitchat. We talked about the dreams we’d had the night before, the assignments we were working on for school, the dead rat that someone had left on the principal’s desk. Even I began to question my own mind—had I imagined it all? Was everything fine?
But a week passed in this way.
And then we woke up one morning.
A Saturday in early December.
And Evelyn was gone.
V
Persephone’s footsteps were said to cause plants to bloom, trees to blossom, flowers to open wider. But they were also said to cause weak spots in the fabric of the universe, becoming their own tiny little portals to another world. Persephone loved her husband, and she loved the Underworld but she also lovedourworld, and when she was there, she longed forhere,and when she was here, she longed forthere.You might say she was destined to never be completely satisfied; you might say she lived so firmly in the in-between as to have no real home. You might say that women who grew up in these footsteps lived in the in-between, too. So close to two worlds they might somehow find a way to travel between them…
I found her empty bed, of course. It was ten o’clock in the morning and our parents had gone to the Berkshires for a four-day trip with friends; they’d left the night before. Bernadette and Clara and I had decided to go to Todd’s for breakfast and I’d volunteered to wake Evelyn. So of course it was me who pushed open her bedroom door and found her bed, perfectly made,perfectly smooth, and her room, neat and clean, with not a piece of clothing or scrap of paper out of its proper place.
I didn’t move for a long time.
