The Season of Risks

The afternoon still had me under its spell as I drove home. The spell lifted only when I was twenty miles or so from Homosassa, when I noticed that the dashboard clock read half past six and remembered I was expected to cook supper. What sort of story could I tell Dashay?



When I got home, the truck wasn't there. I took the yellow tag off the Jaguar's rearview mirror and put it in my pocket. Then I ran inside and into the kitchen. I was making a salad when someone knocked at the door.



Yes, I expected it might be Bennett, but even then, when I let him in it was like admitting a stranger. He didn't walk with the buoyancy he had before. He looked thin, and his shoulders were stooped, as if he were recovering from a long illness. Even his head looked smaller, but that might be because he wasn't wearing the black cowboy hat that Dashay had often teased him about.



I gave him a quick hug, trying not to notice how bony he felt. "Dashay's not here," I said.



"I know. She phoned me. Said she tried to call you, but her call went straight to voice mail." He didn't even talk the same way. The old Bennett had spoken quickly, with laughter in his voice.



I'd shut off my phone when I met Cameron, of course.



He sat on a chair, and I tried not to notice how loose his jeans were, how skinny his legs. They warned me that, as a fellow half-breed, I might be at risk as much as he was.



"Is she running late?"



"She is." He was looking around the room. "Nice to be here again. I've been invited to supper."



"Come and help me get things ready." I couldn't leave him sitting there alone, sunk into himself. Besides, I wanted to find him-somewhere inside that shell was an old friend.



What is it that makes someone who he is? Not appearance, really, although others' eyes and mouths are what newborns first recognize. Not smell-at least, not among us. Vampires have no odor, which may explain why our sense of smell is so acute. The way someone talks, the way someone moves-these are important aspects, but they don't constitute identity.



I'd say that identity is a composite of intangible, immeasurable qualities. When I thought of Cameron, for instance, I did think of his appearance-the star-sapphire eyes and the fluid movements of his hands, in particular-but he meant so much more than that. The way he cared about the world was an essential part of him, and so was his passion for shaping its future. The empathetic ways he treated others, even strangers. The way he stayed loyal to his beliefs.



But actions and ethics aside, there was something else, some elusive essence that made him Neil Cameron. Something that had captivated me. When he walked into a room, the room changed. Not the same way it changed when my father entered, when all eyes were drawn to him and the air around him took on an almost imperceptible shimmer-no, Cameron consciously made people look at him. As much as my father shunned it, Cameron thrived on others' attention.



"Watch out," Bennett said. "You almost cut yourself."



I put my attention back on the carrots, pleased that he'd come out of his self-absorption to notice.



"You look like you're daydreaming," he said. "You know that old saying. 'Be careful what you wish for.'"



"Is that what happened to you?" I said it without thinking.



But he didn't take offense. "No, with me it was different. My bad blood got the better of my good blood."



His face twitched, as if painful memories were returning, so I didn't ask what he meant.



By the time Dashay arrived the table was set, biscuits were baking, and a pot of vegetarian chili simmered on the stove. I hadn't learned to cook until last year, but Mae and Dashay had been excellent teachers. They made cooking seem like dancing, each step rhythmically blending with the next.



Bennett sat in his armchair, sipping a glass of wine, and the expression on his face when Dashay walked in held love and shame and hopelessness, all at once.



Dashay, sufficiently distracted by his presence and mortified about being late (something she'd lectured me about more than once), didn't pay much attention to me. And that was a blessing.



"I tried to buy a horse today," she said. "But the seller didn't want to meet my price." She sank into a chair and crossed her arms.



Each of us clearly was more interested in our own thoughts than in making conversation. At the end of the evening, I do recall Bennett thanking me for cooking dinner and Dashay for her "generosity."



"Yes, yes, you're welcome," Dashay said, looking at the floor.



He shifted his weight from foot to foot, then abruptly turned and left.



"So you're being generous?" I asked.



"I'm letting him stay in the guesthouse," she said. "Only until he gets back to being himself again. He can work to earn his keep. And Blue Heaven can surely use every bit of help it gets."



"He said something strange before you came home. He said his bad blood got the better of his good blood."



"That's the way Bennett thinks. About being half-and-half. His vampire half tries to attack his human part."



I'd never heard of such a thing. "Is that possible?"



She shrugged and began clearing the table. Then she glanced back at me. "Nice shirt."



"Thank you. I didn't spill anything this time, but I'll be sure to wash it tomorrow," I said. Last time I borrowed a shirt of hers, lunch had involved chili sauce and mustard.



Alone in my room, I hid the yellow tag from the park in my journal. Every way that I could, I wanted to remember today.



August came, bringing high temperatures, high humidity, and fierce thunderstorms almost every afternoon. Squalls pulsed in from the Gulf, smelling of seaweed and ozone and algae. Some days the sun felt so intense that I swore I could feel it baking my brain.



Rain or shine, Dashay and I went kayaking and horseback riding, slathered with sunblock, wearing hats and shirts designed to shield us from ultraviolet rays. We devoted the remainder of the days to tending the horses, gardens, and beehives. I wanted to keep busy. I didn't want to feel or think. But sometimes, for no reason at all, I remembered the last time Cameron kissed me, and my lips burned.



Bennett had become a regular at our supper table now, and he seemed a little better to me, a little more himself. His sense of humor hadn't fully returned, but one night as we played a board game he laughed at something I said, and I got up and threw my arms around him, thinking, Welcome back.



Over his shoulder I saw Dashay, watching us, her face impossible to read. I heard her think, You can't erase the bad things, even if you want to.



Evenings I spent writing in my journal, reading, amusing Grace-or sorting through my clothes, trying to decide what to take back to school. I had nearly as much stuff on Tybee, and in a few weeks I'd have to pack it all up. A new semester felt like a chance to become a new person, in a way. But it was hard to revise my image when I couldn't clearly see the one I already had.



The limbo feeling came back, stronger than ever, as if I were suspended between two acts of a play-or waiting offstage, watching the drama build around the other actors. Dashay and Bennett, Mae and my father, Cameron: they stood center stage, while I waited in the wings. Or had I been written out?



When Dashay said we should think about returning to Tybee, I didn't protest. My feelings all were on hold.



"I talked with your mother on the phone last night," she said. "A little mother-daughter time is what you both need."



So I said my good-byes to the house, the horses, the bees, the gardens, and Grace. "See you at Christmas," I promised them. What sort of Christmas would it be, with my parents in Ireland and Cameron who knew where?



When we arrived at the cottage on Tybee, my parents were sitting in its backyard, talking. It felt as if I'd never left.



Dashay and I sat down and told them about our time at Blue Heaven, but I sensed some reservations in the way they listened to me.



"That's very good," Mae said after I'd described my work on her moon garden. "I've been reading up on Ireland."



"It must be interesting." I smoothed the cushion of the wicker chair.



They looked thoughtful, as if they were trying to figure out who I was these days. Well, so was I. And it occurred to me that knowing Cameron and keeping him a secret had changed the way I acted, created a space between my parents and me that hadn't been there before.



So we treated each other politely, respecting our mutual need for distance.



Dashay excused herself and said she needed to get back to Florida.



"Aren't you going to spend the night?" my mother asked. "That's a lot of driving for one day."



"I have things on my mind," Dashay said.



Bennett, I supposed.



I think the stiff conversation made her uncomfortable, because she didn't hug us good-bye. "I'll see you all in a while," she said. She paused to blow us a kiss over her shoulder, then shut the front door behind her as she left.



If I had vague doubts about who I was, Mae had specific reservations.



"Did we really buy these only a year ago?" We were in my room, the next morning. She held up a pair of jeans whose knees had worn through.



"I like them that way." I sat on my bed, watching her sort through my bureau. She was trying to be motherly, I realized. But I'd grown up without all that, and it felt too unfamiliar to be pleasant.



She folded the jeans and set them on the pile of clothes to pack. "You need new clothes."



I might have disagreed. Then the image of Tamryn Gordon returned to me: red lipstick and a form-fitting red dress. I considered the stack of jeans and T-shirts on my bed. "Maybe you're right," I said.



So Mae and I spent the rest of that day in Savannah, shopping.



Shopping for clothes with my mother had happened only twice before. She had an exceptional eye for color and design, and she urged me to try on outfits I would never have selected on my own.



But I did assert my own tastes in some decisions. And to her credit, she didn't object when I selected a red lace bra and panties instead of more serviceable neutral-colored ones. After only a second's hesitation, she said diplomatically, "Let's get two sets of each."



I didn't buy a red dress-I was too proud to be a copycat-but I found a knit sheath that came from Peru, made of pima cotton woven in muted blue, green, and grey that evoked a seaside landscape. The dress cost so much that I nearly put it back, but Mae said, "Oh, you must have that. It suits you perfectly."



Money never had been an issue for my family. My father's research contracts and drug patents brought in considerable income. I took our good fortune for granted by and large, but I also was aware of the needs of people all around us. My father's large donations to charities didn't make me feel any more comfortable with our wealth.



So, as Mae paid for the clothes, I promised myself that one day I'd pay my own way.



We had lunch at a cafe near the river-very close, my mother said, to the place she and my father first met as adults. (They'd met earlier as children, on Tybee, but she had only dim recollections of their meeting. He claimed to remember it in every detail: the exact spot on the beach where she first spoke to him, the words they'd exchanged, even the color of their bathing suits.)



My mood brightened as we sat on the balcony, cooled by overhead fans, watching a mammoth freighter crawl along the river. When the server delivered the two dozen oysters we'd ordered, he said, "Are you sisters?"



Looking across at my mother's long auburn hair and radiant skin, I felt flattered. She didn't reply.



After he left, she said, "Just once, I'd like to look like your mother."



And I remembered my college interview at Hillhouse more than a year before, when the admissions officer also said we looked like sisters. I'd been too intent on framing my answers to notice her reaction then.



"It bothers you that you look young?" In mortal terms, she looked no more than thirty.



"Of course it does." She picked up her oyster fork, then set it down again. "It embarrasses me, seeing other parents. Their faces have lines in them, lines that tell stories." She looked away from me, out at the river. "My face is like a blank page."



That wasn't strictly true, I thought. She'd crossed over when she was in her late twenties, and her face did have a few tiny lines, like seedlings of wrinkles to come.



I helped myself to oysters, hoping to distract her into doing the same.



"I've thought about having the injections," she said. "You know. Epiform."



Epiform was one of several "cosmetic dehancers" used by vampires to simulate the appearance of normal human aging. Other forms of aging-enablers used lasers and lights that pulsed concentrated UV rays. Along with plastic surgery, they were popular among those others who had grown tired of the nomadic lifestyle most vampires lead, moving periodically and adopting new identities to conceal their lack of aging from the mortal community.



"I don't think it's a good idea," I said. "Epiform is so unnatural."



Mae said, "More unnatural than being a vampire?"



I hadn't realized she considered us unnatural. "What does my father think?"



She sighed. "Oh, he agrees with you. He says the injections aren't necessary. But Raphael is nearly indifferent to the appearances of others. He was like that even before he crossed over."



My mother still hadn't had one bite of lunch. "I've noticed the same attitude in other men who are exceptionally good-looking; they take their own beauty for granted, and somehow it's enough to keep them from seeking beauty in others."



"But you're beautiful." More striking now than when she'd been mortal, I thought. I'd seen photos of her early days, in an old album.



She ignored my compliment. "Why should we stay the same when everything around us is changing?"



I thought of Bennett. "Sometimes change hurts."



"I'd rather risk the pains of aging than feel-oh, I don't know. Feel as if I'm a mummy in a tomb."



At this point I couldn't think of anything to say to satisfy or soothe her.



Her face softened. "Oh, Ari. Forgive me. You must think I'm one mess of contradictions. I just had to become a vampire, like your father, and now I feel I just have to look like a normal mother. I'm sorry."



I remembered something she'd said once, and I repeated it now: "You need never apologize to me." But the words sounded stiff, stagy.



I tried to change the subject. "How are things with you and my father?" Those words sounded off-key, too.



She looked surprised. Then her face and her posture relaxed. She picked up a slice of lemon and squeezed it over her plate. "Things are okay," she said. "Better than I might have expected. Sometimes a woman has to take the initiative."



I wanted to ask her for details, but I couldn't find the right words. Dashay had been right. We needed to spend more time together, to learn a language of our own.



She lifted an oyster shell to her mouth and drained it. Then she turned her head to one side, her eyes quizzical. She removed something from her mouth and set it on the side of the plate: a small ivory-colored orb.



"I found a pearl," she said.



It didn't look like the pearls in her favorite necklace, which were perfectly round and lustrous. This one's shape was slightly irregular and its surface opaque, tinged with gray.



Mae handed it to me. "You keep it," she said.



When we returned to the cottage, I set the pearl inside an oyster shell I kept on a bookshelf-a souvenir of my first encounter with oysters two years previously. I felt it would be safe there. If I carried it around with me, I thought, I might lose it.



And then there was no more time. We had to pack up our things and close down the cottage. I wrapped the oyster shell and the pearl in tissue paper and set them in my suitcase.



On the day before we left, my father and I took a walk along the beach. We didn't talk much; we simply savored the day. He slowed his pace to match mine and as we moved along the beach, people in bathing suits gawked at us, as if we were movie stars. The way he moved was so graceful that when I walked with him I felt graceful, too.



When we returned to the cottage, he said, "I have a birthday gift for you."



My birthday was July 15. He'd already given me a present, a book called Pale Fire -an enigmatic novel that described a father's awkward relationship with his difficult daughter.



"This gift arrived late."



He left the room and returned carrying a long box that he set on the kitchen table. I recognized the label: Gieves & Hawkes, my father's London tailors.



I rushed over to hug him, and he laughed at my pleasure. My father's laughter is one of the gentlest, most genuine sounds I've ever heard, and it pleased me as much as the present.



And this was a gift to treasure. Inside the box, I knew, were clothes and accessories made of metamaterials. When I chose to activate them, they'd bend light rays. I'd received a similar set nearly two years ago, and the clothes were beginning to fray.



"Thank you, thank you." I opened the box. This new trouser suit was dark gray, with a fashionably longer jacket and narrow pants. And there were shirts, underwear, socks, shoes, and a backpack, all in the same shade.



"The tailors keep your measurements on file, so any time you need new ones, they can get them to you in about two weeks," he said. "I know I don't need to say this, but I want you to remember it well: use invisibility wisely, if at all. Only when it's absolutely necessary."



I sensed someone watching, and I turned. But it was only my mother, leaning against a door frame, her eyes impossible to read.



That night we sat together in the living room. My father and I read, while my mother worked at the kitchen table, assembling a package of seashells and herbs; she asked me to mail it to Dashay, in hopes it would ease her heartache. From time to time I looked from my book to their faces, then around the room. It seems to me that places change when you're about to leave them; windows and doors that beckoned seem incidental, and nooks and corners that promised mystery have been explored and become mundane.



"The possibilities have shut down," I said.



My parents seemed to know what I meant. "It's not the place that has changed, it's your perception of it," my father said.



But my mother agreed with me. "The season is changing, and the cottage knows we're about to leave it."



Everything is changing, I thought. Nothing will ever be the same again.



If time is as fluid as some physicists claim, it's possible that somewhere we are still sitting in that cottage: a mother, a father, and a daughter intact and united, safe from whatever the future might bring.



We'd decided to say our good-byes privately, at the cottage. A van would take them to the airport. I'd drive the Jaguar to school, about a hundred forty miles south.



My mother wasn't good when it came to separations, and she struggled to hide her tears. My father and I wore more stoic masks, but the pain ran every bit as deep, I suspected.



Mae embraced me, then pulled back to check that I wore the amulet she'd given me a year ago. It was in the shape of an Egyptian cat, and, although she didn't know it, the amulet had ruined one of my invisibility attempts last spring. Unlike the special clothes, the cat didn't react to changes in my body temperature.



My mother touched the cat with two fingers and whispered something to it in a language I couldn't understand. Then she kissed me, looked deep into my eyes, and let me go.



"Don't forget to keep your appointment with Dr. Cho," she said. "And to give her my regards."



My annual physical exam had been scheduled for the next day, and I would never have forgotten it. I had important questions for Dr. Cho. As for regards, my mother's feelings about the doctor were decidedly mixed. She'd found out that, years before her marriage, Dr. Cho had had a crush on Raphael.



My father and I patted each other's shoulders awkwardly, but at the last minute, when the van pulled in to the driveway, I threw my arms around him.



"Boa viagem, minha filha," he said. He kissed my forehead. Safe journey, my daughter.



Then they were gone. I went inside, not wanting to see the landscape diminished by their absence.



Alone in the cottage, I made myself focus on packing the last of my clothes and clearing my room. Another family would live here next month.



When I finished, I walked down the beach, saying good-bye to the day and to summer. The sun was setting, and far from the shoreline, freighters crawled along the coast, their smokestacks gleaming in the dying light.



I thought of lines from my favorite Longfellow poem: Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, / Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; / So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, / Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.



The curse of my education: I knew a poem for every depressing occasion, and they came back to me whether I wanted them to or not.