The Season of Risks

I awoke to the sound of a voice, low pitched yet urgent, coming from another room. Straining to pick out the words, I heard another voice, this one in my head: Please don't tell me you're eavesdropping again.



Both voices belonged to Dashay. I wondered, Am I a chronic eavesdropper?



In the days to come I heard her urgent voice often. She was telephoning my parents in Ireland, making plans for my disappearance.



She explained the reasons on my first morning home, simply by leaving a folded newspaper by my breakfast plate.



NO HOPE OF SURVIVORS, read the main headline, and in slightly smaller type beneath it: "NY-to-Dublin flight disappears with 230 on board." Even smaller letters read: "Cameron's Mystery Girl among the missing."



Cameron. The name made my heart contract.



And there, above my captioned name, was a photo of me.



Except it wasn't me. Even though I had no distinct reflection in a mirror, and only hazy memories of how others had described me, I knew I wasn't the girl in the picture.



"I knew that wasn't you." Dashay lowered herself into the seat opposite me, slowly, as if she were a much older, heavier woman. Worry seemed to add weight to her actions. "I could tell by the eyes."



I stared at the grainy black-and-white photo. The young woman had on too much makeup. She wore a trench coat-something I'd never owned.



"There's a drawing of me," I began, but Dashay had been listening to my thoughts. She stood up from the table and left the room, suddenly seeming much younger and lighter, and came back holding the charcoal sketch. I looked from it to the newspaper photo.



"She's almost identical," I said.



"But not the eyes." Dashay rested her index finger lightly on the photo and tapped it, as if summoning it to life. "Look at them. Look how dead they are. Those are duppy eyes and no mistake."



"What's a duppy?"



She said she'd told me about duppies before. They were Jamaican ghosts who could be summoned from the grave and made to do the bidding of an obeah man. "You might call him some kind of magician, I guess," she said. "Shaman is a better name."



Dashay poured us large cups of tea and set a bowl of oatmeal on the table before me. "Eat your breakfast, please. Then I have some questions to ask you."



Obediently, I ate my breakfast. But I had no answers to her questions. My head felt as if it were full of marshmallows. I didn't know how I'd ended up in Miami or why I'd gone there. Whatever had happened to me seemed as mysterious to me as it must have been to her.



Patience was not one of Dashay's virtues, I learned. Yet I sensed how hard she strove to be patient with me during my first crazy days back in the land of the living.



That first day she explained to me why I mustn't go off the property: I was presumed dead, so in the eyes of the world I must stay dead.



She could have saved her breath. I had no desire to run away from home or even to go out for a walk. I was afraid I'd forget how to get back again.



Dashay began the same explanation a second time. "It would be too risky for you even to go down to the gate to get the mail," she said, enunciating each syllable.



I said, "I may be slow, but you don't have to talk to me as if I'm an idiot."



She tried to look indignant at my sassiness, but I could tell it actually pleased her.



Bennett was much easier to be around, all in all. He took me horseback riding around the property, and the gentle rhythm of the horse's trot brought back a flood of memories-of places we'd ridden before, of the sounds and smells of horses in other seasons.



Dashay had supper waiting when we returned. My appetite seemed insatiable, that first night after we'd been riding.



After we'd cleared the table and washed up, Dashay went off into her room to make and answer phone calls. Bennett taught me a card game, Crazy Eights, which I enjoyed, even though I knew he let me win the first few times we played.



We were in the middle of a "rubber" game-the tiebreaker after we'd each won one-when Dashay burst in, holding her cell phone. She handed it to me without speaking.



"Hello?" I said.



"Ari?" A woman's voice, soft and flustered. "Do you know who this is?"



And those few words unlocked something in me. "Mae?" I said.



"That's right." The woman on the other end began to sob. I handed the phone back to Dashay, shaking my head. Then I began to cry, too, without knowing why.



"No, no, no." Bennett's voice was as gentle as the arm he put around my shoulders.



Dashay left the room. When she came back a few minutes later, she no longer held the phone. "I'm sorry," she said. "That was my idea. She didn't want to talk to you. She knew she couldn't handle it. After all, she thought that you were dead. But listen, Ari. She can't wait to see you."



The conflicting emotions confused me. "Where is she?"



"She's way across the ocean. In Ireland, with your father."



Father. The word conjured no image, no feelings.



Bennett broke in. "Did you book a flight?"



Dashay shook her head. "Sara's superstitious. She wouldn't let Ari get on an airplane, not after all that's happened. No, we're going to take a boat."



"A boat." Bennett sounded skeptical. "All the way to Ireland."



"A big boat." Dashay's voice came fast now, as if she was excited. "A ship. So big it has movie theaters and restaurants and shops and swimming pools and a spa."



I thought, Isn't a spa a kind of bathtub? I didn't think that was anything to get excited about.



"We leave in two weeks. That's the first transatlantic crossing I could find, and lucky for us, it leaves from Florida."



Lucky for us. I had no sense of what those words could possibly mean.



On the day after Dashay announced her big plan, a rectangular box addressed to Sara Montero arrived. After a bell rang, Bennett went down the grassy path to collect the package at the gate.



When he came back, Dashay looked at the address label. "Everybody knows Sara goes by her own name, not Montero," she said. The return address was a box number at Hillhouse College.



Dashay tore open the box. Inside, encased in bubble wrap, lay a laptop computer.



"I think it's yours, Ari," she said.



I was more interested in the note inside the box. The cursive handwriting seemed familiar. It read: "Dear Ms. Montero, I am so sad to hear about Ari. I can't even imagine what you must be going through. She left her computer behind. I hope it brings you some peace of mind. We all feel terrible." It was signed, "Your friend, Jacey."



I had a momentary image of hair-thick, wavy blond hair.



Dashay read the note over my shoulder. "Poor thing," she said. "I feel sorry for her."



Yes, sorry. That feeling accompanied the image of the hair.



Bennett said, "There's something else in the box."



I pulled out a small mound of Bubble Wrap, bound with duct tape. This Jacey person must be cautious, I thought as I unwrapped it. The sort of person who anticipates that things will be broken.



Inside the package lay half an oyster shell, and in it rested a small dull pearl. Bennett seemed unimpressed and Dashay, downright disappointed. "What is that thing?"



I cupped the pearl in my hand, awed by its beauty. "Mae," I said. The word came to me from nowhere. "My mother. She gave this to me."



Dashay's face softened. Bennett took the empty box away. I held the pearl for a few more minutes, then returned it to the shell and carefully carried them to a safe place on the bookshelf in my bedroom.



Later that day someone, probably Dashay, set up the computer on a desk in my room. I glanced at it from time to time, in passing, having no desire whatsoever to turn it on.



Dr. Cho arrived on my third day home. Dashay met her at the gate and drove up to the house with her, and they walked in together, talking.



The doctor set a leather satchel on the kitchen table. She looked familiar to me, the way a character actor you've seen in more than one film looks familiar. "Hello, Ari," she said. "How are you feeling today?"



I looked into her dark eyes and envied their alert intelligence. "I'm not sure," I said.



She examined me in my room. She listened to my heartbeat and stared into my eyes and ears and every other part of me, it seemed. Then she said she needed a blood sample. The sight of the needle made me nauseous. I had to close my eyes.



She didn't ask me a single question until all her tests were done and the tubes of blood had been packed into her bag. Then she asked seven.



No, I said, I didn't remember what I'd done after I left the house in January. I had a vague recollection of holiday celebrations, of food and gifts, nothing more. Miami? Yes, I must have driven there, but I didn't remember that, either. (Did I really know how to drive?) Yes, since I came home I'd been taking my tonic. Before that, I didn't know how I'd been fed. Yes, my appetite was strong. Yes, my body felt healthy. Yes, I slept soundly. My mood? That was a question I couldn't answer. I didn't know how I felt.



"I'll give you an injection to boost your immune system," Dr. Cho said. From her bag she removed a syringe and a vial.



As the syringe filled with dark fluid, I bent over, clutching my stomach. She set the syringe down and came to me immediately. She put her hand on my forehead and knelt to look deeply into my eyes. "It's all right, Ari. It's all right."



I was breathing hard, nearly panting, and my body was shaking. She wrapped her arms around me. "I won't give you an injection. It's all right. You're safe here." She was thinking, Funny, she's never reacted that way before.



Sometime later, after she'd left, I played the scene over in my mind, ashamed of my reaction. Whoever I might be, I didn't want to be a coward.



Every day I ate three meals and went horseback riding. I didn't talk much, and I liked that Bennett and Dashay didn't, either. We created an impromptu play of a small family devoted to keeping quiet about our worries.



But in the background, Dashay was up to something, I could tell. More discreet phone conversations, more scurrying from room to room while I lay on the living room sofa, Grace by my side, reading anything: comic books, cookbooks, old novels. I would have read the dictionary, but Bennett had taken all three copies to the guesthouse, for reasons no one seemed to know. I could have asked him to bring me one, but it seemed too much trouble.



One afternoon I heard singing coming from the kitchen. A strange scent wafted into the living room-rich and sweet, and somehow familiar, promising something impossibly delicious. Grace and I left our sofa to investigate.



The oven door was open, and the smell in the kitchen made my mouth water. Dashay lifted a narrow pan from the oven shelf and set it on the counter. I looked at the golden loaf and said, "Honey cake."



Dashay kissed me. And she let me eat half of it, right then and there.



"Don't you have anything better than that?" Dashay looked critically at my blue dress. It had been washed and pressed, but it was tight at the shoulders, chest, and hips.



I tried on the few other clothes in my bedroom closet, and none of them fit me. Dashay shook her head, then left. She returned carrying a white chiffon dress. After I'd put it on, I noticed the thin, yellow panels set into its skirt. "It's like an iris," I said.



She smiled. "It looks good on you. Your form has filled out this year."



"Do you mean I'm fat?"



She laughed. "No, no. But your chest and hips are fuller. More womanly." She looked thoughtful. "Must be the human side of you, growing up."



She'd made me dress up because we were expecting company. A boy called Sloan would be coming in on a bus from Atlanta, and Bennett had already left to pick him up in Crystal River. She said I'd met him when I was back at college.



"How do you know him?" I asked.



"He's your friend, Ari. The one who drew that picture of you. He was here for Christmas. We stay in touch every few weeks or so. Poor boy has been working in a supermarket. He can use a break."



When Bennett arrived, the young man with him did look familiar, in the way that Dr. Cho had: someone I'd seen before, someone who could most likely be trusted. He came over to where I sat in the living room. "No, don't stand up," were his first words to me.



He sat beside me on the sofa, and we eyed each other. His long hair made him look romantic. I liked that word, romantic. He smiled as if he'd heard it and liked it, too.



"It's amazing to see you," he said. "Ari, you have no idea. It's deadly."



"Deadly?"



"In Ireland it means awesome. What a relief !"



Dashay cooked us a feast that night: ackee, a kind of fruit that actually tasted a little like the scrambled eggs I'd had for breakfast, mixed with salt fish and spices, along with rice and red beans and fried sweet plantains.



Sloan asked for Scotch Bonnet sauce, and Dashay said, "I knew I forgot something."



When I tasted it, I knew I'd had it before. I had no trouble remembering the flavors of foods.



Afterward, as Bennett and I cleared the table, Dashay and Sloan went off for a walk. "Better enjoy the spring before it turns to summer," she said. But I sensed they were going off to talk about me.



Bennett was beating me at Crazy Eights by the time she came back, alone. She went straight to her room and slammed the door. Sloan trailed in afterward, looking forlorn.



"She's vexed and no mistake," he said.



"Sit down." Bennett patted the chair next to him. "She's like that, sometimes."



"Ari, I told her." Sloan sat down and folded his arms across his chest. "About you going to Miami for the Septimal."



"What's a Septimal?" I asked.