“It depends.” She rubbed her eyes. “Some like it on the island. Joey might have been perfectly happy there. But Harris hated it, and Joey didn’t want to be left alone.”
“Will you teach me how to talk to them?”
“Sure,” she said. “It takes some time, but not as much as learning French or Spanish.”
“I want Harris to be my friend,” I said. I imagined holding his hand, talking walks, maybe even trips in the pedal boat.
“He will be, for a while.” Mãe looked hard at me. “You realize he can’t stay here?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe, for one thing. Someone might see them and then we’d have the hotel to deal with. You don’t know yet how small this town is.” She walked around the room, switching off lamps. “Even more important, Harris and Joey will be happier at a primate refuge. There’s a sanctuary in Panama where we’ve sent monkeys before. They’re rehabilitated and taught how to live in the wild again.”
I thought this over. Sadly, it did make sense. “I really wanted him to be my pet.”
“Someday, a monkey might turn up who wants to stay.” My mother yawned. “But not Harris. He absolutely hates Florida.”
How could anyone hate Florida? I wondered later. I lay in my soft white bed, watching the orange-blossom-scented breeze lift the white curtains, listening to the rhythmic song of tree frogs punctuated by the percussion of bamboo stalks clacking against each other. I felt as close to happy as I’d thought I’d ever be.
The next morning, after writing in my journal, I went out to the kitchen and no one was there. I sat down at the big oak table, not sure what I should do. A newspaper from Tampa lay at the table’s head, and I read the front-page headlines upside down. Then I picked up the paper and skimmed it, story by story: Wars. Floods. Global warming.
Toward the bottom right side of an inside page, I read: “No Clues in Vampire Slayings.” The story summarized the deaths of Robert Reedy of Asheville and one Andrew Parker of Savannah. Police asked the public to call with any information about the murders. Parker’s family offered a reward for any tips. I carefully re-folded the paper, wondering how I would tell my mother I’d killed a man.
She came in a few minutes later, talking to a tall woman with the most interesting hair I’d ever seen: it had been rolled and twisted and pinned up into elaborate shapes like cabbage roses. Her eyes were enormous, caramel-colored.
“Dashay, this is Ariella,” my mother said.
I said hello, feeling shy. I’d never known before how beautiful and animated women could be. No one like these women walked around in Saratoga Springs. I stared down at the table, listening to their voices.
Dashay talked about the horses she’d seen at the auction, about the people who were buying and selling. She hadn’t been tempted to bid, but she’d met with three owners interested in breeding mares with Osceola.
Mãe asked detailed questions about the owners while she stood at the stove, cooking oatmeal. She set steaming bowls before us, and Dashay handed me a glass honey pot shaped like a hive. “Drizzle it on,” she said.
We ate, and I savored each mouthful. The honey tasted of flowers and spring air, and the oatmeal’s texture was creamy, soothing. Last night’s dinner — grilled mahi-mahi with citrus sauce and puréed sweet potatoes — had been equally delicious. I didn’t miss my tonic and protein bars at all, but I wondered when I’d need blood again.
My mother looked at me, questions in her eyes.
“So you were up early with the bees, huh,” Dashay said. “Guess I’ll do some gardening this afternoon, then take some honey down to the store.”
Mãe was still watching me. “Two cartons of orange blossom are ready to go,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to give Ariella a riding lesson.”
In short order I learned how to tighten a saddle, adjust the stirrups, mount and dismount, and hold the reins. I’d asked to ride Johnny Cypress. Mãe agreed.
“He’s the gentlest of the bunch,” she said. “I think it’s because he’s so grateful. His previous owner abused him. You should have seen him when we adopted him, poor baby.”
We headed down a trail toward the river, the horses stepping briskly, enjoying the outing. I quickly got used to the rhythm and let myself relax in the saddle.
“You ride well,” my mother said. It was the first time she’d praised me, and I grinned. “It’s not always so gentle,” she said. “Later we’ll pick up the pace.”
The dirt path led through mangroves, past small ponds and marsh grass, and then to the river, broad and blue, smelling of salt. Here we dismounted and sat on a large flat rock, shaded by mangroves. “We have picnics here,” Mãe said.
For a while neither of us spoke. The wind played with our hair, and we watched the horses as they grazed. Osceola was a true beauty: tall and muscular and handsome in all respects. Johnny Cypress was small and jaunty, perfect for me.
“I want to ride him every day,” I said, not realizing I’d spoken aloud until Mãe said, “Of course you will.”
“Mãe, I need to tell you some things.” Again, I hadn’t planned to speak. Then the words all came in a rush. “I killed someone, I didn’t mean to, you don’t know who I am, it all happened so suddenly —” Clumsy words, but such a relief to say them.
She put up her hand, and the gesture made me stop talking and think of my father.
Her blue eyes were clear, untroubled. “Slow down and tell me.”
I told her the story of Robert Reedy’s untimely death in the woods outside Asheville. She interrupted only twice, to ask, “Did anyone see you get in his car?” (I didn’t know) and “Did you leave behind any evidence?” (I hadn’t, and I’d been wearing gloves.)
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said, when I’d finished.
“But it’s murder.”
“More like self-defense,” she said. “He would have raped you.”
“Then why do I feel so bad?” I crossed my arms and gripped my shoulders. “Why do I think about it all the time?”
“Because you have a conscience,” she said. “Something he probably lacked. Ariella, from all you’ve said I doubt that you were the first girl he took out there. Be glad you’re the last.”
I shook my head. “You’re not even shocked that I’m — that I’m —”
She laughed. “You’re so like your father,” she said. “All this concern for things that really can’t be helped. No, I’m not shocked. How could I be? I knew you were a vampire — although I didn’t like to use the word — right from the beginning.”
To be precise, she said, she knew from the first trimester that her pregnancy wasn’t “normal.”
“I felt terribly sick.” She rubbed her forehead, then pulled her hand through her hair. “I threw up all the time, and I was mean to your father. I blamed him for everything. But in fact, getting pregnant was all my doing.”
“It usually takes two.” My voice came out sounding so prissy that she laughed again, and finally I smiled.
“In our case, I was the driving force,” she said, her voice dry. “Hasn’t he told you any of this?”
“Some,” I said. “He said it was a difficult pregnancy. And he did say that you were the one who wanted me.” I looked toward the river.
“That’s not entirely true, either. Look at me. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
I wasn’t sure, anymore. But I said, “I have to know. It feels as if everything depends on me knowing.”
She nodded. She told me her story.
Imagine finding the love of your life, then losing him. Yes, people lose their loved ones all the time to war and disease, accidents and murder. But imagine watching your lover change before your eyes, devolve into some other being, and you’re powerless to bring him back.
My mother told me about meeting Raphael, about their early months together, about packing for her trip to England as if it were a honeymoon. She described their reunion — the horror of seeing a man who wasn’t Raphael inhabit his body, the futile desire to recover what he had been.
“He was brilliant,” she said. “And funny. He could dance, and tell jokes, and of course he was beautiful —”
“He’s still beautiful,” I said.
“But he lacks something,” my mother said. “Something that made him my Raphael.”
She said that she’d hoped that with time and love, he would come back to himself. “The odd thing is, he imposed this new personality on himself,” she said. “It didn’t happen as a result of his so-called affliction. He felt guilty. He made himself into a sort of monk, so obsessed with doing the right thing that everything he did seemed stiff, programmed.
“You’ve known me exactly one day,” she said to me. “But you’ve seen enough to know that I’m impulsive, and kind of silly at times.”
“I like that,” I said.
“So did your father, once,” she said. “In any case, getting married was my idea. He didn’t think it was ethical, a vampire marrying a human. I said, love isn’t a matter of ethics!”
We didn’t speak for a moment. The water nearby began to ripple, and as I watched, a gray-white mass rose to the surface and took shape. I put my hand on my mother’s shoulder, mouthed the word manatee?
She nodded. The manatee turned its wrinkled face away and slowly sank again.
“Oh,” I said. “To think such things really exist.”
Mãe reached for me and hugged me hard.
Listening to my mother that day was something like hearing a horror story read aloud at a toddlers’ picnic. Nothing in the place or the company was in keeping with the tale.
“I trapped him,” she said. Nearby, butterflies perched on a flowering shrub. “He didn’t want to have a child. I told him I was using two forms of birth control, so that he didn’t need any. I lied to him.”
For the first time, I felt I was hearing more than I wanted to know.
She seemed to sense my discomfort. “So when I learned I was pregnant, I felt triumphant — briefly,” she said. “Then I was sick as a dog.”
She learned she was pregnant in November — peak season for the Saratoga Springs doldrums. “The weather was dreadful, and I stayed inside,” she said. “He hated himself for giving in to me, and his way of dealing with it was reverting to complete correctness. That is, he played the model husband — no, more like a nurse — looking after me, doing research about pregnancy and home deliveries, watching my diet, taking blood samples. He and Dennis were like two hens, clucking over me. They made me want to scream.”
Two jays — males, their wings and tails a vivid royal blue — alit on the rocks near the river and looked at us. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I felt sympathy for my father. He’d tried to do what he thought was right, given the circumstances. My mother had been the greedy one.
She was watching me, and now she nodded. “He tried to do what was right. And he thought having a child was wrong. Well, Ariella, at least I won that one.”
