Page 104 of Persephone's Curse
“Oh, that’s not right,” he said. “Let me start over.”
Only Evelyn and Henry weren’t there, and I started the long journey upstairs to look for them, not liking how it felt to be apart from them. If I could lock everyone in a room, I would. If I could keep an eye on everyone forever, I would.
I found Evelyn in her bedroom. She had a small suitcase open on the floor and there were three piles on her bed, various clothes and belongings and knickknacks. She didn’t hear me coming, and I stood in her doorway for a moment, watching her. Henry wasn’t there, but I smelled jasmine, like I had just missed him.
“Marie Kondo?” I guessed, and she jumped a little and turned around.
“I didn’t hear you come up,” she said.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked, nodding my head toward the suitcase.
She lowered her head and said, without looking at me, “No. I mean… No. This is just in case. Just in case we can’t fix it, and he can’t stay here, and I have to go back with him.”
“How does that make any sense, Evelyn? You went through twice and you ripped a hole in the sky. What would happen if you did it again? You’d destroy the entire city, probably.”
“I’m just planning for everything, okay?” she said. And it was so like her, so like my sister, to make sure she was ready for any possible outcome, even if one of the possible outcomes was leaving us forever.
“Where is he?”
“He went out. He doesn’t know I’m doing this.”
It was strange, that he could go out now. He could leave the house that had been his home-slash-prison-slash-afterlife for so many years.
I took a step into the room. The suitcase only had a few things in it. She had just started packing.
“Let me guess,” I said, pointing at the smallest pile on her bed (old paperback copy ofPride and Prejudice,dark-green clothbound journal, fancy fountain pen that had belonged to our grandmother). “Yes.” I pointed to the next pile (small handwoven purse she’d bought in Mexico, collection of folded notes, hat our mother had knit for her). “Maybe.” I pointed to the last pile, the biggest (selection of European coins, set of colored pencils and sketchpad, chunky plastic watch she had worn every day of third grade). “No.”
“I just don’t know what else todo,Winnie. We’re all just sitting around and waiting and meanwhile the tear is only getting bigger and nobody is coming up with any ideas of how to fix it.”
I know how to fix it,I wanted to say.
Henry told me how to fix it, and you’re not going to like it one bit.
“You told me you wouldn’t lie to me again,” she said, her voice quieter now, my own silence spreading out and filling up the room.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Eventually, she picked up a small stuffed animal from her bed. It was Roo, fromWinnie the Pooh,complete with a powder-blue knit sweater that had his name embroidered on it in darker blue thread.
“Do you remember when we got this?” she asked.
“Of course. Disneyland.”
“You got Piglet. With the little scarf around his neck. Do you still have it?”
“Somewhere, sure.”
She held the small Roo tightly to her chest, closing her eyes, concentrating.
“What color was the scarf?” she asked, and I had to admit I didn’t remember.
She set Roo carefully down in thenopile, and that tiny action made me feel like when all of this was said and done, no matter where Evelyn ended up, we had really lost her for good.
XII
And what about now? Does Persephone still wander the earth for half the year, does she still perform her seasonal tasks, or is she able to instead rest, to recede into the background, to retire comfortably in the halls of the dead, where aubergine skies spread out above you and in Grand Central there is endless, fevered dancing under the twinkling lights of a thousand real stars…?
I like to think that she visits us, yes, but not because she has to anymore, rather, because shewantsto, because she misses the feel of the grass and the scent of the jasmine and the places she once wandered. I like to think that she retraces her steps, placing her feet in the same spaces she once stood. Her footsteps deepening, widening, remaining…
