Candles Burning

Forty-two

THE spring and fall bird migrations drew many of our guests. Of the regulars, the Llewelyns were actually among the guests when Mama and I first arrived, but I paid them no mind at the time, and in turn, they paid little to me. Dr. Gwilym Llewelyn was a retired dentist who invited everyone to call him Will. Mrs. Gwilym Llewelyn was quite emphatically Mrs. Llewelyn. Her wifely status emphasized by insisting on being “Mrs. Llewelyn” was a feint; her Christian name was Lou Ellen, and that had proved too much poetry for her.

On their return in the fall of 1958, the Llewelyns remarked on my interest in birds. Their enthusiasm was infectious, their pleasure in the birds so intense and immediate, that I was entirely comfortable with them at once. As soon as they discovered that I was unusually good at mimicry of the birds, they all but adopted me. Dr. Llewelyn insisted on examining my teeth and cleaning them with a little dental kit that he carried with him, and gave me free toothpaste with fluoride in it that probably saved my teeth from the high-sugar diet at Merrymeeting. Mrs. Llewelyn took me shopping with her on occasion, with the excuse that she needed me to carry packages. On those expeditions, she bought me shoes and clothing that fit me, and treated me to lunches and teas in Pensacola or in Milton.

Each Christmas, I sent the Llewelyns a homemade Christmas card with an origami crane in it for them to hang on their tree, and they sent me a store-bought card, half a dozen toothbrushes and a supply of toothpaste, and a calendar. My birthday brought not only a card but a gift, which was always what Mrs. Llewelyn called “frivolous.” Once it was a poodle skirt, with the requisite petticoat to wear under it, so that navigating the aisles at school was like docking a boat. Another birthday, the Llewelyns sent a girlish diary with a flimsy lock and a set of stationery, with stamps and an address book. Their gifts were the commonplace things that my peers were likely to receive from doting grandparents or aunts or uncles, and I always felt a little less of an orphan when I opened them.

From mid-March to June, the beach offered surcease from the northern winter. From June to September, our near-neighbors in the broiling Southern summer sought relief in the relative cool of the beach. Custom slowed a little in October, and fell off through November, December, January and February, but never quite stopped altogether, as guests found their way to Merrymeeting for reasons that had little to do with climate. Even at Thanksgiving and Christmas, which most folk could be expected to observe at home, a few guests took shelter at Merrymeeting. The Llewelyns always departed in time to spend their holidays with family. Mrs. Mank notably never observed the holidays with us.

Of all of Merrymeeting’s guests, the most eccentric assortment were the ones who turned up for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Every year that I can recall, an elderly couple by the name of Slater arrived in the third week of November and stayed until the first day of January. Mrs. Slater loved Bridge. If she could not make up a table, she knitted. Mr. Slater was always looking for someone with whom to play chess or Pinochle. They were both intense competitors, and I often observed them cheating at games. For old people, their reflexes with cards, pins, and knitting needles were astonishing.

An extraordinarily tall, thin, loose-limbed man, Mr. Quigley, was in the habit of arriving the day before Thanksgiving, staying a week, and then returning for a second week at Yuletide. He played Bridge with Mrs. Slater or chess or Pinochle with Mr. Slater. It was my impression that he was also aware that they cheated and was amused to let them. He painted little watercolors, usually seascapes.

Dr. Jean Keeling, a woman much given to reading, spent the last two weeks of December and all of January at Merrymeeting. When she wasn’t reading science-fiction paperback novels, she listened to opera on the Stromberg Carlson, and wrote a great many cards and letters. She played Bridge and other games with the Slaters and was as quick with her cards as they were, but like Mr. Quigley, seemed not to care whether she won or not. She was kind enough to give me her paperbacks when she finished them, but she was not a particularly gregarious person. She had one close friend among the group and that was Father Valentine.

An old blind priest, Father Valentine settled in the first of November and stayed until February fifteen. He was supposedly Episcopalian and retired, but was not the least bit frail. He paid me to read to him by the hour, which vastly improved my reading skills and vocabulary, to say nothing of my knowledge of the Bible, theology and philosophy. Fortunately for me, Father Valentine also enjoyed mystery stories, and through him, I was educated in the canon of fictional crime. He was voluble, not to say indiscreet, in a perfectly forthright way, not the least bit childishly or maliciously.

These guests’ avocations, however, were not what made them our most eccentric guests, nor was it the habit of spending what are normally family holidays at Merrymeeting. It was that they were all adamantly and extremely superstitious, in different ways. They talked and argued about these beliefs as casually as other folks mentioned the weather. It seemed as if someone was always flinging salt over his or her left shoulder or through some other odd little ritual just barely fending off a dire end caused by a seemingly insignificant event.

Father Valentine’s bed had to be placed with the head toward the south, to ensure long life.

Each of the others required the head of their bed to face east, for wealth, and regarded Father Valentine’s insistence on the south as sheer superstition, and likely to bring bad luck.

They all tied knots in their handkerchiefs for a whole spectrum of reasons unique to each.

Father Valentine informed me that the necklace of amber beads that Dr. Keeling always wore preserved her from ill health.

He also told me that the single blue glass bead on a safety pin that Mrs. Slater invariably wore on her collar was to ward off witchcraft.

Mr. Quigley and Father Valentine, who both smoked, would never light three cigarettes with the same match.

Mr. Quigley required half an onion under his bed when he had a cold.

Dr. Keeling regarded the same as ridiculous superstition.

Candles were a general fixation.

A candle had to burn in a window from Christmas Eve through Christmas night. It was bad luck for the year if it went out, and good if it didn’t.

Seeing oneself in a candlelit mirror would bring down a curse. I was neutral on that one, having seen myself in candlelit mirrors and not felt any particular curse.

Seeing a loved one in a candlelit mirror could be the first notice of their death. That I could believe. I had certainly seen Mamadee in the parlor mirror before the confirmation of her passing.

Then there was the one about seeing a loved one known to be deceased in a candlelit mirror meant one’s own death was near at hand. Well, I hadn’t been sure about Mamadee, so I guessed that I didn’t need to write my will yet.

All the little rituals made for a nervous atmosphere, as if everyone was on tiptoe because someone upstairs was dying.

Mama shushed me a lot. I often escaped outdoors, though the cold wind off the Gulf made my bones ache, my lungs tighten, and my nose run. I hardly ever could remember my handkerchief, so the kerchief ties of my hat were always stiff with snot from wiping my nose on them.

Our first Yuletide at Merrymeeting, Miz Verlow made no preparations until Christmas Eve, when she came back from Pensacola with an artificial Christmas tree.

I was very relieved, as the continued absence of the usual preparations suggested that the holiday was not going to be observed at Merrymeeting. Mama told me to stop being silly; we were bereaved, church-mouse poor, and Christmas had become too commercial anyway. We would observe the true religious meaning of Christmas.

Children were rarely among the guests at Merrymeeting and I have since wondered if Miz Verlow obtained that tree only for me. It was white, and looked like the roof antenna for a television set adorned with bottlebrushes. Mama thought it vulgar. We had always had real Christmas trees.

The fake tree was fine by me. We set it up in the larger parlor. Miz Verlow gave me a spray bottle of some clear fluid that she had compounded herself—fire retardant, she said—and I sprayed the tree. The fluid smelled like pine with a hint of peppermint in it. I wondered why a tin tree had to be fireproofed, but it was only one of the many peculiar things that grown-ups did, like throwing salt over their shoulders, or pretending that they didn’t go to the toilet.

The decorations Miz Verlow brought home with the fake tree consisted of a string of colored lights that were supposed to look like small candles in Victorian lamps, and bubbled when they warmed up, and a dozen silver and gold balls the size of goose eggs. I managed to break eight of the shiny balls. The tree looked rather naked.

Miz Verlow studied it for a moment, sighed, and went to the drawer in the desk where the cards were kept. She fished around it and came up with a greasy old beat-up deck. She tossed them to me. I recognized them in midair as the ones we had used when we heard Mamadee’s voice.

I gripped them tightly. Did Miz Verlow want to invite Mamadee to speak again?

“Jean,” Miz Verlow said to Dr. Keeling, who was ensconced in an overstuffed chair in one corner.

Like the other guests and Mama, Dr. Keeling had been observing the assembly and decoration of the tree, but she had not participated. None of them had.

“Don’t you know of something to do with cards?” Miz Verlow asked her.

Dr. Keeling cocked an eyebrow and then shrugged.

“Calley,” she said, “bring me those cards, if you will.”

I brought them to her, and she poured them out of their faded, ragged little box and into her right hand in a single fluid motion. She let the box fall into her lap. She twitched a single card from the deck and set the remainder of the deck on the arm of the chair. Her fingers seemed to flash—I thought I saw an actual spark—and suddenly there was an odd stiff little bird sitting in her palm. She held it out to me.

Clever folding had metamorphosed the king of hearts into this angular, unnatural bird.

“Crane,” said Dr. Keeling. Her fingers hovered over the remainder of the deck and flickered and flashed and there was another one in her palm. “Origami.”

“A bird,” Mama told Father Valentine. “Jean’s made a bird from a playing card.”

Everyone was smiling, including Mama.

“Isn’t that the cleverest thing,” Mama said.

Dr. Keeling made the next crane in slow motion, so I could see the pattern. Then she guided me one step at a time through the folding of my first crane.

Everybody applauded, and Mr. Quigley whistled through his long bony fingers, and everybody laughed.

Sitting on the floor, I turned the rest of the deck into origami cranes while Dr. Keeling passed a needle and thread through each bird and looped it. Then I hung each of them on the tree, with Mr. Quigley’s help on the highest ones.

Everything was so jolly that I let go my fear of provoking ghosts.

When Miz Verlow turned off the lights and turned on the lights on the Christmas tree, everyone again applauded and laughed and agreed it was all quite magical. Then the lights on the Christmas tree wavered, producing a general murmur of alarm.