NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Find an old-fashioned, letter-size envelope, brown with foreign stamp. Addressed to Daisy Briscoe. It is on her front path with a curled and sticky red-oak leaf covering the return address and three ants inspecting an aphid waving its antennae at the edge of a sinus. The letter had been forwarded from an address in Delaware. It is damp to the touch. Looks like Daisy may have dropped it on the way to her door.
She waves her wire cutters from beside a mock orange. Its branches obstruct the path. Her black hair gathered in back and her green and yellow bandana features a white star above the left eye. She throws down a bunch of prunings. Picks up a shovel and beckons to me.
“Just in time, Fred. I get soaked brushing up against these leaves after it rains. Need you to dig under these roots while I pull. They are too strong for me.”
“Okay, but I must change first, it’s too humid to work in what I have on.”
She drops the shovel.
“I hate yard work anyway.”
“Those are wire cutters, you know, not for pruning.”
“Well, they cut.”
She takes the envelope keeping the cutters in hand.
“My God! A blast from the past.”
“I didn’t notice the post mark. How old is it?”
“No, not that. It is from my step-sister Cam, Cam Rayley.”
“Didn’t know you had a sister.”
“No, she ran off to Andorra with a cornet player in about her third year of college.”
“Was he Andorran?”
“No, he was Danish. Cam told me he had a gig there.”
“So, when was this?”
“I think it was the fall of, ah, 83.”
We go into the kitchen where she picks up a paring knife and rips open the envelope. The aphid fell off with the leaf, and she didn’t notice the ants until one showed up on her left index finger.
“That is a U.S. ant!”
She flicks it in the sink.
“How can you be so sure?”
“They don’t travel by mail. They either crawl or fly.”
“True, I have never found one in the mail, only on the mail.”
“Oh! I know. They use my box to hatch eggs.”
“Nice dark protected spot.”
“Oh! it’s from Denmark, look, and it was forwarded from Delaware.”
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“Old family friends. She doesn’t know I am living here.”
“We should have our masks on.”
“I know, but it is too hot, and humid and besides, I feel sure neither of us is infected.”
“Can you feel any antibodies?”
She pulls pack of surgical masks out of the cupboard above.
“Take your pick, any mask so long as it is blue!”
We don masks and stand together looking closely at the stamp.
“Yes, ‘Danmark’ is printed on the stamp.”
“That’s a picture of Queen Margrethe II”.
“Well, I didn’t know Cam was in Denmark. Haven’t heard from her since Andora and the Ghita. We weren’t close. I mean we didn’t even have email back then.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that is what it meant!”
Yes, she called, long distance, one day, asking me to mail her copy of the Bhagavad Gita. We have been out of touch since.”
“Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to buy one there?”
“I suggested that, but Cam couldn’t find an English translation.”
She pulls two odd sheets of paper out of the envelope. One handwritten on a small piece of yellow paper and the other typed on the back of some Christmas wrap.
“Is it in English?”
“This yellow sheet is.”
“Looks like she is coming back.”
“When?”
“Ah, doesn’t say. No wait, here, it says before Thanksgiving.”
She puts the papers down on the counter, by her pile of bracelets and rinses her hands. The Christmas wrap tries to curl against the folds made to put it in the envelope.
“How are they going to travel now?”
“She will find a way around the virus restrictions, if any one can.”
“Seems pretty dangerous, given the infection rates.”
Daisy dries her palms on her jeans and picks up the Christmas wrap.
“This paper must hold some hot news.”
“Probably humidity too.”
OH! Listen to this:”
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.”
“She always loved Whitman. I think she took, Leaves of Grass with her.”
“Do you feel that you know who she is, now?”
“Well! Kind of, anyway she wants to stay here with me. The rest is philosophy. She is into Fichte.”
Daisy drops the Christmas wrap on the counter.
“It is too hot for both Cam and German Romantics. Back in a minute.”
She leaves the room and soon returns without her bandana, showing off a Snazz teashirt and purple sweatpants with yellow stripe down the leg. Her hair is coiled and pinned on top of her head.
“What do you think Fred?”
She indicates her new hair style.
“Looks a lot cooler for you.”
“I call it whipped cream. Wrong color, I know, but you notice how the cone-stack culminates in a point at the top.”
“You might be able to market that idea.”
The Christmas wrap falls off the counter and I pick it up and put it back. Rolled into one of her bracelets.
“You want a coffee?”
“Anything wet, will be fine.”
We sit in the living room. Me on her broken couch and she at the dining table where a small space, amidst her boxes of stained glass, paints and mail, is kept clear for eating in front of an old TV on the sideboard.
“Cam left her stuff behind when she took off, and Mom didn’t know what to do with it. So, it has been in the basement for years. I couldn’t find Cam when Mom died, so I cleared out the place and found a cello case in the bathtub down there.”
“Did anyone in the family play?”
“Sure, Cam did.”
“Was she in the school orchestra of something?”
“No, she played it the bathroom, naked.”
“Why?”
“Liked the acoustical effects.”
“It must have been deafening in that small room.”
“No, not too bad.”
“You mean, you were in there too?”
“Yeah, once in a while.”
“What did you play?”
“Nothing, no hand-ear coordination. I used to draw. She made an unusual model.”
“No wonder she didn’t play in public!”
“Her nudity wouldn’t have mattered to her.”
“No, did she ever play with her cloths on?”
“Sure, when we were kids and she went to lessons. The bathroom was for practice. She said clothing was inhibiting.”
“Well, she could have been the first nude cellist performing for Fauxmont!”
“Yeah, Cam doesn’t care what anybody thinks. She is a philosopher.”
“Really, as well as a musician! What school?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She read Rousseaux and I found Thoreau among her books and ah, of course Whitman. Walt was her true love!”
We sip in the dark. The tree shade seems much darker in the late morning sun and Daisy doesn’t turn on the table lamps. The hum of the air conditioning dies down letting in the sound of cicadas rattling and clicking, soaring and pausing out in the heat.
“It was a blond cello, almost ochre yellow.”
“I think of them as deep brown.”
“I know. Maybe someone made it as a novelty. It didn’t sound all that good, to me”
“What about the humidity in that bathroom?”
“She didn’t bath in there!”
“Oh, a tiled music room.”
“She played in the bathtub.”
“No one will barge in!”
“Right, she sat on the side of the bath with the cello anchored in the drain hole. The faucet had broken, and the water was turned off. The tub was about a foot out from the wall. That space was filled with a tiled shelf. It was a horrible shade of green too, always looked moldy.”
“What did she play?”
“About five notes.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was inspired by early Philip Glass. You know, rhythmic repetitions.”
“Yes, kind of mesmerizing.”
“She loved the effect of mellow deeper notes played softly.”
“Oh, I imagined her playing Bach!”
“No, Bach was Feng’s thing!”
“Feng?”
“Yes, the musician. His name is Feng Youlan.”
“I thought you said he was Danish.”
“He’s a born Danish citizen. His grandmother emigrated to escape the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.”
“How extraordinary.”
“It was. According to Cam, his grandmother was having an affair with a Danish diplomat and he got her out.”
“What about the rest of the family?”
“That is all Cam told me. She said, “No further interrogation, Okay’?”
