Chresmographion
First published in Thrice Fiction
Meeting the past an inevitable outcome (this inside a future fortune cookie). Shame pierces her like a sudden migraine.
Hesitation. If she’d been quick, her face would have become a pixel in a fluctuating crowd and he wouldn’t be standing, smiling, saying her name (Olivia), his hug, his familiar smell steeping a kind of protective love into her.
Too hard to speak; drops of coffee for words.
At the cafe, face to face, she stares past him; he stares right into her. Gently, his hand covers hers.
The past is stored like a compressed spring, the subject within the subject. First, there is the fact that Oliver is adrift. Comfortably adrift, moving in and out of cities and lives, a fact that makes Olivia gasp.
He begins sleeping on her sofa, finds a job bartending. It’s his fallback skill, mixing drinks of fire and brimstone. Olivia doesn’t drink. She doesn’t like alcohol, the alchemy. Mixing drinks is mixing memories and those memories are frozen behind a dam she doesn’t know exists.
She asks Oliver if he ever dreams about the Contessa.
No. He doesn’t remember dreams.
First memories then. She’s eleven (he’s thirteen) and in the room, the Contessa. There’s also a boy (girl), Oliver (Olivia), and a couple who must be his (her) parents. Family of three in duplicate. A mirror-image surprise. The Contessa’s first lesson.
Olivia opens a cardboard box for Oliver. She turns it upside down: a shower of birthday/Christmas cards.
It’s all from the Contessa (there’s guilt in Olivia’s voice) — there was money — checks, sometimes large amounts — no matter where I move, she finds me. Do you think she’ll really leave me her house? Is she still luring people with that money? What if she really does it? Leaves me the house. What will I do?
It’s all from the Contessa (there’s guilt in Olivia’s voice) — there was money — checks, sometimes large amounts — no matter where I move, she finds me. Do you think she’ll really leave me her house? Is she still luring people with that money? What if she really does it? Leaves me the house. What will I do?
Sell it. You’re not a spider, Olivia.
That fear had been background noise. A web without a spider is easier to ignore as a dream. She thought she dreamt often but it was she who was turning parts of herself into dreams. Oliver’s voice a film on her anxiety (their anxiety), she becomes just aware, and then not, as understanding eludes her and self-revelation fails to concretize.
A tiny revelation anyway.
It was money, the trap. But the lure was lessons. Italian lessons. Contessa de Broglie taught Italian and Jodie and Paul had dreams of spending a year in Italy. She teaches for fun — you should see her house, Olivia — house? mansion! — exquisite — she’s really Caroline Brixby, you know Brixby chocolates — she married an Italian count, lived in Italy for years, only just came back — her husband passed away — the way she speaks Italian!
A year of lessons and intimate dinner parties and the Contessa confesses she has no heirs. Childless, without a husband, such a large house — loneliness, fears of old age, no one to depend upon (they’d speculated that the Contessa is in her late sixties). The Contessa promises Jodie and Paul a fortune. If they move into the house and live with her until her death.
Pros and cons. Olivia would have advantages. The Contessa promised that all their needs would be taken care of, including Olivia’s education. The Year of Living in Italy was a fantasy. Fantasies fed Jodie and Paul’s love. This is something real. The Contessa promised she’d take them to Sorrento next summer; she owns a villa there. And then Rome, Florence and possibly Bologna. Nights tossing and turning. Heirs to a great fortune.
In Olivia’s dreams, the Contessa is all eyes. Sympathy, mockery, sadness, love, the eyes trail acid stains across folding memory.
She was beautiful. Soft and beautiful. Once a ballet dancer and model. She was La Musa to her husband. Never wife, she’d note, just simply La Musa. Her eyes and voice swelled with the idea of husband. Luis was born in Piedmont and looked more German than Italian, hair soft and brown, complexion pale. There was an oil painting of him in the Contessa’s music room and Olivia would stare at it, her romantic fantasies creating intimacies until she thought of him more as her own love than the Contessa’s. The Contessa knew this (she thought). The Contessa made Olivia feel that she knew everything about her, that she felt what Olivia felt, dreamt what Olivia dreamt. Wanted what Olivia wanted.
Slow and seductive possessions.
How old were you, Oliver, when you first met her?
It was my thirteenth birthday. She threw a party for me. At Lago. It was just her and my parents and me. That’s when they told me we’d be moving into Lago. I thought Lago was a hotel.
Jason and Patricia were thinking of their son Oliver when they decided to accept the Contessa’s invitation. A week after the move, Olivia and her family arrived.
Lago has many empty rooms, the Contessa explained softly. It was unclear which family would become the heirs.
The house, Lago Maggiore, was like a hotel with several suites and two swimming pools, indoor and outdoor. A hotel with an Italian villa theme. Every piece of furniture, every little knickknack was from Italy.
Neither Jason and Patricia nor Jodie and Paul dared to confront the Contessa. She didn’t like arguments, hostility. The family that won would be the family that charmed.
Jodie and Paul were sure they would win; Olivia was so very charming and already the Contessa was giving her special attention, even inviting her into her private rooms. Olivia was devouring Italian, the Contessa and Olivia creating their own special language.
You were so sweet, Oliver remembers. And so smart. I was in total awe of you.
I hated you, Olivia confesses. Not at first. You didn’t seem to matter. But then her eyes were only on you.
He’d watch, the Contessa alone with Olivia. Frightened and intrigued at the spells the Contessa could cast. One day he too would be caught. He was already caught. There was something beautiful, soothing about La Musa. She ignored him but she was creeping inside him, an ivy that held every part of him. Struggling to breathe, he’d rip a tendril out, but with it came chunks of him. Horror quickly dissipated and ripping became compulsion.
Why did he feel a part of it, servant, accomplice, enslaved gnome? (He remembered a story — a librarian must have read it out loud to them when he was little — before he could read — about a boy — he insults a witch and as punishment, the ugly, old witch lures the boy to her house and turns him into a squirrel. Her house is full of enslaved squirrels, shod in walnut shell shoes, cleaning her rooms, polishing her belts and shoes, cooking her meals — the witch loves a good meal and working in the kitchen the highest promotion. The boy becomes an exemplary slave, a master cook who could satisfy the witch’s slightest whims.)
She knew he was watching, his witness taken like blood sacrifice.
She’d tell Olivia things, calling her Livia, how Livia had the soul of an artist and like the great Livia, born out of and for greatness. Luminous seeds.
Oliver was hardly ever at Lago. Olivia couldn’t bear to be away. It was wonderland.
Olivia and her parents lived in the west, Oliver and his in the east. The Contessa’s suite of rooms was in between, the top curve of the u-shape that was Lago. Each wing of the house had its own grand staircase and it was rare for the two families to see each other except when downstairs. The Contessa didn’t use the stairs; her suite was connected to the ground floor by an ornate glass elevator shaped vaguely like a hat. Or bird cage.
How long did it take for them to become disturbed by the strangeness of each day? The Contessa ate breakfast alone in her own suite: grapefruit juice, one poached egg, toast at 7 sharp (at 11 she had coffee and a croissant while she read the newspapers, either on her balcony or in the music room which was directly underneath her suite). The two families had breakfast in the dining room. There was a buffet: chafing dishes of soft-boiled eggs and sausages (sometimes ham or bacon), carafes of coffee and fresh fruit juices, hot water for tea, pots of homemade jams and marmalades. Near the toaster was bread made earlier that morning. If they wanted anything else, they had to ring an electric bell by the door. The unsaid rule was that no one except the staff and the Contessa could go into the kitchen. Jodie and Paul ended up sneaking a mini-fridge into their suite so they could snack whenever they wanted. A small microwave too. Each addition meant enduring a joke from the Contessa. And the snide smirks from Jason and Patricia.
Jason and Patricia were the first ones down for breakfast. Jodie and Paul were almost always running late, so they’d come scrambling down around 8:30 and wolf down untoasted bread and sausages. Olivia was generally down by 8:00; Oliver never ate breakfast and slept until it was nearly time for school.
Very little happened between the families until dinner at 20:00. The Contessa sat at the head of the table, Olivia’s family to her right, Oliver’s to her left. The men sat next to the Contessa, the women next to the men, the children across from each other. Sometimes dinner was in the grand dining room, sometimes outside in the flower garden.
After dinner they played games in the music room, card or board. The Contessa often lost track of time and they’d play until two or three in the morning, the children having been sent upstairs by 22:00.
The music room. Hypnotic. The Contessa once found little Olivia swimming in the layers and layers of decorative trim, dolphins morphing into trees to seahorses to shells, pink and gold, the ceiling swirling with flora and fauna, Olivia tipping in its tide.
Bound like this, every room she enters becomes that room.
Oliver takes Olivia to a cafe that specializes in airy cakes. Olivia rarely eats cakes; she doesn’t know what to choose so Oliver orders for her: a pale yellow sponge cake dressed with the lightest of chestnut flavored whipped cream. She stares at it. And then with the grey plastic fork she pulls the cake away from the cream. The sponge she cuts into meticulous, tiny squares. She looks up at Oliver, as if she was unaware of what she was doing. She pushes forward her plate, the way she pushes forward other things, and what she’s saying is on this plate is a dream, the cake in squares, pulled away from cream and sweetness.
It wasn’t sweetness. What the Contessa loved wasn’t the sweet but the elaborate presentation of cakes, souffles, profiteroles, flaming crepes, flans, all things that played with air. Agnès, the housekeeper, was the pastry chef. Otherwise, the meals were made by the cook Giuliana; her food was Italian. Except on birthdays.
The house was a cake, Olivia is realizing, the tiny squares of sponge piling up into architecture. Topiary gardens, mazes of boxwood. Insects trapped in sticky sap, Oliver knowing the insect was him by the way the Contessa’s voice becomes a rosette: See how it struggles.
Olivia and Oliver. The realization triggers a simultaneous olfactory memory between them. Perfumes. A fog, yes, of jasmines, lavenders, gardenias too — lilacs, orange blossoms, roses, yes, myrtles, honeysuckles, the hothouses grooming plants that weighed the lungs in sticky mist. Jodie sneezed year-round.
Tomatoes. Yes, the Contessa loved to eat tomatoes, six varieties in the vegetable hothouse. Bouts of sciatica — when she was sick she liked fresh tomato juice served by Jodie who was a school nurse, the only time she was allowed inside the inner sanctum. Olivia tended the invalid too, reading Italian love poetry to the Contessa. She had a pretty voice and the Contessa decided she must have singing lessons along with the ballet and piano.
Sometimes the Contessa would dump boxes of jewels on her bed, she and Olivia swapping diamond bracelets, ropes of pearls, sapphire earrings, ruby rings, tiaras that slipped off Olivia’s head so she wore them as necklaces.
Sometimes instead of jewels it was a piece of old string, cat’s cradle, sometimes, without strings, the light of thought maneuvering patterns.
In her private rooms, the ceilings were hidden by thick layers of gathered chiffon that twisted into radiating circles of soft pale creams. Her custom-made bed was circular too, walls Jacquard, wardrobe doors paneled with veined, gilded mirrors.
Olivia in precious jewels, the Contessa with her eyes closed. A history lesson. China once had a female emperor. Wu Zetian. In Chinese there are no emperors. Rulers are known as Royal Deities. Heaven designates by mandate. So don’t you see? There is no man or woman when ruling. Royal Deity Wu Zetian, the only woman to wear the yellow robe, the only woman to establish a dynasty. You see? Not man or woman but ruler. Rulers, born during eclipses of the sun that can be seen across the vastness that is China. Wu Zetian was born during such an eclipse. Beautiful and intelligent, educated like the son of a nobleman. Still a young girl she becomes the concubine of the emperor, heaven’s mandate. The emperor dies, she into exile — concubines spend widowhoods in convents. Don’t you see? Not Wu Zetian. She becomes the wife of yet another emperor, mother to the heir, ruler of the nation. A Golden Era. The Golden Era. Li Bai. Du Fu. Toilet paper. When Wu Zetian died, men erased her name from history. Or attempted to. The same with Hatshepsut, great pharaoh, daughter of the god Amun. Vindictive cowards always crawl out of their holes to desecrate the corpse of a god.
Thin porcelain cups, rain gliding down the conservatory glass, Jodie in retreat; Olivia’s mother prefers being in the garden; the house makes her anxious. We did the right thing, the right thing, she chants, we did the right thing, Olivia.
Lincrusta voices, houses like the seashells on the walls, the cloches ringing~
stolen grappa and money — she caught Oliver red-handed and he wants to know if she wants some. She leaves things out for me, he says, like breadcrumbs.
The thing is, it was a fairy tale. She’d felt it all along and now he’d traded in her princess for two dingy children. It was unfair.
The Contessa had a beautiful box on her dressing table. Enameled, red, latticed gold, small enough for a little girl’s hand. It had a lock and the Contessa laughed because locks didn’t need keys. She took a small safety pin, stretched out the needle end, gave the pin to Olivia.
It’s a simple lock, she says. Play with the pins until the box opens.
Eyes closed, Olivia plays with the lock until there’s a soft click and the lid pops. Inside blood red velvet and a tiny gold key.
You never lose the key this way, the Contessa says, closing the box, lesson and reward.
Lago was high up in the hills, the ride down a dizzying spiral, trees, facades, triggering flash memories of old dreams, cantilevered desires. That first day of the new school, private and uniformed, in the car driven by the cocky-handsome handy guy about, Oliver holds Olivia’s hand in a Hansel and Gretel kinda way, his eyes straight ahead, hers looking out the dreamscape window. First time she understands he’s not the enemy. That he and she are one under the eye of the Contessa. That he knows more than she does. That all her knowledge is superficial and the locks she picks ornamental. He’s someone now very different from what he was to her before and there’s that anger knowing the cocky-handsome guy sees the held hands in the rearview mirror and is smirking. Oliver doesn’t care, and again, he changes into someone new and these revelations turn inside Olivia, the light pulling her inside herself and she squeezes Oliver’s hand very tight for security, in gratitude, defiance — wonder.
His name was Everley and he was a walking sex hormone. He ran errands, chauffeured the Contessa, cleaned the pools, helped the gardener, did handy things — blond, lanky, everywhere
his creamy hair dipping into eyes
his skin a smooth paint the color of fog.
He drove Olivia to all her lessons, hours in the car together, alone. They never spoke. Olivia, with earbuds, listened to the classical music prescribed by the Contessa. Everley listened to dull mid-west rock. The older she became the more his smirk unhinged her. The Contessa liked him and this confused Olivia so now she can’t ask Oliver about him because he might have only been an anxiety she’d later added to the dream.
If she stares long enough, she could do to Oliver what she did to the cake. Squares of him disconnecting. Like when he was a boy and he trembled with revulsion all that was touching him. Except Olivia and he didn’t know why it was Olivia who kept him answerable.
The truth is that he hasn’t thought of Olivia in many years. He’s kept alive by dangling forward, day-to-day survival akin to Olivia’s dream-morphing. On his own since their last day together, what he’s learned is that he’s remarkably lucky in the unremarkable moments of daily survival. This was his sanity and a thin layer of content.
Parceled into a multitude of squares now spiraling outwards.
He was like a ghost, anxious energy his most perceptible presence. Secretly exploring Lago, room by room, memorizing details he instinctively felt were important in some version of the future.
Olivia, running an errand for the Contessa, finds him in the Contessa’s rooms and says nothing. She understands.
As a child, everything she did charmed the Contessa. At fifteen the whole world seems bored by her. She’s remembered only when the Contessa needs an errand done. This time the Contessa wants her lace shawl — it’s become chilly in the conservatory. The shawl is a wedding-ring shawl handmade by nuns, the knit fabric so fine it can be pulled through a wedding ring. The Contessa still wears her wedding ring, a double band of gold and silver, and indeed, the shawl does go through the ring, as the Contessa once demonstrated as a party trick.
The Contessa has moved to the garden but Olivia finds Everley putting back a small table he’s sanded and polished. He sees Olivia, the shawl in her hands, understanding. The shawl is now in his hands and he’s wrapping it around her, not once but many times. She’s bound and his sun-god gaze freezes her breath. Inside his eyes is a world she’s never known and now she’s very different.
Except — Oliver, who breaks the gaze and takes her hand, the shawl loosening away from her.
She’s been waiting; angry, the Contessa takes the shawl and moves from the garden to the music room. Lately, it’s Jason who opens all the doors for her. Jodie and Paul worry. Paul’s been laid-off from the department store. The inheritance is all they have. What if the Contessa asks them to leave? Paul doesn’t sleep and Jodie cries. Late at night, Olivia hears Paul leaving their rooms. He doesn’t come back again until early morning. Jodie pretends to be asleep. Olivia blinds herself.
Dinners have been practiced performances for a long while. Oliver and Olivia eat slowly but do not talk. The others wait for the Contessa’s cues. Jason talks about the day’s news. Patricia makes witty comments. Jodie smiles and nods agreeably. Paul has entertaining stories or reminds the Contessa that she has entertaining stories. They laugh. While waiting for the bowl of orecchiette, Jason mentions Everley, the poor job he did fixing a bathroom faucet, and, drunk, Patricia laughs and says Boy Toy. The Contessa’s froideur has Patricia ever stumbling and after a week the Contessa suggests perhaps Patricia should visit her parents. Patricia’s departure makes Jodie feel awkward; she’s usually inside Patricia’s shadow. Without that shadow, she feels weak, unable to think, silently criticize and in the evenings, an hour or so after dinner, she excuses herself and asks Olivia to follow.
Jodie knows Patricia is still in town. She’s looked through the window of Patricia’s chic boutique and Patricia was there, organizing new merchandise, beautiful glass orbs that twist color. Maybe, with the inheritance money, she too would open a boutique as elegant as the one Patricia has. It was the Contessa’s favorite shop. Jodie has never stepped inside. The boutique is a reminder that Jodie and Paul have nothing to give the Contessa while Patricia and Jason have everything. Patricia with her boutique and wit, Jason, offering constant tax advice and worldly knowledge. Jodie looks at Olivia and sighs: why did she have to grow up?
Here, at this point, all is confused, distorted.
Oliver is counting a huge stash of cash. He looks up at intervals so Olivia will understand:
~ They’re going to tell you things and I need you not to believe what they tell you. (Remarkable that she believed in me, Oliver thinks. She saved me.)
~ I can’t remember if she kissed me or I kissed her. She creates haze. (Haze — that’s exactly it, Olivia thinks. Haze.)
~ I can get more cash. She leaves the safe unlocked for me.
~ I don’t know what she knows. I don’t know if this is her plan, if this is a trap. The safe’s unlocked.
Abruptly, his fever breaks and his voice sounds like his father’s: Olivia, do you have a place to go? A safe place?
She thinks and realizes there’s her grandfather in New York. He lives near the Hudson. Jodie and Paul are afraid of him. Oliver nods, worried, New York a long trip he hadn’t planned for. He starts over, counting from one, each bill a differing future.
Even at the time she didn’t know if it was Paul or Jason. She’d heard a car door. She’d always been a light sleeper. The sky was almost blue, the birds signaling back and forth, their song shrill, the Contessa and a man, Paul or Jason, coming home from somewhere and it was the movement between them which was strange and not right — and she thinks about all those nights she’s heard Paul’s footsteps, the opening and closing of doors, Jodie pretending to be asleep, in the morning anxious and yet more content seeing the reassuring smile on Paul’s face.
What was Oliver seeing? And could he see at all since he was in the mirror too.
She goes back to sleep. Sleep is where she can lose things. The Contessa told her that sleep and mirrors were doorways. Water too. Any vehicle of reflection. Doorways of either awe or terror.
She doesn’t see Oliver for days. He often disappears. With gangs of isolated electrical storms. The Contessa tells Olivia she’s worried about Oliver. In Italian: He seems so lost, poor thing, more than most adolescents — it can be a dangerous time; the abrupt changes in a young man’s body can trigger mental illnesses like schizophrenia — adolescence can do terrible things to a young girl too, that new, concentrated fury, the frustration of feeling unloved, unable to understand, control things — there was a young girl I knew who could slam doors with her anger alone (they say poltergeists are really the negative energy of adolescents); in the young, anger is raw, unfiltered, explosive — I had ballet — great passion in the arts can save you — I see how you immerse yourself in playing the piano, the growing passion in your playing — would you like to go to a conservatory, maybe in Paris (your French has a heavy Italian accent) — what kind of woman will you become, Livia, the promises of youth often decay on the vine; let’s go to Paris, Livia, spring break, just you and I, and then you can decide, whether it’s music that you want, the possibilities for you are limitless — it’s been a long time since we played a duet.
The Contessa sat at her favorite harpsichord. Like a connected puppet, Olivia is compelled to sit at the smaller one. The two harpsichords are snuggled together like jigsaw pieces. The larger is lacquered red, the smaller black, both trimmed in gold, Italian circa 1850, the red a double manual. The Contessa gauges the mood, pulls two levers and begins to play. It’s the first duet Olivia learned from the Contessa. She loved playing this piece and with each phrase a pleasant memory but what she feels is betrayal, resentment, embarrassment, piercing shame.
She closes her eyes.
It took a week, Oliver driving with little sleep, the car losing parts every few hundred miles — he needed it to last just over three thousand and then they’d be safe. The car he’d bought from a friend’s cousin. He’d paid double for secrecy. His family didn’t even know that he could drive. They’ll say he stole the money. They’ll say he kidnapped Olivia and maybe they were right. The further he drove away from the Contessa, the more he felt unsure of the truth and this was wrong. Of the many versions of the future why was he here in the one where the truth was the most nauseating? He began diverting his thoughts into calculations, how many miles they had traveled, how many miles still to travel, how much money they had spent that day, will spend the next day, his anxieties tied to dollar bills and niggling change which came to a thud in front of a pale green house, the small lawn recently cut.
Oliver laughed when the front door opened and Olivia knew that the tall old man was her grandfather. He laughed and sat on the ground and he cried.
He slept for three days and then disappeared. He and Olivia were no longer connected because this was not his grandfather, this was not his safe haven.
So how did he find his way back to her?
A circle, almost complete.
Together they imagine the Contessa’s funeral. Foresee who would be there. And what appears: Olivias and Olivers in every possible variation.
Author’s Note: How I came to write this story.
The core of this story came from a close friend. When she was in her forties, she and her husband started taking private Italian lessons. This was when she was living in Anaheim, CA, and it was at the home of an elderly lady. The lady was wealthy and without family. My friend was vivacious and charismatic. The elderly lady decided she wanted to “adopt” her and her husband. She offered them a deal: move in here with me and I’ll leave everything to the two of you. My friend and her husband were stunned. And tempted. But in the end they declined. Too many ifs. They lost touch with the woman. The story touched me. What if they’d said yes?
