They were pristine, white, empty. Like he’d never been there at all.
EPILOGUE
Helen Lambert
Maui, Hawaii, June 2013
Mickey’s wedding wasn’t until sunset, so I still had time. I drove to Hookipa Beach just beyond Paia to watch the surfers. I’d heard that you could see some of the pro surfers on this strip, catching some of the best waves at Peahi. After being an East Coaster for so long, I’d wanted to see real surfing. It had become a near obsession. My phone beeped—Mickey texted me that he needed me back by noon. Mickey was marrying the Rock look-alike, just as Madame Rincky had predicted.
In the year since Luke had died—and that’s how I thought of it, Luke dying—my life had changed dramatically. A mysterious package appeared at my door a week after his death. It was from Paris—a lawyer—claiming that I was the heir to Lucian Varnier’s estate. Two keys were enclosed. I felt the heavy weight of the first one in my hand and I knew what it was: the key to the old apartment in the Latin Quarter—our old apartment. The other one I didn’t recognize, so I called the lawyer who recited an address he’d had on file for a house—Pangea Ranch in New Mexico. I laughed when I realized; I’d never actually used a key in Taos.
I sold In Frame for a good price and moved to the apartment in Paris. It had been Luke’s, and I wanted him around me. I found the old painting of him that had hung over the mantel until it was replaced by the Auguste Marchant painting. I leaned it against the sofa and stared at Luke’s canvas likeness for hours while I played my beloved Satie Gnossiennes. I think I was hoping for a conjuring of some sort, but nothing materialized. I’d gotten my wish—I was a dull mortal capable of dying now. I tried to draw on the collective wisdom of all my lives, Juliet, Nora, and Sandra, but we were all hopelessly in love with him as well so all four of us were like a family in mourning. With them near in my thoughts, I walked the streets of Paris looking for him, but he was never there.
My mother, Margie Connor, agreed to go with me over the winter to Pangea Ranch. She was skeptical about this fortune I’d inherited and even more skeptical when she realized I’d become a concert-level pianist overnight. There was no explaining what had happened to me, so I told her I’d secretly been taking piano lessons for years. She was my mother, so there was a part of her that wanted to believe me. I recalled Luke telling me that we’d be surprised at the illusions we allowed ourselves to believe.
The smells of Taos in winter—the smoke from fireplaces that hung over the town—brought back a flood of emotions for me. I teared up when I saw the old TV that Marie had loved so much. I half expected to see Paul and her at the old house, but their absence was more evidence that the curse was really gone. Unlike the time Hugh Markwell had gone to the house in the late 1970s, it wasn’t empty. Call it magic, but everything was as it was when I’d last seen it, in March 1971. I uncovered the old Steinway M and sat in front of it for a long time before I played. In the bench, I found my old compositions. On the out-of-tune piano, I ran through them all.
I went down the hall toward what had been the studio and opened the door. It was there, just as I’d known it would be—the Neve console had sat sadly quiet for forty years; through the glass was Ezra’s old drum kit with the microphones still in place, and next to that my Gibson G-101. I looked down at the Neve and saw that even the ashtrays were still in their places, although they were empty. In the closet, I pulled open the drawer and found them—the tapes from the No Exit recording sessions, the last one dated November 15, 1970. Since I had my recent Sandra memories, I knew how to move around the studio like it was yesterday. Placing the tape on the player, I fished it through the machine until it caught. Back on the Neve, I found the channel dedicated to the reel-to-reel machine and turned it up. No Exit hadn’t been heard for forty years. Listening to the soundtrack from my past again after all this time reduced me to tears. It had been such a special moment. I placed the master tapes in a box and FedExed them to Hugh Markwell at the University of Texas, Austin, with a note. It was real.
Other than Luke, it is the piano and this music that has tied my lives together. Sometimes, after I play, I turn, expecting Luke to be standing there, the sound of his boots on the rough floor, but the hall is always empty. “I miss you,” I say to the empty hall and there is an echo that carries.
Reconciling all of my lives has not been easy. I’m not sure that all of us were all meant to live together in one body like nesting dolls—I have their memories, but I also have their perspectives. I’m more a child of the 1970s these days, like Sandra. I question everything. I feel the weight of life more, like Juliet. Yet I’m more hopeful, like Nora—which has brought me here today to learn to surf. This is more Nora’s wish than the rest of us. These are big waves. I won’t start here at Hookipa Beach, but I want to watch the real surfers, artists in action.
And I’m not disappointed.
When I woke up the day after my thirty-fourth birthday and realized that the curse was broken for good, I felt an amazing sense of loss. I had made myself mortal, and though I didn’t fear death, I’d gained a new understanding of my mortality, and for the first time, I felt vulnerable. There would be no other life—no restart like a video game. This life had to matter. It had come at such a cost.
There is still a darkness that hangs over me. Luke had retrieved Angier’s grimoire—now mine—from my house in Challans and kept it with me all those years. I know now that the grimoire protects me, but it requires something from me for that protection. I’ve chosen to not use this power—not to summon the source that comes with it—not even to get Mickey a lifetime supply of free lattes at Starbucks. When I’m alone with my thoughts, though, I know in my soul that there is only one thing that could tempt me if the cost weren’t so steep.
I took my flip-flops off and squished my toes in the sand. Finding a picnic table, I sat down and watched the waves slam into the rocks. There were two surfers—it was early, so there would be more coming.
“Do you surf?”
I turned to find a man standing there with a board hooked under his arm. He was in his late thirties with a ruddy, tanned face and hair that had begun to turn blond in places from the sun.
“No, but I want to. I’m imagining what could be.”
“I give lessons if you decide to do more than just imagine.”
“Hawaiian waves are too big for me.” I rolled my eyes. “I’d probably kill myself.”
“Well, you have to respect it, that’s for sure.” He smiled. “I had a pretty bad wipeout last year, myself. I was in a coma for a few weeks. I’m really just getting back into it. Teaching other people has been helpful.”
“Oh,” I said. “Be careful out there.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “These waves today are pretty calm.”
“Did it make you want to stop surfing? Your accident.”
“No,” he said, pushing the board into the sand. “The experience changed me. My family says I woke up a different man.”
“Sometimes that can be a good thing.” I stared out at the shoreline, thinking that I had some experience waking up being a different person.