Night Film(184)
I was immediately reminded of the afternoon picnic Peg Martin had described. Ashley had been six years old. It would have been around the time she was finishing treatment—if Gallo was telling the truth.
Ashley took my hand and brought me down to a deserted part of the lake where there was a willow tree and tall grass, the water emerald green. She asked me if I could see the trolls.
“Astrid had a concert pianist from Juilliard come to the house three times a week to give Ashley lessons. Doctors had warned us, some of the very potent drugs used in treatment could have long-term effects on her nervous system, weakening her motor skills and dexterity, making something like playing the piano difficult, if not impossible. Her hands and fingers might go numb, have increased sensitivity. She might experience dizzy spells. In Ashley, however, the drugs had the opposite effect. She was able to play with astounding speed. Her memory, her ability to master even the most complicated of pieces went into overdrive, became superhuman. It was at the piano she began to live again, escape death, sailing over continents and mountain ranges and seas. She’d been in remission when she won first place in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. But three years later, when she was fourteen, we all learned the horrible news again. Matilde had come back. Ashley was strong, but it would be logistically impossible for her to travel to her concerts and undergo another round of treatment. She had to give it all up. And she did.”
Gallo fell silent.
My mind was spinning from the symmetry of this equation I suddenly faced: magical on one side, scientific on the other, a dark pulsing myth and an acceptable reality. Cordova was desperate to save his daughter, as any father would be—but from a devil’s curse or terminal cancer? Ashley’s sudden musical genius at the piano—caused by her traversing the devil’s bridge or a side effect from the chemotherapy drugs she’d taken as a child?
I thought back to what Beckman had told me, describing Ashley in concert. She had knowledge of darkness in the most extreme form. But what had given her this knowledge, staring the devil in the face, knowing he’d take her soul, or turning corner after corner of an endless illness, wondering if Death was waiting for her on the other side?
The explanations were like two sides of the same coin, and the side that I favored revealed something essential about the person I was. Prior to investigating Ashley, with little hesitation I’d have believed the side most others would, the side that was logical, rational, exact. But now, much to my own shock, like a man who suddenly realized he was no longer a person he recognized, that other impossible, illogical, mad side still had a very firm grip on me.
I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept that Ashley—such a fierce presence in every story I’d ever heard about her—could be singlehandedly struck down by real life. I wanted a wilder explanation for her death, something darker, bloodier, more insane—a devil’s curse.
“Things became difficult when Ashley underwent treatment that second time,” Gallo continued sternly. “She’d always had a strong personality. As strong as her father’s. The two of them began to fight constantly—war, really. Doctors warned us that the steroids Ashley was taking could produce volatility—explosions of temper, even violence. No one could control either of them. Not Astrid. Not me. It was like living with two dragons and the rest of us were bluebirds, taking cover in closets and under stairs, hoping not to be incinerated by the crossfire.”
“What did they fight about?” I asked.
She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know if you know much about the temperament of geniuses, but they have hungers unknown to ordinary men. If you’re going to commit to such a person, you have to accept it or there’ll be no end to your suffering. To survive such a person you must bend and twist all the time like a thin piece of wire, making allowances. It’s always changing, the shape you’re in. There were always other women. Other men. Other everything. Astrid accepted it. But Ashley, when she was old enough to understand, thought it unconscionable—a sort of gluttony on his part, a lack of integrity, a total betrayal of the family. One of his longtime lovers came to town and moved back into The Peak, a man Ashley did not like. One night, while I happened to be away, she went to his bedroom, and as he slept, she set his bed on fire. Astrid, not wanting the negative publicity, drove the man, screaming in pain, off the property in the dead of night. Along the way she was in an accident. Theo rescued the man before an ambulance arrived and managed to get him to an emergency room without being spotted. But Ashley got her wish. The man disappeared.” She shot me a look. “I suspect you know most of this already.”
I nodded. “The man was Hugo Villarde. The Spider. A sham priest.”
“It was my suggestion to send Ashley to that camp,” she announced.
“Six Silver Lakes.”
“The place came well recommended. When we were notified an accidental death had occurred there, some young boy drowning during a rainstorm, you can imagine how we felt. Yet when I picked up Ashley she was … different.” She shrugged, a faintly cynical expression on her face. “She’d met a boy. The loneliest boy in the world, she called him. She described him as a beautiful red maple leaf that had detached prematurely from its tree. And it floated through wind and rain, scuttled down drains and across fields, absolutely alone, connected to nothing. Yet there was something fundamentally good about him, she believed. Shortly afterward she tracked him down and they began whatever—a correspondence. I don’t know what they wrote or said to each other, only that she was vital and alive again. Her father was relieved. We all were. Ashley wanted to leave The Peak, be around ordinary people, an ordinary life. He bought this place for Ashley.”