The Cloisters(44)

“And Patrick—” It was barely out of my mouth before Rachel stood and walked to the refrigerator, pulling it open.

“Do you want breakfast?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I’m actually not that hungry.”

“Neither am I. Beach?”

I hadn’t seen a beach the night before when we had landed in the darkness, but I was eager to feel the sun on my thighs and a book in my hand. “The beach sounds great.”

And so, together, we changed into swimsuits and carried towels and books and umbrellas, awkwardly wedged under our arms, down to the sliver of sand that curved alongside the lawn of the house. At the end of the lake, puffs of white clouds lolled across the sky. We napped and read and lounged like that until Rachel rolled over and made clear the reality that had been settling into my bones since the dinner at Patrick’s house by asking:

“Has Patrick convinced you about the fortune-telling yet?” She was lying next to me, her head propped on her hand; a bit of sand lingered on her cheek.

I didn’t want to put down my book, the thing that I had been holding between my face and the sun for the better part of an hour, grateful for the distraction. I wasn’t ready to accept what awaited me back at The Cloisters, even what awaited me in my room.

“I want to say no,” I said, letting the implication drift between us.

“My mother once had her fortune told,” Rachel said. “She went to a place on lower Lex where they read her tea leaves. The woman who was doing the reading looked at her leaves and told her she wouldn’t give her the reading. That whatever was in there was too dark and too sad. My mother always said she laughed it off, but I don’t think it ever left her, that fear.”

“I don’t know what will become of my life,” I said, “and I’m the one living it.”

“I think, if it’s real at all, that women would be better at it than men,” said Rachel, looking out across the lake. “And not because women are intrinsically more intuitive—we’re all so obsessed with the idea of a woman’s intuition. No. It’s because women can see new patterns better than men. Think, for example, of textiles. For centuries, women have been weavers. And those women have been able to see patterns and make inferences that create beautiful things. All we’re doing is weaving together a life. Trying to see where the different threads take us.”

I thought of the Moirai, the Greek weaving goddesses who were said to assign our fate at birth. Clotho spun the fabric of our lives, while Lachesis pulled the thread out. Atropos, the cutter, decided when it would end. The three, it was believed, decided a baby’s fate within a few days of its birth.

“Did you know that my parents died here?” said Rachel, not looking away from where the wind was gently pushing the surface of the lake into unfurling crests and valleys.

“No,” I said. But the image of Rachel alone, orphaned, didn’t seem jarring or surprising. There was something about her, a kind of self-sufficiency, occasionally a kind of weariness, that made her revelation make sense.

“I often wonder if that tea reader knew. I tried to find her afterward, but I couldn’t. I had my tea leaves read by dozens of women below Lex. None of them had ever seen my mother. I carried a photo of her to each appointment. And now I don’t carry any photo with me at all.”

“How long ago?” I knew there were no good questions in this situation.

“Three years.”

“I’m so sorry.” It was a deeply inadequate statement. “My father passed away last year.”

Rachel sat up and looked at me.

“So you know,” she said.

I nodded. The clouds hung low in the sky, kissing the tops of the Adirondacks in the distance.

“I think I do believe that people can tell the future,” I said quietly.

“But I don’t know why anyone wants to know how their story ends,” she replied.



* * *



By late afternoon, a thunderstorm had come through Long Lake, wiping away any trace of the heat that had burned the tops of my thighs a rich pink. And in the coolness that spread through the window screens and made me reach for a sweater, I found the desire to be out there, in the bracing summer air, away from everything in the house—Rachel, the card, even myself.

I threw on the pair of running shoes I had brought with me and heard the screen door hinges creak as they closed behind me. From the beach, I had seen it—a narrow trail, maybe nothing more than a game path, that wound its way north, away from the house, which occupied the southernmost edge of the lake. It was overgrown by a network of lacy green leaves and delicate white flowers. Roots gnarled their way onto the path and caught my feet at odd, slippery angles. Everything was wet from the rain, and the stones along the trail glistened with damp, bright green moss. It was, I couldn’t help but notice, a far cry from the trails I had grown up using, trails that were open and dry and grassy, full of big vistas that allowed you to chart your progress using a few distinct landmarks.

Here, there were no landmarks, just a continually knotted thicket of hardwoods and a canopy so dense that I quickly lost any ability to see the sky. And in time, the trail moved away from the shore of the lake and deeper into the forest, where the terrain shifted back and forth from mostly dry and passable to water-logged and boggy. Still, I continued on. Feeling in my aloneness and the steady movement of my body the distance I needed from the day, the summer even.