Petras ghost, p.17
Petra's Ghost, page 17
“Why did you leave, Ginny?”
“I don’t do conflict well, I told you that,” she says flatly.
“Sure, I’m not a big fan of it myself.”
“It’s more than that.” She tears her eyes away from the painting. “I have a history of running away from things.”
“Like Mark the Englishman,” he says.
“Yeah, I suppose. But more than that.” She goes to sit down on one of the cool marble benches, leans over and takes her head in her hands.
Daniel joins her on the bench, his backpack wedged behind him on the seat back. The portrait of Mary Magdalene views them from the adjacent wall, as if part of the conversation.
“I ran away from home when I was sixteen,” she says, still not looking up.
“Sure, that’s young.” Daniel imagines a sixteen-year-old girl fending for herself in California and all the low-lifes that might try and prey on her. How bad could things have been for Ginny to choose that over home? “Did you have problems with your parents?” he asks gently.
“Sister,” she says.
“Aye, you mentioned you didn’t get on.”
“That would be an understatement.” She lifts her head from her hands, narrows her gaze. “People think only men can be violent, you know, but women can be just as bad. My sister was missing something, I’m not sure what. Basic empathy for sure, but it was more than that.”
Daniel waits for her to go on.
“She would think up creative ways to hurt me,” Ginny says. “From the time I was little. She and her best friend, Sheena.” Ginny looks across the room. “Sheena had a little sister, too. The kids called her Twitchy Trish. Only I knew why, I suppose. She was so fucking scared all the time. So was I.”
“What did they do to you?” Daniel asks softly. He knows bad memories are best treated gently.
“They’d stuff us into old sleeping bags and kick us down the stairs,” Ginny says, stating the facts dispassionately to distance herself. “Catch us and cut our fingers open with sharp blades of grass when we played in the sprinkler on the lawn.” She runs her finger along the cool white stone of the bench as if to soothe the old injury. “Sometimes they’d perform experiments and make us participate. The two of them held me down once and covered my mouth to see how long I could go without breathing. They made Trish keep time. I still remember how her hand trembled holding the stopwatch, afraid she’d be next. Then I lost consciousness. We couldn’t have been more than five.”
“Jesus.” Daniel had heard of sisters clashing with each other, but nothing like this.
“Once we got older and bigger, they couldn’t pull shit like that anymore,” Ginny says. “But they still found their opportunities. My sister would drop broken glass on the bathroom floor before I got out of the shower. Trish found straight pins buried in a jar of cream she’d had prescribed by the doctor for her eczema. I knew because we’d become close friends by then. Bound together for survival of our own siblings, I guess.”
“Why didn’t your parents do something?”
“Our parents were oblivious,” Ginny says, showing her first sign of anger. “Mine were too busy watching their marriage disintegrate, and hers were never home. When they did notice anything was going on, they wrote it off as the usual kid stuff.” Ginny holds onto the bench tightly with both of her hands, as if the force of her story might catapult her off it. “No one wants to believe they’ve given birth to monsters,” she says.
“So, you left.” Daniel speaks the words like a secret. The only way to speak in a hushed cathedral, or when discussing monsters.
“One day,” Ginny begins, “when I was in the bathtub, I must have left the door open, or she picked the lock. My sister knew how to do things like that. I looked up and she was standing over me with the hair dryer in her hands. It was plugged in and she turned it on. She dangled it over the water, smiling. Then she took the cordless phone in her other hand and called Sheena. She just sat there, on the edge of the tub for half an hour, talking to her friend on the phone, the two of them laughing and carrying on. The whir of the hair dryer only inches away from me. I didn’t dare move. The water got colder and colder. My teeth were chattering. I could see the blue veins under my skin.”
“Jesus, Ginny.” He pictures her, a terrified kid, shivering in the tub. An entire childhood spent looking over her shoulder. He knew she had been harbouring something frightening, but hadn’t been prepared for something so domestically sinister.
“I don’t know what would have happened if my dad hadn’t started pounding on the door, demanding to know where my mother was,” she says, breaking the tension slightly with her musing. “He would notice that his dinner wasn’t made when he got home, but not that his eldest daughter was a psychopath.” Ginny shifts on the bench, swallows hard, then sits up straighter. “So, I took off after that. Hitchhiked north, got a job, and finished school at night. I never went back. I just ran away.”
“You were afraid for your life, I’d say.”
“I saved my own ass, is what I’d say.” Ginny raises the pitch of her voice but not her volume. Her next sentence comes out in a sharp whisper. “I ran, and I left my best friend behind, with the monsters.”
“Sheena’s little sister,” Daniel says, and she nods. Then he realizes. “The old friend, that’s who she is. The one you were bringing on the Camino with you.”
“Yes,” Ginny says, gazing up at the portrait again.
“Ah, Ginny, it’s not your fault. You had to go.”
Daniel rests a hand on her upper arm, the nylon of her jacket crinkles under his fingers. She shudders a little but doesn’t pull away.
“I wish it were that easy,” she says, sighing. “I can’t help thinking, if I hadn’t left her there. If I had been braver. If I hadn’t run away. That things would have been different. For her.”
“Right, like you’re responsible for her becoming an addict? Or her overdose? Go on, Ginny. You can’t hang that on yourself.”
“But I do.”
She leans away from him, and his hand falls between them again.
“And I don’t want to do the same to you, Daniel. To hurt you because I can’t handle things. I’m always going to run when the situation gets, you know, volatile. Always.”
“Do you think I’m volatile?” Daniel asks, trying to keep his speech steady.
“No,” she says, running one hand over the smooth marble of the bench. “Besides, it’s not just that.” She gets up and moves across the chapel to stand in front of a richly carved stone sarcophagus. A dead bishop, judging by the pointy hat. “I don’t know whether I’m good for you, Daniel.” She glances back across her shoulder. “You’re seeing these things and this woman. Did you ever think that maybe I’m to blame?”
“That you’re to blame?” Daniel gets up from the bench and crosses over to stand behind her. “Sure, what could you possibly have to do with it?”
She doesn’t answer at first then abruptly turns around to face him. “Tell me, Daniel,” she asks. “Do I remind you of Petra?”
He is floored by the question. Of course, there are aspects of Ginny that remind him of Petra. And there was that first time he had seen her at Alto del Perdón. The mistake he had made. But he had never told Ginny about that, and he isn’t about to now.
She reaches up with one hand, rests her fingers lightly on his chest. “I worry sometimes that you’re mixing Petra and me up. Maybe it was memories of her, at the end, that made you see that — that woman when you saw me in the graveyard.”
Daniel’s body stiffens, and she takes her hand away.
“Petra never looked like that.” Then again, the sunken cheeks, the flesh in a state of decay even as his wife still lived and breathed. There were similarities.
“I just don’t want to make things worse for you is all,” Ginny says, taking a few steps back. “I don’t want to make things worse for either of us.” They lock eyes with one another across the silent gallery.
“Are you after being afraid of me, Ginny?” Daniel asks her, holding his breath. Suddenly, this is the most important thing to him. Not whether he is going mad, or whether he’ll ever manage to spread Petra’s ashes and get on with his life. Only if Ginny puts him in the category of the volatile monsters of her past.
She holds his eyes with hers. “No.”
“Then it’s settled, so,” he says, taking back his breath. “No conflict here. Just an Irishman with an active imagination. You’ve got nothing to run from with me, Ginny.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I am,” he says, feeling a new sense of confidence. If she believes in him, perhaps there is something in him worth saving. He walks over and joins her. They turn and look at the painting again. Lose themselves for a minute in the rich calm of brushstrokes on canvas. Daniel doesn’t believe a student could have done such a thing on Da Vinci’s behalf. He whispers sideways to Ginny.
“Besides, who will protect me from the likes of those Australian women, if I don’t have you along.”
“I think you are capable of taking care of yourself,” she says, a hint of a smile forming on her lips to match Da Vinci’s muse.
“Sure, one of them tried to flash me on my way to the toilet in Espinosa.”
She turns to him, mouth open. “They did not!”
“All right, perhaps that’s a lie. But she was dressed in a tattered old bathrobe and I felt like I was after being flashed.”
“Scarred for life, I’m sure.”
He takes a few steps toward the main sanctuary exit and crooks his elbow. “Come on, there’s far more to see in here than Mary Mag.”
Ginny wavers for a second, her head held as if pondering a question, then she moves forward and takes his arm.
“I hear they have a giant mechanical doll on the west wall that chimes the hour,” Daniel tells her, as he escorts her across the room.
“It’s almost nine o’clock,” she says. “Not a Da Vinci, but worth a look.”
They walk out of the gallery together, leaving the watchful eyes of Mary Magdalene behind.
The Camino out of Burgos is difficult to track. The busy streets and bustling commerce compete for a pilgrim’s attention, and it’s easy to miss the waymarks. Eventually, Daniel and Ginny find their way out of the city and onto the flatness which hallmarks the beginning of the Camino’s infamous meseta region. Infamous with pilgrims, at least. This section of the Camino is home to vast and level open plains that last for days upon days of walking. The terrain is easier on the back of the legs than the mountains and sierra they left behind, but harder on the shins. Daniel grits his teeth at the blister he has developed on the side of his foot. Ginny stops to take breaks more often than is normal for her. The weather has changed. Rain from the day before has freshened the wind, and the air is cooler and crisper, more like autumn back in New Jersey, where Daniel and Petra would walk among the falling leaves and talk of learning plans and the latest crop of students. She tended to each pupil as she did to her painting, with appreciation for the different textures and hues. He can remember her laugh as she recalled the pranksters and her furrowed brow as she felt for the shy ones. All on a backdrop of cool breezes and blue sky. The sense of déjà vu is so intense that he is afraid if he looks beside him he will see Petra again instead of Ginny, substituting one for the other, as she suggested. He concentrates on the road ahead, staying focused on the never-ending horizon.
It takes hours to leave the built-up industry of Burgos and its suburbs completely behind. The scenery slowly changes back to agriculture, with flattened wheat fields and walls of stacked blond hay. The multi-lane autopista that has dogged them in parallel finally branches off to the north, reduced to a black tarmac snake in the distance. Daniel and Ginny mount the quiet asphalt road into Rabé de las Calzadas. The small village on a limited rise looks down on the fleeing motorway, along with the rio Urbel that flows just outside its eastern limits. Most of the population is housed in a large nunnery in the lower part of town next to the Iglesia de Santa Marina. The remaining secular buildings are grouped at a high point circling a small main plaza with tired rose bushes planted in the middle like a life-sized centrepiece.
“Where do you want to stay?” Daniel asks. There are two albergues to choose from on the square, the Libéranos Domine or the Casa de Michelle y Felix. Neither appears open. That’s because it is still early, only just past lunch. They were both tired from the marathon trek of yesterday and had purposely planned to make it a short day. The door of Libéranos Domine opens, and a large man walks out, recognizes them, and waves.
“Hey, peregrinos!” the Englishman calls out, his voice barrelling through the square with the precision of a bulldozer.
“Casa de Michelle y Felix, it is,” says Daniel, taking Ginny by the elbow and leading her in the opposite direction. He leans in to whisper in her ear, “I can’t believe the old codger outdistanced us.”
“Just keep walking,” Ginny says tersely. She opens up the door of the albergue and they both go in.
Casa de Michelle y Felix does not contain a Michelle or a Felix, but Dores, the proprietress, is known for cooking a mean pilgrim’s meal. Ginny and Daniel both oversleep their afternoon naps, a carry-over from the miles of the day before and a difficult night. Daniel never did go back to bed after his nightmare and finding Ginny gone.
When they finally do get up, they discover they have missed dinner. Dores makes them a plate of leftover pork and rice to share. They eat in appreciative silence, Ginny taking most of the rice and leaving him with the pork. Neither wanted to go out for dinner and risk running into Mark. They’d managed to dodge him earlier when he became distracted with the arrival of a couple of friends, a squat young man in a straw boater hat and a good-looking girl with a too-loud laugh. Daniel still can’t believe the Englishman managed to pass them on the trail. Probably took a taxi partway, the cheating bastard of a princess pilgrim.
When she comes to clear away his empty plate, Dores hands Daniel a square of paper with the words Peregrino bendición written on it and a time, 2100h.
“It’s for the pilgrim’s blessing,” Ginny explains, reading from over his shoulder. “The Sisters of Charity have it at the convent each night.”
She takes a last bite of the ice-cream sandwich they were served for dessert. Daniel had eaten half and then dutifully handed it over to her to finish.
“That’s what the card says, at least.”
“Should we go?” Daniel asks.
“Sure,” she says, crumpling up the ice-cream wrapper and throwing it basketball-style into the garbage can in the corner. A perfect shot. She turns to him and licks one last bit of cream off the corner of her lip in a way that threatens his state of grace again. “Why not?”
Nuns have changed since Daniel was a boy. He remembers the sisters who occasionally visited his priest-run boarding school as diminutive women who never spoke. They drifted by in the background like shadows with their long black tunics and veiled habits. He was never quite sure what they actually did. Cleaned things, he supposed. Only now does he realize what a sexist assumption that was. The nuns at the Nuestra Señora del Monasterio do not wear veils or robes, only black skirts past the knee as his granny did. Opaque nylons cover a variety of legs ranging from sturdy to spindly, with the exception of one ancient member of the order who wears beige wool socks that droop about her ankles. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman with a large crucifix dominating her equally impressive bosom greets them as they walk into the sanctuary.
“Welcome, peregrinos. Please take a seat.” She hands them a laminated blue card with a Spanish order of service on it and beams accessibility.
“Do you have one in English?” Daniel asks, hopeful.
“Welcome, peregrinos. Please take a seat.” The nun continues to project her practised smile to match her words.
“I think she’s a one-trick pony,” Ginny says. “Let’s sit down.”
The pews are made of pale, functional maple, their style unadorned. The two find a spot a few rows back from the front. Daniel genuflects in the aisle before he takes his place, appreciating the carpeting on the floor. The chapel is simple and contemporary, more reminiscent of a corporate meeting room than a sanctuary. If it weren’t for the large mahogany cross at the front with Christ hanging from it in agony, Daniel would expect someone to begin a PowerPoint presentation.
“Are you a practising Catholic, Daniel?” Ginny whispers to him sideways in the pew.
“I told you that I am.” Daniel knows Ginny’s not Catholic, but he assumes she is a believer of some sort. He’d seen her fashion that wood-scrap cross in the chain-link fence outside Logroño, even mouth a prayer afterward.
“I mean are you … you know, devout?” she says.
“I’m not one for Mass every Sunday, if that’s what you’re saying.” The last time Daniel had been to a full Mass was the funeral. He and Petra had gone to church only irregularly. They liked the idea of taking time out to pay their respects to God, but they enjoyed sleeping in on a Sunday morning.
“Do you believe in —” she hesitates, trying to be delicate. “In everything the Catholic Church says?”
“Most of it.”
“Most of it?”
“Sure, there are things I disagree with.” When Ireland had a referendum on abortion, Daniel had voted with his conscience rather than his religion, albeit by absentee ballot. He doesn’t think he could ever bring himself to make that decision, but he supported a woman’s right to do so. This information he doesn’t whisper to Ginny, for fear that voicing such a thing in a nunnery might cause him to burst into flames in his functional maple pew.
