Week 10

 September 8

I met my other self today. Danae Joseph is slightly taller and less bony than I am, but not by much. She has large purple crescents beneath her eyes that mirror the bruised soul I see within. She lost her husband a year ago, just after her child turned five. She and her mother have been living off of combined inheritances, both of which are running out fast. Adora filled her in on what I’ve been doing, and she said that I shouldn’t be able to use Danae’s aspect for my own good, without repaying her in some way.

This is just one more person who knows the truth about me. The more people who know about a secret, the easier it is for the secret to get out. Needless to say, I am more than slightly nervous about this turn of events, but Adora took my wrath at being betrayed with her usual stoicism.

And, of course, there is a large part of me that agrees with Adora. I knew, of course, that Danae was a widow who lived with her mother and her daughter, but until I saw her, it didn’t occur to me that I should help. And the bonus to Danae knowing about me, is that she can help keep up the pretense, rather than exposing it. Then again, she could expose it too, should she choose.

All in all, it has been one of those days that leaves my heart lodged and banging behind my right clavicle. It’s enough to make me wish I could go back to my first day here, with a sterner resolution that I would not be a friend to anyone I met, no matter how lonely I got. I’m not lonely now, I can say. There are more people who can expose me here, than I ever thought myself weak enough to show my true self too. Of course, Adora et al only have such a slight idea of my softness. I can always spin any kindness into a semblance of selfishness, but for how long?

In any case, I told Adora that I have no money of my own here, and wondered how I’d be able to help Danae out. Adora says that Danae’s problem is twofold: one is that she needs a job so that she can pay her mortgage and for her daughter, and groceries, blah, blah, blah. The second, and looming problem, is that the banker who is dealing with Danae is less than scrupulous and he keeps trying to get her to barter her body for her house. Danae is willing; her body has little spirit left living in it to protect -- but Adora refuses to accept this as a solution.

Adora wants me to impersonate Danae the next time she meets with the banker, and set a an icy chill in his veins. I tell Adora, how am I supposed to do that without my piercings and piercing blue eye contacts? That was the first time I ever heard Adora laugh. I can’t say I was nearly as amused. So I am to meet with the banker tomorrow, and Danae is going to watch, so that she can get some pointers on dealing with sleazy men in general. She is uncommonly innocent for someone her age, even for a Summerian.

The other part of Danae’s problem is a bit trickier. She needs a job that will give her plenty of time with her daughter, but who will keep the bank from legally possessing her home. Adora’s suggestion was get Danae employment as a maid in the castle, but the pay would not be enough, for one thing. Danae’s house is large, it’s almost a mansion. She was an architect, and her husband was a construction foreman -- they built it together. Danae wants to be able to regain control of her business, which has slipped out of her hands while she was busy with grief and a new baby.

Another sleaze, female this time, has taken advantage of her position as a partner to nearly force Danae out of the company that she started. I’m supposed to go and impersonate her again, this time for the board. Apparently, Danae met her husband right out of college, and she, the flaky artist of naïve farmers, allowed her husband to control all of the business-like aspects of the business, while she spent all of her time with sketches and fabric samples. So, short term, Danae needs a spine transplant, and long term, she needs financial and professional security -- and I am to provide these things for her, in order to thank her for allowing me to hijack her persona whenever I need to.

It works for me; I’d much rather borrow the personality of someone who has a personality, than some wimpy girl who gets taken advantage of in every situation. I can’t say that I have a lot of sympathy for her -- no matter how badly I’ve messed up here, and I acknowledge my weaknesses -- I have always been trying to avoid having my weaknesses exploited by unscrupulous people. Adora doesn’t count, because all of her meddling swings toward the side of fairness, despite how unfairly she has been treated.

September 9

Today I dealt with Danae’s banker. I don’t see why she made such a big deal out of it – I wonder if she’s just reaching to find things for me to do as thanks for taking her persona. The banker, Simms was his name, was sleazy, indeed, but nearly as bad as I thought he must be, to have me take over rather than have her do it herself. She must be a regular Summer dandelion if she can’t handle a weenie like this dude. He did expect me (Danae) to sleep with him, in lieu of rent, thus earning his sleaze status, however, when I laughed in his face, he seemed surprised. 

Simms is tall, and reasonably well built. He is not ugly, as I expected, and in fact emits sort of an oily attractiveness, embarrassing as it is to admit it. I told him that he was either mad or stupid, but probably both – and furthermore that he must think me both things as well to think that I’d even consider his offer. For one thing, even a high class hooker would cost less than my (Danae’s) monthly mortgage payment, which means that he either really likes me [insert romantic sigh here] or he has every intention of  foreclosing on us after he gets what he wants from me – and I let him know that I thought the latter suggestion far more likely than the first. He was quite taken aback, and stuttered for a moment, then he relaxed and turned away, just like men used to do in old movies before turning back and sucker-punching the hero or heroine.  But when he turned back, he didn’t raise a fist. He smiled instead, which made me think that he had something over me, after all. Perhaps he knew my true identity or something.

But all he said was, “I guess you’ll have to take a chance.” He shrugged, a negligent movement that highlighted his broad shoulders. I had a feeling that he used this move for exactly that reason, much as he pursed his lips to highlight his dimples. I was utterly disgusted by both attempts at manipulation, and thought that neither move must be highly effective or he would not need to force his company on unwilling women. “Because if you don’t allow me to seduce you,” and at this, he ran his gaze up and down my body, a move that is far more effective than his other two, though not for the reasons he thinks; it still makes me shudder to relive it. “I’ll definitely foreclose on your house.”

I was silent for a few minutes, and regarded him with a long, measuring gaze. After a few moments, he began to look uncomfortable. I imagine that when he grooms himself, he is shy to look into his own eyes, for fear of what he may see in them. I wondered if he enjoyed his hobby of making women bend to his will. He was a corporate rapist, forcing himself on those that he presumed weaker than himself, and I wondered if Danae would really have given herself over to this pathetic peacock, and if she did so, how she would refrain from vomiting on him, mid-act, and thus solidifying her homelessness.

When I finally spoke, I did so with the same tone he’d used earlier. Silky, with just a glint of slime, like his hair. “You must think I know nothing of the law,” I said, in this tone. 

He started, as if he’d despaired of me ever speaking, as though he’d expected to spend the rest of his days being examined – a man who could not even meet his own gaze, being searched by someone he had once considered a victim. He rallied, though, I’ll give him that. He is a bird who does not let the worm go easily. He merely raised one eyebrow, an expression as rehearsed as the rest, and smiled, almost genially. “You mean that you can get your petition heard by the king,” he said. He shook his head, almost sadly. “You’d really take the risk? With no income, and no promise of one? He’d certainly take the side of the bank. You think the king will take pity on someone who has no chance of being a valuable member of society?”

“I have no income,” I said, in an even, almost passionless tone. “But I do have a promise of one. I own my own business –“ My tone was so taught, an acrobat could perform and entire act on the strength of my words. 

He interrupted me, as though trying to turn me into a prostitute wasn’t enough of a sign of his bad manners. “Your business is folding,” he said, a tinge of disbelief in his voice. It wasn’t that Danae and Simms hadn’t discussed this before, but the Danae he was accustomed to was a mix of apology and hope. “Your partner is forcing you out, citing your performance as a drag on the company and blaming you for loss of income. She wants to sell the business and use the money as recompense for all of the employees you have not paid for the last several months.”

I laughed, but it was with a dry humor. It was enough to shock him into silence long enough for me to say, “That’s what she wants to do.” I shook my head. “It’s not going to happen.”

He stared at me, looking into me, and I got the feeling that his habit of never looking beyond the surface was not limited to himself. He searched me for fear or any sign of uncertainty and did not find it. He looked away, and looked again. I thought that if he were to discover an imposter, it would be now, but I kept my gaze open, yet firm.

Finally, he gave his own little laugh, and shook his head. More performance. “I guess I’ll see you in court.” He turned to leave, and looked back at me sadly. “I wanted to help you,” he said. There was a measure of disbelief at my unwillingness to accept his help. He opened the door slowly. “If you change your mind…” After the door closed behind him, Danae and Adora entered the room. They’d monitored the visit, closely.

I shook my head. “He wanted to help you,” I said to Danae, scorn in my tone. “He saw a buffet and decided to help himself.”

I still don’t understand what it takes for a man to delude himself to such a degree. Does he actually believe his own hype? I’m sure that part of him does, and the rest knows what kind of scumbag he is, yet he continues to breathe in and out every day, as though every breath is not an insult to mankind…

September 10

Danae seemed grateful out of proportion to what I did, yesterday. Simms wasn’t even remotely frightening. The law is clearly on Danae’s side, and so will public opinion be, when this case reaches the court. She seems to be blind to these facts, though, and thinks that what I did was nothing short of heroic. I could tell that Adora was impressed too, and that girl can make ordinary impassiveness seem like overwhelming animation. I really don’t understand it, but I’m glad that I could help. I have some vague idea that my austere Winter upbringing gave me an advantage in the encounter with Simms -- no doubt he would have pounced on any signal of fear, and I certainly didn’t feel any.

For one thing, there was no physical fear. If he’d tried to attack me, even if by some miracle he could overwhelm me physically, I had backup in the next room. Emotionally, I find Danae’s situation compelling, but if things don’t work out the way I want them to, it is not really my life that it affects. Maybe that sounds cold, but it allows me to reach that level of objectivity that is so important in a situation like that. In any case, both Danae and Adora seem to be impressed and grateful for what I did, and now the lost soul living behind Danae’s eyes has lost some of that hopelessness.

My plan to befriend Nalir has been thwarted, for the past several days. Finally, it occurred to me that I should not befriend her as myself, but as Danae. Danae and she have more in common, it would be far easier to get public opinion behind Danae if the king’s mistress were sympathetic to her cause, and it would mean that I could practice being Summer in her presence. Plus, if I got to the place where I was a confidant, I would know when my plan to seduce my husband was starting to work. It’s not like Nalir would confide in me, but she might, eventually, confide in Danae.

I like this plan, though it makes me feel slightly slimy, because I always feel so graceless and stiff next to Nalir, as myself. But Danae moves differently, and it would be less noticeable to imitate her movements if I already moved similarly to her.

In other news, Todd is growing in his capacity as Assistant to the Chef of Winter, the Queen of Summer. He made the dessert tonight -- something called banana cream pie. It was basically a layer of a heavy, sweet cream, with a layer of light, sweet cream, laid on top of a flaky crust. It was magnificent. I worried, briefly, that Stan would feel competitive with his son, but only pride showed in the swell of his chest. He is a chef, not a baker, he says, and he’s thrilled to finally have a dessert fit to be companion to his meals. 

The pie was so good that my mother and cousins raved enough about it that my husband insisted on trying some. He liked it so much that he has instructed Todd to teach the royal baker how to make it so that everyone can have some. Again, I worried that Stan would find something sour in the new arrangement, but the only gleam that sparked along his half-closed eyelids, was gleeful. My husband has, on several occasions, asked Stan to share his recipes with his own cook, so maybe that helped keep him from becoming jealous.

Speaking of my husband, my date with him approaches. Four days from today, I have an intimate interview with my future lover. I would never seduce him as Danae, for if he introduced another mistress to the court, I would probably kill him. However, I will get to practice being all Summery and charming. Then I have to figure out how to contrive to get us together in the same place so that he can see me in all my Summer charm, but as his wife. I think it’s going to have to be a gradual change. I’ll have to drop hints as to my compassionate nature, slowly. But not too slowly. I want to be pregnant by this time next year. But a lot can change in a year. 

I know that my husband likes secret passages as much as I do. I’ll have to contrive an accidental meeting. Something that showcases the purity of my spirit, all the while showing how uncomfortable I am that he is finding out about said spirit. I delight in the diabolicalness of my plan. It sends a thrill through my stomach to think of it. I am finally in one of those sweeping romances that I’ve read, on the sly, throughout my girlhood. I am a woman now, the heroine of my own wondrous saga, and I will seduce my husband and he will be so consumed by me that he will be blind to all of my weaknesses of character and he will do anything I ask of him, just to keep me happy. 

I say indeed, that it is a good thing that I am not evil, and that I will not use my ownership of this man to do anything shady or dishonorable. I will only use him to love me, so that I will not be so lonely, and so that we can use our unity to help integrate both Summer and Winter, and thus saving two planets as well as two souls. I feel almost romantic right now, aside from this blast of pity that makes my arms shake -- my poor husband, he has no idea what is in store for him.

September 11

If I had the words to express my grief at my cousin’s passing, I don’t think I would be able to speak them. There is something clawing at my throat from the inside. I think it’s sorrow. Danae, someone I am certain has some relation to me, based on the recent admission of my mother that she was born in Summer along with the fact that we look enough alike to be twins, is dead. I watched her die in front of me, and now, with her body still warm, must make a decision. 

Danae was my salvation, in that I had someone “normal” to pretend to be. Being myself here makes me a target and an object of disgust. Pretending to be Danae, gave me a chance to blend in, to feel that camaraderie that I had been missing since I got here. Sure, it was a false sense, but it was better than that overwhelming loneliness that would have turned me bitter before my time.

Even better, I was poised to help her with her problem – and it was a meaty one. For one thing, someone was trying to take over her business, and a seamy banker wanted to use the situation as an opportunity to withdraw sexual intercourse from her. I was able to thwart him, and we had plans to return her business to her power – but now…

I have this vague idea that we should continue the charade. I’ll be two people (I already am, anyway). I’d be Winter, Queen of Summer, and I’d be Danae, native of Summer – mother and daughter, Summerian to the bone. It’s a ridiculous notion, of course, on many levels. For one thing, it would be sacrilegious, for another, I just can’t be in two places at once, not without my doppelganger, anyway.

But I can’t stand the idea of Danae’s daughter and mother being put out on the street. I could get them jobs as maids in the castle, of course, or perhaps they have some family who could take them in. But neither is the lifestyle we were trying so hard to win back for them. We wanted autonomy and that beautiful spirit of independence that I was beginning to see in Danae’s eyes.

She’s still lying there. The grass curls around her stiffening form, molding itself to her, welcoming her back to the soil from whence she was made. Her face, so much like mine, looks more strong and determined now, than it ever did when I knew her. I imagine it looks the way it did before her husband died; before he stole her spirit away from her body as he departed this plane of existence.

Adora is crying. If nothing else seems surreal – the fresh breeze flowing through the small entranceway, loosening tendrils of Danae’s hair, which move down to brush comfortingly against Adora’s hand. Adora lies with her face buried in Danae’s stomach. From this angle, the crystal which protrudes from Danae’s chest looks like it instead, has impaled Adora’s head. 

I shudder and look away. Adora is saying something but her voice is muffled by her tears and the lament the wind makes as it breezes in and out of the grass-carpeted cave. We shouldn’t have been running around like that. Playing. What were we thinking? Shouldn’t we know by now that any sign of joy is an invitation for disaster?

“We can’t let anyone know she’s dead.” Adora is at my shoulder now, how did she get there? I didn’t see her move. Her voice comes at me from far away, like the time I was so sick that both ears closed up and I could only hear people speak as though they were shouting from the end of a long tunnel. At first, I don’t realize that she said the thing I had just been thinking. Then I think I must have said it, and shame and guilt run through me. 

As I focus on her mouth, with tear tracks running down each side, she repeats herself. I see my thoughts come out of her mouth. “No one must know she’s dead. It’ll ruin everything.”

I find my voice, but it too sounds like it comes from far away. “What are you talking about?”

Adora is urgent now. “We can not let anyone know that Danae is dead. Sabrina and Bian will be left with nothing. “You will have to take her place.”

I stare at her. “How?”

Adora shakes her head. “I don’t know. We’ll figure something out. She has to be alive until we get her business and her home secured.”

I look over at Danae. She makes no move to disagree with us. The cave is darker. The light bounces around the crystals, but Danae’s body obscures most of the one she lies on top of, and a weak light emanates throughout the cave. 

“And then what?” I’m not certain who speaks the question, and decide it must have been me, when I can find no answer to the question.

Adora sighs. “I don’t know. Lost at sea, or something.” She’s quiet for a moment. “We can’t leave her there.”

I don’t know. Aside from the diamond protruding from her heart, she looks almost comfortable, and if it weren’t for the blood, I could fantasized that she is wearing an extremely ostentatious brooch, as out of odds as it’d look with her flower-patterned dress.

The crystal tears free from the earth, as we lift her body, and the cave goes dark.

September 12

If either Adora or I had a question about whether I should continue to pretend to be Danae, it was answered yesterday afternoon, when I returned to Danae’s abode. Her child threw herself at me with Summerian abandon, babbling with that childlike arrogance which assumes that every word that drops from its tongue is a morsel of wisdom to be absorbed and cherished. I can’t say I caught a word of it; I was too busy trying to disentangle myself from the small human, and shooting Adora pleading glances. Adora is much better with small people than she is with large, and took the child into the kitchen to feed her sugary substances which made her bounce around her room for a while, before passing out in the middle of the soft rug on her bedroom floor; a crayon clutched in one hand, a stuffed rabbit curled into the crook of her arm.

Danae’s mother was more discerning. She took one look at me, and said, “Who are you?” Adora answered the verbal interrogation with her voice, and I withstood the soul version by keeping eye contact with Eliava. When Adora was finished with her explanations, I expected Eliava to berate us, or throw us out of the place. She only sighed, and sank down onto an overstuffed chair. “I knew she was up to something,” she said. She looked at me, seeing for the first time, the similarities to Danae, rather than the differences. Then she looked at me, my Winter posture and hard eyes. “Queen of Summer,” she murmured. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. 

She was silent for a long time, and in that quarter of an hour, I felt more out of place and intrusive than I have the entire time I’ve resided in Summer. Why hadn’t it been me who had stumbled onto that crystal? Danae could have taken over as Queen of Summer and done a better job of seducing my husband and securing a new father figure for her daughter. Who would miss me? Who depends on me or loves me so much, that an imposter couldn’t take my place, with no one the wiser? My own mother, after she leaves, probably won’t see me again for years. All of my family is millions of miles away. It would have been so much better for everyone if it had been me, not Danae.

Eventually, Eliava agreed that I should continue to be Danae. We would ease her daughter into the idea of her mother being gone, before making the death public. (Even a self-absorbed child will eventually see that her mother does not reside in my body.) We’ll have time to restore Danae’s legacy to her daughter, as well. And of course, every time I think about the benefits to my situation, I want to kill myself. Only a few days ago, I was lamenting my lack of secrecy and thinking that it would be better for me if Danae died so that I could be both women with few people knowing my secrets. Of course I didn’t mean it, not taking into consideration the effect that that would have on the people who know and love her. Knew and loved. In hindsight, I wish that I had created an entirely new persona and risked having no real back story. Then Danae wouldn’t have been dragged into this, and she’d still be alive. 

Worse than ever, the knowledge I might be mourning my kin right now, gnaws at me -- and less than ever, do I really want to know the answer. If Danae were related to me, near or distantly, the vacancy caused by her absence would only increase. I am better off not knowing. I’m to meet with Eliava tomorrow, so that she can tell me about her daughter. I am certain that every minute she looks at me, she’ll be wishing I were dead, rather than her daughter.

I spent most of today hiding from everyone who has ever met me. I did not attend court, I befriended foreign gardens far from my usual haunts, I even took my meals alone. I could not even stand to see Adora. I did visit my mother, though. We at breakfast together as usual, and then I visited her again in the afternoon.

For some reason, I thought that she’d take one look at me, and realize that I was in the depths of despair. She’d pull me into her arms, and drag me back into the light. But she was so full of plans, that all she could see was the future. After about an hour, she wound down, and I realized that I was about to become visible to her. The idea was suddenly abhorrent to me, though only a short period of time before, it had been all that I wanted. I moved to leave, and my movement must have caught her attention. 

She tugged on my arm and pulled me into an embrace. “I’m so glad that you’re my daughter,” she said. She used to tell me that when I was a kid. For a moment, I felt grateful that someone wanted me. Then I became angry. Why was she glad? What had I done to make anyone proud of me? Be born at the right time, with the right birth, and the right face? My mother had been speaking to a cardboard cutout of her daughter for an hour, and hadn’t noticed the difference. Should I take it personally that she was glad I was her daughter? What did she know of me, of my heart, of my secrets? She hadn’t visited the inner chambers of my heart for so long that --

I broke away from her, and again, she barely noticed. She was lost in the past, this time, reliving the daughter she had loved. I wondered if people ever love each other at all, or if they love the personas they project into others. 

September 13

Danae’s daughter, Zahina, is six years old. I received a missive late last night/early this morning from Eliava through Adora. Apparently, Zahina was concerned that her mother wasn’t home last night by the time she went to bed. Eliava assured her granddaughter that mommy would be home by morning. So I de-spiked myself and Adora wheeled me over to Danae’s apartment. 

Both Danae and I slept in this morning, and Zahina got to see mom passed out before she went to school this morning. When Eliava came back from dropping the girl off at school, she sat me down. “It’s no good trying to convince her that you’re her mother,” she said. 

“You want to tell her the truth?” I was partly relieved, albeit slightly annoyed that yet another person would be let in on all of these secrets -- and a six-year-old at that. What kind of discretion can we expect from a child that young? Eliava sighed. “Not necessarily. If she doesn’t figure it out on her own, then I suppose it wouldn’t do too much harm to let her believe you’re her mother. But she and her mother were very close, and I don’t think you can pull off the same dynamic. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you about all of their secret little rituals, because I don’t know them.”

I was trying to blink away one of those headaches that come from too much stress and too little sleep. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll be here, when Zahina gets home, and I’ll spend the afternoon with her. We’ll see what happens.”

So that’s what we did. I picked Zahina up from school, we went for ice cream, and came home and played with her dolls for a while. We were sitting on the plush rug in the middle of her room. I was holding a dark-haired doll, a little awkwardly, mind. Even as a child, I never spent a lot of time playing with dolls. Zahina was drawing on a little blond-haired doll with a red crayon. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?”

I blinked. “Stop what?”

She held up the doll, whose lips were outlined in red crayon. “You always say not to draw on my dolls.”

I smiled. “She’s yours. You can set her on fire if you want to.”

Zahina’s gasp echoed through the still air. She rescued the dark-hair doll from my grasp and held both blonde and brunette to her chest, as if to protect them from me. Or perhaps, she was using them as a shield. She moved away from me, without turning her back, until she sat on a toy chest under the window. She trapped the dolls between her legs and her torso. Three small heads stared suspiciously at me over her knees.

I relaxed my Summer posture. I’d been sitting with my legs demurely curled beside me. Now I scooted back against her bed. I planted the bottoms of my feet against the rug, and rested my elbows on my knees. Zahina still glared at me, but something in her relaxed when I did. “You’re not my mother, are you?”

I let out something halfway between a laugh and a sigh. When I was only a few years older than her, I’d been certain that I was adopted -- that my mother wasn’t my mother. I’d thought my mother’s charade unforgivable. It wasn’t too long after that I grew to resemble her more and more, and had to give up the hope of being rescued by a sane woman who had had her child stolen from her.

“Nope.” My arms still rested on my knees, so I just flicked my wrists a bit, in a dismissive gesture.

“Who are you?” 

“I don’t know.” I sighed, frustration creeping into my voice and movements. “I’m a cousin or a sister or something.”

“What are you doing here?”

I looked at her, trying to decide what to tell her, and how much of it. I couldn’t tell her that her mother was dead, not without Eliava there to give the girl some real comfort. “I’m babysitting,” I said, finally.

“Why were you pretending to be my mom?”

This, at least, I could answer honestly. “I need to pretend to be your mom for a while,” I said. “I can fix some things that are messed up by pretending to be her.”

Now came the question I’d been dreading. “Where’s my mom?” I couldn’t tell her. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to. The words wouldn’t come. I willed my tears away, but I couldn’t stop hers, and big fat tears splashed over the chubby cheeks tucked under her chin. “Is she dead?”

I was shocked. How was that her first guess? Then I remembered. She’d already lost her father. Then I couldn’t choke back the tears, or the anger and humiliation I felt for my pitiful attempt empathy. There was no way I could take her pain deeply enough inside myself so that she wouldn’t have to feel it -- and that was what I wished for more than anything, at that moment.

For some reason, probably because I was the only other soul around, my comfort was better than none at all. She tumbled across the room, and into my arms. The light and dark dolls came with her and made their way between us, forming a flimsy barrier between her grief and mine.

September 14

Some days breathing is a chore that I have no interest in facing. Today is one of those days. Although I am relieved that Zahina knows that I am not her mother, and I don’t have to try to keep up the farce, I am overwhelmed by her grief. As angry as I have been toward my mother lately, I can not imagine not having her in my life – and I especially can not fathom how I would have handled the breech if I had lost my mother at such a young age.

I am certain that she will grow to resent the woman who looks like her mother, yet who is not, but right now she seems to find some comfort in the fact that I look like Danae. Maybe this is because the hardest part about losing someone is the knowledge that you won’t be seeing them again. You still feel the love you have for them, and the love they have for you, but there is no body which occupies a space in which to direct that love. It’s only when she realizes that I am the image of her mother, but not the fact, that she will learn to hate me.

Likewise with Eliava. I have a date with my husband tonight, and I can not stand the idea of posing as Danae, for the original reasons I had for impersonating her. The reasoning belongs to a person so far removed from this level of maturity that I can not even recognize the same brain who thought them up, as my own. However, there is good that can come out of what was initially meant to be a selfish assignation. 

I get to talk to my husband about Danae’s petition to get her business back. I’ll be speaking as Danae, and he’ll be speaking as alter ego, the noble farmer, but he’ll be listening with a king’s ears. And the best thing about it is that no one can accuse either persona of impropriety because it is only a date between a farmer and an architect, set up by the architect’s mother. There will be no hint of a conversation between a king and his queen. It had not hit me, what the farce was, until now. I am inclined toward amusement, and am both relieved and guilty at the reaction. 

It’s funny; the attitude people have toward death. In both Summer and Winter, the death of a person means, in a way, the death of self. My friend is dead, so I must not laugh. I must not love. I must not want. When, isn’t that what we are mourning? The absence of our loved ones, and their lack of future ability to do all of those things? The thing I miss the most about my father is the way he had of chuckling in my ear, as I sat in his lap and read him a story. He’s been gone two years, and the loss is like a constant ache, I still forget that he is gone. It’s like discovering a wound, and wondering where it came from, and the realizing, again, the battle which inflicted it.

It makes my grief toward Danae feel at once disingenuous and that much more authentic. I know to an extreme degree what Zahina and Eliava are going through. I can’t feel their pain, but the weight of mine settles in my stomach like a dying fish with energy left to thrash and bite. There are few things I would not do, in order to remove their pain from them. It’s frustrating to yearn toward a task with such passion and to lack equally, to power to carry it out.

Then I think, I can help them. I can keep them in shelter and food and clothing. Then I remember how little any of those things meant to me after my father died. I didn’t want or care for anything but my father back, and to look around at a houseful of possession lent despair to my suffering. It’s so cliché to say that you would give anything and everything to get back the person who is missing, yet generation after generation – no one has found a new way to state an old fact. Life is not worth living without the people that we love.

I think that’s why I’ve been so angry with Mother. She abandoned me, to a certain extent. Yes, she abandoned me to adulthood, but it still feels a betrayal, albeit an inevitable one. And to lose her so soon after my father – even though she is still around, neither of us is the same person without him, and we have both changed and separated further more with my passing into adulthood. Just the idea makes me want to go see her, but I know that when I do, I will only underline the fact which I just expressed.

The relationships that we have with each other are so intangible. They are like a river, changing from moment to moment; they retain the same name and the same basic location, yet the substance of the thing is constantly drifting with moods, maturity, anger, laughter, stress, relief….It makes me think of Zahina. Her mother was already dead when she realized that her relationship with her mother hand changed forever. We don’t notice the small changes, the smoothing of the river stone, the introduction of a new branch or leaf to the current. It is only when a dam is introduced, or a new school of fish – that we notice the disruption to our environment. And by then, it is too late to bring the river back to what it once was – even if we wanted to, even if we could have stopped it from changing in the first place.