Catherine’s Locket

“It’s beautiful,” Hanna Walker proclaimed. The golden locket in her hands had fine filigree woven onto its surface, tangled into intricate patterns. The chain attached to it draped over her palm to hang like a lock of braided hair.

“It’s for you, my dear,” her Uncle Fletcher said, his crow’s feet compressing into a smile. His deep voice emanated from the thick, gray web of mustache and beard. “I picked it up in St. Petersburg. A Russian colleague of mine is having financial problems. He’s from a very noble and respected family in Russia, but he’s gotten on the wrong side of Vladamir Putin. I helped arrange for a rather substantial loan, interest-free, and he repaid me with the locket, among other things.”

David, Hanna’s teenage son, leaned over and examined the locket. “Is it real gold?”

“Absolutely,” Fletcher answered. “It belonged to none other than Catherine the Great.” Her uncle paused, graying eyebrows raised. “It’s true. You’re holding jewelry that graced the neck of an empress. And like all priceless artifacts, this one has a rather interesting story behind it.”

“Tell us,” Hanna said. Her husband, Tim, sat beside her. Unused to stay up to this hour, his eyes drooped. David, on the other side, sat forward on his chair, the firelight sparkling in his earring.

Fletcher smiled and sipped at his brandy. The moment of silence accented the thumping of a wooden gate out in the garden. The New Hampshire winds were strong that night.

“Well?” Hanna urged.

“Open the locket,” Fletcher finally said. Hanna did as told. The interior revealed a tiny gem encased in a depression.

“A diamond?” Hanna said. But then the shaped didn’t seem right.

“Wow, really?” David exclaimed. Tim’s eyes opened wider.

Fletcher smiled. “No, honey. Just glass.”

Hanna sighed. Silly, she thought to herself.

“But don’t be disappointed,” Fletcher said. “The story is about that little sliver. Catherine and her husband, Czar Peter III, hated each other with a passion. He was dim-witted and despised his Polish-born wife. Catherine grew bored and lonely, so she had an affair with the handsome court chamberlain, Sergei Saltykov. Catherine would spirit away from the palace to be with him. Together they would go riding in the forest and end up at a smaller palace on the grounds, called Mon Plaisir.”

Hanna leaned forward. Fletcher’s plain brown clothes and tousled, silver hair faded away, replaced by emerald forests and marble palaces.

“They would love each other in secret there,” Fletcher continued, “surrounded by intimate wood paneling and Dutch tiled floors. Perhaps it was the spell of the wind in the forest or the music of the fountains around Mon Plaisir, but their love grew to a roaring fire. Soon she became pregnant with Sergei’s child. Fearing their secret love would be discovered, they parted. But the handsome chamberlain died a year later under mysterious circumstances, and the child he fathered was taken from Catherine by her husband’s family. Naturally, Catherine was heartbroken beyond comforting.”

A moment passed as Hanna considered the story. Her uncle could weave one hell of a tale, but they always turned out to be true — with a little stretching here and there.

Fletcher took another drink of brandy as Tim shifted into a more comfortable position, head against the red velvet back of his chair.

“Sergei was a player!” David said, eyes alight. “How’d he die? Was he … assassinated?” He said assassinated with a slither of tongue.

Fletcher smiled devilishly. “I don’t know, David, but it’s rumored.”

“How tragic,” Hanna whispered, breathless. “So how does that relate to the locket? Did Sergei give it to her as a present?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Czar Peter was murdered shortly thereafter, when Catherine took his throne by force. After things returned to some form of normalcy, she had a handmaiden contact a Gypsy medium. Meeting with the Gypsy at Mon Plaisir, she demanded the medium help her contact her dead lover. The Gypsy was said to have agreed, casting a spell on a mirror near the bed where they had loved. ‘Whenever you wish to be with him,’ she told the Empress, ‘you need only look in the mirror and see him watching over you.'”

“Did it work?” David asked.

Fletcher shrugged. “She seemed to think so. She would often go to Mon Plaisir to gaze into it. Servants were afraid of the mirror, saying that ghosts would leer out of it, watching them from the other side. Years later, the son, Paul, was being groomed to succeed his mother. He was raised as the son of Catherine’s dead husband, Peter, but there were always whispers about his true parentage. He grew to hate the rumors. Anxious to erase all trace of Sergei, he shattered the mirror and had the servants cart away the remains. Catherine rushed to Mon Plaisir when she heard, but she was too late. The only remnant of the mirror was one, tiny sliver of glass, overlooked in a corner – the very sliver in the locket. It’s said that she wore the locket whenever she became lonely for her long-dead lover.”

The wind shook the shutters as Hanna carefully closed the locket.

“It’s a riveting tale,” Tim said, yawning.

Hanna nodded in agreement, wide-eyed. “Imagine, a love so strong that even death couldn’t separate them.”

“Well, it’s a story, anyhow,” Fletcher answered. “I wouldn’t put much faith in it. Russians are great at telling tales! My Russian colleague may have just picked this up at a market and pawned it off to me as something of value.”

“Well, I think it’s lovely,” Hanna said. She hugged the old man. “Thank you, Uncle Fletcher, I feel like an empress already.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. Returning to her seat, she turned the locket around in her hands. Reflections of her and her family burned in the golden glow of firelight in its surface.

* * *

Hanna turned the page of an old National Geographic. The slick paper smelled of plastic and solvent, new, unread. Catherine the Great’s portrait lay next to a photo of the cathedral where she was entombed. She was old, in her late fifties, according to the figure caption, and looking very grandmotherly despite imperial dress. Her mouth hinted at a smile, but her eyes were pools of fatigue and mental burden, and they were sad, so sad.

A slender necklace ran down Catherine’s neck to disappear under the lacy collar of her red, silken robe. Could it be the same necklace? Hanna touched the locket at her neck, wondered if Catherine had felt its cool touch against her skin as she did at that moment. Hanna had worn it since Fletcher left two days before, unable to part with it from morning to night, feeling an attachment to something stronger, more noble, higher in purpose than the dishes she washed or the secretarial work she did.

“What are you doing?”

Hanna jumped. “David! You startled me.” She stopped to take a breath. The fire crackled against the momentary silence. “I’m just reading up on Catherine the Great, seeing if I can find anything on the locket that your Uncle Fletcher gave me.”

David looked over her shoulder. “Hmm.” He plopped onto the sofa across the room and draped himself over it. “How come Uncle Fletcher never stays long?”

“He’s a busy man, David. He travels all over the world making big deals for oil companies.”

“So? Aren’t we important too?” Hanna didn’t know what to say. David continued, “How come you got that cool necklace and all he gave me was a bunch of stupid wooden dolls shaped like bowling pins?”

Hanna closed the magazine. “Those are valuable too. Very old. Handmade. Russian nesting dolls are symbols of a very rich tradition in that country.”

David shrugged again. The chains on his black leather jacket jingled. “At least he gives me stuff. What I really want is a driver’s license. When are you and Dad going to teach me to drive?” He rolled his tongue against his cheek and briefly stuck it out, exposing that damned silver tongue ring. She heard it tap against his incisors as he pulled it back in.

Hanna closed her eyes and sighed, placing the magazine on the coffee table. “We’ve been through this before, David. We don’t feel you’re ready for the responsibility yet. You’re only fifteen and you were in that fight at school last month….”

David bolted upright and glared at Hanna. “I am too ready! Jeremy’s parents are teaching him, and he’s three months younger! I’ll be sixteen in only a couple months. And you know I didn’t start that fight!”

“The answer’s no, David. We’ll give it until your birthday and then we’ll see.”

David jumped up and stormed from the room. “Screw it! You guys are always putting me off. I wish you would just go away like Uncle Fletcher!”

Hanna wanted to grab David’s arm as he rushed by, but she stopped herself. “Not ready,” she muttered and shook her head.

She sighed and opened the National Geographic back to the page with Catherine’s portrait, bent over it, looked closer for a bulge in the robes where the locket might be.

* * *

Hanna and Tim raked leaves in the shadow of their Victorian house. Missed leaves skittered across the brown grass with each gust of frigid wind. The rhythmic scrape of the rakes and the occasional discordant twang of metal from the prongs were like a dirge for summer.

Sweaty despite the chill in the air, Hanna stopped for a moment to wipe her brow. “Time for a break,” she said to Tim. “Care for some cider?”

Tim just waved his hand at her without looking up.

She set down the rake and walked the twenty yards to the house, absentmindedly stroking the locket at her neck. Hanna admired the house, remembering how meticulously her father had maintained it. “A happy house is a well-kept house,” he would say offhand as he cleaned a gutter or applied a new layer of paint. They had put their handprints in the cement of the driveway when she was David’s age. The imprints were still there, and she was always careful to clean the dirt and debris from them. Her father had died three years ago, linked up to respirators and heart machines. A heavy smoker, he had been fond of thick cigars and filterless Camel cigarettes. Sometimes he even rolled his own filterless cigarettes like his father had taught him. What a shame, she thought, that he didn’t value a well-kept body as well.

Hanna paused a moment at the stairs to the back door and looked toward Tim. She wished life could be as good as when she was growing up. Somehow the old place had been livelier then, festive even. And her father’s strength and presence had extended to every corner of the property. Now there were only shadows.

She crossed her arms against a chill breeze, remembered the funeral, the viewing, the months of depression.

Hanna turned and ascended the stairs, careful not to slam the screen door as she entered. The house echoed with the base thumping and growling of David’s favorite rock singer, some guy dressed like the dead with a name to match. Was his troublemaker friend Jeremy up there visiting again? She would try to ignore the noise for the few minutes she would be inside.

Hanna stopped in the bathroom on the way to the kitchen, opened the mirrored medicine cabinet for a jar of lip balm, closed the cabinet.

She gasped, dropped the balm into the sink basin with a clank. The mirror. Behind her, the reflection of an older man. Balding. Cheeks sagging. Sad eyes pleading for release.

“Daddy!” she cried, turning directly around. But there was only empty space and the open door into the hallway. Holding her breath, she glanced again into the mirror. The apparition was gone.

* * *

That evening, Hanna went to the living room after dinner. Tim was watching a sitcom. David had gone to his room again, blaring his rock music, his favorite singer screaming. The wind had died down. She took a seat on the couch across from Tim’s recliner and watched him intently.

“You’ve been quiet tonight,” he said after a pause.

Hanna nodded. “I had a strange thing happen today when I came in for cider.”

Tim looked up in concern but waited patiently.

“You see,” she continued, “when I looked into the bathroom mirror I saw…. Well, I thought I saw my father standing behind me.”

Tim’s eyebrows tensed. He exhaled sharply without speaking.

“I know. It’s weird,” she said, “but he was there, just as he had looked in the hospital. When I turned he was gone.”

Tim raised his eyebrows, taking a moment to respond. “Honey, maybe you should take a couple days off. You’ve been working pretty hard, lately, and I think all that office work of yours is getting to you, especially with the recent layoffs.”

“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll talk to the boss this week.”

The living room grew quiet save for the hollow laugh track of the sitcom and a bass beat from upstairs. But Hanna paid little attention. She stared, instead, at the decorative mirror over Tim’s head. At her angle it showed only the ceiling. But she wondered, if she stood up, would she see her father staring back at her?

* * *

 Days passed, but Hanna still avoided mirrors, combing and fixing her hair by touch alone. Yet she knew she had to face her fears. She had taken Tim’s suggestion and stayed home that Friday, calling in sick. She slept in while Tim went off. David was probably at school, if he hadn’t skipped again. She cleaned house, ate a quick lunch, and took care of several little chores. Something about being home alone scared her, even if it was the spirit of her father haunting the house.

Hanna remembered back to age sixteen. The canoe trip down the Saco River. They had overturned. She and a friend had nearly drowned in the rapids, crawling out of the river a quarter mile downstream. “I’ll never go in water again,” Hanna told her father. He had sat her down in the living room, eyes focused, lips taut, and said, “Darling, you can’t spend your life afraid of something. It’ll haunt you, search you out, come to you in the dark. You get back on that river as soon as you can!” She followed her father’s advice, and the fear had subsided. How she wished she could be as good a parent as he had been.

At one o’clock, Hanna took her place in front of the living room mirror, eyes closed and hands trembling. Fiddling with the locket out of nervous habit, she opened her eyes. All she saw was her own ashen face staring back at her. The reflection showed oddly combed hair and wide, brown eyes. She softened and took a deep breath. Laughing at herself, she moved away.

But the laugh caught in her throat. A different angle. The reflection of a figure by the recliner. Half-hidden by shadow, a man, tall but stooped over.

“Daddy?” Hanna called to the reflection, her voice meek and squeaking.

The figure coughed soundlessly and looked toward the mirror. The deeply-shadowed face was clearly her father’s. The tubing was gone. He put his hand on the recliner as if to steady himself and smiled up at her. Baby, he mouthed, but no sound escaped the mirror.

Hanna’s eyes welled with tears. “Daddy,” she said, and turned to see. But there was no one where the reflection had shown. She looked back at the mirror, expecting him to have disappeared as before, but he still stood there, eyelids sagging as if he had just endured a long sleepless night. Then he slowly moved his head to the right, then the left, in a slow and deliberate shake. Something was wrong.

“What is it, Daddy?” she said.

He moved closer, stepping out of the shadows until he stood directly behind her. She expected to smell the cigarettes, feel his breath down her neck. But there was only a chill rippling down her back. She shook so badly she could hardly move, yet she wanted to turn and warp her arms around him again.

“Daddy? What is it?”

David, he mouthed.

Hanna looked away, then back up. He was fading. She could see the recliner through his image. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m doing the best I can. I’m … I’m not as good as you were.”

He shook his head again. He was almost gone now. David, he said again. His mouth moved once more, but she couldn’t make out his words. Then he was gone.

Hanna moved from side to side, looking through the mirror to get different angles on the living room, but he was nowhere to be found.

* * *

Hanna spent the rest of the evening alone with her thoughts, sitting in the little sewing room where she kept the family photo albums. She propped up every unfastened mirror in the house around her, waiting for her father to appear. But the glass was empty save for her own reflection.

Her plan had been to lure her father to her with old photographs, and she pulled out some of her as a child, her parents in there with her. But she found herself, instead, listening to the sounds of the house. It groaned and settled with a life of its own. Before long David, and then Tim, arrived and moved through the rooms beyond the sewing room walls. Tim called for her, but she ignored him. She heard them as they stepped across hardwood floors and closed doors with squeaking hinges. A plate clinked. David turned on his music, and Tim turned on the television. Outside, cars came and went along the main road.

She felt like a ghost herself, spying on the living from some secluded dimension. She wondered if that was how her father felt, trapped behind the mirrors, somehow squeezed between photons and the silver backing behind the glass. It was a lonely feeling as the darkness settled around her with the setting of the sun. Still she sat there as the music pounded through the rafters and a distant TV sent muted laughter along lumber that was twice her age. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. She fled to her bedroom to cry.

* * *

Lying next to Tim in the quiet moments before sleep, Hanna waited to tell Tim about her father. The light of a waxing moon lay draped across the covers at their legs.

David’s music still dimly thumped through the hallways.

Tim sighed loudly. “I’m about to go smash our son’s stereo. Are you going to go tell him to turn it off or am I?”

“Tim, I saw my father again today.”

Tim moved in surprise but said nothing. The never-ending wind rattled the shutters bolted outside the window.

“I think it’s that locket that Fletcher gave me. I was wearing it both times I saw him. It’s like what happened with Catherine the Great. You know?”

Tim nodded slightly. “And you saw him in the bathroom mirror again?”

“No. This time it was in the living room mirror.”

There was a long pause as she waited for him to speak.

She lay there watching Tim’s half-shadowed face. He blinked, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, seeming to search her eyes for reason.

“Well, let’s say I believe you,” Tim said. “Why do you continue to wear it?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I guess I want to see him. I miss him, you know?”

Tim nodded.

“I’m wearing it now, even,” she added.

“Now? In bed?”

The phone rang, startling them both. It took a couple rings before Hanna got up and walked out to the hallway table to answer it.

“Hello?” she asked, unwrapping the phone cord from her purse strap.

“Is this Hanna Walker?” A man’s voice. Deep. Authoritative.

“Yes,” she answered. People were talking in the speaker’s background. She heard an intercom announcement.

“Ma’am, I’m Deputy Daniels with the Sheriff’s Department. Do you have a teenage son named David?”

“Yes I do.”

“Who is it?” Tim yelled out, but Hanna ignored him.

“Ma’am, I’m calling from Saint Joseph’s Hospital,” the deputy stated in a nervous monotone. “Your son has been involved in an auto accident.”

Hanna held her breath for a minute. “But David’s home tonight,” she finally blurted. “You must have the wrong….” But the car keys were missing from her open purse. And she hadn’t seen her son all evening. Hadn’t she heard him in his room?

“Ma’am, according to a friend of his who was also involved … a boy named Jeremy … they decided to go on a joyride. They were hit from behind, and your son suffered serious injuries to his head and chest. The ambulance reached the scene in only ten minutes, but…. You’re going to have to come to the hospital. He’s in surgery now. I’m afraid it doesn’t look good.”

“Oh God….” Hanna dropped the phone. Her mouth was open. She was unable to focus. How, Lord, how could this happen?

There appeared a reflection in the hallway window. The figure of a boy materialized, transparent and warped from the glass. Blood covered the front of his shirt and forehead. His badly cut face was a pale white in the wan light of the moon.

Mom, the reflection of her son mouthed. His eyes and brow moved as if to beg forgiveness. He reached out a torn hand to touch fingers against the glass.

“David! David….” Tears came. She gazed at the reflection, longed to run and grab him in her arms, but David faded away like a fog burned by the sun.

“Honey?” Tim muttered from the bedroom doorway.

Sobbing, Hanna lurched forward to place her hand on the window where David’s hand touched it. The glass was cold and empty. All she saw was her own image, thin and translucent, a gleam of gold upon her chest.

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