by Ellen Datlow
The house is an epicenter, it seems. Stefan will allow himself approximately a mile from this center before he becomes anxious.
From her third-floor aerie Elisabeth has observed Stefan pedaling his bicycle to the end of the block, turning then to continue around the block. Though he quickly passes out of her sight Elisabeth understands that Stefan must keep the house at the epicenter of his bicycling. Soon then, he will reappear, coming from the other direction along Oceanview, pedaling fast, furiously, as if his life were at stake.
Once waiting for Stefan to reappear, waiting for—oh, how long?—an hour?—an anguished hour?—Elisabeth can bear it no longer and hurries downstairs, rushes out onto the front walk to look for him; and stands in the avenue waiting for him—where is he? Until finally she glances behind her and sees Stefan hovering at the front door watching her.
She is embarrassed, and blushes deeply. When she returns to the house Stefan has disappeared, damned if she will look for him.
8.
Convulsed with something that looks like passion we tell ourselves, Love.
A high, skittering sound as of glass shards ringing together. Unless it is laughter. Steps back and in the next instant the cut-glass chandelier in the front hall loosens, falls from the ceiling, crashes to the floor, narrowly missing her.
In the aftermath of the shattering glass, that high faint laughter so delicious, you want to join in.
• • •
Surfaces, and beneath. Elisabeth is learning not to be deceived by the elegant polished surfaces of the house.
A place of sickness. Don’t breathe.
Walls look aslant. Doors stick, or can’t be closed. Doorknobs feel uncomfortably warm when touched, like inner organs.
Light switches are not where Elisabeth remembers them to be—where Elisabeth knows them to be. Fumbling for the switch in her own bedroom.
You will never find the light nor will the light find you but one day the light will shine through you.
Finally, her fingers locate the switch. Blasting light, blinding.
In the mirror, a blurred reflection. Wraith-wife.
No: She is imagining everything. In the mirror there is nothing.
For several days her skin has felt feverish. A sensation of heaviness in her lower belly, legs. No appetite and then ravenous appetite and then fits of nausea, gagging. The worst is dry heaving, guttural cries like strangulation.
The most peaceful blue sleep. Hurry!
• • •
Midway in the shower in Elisabeth’s bathroom, fierce sharp quills springing from the showerhead turn scalding hot with no warning.
Elisabeth cries out in surprise—and pain—and scrambles to escape before she faints. . . .
A previous time, the shower turned freezing cold.
Slipping and skidding on the tile floor, whimpering in pain, shock.
In fear of her life—almost. Hearing in the pipes in the walls muffled derisive laughter.
Safer to take a bath. Always in the morning and (sometimes) before bed as well if she is feeling sullied, bloated.
Fortunately there is, in another adjoining bathroom, an enormous bathtub in which she might soak in hot (not scalding) sudsy water curling her toes in narcotic pleasure, letting her eyelids sink shut.
Tub is too crude and utilitarian a word for such a work of art: a marble bathtub. Faint blue veins in the marble like veins in flesh. Ancient, stately, twelve feet long, and deep. Eagerly Elisabeth tests the water, lowers herself into it taking care not to slip, not to fall. It is such pleasure, pure sensuous delight. Almost at once she begins to sink into a light doze. Her hair straggles into the steamy water, her pale soft startled-looking breasts begin to lift. . . .
Hurry! We have been waiting.
Finds herself thinking of an Egyptian tomb. Mummified corpses of a young wife and her baby wrapped in swaddling laid solemnly in the tomb side by side.
Sinking into the water, the enervating heat. Her mouth, nose beneath the water . . . Too much effort to breathe . . .
I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.
Waking then. With a start, in shock. No idea where she is, or how much time has elapsed in this place.
Hovering above the naked female body. The body is white, wizened. The fingers and toes are puckered, soft. In panic she must return to this body. . . .
The bathwater has turned cold and scummy and smells vile as turpentine. The marble has become freezing cold and slippery. In her desperation to climb out of the deep tub Elisabeth’s feet slip and slide, her strength has been sucked away. Loses her balance and falls onto the floor nearly striking her head on the marble rim.
Oh!—pain has returned, and humiliation. For she is trapped inside the wizened white naked female body again.
• • •
In the winter many nights Alexander is away. Bravely, Elisabeth is the wife of the house. Elisabeth is the stepmother of the surviving child.
Dining together, evenings by the fireplace. Like something animated the child will speak of school, books he is reading, or has read. Safe topics for stepmother and stepchild to navigate like stepping-stones in a rough stream.
The father forbids television in the house on Oceanview Avenue. No Internet for Stefan. No video games! He will not have his son’s mind (he knows to be a brilliant and precocious mind like his own at that age) polluted by debased American culture.
(Alexander watches television in his Beacon Street apartment, but the sort of television that Alexander watches is not debased.)
As if he has just thought of it Stefan says, “That room—where you are—that was Mummy’s, too.”
Elisabeth is surprised. That room?—she’d chosen because it is so spare, so unattractive. Two flights of stairs, the second flight to the old servants’ quarters steep and narrow.
She’d assumed that N.K. had worked in another room. Her room shows no signs of human occupancy.
“Oh, Stefan. I—I didn’t know. . . .”
“Mummy wouldn’t let us in, mostly. Not like you.”
Is this flattering? Elisabeth wants to think so.
But who is us, she wonders. Little Clea, also?
The remainder of the meal passes in silence but not an awkward silence and when Elisabeth undresses for bed that night she finds herself smiling, a frothy sensation in the area of her heart of uplift.
Not like you like you like you. Not!
And later, as she is sinking into a delicious sleep—Live like it’s your life.
• • •
Solemn ticking of the stately old Stickley grandfather clock in the hall.
Yet Elisabeth begins to hear the ticking accelerate, and hesitate; a pause, and a leap forward; a rapid series of ticks, like tachycardia. (She has had tachycardia attacks since moving into the house, but in secret. Never will she voluntarily confide in her husband that she has what is called a heart murmur.) In the night she hears the clock cease its ticking and lies in a paroxysm of worry, that it is her own heart that has ceased. A whisper consoles her—Quick if it’s done, is best. Most mercy. Blue buzz of air, the only symptom you will feel is peace.
Ignores the whisper. Very quietly descending the stairs barefoot to check on the clock, to see why it has ceased ticking; why the silence is so loud, in the interstices of its ticking.
The clock face is blank!—there is no time. . . .
It has already happened, Elisabeth. That is why time has ceased. It is all over, and painless.
But no: When she switches on the light she sees that the clock is ticking normally. (Elisabeth is sure: She stands barefoot in the hallway shivering, listening.) And there is the clock face as always, stately roman numerals, hour hand, minute hand, a pale luminous face with a lurid smile just for her.
The wife of the house.
• • •
The well water has been diagnosed by the township water inspector: an alarmingly high degree of organic and fecal material. Decomposing (animal?) bodies. Excr
ement. Contaminated water leaking into the well and until the well can be dredged and the water “purified” it is recommended that the Hendrick household use only bottled water for drinking and cooking purposes.
Informed of this humiliating news Alexander flushes angrily. Elisabeth steels herself to hear him declare This house is not poisoned. But he turns away instead as if it is Elisabeth who has offended him.
9.
The next evening meal with Stefan. Elisabeth has given Ana the day off, wanting to prepare the meal herself.
Though she takes care to prepare only a variation of one of the few meals that Stefan will consent to eat, that doesn’t involve chewy pulpy meat in which muscle fibers are detectable, or anything “slimy” (okra, tomato seeds), or small enough (rice, peas) to be mistaken by the child for grubs or insects. To Ana’s vegetarian-egg casserole Elisabeth has added several ingredients of her own—carrots, sweet peppers, spinach.
But Stefan isn’t so talkative as he’d been the previous night. When Elisabeth brings up the subject of her third-floor room, and the view of wind-shaken trees outside the window, Stefan says nothing. Almost, Elisabeth might wonder if he’d ever spoken to her about the struggling figures in the trees or she’d imagined that remarkable exchange . . . Just slightly hurt, that Stefan is suspicious of the casserole she has prepared, examining forkfuls before lifting them to his mouth. And he is taking unusually small bites as if shy of eating in her company, or undecided whether he actually wants to eat the food she has prepared.
Yet he’d once nursed. Imagining the child as an infant nursing at the mother’s breast.
Or, at Elisabeth’s breast.
She feels a flush of embarrassment, self-consciousness. What strange thoughts she has! And she is not drinking wine with the meal, as Alexander often urges her to do, to keep him company.
Tugging at the breast of life we must devour.
Helpless otherwise, for dignity’s not enough.
Surrender dignity and in return royally
Sucked.
In person, when N.K. read this abrasive poem, or recited it in her smoky, throaty voice, audiences laughed uproariously. (Elisabeth has seen videos.) The enormous wish to laugh with the woman declaiming such truths, like a tidal wave sweeping over them.
Since Alexander has been spending more time in Boston, Elisabeth has been on the Internet watching videos of N.K. Doesn’t want to think that she is becoming obsessive. Knows that Alexander would disapprove and so has no intention of allowing him to know.
Fear of being sucked and fear
Of sucking.
Stefan’s silence is not hostile nor even stubborn but (Elisabeth thinks) a consequence of shyness. Stefan may have felt that at their last meal he’d revealed too much to her, and betrayed his mother.
No betrayal like loving another.
No betrayal like love of the Other.
Distracted by such thoughts Elisabeth has taken too much food into her mouth. Trying to swallow a wad of clotted pulp in her mouth. Her casserole is lukewarm and stringy, unlike Ana’s. Something coarse-textured like seaweed—must be the damned spinach. Chewing, trying to swallow but can’t swallow. Horribly, strands of spinach have tangled in her teeth. Between her teeth. Can’t swallow.
Trying to hide her distress from Stefan. Not wanting to alarm the child. (Oh, if Alexander were here, to witness such a sight! He’d have been dismayed, disgusted.) A deep flush rises into Elisabeth’s face, she can barely breathe. This clump of something clotted, caught in her throat—horrible! The harder she tries to swallow, the more her throat constricts.
“Excuse—”
Mouth too full, can’t enunciate the word. Desperate now, staggering from the table knocking something to the floor with a clatter. With widened eyes Stefan stares at her.
Must get to a bathroom, thrust a finger down her throat, gag, vomit violently into a toilet. . . .
And then you die. And then
it is over.
So much struggle so long—why?
At last in a bathroom, no time even to shut the door behind her as she manages to cough up the clotted pulpy mash, stringy spinach, in a paroxysm of misery gagging as she spits it into the toilet bowl. Though able to breathe again she is distressed, agitated. Too weak to stand, sinks to her knees. Her face is flaming-hot and the heaviness in her bowels like a fist.
In the aged plumbing a sound of faint laughter.
Then, Stefan is standing beside her. Without a word soaks a washcloth in cold water from the sink and hands it to Elisabeth to press against her overheated face.
Too frightened, too exhausted even to thank the child. His small-boned hand finds hers, his fingers in her fingers clasped, tight.
Oh, Stefan, thank you. Oh, I love you.
10.
Impossible to sleep! Bile rising in her throat. That which she has bitten off, she cannot swallow. The muscles of her throat gag involuntarily, recalling. Cannot believe how close she’d come to choking to death.
What an awful death—gagging, choking. Unable to swallow and (at last) unable to breathe.
Days have passed. Nights. She is losing track of the calendar.
Her eyelids are unnaturally heavy. Yet she cannot sleep. Or if she sleeps it’s a thin frothy sleep that sweeps over her like surf. Briefly her aching consciousness is extinguished and yet flares up again a moment later.
A brain is dense meat. Yet, a brain is intricately wired, billions of neurons and glia. The wonder is, how do you turn the brain on? How do you turn the brain off? An anesthesiologist can put a brain to sleep but can’t explain why. And only the brain can make itself conscious.
Falling on the stairs, stumbling. But the stairs moved. It was not my foot that tripped, stumbled. The stairs moved.
Finds herself at the rear of the darkened house where the throaty voice has brought her. Not sleepwalking but there is a numbness encasing her that suggests the flotation-logic of sleep. Hand on the doorknob. Why?—she has no wish to look into the garage, which is the forbidden place. Still less to step into the garage where it is perpetual twilight and smells still (she believes) of the bluish sweetly-toxic gas that killed the mother and daughter.
Alexander has said, Stay away. No need. Do you understand, Elisabeth?
Yes, she’d said. Of course.
I will be very, very unhappy with you if . . .
Briefly he’d considered (he said) shutting up the garage, securing it. But then—why? Whatever danger the garage once threatened is past.
Yet, the door to the forbidden place is opened. In the doorway, shy as a bride, Elisabeth stands.
Dry-eyed from insomnia. Aching, oversensitive skin.
Shadowy objects in the gloom. One of the household vehicles—an older BMW, belonging to Alexander but no longer used.
Like any garage, this garage is used for storage. Dimly visible lawn furniture, gardening tools, flower pots, shelves of paint cans, stacks of canvas. Shadowy presences in the periphery of Elisabeth’s vision.
The Saab in which the deaths occurred is gone of course. Long banished from the property. Elisabeth has never been told, has never inquired, but surmises that it was towed out of the garage, hauled away to a junkyard.
For no one would wish to drive, or to be a passenger in, a death car.
(Would the interior of the car continue to smell of death, if it still existed? Or does the odor of death fade with time?)
In the doorway Elisabeth stands. It is strangely peaceful here, on the threshold. Gradually her eyes become adjusted to the muted light and she has no need to grope for a switch, to turn on overhead lights.
The garage door is closed of course. You can see light beneath it, obviously you must stuff towels along the entire length of the door to keep the sweet-poison air in and the fresh air out.
Blue buzz of air. The only symptom is peace.
• • •
Come! Hurry.
She is hurrying. She is breathless. On her knees on the bare plank floor in fro
nt of the narrow cupboard in the third-floor maid’s room she reaches into the shadowy interior. Cobwebs in hair, eyelashes.
Wrapped inside a beautiful heather-colored mohair shawl riddled with moth holes.
Her hands shake. This must be one of N.K.’s diaries, unknown to Alexander!
The diary he’d found after her death, he’d destroyed. To spare my son.
Feminists had angrily criticized the husband’s actions but Alexander remained unrepentant. Insisting it was his right—the diary was disgusting and vile (though he’d claimed not to have read it), and it was his property. His right as a father to spare his son echoes and reflections of the mother’s sick and debased mind.
But Alexander is not here now, Elisabeth thinks. Alexander will not know.
The diary appears to be battered, water-stained. It is only one-quarter filled. The last diary of N.K.’s life.
At the makeshift desk Elisabeth dares to read in N.K.’s sharply slanted hand, in stark black ink. The low throaty voice of the poet echoes in her ears as intimate as a caress.
fearful of harming the children
fearful of harming the children entrusted to her
begins with “the”—not “her”
telling herself they are not THE children, they are HER children
she does not want to carry the new baby on the stairs
fearful of dropping her slipping, falling
fear of injuring loving too much
(not the husband’s child)
(does he know?—must know)
of course the husband knows a man must know
pillow over my face, he says so the children will not hear
will win custody you will never see them again
your disgusting poetry will be my evidence in a court of law
you are not a fit mother
not a fit human being
he has struck me with his hand. the back of his hand. hits me on the chest, torso, thighs, where my clothing covers the bruises. he says he will take the children from me if I tell—anyone. if I tell my doctor. I must say, I am clumsy, I drink too much, take too much medication (even if I do not—not enough).
I must declare legally, I have invented these accusations against him.
I am a poet/I am a liar/I am sick and debased/I have loved others, not him/I am one who makes things gorgeously up.
