But Samuel. Samuel hunches over the steering column—his body’s too big for the car, his head submits to the height of the canvas top—and grips the wheel as if it’s going to fly away otherwise—the same way my father’s fingers clenched around the tiller of that runabout. Perspiration glosses his temples. He speaks only to satisfy Lydia, and even then his voice is so brief and guttural, it might as well be a skip in the engine, a cough of the pistons. Not human at all.
Me, I just sit there in the corner of the rear seat, holding Evelyn on my lap. Stroking her soft hair. Gathering my strength. Watching the horizon for the first sign of dawn.
But the earth is still dark when we turn down the drive toward Maitland, I don’t know how much later. Black and quiet, the way the world lies in that hour before dawn, the deepest hour of the night. Though I peer through the windshield, I can’t see the house itself, just the glow of the headlights on the track before us. When Samuel brings the car to a stop and sets the brake, I take the existence of house and gardens and orchards on faith. Or else dread: the recognition that we’ve reached the end of the road, Evelyn and I, and there’s no refuge left to us.
“Out of the motor, now!” Lydia sings. “Chop chop!”
“For the last time,” I say. “You can have everything. All Simon left to me. I don’t care about it. I never want to set foot in Florida again.”
“I daresay you might. And then again, you might not. Everything’s gone into trust for Evelyn, hasn’t it? So it’s going to take weeks to get it back out again. Weeks! When there’s a much simpler way.”
She says those words so cheerfully, you wouldn’t believe their meaning. And I suppose until that moment I didn’t quite believe what Simon wrote. I didn’t quite believe that she could possibly be such a monster, that she could so thoroughly lack any human empathy. When you think of such monsters, you think of men. You think of mad criminals, shackled and menacing, the kind you read about in newspapers. You don’t imagine they could dance among you like fairies, charming and exquisite, laughing secretly at your credulousness. How could a voice so sweet convey such evil? It isn’t possible.
I turn to Samuel. “You can’t let her do this.”
He responds by heaving his large body out of the driver’s seat and into the open air. The engine’s still running, the headlights lit. He opens the back door—not ungently—and takes hold of my arm. “Come along.”
“No. I won’t.”
Before I can do more than tighten my hold on Evelyn, Samuel bends inside and grasps my daughter by the waist and shoulder. I cry out and fight him, kicking out my legs and twisting away, but he’s too big and bound in muscle, and I’m sick and exhausted, wedged inside the back of a Ford. No leverage at all. He’ll tear her in two if I don’t release her. My arms give way, and Evelyn, awake now, starts to cry. Samuel hands her swiftly to Lydia and yanks me out of the Ford and into a firm hold, the kind you put on prisoners. I flail for my daughter, without effect. Lydia smiles and cuddles Evelyn close.
“There, there,” she says. “Auntie Clara’s got you, darling.”
“Mama!” cries Evelyn.
“Mama’s just fine, darling. She’s with Uncle Samuel. They’re going into the house now, and we’re going to sit outside and play.”
Evelyn points to the sky. “Night night.”
“That’s right. Night night. Such a long night for you, little angel. It’s almost done now.” Lydia looks up at Samuel. “Go on. What are you waiting for? You can see it’s upsetting her.”
She must know, I think. She must know what anguish it is, to watch your child burrow into the arms of another woman, a dangerous woman, and you helpless. I can see this knowledge in the smile she gives me. The way she turns her shoulder and bends her face to Evelyn’s face and murmurs in my daughter’s ear. Aren’t children supposed to recognize evil? But Evelyn doesn’t. Like me, she submits without question to Lydia’s charm.
“Off you go,” Lydia says again, over that shoulder, carrying Evelyn away, and at last Samuel moves forward, dragging me in the opposite direction, and I can’t beg and sob, I can’t plea and struggle, because Evelyn will hear me and be afraid.
So I stumble behind him and choke on my terror.
Stay calm, I tell myself. Mounting the steps of the front portico, Samuel’s hand a vise around mine.
You must stay calm. You must find a way out of this.
This cannot be the end of the road.
As soon as Evelyn’s out of earshot, as soon as Samuel has forced open the door and dragged me across the front hall, I start to talk. Low, steady voice. A cool customer, Mr. Burns called Simon. Well, I can be cool, too. I can be as cool as you please.
“You can’t do this, Samuel. You won’t kill me, even for her.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Let go of me. You know you can’t live with yourself. She’s killing you, bit by bit. Every word she’s told you is a lie, can’t you see? Let go of me. Let’s save Evelyn together, let’s save what Simon left behind.”
Samuel growls, Damn Simon!
“All right! Damn Simon, then. But don’t damn me.” We’re staggering down the length of the parlor now, past the closed door to Simon’s study, rooms I hardly remember. In back lies the kitchen, beneath the children’s wing. Miss Bertram. Where does she sleep? In the house? In her mother’s cottage, near the orchard? I call out. “Portia! Miss Bertram!”
Samuel wheels around and raises his fist. Stops just short. “Be quiet!” he hisses.
“Portia!” Louder. “Portia!”
The hand comes down to clamp across my mouth, and I keep calling her name through his fingers, while he scoops me up and carries me the rest of the way, limbs flailing, into the kitchen. Plants me down on the table. Says to me in a fierce voice, still pressing his hand over my mouth, “Just listen to me, for God’s sake. Will you shut the devil up and listen!”
I still myself and nod. Samuel lifts his hand from my mouth and curls it around my shoulder. Firm, unshakable grip.
“There’s going to be a fire—”
I gasp and start upward. He pushes me down again.
“Listen! You’re going to wait, you’re going to wait until the smoke’s going and you’re going to flee, out the back, flee and find somewhere to hide.”
“But Evelyn!”
“You’ll get her back, I swear it. As soon as you sign over the damned inheritance, I’ll get her back for you. Do you hear me? I’ll get her back.”
He’s bending over me, staring at me with those hazel eyes that are so exactly like Simon’s, so perfectly recalling the eyes of my husband, I have the strangest feeling, for just an instant, that Simon is actually speaking to me.
“How much?” I whisper.
“Everything. The company. The plantation. The bank accounts. Then you disappear. Move somewhere else, the other side of the country.”
“How do I know you’ll do it? If she realizes, if she makes you go back and finish the job—do her bidding as you’ve always done—”
“I’m not doing her bidding now.”
“Yes, you are. You’re still giving her what she wants. You think that this way, you can still square it with your conscience, but you can’t, Samuel, you’re her stooge, it’s going to tear you apart, the way she’s always torn you apart—”
The hand clamps back down on my mouth. “Enough. You don’t know anything. You can’t possibly imagine—”
“Samuel?”
A sweet voice carries from the doorway. Samuel closes his eyes and sags forward, and I spring against his hold, trying to slip free in this instant of his inattention, but his reflexes are too sharp. He grabs me back and turns to face Lydia, who’s standing by the kitchen door, smiling a little, holding my sleeping daughter against her shoulder.
“I was wondering what was going on in here. Haven’t you finished yet? The sun’s going to start rising any minute.” She meets my gaze and leans her cheek into Evelyn’s soft hair. “She’s such a dear. Goes right to s
leep. Poor little mite.”
I launch myself forward. She turns away, and Samuel gathers me back against his chest, arms bound like iron across my ribs.
“Tie her to the range,” Lydia says over her shoulder. “That should hold her.”
Samuel hesitates.
“Now, darling. Or else someone will spot the car. The light rises so quickly out here.”
I can feel the thud of Samuel’s heart between my shoulders. The heave of his lungs.
“Samuel! For God’s sake. Don’t be a coward.”
Samuel’s hands move to my waist. He lifts me into the air and hauls me toward the Garland range that hulks along one wall of the kitchen, and that’s when I begin to scream. This time I don’t spare Evelyn. I yell for help in a frenzy, flinging my arms and my legs against the barrier of Samuel’s body, draining God only knows what reserve of energy.
With one hand, Lydia whips a handkerchief from her pocket and strides to Samuel. “Here. Put this around her mouth. I can’t stand that awful racket.”
Samuel drives me to my hands and knees on the linoleum floor and straddles me, pinning me in place with his great weight. My strength is failing now. He whips the handkerchief around my jaw and forces it between my teeth, the way you force a metal bit into the mouth of a reluctant horse. Calls to Lydia for some butcher’s twine, on the double, and the drawers and the cabinets rattle softly, at some distance beyond the ringing of my ears, as Lydia obeys him. I can’t seem to get enough air. The kitchen starts to darken around the edges. Fill with spots. My elbows buckle, my chest and head crash to the floor, and while I remain just conscious, I can’t seem to move anything. Can’t seem to summon anything more. Like a doll, a rag doll stuffed with folded paper, unable to tell anybody what’s inside her.
As I sit on that linoleum floor, limbs splayed, tied to the sturdy iron leg of the range by several loops of butcher’s twine, I watch the scene before me as you might watch a scene in a play. As you might watch a film flickering on the screen of a cinema some Saturday night. It is not real. I am not really myself, I am not this person inside this room. There is no kitchen, no range; there is no massive man before me, straightening, taking the kerosene lamp in his hand.
Turning to the woman who stands in the doorway, holding a sleeping child in her arms.
The woman says, down the length of a long, narrow tunnel: “Hurry, for God’s sake. She’s getting awfully heavy.”
“Get back, then. It’s going to catch quickly.”
“I want to watch you do it.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Come on!” Her voice turns shrill. “What the devil are you waiting for? The sun’s coming up!”
“All right. Just get out of the doorway.”
She steps back a few paces. Her gaze remains pinned to the man in the center of the kitchen.
“Now,” she says.
The man lifts his arm and hurls the lamp against the baseboard of the opposite wall.
The glass explodes in a shattering crash. A flame erupts from the floor, licking along the pool of spilled kerosene, making a strange whooshing sound as if all the oxygen in the world has been sucked instantly away.
The woman holds out her hand to the man. “Let’s go.”
“Just want to make sure it’s catching.”
“It’s caught! Come with me!”
He stands there, staring at the gathering flame, the gray smoke as the plaster wall catches fire. The heat lands like a burning palm against my cheek, and I try to cry out, but the sound disappears into the damp handkerchief straining the corners of my mouth. I yank against the leg of the range. Eyes watering. Throat stinging.
“Samuel! Now!”
The man turns at last and strides toward her. Takes her hand and starts to bolt through the doorway to the hall beyond, the parlor and the front entrance and freedom, carrying the child, the beautiful child, into the night.
But as he does, he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out, some compact object he tosses behind him, so that it skitters across the floor to the leather soles of my shoes.
And in my confusion, in the smoke and heat and terror, I find myself staring at this object for several seconds before I realize it’s a pocketknife.
Stretching. Sweating. Shoe reaches the tip of the knife. Try to push it up, try to knock it toward my knee, closer, please God, help me.
Flames now spreading along the wall. Smoke filling the kitchen, curling around the furniture. Shoes too clumsy. Left foot to edge of right shoe. Push, push. Shoe flies off. Stretch again. Grasp knife between toes. Coughing now. Careful. Guide the knife upward, upward. Now a little push. Sweat trickling into eyes. Knife hits hip. Stretch hip, nudge, up, up, up to fingertips.
Can’t get it.
Can’t get it.
Please, God. A miracle, a miracle. Not for me. For Evelyn. My daughter.
My daughter.
And then my fingers find the tip of the knife. Scrabble to gain hold.
Got it. Flick it open. Saw, saw, saw. Fire crackling now, lungs bursting with the effort of breathing so small.
The twine is tough. Of course it is. Made to hold flesh in place. Saw and saw and saw, blood trickling fingers, bandage ripping and tearing, stitches bursting, FREE
FREE
I try to spring upward, but all I can do is stagger, crippled, along the hot linoleum to the kitchen door, the door that leads outside, the service door. The metal knob burns when I touch it. I snatch a handful of skirt and try again, and this time the door opens, and the fire pauses and then roars in ecstasy at all this fresh, new oxygen flooding in from the pink-rimmed dawn.
And I think the heat actually propels me out, like a hand to my back, and I fall into the grass outside the door and breathe in massive, painful gusts of air that cut my throat with their cleanness.
Can’t stay here. Have to get up. Have to get up and—
Help!
A human cry. A female cry. Streaking past the roar of the fire from somewhere behind me.
Somewhere inside the house.
And I do not know what instinct commands me to rise and turn, wet with blood, choked with smoke, and stare back into that hell. I mean I can hardly stand, I can hardly see at all. My limbs are made of liquid, of the thinnest possible jelly, sapped of all sap, bruised and torn and dirty. My daughter waits for me somewhere outside, in the arms of a monster.
But you can no more ignore a cry like that than you can ignore the urge to breathe. You can no more withstand that kind of raw human fear than you can withstand tomorrow. There is something inside the note of that voice that makes you cover your face with your skirt and plunge back through the doorway into the rising inferno, and maybe it’s a kind of something you didn’t realize you heard at first, because the sound reaches you again, as you tear across the floor, and this time you really do hear it, in yours ears and chest and blood: the wail of a hysterical young child.
I scream Evelyn’s name and run down the hallway to the parlor, now filling with smoke, but nobody’s there, the cry’s now behind me, and I beat back to the kitchen, or what should be the kitchen, now crackling with fire along one side, spreading across the floor and walls, and that’s when I see the other doorway, the one between the cupboards and the icebox, covered in smoke, and the pair of figures huddled just outside.
I think, The back stairs. The back stairs leading from the kitchen to the floor above. The children’s wing.
This way! I scream. Through the door!
But even as I speak, I hear a groan above us, the sound of something failing, wood giving way, and they are starting forward toward me, the pair of them, and I scream No! and stagger across the burning floor, scorching my feet, passing across the center just as a beam crashes downward in an explosion of sparks, hitting the ground behind me.
I don’t stop. I gallop on like some kind of greyhound, grab Portia by the arm, grab the small boy by the arm, urge them upstairs to where the fire is already burning through the floor. I
can feel its heat on my skin, licking through the wall of the hallway, trying to find a way through from the room above the kitchen. The girl’s room, I realize, Evelyn’s room. Smoke fumes through the cracks in the molding, and it’s going to ignite, it’s like a bomb, I have no choice, I lead them down the hallway to the great staircase sloping back to earth, where the air is full of smoke but not yet fire, feet pounding and lungs coughing, the sharp crack of gunfire splitting the air, until we spill out onto the portico where the fragrant pink dawn illuminates a pair of automobiles.
A Packard and a Model T Ford.
Epilogue
Cocoa Beach, Florida, April 1924
Something wakes him, in the hour before dawn.
Happens all the time. The house makes noises, or else his dreams take a wrong turn. A man’s nerves, honed by war and by crisis, don’t settle back into a peacetime lull simply because peace has arrived.
So he knows what to do. He remains still on his bed, eyes open, listening first for the steady music of his wife’s breathing and then the larger rhythm of the surrounding atmosphere. The sleeping house, the velvet night. The scent of orange blossoms from the vase on Virginia’s dresser, the smoky warmth of the sheets covering their bodies, nested one into the other: her bottom curving into his groin, his arm draped over the large, firm ball of her pregnancy. He counts the beat of her pulse. Lays his lips on her skin to test her temperature. Waits for the reassuring stir of the baby beneath his hand. A month to go, and he cannot stop checking these signs; his anxiety for wife and child cannot be satisfied. His world, from the moment almost of conception, has shrunk inside the boundaries of Virginia’s skin.
Cocoa Beach Page 37
