Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  It had only been a few weeks, but already Missouri was fading in her memory. Occasionally one of her friends—former friends, that is—texted her, but she never answered. By now they all probably thought she’d changed her number or had forgotten about them, and that was fine with her. She was a freak, and freaks didn’t have friends. It didn’t matter what the stupid therapists or her mother said.

  Ariel sighed and closed her eyes. One thing she did miss was touching and being touched by her mother. Her mother’s touch hurt her now, as though the burns on her body had never healed. As though she hadn’t had a single skin graft. It was like the burns had seared deep into her bones, bruising them forever.

  “Daddy,” she whispered. “I want to go home.”

  It had been more than a week since he’d come to sit beside her bed. The memory of that night was fading, and she felt like she was losing him all over again.

  As she lay there, the hurt of missing him causing a deep, real pain somewhere in the area of her heart. The room filled with a low rumbling, not so different in tone from the machines outside, and the floor vibrated beneath her. The sound rose slowly, slowly, as though coming from very far away. When she heard footsteps pounding across the floor, she tensed, afraid. Something, someone, hit her leg, then bounced away. She thought of gym class, boys wrestling and fighting.

  The light in the room hadn’t changed, and there was enough light to see that she was still alone.

  “Daddy?” She sat up. The room was freezing cold.

  The sounds stopped for a moment, and she heard whispering near her good ear. Kids, she thought. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the room seemed to be filled with them.

  Something poked her—hard—in the side.

  Maybe a finger, maybe a stick.

  Please let it be my imagination.

  She rolled onto her hands and knees to get up. She was cold, but the air in the room was motionless, as thick as swimming pool water.

  Another poke, this time on her thigh. And another. Harder. More insistent, like someone was trying to provoke her.

  Ariel finally got to her feet. Panicking, she flung out her arm at whatever—whoever—might be there. Nothing.

  She ran for the door, but before she could get out, she felt a painful jab at her chest, just below her collarbone. Something was trying to force her back into the room. Her body was weak from the surgeries and lack of exercise, but she fought back, and kept moving ahead.

  Behind her there was the sound of another scuffle, and more thumping on the floor. A hand—surely it was a hand!—pressed firmly between her shoulder blades, pushing her toward the door. The air coming from the hallway was warm and she couldn’t wait to be warm again.

  I’m going. I’m going. Please let me go!

  The push hadn’t quite been a shove, but it wasn’t gentle.

  Free of the room, she hurried to the nearest stairway and a narrow window with its strip of fragile blue sky facing it. The sounds behind her folded back into the distance with every step she took, though there was a kind of static hum in her ears that wouldn’t quit.

  Reaching for the railing, she grabbed it with her good hand, almost laughing with relief. As she took the first step down to the second floor, something—a hand, or maybe a rope or a snake of some kind—wrapped itself all the way around her ankle and pulled.

  Finally she’d screamed, bringing her mother and the contractor running to find her.

  Her mother had been coming by the bedroom every twenty minutes. This time she was carrying a tray. Ariel smelled chicken noodle soup, and her mouth began to water.

  “Do you feel like you could eat?” Rainey set the tray down on the table in front of the couch. Beyond the table, a cable cartoon channel on the television burbled constant, mindless chatter at low volume, reminding Ariel of the voices from the ballroom. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound, but the similarity sent a ripple of tension up the back of her neck.

  “I don’t want the TV on anymore,” she said, turning her face to the window.

  “Sure, honey.” Rainey pressed the power button, and the room was quiet.

  Ariel hadn’t said what she’d been doing up on the third floor, and Rainey didn’t want to ask. She watched the sunlight play over her daughter’s hair, picking up some of the brown highlights in the black.

  When she’d found Ariel lying on the landing, she’d felt like her heart was going to tear from her chest. If Ariel had died too . . . Rainey shook her head to get rid of the thought.

  “What?” Ariel said.

  “Turn this way.” As Rainey reached out to touch her daughter’s face, Ariel predictably pulled away, her eyes filling with suspicion.

  “Please, Ariel. I’m your mother, for God’s sake. I won’t hurt you.” It was one of those rare moments when she remembered that Ariel was only fourteen years old and still in need of serious parenting.

  The sharp note in her mother’s voice startled Ariel and threw her back into the past:

  Get your coat, Ariel. You’re going to be late for school!

  Ariel, please turn off the light and the radio when you leave your bedroom—or are you planning to pay the electric bill yourself next month?

  Ariel, honey, move your milk away from the edge of the table before you knock it off.

  Ariel relaxed her shoulders, making her seem slightly less defensive. “What are you doing?”

  “Just looking.” Rainey took Ariel’s scarred chin in her hand. Maybe it wasn’t so scarred. It had lost some of its leathery appearance, and the scar tissue was almost transparent instead of an angry red. The damaged area seemed less significant as well, as though it had receded a bit.

  The burns had been so significant that the skin grafts hadn’t made the difference Rainey had hoped for. They’d come to Virginia after Ariel had healed from the last round of operations, when the doctors said Ariel had needed a break from the surgeries. Even as they suggested that further healing would be limited, the doctors had encouraged her to start living her life again.

  Ariel’s running from her life the same way I’m running from mine.

  “I think Virginia agrees with you,” Rainey said, brightening. “I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?”

  Ariel shrugged.

  “I guess so,” she said. But she turned away from Rainey because she thought she might laugh or smile. Give herself away. Give her father away.

  Chapter 8

  Bliss House glowed. The paneled walls of the central hall wore a gloss of candlelight, and there were flowers everywhere. Rainey had brought in armfuls of tiger lilies from one of the ponds on the property and arranged them with lavender and eucalyptus for the hall and salon. Gracious mounds of hydrangeas filled the dining room. In the midst of the scents of flowers and food and wine, and the sound of the sound of a hired pianist playing their new grand piano playing in the salon, the big house seemed to sigh with pleasure. This was what it had been born for. This was what it had missed for so long. Rainey was certain that Bliss House wasn’t meant to be lonely, though she’d thought she needed to be alone here. Maybe she’d been wrong. Having people around her again made her happy.

  Every so often she looked up to see if Ariel was watching from the second floor gallery. Back in Missouri, a much younger Ariel would’ve drifted among the guests, the center of attention, perhaps doing a ballet turn for one of the admiring old ladies.

  Getting the bartender and two servers up and running had kept her busy right up to the minute that Bertie arrived—early, as promised—closely followed by Randolph, her husband (whom everyone called the Judge, as though he were a character in an old western), and Jefferson. Both father and son wore dark suits, but only the judge looked at ease. Jefferson had given her a wry, amused smile, as though he wanted to say, I know these people with me are crazy, but I can’t get away from them!

  Resplendent was the only word for Bertie, who was dressed in gold-flecked, blue and green harem pants, sandals shaped mostly from gold
links and disks that jingled when she walked, and a diaphanous tunic of pale blue that did little to minimize her generous bosom.

  Randolph had greeted Rainey—whom he hadn’t seen in almost thirty years—with a cool, firm handshake. His surprisingly dark, lively eyes took Rainey in approvingly.

  “You wore a green sundress, and you’d just gotten over the chicken pox,” he said. He turned to Bertie. “She was lovely even then, Roberta. Only as big as a minute.”

  “You tossed me into the pool,” Rainey said, laughing. He was in his fifties now, almost twenty years older than she, and she remembered being intimidated by his height and roughhousing nature. There had been a sense of mystery about that visit, too. While they were there, she had wondered about Randolph’s older brother, Michael, whom her mother had told her about. He’d disappeared many years earlier while he was getting his art degree at nearby UVA, so she’d never had the chance to meet him. When she got older, her mother told her that Michael had been into drugs and had left a note behind saying he was tired of meeting his family’s “ridiculous expectations.” But Rainey had only been eight years old when they visited, and no one but her mother mentioned him to her.

  Why hadn’t she put it together that Randolph was probably at least ten years older than Bertie? His hair was ice-gray and neatly trimmed, and his body was still athletic, though not particularly muscular. Rainey saw the familiar in him: his towering height, and the prominent Bliss nose and rounded chin of her maternal grandfather. Seeing Randolph’s face, she was plunged back into her childhood and the happy hours she’d spent at her grandfather’s side, watching him work on his stamp collection or following him through the St. Louis Art Museum as he taught her about paintings and history. His words had set her on the path to design. She didn’t know Randolph well at all, but the resemblance alone was enough to make her like him all over again.

  “I promised Rainey I wouldn’t let her hire anyone but the best bartender, but you know Douglas needs warming up before the party really gets started,” Bertie said. “Would you pretty please ask him to make me an apple martini?” She stood on tiptoe to kiss Randolph’s cheek.

  “Anything for you, Cousin Rainey?” Randolph said. “I remember you were very fond of lemonade, but maybe you’re an apple martini fan, too?

  Rainey laughed. “Scotch for me. But maybe in a little while, thanks.”

  He smiled and headed for the bar.

  Guests moved easily through the dining room where the light buffet was set, and the downstairs salon, and the central hall where she’d put the bartender. It was a genial crowd.

  Bertie had made sure Rainey invited everyone she considered proper Old Gate society, including members of the Chamber of Commerce and most of the Old Gate Historical Society. There was Bertie’s garden club, too.

  One of the garden club women cornered Rainey near the buffet saying, “We would just love to get our hands on your formal gardens.” Rainey could hardly believe this golden-curled beauty with her French-manicured nails and honeyed voice had ever so much as repotted a begonia. “My mother talks all the time about how charming they used to be. Before the—well, you know. The Brodsky people.” She seemed flustered by her own mention of the Brodskys, and took a nervous sip from her glass of chardonnay.

  Was everyone in Old Gate afraid to talk about the poor Brodskys? At least Karin Powell hadn’t been so disingenuous.

  “Maybe you have some old photographs?” Rainey changed the subject for the woman’s comfort.

  “Oh, you know, Mother just might. I’ll make a note to ask her.” She smiled broadly, obviously relieved. “It’s just so nice to see that you’re taking care of the house. It’s such a piece of history.”

  “I get the feeling that history is important around here,” Rainey said. Ethan Fauquier, the amateur historian who owned Fauquier’s Books in town, had already done his best to impress her with his knowledge of local history. He had promised to tell her more about Bliss House, as well.

  “Important?” The woman looked stunned. “If we don’t protect it, it will just be lost forever by people who don’t care.”

  Rainey wondered how upset people would be when she turned the house into a more complete showcase for her business. She’d already gotten a sense of where the Brodskys, lowly innkeepers, had fallen on the Old Gate social map.

  “You’re a Bliss, honey,” Bertie had told her. “You’re nothing like those horrid motel people.”

  What would Will have made of the party? He’d been Midwestern through and through: no BS, no subterfuge or ancient historical agendas. Rainey had been raised to be alert to the deep concerns of the people around her. She knew there was much more going on in this very room than anyone was saying.

  Bertie introduced her to Nick Cunetta, a local lawyer who had been in solemn conversation with another man, a professor named Henrik, down from UVA. A twenty-something young woman, Martina, was the third member of the group. She announced to Rainey that she was studying in the archeology department at UVA and gave Rainey a challenging look, as though Rainey might not believe her.

  Nick Cunetta put his arm around Bertie’s shoulders, causing her to giggle and the girl, Martina, to curl her matte-stained lips into a hint of a smile.

  “Ah, my Bertie.” Nick pulled Bertie close and nipped her ear with mock salaciousness.

  A little rough, Rainey thought. Glancing around for Randolph to see if he was watching, she saw him near the bar with Karin and Gerard Powell. Karin’s hand—nails tipped in a luscious bronze manicure—rested on her husband’s arm. She leaned slightly forward, laughing, her cleavage displayed as though it were on the evening’s menu. Rainey had tried hard to like her, but settled for cordiality. That Karin was a good businesswoman was all that mattered. But it hadn’t hurt that she’d gotten Gerard’s services as well. How they’d ever become a couple, she still didn’t understand.

  Rainey turned back to look at Nick. Surely he wasn’t being anything but familiar and friendly with Bertie.

  How does anyone take him seriously?

  As elegant as his black silk polo shirt, sports coat, and grey pants were, he wore his shiny black loafers without socks. Will would’ve taken in his dark tan, glossy black curly hair (not so different from Will’s own), careless manner (very different from his own), and heady gin and tonic, and pronounced Nick Cunetta louche. She could almost hear Will whisper in her ear: Ten to one he’s a personal injury attorney.

  Thus far she hadn’t met a single man for whom she felt the slightest attraction, and definitely wasn’t to the point where she was thinking about another relationship. God knew she still thought about Will every day, and even felt closer to him here than she had in the months after the accident. But it was Ariel who took most of her concentration.

  “Nicholas, you’re shameful,” Bertie said, playfully pushing him away. “What would the Judge say? And in front of Rainey, too. She hardly knows you.”

  “I think that the judge would say . . .” Here, Nick lowered his voice an octave and attempted to mimic Randolph’s distinguished drawl. “You’re a fine, fine woman, Roberta Bliss, but you’re just too fine, just too much woman for one man.”

  Everyone laughed, perhaps pretending his words had nothing to do with Bertie’s plump, soft figure. Bertie laughed along, though Rainey saw a shadow in her eyes. Bertie—for all her chatter and occasional pretense of confusion—wasn’t stupid.

  Rainey couldn’t stand to see Bertie hurt. Bertie was kindness itself. She put a hand on Bertie’s arm.

  “Bertie’s my consultant for all things festive,” she said to the little group. “I think one of the women in the kitchen has wandered off, Bertie. I’m hoping she hasn’t taken the silver.”

  “Oh, but she’s very good,” Bertie said. “She’s probably just outside smoking. Nasty habit.”

  Was it Rainey’s imagination, or had she looked pointedly at Nick, whom Rainey had seen smoking a half hour earlier on the dining room patio? She hoped so.

  “If
you’re worried, we’ll find her,” Bertie said, leading Rainey away.

  But in the kitchen they found that nothing at all was amiss, and Bertie looked momentarily confused. The catering woman was right where she was supposed to be.

  Chapter 9

  There was a part of Ariel that wanted to go back into the ballroom, despite what had happened to her. She had stayed away almost two whole weeks, and what better time to do it than when the house was full of people. Safety in numbers, she’d always heard. Would they experience anything strange? Probably not. Everyone would think she was crazy. Poor little crazy deformed girl. She hadn’t even told her mother exactly what happened on that awful morning.

  What was her mother saying about her to the people downstairs? They had to be curious.

  The music from the salon drifted up to her, mingling with the conversation and the clinking of glasses. Chopin. Her mother loved Chopin.

  Her mother had come upstairs to bring her a plate of party food before the guests arrived. The halter dress she wore was such a pale, lovely green that it might have been fashioned for one of the flower fairies in the framed illustrations on Ariel’s bedroom wall. She was wearing lipstick and eye shadow and smelled of the Chanel No.5 that Ariel’s father had put under the Christmas tree every year.

  Now, as Ariel watched her mother from the gallery balcony, laughing and going from guest to guest, she wanted to ask her why she was trying to look so pretty. Why did she want to smell so good? Was she hoping that some other man would love her?

  Ariel pushed away the thought. She had always loved her mother’s parties. Everyone was always so happy.

  Are you watching, Daddy? Doesn’t Mommy look pretty?

  She fingered the fragile edges of the silk robe she’d found hanging in one of the third floor bedroom closets the week before. It was a creamy beige color and covered with lucious white peonies whose petals were edged in a pink so dark that it was almost red. The robe hung loosely on her, and when she sat down, she felt like she was sitting in a puddle of silk. Tonight, she’d taken off her clothes to put it on, and it felt as soft as water against her skin.