The novel wasn’t quite as horrible as Agnes Grey, but I found it no less threatening. Much like Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre was not fiction, and I didn’t care what James Orville III had to say otherwise. Charlotte Brontë had merely changed the names of people and places from her own life. She sent Jane to the same miserable Christian boarding school that her sisters had attended; she modeled Jane’s dead friend Helen Burns on their own dead sister, Maria; she modeled Mr. Rochester himself on Charlotte’s tutor in Brussels, Mr. Constantin Héger. Of course, in reality, Héger had been a happily married man, and poor Charlotte pined for him for the rest of her life. There was no romantic ending for Charlotte, but that’s where writing your own novel can be so useful.
The similarity between Jane’s and Charlotte’s lives did not end with characters. Halfway through Jane Eyre, Rochester almost burns in his bed, in an attempted murder masterminded by his mad, incarcerated wife. It had always sounded familiar because it was familiar. Branwell Brontë’s bed caught fire, too, around the time Charlotte came out with Jane Eyre. In the book, it had been a lethal revenge plot. In real life, no one knew what had caused the fire, even to this day. Branwell’s elbow? An unlucky gust of wind? A malicious trespasser? Near the end of Jane Eyre, Rochester’s insane wife sets fire to Thornfield Hall by setting curtains aflame and dragging them through the house. Charlotte never allowed curtains in the house until she was thirty-nine years old, due to an all-consuming fear of fire. This, to me, did not seem coincidental.
If Jane Eyre was at all rooted in reality, then one enigma remained for me: the madwoman, Bertha. She was the cackle that haunted Thornfield Hall; she was the character whom Jane Austen would never have written. Her function in Jane Eyre had been the subject of debate since the 1960s, thanks to two books on the subject, Wide Sargasso Sea and The Madwoman in the Attic. It was now accepted that Bertha was a symbol of feminism one hundred years before feminism became trendy. Angry, powerful, and sexual, Bertha is the outer manifestation of every rebellious inclination Jane feels on the inside. Just as Bertha is trapped in an attic, Jane is locked in the confines of her dismal occupation, and the social and political limitations of her gender.
It was all a very tidy theory, but it didn’t go far enough. Bertha was entirely unlike any other character the Brontës ever wrote. She was wild and foreign, so terribly out of place that I didn’t trust that she came entirely from someone’s imagination. If it were true that Charlotte had swiped many of the characters in Jane Eyre from real life—who, exactly, had been the model for the insane woman living in the attic?
Suddenly, I let out a small shriek. I had lost my balance—my arms flailed, and I landed in a heap on the grass. A sharp pain hit my ankle. I hollered and swore; the twist was bad. It was my right foot, the same foot I had broken years ago, when I had climbed the trellis of our home in Boston and fallen. I clutched my newly angered ankle as if I might strangle it back to its former self. I looked around for a sign of help. All I saw was the vague outline of Halford’s Well and the Faculty Wing beyond, stern and unfeeling. I looked to my left and to my right and realized that I had been walking on the lawn.
Above me, the wind took aim. I should not have underestimated the weather. The black clouds looming overhead brought me back to a pre-modern era, when women still died of chills. The rain started to fall, strong and synchronized. It was too painful to stand, so I just sat there, like bait. I had Jane Eyre trapped underneath my coat. I secretly hoped it was bleeding in the rain, my father’s margin notes leaking out like someone’s last breath.
It was some time before I saw my first beacon of hope: a shadow emerging from the Faculty Wing. I stayed very still. Was it a faculty member? I sat up straight and gave a weak holler.
The figure stopped and turned. It had, I noted, a huge head.
“Who is there?” it roared. Baritone.
“The student Raskolnikov?”
He must have not heard me, because he said: “Speak!”
I tried again, but my voice was snatched by the wind. The shadow began moving toward me. Immediately, I recognized him. My heart sank. Orville. What was he doing here at this hour? Shouldn’t he be at home, with a leggy girlfriend? His coat billowed behind him like a broken, flapping tent.
I tried to look chic, like one of those women who know how to arrange their limbs in front of the camera. But I was splayed over the lawn, drenched. I’m sure I looked like I belonged on a toilet.
Orville arrived and stood over me. A puff of white air escaped his mouth. The rain was pounding his hair onto his forehead. He didn’t bother brushing the stray strands away from his eyes.
“Samantha,” he said, expelling a breath.
I said, “Hi.”
“What in God’s name are you doing on the lawn?” His voice was sharp; he sounded like a human Weedwacker.
I looked around. “Ruminating?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He stopped. “How badly?”
I pointed to my right ankle. “I can’t move it.”
He looked left and then right, as if waiting for the medic. Then he knelt to the ground, elbows resting on his knees. He glared at my foot like it might heal by intimidation. I felt as though I was back in 1820 with a pale pink frock and the last name Dashwood. Orville poked at my boot with a gloved index finger.
“Does that hurt?” he said. His features were stern.
“Yes.”
“How about now?”
“You’re doing the same thing.”
“Now?”
“Really?”
Gingerly, he took my foot in one hand and removed my boot.
I squeaked, “Sir!”
My cold, socked foot flopped out of the shoe and gleamed in the muted lamplight like a dead fish. I had never felt so naked in my life. I willed myself away—back inside, back in Boston, anywhere but here. His hands were clammy and wet, and he was hurting me more than I cared to admit. He peeled off my sock—good God, the impropriety.
“Please,” I said, wincing. “I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t answer. He moved his fingers in slow circles around irrelevant parts of my foot.
In a moment he concluded: “Sprained.”
We stared at each other. The rain continued to pound, like coarse salt.
“Thank you, doctor,” I said.
He glanced at the dim outline of the Faculty Wing, then at the well. His frown was impressively unpleasant.
“Did you say that you saw anyone?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
He snapped, “Did you see anyone?”
“Just you. Why do you ask?”
“This is not the best place to be found. Come, I’ll help you up.”
He wrapped one of my arms around his neck and helped me to a standing position. Quickly, I removed my arm from around his neck, but he reached for it and slung it back over his shoulders.
I gave a surprised yelp. “What are you doing?”
His free arm wrapped around my waist. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“I don’t need a hospital.”
He reached for my knees and attempted to lift me but failed. I was nearly six feet tall and he was not quite as strong as he thought. He straightened back up and we stood, immobile, in an awkwardness so profound it seemed beyond the power of expression.
“Please,” I said, “you don’t need to do this. You’ll only get back problems when you grow up.”
He didn’t answer.
My cheeks warmed. “I meant—when you get old.”
Silence.
I corrected, “Older.”
“Samantha,” Orville said, and he let out a breath, “there will come a time when you will need to learn not to be scared shitless of me.”
I shut up.
He helped me limp toward the entrance gate. My brain seemed crowded and swollen. The silence was loud and ugly, and in my mind, it stretched out for several years. Occasionally I found myself muttering, “Interes
ting.”
At last, we exited the college. There were only a few cars splashing through the glassy puddles on High Street. We both saw the cab as it rounded the corner.
“Taxi!” Orville bellowed. The cab swerved, lurched, and screeched to a stop by the curb. We piled into the back, out of the rain. Orville told the driver, “Take me to the Radcliffe Hospital.”
The man looked at us in the rearview mirror. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Orville reached forward and slammed the plastic partition shut.
The hospital was a white Soviet-looking building by the freeway, whose inside still reeked of all the recycled breath from the afternoon. After depositing me on a chair in the deserted waiting room, Orville found the receptionist at the front desk, a thirty-something nurse with pinched lips and three piercings.
“She’s taken a spill,” I could hear him explain.
Someone was typing in the distance. The nurse, glancing my way, said, “Your daughter will be fine.”
He said something I couldn’t hear. I was clutching Jane Eyre, flipping through pages absently. Some of the ink had bled, but for the most part, my father’s comments remained intact.
Orville returned a few moments later. I snapped the book shut.
“Have a seat,” I said. “Dad.”
He walked to the chair directly next to me, then changed his mind and sat farther away, with one chair between us. He reached for the Herald Tribune on the table near us and shook it open.
“You really didn’t have to do this,” I said. “This is not in your job description.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” he said. “What in God’s name were you doing out at this hour?”
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
“I was finishing some work.”
“I was taking a walk.”
“In a storm?”
“I had a rough evening.”
He stared at me. By itself, his face wasn’t terribly handsome—there were crooks in strange places, and his eyebrows were much too large. But he had an impressively focused stare, unreadable and perfect.
I looked away. When I held my ankle still, the pain was dull, like a protest that was losing momentum. I examined it for several minutes in silence. When I glanced back up, I was surprised to discover that Orville’s stare was still on me.
“Samantha,” he said, “are you in some kind of trouble?”
I pretended not to have understood. “Sorry?”
He opened his mouth but closed it. He turned back to his paper. “Forget it.”
I didn’t look away. “May I ask you a personal question, sir?”
“No.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
A long pause. “Have you been visited by a ghost, Samantha?”
“That’s just it. No.”
He paused. “You’d like to be visited by a ghost.”
“Yes, maybe. Don’t you think it would make things simpler? At least I’d have a tangible problem.”
“A ghost is tangible?”
“More tangible than nothing.”
“What is it you’re trying to tell me? Never mind, don’t answer,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
“I wasn’t asking for your help.”
“Perfect.”
“Now that you mention it, will you help me?”
I tried to pin him with my best, sorrowful gaze, but he had veiled any emotion on his face.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” I said.
“How am I looking at you?”
“If there’s anything I can’t stand at times like this, it’s apathy.”
He turned back to his paper. “Whatever.”
A tune erupted in the waiting room. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Someone had jazzed it up and slowed it down and now it sounded more like the theme song from Titanic. I found it incredibly depressing. Finally, I picked up Jane Eyre and tossed it into Orville’s lap. I might as well have handed him a wet diaper. He put down his paper and stared at the book.
“Yes?” he said.
“Can you please take a look?”
He reached for it and examined the first few waterlogged pages. “Who wrote these margin notes?”
“My father.”
At the mention of my father, Orville’s interest seemed to grow. “Was he well in the head?”
“That does appear to be the million-dollar question, doesn’t it?”
He read, “ ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I see something, and you don’t.’ What did he mean?”
“You tell me.”
“Was that note meant for you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Your father left you this book, though, yes?”
“I’m not sure who left it for me. I found this in my room today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Me neither.”
There was a mix of confusion and surprise on Orville’s face. I thought he might ask me a question, but although he opened his mouth he shut it, silent. After a moment, he handed the book back to me.
“I will wager a guess and assume that, like most women your age, this was your favorite novel growing up.”
I said, “Not even close.”
“No? I thought women loved Jane Eyre.”
“I don’t like the main character.”
“Who?” he said. “Grace?”
I blinked. “Who’s Grace?”
“Grace Poole.”
I said, “She is the servant, not the main character.”
“I see you haven’t read the book very carefully.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but I was interrupted by the sound of sharp heels coming down the hallway. Someone short and squat entered the lounge area. She was a middle-aged woman who had obviously been very pretty once. Now she sported a wide, gasping girth. In a green and gray peacoat and a feathered hat, she looked like a spotted mushroom. Orville muttered a low epithet under his breath. She waddled over. I recognized her; she was the woman who had led the faculty processional at my first dinner.
“Dr. Flannery,” said Orville, without standing.
Her heels clacked on the linoleum floor. The popping sound bounced back and forth between the sterile walls. She didn’t say hello, only glanced between the two of us. Her blush looked like she had instead smeared lipstick on her cheeks.
“A student?” was all she said, raising a brow. The lines on her face lifted in concert.
“How is your aunt?” he said.
“The morphine is doing its job.” She turned to me. “What’s your name?” Out came a nice little smile, one that did not reveal any of her teeth. “Tell me your name, please.”
“Samantha.” I couldn’t stand up to shake her hand, so I gave her a small, childish wave.
“Yes, you’re Miss Whipple,” she said. “I’ve heard a bit about you. James, haven’t we heard a bit about Miss Whipple?”
Orville stared at her silently. He was slowly rotating a pen between his fingers, like a baton, or some form of skewer.
“Miss Whipple rolled an ankle,” said Orville.
Flannery made a noise that sounded like “aww” but it also might have been “aaah.” She glanced back at me, tilting her head to the side in—was it sympathy? No, I don’t think it was. I wondered if she carried around the Old College Book of Disciplinary Procedures, and whether she was about to whip it out of her pocket and smack me across the head with it. After all, I had been alone with a professor for almost an hour. Someone, somewhere, was probably gasping.
“Doing what?” she asked me in a let’s-have-a-sleepover voice. “Nothing naughty, I trust?”
“I fell,” I said.
“Where?”
“Enough,” Orville interjected. “She’s tired, Ellery.”
“Ellery” was looking at me, not him. She really did have a nice face—girlish, bright. “Where were you, dear?”
/> “By Halford’s Well,” I said. “I think.”
Flannery turned back to Orville. He put down the pen. I glanced between the two of them. Once again, I was missing something.
“You do know going near that well is strictly forbidden after hours,” said Flannery.
“Ellery,” Orville said in a warning tone. “She fell.”
I felt my face redden. Flannery smiled, this time with teeth. They were crooked, like barbed wire. No wonder she hid them. Her face wasn’t so pretty anymore.
“Do you know how Halford’s Well got its name, Samantha?” she asked.
Suddenly Orville stood, so abruptly that it took Flannery and me by surprise. Flannery faltered, although she made an effort to conceal it.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Flannery stared back up at him with flattering confidence. She was like a dwarf who had been told to kill a giant and didn’t know how, exactly, she was going to do it.
“Nasty things, rolled ankles,” was all she said to me before she left. I heard her shoes rapping along the hallway to the door. When we were alone, Orville sat back down in his seat, breathing heavily through his nose.
“Sir?” I ventured.
But he just stared in front of him. Someone came to us with a clipboard. The doctor would see me now.
CHAPTER 7
On the afternoon of December thirteenth, I grabbed my crutches (my ankle was badly sprained) and made the trek to the Ashmolean Museum. Sir John Booker was scheduled to give an opening speech at the official launch of the Early Women Writers exhibit. Apparently, this was the fourteenth stop on his tour. I was attending only because I had decided it was time to finally meet him.
The lobby was packed, and a luminous banner read Early Women Writers: Gala. Milling between Greek statues and segments of Roman ruins were hordes of annoyingly normal-looking people. I was disappointed. I had wanted to find old women dressed in hippie uniforms and clutching small pugs. I always felt better about my preoccupation with the Brontës when I saw that other people had it worse than I did. But everyone else here seemed maddeningly average. The Brontës were just something they did on Saturday afternoons, like canasta. They were nothing but tourists in my sinking town.
The Madwoman Upstairs Page 10
