I didn’t answer. She was much more confident than I remembered.
“I know you’ve suffered, sweetheart,” she said. “You’re determined to honor your pain because you think it defines you. I’m just worried that you’ve got a hell of a lot of things pent up in there, and someday that top’s going to come blowing off and you’re going to do something crazy and stupid that will get you in trouble.”
“I already did something crazy and stupid.”
“Breaking into Rebecca’s office? It was illegal, maybe, but not crazy.”
I ripped off a piece of croissant. I could feel the tears congeal behind my eyes. I knew they wouldn’t spill; they never did.
“What’s your point?” I said.
Mom’s head tilted to the side and she pinned me with an empathy so ancient that I could easily have been looking at every mother who had ever lived.
“I love you,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I’d rather not see you lose your mind.”
I fell silent. I couldn’t seem to look her straight in the eye anymore. I hadn’t heard the word love in so long that I had almost forgotten what it could do to you. Even my dad never made wordy evidence of his affection for me; love was just another piece of subtext. I found my heart racing and for one brief, exhilarating moment, I wanted to forget my father entirely and come live in Paris with this strange, emotive woman in front of me. Why shouldn’t I move on?
It was a pleasant thought, but it lasted only a few moments. Almost immediately, I was struck by a crushing grief. It was as if Dad’s ghost was rearing out of its sleepy stupor and knocking me over the head with the punishing back of its hand. I looked down at my croissant and I remembered the soft weight of his bear hugs when I ran down for breakfast, and the way he’d scratch my head when I couldn’t sleep. I remembered his perfect, worn, narrow face, irreverent and bespectacled and not of this world. I could still feel the warmth coiling right off him on those pancake mornings when it was just the two of us, alone against the world. I missed him to the point of physical pain.
Mom was wrong about one thing: I wasn’t interested in some old books Dad left me. I wanted something bigger—a message, a lesson, anything—that was wrapped up in what might very well turn out to be a bunch of used towels. I wanted Dad’s beautiful voice to speak up and tell me something profound and improbable—or at least to finish the conversation we had started long ago. I wanted, I suppose, what everyone wants: meaning. Happiness, in some sense, was irrelevant.
When I finally glanced back up, Mom looked lost. I didn’t know what else to do, so I wrapped my hand over hers. Her fingers were cold. Eventually, I felt them returning my grasp, small and fragile.
CHAPTER 12
I returned to Oxford on Sunday evening to a stack of papers and pamphlets on my doorstep. The Hornbeam had milked the break-in story for everything it was worth. Pierpont’s staff of vipers had published more than a few speculative pieces, many of which suggested that the culprit had broken in to change the mark given on an assignment. The articles were terribly written, but I was relieved to find that they did not mention me. One piece explained that the authorities were “close” to catching the “culprit” who was responsible for the “grand burglary” of the room. I didn’t read past page two. I didn’t know where they had found their “sources,” but to me, it all seemed like a load of “shit.”
That week, I finished my essay on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The complete product was less an essay and more of a story on the Brontës, which was reasonable, I thought, considering that Orville had asked me to be “creative.” The final title was “A Very Sad and Pathetic Parable Indeed (Fable? Biography? Autobiography? You Pick).” By Samantha J. Whipple.
Now, here I was, walking to the Faculty Wing to turn it in before the midnight deadline. I would have gone earlier in the day, were it not for my all-consuming paranoia. I was sure that Ellery Flannery would pounce upon me and be able to read the crime all over my face. Since my return from Paris, I only left my tower in the wee hours of the morning or late at night, avoiding everyone I could. The papers wanted a Strange Antisocial Brontë Heiress? Now they had one.
I hadn’t been to the Faculty Wing since I had broken into Rebecca’s office, and my heart was pounding. I was the mistress returning to the scene of the tryst. I took the back route. Halford’s Well was blanketed in darkness, like a defunct German bunker. It didn’t take long to reach the double doors in the front of the Faculty Wing. They were, as usual, locked. I pressed my palm against the frosty glass. How had I snuck in last time? Suddenly, I let out a small yelp. There, on the other side of the door, was a man’s face, also pressed against the glass.
I clasped my hands to my chest. The door opened. It was only a college porter. He had wet eyes and reminded me of the Tin Man.
“Yes?” he said.
I said, “Hi.”
“May I help you?”
“I have a paper to hand in?”
He didn’t say anything. I held up my essay. It stood stiff for a moment, then flopped over my wrist.
“Name?” he said.
“Samantha Whipple.”
He frowned and I winced. I needed to practice inventing fake names faster.
“The faculty is gone for the evening, miss,” he said.
“I just need to slip it under my professor’s door.”
No response.
“May I?” I asked.
He regarded me for a moment—a long moment—then slowly stepped aside. Something creaked, either the door or his tin joints. I brushed past him and began walking through the foyer. I glanced behind me. The shadowy porter was watching me as I retreated, hands behind his back. Was I mistaken, or had the college hired sentries?
I kept going—past Geological Sciences, past Philosophy—until I made it to the English Department. The lights in the corridor were bright and sterile, and I squinted as I walked. Orville’s door was closed, naturally. His brass knocker was bright and shiny, like a solitary, all-seeing eye. I bent down and slid the essay underneath his door. I meant to be quick about it, but I lingered, looking at the plaque in front of me. James Timothy Orville III. I wondered if my name elicited in him the same dull ache. I had thought about him dozens of times this week. Dozens? Hundreds. There seemed to be reincarnations of him everywhere I went, like he was a giant, exploded piñata whose bits and pieces had been showered indiscriminately over England.
To my great surprise, the door flew open. I jumped. There he was, in the darkness—Orville—wearing dark green boxers and a T-shirt with a werewolf on it.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s you.”
His expression didn’t change. “I thought I heard something.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
For a moment, I thought he might be about to explain that he was with a student, and could I come back another time.
I said, “Do you live here or something?”
“Your essay is due tonight, did you remember?”
“And you were waiting for it?”
He glanced at the floor, where my essay lay at his bare feet, like an obedient, panting dog. He picked it up and tossed it somewhere into the room behind him. The chamber was dark, except for one square of uneven light.
“What are you watching?” I asked, nodding inside.
“Jane Eyre,” he said. “The new one.”
I said, “I haven’t watched a movie in years.”
“Are you asking for an invitation?”
“No,” I said. “No.”
“Was that a no or a yes?”
“No. Yes.”
“You’d like to watch it.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Well, then, come in.”
“What?”
“I said, come in.”
“I—”
“Samantha.”
I stepped inside. He was right; I had wanted an invitation. The room smelled like overheated electronics.
Was I allowed to be here at this hour?
“Coat?” Orville said, holding out a hand.
I gave it to him.
“Sit,” he said.
“Woof.”
“Pardon?”
I sat. The movie was paused. There was a scene frozen on the screen. The woman must have been Jane. She was looking sultry and tanned, like she never had in the book. The camera seemed to have caught her mid-wander through an uncharacteristically wild English garden, which had been color-enhanced by one thousand different lighting engineers.
Orville walked to the corner of the room and deposited my coat on the chair by the deadened fireplace. Afterward, he opened the door of his mini refrigerator. A burst of canned light blasted against his face.
“Do you normally camp out in your office in boxers?” I asked.
“In England, we call them ‘pants.’ ”
“My father called them ‘hallelujahs.’ ”
He removed something from the refrigerator. “Did you say you like hot cocoa?”
“Do you have any beer?”
“How about some cereal?”
The door to the fridge closed, and I heard a cabinet door open. In a moment, something rattled and poured into a bowl. It sounded like kibble. Orville walked back to the couch and sat. He handed me a bowl of Bran Flakes. I was silent. The last time I had eaten cereal with my hands was when I was eight years old.
“Really, why aren’t you at home?” I asked.
“Sometimes I find my flat lonely.”
“As opposed to this office?”
“This is my true home. I’ve built my life here.”
I nodded and glanced at the wolf on his torso. “Self-portrait?”
He shrugged. “You’ll find out at the full moon.”
I let out a laugh in spite of myself. That seemed to please him and he rested his heels on the table in front of us. In a moment, he had pressed play and the screen jumped back to life. I was right—Jane Eyre was wandering through an Edenic garden, looking innocent. It had always seemed ridiculous to me that she couldn’t guess what was coming. Only an idiot could have missed the mood lighting, the eerie calm, the promise of torrential rain. Sure enough, the next image was of Mr. Rochester, who was not-so-subtly crouching in the bushes, waiting to strike. He was another overly tanned actor, with a strangely orange face and a strong, gladiator chin. I recognized him from the movie Beast. He was far too attractive to play Mr. Rochester. The man Jane Eyre loved was supposed to be older, gnarled, and knotted, with a face that made you believe in inner beauty. This Rochester—Beast—popped out from behind a gardenia and paused in front of the camera, mid-swagger, like he was waiting for the applause in his mind to die down. Jane didn’t seem startled at all. She and Rochester faced off: employer and governess, in their perpetual dance.
I cleared my throat and asked Orville, “Any reason you picked this movie?”
“Do you always talk during films?”
I shut up. My posture was unnaturally erect, my arm hair static. Thinking about Orville sitting alone watching this movie was like imagining him arranging daisies in front of You’ve Got Mail. Had he been expecting me?
I waited patiently as Jane cried out the dialogue that I had committed to memory so long ago: Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! After which Rochester wrapped his arms around her nonexistent waist, yanked her toward him, and buried his face in hers. It was a cue for the rain, which fell thick around them. I expected the scene to end—this was where the scene always ended, right?—but this one kept going. The director must have forgotten to call “Cut!” Jane and Rochester kissed fervently, with disorganized passion. He began ripping off her coat—no, was this happening?—and she followed suit. No, no, no, this was not in the book. They were dropping to the dirt, they were covered in mud, and oh no, his shirt, there it went. My cheeks burned. I looked away from the screen, embarrassed not only for myself but for poor Charlotte Brontë, too, who had never written anything like this in her entire life, but probably wished she could have.
The scene ended.
“A wonderfully subtle moment,” said Orville.
I said, “I’d like to see your idea of overt.”
No response.
In the dark, I learned, silence has a way of killing you.
The movie kept going. I knew that it was nowhere near over, and that I would have to sit here the whole time, pretending to be comfortable. Whose stupid idea had this been, anyway? Jane still had to go through her internal battle, her external battle, her escape, her redemption, her resolution. Another one hundred and fifty pages at least.
Hours passed. Days passed. One thousand years passed. By the time the movie ended, I hadn’t paid attention to the dialogue or the acting or the scenery. For all I knew, Jane Eyre had turned into a searing portrait of communist revolutionaries in Cuba. I had missed the madwoman altogether—had they even thought to include her, or was this just a sex movie? At last, the credits rolled. I didn’t move. I was all too aware of Orville’s body. It seemed to shift toward and away from mine as if we were two magnets. I stared at the screen with religious focus. The production designer was a man named Alpheus Thomas. How interesting it suddenly seemed. Orville and I waited throughout the entire sequence, until the production logo appeared. It lingered only briefly, then deserted us. At last, the screen went black.
“Well,” Orville said, “what did you think?”
I glanced at the table in front of us with newfound determination and said, “Meh.”
“What does that word mean?”
“I think Rochester is an ass.”
He let out a half laugh, half grunt. “You dislike everything that threatens you.”
“He’s a forty-year-old married man who preys on a governess of eighteen.”
“And?”
“We have a word for that in America.”
“Which is?”
“Sketchy.”
With the light from the television gone, Orville’s features had decomposed into shadows. He was perfectly calm when he said, “Rochester is merely testing Jane, rousing passions that she would have otherwise never acknowledged.”
I paused. “Jane could have come to know her passions independently.”
“Not when she was raised to be sexually repressed.”
“Maybe she was better off being sexually repressed.”
“Pardon?”
“I should go.”
I stood up so suddenly that the couch—and Orville—tipped slightly. I was very confused. For the first time, I had the inkling that my unrequited and entirely inappropriate infatuation with Orville was not entirely one-sided after all. The thought was so alarming that I wished I could jump behind the couch. I was comfortable being obsessed with James Orville III from a distance. I was quite good at that. But I didn’t know what would happen if the two of us became any sort of reality, even in our own minds. Orville had it right the first time: I was scared shitless of him.
I searched for my coat. Orville walked with me to the door. I couldn’t breathe. With one flick, he turned on the lights. The lights, by the way, should never go on. They were bright and hard, and I was painfully aware of the acne that I hadn’t bothered to cover up. Orville and I were looking at each other as we actually were.
“How do we say goodbye?” he asked. “Shake hands?”
I said, “In America, we wave.”
But we did neither. Instead, I nodded and almost wished him a merry Christmas. Before he could say another word, I opened the door and fled. Well—I didn’t flee. After the door slammed, I stood on the other side of it for a long time, letting my back lean against the cool wood. I let out a long, slow breath. This was how it should always be. I would remain as close to him as I possibly could, as long as there was a solid barrier between us.
To: “Samantha J. Whipple” [email protected]
&n
bsp; From: “Ellery Flannery” [email protected]
Subject: Inquiry
Dear Samantha,
It has come to our attention you entered the Faculty Wing at 23:50 two nights ago, to drop off an essay for Dr. Orville. It was noted by the porter on duty that you did not leave until 3:15. I would appreciate it if you would please send me an e-mail explaining the reason for the delay at your earliest convenience.
Best,
E. Flannery
To: “Ellery Flannery” [email protected]
From: “Samantha J. Whipple” [email protected]
Subject: RE: Inquiry
Dear Dr. Flannery,
I am having an affair with your colleague. Hope that clears things up.
Thanks,
Samantha
Delete, delete.
It was eight in the evening and I was sitting at my desk, hair unkempt, à la Beethoven. There was a half-empty bottle of wine next to me. I was tipsy. It was alternately pleasant and vile, depending on the way I thought about it. Drinking alone had a distinctly pathetic quality to it, but the idea that this was some poetic rite of passage made it wildly tolerable. For better or worse, I was becoming my father’s daughter.
My phone rang. Orville? Orville? I snatched it from my desk. Open books and wilted papers were in disarray around me.
“Samantha,” said the voice on the other line.
I squinted. “Professor?”
“John. Sir John.”
“Booker?”
“Precisely.”
I gave an audible groan. “I don’t take calls over the telephone.”
“I see,” he said. “Can you make an exception?”
I thought about it. He misinterpreted my silence as a yes, and said, “Excellent. I was—”
“You know, I heard something about you the other day,” I interrupted. “I heard that you were once found wading through the mud.”
A pause.
“Are you crazy too?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“I’m also wallowing.”
He paused. “In the mud?”
I gave a small, soundless burp and sat upright. I said, “The proverbial mud.”
The Madwoman Upstairs Page 20
