Copperhead

by Tina Connolly

  “And send them back for alterations until they’re perfect,” Helen said. She recalled how they had sent back dress after dress from before the wedding and she wanted to smile back at him. She had dreamed up things she’d never known she wanted, and he had indulged all those dreams.

  “You know what you should do,” said Alistair, eyes shiny and bright. “You should learn to create your own patterns. You have such beautiful fashion sense. You could set up a little atelier right here among the shops, be a modern woman.”

  The idea was breathtaking. It was as if he had looked to the bottom of her soul and pulled out something she had never thought to want, and now that she saw it hanging there, shining, she felt her heart beating out of her chest with pure lust for the idea.

  It was not his idea. It was not Alistair.

  “No!” Helen cried.

  He let go of her hand, confused.

  “No,” she said again, and with a great surge of will let everything relax and her mind wipe clean until the strange thread that bound them broke.

  Alistair faltered, standing, and she thought his eyes swam clear, but he turned his head away from her, it was so hard to tell.… He turned back, saw her frightened face. “No what? No pretty dresses? Don’t be silly, pet.”

  “Stay away,” she said firmly, feet planted.

  His temper rebounded. “You’ve been out. You and that double-crossing dwarf are plotting against us all. You’re the reason Copperhead’s turning against me, why they’re keeping secrets from me. Do you deny it?”

  “Deny what?” She was at sea.

  “You know where she is, you useless doll. Where is she?” His voice rose and rose. “Where is Jane Eliot? Where is Jane?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” gasped Helen, and backing up, slammed the door to his room in his face. Then turned and ran, scooping up her things from the hall as she went. Her stockinged feet slid on the cold floor, slipped numbly on the stairs, till she threw herself into her bedroom and locked the door.

  She did not know what she would do if he came—if it came to a direct confrontation like that. She was good at sliding away, at giving in. She did not know how to tell him “No,” and take that. But she knew how to run, and he was drunk, and he might let her go, finding the game not worth the candle.

  Helen pressed her ear to the door for a long time, staring at her bleeding palm, smelling the whiskey soaked into her seafoam silk. But nobody came.

  * * *

  In her dreams she sees the house, their old house. Except it is not theirs anymore. Charlie is gone, Jane is gone, Mother is gone. Helen lives on charity, on borrowed time and space in a bit of attic at the neighbors’. Like Helen’s family, the neighbors straddle that uncomfortable line between gentility and poverty, except they are further down the ladder. The wife had money, once. The husband has a bit of land and he tries to make it pay. They had one cow and now they have two, for the Eliots’ former cow is keeping Helen in skirts and schooling.

  Helen is not given to moping. She is angry at being alone. She is heartbroken (at least, something feels broken inside) at being here in an attic without Charlie and Jane and Mother, or perhaps what she means is, without people who love her. People who chose to leave her. That is not fair, and yet. She saw Mother waste away for no Charlie, even though Helen was there. She saw Jane run to the city to find someone else to love her, even though Helen was there.

  And Charlie is gone because Helen was not there. Because Helen could not pick up a staff and kill.

  That is what it comes around to, every time she runs through it, and then something in her head tells her that Jane and Mother were right to leave, because when it came down to it, Helen had proved she couldn’t be there for someone who needed her.

  It doesn’t matter that she knows this is nonsense. Every time her heart breaks a little more. Her spine stiffens a little more. Her jokes become louder and shriller, as she covers herself up in a cloud of decorative nonsense.

  They like her at the village school, when she lets them. She goes through several cycles in the time she is there, before she goes off to governess in the city. She lets them all like her and then she pushes them all away. The method varies. Once her best friend acts nasty to her. Polly. Calls her a charity case, right in front of Sam, whom Polly likes, too. Helen has no idea why on this day it is suddenly too much, but it is, and she runs away. It is late spring, and she lives on the land and stolen table scraps for a week, and when she comes back it is summer, and she doesn’t see any of them for three months, is gone when they stop in, lets all those relationships heal around her, because she is better at being alone.

  When school starts in the fall Polly is best friends with someone else, and Sam has moved away, and Helen comes in and dazzles them, and runs the school with an iron fist for a season. But then that pales and she drops all her friends, again, yet again, for they are not really friends, she knows inside, no matter what they claim, and turns to her studies for a few months.

  At graduation she is invited to all the parties, and they give her mementos and write “remember me” in her memory book, but if you asked them, they would none of them say that she had truly been their friend, only perhaps that they would like her to be, or that she had been “a good deal of fun, when she wanted to be.”

  It’s one of those dreams where you can know what others said about you, just as if you were dead and they talked around your coffin.

  She’s not dead, though. She’s still not dead. They all might have left her, but she’s still here.

  If she woke right now she would find the eiderdown wrapped around her legs, clutched in her hands. She would find her lips pressed, her cheeks wet. But she does not.

  * * *

  At last Helen did wake, to a gentle tapping on the door. “Ma’am?” said the voice of Mary. Helen opened bleary eyes, stiff with salt and frustration. Why was Mary knocking? Why didn’t she just leave the tray?

  She had locked the door, she remembered now. She pulled on her robe and padded to the door, blinking her eyes to clear them. Her palm was stiff with dried blood. There was another stiff spot on her cheek and ear from touching her face with her palm. She shook her hair forward over her cheek and curled her hand closed as she opened the door.

  Mary’s face was apologetic. “I wouldn’t have woken you this early, but a woman brought him by and said you wanted him. Is it so?”

  Helen looked down to see the small face of Tam, his hands clutching the inevitable glass jar.

  He smiled tentatively when he saw her. “Museum?” he said hopefully.

  Helen knelt beside him, mint green robe billowing out around her. “Yes,” she promised. “But I have to get permission. Are those caterpillars?”

  He nodded and thrust the jar forward for her inspection.

  “Nice,” she said. “I like the one with the red spots.”

  “His name is Biter,” said Tam.

  Helen reached forward without thinking. Mary sucked in breath at the sight of her hand. “I saw the glass, ma’am,” she murmured, and her worried eyes met Helen’s.

  Helen looked away. She stood up and took Tam’s hand with her good one. “Do you want some breakfast? Mary, bring something nice, will you?”

  Mary promptly produced a rolling cart. “We’ve had him down in the kitchen for ten minutes,” she said. “I rustled up everything I could find.” She laid buttered toast and cherry jam and sugared oranges on a tray, and tried not to wince when Helen’s hair swung away from the blood on her cheek.

  The two women installed Tam on a pink tufted seat and watched him go to town on the buttered toast. Helen stood, watching him, knowing she should just stay at home. Play dominoes with Tam and enjoy the luxury of not having to make any more decisions.

  When you have knuckled under once, it is assumed you will knuckle under again.

  Her stiff hand clenched into a fist.

  “Is Alistair still asleep?” she said.

  Mary nodded. Helen hesitate
d, uncertain how to ask in front of Tam if Alistair was in the sort of post-drunken state that meant he would be passed out for several more hours. But Mary intuited her question and added in a low voice, “Probably till lunch, ma’am.”

  The plan, such as it was, solidified. Helen raised eyebrows at Mary. “Cover for us?”

  “Always and forever.”

  Tam stopped in midchew of his toast, butter and crumbs on his cheeks. He looked from one defiant woman to the other.

  “Finish up,” Helen said, “and then museum.”

  * * *

  They had Adam drive them to the Natural History Museum, and they were first in line for the museum’s opening at ten. They did indeed see the unusual reptiles exhibit (Reptomania!), spent all morning learning about the way basilisks opto-paralyze their prey, and the nesting habits of the extinct parasitic minidodo. (They nested in the ears of an also-extinct species of crocodile, and therefore were deemed acceptable to sneak into Reptomania!)

  But perhaps most interesting of all to Helen was the glass case with a mated pair of copperhead hydras. “That’s your necklace!” Tam said when he saw them, and he was right. Even more than Copperhead’s flat lapel pins, her twisted copper necklace caught the essence of the unusual snake. The hydras were a lovely shimmery copper color, the sort of thing you would go up to and pet, if you didn’t know better.

  “‘The beautiful copperhead hydra never attacks unless provoked,’” Tam read slowly, sounding out the words. “‘This much-maleeg—’”

  “Maligned,” supplied Helen.

  “‘—species is noteworthy for its regenerative powers. Through the process of duogeneration, if one head is damaged, two more grow in its place. However, the resulting heads are weaker than the original, so the process cannot continue indefinitely.’ What’s that mean?”

  “It can’t have a hundred heads, say,” Helen explained. “At some point it gets too weak to support all its heads. Like the poor female there.” She read from a different sign about the individual hydras in the glass tank, interpreting it to Tam. “She was in a circus sideshow. They kept cutting off her heads so she’d grow more, and people would pay more money. The museum rescued her.”

  Helen and Tam looked in at the two hydras. The male had nine heads, all shiny and glossy and snappy. But the female hydra’s slim trunk blossomed into a thick tree of writhing heads. Many of the heads in the middle were stunted and limp, like shoots that couldn’t reach the light. But the other heads were twice as ferocious to make up for it. “She wants to live,” said Helen.

  Tam looked again at his species placard. “‘The copperhead hydra has one more trick up its sleeve. As it dies from cranial overgrowth, it begins to secrete a deadly poison through its pores.’”

  Helen peered at her own card. “That’s what happened to the circus keeper,” she said.

  “Good,” said Tam with relish. They looked at the poisonous female hydra with its forest of heads and both of them shuddered with glee.

  * * *

  After the museum they went to the big downtown department store and had lunch, right out in the atrium where you could see everybody. Helen was in a chic herringbone suit and wide hat that had seemed very museumy to her, and although it was admittedly a little odd, she kept her gloves on through lunch to hide the bandage on her hand. Tam was decked out in acquired regalia—a canvas hat like all the explorer-scientists wore, and a pair of binoculars he was very taken with. (He had even agreed they were suitable recompense for Helen making off with his jar of bugs.) Between spoonfuls of bisque, Tam peered through the binoculars to discover what people on the other side of the restaurant were eating—a game that delighted both of them very much. After lunch and after ices Helen let Tam ride the elevator up and down for an hour—much to the amusement of the elevator operator. There was a Copperhead poster in the elevator and Helen peeled it off when the operator’s back was turned, ground it under her heel. All in all, it was a lovely day and Helen didn’t regret a bit of it till they arrived home in the late afternoon and she saw Alistair’s lights on.

  Then, despite all her brave intentions, her fingers trembled in the lilac gloves.

  “And when I grow up, I’ll see the pterodactlia go into a cocoon, and then wait a long time, and then they’ll metamorphose and that means they’ll become man-eating butterflies, but I won’t be afraid.…,” Tam was explaining. He was more excited than she’d seen him yet.

  Her spine crumbled. She bent down to Tam, her shoulders next to his. “Can you do me a big favor?” she said, her words weak and whispery.

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to go out today,” Helen said. “You know how it’s dangerous out with the fey. We kind of snuck out.”

  Tam nodded.

  “If Mr. Huntingdon asks, can you pretend we didn’t go to the museum?” she said. “So I don’t get in trouble? Say we just went to the next-door neighbor’s to play with their son.”

  “Lie?” he said.

  “Well.” She was teaching him cowardice and lying. If Jane were here her sharp tongue would reduce Helen to coals in two seconds flat. “Yes,” Helen said.

  Tam thought about this. “Okay,” he said, and reminded her, “I’m good at lying.”

  “I guess you said that,” said Helen.

  “You just watch,” said Tam. “Will you find me some food for my snake though? Usually father gets me things when I lie.”

  “Certainly,” said Helen.

  “The copperhead hydras ate slugs. I think my garter snake would like slugs, don’t you?”

  Helen winced at the thought. “It’s a deal,” she said.

  She took the boy in the back way and they crept up the staircase to her set of rooms. Mary was just starting a fire. As with Helen, Mary’s defiance had wilted into worry and fear. She turned when she saw them and said in a rushed whisper, “Oh good; I just saw the master in the games room and he’s in such a state. He’ll be up here any minute. I put out your tea like it’s been half-eaten, but I can always bring you more.”

  “Mary, that’s brilliant,” said Helen. She tried to smile and project reassurance. “What sort of state? Did he just wake, or did he go out and find trouble?” Drink, opium, horse didn’t win? Tripped on a stick and fired a gardener? Drop of rain plashed his lovingly buffed windshield?

  Mary shook her head. “Something to do with Copperhead, I think.” She lowered her voice. “That Grimsby could incite the angels to riot.”

  Tam looked up at the mention of his father’s name. Helen hurriedly motioned him to sit down and eat from the leftover scraps Mary had artfully arranged. “Oh, that’s a new hair ribbon, isn’t it, Mary? I like that plum shade on you.” Which was true, as well as turning the conversation away from the boy. “Did my telegram finally come? Tam, take off your explorer hat and try the cream cakes. If they don’t vanish it’ll definitely look fake.” She whirled around, tugging off her coat and hat, shoving things to the back of the wardrobe.

  “Something came,” said Mary, passing her a sealed and folded slip of paper. “I got it away from the butler just in time. And the ribbon’s from that new beau I was telling you about—”

  Tam bounced. “Miss Helen, Miss Helen, I’m going to go into the forest and capture a copperhead hydra—”

  “Ooh, Mary, the clerk? Yes, you and me both, Tam.” Helen shoved the telegram into a pocket and plopped down on one of the pink tufted stools by the tea tray just as the door opened and Alistair burst in.

  His face was red from his hangover, his movements stiff and painful. The lavender soap smell meant he had been up a little while, yet clearly not long enough to feel himself again. He looked like a schoolteacher who has finally found an excuse to whip a particularly disliked child. His glittering eyes roved the room until he found her, and then he pounced. “Have you been thinking about our discussion?”

  Helen stood, brushing her skirt off, thinking what to say about the small boy sitting opposite, cream cake clutched in one grubby paw, eyes wi
de.

  Alistair’s eye fell on him. “Who’s that? What’s he doing here?”

  “Tam—,” she started, but he apparently didn’t really care, because he continued headlong, brushing her response aside.

  “I’ve been going through everything I can think of about where to find Jane. You can make it up to me if you find her. We can make it up to Grimsby if we turn her in. I know the only reason I’m on the outs is because of this Jane nonsense. Grimsby and Morse and Boarham were all together without me this morning, did you know?”

  “Maybe they were having pancakes,” Helen murmured.

  Alistair paced. “Well, Hattersley’s on my side. He was just here and he swears he saw Jane last night, near the statue of Queen Maud on the pier. Why would she be there? It’s all just warehouses and the dwarfslum.”

  “I don’t know,” said Helen. “Why don’t you ask your dwarvven spy?”

  Alistair waved this aside irritably. “Don’t hold what a man says when drinking against him. You know I couldn’t possibly suspect you of fraternizing with those half-size mongrels any more than you have to. Now look. We are going to go get Jane and trap her. And then she’ll pay for what she did to Grimsby. And we will all be back in business.”

  Helen just looked at Alistair, at a loss for words. How had the man she thought she married turned into this man?

  “Why is he here?” murmured Alistair, pointing at Tam. He ran fingers through his tight curls, hectic motions.

  “His father said he could come for an outing,” started Helen. “We’ve just been having tea—,” but Alistair brushed that aside just as he had the boy’s name. She saw then that sometimes lies were useless, if others didn’t care enough to look under their noses. Alistair was filled with these new thoughts of capturing Jane. He probably didn’t even realize who Tam was, though he had just seen him at the Grimsbys’. Alistair was really only focused on himself, his friends, his jockeying for position—he certainly did not care about children, who could supply him with neither gossip nor gambling. She stared at her husband, thinking: Be who you were. Be who I thought you were.