Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  “Shall I put the sheet up for you tonight, Miss Charlotte?”

  I glanced wistfully at the tall windows. It hadn’t gotten any grayer outside, but then it wasn’t turning sunny, either.

  “I can put it up right away if you like. The curtains can be closed.”

  While I usually tried not to be any more trouble than I needed to be, my desire to see the slides overrode any thoughts of Terrance’s inconvenience. He did, after all, work for me. I smiled.

  “I’d like that, thank you. Will you show me how to use it?”

  Chapter 11

  Another World

  Virginia history is in my blood. I didn’t have to read much about it in books, because much of my family, particularly my father’s sisters, talked about it as though it had happened in their lifetimes. Neighbors and acquaintances identified themselves by their links to the Revolutionary or the Civil War, and there were a few people still alive who had witnessed the latter. One of my very distant uncles had served under General Washington, and as Virginians my family’s loyalties were hardly split when it came to the Civil War—or The Recent Unpleasantness, as one of my aunts liked to call it. As a child, all my school holidays were spent tromping around battlefields with my father: New Market, Fredericksburg, Fort Sumter, Shiloh, Gettysburg, Malvern Hill.

  But college showed me so much more. We took bus trips to Washington, D.C., and New York City. We prowled through museums and great houses. We stood quietly in artists’ studios, letting the smell of oil paint permeate our skin while we listened to artists tell their stories as they worked. (Painters have a reputation as introverts, but the ones I met were full of information—gossip and history and opinions of the world that were remarkably observant. And they loved an audience.) Back at school, I reveled in my art and art history classes. Painting or drawing, and often sitting in the dark auditorium staring up at slides of the artwork that wasn’t readily available to us. Artwork from the Louvre and Florence and Amsterdam. Of course, many of the girls at school had traveled extensively and found the classes dull. But that was never true for me.

  As I sat in Olivia’s morning room, the curtains drawn, a cooling pot of tea nearby, I tried to remember the way I’d felt at school: calm but ready for something new. I closed my eyes, resting in the quiet, listening to the electrical hum of the projector. Had my last days of calm really been before I’d married Press and come to this place? If anyone had asked me weeks or even a few years earlier, surely I would have said that I was happy. I loved my children. I loved Press. Didn’t I love him? Now I just felt like I didn’t know him. He had always given me everything I needed. If I had suspected him of being selfish, it wasn’t that he had kept things that were rightfully mine for himself. With me he was always generous—even if he wasn’t quite with others.

  A few hours earlier, I had wondered what he would think of my being in this room, looking at these old slides. I doubted that he would care. As much as he professed to love us, and loved Bliss House, he was so often elsewhere. But I belonged where I was, and had a feeling that he wouldn’t believe me if I told him how the room itself seemed to sigh with pleasure, grateful to have me there.

  Anxious not to spoil the aura of adventure about what I was doing, I chose sections of slides to view at random, rather than begin with the box labeled A–F.

  Terrance had given me careful instructions, and I handled the slides gingerly, doing my best not to touch the housing that had turned dangerously warm when the bulb was lighted.

  I almost wept at the beauty of those first images. It was Paris—a place I’d never been. Press had promised that we would go, someday. More than ten years after the last World War, it was a popular place for honeymoons. Jack and Rachel had gone, and Rachel had come back with a trunk full of expensive, perfectly tailored dresses and suits.

  These images were more than a half century old, even from the 1890s and earlier. There were, of course, the obligatory shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the palace at Versailles, the stately Louvre with its parade of windows and chimneys. Carefully framed shots that must have been taken by professional photographers, then hand-colored. The skies were a perfect blue, the stone of Notre Dame a sallow cream, down to the shadowy arches fanning into the doors of its western face. Such rich, extravagant color, as though the photographer had invented each blue, each bit of yellow in the cathedral windows and dabbed red in the flag or on a man’s cap just in that moment, just for that picture. Was it real? No. It was day, and no doubt the colors would be dull in the sunlight from the outside. But this was a fantasy world. The perfect colors gave each location a kind of fairytale quality as though they were in a Paris that never rained, that was never smudged with coal smoke or grit.

  The streets of this Paris were nearly empty of people and carriages. No cars. The focus was on the architecture, the structures’ forms and lines.

  The flowers in the Jardin du Luxembourg in front of the palace were like jewels, the grass beyond a fervent green, the palace solid and settled in its landscape like a dowager queen.

  There were landscapes, too, of beaches and a mountainous area that was nothing like our nearby Blue Ridge. These mountains looked less populated, with the occasional tidy valley village nestled between them. Pristine mountain lakes, again colored a luminous blue, against forests of near-black pine trees and jagged gray rock faces. No people. How happy could I be, standing in the shallows of one of these remote lakes, listening to the birds, small fish fluttering around my ankles? Alone.

  I had never lived alone for more than a week at a time. The idea at once thrilled and frightened me. Olivia had never lived alone until her husband died. Nor had my own mother or Nonie. We were all, always, attached to men. Fathers or husbands or employers or children. Could I ever live on my own, given the chance? Was I strong enough?

  Yet even as I sat there alone, I wasn’t seeking solitude, but Olivia.

  Going back to the first box, I found an alphabet series. These weren’t photographs, but illustrations of animals, each paired with a number from one to twelve. Holding them up to the light before putting them in the machine, I wasn’t alarmed, and thought they might be fun for Michael to look at. Even the first one—eight Adders on Ladders (the ladders forming the letter A)—seemed odd, but clever. But when I reached seven Cavorting Cockroaches forming the letter C on the shirtfront of a horrified little boy, and then got to four Murderous Marmosets with exaggerated claws extended, teeth bared and silvery fur dangerously spiked, I stopped looking for more. Had Press been forced to see these hideous slides? They were the stuff of nightmares.

  I was relieved to come to several slides of an enormous meadow dotted with hot-air balloons, probably the beginning or end of a race, shot from a hillside. Three teenaged boys in clothes from a generation past stood in the foreground, leaning on one another, watching the balloons. One of the boys looked back over his shoulder squinting at the camera, his shoulder hiding the lower part of his jaw as though he didn’t want his whole face to be seen. I wondered how long he had stared at the photographer to make his face so clear in the image. Unlike the other boys, he wore no cap, and with his narrowed eyes and lanky black hair he reminded me of one of a pair of twins I’d known in primary school. Boys who had tormented even older children, pelting them with rocks from behind an old shed that sat on the road near the school. It was rumored that they had once tied the tails of two cats together just to watch them fight. As I stared at the boy’s unpleasant face, one of his eyelids dropped in a lascivious wink.

  I gasped, disbelieving. But then he was still again. Beyond him, the two other boys then seemed to come to life. The second boy, the one with white-blond hair, turned his head slowly to look at the third boy. He inclined his forehead so that it rested against the hair just above the third boy’s ear. I knew that profile, that tall forehead and the permanent look of hauteur. But that hauteur melted as he tenderly nuzzled the third boy’s cheek and the lobe of his ear. I knew I should look away. I knew t
hat what I was seeing couldn’t possibly be real. And yet, when the third boy suddenly turned to face the second and roughly grabbed the back of the white-blond head, and kissed him with sudden violence, I knew the feel of that kiss, the fullness of those lips against mine. I put my hand to my throat and closed my eyes, terrified.

  At a tap on the door, I opened my eyes. The teenagers on the screen had returned to being anonymous figures who certainly didn’t at all resemble my husband and his best friend.

  What was wrong with me that I’d imagined such a thing? Something I couldn’t have even conceived of in my most secret thoughts?

  “Charlotte?” Nonie opened the door from the hall a few inches. “Are you asleep?”

  Embarrassed, I tried to keep my voice light. “Of course I’m not asleep. I don’t need a nap.”

  “Are you coming down to dinner?”

  Dinner? I looked around the dim room. There was no clock, and I didn’t remember seeing a clock. Glancing at the curtains closed over the window, I could see the light had faded significantly.

  “What time is it?”

  “Why are the lights off? What are you doing in here?” Nonie used a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. I felt seven years old.

  I moved to switch off the lantern, but my hand brushed the searing housing instead and I cried out.

  Nonie rushed inside, bringing in a soft unfocused light from the hallway with her. Then she pressed the wall switch, flooding the room with light. I brought my injured hand to my eyes.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I spoke harshly without meaning to.

  Nonie ignored me, anyway. “Let me see.” She took my wrist and inspected the burn. “The aloe plant is in the butler’s pantry. We’ll put some on it when we go down.” Looking at me closely, she let go of my wrist and touched the sleeve of my blouse. I couldn’t remember shedding my sweater.

  “You’re soaking. It’s like a furnace in here.” She looked around. “What’s that smell? Like something burning.”

  I waved my hand. “Me?” I said, trying to be funny to make up for my harshness.

  Her eyes rested on the lantern and the boxes of slides piled beside it.

  “I meant to show you this,” I said. “You said you hadn’t seen one in a long time.”

  She shook her head. “Not since I was twenty or so. Though even by then, not many people used them, except for. . . .”

  “Except for what?”

  A flush of heat came over Nonie’s face. Whether from the temperature of the room, or what she was about to say, I wasn’t sure. It was awfully warm. Sweat had gathered in a rivulet between my breasts, and the seams of my blouse under my arms were wet.

  “You need to come downstairs, but you don’t want to come to the table like that. I’ll go lay something out for you.” She started out of the room.

  “But what do you mean? Tell me.”

  Nonie turned in the doorway. “Just be careful what you look at in there. But I suppose Olivia Bliss was probably not the kind of person to own those sorts of pictures.”

  “Oh.”

  I finally understood. She meant just the sort of pictures I’d just seen: people like Press and Jack doing unspeakable things. But I couldn’t have seen what I had seen. They were slides, not films. It wasn’t possible. They were just innocent pictures.

  She sighed. “I’ll go lay out your clothes. Hurry. Your husband’s already at the table with Michael.”

  “Press is home?”

  “You don’t think I would leave Michael by himself in the dining room, do you?”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He just came in. Terrance gave him a Scotch, and he asked where you were. I thought it best that I come find you.”

  Press was home, and I’d been pulled back into my life. I looked at the boxes of slides and the cooling lantern. What were these things, and what did it all mean?

  I carefully unplugged the lantern from the wall socket and tucked the cord beneath the table so no one might trip on it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever turn the thing on again.

  Chapter 12

  Enchantment

  Mommy.

  What mother doesn’t wake when her child whispers her name? When it comes in the night, a whisper is more alarming than a cry. Grateful that I hadn’t taken the sleeping drops, I threw back the covers and felt for my robe. Finding it near the end of the bed, I put it on, forgetting for just a moment that Eva wasn’t really there whispering for me. But from the depths of my disappointment came the realization that someone had called for me.

  There was enough moonlight to see my way across the room. My door, which was always closed when I slept, stood open to the gallery.

  Mommy.

  Footsteps outside my room. Light, running footsteps. Thinking it might be Michael looking for me, I started down the gallery to the nursery fully awake, my heart quickened by the voice.

  Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.

  Was it Eva’s voice? It was young. Feminine. I wanted it to be Eva, but there was something teasing in the sound.

  It seemed to come from everywhere. First, a few feet ahead of me. Now, near the back stairs. Then from the hall below. Above me, the stars painted on the dome were mute, the chandelier a silhouette in the moonlight from the clerestory windows. I knew that everyone in Bliss House was asleep, but the night around me felt wakeful, as though something were going on behind one of the closed bedroom doors. Only Olivia’s bedroom door was open, and, beside it, a faint light shone beneath the morning-room door. As I watched, the light faded and brightened, like a stuttering flame. Had Eva awakened me to warn me of a fire? It seemed possible.

  I was close to Press’s door but, afraid of appearing foolish, I chose not to wake him right away. And if it really were Eva, what would I do? God help me, I couldn’t bear the thought of sharing her with him. He didn’t deserve her.

  I crossed the gallery and, taking a deep breath to calm the pounding of my heart (pounding, yes—even though I would never be afraid of my own child), I put my hand on the shining brass knob of the morning-room door. To say it was cold was an understatement, like saying a 104-degree day was a little warm. I drew my hand back and pressed it to my mouth, breathing into it to lessen the sting. When I reached for the knob again, I used the sleeve of my robe, but it made little difference. As soon as the knob was free of its catch, I pushed the door open with my shoulder. Even through my robe I could feel that the door itself was like a block of ice. The hinges—always kept oiled by the dedicated Terrance—complained of the cold as well.

  I hesitated before I went inside, remembering the image of the teenage boys. But Eva had called me, so I had to go on.

  Inside? How to tell you. . . .

  The morning room was transformed. Frigid with cold. No. Not just cold, but with a frost that hid the true nature of every surface, as though every object had been fitted with a glittering pavé of tiny diamonds. Shaken and uncertain, I turned to look behind me into the hallway. I was still in the house and hadn’t been swept into some dream place or other universe.

  I stepped inside, hoping to see Eva. Will you believe me when I tell you that the door closed slowly behind me? I was so stunned by what I was seeing, I didn’t see it close but only heard it catch, softly, as though it had been shut with great care. Had it slammed, I might have screamed. That would have brought Press, and perhaps Terrance and Marlene and Nonie, running to find me. It might have changed everything that happened later: I might never have seen what Olivia wanted to show me, and perhaps no one else would have died that dreadful October.

  There was no Eva. But all around me, despite the cold, which was oddly flat and without sting, was the smell of roses. Not the fresh, ethereal scent of newly opened buds, but roses whose scent was fecund almost to the point of rot. I covered my mouth with my hand.

  The light still flickered erratically, as in an old film. I saw the reflection in the windows first because the curtains had been pulle
d aside. Who had done that? Terrance, perhaps, thinking I would not be back in the room that night? I crossed the room to the chaise longue beneath the windows and picked up the folded mohair blanket that Olivia had kept there for reading on cool days. Frost crystals flew about like sprites as I shook the blanket in the air and then wrapped it around me. Clutching it close against the cold, I saw my own shape in the glass, surrounded by a bright halo. A delicate layer of frost covered the glass, but when I touched it I found the surface smooth. The frost seemed to be on the other side of the mirror.

  You’re wondering about the source of the light. I didn’t want to look at it, because I knew what it was and I was afraid. I think I knew what it was even before I crossed the gallery.

  The sheet that Terrance had hung was filled with light from the lantern, which sat silently on its table, untouched by the frost. The sheet itself was also dull in comparison to everything around it—even the paintings had been turned into winterscapes.

  You might think that I was brave to remain in that enchanted, terrifying room. There have been things that I’ve done, things I’ve had to contend with as mistress of Bliss House, that I never would have imagined I could live through. But I am a mother and was a mother then. There is something sacred about being a mother. Not necessarily holy, but at least unique in the sense that there is nothing else in the world to compare to it. I have read stories about men in battle dying for one another, their intimacy a creation of their vulnerability in the face of a common enemy. But the danger needn’t be great for a mother to feel an intense need to protect her child, and it doesn’t matter to her if her actions appear irrational to someone on the outside. They are rational within the universe created by the bond between her and her child. Even her fear of death is secondary to the possibility of her child suffering for even one moment out of a single day. A single hour.