Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  J.C. and I had looked at each other, then nodded. It was the best answer.

  I knew there was no way he’d gotten to the top of the armoire without help, and, given the number of times we’d looked in Olivia’s bedroom, it seemed unlikely that he could have been up there, quiet, the entire time. But who would’ve put him up there? I still suspected Terrance, whom Press had assigned to hand out cigars to the men and was now making his way from group to group, holding open one of Press’s smaller humidors. But I still couldn’t answer the question why. It seemed like a prank—a dangerous, foolish prank. Playfulness did not seem to be in Terrance’s dour personality. Then there was J.C., who might have done anything while I was knocked out and the others were searching. I silently cursed myself for giving in to Jack and his drugs. But Press had been holding me. I’d had no choice.

  As Shelley continued to try to engage Michael, I looked across the hall to see Rachel talking to Hugh Walters, who wasn’t in uniform but wore a denim work jacket and light brown moleskin trousers. Jack hadn’t wanted Rachel around the stressful search, but had called her to come right over after Michael had been found. Seeing me, she blew me a kiss.

  Michael, excited by the novelty of the crowd, began to wriggle again, and I recognized the signs of approaching hysteria. His eyes were rimmed in red, and he rubbed at them with his fist.

  Having volunteered to help Marlene hand around drinks, J.C. finally came to stand beside me. After I introduced her to Shelley, Shelley said that she would try to find her brother, and excused herself.

  J.C. had returned to wearing her very public smile, but toned it down when she stepped a little closer to gently pat Michael’s back. He put his thumb in his mouth and rested his head on my shoulder.

  “Looks like he’s about to pass out.”

  “I really should get him upstairs. Have you seen Press?” I felt awkward and confused around her. Was she really having an affair with Press, and was she involved in Michael’s disappearance? Or was I mistaken? Something about her made me want to trust her, but I couldn’t make myself.

  She said she thought she’d seen him go into the library. When I went in search of him, she drifted toward Hugh and Rachel. Recalling what I’d seen in the garden, I couldn’t help but wonder how uncomfortable that conversation might be.

  I found Press and Jack in the library, the smoke from their cigars clouding the room.

  “There’s my little man.” Press rested his cigar in the nearby standing ashtray and rose to take Michael from me. I didn’t want to let him go, but Michael had given a small grunt of delight on seeing his father and pulled away to reach for him.

  “He needs to be in bed, Press. He’s about to fall apart.”

  Michael rested his face against his father’s cheek and patted his head as though it had been Press lost and in distress all afternoon. It was reassuring to see how comfortable the two of them were together. Without Eva, we would all need each other that much more.

  Press sat back down in one of the broad, comfortable leather chairs, pulling Michael onto his lap. Olivia had bought the chairs on a trip she’d taken out West and had them sent back to Virginia. They weren’t the kind of thing one saw in houses in Virginia, but perhaps in an elegant hunting lodge. But they suited the room, and suited the two attractive men resting in them.

  Behind me, the library door opened with a murmur of voices from the hall.

  “Here you all are. Why is everyone hiding in here?” Rachel waved a hand in front of her face. “Phew. Those stupid cigars. I thought I could at least get away from the smoke in here. Will somebody open a window before I die?” She held on to the couch’s arm as well as her belly as she sank onto the cushions.

  By “somebody,” she obviously meant Jack, who quickly got up and opened the window beside the fireplace a few inches.

  “So, are you going to tell me where he really was? I don’t buy the whole hiding under the bed story. You can sell it to the hillbillies out there, but not me.” She was looking at Press.

  I also looked at Press, waiting to hear what he would say.

  “I’ve already told Jack. Charlotte found him on top of the armoire in my mother’s room. God knows how the tyke got up there. Somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

  Now Rachel looked at me, appraising. It was as though we had just been introduced and she was trying to determine what sort of person I was. I was puzzled at first, then realized she thought I had done it.

  “You can’t think I put my own son up there, Rachel!”

  “Nobody said that.” Jack shook the ice cube in his nearly empty glass, drawing Michael’s attention. He drank down the final sip of whiskey. “No one is accusing you, Charlotte.”

  I remembered how Press had squeezed my shoulders so I would stay still while Jack injected me with the sedative. There had been a strange look of pleasure in Jack’s eyes that I hadn’t remembered until just then.

  Rachel spoke quickly. “Everyone knows how horrible it’s been for you, darling. Of course I don’t think you did any such thing. I would defend you to the death. I swear on the tiny fiend in my belly.” She tried a little laugh, but it fell flat in the silent room.

  Press stood up.

  “You were right, Charlotte. Michael does need to be in bed. You too.” He brought Michael over to me and kissed my cheek. “You’re exhausted.”

  I was still stung by the way Rachel had looked at me. But Michael returned to me without protest, and having him in my arms was a comfort. I told myself that what had happened with Eva had left a question in a lot of people’s minds. Although I hoped Rachel would think better of me, I knew it was unfair of me to expect it. It would be a long time before anyone fully trusted me again.

  I was asleep when Press came into the nursery. Michael had fallen asleep even as I’d changed his diaper. I’d been about to lift him into his crib, but instead I laid him on the lower mattress of the trundle bed, where he settled immediately, finding his thumb and pulling the sheet close to his face.

  When the sudden light from the hall sliced through the darkness, I woke on the upper mattress of the trundle bed without any memory of falling asleep there. Turning over to rise up on my elbows, I saw Press silhouetted in the doorway.

  “What is it?”

  He left the door open just a few inches, letting some light in, and walked cautiously across the room to lean over the foot of the bed.

  “How’s he doing?” he whispered, putting a hand on the blanket covering my leg. It wasn’t a terribly warm blanket. Had Eva ever lain here, cold in her own bed? The thought saddened me.

  “Why don’t you go back to your room?”

  I sat up. “I want to be here if he wakes up tonight. He was so fretful.” It would have been fruitless for me to be anywhere else. Away from him, I might not sleep at all. “What time is it?”

  When Press bent toward me, he smelled of cigars and Scotch. “Just a few folks left. J.C. is still downstairs. Rachel and Jack, Hugh. They won’t stay much longer. It’s almost one.”

  I wanted to lie back down, to sleep and sleep until the heaviness in my chest dissipated. I wanted to drop my hand over the edge of the mattress to the trundle below and feel Michael’s breath against my skin.

  But Press leaned closer, steadying himself on one hand, and kissed me, hard, forcing his tongue into my sleep-clouded mouth. He hadn’t shaved since early that morning (how long ago that seemed!), and his beard was harsh against my face. Before Eva died, he had made his way to my bedroom four or five nights a week, but I was surprised he’d come into the nursery with guests downstairs. With J.C. in the house.

  His hand went to my breast. I’d been too tired to go to my room for pajamas and so wore only my bra and panties beneath the blanket; my clothes lay over the back of the rocking chair. It was strange to be there in the nursery, with Michael so close by, yet I felt myself responding to Press despite all that had happened. Grief and fear and, finally, elation had made me vulnerable. I’d ceased to trust him by then
, and perhaps I’d even ceased to really love him. But desire has no need for love.

  He climbed onto the bed, and was on his knees in front of me, hurriedly unbuckling his pants. As his pants fell, he took down his boxer shorts. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but the smell of him was musky, and he pressed himself against my face, my lips. His hands were in my hair, and he forcefully massaged the back of my head and my neck. Remembering that Michael was there below us, I pulled away. I whispered that we couldn’t.

  “Of course we can,” he answered and tried again.

  “I won’t.”

  I pulled away again, whispering no. I had never told him no before.

  With a grunt of frustration, he pushed me gently onto my back and quickly found my panties and began to remove them. The tension of Michael being so close caused me to tremble, and by the time Press entered me, I had to grind my teeth together in my mouth to stop their violent knocking. Our tender passion the afternoon that Eva died felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. The thought made me sad and I banished it, but it was quickly replaced by the memory of Terrance and J.C. in the garden. No, not Terrance. Hugh.

  And through it all, I had the sensation that Press and I were being watched.

  Press’s face was buried against my neck, and the length of him was far inside me. I chanced a look at Michael, but he still lay sleeping, turned away from us. Despite the heat of Press’s body, I felt a rush of cold and I looked beyond him to see a shadow on the ceiling, an ill-defined, darker spot in the darkness. As I watched, it gathered itself into a tight circle and slid across the ceiling to hang, suspended, for a few seconds before dropping in a long oily stream. I was startled by the sound of breaking glass, but Press was pushing into me with concentrated determination and wasn’t disturbed. I squeezed my eyes shut. Waiting. Praying that what I’d seen was only a trick of the darkness. Whatever it had been had frozen every bit of my sudden desire, and I let Press finish without offering much in response, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was quiet as he came inside me, shuddering to a stop to lie against me, heavy with sweat. When his breathing returned to normal, he rolled off me carefully—the bed was small, and Michael was still just a couple of feet away.

  “Look what you do to me, you witch.” He kissed me on the nose, his face shining with perspiration. There was no sign of the cruel Press, the deceitful Press. But whatever he saw on my face quelled his pleasure. “What’s the matter? He’s fine. He doesn’t know a thing.”

  Whatever I might say about what I’d seen would surely sound mad, but I couldn’t help thinking of Olivia. “What about everyone downstairs?”

  His teeth were bright in the room’s dim light. “I’ll tell them the truth. That you seduced me.”

  Suddenly, I didn’t want him to go. Turning onto my side, I wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him to me, wishing, wishing that Olivia hadn’t died. That Eva hadn’t died. That he could be the same man I’d married and not a man of secrets. That I could close my eyes and open them a moment later to find that it was still early spring, and we were all happy and safe.

  Finally he kissed my forehead. “They really will start chewing on the curtains if I don’t get back to them. Try to go back to sleep.”

  He left the room, pulling the door softly closed behind him.

  I lay back on my damp pillow. When Rachel and Jack were gone, would he go to J.C.? In that moment, I didn’t really care. I had my son back, and that was all that mattered.

  I dropped my hand to where Michael lay below me. Heat clung to him like a protective cloak. My poor boy.

  Shivering, I pulled the discarded blanket all the way up to my shoulder and lay watching the place on the ceiling where I’d seen (or imagined I’d seen) the shadow. Before I finally fell asleep, I heard the distant chimes of the great clock in the hall ring two.

  I dreamed.

  The windows and doors of Bliss House were open and the winter cold was coming for me and there was no way for me to outrun it. Glittering ice covered the windows at the front of the house. I was naked, crouching close to the walls as I moved, trying to cover my genitalia because I felt someone was watching me. Not Press, but perhaps Marlene or Terrance. I was certain one of them might emerge from one of the rooms or come out from the back of the house. The paneling was so frigid that I knew if I paused too long in any one place, my skin would turn into a tough, frozen hide and I would become immobile like Hera in the garden. No, I had to keep moving.

  Daylight, always at a premium in the deep interior of the house, streamed down from the narrow windows around the dome. I stretched out one hand toward the sunbeams’ warmth, but they were freezing, too, like the walls.

  Olivia’s was the only closed door, and behind it was the only possible shelter in the massive house. To make my way there, I grabbed on to the railing, which was less cold, less dangerous than the tall paneled walls. As I pulled myself along them, every part of my body hurt, and I couldn’t cover myself any longer because I knew I would be frozen if I slowed. With each crouching step I took, the sense that I was being watched intensified.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I had to drop to my belly, and the floor was cold against my breasts. My nipples caught on the tiny, age-filled grooves of the plank floor. All of the house’s lovely furniture and carpets were gone, and its walls were bare. Bliss House had been abandoned. Or perhaps I was seeing it as it had been when it was first raised out of the dirt, sculpted out of bricks from the local lime-rich clay.

  Once I reached Olivia’s door, I pressed my body against it to feel its heat, and I nearly swooned with relief so intense that it felt sexual. I opened the door carefully, worried that the frozen light shining in from the windows might cut me. But I needn’t have worried. It looked as Olivia’s room always looked. The papered walls were crowded with paintings, needlepoint samplers, and hangings done by Olivia’s mother and aunts. The massive French armoire dominated the left side of the room, with Olivia’s four-poster on the right. It wasn’t until I was well inside the room that I noticed the smell. Covering my mouth, I tried to filter the fetid air by breathing from behind my hand. It was the smell of the slaughterhouse, or of the offal barrel behind the butcher shop a few doors down from my father’s store on a July afternoon.

  “Mamamamamamamama!”

  How had I not seen him before?

  Michael was on Olivia’s bed, nestled in Olivia’s arms. Rushing to them, my heart went cold. Yes, it was Olivia. Her long hair, which—since I’d met her—she’d pulled back into a tight, chic bun, rested in greasy strands on her shoulders. She wore a loose silk dressing gown covered with pale pink and white peonies, and her arms were wrapped tightly around Michael, who had begun to wriggle and whine.

  “Mama! I want to get down. Make her let me go!” It was Michael’s voice, but older. He held out his hands to me, clenching and unclenching his fists—a sure sign of his excitement.

  Olivia, though, didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed, the slack half-grin on her face showing only a sliver of her age-yellowed teeth.

  “I’ll take him, Olivia.” My voice was flat and strange to my ears. “Let him go, Olivia.”

  Olivia didn’t move, but continued to stare. Something flickered on her upper lip. A pair of flies lifted away and spun around each other for a brief moment, then landed at the corner of her left eye. She didn’t blink.

  I wanted to run away, but I wouldn’t leave Michael. He didn’t seem unhappy or even aware that the woman holding him was certainly dead.

  “Come here, Michael,” I said, as calmly as possible.

  Michael tried to lurch forward, but only fell sideways into his grandmother’s motionless lap, hanging over one of her arms.

  “Mama!” He grabbed at her fingers, trying to peel them off of him, but the flesh began to break away and stuck to his hands. When he looked up at me, I saw the panic in his eyes.

  Against all reason, I began to scream at Olivia for her to release him. Instead, more flies lifted from
their resting places on her robe, in her hair, from the hollow of her neck, filling the putrid air with their ceaseless drone.

  I woke, opening my eyes to find the sheet twisted around me and soaked with sweat, and Michael, his eyes wide and frightened in the faint blue light of the hour before dawn, standing on his trundle mattress, watching me.

  “Eva.” His eyes filled with tears that spilled onto me as he climbed up, into my arms.

  Chapter 25

  Respite

  I was grateful for dawn.

  Both J.C. and Michael slept most of the day. I sat in the nursery rocker, dozing or reading. There were no visitors and no workers, not even the painter in the ballroom—at least I didn’t hear him, and the ballroom doors were closed. Had I really spoken to him only two days earlier? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Marlene cooked. Terrance served and polished silver. Even Bliss House seemed to rest after the excitement of the previous day.

  Late in the morning, I called Nonie to check on my father, and to tell her about Michael disappearing. While I didn’t exactly make light of it, neither did I tell her how panicked I’d truly been.

  When I was finished, after a long silence, she said, “Why don’t you come home to us, Charlotte? For a visit.”

  But I still couldn’t leave. Though I hadn’t seen Eva in days, nothing had changed, and the knowledge of what Terrance had done to Olivia was still there, but its urgency had faded. I wanted to forget what had happened to Michael. He had, after all, been found safe and unharmed inside the house.