Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  “I didn’t want to be part of that. I swear I didn’t. You don’t know what he’s like, Charlotte.”

  As shocked as I was to hear that I’d been right, I couldn’t let her see it. “What I want to know is why, Julianna. You and Press were trying to—what? Frighten me? Make an ass out of me in front of Jack and Rachel and Hugh? I just want to know why.”

  J.C. shook her head violently. “No! Charlotte, you and Michael shouldn’t stay here. Go to your father’s house. Anywhere. There’s nothing good for you here. Whatever you saw . . . whatever that was. That was real. Whatever is happening here is really happening. It’s not part of any game.”

  She bit her bare lip as though she’d said too much.

  “I don’t believe that bullshit about your brother, either,” I said, surprising myself with the profanity. “I’ve thought you were disgusting ever since Press introduced us. God knows what kind of people you spend your time with, and if you have a shred of decency, you’ll get the hell out of this house so I don’t have to look at you.”

  “You’re wrong. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

  “Prove it.”

  J.C. dropped back a foot or so, and into the reflection of my vanity mirror. Even in her dressing gown, her edges were so sharply defined that she hardly looked like a woman.

  Was she human? Had we all become less than human? I’d never been so cruel before.

  “You have to let go of your guilt about Eva.”

  I moved toward her, wanting to shake her, to choke her. Anything to shut her up. “My God, you’re unbelievable. You’re not making any sense. You talk about my guilt when you don’t even know me. Get the hell out of this house. I don’t give a damn what Press thinks.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t know why you hate me so much. If you really wanted to help me, you would start telling me the truth. But you obviously won’t.”

  “There’s a difference between wanting badly to do something and knowing that you can’t.”

  Furious as I was, I was struck by the change in her demeanor from the previous days. It was almost as though she were a different person. She seemed resigned, if not contrite. Older. Her jowls sagged a bit and her shoulders slumped. We were two women separated by a small, fraught wedge of fear. Almost equals.

  Yes, I was struck, but I refused to be moved.

  She sighed. “It wasn’t just the séance, Charlotte. He brought me here to get me close to you. This has been planned for a long, long time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told him you wouldn’t understand. Ask him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you.”

  When she left the room, closing the door behind her, I had to work to control my breathing, my rabbiting heart.

  She would be gone. I didn’t have to think about her anymore.

  I dressed and went downstairs to let Marlene know that it would be just the four of us, including Shelley, for dinner. She accepted the news in her usual calm manner, and when I asked if she could make up a small meal for Jack that I could drop by their house, she said she would have it ready in half an hour.

  Grabbing a jacket from the mudroom, I went outside to spend a few minutes with Michael, my only respite.

  Chapter 30

  Seraphina

  Sometimes I wonder at my younger self, unable to understand why I was so blind. I rarely questioned Press about what he was doing all those hours he was away from home. People told me how helpful he was to them as a lawyer, but to my knowledge he never did pro bono work for the poor, and I know he never presented a case to a jury. Now I think that I didn’t really want to know what he was doing. I lived in a kind of fog, strangely secure in Bliss House. I know now that it’s a world in itself, a world that exists on more than one level. But I could only perceive and understand one level in those early years.

  Bliss House kept me from seeing the truth about what was going on around me. What Press was really like. What Terrance is—or was. Olivia showed me the truth about what she had endured. Surely no ill-intentioned spirit would try to make me more sympathetic to her than I already was. But perhaps I’m wrong. I lived for so long under one delusion that I may have been rendered unable to know when I’m living under a different one.

  Rachel was still under some kind of sedation when I arrived at the hospital. It was common then, but not nearly as common now. All but the poorest of women were expected to remain in the hospital four days or more after childbirth, recovering. We weren’t really delicate, though we were often plied with drugs to make us feel that way. But is it such a bad thing to put off the demands of children? We carry them for nine months, growing fatter and slower and worrying more and more, hearing nightmare stories from other women about the perils of breastfeeding and colic. How much nicer to have crisp young uniformed women and our own mothers (or friends) spoiling us for a bit. To delay that moment when the nurse puts your baby into your arms and says, “Off you go!” expecting you to understand that you’re responsible for it forever. You can’t give it back to her. It’s yours for the rest of your life, unless death intervenes.

  Jack had privileges at both the Lynchburg and Charlottesville hospitals, but Rachel had chosen an obstetrician in Charlottesville because she thought him prestigious. For everyone visiting her, it just meant a longer drive. I didn’t mind being alone in the car for a while, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Michael’s birth, and how Eva had begged and begged to be allowed to come and visit the hospital. But Nonie was adamant that she stay home, and the hospitals had rules against child visitors.

  While I felt a strange freedom being away from Bliss House, it remained in the back of my mind like a brooding shadow. Jonathan—if J.C. had ever truly had a brother named Jonathan—hadn’t felt safe there. I didn’t feel safe away from there.

  Jack greeted me near the nurse’s desk, his eyes glassy with lack of sleep, his shock of white hair flattened on one side as though he’d been sleeping on it. It was a careless look for someone who was usually so well groomed, but I didn’t comment because he was sensitive to criticism.

  “Rachel’s hardly said a word. But she’ll be glad you’re here.” He kissed me on the cheek and I caught a scent of a familiar aftershave and cigarettes. Grandma is in the room with her, but Dr. Daddy is apparently persona non grata. She’s trying to talk Rachel into breastfeeding, but I think we all know that horse has already left the barn.”

  “Did everything go all right?”

  “As far as I know. She apparently told the OB she’d cut his balls off if he let them give her an episiotomy. But then they knocked her out, so everyone survived.”

  I laughed, imagining Rachel threatening her nice old doctor.

  “Are you okay?” Jack sounded almost shy. “Last night was strange.”

  I thought of how he’d touched Press’s hand. That seemed strange to me, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. I didn’t know what to think about Jack. I didn’t hate him, but I understood he wasn’t the person I had thought he was for so long. It made sense that Press had—God help us all—seduced him in some way, just as he had me, and J.C., and who knew who else.

  One of the two nurses sitting at the nearby desk giggled, but I had no idea if it was directed at us. I had been out of the house so little that I hadn’t thought about people recognizing me as the woman who had been responsible for her own child’s death. Suddenly I was even more self-conscious than usual. I drew my light coat more closely around myself.

  “I want to hear about the baby. Does she have a name?”

  He smiled and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Damn. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He took my arm. “The babies are down here.”

  The nursery was a few doors down a nearby corridor. On the other side of its enormous window, bassinets with babies in them were lined up in rows, each one bearing a sign with the baby’s name, mother’s name, and measurements. I found myself ha
nging a few inches behind Jack as he pointed to a bassinet far at the back. Rachel had been so very sure they’d have a boy. She hadn’t rejected having a girl out of hand, but neither had she really entertained the possibility. Rachel didn’t hide her feelings well, either. What would it be like to grow up having a mother like Rachel? A mother who had very clearly wanted a boy?

  “Do you want to go in and hold her?” Jack asked. “I can get you in. You’ll just have to wear a mask.”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think so.” Though I already felt pity for the poor child, I wasn’t ready to hold her. I wasn’t ready to watch her grow up, either, even though I was trying my best to be happy for them all. “What’s her name?”

  “Seraphina,” Jack said, heading for the nursery. “Rachel didn’t have any girl names picked out, and her mother suggested it. It was Rachel’s great-grandmother’s name. I’ll bring her to the window.”

  She was precious, tightly swaddled in a pale pink flannel blanket with her very tiny, very red little face peeking out. Her eyelids twitched against the bright lights of the room and she began to work her rough, pink lips as though wanting food or succor. I’ve never understood why newborns are supposed to be able to sleep in rooms lit like operating theaters. Her coloring was newborn, and her lush hair was jet black. Her features were perfectly formed, almost like an adult’s. She was a miniature of Rachel, but I saw nothing of Jack in her at all.

  Forcing myself to smile and blow the baby a little kiss, I stepped back from the window while Jack put Seraphina back in her bassinet. Several of the other babies, disturbed by his presence, set up a righteous howl, and Jack left the nursery with the nurse on duty shaking her head behind him.

  I met him in the hallway. “She’s lovely, Jack.”

  “Seraphina? Yes, she is. She’s quiet. Not like those other loudmouth babies.”

  I looked closely at him to see if he was joking, calling the other babies “loudmouth.” But his face held only irritation.

  Holly Webb, Rachel’s mother, looked up from the piece of fabric in her lap. Both she and Rachel were quite good at smocking—the artful embroidery that makes fabric stretch prettily. Rachel had done it in quiet times in our dorm room, surprising me with her skill. Her mother had decorated a large wicker fishing creel for her supplies, which Rachel still used.

  “Don’t make fun of me,” she’d said. “It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

  That wasn’t true, of course. But it was the closest thing she did to any kind of art. Rachel, herself, preferred to be the decoration.

  “Dear Charlotte,” Holly whispered. She held her hand out to me.

  I motioned for her not to rise, as her lap was covered with a pink swath of cloth that she’d obviously been working on for days. Rachel hadn’t been joking when she’d said her mother had decided the baby would be a girl.

  “You’re so kind to come. She just went back to sleep. She’s exhausted, poor thing.”

  “How long was her labor?” I kept my voice low to match Holly’s, and sat down in the chair on the other side of Rachel’s bed in the sparse, blank room. She’d managed to get a private one, which didn’t surprise me, given Jack’s association with the hospital.

  “Nearly six hours. But as soon as she woke up the first time, she said she wanted to go home. And that was even before she’d seen the baby!”

  I wondered if Holly knew how strange that sounded. From the smile on her face, I didn’t think so.

  “Isn’t she adorable? Absolutely the perfect baby. I think she even looks a little like my own baby pictures. That will make Rachel’s grandmother so happy.”

  Nodding, I looked at Rachel. Beneath the blankets her stomach was still distended, and her face was strained in sleep, her brow furrowed. I suspected they had given her morphine, although she didn’t look as though it was giving her any peace. I didn’t know when she would wake up again. I was happy that I’d seen the baby; but, sitting with Holly, I didn’t have much to say. She was watching me watch Rachel. Of course, she had to be thinking about Eva. She’d been terribly fond of her, sending her sweets and buying her small presents whenever she and her husband traveled.

  How much did she know? Had Rachel told her I’d been drinking that afternoon? She’d been at the funeral, of course, and had seen my hysterics. Everyone had seen.

  “It was so lovely of Press to come by first thing, though I thought for sure he would’ve just come with you. He’s so good to Rachel and Jack. Just like a brother.”

  Trying not to act surprised—but was I so surprised?—I said that he probably had business in Charlottesville and decided to drop by.

  “Oh, do you think so?” She sounded as though she might disagree. If women were said to come to resemble their mothers as they aged, Rachel would continue to be stunning until the day she died. If anything, Holly Webb, with her striking brown eyes, full, well-shaped brows, and neat figure, was even more beautiful than her daughter. She arranged a demure blue cashmere cardigan over her thin shoulders.

  “She never eats,” Rachel had told me before I met Holly for the first time. “Watch her. She only pretends to, talks all through dinner, then has the housekeeper clear the plates away before anyone notices.” And she’d been exactly right. I’d watched Holly do the same thing at every meal I ate at their house.

  “Well, Press certainly came prepared, anyway.” Holly, her hands busy, nodded to the shelf holding two bouquets of flowers—one quite compact and a little dull with yellow carnations and a lot of greenery, the other tall, with lilies, birds of paradise, and thick purple stock. “We both had Delmonico, at The Grange’s florist, out of bed at the crack of dawn. Though they certainly are different in style, aren’t they?” I wasn’t sure what her smug grin implied.

  It wasn’t hard to guess which arrangement was from Press.

  “Press does tend to go over the top sometimes.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was difficult to hide my embarrassment.

  Holly rested her handwork in her lap. “Oh, the big one is from David and me. Press brought the carnations. Ours were delivered just a few minutes ago.”

  I was speechless. The small bouquet was like an insult compared to the other, and hardly suited to Rachel at all. I wondered if there had been some mistake. But Holly had said Press had brought it himself, first thing. I wondered that he’d even been allowed in so early. What did it mean? Perhaps nothing. It was just that everything seemed significant then, as though my life was strangely magnified.

  “Are you well, dear? Rachel and I have been terribly worried about you. I can only imagine how devastated you are, but you look so thin. I have a prescription for iron pills from Jack. They might do you some good.”

  Was the woman so stupid? My best friend had just given birth to a baby girl, weeks after mine had died, horribly and suddenly. It was too much. Iron pills wouldn’t bring Eva back. Why had I stayed as long as I had at the hospital? I had seen the baby: Seraphina. A seraph. An angel. But the baby didn’t care that I was there, and Rachel wasn’t even awake.

  “Maybe you and Press should get away for a while. Sometimes a different setting can help. You won’t be constantly. . . .” Her voice faded and her eyes left my face.

  The busy chatter of the hospital staff floated in from the corridor.

  “You need not have come, Charlotte. This must be so hard for you. You look tired.”

  The unexpected softness in her face, her voice, took me by surprise, and I felt tears threatening in the inner corners of my eyes. Of course I shouldn’t have left the house.

  I put on my gloves and fumbled for the wrapped gift I’d brought—an infant’s pillow with an embroidered linen cover—and set it on the deep windowsill with the flowers. “I’ll just leave this here. Please tell her I’ll come by the house when she gets home.”

  Holly gave me a pitying smile. “Of course I will. Rachel will be so sorry she was sleeping, poor thing. I told her she needed to get more exercise while she was pregnant, that she’d be exhausted. Bu
t you know how she is.”

  By that point I was only half-listening. The car in the parking lot seemed so far away, and I wanted to get to it quickly. On another day (or was it in another life?) I might have gone over to The Grange for lunch and shopping, or stopped at the toyshop near the university and picked up a surprise for the children. But it didn’t even occur to me then. I could only think of being back at the house.

  Quietly pushing back the heavy wooden chair, I rose. Rachel sighed deeply in her sleep. She looked like a worried, sleeping princess.

  “Before you go, would you look under the bag with Rachel’s robe in it and hand me her notions basket? I thought she might get bored and want to work on something for the baby while she’s waiting to go home. I’ve misplaced my needle threader, and I’m helpless without it.”

  No! I wanted to scream. I want to get the hell away from here. Away from all of you! But of course I put my handbag down on the chair, lifted the bag, and picked up the wicker notions basket by its handle. The basket was familiar, painted with the same cheerful red and yellow flowers—now chipped and faded—that had decorated it when Rachel first unpacked it in our dorm room at Burton Hall. I had envied that basket, and wished I had a mother who had taught me smocking and bought me dresses and sent me care packages with new gloves and cookies and expensive shampoo. Even though Rachel had joked about the basket being silly and childish-looking, it was obvious that it was one of her treasures, the sort of thing she might pass on to her own daughter.

  Even through my gloves I felt the handle burning my fingers. (It was my imagination, of course. It was a perfectly normal wooden handle.) As I passed it over the bed, the brass catch loosened, and the basket gaped open, spilling some of its contents onto the bed.

  Holly jumped up, gathering the ribbons and bits of cloth and spools of colorful thread as they rolled over Rachel’s covered legs and across the bed or onto the floor. Nothing was heavy enough to disturb Rachel, but Holly still acted quickly.