Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  “Charlotte,” she whispered. “The lid. Close it?”

  But I could only stare at the curl of Wedgwood blue velvet ribbon that clung over the edge of the bed like some lovely, poisonous snake.

  Chapter 31

  The Last Happy Afternoon

  I don’t remember much about the drive home. At some point I arrived back at Bliss House, and Terrance opened the car door for me. It had turned bitterly cold for October, and I had foolishly left the house without putting on a coat over my burgundy wool suit, but I stood on the front terrace for several minutes, watching the sky.

  (I mention Terrance. It may seem confusing that I hadn’t demanded that he leave. But what power did I have? In history, there have been men called “the king’s men.” Terrance was Press’s man, a reality of Bliss House. I couldn’t reveal what I’d learned about him without telling Press about Olivia’s presence. And I would not give him more ammunition against me. You may be relieved to know that Terrance resolves the problem of Terrance without my help.)

  As I fled the hospital room, Holly called after me, and Jack—where had Jack come from?—caught my arm, trying to stop me, saying Holly was signaling that Rachel was waking up. My head felt wild and I was breathless, all because of a length of ribbon. Wedgwood blue velvet ribbon. So delicate and sweet, something one might stitch onto the edge of a baby boy’s smocked romper or coveralls.

  But I recognized it as the same ribbon that Eva had been wearing when she first came to see me in the morning room. Where was that ribbon now, and why couldn’t I remember her having it?

  Eva had loved ribbons and hair bows and frilly dresses in a way that I never had, though I confess I had loved to indulge her whims. Like her mother, Rachel, too, had often given Eva little presents: a new rabbit fur muff, pairs of lace-trimmed panties and socks, real fawn leather gloves, and dear little hats. I’d once teased Rachel, telling her she was trying to outfit Eva like she was Bonnie Blue Butler from Gone with the Wind. It had been little Bonnie Blue’s memorable death from a fall from a pony that had kept me from putting Eva on one, though Press had thought I was being silly.

  My reaction to the ribbon—hurrying from Rachel’s room like a dazed criminal—must have seemed bizarre to everyone who saw me there. Fuel to the rumors that were already being whispered.

  I was confused. Olivia had appeared to me in many different kinds of clothes, not just what she’d been wearing when she died. But hadn’t my visions of Eva been different? Eva had been so wet, always wearing the pink playsuit and ribbon and muddy sandals. Had Rachel brought the ribbon with her that evening and put it on Eva after she died, but before I’d been upstairs? And put shoes on her feet? No, it wasn’t possible.

  Perhaps I’d simply forgotten that Eva had brought back the ribbon from Rachel’s house on another day. She wasn’t quite at the age when she might acquire objects or words whose provenance was unknown to me. Children do eventually become connected to the world in ways we are not. Those first threads come slowly, but then new ones come, faster and faster, until our children are no longer exclusively ours. I felt another bit of Eva slip away.

  I didn’t yet know what the ribbon meant, but when I re-entered Bliss House, I was suddenly less troubled about it. Inside the preternaturally quiet hall, I felt my body relax, and I was finally warm. It would come to me.

  I couldn’t help my children or myself by worrying or being afraid. Not of Press. Not of the house. The worst thing that could happen to a mother had happened to me, and I had survived. But Michael was still with me and would be happy in Bliss House. He might go away to school for a while, and to work. Then he would perhaps come back with a family of his own and we would all live together.

  I looked up to the gallery and saw what I expected: the door to the yellow room, where J.C. had been sleeping, was open. I couldn’t be certain, but the house had a tangible emptiness that told me she was gone. There had been no cars or workmen’s trucks in sight. Everything was finished. It was a huge relief to me—not just the absence of J.C., but the absence of strangers in my home.

  It was my home, now. Press might bring any fool into it that he cared to, but I would be here to keep it safe for Eva and ready for when it became Michael’s.

  I looked into the kitchen, where Marlene was chopping vegetables for dinner.

  “I’m going upstairs to rest for a while. Were there any calls?”

  “No, Miss Charlotte. Shall I serve dinner at the usual time?”

  “Six o’clock is fine. Are Shelley and Michael in the nursery?”

  “She took him out to one of the farm ponds to see the geese. They’ve been making a terrible racket all day. I sent yesterday’s bread with them.”

  “But it’s so cold.”

  “They were bundled up.”

  With that, Marlene turned back to the vegetables and I knew our conversation was over.

  Not really satisfied that Michael was sufficiently warm, I thought for a moment that I might follow them out to the pond. But Nonie’s voice in my head told me to stop being such a worrier. Michael was safe with Shelley, who, while not terribly bright, had lots of experience with toddlers and animals.

  As I went upstairs, watched by all the expectant faces of the portraits lining the walls, I remembered that I’d missed another hair appointment. I had used a new round hairbrush and hairspray to keep my hair neat, and teased it, but perhaps it did need a trim. When I reached the second-floor gallery, I stopped at the gilt-framed Italian mirror that Olivia had sent home from one of her antique-shopping trips to New York.

  Holly had been wrong. The face looking back at me in the mirror didn’t look tired at all. My makeup was still fresh from the morning, and the area beneath my eyes held only a hint of a shadow. I liked the leaner lines of my face. Nonie had been gently harping at me for months to be more careful with my figure, and I guessed that now she might be satisfied.

  As I continued to my room, I passed beneath the corner of the third-floor gallery where Press’s father had hanged himself. I should have been horrified. Afraid. But I felt only pity.

  I spent the next two hours—with an interruption to have a snack with a ruddy-cheeked Michael who’d been very excited by the geese—moving my clothes and other belongings into Olivia’s room. It was where I belonged. Afterwards, I took Michael with me into the freshly painted ballroom while Shelley went to tidy the nursery.

  Despite a brisk draft coming from right in front of the ballroom’s generous fireplace, the ballroom was comfortable, and all the lights were working. I was relieved to see that the two brutal-looking metal eyes had been removed from the ceiling as I’d requested.

  Michael laughed as he alternately stumbled and ran after the two large rubber balls I’d brought for him to play with. When he tired, he sprawled on my lap and I showed him the pictures of the animals I would paint for him on the walls: Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, Jeremy Fisher, naughty Tom Kitten. Though I’m not sure if he understood me as I explained to him what I was going to do, and how the ballroom would be a special place for him to play, he seemed happy, and finally drowsy. Content.

  Because of the faint odor of paint in the room (are you wondering, as I did not at that moment, how the room had been transformed in so short a time? I had only engaged the painter three or four days earlier), I’d left the pocket doors open two feet or so. As Michael gently snored, I watched the sunlight fade on the theater doors across the hall and wondered how it must have changed since I’d last seen it. But I wasn’t in any hurry to know.

  It was the last truly happy afternoon Michael and I had together for a long, long time.

  Chapter 32

  Olivia Avenged

  In the days after J.C. left, Press spent much of his time away from the house, which suited me very well. I spent two peaceful nights in Olivia’s bed, but on the third night I awoke to a scent of roses so strong that it was like an assault.

  Olivia was waiting for me.

  Gathering the robe from the end of t
he bed, I rose anxiously and hurried into the morning room. Had it been she who had shown me the truth about Michael Searle’s suicide? (I had no belief in J.C.’s supposed brother and felt the fool for being duped into the séance.) Was I the only one alive who knew? I doubted that Press knew the whole truth about his parents. If he did, might it not make him more compassionate? No. That was wrong. His father—the man I believed to be his true father—had been a monster. There had been no kindness in him, and Press was fast becoming like him. It was, I guessed, a case of blood will out. But was it that Press was only now exhibiting madness that had been handed down to him at his birth, or was it that he was, God forbid, possessed by the spirit of the creature who had raped Olivia?

  The sheet was hung once again in the morning room, though I knew it hadn’t been earlier in the day. Terrance, I thought. Or, no. I certainly no longer needed rational explanations for what went on in Bliss House. I was far, far beyond that.

  I waited. The Magic Lantern flared to life with its slight odor of hot metal and oil. With its light, the chilled room warmed. There was no more of the frost that had been there that first night, and I felt an odd sense of normality about it all. Except that Eva wasn’t there. I feared that she had gone, driven away by Press and my own inability to help her.

  The details of what Olivia showed me that night are shamefully sordid. Though God knows I have already related enough to alarm even the most jaded of listeners. I can only say that—even though at times I had to look away myself—it was a scene of such great passion and tenderness that I don’t have the words to convey it.

  Olivia was in her bed. She held out her arms to Michael Searle, who was now naked and finally unashamed; he lay down with her, kissing the bruises and hideous bite marks inflicted by the old man—his own hideous, desiccated father—on her pale, lovely skin. The moonlight streaming through the windows cast much of the room in stark relief, but the reflection from the well-stoked fire was gold and lively on their flesh. I will tell you that there was no true consummation between them, because consummation wasn’t possible and had never been. But there was something more. There was an obvious, deep affection between them. Even, it might be said, love.

  You may ask how such a thing is possible between two people such as they. I had seen Michael Searle clearly the night before, and my vision had confirmed a suspicion that I hadn’t dared admit to myself. Michael Searle was a man, but, perhaps, also a woman. A hermaphrodite. His member was quite small, but his breasts were also gently developed. As he embraced Olivia with a languor that was both sensual and feminine, I could see that his body was nearly hairless, like a young girl’s. There was no awkwardness, but only tenderness between them.

  I felt no shock. Only pity. I saw the large corset lying over the chair, and I knew what pain Michael Searle must have endured every day of his life and why his chest was bruised and badly scarred. He had been forced to live completely as a man by the monster that was his own father—to hide his father’s shame in him. Seeing such tenderness between the two of them, I understood that there was no shame between Olivia and Michael Searle.

  My heart filled with feeling for them. For Olivia.

  When the door to the bedroom up on the screen flew open, Olivia screamed and held fiercely to Michael Searle. Terrance entered, with the old man leaning heavily upon him.

  Michael Searle pulled away from the clinging Olivia and, with a fierceness he hadn’t shown the last time his father and Terrance had been in the room, flew at his father, Randolph, his hands reaching for the hideous wattled throat. But Terrance, who in the present I knew to be ponderously slow, was too fast for him and shoved Michael Searle hard so that he fell, his head hitting the massive blanket chest at the end of the bed. I—along with Olivia—waited for him to rise, but he did not. Because I had witnessed his later suicide, I knew that he wasn’t dead, but I think Olivia did not know.

  The old man did not react beyond giving his son a rheumy glance, but fixed his gaze on Olivia. She was an object to him. A property. Though his own body was decrepit and dangerously fragile, everything about his presence spoke of confident ownership.

  Terrance turned from Michael Searle and went to steady the old man, who was speaking to Olivia. His words, like all the words spoken on that white screen, were unintelligible, but I had the impression that he spoke slowly. Their effect on Olivia was immediate. She looked from the old man to Terrance.

  What was she saying? I moved closer to the screen, feeling the increase in heat from the Magic Lantern, as though it were burning hotter.

  After speaking, Olivia closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded.

  As Terrance helped the old man up the bed stairs, a retainer helping a demon king onto his throne, I saw Olivia feel for the drawer in the bedside table. She took out a handkerchief, along with something else that flashed green and blue in the firelight.

  When the old man was finally on his knees over her—and I will not describe how he was readying himself because it makes me ill even to think of it—Olivia grimaced and swung the jewel-handled peacock knife into the side of his neck: once, twice, three times in quick succession.

  The screen went blank, and I was grateful. I had seen enough.

  How alone Olivia must have felt for the rest of her life! For a short time she had been loved, but then had to raise her son—perhaps the result of that first rape—alone. Bliss House had been thick with fear and hopelessness, and she had turned that hopelessness into some kind of strength. I had witnessed her strength and had thought it hauteur or disdain. What she had shown me horrified me. But I was also humbled.

  Chapter 33

  Press Revealed

  There was no more sleep that night. I huddled beneath a third blanket from the chest at the foot of Olivia’s bed, unable to get warm. In addition to turning on the bedside lamp, I also lighted a pair of candles, hoping for that much more heat. A book lay open beside me, but my mind was too filled with what I had seen.

  “I saw your light on.” Press hadn’t bothered to knock.

  Each of the preceding nights, I’d remembered to lock my door, and Press hadn’t—to my knowledge—tried the doorknob. My own complacency had betrayed me. Though I’d known I couldn’t put him off forever. In matters of sex, Press was rarely patient.

  He tossed his robe onto a nearby chair and got into bed with me, wearing a comfortable smile.

  I didn’t yet hate him then, but I couldn’t honestly say that I loved him anymore. How I wished there had been someone else to steal my affections. Someone gentle and kind and willing to take care of Michael and me.

  When I tried to turn away, he pulled me close. He was naked, and I felt the heat of his skin and the prickling of his body hair through my gown.

  “You know you can’t leave me, Charlotte.” He kissed my neck and rubbed his face against it, abrading it so that it stung. “You can’t have Michael unless you have me.”

  “I never said I wanted to leave you.”

  “But you moved out of our suite. Locked your door. You’ve been an ice princess ever since J.C. left. And she could’ve been very, very nice to you, my love.” He squeezed one of my nipples to punctuate his words, and I cried out softly. I couldn’t bear the thought of Shelley hearing us. What he was implying about J.C. and me was probably meant to shock me, but she had told me herself, hadn’t she? There was very little now that he could say that would shock me.

  I was still cold, and I hated that he burned with warmth beside me. But it was as if he were a stranger. Worse than a stranger. My body refused to respond to him.

  “You’re breaking my heart, my love. You’re not being a good wife, or a good mother. Everyone’s saying you look so tired. So unhappy. Tell me you’re not unhappy, my darling.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “You’re going to have to work a little harder to convince me. You were so mean to J.C. that she left here in tears. It takes a lot to make an old warhorse like J.C. cry. What did you do to her?”

&
nbsp; He continued to touch me gently, with his lips and his hands. I didn’t resist when he edged my thighs apart, but neither did I make it particularly easy for him. I knew it was my duty to let him exercise his husband’s privileges, but I wasn’t so naïve as to think what he was doing was right. It’s so hard to describe the change in him. In a matter of a few months, he’d gone from being my generous but slightly arrogant husband to a manipulative stranger. Yet the only things that had changed in our lives were the deaths of Olivia and Eva.

  “Didn’t you like J.C.? Is there someone you would like better?”

  I turned my face further into the pillow, which made him laugh. The sound of it was too close. Disheartening. We were utterly alone. In the nursery, not so many days ago (though it felt like a lifetime), I had at least felt someone else there, watching us. God knew it wasn’t right, but I preferred the presence of some unseen entity to that of my husband.

  “Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte. How precious you are. Promise you’ll always stay like this. So beautiful.”

  I lay there, waiting. Enduring. Thinking that Olivia had endured much worse. It hurt, but only because I couldn’t make myself respond. The things that had once brought me so much pleasure were like ancient rituals that had to be endured. There was no shame in them. Only sadness.

  When he finished, he used the pristine bedsheets—his mother’s sheets—to wipe himself clean. I tried to turn over so I didn’t have to look at him, but he grabbed my shoulder and jerked me back. It was the closest he’d ever come to touching me with violence.

  “I can play this game as long as you like. Just know that you are here for me until I decide I don’t need you anymore.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “We’ve had a wonderful time, haven’t we? No one could ever say I haven’t treated you like a queen.”

  “If you’re going to treat me like this, why in God’s name won’t you divorce me? Let me leave. It’s like you want to humiliate me. Are you going to continue to punish me for Eva?”