“I want no more girls. I don’t believe in his experiments. They have been full of danger for me as well as for the girl—an air bubble, and I should be gone. I’ll have no more of his dangerous quackery. I’ll find some new man—a better man than you, sir, a discoverer like Pasteur, or Virchow, a genius—to keep me alive. Take your girl away, young man. Marry her if you like. I’ll write her a check for a thousand pounds, and let her go and live on beef and beer, and get strong and plump again. I’ll have no more such experiments. Do you hear, Parravicini?” she screamed, vindictively, the yellow, wrinkled face distorted with fury, the eyes glaring at him.
The Staffords carried Bella Rolleston off to Varese next day, she very loath to leave Lady Ducayne, whose liberal salary afforded such help for the dear mother. Herbert Stafford insisted, however, treating Bella as coolly as if he had been the family physician, and she had been given over wholly to his care.
“Do you suppose your mother would let you stop here to die?” he asked. “If Mrs. Rolleston knew how ill you are, she would come posthaste to fetch you.”
“I shall never be well again till I get back to Walworth,” answered Bella, who was low-spirited and inclined to tears this morning, a reaction after her good spirits of yesterday.
“We’ll try a week or two at Varese first,” said Stafford. “When you can walk halfway up Monte Generoso without palpitation of the heart, you shall go back to Walworth.”
“Poor mother, how glad she will be to see me, and how sorry that I’ve lost such a good place.”
This conversation took place on the boat when they were leaving Bellaggio. Lotta had gone to her friend’s room at seven o’clock that morning, long before Lady Ducayne’s withered eyelids had opened to the daylight, before even Francine, the French maid, was astir, and had helped to pack a Gladstone bag with essentials, and hustled Bella downstairs and out of doors before she could make any strenuous resistance.
“It’s all right,” Lotta assured her. “Herbert had a good talk with Lady Ducayne last night and it was settled for you to leave this morning. She doesn’t like invalids, you see.”
“No,” sighed Bella, “she doesn’t like invalids. It was very unlucky that I should break down, just like Miss Tomson and Miss Blandy.”
“At any rate, you are not dead, like them,” answered Lotta, “and my brother says you are not going to die.”
It seemed rather a dreadful thing to be dismissed in that off-hand way, without a word of farewell from her employer.
“I wonder what Miss Torpinter will say when I go to her for another situation,” Bella speculated, ruefully, while she and her friends were breakfasting onboard the steamer.
“Perhaps you may never want another situation,” said Stafford.
“You mean that I may never be well enough to be useful to anybody?”
“No, I don’t mean anything of the kind.”
It was after dinner at Varese, when Bella had been induced to take a whole glass of Chianti, and quite sparkled after that unaccustomed stimulant, that Mr. Stafford produced a letter from his pocket.
“I forgot to give you Lady Ducayne’s letter of adieu,” he said.
“What, did she write to me? I am so glad—I hated to leave her in such a cool way; for after all she was very kind to me, and if I didn’t like her it was only because she was too dreadfully old.”
She tore open the envelope. The letter was short and to the point:
Goodbye, child. Go and marry your doctor. I enclose a farewell gift for your trousseau.
ADELINE DUCAYNE
“A hundred pounds, a whole year’s salary—no—why, it’s for a—a check for a thousand!” cried Bella. “What a generous old soul! She really is the dearest old thing.”
“She just missed being very dear to you, Bella,” said Stafford.
He had dropped into the use of her Christian name while they were onboard the boat. It seemed natural now that she was to be in his charge till they all three went back to England.
“I shall take upon myself the privileges of an elder brother till we land at Dover,” he said; “after that—well, it must be as you please.”
The question of their future relations must have been satisfactorily settled before they crossed the Channel, for Bella’s next letter to her mother communicated three startling facts.
First, that the enclosed check for one thousand pounds was to be invested in debenture stock in Mrs. Rolleston’s name, and was to be her very own, income and principal, for the rest of her life.
Next, that Bella was going home to Walworth immediately.
And last, that she was going to be married to Mr. Herbert Stafford in the following autumn.
And I am sure you will adore him, mother, as much as I do, wrote Bella. It is all good Lady Ducayne’s doing. I never could have married if I had not secured that little nest-egg for you. Herbert says we shall be able to add to it as the years go by, and that wherever we live there shall be always a room in our house for you. The word “mother-in-law” has no terrors for him.
LUNCH AT CHARON’S
Melanie Tem
Melanie Tem (1949–2015) was presented with the British Fantasy Society’s Icarus Award for Most Promising Newcomer in 1992. Her short fiction is collected in The Ice Downstream and Singularities, while In Concert and the Bram Stoker Award–winning Imagination Box both featured collaborations with her husband, the writer Steve Rasnic Tem.
The couple also collaborated on the multiple award–winning novella “The Man on the Ceiling,” which they later expanded into a full-length work, and another novel entitled Daughters. Melanie Tem’s solo novels include the Stoker Award–winning Prodigal, Blood Moon, The Wilding, Revenant, Desmodus, Tides, Black River, Slain in the Spirit, The Deceiver, The Yellow Wood and two collaborations with Nancy Holder, Making Love and Witch-Light.
About “Lunch at Charon’s,” the author explained: “My eighty-three-year-old friend is expected to be flattered when people tell her she doesn’t look her age. My twenty-five-year-old friend weeps over the first crow’s feet at the corner of her eye. My sixty-year-old friend says his body has betrayed him because it’s slowing down. Hardly anybody wants to call death out of the shadows and make friends with it.
“All this has something to do with the vampire mythos, I think, and also something to do with the genesis of this story.”
AMY ALGHIERI IS dead.
That’s three out of four. Leaving only me.
I heard about Amy at the gym this morning. She didn’t work out obviously—but she and my personal trainer Vonda were close; Amy’d been Vonda’s physics professor in college, and a friendship had developed. “A massive stroke,” she told me, keeping a critical eye on my workout. “Out of the blue. She was in the grocery store and just collapsed. The baby was in the grocery cart.”
Chills raced through me, as happened whenever I heard about something like this: how could you protect yourself against lightning from a clear sky? Reminding myself that what had happened to Amy might not be as random as it seemed only made my horror more complicated. “God,” I panted, grimly maintaining the rhythm of the arm curls and the breathing that supported them, “that’s awful.”
“Come on, Madyson, focus. Push it.”
My given name is a dowdy, old-fashioned moniker common to women of my generation. I think of Madyson as my taken name. Madyson—young, fresh, more appropriate for someone in her twenties than nearing fifty, to go with my taken body and, presumably, my taken soul. I like the sound of it, the way it looks on the page. I like the y. I like what it projects about me.
I obeyed Vonda’s command and managed to extend my arms ten more times with the weight, heavier than any I’d pressed before, steady in my hands. The burn across my shoulders and pecs was gratifying. Between controlled inhalations and exhalations I said, “That’s terrible.”
Vonda said, eyeing me critically, trying to do her job but, I saw now, trembling and exhausted. By this point in the workout she would ordinari
ly have given me both encouragement and instruction; although I understood, of course, why she hadn’t this morning, I found myself working harder, pushing harder, going a little beyond the goals she’d set for me, in hopes of catching her attention. It wasn’t approval I craved from her so much as assurance—that I was strong and healthy, that I was looking good, that I was doing everything I could.
“She was dead before the paramedics got there.”
“Wow.” I shuddered, and added quite sincerely, “That’s really tragic.”
“You never think of somebody in their forties having a stroke.”
“It happens,” I said carefully, getting up off the mat.
Vonda gave me a quick one-armed hug, the equivalent of men swatting each other’s butts. “Okay, you can go to the sauna now.”
She turned to leave me for one of her other charges, but I stopped her by demanding shamelessly, “So, how’d I do?”
I had to settle for a distracted, somewhat impatient, “Fine, Madyson. You did fine.” She gave me a dismissive wave and strode across the gym. I glared after her, thwarted and insulted, soothing myself with the vitriolic thought that the only interest I had in a relationship with this lithe and self-sufficient young woman was what I could get from her. In the locker room I stripped, noting with pleasure the firmness of my new breasts and the tautness of my ass, reveling in the appraising glances of the other women and thinking about the last time I’d seen Amy.
We met for lunch at Charon’s to say goodbye to Kit. We didn’t quite acknowledge that. We said it was because Denise was in town and the four of us hadn’t been together since she’d moved to Austin. Even when Amy called me to set it up, she didn’t say, “This might be the last chance we have to see Kit.”
Denise and I had snagged a window table, and I saw Kit’s Beemer pull up, her husband behind the wheel. He parked in the handicap space by the door and went around to help Kit out; she hadn’t even opened the door. It took long minutes for her to maneuver onto her feet and, leaning on Jerry and visibly off balance, long minutes more before they made it into the restaurant. When a few days earlier I’d spent the evening at her house, she’d felt papery in my arms, like an origami flower; her fingers on my shoulders, though, had been unnervingly strong, a death grip already. Her bones had seemed about to snap under my very light massage, but she’d sighed that it felt so good; fascinated by her absolute hairlessness, I’d rubbed her legs for a long time, gently, envying their incredible smoothness, tempted to lay my cheek against her calf.
Kit had never been beautiful, but her exuberant nature had made her very attractive to a lot of people. We’d met the year we both turned forty-three. She’d just taken up skiing and was learning to clog dance. My breasts had begun to sag and more often than not my lower back hurt. We were in a yoga class together. We took to practicing between classes at her house or mine. When we helped each other with poses—her arm against the small of my back, my hands at her ankles and knees—I first marveled at, then absorbed, then siphoned off the energy I needed. I knew her heart was failing about five years before she did.
Denise had not commented on my appearance beyond a generic, “Hi, Madyson! It’s so good to see you! You look great!” while we hugged hello, the kind of thing women routinely say to each other with hardly any actual referent. Most people are surprised by how young I look; Denise said nothing about it. She did not look young. She looked our age. Healthy and strong, I had to admit, but thirty pounds heavier than I’d have settled for and with wrinkles and graying hair it would have been easy to get rid of. The longer I live the less I understand women like her. They give me the creeps.
“There’s Kit,” I said.
“Where?”
“With the red turban.”
“My God.” There was a pause while we watched Kit waft the short distance to the door. She hardly seemed to be touching the ground. “She’s really sick, isn’t she? She’s really dying.” Her voice broke.
For a moment Denise hid her eyes. I noted the stubby fingernails, clean and coated with clear polish but entirely functional, the nails of a middle-aged mother and grandmother who cooked and cleaned and gardened and played and otherwise put her hands to use. Her lack of self-consciousness about her hands was disgusting, and I looked for solace to my own slim, smooth, tastefully ringed fingers on my glass of iced tea. To my horror, the polish on the right thumb had a minuscule but perfectly obvious chip, and on the left ring finger the cuticle was not perfectly smooth. For the rest of the lunch I did everything possible not to draw attention to my hands, which were usually one of my best features; I’d have to make an emergency call to my manicurist as soon as I got home, since obviously I couldn’t wait for the standing weekly appointment.
“It’s such a shock to see her like this,” Denise said. “You’ve been with her all through it so you must be almost used to it, but I didn’t imagine this. What am I going to say to her?”
Amy came up behind Kit and put a thick arm around her thin waist. Always on the chunky side, Amy had put on even more weight since the last time I’d seen her. Maybe she wouldn’t be called obese in any clinical sense, and she certainly wasn’t slovenly; her turquoise dress looked nice, and her loose chignon accentuated her flawless skin and wonderful green eyes. But she was fat. The contrast between them was breathtaking: Kit translucent, ethereal, used up; Amy substantial to a fault.
Under the table I rested my hands on my own flattened belly, murmuring to Denise, “I think I’d kill myself if I looked like that.” Denise looked at me as if this were a bizarre thing to say.
When Kit and Amy approached the table, Denise sprang to her feet, smiling and overenthusiastically exclaiming, “Hi! Amy! Kit! It’s so good to see you! You look great!” She hugged Kit first, very gently, and pulled out a chair for her. After Amy settled her into it, she and Denise embraced; from the stiff angle of Amy’s upper body I guessed she was taking pains not to compromise her hair or makeup or clothes just for the sake of human contact, and my estimation of her rose a few notches. Denise, on the other hand, hugged her fiercely, and spent the rest of the lunch with one side of her hair sticking out. How any woman could care so little about her appearance is beyond me.
I smiled at Kit and touched her skeletal wrist. I really did care about her. “Hi,” I said softly to her, under the din Denise was making. “How are you doing, sweetie?”
The others had taken their seats before Kit had gathered herself to answer, “I’m tired, Madyson. I don’t have much left. I’m almost done.”
Without brows or lashes, her facial expressions were all but impossible to interpret, but I thought she looked at me then as if she suspected something, unlikely as that seemed. Guilt broke through and set my stomach roiling, followed by the terror that is never far away. Mortality, which is to say death, took its place with us at the table, and I hurriedly excused myself. As I passed behind Kit, I touched the chill back of her neck, in a gesture of love and apology, gratitude and farewell.
Charon’s has a truly remarkable ladies’ room. In the spacious anteroom are three-way floor-length mirrors, a long vanity with tissues and cotton balls and individual mirrors, dispensers for lotions and astringent cleansers, little squirt bottles of antistatic and hairspray, nail buffers, a vending machine dispensing individual vials of various scents at a cost per ounce as exorbitant as if it were Parisian perfume. The line for Charon’s ladies’ room often stretch out the door.
That day only two or three other women were ahead of me, and while I waited I took stock. I’d checked myself at home, of course, as part of my morning regimen, and again at the gym, but you couldn’t be too sure. Under cover of smoothing my clothes, I assured myself that the work on stomach, breasts, and buttocks was holding. Thighs below the leather miniskirt were firm and free of varicosity. There was no loose flesh on the backs of upper arms, no crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes or mouth. All exposed skin, of which there was a considerable amount, was taut and moist. My hair swung nicely
in the simple, youthful shoulder-length bob my hairdresser had recommended, his expert highlights creating exactly the right aura of light and lightness around my face. Although I was still not entirely satisfied with my lips and nose, my brows arched perfectly and my breasts finally were the size and shape I wanted.
But as I regarded myself in every possible mirror and combination of mirrors, I saw death encroaching. Saw my organs aging, my hair graying and thinning, the skin of my elbows wrinkling like dried fruit. Saw the crabwalk of deterioration advancing.
The effort it took to keep all this at bay—one day, one procedure, one friend at a time—was staggering. I could scarcely do anything else.
When on the way back to my friends I caught sight of Kit, faintly nodding at something Amy was saying, I realized I’d had the fantasy that in the time I was absent she’d have slipped away; at the same time, I’d been hoping she’d still be available to me for a little while. Love for her brought tears to my eyes; careful not to smudge my mascara, I dabbed them away. It was plain to see that Kit was now quite beyond my reach. So, regretfully but without hesitation, I turned my attention elsewhere.
Denise had a hefty lunch, including dessert. Amy and I had salads. We chatted stiffly; it was hard to come up with safe conversation with Kit among us. Talking about the future, even next week, seemed ghoulish. Talking about the present made Kit’s illness the elephant at the table nobody could forget but nobody mentioned. Talking about our shared past reminded us of what was gone. Kit didn’t take part in the conversation much and, although she ordered something, she didn’t eat, just took a sip of water now and then, slowly and with great care.
Denise was into a somewhat manic recounting of her recent expedition climbing Colorado’s fourteeners. “Not bad for a fifty-one-year-old grandmother, huh?” she crowed more than once. Amy was looking increasingly pained. I guessed that Denise was desperate to fill silence, to talk about anything other than the elephant, but I allowed myself to half-believe that her insensitivity justified what I was about to do.
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 47
