The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  Faye gave a little laugh, but there was genuine concern in her eyes.

  “Darling, you’re not going to die.” She disengaged Lucy’s hand and took it in both of hers. “It’s just one of those things that will have to blow over.”

  “No! I have to get away from here. You have to help me. What if they send me away? Far away? I dreamed that I was on an island, and I couldn’t swim off of it because there were sharks and those awful stinging rays in the water everywhere. Do you remember when we tried to picnic on that island in the James? And there was that nest of snakes, and we got scared and had to leave? It was like that, only I had no boat.”

  Faye sat on the edge of the couch. “Sharks? You dreamed of sharks in the James? I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “Listen, darling. Why don’t you come stay at my house? At least until your mother’s birthday party on Friday. If you like we’ll get Josiah’s father to look at you. Really, Lucy. You’re not yourself at all. I wish I hadn’t let you go on your own to that foolish lecture. Then your parents could have blamed me, instead of you, for all of this. I know they think I’m some kind of Satan’s spawn, despite Mummy and Daddy being in their set.” She lowered her voice. “Thank goodness they didn’t see us on May Day. You would be in a nunnery by now.”

  There was a polite knock on the door, and Carrie came in with tea and slices of lemon cake.

  After arranging things on the table beside the couch, she picked up the breakfast tray. But before leaving the room, she addressed Faye. “I beg your pardon, Miss Archer. Missus Searle told me to ask you to encourage Miss Lucy to have a bit of cake.”

  Faye nodded. “Oh, I will.”

  Carrie cast a glance at Lucy that said, I’m just acting as the messenger. But Carrie was also the only one in her parents’ house that she could trust. As she left she closed the door softly behind her.

  “I told them I don’t want to come to the party. I don’t feel like a party.”

  “We’ll go to the river house for a few days. Mummy won’t go down unless Daddy’s there, and he’s in Richmond until the end of the week. You’ll feel so much better if you get out of here. I’ll have Mummy send the invitation. You know your mother can’t say no to her.”

  “But I’ll still have to come back for the party.”

  “You’ll probably feel like it by then. You’ll see.”

  Even as Faye pressed a plate with a slice of lemon cake on her, Lucy was thinking about how she might get to Bliss House from the Archers’ river house. Faye would certainly forgive her if she left for just a short visit.

  The urge to get back to Bliss House had begun to feel like a desperate need. It was as though she had left some unknown part of herself in its vast hall. A part of her that she hadn’t realized up to now was inside her, like a secret part of her soul. If she couldn’t get back there, and, perhaps, back to Randolph, she truly felt as though she would fade and die.

  Chapter 10

  LUCY

  June 1899

  “Would you like anything before I go to bed, Miss Lucy?” Carrie stood in the doorway with a lamp. The river house was cool, so much cooler than the house in town, and Carrie wore a shawl over her shoulders. A hint of a smile played at her lips as she related that “Miss Faye” had told her she wouldn’t need anything more this evening.

  It had been a happy compromise for Carrie to come along to the river house. Selina hadn’t wanted Lucy to go to the house unaccompanied, and Pinky Archer had told Faye that they could use the house, but that she couldn’t spare a maid. Lucy’s father had been uncertain about the plan, but Selina had, indeed, been unable to say no where her friend Pinky was concerned. Lucy wondered what the mothers would say if they knew that now, just down the hall, in the parlor at the front of the house, Josiah Beard was furiously making love to Faye. After dinner Lucy had politely excused herself, and Faye and Josiah had made equally polite protestations, but Lucy suspected that Josiah would still be in the house when morning came.

  After dismissing Carrie, Lucy lay listening to the sounds outside her open window. There were no voices as there sometimes were in town in the early evening, only the peepers and the frogs living near the river’s edge croaking at one another. In the far distance coyotes yipped and howled.

  There was a softer sound: the whicker of the mare, Nutmeg, that had brought her with Carrie to the house. The river house had a small barn with a paddock, and they had left Nutmeg loose to come and go from the barn as she pleased. It would be nothing to hook her up to the trap, or even to saddle her with one of the saddles from the barn’s tack room. They could be at Bliss House before eleven. In one more day they had to return to town, and while she felt much better, she knew she lacked the boldness it would take to carry her to the barn, then onto the dark roads that would lead her to Bliss House.

  Was she even wanted there? Randolph had never written her or invited her back. She turned in her bed and threw off the blankets and got up to stand at the window. Perhaps the big chandelier was lighted, and Bliss House was full of people. Maybe there was a party to which she hadn’t been invited. Perhaps Randolph was in one of the darkened bedrooms with some other woman. How had she ever imagined that she might be mistress of Bliss House? She was just a silly girl. She had nothing to offer. Surely his wife Amelia had had money and position, and there were plenty of other older, wealthier, and more beautiful women—if not here, then in the places he traveled—who could be mistress of his house, and of his bed.

  She flushed to think of how shy she had felt at the Maypole dance. So virginal!

  Hearing footsteps and quiet laughter in the hallway, she hurried back to bed, feeling miserable. She envied Faye and couldn’t help but hear the hushed tones of Josiah’s deep voice as they entered the bedroom beside hers and closed the door.

  There was quiet laughter, and then the voices stopped. She closed her eyes and was in the room with Faye and Josiah.

  Josiah unhooking Faye’s corset, hungrily putting his mouth to her breast. And Faye pulling at his snowy white summer shirt, laughing as a button falls to the floor. There is no worry because Faye is handy with a needle, and if she chooses, Carrie can be trusted to sew it back on.

  A scrape of furniture on the uncarpeted floor. Josiah is in Faye’s bed, and they are naked as they were at the Maypole. As he lowers himself to Faye, Lucy remembers the taste of his warm lips on her own, and the bulge of him against her hand.

  But as Lucy touched herself in her own bed, it was Randolph’s face she imagined, Randolph’s broader shoulders outlined against the ceiling above her. Randolph who entered her as Faye cried out in the next room. Randolph was hers and she was his and they were together in his house, their house, and the moon outside was full and shining, and the only cries heard in the house were their own as they were united, body and soul.

  Josiah was gone when Lucy came out of her room in the morning.

  The sunshine of the day before had turned to rain, and Faye slept until noon. When she emerged, dressed and famished, they ate a meal of bread and cheese and strawberries, then sat together on the gliding swing on the front porch, watching the river.

  “Your parents won’t know you. You look so much better.”

  “Well, you look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”

  Faye laughed. “I know what’s good for me. Plenty of fresh air, yes?”

  “I’m sure that’s what did it. The fresh air.” Lucy’s voice was teasing.

  “It’s not all a game, you know.” Faye was suddenly serious. “He’s going to ask for my hand, and then we’ll have to play by all the stupid rules that everyone has to play by. I hope he doesn’t turn into a stick like his father after we’re married.”

  “I hope some part of him stays like a stick, anyway.”

  “Lucy Searle! I can’t believe you’d say that.”

  “But I did, didn’t I?” Lucy was still somewhat giddy with the sense of pleasure she had felt the night before. She suspected that she should feel ashamed that F
aye and Josiah’s activities in Faye’s room had played a part in it, but she could not. There would be plenty of time for shame when she returned to her parents’ house.

  Her secret pleasure helped her feel less hopeless than she had the day before. She and Carrie would go back home, and she would somehow find a way to see Randolph, if, indeed, she learned that he wanted to see her. Her parents couldn’t stop her. If they threatened to throw her out, she would make her own way: teaching piano or giving singing lessons. She had enough money to buy a small cottage from a legacy her grandmother had left her. She would not starve.

  “If I were poor, would you still be my friend?”

  Faye laughed. “You’re not going to be poor, you goose. So what does it matter?”

  “If I left my parents’ house, I might be. What then?”

  Faye looked out at the river, her fingers tracing the floral design inlaid into the arm of the glider. “When you leave your parents’ house, you’re not going to be poor. I promise.”

  A few hours later, Lucy awoke from a nap to find Faye standing in her doorway.

  “Put something pretty on, and come help me do my hair, then I’ll do yours. I have a surprise.” She shut the door and was gone.

  At six-fifteen they were sitting in the parlor, Faye looking as though she would burst with excitement. They heard heavy footsteps on the porch, and Carrie hurried to answer the knock that followed. Josiah removed his hat and stepped inside, smiling broadly when he saw Faye. Lucy was disappointed, thinking that he wasn’t much of a surprise. Faye hadn’t said he was coming, but Lucy had half expected him.

  She hadn’t expected that he would not be alone.

  Randolph.

  Chapter 11

  KIKU

  September 1878

  Kiku had never met anyone like Odette, so forward and yet so sensitive. She was protective of her husband, Mason, but also expected him to do all the things she wished him to do without complaint. If Odette reminded Kiku of anyone at all, it was her own mother.

  For those first few weeks, Odette came every day, but never when Randolph was there. Kiku didn’t understand how Odette knew when he was there and when he wasn’t, as he never announced that he was coming. When Kiku noticed the pattern, she gathered her nerve and asked her about it.

  “Why, I see if his walking stick is on the porch. How did you think I knew? Did you think I asked the birds sitting in the trees or something? How would you have known?”

  Kiku thought for a moment, and said that she would probably have looked in the bedroom window to see if they were in bed together, because whenever Randolph came to the house, he was likely to bed her.

  Odette pursed her lips, then broke into a smile that illuminated her whole face. “Oh, you’re playing with me now.”

  Kiku looked puzzled.

  “You mean you would look in people’s windows to see if they were shaking the sheets to see if they were home?”

  Kiku nodded.

  “They must do things a lot differently in Japan, or even in New York, if you think that’s the way people should behave. That’s just rude, Kiku. People don’t like to be spied on.”

  There had been a special room at Madame Jewel’s that all the girls knew had a hole drilled into the wall with a covering on the other side to hide the light. Certain types of men preferred to watch rather than participate. If they were to watch another paying customer, with or without his knowledge (some men had actually enjoyed being watched by other men, to Kiku’s amusement), it cost less than it did for him to watch two of the girls in the room together. Kiku herself had only been asked to participate with another girl once, and the girl had been Emerald, so it hadn’t been too alarming. The hardest part had been trying not to laugh when it was her turn to pretend to be the man. Emerald had whispered that she needed not to act silly, that if they did a very good job, the man who was paying would make sure that Madame Jewel gave them each a tip of two dollars, which was an enormous sum as a tip for forty-five minutes’ work that wasn’t really work at all.

  Kiku didn’t tell Odette this story, suspecting that it would make her frown. Maybe someday, when they knew each other better.

  Today, Odette was teaching her to make cornbread.

  “Did you put in the baking powder? You can make it without, but it’s better with it. Or else it lies flat in the pan.”

  Kiku looked around for the small crock of white powder that Odette had given her and saw that she had never opened it. She asked Odette to tell her again how much to put in. When she was done mixing, Odette helped her pour the mixture into the hot, buttered, heavy pan that would go in the oven.

  The stove was identical to the one in Odette and Mason’s kitchen, and burned wood rather than coal, as the stove in Madame Jewel’s kitchen had. Mason brought Kiku to their house, which was near the newly planted orchards, on evenings when he knew Randolph would be away from Bliss House overnight. At first she had been reluctant to go, fearful that Randolph would return unexpectedly. But she’d been excited, too, to see where Odette and Mason lived.

  “I don’t like to make cornbread on top of the stove like some do, so you’re just going to learn it my way.”

  So far Odette’s ways had been working well. Kiku had been in the cottage for a month and had gained a small amount of weight, which had pleased Randolph.

  “Now no one could mistake you for a goddamn boy, except for that hair,” he had told her.

  There was another reason she was gaining weight. For several months in a row, she had missed her monthly cycle. In the two months before leaving New York, she had lied to Madame Jewel, stealing one of Jet’s bloody rags to show as evidence of her menstruation. If a girl missed more than two months of her cycle, she was sent to the abortionist who lived in the next block. Abortions were expensive, and Madame Jewel took the cost out of their wages, even though none of them wanted to be pregnant on purpose. There were surely also abortionists in Virginia, but she was afraid of them.

  For almost the entire month since she had arrived at the cottage, she had had to run outside to the privy to throw up. What would Randolph do when he learned of the child? He already had a daughter, Tamora, but Odette said there was something badly wrong with her. Perhaps Randolph’s wife could not give him more children, and he would be pleased about her bearing him one. The idea of having a child was strange to her, but at least with a child, she would never be lonely. Whatever the case, she would not be able to hide it much longer.

  When the cornbread was in the oven, Odette followed Kiku outside to watch her fill a bucket of water at the pump.

  “So where exactly did you meet Mister Bliss, Kiku? You’ve never said.”

  Kiku considered for a moment, letting the icy water run over her hands, cooling them. It was still hot. Hotter than it had ever gotten in the fishing village she had grown up in. She missed her family very much, but she wasn’t sorry to be away from the ocean. The journey from Japan to New York had taken six months, and she had come to hate the sight of it. The ocean had taken her life away from her, and if she ever saw it again, she would turn her back on it in defiance. Refuse to bathe in it. Refuse to eat the fish that swam in it. She didn’t care if it meant that she starved to death.

  “Where do you imagine we met?” She turned the question back on the taller woman, but Odette was not the least bit piqued.

  “I think he met you in a whorehouse is what I think. No one but fancy girls wear dresses like the ones you came with. Those aren’t ladies’ dresses.”

  Randolph had sent Odette to Lynchburg to buy Kiku some dresses more suitable for wearing in Virginia, as well as some fabric to make more. But he hadn’t allowed Kiku to go along.

  “Can’t have you getting lost in the fleshpots of Lynchburg, my dear.” He had picked up his cane before heading down the porch stairs. “A rare flower like you is sure to be noticed and snapped up by someone who knows a treasure when he sees it. Odette is formidable, but she’d be no protection for you, and I can’t spar
e Mason.” That Kiku was not allowed to go along had been further confirmation that she was a kind of prisoner at the cottage, despite not being locked in or chained inside, as she had been afraid she might be.

  The news that dresses like the ones she had brought with her were only worn by prostitutes took her by surprise. She had always thought them beautiful.

  Odette saw Kiku’s surprise, but she pressed on.

  “And why shouldn’t they have been fancy, if that’s what you were? Or—” She stopped, but to Kiku’s ears, she might have well have finished her sentence by saying, “are.”

  Up to that day, Kiku hadn’t worried much about being what everyone called a whore or prostitute. It was a fact of her life, a fact over which she had no control. At home, she had heard of prostitutes. Prostitutes were made for sex, and they were licensed by the government for pleasure. Her father’s brother spoke often of his favorite prostitute outside the gates of the city. There was not so much shame at home as there seemed to be in the United States.

  “I was doing work in Madame Jewel’s house, and for that I was paid. Randolph was one of the men who came to the house, and soon he reserved me for himself.”

  Odette regarded her, her arms folded. “Well, that sounds like the truth. Sounds like something Mister Bliss would do, keep his favorite toy away from the other children. He’s greedy like that.”

  Kiku carefully carried the full bucket to the steps of the cottage’s back porch.

  “I will tell you how I came here. Will you sit with me?”

  She held out her hand to Odette, who looked at her curiously.

  “Out here? We can’t forget about the cornbread. It only cooks for twenty minutes or so.”

  “It is hot inside. When I am inside the house, surrounded by walls, I cannot think of how I came here without feeling like the walls will close, becoming smaller and smaller, until I cannot breathe anymore. Then there will be no more air, and I will die.”