The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  LUCY

  May 1908

  Lucy parked the Packard well down the street from the butcher’s shop and got out to walk. One day she had chanced to exit out the back door of the flower shop and saw that there was a small courtyard onto which many of the shops opened. It was pleasant there, with a well pump and a few small benches. Almost like a park. The Crockers and several other shopkeepers lived above their shops or rented out the living quarters, so it wasn’t unusual to see laundry hanging from post to post. In all, the courtyard had an appealing, European look about it. And she knew exactly where the gate was where she could gain entry without being noticed on the street.

  No one stopped or appeared to see her take the stairs up to the apartment above the butcher’s shop. In her hands she carried a bouquet of flowers and a small basket of cakes the cook had hurriedly made for her earlier in the day. She rang the bell.

  Carrie’s face appeared at the curtain behind the glass, and Lucy saw how she bit her lip, anxious, before she opened the door.

  “I’ve brought some things for Missus Crocker. I’m sure she’s not well enough to see me.”

  Carrie let her into the apartment’s roomy kitchen. Up here, there were the smells of liniment and marrow broth, instead of blood. At least now, she thought, it might smell of flowers, too.

  “Thank you. I’m sure she’ll like them very much.” Carrie took the flowers and cakes and laid them on the scarred wooden table that held crumbs of bread and a curled cheese rind. Perhaps the remnants of her own lunch.

  “I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes, Carrie. Do you mind?”

  “Not in here. Let’s go down to the courtyard.”

  Neither of them was under any mistaken impression about the nature of Lucy’s visit. Carrie left for a moment to check on her aunt.

  “What happened to you, Carrie? Why did you leave?”

  Carrie’s hands were restive in her lap, her fingers plucking at the edges of her apron pocket.

  “I didn’t want to worry you, you being on your honeymoon, and all. Your parents were already so angry. The cook came to see me, and I explained, and she said your mother was in a perfect rage, and that your father was worried. I tried to tell her that all would be well, and that Mister Randolph had improved my salary. I told the cook you were happy, Miss Lucy. That she should tell them that.”

  Lucy reached out to squeeze the other woman’s hand. “Thank you for that. It’s their fault they wouldn’t listen. Nobody ever blamed you. I think my father would even have taken you back.”

  She regretted the last part immediately when she saw Carrie’s face fall. “Oh, do you think he would have?”

  Lucy nodded, but continued quickly, “I’m sorry you were unhappy at Bliss House. It meant so much to me to know that you were there, waiting. I had no idea Randolph and I would be gone so long.”

  Carrie sighed. “I should have written you again before I left.” She touched the scar tissue on her neck. It seemed an unconscious gesture, as it had seemed when she did it in her uncle’s shop.

  “Who did that to you?” To Lucy’s surprise, Carrie didn’t hesitate to speak, and the words came in a flood.

  “Terrance wouldn’t leave me alone. He followed me everywhere. Every time he caught me alone, he stood over me. Staring. Asking me questions, telling me I was—telling me I was pretty, and that I should leave my door unlocked at night so he might come and visit me.” She shook her head. “You hear of women doing such things, it’s true. But I never gave him any leave, or even so much as a look, I swear to you. I swore to Odette, but she wouldn’t listen and said that I should just ignore him, that he was lonely and only wanted to be my friend.”

  That Odette would take such a position did not sound like the Odette that she knew, but Lucy did not say.

  “I locked my door, and even pushed the little dresser against it at night, and he caught me in one of the upstairs rooms as I was dusting, and told me he had seen the marks on the floor, and that he’d heard me pushing it, and that it didn’t matter because he could make me let him in.”

  “But he couldn’t. There were others in the house, yes? Surely Mason wouldn’t have let him hurt you.”

  The look that Carrie gave her told her she was being naïve. And of course she was. Carrie had had no friends at Bliss House, just as Lucy herself had had no friends in Paris.

  “That’s when I wrote you.”

  “But you were vague, Carrie. You didn’t tell me he was threatening you. How was I to know?”

  The way Randolph had laughed and shaken his head when she had told him Carrie had written that she and Terrance weren’t getting along. “When the master’s away, oh, how they’ll play!” He had brushed it off, and so had she because of her own turmoil. Yes, she should have known. Should have taken better care.

  “He said the first day he saw me with you, the day we saw the preacher woman, that I looked at him. He said he knew that I was meant to come to him. That Mister Bliss had agreed.”

  So, the truth. Arranged between them. Mister Bliss had agreed.

  Two weeks later, after many sleepless nights with the dresser against her door, she had decided to go to Lucy’s father’s church, to beg him, after the service, to let her return to her job. She said she wanted to make herself look especially nice, as the Episcopal church was where the richer families went, and she didn’t want the Reverend Searle to think her disrespectful. So she had taken her curling iron to heat it in the stove, and was alone in the kitchen when Terrance came in. At first she thought he would let her by, but then he tried to grab her, and she held him at bay with the heated curling iron. But he was too fast for her and took it from her and held it against her neck.

  “The smell was awful. Like pig’s flesh over a fire.” Carrie looked away, sickened by the memory.

  They sat, silent, Lucy imagining the iron burning Carrie’s skin. The cruelty on Terrance’s face. She had never known him to be so wicked, but she didn’t doubt Carrie’s words. She was heartsick.

  “My aunt and uncle had told me my position at Bliss House was a good one, and I needed to make it work. I couldn’t tell them that I was afraid.”

  “Did you tell them what Terrance did? Did you tell Odette?”

  “Odette gave me enough money to get to my mother and another job in Norfolk County, and told me I should have left long before. That I was a plague to Terrance because he wasn’t used to having pretty girls in the house.”

  “Dear God.”

  “I don’t think she meant to be mean. I don’t know if it was that she cared for him like family or was afraid of him, too. He said that if I told anyone what he did, he would tell the police that I was a thief, and that I would go to jail. Even if I didn’t go to jail, he said I’d never find work again.”

  Lucy waited until she knew that both Randolph and Michael Searle were asleep before she confronted Terrance. What else could she have done but offer Carrie money? The tears she had fought as she apologized weren’t enough. Carrie hadn’t wanted the money, but Lucy had begged her to take it as some kind of reparation. She urged her to go back to Norfolk County as soon as she could possibly leave her aunt, and Carrie had told her not to worry. She had not wanted to return to Old Gate at all, but her mother had pressured her. Her aunt was finally almost well, so it wouldn’t be long. Lucy had embraced Carrie when they parted, but it was an awkward moment.

  Terrance sat at the big table in the butler’s pantry, smoking his last cigarette of the day. He didn’t bother to get up when Lucy came into the kitchen.

  “What did you do to that poor woman, Terrance?”

  “Poor woman?”

  “You terrorized Carrie. She could hardly bear the thought of coming back to Old Gate to take care of her aunt because she would be too near you.”

  Terrance ground the remains of his cigarette out on a china saucer. When he saw her notice, a shadow of a grin came to his face. She had never once seen him smile fully.

  “Whatever she told you, s
he didn’t come here a virgin, Missus Bliss.”

  “I’m not interested in her virginity. You scarred her. You threatened her.”

  “She misunderstood me. Ask Odette.”

  Lucy’s heart beat wildly in her chest. Although it distressed her that Odette hadn’t helped Carrie when she was first told about Terrance’s unwanted attentions, she didn’t want to have to confront Odette. She liked Odette. Depended on Odette to take care of Michael Searle. To keep their secrets.

  Terrance pushed back his chair. “We could wake her now. I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to both of us.”

  “What do you think Randolph will say when he knows what you did?”

  Now he stood, a look of mock perplexity on his face. “What do you think he will say?”

  “I will do everything in my power to get you out of this house. I don’t like you near me. I don’t like you near my son.”

  “Do you mean your son? Or your daughter? I’m confused sometimes. I’m sure his friends at school would be equally confused. Don’t you agree?”

  More than once in the following days, her complaints against Terrance rose to her lips when she was with Randolph. But when she thought of her son’s sweet, mild face, she bit back the words, knowing Terrance would not hesitate to ruin his life. A life that had hardly yet begun.

  Carrie’s letter arrived less than a week later, saying that she had returned to Norfolk County, and that she was sorry to leave without having seen “sweet little Michael Searle.” Lucy was not disappointed, finally believing that it had all worked out for the best.

  Chapter 30

  KIKU

  January 1879

  Kiku secured her robe more tightly around her and took one of the blankets from the bed to wrap around her shoulders. It had begun to snow in the night, but the surrounding trees had kept the snow from piling too deeply around the cottage. The third-hand, wool child’s coat that Odette had found for her back in September had never fit her well, and now the sleeves rode above her wrists and the front wouldn’t meet, leaving a gap the width of one of Randolph’s books when opened.

  Randolph had not come to see her in several weeks, finally repulsed by her growing stomach, and so she was nearly always alone. Once again, she felt too cold to make her way out to the woodpile and eyed the two shelves stuffed with books that she could not read.

  All of the books were bound in the same wine-colored leather that Randolph had told her was called Moroccan. She stood on her toes and snuck a hand from beneath the blanket to take one from the shelf.

  The leather might not burn, but when she opened the book and fingered the thickness of the creamy white pages she knew that the paper would crackle and burn cleanly in the fire, and that she might spend hours tearing the pages out, one by one, and laying them on the now-smoldering logs. All those words! They flowed over the yellowed pages like endless schools of fish, taking peculiar shapes, stopping in one place, only to flare off and continue farther down the paper.

  Inside her the baby rolled, as though to encourage her. She put the book on a nearby table and touched her belly, looking for the bump of the foot that sometimes revealed itself as an outline beneath her skin, but today the child was nestled far inside her.

  Surely he is cold, like me.

  The thought made her angry.

  Letting the blanket fall, she held the book in the air by its tooled front cover and tried to tear out a hunk of pages, but they resisted and she only bent them. With a grunt, she tried again, and again. Finally realizing that she could only do a few pages at a time, she worked quickly, ripping out three, four, five, but no more than that at once.

  On the fire, the pages quickly flamed, and they smelled just like seasoned wood. But though they burned and burned they gave off little heat. She ripped them out faster, nearly burning her fingers. What right did Randolph Bliss have to keep her freezing here?

  Where else would I go? I have no home. This is my only home.

  What would happen when the child was born? Randolph had refused to speak of it except to say that the world didn’t need another bastard.

  With a great cry, she threw the book’s empty cover onto the fire, where it lay for a moment before beginning to smoke and curl. The little chimney was drawing and the smoke didn’t come into the room, but the smell still sickened her. She retched and grabbed the blanket to hurry out the kitchen door.

  Her boots slid on the snow-slick steps and she fell onto her elbows and back, banging her head and shoulders against a stair. Her fall was nearly soundless, reverberating only through her body.

  She opened her eyes and lay motionless, staring up at the tops of the leafless trees against the sky.

  What if I die here?

  No, she would not. Her hands and arms could move. She turned her head from right to left. Pressed her hands against her belly. If anything had happened to the child, how would she know? There was no question of a doctor. Randolph had said she had no need of one, though Odette had told her he was wrong and had wanted to engage a midwife. But she was too afraid of Randolph.

  Indeed, what if it died inside her?

  Will I live with the corpse inside me forever?

  Rather than alarming her, she found the idea comforting. She would be the living and the dead at once. A creature unknown to the world. Unless the ghost of her child escaped, and, unhappy, blamed her for its death.

  Better to blame Randolph, my child.

  She carefully turned onto her side to raise herself and stood. When she was moving again, with only some stiffness in her back, she gently shook out the blanket to rid it of the snow from the stairs. The terrible smell and her nausea forgotten, she retrieved the wood basket from the porch and walked hesitantly to the woodpile. Though she considered herself strong, she could only carry four or five of the split logs at once in the basket. Barely enough to feed the fireplace through the night.

  When the baby comes, we will sleep together in blankets by the fire, and if he wakes crying, I will calm his cries with kisses. But the image of Randolph arose, unbidden, in her waking dream. He would want her again when her body no longer repulsed him. Or perhaps he would abandon her altogether. Force her and his child out of the cottage.

  Arranging the blanket again around her shoulders, she bent to fill the basket with wood. Her lips and fingers were stiff, and she realized she should have put on the gloves that Odette had given her for Christmas. She could picture them sitting on the kitchen table, waiting.

  With the wood basket full, she grunted as she lifted it, feeling the stretch in her groin muscles. Inside her, the baby suddenly rolled, which made her smile. Her fall on the stairs hadn’t hurt it.

  As she turned to go back to the cottage, she saw something black on the unbroken snow.

  It was a boot. A child’s boot.

  Setting the basket on the snow, she picked up the boot. It was still pliable, not completely frozen, and—strangely—not covered in snow. She looked about her. The only footprints in the snow were her own. Looking up into the trees, she wondered if some bird might have dropped the thing there. Above, she saw only twisting branches and squirrels’ nests. She put the boot into the basket, oddly leery of leaving it on the ground.

  But cold as she was, she knew she had to look further. It had to be Tamora’s boot. Tamora, who, according to Odette and Mason, wasn’t allowed to go anywhere by herself.

  “Touched,” they had said. Always screaming because she didn’t speak.

  Kiku said the girl’s name, her breath forming the word in the air.

  There was no response.

  She looked toward the deeper woods and now saw the other boot a dozen yards away. Cold gripped her heart. She ran toward the second boot, and, yes, perhaps there were footprints now. Faint footprints even smaller than her own.

  She called for Tamora again, her voice louder. Stronger. There was no echo, but the sound seemed to grow, expand in the spaces between the trees.

  Now there were stockings. Thick black
stockings lying in a tangled knot. She picked them up, hardly able to feel them with her stiff fingers. The child was losing her clothes! Where was she going?

  She bent to look for more footprints, cursing the white brightness of the day. Bright and frigid. She almost wept with frustration. The footprints had disappeared.

  Her own boots were little protection against the frozen, snowy ground, and she could no longer feel her toes. There were beggar children in New York whose toes froze off during the relentless winter, so that they were left with gray, hideous stubs at the ends of their feet. In summer, their deformed feet were exposed on the steaming summer sidewalks. She had tried to give one the pennies in her ditty bag, but Emerald had pulled her away, saying that their parents or keepers often maimed them just to get pity.

  Her body told her to return to the cottage. No one would ever know that she’d found the clothes. Looking down at the stockings in her hand, she dropped them onto the snow and stared at them. Wondering.

  No one would ever know.

  Could she be so cruel?

  But as she was about to turn back to the cottage, she saw the clump of dark green wool hanging on a distant bush. When she reached it, she also saw the dead squirrel with its feet mounted on a piece of wood, and a nut clasped between its front paws.

  Kiku knew the tree in which she found the dead girl, and had once imagined the arch-shaped, peaked hole in its side to be the home of a kodama, a tree spirit. She did not know for certain if this tree contained a kodama, because there was no one to tell her so. But in the fall, the tree had dropped sweet black walnuts that she had gathered, and she had been sure to thank the tree. Back at the cottage, she had cracked and eaten nuts, even though they sometimes hurt her teeth. She had hidden them from Randolph, her own treasure.

  Tamora was curled in the hole, her bare legs folded against her, her head resting on her knees, her face looking out to the woods. The wind played with the blond hair that just covered her face, hair that was not much longer than Kiku’s own. Her arms were clasped around her legs. She might have been trying to make herself as small as possible against the cold, but to Kiku she looked like a half-dressed doll that some child had tried to hide.