“Can’t say I particularly want to. But when I do, I won’t stay around. There’s plenty of dead here already. Not everyone stays, though I don’t know if it’s a choice or it just happens that way. I don’t believe your mama’s here, do you? Mason didn’t stay. Mason’s waiting for me with the Lord.”
Lucy let Odette’s words linger and dissipate in the close air of the tidy bedroom. So much talk of death.
“I’ll have one of the girls bring you dinner. Would you like some soup? People brought a blue million pies and cakes, but not much in the way of meat.”
“I don’t want any meat. It troubles my teeth, and I can’t swallow it.”
Was this what it was like to be an old woman? Lucy could not see herself sitting and staring out a window, unable to eat meat. Then, she had’t really been able to imagine herself turning forty years old, either. There were new lines on her face, and she had put on weight in her hips. Some of her dresses had had to be let out, but there hadn’t been a man in many years for whom she had cared to keep her figure. There had been Randolph, and that was all. And that had been a very, very long time ago.
In her bedroom, Lucy slipped the envelope that Odette had given her into the lower drawer of her bedside table. She had careful instructions not to open it until after Odette was dead, and though Lucy had thought the whole thing very macabre, she had agreed, and kissed Odette’s withered cheek. As she left the room, Odette had called after her.
“Push the button so the door locks, please.”
Lucy disagreed that the door should be locked, but didn’t argue. If Odette were to be ill in the night, or—heaven forbid—were to die, it would be trouble to get to her. Lucy had the set of master keys, and Terrance had another set. Who was Odette trying to keep out? Ghosts?
Exhausted, Lucy told Michael Searle that she wanted to lie down before dinner and went back to her room.
Lying on her bed, curtains closed against the late afternoon sunlight, Lucy stared up at the ceiling. The house was silent. Michael Searle was in the library, looking through his father’s papers. There was a will with various bequests that they would have to handle, but it was in the hands of the lawyers. Randolph had long ago hinted that there were other children, and, of course, that had long been rumored. Had he acknowledged them? How many lives would be ruined with his death?
The biggest question was what he had left to Terrance. If Randolph had truly believed Terrance was his son, did the will mention him? She closed her eyes. No. It wasn’t possible. Michael Searle was his only son, she his only real wife.
Sleeping, she dreamed of a laughing little girl, of chasing her through the garden the way she had chased Michael Searle when he was young. The girl was blond, her hair shining in the sun, but her clothes were rags and her skin unwashed. Was this Tamora? They had a portrait of Tamora, with her strange, fixed gaze, and this girl was something like her.
When she ran into the maze, which was far taller in the dream than it had ever been, Lucy opened her mouth to call after her, but she had no name to call.
She tried to say, Wait!, but her mouth felt full of something, and she had to stop running. Now both her mouth and throat were full and she began to choke. Inside the tall, leafy maze walls, the little girl’s laughter continued like an endless happy song. But Lucy couldn’t breathe and she tried to cough out whatever was in her throat. It wouldn’t come, and so she put her fingers into her mouth, not finding her tongue, but a tangle of something that felt like petals and pliable stems. Tugging, she felt whatever it was move, far down her throat. Something came loose: Her hand was full of red heart-shaped petals, flowers with delicate white and blue stamens that had bent with her violence. Alarmed—terrified!—she pulled and pulled and the flowers tumbled from her mouth, attached to their long, plum-colored stems. The harder she pulled, the more painful it was. Still, she had to breathe, and her breath wouldn’t come.
The knot of stems seemed endless, but finally they began to change and the stems were no longer plum-colored, but tinged with brown. The taste in her mouth was gritty and base. The dirt that followed was harder to remove and hurt ever so much more than the stems. Not just dirt, but pebbles and rocks and the occasional piece of metal. Even a small tool that made her want to scream in fright, and nail after nail after nail.
When the nails stopped, and the narrow planks of wood began working their way up her throat, she was paralyzed with fear. They twisted their way out and her breath came in bursts with their twisting. One, two, three, four planks, each one longer and broader than the last, and she knew that she was giving a strange kind of birth to the house looming behind her. It had to stop! She thought of the stairs and the dome and the sharp, sharp bits of iron that would pierce her throat and make her bleed to death. But she could not wake!
The little girl’s laughter continued on. Laughter that by its very existence mocked her. Mocked her plight.
Finally, finally, the last plank worked its way out and she cast it to the ground with a loud clatter, and for a moment she could breathe again. But only for a moment. Her throat filled with something that tickled, like water coming up instead of washing down into her stomach. It grew larger. Larger. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and put her fingers inside to pull out whatever it was, and other fingers gripped hers in a violent grip, and she knew, she knew, that someone was coming out of her and she wanted to scream, but there was no air to scream. So she pulled, not letting go of the fingers that held hers, and she brought the hand and forearm out, and in the bright sunshine she saw the stout, wrinkled fingers and the liver spots and her husband’s firm fist, and she knew, she knew, that the growing pain in her gut was her husband, Randolph, and he would come out.
She woke on her side, her own fist pressed against her mouth, desperate to breathe.
It was after midnight, but several bulbs along the gallery outside her room burned in their sconces. Michael Searle’s door was closed, and no sliver of light showed beneath. Across the expanse of hall, Randolph’s open bedroom door revealed a landscape of dense black shadows.
Desperately thirsty, she might have drunk cool water from her bathroom tap, but she couldn’t bear to remain in her bedroom even with all the lights turned on. Randolph’s presence consumed her, and she still couldn’t shake the notion that he existed somewhere inside her. Bliss House had presented itself to her that first day as a place where ghosts might live beside the living. Had she forgotten? It made a strange kind of sense that Randolph would still be here. But inside of me? The thought made her stomach roil.
At a sound above her she looked up to see Terrance on the third-floor gallery.
“What are you doing up there?”
“Are you not well, Missus Bliss? Michael Searle said you had gone to lie down, but that he couldn’t wake you for dinner.” Concern from Terrance made her suspicious. She wasn’t quite sure what their roles would be now. He had been Randolph’s man since he was only a boy.
“I’m going to the kitchen for something to drink.” She suddenly realized her feet were cold on the floor; her black silk funeral dress was creased, the thick lace trim flattened. Though she wasn’t old-fashioned, she was acutely aware that her feet were bare and her ankles exposed, in front of Terrance. But she would not run away like a silly, backward girl. Bliss House was hers now. Terrance was little more than a servant.
He didn’t respond and went out of sight. She could hear his footsteps on one of the back stairways.
They met again in the kitchen. For the first time, Terrance looked tired to her. Older. They were the same age, but Terrance’s closeness to Randolph had kept him indoors for the most part, and so his skin was relatively unlined.
She told herself that she should have no sympathy for him. Randolph’s cruelty had been like mother’s milk to Terrance. In a way Randolph continued to live through him.
Inside me, as well. Randolph is still here.
But for once, she and Terrance were almost companionable in the kitchen. In tru
th, Lucy didn’t want to be alone, yet she hadn’t wanted to wake Michael Searle. Odette needed her rest, and she was not friendly with the housekeeper or housemaid. After drinking a glass of cold well water from the kitchen tap, she realized she was hungry and made a plate of roasted chicken for herself from the icebox. There was cornbread, as well, in one of the larder cabinets.
“Would you like something to eat?” It may have been the first time Lucy had asked the question of Terrance, but he showed no surprise and only said, “No, I don’t care to.” She knew he didn’t like to eat in front of others. Randolph had joked about how he had neglected Terrance’s table manners when they traveled together.
“How he eats doesn’t matter a whit. It’s how he serves that’s important. He’s trained well to serve.”
Terrance made them tea, and they sat at the big table in the butler’s pantry with him as host. As Lucy ate, he smoked a cigarette without apology, and she did not complain. It was as if the true reason for their previous enmity had evaporated. They were like Civil War generals from opposite sides after Lincoln was dead and the war was ended. She and he had lived in the same house almost half of their adult lives.
“Odette is dying. Did you know?”
Terrance nodded. “It won’t be much longer. I hear her wheezing in her sleep. Sometimes early in the morning. I think it would be a kindness for someone to put a pillow over her face.” He watched Lucy, his eyes unwavering from hers. She knew he had meant to shock her.
“God will take her soon enough.”
Terrance smiled his mirthless smile. “Of course, you’re right.”
Lucy sipped her tea. “This house needs her. There’s no one else like her here. I think she’s been the only one with any sense. Randolph was right to trust her and Mason.”
“She wanted to be my mother. I didn’t want her to be my mother. But she was always very kind to me.” He stubbed out his cigarette into a china ashtray.
“Tell me, Terrance. Will you leave here? I’m sure Randolph has left you plenty of money. If not, I would give it to you. You could go anywhere. Anywhere in the world, now that the war is over.”
“Will you leave?”
“There’s nothing for me anywhere else. I have Michael Searle. I’m not interested in remarrying. No. I think I will stay here.” She touched her napkin to her mouth and rose from the table. “There’s more angel food cake, I believe.”
Terrance did not respond right away, and she felt his eyes at her back as she opened the cupboard and took out the cake. Uncertain where the girl had put the cake slicer she had used earlier in the day, Lucy gently pried a hunk of the cake from its body with her fingers and laid it on the plate. She took it back to the table and sat down.
“Randolph assured me that I might live here the rest of my life, if I choose to. I see no reason to leave. He was my father, you know.”
Lucy put down her fork. “How long have you known?”
“I lived with Odette and Mason until I was eight, and then he sent for me. For more than ten years he dragged me all over the northeast, and Europe, training me to be his valet. His butler. His messenger.” In his silence, Lucy wondered what horrors he had seen as a boy, but he didn’t go into any more detail.
“Odette told me he was my father when he brought me back here. By then it didn’t matter. I did what I was told.”
“Are you sorry he’s dead?” The words were out of her mouth before Lucy realized how very rude they were.
Terrance looked at her. The overhead light made his deep-set eyes look hooded. Almost black.
“Are you?”
Chapter 41
KIKU
February 1879
So Amelia was dead. Kiku waited for someone to come and tell her that what she had seen was real, but no one came. She took Odette’s and Mason’s silence as her answer and did not ring the bell again. They had chosen, or had been forced by Randolph to choose, between her and their livelihood. Aaron, too, had abandoned her.
For another day, there was little strength in her legs, and she moved slowly, gathering herself. She would go to the house and find her child. There was no guard at her door. No one to stop her. Whether anyone at the house saw her didn’t matter to her anymore. The threat had come from Randolph, and he could only hold her life over her now. That life mattered not at all.
“Kiku. Kiku.”
She opened her eyes. She had made a nest of the only clean blankets left in the cottage and lay on some cushions near the fire. Her sleep had been fitful, and she had awakened alternately chilled and sweating in the night.
Seeing her eyes opened, Aaron knelt and held her gently to him. She thought that she might be dreaming, but he was touching her, and his skin was cool against hers.
“Did you think that I had died?”
“I was certain you were alive, though Randolph told me you had died. But I couldn’t get away from the house.”
“Tell me.”
Aaron laid her down again. “Let me get you some water. You’re burning up.”
She grabbed his arm with both hands to keep him from going. “Tell me.”
“He’s at the house. Odette is caring for him, and a wet nurse has come.”
Kiku stared back at him. The gods had listened. They had not given her a girl child. It was a small mercy in the hell of her existence. She felt the tears start then, and she couldn’t hold them back.
Aaron, moved by her reaction, sat back on his heels and stroked her head. He let her cry without interruption, and when she was spent, he told her that he was going for a doctor. Not Doctor Beard, but another that he thought he could trust.
“No. Take me to the house. I have to see him. It’s my right to see him.”
“Randolph.”
“Randolph doesn’t matter.” Kiku saw that Aaron was still afraid of Randolph. She saw that he was not brave, and knowing it made her sadder still.
“When you’re better.”
She saw, too, that this was a lie, and that he was hoping he might change her mind. He looked away from her gaze, ashamed.
So much shame. To these people—even Aaron—her life was all shame. She had borne her child in shame. She had been hidden away for shame. She had been stolen from her home for shame. Strangely, it was everyone else who was marked by that shame. All she had done was survive.
“You are all so afraid of him. I could never tell you the things he has done to me because you would never be able to look at me again. Why don’t you all see that there is nothing to be afraid of? What can he take from you? Look at me, Aaron.”
He turned his face to her.
“Are you so afraid of losing your reputation? Your living? You abase yourself as a slave who welcomes his whip. I will not do that anymore. Are you less than I am? I don’t want to believe that’s true. Would it not be better to die? Randolph has no reason to kill you. Me, he will kill if I do not escape him first.”
“Then let me take you away from here. This moment. Let me show you.”
He was vehement. Rash. But he would not understand her.
“If you won’t take me to the house, tell Odette to bring him here. I won’t try to steal him. I only want to see him. Then I can go.”
“We’ll go away. We’ll have all the children you want to have.”
“Yes, of course. But I must see him first. What has he called him?”
“Terrance.”
There was little to do but wait. She knew that if she tried to walk to the big house alone, she would collapse in the cold. In spite of the haze it cast over her, the fever helped her to understand everything more clearly. She moved the books from the shelf nearest the fireplace and made a small shrine to the goddess Harati. In a metal bowl she burned scraps she had torn from the useless, bloody sheets, offering up the birth of her only child. She kept candles burning and prayed constantly. Harati would make certain that she would see her son. Hold her son. Never before in her life had she been so focused on a single image: her son’s face. It d
idn’t matter that she had not seen it after he had left her body. She had seen it when she closed her eyes each time she laid her hand on her belly, she had seen it in her dreams, and she would see it for eternity. She would be with him for eternity.
And Randolph. She would never leave Randolph. He had kept her so jealously that he deserved to have her forever, did he not?
The fever came in waves. When it was at its hottest, sometime in the late afternoon, she made her way to the front door and opened it.
There was something on the air, some damp scent that made her think of spring. The day was warmer than it had been in weeks, and the icicles hanging from the edge of the porch roof were melting, and she believed she could hear the water sliding into the ground. Below the ground, each drop found the others and together they became a stream that might cool her, and bear her away, far underground, where she might be safe.
Kiku!
Kiku looked past the trees to the far garden wall. The sky opened and rain began to fall. It was a warm rain that turned to mist as it hit the hard ground that was now bare of snow. She held onto the stair railing as she stepped down off the porch, and the raindrops softened her sweat-stiffened black hair.
Far ahead, she saw the woman and the girl through the trees. The girl raised her hand in greeting, and Kiku lifted hers in return.
Odette was coming with the baby. Watching the girl, the words had come into her mind.
Be ready. He comes.
On the Sunday before Christmas, Mason had read from the Bible about the prophets who had foretold the coming of their Jesus. Be ready! All were warned to be ready. An angel had come to the girl, Mary, as well. Be ready, O Blessed One!
With great effort, Kiku had gone to the pump and brought water inside, a little at a time, to warm it. She bathed as best she could and dressed in one of her old dresses—the purple one with the layers trimmed with black lace. It was tight in the bust because her breasts were numb with milk her son would never have, and at the waist and hips because she still had the shape of pregnancy. But get it on she did, and she dressed her hair in the vanity mirror. She brushed her teeth with the brush and paste that Randolph insisted that she use, and the taste of sleep and fever was gone for at least a while.
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