by Nell Goddin
But something.
Josephine could not sleep. It was one of the insults of old age and she did not take it well. She got out of bed, took off the nightgown her husband had brought her from Paris and let it drop to the floor, and wandered around the house naked. The heat was turned way up so she was not cold, the shutters were closed so she had privacy, with only the faintest moonlight coming through the slats to see by.
She was looking for something, but she had no idea what it was.
No one ever calls. All those cousins who live in Paris, do they ever come visit? No. My sister barely even calls anymore. All I’ve got is that mewling excuse for a nephew who has never amounted to anything at all.
She came into a sitting room on the second floor, a room where her husband Albert used to work on his inventions. Back then it was a big mess of tools and parts and boxes of strange things he had ordered from somewhere, and books and papers in towering stacks, threatening to suffocate the man.
What a bore Albert had been, she thought. Always working. Always had his head in some manual or something. Never paying me, his wife, the attention I deserved.
After he died—out of nowhere, a heart attack and he was dead on the spot, she had no warning or time to prepare at all—Josephine had ordered all of his junk taken out of the room. Every last wire, every nut, every bolt. And she had bought a pair of sumptuous love seats and a stuffed ostrich, put candelabra on the mantel and tables and hung thick brocade curtains at the windows. Following the transformation she found it an agreeable place where she liked to sit and feel tragic about being widowed when she was still so young.
She had been fifty-two when her husband dropped dead—not exactly a dewy ingenue, but it was true that fifty-two felt like a very long time ago now.
Josephine went to a small antique desk, bought long after Albert died. She opened the bottom drawer and took out three letters tied with a pink satin ribbon. They were tucked in yellowing envelopes without name or address. She slid the top letter out and began to read:
Ma belle,
I am not a poet and words are not easy for me but I want so much to tell you how much our time together means to me. You are so lovely and I find myself thinking of you when I should be studying.
All my love,
A.
The old woman’s eyes burned with tears. She put the letter back in its yellowed envelope, retied the satin ribbon, and put the packet back in the bottom drawer of the desk. Though tears were spilling down her wrinkled cheeks, her eyes glared and her mouth turned down. On her way out of the room she caressed the stuffed ostrich’s neck, which was showing some signs of wear. She wished the candles were lit but did not want to search for matches.
She could not sleep.
Suddenly she clapped her hands and went down to the kitchen. It was four in the morning. She had not been in the kitchen in several years, so at first she had to turn on a light and rummage about, deep in the pantry, until she found what she was looking for.
Ah! I knew they must still be here!
And then she stood in the kitchen, fingers stroking her chin, pondering just where to set the rat trap so that Sabrina would catch her fingers in it.
3
“It’s so totally beyond awesome that you really, really did it!” shrieked Frances, dancing around Molly’s living room and looking everywhere at once. “You moved to France!” She grabbed Molly’s hands and spun her around. “Hey, wanna put some music on? We can dance together just like in our wanton youth!”
Molly laughed but made no move for music. “Want me to show you around? House first?”
“Yes ma’am! I want to see it all! It’s so quaint I may die. Look at these itty-bitty little windows, they’re like something out of a fairy tale.” Frances reached out to a small leaded window in the foyer and put her hand right through the glass.
“Oh my God, Molly!”
“Jeez, wait, Frances—don’t yank your hand back through there, you’ll slice yourself to ribbons!” Blood was already pouring down the glass. “Stay right there, don’t move, I’m getting a bandage…”
A first-aid kit was on a list Molly had made of things she needed for the house. Somewhere. She got a clean rag from under the kitchen sink and trotted back to her friend.
“It’s nothing, really,” said Frances. “I’ve cut my hand a trillion times, you know that. I’m just—I’m so sorry about your window.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Molly. She got Frances’s hand back through the window without further cutting, led her to the bathroom sink and rinsed out the cut. Then she wrapped the rag around it and told Frances to push down on it.
“Oh, believe me, I know how to stop blood loss,” she said, laughing. “I’d be even paler than I already am if I hadn’t learned that pretty quick.”
Molly and Frances had met in grade school. They had both been known for their white complexions—Molly a freckled redhead and Frances dark-haired and long-legged with unusually white skin. They had done everything together and been nicknamed The Pales.
Frances was undeterred in her wish to see every nook and cranny of La Baraque, and so Molly took her up the front staircase and into every room, down the back staircase and into the pantry, the laundry room, and an odd little room in which the former owner had left some remnants of fabric and a pincushion shaped like a mouse.
“I love how ramshackle it all is—don’t take that the wrong way,” said Frances. “I mean…how it’s so asymmetrical, like one day the owner woke up and said Hey, I really need another room, let’s get busy! and that just kept on happening over decades, you know?”
“I like that about it too,” said Molly. “I wish I knew its history but the couple I bought it from didn’t seem to know anything. I don’t think they owned it for very long.”
“You could probably find out a lot in the courthouse, or wherever they keep the real estate sales records, and deeds, that stuff.”
“Probably so. Though, uh, chances are pretty good I’ll never get around to it.”
“Yup!” said Frances. “Now let’s put on our boots and go tramp around your Property.”
“It’s not exactly Property,” said Molly, laughing. “It’s just a little over five acres.”
“Oh, that counts! That totally counts. You’re a châtelaine, Molls! Have I mentioned I love that you moved here! I bet your family is all pissed off, aren’t they?”
“They…weren’t in favor.”
“Just icing on the cake,” said Frances, grinning, and she opened up the kitchen door as she pulled on her coat.
It had been a satisfactory day thus far, thought Josephine Desrosiers with more than a touch of complacency. Silly Sabrina had stuck her hand in the wrong place and had a rat trap go off. Definitely fractured one finger, maybe two. Josephine had waited at the top of the staircase, listening. She was prepared to wait a long time, but Sabrina had found the trap quickly, propped inside a bucket she used for mopping the kitchen floor.
The old lady had closed her eyes and listened to the howling with a serene smile on her face. Stupid girl, not to look where her hands were going.
The afternoon passed with one television program after another, mostly game shows. She felt more energetic than usual and went wandering into a room where several large chests of her old things were kept. Fancy dress after fancy dress, the lace, the taffeta! And what was the point, she thought morosely, running her fingers over the finery. It’s nothing now, useless.
She slipped one dress out of the pile and held it up. It was black lace, with a silk sheath underneath. Stunning workmanship. She vividly remembered how she had enjoyed spending her husband’s money, with no thought of bank accounts or overdrafts or anything else. And how when she would come out of her dressing room wearing a frock like this one, all would be forgiven.
Josephine decided it would be the perfect dress to be buried in, not that she had plans to go anytime soon. But it felt wrong to try it on. Wear a fancy dress all alone in the hou
se? That’s ridiculous. Yet she took the dress back to her room, and stood in front of the mirror, looking at it. It fell just above the knee, not an outrageous length for a woman her age if she has the legs to carry it off.
And I do, she thought, nodding at her reflection. Michel is coming tonight anyway, perhaps I will go ahead and put it on. Show the little weasel how a woman of sophistication dresses.
The dress still fit, although it was tight in different places than it had been when she was thirty. She selected some diamond earrings to wear with it, because black and diamonds are so natural together.
Her hair and makeup were finished before Michel arrived, so she was forced to flip through an old issue of Paris Match while he waited downstairs, but finally got tired of that and made her entrance on the grand staircase.
“Well, Aunt…” Michel was speechless. He desperately wanted to laugh at this ridiculous specter coming down the stairs like she was the star at a Hollywood première, her hair standing on end with Lord knows how much hairspray, eyeliner gone terribly awry, and stuffed into a dress that ought to be in a museum somewhere. “…you look magnificent.”
“Thank you, Michel. Sometimes I get tired of just throwing on any old thing.”
“You must have quite a closet full of treasures. Did Uncle Albert let you buy all the couture you wanted?”
Josephine smiled a girlish smile and laughed, “Nearly! Sometimes he could be fussy about money. But most of the time…most of the time he was shut up in his room fiddling with little bits of things, or on the phone talking to one of his colleagues. Such a bore,” she added.
“But that fiddling as you call it—that’s how you could afford a dress like that,” said Michel, who barely remembered his uncle, but felt someone should stick up for him.
Josephine glared at her nephew. “What do you know about anything,” she sneered. “Have you ever made more than fifty francs altogether, in your entire excuse for a life?”
Michel sighed inwardly. Her barb did not hit home because he had long ago realized her poison was about her and not at whom she directed it, and because she was so ridiculous standing on the stairway in what she imagined was an elegant pose, hurling thunderbolts down on his head.
She was a tiresome, noxious old hag.
“Oh, dear Aunt, you have such admirably high standards. I will redouble my efforts to try and meet them.” He bowed his head to hide his ironic grin.
Josephine was momentarily mollified. She made her descent, clutching tightly to the handrail, her heels clopping on the stone stairs and sounding like a small pony. Michel went to the sideboard to pour his aunt her usual Dubonnet, which she drank off in two gulps.
“So this evening, my darling. Would you like me to take you out for dinner? I made reservations at La Métairie, if you would like to go.”
Mme Desrosiers pursed her lips. On the one hand, she appreciated that he had made an effort, in advance, to please her. On the other hand, she wanted to make whatever decisions were to be made about dinner, not follow along with whatever Michel wanted to do.
“Hm. Well, what sort of food is it? It’s nothing modern, is it? Not…not ethnic?”
Michel laughed at the way his aunt spat the word as though she had suddenly realized there was merde in her mouth. “No, Josephine, La Métairie is French, through and through. They specialize in duck, as a matter of fact. I’ve not had the pleasure of eating there myself, but all reports are extremely positive.”
“You mean you can’t afford to go on your own.”
Michel inclined his head, and forced himself not to roll his eyes. “Yes, Aunt, true enough.”
In the end Mme Desrosiers agreed, and she allowed Michel to fetch her fur coat and bundle her into the economy car she had bought him, so that they could drive the six blocks to the restaurant. Certainly she would have refused his offer if she had any way of knowing what would occur after she arrived, but that is life.
And death.
4
Claudette Mercier always had tea for breakfast, with a bit of stale bread leftover from the day before spread with some strawberry jam. This had been her routine for close to twenty years, ever since her husband had passed away and she no longer had to make the more substantial breakfast he preferred. While she waited for the water to boil, she stood in her nightgown and brushed her long white hair and then braided it. Most mornings she remembered how her husband, Declan (his mother had been Irish) had often told her that the long white braid was the hairstyle of an old woman. And she had replied that she was an old woman.
It made her smile to think she had only been in her fifties then, hardly old considering she was over seventy now. It had been so many years since Declan had been gone, but she felt his presence still. Even strongly so, from time to time, and she believed that some part of him was still there with her, though she could not explain in what fashion that might be possible.
After her tea and bread with jam she went to work in the kitchen, which took most of the morning. There was jam to make, and chutney, and silver to polish. The work was never-ending and she enjoyed the routine and sense of accomplishment. Her father had owned a prosperous hardware store and her family had been well off, by the Castillac standards of seventy years ago; her parents tried to keep her out of the kitchen and let the servants take care of those chores, but Claudette hadn’t listened. It seemed as though she had spent most of her life cooking and cleaning up, and except for missing Declan, that life had been mostly happy.
At least until the letters started coming.
By about 11:30 she was folding up the last dishtowel and ready to get the mail, before making her lunch. In earlier years the mail had been such a source of pleasure! Her friends sent postcards and letters when they traveled, and she had some cousins who lived in Brittany who sent a birthday card every year. But people didn’t write letters anymore. She still got a few birthday cards but the mail was almost entirely advertisements now. Except for these letters, written on expensive stationery, which came every few months. Vicious, hateful letters, with the sole intention of causing hurt.
When the first one arrived, Claudette was excited to see the lovely stationery; it had been so long since receiving a real letter. She opened it standing by her front gate, not waiting to get back in the house, and began to shake and then to cry when she saw what it said. Later on, when others showed in her mailbox and she recognized the stationery and handwriting, she knew the prudent thing would be to throw them directly in the trash, but she could not make herself do it.
Five letters so far. Every word burned into her brain like a scar.
Everyone has weaknesses, or perhaps we can call them areas of sensitivity, where we struggle if prodded too roughly. For Claudette, her heart’s desire was also her weakness. All she had ever wanted was a simple life of making food and being with her family, and that was what the letter-writer attacked, telling her she had been adopted and was not the natural child of her parents, and she was lucky not to be a scullery maid which was all she was equipped for.
Now, Claudette had nothing against adopted children, or even being adopted herself, but the idea that her parents had lied to her, never told her the truth, dying with the secret? They must have thought the circumstances of her birth terribly shameful. It was unthinkably painful to contemplate.
She was not a woman who was particularly gullible or dim, nor was she quick to take offense. It was only that the letter-writer had been able to divine the exact thing to say that Claudette could not defend against, finding the one bit of soft flesh showing under the social armor we all put on every day, and driven in the stiletto precisely at that spot. Now Claudette counted the days since the last letter, wondering if the next one would come on the same schedule as the one before, or just possibly there would be no more and it would all be over—but she sensed that the letter-writer would keep on as long as she was able, and Claudette was not wrong about this.
That morning there was no mail, and she was caught somew
here uncomfortable between relief and wishing a letter had been there, just to get it over with, because the anticipation of the pain had become almost as bad as the pain itself.
She kept the letters, for reasons she could not explain. All five were placed in a tin and nestled in her bureau drawer underneath her winter socks. The letters were unsigned with no return address, and no telltale markings or monogram on the fancy stationery. But Claudette had a pretty good idea about who was sending them, and she was not wrong about this either.
Molly and Frances had intended to make an extensive tour of Castillac before going to dinner, but the weather was not cooperating and their feet complained before they had gotten very far.
“We lost our taxi driver—long story—so we have to walk,” Molly told her friend as they left La Baraque. They were dressed up and wearing heels, and looking forward to a meal at La Métairie. Molly had never been to the almost-one-Michelin-starred restaurant but figured her friend’s visit was the perfect opportunity to try it.
“I don’t know about a fancy restaurant,” said Frances, limping a little from an incipient blister on her right heel. “If you’ll remember, my palate leans sorta towards the Cheetos end of the spectrum.”
“But don’t you want just once to eat in a serious French restaurant, where food is art? And yes, I’m regretting the shoes too. Let’s explore Castillac tomorrow, if it warms up a little. You don’t have to rush home, do you? I meant what I said about the open invitation. I have no bookings so the cottage is yours. And if a miracle happens and somebody wants it, you can always move into the big house with me. I’ve got a haunted bedroom upstairs that would be perfect for you.”
Frances shook her head quickly, her straight black hair whipping around her face. “Haunted? Nope, not for me, thanks. I’m superstitious, Molls. Nuh-uh.”
Molly grinned. “Maybe the restaurant has a bar where we can wait—our reservation’s not until 8:30.”
