Pretty Dead

by Francesca Lia Block

  “Can I sit here?” I asked, and he nodded, so I sat beside him on the sand. He was unshaven and looked as if he hadn’t bathed in days.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. Together we looked out to the horizon. I couldn’t meet his gaze. The intensity was too much.

  He hung his head between his knees.

  “I know how you must feel,” I told him.

  Then he looked up at me and I couldn’t look away. His eyes were flashing like the light on the water. For a moment I could not breathe. “You don’t know,” he said.

  In his upset, Jared had loosened his grip on the piece of fabric in his hands. I saw that it was a white cotton bra. He shoved it into his sweatshirt pocket and his face reddened.

  “I loved her, too,” I said.

  “You don’t understand any of this,” he replied, and suddenly he was not seeing into me anymore. He was not seeing me at all.

  Jared Pierce was wrong about me not understanding. Before I was this thing I am now, I was a girl, like Emily Rosedale. I was a person, like Jared Pierce, and I had also lost the one person I loved most.

  The Twin

  Charles and I cantered over the meadow like wild horses, whinnying uncannily; we both had that talent. I had violets in my hair. The wind blew the clouds across the high blue.

  Charles was my twin, long-limbed and blue-eyed like me. But his hair was black, like my mother’s. Black Irish. And I had my father’s hair. He was from pale Puritan stock. They burned witches at the stake in Salem. Think of the irony! How I would later wonder—as a descendant of those who would have ripped my kind to shreds—what would become of me?

  The day shone; if the wind had a color, that day it would have been light green. That was before I could see the true colors of things, before I could smell so keenly. But even then there was the scent of meadowlands and streams, violets and grape hyacinths; my brother.

  Charles and Charlotte. The beautiful ones who had everything. Who had each other. I had something else then. I had the ability to feel what Charles was feeling; to know what he was thinking, what he did when he was away from me; to see what might happen even when he was out of my sight. When he cut himself, my skin throbbed. When he missed me, my heart fluttered. If I stood close enough to him and closed my eyes, I could see images of things that he had done when he was away from me. If I concentrated hard enough, I could even send him psychic messages. Meet me in the garden. Meet me in the woods, under the biggest white oak by the brook. And Charles had the same empathic and psychic abilities as I did. Our thoughts were powerful in an almost supernatural way, but we never thought anything of it; it was as natural to us as the color of our eyes. And this power never worked on anyone except the other.

  We lived in a large stone house with a tower from which my father surveyed the planets. My mother created what she called her “pageants,” decorations for every season. In winter there was a fir tree covered with candles, and holly wreaths on every door. Handmade stockings hanging from the mantel, silver paper snowflakes dangling from the beams, feasts of goose and plum pudding. In spring there were baskets dripping with flowers, and young animals birthed in the garden, in the henhouse—kittens in my mother’s linen drawer. She made me a May Queen gown and I danced around the maypole with ribbons in my hair. Charles teased me; he would only dance alone with me in the meadows when no one was looking.

  One summer day, when we were thirteen, the humidity was so high it soaked our hair, our clothes.

  “Let’s swim!” Charles announced.

  “I don’t have my bathing costume.”

  “It’s too hot for that!”

  He took my hand and we ran through the tall, buzzing grass to the glade, then down to the river. It tumbled the stones at its depths, polishing them. Charles removed his linen suit and tossed it on the bank, then flung himself into the water.

  “Come join me, Charlotte! It’s wonderful.”

  I stood shyly under the trees, dappled with green and golden sunlight. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if I was feeling his excitement or my own. We used to bathe together as children, but it had been years. My dress had so many tiny buttons it felt as if I stood there forever while he splashed like a fish, coming up to grin at me. Finally I hung my dress on a branch and waded in. I felt his gaze across the water. I took off my camisole, my knickers. I walked into that water as naked as when we were born.

  When we got out of the river that day, we put on each other’s clothes. We were the same size. He was so beautiful in my white linen dress. And his linen suit felt so natural hanging off my shoulders and hips. Almost as if I were wearing him.

  We never told anyone of this indiscretion. It was our secret. It was one more perfect moment I would lose when he was gone.

  Charles Charles Charles Emerson. Where did you go? Why couldn’t you have received this curse along with me? We would live forever all over the world, buying and selling our beautiful things, changing our homes, our lovers, our coiffures with the ages. But always together.

  Charles contracted rheumatic fever and died when we were fifteen. I was not yet cursed; there was nothing I could do to help him. The night the disease entered his body, burning him up from within, I woke in a sweat, screaming. Our mother came to me first.

  “Go to Charles!” I shouted. But it was too late. There was nothing that could have been done anyway.

  You have visions, you have powerful thoughts, I told myself. I sat by my Charles’s bedside and tried to imagine him healthy again, running beside me through the meadows. But my visions and thoughts were useless; they did not save him. And they died with Charles. I wish that I had died then, too, so as to have ended the neverending story of Charlotte Emerson.

  My father withdrew to the study in his tower to watch the planets. My mother lay catatonic on Charles’s bed. No one could get her to move. We had to bring her her meals on a tray and spoon-feed her so she would not starve to death.

  How did I, Charlotte, twin sister of the deceased, cope with such a loss? I stood at his grave in a black dress with a high collar, a black lace veil over my dripping face. The old stone graveyard where all our ancestors were buried, where one day everyone thought that I, too, would finally be put to rest. I imagined my headstone beside Charles’s; I did not at that time conceive of a husband, alive or dead. The slabs of gray marble, the twining rose briars, the day too bright and blue for the death of a boy. I ran out into the fields, tearing my lace dress on brambles, my hair wild around my face, my cheeks streaked with mud and tears. I ran and ran, hoping my heart would explode, but it had become too strong from trying to keep up with Charles all those years. It betrayed me and has continued to do so for almost a century.

  What else did I do? What would you do? If William Stone Eliot had materialized one Halloween evening, dressed as the devil, more handsome than any young man you had ever seen except the one who was gone, and offered you everything, would you not have accepted?

  I told none of this to Jared Pierce, of course. I knew he was ill with sorrow. I accepted his scorn.

  When I looked at him, I saw a strange vision, like the ones I used to have when I was mortal. I saw Jared Pierce stripping off his clothing and walking into the sea.

  I said, “If you ever need me, come to me. Maybe I can help in some way.”

  He looked as if he might spit. “Just leave me alone,” he said

  There was nothing more I could do. Before he could say anything more, I was gone down the beach, under the hazardous sun.

  The Devil in Disguise

  My parents were concerned that I might never recover from the death of my brother, and they were so grief-stricken themselves that they gave me much more freedom than I might otherwise have enjoyed. Without their knowledge, I visited a spiritualist, who introduced me to psychography, the art of automatic writing. She said I could communicate with Charles this way, and whether the words I wrote were from him or my own unconscious, they comforted me. They recounted our childhood together, an
d sometimes they were ominous, full of warnings about the future. I didn’t care—anything to connect me to him was welcomed.

  I spent my days in the meadows with an easel and canvas, painting the wildflowers and the sky that Charles loved. Sometimes I painted the figures of a boy and a girl running through the landscape, but I never showed these images to anyone. Sometimes I practiced my own form of witchcraft in the woods, using twigs and flowers to make an effigy of a boy and holding him in my arms, breathing into his petal mouth, trying to bring him back to life. I returned home late at night with mud on my shoes and leaves in my hair, and no one asked where I had been.

  And when our friends hosted a costume ball on All Hallows’ Eve, a year after my brother’s death, my sorrowful mother, no longer so protective of me, allowed me to attend.

  Gwendolyn and Gerald Doolittle had a gentleman visiting them at the time. He was only five years older than me, but he had already been on tour in Europe and had published a number of poems in a literary review, to much acclaim. Everyone whispered about his shady reputation, but he was also notoriously handsome, and there was a great deal of fussing and primping among the young ladies that night; they all had secret hopes of gaining his favor.

  It was impossible not to recognize him at once in his red satin cloak, with his dark curls styled into two small horns on either side of his head. He even wore custom-made leather boots with cleft heels. I felt ridiculously underdressed in a black taffeta gown my mother had made for me, even with the crow-feather mask over my eyes. I had worn only black for the entire year following Charles’s death. That night I wished for the first time for a dress of silver, like the stars my father worshipped and, since Charles’s death, seemed to love more than his wife and daughter—a dress to ignite William Stone Eliot’s fancy.

  The Doolittles’ ballroom was bordered by a glass atrium that opened out onto a sunken garden filled with fountains and mossy grottoes. I stepped outside to cool off; there were beads of sweat on my forehead. It wasn’t ladylike to perspire, but I had danced in a frenzied fashion all night anyway, with any partner who would have me, hoping to relieve the pain in my heart.

  William Stone Eliot had danced with every girl, it seemed, except for me. Maybe it was the black dress, or perhaps the death that followed me around like my brother’s shade. I knew I was as pretty as any girl there, though, and for the first time in my life I was grateful for my physical attributes as a means to an end, rather than just for the joy and freedom they had provided me when I ran on my long legs through the fields with Charles or felt the wind like fingers in my hair.

  Though I had learned the power of my thoughts as a child, communicating telepathically with Charles, my faith had been fully shaken when he died. If I had any power at all, how could I not have prevented the loss of my twin? Why didn’t my love and my spells and effigies bring his spirit back to me, even in the body of another? Now I decided to test my powers again on the strange man who had not yet noticed me. Maybe I could be distracted from my loss if I could call the sought-after William Stone Eliot to my side.

  Sure enough, I heard someone behind me, felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned around. He was very tall, with a body like a marble statue and a chiseled face trimmed with a neat beard. His black eyes gleamed, and he flashed a smile of small but sharp white teeth.

  I felt a weakness in my knees and took a step back.

  Now I wonder, did I call him to me or was it the other way around? Had he sent me out alone into the garden to receive him?

  “Charlotte Emerson,” he said softly, holding out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquintance.”

  “And yours,” I said.

  “May I call you something else? ‘Charlotte’ feels too formal, too heavy for you.”

  “I don’t have another name.”

  “Then I’ll give you one. They call me Stone. And you shall be Char.” I stood transfixed by his eyes as he gently removed my glove and pressed his lips to my naked hand. His mouth felt full and soft, and I shivered with sensation.

  He took my arm, and we walked down the garden path.

  “Do you know the origin of All Hallows’ Eve?” he asked me, and then continued before I could answer. “The ancients believed that the night was taking over as the days grew shorter. They feared that demons and evil spirits were coming out of hiding, stealing the light. So they disguised themselves as their enemies in order to be safe.” He scrutinized my dress. “Do you feel safe, Mademoiselle, in your mask and black gown?”

  “Perfectly. But I see you must rely on the dress of a devil to protect you,” I answered, as we continued our stroll.

  “Ah, wit as well as beauty. Quite a combination.”

  “But alas, no demon boots upon her feet.”

  “That can be easily remedied. I see you wear the slippers of a pampered girl. What do you do with your days, Char Emerson?”

  I stopped walking and resisted the impulse to stamp my foot.

  “I study,” I said coolly, putting my black glove back on, “with my father. I do needlepoint. I dance. I walk in the gardens.” My voice went up a note in spite of my best efforts.

  “Ah. A lady of leisure. I was correct.”

  “I paint,” I said, bristling even more. “I write. I will be a respected artist one day.”

  His tone softened. “Yes, good, that’s good. And I assume you’d like to learn more about the arts.”

  “I have a tutor.”

  “But what about the colleges? There’s so much to learn, my dear, especially if you want to be a respected artist, as you say. And what about traveling? I assume you’ve been abroad.”

  “Just once. I took a European tour with my parents. And Charles.”

  “Charles?”

  “My brother.”

  I took off my mask and gazed out across the banks of dark rosebushes, imagining a boy in a white suit running through the moonlight.

  Stone was watching my face. “Are you all right, Mademoiselle?”

  “My brother died not long ago,” I said, curling my hands around the ornate iron railing.

  He moved closer to me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I hung my head for a moment, then brushed away the tear that clung to my cheek and looked up at him.

  “I am going to Italy this summer before I return to my studies,” he said. “Perhaps you could join me.”

  This startled me and broke the spell for a moment.

  “My parents would never agree!” I answered. “But you are bold to think of it.”

  “I am very bold,” said William Eliot. “And you would be surprised what I can get people to agree to, Mademoiselle.”

  He was right. He got my parents to agree, as long as I would be chaperoned by the Doolittles. At the time, I believed it was their grief that made them blind. Perhaps. But William Eliot had powers I could not have imagined as I stood in that dark garden waiting for my life to begin, having no idea that it was only never-ending.

  Nightmare

  My closet is really more like a room filled with designer clothes. Tweedy Chanel suits, Yves Saint Laurent satin smoking jackets, Dior chiffon gowns, Balenciaga taffetas. I like to say the name of those masters; they have a magical, incantory sound. Emily liked to go into that room and run her hands over everything, feeling the textures of lace, velvet and silk. My shoes were too big for her, but she took them out of their boxes and their linen pouches and tried them on anyway, like a little girl playing dress-up, teetering around in the chunky platforms, the spike-heeled pointed pumps, the strappy sandals. We even looked through my lingerie—the boxes of antique French-lace bras and satin panties embroidered with tiny rosettes and tied at the hips with ribbons. Sometimes I would see a tense look on Emily’s face as she explored. Perhaps it was envy, but I hoped that it was not. One reason I never got close to anyone was because of this familiar look. There were girls I had met over the years whom I wanted to know better. But they always seemed to resent me for my material wealth an
d perhaps for my appearance, my apparent power over boys. I could never explain that what I had meant nothing compared to being truly alive. Even though Emily did not know my story, I sensed that she was different, that she somehow understood what was really important. Maybe the look on her face only meant that she was sad because she did not have what I did, not that she wanted to take it from me. Maybe I just wished this to be so.

  Once, when she was trying on my shoes, I asked her what was wrong.

  “It’s just insane how much stuff you have. You’re so lucky.”

  “You’re welcome to borrow any of it,” I said, and the look on her face softened.

  “No one has ever been so generous. Ever.”

  “You deserve it, You deserve to have everything you want.”

  “I do,” she said. “I have Jared and I have you.”

  One night I dressed her in a Courrèges silver 1960s mini shift dress and go-go boots, and we went to a club in Santa Monica. My outfit matched hers, but it was in gold. I had tailored the silver dress to fit her, and she let me put makeup on her face and douse her with French perfume. She looked beautiful, like my little doll, and she smelled like Paris, especially to my sensitive nostrils, but she kept checking her reflection in her compact mirror and wrinkling her nose at herself.

  “I’m so much shorter than you are,” she said.

  “You’re perfect.”

  The bouncer let our fake IDs pass with a wink. He thought he was doing me a big favor, but he had no idea that I was three times as old as he was.

  “I guess he thought we were cute,” I said.

  Emily rolled her eyes. “He thought you were Gisele Bündchen. Of course we got in.”