Jane of Fire

by Jessica Penot

  We went to the same place we had gone to before. We went to the fire tower. I didn’t hesitate to take his hand as he helped me up the rusty structure to the top. Together, we looked out on the world.

  “This is the only place I have ever known peace,” he said as he looked out.

  “But you’ve been everywhere! You’ve seen such beauty. How can you not have known peace?” I asked.

  “The past is a ghost I carry with me. There are very few places I can let my ghosts go and just be.”

  I nodded. “I know that feeling.”

  He touched my cheek. There was a tear on it. I hadn’t even noticed it myself.

  “You have as many ghosts as I do, don’t you?”

  “There are so many people in this life who have hurt far worse than me. I try not to focus on the dark parts of my life. I try to stay focused on the light ahead of me. I’ve been lucky in so many regards. If I focus on the past, I will be pulled down and it will drown me.”

  Edward’s laughter was as bitter as the winter wind. “I wish I had your wisdom. Some days I think the past will drown me. Other days, I think it already has.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and looked up at him. “Don’t say that. You have so much to live for. I know your life has been hard. Death has surrounded you and taken many people you love, but you are still here and the sun is shining on you. You are rich and young and handsome. Life has given you so much others can only dream of. You have to remember that.”

  He placed his hand on mine and held it. I gazed into his blue eyes with flecks of green and couldn’t breathe, they were so beautiful.

  “And you have your Blanche, now,” I added. “You aren’t alone.” Why did I say that? Why was I such a consistent, bumbling idiot? I blushed in anger. I was angry at myself.

  He let go of my hand and turned away from me. “That’s right. I have Blanche.” His voice was hard and cold. “We should go now. It’s getting late.”

  “Can I say something before we go?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I want to apologize for last night. I was too forward and I shouldn’t have said anything I said. I can’t believe I asked you to make out. I really am not like that. I was just drunk. I shouldn’t have tortured you with questions about hearing laughter in the middle of the night and family curses. I would like to give you your family letters if you want them. I preserved them for you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, turning back to me. “That damn curse has haunted me my entire life. It’s good to talk about it. I’m sure most people would think my family was crazy, but the curse has always been very real to the Rochesters. Even if the curse was just a myth, it has still overshadowed all of our lives, for as long as I can remember. I would love to go through the letters with you.”

  “Are you sure you want to read the letters with me? They are…. Haunting. I almost believed in the curse after I was done with them. Maybe you have been through enough. Maybe you don’t want me to read the letters with you.”

  “After my mother died,” he said, “my father was so sure that he’d killed her. He said she turned to dust in his arms. He said that if he had just kept hating her she would have lived. He killed himself. He hung himself from the chandelier. What a cliché! I think my entire family is insane. My grandmother told me that it was my fault Bertha died. I had cared about her, so she died. I wasn’t allowed to date, but I met Bertha at a coffee shop and I really liked her. She was a sweet girl. She was my first love. We made love in the stables on a warm, summer night. The next day things got weird. She started following me. She threatened to kill me. She talked about monsters and demons following us. Her parents took her for a psychiatric evaluation. She killed herself. It was easy to believe my grandmother was right. It was my fault she died. There was another girl I liked. I didn’t even like her that much, but she was hit by a car. My grandmother said that was my fault, too. She said I can only be with girls I hate. It is crazy. Living this way is a sign of mental illness, but I can’t stop. I can’t help thinking that the curse is real and that I am hollow, and if I let myself care about anyone, they will die. I am glad you found the letters. I am glad I can finally talk to someone about this. I have lived with this my entire life and I can never tell anyone. Do you have any idea how lonely that is?”

  I had no idea what to say, so I took his hand in mine. He was shaking.

  “I don’t even remember my parents,” I said. “I can’t even remember my mother’s name. I used to spend so much time conjuring up their images in my mind. I imagined they were rich and beautiful and perfect. I dreamed that I would end up like Oliver Twist and someday my long-lost relatives would find me and save me from my life, but they never came. I imagined so many stories about myself. I was a foundling like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. I just turned up on the floor in an Emergency Room. Someone had just thrown me down on the filthy floor and walked away. Jane was written on my head with a Sharpie. Even better than that, someone wrote some incredible bullshit on my chest: Love is the gateway. Love is the key. Love is the door that will set all the old ones free. That was on my chest! I was naked, so I am going to assume my family was completely insane, too…” I hadn’t realized how much bitterness had tainted my voice. I had told him almost everything, but I stopped just short of telling him about the tattoo. “I know what loneliness is.”

  “I am so sorry, Jane. I really am.”

  I shook my head. “I try not to think about it.” I was trying not to cry. I was holding back my tears with everything I had in me.

  Edward squeezed my hand and we stood together looking out on the beautiful world. We looked out over the rolling hills and the verdant forest. We looked out on the tiny town, nestled in the gentle slopes of the Appalachians. The sun went down in a swirling display of orange and purple, leaving only a sprinkling of stars behind it. Edward’s hand was warm and strong in mine, and I wished the moment would never end.

  Chapter 4

  I will walk where my own nature would be leading.

  ~ Emily Bronte

  On the ride home, I told Edward about the letters. I told him about Liliana and her broken heart and about her tragic end. He listened quietly. As we got off our horses, he took my hand again.

  “Maybe my family deserved the curse,” he said. “Liliana sounds terrifying. Maybe my ancestor should have just married her.”

  “You should read the letters, yourself. I’m filtering them through my own bias. I don’t want to say anything bad about your family.”

  Edward laughed. “My feelings won’t be hurt by your calling my ancestors jerks. It was over 300 years ago.”

  I laughed, too. “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it like that. I always thought big, rich families like yours wanted to protect their family name going back to the beginning of time.”

  “Maybe they used to. Maybe some people still think like that, but my family is so messed up, I can’t even defend the actions of my own father. He hated my mother, you know. He was forced to marry her when he was very young. He could barely stand to look at her. Eventually, she grew to hate him, too. She lived on one side of Thornfield and he lived on the other side. It was the same with my grandparents. Grandma lived on your end of Thornfield and my grandfather lived on the end I’m in. They all hated each other and tortured each other in passive-aggressive ways. My father cheated. My mother drank. Then after they hated each other for so many years, they realized they loved each other and she ended up dying and then he killed himself. It’s completely crazy. How could I possibly defend the honor of my family? The Rochester men have been sleeping with and marrying women they hate for generations. They do it on purpose. It is cruel.”

  I sat in the cold and watched Edward take the saddles off the horses and put them in the stables. It was too cold to leave them out. I sat by the heater in the barn and warmed my hands. Edward worked quickly and before I
knew it we were walking again.

  We walked back to Thornfield slowly. It was growing cold, again, and I shivered in my heavy coat. The wind blew and I felt like its icy breath would penetrate all the way down to my bones. By the time we made it back inside I was shivering. Edward walked me back to my room and I gave him the letters that I had mounted in the books.

  “Thank you for this,” he said as he held the books. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” I answered.

  “Will I see you at dinner in an hour?”

  “Definitely.”

  I cleaned up and changed my clothes. I put on more lipstick. I wanted to look my best for dinner. I helped the nurse walk Miss Adele to the dining room. Miss Adele was babbling and shaking. I couldn’t really understand what she was talking about, but she kept saying burn under her breath. I tried to comfort her. I put my arm in hers for the walk down to the dining room. I told her Edward was staying for Christmas, but she seemed to only grow worse.

  “Be careful,” she said to me before we made it to the dining room. “Be careful, little bird. Don’t get burnt. Don’t get burnt, little bird. The fire is coming. It’s coming. It will open. They are coming. The door will open. I can hear them. The old ones. I can feel them in my bones.”

  “It’s okay,” I said as I sat her down at the table. “There’s no fire. There’s only ice. Look,” I said as I pointed to the window, “it’s beginning to snow.”

  It snowed so rarely. We weren’t far enough North to get heavy snow, so there was something magical in the white crystals that danced in the frigid air just outside the window. It was like something out of a fairy tale. I walked over to the window and watched the snow as it fell and cover the gardens in a pretty white blanket. It collected at the feet of old statues and trees and made mounds of white crystal where old leaves and weeds had once ruled. The Christmas lights shone out onto the snow, illuminating the white with shades of red and green. All was right with the world.

  I sat next to Miss Adele during dinner and helped her eat. Her hands were shaking far too much for her even to attempt to feed herself. Edward and I had steak, but Miss Adele had soup. I carefully fed her each spoonful.

  “I want my Edward,” she said with soup dribbling down her chin. I wiped her mouth with the napkin. “Where is my grandson?” Adele pushed my hand away. “He said he’d come home.”

  “I’m here grandma,” Edward said.

  “No! No.” Her hands began to shake and she picked up the bowl of soup and threw it across the room. “You aren’t him. You are just trying to confuse me. Where is my Edward! He promised he’d come. I have to tell him something. I have to warn him.”

  Miss Adele hurled her salad plate against the wall and it shattered right next to the soup stain. The nurse took a syringe out of her fanny pack.

  “Help me,” the nurse ordered me. I helped hold Miss Adele while the nurse gave her an injection.

  “Can’t you smell the smoke!” Miss Adele began to yell. “Can’t you smell it?” She grabbed my steak off my plate and threw it. “I want to go home! I want to go home! Why did I come here? Why did I come here? I want my mother! I don’t want the old ones to come. I am afraid. I am afraid.”

  Edward got up and gathered his grandmother into his arms. He carried her like a baby, upstairs to her room. The nurse and I followed him. Miss Adele thrashed all the way and didn’t calm down until Edward tucked her gently into her bed.

  “It’s all right now,” Edward said to her. “I know now. Everything will change. The curse is over. Don’t worry, Grandma. Don’t worry. It’s all over.”

  Slowly, Miss Adele calmed down and drifted off to sleep. The nurse sat on the bed beside Miss Adele and smoothed back her hair.

  “She should be in a nursing home,” the nurse said. “If you aren’t willing to put her in a home, you should consider hospice. Home health can no longer provide her with the care she needs.”

  “Hospice?” Edward asked. “Isn’t that for people who are dying?”

  The nurse nodded and handed Edward a card.

  “Think about it and we can discuss it more in the morning,” the nurse said.

  Edward and I left the nurse to her duties. We returned to our meals. Jenna and Mrs. Fairfax were frantically trying to clean the mess Miss Adele had left. I had a fresh steak on my plate. With Miss Adele gone, Edward seemed impossibly far away, so he picked up his plate and took the seat that had once been occupied by his grandmother. We sat next to each other. We were so close our arms brushed while we were eating. The room was lit by candlelight and the snow fell outside in huge fluffy flakes. Mrs. Fairfax and Jenna left and I was alone, with Edward, in the candlelight.

  We ate silently. I knew that what the nurse had said was weighing on his mind. I agreed with the nurse. Miss Adele needed more care, but Edward had been gone so long he didn’t know how bad his grandmother was getting. Dessert came and he and I ate French Silk pie together.

  I followed him to Miss Adele’s sitting room after dinner. He lit a fire and we sat together in silence for a while.

  “Do you think she needs hospice?” he asked me.

  “She needs more care than we can provide,” I answered.

  He nodded. “I wish there was a television with cable here. We’ve got to get cable or Wi-Fi or something.”

  “I like it better this way,” I said. “Although, I would like to see a movie now and again.”

  “Would you like to go to a movie with me?” he asked.

  “I would love that, but the nurse’s shift is almost over and we can’t leave your grandmother alone.”

  “A little money solves every problem. I’ll just go bribe the nurse into staying later.”

  Edward vanished and when he returned he took me out in his Jaguar. I felt completely out of place in his fancy car. I felt like a scullery maid sitting in the king’s carriage. I looked down at my hands. The nails were bitten down and scraggly. My boots were worn and scuffed and my jeans were faded. I felt like I was soiling the pristine leather of his beautiful car.

  We went to see a comedy together. It was light and funny and full of jokes so inappropriate I couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed, too, and for a minute we forgot about Miss Adele and everything sad that had shaped our lives. There was only laughter and jokes about farting.

  Chapter 5

  Every leaf speaks bliss to me fluttering from the autumn tree.

  ~ Emily Bronte

  I think I was glowing the next morning. I was so happy, there were no words. I went downstairs early for breakfast and ate with the rest of the staff. I grinned stupidly as I ate my oatmeal and then helped the nurse feed Miss Adele. She never ate for the nurses.

  After breakfast, I headed back up to Miss Adele’s sitting room, hoping I might find Edward there waiting for me. Instead, I found Mrs. Fairfax. She was sitting in front of the fire, with knitting needles and yarn in her lap. She knit as she spoke.

  “You don’t have a mother, do you?” Mrs. Fairfax said as I walked into the room.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m an orphan.”

  “I have grown quite fond of you, Jane, and I’m going to give you the advice any loving mother would give her daughter in this circumstance.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Be careful. You are very young and you don’t know much of the world or of men. I can see what’s happening between you and Edward and I think you should guard your heart and your body. I would hate to see either ruined or broken.”

  “I appreciate the advice, but I’m no fool. There is nothing between Edward and me, and even if there were, I doubt he would do anything to ruin or break any part of me. He’s a good guy. He would never hurt me.”

  “There is so much you don’t know. You are just a girl. I have lived far longer than you and I am wiser than I look. I kn
ow men. Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful,” I said.

  “Stay away from Edward. He can hurt you in a way that can never be healed.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine Edward hurting anyone or anything. I didn’t care about curses. I turned and left Mrs. Fairfax to her knitting and bumped into Edward in the hall. He was dressed casually, again. I liked him in jeans.

  “Would you like to go on an adventure?” he asked.

  I nodded and he pulled me away from Thornfield Hall. He took me on a car ride, through the mountains into the woods. He took me far from home to a place where waterfalls danced over babbling brooks. We walked up into the mountains, past the frigid streams, and into a place where the trees were so thick you could get lost ten feet from your destination. Snow hung on the branches of the trees and covered the forest floor.

  He pulled me upward as if we were climbing to reach the face of God. We were too out of breath to talk, but he was always in front of me, helping me and pulling me on. It was cold, and the higher we got the colder it became. At the top of the mountain, the snow on the ground was thick and icicles hung from every tree. They hung from the branches like tinsel clinging to Mrs. Fairfax’s Christmas tree.

  I stood on the top of the mountain and looked down on the world far below. I shivered as a cloud passed the sun and the wind pulled my hat from my head. My hair spilled out and became tangled in the wind.

  Edward handed me his hat. “But you’ll get cold,” I said.

  He pulled the hat over my head. “I like the cold.”

  The view from the mountain top was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. The world was covered in snow. It lay on top of the landscape turning the world white. Everything seemed so far away, so peaceful. It was sublime. The view was worth the climb. It was worth the breathless scramble upward.