Charlotte’s Story (11 page)

More than any other room in Bliss House, the library, with its smell of old books, polished wood, and low afternoon light, suited Preston. Even though his body was quite athletic, he had an old-fashioned, almost antique look about him, and his strong features made him seem almost roguish. His face would be right at home in the portrait gallery of some Old World museum: Amsterdam, perhaps. Or Rome.

“You went out!” He put his drink down on the desk beside a small pile of open boxes and strode across the room to me. “I’m so glad, my love. How is Rachel?”

“She sent you these.” I was determined to speak to him about the memorial plans, but knew it was always best to approach him carefully about things we might disagree about. I definitely thought having the memorial at the house was inappropriate. I turned my head so he could kiss me on the cheek, then handed him the small paper bag, which was spotted with grease from the butter in the ladyfingers.

He opened it and looked inside. “These smell damned good. That new housekeeper of hers . . . what’s her name? Cynthia? Susan? I can’t keep up. She’s a decent cook. Jack and I both told Rachel she needs to be nice to this one.”

Setting the bag on a table, he took out a ladyfinger and popped two-thirds of it into his mouth. “Damned good,” he said with his mouth still a little full. “Do you want one?”

“They’re for you. But you might save part of one for Michael.”

“Of course. If you think Nonie will let him have one.” He said this with a look of mischief in his eyes.

I had loved this playful Preston. I was still drawn to him, even though there was a wall inside me then that didn’t want to let him pass. He was not the way back to Eva.

“What’s in the boxes? I didn’t see any mail on the table in the hall.”

He glanced back at the desk.

“Want a drink? It’s after five.”

I wondered how far a drink would go to dispel the wall inside me, but wasn’t tempted. The last champagne I’d drunk had made me sleep so deeply that I’d let my daughter drown.

“Water is fine. Ice too, please.”

While Press poured my water, I went to look in the open boxes on the desk. Both were full of rich velvet fabric. Midnight blue, deep scarlet, ruby red with shiny gold threads woven through it. Green with outlines of large, abstract stars, also in gold. I lowered one of the cardboard lids. “J. C. Jacquith Designs, NYC” was neatly hand-lettered on the return label. I took out one of the fabric pieces and carried it to the window to get a better look. The velvet was lush, but the gold threads were sharp as though they were made of actual metal and caught at my fingertips.

“What are these for?”

I wasn’t a fool. I already knew what they were for.

“Samples that J.C. sent down weeks ago. I was getting ready to throw them away. The curtains up in the theater are moth-eaten. It’s Mother’s fault for letting them get to that state.”

There was a note card that had fallen between the two boxes. I picked it up. The paper was heavy stock and scented—something peppery and arresting. The note was dated more than two months earlier, only a week or so after Olivia had died.

“Darling Press, Again, I’m just crushed about your dear old mummy. I hope you’re still holding up like the brick that you are. Here are the samples I promised. The red velvet with the gold is what they’ve put in the studio at Carnegie. Too much? Maybe! Call with the measurements. I’ll bring them down and supervise installation myself. It’s going to be spectacular! Love to you and Precious Bride—J.”

The paper’s scent was vivid, like J.C. herself. I’d found her intimidating with her expensive tailored clothes, bold, interested gaze, and exaggerated gestures. She had a habit of holding her hand out to men to be kissed, and they usually obliged without hesitation. Their reward was a smile full of blazingly white large teeth. J.C. wasn’t beautiful or even particularly pretty. But she had what Nonie called “go-to-hell style.”

“Why are we replacing the curtains? No one ever sees them.” I was being disingenuous, so the words felt predictably clumsy.

It was a longstanding disagreement between Press and his mother. Like the ballroom, she believed the theater to be a waste of space and resources, but had refused to let Preston use it. By the time we were married, the discussions had all been exhausted, leaving me to hear only “she’s irrational about the theater” from Press, and “a home is no place for theatrical productions” from Olivia. It didn’t matter to Olivia that Preston’s group only wanted to rehearse. They held their infrequent performances in the auditorium of Fellowes Academy, a nearby private girls’ boarding school, and had done them there since Zion and Helen had started the group fifteen years earlier.

Press handed me my water. “You and Marlene can continue using my mother’s menus from now until the end of time, if you like. We can even keep her bedroom as a shrine.”

At those words, I wondered for a moment if he somehow knew what I was thinking about Olivia’s room. And that Olivia was still here—somewhere.

His heavy eyebrows lifted, lightening his face. It was a look he got when he was truly excited. “But the house is ours to do with as we choose, isn’t it? Now that Zion and Helen are gone, I’d like to take the group in a new direction. This place. . . .” He swept his arm, I assumed to indicate the house. “Bliss House is so much more than my mother would ever let it be. Now it’s
ours
, Charlotte. Everyone in the group adores you, my darling. I’ve been telling you
for months, you should come and at least read with us. You’d be terrific on stage. Helen was always saying that you and your killer cheekbones belonged up there.”

When Press introduced Helen to me at our engagement party, Helen had reached up and taken my face in her tiny hands that sparkled with stacks of expensive rings and given my cheeks a not-so-gentle squeeze.

“Look at those cheekbones, Zion! This is a girl born to play Brunhild, yes? But do you sing, my dear?”

Even though the group didn’t do musicals, that line, “But do you sing, my dear?” became a kind of joke between Press and me.

“I don’t think so. I’ll leave the theater to you and Rachel.” Sometimes Press was like a particularly winning child whose pleas I found hard to resist no matter what my mood. But the wall was up. Even if I felt my emotions, my body responding to him, I wouldn’t be drawn from my purpose. My grief.

“Then come and play with us. We’ll be at loose ends without Zion and Helen. Helen kept us going.”

“Come and
play
with you?” Even the word
play
felt repellent in my mouth. “What are you saying? Our baby girl hasn’t been dead a month. What do you think you’re doing?”

He put a hand on my arm. Angry, I shook it off and picked up the note from the desk.

“When is J.C. coming? Have you already arranged it?”

“She’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

“Jesus, Press. How could you not tell me about this?” I searched his eyes looking for understanding, waiting for him to tell me that he hadn’t meant to hurt me. “You need to tell her not to come!”

“It’s just a few days. She’ll be here, and the work will be done, then everyone will be gone. I’ve already had the outside stairway to the theater repaired, and the workmen will use that.”

How had I not heard? Not noticed? I vaguely remembered voices, hammering, but just barely. It must have taken days to repair
the towering, dangerously narrow wood-and-iron stairway that hugged the western side of the house as though it didn’t want to be seen. It was a leftover from the days when Randolph Bliss had invited in the locals to see minstrel shows and even the occasional traveling preacher, though the rumors were that the family secretly mocked them. Someone from the town had fallen from the top of the stairs years before, but I didn’t know the details.

“And then? Don’t lie to me. Rachel told me about the memorial.”

“Lie to you? Darling, we aren’t the only ones who lost something precious. There are a dozen people living in or near Old Gate who loved Helen and Zion like parents. It’s only right that they be able to come together and mourn them properly.” He reached out for my arm again, but hesitated.

I was glad he stopped, because I might have hit him or flung myself at him. Still, I could hardly speak. My jaw was clenched so tightly, the words barely escaped.

“They don’t have to do it here.”

Behind my thoughts, my rage, I heard a rustling somewhere. From outside the room? No. From the nearby wall, or perhaps the fireplace. I thought of rats. They were a constant problem in the orchard’s storage buildings. But I didn’t want to look away from Press.

“Charlotte, they died here.”

“They died in the drive.”

“It’s still our home. Our house. Bliss House isn’t just the house—it’s everything we own. That I own. I have an obligation.”

The rustling got louder. Press glanced away for just a second toward the fireplace.

“It’s just a room. You can have it in town at the auditorium. Or if they hadn’t been goddamn heathens, you could do it in a church like you would for normal people. You act like it matters, giving them some kind of service. They’re probably in hell, anyway.”

My breath came short and my body was flushed with heat. The sounds from the fireplace were louder, more violent, as though
the chimney were about to collapse. I wasn’t sure how much longer we could ignore them.

In my heels I was almost two inches taller than Press, but his body filled the space in front of me and I could feel the force, the presence of him overwhelming me.

Then he smiled. It wasn’t the same smile that so often charmed me. This was like someone else’s cruel smile. It was the first time I had ever felt even a little afraid of him.

We turned as the sounds from the fireplace erupted into a chaos of flying embers and terrible shrieks. Yellow-hot sparks and tiny chunks of burning wood littered the hearth and carpet. Alarmed, I fell back. Press pushed me roughly aside to grab the brass-handled broom hanging near the wood caddy and quickly swept the burning embers back into the fireplace. But the sparking continued, fueled by the vicious tangle of whatever was now wrestling in the fireplace. Rancid tendrils of smoke unfurled around us.

Press thrust the broom at me, shouting “Use this! Keep the fire off the carpet.”

I took it without question and hurried to the farthest bits of red smoldering on the antique Yomut carpet. Press had taken the poker and shovel and was gingerly trying to handle the creature—or creatures—scattering the fire. The shrieking was fading, and it would surely end in death. Press suddenly jumped aside, and some mad, flaming
thing
shot past him and into the room.

I screamed.

A trail of embers dropped to the floor, melting into the carpet. The thing hit a row of shelved books, and it, too, fell to the floor, floundering.

The library door opened. Terrance, with more speed than I could imagine him capable of, grabbed the brown cashmere throw blanket from where it sat on a chair and tossed it on the thing. I watched as the throw lifted and fell, lifted and fell, until it shuddered to a stop.

Whatever was left in the fireplace gave a loud
pop
and whistled finally into silence.

“Miss Charlotte, let me.” Marlene took the broom from me. In the flurry, I’d forgotten the smoldering bits of wood on the carpet. Fortunately, most had burned themselves out.

I went to the fireplace where Press stood looking down into the scattered logs. Among the squarish chunks of spent firewood, something long and twisted lay draped like a thick piece of rope. As I watched, it moved slowly as though it were trying to turn itself over. Then it was still.

“Snake.” Preston jabbed at it. “Not a very big one.” He turned, pointing the poker at where Terrance stood across the room. “I believe that was a raven.”

Terrance had picked up the other creature in the ruined blanket. He folded back the edge so we could see the limp body of the bird.

Chapter 10

The Magic Lantern

Dense silver clouds from the previous day hung over the house all through the night, pressing against the windows as though they would come inside. The bedroom itself was cast in gray as I rose groggily from my bed in the steely morning light to retrieve my robe from the closet. Before I could put it on, I doubled over in a fit of coughing. My hands still smelled of smoke, even though I had scrubbed them, and Terrance and Marlene had left all the windows on the first floor open until well after nine the previous night.

We’d had a damp, rather dismal dinner in the dining room. Press made a weak joke about Marlene serving us roasted raven, but when neither Nonie nor I laughed, he looked down at his plate and was uncharacteristically reticent for the rest of the meal.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said when we were finished. “Care to join me?”

Given the argument we’d had just two hours earlier, I thought he was being sarcastic. I was surprised to see that his face was serious.

“I don’t think so.”

I could feel Nonie’s eyes on us. Had she heard the argument in the library? Bliss House was big, and sound didn’t travel well through its walls. Or perhaps she was just being her discreet self.