Forty Rooms (26 page)

Mrs. Caldwell worried about Celia.

She read in English because the girls did not know Russian. Eugene was the only one who understood it, albeit imperfectly, for she had sung him Russian lullabies and told him tales of her own childhood; but when she had spoken Russian to the infant Emma, Emma had cried, as if sensing something amiss, and as a toddler she had flatly refused to submit to the pointless torture of learning some made-up word that no one but her mother understood for every normal word used by everyone around her. By the time the twins were born, Mrs. Caldwell had switched fully to English.

“‘The older princes brought many pretty little dogs, but none could fit in the walnut shell . . .’” The room flared up in a car’s headlights, and Mrs. Caldwell paused to glance out the window; but the car did not slow down by their gates, passing out of sight down the darkened street. “‘And so the old king again embraced his youngest son, told his servants to drown all the other dogs in the sea, and—’”

“Oh, Mama, does it really say that?” Celia cried, her lips turning down once again and beginning to tremble. Mrs. Caldwell looked at her without comprehension, then ran her eyes over what she had just read. She was in the habit of softening the harsher truths of the Brothers Grimm stories, omitting certain details, changing executions to exiles and deaths to prolonged absences—when she paid sufficient attention.

“No, sweetie, of course not, I read it wrong,” she hastened to say. “The king told his servants to release all the dogs by the sea.”

“Because the dogs will enjoy playing on the beach,” Celia said, and, nodding with understanding, subsided back into the pillows.

Emma snorted.

Mrs. Caldwell gave her older daughter a warning look, and returned to the book. At the account of the third task, that of finding the most beautiful girl, her thoughts wandered again, and by the time it came to the king’s ordering the entire crowd of second-rate ladies “to be thrown into the sea and drowned,” she neglected to amend it. Celia sat up in bed, blinking.

“So ladies who aren’t beautiful are drowned? What if I’m not beautiful when I grow up?”

“You probably won’t be. To be beautiful,” Emma said helpfully, “you need to be really skinny and at least eight feet tall.”

Celia looked alarmed.

“No, no, sweetie, Emma’s joking,” Mrs. Caldwell said, snapping the book shut and turning off the lamp, then gently pushing the bunnies and the bears aside to perch on Celia’s bed. “And in any case, I’m sure all the ladies knew how to swim and were perfectly all right in the end.”

Except for the old ones and the fat ones, a voice inside her added with bitterness.

Squash growled in uneasy slumber in the hallway, and she listened for a moment, but all was quiet again. It was almost nine o’clock. The girls’ room lay shadowy and warm, illuminated softly by a single nightlight shaped like a pale pink seashell. “Why don’t I tell you some stories from my childhood instead? How your grandfather and I used to hunt mushrooms, or about the brownie who lived in our dacha attic, or—”

“I don’t want real life,” Celia said. “I want a fairy tale about a princess, but only with a happy ending.”

Mrs. Caldwell looked over at Emma, but she had already fallen asleep, probably as soon as the light had gone out.
(In her dream, Emma walked through a city, barefoot, still wearing her cherry-studded pajamas. It was a place she dreamed about often. The streets were straight, the squares wide and empty, the houses made of brightly polished white stones. There were no people around, only statues dressed in what looked like cascading sheets, but Emma was happy there; it seemed to her serious and good. Whenever she found herself visiting, she tried to commit to memory the gleaming geometry of the place so she could build a city just like it when she grew up.)

“All right,” Mrs. Caldwell whispered, stretching along the edge of Celia’s bed. “There once was a princess.”

“Was she beautiful?” Celia asked, snuggling closer.

“She was. But she was not one of those silly princesses who sit in front of their mirrors all day long combing their hair. The most beautiful thing about her was her voice, and above all else in the world she loved to sing. One day the princess decided to leave her home.”

“Why? Didn’t she live in a castle? Were her parents not nice?”

“She lived in a very small castle. Her parents, the old king and queen, were kind and noble, but their kingdom was tiny, and the princess wanted to see new places and learn new things. When she went to say good-bye to her parents, her father gave her a gift—a box that looked plain on the outside but had seven precious songs inside. And he told her to treasure these songs and to keep them secret from everyone. For her voice would stay
beautiful and true only as long as the songs stayed hidden, the king told her, but if she let the songs out, she would no longer be able to sing at all. So the princess took the box, thanked her father, and traveled to a distant land across the sea, and in that land she met a prince.”

“Was he nice?”

“He was very, very nice. And he lived in a lovely castle that was much bigger than the castle where the princess had grown up. The prince fell in love with the princess, and the princess loved how nice the prince was, and she loved his castle too. So they got married, and the princess felt so happy on their wedding day that she opened her secret box and sang the first song to her new husband the prince. And the next morning her treasure box had only six songs left in it, but some time later a beautiful baby boy appeared asleep in the cradle, and the princess was happy—so happy that she opened her box and sang the second song to her little son. And then she had only five songs left in the box, but some time later a beautiful baby girl appeared in her cradle.”

“And did the princess sing a song to her baby girl too?”

“She did. In fact, she sang two songs, one to her new baby girl and one to her firstborn boy, to show that she loved them both equally. And then she had two new babies, and only three songs left. And this happened two more times—two more times the princess felt so happy that she sang one of her special songs—and so in the end she had six precious children, and only one song left in her secret box.”

“Six children, how nice,” said Celia sleepily. “You only have five. And did the princess sing her last song away too?”

“No, that one she kept for herself,” Mrs. Caldwell said.

“So the last baby didn’t make her happy?”

“Oh. No, no, it’s just that she wanted to keep one song for herself.”

“So she was selfish.” Celia yawned and closed her eyes, and mumbled into her pillow, “Or maybe the last song was a bad one. Or maybe her father forgot to put it in the box and gave her only six. Or maybe the princess lost it when she opened the box the time before. Or maybe—”

Mrs. Caldwell sighed. “Maybe,” she said. Bending over the drowsy girl, she smoothed the matted blond locks on her forehead, then whispered, her lips against the child’s warm cheek: “Would you like a little sister?” Celia did not answer; she too had fallen asleep.
(Celia dreamed that she lived in a house just like their house from the outside but completely different inside. There was no furniture anywhere at all, and the empty rooms had clear glass walls; through the walls she could see disappearing vistas of tantalizing, brilliantly colored places—gardens, mountains, amusement parks with the most delightful carousels—to which, however, she could discover no entrance, for when she walked through the doors, she found herself in other glass-walled rooms that were just like the rooms she had left. The floors were likewise glass, and when she peered closely, she could see roots and insects stirring in the soil under her feet, though she could not touch them through the thick transparent plate. None of the rooms had ceilings; no matter what floor she was on, wherever she looked up, she saw white curly clouds scurrying across the skies and, in one spot, a gathering thunderstorm. A few times she thought she glimpsed, through the glass of the walls, her mother passing slowly, rooms away, her eyes cast down, her face pale—but she could never get close to her. And once, a man appeared before her and looked her over thoughtfully. So you are one of the brats for whom your mother the princess has given up her songs, he said. I wonder if you’re worth it. He smiled at her then, but it was not a nice smile. She felt a little afraid, and fascinated at the same time.)

Mrs. Caldwell slipped off the bed and sat down in her reading chair to wait. All five children and the dog were sleeping now. Outside the girls’ room, the house shifted, settling deeper into its mysterious nocturnal life, filling with odd creaks, groans, and murmurs—the sock monster rummaging through the laundry basket, the cantankerous ghost of her grandmother muttering in the exercise room, two shadowy lovers embracing among the bottles down in the cellar—but inside the girls’ warmly glowing pink-and-white room there reigned a tranquil stillness, not altogether soundless, and yet separate from the rest of the world, as if they were sheltered within some luminous rosy seashell, and while the seashell hummed gently with the rumble of the ocean, the ocean’s chilled, roiling vastness was reduced in the seashell’s pearly, blushing spiral to something toylike, and soothing, and remote. Mrs. Caldwell watched her daughters sleep—Emma lying still and serene on her back, her dark hair framing the solemn clarity of her profile, Celia tossing, pulling the covers on, throwing them off, revealing the scratches on her arms and the scabs on her knees, hugging her bunny closer to her chest, muttering something with a quiet but fierce conviction—“Yes, yes, I am, I swear,” Mrs. Caldwell heard, or thought she heard. Two small, self-contained worlds, two perfect, unknowable mysteries, and down and across the hallway, three more—and she loved
each of them completely, loved them more than anything else in the world, more even than her songs.

Another pair of headlights flooded the inside of the seashell with a cold, sliding glare, but this time the car did slow down, the gates glided open, gravel crunched under the tires. She did not rise to meet him—she had chosen this room for their talk, had meant to stay within its rosy safety. When his ponderous steps thumped up the stairs, she called him in an undertone, and called again, louder. The steps hesitated on the landing before turning toward her. Then he stood in the doorway—an imposing, impeccably dressed man with the heavy face of a tired stranger.

“Come,” she said, “look at them. Look how sweet they are.”

“Yes,” he said from the threshold, and was silent. She saw his face harden with a sudden resolve. He took a step into the room.

“Sit down for a minute,” she said, and while her voice was low with tenderness, her stomach lurched with worry.

She could smell whiskey on his breath from where she sat.

He remained standing, looking away from her, at the girls in their beds.

“Time has flown,” he said. She wished she could see his eyes. “It’s hard to believe Cecilia is turning five in another week. Not a baby any longer . . . Look, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Panic split her asunder. She had prepared for their conversation with care, had watched her face in the mirror as she had practiced saying the loving words leading to the hinting words leading to the shocking words to be followed up quickly by the calming words—but there was no time for it now. He was going to tell
her about the other woman, she knew, and then he was going to leave her, leave her and the children, because none of them were babies now, because they would manage—

“Wait, I have something to tell you too,” she cried. “I’m pregnant!”

The seashell nightlight glowed, the girls’ breathing was peaceful in their sleep.

He looked at her stonily, without speaking.

“I’m pregnant, Paul,” she said again, softly, and forced herself to smile.

The expressions shifted in rapid succession on his face, like a shuffled deck of cards, until the one that settled on it was anger.

“How is that possible?” he said. His tone was even, but she felt the boil of his fury beneath. Her smile flickered out. She could no longer tell what expression her own face bore. “How is that possible? It’s only been once or twice in the past few months, if that. And I thought you were taking the pill—”

Her panic grew. She had not practiced for this.

“But I am,” she pleaded, untruthfully. “Accidents happen.”

He sat down on Emma’s bed, placed his hands squarely on his knees.

“Look,” he said. “Things aren’t . . . We already have five children. You only ever wanted two. I wanted three. The twins—the twins were a blessing, of course, and little Celia . . . Well, you know I was against it, but you talked me into it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, that goes without saying, but this time . . . We’re both forty years old, my job security isn’t what it used to be, and—and things are different. You have to talk to your doctor—”

“Paul.” She was crying. “I can’t. I can’t now. It’s too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?”

“Do you remember that night—the night your father told you he needed surgery—”

“Do you mean,” he began, and stopped, and stood back up, towering over her, staring down at her as she pressed, feeling small and frightened, into her chair. “That was almost five months ago.”

“Five months and a week,” she whispered.

“You are five months pregnant, and you haven’t told me?”

“Don’t shout, please don’t shout, you’ll wake them up . . . I didn’t know. Please. Paul. I didn’t know myself. I thought I was just . . .” (
Old. Fat. Say it.
The cold voice inside nudged her, but she disregarded its promptings.) “I only just found out myself. Paul. It’s going to be a girl. A healthy girl. Look at them. Look at them!”

And there were the upside-down mermaids floating on the wallpaper, and the warm seashell nightlight, and Emma’s papier-mâché model of a human heart on her desk, and Celia’s one-eared blue bunny hanging half off her bed, and two heads on the pillows, one blond, one dark. And as he stood before them, the big hulk of a man, the big husk of a man, his shoulders drooped, his mouth sagged, and she saw defeat in his eyes, and underneath it, possibly, just possibly, the touch of old warmth, of old kindness.