The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (19 page)

She let the curtain fall into place. Molly sat up, glassy-eyed, whimpering, and Jane jiggled her knee ruthlessly. Molly began to cry.

Jane stared at me, waiting, I realized, for an answer.

It’s
—to my credit I did not lie, certainly I might have, another man would have—
Constance.

Jane rose with Molly against her shoulder, bending her knees deeply, as if warming up for a race, and looked back at me blankly. Something in me was perversely irritated that she did not know who Constance was. Everyone knew Constance. Everyone in our circle, certainly. Possibly everyone in Boston.

Morris’s daughter,
I said, pulling on my galoshes.
She helps out around the office sometimes. Helps out, you know what I’m saying. Morris’s make-work project. Wants to keep her busy, I suppose. If she lifts a finger, it’s only to check her nails. Been to one of those snooty girls’ schools, Radcliffe or something, I don’t really know. Home for the holidays. She offered a ride. I told her I could just hoof it, but she insisted, decent of her, after all, and I suppose it’s just easier. I’ll be home sooner this way, you see.

I buttoned my overcoat in the alcove as I spoke. Jane stood in the sitting room. Molly cried.

Well
, I said briskly.
Home soon. Try to get some rest.

And I pulled the door shut behind me, hurrying, lest Constance, dressed as I knew she would be, scandalously, should, god forbid, come to the door.

When I stepped into the snowy street, smoothing my hair, I made a point of not looking back. I did not need to. I remembered the expression on Jane’s face well.

I suspect I will remember it always.

The evening was a great success, as such parties in poor times must need be. Constance was clearly having a splendid time, into the gin punch and the men equally enthusiastically, and some of the women as well. I stood over by the window, sipping a ginger ale, watching her dance the Charleston on a table in such a manner as to make it look fashionable still, her bobbed hair damp against her cheeks, her silvery dress throwing hard sparks in the candlelight, like armour. I tried not to think of Jane and Molly, ill at home; tried not to think of them, out of a kind of misguided spite; but they were on my mind nonetheless and I had begun to regret my decision.

On the table, Constance reached up and pulled down a silver garland with a gesture at once obviously calculated and yet so seemingly natural. The girl, I thought, was masterful.

You know what I call a dame like that?
said someone at my shoulder.

No
, I said, without turning.
What.

A Chicago overcoat.

Chicago overcoat?

I turned, then, to look at him. I did not recognize him from the office. He had a bright spot of cocktail sauce dribbled on his tie.

I thought that was a coffin,
I said.

The man drained his highball before responding. The ice clacked against his teeth.

Bingo.

The band, winding down, launched into the syrupy “Stardust” and Constance slowed too, swaying there on the table, one hand outstretched, swinging the silver garland like a tail, the fine straps of her dress looped down over the tops of her white arms.

Want my advice
, the man said, chewing an ice cube, moving away into the crowd.
Take a cab.

When I turned back to Constance, Morris, absurdly furious in a velvet Santa hat, was pulling her down from the table. He steered her into a corner. She was easily as tall as her father, and she stood with her head thrown back, half-reclined against a table, her long legs stretched out like a man’s, while he spoke angrily into her ear.

She caught my gaze then, across the room. I held it a moment too long. Morris glanced over, following her look, and I turned quickly away, toward the window. I lifted my glass of ginger ale but it was empty. I set it on the window ledge.

The snow had begun to fall harder, spiralling in great flakes, drifting against the parked cars along the curb, the dead lawns, then swirling back up to stick against the steamed windowpane. The lights of the city were dying. One by one, guests drifted over to the window and rubbed the glass, peering out, frowning. The air stank of stale tobacco, soured wine. The band already packing away their instruments in great black cases with self-conscious ceremony, like magicians, the chatter of the crowd all at once shrill in the absence of music. A couple stood in the doorway, locked in intimate, groping conversation. An elderly man dozed in an armchair in the corner. Someone had removed his shoes and socks, and his feet against the dark carpet looked bloodless and sculpted. A fat woman wrapped a string of silver paper bells around his throat like a boa; another threw back her head and laughed. A pretty young woman I recognized from the office stood surrounded by a circle of girls, like horses, in the center of the dance floor, shaking her head and weeping.

Constance, it seemed, had disappeared. I sat on the window ledge, folding and refolding a paper cocktail napkin, waiting. I imagined Jane and Molly would be asleep by then on the old sofa in a yellow pool of lamplight.

Slowly, the room emptied, the guests trickling away with the weather and the hour, leaving cocktail glasses, and trampled party favours, and plates of oysters half-eaten. Soon it was just me and an old Negro who emptied ashtrays into a tin bucket beneath the drooping garlands. I wanted to go home.

I made my way to the abandoned coat check and found the last two in the back row, hers and mine, ominous as hanged bodies. The feel of her coat on my arm, some sort of inky fur, was as of a live thing, at once sensual and alarming. I wondered what sort of state I might find her in, and where.

It did not take long. She leaned against the wall outside the ladies’ room, her cheek pressed up against the gilded paper, hair damp against her forehead, scarlet lipstick bleeding beautifully.

She raised her head slowly at my approach.

Ready?
she said.

2

The image of the child in the garden haunted me. There was something about the pale wispiness of her hair, a certain sturdy set of the shoulders. Something achingly, impossibly familiar.

But I could not think it. I pushed it from my mind. My head pounded. I worked sporadically, slept fitfully. During the night, I woke to the feel of a small hand against my cheek, cold, cold. I left the light in my room burning, and rose in the morning only to cross to the window and look at once down into the empty garden with a feeling of dread. I did not know what I feared to see, what sort of apparition—no, that was not right: I knew exactly what I feared to see. But there was nothing. Only glittering morning, only raindrops hung from bare branches like purses of pure light.

I fumbled my feet into my shoes and went sockless down, through the foyer and around the outside of the house to the back garden, wanting proof. Something concrete, tangible, bare footprints in the turned soil, an unlatched door.

I found only last summer’s weeds and long grasses, untrampled, beneath limbs so overgrown and diseased they’d been peeled smoothly of bark. I tried the latch of the garden door, which seemed to be, as I had thought, a sort of back entrance to Flossie’s suite, but the latch was padlocked and looked to have been so for some time, cobwebbed, the metal dripping rusty stains down the white clapboard siding. Mossy clay pots stood stacked in front of it, still filled with soil and dead plants from summers previous, mouldering leaves packed against them in drifts. No one had come that way, clearly.

I circled the house slowly in the cold air, all the way back around to the garden. Nothing. As I stood pondering, the silver tabby appeared out of nowhere, curling himself round my ankles in a long, serpentine stretch. I bent to rub the top of his head, but he shot away into the long weeds, gone.

When I straightened, I saw on the cobblestones at my feet a little gray sparrow, its head twisted at a terrible angle. Squeamish, Jane had often called me, and I could not have honestly disagreed. I bent to look closely. The bird blinked its black eye, horribly, and the silver tabby reappeared at the edge of the grass. What could I do? I left the bird to its bloody fate, reminding myself it was, after all, too late.

On my way around to the front of the house, another possibility occurred to me. A plausible one. I cut back through the yard again, pushing between the hedges to the yellow boarding house. I could smell bacon, coffee, on the wet air. I stepped up onto the whitewashed verandah and rapped at the door. It was opened shortly by a plump, redfaced woman in a stained apron. A blast of oven-warmed air and breakfast table chatter and clinking dishes wafted out behind her.

Morning
, she said cheerfully, wiping her palms on her apron.
Afraid we’re full up just now.

Then, before I could set her straight, a funny look crossed her face. I saw her glance down at my bare ankles and I recalled I had hardly bothered to dress, much less wash or comb.

Forgive me
, I said.
I’m just from over the way
. I gestured to the house behind me, and the woman’s eyes glanced there but she said nothing.

This will sound strange
, I began awkwardly,
but do you know, has there been anyone out in the garden at night, between the two houses? A guest of yours, I mean.

The woman blinked at me.

A child, perhaps?
I said.
A little—

The woman turned abruptly and called over her shoulder.
Mister, can you come out a moment here
.

A man, about the same age as the woman, and with the same ruddy complexion, appeared at her shoulder. A husband or brother, he could have been either.

What is it, Missus
, he began. Then, seeing me, he said,
Oh … hello, then
.

Good morning
, I said.
I’m not sure; perhaps I could speak to the owners, or the caretakers, or what have you, or perhaps you are—

You can speak to me,
the man said, not rudely.

He’s wondering,
the woman said,
has there been a child … in the garden … at night.
She seemed to be weighing her words oddly.

A child?

I told him we’ve got no child here.

There’s James
, said the man.

That’s right, too
, said the woman.
I forgot about him
. She looked at me.
There’s James. Quiet one, he is. Hardly know he’s even here.

Is it James you’re looking for?
asked the man.

No—

Well, that’s all we’ve got. There’s no other children. Isn’t that right, Missus.

Yes, it is.

Just the boy,
the man said.

James,
the woman confirmed, nodding.
There’s just James.

I noticed the clattering of dishes, the hum of voices, had fallen silent in the room beyond. The man Baxter appeared at the door. I was pleased to see him and told him so.

I’ve got it
, he said to the couple.

They exchanged a glance and, nodding at me solemnly, disappeared back inside the house.

I began to ask how the job search was progressing, then stopped myself. It would hardly have been tactful. At that moment, James appeared beneath his father’s arm.

Quietly, Baxter said to the boy,
I told you—

But, I wanted to ask
, the boy said.

Ask what?
I said.

James
, the father cautioned, taking the boy by the arm.
Go back inside.

Could she come here sometime?
James said to me.

What?
I said.
Who?

She waves me over, but Papa won’t let me.

James!

Who?
I demanded, laying a restraining hand on Baxter’s arm as he pulled the boy inside.