Wither (34 page)

On the morning of my planned escape, I lie on the trampoline and listen to the coils creaking as my body moves. This was Jenna’s favorite place to be, her own island.

It’s here that Cecily finds me, her red hair catching some snowflakes as they fall. She says, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Can I come up?” she asks. I pat the empty space beside me, and she climbs up.

“Where’s your little tagalong?” I ask.

“Housemaster Vaughn,” she says, a little unhappily.

It’s the only explanation necessary. She settles beside me and wraps both of her arms around my elbow and sighs.

“What now?” she says.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I really didn’t think she was going to die,” she blurts out. “I thought she had another year, and by then there’d be an antidote, and . . .” She trails off. I lie on my back and watch her breath and mine fade into the cold air.

“Cecily,” I say. “There is no antidote. Get that through your head.”

“Don’t be so pro-naturalism. Housemaster Vaughn is a brilliant doctor. He’s working very hard. He has a theory that the problem is that the first generations were
conceived
artificially. So if a baby is born naturally, that baby can be fixed through”—she pauses, trying to remember the words, then she says them carefully, like she might break them—“external intervention.”

“Right,” I laugh cruelly. I don’t tell Cecily that my parents devoted their lives to finding an antidote, and that I have a hard time believing Vaughn could possibly have the same motives that they had. I don’t tell her about Rose’s body in the basement, and that Jenna is probably down there too, locked up in a freezer or dissected into unrecognizable pieces.

“He’ll find an antidote,” Cecily repeats firmly. “He has to.” I understand her denial. Her own son’s life depends on Vaughn’s imaginary antidote, but I am in no frame of mind for pretending. I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up.

“He has to,” Cecily says again. She sits over me, her face blocking my view of the clouds. “You have to stay here and let him cure you,” she says. “I know you’re planning to run away. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“What?” I say, sitting up.

She grabs my hand in both of hers and leans closer to me in earnest. “I know all about you and that attendant. I saw him kiss you.”

That noise in the hallway. “That was you?” I say. My voice sounds strange and far away, like I’m overhearing a conversation between two people I don’t know.

“He was distracting you from your duties as a wife. I thought that once he was gone, you’d realize what a good husband Linden is. You would see things more clearly. And you have, haven’t you? You’ve been having fun at those parties?”

It hurts to breathe, suddenly. “You’re the one who told Housemaster Vaughn.”

“I did it to help you,” she insists, squeezing my hand.

“He and I were only looking out for your best interests. That’s why Housemaster Vaughn had the attendant reassigned to another part of the mansion.”

I rip my hand out of hers, and I want to back away. I want to get as far from her as I can, but for some reason I can’t move from this spot. “What else did you tell him?”

“I know more than you give me credit for,” she says.

“You and Jenna had your little club that I was never a part of. You never told me anything, but I’m not stupid, you know. I know she was helping you to see that attendant. And that’s no good. Don’t you see? Linden loves you, and you love him! He’s
good
to us, and Housemaster Vaughn is going to find the antidote and we’ll be here for a long, long time.”

Her words tumble around me like the snowflakes, which have multiplied in amount and intensity. My breath is coming out in cloudy, frantic gasps. I hear Vaughn’s voice in my head.
She’s something of a cold fish,
isn’t she? If I had my way, we would just toss her back into the
water.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I say.

“I’ve helped you!” she cries.

“You’ve killed her!” I cry back. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, and I want to scream. I want to do a lot of things I’m likely to regret, so I just sit like that for a long while trying to catch my breath.

But I can’t stay unresponsive forever, because Cecily is saying, “What?” and “What do you mean?” and “What are you talking about?” And finally I’ve had enough.

“You killed Jenna! That’s what! You told Housemaster Vaughn that she was snooping around, and he killed her! I don’t know how, but he did! He was looking for a reason to do her in, and you gave it to him. And Gabriel is stuck alone in that . . . awful basement, and it’s all your fault.”

Disbelief and then fear fills Cecily’s brown eyes, and I can see her struggling to deny what I’ve told her. “No,” she says, averting her gaze, nodding with certainty.

“Jenna died of the virus, and—”

“Jenna was only nineteen,” I say. “She was dead in a week. Yet Rose was alive for months. If your Housemaster Vaughn is such a brilliant doctor, explain to me why she was gone so quickly on his watch.”

“E-every case is different,” she stammers. And then she says, “Wait! Where are you going?” because I can no longer look at her and I’ve jumped to the ground, and I’m running. I don’t know which way I’m going, but she follows me. I hear her shoes crunching the snow. She manages to catch up to me and grabs my arm, and I push her off of me so hard she falls into a snowbank.

“You’re just like him!” I say. “You’re a monster just like him, and your baby is going to grow up to be a monster too! But you won’t even get to see him grow up, because in six years you’ll be dead. You’ll be dead and Linden will be dead, and Bowen will be Housemaster Vaughn’s new toy.”

Her eyes are red with tears, and she’s shaking her head, saying, “No, no, no” and “You’re wrong.” But she understands that I’m right. I can see the regret all over her face. I run away from her, before I can lose control and do something awful to her. As I go, I hear her screaming my name in a brutal, bloody way, like she’s being murdered, which maybe she is. But slowly. It will take her six years to die.

My last day in Linden’s mansion. Or maybe it’s Vaughn’s mansion. He’s the one who made it what it is, and Linden is just a pawn like his brides. It would be easier if I could maintain my original hatred for Linden, to escape his cruel tyranny without ever looking back. But I know in my heart he isn’t an awful person, and the very least I can do is say good-bye to him. In the morning he’ll wake up and I’ll be gone. He’ll think I’m dead, and he’ll scatter my ashes. Or maybe Cecily will keep them in a vase beside Jenna’s memory.

Cecily. My last remaining sister wife. I take great care to avoid her for the rest of the afternoon, but I don’t have to try very hard. She’s made herself scarce. She doesn’t even come down to dinner, and Linden is, of course, starting to get concerned that she’s missing so many meals. He wants to know if I’ve noticed anything strange about her behavior lately, and I say she’s doing as well as can be expected, under the circumstances. Linden has not been able to understand his wives’ grief over Jenna’s passing, not truly. So when I use it as an excuse for Cecily’s erratic behavior, it shuts him up.

Linden hardly knew Jenna, and I no longer think Vaughn captured three brides for his son’s benefit. I think he just wanted an extra body for his antidote. Jenna was the disposable one. Cecily is the baby factory. And I was supposed to be the apple of his eye.

After dinner, at about eight p.m., I call Deirdre to draw one of her chamomile baths for me. She’s somber, though.

After Jenna’s death, Adair was sold off in an auction. So I’m not the only one who has lost a friend. She keeps busy, though, organizing and reorganizing the makeup in my dressing table as I soak. I wonder what will happen to her once I’ve gone, if she’ll be sold to another mansion.

Maybe she’ll be reassigned as Bowen’s caregiver. She is a little younger than Cecily, and she’ll live at least until he’s an adolescent. Maybe she can soothe his crying and be sure to tell him nice things about the world, like the beach her father painted.

“Come and talk to me for a while,” I say. She sits on the edge of the bathtub and tries to smile a little. But the overall feeling of sadness on the wives’ floor has even spread to her.

I’m trying to think of something I can say to her.

Some way of saying good-bye without actually saying good-bye, but to my surprise she’s the one to say, “You aren’t like the others, are you?”

“Hm?” I say.

My head is resting against a rolled-up towel on the edge of the tub, and Deirdre begins to braid my wet hair. “It’s just your demeanor,” she says. “You’re . . . like a paintbrush.”

I open my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a good thing,” she says. “Good things have happened since you arrived.” She waves her hand as though painting a picture. “Things are brighter.”

That’s a joke. Gabriel is confined to the basement and Jenna is dead. “I don’t see what you mean,” I say.

“The House Governor is so much stronger. Happier. He used to be so fragile before. And things are just . . . better.”

I still don’t see it, but I can tell by her tone that she means it, and so I give her a smile.

Is it true? I don’t know. I think of what I said on the way to the party, about coaxing him into the pool when the water is warm. Maybe something like that would have made him happy, like Deirdre says. I’ll have to add it to my list of failed promises, right up there with my promise to take care of him. But when Rose asked me to do that, she hadn’t anticipated Cecily. She and Linden are better suited for each other anyway. Cecily is so devoted to him that she would rat out Jenna and me to Vaughn, and she’s the one who was so eager to carry his child, and they are both so painfully oblivious, that maybe they’ll be good for each other. Two caged lovebirds. I’m no good for Linden. I’m full of atlases and maps. So what if I look like Rose? I’m not her, and even she had to leave him.

“Ready to get out?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. As I change into my nightgown, she begins to turn down the covers on my bed, but I sit on the ottoman and say, “Can you do my makeup?”

“Now?” she says.

I nod.

And one last time, she works her magic.

I page one of the attendants and ask him to find Linden. A few minutes later Linden shows up in my doorway. “You were looking for me?” he says. He’s going to say more, but he stops when he sees me, all made-up with my hair falling naturally, unsprayed or primped, the way it’s supposed to. I’m wearing one of Deirdre’s cabled sweaters that’s as fluffy as a cloud, and a billowing black skirt that glitters with black diamonds.

“You look very nice,” he says.

“I was just thinking how I’ve never seen the verandah,” I say.

He holds out his arm for me. “Come on, then,” he says.

The verandah is on the ground floor, off of a dancing hall that doesn’t get much use. All the tables and chairs in the hall are covered in sheets, as though ghosts have fallen asleep after a spectacular party. We navigate through the darkness of it, arm in arm, and stop before the sliding glass doors. Against a deep black sky, snow is falling in a dizzying fury like millions of pieces of broken stars.

“Maybe it’s too cold to go out,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “It’s a beautiful night.”

The verandah is a simple porch with a love seat and wicker chairs that face the orange groves. Linden dusts away the snow, and we sit on the love seat together. The snow falls around us, and for the longest time we don’t talk.

“It’s okay that you miss her,” I say. “She was the love of your life.”

“Not the only love,” he says, and wraps his arms around me. I can smell the cold wool of his coat. We watch the snow fall for a while. And then he says, “It feels wrong to think about her as often as I do.”

“You should think about her,” I say. “Every day. You shouldn’t try to look for her anywhere else, because you’ll never find her. You’ll see her walking away in a crowded street, and when you reach for her, she’ll turn around and be somebody else.”

I did this for months and months after my parents died. Linden is looking at me intently, and I tap my finger over his heart. “Just keep her here, okay? It’s the only place you’ll always be able to find her.”

He smiles at me, and for a moment I see the glint of gold in his teeth. When I first met him, thought they were a symbol of power and status. But they are just scars, the result of a fragile little boy whose teeth succumbed to an infection. He’s not menacing at all.

“You seem to know a lot about loss,” he says.

“I know a thing or two,” I say, and rest my head against his shoulder. There’s warmth radiating from his neck, and the distant clean scent of soap.

“I still don’t know where you came from,” he says.

“Some days it’s like you just fell from the sky.”

“Some days I feel like I did,” I say.

He weaves his fingers through mine. Through our matching white gloves I think I can feel his pulse. Our hands are so deceptive, and yet not. They look like they belong to a husband and wife; you can see the line of my wedding ring. And the way our hands fit together, it’s like he can’t have me close enough.

There is nothing in those hands to indicate the finality of this moment. Soon we will never touch each other again. We will never attend another party, or have a baby, or die together in the same anguish.

Will we die at the same time, at our own places along the coast? I hope Cecily will be there to hold his head in her lap. I hope she’ll read to him, and say nice things. I hope that by then I will be far from his mind and he’ll be able to find peace.

I hope Vaughn is not as heartless as I think, and that he’ll commit his son’s body to ashes unmarred, whole, and that Linden will be scattered in the orange grove.

As for myself, I try not to give my own death a lot of thought. I just know I want to spend my final years at home, in Manhattan, with my brother, in the house that our parents left us. And with Gabriel, maybe. I’ll try to teach him as much as I can about the world, so he’s able to find a job, maybe at the harbor; so he’ll have something to do with himself after I’m dead.