Charlotte’s Story (14 page)

The light still flickered erratically, as in an old film. I saw the reflection in the windows first because the curtains had been pulled aside. Who had done that? Terrance, perhaps, thinking I would not be back in the room that night? I crossed the room to the chaise longue beneath the windows and picked up the folded mohair blanket that Olivia had kept there for reading on cool days. Frost crystals flew about like sprites as I shook the blanket in the air and then wrapped it around me. Clutching it close against the cold, I saw my own shape in the glass, surrounded by a bright halo. A delicate layer of frost covered the glass, but when I touched it I found the surface smooth. The frost seemed to be on the other side of the mirror.

You’re wondering about the source of the light. I didn’t want to look at it, because I knew what it was and I was afraid. I think I knew what it was even before I crossed the gallery.

The sheet that Terrance had hung was filled with light from the lantern, which sat silently on its table, untouched by the frost. The sheet itself was also dull in comparison to everything around it—even the paintings had been turned into winterscapes.

You might think that I was brave to remain in that enchanted, terrifying room. There have been things that I’ve done, things I’ve had to contend with as mistress of Bliss House, that I never would have imagined I could live through. But I am a mother and was a mother then. There is something sacred about being a mother. Not necessarily holy, but at least unique in the sense that there is nothing else in the world to compare to it. I have read stories about men in battle dying for one another, their intimacy a creation of their vulnerability in the face of a common enemy. But the danger needn’t be great for a mother to feel an intense need to protect her child, and it doesn’t matter to her if her actions appear irrational to someone on the outside. They are rational within the universe created by the bond between her and her child. Even her fear of death is secondary to the possibility of her child suffering for even one moment out of a single day. A single hour.

Eva had suffered. Was she still suffering? I only knew that I hadn’t been there when she had needed me most. I had compromised the bond between us. I had failed her, and I was desperate for her to forgive me. I wanted another chance.

Wrapping the blanket more tightly around me, I brushed the frost from the seat of the upholstered chair Terrance had moved in front of the makeshift screen earlier in the day, and sat down with my legs tucked under me for warmth. I didn’t speculate on why it was so cold, remembering the cold draft where Olivia had stood in the dining room. If it was cold, I reasoned, Olivia was near.

Chapter 13

Olivia Revealed

She
was
there, of course, on the screen. Waiting for me.

This was a younger Olivia than the one in the photo in her room or the portrait in the salon. A girl I might have shared secrets with at Burton Hall, or sat next to on the bus going downtown, our white-gloved hands folded on our laps. A teenaged Olivia, her smooth blond hair parted in the exact center of her head, and two braids twisted into tight spirals that covered her ears. She wore a simple green linen shirtwaist and a familiar look of unwavering confidence. A challenge in her eyes and the open curves of her brows—one of which was ever so slightly lifted. How will you explain yourself to me? Why should I be interested? Seated, her right elbow rested casually on the chair’s arm, one of her two long necklaces caught up to dangle from her fingers. It was a perfect picture, except for the angry scar from an accident that she’d had as a child above her right brow.

It surely wasn’t possible, but she leaned forward a few inches and beckoned to me. I breathed in sharply.

Watch, Charlotte. Listen.

Olivia’s voice, low and relaxed—the same voice she used when reading Eva a story—but coming from far, far away so that I also had to lean forward to hear.

I feared I had gone mad, or might be dreaming, but the cold told me otherwise.

The necklaces dropped from her slender fingers, and she held out her hand.

You must know, Charlotte.

Yes, now I was terribly afraid—not of Olivia herself, but of the fact of what was happening. She was reaching out to me. Did I dare? I rose from the chair, careful not to trip on the blanket. She waited, her hazel eyes more patient than I’d ever known them to be in life.
In life. Surely this was life too.
Her presence was warm. Surreal. Perfect.

I barely felt the cold on my feet as I crossed the few feet of carpet to where she waited. I reached for her hand.

It is my betrothal day. Me, Olivia. I can hardly believe it.

My father has not spoken to me for four days, and my mother won’t stop talking. I steal a glance at her as she tries to flirt with the attractive dark-eyed boy sitting across from us who looks like he has been kept in a broom closet his entire life, and I want to beg her to be quiet because she sounds like a fool. Look at the boy, Michael Searle Bliss: Did you ever see a boy who was so polite and neat? He’s kind to my mother, but I wonder if he isn’t patronizing her. Being patronized is the thing she likes best, aside from a coconut blancmange. It makes me want to scream, but she has made her way in the world by pretending to let others advise her while making sure that she gets exactly what she wants. What she wants now is for me to be married and away from the house.

My father and his anger simmer beside me. His fingers grip the knees of his brown wool pants so tightly that his knuckles are white. The
lawyer—who, like the tall ugly man with moles on his face and neck, arrived wearing an old-fashioned Homburg even though it’s nearly eighty degrees outside—keeps trying to engage him in conversation from where he stands behind Michael Searle’s chair. You would think by now that the man would understand that my mother is in charge in this matter.

I’ve never been alone with Michael Searle Bliss, who is always called by both his first and middle names. He has written me letters—long, rather interesting letters telling me about Virginia and the town of Old Gate, where he lives with his mother, Lucy. Although he is only a year younger than I, the letters are as enthusiastic as if they’d been written by a child. When these letters come, my mother reads them first, but I do not care just as I don’t care whom I marry anymore.

There is money enough for me to live on when my parents are dead, but my mother is determined that I should marry. Although I won’t complain, as it is the only way I won’t have to listen to her constant harping about my stubbornness, my posture, my table manners, anymore. I have only the vaguest idea of how she settled on Michael Searle. It had something to do with our mothers being very distant cousins. Why this rich boy would have any interest in a scarred girl who cares more about accounting for her father’s acreage and livestock than throwing parties or running a house, I’m sure I don’t know.

But it is why my father is angry. He imagined I would act as the son he never had, taking over the management of his land when he got too old. My father is an abrasive man. He alienated the only other suitor I ever had, calling his Irish family “mackerel-eating papists” during a dinner at which he drank too much wine. Though I suspected he wasn’t really as drunk as he pretended. If he were kinder, and my mother less ambitious, I might have stayed with them forever.

I know I should listen to what they’re saying. I hear my name, though no one talks to me directly. But the room is hot and I dislike the way the tall, ugly man stares at a point just above my head, as though I am invisible.

There are parties to celebrate our upcoming wedding. More of them are in Raleigh than in Virginia because Michael’s mother is still in mourning and is, anyway, rather reclusive. Michael Searle and I smile dimly through them while my mother comments behind her hand about the quality of the wine being served. Many people’s stockpiles put by before the Volstead Act are running low, and so the quality is uneven. She embarrasses me, and I try to keep her away from Michael Searle. I’ve become protective of him, somehow, as though he were a younger brother rather than my betrothed. The parties are a torment. He is a dreadful dancer, and so we sit watching the others. He urges me on, encouraging me to dance with the other young men who politely ask, but I become sad for him when I see him sitting, alone, wearing his mourning armband and smoking cigarette after cigarette. I wonder that he doesn’t have any friends. Of course, so many of the young men our age went off to war and died. Perhaps his friends have all died. I do not ask.

At the parties, regardless of the quality of the wine (or gin or bourbon), everyone drinks heavily. Nothing so coarse as bathtub gin—though I have been to hidden roadside taverns, much to the chagrin of my father and the shame of my mother. Michael Searle and I have a fondness for champagne. I think, sometimes, that I would like to drink champagne until I drown in it.

Three weeks before the wedding, Michael’s mother disappears from Bliss House, and her body is found deep in the woods. When Michael calls to tell me, I try to convince him that my mother and I should come up to help him and be with him. But he tells me it’s better that I don’t. When I do see him, there is a new sadness in his eyes and he tells me that he has found morphine in her room, that everyone thinks she died of a heart attack, but he fears she was an addict. It’s deeply shocking, and I cannot reconcile his words with the kind woman who had already welcomed me as a daughter and pressed several pieces of her elegant jewelry on me. I have heard of people becoming slaves to morphine and opium, but I have never known anyone
personally. My father wants to call off the wedding because her death is a bad omen, but my mother says that I must decide. I tell her that there is no reason at all that I shouldn’t marry Michael Searle, though I’m not sure if I am marrying him because I care about him, or because I pity him.