Charlotte’s Story (22 page)

Terrance, as though to encourage my wine-induced vulnerability, came outside with a tray of after-dinner drinks.

“Finally!” J.C. said. “We were about to turn into butter from spinning around out there. Hugh is a madman.”

As the two thirsty dancers fell on the glasses of water and cognac Terrance had set out on the table, Press and I remained silent.

I closed and locked the nursery door softly behind me, leaving the key on the commode table just outside. Sometime during the night, Michael had climbed out of his crib to sleep on Eva’s trundle bed. I wasn’t ready for him to move permanently from his crib, but as I looked down on him, sleeping with one arm flung over the back of Eva’s Lassie dog, I didn’t have the heart to put him back. Before leaving the room, I pulled out the lower mattress in case he rolled off.

Moonlight streamed through the dome windows, brightening the stars on its surface and filling the well of the house with silver light. My feet were bare and cold on the gallery floor and I was
about to hurry back to my room when I noticed that the door to the yellow guest room, J.C.’s room, was standing open.

How horrid a thing jealousy is! I couldn’t help myself that my mind, rather than imagining that she’d gone down to the kitchen for something to eat or to the library for a book, went directly to the idea that she was in Press’s room. I’d seen nothing untoward passed between them that evening; but as the wine had worn off, my suspicions reasserted themselves. The idea of J.C. in any sort of sexual situation with my husband or anyone was repugnant to me. Hers would be like the embrace of a particularly feminine, but ghoulish, spider.

So do not blame me when I tell you that I went to my husband’s room as though I were being pulled there. I swear, I had no choice.

My hand trembled a bit as I touched the doorknob and rested my cheek against the wood. There was indeed a sound coming from the other side. As I turned the knob and let the door open of its own accord, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Press was snoring in the shadows of his tall bed. The shadows were familiar, too: he was alone.

With his door safely closed, I went to stand at the top of the front stairs to listen for any sound that might come from downstairs. But I heard only the grandfather clock.

I should have gone straight back to bed, ashamed of my suspicions, or at least comforted. But I was awake and curious. There had been another girl very like J.C. at Burton Hall: the same razor-sharp limbs and aggressive laugh. We rarely spoke and never shared a class, but she had caught me staring at her once, in the library. Before I could look away, she flicked her tongue from between her lips and ran it slowly across her large white teeth. It was a strange, sensuous thing for her to do, and I couldn’t look away, and for a moment it was as though we were the only two people in the room. My breath caught in my chest. Then she turned back to her book, amusement plain in her callous smile, and the spell was broken.

Something about the stillness of the house, the heaviness of the air, made me give Olivia’s doorway a wide berth as I passed. Olivia’s room, like J.C., fascinated and repelled me at once. What other terrors waited inside for me?
But Eva. Don’t forget Eva
, I told myself.

I knew I shouldn’t go into the yellow room. I’m sure I gave myself some foolish excuse about her possibly being injured or too ill to close the door herself. And of course there was the possibility that she’d just wanted to leave the door open, tempting, suggesting, to someone that
he
—yes, of course he—should make his way inside.

I forced myself to breathe deeply to slow the beating of my heart. The anticipation I felt was inappropriate, surely, for a hostess who was only supposed to be checking on a guest’s welfare.

The moon was high enough that the yellow room stood in deep shadow. I had stayed in this room more than once before Press and I were married, tucked up safely beside Olivia as though she might keep an eye on me there and keep Press away from me. Although Olivia called it the yellow room, its wallpaper was truly gold and silvery white. Large flowers traced in silver-white against a rich gold field caught the bit of moonlight and shone, iridescent. The far windows looked directly down on the garden maze. I’d sat in the window seat beneath them before, wondering what my life here in Bliss House would be like. That night, I wondered if J.C. had also been imagining what her life might be like if she were the mistress of Bliss House.

The bed was empty and in disarray, but there were smells in the air that told me she hadn’t been gone too long. The peppery scent of
Caron Poivre
mixed strongly with flatulence and perhaps . . . what was it? Cognac.

There was light enough to see how her belongings lay about the room with surprising carelessness: yesterday’s dress over the top of a chair, a stream of lingerie flowing from the suitcase on its stand to the floor, two pairs of shoes trailing along the middle of the carpet toward the far windows. The sight of the clutter reassured
me, somehow. Press didn’t like clutter, would comment even if the nursery were in too much disarray. He could never live with a woman like J.C.

I dipped my hand into the open suitcase, and its depths of silk and cotton and nylon released an invisible cloud of perfume. I lifted a slip to my cheek. It was fine silk, the lace at its bosom soft, not prickly, like the lace on so many of my undergarments. She, like Rachel, would pay attention to such things, I thought. The differences were often lost on me. How odd that the two women, so alike, disliked each other.

I heard a voice through the open window. The evening had cooled, and J.C. had gone on at dinner about how much she liked sleeping in a cool room
in the nude
, and then she had laughed at my reddening face. “Oh, Precious Bride. I
am
so bad, I know. It’s age, I think. I have no reason to care what people know about me.”

Still clutching the slip, I crossed the room to kneel on the window seat. (On the small table beside it was, indeed, a balloon glass with a splash of cognac in the bottom. Unfortunately, the glass was resting in a puddle of the stuff. How careless she was! But I didn’t dare clean it up lest she realize someone had been in the room.) Sighing, I pressed my forehead against the glass. The view from this side of the house was remarkable in the daytime: the garden below, the woods, and then the distant purple ridge of mountains beyond. It was a vast, romantic view, and it made sense that the largest, grandest bedrooms were on this side of the house. Now the ridge was just a faint line against the horizon, but I could see the maze in the garden and three figures in the center of it quite clearly. Three, where there should just have been Hera, standing on her moss-grown pedestal, her peacock in her arms. Stunned, I squeezed my eyes shut for a second to clear them. When I opened them again, the figures were still there, etched in the same silver light as the flowers on the wallpaper.

“What are you doing in here?”

Hearing Press’s husky whisper, I should have been chagrined. Ashamed of myself. But I couldn’t look away.

“Charlotte!”

Without turning, I waved him toward the window.

“Why are you in here, Charlotte? Where’s J.C.?”

I sat back on my heels, not knowing whether to laugh or cry out in indignation.

Press put his hand on my shoulder as he leaned forward to look. I watched his face, looking for the same shock that had taken hold of me. Instead, a sly smile came to his face.

I looked back down at the scene below. J.C. was on her knees in the white pea gravel surrounding the statue, just a foot or two away from one of the marble benches, her arms wrapped around the hips of the skeletally thin man standing in front of her, her face pressed into his groin. She wore a clinging robe, her head, back, and waist a trim, recognizable silhouette. The man’s face was upturned to the clear night sky; his eyes were closed, a look of sublime pleasure softening his sharp features.

Terrance.

I put a hand against the window to steady myself.

Press looked down, still amused. “Poor Charlotte. Let’s get you back to your bed where you belong.”

“But we can’t. They have to stop!”

“They’re adults, Charlotte. This isn’t any of our business.”

“Of course it’s our business. She may be a guest, but that man is at our table every day. He serves our food.” I shuddered. “It’s disgusting. And he’s. . . .” I couldn’t find the words.

“What are you talking about?” Press looked genuinely puzzled. “Hugh?”

I shook my head, continuing to whisper, afraid they’d hear even though we were many feet above them.

“It’s not Hugh. Didn’t you see? It’s Terrance.”

Press chuckled and rubbed my shoulder. “Honey, it’s not Terrance. That’s Hugh down there. Although I rather like the idea that she’d be a good sport and give Terrance a thrill.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“Am I? Look again.”

God knows, I didn’t want to look into the garden again; but Press seemed so confident, I had to see for myself. I leaned forward again, trying not to look at J.C. but at the man’s face.

There was no doubt that it was Hugh. But I had definitely seen Terrance. I felt tricked somehow. Deceived. As Press led me from the room, I sensed a lightening of the heavy atmosphere I’d felt when I’d earlier crossed the gallery. It was as though the house were laughing at me.

Press helped me into my own bed and got in to spoon against me. He kissed me lightly on the back of my head as though I were a child and told me to just forget what I’d seen.

“She’s a pistol, that J.C.; I’m sorry she shocked you.”

I didn’t think of myself as a prude, but I imagined what Olivia might have done. J.C. would surely have been quietly asked to leave.

“We can’t have people like that around Michael. I don’t want Hugh here anymore, either. What if Nonie had seen them? Or Marlene?” I didn’t mention Terrance. A part of me was still certain that I’d really seen him, and I knew that he had witnessed—done!—far worse. But I wouldn’t tell Press what I was thinking. What if he was a part of the deception? Though a part of me was very relieved that he hadn’t been the man with her in the maze.

“They’re adults, darling. It’s not any of our business. And Nonie isn’t here, is she?”

“You need to speak to Hugh.”

“It didn’t look like he was forcing himself on her. Did it look that way to you? What they were doing wasn’t so bad. It’s not like we’ve never done it.”

I stiffened as he slid his hand over my hip and into the curve of my waist.

“What is it? Why won’t you relax, Charlotte?” The evening growth of his beard was rough on my shoulder and his breath was warm. “Don’t be upset with J.C. She had a lot to drink tonight. Would it have been better if she had invited Hugh into her room?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, no one else saw them, so you don’t have to worry about gossip. I know how you hate that. You and my mother. Two of a kind.”

“What do you mean?” I shifted away, grateful to have my irritation as an excuse to no longer have his body touching mine.

“I mean you’re like my mother in a lot of ways. You worry about what people will think. Who’s to know besides us? And you
were
spying on them.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Though I was secretly glad that he thought I was like Olivia.

He stroked my head. “My sweet, sweet Charlotte. Sometimes I think you’re too good for this world.” He said it softly, without a hint of irony. Within two minutes, he was snoring.

So it was decided. We would say nothing. But I couldn’t stop thinking. Hugh was probably a temporary diversion. J.C. had spent the whole evening flirting with Hugh in front of Press. Either what she was doing in the garden was yet another bid to get Press’s attention, or she was simply a well-dressed tramp.

Why was it that everything good and gentle seemed to have died with Eva? Everything around me had come to seem distastefully carnal: the slides, the things Olivia had shown me. The insinuations that I knew would be made about my father and Nonie. J.C. and Hugh/Terrance. Even Rachel seemed to be obsessed, complaining that Jack didn’t want to have sex with her. It was too much.

I was worried about my father. Nonie would telephone if he weren’t doing well, I knew. If everything were all right, she
wouldn’t spend the money on a long-distance call even though I had told her to reverse the charges. I envied her being back in the tidy house where I’d grown up. Two stories, four bedrooms, two easy sets of stairs: one in the front of the house and one in the kitchen. A fenced yard where Michael might roam safely. In contrast, Bliss House was endless. Unpredictable.

Then there was the chasm between Press and me that had everything to do with Eva. My guilt was certainly between us. Though we’d both lost Eva, it seemed now like I was the one who had lost more. He didn’t miss Olivia, and I still felt like he didn’t really miss Eva, no matter what he said. What kind of father didn’t miss his dead child?

I saw the red fingers of dawn reflected in my dresser mirror before I finally fell asleep.