Charlotte’s Story (32 page)

“Don’t make fun of me,” she’d said. “It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

That wasn’t true, of course. But it was the closest thing she did to any kind of art. Rachel, herself, preferred to be the decoration.

“Dear Charlotte,” Holly whispered. She held her hand out to me.

I motioned for her not to rise, as her lap was covered with a pink swath of cloth that she’d obviously been working on for days. Rachel hadn’t been joking when she’d said her mother had decided the baby would be a girl.

“You’re so kind to come. She just went back to sleep. She’s exhausted, poor thing.”

“How long was her labor?” I kept my voice low to match Holly’s, and sat down in the chair on the other side of Rachel’s bed in the sparse, blank room. She’d managed to get a private one, which didn’t surprise me, given Jack’s association with the hospital.

“Nearly six hours. But as soon as she woke up the first time, she said she wanted to go home. And that was even before she’d seen the baby!”

I wondered if Holly knew how strange that sounded. From the smile on her face, I didn’t think so.

“Isn’t she adorable? Absolutely the perfect baby. I think she even looks a little like my own baby pictures. That will make Rachel’s grandmother so happy.”

Nodding, I looked at Rachel. Beneath the blankets her stomach was still distended, and her face was strained in sleep, her brow furrowed. I suspected they had given her morphine, although she didn’t look as though it was giving her any peace. I didn’t know when she would wake up again. I was happy that I’d seen the baby; but, sitting with Holly, I didn’t have much to say. She was watching me watch Rachel. Of course, she had to be thinking about Eva. She’d been terribly fond of her, sending her sweets and buying her small presents whenever she and her husband traveled.

How much did she know? Had Rachel told her I’d been drinking that afternoon? She’d been at the funeral, of course, and had seen my hysterics. Everyone had seen.

“It was so lovely of Press to come by first thing, though I thought for sure he would’ve just come with you. He’s so good to Rachel and Jack. Just like a brother.”

Trying not to act surprised—
but was I so surprised?
—I said that he probably had business in Charlottesville and decided to drop by.

“Oh, do you think so?” She sounded as though she might disagree. If women were said to come to resemble their mothers as they aged, Rachel would continue to be stunning until the day she died. If anything, Holly Webb, with her striking brown eyes, full, well-shaped brows, and neat figure, was even more beautiful than her daughter. She arranged a demure blue cashmere cardigan over her thin shoulders.

“She never eats,” Rachel had told me before I met Holly for the first time. “Watch her. She only pretends to, talks all through dinner, then has the housekeeper clear the plates away before anyone notices.” And she’d been exactly right. I’d watched Holly do the same thing at every meal I ate at their house.

“Well, Press certainly came prepared, anyway.” Holly, her hands busy, nodded to the shelf holding two bouquets of flowers—one quite compact and a little dull with yellow carnations and a lot of greenery, the other tall, with lilies, birds of paradise, and thick purple stock. “We both had Delmonico, at The Grange’s florist, out of bed at the crack of dawn. Though they certainly are different in style, aren’t they?” I wasn’t sure what her smug grin implied.

It wasn’t hard to guess which arrangement was from Press.

“Press does tend to go over the top sometimes.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was difficult to hide my embarrassment.

Holly rested her handwork in her lap. “Oh, the big one is from David and me. Press brought the carnations. Ours were delivered just a few minutes ago.”

I was speechless. The small bouquet was like an insult compared to the other, and hardly suited to Rachel at all. I wondered if there had been some mistake. But Holly had said Press had brought it himself, first thing. I wondered that he’d even been allowed in so early. What did it mean? Perhaps nothing. It was just that everything seemed significant then, as though my life was strangely magnified.

“Are you well, dear? Rachel and I have been terribly worried about you. I can only imagine how devastated you are, but you look so thin. I have a prescription for iron pills from Jack. They might do you some good.”

Was the woman so stupid? My best friend had just given birth to a baby girl, weeks after mine had died, horribly and suddenly. It was too much. Iron pills wouldn’t bring Eva back. Why had I stayed as long as I had at the hospital? I had seen the baby: Seraphina. A seraph. An angel. But the baby didn’t care that I was there, and Rachel wasn’t even awake.

“Maybe you and Press should get away for a while. Sometimes a different setting can help. You won’t be constantly. . . .” Her voice faded and her eyes left my face.

The busy chatter of the hospital staff floated in from the corridor.

“You need not have come, Charlotte. This must be so hard for you. You look tired.”

The unexpected softness in her face, her voice, took me by surprise, and I felt tears threatening in the inner corners of my eyes. Of course I shouldn’t have left the house.

I put on my gloves and fumbled for the wrapped gift I’d brought—an infant’s pillow with an embroidered linen cover—and set it on the deep windowsill with the flowers. “I’ll just leave this here. Please tell her I’ll come by the house when she gets home.”

Holly gave me a pitying smile. “Of course I will. Rachel will be so sorry she was sleeping, poor thing. I told her she needed to get more exercise while she was pregnant, that she’d be exhausted. But you know how she is.”

By that point I was only half-listening. The car in the parking lot seemed so far away, and I wanted to get to it quickly. On another day (or was it in another life?) I might have gone over to The Grange for lunch and shopping, or stopped at the toyshop near the university and picked up a surprise for the children. But it didn’t even occur to me then. I could only think of being back at the house.

Quietly pushing back the heavy wooden chair, I rose. Rachel sighed deeply in her sleep. She looked like a worried, sleeping princess.

“Before you go, would you look under the bag with Rachel’s robe in it and hand me her notions basket? I thought she might get bored and want to work on something for the baby while she’s waiting to go home. I’ve misplaced my needle threader, and I’m helpless without it.”

No!
I wanted to scream.
I want to get the hell away from here. Away from all of you!
But of course I put my handbag down on the chair, lifted the bag, and picked up the wicker notions basket by its handle. The basket was familiar, painted with the same cheerful red and
yellow flowers—now chipped and faded—that had decorated it when Rachel first unpacked it in our dorm room at Burton Hall. I had envied that basket, and wished I had a mother who had taught me smocking and bought me dresses and sent me care packages with new gloves and cookies and expensive shampoo. Even though Rachel had joked about the basket being silly and childish-looking, it was obvious that it was one of her treasures, the sort of thing she might pass on to her own daughter.

Even through my gloves I felt the handle burning my fingers. (It was my imagination, of course. It was a perfectly normal wooden handle.) As I passed it over the bed, the brass catch loosened, and the basket gaped open, spilling some of its contents onto the bed.

Holly jumped up, gathering the ribbons and bits of cloth and spools of colorful thread as they rolled over Rachel’s covered legs and across the bed or onto the floor. Nothing was heavy enough to disturb Rachel, but Holly still acted quickly.

“Charlotte,” she whispered. “The lid. Close it?”

But I could only stare at the curl of Wedgwood blue velvet ribbon that clung over the edge of the bed like some lovely, poisonous snake.

Chapter 31

The Last Happy Afternoon

I don’t remember much about the drive home. At some point I arrived back at Bliss House, and Terrance opened the car door for me. It had turned bitterly cold for October, and I had foolishly left the house without putting on a coat over my burgundy wool suit, but I stood on the front terrace for several minutes, watching the sky.

(I mention Terrance. It may seem confusing that I hadn’t demanded that he leave. But what power did I have? In history, there have been men called “the king’s men.” Terrance was Press’s man, a reality of Bliss House. I couldn’t reveal what I’d learned about him without telling Press about Olivia’s presence. And I would not give him more ammunition against me. You may be relieved to know that Terrance resolves the problem of Terrance without my help.)

As I fled the hospital room, Holly called after me, and Jack—where had Jack come from?—caught my arm, trying to stop me, saying Holly was signaling that Rachel was waking up. My head
felt wild and I was breathless, all because of a length of ribbon. Wedgwood blue velvet ribbon. So delicate and sweet, something one might stitch onto the edge of a baby boy’s smocked romper or coveralls.

But I recognized it as the same ribbon that Eva had been wearing when she first came to see me in the morning room. Where was that ribbon now, and why couldn’t I remember her having it?

Eva had loved ribbons and hair bows and frilly dresses in a way that I never had, though I confess I had loved to indulge her whims. Like her mother, Rachel, too, had often given Eva little presents: a new rabbit fur muff, pairs of lace-trimmed panties and socks, real fawn leather gloves, and dear little hats. I’d once teased Rachel, telling her she was trying to outfit Eva like she was Bonnie Blue Butler from
Gone with the Wind
. It had been little Bonnie Blue’s memorable death from a fall from a pony that had kept me from putting Eva on one, though Press had thought I was being silly.

My reaction to the ribbon—hurrying from Rachel’s room like a dazed criminal—must have seemed bizarre to everyone who saw me there. Fuel to the rumors that were already being whispered.

I was confused. Olivia had appeared to me in many different kinds of clothes, not just what she’d been wearing when she died. But hadn’t my visions of Eva been different? Eva had been so wet, always wearing the pink playsuit and ribbon and muddy sandals. Had Rachel brought the ribbon with her that evening and put it on Eva after she died, but before I’d been upstairs? And put shoes on her feet? No, it wasn’t possible.

Perhaps I’d simply forgotten that Eva had brought back the ribbon from Rachel’s house on another day. She wasn’t quite at the age when she might acquire objects or words whose provenance was unknown to me. Children do eventually become connected to the world in ways we are not. Those first threads come slowly, but then new ones come, faster and faster, until our children are no longer exclusively ours. I felt another bit of Eva slip away.

I didn’t yet know what the ribbon meant, but when I re-entered Bliss House, I was suddenly less troubled about it. Inside the preternaturally quiet hall, I felt my body relax, and I was finally warm. It would come to me.

I couldn’t help my children or myself by worrying or being afraid. Not of Press. Not of the house. The worst thing that could happen to a mother had happened to me, and I had survived. But Michael was still with me and would be happy in Bliss House. He might go away to school for a while, and to work. Then he would perhaps come back with a family of his own and we would all live together.

I looked up to the gallery and saw what I expected: the door to the yellow room, where J.C. had been sleeping, was open. I couldn’t be certain, but the house had a tangible emptiness that told me she was gone. There had been no cars or workmen’s trucks in sight. Everything was finished. It was a huge relief to me—not just the absence of J.C., but the absence of strangers in my home.

It
was
my home, now. Press might bring any fool into it that he cared to, but I would be here to keep it safe for Eva and ready for when it became Michael’s.

I looked into the kitchen, where Marlene was chopping vegetables for dinner.

“I’m going upstairs to rest for a while. Were there any calls?”

“No, Miss Charlotte. Shall I serve dinner at the usual time?”

“Six o’clock is fine. Are Shelley and Michael in the nursery?”

“She took him out to one of the farm ponds to see the geese. They’ve been making a terrible racket all day. I sent yesterday’s bread with them.”

“But it’s so cold.”

“They were bundled up.”

With that, Marlene turned back to the vegetables and I knew our conversation was over.

Not really satisfied that Michael was sufficiently warm, I thought for a moment that I might follow them out to the pond.
But Nonie’s voice in my head told me to stop being such a worrier. Michael was safe with Shelley, who, while not terribly bright, had lots of experience with toddlers and animals.

As I went upstairs, watched by all the expectant faces of the portraits lining the walls, I remembered that I’d missed another hair appointment. I had used a new round hairbrush and hairspray to keep my hair neat, and teased it, but perhaps it did need a trim. When I reached the second-floor gallery, I stopped at the gilt-framed Italian mirror that Olivia had sent home from one of her antique-shopping trips to New York.

Holly had been wrong. The face looking back at me in the mirror didn’t look tired at all. My makeup was still fresh from the morning, and the area beneath my eyes held only a hint of a shadow. I liked the leaner lines of my face. Nonie had been gently harping at me for months to be more careful with my figure, and I guessed that now she might be satisfied.

As I continued to my room, I passed beneath the corner of the third-floor gallery where Press’s father had hanged himself. I should have been horrified. Afraid. But I felt only pity.

I spent the next two hours—with an interruption to have a snack with a ruddy-cheeked Michael who’d been very excited by the geese—moving my clothes and other belongings into Olivia’s room. It was where I belonged. Afterwards, I took Michael with me into the freshly painted ballroom while Shelley went to tidy the nursery.