Her Fearful Symmetry (36 page)

She stood in the guest bedroom, staring at the machine.
If this is what I want to do, I ought to do it.
She had researched fashion-design courses on the Internet; you needed a portfolio to be admitted. She had not spoken to Julia about college in weeks.
I’ll apply, and if I get in, I’ll just go. Dad would pay for school. Julia can’t do a thing about it.
Valentina took the cover off the machine. She brought in a chair from the dining room; she found her suitcase full of fabric and emptied it onto the bed. As she picked up each piece of fabric, unfolded and smoothed and refolded it, she thought of Edie. Julia had no patience for sewing and had never learned. Valentina untangled ribbon and sorted spools of thread. She found her box of bobbins and her good scissors. Now everything was neatly laid out on the bed and she stood wondering what to make with it.

There was a pair of half-finished blouses she’d begun before they left Chicago. She could work on those.
No,
she thought.
I want to make something new. And not a pair; I’m going to make just one.

At home she had a dressmaker’s dummy, but it was too cumbersome to bring to London. She got out her measuring tape and took her own measurements.
How weird. I’ve lost weight.
She sorted the fabric into piles: yes, no, maybe. In the maybe pile was a swathe of black velvet. She had bought it in eighth grade, during a brief flirtation with Goth fashion; Julia hated to wear black, so the velvet had stayed unused in Valentina’s collection of yardage. She unfurled it.
Four yards? That’s enough for a dress.

She was sketching the dress when Elspeth appeared. “Oh, hi,” Valentina said.
You’d think she’d notice the door was closed and I want to be alone.

Elspeth mimed writing and Valentina opened the sketchbook to a fresh page. ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE SOMETHING?

“Yeah.” Valentina showed her the sketch. “It’s a minidress with a built-in shroud.”

YOU’RE SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME WITH ROBERT.

Valentina shrugged.

MAY I WATCH?

“Whatever.” Valentina rubbed her hands to warm them and went back to her drawing. Elspeth curled up on the bed and vanished.

Hours went by. Valentina was trying to make a pattern and feeling frustrated. Pattern-making was one of the things she wanted to learn in college. She sat on the floor with the paper in front of her, knowing it was wrong but unable to correct it.
I’m so stupid. Maybe I should take one of Elspeth’s dresses apart, to see what I’m missing.
She heard Julia’s footsteps in the hall. “Mouse?” Valentina sat barely breathing. “Mouse?” The door opened.

“Oh, there you are. Oh, cool. What are you making?” Julia had been outside all day, roaming Hackney. She was drenched. Valentina became aware that it had been raining; she hadn’t noticed.

“Why didn’t you take an umbrella?” Valentina asked.

“I did. It’s really coming down out there, I got wet anyway.” Julia disappeared and came back wearing pyjamas with a towel around her head. “What are you gonna make?”

“This.” Valentina handed over the sketch reluctantly.

Julia looked at it carefully. “Out of that black stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s-different.”

Valentina didn’t reply. She held out her hand and Julia gave her back the sketchbook.

Julia said, “Where are we even going to wear that? It looks like a Halloween costume for Lolita.”

Valentina said, “It’s an experiment.” “You don’t have enough fabric, anyway. Maybe we could find a fabric store. You could do it in pink. That would be cool.”

“I have enough fabric to make one dress. And it wouldn’t look right in pink.” Valentina pretended to correct the pattern. She wouldn’t look at Julia.

“What’s the point of making one dress?”

“It’s for my portfolio,” Valentina said quietly.

“What portfolio?”

“For school. Design school.”

“But you’re not
going
to school. We agreed, you’re
not
.” Julia circled around the pattern and crouched down, trying to see Valentina’s face. “I mean, what’s the point? We have money.”

Valentina said, “
We
haven’t agreed on anything.
You
just keep trying to, you know, ram stuff down my throat.” She began to roll up the pattern, to put away her pencils and sketchbook.

“But you keep doing things without me. I hardly ever see you any more, you won’t go anywhere with me and you’re out every night with Robert. You spend all day talking to Elspeth. It’s like you hate me.”

Valentina finally looked at Julia. “I do. I do hate you.”

“No,” said Julia. “You can’t.”

“You’re, like, my jailer.” Valentina stood up. Julia remained kneeling on the floor. “Just let go of me, Julia. At the end of the year, we’ll ask Mr. Roche to split the estate. You can keep living here if you want to. I’ll just take some money, I won’t even take very much, just enough to live…You can do whatever you want. I’ll go to school, I’ll work, or whatever, I don’t even care. I just want to do
something,
have a
life,
grow
up
.”

“But you can’t,” Julia said. She stood up, the towel awkwardly unwrapping itself from her head as she did so. She tossed it onto the floor. She looked pathetically young, with her hair matted to her head, her baby-blue pyjamas. “Valentina, you can’t even take care of yourself! I mean, the first time you get really sick and I’m not there to take care of you, you’ll just die.”

“Fine,” Valentina said. “I’d rather be dead than spend my life with you.”

“
Fine,
” replied Julia. She walked to the door and paused, trying to think of something else to say. Nothing came to her. “What
ever
.” Julia went through the door and slammed it behind her.

Valentina stood staring at the door.
What now?
She suddenly realised that Elspeth had reappeared and was still sitting on the bed, regarding her with a shocked expression. “Go away,” Valentina said to her. “Please just leave me alone.” Elspeth got up obediently and floated through the closed door. Valentina continued to stand there, her mind racing. Finally she pulled the black velvet off the bed. She climbed into the midst of the pile of fabric and pulled the velvet over herself.
I’ll disappear,
she thought. She could hear the rain falling in torrents. Valentina cried for a long while. It was warm and safe under the velvet; as she began to fall asleep she thought,
I know. I know what to do…
and her plan was formed completely in that space between consciousness and dreaming.

T
HE NEXT morning Valentina watched Elspeth reading. Valentina had laid half a dozen old paperbacks creased open on the carpet in the front room. Elspeth read each page spread, then moved to the next and the next. She was mixing old favourites (
Middlemarch, Emma, A Prayer for Owen Meany
) with some ghost stories (
The Turn of the Screw,
plus bits of M. R. James and Poe) in hope of finding a few tips on haunting. The effect was slightly disconcerting. When she had read all the open pages she would go back to the first book and laboriously turn the page. Then she would proceed to the others, going along the rows until all the pages were turned. Valentina could see only some of Elspeth; her head, shoulders and arms were visible, but the jumper she was wearing vanished somewhere around the bottom of her rib cage. She was floating inverted above the books; if her whole body had been there she would have appeared to be dangling from the ceiling. If she had had any blood it would all have gone to her head. As it was, she looked perfectly comfortable.

“Do you want me to turn pages for you?”

Elspeth looked up, shook her head. She made a muscleman gesture, cocking one arm:
I need the exercise.

Valentina was lying on the pink sofa with a tattered Penguin edition of
The Woman in White.
She found it difficult to concentrate on Count Fosco and Marian with Elspeth fluttering pages only a few feet away. She put the book down and sat up. “Where’s Julia?”

Elspeth pointed at the ceiling. Valentina said, “Ah,” got up and left the room. She returned with the Ouija board and planchette. Valentina put her finger to her lips. Elspeth looked at her quizzically.
You needn’t tell me to be quiet.
She moved to Valentina’s side.

Valentina said, “You know what happened with the Kitten?”

Elspeth turned away.
I don’t want to talk about that.
To Valentina she said nothing. Valentina persisted. “Could you do that with me? Take out my-soul-and put it back?”

No, Elspeth spelled.

“Couldn’t, or won’t?”

NO NO NO. She sat shaking her head.
What a bloody daft idea
was what she wanted to say. Instead she wrote, WHY.

“Because. Why do you have to know why?”

Elspeth wondered if this was what it would have been like to have a teenaged daughter: unreasonable demands, tendered with unthinking entitlement. She wrote, WHAT IF I CANT PUT YOU BACK.

“You could practise with the Kitten.”

RATHER HARD ON KITTEN

Valentina blushed. “But the Kitten was fine. And there’s no reason it wouldn’t work with me, so you wouldn’t have to do the Kitten again anyway.”

CELL DEATH BRAIN DAMAGE HOW DO WE KNOW KITTEN IS FINE

“Come on, Elspeth. At least think about it.”

Elspeth stared at Valentina. Then she wrote, FORGET IT, and vanished. Valentina sat thinking. A breeze ruffled the pages of the books lying open on the carpet. Valentina wondered if it was Elspeth or just wind. To annoy Elspeth she flipped all the books facedown. She had not expected Elspeth to agree. But she had introduced the idea, and she knew she would figure out how to get her way.

Julia was restless. She sat on the landing with her back against Martin’s front door, one leg thrust straight ahead of her and the other angled down the stairs. It was another rainy morning, and the light seemed to coat everything on the landing with extra dust. Julia could hear Martin grumbling to himself inside his flat. She wanted to go in and bother him, but she would wait a while yet. She changed her position so that both of her feet pressed against the piles of newspapers Martin kept on the landing. The piles were a bit unstable. Julia imagined them toppling over and burying her. She’d be smothered. Martin would never find her-he wouldn’t be able to open his front door.
No, that’s not right. The door opens inward.
Valentina would think she had run away; she would be sorry.
I’ll be a ghost, then she’ll love me again. She’ll sit here all day with the Ouija board and we’ll have a great time.
Robert would come up to look for them and be caught in an avalanche of newspaper; he would crack his head and die. Julia gave one of the piles a shove. It collapsed sideways, onto another pile of newspapers. This was not very satisfying.

I’m bored,
Julia decided. It was no fun to be bored alone. Julia looked around, but found nothing worth looking at or thinking about. There was no point in going downstairs; Valentina wouldn’t talk to her.

Martin began to sing. Julia could tell that he enjoyed singing. It was not a song she knew. She thought it might be an advertising jingle. She kicked at the papers again but they did not fall over.
Maybe I should get a job,
she thought.
I would still be bored, but at least I’d have a reason to leave the house.
She smelled toast, and felt suddenly, inordinately sad. She gave a sharp kick and this time the newspapers obliged her by falling into a heap, covering her legs and stomach. It was somewhat like being at the beach, buried in sand, but the papers were less soft; they poked her with their corners. She sat there for a few minutes, trying to enjoy the experience.
Nope,
she thought.
Pointless.
Julia climbed out of the pile of news, stepped over it and opened the door. She followed Martin’s voice to the kitchen, where he sat preparing to eat-yes-toast.

The following morning Valentina and Elspeth sat at the Ouija board together. Elspeth had been doing some thinking.

I DONT UNDERSTAND, Elspeth spelled.

“I want to leave Julia,” Valentina said. Her idea had been growing on her until she thought of little else.

SO LEAVE HER

“She won’t let me.”

NONSENSE

“When you and Mom split up-”

WE HAD NO CHOICE

“Why not?”

Elspeth twirled the planchette aimlessly, then stopped.

“If Julia thinks I’m dead, she’ll let me go.”

JULIA WOULD BE CRUSHED IF YOU DIED EDIE AND JACK TOO

Valentina had not thought of her parents. She frowned, but said, “Look, Elspeth, it’ll be perfect. I’ll die, Julia will be forced to go on without me, she’ll get over it. And you’ll put me back in my body and I’ll live happily ever after, or, you know, I’ll at least be able to live my own life. I’ll be free.”