The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (25 page)

if not outward respect.

“So this is child,” Madame Lu said.

“April,” I said.

“Pretty name. Pretty child.”

“We . . . I—”

She cut me off. “Come here, child. Sit with Lu.” She

extended her pudgy, swollen hands behind stiff arms that looked

like tubular balloons knotted at the elbow. To my complete surprise,

my daughter stood, walked the distance and scooted up into

the large woman’s lap. For a moment, she seemed to get lost in

the Great Lady’s garment, like stepping behind a curtain and

then peering out again. I smiled at her. Then my heart stopped:

my daughter smiled back at me. It was the ?rst such expression

since Douglas Posey’s suicide, and it brought tears to this

mother’s eyes. (I am softened by the simplest gifts!)

The bearing of the Great Lady was formidable. She seemed to

?ll the entire room all of a sudden. The ?ames of the candles in

the room (and I swear this is true!) all bent toward that throne as

if victims of a dozen simultaneous winds, as if water were running

past them and down a drain directly beneath the Great Lady’s lacquered

chair. The room ?lled with added light, and for a

moment my heart danced in my chest, and I thought I might be

faint. She said, “Mother tell me child, that you seen a man take

his life.” No beating around the bush for Madame Lu—this was

the ?rst that anyone, to my knowledge, had spoken so openly

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about Douglas’s tragedy, and I feared repercussions. Again to my

surprise, April nodded. “Madame Lu understand you no talk

since this day. You hold your tongue. Madame Lu think smart

child. Good girl, little April.” April looked up at the woman’s

swollen cheeks and beady, slit eyes. “You no talk because the

question not answered, isn’t that right?”

I bubbled out my surprise and began to sob as my precious little

girl nodded right along with the Great Lady—this was, by all

accounts, a conversation, and as such, nothing short of a miracle.

Lu said, “No one here answered the question for you, did

they, Child?”

April looked over at Sukeena and me and shook her head.

“Until question answered,” the Chinese woman continued,

“no sense in risking anything and ending up like that man—dead

as dead can be. Am I right?”

April nodded vigorously.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”

The candle ?ames stood straight up again, the wind suddenly

lessened, or perhaps it was gone completely. I worried immediately

that Madame Lu had missed her opportunity, and my heart

sank like a stone. She read me from her chair and ?ashed me a

look that urged I reconsider, and I realized this woman was inside

me: she heard my every thought. I forced an awkward smile.

Lu asked, “Do you know the question, Mother?”

I shook my head no.

“You, Darkie?”

Sukeena remained impassive. I wasn’t sure where Sukeena was

at that moment—I had a feeling that she, too, was inside me, also

reading my thoughts. Perhaps protecting me, standing sentry at

my door. I struggled to stay conscious.

“The question,” Madame Lu said privately to April, “is where

did the man go? Isn’t it, Child?”

April looked shocked. I let out a yelp and again was repri-

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manded by the big woman’s glance. “If he were no longer, where

he gone? If still here, why he not talk?” She said quietly, and

calmly, “So you no talk.”

“Where did he go?” April said, speaking for the ?rst time

since the tragedy and causing me to sob with joy.

“To the other side, my child,” Madame Lu said, still calmly.

“You seen him there, yes? You talk, you and this man. Talk, with

no need to use mouth. He the one tell you no talk to others, yes,

Child?”

“He said they’d never understand.”

“Ohhhh,” I sobbed into my handkerchief, so overcome with

grief and joy that I failed to hear the rest of what was said. It was

over quickly, Madame Lu grinning, showing gaps where her teeth

were missing. April hopped off her lap, cheerful as a bug, and

scurried over to me. We hugged, and she must have thought me

queer for my display.

I waved over Sukeena and requested she complete the business

with Madame Lu—I would pay anything, offer anything she

requested. Sukeena promised to relay the message. April and I

descended the dark stairs, my sweet, loving child already telling

me all about the “awful man who jumped from the ladder.”

If ever I doubted the power of the other side, to-day this

mother’s heart was convinced. To-day, I became a convert.

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17 february 1917—rose red

For the last eighteen months, suspicious again about your role,

Dear Diary, in the strange and entangled events of this grand

house, I have kept thought and soul to myself, never sharing them

with your pages, no matter how great the temptation. No ghosts

to look over my shoulder, goes my reasoning, if nothing is being

put to paper. Alas, my plan has had little consequence. I sit down

here to write in an act of desperation (this is not one of Poe’s

gory inventions of ?ction: no young girl who can set schools

a?re; no dog that behaves as if possessed; no giant pendulum

swinging to cut one in half!). If there exists some wraith, some

bodily spirit here in this room with me, if he or she can hear my

thoughts as the wet ink travels from my pen to parchment, if in

fact said entity has any modicum of compassion still held in

reserve, then you—it!—must certainly heed a mother’s cry: my

sweet child has gone missing. Help me!

I offer anything in return if sign be shown to indicate such an

exchange. Money? My own soul? My life. My husband’s. “What’s

that?” I ask . . . a voice in reply? A wind? (It is at this point I

notice my east window has slipped open, and I fear the woman’s

voice I did detect was nothing more than nature’s idle callings

from the forest that surrounds these walls.) Nonetheless, Dear

Diary, I do speak again into the privacy of my room, after securing

this window shut and locked. “Did you speak to me? Is anyone

there?”

Again—and I swear this on my life—a rumbling grew from

beneath my trembling legs and swept through my ears like a whisper.

“Hello?” I call out.

Another window open! This time in my reading room, a

lovely place for meditation and study just off my bedroom chamber,

opposite the ?rst of my two dressing rooms. I hurry

through, about to shut it against the swirling wind and rain that

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engulf this awful tomb, when I think that perhaps this is how you

speak to me, Rose. A mother’s hysterical anguish? I ask myself.

Or is there reason behind this assumption? As your “voice” grows

stronger I can picture my sweet April in the bed behind me so

vividly, her golden curls thrown back against a pillow, her high

little voice whispering to me: “Whales don’t have noses.” Or is it

you? “Are you there?” I call out into my chambers. “Are you with

me, Rose?” Nothing comes back at me. No sign that I can take to

heart. No indication that my girl has only been borrowed, not

stolen instead.

I tremble, my head unstable. I swear I hear the words return:

“T . . . h . . . e d . . . o . . . w . . . e . . . r.” Though these

words make no sense to me, I am grateful for any sibilance, any

sustenance to what previously was discerned as only wind. “The

dowry?” I wonder, reminded of my marriage. “The dowager?”

“Help me, I pray.” I return again to the empty reading room,

my head spinning as I turn on my heels, a blur of the books’

leather bindings ?oor to ceiling, the stained-glass lamp I bought

in Venice, the carpet from Constantinople—all these and more I

would trade in a beat of the heart for even a sign that my child has

been spared, never mind what I would surrender for the child

herself—this mother’s life in an instant! Just give me a sign!

I stand now, the window thrown open to the storm, debating

throwing myself to the slate of the garden path below in sacri?ce.

All I await is the sign. Give me such a sign, and I am yours! A

?ash of lightning. A cry from the forest beyond.

I see instead the unsteady ?ickering of the policemen’s ?ashlights

as they patrol our woods, and wish it were a sign. I hear the

thundering voice of my husband, a world away, in the Entry Hall

below: “Find her! Find my child!” He is in a ?t of rage, ordering

staff and police alike (there are ?fty police here searching for my

April). I fear that like me, John, too, is making his prayers heard

to your spirits, Rose, making offerings for an exchange. How this

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parent’s heart breaks at the thought of any harm coming to my

April.

The main focus of the search began in the Kitchen, where

April was last seen playing tea—the enormous architect’s model of

the grand house just out of reach. Sukeena reports that the child

was playing by herself and seemed quite content at the time. (I

fear that John has directed his fears to Sukeena herself, for I am

told by Millicent that Sukeena has been sequestered in the staff

kitchen, where she is being questioned by the police. Try as I

might to intervene, to free her from this unfair suspicion, John

sent me to my chambers, and this is one time I dare not challenge

my husband, for his mood is aggressive and even frightening.)

April was left for a moment as Sukeena neatened the pantry (she

believes the pantry another of the house’s portals). When

Sukeena turned around April was gone. Oh, how my world is

turned upside down all of a sudden! (Indeed it has been quite

askew for some time, but only now do I admit to the full effects of

such behavior. I would never doubt Sukeena’s explanation of

events whatsoever. I trust my friend beyond any other.) She

explained also that at no time did April leave the Kitchen nor did

she call out. Nor was there any cause for alarm, nothing whatsoever

out of the ordinary. When next she looked the Kitchen stood

empty, only the tea set and that model, a grotesque representation

of our grand house, planted ?rmly in the center of the

kitchen table, the house’s wings and extensions growing from its

original form like some tumorous root. Not a lock of hair, not a

?ber of clothing. Just the empty room and, of course, Sukeena.

A moment later a scream: John claims it was Sukeena;

Sukeena says it was the house itself.

I stand at my window, eyeing it as my escape from this pain. I

never imagined a heart could endure such torture. I never

understood the depth of this great love, how encompassing, how

whole and complete. Dare I say it here? Yes, there were times I

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wished the children would go away. Yes, there were times I longed

for that simplicity of husband and wife in the cabin of the Ocean

Star with nothing but time between great lavish meals, the best

wines, and the intrigues of physical discoveries. But now! Just the

thought of such sel?shness is enough to make me sick! How gladly

I would recapture the slightest whisper of such wishes! How simple

that window looks to me. How effortless to end it here.

I drag the Louis XVI settee to rest before the window and

think to remove my shoes before stepping onto her pink and

green silk upholstery, my dress held high around my thighs, and I

awkwardly squeeze myself into the open frame, looking down

between my feet at the looming darkness. I teeter there, half in,

half out, whispering prayers repeatedly, the drumming of my

blood in my ears, as images of sweet April swirl and ?ll the void

in my chest where once my heart resided. Oh Wind, talk to me

now. Summon me now! Say but a single word—J . . . U . . .

M . . . P—and you shall own me forever, or what is left of it. I

can see beyond the slate rooftop of the Pool House, to the rising

wing I commissioned at the instruction of Madame Stravinski. I

would haul it all down in a second for the af?rmation of life in

my precious child. I shudder at the thought of immortality that

fails to include my children, fails to include those I love:

Sukeena, my mother and father. Who would wish for the curse of

the endless extension of a life without family, a life without love?

If Rose has taken my dear child, is it because I built too slowly, or

because I built at all? Is it because I have shared my bed with the

sweet child for nearly two years, or because I allowed my husband

to send the boy away to school? How much is a product of those

things I control, and how much those I do not?

Do I confess my sins now, from the pious mount of this open

window, the ?re?ies of ?ashlights blinking in the woods? “He is

unfaithful!” I shout from my pulpit. “I am unfaithful!” I hesitate.

I hear a voice. Rose Red? I wonder. I shout, “I live torn by lust,

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corrupted by a woman’s gentle, loving touch.” I want Sukeena to

hear this. I want her to understand. The guilt has been too much

to bear. Rose Red has punished us for what we’ve done in secret

these many months. She has taken my child to show me the ways