The Unsuitable

by Molly Pohlig

  But around the time that Iseult reached her zenith, she realized something curious. Her mother wasn’t getting quieter; if anything, she was growing louder. Everything was growing louder. The whispers and jeers of classmates; Mrs. Pennington’s scoldings; even the geese in the park were more likely to honk, and to chase her as she clumsily tried to run away.

  So she gave up.

  * * *

  “Iseult.”

  “Mm.”

  “Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know how important it is for your father that you—”

  “—make a good impression this evening, yes, Mrs. Pennington. I won’t remark upon the pheasant, or Father’s nasty little smile, or the Finch son’s pimples, which he is sure to have.”

  “… or?”

  “Or what?”

  “Listen to me, miss, you know exactly what—”

  “Yes, I know. And no, I won’t. I won’t speak of her tonight.”

  “Do you promise? Last time was—”

  “I know. I apologized for last time. It won’t happen again. I shall behave. I shall be good. I won’t let Mother … I won’t let her…”

  “Please. No scenes tonight, my dear. Do what your father asks.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Pennington. I will. Not like last time.”

  * * *

  Iseult’s was a world of stark opposites. If black didn’t work, try white. If fat didn’t drown out her constant companion, then she would take it away, and more. On Iseult’s tenth birthday, she enjoyed a polite tea party with the daughters of her father’s acquaintances who agreed to be roped into the business. She opened the gifts in which she had no interest; when they played blindman’s buff she flailed her hands uselessly until they agreed her turn should be over; and she ate a gratuitous share of cake. From midnight onward, she resolved to drastically cut her food intake. And she did.

  At first it wasn’t as easy as she’d supposed it would be. Hunger clawed from the inside of her stomach in the same way that Beatrice clawed from underneath the skin of her neck. Sometimes she was tempted to eat more than she knew she should. But when she heard her mother say, there there my dear love you eat what you want why do you punish yourself please i only want your happiness your happiness and mine ours both please eat you need our strength, she found the resolve to put the fork down next to the plate.

  At first, Mrs. Pennington was overcome with pleasure at the onset of Iseult’s fast, which returned to her within a matter of months the reasonably sized child she’d been charged with bringing up. The seamstress was visited again, but this time to hide the allowances rather than constantly uncovering yet another fold. But it was only a couple of additional months after that before the sight of Iseult in her bath was enough to make Mrs. Pennington shudder, as bones she didn’t know a human child possessed threatened to poke right through Iseult’s skin.

  This time, though, Iseult was right. As her flesh shrank, voices got quieter. Mrs. Pennington’s no longer had the ability to move her to pity, and she no longer felt compelled to seek forgiveness when she was naughty. Her father’s stern voice no longer sent a thrill of nervous electricity through her body. The schoolmistress’s voice, the voices of the girls who now jeered at a body that was the opposite of what they jeered at before—they all faded. It was as if she had pillows over her ears. So much so that she once tried tying a pillow over each ear with twine, and then tried to see if she could still hear her own voice. She wore the pillows all day, until Mrs. Pennington wept in frustration. It was a pleasant sensation, she tried to tell the housekeeper, like when you’re in the bath and you let the water into your ears. Muffled. Numb. Like you are still aware of everything going on in your usual world but you find that you are not at all bothered by the things that used to bother you.

  Except.

  Except that Beatrice’s voice was still coming through loud and clear. Iseult couldn’t credit it.

  * * *

  please my darling eat a little something for mother today.

  no. i shan’t. stop bothering me.

  i will iseult i will bother you until the day you die.

  then i will go on until i die and then we’ll see where things stand.

  * * *

  Even then, it was not lost on Iseult that Beatrice was dead and yet not, and she wondered whether that was how it would be for everyone. Did we all die only to move into someone else’s ears? Did a soul need a body, no matter whose?

  * * *

  “Mrs. Pennington?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  Do you remember? Iseult thought. Do you remember the first time that you knew? No. She still doesn’t know. She still thinks she doesn’t know. Iseult said quietly, “Do you remember the first time I said it?”

  “What’s that, dear?” The plump hands stilled momentarily, just a hiccup, but Iseult knew what it meant. Don’t bring it up. It never goes well. They get angry and sad and talk about sending you away. Until she was twelve Iseult thought there was a town called Away. Sometimes she was afraid of it, sometimes she couldn’t wait to go. The seaside town of Away, where she and Beatrice would live in a stone cottage. And maybe when they were finally alone like that, her mother would become visible, more tangible than the dour wedding portrait in the hall, not so stiflingly close as the tangle of scars that Mrs. Pennington was attempting to soothe.

  No. Better not.

  “I’m wondering what dress I should wear this evening.” Nothing cheered Mrs. Pennington more than Iseult taking an interest, however slight or feigned, in social activities. She didn’t even answer Iseult, just rushed off to the armoire with a look of joy on her face, wiping her salved hands on her apron.

  “I promise you, Iseult, this is the year we get your father to relinquish the mourning!” She called through a clatter of wooden hangers and the violent swish of too much fabric. “That’s why we haven’t seen you married yet: What young man wants to think of a pretty young wife all in black?”

  If only that were the only problem, Iseult thought, grabbing up her heap of skirts and making her way to the armoire.

  “What young man wants a wife who loathes him, and whom he loathes in return?” Iseult passed a rough hand over the rows of black, each dress as pointless as the next if you were hoping to make a favorable impression. Mrs. Pennington paused in her frenzy to hand Iseult a sharp look, and found what she was looking for.

  “See here now, this one is so light as to be almost a … dark gray, don’t you think?” She waited for no answer before whisking the dress out of the armoire and thoughtfully arranging it on the bed, flicking off bits of lint invisible to the human eye. Iseult stood by, somber, arms folded. Mrs. Pennington continued to smooth the tiniest wrinkle, but she said softly, “Say you will keep an open mind, Iseult, please?”

  Iseult’s arm jerked, and she tried to cover the ensuing small shudders by turning back to her dressing table and rummaging in a drawer. “What if I said I’d even wear a ribbon in my hair?”

  Iseult didn’t even have to turn around to know she’d said the right thing.

  * * *

  you bait that poor woman iseult. you shouldn’t. i didn’t raise you to—

  you didn’t raise me. she did. i shall treat her as i please.

  i do as i please. i am my own girl. my own … woman. i can make decisions too. maybe i will marry this one.

  you haven’t even seen him you can’t you can’t you don’t want to marry i assure you, my girl.

  my own woman, i said! maybe i will marry this bird, this finch, and i will have a child and she will kill me and i can go and live with her and you can stay here in iseult’s sad little body.

  you won’t i promise you you won’t.

  * * *

  Predictably, Mrs. Pennington was in high spirits as she readied Iseult for dinner. She laced the corset so tight that each breath made the bodice of Iseult’s dark gray dress ripple, and it must be said that she overdid the hair. Too many curls over the rib
bon. Privately Iseult thought she looked like a sheep at a fair, but she held her tongue, determined to be good for Mrs. Pennington. Or was it bad for Beatrice? Was there a difference? They so often amounted to the same thing. They both claimed to want the best for Iseult, but one was black to the other’s white. It depended on the day, whom Iseult wanted to please and whom she wanted to harm. She could never please or harm both at the same time. Someone always had to suffer. Iseult always suffered.

  Mrs. Pennington was completing the final details of Iseult’s ovine coiffure when Mr. Wince knocked on the bedroom door. Both women jumped, which was both surprising and not. Surprising because he was the only person who would be knocking on the bedroom door, but not surprising because he was the sort of man who caused people to jump, the sort of man who reveled in their jumping.

  Mrs. Pennington pinned a final curl into its frivolous place and hastened to open the door. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. Before Beatrice’s untimely passing, this had been her bedroom. Mr. Wince had not stepped inside the room since, even though it was the only bedroom Iseult had ever had.

  Iseult could hear murmurs of conversation through the door, sounds that seemed to float up from beneath the surface of the ocean. Many of Iseult’s dealings with her father occurred from this distance. She sat at her mirror avoiding her own eyes, watching the fabric over her diaphragm shimmer with each breath and quiver with each heartbeat. The door chime rang, and the voices drifted away down the stairs, and it was time for dinner.

  3.

  To spoil the surprise: the dinner was not a success. It began well enough, with polite though stilted questions and answers, with pleasantries that had been uttered so many times by so many people that they were utterly meaningless. The Finches were predictably dry and colorless, which Iseult had learned from experience was the best that she could reasonably hope for. And she had been right about the son. Pimples. Swarms of them. The kind that you can’t stop staring at.

  “And business continues to go well, Edward?” Mr. Finch’s knife scraped through the poor pheasant and shrieked against the china. Iseult did her best to force down the spasm threatening to shake her arm.

  “I think you can tell that by the beautifully appointed house, my dear,” Mrs. Finch said, delicately poking at her dinner, “unless it is perhaps attributable to Iseult’s talents in terms of thriftiness?”

  Mr. Wince spoke before Iseult could open her mouth to deny this. “I do believe that it is both, Mrs. Finch. I cannot complain of the Wince Steelworks’ success, and Iseult manages the house every bit as well as her dear mother did.”

  Iseult’s arm jerked and she nearly upset her water glass. Mr. Wince flinched, and the Finches could feel the evening slipping from their grasp for reasons beyond their understanding.

  “Miss Wince, I am told that you are very fond of walking.” Alexander Finch’s voice was as unpleasant as the scrape of his father’s knife against the plate. It might settle in time; he was only nineteen, after all. Iseult clenched her napkin in her fist below the table.

  “Yes, indeed I am.”

  These were the first words that Iseult had ventured to speak, and all had leaned forward in anticipation. Sadly, she was not inclined to continue.

  “And … where do you prefer to walk? In the park? Along the streets? Looking into the shop windows? Or do you plunge forth into the countryside?” Alexander was hoping that someone would stop him; otherwise he would have no choice but to keep going.

  “Good healthy exercise for a young woman, better than being shut up inside all day.” Mr. Finch scraped again, then crashed his teeth into his wineglass. His wife simpered at him. Alexander scratched at a pimple, which burst. All eyes were on Iseult again, and she thought of the lecture she was going to receive if she got this answer wrong. But then she considered the possibility of a future inextricable from these most disagreeable dinner partners. And not only at mealtimes. All the time. Forever. No.

  “I walk everywhere, anywhere, Mr. Finch. I walk until I am so tired I can barely stand. And then I go to the churchyard and visit my mother’s grave. She likes it there.” In the ensuing silence, Iseult swore she could hear her father’s mustache bristle. The Finches exchanged uneasy glances.

  “We-e-ell, I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing your churchyard, but I have been told that there are excellent views of the town. I’m sure it is a most pleasant … place to … rest … for you … and your mother.” Iseult glanced up. Alexander’s face had gone red in his efforts to finish the sentence.

  “What Iseult means to say is that exactly. She has a singular turn of phrase, does she not?” Mr. Wince was well accustomed to cleaning up after Iseult’s conversation, and that hadn’t been an insurmountable disaster.

  “Actually, Father, what I meant was that Mother and I like to go there together.” Iseult turned from her father’s face, which was turning to stone, back to the quizzical Finches. “She is with me, you see. Inside me, as it were.”

  Iseult derived a real satisfaction from causing a true, panicky silence. And then she worked to prolong it. “So you see, it wouldn’t just be me you marry, Mr. Finch. My mother comes too.”

  The elder Mr. Finch choked on a large swallow of wine, and Mrs. Finch’s ample bosom heaved erratically. Iseult noted with interest that once the color drained from Alexander’s face, the pimples were much less noticeable. Mr. Wince rang the bell sharply for the maid, who must have been pressing her ear toward the door, she appeared so quickly. Her heels cracked the silence against the shining wooden floor, and Iseult smiled warmly at her as she cleared her plate.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” she said happily. Sarah’s saucer eyes widened further, and after taking Mrs. Finch’s plate as well she quickened her pace back to the kitchen, no doubt to tell Mrs. Pennington that some form of disaster had struck. Iseult never smiled like that when things were going well.

  Iseult spent the rest of dinner smoothing her skirts and not touching her neck. Everyone else spent the rest of dinner speaking of the steelworks and trying to pretend that she wasn’t there. Everyone else drank a large quantity of wine. Predictably, the Finches flew away early. The Winces saw the Finches to the door, and all exchanged lovely hopes that they would see each other soon, which of course they wouldn’t, preferably ever if it could be arranged. Mr. Wince closed the heavy front door and fixed his gaze somewhere above his errant daughter’s head. Many people had noted the marked similarity that Iseult’s frighteningly large eyes had to her late mother’s, and because of that resemblance Mr. Wince rarely had the temerity to meet them. His own eyes were hard, nasty little pebbles. He could not recognize the hardness in her eyes that echoed his.

  “Iseult.” This was how it began. Iseult bided her time and shuddered, a chill spreading through her collarbone before dissipating somewhere past her shoulders. “Iseult, you may not continue to behave like this.”

  * * *

  tell him dear tell him now tell him it’s not necessary for him to continue parading this poor show of bachelors through the front hall.

  he doesn’t won’t doesn’t listen to me mother. you tell him. he will only say i am a belligerent girl who deserves to be married off to the first decent man who passes.

  nonsense. he loves you still. still. i believe.

  * * *

  “You are a disgrace to your mother’s memory. You behave like an insolent child. I am tempted to marry you off to the first man who passes in the street.”

  * * *

  see?

  well you’ve been baiting him stop baiting him.

  if i stop baiting him i will have to marry one of them. and you don’t seem to want me to marry. so what am i to do mother, what to do? something is about to break. i am afraid. i am afraid. i am afraid it will be me again.

  * * *

  “Have you nothing to say in your own defense?” The only sounds were the relentless tick of the hideous clock on the mantelpiece and the flutter of Mr. Wince’s mustache hairs. Iseult star
ed at them, wondering as always how they could make a sound, those tidy little reddish hairs with gray interlopers. In her pockets, her fingers began to move of their own accord, cracking the knuckles. Right: crack. Left: crack. Right: crack. Left: crack. And so on. So lost in the simple pleasure of each hollow crack, she was startled to find her father’s face discomfitingly close to her own.

  “Iseult, dear darling daughter,” he jeered, the sour smell of wine seeping between his clenched teeth, “I have reached what I believe is the end of my rope where you are concerned. I am very liberal in terms of women being allowed to make their own decisions, and you know that I abhor violence unless absolutely necessary, but at this point, any man offering a fair price could carry you out that door”—here he pointed helpfully at the front door, an angry tremor shaking his finger—“and beat you into something resembling sanity and I would rejoice!”

  * * *

  say something, say you’re sorry! he doesn’t deserve this you love him i love i love him.

  but there is nothing to say. i am caught between you and nothing that i say will placate either of you. i want to be left alone. i should wish that he would die as well, but then i’d have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and never be sure which was which. no. mother. i will hold my tongue.

  brat. ungrateful wretch. tell him you love him and will obey him.

  so you can tell me to defy him again the next time he hauls home another pockmarked prospect? no thank you, madam. you may have stunted my growth thus far, but i know my own mind. i will not marry because he tells me to, nor abstain because of your wishes. i shall make my own choice, if he ever comes along. if not i will remain alone. as alone as it is possible to be in this madhouse of my mind.