The Unsuitable

by Molly Pohlig

  “If it is so dreadful a thing to be seen with me, then perhaps this is not going to work after all,” he said quietly.

  “Can’t you understand?” Iseult felt, as she often did with people, that she was conversing with someone very ignorant if the truth was not plain to them. “They stare at you as if you were a carnival monstrosity on display, but don’t you know yet? I am more monstrous by far.”

  Jacob laughed the short, sad laugh of a man defeated, and backed away from her until he leaned against the wall opposite. “You are strange, I will grant. You have spent perhaps even more time alone than I myself, which could make anyone strange. But I do not see anything which would warrant the label of monstrous.”

  There was a jagged chunk of brick behind Iseult’s waist, and she worked her left fist into it, finding some measure of relief in the pain. “My mother…” she began, but couldn’t find it in herself to continue.

  * * *

  why don’t you speak? you must be aching to.

  * * *

  “Your mother … passed away in childbirth, I believe?” Jacob again bent his head to bring her eyes up from the ground. “So I cannot see that it was any fault of your own. Although if you know otherwise, please do enlighten me.”

  There was a tinge of amusement in his voice, a shade of mollification, and Iseult jabbed her fist again at the broken masonry, feeling a strip of skin leave her hand like peel from a carrot.

  “I hope that I will not alarm you with my indelicacy, but what happened was that a bone broke here”—Iseult’s right hand smacked at her collarbone as her other fist scraped away at the wall again—“and it cut my mother inside and she bled to death.”

  It was Jacob’s turn to look at the ground, and Iseult felt a sense of triumph, although over whom she didn’t yet know—Jacob? Her mother? Her father? It would come to her later. For now, she felt as if she had won. “So, Mr. Vinke, if her death was not at my hands, pray tell me who is responsible. My father has always considered me to be at fault, and I must confess that is one thing upon which we are in agreement.”

  Her hand began to throb, but the sense of impending victory kept her head high. This marriage wasn’t going to work; how could it? It would be akin to leaving two cripples alone in a house where everything was on the fifth floor. No. She would prefer a convent to this public humiliation. She would be damned if her father was rid of her so easily.

  Something inside her curdled in disgust and, again wondering where Beatrice could have got to, Iseult grasped her head in her hands. Her fingers threaded their way into her hair and she wondered idly how long it would take to pluck every single strand from her head. As she stood looking at the cobblestones, she saw rather than heard Jacob’s feet come close to hers.

  “What has happened to your hand?”

  Iseult straightened up immediately, thanking her aunt silently as she plunged the wounded hand into her pocket, and attempting to smooth her hair with the other.

  “Mr. Vinke, I believe that you were correct before. I should very much like to go home. You are right. I am unwell.”

  “Of course,” Jacob said. There was silence, and Iseult realized that he was holding out his arm for her to take. For her to take with her left hand.

  Iseult wanted to go home. She didn’t care if she never married. She didn’t care if her father locked her in her room and stopped feeding her. She didn’t care she didn’t care she didn’t care.

  She took her hand out of her pocket and wrapped it in the crook of his elbow. He looked calmly at the wreck she had made of her poor fingers, reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, and wrapped it gently around her hand, holding it in place with his own.

  They walked back to the Wince home in silence.

  The walk was a blur for Iseult. Was she glad it was over and she had driven him away? Because it was surely over. Surely.

  Her father would certainly do his worst. In a way, she was curious as to what his worst would be. He had never raised a hand to her. Not even the time when she was twelve and bit his hand, although on that occasion she could see that he longed to thrash her. She wished he would, so their mutual hatred could at last be tangible instead of just another ghost in the house. Maybe thrashing her would relieve the awful tension between them, and they could coexist peacefully in their ignorance of each other. One ghost fewer, two more, did it make any difference?

  They had nearly reached the front gate when Iseult remembered that members of her household would be more than a little surprised to see her swan up to the door on Jacob’s arm. Trying not to be abrupt but failing, she removed her hand, handkerchief and all (she suspected it was now part and parcel of her fingers) and gave what she supposed to be an Oriental bow of apology.

  “I will see that the housekeeper returns your handkerchief to you, and I am very sorry about the whole … business.” She looked for a better word but couldn’t come up with anything. Business was what it was, anyway; they had at least agreed on that much.

  “Nonsense,” Jacob said, smiling. “You are feeling unwell and we shall simply continue our conversation another time. There is nothing to apologize for.”

  Iseult pursed her lips, annoyed now. One of them was misinterpreting the situation. She believed that it was him.

  “Mr. Vinke, I don’t think you understand.” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if he were deaf or elderly, or merely not very clever. “I am releasing you from any … obligation that we may have discussed earlier.”

  He continued to smile pleasantly at her, not saying a word.

  “Look, I promise you’ll get the handkerchief back, and we’ll consider the matter settled.”

  “Miss Wince, the return of the handkerchief is immaterial.” And still with the bland smile. He just stood there, smiling as if they had shared a pleasantly banal afternoon. She waited for him to say goodbye. And waited. She didn’t want to be any ruder than she needed to be after the disastrous afternoon, but he didn’t seem to be leaving her with much of a choice.

  “Well,” she said slowly, giving him one last chance to release her from what was sure to be an embarrassing farewell. “I do appreciate your taking time to discuss this with me, and I truly am sorry for any inconvenience and…” How long was he prepared to let her keep going? She longed to be elsewhere and to be done with the whole stupid thing, to tuck it away in a drawer like stockings she never meant to wear again. “And I have enjoyed … knowing you, and our walk, and … good day. Goodbye. I am sorry to have wasted your time, but surely you agree it is better this way.”

  Here Jacob wrinkled his largish silver nose, as if he had just been dropped into her speech and wasn’t sure which bit she was at. “Better which way?”

  Iseult huffed in exasperation. If she hadn’t exactly disliked him before, she was beginning to now. “Better that we know that we are ill suited, Mr. Vinke, and we can regretfully but respectfully inform our parents that the attempt at a match has failed.”

  He shook his head as if genuinely surprised. “But, Miss Wince, I did think that we were in agreement earlier. That we thought we might as well try it as not. Didn’t you say…?”

  He had a pathetically questioning tilt to his eyebrows, making him the double of a stray dog.

  “Well, yes, I did, but … but don’t you see now it would be of no use?”

  “I don’t see that at all,” he said, stepping closer while his voice grew quiet, which in turn made Iseult feel that she should step closer and speak more quietly as well. Whatever it took to put an end to this ridiculous charade.

  “I think we had a fine time. A few hiccups, some understandable awkwardness, you aren’t feeling your best, but what I can surmise from both today and our previous meeting, Miss Wince, is that I like you, and that is far more than I can say for any other of my prospective brides.” Iseult’s shoulder twitched at the word “brides” and she realized that they were standing close enough that she could feel the edges of his breath float by her face. She began to breathe through her
mouth, feeling that it would be unseemly to know what his breath smelled like.

  “But I don’t think that will last very long, you liking me.”

  “Let me worry about that,” he said, and then the nose wrinkle again, but sadder this time.

  She inched backward, edging along the iron fence until she felt the space of the open gate at her back. She gave a highly perfunctory curtsy.

  “Again, thank you, and good day, and my apologies,” she said too loudly, as a pedestrian was passing and she didn’t want them to assume some sort of lovers’ quarrel. A shiver of something ran through her at the appearance of the word “lovers” in her head. She was aware that Jacob was saying something, but she had already decided not to listen. Stumbling slightly over her own feet, she turned and ran to the front steps, which had rarely looked so dear. As she banged the door knocker, she threw words over her shoulder, more to drown out the sound of his voice than to provide any real information: “Try not to worry about the handkerchief!”

  He was still saying something when Iseult fell inside the door as Mrs. Pennington pulled it open. She crashed to the floor, a tangle of knees and elbows and fabric. Mrs. Pennington was gathering her resources to fuss when Iseult cried, “Close the door, close the door!”

  Mrs. Pennington did hastily close the door, but immediately her fists went to her hips. “Now, Miss Iseult, you are going to explain to me exactly what is going on, and don’t even think of trying to tell a lie. You’re no good at it and you never have been.”

  Iseult stayed in her heap on the floor, wanting to wait until her joints stopped echoing with pain, rubbing a knee exaggeratedly with her undamaged hand, hiding the other hand, and trying to think of a lie that wasn’t too far from the truth. Mrs. Pennington’s eyes became small and beady, and for a moment, Iseult felt relief when she heard the knock on the door. But that lasted no more than a moment, until she realized that there was only one person who could be on the other side.

  Iseult scrambled to her feet as if she’d been pinched and tore off up the stairs. Mrs. Pennington was either too stunned or too angry to call after her. Iseult slammed the door shut to her room, but she wanted to keep running; she ran across her bedroom to the armoire. She could hear voices downstairs. She opened the doors and climbed inside, pushing her way past the winter coats and dresses, stiff with tissue paper and reeking of must, and she wrestled the doors closed behind her. It was chokingly warm, but that felt about right. Squashed behind everything like that, she discovered that all sounds from below were so muffled that they weren’t recognizable as human voices. They might have been squeaking mice or barking dogs, for all Iseult knew.

  She thought she could hear her mother’s disapproval, though. A silent censoriousness with which she was intimately familiar. Was she imagining it? She sank to the floor, knees coming up to meet her chin. The handkerchief was still stuck to her bloody fingers. Iseult felt stupid and embarrassed; surely things couldn’t get any worse than this. But she had felt that before, and things almost always got worse afterward. She rubbed some spit into the dried blood on the handkerchief to loosen its grip.

  It came away with blessed ease. Iseult sniffed the fabric to see whether it smelled like Jacob, but there was only the rusty scent of blood mixed with her own saliva. Her knuckles were bare of skin, and would take ages to heal. When she was small and had hurt herself, Mrs. Pennington would laugh and say, “You’ll be better before you’re married.” A thought that had always made Iseult uneasy. Marriage at that time had been so far in the future. Would she be hurt for so long? Mightn’t things heal sooner than that? Now, with the specter of an actual marriage (however unlikely) hovering in her field of vision, she wanted her skin to stay raw. Maybe injury could stave things off a little longer.

  Iseult moved to press her ear against the back wall of the armoire, jamming a hole in a hatbox with an elbow as she did. The collapse triggered a puff of dust and she stifled a sneeze. She could hear the faraway hint of a conversation, presumably between her father and Jacob. She pulled herself in smaller and smaller, pressing her face into her knees, and her eyeballs began to throb pleasantly. The blackness behind her eyelids changed shades, rippling with charcoal and grays, shot through with bruised yellows. Iseult thought she might stay in the armoire indefinitely. She was getting used to the heat.

  13.

  Iseult’s father’s footsteps grew louder and faster, and Iseult’s heartbeat sped up to match itself to to their rhythm. As he walked toward the bedroom, Mrs. Pennington’s footsteps could be heard bustling alongside his, and Iseult’s heart pounded loud to drown them out. She resisted the urge to press her knees further into her eyes. She started to see small silvery worms wriggling back and forth across her field of vision. She wished there were more dresses in the armoire to put between the outside and herself, and she tucked in her feet so her shoes weren’t visible.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door, unnecessary since Mr. Wince had never grasped that the point of knocking was to determine whether there was someone on the other side who wished that you come in. Or not. Mr. Wince merely knocked and entered, even when he visited other people’s homes. Iseult had seen him surprise a number of servants and housekeepers while on social calls, entering homes as if they were his own. Iseult was surprised now.

  “I don’t understand; where is she?” he said. Mrs. Pennington’s sigh sounded like a weighty thing, which Mr. Wince ignored. “She’s not here. Did the little fool climb out a window?”

  Iseult pressed her knees so hard against her eyes that her ears began to hurt, and colors she couldn’t name flashed against her eyelids. She thought she might be sick.

  “Iseult, your father wants to speak with you. Please come out,” Mrs. Pennington said in a thin voice. Mr. Wince opened the door and began pawing through the clothes, a whoosh of air signaling that he had moved the correct ones to uncover her hiding place. She let up the pressure on her eyes and raised her head, blinking until she could focus again.

  “Get up, Iseult, for Christ’s sake.”

  Iseult looked up sharply. Her father was not one to swear. He did not extend a hand to help her rise.

  Mrs. Pennington sidestepped him and reached into the armoire to pull her out. Iseult’s knees didn’t want to straighten; she stumbled.

  Mr. Wince breathed noisily through his nose. “Mr. Vinke, for whatever reason, has asked for your hand in marriage. I have given it to him. You will marry in two months. And you will no longer be my concern.”

  Iseult looked hard at her father’s shoes. They were plain black. Elegant yet simple. They had most likely been expensive, they were sturdy, and they would last him a long time. She didn’t know where he had gotten them. But they seemed to be very nice shoes. Anyone seeing these shoes might think their owner a reasonable, thoughtful man. It was likely that he saw himself as a reasonable and thoughtful man. But Iseult was thinking that she knew very little about her father, and that he knew very little about her. It was probably for the best if they were to part ways for good.

  She could feel Mrs. Pennington’s sweaty palm through her sleeve, could sense that everyone was waiting to hear her speak, but she didn’t feel like speaking. She noticed that the stitching on her father’s shoes was so delicate and deft that she had to squint to see it at all. The man who had made the shoes was probably a much better man than her father was. She felt Mrs. Pennington nudge her with a round, warm hip. Iseult raised her eyes to meet her father’s, and began to say what was expected.

  “Thank you, Father. I will marry him. I promise … I promise that I will be…” Iseult felt the words slowing down as they came out of her mouth like sludge, and she had forgotten what was supposed to come next.

  She tried to imagine what Beatrice would say if she were there.

  “—willbeadutifuldaughteruntilthen.” The last words of the sentence shot out like a starter’s pistol, loud and clear and sharp. She worried that it might have sounded as if she had said “beautiful,” but it didn’t
matter. He would hate her no matter what she said.

  They stood there looking at each other out of identical eyes, too angry and self-pitying to have any pity left over for each other. He wanted to slap her face, which wasn’t enough like her mother’s to be pretty. She wanted to claw out his eyes, so hers would be the only ones left. Neither of them felt like expending the energy this would have required.

  His mustache twitched, a thing separate from the rest of him. “You can do what you like until then. Dutiful or not, I don’t care. You can live in the armoire for the next two months. Only know that on the day I designate, you will marry him and you will leave this house for good. I will be polite and civil. I will do whatever needs to be done to avoid scandal. Dinner parties, christenings, weddings, funerals. But no more.”

  Iseult felt compelled to curtsy for the second time that day. Wasn’t the day over yet? It was taking a very long time to reach its conclusion. Iseult swayed but didn’t bend, and the tightness in her throat relaxed. Mrs. Pennington’s arm stayed resolutely around her, firm and sweaty, but it was small comfort.

  “Do you require a response from me?” Iseult asked her father, who didn’t seem to be in a hurry. “Do you want me to plead with you? To let me stay here, unmarried? To let me go but stay always my loving father? I won’t plead with you. You wouldn’t listen anyway.”

  He moved slightly as if to go, lifting a foot from the carpet but putting it back down again. Opened his mouth and closed it. Was something softening in him? Even a little? Again the dragon-like breath through the nostrils, the slightest disruption in the mustache hair. He made himself taller, somehow. “Perhaps your mother would have loved you.”