Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  She discovered that she could get into small spaces, and this led to her first experiment. Her desk had one drawer which she had never been able to open. It must have been stuck, because the key that unlocked all the others didn't work on the lower left-hand drawer. It was a shame; it would have been handy for keeping files. Now Elspeth drifted into it through the keyhole. It was empty. She was slightly disappointed. But there was something about being in the drawer that she liked. Being compressed into two cubic feet gave her a solidity that she quickly became addicted to. She didn't have separate body parts yet, but when she crowded into the drawer Elspeth felt sensations akin to touch: feelings that might be skin against hair, tongue against teeth. She began to stay in the drawer for long periods, to sleep, to think, to calm herself. It's like going back to the womb, she thought, happy to be contained.

  One morning she saw her feet. They were hardly there, but Elspeth recognised them and rejoiced. Hands, legs, arms, breasts, hips and torso followed, and finally Elspeth could feel her head and neck. It was the body she had died in, thin and scarred by needle holes and the wound where the port had been, but she was so glad to see it that for a long time she didn't care. She gained opacity gradually - that is, she could see herself better and better; to Robert she was quite invisible.

  He spent a lot of time in her flat, winding up her business, wandering around touching things, lying on her bed curled up with some piece of her clothing. She worried about him. He looked thin, ill, depressed. I don't want to see this, she thought. She vacillated between urgently trying to make him aware of her and leaving him alone. He won't get over it if he knows you're here, she told herself.

  He's not getting over it anyway.

  Sometimes she would touch him. It seemed to affect him like an icy draught; she could see the goosebumps rise on his skin as she ran her hands over him. He felt hot, to her. She could only feel warmth and coolness now. Rough and smooth, soft and hard: these were lost to her. She had no sense of taste or smell. Elspeth was haunted by music; songs she had loved, or hated, or barely even noticed now played in her mind. It was impossible to be rid of them. They were like a radio played at low volume in a neighbouring flat.

  Elspeth liked to close her eyes and caress her own face. She had substance under her own hands, even though the rest of the world slid through her as though she were walking in front of a film projected on a screen. She no longer went through any daily rituals of washing, dressing or applying make-up: calling a favourite jumper or dress to mind was enough to find herself wearing it. Her hair did not grow, much to Elspeth's disappointment. It had been hard to see it all fall out, handful by handful, and when it had begun to come in again it was someone else's hair, silver-grey in exchange for her blonde. It felt coarse when she ran her hands over it.

  Elspeth was no longer reflected in mirrors. It drove her mad - she already felt marginal, and not being able to see her own face made her lonely. She sometimes stood in her front hall, looking intently into the various mirrors, but the most she caught was a dark, smudgy indication, as though someone had begun to draw on the air with charcoal and then rubbed it out, incompletely. She could hold out her arms and see her own hands quite visible before her. She could bend over and stare at her well-shod feet. But her face eluded her.

  Being a ghost was mostly like that: it forced her to feed off the world. She no longer possessed anything. She had to take her pleasure in the doings of others, in their ability to move objects, consume food, breathe air.

  Elspeth badly wanted to make noise. But Robert could not hear her, even when she stood inches away from him and yelled. Elspeth concluded that she had nothing to make a sound with - her ethereal vocal cords weren't up to the task. So she concentrated on moving things.

  At first things were utterly unresponsive. Elspeth would gather all her substance and fury and hurl herself at a sofa cushion or a book: nothing would happen. She tried to open doors, rattle teacups, stop clocks. The results were indiscernible. She decided to retrench, and began to attempt very small effects. One day she triumphed over a paper clip. By dint of patient tugging and pushing she managed to move it half an inch over the course of an hour. She knew then that she was not a negligible being: she could affect the world if she tried hard enough. So every day Elspeth practised. Eventually she could push the paper clip off the desk. She could flutter curtains and twitch the whiskers of the stuffed ermine who sat on her desk. She started to work on light switches. She could make a door sway a few inches, as though a breeze had come through the room. To her joy, she succeeded in turning the pages of a book. Reading had been Elspeth's great pleasure in life, and now she could indulge in it again, as long as the book was left lying open for her. She began to work on pulling books from their places on the bookshelves.

  As insubstantial as objects were to Elspeth, or she to them, the walls of the flat were absolute barriers and she could not pass beyond them. She didn't mind this at first. She worried that if she went outside she would be dispersed by wind and weather. But eventually she became restless. If her territory had included Robert's flat she would have been content. She tried many times to sink through the floor, but only ended up in a sort of puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Attempts to slide under the front door into the hallway were also unsuccessful. She could hear Robert down in his flat, taking a shower, talking to the TV, playing Arcade Fire on the stereo. The sounds filled her with self-pity and resentment.

  Open windows and doors were inviting, but useless. Elspeth found herself dispersing, shapeless but still in the flat, as she tried to pass through them.

  Elspeth wondered: Why? What is all this for? I understand the rationale behind heaven and hell, reward and punishment, but if this is limbo, what is the point? What am I supposed to be learning from the spiritual equivalent of house arrest? Is every dead person consigned to haunt his or her former home? If so, where are all the other people who lived here before me? Is this an oversight on the part of the celestial authorities?

  She had always been lax when it came to religion. She had been C. of E. in the same way everyone else was: she supposed she believed in God, but it seemed rather uncool to make a fuss about Him. She had seldom been in church unless someone was dead or being wed; in retrospect she felt even more remiss because St Michael's was practically next door. I wish I could remember my funeral. It must have happened while she was rolling around the floor of the flat in an amorphous mist. Elspeth wondered if she should have been more assiduous about God. She wondered if she was going to be stuck in her flat for all eternity. She wondered if someone who was already dead could kill herself.

  THE VIOLET DRESS

  EDIE AND VALENTINA sat together in Edie's workroom, sewing. It was the Saturday before Christmas; Julia had gone downtown with Jack to help him shop. Valentina pinned the dress pattern to yards of violet silk, careful to lay out the pieces without wasting fabric. She was making two identical dresses, and she wasn't sure she'd bought enough silk.

  'That's good,' Edie said. The room was warm in the afternoon sun, and she felt a little sleepy. She offered Valentina her best scissors and watched the steel work through the thin material. That's such a great sound, the blades moving together that way. Valentina handed Edie the pieces, and Edie began to transfer the seam lines from the pattern to the fabric. They passed the silk back and forth, working companionably out of long habit. Once the fabric was marked and unpinned and repinned without the pattern, Valentina sat at her sewing machine and carefully stitched the dress together while Edie began to pin and cut out the second dress.

  'Look, Mom,' said Valentina. She stood and held the front of the dress against her chest. Static electricity wrapped the skirt around her with a crackle. There were no sleeves yet, and the seams were raw; Edie thought the dress was like a costume for a fairy in a Christmas pantomime. 'You look like Cinderella,' Edie said.

  'Do I?' Valentina went to the mirror and smiled at her reflection. 'I like this colour.'

  'It suits
you.'

  'Julia wanted me to make them in pink.'

  Edie frowned. 'You'd look like twelve-year-old ballerinas. We could have made hers pink.'

  Valentina caught her mother's eye, then looked away. 'It wasn't worth the hassle. She wanted whatever I was making for myself.'

  'I wish you'd stand up to her more often, sweet.'

  Valentina peeled the dress away from her and sat down at the machine. She began to make the sleeves. 'Did Elspeth boss you around? Or did you boss her?'

  Edie hesitated. 'We didn't ... It wasn't like that.' She laid the second dress flat on the table and began to roll the tracing wheel over the seam lines. 'We did everything together. We never liked to be alone. I still miss her.' Valentina sat still, waiting for her mother to continue. But Edie said, 'Send me photos of the flat, will you? I imagine it must be full of our parents' furniture; Elspeth loved all that heavy Victorian stuff.'

  'Okay, sure.' Valentina turned in her chair and said, 'I wish we weren't going.'

  'I know. But it's like your dad says: you can't stay home forever.'

  'I wasn't going to.'

  Edie smiled. 'That's good.'

  'I wish I could stay in this room forever, and sew things.'

  'That sounds like a fairy tale.'

  Valentina laughed. 'I'm Rumpelstiltskin.'

  'No, no,' said Edie. She put down the dress pieces and went to Valentina. Edie stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. She leaned over and kissed Valentina on her forehead. 'You're the princess.'

  Valentina looked up and saw her mother smiling at her upside down. 'Am I?'

  'Of course,' said Edie. 'Always.'

  'So we're going to live happily ever after?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'Okay.' Valentina had an acute moment, an awareness of a memory being formed. We're going to live happily ever after? Absolutely. Edie went back to the other dress, and Valentina finished the first sleeve. By the time Jack and Julia got home, Valentina was wearing the violet dress and Edie was crouching in front of her with a mouthful of pins, hemming the skirt. It was all Valentina could do to hold still; she wanted to twirl and make the dress flare out like a carnival ride. I'll wear it to the ball, she thought, when the prince invites me to dance.

  'Can I try it on?' said Julia.

  'No,' said Edie through the pins, before Valentina could speak. 'This one is hers. Come back later.'

  'Okay,' said Julia, and she turned and ran off to wrap the presents Jack had bought.

  'See,' said Edie to Valentina. 'You just open your mouth and say "No".'

  'Okay,' said Valentina. She twirled and the dress flared. Edie laughed.

  BOXING DAY

  JACK WALKED INTO his den and found the twins watching a movie. It was midnight and usually all three of them would have been in bed by now.

  'That looks somewhat familiar,' said Jack. 'What are you watching?'

  'The Filth and the Fury,' Julia said. 'It's a documentary about the Sex Pistols. You and Mom gave it to us for Christmas.'

  'Oh.' The twins were sprawled together on the couch, so Jack lowered himself into the recliner. As soon as he was seated he felt exhausted. Jack had always enjoyed Christmas, but the days after Christmas seemed vacant and cheerless. The effect was compounded by the fact that the twins were leaving for London in a few days. Where did the time go? Five days until their twenty-first birthdays. Then gone.

  'How's the packing going?' he asked.

  'Okay,' said Valentina. She turned off the sound on the TV. 'We're going to be over the weight limit.'

  'Somehow that's not surprising,' Jack said.

  'We need to get converters, you know, to plug in our computers and stuff.' Julia looked at Jack. 'Can we go downtown with you tomorrow?'

  'Sure. We'll have lunch at Heaven on Seven,' Jack said. 'Your mom will want to come with.' Edie had been shadowing the twins for weeks, hoarding them, memorising them.

  'That's cool, we can go to Water Tower. We need new boots.'

  Valentina watched Johnny Rotten singing silently. He looks deranged. That's a great sweater. She and Julia had studiously prepared for the trip to London, reading Lonely Planet and Charles Dickens, making packing lists and trying to find their new flat on Google Earth. They had speculated endlessly about Aunt Elspeth and the mysterious Mr Fanshaw, had been very pleasantly surprised by the amount of money in their new bank account at Lloyd's. Now there was hardly anything left to do, which created an odd void, a feeling of restless dread. Valentina wanted to leave right this minute, or never.

  Julia watched her father. 'Are you okay?'

  'Yeah, I'm fine. Why?'

  'I dunno, you seem kind of wiped.' You've gained a huge amount of weight and you sigh a lot. What's wrong with you?

  'I'm okay. It's just the holidays.'

  'Oh.'

  Jack sat trying to imagine the house/his marriage/his life without the twins. He and Edie had been avoiding the subject for months, so now he thought about it obsessively, oscillating between fantasies of marital bliss, his actual memories of the last time the twins had left home and his worries about Edie.

  For some time before Elspeth's death Edie had been distracted. Jack had hired the detective in hope of discovering the reason for her absentmindedness, her vacant stare, her bright, false cheer whenever he asked her about it. But the detective could only observe Edie; he had no answers for Jack's questions. After Elspeth's death Edie's distraction had been replaced by a profound sadness. Jack could not comfort her. He could not seem to say the right thing, though he tried. Now he wondered how Edie would fare once the twins were gone.

  Each time the twins left for college, things started out well. Jack and Edie revelled in their freedom: there would be late nights, loud sex, spur-of-the-moment amusements and slightly excessive drinking. But then a kind of bleakness always set in. Soon it would be upon them, their empty house. They would eat dinner together, just the two of them; the evening would stretch out before them in silence, to be filled with a DVD and perhaps a walk down to the beach or the club. Or they would retreat to opposite ends of the house, he to surf the Internet or read a Tom Clancy novel, Edie to work on her needlepoint while listening to an audio book. (She was currently listening to Brideshead Revisited, which Jack thought was pretty much guaranteed to produce a serious bout of depression.)

  Tonight he didn't see much to look forward to after the twins were gone. He felt grateful to them for having stuck around as long as they had, grateful to Edie and Elspeth for having arranged things so that Julia and Valentina could grow up in this ugly, comfortable house, so he could be Dad, so the girls could sit here in his room watching Johnny Rotten spastically singing 'God Save the Queen' with the sound turned off; suddenly Jack was overwhelmed with a gratitude that felt like grief, and he struggled out of his chair, muttered goodnight and left the room, afraid that if he sat there one minute longer he would cry or blurt out something he'd regret. He walked into his bedroom, where Edie slept curled up, faintly blue in the clock-radio light. Jack undressed silently, got into bed without brushing his teeth and lay there in an abyss, unable to imagine any happiness for himself ever again.

  Valentina turned off the TV. The twins rose and stretched. 'He seems really down,' said Valentina.

  'They're both, like, suicidal,' replied Julia. 'I wonder what will happen when we're gone?'

  'Maybe we shouldn't go.'

  Julia looked impatient. 'We have to go somewhere, eventually. The sooner we're gone, the sooner they'll get over it.'

  'I guess.'

  'We'll call them every Sunday. They can come and visit.'

  'I know.' Valentina took a breath. 'Maybe you should go to London and I'll stay here with them.'

  Julia experienced a frisson of rejection. You'd rather stay with Mom and Dad than be with me? 'No!' She paused, trying to quell her irritation. Valentina watched, a little amused. 'Mouse, we both have to--'

  'I know. Don't worry. I'm coming with you.' She pressed against Juli
a, put her arm around Julia's shoulders. Then they turned out the light and walked to their room, glancing at their parents' door as they passed.

  NEW YEAR'S DAY

  ROBERT STOOD IN Elspeth's office. The twins would arrive tomorrow. He had brought along an external hard drive and a few boxes from Sainsbury's; these stood empty and open next to Elspeth's enormous Victorian desk.

  Elspeth sat on her desk and watched Robert. Oh, you don't look happy, love. She had no idea how much time had passed. Had she died months ago? Years? Something was happening; until now Robert had kept her flat unchanged. He'd thrown out most of the food and cancelled her credit cards. She no longer received mail. He had closed her business and written personal letters to her customers. It was becoming very dusty in the flat. Even the sunlight seemed dimmer than she remembered; the windows needed washing.

  Robert went through the drawers of Elspeth's desk. He left the stationery and the invoices. He took some packets of photographs and a notebook she'd doodled in while she talked on the telephone. He went to the bookshelves and began carefully removing the ledgers she'd used as diaries, dusting them and placing them in the boxes. Open one, Elspeth said. Open that one. But of course Robert couldn't hear her.

  He worked in silence. Elspeth felt slighted; sometimes he talked to her when he was in the flat. Photo albums, a shoebox full of letters, notebooks went into the boxes. She wanted to touch him but held back. Robert plugged the hard drive into her computer and transferred her files. Then he wiped the computer of everything except the system and applications. Elspeth stood behind him and watched. How strange, to feel sad about the computer. I must really be dead now. Robert unplugged the hard drive and put it in a box.

  He began roaming through the flat, box in hand, Elspeth trailing behind him. The bedroom, she urged silently. When he got there he stood in the doorway for a few minutes. Elspeth flowed by him and sat on the bed. She looked at him: there was something about her sitting here and the way he stood there and the light, the way the light bathed the room in dusty warmth. In a moment he'll come over here and kiss me. Elspeth waited, forgetting. They had done this so many times.