“Mommy …” began Jonathan, rubbing at his eyes, his dark heavy eyelashes crusted with sleep. “I can’t find the lady inside the other lady.”
“What are you saying?” said Mrs. March, alarmed.
“The lady inside the other lady …” repeated Jonathan. “You know, the Russian one!”
“Oh,” said Mrs. March, with relief. He was referring to her mother’s collection of wooden Russian dolls. “Have you been going through my things? You know you’re not allowed in there.”
“I couldn’t find her … the last one, the tiniest one.”
As a child, Mrs. March herself had played with these dolls in secret, twisting them open, revealing smaller versions of themselves. She would sometimes replace the innermost doll—the smallest, purest one—with another object. A folded bit of paper with a doodle on it, an ivory chess pawn, or one of her baby teeth. She’d thought it marvelously relatable that her mother even had dolls. It was at last something she could understand about her, something that might bond them. Her mother, upon discovering that she’d been tampering with them, scolded her and relegated the dolls to the highest shelf above her bedroom dresser. The dolls possessed an aura of unattainability, which prompted Mrs. March to take them for herself after her mother had been shipped off to Bethesda and the apartment had been emptied.
When Jonathan finally left the bathroom after much cajoling and, ultimately, the threat of punishment, Mrs. March rose from her awkward position in the tub—the water now cold—and pulled the drain stopper. Water drained from her body, too, dribbling out thinly from between her legs.
SHE’D TAKEN the herbal pills that had worked on other occasions, but this time they failed. Sleep managed to elude her.
She got up from bed and pulled on some socks, grabbing her robe and making her way to the living room. Softly illuminated by streetlamp light, the room was silent, save for the occasional car on the street below.
Years ago, on a trip to Venice, George had gifted Mrs. March with an old mask. It sported a long beak, like the ones worn by plague doctors, except this mask had been painted a brilliant yellow, with white and gold feathers around the eyeholes, making it further resemble a bird. Perturbed by it, Mrs. March had hidden the mask on a high shelf among decades-old travel guides. Now, she stepped onto a chair, feeling for it blindly with her hands. She recognized it immediately upon touching it.
She walked with no real purpose around the apartment, her breath hot and loud inside the mask, her vision adjusting to the small eye cutouts. As a child, when she couldn’t sleep, she hadn’t dared to wander about like this. There had been something forbidding about her parents’ living room in the dead of night, with its stiff sofas and heavy coffee table.
She walked into the dining room, running her hand along the table, tracing a finger on the portraits. She spotted something silver in one of the frames, glinting against the dark Victorian palette. She peered closer, as close as her beak would allow, and saw that it was a silverfish, trapped under the glass, searching blindly for an exit. The insect creeped up toward the Victorian woman’s face, whose entreating eyes seemed to be asking her to do something about it.
The silverfish raised its tiny head, as if to look at Mrs. March. She tapped on the glass gently and the insect skittered off, retreating under the frame and out of sight.
With George scheduled to return in the evening and Jonathan at the Millers’, Mrs. March set out to pick up the family’s dry cleaning. This had once been a task for Martha until one of George’s suits returned missing a tie. Rather than reprimand her for failing to notice, Mrs. March decided to take care of the dry cleaning herself from then on. She tended to wait until the weekend, when Martha had a day off, so as to avoid any awkwardness.
Mrs. March had gathered, on the many occasions she’d witnessed the doorman with the neighbors’ dry cleaning, that it was considered appropriate to have him retrieve it, but that was out of the question. As she rushed past him in the lobby, she pulled her hat lower over her face to avoid interaction. He held the door open for her and called out “Good morning, Mrs. March!,” to which she flushed a deep crimson, and mumbled an unintelligible reply.
The dry cleaner’s was a deceptively small place tucked into a building on Third Avenue. Their delivery service wasn’t reliable, and Mrs. March had noticed that she was charged at varying rates depending on what she happened to be wearing when she dropped off the dry cleaning (her fur coat coincided with the highest prices). However, the quality of the cleaning itself was beyond reproach. They could, as advertised, get any stain out. Today she was eager to pick up the clothes George had worn on his trip to Edgar’s cabin. George had, strangely, insisted on dropping them off himself.
“Did you find anything, say, funny? On the clothes?” she asked the dry cleaner after he slapped the plastic-wrapped clothing onto the counter.
The man squinted at her for a minute, one edge of his mouth pulled into a sneer she hoped was involuntary. “Whaddya mean?” he asked through a rancid cloud of cigar breath. His shirt had a small burn hole in the collar.
“Oh, nothing. Never mind,” she said. “Did you get everything out all right?” She pressed her hands against the plastic, inspecting the clothes underneath.
“Everything all right, everything usual. Ain’t no stain too hard for the stain professionals. Receipt’s in the bag.”
Mrs. March fumbled with her pocketbook as the man tended to another customer. From the back room, amidst the hissing of steam from the irons, a tinny radio announced: “The little town of Gentry, still distraught over the discovery of Sylvia Gibbler’s body …”
She thrust a few bills at the dry cleaner, and as he made change, she leaned over the counter, straining to hear. “There are currently no suspects, and friends and family believe the brutal crime may have been committed by a passing stranger. Authorities urge anyone who has any information to call the anonymous tip hotline at—”
Mrs. March toyed with the idea of calling, of turning George in. She couldn’t, for fear he was innocent. But from the dread in her stomach, she knew that he wasn’t.
“Thanks, come again,” the dry cleaner recited in a gruff singsong as he handed her the change.
On her way back home, her hands sweaty against the plastic, a plan began to take shape in her mind. She would travel to Gentry herself. Search for clues, confirm her suspicions. No, that’s ludicrous, she said to herself. Why would I go all the way to Maine on a silly hunch? But this objection proved to be halfhearted as she imagined herself gaining the trust of the locals, uncovering overlooked clues, even being lauded by the police for her bravery and tenacity. She resolved to make the trip, to ascertain once and for all if she was married to a violent murderer.
She was walking past a bookstore on Madison, turning her nose up at old editions of George’s books that lay in carts outside the store, pages splayed like the legs of beckoning prostitutes. She stopped when she saw his latest novel on display in the store window. Through the glass she could see the warm-lit café, the brass-railed ladders attached to the bookshelves, books from floor to ceiling. Standing in front of the section labeled “Bestsellers,” Mrs. March thought she recognized the gossipy woman from the supermarket, whose name still eluded her. The one whose copy of George’s book Mrs. March had stolen from her sausage-laden cart. Mrs. March couldn’t hear through the glass, but it looked as if the woman was reading aloud from George’s book and laughing. And laughing beside her … was that Sheila Miller? Short-haired and slim, decked in a boyish parka and colorful scarf, and holding her stomach as if trying to contain the convulsive laughter within.
Mrs. March glared at them through the window, her heaving chest rustling the dry cleaning bag. A cab sped by behind her, its reflection a yellow blur across the bookstore window, slicing through the women’s necks as it splashed gutter water onto the pavement.
The supermarket gossip pointed at something inside the book. Sheila bent over for a closer look, her face expectant. Whateve
r she read made her still-smiling mouth drop open in cheerful shock, and she covered it with her hand, her eyes wide. The women turned toward each other in delighted mischief, like witches over a cauldron.
Mrs. March began to traverse, slowly, the length of window. Eventually her eyes met those of the two laughing women. She waited for their faces to collapse into an expression of contrition. Instead, to her dismay, the women’s lips stretched into cold, greedy smiles. Mrs. March continued home.
When she arrived at her apartment building, she spied a small group huddled outside. Another gathering of George’s fans, she assumed. As she neared the entrance, a few of them glanced at her curiously.
She had barely stepped inside her apartment when the intercom rang—a harsh, ugly bray that startled her. She picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
“Is George there?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s out. Who is speaking?”
“Could we come in? We’d really like an autograph.”
“That’s not possible. Like I said, my husband isn’t home.”
“We’re huge fans of the book. We only want to see where he lives. Please?”
“No, I—”
“We’ll be out of your hair in five minutes, tops.”
“Where is the doorman?” she said, her mouth dry.
“I’m writing my thesis on his new novel,” said another voice. “It’ll just take a moment. To see Johanna’s birthplace would be invaluable to my research.”
“I really can’t let you in. Please leave.”
Through the static of the intercom, she could hear whispering. “Stop bothering us,” pleaded Mrs. March, the dry cleaning still clutched in one hand, sweat forming at her temples. “Hello?” she said. “Hello?”
“Yes?” came a voice, so loud and clear she recoiled. “This is the doorman.”
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “This is Mrs. March, in 606. Are they gone?”
“Are who gone?”
“The fans, George’s fans, the group outside …” She stopped, her sweat now cold, as she theorized that this wasn’t, in fact, the doorman speaking at all. And now they had her apartment number.
As if in confirmation, something slammed against her front door with such force the hinges rattled. Mrs. March gasped, the dry cleaning dropping to the floor, as if shot. She swallowed, gathering her courage to peer through the peephole, when another violent slam threatened to knock the door from its very frame. She held her face in her hands, and as the banging continued, pressed her back against the door as a kind of buttress. The relentless pounding rang through her chest as she leaned on the door. “Leave me alone!” she cried between anguished sobs as she slid down to the floor.
And just like that the knocking stopped.
SHE REMAINED in a heap on the floor, propped against the door, until well after dark. When the doorbell rang she twitched, and a voice on the other side announced: “Mrs. March, it’s me, Sheila! I’ve brought Jonathan.”
Jonathan—she was bringing Jonathan back from upstairs. Mrs. March got up off the floor and checked herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy and her mascara had streaked down her cheeks. She fixed it—smeared it more or less—with her fingers, as Sheila knocked again. Shadows shuffled underneath the door, and Mrs. March suspected for a second that it was all a ruse: George’s fans were getting creative. She put one eye to the peephole and saw Sheila, her blond head warped, looking directly at her. She pulled back hastily, then bit her thumb and unlocked the door.
Sheila smiled, her hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. If she had seen Mrs. March outside the bookstore, her face betrayed nothing. Jonathan ran into the apartment, and Sheila was about to walk off after uttering a generic “Have a great day!” when Mrs. March cleared her throat and said, “I would appreciate it, Sheila, when Jonathan is in your care, if you wouldn’t go out and leave him unsupervised.”
Sheila’s face projected bewilderment, her neck flushing. “Of course not,” she said. “I would never—”
“But didn’t I see you on Madison? Just a couple of hours ago?”
Sheila frowned in such an exaggerated manner it could only be taken as mock contemplation. “No, I … I didn’t go out at all today. The boys watched a movie, I made some lemonade and cookies …”
“Well, I must be mistaken then.”
Sheila scratched at her collarbone. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m perfectly fine,” answered Mrs. March. She blinked, and it was like flipping a switch: her posture straightened and she smiled so widely her face threatened to bubble and melt and slide off the side of her head. “Thank you so very much for taking care of Jonathan,” she gushed. “We’ll see you again soon, I hope. Have a lovely evening.” And with that she closed the door in Sheila’s face.
WHEN GEORGE returned, Mrs. March—ever dutiful—asked him how his trip went.
“Splendidly,” he answered, which annoyed her greatly. “Everything went without a hitch. I think I nailed the interview—did you watch it?”
“I recorded it so that we could watch it together, with Jonathan,” she said, her eyes darting to the television and the empty tapes in the console.
“They seem to really love the book over there,” George said as he sat on the floor attempting to fix Jonathan’s train set, which had stopped working the previous evening.
“They love it everywhere, darling,” she said in such a breathless way that even Jonathan, who was lying on the floor watching television, gave her an odd look.
“Regardless,” continued George, “I’m thankful for everything.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “I’m thankful,” he repeated, reaching out to squeeze Mrs. March’s hand.
She was supposed to be pleased for him, she thought, pulling her hand from his, but she wasn’t. She had been left alone despite wanting to accompany him (had she really? a small voice inside her asked). She wanted to punish him, to make him feel guilty for leaving her behind. To make him think twice before doing it again. As George rattled on about some prize his book had been longlisted for, she examined him for any traces of the stranger who had stood before her in their bedroom packing his suitcase. She took in the blackheads on the tip of his nose, a wiry white hair sprouting from an eyebrow, his slightly lopsided glasses, and she concluded—with disappointment—that her theory was flawed. George was George, as he had always been and always would be, and her insistence on fantastical theories to excuse his violent crime would simply not do. No, she thought, feeling herself physically harden as she watched George fumble with Jonathan’s train set with the same hands that had strangled Sylvia—she would get to the bottom of this once and for all. She would tell George that she was visiting her sister and mother in Bethesda, but instead she would go to Gentry. When George cut his finger on a train track, Mrs. March headed to the bathroom for a Band-Aid, smiling to herself all the way.
It’s a funny concept, guilt. The first emotion Mrs. March could ever remember feeling. She had been around three years old, toilet trained but not yet proficient in the art of wiping. Her parents were hosting a luncheon. She couldn’t recall exactly who was present, or why she and her sister Lisa were allowed to sit at the dining table, but in the midst of eating her pureed vegetables—perhaps through some Freudian connection—she felt the unavoidable call of nature. She looked to her mother, who was presiding at the table a few chairs away. Pushing her chair back noisily, her linen napkin falling to the floor, she made her way to her mother, her pudgy hands gripping onto chair finials. She reached Mrs. Kirby in the middle of a shrill, rippling laugh, of a kind never heard in the apartment unless guests were present. On tiptoes, Mrs. March cupped her hand and whispered into her mother’s ear, her nose brushing one Chanel clip-on: “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Her mother sighed, asking “Can’t you hold it in?” through gritted teeth. When Mrs. March shook her head, her mother dismissed her with a flick of her hand.
Mrs. March still dreamed of it some nights—the shadows of h
er dangling feet on the tan marble as she perched on the guest bathroom toilet. She had used that particular bathroom, presumably, because it was nearest to the dining room. So that her mother could hear her when she called out to her—“Mommy! I’m ready, Mommy!” After what felt like an impossibly long time (what if she never came?), her mother appeared, furious, muttering under her breath, “Couldn’t you have waited? … shouldn’t be my job … Lisa never …” She wiped her daughter’s behind with such force it left her raw. Afterwards, whenever Mrs. March called for her mother from the bathroom to come and wipe her, the help would appear in her stead.
That was Mrs. March’s first experience with guilt.
Then, aged four, she had received a lavish dollhouse on Christmas, bursting into tears upon tearing off the gift wrap.
“What is it?” her mother asked. “Isn’t it what you wanted?”
She nodded and continued to cry, snot running down to her lips.
“Ugh, she’s so spoiled,” her sister Lisa said, holding her own present—an elaborate chemistry set—with mature dispassion.
Mrs. March hadn’t, at that moment, been able to explain that she had in fact wanted that particular dollhouse, that she had fantasized about it ever since first glimpsing it in the FAO Schwarz catalog. And now here it was, a mammoth Victorian, complete with miniature paintings in gilded frames and working light fixtures and a porcelain bathroom. She’d done nothing to deserve it, hadn’t worked for it the way she would for a gold star sticker in her preschool class. She had merely asked for it, and now here it was, in her undeserving hands.
Lisa rolled her eyes, saying, “Jeez, it’s not that big a deal. You’ll get what you want next year,” as Mrs. March wept quietly.
Guilt was for the brave. Denial was for the rest.
The only problem now, Mrs. March thought, was the possibility that her sister might call while she was away, asking after her. She didn’t think Lisa would call; in fact she rarely ever bothered to pick up the phone outside of holidays and birthdays. However, she had been known to call randomly with updates about their mother. Once she phoned with the pressing news that their mother had stuck glitter to a handmade Christmas tree ornament at the nursing home.
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