Catherine House

by Elisabeth Thomas

  “I was the one who let the rabbit out of the lab,” I said. “Not Theo.”

  Nothing changed in M. Neptune’s face. But he stopped rocking.

  I’d never realized before—probably because I’d never seen him up close—that M. Neptune’s face was completely unreadable. It was magnetic, dark, and powerful, but it didn’t reveal the truth. It didn’t reveal anything.

  “I stole Theo’s keycard,” I said. “It wasn’t his fault. He trusted me and he shouldn’t have. I took the key while he was asleep and snuck in. I was wearing his clothes, so I looked like him. I didn’t realize the keys were tagged. I didn’t know he would get in trouble.”

  M. Neptune tapped his fingers together over his stomach. I reached for a chocolate.

  “Why?” M. Neptune said after a long pause. “Why did you do it?”

  I swallowed the chocolate. “I don’t know,” I said. “Rabbits should be hopping around on the grass. Not locked in cages.”

  “No,” he said, “I mean, why did you steal the key? Why did you break into my lab?”

  “Oh.” I shrugged. “Because I needed to know,” I said. “I needed to know what the house was doing. I needed to know everything.”

  M. Neptune tapped his fingers against the table. He stared as I folded the chocolate wrapper into little squares.

  “So,” he said, still staring. “You saw my lab.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How far did you go?”

  I looked up.

  M. Neptune was smiling.

  “You saw my projects,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  The chocolate had gummed up my teeth. I hadn’t realized there was caramel inside.

  He was still tapping his fingers.

  “And what did you think?” he said.

  I blinked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  He was still smiling.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  I was crying again. I wished I didn’t keep crying.

  “I just want—I just want them to be okay, Baby and the boy. I can’t stop worrying about them.” I sniffled. “Baby has a sister. Did you know that?” I sniffled again. “I keep having this dream of Baby being somewhere, doing something, anything. Like, ordering cold cuts at a deli, maybe, or waiting for the bus. And then her sister runs into her. And her sister—she taps Baby on the shoulder, laughing and so excited, like oh my God, she can’t believe they’re randomly running into each other like this. But Baby turns around and just blinks. She doesn’t recognize her own sister. And I wake up sad. I’m so sad.”

  I wiped my nose.

  “I know I should be excited about your work, like Theo is,” I said. “But ever since I saw your lab, I’ve felt so … sick.”

  I looked up again.

  “I’m messed up,” I said. “I’ve always been wrong inside. These past couple of years, I’ve tried to be better, and it almost worked. I was almost happy here. But now I’m fucked up again.”

  M. Neptune glanced at the clock.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Help me.”

  He picked up the phone. He dialed four numbers.

  “Please,” I said again. He was focused on the phone.

  “Hey, Maria,” he was saying. “Could you send over an aide? Yeah, right now would be great. Yes, thanks.”

  M. Neptune hung up. He leaned back in his chair again and folded his hands on top of his head as he considered me.

  It wasn’t long before I heard the click of footsteps on the other side of the door.

  “Thank you,” I said as the door opened.

  *

  Hours later, I was standing by the bare light bulb in front of the tower door. I could hear the aides inside talking in low, lazy voices. They weren’t in a rush. They were gossiping about me.

  While I waited, I played a game: I pressed my back and hands hard against the door, as hard as I could, for as long as I could. Then I stepped forward.

  My hands rose, weightless, up and up, into the sky.

  The yard smelled like sap, mulch, and sweet grass. Sunset beams flashed through the pines. I couldn’t see the sun itself, though, only a bank of plummy dark clouds and four diamond stars.

  Right now, in the house, students were studying in the library or playing piano in the music room or getting drunk with their roommates. They were in the parlor playing cards and braiding each other’s hair. Dinner tonight would be tomato salad and whitefish and big bowls of vanilla ice cream. And after everyone grew tired of studying, finished their games, washed their faces, and brushed their hair and teeth, they would all go to bed. They would get cozy underneath their blankets and close their eyes. They would fall asleep, warm and fed, comfortable and clean.

  An aide, a reedy red-haired girl, stepped out of the tower. She glared at me but said nothing. Then she walked off into the grass. She crossed over the yard, toward the house, without looking back.

  “You can come in,” the other aide called.

  Walking back into the tower felt like returning to a dream. There were the wood-paneled walls and rolltop desk, the armoire and shelves shrouded by blue latex curtains. There was the yellow door. The aide was different, but everything else was the same. Two years later and nothing had changed.

  This aide had long, smooth chestnut hair and warm eyes. She was eyeing me with curiosity.

  “You know what to do,” she said. “Strip.”

  “Is Viktória coming?”

  “No.”

  I unbuttoned my jeans.

  The aide chewed on her lip as she folded my T-shirt and jeans and placed them in the armoire. She reminded me of a girl I’d read about in a book once, one who played with boys and rode unruly horses. I couldn’t remember its title. I hadn’t thought about that book in a long time.

  She removed my bracelet. It was just a bit of string Yaya had tied there months ago. Her hair fell over my wrist as she did it.

  “They let Theo go,” I whispered. “This afternoon?”

  She glanced up at me before nodding. “About an hour ago.”

  I let out a breath.

  “So,” the aide said, “I guess he was right all along.”

  “Right about what?”

  She shrugged. “Theo kept arguing with M. Neptune, saying you were the one who did it. He didn’t know how. But he always knew there was something wrong with you.” She glanced up again. “Isn’t that funny?”

  A clock ticked somewhere I couldn’t see.

  “My tutorial,” I said. “I have a draft due next week.”

  What had the aide said last time? Something about classwork being suspended until I was out of the tower. Something about making it up later.

  This aide only straightened, stared at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, and said nothing as she opened the yellow door.

  Pity. That was the expression I saw in her eyes.

  Light from the antechamber lit up the room. As I stepped inside, I got a vague impression of the bed along the wall, the bookcase, the tea table. Then the door closed, and I was alone in the dark.

  Glo

  Was I alive?

  Yes. I was in the tower. I was lying on the bed. My eyes were open, but everything I saw was gray. The ceiling was gray, the bed was gray, the rug and table and bookshelves were gray. My gray hand rested on my naked gray chest. The gray walls receded, as if they weren’t there at all.

  I moved my hand from my chest. I hated the sound of my heart beating.

  I closed my eyes. Time must have passed, but I didn’t feel it. Because I wasn’t there, in the tower. I was in the Harrington library. I had an American Poetry midterm tomorrow, and I really needed to study. I was having trouble concentrating. The textbook’s words swam before my eyes.

  I pressed my hands over my ears. No, I was in the tower. I had been asleep. And now I was waking up again.

  The room was dense with heat, and the window, when I’d tried to open it, it was locked. So I lay there sweating.
I rotted and sweetened.

  One night, and another night. And another.

  There must have been days, too. Someone brought me trays of food, as they had the first time I was in the tower. But no one brought any plasm pins, and the days folded into the nights, and in the night, I wasn’t a girl. I was only a crazy, twisted brain, draining on the bed. I was dying. I was dead.

  What was happening back in the house? Did my friends miss me? Were they horrified that I was locked in here? Or had they always known I would fuck things up?

  I turned to face the wall.

  Theo had known. He’d seen me for what I was.

  I stroked the peeling plaster wall. It felt so cool and heartless beneath my fingers.

  Baby had been here. In this room, touching this wall, feeling like this: so seized by sadness, so violently alone.

  Did she feel better now?

  Or did she feel nothing?

  I slept with my mouth open. My lips cracked and bled.

  I didn’t know if it was many nights later, or many weeks, when I sat up and looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

  An English dictionary and a science fiction book stood on the bookshelf. The thriller from last time, The Second Lady, wasn’t there anymore. I wished it were. But there was the same elephant figurine with its trunk lifted. And on the other side of the room was the same back door and the tea table with its packet of cards.

  The curtain to the toilet was pushed aside. It smelled like shit. I must have forgotten to flush.

  Somewhere over the yard, up the stairs and through the hall, was my beautiful little bedroom. My window was open, a summer breeze rustling through the notes that littered my desktop. I was putting my books in my bag and munching on a slice of cantaloupe I’d taken from the morning room. I was licking its juice from my palm.

  Someone was turning the tower doorknob. It was the aide. It was time for my weekly shower.

  The aide let me out the back door to a shower situated over a plastic drain on the lawn. I shivered as she hunted for the spigot. The sky was a clear, brutal blue. A chubby bee hovered over the grass, then drifted over the yard and down the hill. There, past the hills, I could see the silos and the loading dock. I’d never seen the dock from this angle before.

  The shower puttered on. The sudden cold water shocked me.

  The aide was sorry, she had forgotten to bring a washcloth. That was fine. I didn’t mind. I rubbed the bar of soap all over my body.

  “Hurry up,” she said.

  I scrubbed harder.

  *

  When did I realize that Catherine would never let me go?

  *

  Rain echoed against the roof. I was waking up. I opened my eyes.

  Viktória was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “Hello,” she said.

  I sat up. Then, remembering I was naked, I pulled the sheet to my chin.

  A smile twitched her lip. Her skin was damp, and a long black umbrella stood propped against the door, dripping onto the floor. A pair of high-heeled pumps dangled from her finger. Her slender feet were bare and muddy but the shoes were clean.

  “These silly things,” she said, following my gaze to the pumps. “I just came in from a conference. I forgot I would be walking across the yard. But the grass under your feet, even in the rain—it feels good, doesn’t it?”

  She smelled like grass and dark, sultry soil.

  I sank lower in the bed.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to the lab,” she said. “It wasn’t time.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  She ran a hand over my head.

  “You really were a wonderful student,” she said, brushing my hair away from my face. “Unlike any other I’ve known. I read through your tutorial essay draft. Sixty pages describing an off-white canvas. Indecipherable.” She shook her head. “It’s as if you never learned the most basic analytical habits, so you never had to unlearn them. You see the world sideways, like a stranger. Yes, you were lazy. And you never learned to study well. But you had an interesting mind.”

  I sneezed.

  She lowered her hand. “Bless you.”

  I sniffed.

  Viktória leaned back against the wall, uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again.

  “I came here,” she said, “because I thought you might have some questions for me, and I’d like to answer them for you.”

  She stared at me with kind but austere eyes. The rain slushed harder.

  I said, “Do my professors know where I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do my friends?”

  “Yes.”

  I scratched my knee.

  “Baby,” I whispered. I swallowed, took a breath, then tried again. “Baby, in the end—did she choose … that? Did she choose to be an experiment?”

  “Yes,” Viktória said. “She did. And so did Alexander.”

  I nodded. I nodded again.

  “Ines,” she said. “We are not cruel. You understand that. If you’d really thought Baby were being held against her will, you could have done something. You could have disturbed the experiment or told a professor. Anything. But you didn’t. You trust Baby, and you trust Catherine. You do—you trust us. Even if there are some who don’t.”

  Viktória bent to arrange her high heels on the floor, lining them up neatly beside the bed. I stared at them—the empty ghost shoes—suddenly sickened, though I couldn’t have said why. She leaned back against the wall.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “I’m quite familiar with the reactionaries’ arguments against our work. Of course I am. I was witness at M. Shiner’s trials, and I heard every silly, misguided invective tossed his way. Believe me, I remember how many people out there weren’t ready to see how far we had come, and how much further we were ready to go. Because they were small people with small imaginations.”

  She shrugged.

  “For those small people,” she said, “the world is fine. Years go by, they watch their bodies shrivel and shrink and their brains warp, and they don’t care. They say goodbye to their friends and families, to themselves, and to their realities. And still they don’t care. Because they have some delusion that to be human and perishable is to be divine. But here in Catherine, we know differently. We know that the divine is the object. The supernatural matter.” She touched my ankle. “You understand. You do. You’ve felt it.”

  She smiled.

  “I’m proud of Barbara,” she said. “I’m proud of Alexander, too. He was our first, did you know that? Our first human.” She shook her head, impressed. “He’s done so much better than expected, especially since M. Neptune decided to set him free in the house. Braiding Alexander’s body into Catherine, our operations, and our objects—it’s made all the difference, really.”

  Her hand, on my ankle, was damp and cool.

  “I’ve seen—before I came here,” I whispered. “I saw a dead person. I stared her in the face.”

  “Yes,” Viktória said. Her voice was sweet. “That must have been terrible for you. Awful, really. Things like that should never happen to such young, lovely girls.”

  I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight.

  “Sandy—Alexander,” I finally said. “With our sessions and the coming in and all the experiments … have we been helping him stay? Have we been keeping him here?”

  Viktória shrugged. “M. Neptune’s reports indicate that this is all a very inexact science,” she said. “But I’m sure everything helps.”

  I shook my head.

  “And all of us students, we’ve been going along with everything,” I whispered. “Without any questions.”

  “My dear, you would have asked questions,” Viktória said. “If you wanted to know.”

  I hugged my stomach.

  “It’s a stunning project,” she said. “But yes, it is a project Barbara and Alexander believe in. A project for which they gave everything of themselves. Not for a perfect today or a perfect future, but for a
perfect object forever.”

  She was still smiling.

  “But you don’t know what it’s really like,” I said. “I don’t know about … Alexander. But Baby was a sad person. She was so unhappy.” I squeezed my stomach tighter. “She gave herself to you because you were the only thing she ever believed in. You and your plasm, your perfect object forever. She was desperate. You don’t know what it’s really like, being that way. What if it’s terrible? What if it hurts? Or what if it doesn’t feel like anything, anything at all, and it’s really forever? I’ve looked into Sandy’s eyes.” My voice was rising. “He’s wandering around, right in the open, like some kind of pet. He’s not alive.”

  “No,” Viktória said. “He’s not. Isn’t that wonderful? Living, that’s what hurts. Don’t you understand? We saved him.”

  Her smile grew bigger. I had never noticed how her teeth were girlishly crooked.

  “And isn’t he a beautiful thing?” She said. “And Baby will be, too, someday. Such a beautiful thing.”

  “She won’t be beautiful,” I said. “She won’t be real.”

  Viktória laughed, shaking her head. “She will be real. We are not.”

  I sneezed again.

  Viktória stroked the ends of my hair. She examined my split ends with a disinterested eye.

  “I try so hard,” she said, “to make this house a home. To pull you in and hold you close. Nothing in the universe matters more to me than you, my sweet children. But what if I could give you even more than Catherine? Can you imagine how it would feel?” Her voice grew softer. “This house was founded on the idea that there is some strange, extraordinary, beautiful power inherent to every one of us. That power is real. But we’ve since learned that we are not singular beings. We are each facets of some larger infinite truth. What if I could teach you that truth?” I could barely hear her now. “What if I could make you at home, forever—not merely in one house but a whole world? Can you imagine?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t imagine.”

  Viktória hesitated, then burst out laughing. I jumped at the noise of it. “No,” she said. “I suppose I can’t, either.” She inclined her head. “But I wish I could.”

  She stroked my hair slower and slower.