Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

  Oh. That was not the plan: She was supposed to leave without him. “But there’s all this food….Michael, maybe you could come back for it later?”

  But Ashley was shaking him off. She managed to stand upright and gather her coat from the hook by the door. “No, Michael, you stay and eat. It would be a shame for all of Vanessa’s cooking to go to waste. I’m just going to lie down and sleep anyway.”

  Michael looked at her and then at me. “Well. If you insist. I won’t stay long.”

  Ashley’s skin had taken on a greenish cast. She didn’t even bother to acknowledge Michael’s response, she just flung the door open and raced out into the night. We watched her through the window, careening down the path toward the cottage in the rain. Just before she vanished out of sight, I saw her double over and vomit into a stand of dormant azaleas. I flinched, wondering whether Michael would go to her then; but maybe he didn’t see her, because he didn’t move.

  Or: Maybe he did see, and he just didn’t care.

  And then we were alone, Michael and me. I turned to smile at him, suddenly feeling almost shy. I reached for another bottle of wine and grabbed the corkscrew.

  “So,” I said. “You wanted the grand tour?”

  * * *

  —

  Michael followed me through the rooms of the mansion, wine in hand, as I maintained a giddy patter about the history of Stonehaven, all the family legends passed down to the Liebling heirs. “So, the house was built in 1901, story was that my great-great-grandfather had a crew of two hundred working on it so that it could be finished within a year. This was the biggest house on the lake back then, the family came up only in the summers but kept a full-time staff of eleven to maintain it year-round.” I flipped on the lights in each room that we passed through, hoping to make the house seem cheery and inviting, but the dim old sconces couldn’t illuminate the shadowy corners. I hadn’t even been in many of these rooms since I arrived, and it looked like the housekeeper hadn’t, either. Dust lay thick on the sideboards, a musty smell lingered in the old nursery, dark stains bloomed in the draperies in one of the guest bedrooms.

  But Michael didn’t seem bothered by Stonehaven’s state of neglect. Instead, he seemed fascinated by—even knowledgeable about—everything he saw; because of his family’s heritage, presumably. He sipped at his wine as we wandered through the halls, asking me about specific pieces and their provenances—my grandmother’s hand-painted Louis XVI chairs, the old master still life in the stairway, the gold-and-alabaster clock in the study. He lingered in each room, going up close to paintings, touching the panels on the walls, peering behind doors and inside closets. Sometimes, I’d turn around mid-sentence and discover that he was still in the room that I’d already left, studying the antiques.

  I didn’t want to be talking about antiques.

  I saved my bedroom for last. I led Michael to the big wooden doors: “See that? The coat of arms with the boar’s head and the scythe? It was passed down from my family’s ancestors back in Germany.” Or so Grandmother Katherine had told me. I’d always suspected that this wasn’t quite true, but myths are so easily burnished into truths through the power of self-regard.

  Michael reached out to trace the carvings with a finger. “A lot of history in this house.”

  We stood side by side, admiring the door. Lingering there, the moment so magnificently fraught with tension (Entering the boudoir! The bed lies beyond!), as I wondered, a little dizzily: Do I tell him now, or later? How do I reveal my history with his girlfriend without driving him away? “So,” I heard myself ask. “Have you and Ashley been together a long time?”

  He looked sideways at me, surprise on his face. And I was sure I could read his thoughts: Why are you bringing her up now, of all times? “A long time? No. About, oh, six months? Eight?”

  “How well do you know her?”

  “That’s an odd question. How well do I know my girlfriend?” He frowned, and kept tracing his finger across the grain of the door. “Where is this coming from?”

  “Just curious.” And I was! I was curious despite myself. I ran through all the things I wanted to know about Ashley/Nina. Where had she been all these years? When did she adopt the Ashley Smith persona, and why? Was she a scam artist like her mother? And what about her mother? Was Lily Ross still around? Did the law ever catch up with her? Oh, I wanted Lily Ross to have suffered. But maybe she had? There was that sob story Ashley had told me in the library, about her “ailing” mom. Was that another lie? Somehow, I didn’t think it was. Something about the way she said it—those tears, they’d felt authentic. (But then, I’d been so gullible!)

  “Do you know her family? Because Ashley said her mom is sick, and I wondered: What’s wrong with her?”

  “She told you that?” Michael frowned. “Hmmm. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure, something chronic.”

  So it was true; that, or she was lying to him, too. “You’ve never met her?”

  He was still staring at the door as he shook his head. “No. She lives far away and we haven’t made the trip together in the time that Ashley and I have been together. We were planning to go at Christmas.” He put his hand on the doorknob and raised an eyebrow. “Can we go in now?”

  He pushed open the door then, and stopped short. The bedroom was cavernous, the pulsing red velvet heart of the house. The walls were covered with mahogany paneling, decorated with the same coat of arms; the fireplace sat in a stone hearth that stretched taller than my head; and the pièce de résistance was a massive carved bed with a velvet canopy fit for royalty. A wall of windows overlooked the lake. It usually offered a spectacular view, but at that moment all that was visible was the pouring rain and the darkness beyond.

  Michael laughed. “This is your room?”

  “What did you imagine?”

  He shook his head. “Something more modern and feminine. More like…you. Silly, I suppose.”

  He’s been imagining me in my bedroom! A delicious realization. “Not in this house. There’s nothing modern here, anywhere.”

  I watched as Michael wandered around the room, examining the trinkets on the bookshelves and the painting of Venus and Hephaistos over the mantel, opening the doors of the walnut-inlaid armoire that hulked against one wall. He walked over to the moving boxes stacked against the wall, and tilted his head to read the labels. “You haven’t unpacked?”

  “Why? I don’t need any of that here, anyway. There never seemed to be much of a point in taking it out.”

  “You’re still looking for a reason to leave.” He tossed back the last of his glass of wine. “Or to stay.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” And then, feeling bold (or maybe I was just a little bit drunk?): “Can you give me one?”

  “To what? Leave, or stay? It would depend.” He turned and took in the bed, in all its monstrous glory. I wondered if he was imagining us in it, naked, swaddled in velvet. (I was!) Outside, the rain had turned to hail. It battered the roof overhead; a wind-tossed tree branch raked against the window as if trying to make its way to the warmth inside. Michael closed his eyes, and recited a few lines of poetry, so softly that I had to crane my head to hear his words.

  “Western wind, when will you blow,

  So that the small rain down can rain?

  Christ, that my love were in my arms,

  And in my bed again.”

  He opened his eyes and met mine, on the other side of the velvet expanse, and it was that look again, the one that made me feel as if he were looking straight inside my head. The martinis and wine had me spinning, but surely I wasn’t imagining this, the static buzz heavy in the room between us. “Did you write that?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He just walked around the bed and directly toward me, his pale eyes still fixed on mine. The border between my body and the room around me felt blurred, I was vibrating with anticipation:
This was it, he was going to kiss me. But then, when he was just a few feet away, his gaze shifted and suddenly he was not looking at me but over me, to the door. Two more steps and he was passing right by me. The first flush of excitement dissipated, leaving behind a tight knot of disappointment. All that, just in my head?

  And yet. He passed by me so close that I could feel the heat coming off of him and—was that? Yes, it was his hand brushing against mine, just the tip of a finger catching on my pinkie. His hand pressed there for a meaningful second. Then he let out a sigh—the sigh of a broken heart; the sigh of life conspiring against you—and slid away.

  I hadn’t imagined it at all. Of course I hadn’t. He had told me as much, two days earlier, in the games room: I see you.

  (But if he sees me then that means he also sees all the awful things about me, the things that no one could possibly like.)

  (Or maybe he sees them, and likes me despite them?)

  The moment was now; I needed to confess. “Look—I have to tell you something,” I began. But he was glancing at his watch now, and my voice was too small, too timid, too fuzzed with gin. He didn’t hear me as he reached for the door and swung it open. Instead, he smiled sadly, and gave me a courtly bow. “Ladies first.”

  I hesitated, and then walked past him and out into the hall, fogged with confusion and desire and alcohol. I was halfway down the stairs before I realized that he wasn’t right behind me. What was he doing up there? A little clot of hope: Maybe he’s leaving me a message.

  But just moments later, he appeared on the landing. “Sorry, Vanessa, but it’s been hours. I really should go check that Ashley is OK or she might eat me alive.”

  He tumbled down the stairs past me and toward the back of the house. I chased after him, rebuking myself for having missed another opportunity: Fool! Coward! And then, just like that, he was gone, jacket over his head, disappearing off into the liquid darkness of the garden. All that was left in his wake was a scattering of hail from where I held the door open too long, watching him go.

  After he left, the house returned to being a deserted island on which I was once again marooned. I scraped the remains of the coq au vin into the trash, and wiped up the puddle of melted hail on the floor. I left the dishes for the housekeeper to address when she arrived in the morning. Only when all that was done did I allow myself to go up to my room to check if Michael had left something for me.

  There was no quickly scrawled missive detailing his forbidden desire: nothing dropped on the velvet coverlet, nothing propped on the mantel, nothing scribbled in eye pencil on the mirror in the bathroom. And yet: a little hiccup in my heartbeat as I looked at my bed. There was a dent on the pillow that I was sure hadn’t been there before.

  Did he get in my bed and imagine lying here with me?

  I climbed in bed and rested my head in the divot; I inhaled and—yes!—I could smell him, smoke and lemons. His shampoo, lingering in my linens.

  I closed my eyes, and I laughed.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up the next morning, the quality of the light had changed. Overnight, the hail had turned into snow. Silence had settled in around Stonehaven, as if someone had dropped a blanket over the house. I rose from my bed, shivering in my flimsy nightgown, and unlatched the window sash. Snow was falling, softly, a delicate lace balancing on the pine needles outside my window. Below, the lawn was a featureless wedding quilt, punctuated by frozen ferns. The lake was gray and still. When I breathed, the cold air burned in my lungs.

  The stairs felt treacherous under my feet. I was horribly hungover. Downstairs, the kitchen was still a disaster zone, and a text from my housekeeper informed me that she couldn’t get in because of the snow on the roads. I made myself a cup of coffee and went to lie on the couch in the library, pondering my next move.

  My phone pinged with a text from Benny: So?? Is it her? Nina?

  Didn’t have a chance to ask.

  A sharp knock on the back porch made me jump: Michael. I walked to the kitchen and peered out the French doors and was surprised to see Ashley standing there, apparently fully recovered.

  I cracked open the door. “You’re feeling better already?”

  “Like new,” she said. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.” Her face was back to its normal color and her hair was freshly washed; she looked radiant and healthy and young. She looked better than I felt, which was manifestly unjust. How could she have bounced back so quickly? I should have put more in her drink.

  “Food poisoning, you think?”

  She shrugged, peering at me from under those long lashes, and I wondered if she suspected something. “Who knows. The body is a mystery sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re on the mend. We missed you at dinner.” We didn’t, not a bit.

  “Michael told me what a nice time you had,” she said. “I’m so sad to have missed it. I hope you’ll offer a do-over.”

  I looked over her shoulder, in the direction of the cottage. Would Michael come to me on his own accord? I needed to give him an excuse to return, so I could get him alone. “Tomorrow.”

  She smiled. “Look, can I come inside?”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be alone with her; I thought of the pistol I’d stuffed under my pillow upstairs. “I’ll just go get dressed.”

  “Oh, please don’t bother for my sake! It’s just—there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  A spike of adrenaline: Wait, is she going to confess her real identity to me? I pulled the door open wider and invited her in. Ashley kicked off her boots and stood there by the back door, snow dripping off her jacket. She gazed at the mess of dishes and empty wine bottles. “Wow. You really did have fun last night. How many bottles of wine did you drink after I left? Michael was smashed when he got in. Now I can see why.”

  Jealous, then. Well, you should be. “The housekeeper was supposed to come in today but she got snowed in, poor thing. I just haven’t gotten to the dishes yet.” I picked up the wineglass closest to me and moved it over to the sink.

  She watched me with a little smile hovering over her lips, as if she knew perfectly well that I was not planning to clean this mess myself. “I’ll send Michael over to help. He made the mess, he should help you clean.”

  I shook my head in protest, although secretly I was thinking, Oh yes, please do that, please give us more time alone. My head throbbed, as if someone had taken pliers to my skull and was pulling out pieces of my brain. She didn’t look particularly anxious. Was she going to confess or not? If she did confess, could I still hate her? I plopped down in a chair, pressed a finger on the pulsing vein in my temple, and waited.

  Ashley sat down next to me, so close that our knees almost touched. She leaned in conspiratorially and I waited for the words to come: I need to be honest with you. My name isn’t Ashley Smith. “So, I’m not sure if Michael told you this last night—he can be so private, sometimes….” There was a curious little smile on her face, and with that smile I suddenly knew that this was not going to be the confession that I was expecting. “But he asked me to marry him. We’re engaged.”

  I was blind, red spots floating in my vision. Engaged? Why would he do that? When did it happen? Why her? Her smile grew stiff as she waited for my reaction, and I realized that I’d waited a beat too long to respond. I opened my mouth and the sound that came out was a horrible squeal. “Tremendous! Fantastic!”

  I did not find the news tremendous in the least.

  But my shrieks of delight must have been convincing because she started talking and talking and talking. She told me about how he got on his knee on the steps of the caretaker’s cottage, as they stood looking at the lake on the first night they arrived; how he had an heirloom ring that belonged to his grandmother and she cried when he gave it to her. She was tugging off a mitten and thrusting a hand at
me and there it was, a big cushion-cut emerald surrounded by diamonds, not a pristine stone judging by the color, but a pretty enough ring nonetheless.

  Merde. It was too late. She’d conned him already.

  She went on and on, about how demure she was, how uncomfortable she was with ostentation and money (Oh, bullshit). I was barely listening to her as I stared at the ring drooping off her finger, thinking, But he doesn’t even like her that much. I’m sure of it. They have nothing in common. He likes me. How could this happen? She was still talking, about her fear of the ring falling off, the need to get it sized, and how until then she couldn’t wear it, because oh, she was so worried about losing it. So could I put it in my safe? For—pardon the pun—safekeeping?

  “My…safe?”

  She nodded.

  But of course I had a safe. The safe in the study, where my father used to keep his go-cash. That’s what he’d called it, the day years ago when he called me into his study and opened the vault to show me stacks of neatly bundled hundreds. “Cupcake, if you ever need go-cash, this is where you look. There’s a million dollars in there. For emergencies. Another million in the safe in the house in Pacific Heights.”

  Why would I ever need that much cash? I’d wondered then. What kind of trouble does he think I might get into? Benny used to steal hundreds from it, as if it were his own personal piggy bank.

  Of course, the safe was empty now. Like all of the Liebling money, it was long gone.

  * * *

  —

  Oh, I haven’t mentioned that yet, have I? That I am broke, penniless, destitute. Don’t let appearances deceive you: After my father’s death, when the trustees sat down to go through the accounts with me, I was shocked to discover that my father was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Since even before my mother’s death, it seemed, he had been making bad investments with his fortune, throwing good money after bad, including a massive casino on the coastline of Texas that was obliterated by the hurricanes. There were gambling debts, too: poker games with million-dollar stakes that my father lost, week after week, according to a black ledger I found in his desk.