by Rose Szabo
“Father,” I said, and he jumped.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Eleanor.” He looked guilty, like I’d caught him doing something.
“Are you alright?” I asked. “I heard you and Arthur talking earlier, and he said something about wanting to leave. Is there something he’s upset about?” I heard Grandma Persephone’s voice in my head saying manage the family. Surely, that meant keeping Arthur.
“It’s not really anything you should be worried about,” my father said. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I can help,” I said. “Grandma Persephone asked me to, you know, when she was dying. She asked me to take care of you all.”
My father furrowed his brow.
“I don’t know why she’d say that,” he said. “We have everything handled. Nothing for you to do, really.”
He was lying about something. I could feel it.
“Well, she said to. So if there’s anything I can do, please just—”
“You know what you can do?” he said. “Maybe you can explain to Luma that Arthur’s not really a good choice for her. Maybe you could, I don’t know, persuade her of this.”
Suddenly, what I’d seen in the hall made sense. Father was worried about Luma. And there was something I could do, at least. I could comfort him.
“I know he’s a little older,” I said. “But I don’t think she’s in any trouble. He’s a gentleman.”
He shook his head. “He’s not interested in her.”
“What do you mean?”
“He won’t make her happy.”
“Look at them,” I said, and pointed at Luma throwing back her head to laugh. As if on cue the clouds parted, and for a moment her hair floated in a beam of sunlight. As long as Luma was with him, I thought, Arthur would never have reason to look at me again.
Beside me, my father began to growl. I glanced over at him, and he stifled it, turning it into a cough. And my small moment of triumph vanished, as I realized that I still didn’t know what it was that I was seeing.
* * *
That night, I dreamed.
I was a girl who lived on a white island in the middle of a blindingly blue sky that bled into a dark and frightening sea. I had a battered journal that I carried under my arm that was full of the handwriting of my father, but I couldn’t picture or remember his face. I walked down the street of white plaster houses on that dry white island, and old women in black shawls shuddered and spat on the ground as I went by. I climbed a hill to what I knew was my house, although I’d never seen it before, and I didn’t want to go inside, but my feet propelled me in, and a drunk woman slurred something at me in a language I couldn’t understand. My mother, I thought, but she wasn’t the bath-bound mother I knew: she was a stranger.
This strange mother reached out, clawing for the journal in my hands. I tried to back away from her and she slapped me across the face, and I realized that it stung the way a real slap would. This wasn’t exactly a dream. This woman could hurt me.
She grabbed for me and I ducked around her, trying to get away. We knocked a heavy bottle off of the table and it went rolling, spilling something that looked like water but stank like medicine. Tsikoudia, I thought, without knowing why. This woman wanted to kill me.
At last, she caught me by the throat. My hands scrabbled to pull her off of me, but hers were fastened around me like claws. Her breath was rank with alcohol as she spat in my face words I didn’t recognize but somehow knew meant damn witch. Her eyes were wild and dark. She looked, I thought dimly, as I faded, a little bit like Grandma Persephone.
I jolted awake, my hands loosening from my throat. Had I been strangling myself? My throat was dry. I stumbled to my feet. Water, I needed water.
Through the crack in the bathroom door, I could see Mother sleeping in her bathtub. I didn’t want to wake her, so I crept down the back staircase and past the closed laundry door, trying not to think about Grandma Persephone’s body laid out on the flagstones. I slipped into the kitchen and was halfway to the sink when I realized I wasn’t alone.
Margaret stood in the middle of the room with her back to me. She was working at the long low table, her hands doing something I couldn’t see, something that squelched. I held very still at the sink, not sure what to do. She would notice me if I tried to leave, or if I turned on the faucet.
I had to be brave, I told myself. This was my family. Margaret used to stand me on a stool and let me help her in the kitchen, I remembered. Help with what, I wasn’t quite sure.
I shifted so that I could see what she was doing, and had to stifle a gasp.
There was a vulture spread out on the butcher block, its naked neck and head hanging down. Its wings were as long as the table. Its belly was slit open, the knife she’d used was stuck point-first into the wood, and she was rummaging around inside its body, mumbling to herself as though she were looking for something in a handbag. Slick guts caught the moonlight. She combed through them for what felt like an eternity while I was frozen on the spot, not able to move. And then she looked up and turned to me. She held up a length of gut in bloody hands. She seemed to look at me and past me at the same time.
“Mother!” she said.
The back of my neck went cold. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I was still dreaming, that if I shut my eyes I’d wake up back in bed, and if I shut my eyes again I’d wake up in my room at Saint Brigid’s, and from there I could shut my eyes and wake up a child again, somewhere in some house just like this one, but where I’d been happy.
Margaret’s feet scuffed on the floor as she padded over to me. One hand, wet and sticky, touched my wrist. She pulled on it. Eyes shut still, I let her lead me, until my fingers brushed feathers, and I realized all at once what was about to happen.
I struggled, but she was stronger than me. She plunged my hand into the guts. I thrashed, silently, afraid of what would happen if I screamed, afraid to open my eyes and see what was happening to me. And then all at once, I felt it. It was as if there were words, in there, in the guts. I relaxed my hand. I felt. The smell of dead meat and guano was almost unbearable, but somewhere in there was the truth. I just had to fight my way through to it.
But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make sense of it.
At last, I opened my eyes. I shook my head at Margaret. She let go of my wrist, flinging it away from her like some useless thing. And I fled into the predawn garden and desperately pumped water from the spigot to wash the smell of blood from my hands.
FIVE
In the greenhouse, the snake lilies were dying.
I’d watered them the day Grandma Persephone died, and the day after, but their leaves had quickly turned a sick yellow. Whenever I looked at them I felt panicky. And I wasn’t sure how many I’d need to keep alive to fill our orders, mostly because no one would show me the finances. I’d asked Father, told him that Grandma Persephone had asked me to look after the business, and he’d just stared at me and told me not to worry about it.
And on top of all of that, Grandpa Miklos was getting worse with every passing day.
I’d heard from girls at school that often, grandparents died within a few months of each other. The human part of him seemed to feel that way; indoors he picked at his food, he talked less and less, and he stopped reading entirely. The wolf thrived, though; every day he went out into the woods, and sometimes he didn’t come back until well after dark.
Things were falling apart, and Rhys, heir to the family fortune, was doing absolutely nothing differently than before. Grandpa Miklos still sometimes looked at him and said “All this will be yours,” but Rhys seemed to be totally untroubled by it. Rhys didn’t stare at the wilting plants and wonder what could possibly be going so wrong. He didn’t worry about money, or if he did, he never said it to me. The house could probably have fallen down, and he would have just moved into the woods. He alternated between stalking around the house looking for Arthur and frolicking outside with Grandpa Miklos, seemingly without a care in the worl
d. Why on Earth did Grandpa think Rhys should inherit the house? He certainly wasn’t doing anything for it now.
“It makes sense,” Luma said. “He’s always been the one they worried about. Ever since he was born they treated him differently. I think they were afraid he was going to die.”
We were in Luma’s room. It was more of a mess than usual, with dresses and lingerie draped everywhere, over chairs and the old rocking horse and the knobs of the dresser, which she’d now shoved in front of the hole that she and Rhys had chewed through the wall between their rooms when they were younger. A few times when I’d come in to visit her, I’d heard him scratching at the back of the dresser to be let in.
“Rhys keeps asking me about Arthur,” I said. “Yesterday he asked me if he ever came to see you when everyone else is out.”
“He doesn’t,” Luma said. She tried to sound airy, but her voice was bitter. She brushed her hair back from her shoulders and turned this way and that in the mirror to look at her cut-glass earrings. “He’s such a gentleman.”
I began to feel it again, that longing I was trying to pretend I didn’t have. I just wanted to talk to Arthur, instead of hearing Luma talk about him. Or—something. My throat was tight and itchy. I looked up at Luma and hoped she didn’t know what I was thinking.
I also felt a little sorry for her. There was no way she’d be able to keep up with someone like Arthur, someone who always had something witty to say.
“Oh, speaking of Arthur,” Luma said. “I can smell him on the landing. I wonder what he’s here for?”
There was a knock on my door, down the hall. “Eleanor?”
“She’s with me, one minute,” Luma called out. She put on a silk robe, and then pulled the robe down to show off her shoulders. The silliness of it made me angry. “Come in.”
Arthur opened the door. He looked at me.
“Do you still want to take over?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. I was already rising to my feet. “Why?”
“Your father and I are sitting down to look over some finances,” he said. “I think he intends to close the extracts business and sell off related assets. If you’re going to say something, the moment is now.”
“I’ve got to handle this,” I said to Luma. I hoped it would make me sound important, but she just shrugged, waved at Arthur, and then flopped down on her bed to read Wuthering Heights. I pulled her door shut as I left.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “Do you think Father will be upset?”
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” I said. “This is important.”
“Good.”
I followed him down to the library. The door had been locked the other day, and it now stood open, a key still in the lock. It was dark, but in the light of a single lamp I could see my father sitting at Grandma Persephone’s desk. He had her reading glasses perched awkwardly on his nose. Spread out around him were various forms. He glanced up when I came in.
“Eleanor,” he said. “What can I do for you, darling?”
He never called me darling. He was trying to appease me. I wouldn’t have it.
“You can’t sell off all the business assets,” I said. “We’re keeping the extracts business.”
“No one around here plans to manage it.” He looked back at the papers, and it took me a moment to realize that he had said all he intended to say.
“I want to manage it,” I said. “Grandma Persephone left me instructions.”
“The plants didn’t look well the last time I saw them,” Father said mildly. “And besides, you need to focus on your studies.”
“I’m not going back to school.”
“Your grandmother was clear about what she wanted.”
“I just told you what she said!”
He shuffled the papers into a pile, then glanced at them and turned them the other way up. “The estate belongs to Rhys. So I talked to Rhys, and he said to sell the business because he doesn’t intend to ‘mess with plants.’ I think that’s accurate.”
“You just can’t tell him no,” I said. “Why not?”
“Eleanor, this is men’s business.”
“Like the business in the hall the other day?”
I was warm with the fire of my own bravado, but even I could feel the chill that descended. Arthur smirked. Father stared at me in horror. And I realized suddenly that my father didn’t like me. Not even a little bit.
“No one was with the two of you the night my mother died,” Father said. “Every day for nineteen years, my father has said that he intended for Rhys to be the heir of his estate. I never heard my mother say otherwise. Now she is dead, and you say that she left everything up to you. I have a copy of the will in front of me that says everything belongs to Rhys. Do you have an alternative will? Or anything other than a very strange lie about my mother, who died recently, and whom you did not know very well?”
“I’m not lying,” I said. “Father, I think it would be—”
“Miles,” Arthur said. He crossed to my father’s side and put a hand on his back, and Father’s face flared with something I didn’t quite recognize. “I think you should look at the will again.”
Father glanced down at the will. “It says … wait.”
“What?” I asked.
“Arthur, what’s this?”
Arthur leaned in close.
“It seems to be saying that the estate belongs to Rhys,” Arthur said. “Saving the materials and capital that pertain directly to the extracts business, which are left to Eleanor.”
“I could have sworn it said that she was to receive Persephone’s library books and the pearl-inlay vanity set…” He glanced up at Arthur. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Miles.”
My father stared at me across the desk, angry beyond words. He looked like Margaret had when she’d called me a traitor. I hadn’t even done anything, but that was how he saw me.
“Fine,” my father said. “I was planning to channel that money into investments, so if you can’t keep the business running, we will lose most of our income. Since most of us do not work, we would probably have to leave this town and sell this house, which has kept your grandfather safe and happy for most of his life. Are you sure you want to go against my judgment?”
Maybe this was what that card had meant, the tower, all of those people falling. I imagined us driving a FOR SALE sign into the turf of the front lawn. I imagined us packing up the wooden-slatted truck and moving away. It made me want to die. But she had told me to take care of the plants and the people. And what did my father know?
I looked at Arthur. His expression was neutral, but I wanted to believe there was something encouraging in it. He’d come and gotten me, hadn’t he?
“I can do it,” I said. “Please, believe in me.”
Father stood up.
“Well, this is your desk now,” he said. “And your meeting, with your accountant. I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
He left, shutting the door behind him.
“He hates me,” I said, sitting down in the chair.
“That may be a bit much,” Arthur said. “I think he fears you.”
“Isn’t that worse?”
“Relationships have been built on fear. Not all terrible.”
I stared at the pile of papers in front of me.
“The plants are dying,” I said. “But I promised her, at the end, that I’d take care of them and everything else. What do I do?”
“Your grandmother had a talent for resurrection,” he said. “Perhaps it runs in the family.”
He was trying to tell me something, I could feel it. I looked up at him, studied his face. There was nothing there to read. I still couldn’t see his eyes behind those glasses. But it felt beyond me to solve it now. I had the business. That was enough to worry about.
“Alright,” I said. “Help me figure out the finances, and then I’ll see if I can find her notes ab
out the plants.”
We spent hours looking over the paperwork. Arthur had taken down a ledger the size of an encyclopedia volume that had income and expenses going back fifty years, the pages brittle and yellow. For the first time I was grateful for Sister Katherine’s endless lectures about compound interest. Finally, Arthur tapped a stack of papers together and held them up.
“I am going to post these,” he said. “Good-bye, Eleanor.”
“Wait,” I said. He stopped.
“Why did you back me up?” I asked. “And you changed the will, too, before I even got down here. Why?”
“You said it was what you wanted.”
“Do you always give everyone what they want?”
He looked serious then. “Always.”
“You’re trying to tell me something,” I said. “You’ve been trying to tell me something. Why won’t you just say what you mean?”
He leaned toward me over the desk until our faces were very close together. He smelled strange, not like a person, but like things did: like wool, like cedarwood, like mothballs. Shoe leather, pennies. I wanted to lunge across the table and rip his throat out, or something like it. He opened his mouth, as though he were going to kiss me, or speak. I wondered if he was holding his breath: he didn’t seem to exhale, but air drifted out, smelling somehow both clean and stale, like a big, empty house.
“You can’t trust anyone in this house,” he said. “It would be better if you remembered that.”
He lingered near me for a moment, and then straightened up. As he left, he flicked dust from the shoulder of his jacket.
I realized at once that I was alone in Grandma Persephone’s office for the first time. A day ago, I couldn’t get in here, and now it was mine. I knew what I wanted to do. If I couldn’t trust anyone, I might as well start by not trusting Grandma Persephone.