by Rose Szabo
I looked up at her, through the little haze of tears I was calling up by thinking of Grandpa in the woods, his broken teeth, his sad yellow eyes. Grandmere’s brow furrowed in sympathy.
“I can give you that,” she said. “If that is what you want. Tell me just how you would like it to be, and it will be.”
I began to lay it out for her, a little at a time, over the next few days. First, we had to have as many real people as possible, and as few of Grandmere’s pawns as I could get away with, so I said I wanted to invite the whole town. Fill the house with bodies, too many of them for her to control entirely. She made suggestions about guests she could call forth from her collection, but I rejected as many as I could, saying they were too odd, or not fun enough. I insisted on a live band for another ten people. And I said I wanted Rhys and Mother there; I wanted them to see me at my best, I said. I wanted them to understand just who they’d thrown away.
“And I want Arthur to come.”
She smiled. “Of course.”
She wouldn’t let me go to town to post the invitations; she sent Father instead. But of course she didn’t know that I wasn’t trying to escape anymore. I threw myself into the details of the party: the decorations, the food. And in the meantime, I scoured the house for a way of setting a fire.
* * *
There is so much I want to tell them all. I have made so many mistakes. Things I cannot undo from where I am now.
I cannot go and find my husband in the woods, not that I think he could hear me if I did. He has always been a simple man. It is madness to love someone: there is no greater feeling of estrangement than the ways in which they are different from you.
I go to Margaret. She is the one who has always been the greatest mystery to me. I want to tell her I’m still here. I want to explain to her what has happened.
She is in the kitchen, looking out the window. She has always known I was here, since the night she opened up the vulture. When she feels me get close to her, she does something surprising. She steps backward, into me, and suddenly the two of us are together in the past. Margaret, how talented you are! I don’t think I ever noticed. You were born when I was sick with grief, and so I never saw how you watched me, how you watched Miklos, how you gave up words and silently learned perfection in other things. She has brought me into her past, into her memory. She has brought me to a moment I did not know she saw.
She is small, standing on a chair to wash dishes in the sink. She is looking out the open window to the back garden, where I have gone to speak to Miklos.
Rhys was several years dead, Margaret old enough to be left on her own, and Miklos and I had barely spoken in years. And so I’d taken up with Tom. He was so young then, bad at sermons, a nervous stammerer, and I’d loved him for being normal after so much pain. And this was the day that I had read the guts and learned I was pregnant.
My younger self stands in front of him, trembling, until he glances up to see what kind of narrow shadow has fallen across him. She touches her stomach with a hand still bloodstained from augury.
“I’m sorry, Miklos,” she says.
He changes so that he can stand on two legs as a man should when confronting his wife. She thinks with regret that he is lovely. Not lovely like a spindly fair boy, but lovely like a shark or a wave, the thing that is going to kill her. She hopes he will take good care of their daughter when she is dead.
“I should have belonged only to you,” she said. “But I didn’t.” There’s reproach in the way she says it, as well as regret—why didn’t he want to keep her? “And now there’s a child.”
I remember young Miklos as a creature who never had a complicated feeling in his life. His anger, his grief, have all had space in them only for him. Now for the first time I watch as he feels a mixed emotion. Anger certainly, but at what? She is not his, he is not hers, and they have not been for some time. Except that they are glued together by the ghost of Rhys. Miklos is not good at speaking. And so he opens his mouth and puts together a few slow, faltering sentences.
“I left a place,” he says, “where kings and princes owned us. Where a witch in a high castle owned us. Where priests and work owned us.” He takes a step toward her, and she is transfixed like a rabbit before a wolf. “You do not belong to me, and I do not belong to you.” Her heart falls through the floor. He sees this and tries again to explain what he means: “I do not own the woman I love.”
“What should we do?” she asks. “About the child?”
He shrugs.
“Your children are my children,” he said. “This is our family.”
She descends the steps and throws her arms around him. Together they collapse to their knees among her cabbages. Her hand, still bloody, caresses his cheeks and hair, leaves him streaked with red. His fingers wrap around her fingers. This is the moment, I realize, when I loved my husband for the first time. When I forgave him for having parts of himself that did not belong to me, as I had parts of myself that he would never know.
Margaret tips her head forward and I slide from the envelope of her body. She has always been my greatest mystery, the child I understood the least. And now I see that she is the answer to my old question. Who was my lover before he was mine? He was like this. Silent and cunning, hardworking, savage, strange. Preparing a den for animals he hadn’t met yet. I think suddenly of Margaret’s teenage years, when she would disappear from the house for long stretches of time to the village and would come back looking like a contented cat. She is not secretive, not deceitful—she just does not ask and does not tell, because nothing she is must be said. We never explained ourselves to her; she learned how we loved her, and each other, by watching what we did. You care for people and you give them tasks. You leave them and you come back. You bite and you kiss, and there is nothing words can say more eloquently than gestures.
And then when she had a child, he looked so much like my boy that I took him from her and named him Rhys. I used her silence, her acceptance, against her.
Did I bring this other grandmother to our house? Maybe she didn’t kill me by appearing to me in the cards. Maybe I was about to die, and the empty space I was leaving found something to fill itself. Some other monster of domination and control. A different skin, a different method. But a monster all the same.
But Margaret doesn’t look at me like I’m a monster. She reaches out to stroke my ghostly cheek, and her hand slides through me. She smiles, and her smile is Miklos’s, wicked and noble and all teeth. She reaches deep down into her throat and pulls out a single little-used word. “Mother,” she says.
“I’m here,” I say to her. “I’m going to fix this.”
She shakes her head vigorously, then nods toward the doorway. She grins at me before picking up a broom. Her whole demeanor changes, and she shifts from a wild, lovely thing to a shapeless drudge in a single motion, and begins sweeping and muttering to herself. Then the shape appears in the doorway.
The other grandmother looks less like an old woman with each passing day. The skin is still there, but the shape bulges oddly and occasionally wriggles like a sackful of cats. I can see that the shape has a hand clamped over its neck, and that something inside of its throat is struggling against the surface. It loses its grip for a moment, and a fat crow tumbles out onto the floor. She makes a grab for it, but Margaret, sweeping and muttering, knocks it away from her with the broom. It goes skittering across the floor, wings flapping in indignation. I’d laugh, if I had lungs.
I watch in horror as the creature advances on Margaret. It takes its hands off of the gash in its neck, and a few more birds slip out and orbit its body. It grabs for my daughter with both hands, and—
“Grandmere?”
It turns, clamping down on its neck.
Eleanor stands in the doorway. She looks different. Older, somehow, than when I saw her last. She wears a dress of gray silk. Her hair is held up by pearl combs. She looks like snow falling on the sea. She looks like a witch. The creature has changed he
r; she’s become stronger, more substantial, more aware of what she can do. I spent so long hoping to keep that from her. Now I feel afraid of what she will do with it.
“My dear,” the creature says, “I’m a little busy.”
“Grandmere, your neck still hasn’t healed,” Eleanor says. “Please, let me help you.”
The creature relaxes visibly. It is warmed by Eleanor’s presence. I think, in horror, that it loves her.
“Oh, my dear,” it says. “I am fine, please do not worry.”
“What do you need? Tell me, and I’ll fetch it. You should go upstairs and lie down.”
Eleanor is controlling her, I think. Not with force. But she is angling her into a position.
“Very well,” it says. It shoots Margaret one last evil look, and then turns for the door. Clutching the hole in its neck, it uses its other hand to take Eleanor’s arm.
They’ve killed my son. They’ve driven my husband from his house. But when I look at Margaret, I see that she looks untroubled as they leave the room. She’s humming. I recognize the song I used to sing to her when she was little, the song about bones ground into dust, as she finishes her sweeping and starts preparing dinner. I see her reach up to a high shelf and take down a bottle of snake lily extract, prepared as poison. She dilutes it and pours a little bit onto a square of bandage, and when Eleanor comes back downstairs, she hands it to her, still humming. Eleanor nods to her and puts her finger to her lips. Shh.
“Grandmere,” Eleanor calls up, “I’m going to come change your bandage.”
Margaret glances at the empty air I inhabit.
“Traitor,” she says, raising her eyebrows and jerking her head in Eleanor’s direction.
Traitor, yes. Our traitor. I wish I could give her some sign that she is not alone.
I wait until the creature has gone to sleep, then creep through the house, through ever unfolding layers of past and present, to Eleanor’s room. She is holding a book of matches and looking serious. I dim the lamp beside her bed, just for a moment. She shivers and looks up.
“I think I know why you sent me away,” she says. “You thought I was like her.”
I realize that I can speak to her. I bring the lights up a little. She nods.
“Did you miss me?” she asks. “While I was away?”
There isn’t enough light in the whole house to answer.
To stay quiet, she writes down questions in a notebook and points to them. And I make the lights go. On for yes, off for no.
At last, of course, she asks me about Arthur. Whether he is a dead creature (yes). Whether he has any other names, whether he was bound to the grounds (no and yes—why does she want to know that?). Some of her questions I cannot answer—how can I tell her how far he can travel with yes and no?
How can I break the curse on him, she writes.
I had honestly never planned for it. I’d promised him I’d let him go before I died, but I never really thought it would happen, so I had never worked to figure it out. I feel so foolish. I put the lights out entirely, and we sit in dark silence for a while.
WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO HIM she writes, so forcefully that the tip of the pencil goes through the paper. There is no way for me to answer this as a yes or a no. She knows. She just wants me to know she’s angry.
I make the lamp flicker. It’s the only answer I can give her. Because I was alone in a country not my own with a man I didn’t know very well. Because I could. Because I didn’t yet know what love was. Because my power had its own desire to be used. There is so much I cannot say to her, and so I slip my soul behind her eyes for just a moment, and open her mouth, and hear the ghost of my own voice say, “I’m sorry. Eleanor, I am so, so sorry.”
TWELVE
In the days leading up to the party, Mrs. Hannafin had done her part and drummed up most of the people in the village to come to the house to celebrate. Rhys and I were going to Europe with our grandmere to study in Paris, it was said. Mrs. Hannafin had talked about how much our hospitality had improved with Grandmere here, how good the food was, how polite and respectful we’d all become.
And so, right on time, about a hundred of Winterport’s finest came pouring up the hillside. The musicians we’d hired from a few towns over were tuning up in the parlor. Grandmere swept in, looked outside, and gestured to them. “Go on,” she said. “Start playing!”
They shrugged and looked at her. “We’re not quite ready yet.”
I’d told them earlier to take their time tuning up. “I’ve got good pitch,” I’d said. “And I don’t want to have a headache while my guests are here. Even if people come in, don’t start until you’re sure.”
She waved at them impatiently. “Start playing,” she said, and the conductor began waving his hands, and she turned to me. Her cheek bulged for a moment, and she gave it a swat with her hand to quiet whatever was moving beneath her skin.
“It is going to be lovely, just lovely,” she said. “I will see to every detail. You enjoy yourself.”
I had already seen to every detail. I’d told Grandmere that I wanted white frosting, and then had crept into the kitchen and put a few drops of coloring into the mixture when no one was looking. I’d hired a photographer and had given him the wrong start time for the party. And I’d insisted that Rhys come to the party, his last party, and that he behave himself. By the time the day was over, Grandmere was going to be exhausted from managing every little detail I could throw at her.
Meanwhile, I’d sent Margaret to the cellar for a jug of kerosene and put it in the hall closet behind a curtain of dusty winter coats. Margaret, when she’d seen what I was doing, had given me a wicked grin and a sack of flour to really get the blaze going. I was starting to like her.
People whispered about the flower garlands on the stairs, the cleanliness of the hall, darting nervous glances at me the whole time. I smiled tightly back at them.
“Big day!” Mrs. Hannafin said next to me.
I turned. She looked the same as she had the last time I had seen her, perhaps a little better dressed. But something about the way she’d said it made me uneasy. I’d seen her and Grandmere talking only a minute before, and Mrs. Hannafin had seemed flustered then, not calm the way she was now. I had to test it.
“I thought you’d be disappointed we’re leaving,” I said. “I know you wanted your daughter to marry a Zarrin and get rich.”
She exhaled and leaned back on her heels. “Big day.”
Her eyes looked vacant. I wondered if Grandmere was behind them, watching me.
“Well,” I said, “I can see that we have nothing to talk about.” And I moved on, through the party. I was looking for Arthur. There was something I needed to tell him. But I couldn’t find him anywhere: not in the parlor, or the dining room, or even the library, which had filled with village women drinking wine and oohing over the books. Where was he?
I ran into Rhys instead. He was dressed up and smiling wildly. I didn’t know exactly what Grandmere had told him to do, but I could see the rage bubbling just behind his eyes. He was holding a champagne flute so tightly that it had cracked a little, and drops of it had beaded on his hand. But he was out of his room, and that was what mattered.
“Rhys,” I said, “listen to me very carefully.”
I ordered him to do nothing at all out of line until I said his name again. And even if he didn’t hear it or see it, even if he’d been told to do something else, when I said his name he should run upstairs, get Mother from the tub, carry her down the back stairs and out to the woods. He should go find Luma and Grandpa, and tell them that Eleanor said she was sorry, that she loved them. He should tell them that she couldn’t promise the house would be safe again, but that at least they would be free. Tell them they should run and not look back. Tell them Eleanor was going to end Grandmere once and for all.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes filling with tears. Sentimental creature. Good thing he had me to look after him.
I threw my arms around his neck then. I kissed him on the cheek. And then I melted back into the crowd, before Grandmere could see me.
Everything after that became a kind of blur. The feast was, of course, spectacular, and thronged with well-wishers. Grandmere had supplied some of them from her collection: charming men and women and a few children who rounded out the party and made it feel like a real occasion, full of real and happy celebrants. The villagers believed it. Women who ordinarily frowned at me in the street came to tell me what a good time they were having. Men shook my hand. Mrs. Hannafin appeared periodically to tell me what a big, big day it was.
And then the door opened one last time, and Arthur came in.
My breath caught when I saw him. I’d forgotten how it felt to look at him, the giddy ache. I wanted to cry and run into his arms. I wanted him to take me away from this place and never look back. He wore the black silk jacket that Grandmere had ordered for him, his dark glasses reflecting the faces gathered in the room. And then he spotted me and gave me an almost imperceptible smile.
“Will you dance with me?” he asked.
With everything that was happening, it surprised me that I could still feel shy.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I asked you.”
I let him take my arm and walk me into the parlor, where a few other couples were swaying to the music. Arthur put a hand on my waist, twining his other hand in mine and pointing them together toward the sky. He twirled me and then guided me by the waist closer to him until I felt like I was floating along the ground to the tune of a slow violin waltz. I couldn’t breathe.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
“I’m going to burn down the house. The family will leave after that and not come back. You’ll be alone, and have the run of whatever’s left, the grounds. I know it’s not the same as being free, exactly, but at least there won’t be any Zarrins here anymore. It’s the best I can do.”
He looked irritated; his chin flicked up and away from me, his head moving slightly as he scanned the room. I wondered what his empty eyes saw in this dim room lit with candles, filled with nervously dancing bodies. The villagers seemed to bumble aside every time they got too close to us, wrinkling their noses at the smell of embalming fluid and mothballs.