“Do you remember what my name means?” Ophelia asked Brigitte one evening. They were reading in the study. Brigitte was humming, repeating the same stanza over and over.
“Of course I do. Ophelia means help. You are a helpless, darling thing and the world needs to take care of you before you go mad.”
“If I go mad, don’t you mean?”
Brigitte looked at her. Or more correctly, she looked through her, into the future where Ophelia’s exquisite corpse lay.
“I’ll surround you with flowers. With pearls. Your tresses will be arranged around your face in such a pleasing way. I can see it now.”
Ophelia paled. “What do you mean? Surround me with flowers? Do you mean after I am dead?”
Brigitte closed her eyes. “The plaiting was practice, don’t you see. Now I’ll be able to do it just right. I have the most beautiful pale gown for you. The palest of blue with silver threads dotting it like stars. So lovely, so tragic.”
Ophelia’s voice sounded ethereal already. The wind and her mother’s words had swept it away.
“A … a gown? A funeral gown?”
“Ah, it’s so lovely, Ophelia! I made it myself with such care. It fits you perfectly. You will be such a wonder.”
“What if I grow, mother? And the gown no longer fits?”
Brigitte’s laughter sounded like broken bells, like the car horns that blared in the Walmart parking lot as she threaded her way on foot to work.
“It is nearly time, my sweet girl. There’s no need to grow anymore. You will never be more beautiful than you are right at this moment. I have some herbs that I have gathered, to make a draught. You will die in the epitome of loveliness. This is my gift to you, my darling.”
Ophelia’s stomach grew hard and heavy at the thought.
“Mother,” she asked, “what of you, during this? While I lie there pretty and dead, what will happen to you?”
Brigitte’s lips trembled, but only for a minute.
“I will adore you. I will throw myself on your casket, weeping, but only for a moment. You will be buried and I will put flowers and small gifts on your grave. I will never forget you. I am Brigitte, and Brigittes are faithful. We are durable. I will trek out to see you morning, noon, and night. I will work my fingers to the bone to make sure that I can bring you the loveliest of things for your grave. Your headstone will be marble. I will keep it clean and free from soil and weeds. For I love you, my darling.”
She did. She did, and Ophelia knew she did, but she realized this love was a sickness, an abomination, and no matter how she loved her mother, this resolute Brigitte, she could not stay here lest she die.
That night Ophelia brewed her mother a cup of tea. It was filled with the secret herbs, and honey, and sweet things that made one sleepy.
She led her mother to bed and tucked her scratchy wool blanket around her.
“Why don’t you use my blanket, mother?” she asked. “It’s so very soft and fine.”
“It’s not for me,” Brigitte murmured, and then she was asleep. The tight line of her mouth softened. Her dark hair was loose.
Ophelia stole to her room to fetch her blanket. It was of the finest of linen, embroidered beautifully by Brigitte’s worn hand. She spread it over her mother with careful fingers. She slid the flowers from her own hair and tucked them gently into her mother’s curls.
Ophelia pressed her pink lips to her mother’s cheek. Brigitte’s skin was soft, the bloody furrows beginning to heal.
The girl padded to the bathroom. She stepped out of her nightdress and into a practical outfit stolen from Brigitte’s closet. She slipped out of her satin slippers and into Brigitte’s functional shoes, the toes stuffed with paper so they would fit.
Ophelia looked into the mirror and took the scissors to her long hair. She sobbed as she cut, one hand over her mouth, chopping and hacking until she had tresses no longer, but a short, uneven cut that made her eyes too wide and her runny nose far too big.
She smiled.
The stranger in the mirror grinned back.
She did what her mother had always hoped and fled across the moors, but her footsteps weren’t graceful. She clomped across the land in oversized shoes, dodging the parked cars in the dark, and breathing hard. The parking lot pavement was hard and unfamiliar under her feet, but she still ran through the rain that began to fall. Shorn bits of her clipped hair fell into her eyes and plastered themselves onto her reddened cheeks. She ran toward a woman who had three daughters and two sons, and she had been invited to become one of them, whichever she wanted, as winsome or slovenly as she liked. Her name, Ophelia, meant help after all, and she had the power to help herself.
~
Brigitte’s eyes fluttered open. She turned her head to the side and caught the faint scent of flowers.
“Ophelia?” she called. She sat up in bed and a daisy fell from her hair. Brigitte reached out to touch it, her hand trembling, and realized she was covered in her daughter’s exquisite blanket. She ran her fingers over the expensive fabric, feeling its softness. Her fingers fluttered to her lips.
“Ophelia!”
Brigitte leapt out of bed and rushed down the hall in cold, bare feet. She flung open the door to Ophelia’s room.
Her daughter’s bed was horrifically cold and empty.
“No,” she said, and flew around the room like a frightened bird. She plucked at the curtains and the sheets. She searched the house and made a small sound when she saw that the front door had been left slightly ajar. Brigitte snatched one of Ophelia’s white robes from the front closet and pulled it over her nightgown as she flew into the night after her child.
The rain hit the ground prettily as she ran. She left the gardens and raced across the moors, her bare feet hitting the ground, splashing through the rainbow-colored puddles of car oil. She gave her discomfort no heed, hands to her terrified face, hair dripping flowers as she raced around, calling for her daughter.
“Ophelia! Ophelia!” she screamed, and she was calling help help help.
Tragedy brought Brigitte to her knees. A missing child makes its mark on a person and sadness, as we have learned, makes a woman extraordinarily lovely. A devoted mother caught up in madness can, indeed, die of a broken heart, and she tumbled into a stream, the water rushing up her nose and mouth, flowering inside of her lungs. Her dark hair waved gracefully around her white face, her eyes staring at the hungry moon. Brigitte had never, ever been so beautiful as the night she lost her Ophelia, and the moon devoured her whole.
~
Ophelia made her way into the Walmart.
OPEN 24 HOURS, it said. The signs were loud and garish, and the lights inside hurt her eyes.
Ophelia hesitated in the doorway, her sopping clothes sticking to her body, and she stared at the horrors around her. Men with hair on their faces who smelled of musk. Women using loud voices and wearing rough pants of scratchy fabric. Jarring voices came out of the air and asked for checkers and aisle cleanups and said there was a great deal on air fresheners.
Sound. Noise. Saturating color. Smells. It was too much, far too overwhelming to a young woman raised on weak tea and quiet afternoons in the library with Proust.
Ophelia’s raised her fingers to her teeth, biting her fingernails, gnawing at a hangnail until it bled. She backed out of the store and into the rain outside.
A thin woman with suspiciously bright eyes grabbed her arm.
“Hey, have any money?” she asked.
Ophelia yanked her arm away and stepped back. She spun around and ran for the house.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated. It was a chant, a spell, and it would keep her safe. It would ferry her home and tuck her snug in her bed, where she would be warm and things would be quiet. Her mother would forgive her and weave flowers into a garland to cover her shabby head until her ha
ir grew out. She would eat the delicate soups and drink mugs of warm milk with all of the poisonous herbs, whatever her mother wanted, as long as she didn’t have to be out in this world of horrors alone.
The lights of her home glimmered on the other side of the moor. She used her arm to brush tears and rain out of her face as she staggered, weaving in and out of the parked cars, tripping over her too-large shoes. She was nearly there when she caught sight of something in the gutter. Her stomach fell and her mouth formed a large O.
Her mother, face bloomed with death, lay in the water. It rushed over her, washing the color from her skin and out into the moors. Her dark hair moved gently in the current, jeweled with the remnants of beautiful flowers.
Ophelia fell to her knees and sobbed, the sound ugly in her throat. She reached for her mother with ruddy hands, but could not force herself to touch Brigitte’s unlined, peaceful face. A violet slipped from Brigitte’s curls and floated away.
Ophelia managed to choke out two words.
“Ophelia. Help.”
Frankenstein’s Daughter
Theodora Goss
To Mrs. Saville, England
May 27th, 17—
My dear Margaret,
You know with what high hopes I set out once again on this third of my expeditions into the Arctic Circle. This time, I told myself, I would not be defeated by ice and the dreadful cold of those latitudes. This time my sailors would not rebel; this time my ship would not become trapped among icebergs. This time, finally, I would break through into that temperate northern sea I had dreamed of, and sail upon it to the other side of the globe, returning with riches from Africa or the Americas. This time the North would not defeat me.
But I return to you a broken man, more broken this time than in my previous endeavors. I am weakened by a long illness, but it is not that which has made me, in the space of six months, a bent wreckage of my former self, my hairs gray—or rather grayer than they once were, particularly about the temples, although I confess what when I look into the mirror, I remain youthful of countenance, and not unattractive. No, it is that most common and yet mysterious of human ailments, a shattered heart.
How I shattered it—or how she did so, the woman to whom I offered it, and who cared about it no more than she cared about jewels, fine clothes, or such other feminine adornments, you shall hear. I shall sit down again at your fireside in Hampshire, where I shall return to nurse my wounded heart. I know that you, most affectionate of sisters, will welcome me into your parlor, and gazing at me in your particular way, both loving and admonitory, say “Seriously, Robert” at this account of my adventures. But I assure you, dearest Margaret, that they are all true, or as true as memory may recollect, for my mind was touched as well by the illness I suffered, and there are things I remember only as fever-dreams. Yet her, and her dreadful father, I remember as clearly as though they stood before me—alas, if only she were here with me now! But I lost her, or rather I never had her, and therefore I return to you alone, with hopes and dreams dashed.
How fortunate I am that you, my sweet sister, are one of those women sent to be a comfort to man! It will be a pleasure to see your face again, with its calm gray eyes, and feel the warmth of your solemn smile, and taste the wonderful cakes that Mrs. Asher makes, the ones with the apricot jam centers.
But now to my story!
You know how I have dedicated my life and fortune to the exploration of the Arctic Circle, and how in that attempt I have been thwarted again and again! You yourself have been a generous supporter of these endeavors, when the audacity of my dreams has been greater than my income. On my first attempt, I was able to purchase the services of an English ship and captain. We made our way to a northern sea that glitters with icebergs, under the almost perpetual light of the Arctic summer. But alas, the ice closed in on us, and in the end, fearing for the safety of his ship and crew, the captain determined to turn back. It was on this trip that I encountered my friend Victor, of whom I have often spoken—a nobler gentleman never walked upon this earth. It was then, too, that I met the fearful shadow that pursued him—that fiend in human form, the destroyer of my friend’s health and happiness. Of him, more anon.
On my second attempt, I was not able to get so far—waylaid by a fever in Archangel, I was confined to a sanatorium for three months, and finally ordered home for my health. I still remember with what devotion you nursed me, dear sister, during my long convalescence. “Robert,” you said to me then, “surely this is enough. Surely now you will leave off this vain pursuit and live a sensible life. There are sciences you may pursue here, without going off to the ends of the earth, that will benefit mankind.” Or some such. I cannot exactly recall your words, as to be honest, I did not then mark your advice. I remained desirous of scientific renown for opening up regions that had been hitherto hidden from man. Surely any gentleman who has been educated in what science can do, in its limitless potential to transform our understanding of this earthly realm, if not indeed the heavens themselves, will understand my ambition.
I still remember what a serious child you were, with your long brown ringlets, eternally sketching wildflowers, catching insects in jars and creating the most enchanting displays pinned on cards, prattling about the gradations of species as though you were an infant Linnaeus! And how you grew into a very pretty girl, the picture of sense and propriety, hiding your muddy boots under the hem of your skirt so our uncle would not know you had been out on the downs, collecting what have you—fossils, I think it was? You, with your feminine modesty, cannot understand the desire for glory, for the conquest of new realms, whether of land or knowledge, that drives men on—or some men. My friend Victor was much a man, and I myself have not been able to resist similar lofty ambitions. But alas, this third attempt was to prove my most disastrous, and I do not think that I shall ever again make the attempt.
Once again, I hired a ship, but I was known in Archangel, and said to be bad luck, so no captain would work with me except one, a Russian named Ivan to whom others had given the soubriquet of The Madman. This madman, so called, said he would work for me, and he assembled a crew. The men were not prepossessing—I suspected that some of them were smugglers or even pirates rather than honest whalers—but I had no choice in the matter.
We set out in late summer, later than I would have liked, but it had taken longer than I expected to equip our expedition. There was no enthusiasm for my project in Archangel. There was no wealth to be gained from sailing so far north, men said—they did not believe in my dream of a northern sea that would allow us to travel over the top of the globe itself, to the other side, and establish new routes to the riches of the Orient. They insisted that to the north was only ice. Alas that the mass of mankind is so shortsighted.
Nevertheless, the voyage started more propitiously than my last one. The weather was relatively balmy for those climes, the water remained clear of ice, and we sailed without impediment farther than I had been able to sail on my first ill-fated voyage.
But then, almost a month after we set out from Archangel, on a course headed northwest into the sea beyond Nova Zembla, we encountered storms so severe that I was in despair, expecting every day that my crew would insist on turning back, and I would once again have lost my chance at renown. Indeed, I believe they were prevented from so doing only because I had laid in a considerable supply of rum, and there was general drunkenness on board although somehow, the captain managed to keep us on a steady course. At last, the sea grew calm—I hoped we were about to enjoy a period of milder weather. But the cold came, suddenly, silently in the night—there was ice on the masts, ice on the sails, frost on the men’s beards. We continued to sail northward, but the men began to grumble, and the rum was almost gone. Fights broke out—evidently the quartermaster had saved a private barrel for his mates, and some of the men suggested throwing him overboard. These are the circumstances of a rough sailing life, which would shock a gentlewoman l
ike yourself.
Each day was colder than the last, and the ocean began to freeze around us. Finally, we had only a narrow path northward, and then no path, and the ship was entirely surrounded by ice.
Then began a dark and difficult time. For two weeks we stayed there, trapped in ice like the insects you collect in amber, insisting they reveal the age of the earth—darling Margaret! How your speculations have always charmed me! I am glad that you have never been exposed to the harsh, rough world of such men as these sailors. They fought and drank, and when the rum ran out, they fought the more. Then the biscuits and salted meat ran out, and a dark sort of talk began of salting the quartermaster—of how he would taste pickled and brined, probably like pork. One of the cabin boys disappeared, and I do not know if he wandered off into the white fogs that sometimes swirled about the ship, or whether—but I should not speculate about such things.
I knew that I must do something—so I asked the captain to gather his men on deck, and I spoke to them, as my friend Victor had done on my first voyage. I exhorted them to think beyond themselves: of the good they could do mankind, the fame they would achieve if we stuck to our purpose. Did they not want to benefit their fellow men? Did they not want to expand the field of science, of human knowledge?
Victor must have had some eloquence I lack, or perhaps this crew was so much lower than the last in sensibility and ambition, for when I had made this argument, they glowered at me out of eyes that were red and raw from the perpetual light of the North, and in a few moments I found myself trussed like a chicken, tied hands and feet with rope.
Then they put me out upon the ice. None of them wished to kill me himself—there were English trade representatives in Archangel who would make inquiries, and none of them wished to be more guilty than his fellows, only as guilty so there would be no value to any of them in informing on the others. And besides, some of them were religious—they did not want blood on their hands. But they were willing to let the ice and cold perform the task they shunned. So I found myself out upon the ice sheet, which was in some places blue, in some gray, in some pure white, far enough from the ship so they did not have to witness my inevitable demise. I shouted myself hoarse for them to come back and get me, but to no avail. There I remained, bound hand and foot, protected only by the fur coat and leggings that I had commissioned specially in St. Petersburg.
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