The Winters

by Lisa Gabriele

  All the while Dani remained out of our sight. But I could sense her above us, pacing, smoking, hatching plans, our little mad girl in the attic.

  Most parties die in the kitchen, and there we found ourselves gathered around the island, Max, Jonah, and I, tired yet vibrating from the residual energy that had abruptly drained from Asherley. Louisa volunteered to check on Dani, Max being too angry still, and I too afraid.

  Max reached to touch my face as though to see if a fever had broken. “How are you holding up, Mrs. Winter?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, smiling. I meant it. Hours earlier I had stood mortified in front of a crowd of strangers in the greenhouse. But now I was among family, my new family, and I felt buoyed by their sympathy.

  “You married a remarkable woman, Max,” Jonah said, pouring scotch into his coffee. “Most would have crumbled after that terrible incident. Louisa told me you really gave it to Dani.”

  Just then Louisa returned, holding an empty bottle of champagne. “That’s what you get when you lock me out of a room.” She carefully placed the bottle on the counter. “Dani’s out like a light, all tucked in with her little kitten. She’ll be very hungover tomorrow, but much more reasonable, I suspect. Maybe this time she’ll volunteer for rehab.”

  “I’ve already put in a call to intake,” Max said, his hands around a mug of coffee. “And Dr. Sherman’s been notified.”

  Louisa slapped the marble. “Listen, why don’t you two go on a honeymoon after all? I know you wanted to take Dani, but if she’s going to rehab . . . We can check in on her while you’re away, can’t we?”

  Jonah looked alarmed. “What I saw tonight put the fear of God and of teenage girls in me, this one in particular,” he said. “Almost made me glad we had shit luck in the baby department. No offense, Max. But you two have your hands full.”

  The notion of no longer delaying our honeymoon did appeal. Maybe that’s all we needed, space between Dani and us. Not Paris. Somewhere neither of us had any history.

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Max said, letting out a yawn. “All this teenage subterfuge has knocked my lights out. We need our rest to deal with the little beast in the morning.” He put his arm around me and kissed the side of my head.

  “Well, we can take a hint,” Louisa said. “Husband, fetch my coat and bag, will you?”

  “Oh. Wait,” I said. “Let me change out of your dress.”

  “Return it another time. We’ll leave you two alone now. It is your wedding night, after all. And I hope not everything is ruined.”

  Louisa gave me a long embrace at the front door. Max walked them under an umbrella to their car. I stood there alone until their taillights disappeared down the drive, inhaling the musty forest smell the rain unleashed. Max joined me back on the porch, scooping me up into his arms so abruptly I let out a yelp.

  “May I carry you over the threshold of your home, Mrs. Winter?” He stepped inside and gently placed my bare feet back down on the cold marble. “Welcome to Asherley. What a horribly lovely day we’ve had.”

  Despite the earlier drama and the late hour, I was no shy bride that night. I seemed to be using his body to blot out the memory of myself in Rebekah’s cursed dress. I took his hands and placed them where I wanted to erase her: my breasts, where her strange lace had touched me; my waist, where her red sash had cut me in half; and my face, where tiny brushstrokes had painted me into a darker version of myself.

  Afterwards Max fell fast asleep, but I drifted in and out for hours. I kept coming up against the two obstacles in the way of my complete happiness. One I could do nothing about. Rebekah’s memory would always permeate our lives, stoked in large part by Dani, who was the second, more complicated obstacle. I felt guilty about my earlier rage, but I still allowed myself the fantasy of a blissful life without her lurking around every corner, sabotaging my happiness, undermining my relationship with Max. Perhaps there was a school she could attend far from here. Maybe Paris for a year. I couldn’t go back to living under the same roof as someone who could pull that kind of stunt, who could careen from generosity to humiliation, from good to evil, from sweet to mean in minutes. It was destabilizing. I thought I’d seen glimmers of something resembling reason, but I was wrong. She needed the kind of help I was not equipped to provide. I was done. The day had sapped me of my last reserves of kindness.

  Sleep had finally begun to pull me under when a horrible scream cut through the still, dark house, one so high-pitched and mournful it didn’t sound real at first, or even human.

  Max shot upright in bed. “What was that?”

  His feet had barely touched the floor before another scream came. This time we knew it was Dani. Max bolted ahead of me downstairs. I needed to hold the balustrade, terror turning my legs to liquid. I caught up to him in the kitchen, where he already had Dani pinned to the floor, her arms and legs flailing beneath him, her eyes horror-stricken.

  “Dani, Dani, shh,” Max said, using what seemed to be all his strength to contain her. “It’s all right, it’s all right, you’re all right.”

  Her nightgown was filthy at the knees, the collar pulling at her neck as she tried to break free of Max. I fell on the floor beside them, reaching for her hands, her nails black with dirt.

  “Dani, what happened?”

  She pointed down the hall that led to the greenhouse, opening and shutting her mouth like a fish fighting for air on the deck of a boat. No words came out. I smelled the wine on her breath.

  “I s-s-s-saw her. In there,” she stammered, her body still convulsing with terror. “I saw her!”

  “Who?” She crawled towards me, clutching at me. I pushed the hair out of her sweaty face. “Tell me what happened.”

  She looked at Max, her face panic-stricken. “Why?”

  “Stay here with her. Do not move,” he hissed. “Do not let go of her.”

  I nodded, Dani’s terror mingling with my own. Max headed to the greenhouse.

  Dani began clawing my upper arms, her voice a desperate rasp. “Listen to me. I saw her. She’s in there.”

  “Who, Dani?”

  “My mother.”

  She was drunk, but she believed this madness. By then I could hear Max in the greenhouse, throwing stuff about, a bang, a shuffle, overturning tables or chairs.

  “Dani, you’re not well.”

  “You have to believe me. She’s in there. I saw her,” she said, slumping back onto the floor. “I’m gonna be sick.”

  I left her to retch on the floor while I ran to grab a bowl and to wet a tea towel, which I brought to Dani’s forehead. Then the noise in the greenhouse abruptly stopped.

  “Dani, stay here. I’ll be right back,” I said over her retching.

  I stood. Slowly I made my way down the dim hallway to see what had unsettled her, what had Max in a frenzy. It was quiet. Too quiet. Just as I reached the greenhouse door, Max swiftly exited, his body blocking my view. He looked shattered.

  “Sweetheart, please don’t go in there.”

  Over his shoulder, I caught a glimpse of what looked to be a dirty wig on the ground next to a deep hole, white squares from the temporary flooring ripped up and flung about.

  “What is that?”

  “That’s . . . the kitten.”

  “Oh God. Maggie!”

  He spun me around and forcefully walked me back to the kitchen, where we found Dani tripping over her own vomit, trying to stand up.

  I ran to her.

  “We need to get out of here,” she slurred, tumbling to the floor, taking me back down with her. Max crouched in front of us, trying to secure eye contact with Dani, but she was lolling drunk.

  “Dani, honey, look at me. Look at me.”

  “No. Stay away from me.” She burrowed herself deeper into my arms like a terrified animal, shaking her head at him.

  Max made a “phone cal
l” gesture. “Do not move from her this time,” he whispered. “Stay. Right. Here.”

  Dani kept her eyes trained on him. As soon as he rounded the corner to the den, she turned to me. “Did you see?”

  “See what?” Oh, Maggie. Poor Maggie.

  “My mother.”

  “No one’s in there, sweetheart.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  She made another feeble attempt to stand. I restrained her, pinning her back down with me on the floor. Moments later Max returned, cradling the phone to his ear, listening, pacing the hall to the greenhouse like a goalie guarding a net.

  “Yes . . . yes, but worse this time,” he murmured. “Delusions again, but now . . . violence, maybe. I don’t know . . . Yeah, I found some from the last time . . . Okay . . . We’ll wait right here. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  He hung up and handed me a small white pill.

  “Here,” he said. “Under her tongue, if you can. Dr. Sherman’s coming, Dani.”

  I hesitated to put my fingers near her mouth, but when Dani saw the pill, she opened up like a hungry bird. Max brought her a glass of water but she would only take it from my hand. She took a gulp, then handed the glass back to me. She tapped her head with her index finger.

  “Guess what, Daddy?” she hissed. “I remembered all about that night, what happened in the greenhouse.” Her filthy hands suddenly distracted her. “Wow. Look how gross my nails are. They’re like yours,” she said, laughing up at me.

  “Dani, rest,” Max said.

  She continued to ignore him, turning again to me. “I’m sorry I threw up. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “That’s okay, sweetheart,” I said, patting her sweaty head. “I forgive you. Just rest now, okay?”

  “I know I did some bad stuff, but I didn’t do the dress. I don’t hate you. But he hates me,” she said, going a bit limp in my arms. The pill started to kick in and soon she was staring blankly at the floor, not awake but not asleep.

  Twenty minutes we stayed like that on the floor, in our pitiful Pietà, while Max ran upstairs to pack Dani a bag and some toiletries. Then he cleaned up the vomit and straightened the kitchen. When the doorbell finally rang, Dani didn’t hear it. She barely noticed Max returning with two ambulance attendants pulling a quiet gurney behind them. But at the sight of a tiny older woman, white-haired and calm, she threw open her arms like a toddler wanting to be picked up.

  “Dr. Sherman!” she exclaimed.

  The doctor gathered Dani in her arms and they fell into a familiar routine, the doctor asking her gentle questions, Dani murmuring answers.

  “It was very good champagne, Dr. Sherman.”

  “I bet it was. How much of it did you have, love?”

  “Maybe like half a bottle. No, a whole one.”

  “What else?”

  She shrugged.

  I looked at Max, who closed his eyes. He looked helpless, ashamed.

  “Dani, I have to know for your own good.”

  “One teensy Valium. Three at the most.”

  “And?”

  “She gave me a little white one,” she said, lifting her limp hand in my general direction. The doctor gave a brisk nod to the attendants, who gently pried Dani from the doctor’s arms and placed her across the gurney, strapping her down.

  When they started to roll her away, I grabbed a rail. “Wait. Where are you taking her? Max, we have to go with her.”

  Max and the doctor exchanged a look. They’d done this before.

  “She needs to be detoxed first,” the doctor said. “Until then there’s nothing for you to do.”

  “The rehab’s not far from here,” Max told me. “One of the best in the country. We can visit in a couple days. Dani, honey, we’ll come see you as soon as you’re out of detox.”

  Dani found the last reserve of clarity not blotted out by the champagne, or the pills. She twisted her body around the side of the gurney and addressed me as though we were alone.

  “You have to believe me. I need you to believe me.”

  “Oh, Dani.” I reached for her again. She seemed so lost and alone.

  Max came to my side. “Dr. Sherman is going to help you, Dani,” he said, walking beside the gurney to the front door. “You’re a good girl, Dani. We know it was an accident.”

  “Noooo!” she wailed, squirming under the straps. “Don’t say that! I know I’m good. It’s you that’s bad!”

  Once she was rolled out of earshot, Dr. Sherman turned to Max. “I’ll call you once we check her in. How did the kitten . . . ?”

  “Broken neck, I think,” Max said quietly. “She seemed to be in the process of burying it. It might be what set this off. My hope is that she found the kitten that way.”

  “I’ve never known her to be violent,” said the doctor. “But anyway, we can talk about a plan in a couple of days, once I’ve assessed her.” She turned to me. “It was nice to meet you. Sorry it’s under such distressing circumstances.”

  The wheels of the gurney had a tricky time on the wet driveway, pocked with little puddles from the rain. I thought of the last time I had seen my father alive, how frightened I was navigating the boat around those bloated cruise ships, racing him to the dock and the waiting ambulance. I remembered the white sun glinting off the hot chrome of his gurney and the doomed sense that my entire life had just changed in an instant, and none of it required my permission. That happened to Dani that morning. Her gurney was swallowed into the ambulance like a tongue rolling back into a large steel mouth. She would never live at Asherley again.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Max closed the front door and gathered me into his arms. We stayed like that for a long time, Asherley thrumming hollowly around us. Even on the days I hadn’t seen Dani’s face I always knew she was somewhere in the house, watchful and coiled. Now the house felt dead inside, the only sounds coming from the morning crows that had a habit of screaming at their own reflections in the east windows. Everything hurt. It hurt to think, to talk, to breathe, to hold on to him, and to finally release him.

  “I’m sorry,” Max said.

  “For what?”

  “I’m sorry about Dani, What she did to you. What she’s going through. I knew she was off, I just didn’t realize how badly she was spiraling.”

  “I wish I could have done more, too,” I said.

  “Listen, we have plenty of time to admonish ourselves for the mistakes we made, mistakes I made. But you.” He stopped to carefully tug something from my hair. “You need a shower.”

  I looked down at my vomit-spattered robe.

  “Not how you hoped to spend the morning after your wedding. Listen, I’ll join you in a minute, after I bury that poor kitten.”

  “Let me help you. I’m not squeamish. I’d like to see how she died.”

  “No. No. I don’t want you to go in there, or see that,” he said. “You’ve already been through enough grief. I mean it.”

  “You think it was an accident?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. Go. You’re starting to turn,” he said, scrunching his nose and nudging me towards the stairs.

  I didn’t go straight to our room. I went up to the third floor, looking for something that would explain Dani’s state of mind. Her room had been left in shambles, clothes everywhere, empty wine bottles scattered about, an overflowing ashtray on the windowsill—evidence of substance abuse on her part, neglect on ours.

  I headed to the turret and was surprised to find the door unlocked. All these months I’d wanted to come up here alone, to lay across Rebekah’s bed, to try on her jewelry, her perfumes, not the way it was with Dani, manipulative, under duress, but leisurely, sensually. I wanted to savor my discoveries, like a girl left in a department store overnight. But now I hated these rooms. Where I once envied the majestic gilt mirrors, the circle of windows bracketed by cream
y drapes hanging like long hair, the closet full of beautiful clothes, now everything felt ludicrous and unnecessary. In fact it was here where Rebekah’s memories were stored, in these rooms, not the greenhouse. And it was here where Dani incubated her anxieties and cultivated her delusions, especially the ones about her father and what had really happened that night. Perhaps she needed to hear the truth, needed to know everything there was to know about both of her mothers. Maybe after she healed and got some help, we’d tell her everything, so she could put it all behind her and start anew.

  This room, too, was in total disarray, clothes piled on the marbled island, some flung on the backs of chairs and over doors. When I opened the closet door, I was hit by the smell of Maggie’s litter box. My heart sunk again. Poor little thing, a victim of my misplaced trust in Dani. Hangers hung crooked in the closet, clothes barely holding on. I could still detect Rebekah’s perfume hovering in the air, musky and expensive.

  Stepping over Maggie’s crusty food bowls, I spotted it, the cursed dress, the red sash like stray guts down its side, the hanger poking from the lace bodice like a broken collarbone. I knew what I needed to do while Dani was away; I would remove everything that had been coming between Max and me, and Dani and me, starting with that goddamned dress. Every curtain in the house needed to be flung open to the light, every side table emptied of her pictures and mementos, all the walls painted white, blank slates for new stories, our stories, every room purged of ghosts.

  I went to the window overlooking the brown bay. Dawn was breaking over a sickly gray sky, yet from here it was clear enough to see all the way to Orient Point. A night of rain had begun to turn the lawns green and brought out the pink in the hydrangea bushes that edged them. I must learn the names of everything that lives and grows here, I thought, and of all people in the paintings and all the flowers in the gardens. We could open the pool soon, have parties. There should be so much more life here. A dog or two. Children, of course; I was ready. That would be my focus, that and caring for Dani, helping her get well again, in order for Asherley to thrive under her eventual watch. I no longer felt afraid of Dani, just for her. She was a damaged, angry child. She was the exile, not me. I was the one standing in the turret, overlooking the expanse of grounds, surveying the land, making plans.