Sever (Chemical Garden Trilogy)

by Lauren DeStefano

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I say. Then, thinking better of it, I add, “But thank you.”

  He gets up and pushes his chair back against the table, then Cecily’s chair, then mine. “You and Cecily can share the bed. I’m going to sleep on the divan in my uncle’s library. I’ll set up Bowen’s bassinet in the bedroom, but you won’t have to worry; he mostly sleeps through the night.”

  “You’re really staying the weekend, then?” I say.

  “It’ll be good for Cecily,” he says. “She’s been stir-crazy lately.” He lingers in the doorway for a moment, his back to me. “It’ll give both of you a chance for a proper good-bye. It’ll help her to let go of you.”

  CECILY STANDS at the bedroom mirror, frowning. Her shirt is rolled to her chest, and she dusts her fingers over the pink ribbons of shining skin that run up her stomach. “Horrible, aren’t they?” she says. “Bowen stretched me out as far as I could go.”

  I’m sitting on the bed, staring at the book I’ve taken from Reed’s library. He doesn’t have as many books as his brother, and they’re all tattered and old. I get the sense that he inherited the rejects of the collection. Some of the history books have pages ripped away, and passages that are blacked out. There was a book about the discovery of America—I was drawn to it by the image of a ship on the cover—but the pages were filled with furious notes calling the text a lie, theories scrawled in smudged, sloppy lettering I couldn’t read. I didn’t want to read it anyway; I just wanted to look at the ships and try to remember Gabriel’s fingers in my hair.

  I turn the page, staring at yet another photograph of a cargo ship. Gabriel would have something to say about it, I’m sure. He would know how fast it could move across the water. This ship looks burdened by the weight of its cargo, though. I bet that if I stowed away, it would be easy for me to hide among those towering crates, but it would take me months to reach Gabriel. It would be torturous, feeling myself drag across the water so slowly.

  But slowly would be better than not at all.

  Cecily is still going on about how she’s lost her youth, and how her body will never be the same, but how happy she is to be a part of it all. Some kind of miracle, reinforced hope. I don’t want to look at her naked stomach, which is starting to take the shape of an upside-down question mark; her knuckles and cheeks and feet are always bright red. She gave birth to her first child with difficulty, fazing in and out of consciousness, crying when she had the strength, white from blood loss. I don’t want to think about her going through it all again. The whole thing terrifies me.

  But it’s unavoidable. Since Cecily arrived with her son, this room has smelled like a nursery. Powder and some indeterminable sweetness that lingers on infant skin. It has taken over the room like it has taken over her life. The child here is no longer her.

  “Aren’t you tired?” she asks, falling onto the bed beside me and kicking off her socks before getting under the blanket. “Don’t you want to change into your pajamas?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “I think I’ll read for a while. I could go somewhere else if the light bothers you.”

  “No, stay,” she yawns, and rests her head on my knee and closes her eyes.

  Within minutes she’s breathing that disquieting pregnancy snore that makes me worry. We were brought to Linden as breeding machines, and Vaughn saw no greater opportunity than in the most naïve among all the girls to tumble from that line: Cecily. I’ve no doubt that’s why she was chosen. He saw that determination in her eyes, that vulnerability. She would do anything, anything to belong to his son after a lifetime of belonging to no one at all.

  What is happening to her? What does it do to a young girl to birth two children in less than a year’s time? There’s a rash across her cheeks; her pianist’s fingers are swollen. In sleep she clings to my shirt the way Bowen clings to hers. The way a child clings to its mother.

  I rake my fingers through her hair as I go on flipping the pages.

  I’ve gone through all the pictures of boats a second time, never bothering with the words, when there’s a soft knock at the door. I know it’s Linden. Reed never comes upstairs at night. In fact, I’m not sure where he sleeps, or even if he does.

  “Come in,” I say.

  Linden inches into the room through the slight gap in the doorway. His presence is barely there. He looks at Cecily and me, and I feel like a model in an unfinished portrait. The Ashby Wives. There were four of us once.

  “Is she asleep?” Linden asks.

  “I’m awake,” Cecily murmurs. “I had a dream we were ice-skating.” She sits up, rubbing her eyes.

  “I wanted to see how you were feeling,” Linden tells her, looking right past me. I’m nothing—candlelight on the wall. “Did you need anything to drink? Are your feet sore?”

  She says something about needing a back rub, and I take my book and slip out of the room just as easily as Linden slipped in.

  I’ve memorized which floorboards in the hallway don’t creak, thereby leaving Reed undisturbed as he toils about his mysteries below me.

  The window is open in the library, and the books and walls and floorboards are all cool with the night’s breeze. I hear crickets as though they’re in the shelves. The stars are so bright and unobstructed that their light fills the room, making everything silver.

  I replace the boat book and run my fingers over the spines of the other books, not really looking for anything. I think I’m too exhausted to read, anyway. There’s a pillow and a blanket on the divan, and it looks inviting, but I don’t feel right about getting into the bed Linden has made for himself. I focus on the book spines.

  “My uncle used to let me pretend they were bricks,” Linden says, startling me. He eases a thick hardcover from the shelf, hefts it in either hand, and then places it back. “I liked to build houses out of them. They never came out exactly like I’d planned, but that’s good. It taught me that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.”

  For some reason I’m finding it difficult to meet his eyes. I nod at one of the lower shelves and say, “Maybe it’s because in your mind you don’t have to worry about building materials. So you’re not as limited.”

  “That’s astute,” he says. He pauses. “You’ve always been astute about things.”

  I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment, but I suppose it’s true. So much silence passes between us after that, with nothing to sustain the atmosphere but impassive crickets and starlight, that I become willing to say anything that will end it. The words that come out of me are, “I’m sorry.”

  I hear his breath catch. Maybe he’s as surprised as I am. I don’t look up to see what his expression is.

  “I know you think that I’m awful. I don’t blame you.” That’s it—all I have the courage to say. I fidget with the hem of my sweater. It’s one of Deirdre’s creations, of course. Emerald green embroidered with gold gossamer leaves. Since having my custom-made clothes returned to me, I’ve been sleeping in them. I’ve missed how comfortable they are, how getting dressed into something that fits every angle and curve feels like rematerializing into something worthwhile.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Linden says quietly. “Yes, I’ve told myself that you’re awful. I’ve told myself you must be—that’s the only explanation. But my thoughts always go back to the you I remember. You, lying in the orange grove and saying you didn’t know if we were worth saving. You held my hand then. Do you remember?”

  Something rushes through my blood, from my heart to my fingertips, where the memory still lingers. “Yes,” I say.

  “And about a thousand other things,” he says, pausing sometimes between his words, making sure he has them right. I get the sense that words are not sufficient tools for him to build what’s going on in his head as he stands before me. “While you were gone, I tried to take all of those memories and turn them into lies. And I thought I’d do
ne it. But I look at you now, and I still see the girl who fed me blueberries when I was grieving. The girl who was in a red dress, falling asleep against me on the drive home.”

  He takes a step closer, and my heart leaps into my mouth. “I try to hate you. I’m trying right now.”

  I look at him and ask, “Is it working?”

  He moves his hand, and I think he’s going to reach for a book on the shelf above me, but he touches my hair instead. Something in me tightens with expectancy. I hold my breath.

  When he pushes forward, my mouth falls open, expecting his kiss even before it comes. His lips are familiar. I know the shape of them, know how to make mine fit against them. His taste is familiar too. For all the illusions and colors and sweet smells of that mansion, and of our marriage, he has always tasted like skin. His breaths are shallow. I’m holding his life against my tongue, between my rows of teeth. He’s offering it up.

  But it doesn’t belong to me. I know that.

  I draw back, gently step out of his hands that gripped my shoulders and were just edging their way to either side of my throat.

  “I can’t,” I whisper.

  One of his hands still hovers near me, a satellite. I imagine what it would be like to tilt my head into his open palm. The flood of warmth bursting through me.

  He looks at me, and I don’t know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she’s not here with us now, in this room. It’s just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

  I could kiss him again. I could do much more than that. But I know it would be for the wrong reasons. It would be because my family is far away, or else dead, and because I miss Gabriel; in my dreams he’s something small I dropped into the ocean, and I wake knowing that I might never find him again. But Linden is here. Brilliantly here. And it would be too easy to make him a substitute for all those things, to take advantage of his desire for me.

  But then logic sets in. Logic and guilt.

  I won’t hurt him the way I did before, manipulating his affections while I worked for the freedom I wanted.

  He seems to understand. His fingers close into his palm, and he lowers his hand from my side.

  “I can’t,” I say again, with more certainty.

  He steps closer to me, and my nerves bristle like the long grass outside. Everything is rustling with expectancy.

  “We never consummated our marriage,” he says softly. “At first I thought you only needed time. I was patient.” He presses his lips together for a moment, thinking. “But then it didn’t matter so much. I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.”

  A smile tugs at one side of my mouth, and I allow it.

  “Looking back, those feel like the most important parts. They were real, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” I answer, and it’s the truth.

  He touches my left hand and looks at my eyes, asking permission. I nod, and he holds my palm flat against his and then holds my hand between us. His other hand traces the slope of my wedding ring and pinches either side of it between his thumb and index finger. When I realize what’s happening, my pulse quickens, my mouth goes dry.

  He slides the ring down my finger, and it hitches on my knuckle, like part of me is still trying to hang on. My body lilts forward, tethered to the ring for only an instant more before letting go.

  This was it. This was why I kept wearing my wedding ring, why it never felt right to remove it myself. There was only one person who could set me free.

  “Let’s call this an official annulment,” he says.

  I can’t help it. I throw my arms around him and pull him tight against me. He tenses, startled, but then he puts his arms around me too. I can feel his closed fist where he holds the ring.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  Minutes later I’m lying on the divan, watching my ankle swing back and forth over the edge like a guillotine. Linden paces the length of the room, tracing the book spines.

  I look for the moon through the open window, but it’s hiding behind clouds.

  Linden says, “What’s your brother like?”

  I blink. It’s the first time he’s asked me about Rowan. Maybe he’s trying to get to know me, now that he knows I’ll give him the truth.

  “He’s smarter than me,” I say. “And practical.”

  “Is he older? Younger?”

  “About ninety seconds younger,” I say. “We’re twins.”

  “Twins?” he says.

  I hang my head over the arm of the divan, looking at him upside down. “You sound surprised.”

  “It’s just—twins,” he says, leaning against a row of paisley cloth-bound books. “That changes the entire way I look at you.” He keeps his mouth open, struggling for the right words.

  “Like I’m half of a whole?” I say, trying to help him.

  “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he says. “You’re a whole person by yourself.”

  I look out the window again. “You know what scares me?” I say. “I’m starting to feel like you’re right.”

  Linden is quiet for a long time. I hear his clothes rustling, the chair creaking under his weight. “I think I understand,” he says. “When I lost Rose, I kept going, I still do, but I’ll never be what I was when she was alive. It’ll always feel like something’s . . . not right, without her here.”

  “That’s sort of what it’s like,” I agree. Even though my brother and I are both still alive, the longer we’re apart, the more I feel myself changing. It’s like I’m evolving into something that doesn’t include him. I don’t think I can ever be the person I was before all this.

  It’s quiet again after that. It’s a comfortable quiet, though. Peaceful. I feel unburdened, and after a while I start to imagine that the divan is a boat moving over the ocean. Sunken cities play music beneath the waves. The ghosts are stirring.

  Someone turns on the light, and my thoughts scatter away as I blink at the brightness. This is one of the few rooms with functioning lightbulbs, though they flicker.

  “Linden?” Cecily says.

  She’s standing in the doorway, her knuckles white from clutching the frame. Everything about her is white: her face, the quivering misshapen O of her lips, the nightgown that she’s got bunched up to her hips as though she’s unveiling her body to us.

  But sliding down her thighs is an abundance of red. It’s pooling at her feet, from the trail of blood that followed her into the room.

  Linden moves fast. He scoops her up by the backs of her knees and shoulders. She comes alive with a scream so awful that he has to brace his hand on the wall to keep from falling. She’s whimpering while he’s rushing her down the stairs.

  I hurry after them down the long hallway, making footprints in the red puddles and thinking about how small she is, about how much blood it takes to keep a girl her size going, how much of it she can stand to lose. Redness is leaking rivers over Linden’s arms like veins atop his skin.

  He says my name, and I realize what he wants. I push ahead of him and open the door.

  Outside, the night is warm, sprinkled with stars. The grass sighs in indignation as we crush it with our bare feet. Wings and insect legs make music, which moments before had been lovely through the open window in the room full of books.

  In the backseat of the car, which reeks of cigars and mold, I take Cecily’s head in my lap while Linden runs off to find his uncle to drive us.

  “I lost the baby,” Cecily chokes.

  “No,” I say. “No, you didn’t.”

  She closes her eyes, shudders with a sob.

  “They’ll know what to do at the hospital,” I tell her, though I don’t believe a word of it. I’m only trying to calm her, and maybe myself. I hold her hand in both of mine. It’s clammy, ice-cold. I can’t reconcile this pale, trembling
girl with the one who stood before the mirror hardly an hour ago, fussing over her stomach.

  Thankfully, Linden is back soon.

  The drive to the hospital is rocky, thanks to Reed’s reckless driving and the lack of a paved road. Linden holds Bowen, whose eyes are wide and curious, and shushes him even though he doesn’t cry. I’ve always thought Bowen was intuitive. He just might be the only child of Linden’s to live.

  I feel a gentle pressure around my finger, and I look down to realize Cecily is touching the place where my ring used to be. But she doesn’t ask about it, the bride who has always made it her mission to know everything about everyone in her marriage. She has been eerily silent this whole ride.

  “Open your eyes,” Linden tells her when she closes them. “Love? Cecily. Look at me.”

  With effort she does.

  “Tell me where it hurts,” he says.

  “It’s like contractions,” she says, cringing as we hit a pothole.

  “It’s only another minute from here,” Linden says. “Just keep your eyes open.” The gentleness is gone from his voice, and I know he’s trying to stay in control, but he looks so frightened.

  Cecily is fading. Her breaths are labored and slow. Her eyes are dull.

  “ ‘There will come soft rain,’ ” I blurt out in a panic. She looks up at me, and we recite the words in unison, “ ‘And the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound.’ ”

  “What is that?” Linden says. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s a poem,” I tell him. “Jenna liked it, didn’t she, Cecily?”

  “Because of the ending,” Cecily says. Her voice sounds miles away. “She just liked how it ended.”

  “I’d like to hear the whole thing,” Linden says.

  But we’ve arrived at the hospital. It’s the only real source of light for miles. Most of the streetlights—the ones still standing, anyway—have long since burned out.

  Cecily has closed her eyes again, and Linden passes the baby off to me and hoists her into his arms. She murmurs something I can’t understand—I think it’s another line of the poem—and her muscles go lax.