The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

  “He knows enough,” I say, the lie so obvious that silence would have been less incriminating.

  “I wonder if he’d be interested in knowing more?” Mrs. Renard asks, crisp and conversational. “In my experience, clients often come here because they have limited room in their hearts. A limited capacity for embracing new people. But maybe Mr. Braddock is different. Maybe he’d love to get to know you. Learn where you came from, what you’ve done.”

  My silence expands, big enough for us both to understand fully what it means.

  “You’ll stay uninvolved,” she says. A command.

  “Yes.” I hear myself say it, flat and grudging.

  She sighs as if she’s survived a small crisis and is ready to move on to something more important. “Don’t torture yourself over this,” Mrs. Renard says.

  I look at her dully.

  “Remember that most of the people who work for me don’t have lives to speak of,” she says. “They’re lonely. They don’t have their own loved ones to miss them after they’re gone. What kind of person would agree to be the vessel for the love of strangers, day in and day out?”

  My mind turns to my childhood bedroom. The lawn under my feet, the taste of birthday cake, the scent of my mother when she hugged me, her hair floating in my peripheral vision. And I remember the memories from later, the ones I’ve hidden. Letting the layers upon layers of other people’s stories smother my own.

  Mrs. Renard addresses the crooked square of afternoon light that lands on the opposite wall. “Really, it would have been the best thing for that girl if we’d let her stay Hopeful Doe,” she says. “When she was Hopeful Doe, people were interested. She was someone worthy of love. Never make the mistake of thinking that one’s true identity is necessarily the best one. You know better than that by now, Eurydice.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  There are arrangements to be made. Patrick has asked for a week. My apartment lease expires in three months, a lifetime from now. I walk through the rooms, assessing which parts of my life I’ll bring along. Everything feels expendable, as if I was waiting for a chance to get rid of it.

  I research cities to disappear to. There’s the predictable spread of places, more fantasy than reality. Sun-drenched beaches in California, the endless movie set of New York City, watercolor towns in Europe. I skim past these, unable to fit ourselves into other people’s dreams. Instead, I look at unremarkable places, places people move to out of necessity. I imagine us living in a split-level on the outskirts of a run-down city, a freeway roaring past our bedroom window. I imagine us tucked inside the graying snow for months at a time in a northern state.

  When I come to the Braddocks’ house tonight, I find him upstairs. He’s in the room that holds Sylvia’s belongings, looking at a stretch of gauzy white spread over the top of the boxes. I come to stand next to Patrick. Her wedding gown.

  “I don’t know what to do with all of this,” Patrick says. “I should have thrown it away a long time ago. Or donated it. It felt like turning my back on her.” He glances around the confines of the room. “It’s impossible, but there’s more in here than there used to be.”

  The unfairness of it hits me: that this pointless piece of Sylvia’s life should have survived longer than she did. All the possessions that my clients have brought to me over the years, each one outliving the person who loved it.

  “Just keep the things that were most important to Sylvia,” I say.

  “I have,” he says. “I already gave most of that to you.”

  We exchange smiles.

  “Patrick,” I say, “why did you bring me that lipstick? The first time you came to the Elysian Society. Sylvia barely ever wore it in her photos. And she—” I hesitate. She clearly chose it for Henry Damson, I want to say. Her lips were darkest in those photos from the lake.

  “I can’t really explain it,” he says. “I walked through the house that day, trying to choose the right object to bring. It was still surreal, like a joke. I was trying to remember what she wore, what jewelry she liked or what perfume she’d put on. I found that lipstick lying at the bottom of her closet. I remembered seeing her in it, once. When she was getting ready to go out of town. She was looking at herself in the mirror, and she was different. Beautiful, but different. It was a moment of realizing how little I knew about her. How separate she was from me.”

  I touch his arm. “Do you want to see her?” I ask, and his expression opens up as if he already knew that I was going to ask, as if he’s just been waiting for a chance to say yes.

  In the bedroom, after I apply the lipstick, Patrick reaches out his thumb to wipe away the excess. The lotus lies on the bed next to me, nearly lost in the rumple of the sheets.

  “Are you nervous?” I ask; briefly, a memory of that infinite, soundless world beneath the water fills my skull.

  “No,” Patrick says. “Not really. Are you?”

  I slide the lotus between my teeth, swallowing without water. The dry clot of bitterness brushes the tender back of my throat, and then I’m gone.

  The moon is full tonight. So heavy that I imagine it falling right out of the sky, landing with a wet thump at our feet.

  “She wasn’t supposed to do that,” he says. “It was a shock to me too.”

  It’s not exactly an apology. I just shake my head, afraid that if I speak I’ll embarrass myself. An undignified lurch of a sob. A spiraling shriek of accusations.

  When it’s clear I won’t respond, Henry sighs and reaches into his pocket for his phone, making a show of checking the time. Viv is still inside the restaurant; she excused herself as we were leaving, fluttering at the two of us to go on ahead, go on ahead. I wondered if this was the way it would be from now on. Viv flaunting her status, fussy, secretive needs that a barren woman can never understand.

  The restaurant has ivy-choked trellises, sparkling lights strung along the gutters. Music playing soft and tinny, barely discernible on the outdoor speakers. We’re the last diners leaving tonight, alone in the parking lot. Blandly romantic violins twirl overheard. Everything feels like a mean punch line at my expense.

  “Of course,” Henry says, as if we’re continuing a conversation, “you can’t blame her. She shouldn’t have told you. But you weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “You wanted me to follow,” I say.

  A soft, disbelieving huff of breath.

  I see us as if I’m observing from a distance. Leaning against the car like people half our age, the strangeness of the evening and the alcohol hitting us at once. Patrick and I have always looked good together. We complement each other: my stark coloring against his sunniness. But Henry and I are similar, almost like siblings, with faces that tend toward melancholy when we aren’t making an effort to charm, with dark hair that snaps up all the light.

  “You could have told me about the pregnancy yourself,” I say.

  “Jesus, I only found out a few weeks ago,” Henry says, impatience clouding his words. “You’re not supposed to tell anyone except close friends. Family.”

  A joke swirls wildly through my brain: Can you tell your mistress? It’s the kind of joke I could have made, a month ago. Henry liked my irreverent moments, and I’d play this up, half guilty, knowing that it separated me from Viv’s sweet, wide-eyed humorlessness.

  “I deserved to know.” I’m too exposed in my white dress. “It matters to me too.”

  “Fine,” Henry says. “I’ll report every detail of our lives to you. I’ll make sure you know what we do together. Every time she picks something new for the nursery, every time we have an appointment. Do you want me to send videos from the delivery room? Tell you each time our kid scores a goal, gets a laugh from the audience?”

  It’s a keen hurt. He knows I don’t just want a baby, a newborn, but everything. The whole tedious and beautiful life that child would bring along. I’ve used those exact examples, achingly ordinary. The soccer matches. The school plays.

  “I know why you introduced me to her,” Henry
says. “So you could watch us fail.”

  “That’s unfair,” I say.

  “You didn’t expect I’d start a life with her,” he says. “You didn’t expect the baby. That’s what gets to you, huh? You wanted a baby for so long, and now here I am, in a relationship that was supposed to be a joke, and—”

  When he stops talking, it’s not out of discretion or a desire to shield me from the pain. It’s because his point is already made. After so little time, he’s created a vision of a family that I’ve been chasing and losing. As if it’s truly this easy, and it’s just fatal stubbornness on my part that’s preventing me.

  A light in the window near the front of the restaurant snaps off, and then another, closer. The insects are shrieking all around us. Beyond the parking lot, the roads are dark and quiet this late in the evening. I think of Patrick, back at the lake, miles away. Waiting for me. Waiting.

  For the first time, I regret it. The pain is almost a relief, if only because it’s a fresher pain than the same aches I’ve been worrying over, pressing like bruises that won’t fade. I regret letting my heart be devoured by this imaginary child. I regret ignoring Patrick, the flesh-and-blood reality of the two of us. Who we were. Who we could have become.

  “I have to tell Patrick about us,” I say.

  I expect him to protest. I brace for his anger. But after a moment, he says, “No, you won’t.” Perfectly calm and assured.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “He’ll leave you,” Henry says. “What have you been telling me about your husband? He can’t look you in the face when you’ve been crying, he ignores you when you’re in bed all day—he’s not going to shrug this off.”

  My tipsiness is a woozy layer just behind my eyes. “Maybe he won’t,” I say. “But whatever happens, I was honest. If Viv is happy with you, it’s because she doesn’t know you.”

  “My wife knows who I am,” Henry says.

  The restaurant door clatters open, and then Viv is walking toward us, grinning with exaggerated apology, waving like a parade-float queen. Henry reaches around me to open the car door; I understand I’m supposed to get inside. I panic like a hostage.

  “Forget this,” Henry says to me, a quick whisper. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder and waiting for you to do something stupid.”

  She’s coming across the parking lot, her body highlighted by the street lamp and then dimmed in the shadows. If she can detect the tension that surrounds us, she doesn’t show it.

  His sudden anger closes the space between us, yanking us together like a string pulled taut. “I could lose everything,” he says. “You don’t understand what that feels like.”

  “I have as much to lose as you do.”

  He laughs.

  I slide into my seat, away from him. Heart hammering, I watch through the window as he turns to his wife, all warmth, all solicitousness, opening his arms. Her face appears over his shoulder as they embrace. And I’m watching them from far away, trapped in a world beneath their feet.

  Edie.”

  who is that?

  who is she?

  Across from me, in the mirror, I see her: a strange woman in our bedroom. In our bed. Her coarse hair, startled and pale-lashed eyes. His arm around her; his hand tipping her chin to seek out her gaze.

  “You’re all right, Edie?” he asks.

  I want to tell him that’s not my name. But I remember, slowly, that it is. My name for this life with him. One name for each life.

  “I’m fine.” My voice is hoarse; I clear my throat. “Could I please have a glass of water?”

  After Patrick’s left, I sink back against the pillows. When I learned that Sylvia had brought us back to the surface of the water, I was grateful for a presence inside me that saw my body as something worth rescuing. But I know, right now, that it wasn’t a pure gift, freely given. It was a bargain, a truce, and she’ll ask for something in return.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Four days until we leave the city. I’ve gone through my typical routine this morning. White dress. Hair pulled back; skin scrubbed bright pink in the shower. In the parking lot, I look up at the ashen brick walls and the curtain-blinded windows.

  Behind each pane of glass, a body in white, a static chill, a household artifact. A stranger leaning across the space that separates them, searching for a way back to the beginning. Each room a time capsule.

  Coming to the Elysian Society has the ugly undercurrent of an obligation now. After our conversation, Mrs. Renard will be watching for me. My obedient presence here is an implicit absolution of what she did to Laura Holmes. If I didn’t show up, my sudden disappearance could trigger her cool and swift revenge. I’d lose Patrick just as we’re about to walk away.

  I step out of the car and move toward the building, trying not to remember Laura’s eyes staring out of Ana’s face, or the feel of her fingers against me as she begged me to peel her down to the most fleshless part of herself.

  Ms. Olsen, I wanted to let you know that I may not be coming back,” I say.

  Beth Olsen has only been with me for a few months, but I’ve come to like her. When she visits her girlfriend, she’s so reverent and serious, like a student contemplating a difficult question.

  She squints at me. “What do you mean?” she asks. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” I say. “Not at all. I’m just . . . moving on.”

  “You’re going?”

  “When you joined the Elysian Society, someone should have explained to you that bodies sometimes leave,” I say. “If you’d like recommendations for a replacement, I can—”

  “No, no, I knew all that,” Beth says. “They mentioned it. But I picked you because they said you weren’t going anywhere.” She pauses. “If I’m honest, I wanted you because of that.”

  “Things do change,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  Telling her was a mistake. I wanted to test out the sound of it. But Beth’s eyes brighten and expand with tears. “Jesus,” she says softly, as if to herself. “I can’t believe this.”

  “You’ll find a new body, Ms. Olsen,” I say. “Nothing will change.”

  “Everything will change,” Beth says.

  I’m quiet, startled by the grief exposed in her voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Beth says. She squares her shoulders back, shuts her eyes and opens them again, clearing away the tears. “You don’t owe me anything. I know that. But it’s like you’re asking me to say good-bye to her all over again.”

  The exhaustion laps at my heels. After my day at the Elysian Society, it’s as if the final lotus I swallowed never fully wore off. At home, I sit on the couch, my skull heavy, listening to a shouting match between the neighbors above me. Their voices crash and ebb like waves.

  The tiredness seems to grow more solid around me. Not a prelude to falling asleep, but a force that’s gaining strength. There’s a hollow thump from above me, the rise of a wordless yell.

  Finally, I shuffle through the contents of my medicine cabinet. I find a small bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills, bought years ago and never used. The little tamper-proof seal is still in place; underneath this, a layer of cloudy cotton.

  I tip two of the tiny blue pills into my hand and bring my palm to my mouth.

  It’s dark. The night lit only by the street lamps, by the crisp pools dotted along the street. The snowflakes taped to the front window are coming loose. One or two dangle crookedly from single pieces of tape, dead leaves on a branch.

  Through the frosted crescent of glass in the door, the security system blinks red.

  The porch holds the stroller, a tiny pair of rain boots, a ceramic swan overflowing with fern fronds. Stooping, I lift the potted plant from the hollow in the swan’s back. Something glints in the darkness of the dusty cavity. Of course: no matter what illusions of safety they might create, they’re secure in their lives. Sure that nobody can take it from them.

  I unlock the front door. The alarm starts a thin series
of chirps as soon as I enter, but I know which numbers to press. Their wedding date. The alarm goes silent. The red light resumes its neat, reassuring blink. I shut the door behind me and ascend the stairs.

  Their bedroom door is on the right. Tightly shut. I walk past quickly and softly. The room I want is on the left. The door hangs open, and through the wedge I can see pale blue light spread on the wall, cast by a miniature lamp. As I slip inside the baby’s room, I spot the broad black eye of a monitor, positioned to look through the bars of his crib.

  The baby lies on his back. His pajamas cover his feet, zipped up to his neck. Too warm for the summer outside, but the house purrs with frigid air-conditioning. The baby’s eyelids are so fine, like veined insect wings. His stomach jumps in a hard bubble. I reach down and stroke a finger against his cheek. Poreless skin, fine and unused.

  If Ben hadn’t come into the world when he did, Henry might never have left me. More purely than Viv, it’s Ben who came into Henry’s life and left no room for me.

  He should have been mine. Could have been mine. There’s a particular cruelty to being replaced by him.

  I slip my gift beneath the mattress, leaving a single edge showing.

  The overhead light comes on, washing the shadows into flatness. I don’t turn from the crib. Ben winces, his lips puckering, but he doesn’t wake.

  “Please,” Henry says. His voice is quiet. “You don’t want to do something you’d regret.”

  I don’t answer.

  “If Viv wakes up, you’re going to terrify her,” Henry says. “Get away from our son.” He’s barely holding back his rage. It’s there beneath the surface of his words, like the rush of water beneath the surface of ice.

  I turn to him. He must detect me in her features: her plainness fleshed out with my beauty. He steps back, his eyes moving over me, piecing me back together.

  Memories filtered through someone else’s brain are strained and stale. But I’m lucky. She’s so austere. Everything is pushed to the very sides, leaving my memories with more room.