The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

  But then . . .

  A certain pesky thought wouldn’t go away.

  “Or maybe . . . ,” Victoria began. She frowned and stared at the fireplace.

  “What is it?” asked Jacqueline. “You look strange. Is everything all right?”

  Maybe Mrs. Cavendish had nothing to do with the passage moving, Victoria thought. She remembered how, in the gardens two nights earlier, Mrs. Cavendish had kept looking around the Home like she was searching for something. Victoria herself had seen the front of the Home move when she came to question Mrs. Cavendish, just the other day.

  Letting Victoria get through the fireplaces and throwing her around to scare her was one thing; but why would Mrs. Cavendish have made the Home move that day, when she was shoving Victoria out onto the porch, trying to make her leave?

  “I wonder why I could get through,” Victoria said slowly. “Why me?”

  Jacqueline tilted her head. “Maybe it was a trap or something. Maybe she’s spying on us.”

  “Maybe,” said Victoria, but then a gofer came to get them, and Victoria changed the subject. That awful between feeling was back, where Victoria didn’t know what to think.

  In scattered whispers, on the way down to the dining room, Victoria and Jacqueline discussed what they thought Mrs. Cavendish did to the children who failed coaching, and why Jacqueline was here. She had been ugly, with hunched shoulders and ratty hair and a splotchy face, and she had insisted on painting that freakish, ugly art of hers. Victoria studied Jacqueline’s face. Her coaching was making her into something different, prettier, more normal—better, supposedly. Victoria wasn’t sure she agreed. It would be one thing for Victoria to help Jacqueline be prettier and more normal while they were both safe at home. Why, it would be just like helping Lawrence keep his hair combed and reminding him to please not hum to himself in public.

  But what Mrs. Cavendish does is different, Victoria thought. Isn’t it?

  An uncomfortable feeling unwound in her belly, all the way down a new hallway made of shiny gray stone with jeweled eyeballs for doorknobs. In the gallery, gofers scurried between chores, and the shadow-eyed birds settled back into the ceiling.

  At breakfast, Victoria picked at her eggs and avoided the meat bits. They looked funny and tasted even funnier, and she couldn’t stop thinking about that awful, rotten-smelling kitchen. When she caught Mrs. Cavendish staring at her from the head of the table, Victoria stared right back, but she didn’t pay attention to her fork and ended up eating a chunk of rubbery, spicy, stinking meat. Mrs. Cavendish smiled, and on the way to the first class of the day, she petted Victoria’s hair.

  Victoria tried to distract herself as they walked single-file down the second-floor corridor of classrooms by planning her and Lawrence’s escape—but she didn’t really know where to start.

  Walking out the front door was no good. Surely before they got there, the Home would wind around and trap them somewhere till Mrs. Cavendish found them.

  They couldn’t persuade Mrs. Cavendish to let them go, either, although Victoria thought it might be either funny or horrifying to try. Maybe Mrs. Cavendish would laugh.

  Victoria shuddered. No, that wasn’t an option. She would rather see Mrs. Cavendish angry than laughing.

  Maybe if they looked hard enough, they could find a secret way out of the Home. If it was always changing, if that fireplace opened up for Victoria, maybe a door would open up somewhere, too, and let them out onto the grounds.

  Maybe it was possible to . . . ask the Home to let them out? Would it take a trade?

  But if the Home was Mrs. Cavendish or whatever, then it would just report to her, or Mrs. Cavendish would know herself, and then they’d probably be in big trouble.

  Or would it? Was the Home a part of Mrs. Cavendish? Could she control it and turn it this way and that way as easily as she would walk or wave her arms? Or was the Home something separate? And if it wasn’t part of Mrs. Cavendish, what was it?

  And what was making it ripple and groan? What made it shift around? What made it look different every day? If Mrs. Cavendish didn’t make the Home move, what did?

  Victoria was so wrapped up in these thoughts that she entered the classroom of manners, sat down at her desk, and pulled out her notebook before she realized what was going on.

  Donovan O’Flaherty sat at the front of the classroom on a high stool, and on a high table next to him sat a pyramid of Mallow Cakes. Victoria recognized their white and yellow icing at once. After all, she had seen Donovan stuffing his face with them for years in the Academy lunchroom.

  Now that he was up in front for everyone to see, Victoria realized how sad and misshapen Donovan looked. His skin was pasty and sweaty, and it didn’t seem to know what to do with itself. It hung limply off arms and legs that weren’t quite fat or skinny.

  Beside Donovan stood Mrs. Cavendish, right at eye level. For some reason, she had never looked prettier. Victoria found herself entranced, like Mrs. Cavendish had put a spell on her. Mrs. Cavendish’s blue eyes sparkled and shone. Her smiling mouth stretched wide.

  Victoria’s stomach turned. All around her, the other children also looked entranced and queasy.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve eaten, hasn’t it, Donovan?” said Mrs. Cavendish.

  Donovan nodded silently. Mrs. Cavendish’s hand tightened around Donovan’s arm.

  “Hasn’t it?” she repeated.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Donovan. His eyes filled with tears. He kept looking at the pile of Mallow Cakes like they were the only thing he loved in the world.

  Victoria thought back to breakfast and realized with a horrible lurch that on Donovan’s plate had been—nothing. He had sat in silence while everyone else worked through their steaming piles of eggs and meat.

  “Well, lucky for you, it’s eating day again,” said Mrs. Cavendish. She tied a napkin around Donovan’s neck and put a spoon in his hand. “And remember, we must be tidy.”

  For several minutes, Donovan just stared back and forth between the Mallow Cakes and his spoon. Finally, Mrs. Cavendish lost her patience. She slammed her hand down on the teacher’s desk. Everyone jumped. Then, just like that, she was smiling, sweet Mrs. Cavendish once more.

  “Eat, Donovan,” she said. “You won’t get the chance for another week. Come, come, you know this by now, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Donovan, beginning to cry.

  As he carved out a piece of the nearest Mallow Cake with his spoon, his arms and lips trembled, and his eyes got the empty, wild look Victoria felt deep in her belly whenever she got hungry.

  Donovan brought the crumbling cake to his lips. It was a long way, and bits of it fell into his lap or onto the floor. He began to chew, and at first it seemed all right. His eyes lit up, and Victoria didn’t think she had ever been happier in her entire life, but then his face went green and mushy, his stomach heaved, and he got sick all over the floor.

  Mrs. Cavendish watched him, cold eyed, till he recovered.

  “Keep going,” she said, and he did, as Victoria watched in horror and the other children watched with less horror, because they had seen it all before. Donovan kept carving out cake chunks and making himself eat them. Sometimes he managed to swallow, and sometimes he got sick again or had to stop and catch his breath. His skin shone with sweat.

  After he had forced down ten Mallow Cakes, Donovan put down his spoon and slumped over in his seat. He sagged till his cheek rested in the remnants of cake, and he held his stomach and groaned over and over. It seemed like his skin had turned into Mallow Cakes, all white and yellow and soft.

  “And what rule has Donovan reminded us of, everyone?” sang Mrs. Cavendish.

  The children recited, tearfully, stone cold, and a bit nauseated themselves:

  Don’t eat too much, or you’ll get fat–

  No better than a sewer rat

  “Congratulations,” Lawrence whispered to Victoria as they left Donovan behind on the way to their next class. He patt
ed her arm. “You survived your first coaching. Well, someone else’s coaching, anyway.”

  Victoria didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t erase the image of poor, sick Donovan from her mind. Her stomach roiled like it had been her up there, caught between wanting to eat and being too sick to eat.

  She wondered what her coaching would be.

  “It gets better,” Lawrence said. “Don’t worry.”

  “How could it possibly get better?” Victoria said. She heard the little angry quiver in her voice but couldn’t stop it. “Did you see what she did to—is all coaching like—how can you stand—it’s just not polite.” She found Donovan, ahead of them in line, struggling to keep up with everyone and occasionally retching onto the floor. The sight made her stomach turn. Such rudeness. Such brazen disregard for social etiquette. Such disorder, with his sick everywhere. Such poor nutrition.

  “Donovan.” Victoria marched up to him and grabbed his arm. She was too furious at Mrs. Cavendish to think better of whispering it under her breath: “Don’t you worry. You can have some of my supper, all right? I’ll sneak it under the table if I have to.”

  Donovan gazed up at her with bleary eyes and clammy green skin. But despite all of that, he smiled tiredly. “Really?”

  “Really. I mean, honestly, she can’t get away with—it’s completely illegal, I’m sure—”

  “I’m glad to hear you have so many opinions, Victoria,” said Mrs. Cavendish, coming up behind her and crooning as though to someone she loved very much (if it was possible for Mrs. Cavendish to love anyone, which Victoria seriously doubted). She put a hand around the back of Victoria’s neck and steered her away from the other children. Victoria saw the terrified faces of Lawrence, Jacqueline, and Donovan, and then she saw mirrors.

  Mrs. Cavendish led her through a hallway of them, only the mirrors didn’t reflect Victoria and Mrs. Cavendish. They were more like windows into some other place, with swings, trees, and parks, and people dancing, except the parks were made of tar, the trees of red glass, and the people dancing had hard eyes and tusks coming out of their mouths.

  “Where are you taking me?” said Victoria calmly, even though she wasn’t calm at all. She held herself erect to keep from screaming and tried to dazzle all the horrifying images in the mirrors.

  “As I told you before, I like you, Victoria,” said Mrs. Cavendish. “And I’m interested in seeing how you . . . progress here. You have potential. But there are the other children to think of, aren’t there? I can’t have you stirring up trouble.”

  “I’m not a troublemaker.”

  Mrs. Cavendish laughed and pulled Victoria into the plum-colored parlor from that first day, but quickly they were through that, down a set of stairs, and into a horribly familiar room.

  The hanger.

  “But I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Victoria. Her throat jumped at the sight of the empty hanger and the dingy lightbulb, but she swallowed it down because while she might be forced to wear ugly pajamas, she certainly wasn’t going to embarrass herself by vomiting.

  “Honestly, I only went through the passage between the dorms,” Victoria blurted. She didn’t say anything about the other things, the falling and the voices. “That’s all. And really, if you don’t want people doing that, you should block the fireplaces.”

  Mrs. Cavendish stared at her, frozen except for her eyes, which widened just the tiniest bit. A lock of her hair fell over her forehead. She brushed it away irritably. “The passage between the dorms.”

  Victoria felt herself shrinking. How could you have been so stupid,Victoria? She thought quickly. “Oh, or actually, that might have been a dream. Yes, it was a dream. This place gives me nightmares. You should do something about that.” Stop talking, Victoria. She had begun to sweat. “So, you see? I really haven’t done anything wrong.”

  The lie sounded awful even to Victoria’s ears. She tried to look wide-eyed and innocent, but it must not have worked. Mrs. Cavendish smiled, and her teeth were like fangs.

  “I’m so disappointed in you, Victoria. How could you misbehave so?”

  “But I only wanted to see Lawrence!”

  “Associating with degenerates again, tsk tsk.” Mrs. Cavendish led Victoria to the center of the room, but she didn’t put her in the hanger. Instead, she leaned down and cupped Victoria’s cheek.

  “You may think you can leave me, and that you matter, and that anyone out there will miss anyone in here,” said Mrs. Cavendish. She paused. She twined a finger through one of Victoria’s limp, golden curls. “But you’re wrong.”

  Mrs. Cavendish flashed a bright smile. “I just want you to understand that right here and now. We wouldn’t want anyone else getting in trouble on your behalf, would we, Victoria?”

  Then she left.

  Victoria kicked the hanger. It creaked of old leather and chains, a rickety thing. Investigation seemed the best thing to do, instead of just standing here and trying to figure out what Mrs. Cavendish meant by leaving her in the hanger but not in the hanger.

  But the closer Victoria got to the walls, the more the shadows moved, and the more things began to scuttle and click and shine. She stepped carefully around the room, afraid that too-loud movements would awaken something awful—or many somethings awful. Click, scuttle, whirr, things kept softly sliding around the air above her.

  After finding nothing helpful, Victoria saw some blurred colors at the far end of the room. She squinted and tiptoed closer to a piece of dirty glass set into the wall. It was so dirty that Victoria had almost missed it in the shadows. She tried to ignore the smudged handprints and finger tracks in the window’s muck.

  Closer now, she saw that the blurred colors were shapes—people, furniture. The furniture and walls were familiar. Plum colored. Small, tidy. Mrs. Cavendish’s little parlor.

  The people were also familiar. Victoria squinted harder. There in her chair sat Mrs. Cavendish. Mr. Alice, a tall, bulgy shape in the corner. Sitting on the sofa were two heads, one balding, one bright as a penny.

  “Mother,” Victoria whispered, her nose and forehead pressing into all the fingerprint grime. “Father.”

  Through the grime she saw mild concern on their smiling faces, but nothing more. She pressed her ear to the dark window and heard her name in a question.

  Mrs. Cavendish smiled. She shook her head.

  “But I’m here,” whispered Victoria. Then she yelled it: “I’m here!” She beat her fists against the window and realized that what she had seen that first day in Mrs. Cavendish’s parlor was someone in the hanger pounding on the glass for her attention.

  Now she was that pounding, but neither of her parents seemed to notice or care. They stood jerkily, then thanked Mrs. Cavendish for their tea.

  “Mother?” Victoria said. “Father?” She kept pounding till she bruised her hands.

  Her parents left, smiling. Mrs. Wright waved her hand: “Oh, just a misunderstanding, I’m sure.” Mr. Wright blinked dully at his wife: “Dear, why are we here again? Can’t we go home?”

  For many minutes after they’d gone, Victoria whispered, “But I’m here.” She scooted back to the hanger because the floor wasn’t as creepy there. She huddled up in the dingy light and cried into her sleeve.

  MRS. CAVENDISH LET VICTORIA OUT OF THE HANGER in time for supper.

  “And how was our day?” she asked Victoria, petting her hair.

  Normally, Victoria would have looked Mrs. Cavendish straight in the eye and said, “It was excellent.” She wouldn’t have in any way let Mrs. Cavendish see that really the day had been the worst day ever.

  But this wasn’t normally. Victoria stared at the roach-covered wall. They weren’t moving now or flicking their wings or anything; the wall stood shining, silent, and still. Victoria shrugged.

  “It was fine.”

  Mrs. Cavendish jerked Victoria’s chin up. “You must look me in the eye when you speak to me.”

  Victoria did. “It was fine,” she said again.

  A
smile unfurled across Mrs. Cavendish’s red lips. “That’s a good girl.”

  Victoria followed her out of the hanger. She dutifully tidied herself up in a jeweled powder room that Mrs. Cavendish opened from the wall with a brass key. The jewels were golden hands and pearled teeth and bright ruby hearts.

  Victoria went to supper. She ate every single one of the meat bits in her stew and cleaned her bowl. Mrs. Cavendish watched gleefully from the head of the table. So did Mr. Alice.

  She followed the other girls upstairs. She sat on her cot. At lights-out, she got under the covers and stared at the ceiling.

  Jacqueline crept over and whispered, “What happened? Where were you all day? What’s wrong?”

  Victoria said nothing. She hardly heard Jacqueline. She hardly heard anything at all.

  “Did she put you in the parlor?” asked Jacqueline.

  Still, Victoria said nothing. Jacqueline gave up.

  Victoria didn’t sleep much that night. Every time she closed her eyes, the dark place behind her eyelids became the dirty window in the hanger. The floating red and yellow light spots became her parents, leaving her, not caring about her.

  They were forgetting her. Everyone was forgetting her. Everyone was forgetting all of them.

  Victoria had never really given much thought to people caring about her or not. Her parents treated her well, she had Lawrence to boss around, she had the respect and fear of her professors and schoolmates. That had been enough.

  But now the thought of her parents going on without her, and not even realizing they were going on without her, shriveled her up inside. Even seeing them through the hanger’s dirty window had been wonderful. She missed seeing them, being proud of how beautiful they were, and hearing them brag about her.

  She wanted to curl into the scratchy white sheets and hide, but she couldn’t find the will to move that much. Instead, she turned her cheek into the pillow and stared at the wall.