by Alice Bell
There was no mirror in the attic, which wasn’t a bad thing. I twirled across the dusty floor in my bare feet. The long skirt flew out and rustled against my skin, like cool water. My mother was so much taller than me; the dress dragged the floor when I walked.
I went back to the chest and sat next to it.
The next thing I pulled out was an ivory napkin edged in white lace. I refolded it and put it away. There was a set of English Bone China trimmed with pink roses. I found a flat wooden box, intricately carved.
Knives glinted against black velvet. When I touched the gleaming points, my pulse raced.
One knife was missing.
I closed the box and slid it away from me, across the floor. I dipped my hand back into the chest. I ran my finger along the rims of crystal glasses. I took out a flute and held it up. My mother’s name had been etched in curling letters. India.
I searched for a glass with my father’s name. I examined every plate and cup and saucer. There was no trace of him.
Nestled in the lap of a linen tablecloth, I discovered a silk pouch. I emptied it. A gold locket slid into the palm of my hand. I opened it and found it bare.
Anger flared in the pit of my stomach. Despite the beautiful things my mother’s hope chest held, it was as empty as her locket. Hopeless.
I had nothing from her. Not even a picture of my father. She called him the ‘sperm donor’ but I believed he was a real person who would have loved me, if he’d been given a chance.
I stalked across the floor. Dread churned in my gut. The lowering sun cast pink swaths on the floor.
Standing by the bed, I drew aside the mosquito net and stirred dust. I sneezed. I stroked the white chenille bedspread and breathed in the faint scent of soap. I felt as if I had opened a sealed time capsule. I had an urge to lie down and take a nap.
But I had to finish what I’d started.
I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed. It was right there, at my fingertips—my suitcase from the sanitarium. I grasped the handle and pulled it out, an old midnight blue Samsonite, a hand-me-down from my grandmother.
When I opened it, my heart thudded in my chest. My grandmother had packed clothes that were far too glamorous for a twelve year old mental patient. I guess she thought it would cheer me up to wear a silk scarf or a pair of patent leather shoes, a Chanel dress.
She never traveled again, after I got out of the sanitarium. She stayed home to take care of me, making sure I followed my prescribed schedule, imbibed the proper medication and ate balanced meals.
I pushed the clothes aside, looking for a tear in the lining of the suitcase. A memory loomed in the far recesses of my mind. Why had I pushed it away?
I found the tear. It wasn’t very big. My fingers hit one side of the case. Nothing. Maybe I had dreamed it. I swept my hand across to the other side and my fingers brushed the fragile edge of a thin piece of paper.
It was small, cut from a newspaper. I didn’t look at it, but held it curled in my hand.
I got in bed, under the covers. My mother’s perfume wafted up from her dress and enveloped me. Already, I was starting to cry. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.
The light in the attic turned gray.
I allowed myself to picture her, as I remembered her. She was tall and thin with a haunted look in her eyes. She had white blonde hair, like a flame. She used to sit by the window and stare out.
Her name was Zadie.
She said she had to find him before it was too late. No one ever came to visit her.
One morning, she wasn’t sitting in her chair by the window. I got a funny feeling, like when I used to wake up in the middle of the night to find my mother had gone out and left me alone.
I went to Zadie’s room and ran into a nurse just leaving. I asked where Zadie was. The nurse said she left.
“Did he come to get her?” I said.
“No, dear,” the nurse pulled the door shut. “No one came.”
I pretended to leave but as soon as the hall was clear, I tried Zadie’s door. It wasn’t locked.
I saw a pink plastic lunch box on a cramped little desk in the corner. I thought Zadie must have left it. She favored pink, which was my favorite color too. All her things looked like they were from a thrift store.
I opened the box and found a newspaper clipping inside.
Now, I sat up in bed and unfurled the paper. There was a black and white picture. Of Devon. My eyes scanned the words with disbelief.
On the evening of July 7, Devon Slaughter passed away at Hospital Metrapolitano in Managua, Nicaragua. He was 29 years old. He was the only child of Erin Morgan and Devon Ames Slaughter.
Devon was a doctor of philosophy and taught at Hawthorn College before leaving to travel and volunteer in Central America. A celebration of his life will be held at seven p.m. on Sunday at the Episcopal Parish of St. Barnabas. Donations in his name can be made to Doctors Without Borders.
18. Devon
MY HEAD throbbed like I had a hangover. I opened one eye. The dark swirled around like fog until my sight adjusted. I recognized the color of twilight coming through a crack in the curtains.
I was hugging a soft pillow.
I shot up out of bed. My gaze sought the corners of the room. Where were my boots? Damn. I felt disoriented, though I seemed to be back to normal, more or less, aside from the dull ache behind my eyes.
I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced down and buttoned my jeans. Oh, man. Zadie. What a fucked up night. Is that what it took to remember?
Did I want to remember? It was like being dealt another losing hand. Same shit, different day.
I pulled on my boots. I liked to be ready for a quick exit, no matter what. Under normal circumstances, my shoes stayed on. A sloe (slow) screw up against the wall wasn’t just a drink to me.
I ran my fingers through my hair and listened, hearing what at first I thought were mice scampering across the floor above. When I honed in, I realized it was the sound of crying.
So that’s where Ruby had gone. She did cry a lot.
Why was she crying? Her rampant emotions had excited me, at first. And now they stirred something deeper, what I’d been searching for when I watched those old movies—my humanity.
At the end of the hall, I saw a door cracked open. I went to it and found a narrow stairway. When I went up, my head brushed the ceiling.
Ruby heard me. I caught her sudden stillness, before her little footsteps scurried. When I reached the top of the stairs, my gaze fell on what looked to be discarded clothes. I followed the trail and found her hiding behind a red screen.
“Ruby?” I expected her to come out. I thought it must be some kind of game. Or maybe she had been doing something embarrassing and her first instinct was to hide.
She was crouched on the floor, wearing a white gown. The folds fanned out around her. She stared up at me with huge black-smeared eyes. Her long red hair was disheveled, as if she had been tearing at it. Her gown looked like something a little girl would put on for dress-up.
I wondered why her hands were behind her back. “What are you doing?” I said.
“Go away,” she hissed.
Had I hurt her feelings? Last night couldn’t have been much fun for her. But seeing her huddled in the strange dress, her hair wild, her eyes ravaged, I was afraid it might be something worse, something I should have seen coming. I thought of the full bottle of Lexapro in her dresser. Which brought me to: What exactly is wrong with her?
She stood up, keeping her back to the wall.
“What’s in your hand?” I said.
When I stepped around the screen, she bared her teeth and brandished a knife.
“Whoa. Hey. Take it easy…”
I wasn’t worried about myself. She couldn’t hurt me if she tried and it looked like she might. I was afraid for her, already envisioning a bloody accident. Though it was small, the knife appeared sharp. “Ruby, what’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”
Her li
ps were pale, trembling. “You’re not real,” she said. A sob wrenched from her throat. She held the knife higher. “Stay away from me, I’m warning you. Please.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will. Just give me the knife.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
I stared into her eyes and she stared back. Time slowed.
She tore her gaze away. “Oh, God,” she said. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happen-ing…” the knife dropped on the floor and she put her palms over her ears.
19. Ruby
WHAT WAS the truth?
I saw his dark eyes go to the knife. Or I imagined it. My hand shot out, quick as lightning, like I was a ninja on a movie screen. The handle was cool and smooth. The knife was real. I was real.
Devon was not.
He was born of my mind, fully formed (walking and talking and kissing), like Athena sprouted from the head of Zeus. I brought him to life from the pages of an obituary. I was inside a horror movie and I had no one but myself to blame. I couldn’t remember why I had stopped taking my pills. It seemed as if I had been cocky, like calling Dr. Ess a shrink and laughing.
I didn’t want to end up like my mother.
“Ruby, come on. Just give me the knife,” he sounded alarmed and even annoyed. Who did he think he was? A strange sound escaped my lips, a high careening giggle. My own fantasy had the nerve to tell me what to do.
Fury gripped me.
Curling my fingers tighter around the knife, I stood up and squared my shoulders. Devon’s face loomed above me, like Georgie’s had; only Devon’s was inhuman, perfect, so as to steal your heart with a single glance.
I forced myself to meet his gaze. His eyes were inscrutable. “Ruby. Give me the knife.”
My heart fluttered. I looked away. If I could conjure him out of thin air, I could make him disappear. But I didn’t want him to go away.
Images flashed through my mind, faster than I could grasp. Other people had seen him. What had Wong said about him? Hot, as in dangerous. And Henry shook his hand. He’d made Georgie’s polka-dot dress twirl on the dance floor.
“Ruby,” his voice was low and seductive. “Look at me.”
I imagined him reaching for the knife again. I lunged back and pointed it at him. His eyebrows drew together. He licked his bottom lip and I saw the white edge of his teeth. I felt dizzy. “Let me see you bleed,” I said.
“What?”
“I want to cut you.”
Something flashed in his eyes. I held his gaze, unyielding.
“Why?” he said.
I blinked. I would not cry. I was done with crying. I was going back on my meds tomorrow. I heard my grandmother’s voice in my head, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispered.
I started to quiver. “Please,” I said. “Please just…let me cut you. On your arm. I—I have to see if you’re real…”
The silence was unbearable. I lowered the knife.
“I could hurt you, Ruby. I don’t want to. But I do it all the time…things I don’t want to do.”
What if he wasn’t a delusion?
For the first time, I felt the real danger of him. My heart raced. It was an insane idea, and yet it was the only answer (aside from waking up in a padded room). He is a monster.
“I want to see,” I whispered. “I want to see what you’re made of…”
He grabbed the knife. I stood there, empty-handed. The room tilted. He wouldn’t give me this one thing. He didn’t trust me. He would rather hurt me.
But he said, “I’ll do it.”
He held out his arm and studied it, like he was a doctor. I wanted to kiss the smooth underside of his wrist. He made the cut across his vein. Blood spurted, red and thick. He tossed the knife. It skittered across the floor. “Keep watching,” he said, when my eyes darted to his face. The wound closed up, like magic. It reminded me of 3D movies, where volcanoes spewed fire and mountains collapsed into the sea.
I sank to my knees and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Don’t, Ruby.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care…”
He pulled me up by my arms. Gold light slanted through the long windows.
“I want to make love,” I said.
“Make love?”
“Whatever you call it. Right now. Before you leave me.”
“Why would I leave you?”
“Everyone leaves. And I forced you to show me something you didn’t want to. Something personal.” Something tragic.
There was a long, deafening quiet.
“What am I going to do with you?” he said.
* * *
He carried me to the bed and I clung to him like I was Scarlett O’Hara. He laid me on the rumpled covers and moved away. I heard him taking off his boots and my heart hammered. I was tense and waiting, but for once my mind was quiet, emptied of everything except him.
He straddled me, lacing his fingers through mine. I thought he would kiss me but he looked into my eyes. I didn’t want him to look at me. I just wanted to feel him. I wanted the rest of the world to disappear.
“I know you’re a virgin,” he said, finally. “It’s going to hurt.”
“How do you know I’m a virgin?”
He smiled.
“I want it to hurt,” I said.
He got off me.
I sat up, confused, until he began to undress, peeling off his T-shirt and sliding his jeans down past his hips. His body was chiseled in the dusky light. My mouth went dry as my eyes crept below his waist. I was suddenly, completely terrified. “Should I undress too?”
“Come here,” he said.
I stood in front of him. My gaze landed on his chest. I’d never seen a naked man, though I’d seen Javier without his shirt a few times. Javier was hairy. Devon wasn’t. His skin was smooth, almost burnished.
I reached out and touched the muscles on his stomach. I sucked in my breath. A few dark hairs made a silky trail and my hand moved down.
Without warning, he grabbed the front of my bodice and yanked. My mother’s wedding dress slithered to the floor. Cool air rushed over my skin.
He laughed.
A giddy feeling rose up inside me.
“Now these,” he slipped a finger inside my panties. There was the sound of tearing. Blood pounded in my ears.
He was carrying me again. Arranging me on the bed. I became aware of small details, the dampness on the sheets, the salty taste of his skin, my own slick sweat, the slow hard beat of his heart.
I stopped breathing.
His open mouth was on my throat. I felt his teeth scrape my skin. And then he was inside me. The pain was sharp.
His breath deepened. He slid out, back in. I swelled and tightened around him.
There was only his movement, his breath in my ear, the slow friction, sweat pooling between my breasts. My body went slack.
His hair was on my lips, filling my mouth and I saw a red glow outside the window as the sun fell low in the sky.
20. Devon
SHE SLEPT. Her hair spilled across the pillow. I dressed in the dark.
I was full of her energy and moved with stealth, searching the attic. This time, while fondling her things, I was on a mission. She had discovered something about me and the clue was up here, somewhere.
I thought of the night we met, the way she insisted I looked like Heathcliff, a vision created in her mind from the pages of a book. I thought of her dream, how it had pulled me in, like her tortured eyes. What if I had met her in another life?
I felt like a character in a video game, getting killed and resurrected, starting over from zero.
I checked the suitcase first; left open in the middle of the floor. It contained clothes that told me nothing.
I sifted through items in a cedar chest. I thought it was what Ruby had been doing before I heard her crying, before she went ballistic with the knife. Not that I blamed her. She’d figured ou
t the nasty truth about me a lot faster than I did. I was only just now comprehending how truly fucked I might be.
It wasn’t enough to remember the night in Ometepe and what led up to it. I needed to know who I had been. I wanted to be him again.
I pushed aside a table cloth and dug under linens. The chest contained heirlooms and housekeeping paraphernalia for a woman’s impending nuptials, I guessed. It was weirdly old-fashioned. I wondered if the things in the chest were for Ruby.
None of it had to do with me. I closed the lid.
What I was really looking for was a culprit. I had my suspicions but they were all so implausible, like my entire existence. I needed more to go on, a sign Ruby and I weren’t locked in an alternate reality, also known as ‘batshit.’
The attic was mostly bare. There was just the old screen, the bed draped in that incongruous mosquito net, the trunk…and Ruby. I gazed at her. She seemed to be dreaming. Her pale eyelids fluttered. Maybe it hadn’t been an accident falling into her dream. Maybe I possessed powers I had yet to unleash.
I felt beneath the covers, ran my hand under the mattress. What had she come across? I was sure I would recognize the significance, if only I could find it…whatever it was.
I could always wake her and force her to tell me. But I didn’t want to hear the words spoken aloud. I didn’t want her to have to say them. I’d seen the look in her eyes when she held the knife. She was already too close to the edge.
I checked the pockets on the suitcase again. The clothes were so small, fit for a child. I frowned. Was there a secret compartment? When I emptied the case, I saw a gash in the lining. I ripped it open wider. The sound of tearing was loud to my ears. My gaze darted to Ruby.
She stayed asleep.
It was such a small piece of paper, curled at the edges. I could hardly make sense of what it said. Devon Slaughter. So strange to see my name in faded print, as if I was old news, a forgotten relic.
I read the words over and over.
Passed away in Managua…twenty-nine years old. Passed away…
* * *
She sat up in bed. Her gaze found my shadow. I saw her struggling to connect to her surroundings. She pulled up the sheet to cover herself. “Devon?” she was breathless but she sounded relieved which bothered me. I wasn’t anyone (or anything) you’d want to bump into in the night. But she was nuts, wasn’t she?