by Lily Levi
Her feet sunk into the plush carpet. “No,” she said. “But it still kind of tickles.” She wrapped her own arm around his waist and instantly felt how muscled and warm he was beneath his linen shirt. She bit her lip.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she said. She was ready.
Holding the silver tray with the abhorrent blood sausages in one hand, he helped her walk towards the open doorway and into the dark hallway.
“I’m doing it,” she whispered. “I think I have some kind of weird regenerative power.”
“You’ve forgotten how long it’s been,” he whispered back.
“Why are we whispering?” She looked up to find his face, but it was too dark.
“Ghosts,” he said. “We mustn’t wake them.”
She could hear the smile in his voice and it made her unexpectedly giddy. Perhaps it was the dark. Perhaps it was being so close to him. Perhaps it was both.
They moved slowly down the hall and then slower down the stairs. They took short breaks when she needed them. She could feel the bloodhound’s coarse fur against her bare legs as the dog ran happy circles around them.
They paused together on the second platform. The stairs flumed out into an empty lobby, though it was still richly elaborate in its own way.
Two lounging chairs, covered with dust, sat on either side of the room. Blue and white vases armed them on either side. A silver chandelier, dim with light rust, hung from the ceiling above them.
Jolene shook her head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You’re some kind of old-timey prince, aren’t you?”
They continued their slow descent down the flumed staircase. “That would be lovely,” he said. “But alas.”
The marble floor was cold beneath her feet and she shivered.
He held her closer against him and they made their way to the end of the lobby-like foyer.
At the start of a smaller hallway, she paused with him to look into what must have been, at one time, an inviting parlor.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, “but this whole place is kind of rundown, isn’t it?”
He followed her gaze. “Such things tend to happen when you’re the only one left.” His voice betrayed a quiet sadness and he moved her forward into a narrow entryway without saying more.
Here, he stopped and set the silver tray on a spindled table and turned to face her. His hands rested lightly on her waist.
She felt the sudden, unbearable urge to lift herself up on her toes and kiss him. A month had passed and every day found her more drawn to him than the last.
“Let me carry you the rest of the way,” he said, breaking the short spell. “I’m afraid it gets a bit rocky from this point onwards.”
Jolene didn’t protest, she only held her breath and hoped he wouldn’t feel the quick beating of her heart.
He pushed the double doors open and picked her up.
The cool brightness of the air outside forced her to press her face against his shirt. Her heart rose at the musky smell of him.
“Do you like it?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she whispered, mistaking the question. But he hadn’t meant how he smelled. Quietly mortified, she moved her face away from his shirt. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the light and to the full pines rising up on either side of a long path down to the gray water below.
“Yes,” she said. “I like it.”
He carried her down to the rocky shore. Despite the bright sun and open sky, the water in the bay sat dark and uninviting. Clipped waves reflected the sun, but they didn’t look as though wanted to take in any of its warmth.
She peered behind him with her arms still wrapped around his neck.
The house was nothing like she’d imagined it. The house – no, the manor – was five stories tall, but only if she counted the peaked windows of the attic and the double rotundas on either side of its center, like some kind of American castle.
Its length spread out in two directions behind a mask of green trees. On one side, the four floors extended out without interruption. The windows were perfectly symmetrical and dressed with curtains, except for the windows on the top floor, which ran from floor to ceiling. On the other side of the house, the top three floors stopped abruptly and the bottom two extended back, like a folded stone wing.
“I can’t believe you live here alone,” she said.
“I don’t,” he said. She could feel his lungs expand beneath the wall of his chest. “At least not anymore.” He carried her down to a long dock that extended out into the bay and set her down into a reclined wooden chair, facing the open water.
“Thank you,” she said, sad to have left his arms.
He smoothed her wild hair, set the cigarettes into her lap, and returned to the house for the coffee and blood sausages.
Jolene lit a cigarette against the wind and closed her eyes. “Godforsaken blood sausages,” she whispered.
She listened to the soft lapping of the cold waves beneath her.
Was this how life had always been?
She didn’t think so. Besides her lost memories, there had to be some desperate flaw in the whole thing that she just wasn’t seeing.
Or maybe there was nothing at all. Maybe she would never have another reason to worry ever again, but that didn’t feel right.
No, if her life here was a painted canvas, there was the smallest black mark in the corner, just off the edge. But what was it?
Chapter Seventeen
The day passed peacefully. They spent the whole of the morning and most of the afternoon on the dock. They spoke in shared whispers, though there was no one to hear them.
When the evening settled in along the sky and the fireflies took to the air, Laurie carried her back inside. In some terrible unspoken way, he enjoyed that she couldn’t walk fully on her own yet. He hoped that she’d regain her abilities soon, yes, but holding her made him feel more strong and powerful than he’d felt in a long while.
When she asked to sit in the parlor rather than the bedroom, he hadn’t denied her.
“It’s so much cooler down here than upstairs,” she said, settling into the large green ottoman. “Would it be all right if I slept here instead? Just for tonight, I mean.”
“Of course,” he said. He reached for a tasseled pillow and brushed it off for her. “Will you be comfortable?”
“Oh yes.” She reclined into the cushion. “I think so.”
Riley jumped up into the armchair beside her and curled into a brown ball of fur.
“Then by all means,” he said, patting down Riley’s coarse fur. “My home is yours.”
Her face hardened for a small moment, just quick enough for him to see it.
“Thank you,” she said.
He thought about the fourth floor, about his portrait gallery and Maman’s hidden remains. Did she sense them? Could she know what he hid from her? He knew that these things could never be part of the house in her mind. She wouldn’t understand his zealous need to paint himself again and again, and she certainly wouldn’t understand Maman’s corpse.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She gave him a weak smile. “No, not really. It’s just, I keep thinking about the woman in the obituary. I wish I could remember who she was.”
He look down at his hands and then back at her. “Finding the memory of her won’t bring her back. Still, I understand and will do what I can to help you remember who she was and how you knew her. But,” he said, “tonight, you rest. No more worrying that little head of yours. Not now.”
He moved out from the parlor and stopped in the doorway.
“Not now,” she repeated. “And, just so you know, when I say ‘thank you’, I really mean thank you. Thank you for today, for everything. I realize you don’t have to do any of this and well, it really means something. You could’ve taken me to a hospital and I guess I’m saying I’m glad you didn’t.” She took a long breath, having stumbled through the words. “I
like this.”
He gripped the side of the doorway to keep himself from moving towards her and kissing her, once and for all. He’d felt the urge to bring her close and kiss her on the dock, and before then as well. She was at once plain and wild with a beauty all her own, but he couldn’t let himself believe that she’d think fondly of such a kiss. She’d given him no indication that it would be well-received, and so he held himself back from her.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I would never put anyone back into a world they didn’t remember.” He gazed at her and tightened his grip against the doorframe.
She lounged with her arm behind her head. “No one?” she asked.
“Especially not you.”
“Well, thank you.” She smiled sleepily at him. He saw that the summer sun had played its tricks on her and she would soon sleep.
“Good night,” he whispered.
“Good night.”
He forced his legs to carry him away from the parlor – and from her. He didn’t want to do something they might both regret. She had been with him for over month and, try as he might to keep the softer feelings at bay, they insisted on pushing through.
Of course, it had been a most enjoyable month and some weeks. He knew this because where before the same amount of time had felt like nothing but a wrinkle in a large swath of fabric, the time spent with her had been like an entire fold in the same swath.
It could not be ignored.
Riley stayed behind in the armchair and he was glad for it. It comforted him to know someone was with her when he couldn’t be.
He took his time climbing up to the fourth floor.
He unlocked the door with the same quiet carefulness as he would if it were a sickroom.
Inside, Maman lay lifeless in the middle of the bed.
Laurie felt a vitriolic mixture of relief and disappointment at the sight of her. He’d continued to course the blood through her broken body, but some part of him prayed it wouldn’t work, even while he held the mechanical heart in his hands.
For better or for worse, the mad urgency had all but dissipated. It was Jolene. Unbeknownst to her, she was a salve for his obsessions, even for his obsessive painting.
Elise had done the same.
He allowed himself a low sigh. It was a small thing, but it helped.
He took up the needle and syringe. He could walk away, he knew this. He could shut the door. He could never enter the room again. He could leave the house entirely. He could set it on fire and forget that he’d ever wanted to know what happened.
But instead, he pushed the needle into his arm and drew out more of his own dark blood.
He injected it slowly into the top of the mechanical heart, watching, mesmerized, as it whirred and pumped his blood into her.
After it was finished, he kneeled beside Maman’s bed and reached for her dry hand. He moved his ear over her mouth and listened for any sign of returned life.
Maybe she was never coming back.
The muggy air pulsed with something hot and gray, but it passed so quickly that he couldn’t have said if it was anything at all.
But it was.
Maman’s black eyes glistened sharply, as though she’d felt it too, and he moved his head away from hers.
Chapter Eighteen
January 4, 1702
Unmapped Territory, North America
Francoise pulled her dark hair back and twisted it up into a tight bun at the base of her neck. Bring him home, she’d said, and he had.
But what of himself?
She pressed the rouge to her thin cheeks.
“What happened?” she asked absently, though he still slept.
It was their custom, now. She would wake up before him, sit at her vanity, and watch the mirror with one eye for movement on his side of their cold, shared bed.
But there was never an answer. If he ever looked at her, it was only because his eyes were passing by and she happened to be in their way.
I brought him home, he’d said. But that had been some time ago. Few words had been shared between them since.
She wanted him to say he didn’t know what happened. She wanted him to yell at her, to hit her, to throw her head against the floor and demand she never ask him that question again or any other question.
She wanted for his face to break and for tears to fall down his face like the little boy she knew he still was, somewhere deep inside, not the cold, empty monster that had returned home in the place of the husband that had loved her and their son.
He woke silently from the bed and shuffled out from the room. She listened to the opening and closing of the door across the hall and the heavy turn of the lock.
A servant would leave food outside the door. He would leave his secluded study twice to relieve himself. At two hours to midnight, he would shuffle back into their room and move into the bed beside her, never saying a word.
Francoise closed her robe and made her way down the stairs.
The boy lay in his bed as he had since their return from that frozen hell. She should’ve put herself between him and the ship. He never should’ve left her.
She watched him twirl a paint brush through the air.
“What does Papa do?” he asked, dropping the brush into his lap. His gray eyes widened at his own question, as though he expected to hear something very unpleasant.
She touched the small mole on her chin. It was a strange habit to have, but it helped her to think and brought her back into her own flesh.
She felt the warm eyes of the boy’s tutor on her face, but she refused to exchange looks in front of the boy, in front of Laurie.
Laurie. Oh, how the name pained her now. That he would be named after his father was once a thing of pride. Now, it shot dark pins into her heart.
She dropped her hand and moved to his side. She smoothed the dark hair back from his small forehead. He already looked so much like his father and nothing at all like her. “I don’t know what your father does,” she said.
Martel, the boy’s tutor of four years, caught her eye from the other side of the bed. “Perhaps,” he said, turning towards the boy, “he’s looking at maps and studying them for your next adventure.”
Laurie’s mouth turned down in a petulant frown. “He never comes to ask me about it, Monsieur. We plan together, that’s what he said.”
“Ah,” said Martel, “that’s because mapping an adventure is very, very taxing. He is always so tired that he goes straight to bed. You see?”
Laurie leaned back into the bed and gave a reluctant nod.
Francoise touched his soft hair again. “He loves you very much,” she said, not knowing how true that was anymore. She didn’t know what else to say.
The boy furrowed his brow at her touch. It hurt to see and she pulled her hand away.
“All right, Maman,” he said.
Francoise took a long breath and smiled at him, her boy who had been brought home. She wanted so much to ask him what had happened in that white wasteland, and every day her jaw worked itself up into asking the question, though she never asked it. Martel was her last well of strength and he would not let her.
When he’s ready, he will tell you. The boy loves you very much. Let him heal, my darling, let him stop hurting. We must be careful not to upset him and cause further injury.
Martel patted the bed. “Shall we paint?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” he said with an air of finality, as if it were the only thing anyone should ever truly be doing. “The dog again, please.”
Francoise found her eyes drawn away from the bed and to the green rug in the corner of the room. The bloodhound slept with her face in her paws.
“Oh,” said Martel. “You paint this dog too much.”
The boy shook his head with the adamancy of the child he was. “I will paint her perfectly. I will be a master painter.”
Martel smiled gently, perhaps even knowingly. “A good painter knows when to move on to other, less fine subjects. To obses
s over one thing, that is not a good painter. A good painter will know how to capture dogs, yes, but also he will know how to paint this chair, this bed, this window frame.”
“And you,” said the boy, interrupting him. His voice flashed bright and open, as though he had come to some high understanding. He turned to Francoise and she gave him her best smile.
“And Maman,” he said, more to himself than to either of them. “I shall paint Maman. I shall paint Monsieur Marteaux. And then, I shall paint again Riley.”
“Between these things,” said Martel, “nous pratiquerons votre français. We shall practice your French.”
In the morning, Martel presented the boy with a basket of wax fruit from his own home.
He moved to her side. Together, they watched the boy prepare his paints with all the seriousness of an old artist.
Martel placed his hand against the small of her back and she straightened at his touch. The time between his skin touching hers always felt so long, though it could be just minutes before.
“We might find a new pastime for him,” he whispered into her ear. “He will grow tired of the fruit and take up the dog again.” She felt his eyes glide playfully over her. “He is stubborn like his sweet maman.”
Francoise folded her arms. “Bedbound children have few enough things to do. He should enjoy his dog, if that’s what he wants.”
“Yes,” said Martel, tilting his head as if to see the boy and his canvas from a different angle, one he hadn’t seen before. “At least it’s only a dog.”
Chapter Nineteen
July 23, 1994
Neverpine, California
Laurie waited. The hours passed slowly.
Her body groaned periodically from some deep, earthen place.
Her dry lids blinked for the first time and he dropped her hand.
“Maman?” He held his breath and waited. It wasn’t possible, but there it was.
She groaned louder, a dark whimper.
He felt himself pained with the struggling sound of it, unable to move.