Lionel nods to Stoakes, then crosses to me and lays his hands on my shoulders before pulling me to him in a strong grip.
My ear presses against the pouch of tobacco in his coat pocket. He rubs the back of my neck, lays his cheek on my head, and his breath warms my scalp for only a moment before he steps away.
I smell like death. It’s why he moved away. The decomposing skin, the rot of liver and belly, the stench of gases, the sweet mildew and musk of it threads my black widow’s weeds and hair. Alice wraps around me like a shroud.
“My God,” I say. “What have we done?”
“Not now.” He glances behind, to Stoakes, his eyes apologizing. Then he strides down the stairs to the pebble walkway, just one glance over his shoulder to make certain I’m following him. “Come along, Marion. The cab is waiting.”
He leans forward to talk to the driver. The horses are edgy; the cab rolls back, then forward.
I take his hand and clamber to my seat, folding my skirts round my thighs and settling into the cracked leather. The driver in his faded coat turns his head halfway to hear us. His hat is dark rimmed with sweat and matted with horsehair.
“Move on.” Lionel rests his hands atop each other, snaking his gloves between his palms.
The carriage sways and starts forward.
“We’re all that’s left now.”
Lionel stares at a rip in the fabric, right near his shoulder. It’s been poorly mended. “Don’t be silly. There’s Cathy. Toby.”
“Your family,” I say. “Not mine.”
We slow for the gatekeeper. He chucks his crutch under his arm and uses the gate for balance, his left trouser leg loose below the knee, swinging with the motion. Where? I want to ask. Antietam, Fredericksburg, a nameless creek in Virginia muddled with late-spring runoff: I might have held his hand. Or lied and said there would be ether when there was none.
The driver turns the horses to the road. The light flicks through silver maples, planted to maintain privacy.
“She wasn’t well. If you’d been here, you’d have known.” His voice drips with accusation. “Not at the end. My God, she nearly—”
“I don’t want this argument now.”
“You made a lot of excuses for her.”
I shake my head and look down at my lap, at the tangled mess I’ve made of the thumb of my glove. I’ve picked it apart, cotton and silk now torn and in knots.
Lionel stares, too, then pulls the glass open. Just outside his window, orange dahlias and red heleniums line the drive, riotous and bloated with too much color. Just outside mine is the brown brick building that holds Alice in its bowels. Two workmen sit astraddle the far peak of roof. One fans his face with a wide-brimmed hat, staving off the heat and mosquitos. The other slaps at his arm, then turns up his palm to stare at whatever’s left of the bug before wiping it off on his trouser leg.
“I was going to visit,” I say. “When I’d settled. This week or next.”
“She’d have refused to see you.”
“Why?”
“Do you need to ask that?” He points out my window to a narrow road that meets with ours. A mule with heavy head pulls the buckboard. A simple pine casket rests in the bed. “There’s the wagon.”
The driver sits wide kneed, round backed, his chin jutted forward. He pulls the traces, slowing the mule, ceding the roadway to us. With a quick nod, he doffs his soft cap and holds it aloft as we pass by.
My chest burns with each breath. I force myself to watch our driver. I count the stitches along the back of his brown coat. The fabric is faded nearly yellow at the shoulders. He’s mended a rip in the hem.
Lionel’s wife, Cathy, will be waiting at the house. She’ll have cleared the dining room and gathered muslins. I don’t think I can take her condolences any more than I could take them when Benjamin died.
The horse whip bends and swings in its stand near the driver’s thigh, and he looks averse to using it. Other drivers flick and play the leathers on their horse’s backs, but he leaves it be, churrs and hums instead.
“Toby shouldn’t see Alice like this,” I say, my eyes following the swing of the leather. “He’s too young.”
“I’ll look out for him.” Lionel stretches his neck, first one way, and then the other, before staring out his window glass.
There’s a quick movement along the stone fence. A shard of sun reflects off a white cap and pale wrists and forearms. A girl, wraith thin, scrambles over the fence, hands waving, black hair frizzled at the forehead. She jogs next to us, reaching out to catch the doorframe. Her eyes are the palest of green, nearly incandescent against the scarlet birthmark marring her cheek and jaw.
“Mrs. Abbott. Oh please, Mrs. Abbott.” A wide scar rides along her chin and curves up as she speaks. “I need to talk to you.”
Lionel leans over me. “Get away from the carriage.”
“No, I need to talk to Mrs. Abbott. Please . . . stop the horses.”
The driver flicks his long whip so it snaps the air by the girl’s leg. “Get back to work, Kitty Swain.”
“Oh, stop. Charlie, stop.” She calls and waves, stumbles in a divot as she sprints to keep pace.
The horses are urged to a trot. The girl gives up, lifting and dropping her arms to her skirts. She stares at me, her mouth moving and something akin to pleading in her visage. But the words are lost in the horse’s clops and the squeals of the carriage axles.
A spit of sweat, icy and sharp, stings my neck. I remove my kerchief from my sleeve and dab. But I turn my head, compelled to take one last look at this pompous brick building with the inviting porch and grated windows and a cupola ringed with lightning rods. A single-paned glass window in the middle dormer catches the sun and holds it. Each wing’s roof is steep pitched—easy enough to slip.
Three stories. Four along the left wing where the ground slopes away. An accidental, unfortunate fall. Sunken eyes, gaping mouth, crisscrossed slices and scratches from the thorns. Bruising on her forehead. Blood-stiff hair.
Three stories. Four at the apex.
How did you get on the roof, Alice?
Chapter Two
Maple and elm branches arch over the road, cling tight to the edges. The trees are heavy with cicadas, the air vibrating with their chatter. Teeth on metal. The branches tap and scrape the top of the brougham. One of the insects drops past my window to the dirt.
Lionel and I pass an hour in silence. The dirt road curls to the right, a thin track between the trees. Midway down we pass the husk of a once-grand house. Now it is nothing but long windows of shattered glass and weeds crawling up the brick. The old Burton manse. Silent and empty these past ten years, ever since the murders of the poor wife and her companion.
We turn to the Post Road, follow the wind of the river until we are amidst the tumble of Harrowboro proper. The town is full with mourning, though it has been months since the war ended, since Lincoln lost his life; no one looks askance at our cortege. I stop counting the women in weeds black as mine—flicking a broom on a porch, bending to a basket to coo at a babe, balancing wash on a shoulder, exiting the dry goods, the druggist’s. Dull cottons, heavy laces, jet bead brooches, lapel pins that hold an image or braid of hair in their cases. I turn my head from the legless beggar, the newsboy lifting the afternoon paper with one arm and the sleeve of the other pinned tight. By the livery, the women thin out, their figures just ghosts of skirts flitting between the shops. Three new photography studios have opened between Adams and School Street. At least now the tintypes will be of the living.
At Manufacturers Row, we slow and plod and lurch forward, accommodating carts piled high with woolens and mules pulling great carts of lumber. The brass dome of Snow & Son gleams. I turn my eyes from the reflection, but Lionel stares at it straight on. The windows are shuttered; a note with a black border is pinned to the door.
The buildings give way to farms set back behind low stone fences and fields and weeping trees. Then, another hour, and there is the house. Plain w
hite wood, black-paned windows, the whole of it rambling every which way over the contours of the land. Lionel has removed the grand elm we used to swing from, leaving the house exposed and sharp edged like a broken tooth.
“Ahey, ahoy!” There’s a flash out my window: Lionel’s son, Toby, runs alongside us, his knees pinked and dimpled, his short breeches tight around his stout legs. Old Saoirse chases after him, white braid against her back, calico skirts flicking up fine dirt, her fingers just missing him as he jumps away.
He’s pale, his eyes the same faded blue as his mother’s, like gingham too much worn. It still hurts to look at him. How much he resembles Lydia, as if she shimmers under his skin instead of under the earth with a simple granite marker. His nose has the same quick upturn, and mouth the same curve to the lips; all of it so pleasing on his mother—Lovely Lydia, we called her—but somehow giving pause when observing the child. As if all of Lydia’s features have been copied by an apprentice.
We come to a stop in front of the house. The windows are festooned in black. A long ribbon hangs from the front door. Cathy has been industrious during our absence.
Toby jumps the two granite steps and peers at the wagon behind us. He opens his mouth to say something, but Saoirse has caught up and stands in his way.
Lionel reaches across me and clamps his hand to the window frame. “Why is the boy outside? Get in the house.”
I lay a hand on Lionel’s forearm. He shakes it off, clambers over me, fumbling with the handle before shoving the door hard enough it clangs against the brougham’s body. He curls his hands to the frame and takes a breath. His cheeks have turned a mottled red.
“Lionel . . .”
“See to our sister.” He jumps out and strides to Toby, lifting him into his arms and over his shoulder. Toby’s hands flap on his father’s back. Saoirse turns to me, lifting her palms in surrender before following them.
The old roan blows out a breath and jangles the traces. I fiddle open the clips to the glass between us. “Do I owe you money?”
“The asylum paid.”
“Will you help with the coffin?”
The driver—Charlie—purses his lips and scratches a dark patch of stubble on his chin. His eyes mark each window of the two-story house and land on the open door. “You’ll need to bury her soon.”
“I’m aware.”
He twists farther to look at me directly. Something shifts in his features. “I’ll do such.”
“Oh, Marion.” Cathy floats down the front steps, crosses to the cab, her dove-gray skirts clutched high to avoid the dirt. The crinoline swings and settles when she lets go to reach up for me. “Oh, Marion. This is too much death.” Her eyes are button black and restive, and her dark brows come together as she looks to the wagon behind us. She puts her hand to her mouth, stumbling back on a foot and catching herself. “We’ll need more towels.”
I step from the cab, my stomach roiling and legs still feeling the sway of the carriage. The two drivers take the coffin between them, each to a handle. The melting ice drips a dark line into the drive, a thin stream of water and mud.
“I have the dining room ready,” Cathy says.
“Thank you.”
She scuttles in front of me. “I’ll have Saoirse bring more towels.”
The chairs have been pushed against the wall, ready for vigil. The summer curtains, pulled closed, leave the room a dingy beige. There is no air; the windows have been closed against the heat. Cathy’s added another leaf to the table, laid the muslin on the waxed wood. I turn to the serving cabinet. My eyes follow the new wallpaper’s tangling green vines and florid palm leaves. Underneath there is still the pale peach that Lydia had sent from Boston. But Cathy is fond of this. The rug has been rolled back. The men’s feet echo, and if the mirror were not layered in black cloth, I would see their reflection as they set Alice’s body to the table.
Cathy’s left a bouquet of summer blooms on the cabinet top. I run my hand across them and then crush bits of lavender sprig she’s laid to the side of a large bowl of water. A basket is set to the floor with colored rags rolled and stacked. I need to thank her, but the thought of another debt sits heavy.
There’s a scrape and bump above my head, from Toby’s room. Lionel is playing with the boy, distracting him; perhaps they’re playing hoops and sticks inside, which Cathy forbids.
Leather is pulled from brass; the ice has been unbuckled, or what’s left of it.
“We’ll crack it outside,” one of the men says. They’ll crack it so we can slip the shards around the body, hide it away under the muslin.
“It’s not necessary,” Cathy says. “There’s no one to call on her.”
“I would like to sit vigil tonight.” The lavender is brittle; I press a thumb to it, raise it to my nose.
Cathy nods. “The ice, then.”
The pine box rests on the floor. The men make quick work of the lid. I keep my eyes to the wallpaper. Every third vine on the wall changes pattern, turns another way, hides a bright-orange floret. Why did Cathy replace the original? There was nothing wrong with it; it was not out of style. It was an extravagant thing to do, and in the middle of the war.
“Hup,” one of them says. One at Alice’s head, the other at her feet, and they’ve laid her to the table with only a rustle of muslin and a light bump to the wood.
“The ice is under the yew, when you’re needing it.” I glance to the door, at Charlie with his cap stuffed in his belt, watch him step to pick up the leathers and roll them tight. He takes the hammer from the cabbie and sticks the handle in his belt next to his cap.
Cathy, at the head of the table, rubs and rubs her hand over her bodice. Then she lifts the watch pinned to her waistband. “Is that all?”
“That’s all, ma’am.”
“You’ll find lemonade and cake in the kitchen. Before you go.”
She moves from behind the table to close the double doors. Her hand is on the knob as she turns back to the room, and she twists it back and forth. Her eyes travel the long boards of the floor.
We must look. We must look.
The coffin’s top leans between two windows. The nails show, ready to return to their place. The long box stands alongside. I turn, catch the tip of a nose and curve of forehead, force myself to look. It’s not Alice here. It’s a body. Alice left when she fell off the roof. This is just a body.
Cathy’s lips tremble. She lets go the doorknob and takes a hesitant step.
“Will you read from the Bible, Cathy?”
Her face relaxes, eyes alit with relief. “Yes, of course I will.”
“Then I shall wash her.”
4573. This is the number stitched above Alice’s left pocket. Neat and small, in a blue thread. The cotton gown is shapeless, the buttons obscenely large. One has been ripped from the collar, and the one below is sewn with red thread. I fold back the fabric: Alice is barely there. The poke of ribs, breasts small and shriveled though she is but twenty-four. Her stomach is concave, slung between the jut of her hipbones, marbling now in greens.
I shift Alice to undress one arm and then another. Cathy murmurs from her perch on a chair, peering up every so often from the Bible she holds flat to her lap. She murmurs, and outside the glass the cicadas buzz.
Alice is light as air; I expected the weight I’d grown used to when preparing the men at the field hospital. Like the dead men, she is silent and does not complain about the indignity of her naked body exposed to all and sundry.
I fold the garment and set it on a chair, though my only plan is to burn it. The water in the blue filigreed bowl is tepid. I circle the washcloth, squeeze it, and listen to the drops.
Her skin has begun to slough from muscle and bone. I hold her hand, press the cloth between the fingers. Her nails are short from biting them; a bad habit she never broke. We have the same curve to our ring fingers. I rub at her wrist, but the mud-brown ring remains stubborn. I turn her hand, palm up. The underside of her wrist is white, the veins a blue black.
I round the table. Touch my thumbs to a bruise that runs from temple to temple, then run my gaze to the faint stippling of color across her chest, across both upper arms. Another band of yellowing at the wrists. Again, across her thighs and ankles. Across the tops of her feet. Each band of discoloration uniform in width. Like leather belts buckled one hole too tight.
With a quick turn, I yank open a curtain for more light. Cathy straightens in her chair and stops reading.
“What is this?”
She won’t look. Her eyelids flit, and she gives a minute shake of her head.
“What did they do to her?”
The Bible slips from Cathy’s lap, hitting the floor with a thud as she stands. Her eyes slide across Alice’s body, and she lets out a sharp gasp. “Oh, no. Oh, Alice.”
I slap the cloth to the table and stride to the door, out to the hall, lunging up the stairs past the walls of bilious peonies, turning at the landing to Toby’s room. The door is ajar. Toby shrieks a laugh. I push into the room, find Lionel crouched on the floor in the center of a cast-iron train set. Toby shrinks into the corner by the hobby horse.
“Have you seen her? In all this time, have you ever seen her?”
Lionel stands and steps from the circle of flatbeds and caboose. He grips my arm tight near the elbow and half pushes, half pulls me from the room. “Not here.”
“Did you visit her?”
“She didn’t want to see me.”
My shoulder catches a picture frame, tilting Mother’s image and pushing the far corner against the curio.
“You’re hurting Auntie.” Toby cowers against the door, a stuffed toy rabbit crushed between his hands.
Lionel turns to him, loosening his grip. “Get back in your room.”
Toby darts past us, bouncing from Lionel’s leg to the railing before tearing down the stairs.
“Don’t let him—Lionel, don’t let him.”
After Alice Fell: A Novel Page 2