The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  “You need to pray that she’s as good a whore as her mother, because I will have need of her.”

  Hearing those words, she regretted not listening to Odette. How could she watch him do these things to a daughter? A girl she had doomed long before her birth.

  When he was finished, she fumbled for the edge of the table and for her napkin to wipe her mouth the way he had done as he had eaten the rabbit. But she had to hold onto the table to keep from falling over. Still, nothing looked quite right to her eyes. Hot tears pressed against her eyelids when she closed them.

  Randolph, his pants secured, squatted down. Even squatting, he towered over her.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Kiku. I don’t even know if the bastard you’re carrying belongs to me. For the sake of propriety, I’m going to say it’s probably not. I know that cunt Jewel was whoring you out to other men even when I was paying her not to. But just so you understand, I own that child in the same way I own you.” He stood again, but she would not look at him, and so did not see his boot lift from the floor. The kick landed on her rib cage, and now she fell onto her side with an anguished cry. She gathered her knees to her chest and lay there, weeping, on the cold floor.

  In another few minutes, he was gone, his footsteps pounding down the porch stairs. But he hadn’t closed the front door, and when she finally opened her eyes, feeling the rush of cold across the floor, she saw that a tiny brown screech owl had flown in and landed silently in the middle of the parlor. It kneaded the carpet gingerly with its talons. Kiku gasped, drawing its attention, and its tufted ears twitched before its head slowly turned to face her. Its eyes were black disks surrounded by thick circles of gold.

  “Hello.” Kiku whispered to it in Japanese, certain it would like hearing Japanese rather than English, a language that sounded sharp in her own ears. Staring, it took a single step as though it might come to her, but, hearing a sound that made its ears turn suddenly, it took off again into the night just as silently as it had arrived.

  With its departure, the pain in Kiku’s heart eased as well.

  Chapter 15

  AMELIA

  November 1878

  Tamora’s nurse, Harriet, came out of the train car’s larger bedroom carrying a bottle of medicine.

  “She took it like a lamb. Much better than last night.”

  “She’ll sleep then.” It was a statement, not a question. Amelia liked to have all questions concerning Tamora answered before they became questions in anyone else’s mind. She had to. If it weren’t for her constant vigilance, Tamora would have spent the last three years of her young life in an institution, rather than under her care and that of whatever nurse they had managed to retain.

  “I daresay the motion of the train will also help her sleep. May I ask how long it will be before we arrive in Virginia?”

  “Not more than six or seven hours, I should think.”

  The train car was chilly, and Amelia kept on her gloves as well as the jacket of her brown tweed traveling suit. They had brought extra blankets and Tamora was cozy in the bedroom’s small bed. Outside the narrow train windows, the northern Virginia countryside rolled by, green and amber in the failing November sunlight. Patches of pale gold flashed through the mostly barren woods, oak trees, perhaps, that lost their leaves so much later than the others. Back home, on Long Island, the leaves were long gone, and the winter winds had settled in. Amelia had never been to Virginia, though friends had told her that it wasn’t nearly as pleasant in the winter as, say, South Carolina. And certainly not particularly warm in the part of the state where Randolph had built their house.

  “Our country house,” he had called it. Though in their world, country houses were usually in Connecticut or even—among the more adventurous of society—the Catskills. No one in their right minds had houses many hundreds of miles away in Virginia. And if they did venture so far, they built within a few miles of the Atlantic. Even now that the war had been over for more than a decade, the idea of living in central Virginia seemed savage. It had been such a wild idea that Amelia had asked him, with a light tone that would maintain their mutual air of civility, why he didn’t just take them somewhere truly uncivilized like Ohio. Or Tennessee. Perhaps even Indiana, all their worldly goods in one of those covered wagons she’d read about.

  He had laughed, treating her sarcasm as the wittiest of jokes, then smiled with his perfect teeth. It was a sympathetic smile that had once unexpectedly charmed her, and certainly had captivated the rest of her family (it was a story she told herself that his smile had captivated them; it had been only his money that had charmed them).

  “Because that is where so many of my investments are, my dear. The investments that keep your mother’s carriage and your father in good odor with the suppliers of his taxidermy needs, and his friends, the bookies. It will be good for all of us.”

  All of us.

  Here was reality. She was old enough and, unlike many of her friends, savvy enough to be aware of the financial requirements of her parents, but she could also see that he was speaking more significantly of Tamora. Amelia had been stunned when he agreed with her, against all the protestations of her family, that when Tamora, at age four, had been definitively pronounced by several doctors to be “mentally deficient,” the child should not be institutionalized but kept at home. She would stay at the house they shared on Long Island (though never at the apartment in New York City if it could be helped; this was simply understood). Her family had protested that it was unseemly for Amelia to have such ideas. Ideas were never appreciated by her family. Particularly her mother. Oh, how her mother’s behavior toward Tamora had changed for the worse after the diagnosis. A diagnosis that hadn’t seemed to Amelia to be a diagnosis at all, but a kind of unavoidable resignation to uncomfortable facts.

  It didn’t matter to her so much that Tamora was not a winning child, that she refused to speak even though the doctors had said there was nothing physically wrong with her throat or mouth. Despite all of Amelia’s efforts, she could not get the child to look her in the eye or into the eyes of anyone around her. When Tamora was unhappy or uncomfortable, she screamed, alarming everyone. Their Long Island house was large enough, and the nursery distant enough, that Amelia and Randolph (when he was home, which wasn’t all that much because he often stayed in the city, or was in Virginia) could sometimes pretend it wasn’t happening. But they found they could rarely entertain, and Amelia stopped inviting her friends for tea or lunch, mindful of the screams from the nursery.

  Unless Tamora was dressed in the simplest of cotton undergarments and dresses, she screamed and removed all her clothes. Amelia had been particularly grateful to Gretna, the nurse who had stayed with them for nearly the whole year that Tamora was three, who had suggested they try putting only very soft clothes on her.

  “Willful” was how Amelia’s mother described Tamora, and she had recently spent an entire hour trying to get her to use a spoon with her soup instead of picking up the bowl to drink from it directly. The experiment had ended with Tamora throwing a fork (she was never given them, but had filched one from another place setting) at her grandmother’s head.

  Amelia suspected that her mother was secretly glad that Randolph had planned the house in Virginia. Far away from everyone they knew, and too difficult to travel to very often.

  Now it was November and Randolph had sent for them. She hadn’t seen him in two months. He had left from the city, letting her know by letter what belongings of his she should have shipped to Bliss House, Old Gate, Virginia.

  Bliss House. How preposterous it sounded! No respectable people would name their house after themselves.

  But Randolph had little pretense to respectability.

  Randolph had had money that her parents needed. They had given up on her being married, and her mother, at least, had resigned herself to decorative penury: the sale of the occasional piece of D’Jarnette silver she’d inherited or one of the few decent landscapes they owned. When so many of he
r mother’s friends were planning to donate their Turners and Edwardses to one of the newly subscribed museums that were springing up in cities like New York and Boston, her mother was busy inviting discreet art dealers to dinner. Randolph had changed that. She was keeping both her Turner and her Edwards.

  Amelia had been thirty-two when she met Randolph at a dinner party given by the Martin-Joneses. The Martin-Joneses weren’t upper tier people, but she liked Dolly Martin-Jones, and they enjoyed laughing over their dancing school days together. And Dolly and her husband, Treadwell, were among the Long Island families who didn’t hold the Jewish lineage of Amelia’s paternal grandmother against her.

  Randolph was younger than Amelia by seven years, and his mother was a Hasbrouck of old Dutch stock. Amelia had never asked Dolly if she had seated them beside each other at dinner on purpose. Randolph had been introduced as a business associate of Treadwell’s, which meant Randolph was probably also a customer of the bank of which Treadwell was president. That meant he was wealthy. The knowledge that Randolph’s father was notorious—well, as notorious as a wealthy man married to a grimly respectable Dutch heiress could be—for trading with and selling arms to the Confederacy came to her later. After Randolph had seduced her, shocking her out of her well-aged maiden virginity. And well after she realized that he appealed to a baseness in her character that she hadn’t known she possessed. For Randolph Bliss was a man who had his father’s raconteur business sense, but also an overt charm that she found at once irresistible and repellant. Randolph was not a talkative man, but as he bowed his head over his soup, she had noticed that his profile was strong yet appealing. He had been flattering and attentive, and she had, indeed, thought his smile attractive and sincere. The truth was that his earnest attentions made her feel attractive, when she knew very well she was not. Her nose was too large, her lips too thin, her waist no longer girlish, and she had a tendency to scowl.

  “You always look unapproachable. No man wants a woman who looks perpetually unhappy. Are you so unhappy?” Her mother’s critiques had begun when Amelia was only a girl of ten. She never understood her mother’s obsession with happiness and knew from her Bible that no one was promised happiness in this world. Yet she could find no reason to call herself unhappy. She had friends whose company she enjoyed, and she had her books and needlework. As she grew older she had taken up some of the household management duties that her mother had disliked. She had resigned herself to being an aunt to her brother’s boisterous children, and she felt pleasure at being around them, as she felt pleasure at walking on the beach and spending the afternoon reading Hawthorne or George Eliot.

  What other happiness should she have expected?

  Their courtship had been brief, over the course of a single social season. They announced their engagement at a February ball, and had retired afterward, with a few close friends and her parents, to the apartment her parents kept in the city. The party lasted until dawn, and they had celebrated with more champagne and a breakfast of eggs and pheasant and oranges and her favorite tiny, sweet rolls that the cook had been making for her since she was a girl. Was that not happiness?

  It was mid-November now, and she wondered what perversity had made Randolph insist that she come to Virginia at the beginning of the season. Though the truth was that she rarely accepted invitations in the city, not wanting to leave Tamora at the house with Harriet and the staff for longer than was strictly necessary.

  He had promised her that there were plenty of good Virginia families around Old Gate that she would get to know. Douglas, his brother, who had settled in the next county with his wife, Mary, had promised that she wouldn’t be too lonely.

  Randolph had been in Virginia since late August and had told her he was too busy to come up to New York and escort them to Virginia. So it had just been her, Harriet, and Tamora that her parents had seen off at the station. Amelia had been ready for disaster, timing the arrival of their carriage so that they would be able to board the private car only thirty minutes before their departure. Her mother had been overly bright, going on about how nice it would be not to have to endure the brutal throes of the coming New York winter, and her father had stood, silent, glancing occasionally at Tamora as though she were a cannonball that might explode at any moment. Amelia couldn’t blame him for it. Wasn’t that how she always felt? But Tamora had been unusually calm despite the strange sounds and smells, and Harriet later told Amelia that she had given Tamora a little brandy in her milk and had molded some soft wax and tucked it into her ears. Amelia disapproved of giving children brandy, except for bad colds, and suspected that it had come from Harriet’s own silver flask that she thought no one knew she kept in the large tapestry bag she always carried with her. But the proof was that Tamora stayed by Harriet’s side, letting her hold her hand (and the black velvet ribbon that was tied to both of their wrists was almost unnoticeable against the black of Harriet’s great wool coat), only occasionally poking a finger at her ear and making quiet unh unh unh sounds.

  Yes, they would arrive in Virginia by ten o’clock in the evening, abandoning the unfamiliar train car for the even less familiar town of Old Gate. Randolph had promised to meet her at the station with a brand-new carriage that he’d had built just for her, so they could arrive at Bliss House in comfort and privacy. She had his most recent letter folded in the book she had brought along on the train.

  I’m eager for you to see our new home, my dear Amelia. If only you could arrive to see the sun shining on its golden brick and to see it sparkling on the windows. Monsieur Hulot has made it a very special house, right down to the furnishings, with which I know you’ll be pleased. This will be the home where our dream of being together without interruption will come true. Even now we are guarding the tender orchard saplings from early frost, and within two years you will have fresh peaches from our own land at our breakfast table, and as many apples as Tamora cares to eat in a day. There is a small amount of construction that will finish in the spring, but for the most part, the craftsmen and laborers are departed, and the house is ready for you and our daughter.

  As I have promised, if you find yourself discontented with Bliss House, or find you cannot bear to be away from your parents, you may leave Virginia with my blessing, and I will follow you when I can.

  Though I cannot imagine that you and Tamora will be unhappy here. Bliss House has all the privacy you could ever want. I would show you to the world, my dear wife, every day. But I know that your nature—and the health of our daughter—demands quieter surroundings. You will find them here, waiting for you, along with me.

  Ever Your Devoted, Randolph

  She couldn’t recall having a conversation with Randolph about their being together without interruption, but her mother had told her often enough that a wife’s place was at her husband’s side. To his credit he very much understood her reluctance to be out in the world now that Tamora demanded so much care.

  As the green and brown and gold countryside outside the window faded behind a curtain of gray, Amelia tried to imagine both the house and the happiness he had described. With a flutter of apprehension in her stomach, she realized that the countryside outside the window had disappeared and she was seeing only her own reflection in the glass.

  Chapter 16

  AMELIA

  November 1878

  Tamora sat squeezed into the corner of the brougham, her hazel eyes tightly closed, and her doll, Evangeline, pressed against her chest. The air inside the carriage was a tense mix of Randolph’s jollity, Harriet’s fluttering confusion as to whether she should flatter Randolph or tend solemnly to the silent Tamora, and Amelia’s desire to get to Bliss House as quickly as possible. Randolph had met them at the station with the brand-new carriage, which smelled of leather and straw and sawdust from the stable and the spiced cologne that Randolph preferred. Sitting beside her husband, Amelia realized that she had missed that scent, a scent that both put her on edge and excited her. But at that moment she was far too worrie
d that Tamora would suddenly explode in a screaming fit that would drive them all out of the carriage and onto the unfamiliar streets of Old Gate to feel anything but anxious.

  “The photographs you sent to Missus Bliss of the house were most remarkable, but I confess that I can’t wait to see the house in person, Mister Bliss.” A smile spread over Harriet’s rather homely, plump face. The road was not smooth, and Amelia could see the false brown curls Harriet wore bobbing near the back of her head, below her tiny, high-placed hat. The front of Harriet’s hair was salted with gray, but somehow she had not thought to match the hairpiece to it.

  “There’s a good moon tonight, Harriet, but it won’t do the house justice. I’m of a mind to have you all get out of the carriage with your eyes closed, lead you inside, and bring you back outside early in the morning for a proper look.”

  Harriet tittered. “But I would be sure to fall down, Mister Bliss. I can’t see my way to walk with my eyes closed!”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. You will see Bliss House from every vantage point at every time of day. And we won’t let you fall down once.” Randolph rested his palm on Amelia’s leg. “Will we, my dear?”

  Amelia gave a faint answering smile and wanted to suggest to Harriet that if she didn’t want to fall down, she should stay out of the brandy she kept in her bag.

  Most of the lights in the town were extinguished, and there appeared to be no streetlamps. The moon was, indeed, high. Randolph inquired about the trip and the acceptability of the private car. Harriet was enthusiastic, saying that it was quite the nicest way to travel.

  “What did you think of the train, Tamora? Did you see any sights?” He reached out and was about to touch his daughter, but Amelia put her own hand on his arm to stop him.