“Don’t say such a thing!” he said, looking nearly dead himself.
“John?”
“What is it about this house?”
“It has nothing to do with this house. Coincidence is all,” I said. Secretly, I did not believe a word of my own explanation. I believed either my husband responsible or that the two disappearances were somehow related to the child I carried in my womb. Fear kept me from examining my husband’s possible role, so I focused on the latter possibility. Sacrifices. My prayers to the dark side were being answered, but I had yet to understand the language being spoken. Privately, I wondered if another visit to Madame Lu was in order. Or, conversely, had my recent visit with the Great Lady been heard? One thing is for certain, prayer is a powerful weapon, and when wishing one’s husband ill will, one must be terribly careful.
“Coincidence?” he scoffed. Spittle flew from his lips as he hollered at me, “She was right here, and now she is gone.”
I have never felt so calm. I spoke with reserve. “Right where, John? Did you see her yourself to-day?”
My words flustered him. “What!?” he barked, sounding like one of his hounds. “What kind of accusation is that?”
“I accuse you of nothing. Observation is all. I asked merely if you had seen the poor woman yourself?”
“And if I had?” he roared.
“A question is all.”
“And you, so calm, so collected. What of you, Ellen? Did you not see Laura to-day?” His large head jerked left to right, and I thought it might sever from his body. “She is employed in this very wing. Our chambers. She is practically underfoot, this woman. At our call, day and night. She serves us both, equally.”
Oh, Dear Diary, the look in his eyes! The terror this man felt. The guilt. A woman knows. A wife, better than anyone. “At our call, day and night.” I, for one, have not once called Laura to my rooms in the night. Sukeena, of course—more times than I can count. But little Laura? I barely knew she existed, except to note her unusual beauty. The translucent skin. The noble nose. I realize now that my husband did not overlook this beauty either, and I made a point of it.
“A fetching girl, wasn’t she, John?”
“You speak of her in the past?”
“I speak of her looks. So innocent. So young and … fetching.” I said, “Or maybe not so innocent. Looks can be deceiving.”
I saw pure panic in my husband’s eyes. There, it was done. We both knew.
Perhaps I will have an “accident.” Perhaps I shall call upon Sukeena to mix her herbs for me and dislodge the future heir from where it lies curled inside me. This is the only true punishment I can conceive for him. Accident that it may be, Laura’s disappearance is not entirely innocent. I will not ask Sukeena if she knows what happened to the girl if she, Sukeena, is protecting me. Perhaps Laura did leave Rose Red of her own accord. Perhaps Sukeena intervened and sent the girl packing without so much as a visit to her dormitory to retrieve her belongings. Increasingly, I am convinced that my dear handmaid has powers far beyond insight and herbs. She is prescient and clairvoyant and somehow divines the thoughts of others. I do not ask, because I do not wish to know. If innocent Laura was not so innocent, then her departure in any form is welcome. I have said so in my prayers before. “Curse the woman who takes my husband for her own.” I shall repeat it again to-night as I retire, as I do each and every night. If Sukeena has perhaps overheard this prayer, through her substantial powers or a slip of my own tongue, if she is controlling my destiny in some manner—protecting me—then who am I to complain? Who am I to inquire? Laura has left us. The police are not to know. Many a latch will be locked in this house to-night.
Many a question remains.
9 SEPTEMBER 1909—ROSE RED
I write with weak hand, but I will not be denied the opportunity of recording the most important day in my brief life. Eleven hours ago, in the wee hours of the morning, I gave birth to a son. I have called him Adam, for he is the first. I am told by the women who attended me that it was “an easy birth.” Three hours of labor and a swift delivery. But if that was easy, I never hope to experience otherwise! I have never felt such pain, have never experienced that part of my body that is only a woman’s in such a way that I did not know myself at all. Muscles and cramps and contractions, in and out of consciousness, screams of pain, cries of joy, and then that damp, pink creature laid atop my bosom and already moving for my breast, some primeval instinct overcoming him before the cord was even cut from our connection. He now lies swaddled in the finest linens in a bassinet alongside my bed, his small blue eyes closed in peaceful sleep, his tiny hands clenched tightly, as if deep in thought. Oh, what a treasure! What joy! I’m told Rose Red is abuzz with joy, that all the servants are smiling and the master has been heard singing from his rooms and has twice ordered champagne to his chambers. A son! When Adam had been delivered, his father kissed me as tenderly as I can ever remember. He thanked me with tears flowing from his eyes and promised me—us—a life of joy and prosperity, and that as a family—“a family!” he roared—we should never know pain, loss or sadness. (He must have been drunk, even then, but his little speech brought me to tears just the same.)
Sukeena acted as midwife, sat by my side through the long night of “warnings” as she called the early cramping, the early morning hours of severe pain, and it was into her sure hands that I pushed for the last time and felt that relief that is only a childbearing woman’s. My nine long months were done. For this alone I would have celebrated.
Now I contend with milk bubbling from my breasts, a discharge from between my legs that Sukeena assures me is normal and an abundance of unnatural amounts of skin where my stomach should be. I am not hungry, and yet I am starved. I drink the coldest water they can bring me, and in amounts I would not have thought possible. I sleep for hours at a time, I’m told, and yet it feels like only minutes. All this is so new. So much a miracle. I look down at his peaceful face and marvel that he was inside me, without air, less than a day earlier. This little boy, this breathing creature. This Rimbauer.
I heard music from the general direction of the servants’ quarters, and Sukeena tells me there is much celebration—food and dancing—in that part of the house. John has provided the staff spirits and wine. There is much revelry on my account. (I fear Rose Red will barely operate to-morrow, given the condition of our staff to-night, but no matter.) Word has spread quickly around society. Tina Coleman’s coach delivered a card requesting a visit, and I fear I shall be much besieged with such inquiries. I have asked Sukeena to prepare a bath, and for my girls to assist me in washing my hair, but she tells me it is too soon. A sponge bath is all she will allow me until my recovery is better contained. My hair may be washed, though in a bowl. In the morning, we shall make the most of me we can.
Little Adam is so precious. When he drinks of me, I feel so good, so bursting with happiness, that I want to laugh for no reason at all. His hunger comes as great relief as my bosom nearly bursts at times with mother’s milk. Already we have found a rhythm of sleep and feeding and sleep again. He has not relieved himself, and Sukeena waits for this event as anxiously as I did my delivery. I don’t believe she has slept in the last two days, always by my side when I wake, always holding my hand as I slip back off to sleep. What a dear friend she has become. How did I ever exist without her as a sister? Those hands of hers, inside me, ensuring a proper delivery. So gentle, so kind. So careful and understanding of my pain. Some day perhaps I shall dare to ask for the details, but not now. Now, I drift in and out of sleep, Adam at my breast, in the bassinet, at my breast. Sukeena’s blue-black face glowing in the gas flame. I see love in her eyes. I feel her love. I see hope and goodness. I shall remember this day forever—the passing of life from life, generation to generation. My husband is back in the hall outside my rooms. He is shouting, “I have a son! I have a son!” There is joy in this house at last. I only can hope and pray that it will last.
23 SEPTEMBER 1909—ROSE RED
Good God in Heaven, I fear this house has a mind of its own.
For the past two weeks I have strolled with Adam and Sukeena down the long halls of this grand house, just today revisiting the East Wing, an area I feel I have scarcely seen before. Here is located the Grand Ballroom, last used during the inaugural but kept wonderfully fresh and white-glove clean by our dedicated staff. I can still see the dancing, hear the orchestra (thankfully, I cannot smell the liquor, for since Adam’s birth my senses are severely heightened—I can hear at great distances and detect my husband’s cigar from opposite ends of this enormous Rose Red), recall the dashing band leader, and I am able to envision the women’s gowns in all their glory. While Sukeena held Adam I strolled the great room, reliving that wonderful party and beginning to anticipate the second of its kind, now only a few months off. Full preparations will begin in just a week or two, as I will organize the staff and we will begin to conceive decorations, entertainment, cuisine, invitations and all the details that must be attended to prior to this January the fifteenth. This was, in fact, the basis for my visit today: to get a feel for the room again, the walnut-paneled walls of the hallway leading to the Ballroom, the grand oil paintings—portraits and landscapes—that John and I purchased in Paris and London while on honeymoon. I would like fresh-cut flowers in the Mediterranean urns, and this will require our gardeners to work months ahead, as the only flowers available will be forced bulbs, and I shall want them in quantities of many hundreds. (This climate seems especially favorable to bulbs, and I can foresee the day when farmers raise great quantities of them. I have already encouraged John to buy and clear land north of the city for this purpose, and he is considering working a deal with the lumber barons to take over the ground they clear-cut, as this ground is virtually worthless to them once the trees have been taken.)
After walking this wonderful room several times and explaining aloud to Adam where I envisioned the drinks, the seating and the entertainment, Sukeena and I (and Adam, in Sukeena’s arms) left the great room and reentered the impressive hall of the East Wing.
That I fainted and Sukeena screamed is the only reason Adam remains unhurt, for if I had been holding him he would have fallen with me.
There at the end of the hall, just prior to the top of the staircase, stood lovely Laura, our missing housemaid. Missing these many months! Her blouse hung open, partially exposing her bare breasts and dark skin. Her skirt was missing altogether, her ruffled underclothes untied and hanging open at the junction of her legs, her womanhood exposed, as I imagine some street whore presenting herself. She looked so terribly saddened—a woman recently ravaged—her hair tousled and her skin blotchy. I did not hear her voice, but I saw her lips move and understood clearly her words, nonetheless. “My skirt,” she said, looking at me and then down at herself and making the motions as if tying it back around herself. So pathetic. So ghastly!
It was then I lost consciousness and fell to the floor. Then that Sukeena screamed—less from fear than it was calling for someone to help me. By the time I regained my strength, Laura was gone. Lost to this house—or taken by it—as she had been before.
Leaving young Adam with a chambermaid behind locked doors, I ventured outside of Rose Red this evening for the first time since the birth. John had gone off on “business,” which meant downtown, either to a poker game, to a business dinner or to places I had no desire to think about. With Sukeena at my side, we struck out for adventure, following a train of logic so easily seen: if Laura had indeed been spotted in the Carriage House, and if she was now missing her skirt, then what were the chances Sukeena and I might find this piece of evidence and help the poor creature? Perhaps it was that skirt, and that skirt only, that kept her locked in the netherworld in which we had witnessed her. (For I swear it was so: that woman at the end of the hall was a ghost, not any kind of flesh and blood. Do not ask me how this is possible, for I know not. But it is with absolute certainty that I write this!)
I must confess to feeling a bit like a teenager, my heart in my throat, as Sukeena and I elected to flee unseen from the West Wing via the narrow servants’ staircase that deposited on the ground floor between the Parlor and the Central Hall West. From there, with Sukeena as lookout, we crossed to the Gun Room, out to the exterior hall, between the Tapestry Gallery and the structural south wall, and down a long, stone corridor and through a door to the spiral stairs that access the west end of the West Wing, off John’s chambers. (I swear he uses this hidden stairwell to enter and leave the house without my knowledge.) We passed through the Bowling Alley to the swimming pool, and around the pool to the east doors that face Rose Red’s rear gardens. Sukeena is capable of moving without any sound. My African queen seems to float above the stone, move fluidly around corners and remain unseen, almost invisible. Upon reaching the garden, we both stopped to catch our breaths (me, far more than her) and waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Oh my, but my chest hurt with the tension! Our ears clouded with the sound of the fountain, only a matter of yards away—directly between us and the Carriage House—we remained in shadow along the wall of the Pool House, well off the perfectly laid stone paths, electing a circuitous route through the plants, shrubs and flowers.
“I’ll have at it later!” came a male voice I did not recognize. One of the Carriage House staff, no doubt, preparing either to leave the property for a beer or to retire to one of the dormitories we provide.
Sukeena and I had chosen our timing carefully, as the Carriage House staff is usually dismissed and done for the day an hour or so after the return of the last horse or team. John having taken the motorcar to his “business,” it followed that the Carriage House would be quiet for the night (although John does park the motorcar in a modified stall in the Carriage House and would be returning at a later hour). I assumed that Daniel, as head of the Carriage House, would make himself available upon my husband’s return, but Sukeena had it on good report that Daniel had a game of dice planned at this same hour, said to be under way in the skeet room of the basement—a room designed to launch the clay pigeons for skeet shooting from the Loggia on the north side of the ground floor, just off the Billiard Room. If true, Daniel would be hard pressed to find himself any farther away from the Carriage House and still be on the property. That said, I thought it in the man’s nature to have a young scout placed somewhere about, keeping an eye out for the master’s premature return. Probably a son of one of his workers—someone paid by a piece of sausage or a few coins for his time. It was this scout that Sukeena and I sought to avoid.
We settled in the shadow of a well-kept rhododendron on the northwest corner of the garden, only a piece of the rose garden between the fountain and our hiding spot. Directly across from us was the dark, looming structure of the Carriage House, now all but quiet, given its four-legged residents. (The pool, the west wall of the house, and the Carriage House combine to form an enormous courtyard, the only escape from the west where we were now firmly entrenched.) We waited for what felt like an eternity, my muscles complaining from the childbirth I had performed, Sukeena as still as a black rock. When we ascertained that all human voice was gone from the place, we sneaked ahead and rushed across a small clearing of mowed grass, making for the Carriage House’s west entrance—its only entrance entirely screened from the rest of the house. If we were to confront anyone, it would be someone inside the Carriage House. (I had several rather clever excuses for the two of us showing up at the Carriage House unannounced like this, and even one or two that might help cover that fact so my husband would not find out. As it turned out, we didn’t need them. At least not right away …)
Sukeena led the way across the short open space and into the shadow of the Carriage House. I tell you, my heart felt ready to burst as I ducked and hurried through the garden and out across the short expanse of crushed stone driveway that accessed the Carriage House. We pressed our trembling bodies up to the building’s cool wall and tried to catch our breath. I glanced at Sukeena and
nearly burst out laughing, I was so nervous. She remained stoic and impassive—hard to read. I don’t know if she enjoyed it half as much as I. Perhaps she feared losing her job—and it was only then I saw the difficult position I had put her in. She would not refuse me—not ever, I’m sure of it—and I had placed her in the awkward position of leading me into the mouth of the lion. (It is not that I am forbidden to visit the Carriage House, but to search it for a woman’s missing garment is another matter entirely!)
After a moment of collecting our courage, together Sukeena and I calmly turned and entered through the massive open doors at the west end of the Carriage House, as if we had not a care in the world. The doors had been left open, presumably to allow for the return of John’s motorcar later this same night. It afforded us easy access as we stepped onto the wide redwood planks, a dusting of straw beneath our feet, the gorgeous Carriage House flooded in dim electric light, not a soul in sight. I have always loved the smell of horses, and entering the Carriage House brought me back to my childhood. The stall doors are made of wrought iron and carved redwood and operate nearly soundlessly. (Daniel is the finest stable master in the state, by some accounts.) It is a two-story barn, the bottom occupied by horse stalls, room for several carriages, a tack room and a saddle room and Daniel’s office. The upstairs loft is primarily for straw and hay storage, though several large rooms were constructed here for cold storage as well. I assumed most of these to be empty, as we had occupied Rose Red for less than a year, and these rooms were intended for “overflow” storage. (Mind you, I can’t imagine ever running out of basement storage in Rose Red—it’s the size of a school playing field.)
Sukeena and I stopped many times, trying to discern the sounds and to separate man from animal. Thankfully, we heard no one, and so continued into the depths of this large barn. I will admit here, where I share my innermost secrets, that I was imagining the worst. If Laura was missing her skirt, I feared a man responsible. Need I say more? I feared Daniel’s participation in this matter—his allegiance to my husband is unquestionable. I did not forget Daniel’s disclaimer concerning Laura, made in front of all the staff. He had not seen Laura—or so he said.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer Page 10