“Madame de Pompadour,” Phoebe says, raising a single eyebrow. “That can’t be her real name.”
Then we reach the Hameau and its familiar outcropping of buildings around the lake: a waterwheel at the mill that seems diminutive and adorable rather than an actual source of power, the tower of a half-sized lighthouse, other rustic buildings that look medieval and half-timbered.
Eleanor breaks out into a gentle smile, and I’m relieved she seems to be over her sadness.
“I could totally live here,” says Phoebe. “I’d just lie on my back and stare at the clouds.”
“I’d be happy here, too,” says Eleanor wistfully.
An irony occurs to me, that maybe Marie-Antoinette thought the same, that the placid farm with its manicured lawns could resurrect a happiness in someone so bruised by circumstances. In fact, she had been here at the Hameau, reading in the rock grotto, when word came to her that a mob was on the march from Paris to seize her and her husband, Louis XVI. She had hurried back up to the chateau to locate him, but he was out hunting. The events of that day must have been so panicked, the last day of true serenity—if indeed she found it here. She and her family, including the returned Louis, had walled themselves up in the palace, but still the mob attacked at night while they were in bed and captured them.
I lift my gaze to the meadow on the other side of the lake, where I see what must be Marie herself, with a girl of about seven, her daughter Marie-Thérèse. I look around quickly, but this isn’t a trip. Their bodies are somewhat transparent, and I still see tons of visitors with cell phones and holding up their iPads to take pictures, like protestors holding picket signs.
Marie-Antoinette wears a gauzy white dress with a blue sash, and a floppy straw hat. I think it’s the outfit from a painting that caused a big sensation when it was unveiled. Because the gown was so loose fitting and non-regal, it didn’t match up to the stiff, brocaded, jeweled gowns expected of queens. I remember my mother showing me this on the computer before we came here. The portrait had to be repainted, with more suitable couture.
The girl wears a similar white gown. She carries a pair of scissors and bends down now and then to cut a stalk of a perfect flower, which she lays carefully in the basket her mother carries. Their sense of leisure is palpable. This girl’s pleasure in her mother’s company is, too. Roomfuls of noblemen and duchesses couldn’t make her smile the same way the butterfly does, as she lightly runs after it.
Phoebe and Eleanor are watching, too. “What happened to her, the little one?” asks Phoebe hoarsely.
“She lived,” I say. I don’t tell her the rest of what I know: that she was imprisoned with her family at the Tuileries and then the Conciergerie that Phoebe’s stepdad so delighted in visiting. That she had been part of an escape plan, a carriage ride that brought the family to the borders of Austria, only to be betrayed, some say, by the scent of her mother’s perfume.
And of course, that she was orphaned by the guillotine, and in her prison chamber likely heard its blade plummet onto the necks of her father and, months later, her mother—each time, the horrible roar of the crowd joyful to see them killed.
That she was separated from her brother and could hear him through the hallways screaming as his captors tormented him. That when the news passed to her that he had died under mysterious circumstances, she must have known it was only her luck to be born as a girl that had spared her from the same fate. Her brother could have been king, but she would have been passed over for her uncle in line for the throne.
All that terrible fate, all that agony, is entirely unforetold as she walks with her mother in the meadow, cutting blooms as they please, the scissors’ cuts neat and clean as that of the guillotine blade her parents will meet.
“She lived?” Phoebe repeats dubiously. She’s been watching my face the whole time.
I look over at Eleanor. Does she know this history? But she’s not listening, looking over at the two Maries, her face concerned. She’s used to worrying about children.
“Yes,” I say abruptly. “They even tried to reinstall her later after Napoléon’s empire fell.”
Still, I think Phoebe can tell I’m not saying everything I know. “Then I’ll just enjoy watching her cut flowers,” she says softly.
We trail Phoebe’s family around the outcropping of nine thatched-roof cottages that constitute the farm. Phoebe’s stepdad snorts when he reads from the guidebook that the dairy is called the “Dairy of Cleanliness.”
“I’m guessing she had a wet nurse instead of nursing her own babies if she thought milking was ‘clean,’ ” says Phoebe’s mum.
“And get this: she had porcelain cups made, molded from her breasts, to drink the milk from.”
“Well,” says Phoebe’s mum. “I’m sure men enjoyed that.”
Inside we see marble walls, not the typical vista for cows. The Swiss cows who produced creamy milk are no longer here. I imagine the Parisian mob slaughtered them and enjoyed steak for the first time in their lives. We see the dovecote, essentially a chicken coop the size of a single-family home, and the Marlborough Tower. Phoebe’s stepdad points to the worm-ridden wood selected for the buildings to make them look instantly old at the time they were built, and the way a craftsman had painted cracks on the plaster between the beams, manipulated to look rustic for the queen’s eye.
The queen’s house and billiard room are accessed by an outdoor winding wooden staircase that is rickety and fragile, with some steps completely missing. It also looks madly cool. I want to climb it. Tabby wants to, too, but there’s a short picket fence around the base to stop people. None of these buildings except the marble dairy can be entered.
I wink at Phoebe and Eleanor and point at the door at the top of the staircase.
Their reaction? Textbook.
Eleanor shakes her head, and Phoebe grins.
I hold out my hand to Eleanor, but she shakes her head again.
“No?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? We won’t hurt anything, and it’d be so cool to see! They always lock up the good stuff.”
“I like it when we all six stay together.”
“I do, too, but just for a few minutes,” says Phoebe.
“Please let’s keep together,” says Eleanor. “It’s not completely safe here. You two saw Madame Arnaud!”
“Literally, just for a minute?” I plead.
She answers by walking away. Phoebe’s family has already drifted along to the next building.
“I’m game,” says Phoebe. “But make it quick. I don’t want to hurt Eleanor.”
“In and out,” I promise.
We have ways of getting in. It’s cool to see the opulence inside, a faint haze of dust floating above these objects: grand settees, porcelain flowerpots with the queen’s MA initials. We walk in awe past these once-loved items, now accessible only to museum staff. We dart across the second-floor gallery connecting the billiard room to the queen’s house.
Let’s see: grand salon, a dining room . . . but no bedroom. Drat. I had the wrong building, didn’t I? These weren’t the queen’s sleeping quarters.
“Looking for something in particular?” Phoebe asks.
“I was just wondering where the queen slept,” I say innocently.
“Wait a minute . . . Is that why you were so adamant on getting in?”
“Nothing whatsoever at all to do with it.” I look at her blankly until she slides into a knowing smile.
“You had plans?”
I reach out and touch one of those slightly curling locks of her auburn hair. Very, very gently, I tug it. She takes a step closer to me.
Our eyes lock.
I could almost swim in those green depths, with the darker flecks around her pupil, widening even as I look. Something in her eyes pulls me in, makes me forget everything else in the world. I inch my fingers up that same lock of hair to get a new grasp, and tug again. She comes closer.
We’re almost touchi
ng, but not quite. Her lips part, but I don’t move. I want to kiss her so badly, but I also love this moment of suspense when we both know we’re going to but haven’t yet. I slowly incline my head toward her, and she tips her face up, glowing, beautiful, touched by the half-light from the clouded windows.
She closes her eyes and I study the way her lashes, long and honey-colored, flutter slightly as she waits. I let go of her hair and move my hand to her jaw. I take one step closer and feel her against my chest.
She opens her eyes and looks up, wondering why I’m leaving her hanging. My own eyelids lower in response and I bend to her, our lips about to touch.
She runs her hands over my arms up to my shoulders in a smooth caress that is possibly the best thing I’ve ever felt.
Then I hear it.
“Miles, come to me.”
A plaintive voice I haven’t heard in a long time.
“Miles, I can’t stand it . . . I can’t handle this—I miss you—”
I’m in Gillian’s bedroom, which looks like a stage set with a spotlight on her. Gillian with her golden hair in that short punk hairdo, wearing layers of black clothing, her eyes outlined in dark, thick eyeliner.
She’s sitting on the floor with a candle set before her. It’s the only source of light, which explains the dramatic lighting. She’s pulled the curtains so I can barely see the two friends there with her. God, I’d forgotten about them: Lily and the one that I thought never liked me. I struggle to come up with her name.
Avery.
That’s right.
Avery, Lily, and Gillian, sitting with their legs crossed, forming a rough circle around a thick red candle sitting in a tea saucer. All of them are crying.
“I want to talk to you,” Gillian says in a voice so raw that I instantly kneel next to her to take her in my arms. It doesn’t work. My arms go through her. “I can’t believe I’ll never see you again.”
“Send us a sign, Miles?” pleads Avery. “Make the candle flicker?”
They’re doing a séance for me.
No, no . . .
I lean forward until my forehead touches the black and gray carpet, but that’s just an illusion my mind feeds me—because I can’t touch anything other than Phoebe.
Gillian’s so beautiful—and so destroyed. I’ve never heard her sob like this before. “I love you so much,” she says. “I just can’t believe that you’re gone. Miles, come to me. Say something.”
Gillian was with me when I died. I’d been driving and she was buckled up in the passenger seat. The car had drifted into a ditch and rolled, and I fell out and hit my head on a rock. I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt for some reason . . . why not?
Gillian had scrambled out of the car and come to me, there stranded against the rock, my head dripping with gore, blood streaming so heavily I couldn’t see until she wiped my forehead for me. She had sat with me, holding my hand and telling me over and over, “You’re going to be fine.”
But I had heard her frantic call on her cell phone as she lost control and told whatever emergency responder was on the other end of the call that she could see a gash in my skull and that she didn’t know what to do, how to keep what was inside, inside.
I remember thinking I’ve lost my mind . . . literally before my eyes drifted closed on that sight of beautiful Gillian willing the world to move faster, to get an ambulance to her boyfriend before he died on that remote country road, surrounded by wildflowers and beauty on the other side of a bridge.
“I’m here,” I say to her, lifting my head so our eyes are on the same level. “Can you hear me, Gillian?”
She continues crying. She hasn’t heard.
I inhale and look around the circle at the half-lit faces. No one sees me. Lily and Avery are exchanging a glance between each other, like a how-long-do-we-let-this-go-on? kind of look.
“Gillian!” I say urgently, right in her face.
I’ve seen Phoebe successfully reach Tabby after many attempts, after a lot of practice: but only Tabby. We’ve learned—me, Phoebe, and Eleanor—that the living aren’t all capable of connecting with us. Only special people can, like Tabby.
But I’ll keep trying. Maybe Gillian is capable. It seems if she’s holding a séance, if she’s called me to her, she’s as receptive as she ever could be. She wants to hear from me and in some way expects to; what better moment could there be?
I reach out to try to touch her cheek; that had worked with Phoebe and Tabby. My hand hovers over her skin and . . . penetrates it. She doesn’t react.
I feel the tug at my chest that signals another arrival.
It’s Phoebe.
She arrives, standing in the center of the circle. If she were really there, her boot-cut jeans would catch fire from the candle. She looks around, bewildered. “Miles, where are we?”
“We’re back in Grenshire,” I say. “This is Gillian, my . . .”
I gesture toward Gillian, her face now ruined by crying, the mascara blotched all around her eyes. Lily has given her a tissue, but Gillian’s erratic wipe at her eyes only moved the makeup around, not off.
Phoebe sinks to her knees between Lily and Avery, and now all three of them stare worriedly at Gillian. Real girl, ghost girl, real girl. Phoebe is only slightly less vibrant than the living girls, but with the contrast I can see the paleness, her insubstantiality.
“This was your girlfriend,” says Phoebe.
I nod.
“And she’s trying to talk to you.”
“She’s trying, and I’m trying, but we’re not connecting.”
I brace myself, waiting for Phoebe’s reaction. She’ll be angry? Jealous? From her perspective, I left her hanging to come see Gillian. We were about to kiss, and here I am trying to talk to my old girlfriend.
Phoebe’s eyes fill with tears. “I can’t imagine how she feels,” she says. “Losing you. My God.”
I look over at Gillian, now hyperventilating and trying to regain her breath. Her body heaves out of control. She really loved me. And . . . I loved her.
“Unreal,” I say, and again lower my forehead to the ground. Gillian’s pain is almost unbearable.
I feel Phoebe’s arm stretch across my back. Thank God that she and I can touch. She’s literally all I have now.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
I’ve never been the crying sort, although I cried when I told Phoebe I was dead. Our huge epiphany. Now tears prickle at my eyes, but I think I can school myself to not let them spill.
“Gillian?” says Avery quietly. “I think this isn’t working.” Beside her, Lily nods, her face wet with tears.
“We all miss him, too. Not the way you do, but we miss him. We can try again, but I don’t think he’s coming today,” says Lily.
Gillian nods. She sits there staring into space as the other girls blow out the candle and put it back on her dresser. They open up her curtains and let the muted sunshine of an overcast England afternoon back into the room.
“What do you want to do?” asks Avery.
“I want to make him a cake,” says Gillian. “I want to make him a glorious chocolate cake. With seventeen candles.”
“We’ll help you,” says Avery firmly. She waits a beat, then adds, “And believe me, girlfriend, we’ll help you eat it.”
Gillian lets out a weak laugh, exactly what Avery was angling for. Avery pulls her up to standing and the three girls hug together, tightly. I stand there watching them, feeling like I’ve done something wrong.
I let Gillian down. I was the jerk who got her to fall in love with me, and then I died.
“Miles?” asks Phoebe. “Do you want me to go back? I was just checking on you. You disappeared and I—”
One look at her stricken face and I am wrenched in two. Phoebe’s hurt in a whole different way. “Stay,” I say. “I need you.”
And instantly she’s in my arms, and I nuzzle down into the vulnerable crook of her neck. God, she’s incredible.
By the time I lift my hea
d again, Gillian and her friends are gone. From downstairs, I hear the cupboard doors opening and closing, and them chatting. They’re really making me a cake.
“Happy birthday, Miles,” says Phoebe quietly.
“Thanks,” I say. We disengage and I watch Phoebe look around at Gillian’s room, the pottery she’s painted in glossy black and the abstract art on watercolor paper. Again: black. Even before she became a griever, Gillian was attracted to the dark side. She wouldn’t be caught dead in pink.
I cringe at my own thought.
She wouldn’t be caught dead in anything, because she was smart enough to wear her seat belt. I start replaying the events of that day, trying to figure out what made me not click in. If I’d been driving a newer car, rather than my beat-up vintage Mini Cooper, the seat belt chime would’ve alerted me. I wonder briefly if my parents have thought about that, if they’ve wished they’d taken a firmer hand in helping me pick the car I bought with my own money. A newer model. A son still alive.
I’d still be going to school, hanging out with Gillian, still mad about her.
Instead, I fancy an American I never would have met if I hadn’t died. Odd how the biscuit crumbles.
“Do you want to go downstairs?” Phoebe asks. “I feel kind of weird in her room when she’s not here.”
The eternal sense of trespassing, of eavesdropping. Will we ever get over it? Living people think they’re alone and say and do the strangest things. True privacy is only for those who know who else is in the room with them. I’ll forever be the observer who learns the unpleasant, unsavory things people thought were hidden.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want to watch them make a cake I can’t eat.”
“Do you want to go back to Versailles?”
I wander over to the dresser, where there’s a picture of me and Gillian, a candid snap Lily took. I’m clowning in the picture and I wish I had a normal face on. Is this all Gillian has to remember me by? The twisted face and bulging eyes? I guess we took a bunch of selfies that live in her phone.
Live. Pictures live, but I don’t.
Betrayed Page 4