Nineteen Seventy-Four

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Connor nodded. He puffed out his cheeks and blew out a breath as he fumbled with the wrapper. Neither of them had done this, but his face flushed at his lack of finesse. Elizabeth laid her hand over his and smiled. This eased him, and he was able to successfully fish the contraception out.

  She figured the next part would give him even more performance anxiety, so Elizabeth turned to the side to light the joint. While he was preoccupied, she took two deep, strong hits, praying for the head start she’d need to get enough of the heroin coursing through her to lift the shield.

  “I think I’ve got it,” he said, and she took one more hit before handing it to him.

  Connor wrinkled his mouth, and with a hesitant look, drew the cigarette to his lips and inhaled. He coughed, shot her an apologetic look, and tried again.

  She immediately took another, and offered it back. He shook his head. “Last time, one was enough.”

  Elizabeth secretly stole one more hit as she turned to place it in the glass bowl at her bedside. Yes, this would be enough.

  She turned and wrapped Connor in her arms and opened the rest of herself to whatever came next.

  * * *

  Maureen willed the phone to ring. She’d talked to Colleen twice after the first time she’d spilled her news, and each time, Colleen said she was working on it. To trust her to help.

  “Colleen is a pain, but I would trust her,” Madeline said.

  Maureen realized she really was in dire straits if she found comfort in the dead.

  “I do trust her, but look at me!” Maureen pressed her sweater tight and turned in the mirror. “You can tell!”

  “Only if you’re paying close attention.”

  “Have you met Mama?”

  “Colleen knows you’re racing a clock here. She’ll come through.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  Madeline reached forward and squeezed her hand. Maureen felt nothing, because there was nothing. “Then I’ll help you.”

  “I wish you could. I wish we could rewind the clock. To before you died… before Charles married that wench… before I foolishly let my boss use and discard me. I’m such an idiot! I never, ever want to see him again, Maddy. Colleen said he should pay up, or something, but I don’t want a damn thing from him. Nothing. If I even see his face, I’ll hurl myself off a bridge.”

  “He can send checks in the mail.”

  Maureen laughed. “I’ll rip them up and toss them in the fire. Then piss on it as it burns.”

  “That’s dramatic, even for you, silly girl.”

  August had been oddly quiet since she found she was pregnant. She hoped he was off in some peaceful place, having a good time, or whatever it was he did when he wasn’t haunting her. But she suspected it was worse than that: His judgment and disappointment kept him away.

  “Why, Maureen?” Peter, as always, reminded her that nothing could keep him away.

  What was she going to do? The life growing within her now felt real. It was more than the results of a test. It was now a she, and Maureen had never wanted anything more in her life than her daughter. Her extrinsic worries, about what people would think, how she’d show her face, seemed so petty and vapid in the face of the love she bore for a child she’d not yet met.

  She still had the money she’d earned from the Virgins Only Club. She could still run away and start a new life, where she could tell everyone her husband had died saving orphans or something. By the time the money ran out, she’d have her trust, and she’d be the eccentric Widow Deschanel, who pined for her nonexistent dead husband, when she wasn’t knitting blankets for the destitute.

  Yes, there was that. And if Colleen didn’t come through for her, she would leave in the middle of the night and never come back. Starting over would be the only option. She couldn’t dare face her family as a disgraced woman.

  But that was not the life Maureen was born for.

  It was the life choice that had killed sweet Madeline.

  Give it to God, Mama would say, but Mama was not someone Maureen looked up to. She loved her, but she did not respect her.

  Colleen would know what to do, and Maureen was placing everything on the line in the hopes her wise older sister would come through with a solution that allowed Maureen to move forward without shame.

  She glared at the phone and begged it to ring.

  * * *

  When Elizabeth awoke, it was dark. She rolled her head to the side, in a panic. Downstairs, the sound of her mother rustling around in the kitchen sent her heartrate skyrocketing.

  Connor was awake. He stared at the ceiling, with a look that chilled her heart.

  “What happened?” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse from the hits. “Connor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did we have sex?”

  Connor’s eyes glistened. “Don’t you see the problem, Lizzy? That you even have to ask that?”

  “Yeah, but…” Elizabeth winced. “Did we?”

  “We must have. The condom was full,” Connor replied. He turned away from her. “I remember some stuff, but…”

  Elizabeth remembered nothing. Nothing at all, after rolling over him and deciding to give herself to him. Nothing. Not even a flash, like she had with her visions. There was only a void.

  She’d given her virginity to the only person in her life she loved with her whole heart, and the memory was lost to her haze of drugs.

  “We shouldn’t have done the heroin,” Connor was saying. “It was a bad idea the first time, it was a bad idea this time, and… oh, God…”

  The sob started in her throat and rolled forward, pitching her body up and off the bed as it made its way out of her. Elizabeth grabbed a pillow and buried her face in it and screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Because this wasn’t the first thing she’d missed.

  She’d been high through Charles’ wedding.

  She’d been high at Maureen’s eighteenth birthday party.

  She’d been high when they had the going-away dinner for Augustus and Ekatherina in the summer, and later forgotten they’d ever left.

  She’d been high when they sent Colleen back to Scotland.

  And she’d been high for what should have been the biggest moment of her life so far.

  If she didn’t have a problem, how could she explain all these losses? Did they outweigh the gift of losing her visions? Did any of it matter, if nothing mattered?

  Elizabeth sobbed into her pillow.

  Fifteen

  You Can’t Always Get What You Want

  The whole evening had been an exercise in uncomfortable choreography.

  Of all people, Cordelia the Ice Queen was the one who insisted that, once a month, they entertain guests. Charles shouldn’t have been so surprised, really, seeing as the only thing his wife cared about more than her own personal space was her sense of duty.

  This desire to remain relevant in society did not, unfortunately, transform into a super hostess, however. She was cordial, asked most of the right questions, and sipped her wine at the right times. Knew how to arrange silverware for place settings, and the right timing to direct the kitchen staff on when to bring which course. She was a walking textbook on proper etiquette and form for bluebloods.

  But anyone who had ever interacted with an actual human being could see the ruse.

  When she suggested the party, Charles had only paid half a mind to the idea and told her to do whatever she pleased. They rarely existed in a manner that dared allow either of their spheres to overlap at any point in orbit, and so when they did speak—usually about things of a matter-of-fact nature—he was happy to have it done.

  He didn’t think what they had could be considered a marriage at all, unless, as Evangeline said one night with a beer in her hand and four in her belly, you considered marriage in a much more old-fashioned lens: a business arrangement.

  That seemed right to Charles. Cordelia exacted her transactions in the bedroom like a janitor clocking in and o
ut, right on time, to a job he loathed but required to survive. She retreated to her own room after, and he’d never awoken or fallen asleep with his wife at his side. They had no memories together, no inside jokes. No shared stories of how one of them had done a silly thing, and the other still found it funny. He dreamed of a day when Cordelia was pregnant and he could slip away into the night and find his own prurient pleasures, as he once had.

  In the beginning, this was some terrible fresh horror he believed would turn out to be a nightmare, but as their marriage entered its second quarter, Charles wondered if it wasn’t, instead, a blessing.

  If he couldn’t marry for love, then maybe the best alternative was to marry purely for the benefit of fulfilling his sacred duty as heir.

  Because Charles paid no mind to the party Cordelia wanted to throw, he hadn’t had an eye to the guest list. Later, he wondered, had she known? Was that why she’d done it?

  Colin. Catherine. Dan Weatherly and his new wife, Mary. That hack, Darwin. Some other names that didn’t matter, not behind the ones previously listed.

  There was little to no chance Cordelia cared about keeping the fires of friendship burning between her husband and his pals, so she must have known. That prick of cruelty that ran through her veins must have required entertainment, the kind that could only be produced by seeing her husband squirm in heartbreaking discomfort.

  They’d sat around the table. Cordelia, who did not care a whit for things like seating charts, had created one and placed Catherine at Charles’ left. Cordelia sat directly across, the best seat in the house.

  “You look well,” Catherine had said, and Charles smiled and pretended the conversation was as congenial as it might have been if it was anyone else in the world, because Cordelia’s eyes were glued to him, completely ignoring Mary Weatherly’s attempts at conversation at her side.

  “I am,” he said. He sniffled, wishing he’d had the foresight for a bump or four of cocaine. “And you do, too.”

  Catherine’s cheeks flushed with the early days of pregnancy. She kept one hand protectively over her belly at all times. He’d heard men wax about their wives never being more beautiful than when they were carrying a child and figured it for bullshit, but she was as radiant and lovely as she’d ever been, and he fell in and out of love with her twelve times in the span between their silences.

  It had been so much easier when they kept their distance. All his hard work came undone in her presence, and he was a mess.

  For one, secret, hopeful flash, Charles wondered if the child could be his, but he hadn’t been with her in close to a year.

  “How’ve you been, Huck?”

  “You know me,” he said. He flexed his fist under the table to snap him back to the moment, to keep him from drifting into the past. “I always have something to occupy me.”

  “You always did,” she said and smiled into her apple cider. There’d be no wine for Catherine that night, or any night until her child was born. “And Augustus? How is married life treating him?”

  “You never know with him, but he seems happy.”

  “Are you?” Catherine asked. A leading question, if there ever was one, and she was clearly unaware of the devious Cordelia eagerly awaiting his answer.

  “I’m always content. You know that.”

  “Yes,” she replied, and this time looked away. Good. He was past the point in his grief where he wanted her to feel pain, but it was nice to know he wasn’t the only one still suffering. “You’ve never needed anyone else to make you happy.”

  “Nope,” he said, then added, quietly, “But, once upon a time, it didn’t hurt.”

  “Charles will be much happier soon, I should think,” Cordelia said, her words rising with her lanky frame. “I have an announcement to make.”

  “You do?” Charles asked. Catherine shot him a curious look. He shrugged, but his heart ricocheted around like a fresh high. He couldn’t guess what she had up her sleeve, but it couldn’t be good.

  “We do, darling.” Cordelia’s smile was black ice; the venom invisible at the surface, unless you knew.

  Charles sucked in a breath. “By all means, go on.”

  She reached her hand across the table. It took him a minute to realize she was looking for him to hold it. Maybe she can act. He frowned and reached for it. Her skin was cool and rigid, like a body in the opening act of rigor mortis. “Charles and I are having a child!”

  Charles swallowed the remainder of the wine in his glass.

  Catherine’s smile died on her face. Not for long, but long enough. She recovered and was the first to congratulate them. “You’ll make such a wonderful father,” she said, raising her glass.

  Colin beamed with pride and wiped at the corner of his eye. “Charles, I’m speechless. I’ve always hoped this day would come for you. Just think of how much has changed in a year.”

  Chancing a glance in his peripheral, Charles said, “Yes. A year can make a world of difference.”

  * * *

  The rest of the evening passed by in a blur of inebriation and dim lighting. He lost track of his drinks, the number surpassing his humor and good nature somewhere between watching Catherine sip her non-alcoholic drink like a perfect mother-in-waiting, and hearing Dan make repeated arcane jokes about how he’d enjoyed slipping it to his wife four times a day so they could be the next to make an announcement of their own.

  Everyone’s eyes occasionally turned to Charles; for once, not to judge his behavior but to gauge his reception of the news his wife had chosen to share with not only their close friends but also him. Did they pity him? He could take a lot, but they could fuck off with their sympathy.

  As they said goodbye to the guests, one by one, Cordelia turned on a level of charm that was both uncomfortable and entertaining to watch. Uncomfortable, because it was not the least bit authentic or natural, and entertaining for the same reason. She curtsied when a kiss on the cheek would do and laughed at things that weren’t funny. Charles almost felt a stab of affection for the young woman who’d never had a mother to guide her and was now floundering.

  A stab only, though, as he remembered she’d intentionally put him in a position to be humiliated that night, if not with his pairing of Catherine, then for certain catching him unawares of the news of his impending fatherhood.

  He’d done it. He’d fucking done it, and now he didn’t have to touch her at all, ever again. Or at least until he felt it prudent to produce a spare.

  Cordelia stood at his side and waved at the last of the guests. She closed the door as the engines roared outside, and headlights flooded the night.

  “Couldn’t have told me before dinner, dearest?”

  “What would have been the fun in that, darling?”

  He reached for her arm as she turned toward the stairs. “Cordelia. Seriously, you’re really pregnant? Finally?”

  “It would seem so.” She grunted. “May.”

  “That’s the due date?”

  “I wrote it down somewhere,” she said, dismissive. “I’ll find it later. Right now, I’m exhausted, and I have an early day.”

  “Why? Tomorrow is Sunday. Don’t tell me you’ve found the Lord all of a sudden.”

  Cordelia sighed and brushed his hand off her arm, like swatting off an annoying insect. “Now that the unpleasant task of procreation is checked off our list, I’ll be moving to my townhouse on Esplanade for the winter, and into the spring.”

  Charles laughed. “Ophélie isn’t big enough for you?”

  She pinched her face even tighter than usual. “It will never be big enough for the two of us, Charles. Don’t look so grim. I’ll be back when our child is born, and we’ll resume our duties another thirty days after that.” She took his chin in her bony fingers. “In the meantime, darling, feel free to whore your way through New Orleans a hundred times over. These are the glory days, husband. When we have a passel of brats running through these ancient halls, we’ll no longer have the time or the energy for anything that b
rings us the remotest bit of joy.”

  Cordelia turned and ascended the stairs without another word.

  Charles moved into the parlor. He had other business to attend to that night, but he needed a drink, and also something else, and he always had his secret stash of coke in the trap drawer of the bar table.

  “Charles.”

  Charles jumped at the sound of his name. He spun, bringing the room in and out of focus, before landing on the only face he’d deem as unpleasant and unwelcome as his wife’s.

  Darwin.

  “Why the fuck are you still here?”

  Darwin spread his arms over the back of the sofa, one hand dangling a whiskey on ice. Charles bristled at the thought of this vile man partaking of his booze. “Have you never mastered the art of small talk, or do you find it offensive?”

  “I find your face offensive.”

  “Insults don’t become a man.”

  “Your face doesn’t become you.”

  “Then again, perhaps you’re not capable of more,” Darwin quipped. He drew a sip from his tumbler and leaned back into the couch, making himself right at home.

  This will never be your home. It’s hardly hers.

  “You really don’t want to know what I’m capable of, Darwin.” He checked his watch. “But you’re right, I don’t deal in small talk. So tell me what you want and leave.”

  “I need money.”

  Charles laughed. “Obviously.”

  “Would you like to hear why?”

  Charles pointed at his watch. “Not hardly, unless you can do it in thirty seconds.”

  “Costs are rising. We need to move some of our operations to China, but this requires an investment. I need an investor. How’s that for a brief summary of my needs?”

  “Efficient as that was,” Charles replied. “You can well and truly go fuck yourself. I gave you money once, and I told you that you’d never get another goddamn penny.”