“What?” says Kiran. “Cook? My head hurts. Does your head hurt?”
“Your cook,” Jane says. “That’s the guy who wears checkered pants and a chef’s hat, right?”
“Cook dresses like that sometimes,” Kiran says. “Though I always get the feeling he’s doing it to be ironic.”
“Ironic?” Jane says. “What do you mean?”
“How should I know?” Kiran says, then sighs. “What does it matter? It’s like his name. His name is Cook, that’s why we call him Cook. Corcoran, actually, but he’s always gone by Cook, and I think he does, in fact, like to cook, but I don’t think he ever cooks. He’s always busy doing god-knows-what instead. Playing his damn saxophone. Caring for his parents. Cook is Mr. and Mrs. V’s son. Patrick does most of the cooking. Everyone in the world has fulfilling work but me.”
This is such a striking thing for a bored millionairess to say—especially about her own servants—that Jane is momentarily stunned into silence.
“Kiran,” says Colin gently, not taking his eyes from his cards, “you speak half a dozen languages fluently and have as keen a political mind as anyone I’ve ever known. You’ll find a job, when the time is right. Don’t rush yourself.”
There’s a particular quality to Kiran’s silence. Jane is beginning to recognize it: a kind of irritable resentment at the expectation of her gratitude. As if his niceness is oily and self-serving.
Nearby, in her armchair, Lucy St. George sighs over The House of Mirth. “I thought I remembered the plot of this book,” she says, “but I guess I don’t.”
Jane glances at Lucy uneasily. Lucy’s wrapped her hand in a bandage, which seems extreme, for a splinter. There’s a bruised look to the skin around her eyes, a fragility Jane sees in her own mirror after nights when she’s not slept well. “What do you mean?” she asks. “Is the plot different from what you remember?”
“Everyone is playing more bridge than I remember,” says Lucy. “Lily Bart is sitting in an armchair in a library, reading a book and watching her friends play bridge, endlessly, which I don’t remember. Didn’t she usually play bridge herself? Isn’t that what got her into financial trouble? And wasn’t she always having clever conversations with gentlemen?”
“I don’t remember the plot either,” Jane says. “I just remember thinking there wasn’t much mirth. Is your hand okay?”
“She’s getting awfully sleepy as her friends play bridge,” says Lucy. “It’s making me sleepy.”
Jane’s own bridge game is stalled, because Kiran is staring into space. “Charlotte chose something interesting for the ceiling of this room,” Kiran says.
“I don’t want to talk about her,” Jane says, automatically.
“Doesn’t it look like an open book?” Kiran says. “The way Charlotte designed the ceiling?”
“Don’t say her name,” says Jane. “She can hear her own name. It wakes her up.”
“What?” says Kiran. “What are you talking about, Janie? Just look at it!”
Jane cranes her neck. The ceiling has two halves, painted white, that, ever-so-slightly vaulted, meet in the middle. The effect is accentuated by what seem to be small images, like miniature ceiling frescoes, arranged in neat lines across each “page.” Jane finds it difficult to decipher the images. This difficulty contributes to the ease of imagining them as letters, or words. Yet, they’re regularly shaped, aren’t they? Not letters of the alphabet, but rows of rectangles and squares. Little windows or doors, painted on the ceiling? Little book covers?
Lucy, now dozing in her armchair, makes a loud snorting noise through her nose. It sends a shock through Jane’s body, like the sound of a gunshot would, and Jane sucks in air.
“Lucy!” she cries. “We should wake up. We should have a clever conversation.”
“Huh?” Lucy says, half-asleep. “Lily Bart is sleeping.”
“You’re not Lily Bart.” Propelled by a sudden sense of urgency—she doesn’t know where it comes from, and even Jasper is startled by it—Jane gets up and grabs on to Lucy’s arm, hard, shaking her. “Wake up.”
“I want to know more about Charlotte and the ceiling,” Lucy says blearily.
“No,” Jane says. “We don’t want to talk any more about—”
Jane means to end with the word that. Her mouth forms the shape of the word that, then somehow the word Charlotte, awkward and full of spit, shapes itself around her intentions and pushes itself out of her mouth. “Charlotte,” Jane says. Frightened, she tries again, but again, her mouth won’t take the form she wants it to take. Her lips purse forward and her breath pushes through. “Char—” she says, struggling against it. “Char—!”
“Shark!” cries Phoebe, who holds her cards in tight hands and stares at Jane, eyes wide and frightened. “Shark,” Phoebe says again, with some triumph. “Try it. You can turn it into the word shark.”
Jane thinks of the bull shark in the fish tank. She imagines the creature pulling the word shark out of her mouth as it swims back and forth. “Charlotte,” Jane says, almost weeping with frustration.
“Shark!” says Phoebe. “Try harder!”
Jane reaches for something more powerful: the gentle whale shark Ivy carved into the edge of her worktable. Jane holds her hand up and imagines touching it.
Jane is underwater, touching the underbelly of a benevolent shark. It glides above her and moves on. Everything is quiet and slow. Jane is herself. “Shark,” she says, feeling the compulsion sink away, down into the darkness. “Shark! Oh, I’ve never been more happy to say the word shark.”
“That was strange,” says Phoebe. “Wasn’t it?”
“What’s wrong with you guys?” asks Colin, squinting at each of them in turn. “You’re being really weird. You’re making the strangest faces too. And what’s wrong with the dog?” he adds, for Jasper is tugging on Jane’s bootlaces with his teeth.
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “But I want to leave.”
“You’re all acting funny,” says Colin.
A phone bursts into song, Lucy’s phone. “My phone!” Lucy cries, then begins patting her body until she finds it. “Hello!” she cries. “Dad!” she cries. “No. Not yet. Don’t worry! It’s safe! It’s behind—”
“Lucy!” says Colin, interrupting hastily. “No one wants to hear you yelling at Uncle Buckley.”
“Never mind!” Lucy cries into the phone. “I’m not telling you where I’m keeping it! I’m not telling Colin, either!”
“All right,” says Colin, shooting to his feet. He shuffles Lucy toward the doorway urgently, shushing her like she’s a child, or a dog.
“Well,” says Phoebe. “We can’t play without Colin and I have things I could be doing.” She stands slowly, as if she’s not entirely sure her limbs are going to behave as usual. But then she crosses the room and strides out.
Jane is left alone with Kiran. Kiran’s not staring at the library ceiling anymore, which is a vast relief, because Jane has no intention of looking at the ceiling again. She wants to pretend there is no ceiling, which is difficult, because she can feel it above her, pressing down. It’s humming some note that makes her own nerves jangle discordantly and she feels that if she looks up, it will sound infinitely worse. Aunt Magnolia? Aunt . . . what?
“Kiran,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay,” says Kiran, still holding her cards, but not really looking at them.
Lucy has left The House of Mirth behind; it’s sitting, facedown, on the seat of her armchair.
With a sudden, certain compulsion, Jane grabs The House of Mirth, carries it to the French doors overlooking the terrace, opens the doors, and flings it as far as she can into the yard. When she returns to Kiran, Kiran raises quizzical eyebrows at her.
“That was weird,” Kiran says. “What do you have against Lucy?”
“I don’t have anything against Lucy,” Jane says firmly. “Quite the opposite. I’m trying to help Lucy. That book felt bad to me.”
“You’re an oddball,” Kiran says, “did you know that?”
The dog is whimpering softly at Jane’s feet. “Yeah,” Jane says. “I know. Let’s go, okay?”