Where’s Dad?
Margot told her she was sure she could guess the answer to that. Simon Lee was with Gwen and Elsa Cook, drinking nettle soup. No more gnawing on gingerbread for him . . . he’d come to his senses. If Simon Lee had had his pick of the farmstead, Gwen Cook would probably be his fourth or fifth choice. Gwen, who didn’t even have enough imagination to let her daughter leave the farmstead. But Simon was sticking with Gwen out of satisfaction that he was her first choice. And not returning Gwen’s ardor now didn’t mean he never would. This was all up to Gwen and Simon, and Margot wouldn’t have had a word to say about any of it if Gwen’s discarded husband hadn’t started bothering her, knocking on the cottage door in the evening and asking if they might drink a little nettle soup together, he and Margot. Instead of using words, Margot had shaken a frying pan at the man until he went away.
But if I stay in that place, Paul Cook will end up being your stepdad. Who are all these people who keep speaking to me when I’m trying to work . . . ? They come up to me and say, “Aren’t you lonely? You’re putting a brave face on, Margot Lee, but you do seem lonely . . . ,” or they’ll remind me that nobody can match Paul Cook’s mustache. Some of these people—Harriet, some of these people have come over from the neighboring farms to talk to me about Paul Cook’s mustache. It’s as if talking to me about his mustache is an additional job on top of all the other work they have to do . . . one last bout of industry before they go home for the night. Six months from now you’ll come home and Paul Cook will be sitting at the kitchen table, drinking piping-hot ditchwater out of a soup bowl, and I’ll put my hand on his shoulder and say, “Whatever was I thinking, turning this man away when I was so lonely and he has such a fine mustache?”
That seemed likely. One way or another, the numbers would stabilize so that Harriet and her farmstead friend had one of each parent: mother plus father plus Elsa Cook, mother plus father plus Harriet Lee.
And if I move here . . . well, it may take a while longer. A year. Give me a year in Druhá City and Clio Kercheval won’t have a patch on me.
That also seemed likely, and just as uncanny. Was there really no way out?
Sweetheart—can’t we just go and live with Aristide Kercheval? If it’s good enough for Maggie Parker’s pigeons, isn’t it good enough for us? Have some of this.
The gingerbread tasted stale, and Harriet thought that was the only catch until the mass in her gullet began to descend. The plunging weight of it—Harriet remembers trying to push her entire hand into her mouth, sticking her fingers down her throat, trying to drag the thing back up, this ever-thickening, slug-like mass. It turned her spinal cord into a bed of nails as it went down. Gasp by gasp.
Don’t look at me like that, Harriet, Margot managed to say, as all the breath in her own body condensed and then congealed. It’s really not what you think. See . . . you—soon.
“This is why I’m dead certain you’ve been talking to a Kercheval,” Harriet tells Perdita and the dolls. Only the Kerchevals know enough about Harriet and Margot’s departure from Druhástrana to be able to put a “follow the gingerbread road” spin on it.
Well, the Kerchevals, and the person or persons who must have come to Harriet and Margot’s hotel room after they’d blacked out. But perhaps all the removal team knew was that their evening schedule involved arranging two corpses into the yoga-like poses necessary for transportation in steamer trunks. This was done in the shortest time possible before the steamer trunks were dropped off at the nearest naval submarine base. That kind of professional doesn’t tend to be bothered about before-and-after scenarios.
A few hours later, when the steamer trunks were opened aboard a boat moored in Whitby Harbour, Margot and Harriet spilled out like “vats of custard.” Ari Kercheval opened the trunks himself. He still has nightmares about it. We thought your bones had melted or something. Margot said: Yes, so did we.
“Do I go on?” asks Harriet.
“YOU DO,” says Perdita and three of the dolls.
“I mean, you said Whitby Harbour. So why are we here in London? Why aren’t all six of us in Whitby right now . . . you tell us the reasons, and no funny business,” the doll named Sago says.
10
Harriet heard someone saying SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH so loudly and for so long that she felt she should check on the situation. Being unable to, she listened for a few more days and realized it was water falling down rocks. That was outside, beyond several walls. The nearest wall held a door or window that twisted around on itself like an hourglass—this acted as a light delivery service. The sun’s rays came and tickled her under the chin, but the waterfall never stopped saying, SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, this is no laughing matter, young lady, so she stayed straight-faced and giggle-free.
Once she’d ceased being overwhelmed by the sound and feel of still being alive, Harriet was able to understand that there were people around her, talking. Not to her, but about her. The people were speaking in English. They sounded like doctors, and they were talking about her hair. They were saying it had gone gray all at once, as if all the pigment had spontaneously dimmed. They’d thought it was all over when this had happened, but in fact the graying had accompanied the restoration of vital functions and the return, the doctoral voices said, of the patient’s ability to lie there pretending not to be listening to them talking about her hair. Since the jig was up, Harriet opened her eyes, looked around at the people clustered around her bed, and dry-heaved on and off for the rest of the day. An old woman wearing what looked like a gray fright wig on the other side of the room did the same, but for longer. Upon closer inspection the old woman turned out to be Margot Lee.
I told you, Harriet . . . I told you everything would be all right . . .
This is your idea of all right, is it, Mum?
Well, have you got a better one?
Harriet couldn’t help mourning the loss of her hair color; she hadn’t known how much she’d enjoyed having black hair until it was gray. But whenever she felt the hair-color mourning become excessive, she emulated Gretel’s calm surprise (if there could be such a thing) upon realizing that she had four pupils instead of two. Huh, well, it’s a change. And slowly, names were put to the bedside visitors. Both of the doctoral voices belonged to Kerchevals. One voice was Tamar’s, and one was Kenzilea’s. Tamar Kercheval, MD, was round and soft and had a polished look to her. You could picture Tamar putting in stints as a cover model for medical journals. Her hands were cold, but her gaze was warm. Kenzilea Kercheval, MD, had a Romany’s working knowledge of many places in the world that are said not to exist. She was frizzy-haired and deeply agnostic in manner; her silences were an alternative to the skeptical repetition of other people’s statements.