Aristide, Harriet’s benefactor, was married to Tamar. At rest he might have been a classic silver fox. The wise-looking kind—King Balthazar graying at the temples after all those years of studying the stars. But Ari was never at rest. Everything about him was lean and tense and rectangular; he was tuned into conversational subtext at a frequency that caused him nervous headaches. He took ambiguity as a personal attack. If a summary wasn’t concise, he’d shout it down or walk away halfway through. Are you trying to be clever with me . . . are you trying to be fucking clever with me? he’d roar.
So you’re the one who wants to grow up. That was the first thing Ari said to Harriet. Through gritted teeth, no less. It would’ve been easy to start off on the wrong foot with him by saying something like “M-me?” but the waterfall was Harriet Lee’s best adviser just then (SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH), so she just looked at Aristide Kercheval without saying anything. This must have put him into a peaceable mood, because after a couple of moments of looking back at her, he fluffed up her pillow, adjusted her blanket, and said, OK, OK. Welcome.
Aristide’s older brother, Ambrose, walked with the aid of a striped cane that looked like a peppermint stick, spoke without insistence, and gave no hard stares. There was a triplicate softness to the man, as if he were a combination of poet, invalid, and monk. This may have been due to constantly having to soothe people’s feelings in Ari’s wake . . .
Last of all were two boys; one was sixteen years of age and the other was seventeen. The younger boy was Aristide and Tamar’s son. His name was Gabriel, and the other, older boy was Ambrose and Kenzilea’s son, Rémy. When Harriet got a proper look at the cousins, she thought, Seriously? Do they seriously have to look like this? It was like looking at faces printed on banknotes—no, they were a pair of black pre-Raphaelite muses. Their features had the same sort of almost unacceptable clarity; the sort designed to appear in an idealized shepherd-boy scene, close-shaven curls and all. All each needed was a backdrop of moonlit cloud. Not that it was possible for them to inhabit the same canvas. Gabriel’s half-frown belonged to a dreamer who chased errant flocks in his sleep. His version of Endymion’s story would end with the young man telling Selene that she’s very pretty but he finds her advances inappropriate and has neither the time nor the resources to adequately pursue a romantic relationship. Rémy’s half-smile was more knowing, less chaste. This Endymion’s rational objections could be overcome. Yes, he was a shepherd and Selene was the moon, but really it all depended on how good they could make each other feel.
(“Oooooh, I should get a prize,” the doll named Prim announces. “I should get a prize for not asking which one you lost your virginity to, Mother-of-Perdita.”
“More like a prize for presumptuousness,” says the doll named Lollipop.
The doll named Bonnie has something to add: “While we’re at it, let’s give Perdita a prize for not asking which one’s her father.”
“Never-ending spiral of presumption,” says Lollipop.)
The younger boy, Gabriel, asked Harriet if there was anything he could get her, and she asked for a piece of paper. He gave her a whole blank notebook, the nicest notebook she’d owned to date, its pages flecked with papyrus pith. Handmade and heartfelt; Harriet wanted everything she did to be like this. Each time she opened the book and saw Gabriel Kercheval’s monogrammed initials, there was an instant, the briefest instant, in which it seemed to her that a note from Gretel had been slipped in among her own.
Harriet started out using her notebook for new words but soon switched to keeping a weekly ranking of the members of the Kercheval household. Margot was number one week after week, though the list didn’t run in order of liking—Harriet liked most of her housemates about the same. She slept well in that house even though it took her by surprise at first—Er, when will it be finished? Margot asked as Ari pulled up in the driveway. It looked like a Brutalist building site, a single block of checkered granite with a number of deep gaps and crenellations that seemed to think they answered the need for windows and doors. The white squares glared . . . perhaps it was a Kercheval rule always to conceal the extent of one’s wealth, whether in Druhástrana or abroad. Exteriors aside, the Kerchevals’ was a household that made room for them. Its members carried furniture from spot to spot in order to get what Margot called “the vibe” right, and they drew alternate floor plans for Margot and Harriet when they got lost due to certain qualities of the building itself. Ari did most of his work from home and liked to move his office around at the press of a button, so the staircase that ran through the center of the building was the only fixed unit, and all the other rooms slid up and down like beads on an abacus. Harriet would knock on what she thought was Gabriel’s bedroom door only to find herself chatting with Margot or Rémy, as Gabriel’s room had gone up or down a floor.
Every now and then the adult Kerchevals would make offhand references to a collective good deed they carried out annually. The less traceable it was in terms of possibility/probability, the more likely they were to take it on. One year it might be the seeding of a long-term investment, and another year it was a question of stopping something from happening . . . blocking somebody else’s move. You’d be surprised how taxing that can be . . .
From this talk Margot inferred that taking in the Lees was that year’s good deed, and also that the annual good deed was meant to be therapeutic for the family conscience. Tamar and Kenzilea were noticeably defensive about practicing medicine in the private sector, and Ari and Ambrose were cagey about the source of their wealth, so it was probably exploitative, true to known Kercheval form. This had no effect on Ari’s ranking in Harriet’s list of household members.
“Let’s have this list, then,” says the doll named Prim, and the doll named Sago says: “Oh no, not a list.” The doll named Lollipop agrees: “I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but lists—you shouldn’t do that to people . . .”
The doll named Bonnie wants to hear it and says Lollipop and Sago can just cover their ears if they’re so much against cataloging people. She, Bonnie, will listen carefully because it’s like a list of suspects, only rather than being suspects connected to a murder they’re suspects connected to a birth. One of the people Harriet’s about to list might be Perdita’s father, and another two of them might be Perdita’s grandparents on the paternal side. Speaking on her own behalf the doll named Bonnie would like to know what kind of people the English Kerchevals wanted the Lees to think they were and what kind of people the Lees actually ended up thinking they were. Furthermore, Perdita has her pen poised over her notebook and looks ready to take notes, and the doll named Prim repeats her, “Let’s have this list, then,” adding that she’s already decided who she thinks Perdita’s father is (!), but she doesn’t mind hearing about the rest of the household since these people were good enough to take Mother-of-Perdita in.
“If the list isn’t in order of dodginess, how does it run? In order of how much you liked or disliked each household member?”
Harriet’s list ran in order of readability, and Margot Lee was number one. The rest of the list generally went like this: