Sadie was so upset at the news of Marie’s engagement to Philip, she found herself unable to sit in her room and do anything, not even write. She decided to leave the house and go for a walk. She threw her awful cloak over her shoulders and pulled her hat down over her hair and eyebrows. And she left the house through the back kitchen door to avoid having to speak to her mother or brother.
Sadie marched around the neighborhood with her long cloak dragging over mud and horse shit on the street, muttering under her breath how angry she was at Marie for disappointing her. She found herself, quite by accident, in Marie’s gardens. She had forgotten the geography of the neighborhood, but she had somehow, instinctively, ended up here. She saw the labyrinth. She couldn’t help herself and wandered into it. Like any murderer, she wanted to return to the scene of the crime.
The last person she expected to see at the center of the labyrinth was Marie herself. Her heart leaped like a frog out of a child’s fist. Sadie recognized her even though so many years had passed.
She hadn’t thought to ever see Marie in the flesh again. But there she was, looking very striking. She was wearing her blond hair up in an incredible style. She wondered how many maids had worked on it. Sadie had never seen a bouffant so high in her life, and she didn’t think she would ever see one that high again. Marie was carrying a small piglet in her arms. The piglet looked as though it were in a state of ecstasy. Sadie had probably interrupted Marie in an intense session of compliments.
As soon as she laid eyes on Marie once again, she was delighted despite herself. She had thought she was inoculated against Marie and had become immune to feelings about her years before. She had been freshly betrayed by Marie’s engagement. But she saw Marie and was shocked by her body’s reaction.
Perhaps there is such a thing as true love. What had she been doing the past nine years? Lying to herself? Distracting herself from a very central part of her personality, which was that she was metaphysically bound to Marie.
The last time they had been in this garden together they had stood facing each other with guns in their hands. It suddenly seemed as though Marie hadn’t moved in all this time. As though she had stood there waiting for her to return for nine years.
“It’s you!” Marie cried. “I knew you had come back. I was waiting for you to come visit me.”
Marie dropped the piglet to the ground when she saw Sadie. The piglet let out a squeal of indignation and hurried off, its pride hurt.
Suddenly the women were unable to keep their hands off each other. They were enthralled by the physical changes in each other, and how they found each other even more beautiful. They reached out and put their hands on each other’s hair. They played with each other’s curls as though they were silk. They grabbed onto each other’s ears and grinned. They put their hands on each other’s cheeks. They gently pulled their faces together and kissed. Then Sadie pushed on Marie’s body in order to distance herself from her, recollecting herself. Marie was engaged to her brother. She was not the same Marie she had left.
“Come have some chocolate with me!” Marie begged. “Every other girl around here is inept, to say the least.”
“It is very nice to see you,” said Sadie calmly. “I trust you are well. I must be returning home now.”
“But why?”
“I’m expected of course. Aren’t we always expected?” Sadie asked, and a slight sneer appeared on the side of her smile, like it was pulled up by a string at the corner.
Marie gave a small smile.
“Should we be friends again?” she said.
“Were we ever friends?”
“Of course we were. How can you say that to me?”
“We were similar back then, I suppose. It was possible for us to be friends. We both thought we were artists of some kind. But I was punished. And I was made to suffer. We can’t really be expected to be friends anymore.”
“I have suffered too.”
“No, you haven’t. Not really.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I came to take a look at who I used to be, I suppose. I wanted to see just how far I had traveled and how much I have become. And all the things I know. I wanted to make sure it was you who were punished and not me. Your punishment is that you have become mundane and ordinary, and you have agreed to marry Philip.”
Sadie turned away, feeling as if she had won something. She almost stepped on a squirrel as she stormed off. The animal’s tail whipped all over the place, like the ostrich quill of a judge signing a death warrant.
* * *
Despite the failure of their conversation, Marie thought she would try again with Sadie. She paced back and forth in her room. She had to have more time with Sadie. She would have to create a situation wherein she could get Sadie to sit down and not budge. Marie invited Sadie to an embroidery circle at her home.
Marie sat at her desk in her undergarments and wrote with her favorite plume to Sadie an invitation for tea. She threw sawdust on the card. She held it up and shook it over her head, causing it to look momentarily like a startled bird that had been shot in the chest. She was in such haste to send the invitation she didn’t want to wait for the ink to dry. She paused only because she was rather fond of her own handwriting.
Once a girl received an invitation to another girl’s home, she could never refuse. It would be regarded as impolite. It would be regarded as her having a mind of her own. And while she was living under her mother’s roof, she would never be allowed to do that.
She knew she was trapping Sadie, but she couldn’t help it.
CHAPTER 18
The Heart Is an Ugly Thumper
Even though she found sitting in embroidery circles to be fraught with a certain level of anxiety, Marie was nonetheless very good at the craft. Her favorite subject was always roses. Roses seemed more alive than any other flower. So capturing their vitality was very difficult. She thought if she were able to capture a real rose, it would seem to move. There were pillows all over the house with her embroidered roses that refused to breathe.