The Arnetts had come to the Golden Mile when Sadie’s father inherited the mansion from his great-uncle. It was a beautiful house made of polished, square gray stones that seemed indifferent to harsh winters. Mr. and Mrs. Arnett moved in on their third wedding anniversary. Their son, Philip, was a baby, and their daughter, Sadie, had not yet been born.
The house in the Golden Mile was their ticket to security and prosperity. Mr. and Mrs. Arnett were both determined to use their address to climb to the top of the social ladder. Mr. Arnett was a politician known for his zealous advocacy of moral decency. He repeatedly requested that prostitutes and houses of ill repute be closed down. The minute he criticized a play, it extended its run, knowing full well the publicity would bring people out in droves.
His address loaned him an air of respectability. The illusion of wealth was what had kept his career afloat. The Arnetts often thought of selling it because they needed the money. But they knew if they did sell it, they would no longer have the status of living in the Golden Mile.
They kept the house freezing cold in the winter to save money. The third floor was entirely cordoned off so they didn’t have to clean or heat it. They had only one maid, who was Mrs. Arnett’s seventeen-year-old cousin. She was more or less posing as a maid instead of actually being one. Mrs. Arnett did the lion’s share of the housework. She got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the floor viciously with a brush. She had to make it look as though she had three maids working all the time. They never encouraged visitors. It was such a great expense to them to entertain.
They could have led a normal life if they were humble. If they lived in a house suitable to a politician and sent Philip to a less expensive school. But they needed to ally themselves with real money. They had to truly be accepted into the Golden Mile if Mr. Arnett were going to rise in the political ranks.
* * *
When Sadie was a young girl, she did not scream and cry and fuss unnecessarily the way some babies do. She never spoke until she spoke in full sentences. She was so clear about what she wanted.
Sadie was very self-sufficient as a child. Perhaps she had to be, since she had only one maid who didn’t clean up. She didn’t like when anyone dressed her. She despised certain outfits. She put on the same navy-blue dress with black stripes on the collar every day and tied on her black boots.
She opened books before she could read them. She refused to ever play with her brother.
She sat next to Philip while he was being taught to read and write. She was absolutely still. She learned the lessons quicker than he did. She seemed to know this would be the only time she was exposed to teaching in the same way. So she sat as quietly as a mouse and took it all in.
She was always shocking members of the household. They would enter a room and not know she was in it. Then they’d turn and leap almost out of their socks. It seemed truly as though she had appeared out of thin air. But she had been standing right there the whole time.
* * *
When Sadie was seven years old, her mother went to the extra expense of hiring a governess, in hopes it would make her ladylike. The governess had to be let go after she had allowed Sadie to fall off a cliff. But she swore Sadie had thrown herself deliberately over it. No one could accept this. But the governess had seen what she had seen. And no one could convince her she had been in any way mistaken in her interpretation.
She had taken her eyes off Sadie for a brief moment. When she looked again the girl was smiling at her, with her back to the cliff. Although Sadie was about twenty feet away from the edge of the cliff, the governess still considered it too close for comfort. She summoned Sadie to come back to her on the picnic blanket.
Sadie smiled wider and began to walk backward. Growing more alarmed, the governess rose to her feet and yelled at Sadie to stop walking at once.
“Sadie, darling. Be careful, please. Turn around! The cliff is right behind you, darling, you’ll fall. You’ll fall.”
When Sadie refused to stop her backward motion, the governess began to run toward her, arms outstretched. She was sick to her stomach and terrified. She began to plead with Sadie, “Please, please stop.” It was as though she were pleading for her own life. She was pleading to be spared from this experience.
Sadie got to the very edge of the cliff. She stopped for a moment. Instinctually, the maid felt herself stop too. It was as though her propulsive movement might remind Sadie of her own seemingly unstoppable trajectory. Then, and most unsettlingly and most unbelievably, Sadie held up her hand to wave good-bye. And took one step back off the cliff.
Sadie recovered but had a broken arm and a concussion. She seemed very proud of her broken arm. It was one of Sadie’s first memories. She remembered thinking if she could throw herself off a cliff, she would be able to throw anyone off a cliff.
Deliberately. “Deliberately” was a word the governess heard herself repeating over and over in the following days. She repeated it so often, unable to have anyone take it seriously, that she began to wonder whether she truly had any understanding of the word.
The governess sat on the trolley with all her bags on the way to her mother’s home. For the rest of her life she would forever after be uncertain about the concept of deliberation and free will.
* * *
After this, Sadie was sent to school. She was the smartest in her class. She dominated in every subject. Her drive was not just for knowledge, in which case she might have found herself lazily daydreaming through her subjects. She wanted to be better than the other girls. She was as good as she needed to be to master and humiliate them.
She came back from school with her scarf wrapped almost up to her eyes and her hair a mess. This always alarmed her mother. She couldn’t understand what had happened. How had her daughter become so ruffled and rumpled? Sadie looked at her mother without a hint of expression on her face, the way she looked at most people. Sadie’s mother could be so infuriated by her daughter’s rudeness.
* * *
Sadie hated the sound of the piano and refused to learn it. She looked stubbornly at the snow falling out the window.
“I don’t like it. It’s too twinkly. It’s too pretty.”
“You can dance to it,” the tutor pleaded.
“No. I think music should be terrible. It should make people weep. Would you teach me a funeral dirge?”
“For what kind of funeral?”
“That of a young mother who drowned herself when she was rejected by her husband.”
* * *
Sadie Arnett had no friends before she met Marie. Sadie had learned to read when she was very young. The larger the novel she read, the more she was able to disappear from the world, and all the people in it. Each novel was like a voyage she embarked on. She specifically looked for enormous books. Then she would be gone for a longer period of time. She might disappear for an entire winter.