The popularity of her broadside trashing Marie did not make George feel any better about herself. In fact, it was the contrary. She sat in a chair across from Jeanne-Pauline’s register. The chair was squeezed in between two cabinets. One of which was filled with bottles of dried mushrooms. They looked like the appendages a witch had severed from children murdered in the woods. The other cabinet was filled with sprigs of plants that were still alive. There was an aloe plant that looked as though it was bent over and searching the ground for something.
George did not even know how a woman who had been devastated by another woman was supposed to act. She certainly didn’t have literature on her side. No wonder she was not noticeable. She felt the most interesting thing about her was her relationship with Sadie. She did not know if she could go back to who she was before she knew Sadie. Being angry had distracted her from feeling sad. But now that the flurry of activity that anger sets off had subsided, she was even more sad. She was so lonely.
She was feeling very sorry for herself. She had never asked for anything from anybody. She had seen other children begging their mothers for affection and candy. There was no one she could ask anything from. That was what made her so happy, she thought. She didn’t expect anything from other people. So she was never disappointed. She had expected so much from Sadie. It wasn’t that she thought Sadie belonged to her but that she belonged to Sadie. And she thought Sadie would take care of that.
But this morning George had finally realized it was not a possibility. Sadie was not going to return. Because Sadie could not do anything she didn’t want to do. Sadie couldn’t do anything simply out of a sense of duty. She did not care for anything that did not give her a sense of personal pleasure. And George meant nothing to her.
Jeanne-Pauline seemed uninterested in Sadie. Although many of the girls in the neighborhood went to see Jeanne-Pauline for advice, it wasn’t something that Sadie had ever done, or ever would do. Sadie never took advice from anyone. Jeanne-Pauline had always known Sadie considered herself above everyone in the neighborhood and only used them to amuse herself.
“Anger is a good thing,” she told George. “So is pettiness. It sharpens your mind. It teaches you how to be wicked. Righteous anger can’t teach you how to be wicked. It makes you demand justice. But petty grievances are like weeds that grow underneath sidewalks and find ways to undermine all that is rational and constructive in human civilization. You have learned to use words as weapons. You have learned to use words as a way to rally people’s moods and desires and drives. They are now in a fit, enraged against Marie Antoine, with the mad fervor people reserve only for those who have crossed them in love. You are unhappy with this now and disappointed by the sordid results. But don’t be. There is greatness here. Your darkness has planted the roots for greatness. I have known you since you were a very little girl, and you are the truest, most responsible person I have ever met. You have to fight against Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett for the right reasons now, in order to achieve the collective good.”
“Who am I to tell women what is right and wrong?”
“There are moments in time when the social hierarchy turns upside down. And those who were at the bottom are now suddenly at the top. We are at such a moment now. You should ask for what you really want. You should speak up now. There’s a megaphone already up to your mouth. People will hear you.”
CHAPTER 40
Wake Up the Servants
Marie had immediately set the maids to work the next day after Sadie had arrived. Some of them had descended into such a state of torpor over the past year they had difficulty even putting their shoes on. But within a few days they were back in vigorous motion again. Having grown up poor, and working since they were eleven and doing housework before, they had been conditioned to work. Marie went around switching them back on one by one, as though they were machines.
Now that Sadie was back, Marie felt a need to keep a proper home again. She wanted to make everything luxurious for Sadie.
Marie no longer ate in the kitchen. She had supper served in the enormous dining room in three courses. Sadie and Marie had their seats together at one end of the table. They consumed absinthe and stayed awake as long as they possibly could. Sadie laid her cheek on the surface of the table because she was so dizzy. Her head seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Marie knocked her dishes out of the way and laid her head on the table to be at the same level as Sadie.
This happened every night. The maids would come and help them off to bed if they were in too peculiar a position. Once they passed out in the bathtub together. The maids came in every half hour to dump a pitcher of hot water into the basin so they didn’t freeze.
When she was little, Sadie had felt the magic of this enormous house. But it had always made her jealous. Now that she lived here she was able to sink into it and admire it. The pillows on the bed swallowed her body and only her face was visible, as though it were being excavated by archaeologists.
* * *
The two women loved to sit together in Marie’s enormous bathtub. Marie had felt too lonely and lost when sitting in this bathtub before. But now it became a favorite spot in the evening for the two women to immerse their bodies. The bath was big enough for them both to fit into easily. They filled the bath with bubbles, and it was as though the two of them were sitting in the clouds together.
That night a stack of broadsides Marie’s assistant brought her were on a table next to the bath. Marie picked one up and read it out loud to Sadie.
“?‘Last week Marie Antoine summoned a fifteen-year-old citizen over to her carriage. Upon approaching the carriage, the boy was shocked to see Marie Antoine completely naked.’?”
“Why is everyone so obsessed with your body? I feel as though somehow I might be the cause of this.”
“In what way?”
“I made you into such a delicious fictional character, other people continue to make things up about you.”
“Nonsense.”