One day, Mr. Fox was traveling on business of some sort, so Lady Mary went in search of his castle. She had to search long and hard, but at the end of the day, she found it. The building was made of stone, tall and majestic, with a moat and crenellations and all that good castle-y stuff.
Lady Mary walked across the drawbridge and found the gate open. She entered the castle and went up a long flight of stone stairs. There was no one around.
She continued, looking into rooms and running her fingers along the walls, imagining her future life as mistress of this immense place. Oh, the fun they would have together! She relished the thought of their nights alone in the dark, and their bright sunny mornings of laughter.
On the top floor of the castle, at the end of a very long hall, Lady Mary found a closed door. It was made of steel, larger and wider than an ordinary door. A shudder went through her as she stood before it, but she pulled it open nonetheless.
Inside was a long corridor. It was filled with bones and the dead and bloody bodies of women.
Trophies. That was what women were to Mr. Fox. Objects of pleasure and then disgust, to be silenced and kept in a closet for memory’s sake while he went in pursuit of the next.
Lady Mary turned and ran, but as she reached the ground floor of the castle, she heard the front door begin to open. She hid herself up in a cupboard and held still, barely breathing. Looking out.
Mr. Fox came home.
He was dragging the body of a young woman, dead as could be. He stopped in the entryway and dumped her on the hard stone floor. The woman wore a heavy diamond ring on one finger. Mr. Fox tried to take the ring for himself, but it stuck.
In fury, he drew his sword and cut the dead woman’s hand off.
Then he dragged the body up the stairs.
Lady Mary scooped up the hand and ran home as fast as she could.
The next day, they were to be married. Before the ceremony was a breakfast. Mr. Fox, Lady Mary, her two brothers, and their guests all sat down together at the table.
“I had a terrible dream last night,” Lady Mary announced to the company.
She told the story of her visit to Mr. Fox’s castle. She told them of the closed steel door, and of the corridor behind it, filled with bodies. She told them of the dead woman, whose hand was cut off for the sake of a diamond ring.
“It is not so,” said Mr. Fox. “It was only a dream, my darling.”
“But it was so,” said Lady Mary, and she held up the severed hand for everyone to see.
At once her two brave brothers drew their swords. They cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.
* * *
—
“MR. FOX” IS my story, just like “Cinderella” was.
I am Lady Mary,
longing for love,
enraptured by a new romance,
protected by her siblings.
And Pfeff,
he is Mr. Fox.
* * *
—
BUT MAYBE I am Mr. Fox, too.
We can argue about it in hell.
PART FIVE
Mr. Fox
44.
IT IS LUDA’S night off. After supper, Tipper asks Yardley and me to help clean up.
The boys, Penny, and Erin disappear back to Goose, with Bess trailing them. My father and Uncle Dean pour themselves nightcaps and begin arguing. Something about financial ethics and business associates—nothing interesting. Tipper shoos them outside and they take themselves to the Big Beach. Tomkin goes into the Clairmont den to watch television.
Yardley and I are to help with the dishes, the dirty countertops, and so on. Tipper gives us aprons and Yardley grumbles as she straps hers on.
“I do this every night of my life, young lady,” says my mother merrily. “So get used to it. When you have a family, there’s no alternative.”
“I think I’ll be in the operating theater,” says Yardley. “My husband will feed the kids while I’m sewing up someone’s chest cavity.”
“My kids will eat in restaurants,” I say.
“Okay, ladies,” says Tipper. “We’ll see how that goes down when you have two little ones in diapers.”
“Oh, my children won’t wear diapers,” says Yardley. “They won’t poop at all. They’ll be completely hygienic and they’ll never smell, or I won’t even have them.”
“You’re very good company,” Tipper answers. “But I need you to put on the rubber gloves and make some progress in that sink.”
When we are finished, our hands smell of bleach and our cheeks are flushed from the heat of the kitchen. Yardley and I leave my mother, who brings her glass of wine over to watch TV with Tomkin.
By now, the others have been at Goose for at least an hour. As Yardley and I head in that direction, we run into Uncle Dean and Harris, coming from the Big Beach. There is tension in the air.
Harris doesn’t look at me but claps Yardley on the shoulder as he passes her. “Done,” he says. And keeps walking.
Dean looks at his daughter. “Lotta fuss about nothing,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” she tells him.
“You want to come talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Yard, come on.”
“Carrie and I are going to Goose.”
Dean shakes his head. “Harris has a stick up his you-know-what.”
“Yeah, well. You put it there,” she says, and walks on.
“What was that about?” I ask when Dean is out of earshot.
“Oh god. I should tell you the whole thing. Do you want to hear?”
“Sure.”
“We can sit out here,” says Yardley as we step into the Goose Cottage garden, which is mostly in darkness. Light shines from the living room. The grass is littered with beer bottles and Ping-Pong balls. We can hear music thumping inside, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”
I’m heading to flop onto the grass so I can learn why Yardley’s mad at her father, when she grabs my hand suddenly. “Oh no,” she says.
I turn to look where she is pointing.
45.
AGAINST THE PING-PONG table, in the shadows, Penny is kissing Pfeff.
They are wrapped around each other, her hand in his hair. He has pulled her loose linen shirt up and his fingers are touching her pale pink bra.
They do not seem to hear us, they are so lost in the ecstasy of one another.
My sister.
And Pfeff.
46.
I FREEZE.
“Do you not hear us come in the gate, you assholes?” shouts Yardley. “We’re literally right here. Me and Carrie.”
“Damn,” says Penny, whose back is against the table.
Pfeff turns around, pulling away from her. His eyes grow wide. His lips look swollen, the way they get from kissing.
I cannot face the two of them.
I cannot speak.
My throat closes, and a ball of hot fury and pain barrels into my head and pushes out through my skin.
It melts my face.
My features ooze like wax,
sliding down my bones,
dripping onto the boards beneath my feet.
I cover my face with my hands, feeling like that’s the only way to keep my flesh from pouring onto the walkway as it melts, everything agony.
Yardley puts her hand out to me, but I turn and run, bursting through the gate and down the walkway into the dark, dark spaces of the island.
* * *
—
THE IMAGE OF Penny’s hand in Pfeff’s dark hair—it makes me sick.
To think that he’s kissed me all those times and had me up in his room, and told me his secret about getting into Amherst, and touched me so softly and urgently; to think that he made me feel clever, insightful, beautiful, impressive—and all the while, he’d have rather had Penny.
She is prettier than I am, no doubt. Even if beauty is subjective, even if beauty standards change over time, she is prettier than I—to everyone. Always. Even though I had my damned jaw broken and reconstructed.
Even though.
It doesn’t matter that I understand how Pfeff feels about college, or that I can see he’s a faker and call him on it, or that I’m good at speaking in front of people, or that I make him laugh.
It doesn’t matter that I feel things deeply and think about the world beyond Beechwood. Everyone loves Penny best. They love her best because how her eyes fit into the sockets of her skull, because of her extra quarter inch of cheekbone, because of her creamy, silky hair, and the line of her jaw and
the slight menace of her white canine teeth.