“What . . . I’m sorry?” Birdie mumbled back.
“About your mother. I came to pay a visit—I’ve left my card for your father, Allene—we had some business matters to discuss and . . . oh dear. Birdie, I am so sorry. What a terrible situation. How unfortunate. How can I be of help?”
Birdie stared. Her tongue was numb, and she couldn’t bring her mouth to speak anything worth saying.
Allene swept up beside him. “Ah, Ernie. Always here to help. You are a dear. Poor Birdie’s quite spent.”
“I’m sure! What an awful accident. Birdie, you must be devastated. I know I would be. I’d be in such a state! Such a state, I tell you,” Ernie rattled on.
Birdie shut her eyes. Andrew let go of her elbow to draw Ernie aside, pointing him in the direction of the refreshments that had arrived in the parlor. She was both grateful and troubled by this. What more could she possibly add to the list of what she owed Andrew?
Allene took Birdie’s arm and motioned to Lucy, who’d returned from delivering the suitcases upstairs.
“Lucy, have the servants draw a bath, and lay out one of my clean nightgowns for her. Birdie needs to go right to bed and rest. Poor thing is exhausted.”
Birdie wasn’t in a state to resist. And yet she couldn’t help but feel as if Allene’s first order of the afternoon was to eliminate, as best as possible, the traces of Birdie’s previous life. Hazel and her death had left a taint, and it was time to scour it away.
Upstairs, they peeked into the guest bedroom. Holly was wearing a new dress—Birdie recognized it as one of her own from years ago. It was a mite too large, and she swam in it. Her head was ensconced in a down pillow, and the coverlet draped across her legs. Her eyes were puffy, as Birdie’s must be, but she was deep asleep. She had been sucking her thumb, but it had popped out and lay, ready to relaunch, where her loose fist rested on the pillow.
Birdie exhaled with relief. She was all right for now.
Lucy ushered her to the bathroom, where she left her in the care of several maids. One was running the bath and sprinkling lavender salts into the steaming water, followed by rose oil. A robe was folded and ready on a stool, along with plush, soft towels. Another maid curtsied before coming to Birdie. Her small hand reached for the buttons on Birdie’s dress.
Birdie took a step back. “I can do it,” she said.
“Miss Allene sent us to help you,” the maid explained.
“I don’t need help.” She was so used to doing everything by herself. Any extra hands on her person felt like she’d owe someone, somehow. And she wasn’t wanting to pay what she couldn’t give.
“This is how things are done for the ladies of the house. Do you not remember, miss?”
She didn’t remember this maid. Many of the servants were strangers to her. And she’d forgotten how things were. Just a few years, and already she had more in common with the cook than with this lady’s maid.
This is what you wanted. This is where you wished to be, wasn’t it? Birdie asked herself.
She nodded. “Of course. You may proceed.” She cleared her throat before adding, “Thank you.”
Relief stole over the faces of the maids. It was far easier for them to do their job when their mistresses were docile. First, they unpinned her tight, white-gold braids and laced their fingers through her scalp to loosen the knots. Then they unbuttoned Birdie’s dress, taking off her chemise and stockings, her loosely laced corset, brassiere, and drawers. Sinking into the heat of the bathwater, Birdie unconsciously sighed. She was buffed from toes to head and shampooed within an inch of her life, and all the traces of the clock factory were removed from under her fingernails with an orangewood stick.
The scent of Hazel’s favorite magnolia perfume—smudged onto Birdie’s chest when she held her unconscious mother—was soaped off. So were Holly’s tears. All things inconvenient and embarrassing, humiliating and tragic, all the mistakes and unsaid words would whirl down the drain soon enough.
From beyond the door and elsewhere downstairs, she heard Andrew’s voice.
Oh, God help me, Birdie thought. God help me survive this house and these people.
If only the maids would use nails and knives to scrape away her shame and leave nothing but her bones. They were so busy polishing Birdie into a bright and pretty thing that they never noticed that her face was wet from tears, not bathwater.
When she was buffed dry and robed, the maids brought her back to her room, where Holly still slept soundly. For the sake of her sleeping sister, she shooed away the maids and insisted that she could dress herself.
She stood in a place that was slipping and slipping fast. Lately, it was her shinbone that hurt. She noticed a bump that shouldn’t be there along the razor’s edge of bone. It had grown within the last week, and she was trying to ignore the pain that went with it. Her jaw still caused her trouble. She’d lost another molar. Thankfully, no one could see her missing teeth when she smiled.
Holly stirred in her sleep. Birdie forgot herself and went to the bedside. Holly blinked drowsily, looking about her, before poking her thumb across her cheek and finding her mouth. The pale green eyes found Birdie and smiled, then saw the milk-glass lamp next to the bed and the canopy and the window with the costly damask curtain. Confusion filled her face.
“Darling, we’re at Miss Allene’s home now. You took a nap. Remember?”
Holly nodded. “She said I can call her Auntie Ally.”
“Yes. You may.”
Memory stirred behind Holly’s eyes. “Where’s Mama?” she whined.
“She’s been taken away.”
“I want to see her.”
“No, Holly. We can’t do that. Mama’s gone and they’ll take care of her until we can say good-bye at the funeral.”
The funeral. She would have to find an undertaker. Buy a plot somewhere—nothing grand like the Evergreens. Where to even look? No one had prepared Birdie for the fact that she ought to have shopped for cemetery plots when it was more convenient, when everyone who counted was still alive. Mother would need a dress. It would cost money, and all that she had was still sewn into the mattress at the apartment. She’d been too dazed to even consider retrieving it earlier.
The door cracked open, and Allene quietly entered. As always, she didn’t ask permission or knock.
“I want to see Mama,” Holly begged into Birdie’s neck, and clung harder.
“Oh, Holly Berry. We can’t. Mother has gone to heaven, and she’s happy there.”
“But we’re not there. How could she be happy?”
“It’s God’s way.” When everything in life went well, it was God’s way. When everything went to hell, it was God’s way too.
Holly sobbed in Birdie’s arms for some time. Allene stayed a quiet witness to this, raising her hand once or twice to wipe tears from her own face.