“Well, maybe I’ll join her soon. I’m not doing so swell myself.” She would have laughed aloud if she weren’t in so much damn pain.
“Don’t say that.” Andrew stole one of her hands in his, ever so gently. His was almost as cold as her own. “The doctor came by today already. He won’t be able to do much besides keep it in a splint. He said . . . he said . . .” Andrew paused. The cigarette was now burning low in his other hand. It almost burnt the skin of his hand before he crushed it in an ashtray.
“I know I don’t have very long. Does Allene know? Does Jasper?”
“Why are you asking about them? I’m right here.”
“Because, Andrew, I believe you’d lie with me in the grave if I asked it of you. And I don’t have to ask.” She opened her eyes and smiled. She knew what she looked like. Lately, in the mirror, her angelic face had become beauty corrupted, a grinning skull behind the thin veil of life. And just like that, her energy seemed to deflate to nothing, and she sagged back onto the bed. “I would like very much to go home now.”
“Home?” Andrew asked. “I thought you already retrieved your things. Do you mean the hotel?”
“No. I mean back to the Cutter house. It’s where I was born, and it’s where I ought to die.”
“Why won’t you stay here? Ernie is happy to have you and Holly stay for as long as necessary.”
“Oh, Andrew. Nowhere is safe for me anymore. Don’t you see?” She raised her hand from his, and it fell limply at her side.
Even when Andrew waited inside his car by the entrance to the Ansonia Clock factory all those mornings after Birdie had been dropped off by Dawlish, he hadn’t seen. Oh, Birdie felt guilty about it, leaving the Cutter house with Allene merrily waving good-bye. To Allene, Birdie was a garnish, a game, a posy to hold. To Andrew, she was a life necessity. Even once she was gone, he would placate her while she lay in her grave, for she had insinuated herself like a cancer into his soul, and he would never stop being a willing victim.
This way, she had the power to make Andrew promise her things, in case her hopes of keeping Holly in the Cutter house disappeared. Andrew would make sure Holly was always cared for. One of his loyal servants, a good and kind lady, was barren and might adopt Holly. Birdie had to keep planning, planning incessantly.
So Andrew had continued to take her to the Hotel Martinique, always made over cleanly with crisp new bedsheets and fresh glasses beside a bottle of Andrew’s favorite brandy. And Birdie had allowed it. Lately, she’d insisted on making love to him astride, so as not to put undue stress on her bones. Andrew would lie, nearly unmoving, watching her in rapture as she rode him at her own pace, never looking at his face, ignoring the large hands cupping her diminishing breasts. Before, it had been impossible for her body to respond to his. But lately, with eyes closed and her mind in a fantasy that had nothing to do with Andrew or anything real in her own life, she had been able to bring herself to an apex of pleasure. Birdie would shudder and cry out, tears at the edges of her squeezed-shut eyes. Andrew understood that her gasps were in spite of rather than because of him.
He knew. He always knew. And still, he was ravenous for her.
They blinked at each other, thinking their own thoughts, before Birdie rang the bell.
“I have to go home,” she repeated.
She had been asleep too long. She was fading fast, and sleeping was a waste of time when she could be spending more time with Holly and the brilliancy that was Allene and Jasper. Unlike Andrew, they made her feel more alive than she was, and that, too, was seductive. There was more information to be had, more clues. What had they learned while she slept? Drat this influenza. It was such a careless killer and a distraction. It was the careful killers they had to focus their attention on.
“What’s the rush, darling?” he murmured.
Birdie shivered whenever he said the word darling. “Florence is dead,” Birdie said. “Mother is dead. Frederick Jones is dead.” She inhaled. “It’s my turn soon. Very, very soon.”
The Cutter house was fumigated and cleaned from top to bottom before she and Holly were allowed to return. Ernie was disappointed she was leaving. But he would find other ways of helping Allene and, by extension, Birdie too.
Allene wore a black band around her arm when she received them. Crepe hung on the grand front doors, like so many others in the city. A morose, dark mood had pervaded every occupant, and even the floorboards of the house creaked with an ominous sigh.
“You can stay with me in my room,” Allene said. Dawlish and George carried Birdie upstairs as if she weighed no more than the crepe paper on the front door.
Birdie nodded, secretly terrified that she might lie in the same bed in which Lucy had died. It seemed that Allene’s old room was going to be the official gateway for exiting the land of the living, but of course she said nothing.
Once Holly was settled downstairs with milk and gingersnaps, her wooden truck tucked happily in her lap, Allene sat at Birdie’s bedside, mirroring her exhaustion.
“Will Jasper be here soon?” Birdie asked.
“I think so. He promised to visit today after work.” Allene stared at the window absently, as if someone else had answered beside herself.
“I’m very sorry,” Birdie began, “about Lucy. I know she meant a lot to you.”
Allene didn’t answer, didn’t move. Her face seemed carved of stone. October light shone from the window against her skin. She looked so much like her mother from the photographs. Birdie herself had completely forgotten what it was like to look upon Dorothy Cutter’s face. They shared the same elegant nose, those same deep-set brown eyes that sparkled with whimsy more times than not. They didn’t sparkle now.
“It’s not your fault, you know. That she died.” Birdie tried to console her.
“What?” Allene shook herself from her distracted thoughts.
“I said, it’s not your fault that she died. Influenza is just a terrible blight. We’re lucky we haven’t been afflicted ourselves. It could have been us, not her.”
“Yes, it could have been us. It could have been me.” Allene went back to staring out the window. She was sinking into a dark territory, so Birdie attempted to pull her into a different sea altogether.
“I had a visit from the doctor. About my broken leg.”
It worked. Allene’s eyes went straight to Birdie. “What did he say?”
“That I shall never walk again.”