A Sign
For nearly two weeks after the frantic strangeness of the day of Eva’s funeral, I stayed close to my bedroom, tethered by guilt and grief. The day itself lives in my memory in a series of tableaux: the fly on Eva’s flowers, the gray, bloody head against the carriage window, the terrified horse, Olivia’s face in the French doors. But isn’t that what our memories are? We walk down a long hallway, opening doors into rooms whose permanent contents wait to surprise or comfort or horrify us. I lay in my bed, not wanting to breathe, remembering brushing Eva’s teeth before bedtime, checking her for ticks when we returned from walking on the deer trail in the woods, her pleased laughter when, at two years old, she stuck her hand in a bowl of noodles and wiped them in her hair. Strangely, I even lingered over Eva in her bath, singing the Eensy Weensy Spider as she tried to string bubbles along the inner wall of the tub as though they would make a spider’s web.
She’d awoken from her nap that day as I slept downstairs, and tried to draw herself a bath in the bathroom off the nursery. Press said she had turned off the water and hadn’t yet undressed, but must have tumbled in, hitting her head. By the time he took me up to see her, he had laid her on her bed and taken Michael from the bedroom. Yet sometimes in my dreams I saw her in the water face down, yet somehow alive. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—imagine her otherwise.
Even though my dreams were tortured, I slept. To my shame, I rarely thought of the Heasters, and my dreams were filled with only Eva.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Nonie would force me from my bed. I could only remain there as long as she was willing to chase after Michael, whom I made sure to see at least once a day. Even though I couldn’t trust myself to be left alone with him, I knew better than anyone that he shouldn’t be allowed to think that I had abandoned him completely.
Waking to sunshine, I could hear Press moving around in his bedroom. (Does it surprise you that we had separate bedrooms? That was the family’s tradition, and I quickly got used to having my privacy whenever I wished. I loved my room with its pale green-and-white dogwood-blossom wallpaper, thick wool green-and-tan carpet, and sumptuous white bedding. I realize now how considerate Olivia had been by updating the bathroom and redecorating the bedroom before I moved in.) He was probably getting ready for work, which I should describe as work, such as it was. He kept a law office in Old Gate proper, handling the affairs of a few of his mother’s old friends, but he mostly dealt with the details of the Bliss estate.
He’d told me the night before that he was going to work, and that he was visiting Rachel and Jack afterwards, if I didn’t mind. There had been something, too, about a memorial for Helen and Zion, but I hadn’t really listened. Or cared. I assumed that he just wanted to get away from my sadness.
I wondered, silently, how he could move so quickly and go on with living. Wasn’t it his sadness, too?
“Charlotte?” His voice was muffled by the door connecting our rooms, but I heard both my name and the soft knock.
I didn’t answer. Everything could continue to go on without me, and I had no desire to see him. I couldn’t yet let go of my self-blame. It was mine. My guilt, and my shame. I wasn’t willing to share.
Nonie was with Michael, and Marlene and Terrance would mind the house as they always did. There would be a breakfast tray outside my room, left there at 8:30 by Terrance if I hadn’t appeared in the dining room earlier. Nothing compelled me to move from where I lay. Eva was gone, no matter what I did or didn’t do.
Press came quietly into the room. Standing beside my bed, he was a shadow blocking the sharp light of early fall that filtered through my eyelids. His cologne, the Floris No. 89 he’d begun wearing after his trip to New York to see plays with Jack and Rachel (I’d had terrible morning sickness with Michael and couldn’t go), was overpowering in the still air. I kept my eyes closed. Finally, he bent to kiss my cheek, brushing my hair lightly with his fingertips.
He walked across my room, not back to the door, but toward my tall dresser.
I opened my eyes just a little to see him raise the bottle of sleeping drops that Jack had brought to me after Eva died up to the light of the window. Jack was a firm believer in the power of pharmaceuticals, and always said that there was no reason anyone should suffer if there was a drug to help. I shut my eyes again quickly.