Daylight, always at a premium in the deep interior of the house, streamed down from the narrow windows around the dome. I stretched out one hand toward the sunbeams’ warmth, but they were freezing, too, like the walls.
Olivia’s was the only closed door, and behind it was the only possible shelter in the massive house. To make my way there, I grabbed on to the railing, which was less cold, less dangerous than the tall paneled walls. As I pulled myself along them, every part of my body hurt, and I couldn’t cover myself any longer because I knew I would be frozen if I slowed. With each crouching step I took, the sense that I was being watched intensified.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I had to drop to my belly, and the floor was cold against my breasts. My nipples caught on the tiny, age-filled grooves of the plank floor. All of the house’s lovely furniture and carpets were gone, and its walls were bare. Bliss House had been abandoned. Or perhaps I was seeing it as it had been when it was first raised out of the dirt, sculpted out of bricks from the local lime-rich clay.
Once I reached Olivia’s door, I pressed my body against it to feel its heat, and I nearly swooned with relief so intense that it felt sexual. I opened the door carefully, worried that the frozen light shining in from the windows might cut me. But I needn’t have worried. It looked as Olivia’s room always looked. The papered walls were crowded with paintings, needlepoint samplers, and hangings done by Olivia’s mother and aunts. The massive French armoire dominated the left side of the room, with Olivia’s four-poster on the right. It wasn’t until I was well inside the room that I noticed the smell. Covering my mouth, I tried to filter the fetid air by breathing from behind my hand. It was the smell of the slaughterhouse, or of the offal barrel behind the butcher shop a few doors down from my father’s store on a July afternoon.
“Mamamamamamamama!”
How had I not seen him before?
Michael was on Olivia’s bed, nestled in Olivia’s arms. Rushing to them, my heart went cold. Yes, it was Olivia. Her long hair, which—since I’d met her—she’d pulled back into a tight, chic bun, rested in greasy strands on her shoulders. She wore a loose silk dressing gown covered with pale pink and white peonies, and her arms were wrapped tightly around Michael, who had begun to wriggle and whine.
“Mama! I want to get down. Make her let me go!” It was Michael’s voice, but older. He held out his hands to me, clenching and unclenching his fists—a sure sign of his excitement.
Olivia, though, didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed, the slack half-grin on her face showing only a sliver of her age-yellowed teeth.
“I’ll take him, Olivia.” My voice was flat and strange to my ears. “Let him go, Olivia.”
Olivia didn’t move, but continued to stare. Something flickered on her upper lip. A pair of flies lifted away and spun around each other for a brief moment, then landed at the corner of her left eye. She didn’t blink.
I wanted to run away, but I wouldn’t leave Michael. He didn’t seem unhappy or even aware that the woman holding him was certainly dead.
“Come here, Michael,” I said, as calmly as possible.
Michael tried to lurch forward, but only fell sideways into his grandmother’s motionless lap, hanging over one of her arms.
“Mama!” He grabbed at her fingers, trying to peel them off of him, but the flesh began to break away and stuck to his hands. When he looked up at me, I saw the panic in his eyes.
Against all reason, I began to scream at Olivia for her to release him. Instead, more flies lifted from their resting places on her robe, in her hair, from the hollow of her neck, filling the putrid air with their ceaseless drone.
I woke, opening my eyes to find the sheet twisted around me and soaked with sweat, and Michael, his eyes wide and frightened in the faint blue light of the hour before dawn, standing on his trundle mattress, watching me.
“Eva.” His eyes filled with tears that spilled onto me as he climbed up, into my arms.
Chapter 25
Respite
I was grateful for dawn.
Both J.C. and Michael slept most of the day. I sat in the nursery rocker, dozing or reading. There were no visitors and no workers, not even the painter in the ballroom—at least I didn’t hear him, and the ballroom doors were closed. Had I really spoken to him only two days earlier? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Marlene cooked. Terrance served and polished silver. Even Bliss House seemed to rest after the excitement of the previous day.
Late in the morning, I called Nonie to check on my father, and to tell her about Michael disappearing. While I didn’t exactly make light of it, neither did I tell her how panicked I’d truly been.
When I was finished, after a long silence, she said, “Why don’t you come home to us, Charlotte? For a visit.”