“Go upstairs, upstairs, Mommy.”
Even with Press’s threats, I couldn’t get Eva’s words out of my head. She meant for me to confront Press in the theater, I was certain. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do, but I decided I would know when I went inside. Above my head, I could hear people walking around. Voices in the hall, bright laughter on the stairs that echoed in the dome and filled Bliss House with an air of celebration. For the first time in years, there were people invited upstairs and into the theater.
“You know almost everyone,” Press had said.
Yes, I would be there.
Aching, and lightheaded from hunger—I hadn’t trusted the soup, but had retrieved the bread from the floor—I went to the wardrobe and found the costume that Press had provided. It was, indeed, a Brunhild costume, complete with a braided gold corset and flowing ivory skirt. Resting on the floor of the wardrobe was a kind of helmet decorated on either side with eagles’ feathers. A molded half-face mask lay beside it. So like Press. I could imagine how the others looked. Press loved a masquerade, but he was never who he pretended to be.
Pushing the ridiculous costume aside, I found a clean pair of loose wool slacks and took a tunic sweater from the drawer. My progress was slow as I washed and dressed. The anniversary clock on the mantel chimed ten-thirty. I found my coat, dirty and torn (I must have looked quite strange to the Webbs), lying over a chair, and transferred its contents into my sweater pockets. I didn’t know what was going to happen—if I would find Michael with Press, or somewhere in the house. I was acting completely on my faith in a dream, and in my dead daughter.
When I reached the third floor, I started for the closed theater doors. Above me, the dome was alive with bright stars as it was every night. I could hear music, not loud but strange and foreign, coming from the theater. Press had had new chandeliers hung inside, but the light showing beneath the door was as gold and wavering as firelight. Even in the gallery the air was pungent with sharply scented incense that was nothing like what Father Aaron burned at church on high holy days.
I reached for the handle of one of the doors, but I heard light, running footsteps behind me. Unmistakably Eva’s footsteps.
“Eva.” I whispered her name. “Eva, come back.”
The footsteps paused for a moment, then continued up and down the other side of the gallery in front of the ballroom, getting louder and louder, heavier and more frantic. Eva, running until she was exhausted. How many times had I watched her run from the nursery door to the back stairs, or around the gallery on a rainy day? Sinking onto one of the tall armchairs resting along the wall when she got tired. I sensed that she had stopped at the armchair outside the ballroom, perhaps to rest. But then the running began again, footfalls thundering until I had to cover my ears. Certain that everyone else in the house must be hearing it too, I ran across the gallery to where I thought she was.
“Eva. Stop.”
Finally, as I stood in front of the ballroom doors, they did stop. I could feel Eva—or something—breathing heavily beside me.
Did she want me to go into the ballroom? I put my hand on the inset handle of one of the doors. As I slid it open, it rumbled lazily in its overhead track.
I’ve never been able to explain what I did—or rather didn’t—see that night. It might have been the result of some drug or unconscious hypnosis. What I mean to say is that what I’d seen in the ballroom prior to that day must have been the result of some trick or enchantment.
The room in which I’d played with Michael just a few days before now looked exactly as it had before I’d had it painted. There were the same hundreds—or maybe thousands—of delicate Japanese women and gruff-looking men painted onto the walls. I groped for the button light switch and pressed it. A few of the wall sconces came on, and I saw the glint of light on the metal rings attached to the ceiling.
Shocked, I spun around to look out to the hallway. Nothing there had changed. But when I looked again, I knew I wasn’t deceived. The room had not changed. There was no faint odor of paint, not a single drop cloth or tool on the floor. Something brushed past me and I heard the footsteps again, running, running, running, playful.
I was, I confess, afraid, despite the presence of my daughter. Nothing was right, and my mind raced for an explanation. Stepping into the room, I could no longer hear the music from across the gallery, so deep was the quiet of the windowless ballroom. It was another trick of this house, which had enchanted me for so many years, hiding its true nature, hiding the true nature of my husband.