Open your eyes. Take the bottle in your left hand—the left, now!—and tilt it carefully, carefully, to the marble. There are two tablets left. Wait until the first one slides to the edge of the rim. Now tap. Once. There it comes. Atta girl.
Now, try this instead. Wet your forefinger and just press it into the tablet. Gently, now. Just until it sticks. That’s the way. Now lift your finger, nice and slow, holding your wrist so the poor thing doesn’t shake quite so much. Except your right hand is making it shake even more! So drop the right hand. Bring your mouth to your forefinger. Open your lips.
It’s not there.
Eyes open. Look down. Tablet sticking to the curve of the basin. Scramble, scramble. The tablet tips off the edge of the finger, rolls like an unattended tire right down under the edge of the drain.
Angry now. Angry! Goddamn fingers, goddamn aspirin! Take the bottle and shake it and it’s EMPTY! EMPTY! But there were two tablets left, you were sure of that! TWO! Where’s the other one? WHERE? You shake again and tilt the bottle to your lips, because maybe it’s stuck, but there’s nothing there, nothing, and you throw the bottle on the floor—SHATTER!—and dig your fingers around the drain, DIG DIG DIG, gore melting from your skin and staining the porcelain, DIG! fingers scraping on the pipe, and you lift out a dirty, hairy white tablet—TWO dirty, hairy white tablets, stuck together!—and SHOVE them both into your mouth just as the thunder goes CRASH outside your window, and the bedroom door goes CRASH against the wall, and you crumple gratefully to the bathroom tiles and dimly, dimly, hear a familiar, anguished voice calling your name.
He wants to know where Clara is. I say I don’t know. I thought she was in Miami Beach. That’s what she said, that she was going to Miami Beach. She took the Packard and just left. He runs the washcloth over my face and arms, and I let him. Feels so good and warm, scented with soap. He swears and asks me how I cut my hand. I tell him it was the flowers, and I point through the doorway into the bedroom, and he follows the direction of my finger, I guess, because then he swears again and says that cut is going to have to be stitched up.
Okeydokey, I say.
He tells me to open my eyes. I open my eyes.
He swears a third time and asks me what I’ve been taking, what they’re giving me here.
Aspirin, I say. I point to the bottle on the floor.
He takes me by the shoulders. “Where the hell is Clara? Tell me!”
“Miami Beach. She said she was going to Miami Beach.”
“When?”
I close my eyes again. “Maybe a month ago. The day after we arrived here. She got a telegram.”
“What telegram?”
“I don’t know. She left a note.”
“Where? Where is the note?”
I point again. “Top drawer.”
He drags me along the floor and props me up against the bathtub and runs to the chest of drawers, and do you know something? I don’t mind a bit. Really.
Tranquillity.
He’s carrying me out of the house in his big, strong arms, and I still don’t mind. Not. A bit. Someone is arguing with him. Miss Bertram, I think. Oh, she’s furious! My, my. I raise my head and tell her it’s all right, he’s not going to hurt me.
Miss Bertram shouts. “What have you done to her?”
“What have I done to her? I found her like this! On the bathroom floor!”
“Take her back to the bedroom! I’m going to call the doctor.”
“The hell with your doctors. She’s coming with me.”
I raise my head again. “Evelyn!”
He shouts to Miss Bertram. “Bring the girl!”
“Oh, no, you don’t! That little girl is staying right here.”
(Menacing.) “I said, bring the girl. Or I’ll fetch her myself.”
“You will not!”
He doesn’t answer. He just swings me around and marches out the door and into the warm, wet night, and he deposits me into a car of some kind, smelling of leather and oil and rain. Don’t move, he tells me.
As if I could.
He leaves, and I hear them shouting, Miss Bertram demanding and remonstrating, and I just close my eyes and let them shout. This seat is so comfortable. I’m fresh and clean, all washed up, dressed in a crisp new nightgown and a dressing gown, my hair pulled back, my right hand wrapped in a thick white bandage. The leather is soft and beaten smooth beneath my cheek. I allow my hand to fall kerplop to the floorboards.
Tranquillity.
I wake up retching. The car skids to a stop. Footsteps crunch. Door opens. He pulls me out of the seat and holds back my hair while I vomit into the grass by the side of the road. Vomit and vomit. Sweating. Spots popping. Slump into his arms.
I whisper. “Evelyn?”
“She’s all right. Everything’s all right. I’m going to make everything all right, okay?”
Okay, Samuel.
Chapter 21
Neuilly, France, September 1918
Later—I don’t remember when—they told me that I hadn’t been hit by a German bomb, as I thought. Hunka Tin’s right front tire had exploded, sending me into the hood of an oncoming truck, packed with soldiers coming off the front line.
I asked them, How does that explain the flash of light? And they couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer. I don’t suppose I’ll ever really know. They never gave me the name of the other driver, either, who must have seen what happened. It’s a terrible thing, believe me, not remembering something so important.
In fact, the gap of memory lasted over a month. I’m told I wavered in and out of a conscious state, but when I search my mind for details—the crash itself, the rescue, the fight to save my life—I can’t find anything at all.
One thing only: the profile of a trim, gray-haired man in a British Army uniform, standing by my bed while he spoke, in great animation, with an American doctor whose name I forget.
On the last day of September, when I could sit up at last without feeling dizzy, Simon Fitzwilliam walked down the long ward and stopped at the end of my bed. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and golden light flooded the windows behind him, but I knew it was him.
“Thank God,” he said. “You’re awake.”
“What are you doing here? How did they let you in?”
“I came last month, on a forty-eight-hour pass, when you were first brought in. I don’t suppose you remember. You were half-dead. I was never so afraid in my life. You’re looking much better.”
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t yet dared to look in a mirror, but I had touched my bandaged face and shorn hair just that morning. I knew that my skin was still bruised, my eyes swollen. “Thank you,” I said drily.
“Do you mind?” he said, after a moment. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No, of course not. I’m just—I’m not very good company for you.”
“For God’s sake. You don’t need to say a word. Just be alive, that’s all. Be Virginia. That’s all that matters.”
“I think I can manage that.”
“Good. Because I had the devil of a time getting more leave. There’s a war on, in case you didn’t know.”