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ROSE HEARD FROM the other governesses that McMahon was a heroin dealer. It was actually quite amazing what the other governesses knew. The girls were so positive about McMahon’s other profession. Their employers talked about it. And they had seen the police come to McMahon’s door in the past to question him. He also ran brothels.
“I heard that whenever a new girl comes to the city, Mr. McMahon is always the first to sleep with her. He makes sure that she is addicted to heroin. Then she is too crazy to ever leave. You should see all the girls who work in his whorehouses downtown. They are all addicted to drugs.”
“My cousin wanted to do something else, but Mr. McMahon wouldn’t let her. All the money she made sleeping with men she had to pay to Mr. McMahon for her room and board. She doesn’t have a penny to her name. She wants to jump out a window.”
“They are like slaves. They don’t even know they are alive anymore. There was this girl and she spent the whole day with her eyes closed.”
“Why? Why would she do such a thing?”
“Well, in the first place, she was really stoned, and when you are stoned, it can be really difficult to open your eyes. And I think that she was a really good person. She liked to see only goodness in everybody and everything. And then she knew that there was nothing but ugliness in the world she found herself in, so she just kept her eyes closed the whole day. She didn’t even take a peek to see what the men she was having sex with looked like.”
Rose was fascinated by these tales about McMahon, but even more she preferred the dirty sexual stories. Those ones made her think of Pierrot. They were her favorite types of fairy tales. She loved that women shared these types of things. Whenever one of the governesses had a story to tell, all the other governesses quieted down to listen to her. The pinecones lay on the grass around them, like cigar butts the gods had discarded.
She liked knowing she wasn’t the only woman in the world fascinated by these things. She closed her eyes and pictured the scenarios as though they were short little movies in which the man pursued the woman all around the room.
Sister Elo?se had taken all the girls aside when they were little. She had warned them that they were all the children of women who had not been able to resist temptation. It was in their blood. They had inherited this weak trait from their mothers. They should understand it as a weakness. Like people who had inherited weak lungs from their parents had to be wary about climbing stairs. Had to be wary about going out on wet, cold days.
When they experienced those feelings, when they felt lust, they should understand immediately that this was a disease.
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ROSE TIED A BLINDFOLD over her eyes. She spent the whole day like that. McMahon saw her in the yard with the blindfold on. She was taking the garbage out to the curb. For a moment he watched her with alarm, as it looked as if she might walk into the street and get run over by a car. He began to open the window, to call out to her.
She started moving around the garden with her arms out in front of her. This was disturbing because there were no landmarks near her. In her head, she might be wandering on the North Pole. She might be in the middle of the desert. She might be about to walk the plank of a pirate ship. Wherever it was, it was miles and miles away from him. And then, maybe more disturbingly, his children appeared. They were wandering from the porch of the house into the yard with their hands out in front of them. They had black blindfolds tied around their eyes too. They had all departed from him. They were all in the land of make-believe.
It occurred to him that nobody in his family really loved him anymore and that they had all found a way to escape to freedom.
17
PIERROT AND THE APPLE
After seeing Elo?se again and learning that he had lost Rose, Pierrot began to be revolted and shocked by pleasure. There was a dumpy blond woman in a green velvet jacket getting ready to play the accordion on a street corner as he walked past. She pulled on the instrument and it let out a long exhale, like a woman in labor trying to breathe. Then she began to play “The Accordion Waltz.” He adored that tune, but now it made him feel sick to his stomach. He sprinted off down the street to get away from it.
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PIERROT WAS WALKING HOME with a tiny debate trophy in his hand. He stood on the edge of the pond in the center of the park. He hurled his trophy into the water and it made a terrific splash. It was as though a champagne bottle had been shaken and then uncorked. He felt a little bit better.