Yes. Yes, it would be too much. It’s too much that I’m here at all. I wonder if Linden is aware of the unfair power he has over me. If I express even a fraction of my disgust, I’ll never leave this floor again in my life. I have no choice but to oblige.
I find a comfortable in-between by carrying my breakfast tray to the bed. I set it between us, and I sit cross-legged before him. “Breakfast came in while you were asleep,” I say. “You should try to eat something.” I lift the lid over the food, and there are waffles dotted with fresh blueberries, far bluer than the ones in the grocery stores back home. Rowan would say not to trust anything so bright. I wonder if these berries were grown in one of the many gardens, if this is what fruit used to look like before it started being harvested in chemical soil.
Linden picks up a waffle in his hand and studies it. I know that look in his eyes. When my parents died, I stared at my meals the same way. Like food was paste, like there was no point to it. Before I can stop myself, I pick up a blueberry and bring it to his lips. I just can’t stand to be reminded of that pitiful sadness.
He looks surprised, but he eats it, smiles a little.
I bring him another blueberry, and this time he puts his hand on my wrist. It isn’t a forceful grip, like I’d expected. It’s tenuous, and it lasts only as long as it takes him to swallow the blueberry in his mouth. Then he clears his throat.
We’ve been married for nearly a month, but this is the first time since our wedding that I’ve been able to look at him. Perhaps it’s the grief, the pink swollen skin around his eyes that makes him seem harmless. Even kind.
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I say, and take a blueberry for myself. It tastes sweeter than the ones I’m used to. I take the waffle out of his hand and break it in half—a piece for each of us.
He eats, taking small bites and swallowing like it’s painful. It’s like that for a while, with only the sound of the birds outside and us chewing.
When the plate is cleaned, I hand him the glass of orange juice. He takes it in the numb way he’s taken the rest of the meal, gulping methodically, his heavy eyelashes pointed down. All this sugar will be good for him, I think.
I shouldn’t care how he feels. But it will be good for him.
“Rhine?” There’s a knock at my door. It’s Cecily. “Are you up? What’s this word? A-M-N-I-O-C-E-N-T-E-S-I-S.”
“Amniocentesis,” I call back, pronouncing it for her.
“Oh. Did you know that’s how they test babies for defects?” she says.
I do know. My parents worked in a laboratory that analyzed everything about fetuses and newborns.
“That’s nice,” I say.
“Come out,” she says. “There’s a robin’s nest outside my window. I want to show you. The eggs are really pretty!” She’s rarely interested in seeing me, but I’ve noticed she doesn’t like when doors are closed to her.
“After I get dressed,” I say, and listen for the silence that means she’s left. I pick up the tray and bring it to my dressing table, wondering how long Linden is going to stay. I busy myself by brushing my hair, fastening it back with clips. I open my mouth and see that the green is gone from my tongue.
Linden leans back on his elbow, picking at a stray thread on his cuff and looking pensive. After a while he gets up. “I’ll be sure someone comes for the tray,” he says, and leaves.
I take a warm bath, soaking in the layer of pink foam that floats on the water. I’ve gotten used to the crackling sensation the bubbles leave on my skin. I dry my hair and dress in jeans, and a sweater that feels like heaven to touch. All Deirdre’s work. I am always shimmering in the things she makes me. I roam the hallway for a while, expecting Cecily to find me and lead me to her bird’s nest, but she’s nowhere to be found.
“Governor Linden took her out to one of the gardens,” Jenna says when I find her, thumbing through the catalog cards in the library. Her voice sounds clearer today, less sullen. She even looks at me after she speaks, purses her lips like she’s deciding whether to say more. Then she looks back to the cards.
“Why do you call him Governor Linden?” I ask her. During our wedding dinner Housemaster Vaughn explained to us that he was to be addressed as Housemaster, because he was the highest authority in the house. But we were expected to call our husband by his given name as a sign of familiarity.
“Because I hate him,” she says.
There’s no malice in the words, no dramatic outburst, but something in her gray eyes says she means it. I look around us to be sure nobody heard her. The room is empty.
“I understand,” I say. “But maybe it’ll be easier to humor him. Maybe we’ll get more freedom.”
“I won’t do it,” she says. “I don’t care about freedom now. I don’t care if I die here.”
She looks at me, and I can see the severity of the bags under her eyes. Her cheeks are hollow and sharp. A few weeks ago in her wedding dress she had been forlorn but pretty. Now she seems emaciated and years older. The smell on her is like cinnamon bath soap and vomit. But she’s wearing her wedding band, a symbol that we’re sister wives, that we share this hell just as we shared that long nightmare in the van. She may be one of the girls who curled up beside me in the blackness. She may be the one who screamed.
Whatever she was looking for in that card catalog, she finds it. She mouths the number of the aisle, committing it to memory, and closes the drawer.
She wanders down one of the aisles, and I follow her as she runs her finger along the spines of books, taps one of them, eases it out of its place. The book is dusty, the cover eaten away, the pages yellow and brittle as she flips through them. All of these books are from the twenty-first century or earlier, which isn’t very strange. The television also airs old movies, and most shows are set in the past. It has become a form of escapism to visit a world in which people live a long time. What was once real and natural has become a fantasy. “There are lots of love stories here,” she says. “They either end happily, or everyone dies.” She laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. “What else is there, right?”
She stares at the open pages, and looks like she’s going to fall apart. Tears are brimming in her eyes, and I wait for them to escape, but they don’t. She holds them in place.
This aisle smells overwhelmingly dingy—dirty pages and mold, and something else, something vaguely familiar. It smells like the earth in the backyard the night my brother and I buried our possessions. And I know my sister wife Jenna is not like Cecily, who grew up in an orphanage and now feels honored to be a wealthy Governor’s bride. No. She’s like me, who has lost something precious, who has buried things of her own.
I hesitate, unsure if I can trust her with my plan to earn Linden’s trust and escape. She seems resigned to rotting in this mansion, but maybe it never crossed her mind that there could be a way out.
If I’m wrong, though, what’s to stop her from betraying me later?
I’m still debating this when Cecily enters the library and huffs indignantly as she falls into a chair at one of the tables. “Well, that was a waste,” she says. And then, in case we haven’t heard her, “A complete waste!”
As she says this, Gabriel enters the room with a tray of tea, with lemon wedges in a small silver bowl.
I take a chair opposite Cecily, who is holding up her cup, impatiently waiting for Gabriel to fill it. Jenna joins us silently, holding her book open at length from her face. Without looking up, she takes a lemon wedge and begins sucking on it.
“Linden invited me out to the rose garden,” Cecily says, taking a sip of her tea. She crinkles her nose. “There’s no cream or sugar,” she snaps at Gabriel, who promises to be right back with some. “Anyway,” she says, “I thought finally he was going to start acting like a husband, you know? It’s about time. But all he did was show me the sunflower trellis that was imported a hundred years ago from Europe or something, and go on and on about the North Star. About how old it is, how it helped explorers find their wa
y home. It was a total letdown—he didn’t even kiss me!”
I think back on the brief time I spent alone with Linden in the same garden, at sunrise. He talked about the Japanese koi and the way the world used to be. It occurs to me now that he likes to lose himself in faraway places, just like his dead wife did. I wonder if that’s what they loved about each other, or if growing up within the groomed walls of these gardens instilled in them a love of things they never had cause to see.
The same thing is happening to me, isn’t it? All I’ve done to console myself in this place is get lost in the ghost of how the world used to be. A pang of something rushes through me—what is it? Pity? Sympathy? Understanding?
Whatever it is, it’s unwelcome. I have no cause to identify with Linden Ashby. I have no cause to feel anything for him at all.
Jenna is sucking the meat from the lemons, setting the empty rinds on the table when she’s done. She turns a page. She loses herself in fiction. In that way I suppose she and I are both lost here.
“Linden won’t touch me,” Cecily tells me. “But he’s kissed you.” It’s an accusation.
“Excuse me?” I say.
She nods excitedly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Her brown eyes are suddenly bigger and brighter. “I saw him come out of your bedroom this morning. I know he spent the night with you.”
I’m not sure what to say to this. I’m not sure what boundaries are walled between sister wives. “I thought what happened in our own bedrooms was supposed to be private,” I manage.
“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” Cecily says. “So did you consummate?” She leans in. “Was it absolutely magical? I bet it was.”
Gabriel returns and sets a pitcher of milk on the table. Cecily takes the sugar bowl from him and dumps nearly half of it into her cup. She takes another sip of tea, and I can hear the grains grinding between her teeth. She’s waiting for my answer, but the only sound is of Jenna sucking the life out of those lemons, and Gabriel clearing his throat as he turns to leave.
I feel waves of heat rushing to my cheeks. I can’t decide if it’s embarrassment or anger. “That is completely none of your business,” I cry.
Jenna looks out from behind her book, curious and maybe amused. Cecily is beaming, asking me all sorts of personal questions that spin and spin around in my head until I can’t stand to look at her. I can’t stand to look at either of these girls, who offer no friendship, no solace, and who would never appreciate the things Linden was talking about anyway. What do they care about the North Star? One has dug a safe little grave for herself in centuries-old tomes, and the other is perfectly happy to remain trapped. I am nothing like them. My legs can’t carry me away fast enough as I run from the room.
Out in the hallway the library smell becomes the smoky wood-and-spice aroma of the incense sticks that burn from little indents along the wall. Gabriel is just stepping onto the elevator and the doors are about to close, when I say “Wait!” and rush into the car with him. The doors close, and I’m holding my knees, gasping like I’ve just sprinted a mile. Gabriel presses a button, and we begin moving down.
“You know, you’re going to get caught if you keep sneaking off your floor like this,” he says, but there’s no real danger to his tone.
“I can’t do this,” I say, catching my breath. But it isn’t the brief sprint that’s winded me. My chest is tightening. My vision blurs around the edges. “I hate it here. I hate everything about this place. I—” My voice breaks. I recognize what is happening to me. My body is doing the one thing it’s been desperate to do since the moment I was shoved into the back of that van; only I was too stunned then, and too angry when I awoke in this place.
Gabriel can sense it too. Because he reaches into his breast pocket and hands me a handkerchief just as the first sob comes up.
When the elevator doors open, it’s to the hallway that is loud with noises from the kitchen. It smells of lobster steam and something sweet and freshly baked. Gabriel pushes a button and the doors close, only this time the car doesn’t move. “Want to talk about it?” he says.
“Don’t you have to get back to the kitchen?” I say, blowing my nose. I do my best not to look sniveling and pathetic, but it’s hard when the handkerchief is already too damp and slimy to dry the rest of my tears as they come.
“It’s all right,” he says. “They’ll think I got held up catering to Cecily.” Sassy, demanding little Cecily is quickly taking Rose’s place among the help as least favorite wife. Gabriel and I sit cross-legged on the floor, and he waits patiently for me to stop hiccupping so I can speak.
It’s nice in the elevator. The carpet is worn but clean. The walls are cranberry red, inlaid with Victorian patterns that make me think of my parents’ bedspread, how protected I felt inside of it. Distantly my mind registers the memory of that long-gone security. I’m safe here, too. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if these walls have ears—if at any moment Housemaster Vaughn’s voice will come booming through an overhead speaker, threatening Gabriel for allowing me to make it this far. But I wait, and no voice comes, and I’m so upset that I’m beyond caring anyway.
“I have a brother,” I say, starting at the beginning. “Rowan. When our parents died four years ago, we had to leave school and find jobs. It was easy for him to find factory work that paid well. But I had so little skill, I was practically useless. He didn’t think it was safe for me to go out alone, so we tried to stay near each other, and I always wound up with phone jobs in the factories that paid next to nothing. We had enough to get by, but not the way we used to, you know? I wanted to do more.
“A few weeks ago I saw an ad in the paper, offering money for bone marrow. Supposedly they were conducting a new screening for causes of the virus.” I turn the handkerchief in my hands, studying it through unreliable vision. In one corner there’s a crimson embroidery of what appears to be a flower, but it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen, with an abundance of spear-shaped petals crowded together. It blurs and doubles. I shake my head to clear my vision.
“I realized it was a trap as soon as I stepped inside the lab and saw all those other girls,” I say, my fingers automatically curling like claws. “I fought. I scratched, bit, kicked. It didn’t matter. They herded all of us into a van. And I don’t know how long we were riding. Hours. Sometimes we’d stop, the doors would open, and more girls would come in. It was so awful in there.”
I remember that blackness. There were no walls, there was no up or down. I could have been living or dead. I listened to the other girls as they breathed around me, above me, inside me, and that was the whole planet earth. Just those terrified hiccups of breath. I thought I’d gone mad. And maybe I am mad, because I think I hear one of the Gatherer’s bullets now, and I jump. Sparks fly around me.
Gabriel raises his head just as the lights begin to flicker. There’s another loud boom, not a gunshot but something mechanical-sounding. Our car begins to shake, and then the doors slide open, and Gabriel is tugging me to my feet and we’re hurrying into the hallway. But it’s not the cooks’ hallway. This one is darker and sterile-smelling. Neon lights are struggling on the ceiling, and in the floor tiles I can see the dim reflection of our shoes before each step lands.
“We must’ve gone down a floor,” Gabriel says.
“What? Why?” I say.
“Storm,” he says. “Sometimes the elevators all move to the basement as a precaution.”
“Storm? It was sunny outside just a minute ago,” I say, relieved to find the fear isn’t present in my voice. The sobs have stopped too, leaving only the soft, infrequent hiccups in the aftermath.
“We get a lot of them on the coastline,” he says. “Out of nowhere sometimes. Don’t worry, if it was a hurricane, we would have heard the alarm. It’s not uncommon for strong winds to mess with the electricity and take out one of the elevators.”
Hurricane. From somewhere deep in my mind comes a television image of wind spinning angrily, destroying houses. It?
??s always the houses that go, sometimes bits of a fence or an uprooted tree, a shrieking heroine in a prairie dress, but always the houses. I imagine a hurricane smashing into this mansion and tearing it apart. I wonder if I’d be able to escape then.
“So this is the basement?” I say.
“I think so,” Gabriel says. “I mean, I’ve never been down this way. I’ve only been to where the storm shelter is. Nobody’s allowed without authorization from Housemaster Vaughn.” He looks nervous, and I know Housemaster Vaughn is the reason. I can’t stand the thought of Gabriel limping to my room, melancholy and bruised because of my transgressions.
“Let’s go back up before anyone catches us,” I say.
He nods. The elevator doors have closed, though, and they don’t open when he swipes his key card across the panel. He tries several times before shaking his head. “It’s not working,” he says. “It’ll be back up eventually, but in the meantime, there’s got to be another elevator we can try.”
We begin walking down this long hallway, with unreliable lighting that cuts out at times and hisses at us. The main hallway branches off to other, darker hallways and closed doors, and I’m sure I don’t want to know where they lead. I never want to see this floor again. It’s triggering something very bad in my memories, in the place of nightmares, where the murdered girls in the van reside, where the Gatherer thief cups his hand over my mouth and presses a blade to my throat. Something about being here makes my palms sweat. And then I realize it. This is where the doctor was, the afternoon before the wedding. Deirdre brought me to this hallway, led me to a room where a man stuck me with a needle and I blacked out.
My skin becomes gooseflesh at the memory. I need to get out of here.
Beside me Gabriel presses forward without looking at me. “About what you told me,” he says in a low voice, “I think it’s terrible. And what you said earlier, about hating this place? I understand.”
I’ll bet he understands.
“It’s Housemaster Vaughn, isn’t it?” I say. “He’s the one that hurt you? It was my fault, because I got out of my room.”