Jaclyn Dolamore - Dark Metropolis

The door burst open; the sound of their struggle must have finally alerted the guards, two tall men in crisp uniforms. They carried guns but didn’t need them. In a moment, they had pulled the tie from her grasp and caught her arms behind her back.

Her hazel eyes were subdued now, almost emotionless. “You’re the one,” she said. “ You’re the one she warned me about.”

He stared at her, rubbing his neck. “Who?” he croaked. He wanted to say more, to ask her if she worked at the Telephone Club, but…well, she wasn’t his waitress. If some other troubled girl there had wanted to kill herself…

A broad hand clamped over her mouth before she could answer. The guards hauled her from the room.

Although she was the only revival of the day, Freddy lingered in the room a moment. He kept thinking of that spark in her eyes. She had tried to kill him—quickly, purposefully, without explanation. It didn’t seem real, and it didn’t make sense. It was as if she had suddenly known who he was, and hated him for it.

But she couldn’t possibly know. And if she did, she ought to be grateful.

Thea’s mother shuffled into Thea’s bedroom; she never took off those old slippers anymore, and Thea hated the constant sound of them. Her mother pushed the curtains open, and Thea blocked the morning light with her palm.

“Mother, please, it’s shining right on my face.”

Mother stood at the open window, watching the birds.

She liked birds, always had, and when Thea was a little girl, Mother used to take her bird-watching. They would stay with Mother’s old friends in the country for two weeks during summer and hike in the woods. “There is a waxwing,” she might whisper in Thea’s ear while pointing.

Now Thea didn’t even like Mother to put an arm around her. Her bound-sickness would bleed out, and Thea would know what her mother was thinking—always, always about Father: Where is he? I can still feel him. He can’t be dead. But why can’t I find him? On and on.

But Father was dead. He had to be dead. Surely he would have found them by now if he were alive, even if he had to fight his way out of a foreign prison or overcome amnesia or any of the other scenarios she’d envisioned. The binding spell would have called him home.

Suddenly she wasn’t entirely certain.

“It’s Sunday,” Mother said. “We have to go to church.”

Thea wrapped Father’s old army blanket around her shoulders and joined her mother at the window. A blackbird pecked at the feeder while a warbler clung to the bars of the fire escape.

She didn’t want to go to church. She wanted to sleep. But Mother was insistent, and Thea always wondered if maybe it helped her, if the familiar rituals were a thin but unbroken line to her old memories.

“I made a cake yesterday, so we can have it for breakfast,” Mother said, finally removing her gaze from the birds.

Thea hoped for a moment that it would be one of the old cakes, but of course it wasn’t. Mother didn’t even know how to make a cake right anymore. Years ago, before the war, she used to make buttery pound cakes, and moist apple cakes, and gingerbread. But when Thea opened the pantry, she saw the same old chocolate cake sitting there. It wasn’t even a good chocolate cake. Rationing had ended several years ago, but Mother still kept baking without eggs or milk or even very much chocolate. Thea could already imagine the cake’s heavy, drab sweetness in her mouth.

Still, she sliced it and got the coffee going. She set the table with plates and cups and pulled Mother away from the window and into a chair.

Mother picked at her cake. “I do like this cake.”

“ Please wait for me to get home before you use the oven. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make apple spice cake.” That was Thea’s favorite, though it never tasted quite as good as Mother’s used to. Her hand wandered to a stack of letters that needed answering, Mother’s old friends from Irminau. Thea had to respond to them so they wouldn’t worry.

“Maybe Henry will be at church today,” Mother said.

“No,” Thea said gently. “I don’t think so.”

“Father Gruneman might know where he is.”

“Father Gruneman conducted the service for Father. Do you remember? When we got the telegram that he was dead?” Thea no longer bothered saying “missing, presumed dead,” as she once did.

Mother looked confused for a moment. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that. He must know Henry isn’t dead.”

Thea just sighed. They were having this conversation every week nowadays.

Only sticky, dark crumbs remained of her cake, and she dumped the plate in the sink with her coffee mug. “Mother, put your good dress on, please.”

If Thea’s mother were her old self, she would have been the one giving orders, telling Thea not to roll her stockings down quite so low, but now Thea had to be the one to make sure Mother was presentable. The mother who had organized singing groups in the neighborhood and taken food to the poor on holidays was gone. The mother who had told Thea to eat every bite on her plate and make her bed every morning was gone. Thea tried not to think about it, but sometimes her armor cracked and despair leaked in, poison thick as oil sliding through her veins.

They walked to church, Thea in her daytime good-little-sixteen-year-old guise: conservative print frock, lips free of paint and eyes free of kohl, her auburn hair set in neat waves under a cream cloche. Her mother was still beautiful, but she looked fragile in her peach crepe dress. Her eyes were gentle but distant. Thea felt a sudden surge of love and fear, thinking of what it would be like to lose her mother altogether. She took her hand and squeezed it. Her mother smiled at her, but Thea could feel her wondering about Father. What a torment never to think of anything else. She let go of the hand.

The white church was one of the oldest buildings in this modernized district, with broad brown beams exposed at each corner and on the roof frame. A simple steeple with a bell reached toward the sky, but even this tower was shorter than the offices surrounding it. The chapel doors were carved with an angel reaching out to a weary woman holding a baby, and above the entrance were the words COME AND REST IN THE SOLACE OF GOD.

It was the same church she had gone to all her life, but the war had changed it, too. Government regulated religion, and many of the old hymns of Thea’s childhood were now banned. All the ones that mentioned adversity or rebellion were gone, and so were any that mentioned magic or even miracles. But other things had relaxed—books that had disappeared for years had slipped back into circulation, although maybe it was just that the government couldn’t keep up with regulating them because of the labor shortage after the war’s heavy casualties.

Thea and her mother settled into their familiar pew, made from golden wood that was speckled with color from the stained-glass windows. The smell was ancient and comforting.

Today, Father Gruneman spoke of being kind to one’s neighbor. Thea always had trouble concentrating on sermons: how could she think of kindness to her neighbors when she had so much to worry about? She kept wondering if she ought to tell Father Gruneman how much worse Mother had become in recent months.

Father Gruneman had been a good friend of her father’s. He had given her the book of fairy tales, stories to whisper and drive back the darkness, right after the memorial service for her father.

She was sure he knew Mother was bound-sick, but Thea didn’t know if there was anything he could do. And she found it difficult to admit that she waitressed at the Telephone Club at night and slept fitfully all day, worried her mother would wander off somewhere or set something on fire.