T. Boyle - San Miguel

For a long moment he just looked at her steadily. “I don’t know about that,” he said finally, and he gave her a smile — or a simulacrum of a smile — that chilled her. “If you ask me, a girl’s place is in the home — especially a home like this one where there’s been a tragedy so fresh I don’t think any of us has had a chance to put it in perspective.”

“But”—she was stunned, pleading now—“Miss Everton will be expecting me. Mr. Sokolowski, all of them. My things are there. My studies. My books—”

“That’s all been arranged.”

“Arranged? What do you mean?”

He took his time, shifting in the chair so that he was facing her, his eyes locked on hers. “Do you know something,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, “I don’t like your tone.” And then he added, “Young lady,” as if he were her mother, as if he were speaking in her voice, in her place, and the address rang hollow on his lips.

He was still staring at her, his eyes hardening, and she should have known better, should have backed off and waited till he was more reasonable, but she couldn’t help herself. “My mother would never have said such a thing, I don’t believe you. She wanted me to have an education, you know she did. You’re a liar!”

He rose from the chair so suddenly she didn’t have time to react, the book spilling to the floor, his mouth twisted in a sneer, his breath in her face, whiskey breath, hateful and stinking. “No,” he said, “I’m no liar. Every word out of my mouth is the truth and nothing but the truth — the truth of your life from now on. You’ll not be up there in that city with no one to watch out for you and your, your boys —”

“But Miss Everton never—”

“Enough! You listen to me and listen well because as long as you live under my roof not only will you do exactly as I say in every phase of your conduct, but you can put Miss Everton out of your mind for good and all.” He swung angrily away from her, stalking across the room to set his glass on the mantel. She saw that his hand was shaking. She kept thinking of Ida — where was Ida? Ida would stand up for her, Ida knew her mother’s wishes. But Ida was in the kitchen or out in the yard, and even if she weren’t, Ida was only a servant and servants had no say in anything.

The house was still, every mote of dust hanging suspended in the air. The fireplace framed him, the great squared-off ridge of the back of his head rising up out of his collar like hammered stone, his shoulders barely contained by the crudely tailored cloth of his jacket. In the next moment he swiveled round, moving so swiftly she didn’t have time to react, and he was right there, thrusting his face into hers and snatching her by the wrist. “Miss Everton,” he spat. “Miss Everton’s an irrelevance. And so’s Mrs. Sanders and the music teacher and all the rest of them. Because the fact is I’m taking you back to the island where I can keep an eye on you. Do you hear me? Do you?”

He was shouting now, but she wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t listen. She jerked her arm away, struggling for balance, and then she was running for the door, the front door, with one thought only: to get out, to get away, to put a stop to whatever it was that was happening to her.

“And we leave as soon as I can break off the lease and put this furniture in storage, if you want to know!” Then the parting shot, his words hurtling at her as she pushed through the door and fought her way out into the sunshine that seared the walk and set the trees afire: “Go ahead, cry your eyes out. But you pack your bags. And don’t you ever dare call me a liar again.”

* * *

She kept on running, through the gate and out into the public street, hatless, sobbing, in her plainest dress and the shoes she wore around the house, not caring what anybody thought. People gave her startled looks, stepped aside for her. The boy three houses down, a boy her own age she barely knew, called out in a jeering voice but the words made no sense to her. She ran past him, ran past them all, and she didn’t stop till she’d reached the grounds of the Arlington, and even then she veered off the flagstone path and across the lawn till she found an isolated bench — the farthest one in the farthest corner of the property where no one was likely to see her — and threw herself down on it. For the longest time she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, couldn’t seem to stop crying, and she understood that she wasn’t crying for her mother anymore but for her own stricken self, because she’d rather die on the spot, rather kill herself, than go back out there to that island. And she would. She’d take poison. Cut her wrists. Find a serpent like Cleopatra, and if it wasn’t an asp then she’d dig up a rattlesnake, with its dripping fangs and furious buzzing tail, and press it to her breast and feel its bite like the kiss of a lover. He couldn’t do this to her. He didn’t have the right. She was almost seventeen years old and he wasn’t her real father, anyway.

Her nose was stuffed with mucus, her face was a mess. She patted her pockets for a handkerchief, but she didn’t have one. She didn’t have anything, not even a comb. The realization — she was helpless, absolutely helpless, not even a comb —started her sobbing again and she couldn’t stop, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders heaving, all her misery boiling out of her and no one to see or care. Her mother was dead, dead, dead, and her step — father was a tyrant and her life was finished before it had begun, and so what was the use of anything?

And then something — a whisper in the grass, a murmur of voices? — made her glance up. Standing there before her was a young couple — very young, no more than four or five years older than she — looking alarmed. They were dressed beautifully, à la mode, the woman — girl — in a gauze veil and a high wide-brimmed hat crowned with aigrettes, and their faces were numb. She saw it all in an instant — they’d come here, to this bench sheltered in its bower of jasmine, to make love, and here she was, unkempt and unfashionable, in her homeliest shirtwaist and scuffed shoes, creating a scene. She was pitiable. Beneath contempt.

The man was saying something, asking if she needed help— assistance, that was the term he used, Do you need assistance? — but she was so mortified all she could do was shake her head. She watched them exchange a look, and why couldn’t they leave her alone, why couldn’t they find some other bench, some other hotel, why couldn’t they take a stroll along the beach or watch the boats from the pier like all the other tourists? Or vanish. Why couldn’t they just vanish?

The man tried again, leaning forward so that his shadow fell over her. “Are you certain? Isn’t there anything we can do?”

And now the woman spoke: “Anyone we might call? Your mother? Do you want us to fetch your mother?”

And the man: “Are you at the hotel?”

She was sobbing still — she couldn’t seem to stop — but she pushed herself up, turned her back on them without a word and made her way across the grounds and past the front entrance and out into the street, where she found herself running again, but this time she wasn’t running blindly. This time she had a purpose, a plan. She wasn’t helpless. She had money. A lot of money. Enough to get her far away from here if she had the courage to use it.

The streets were shabby, muddy. The sun mocked her. After a block or so she slowed to a brisk walk, her skirts fanning out behind her, her eyes locked straight ahead. In the drawer of the night table beside her bed was a letter from her mother, her mother’s last letter, written in a wavering hand the night before she died. It was all too short, just a paragraph telling her that she loved her and would be looking down on her from above and that her father would provide for her until she reached her maturity and then there would be an inheritance coming to her according to the terms of the will, though she — her mother — wished it were more. In the meanwhile, she enclosed a bracelet of precious stones her own mother had once worn and a twenty-dollar gold piece — a double eagle — for her to spend as she pleased. There was a single dried drop of blood on the envelope, and the valediction— With All My Love, Mother —trailed away till it was barely legible, and the thought of it made her want to break down all over again, but she didn’t, because she was calculating now. She would sit down to dinner as if nothing had happened and if her stepfather wanted to make small talk she would oblige him and she would smile when he wanted her to smile. And when he went to bed, when the house was still and Ida was asleep in her room and Adolph in his, she would pack the suitcase she’d brought with her, slip down the stairs and out the door and into the night, never to look back.