us’ll be up here cooking and bringing you your meals.”
“You just work through the storm?” I say.
“Sure, unless the power’s out.”
“Don’t worry,” Gabriel says. “The house won’t blow away.” His small laugh suggests he knows that’s what I’d been hoping for. We exchange a look, and his tentative grin blooms into the first real smile I’ve seen on him. I allow myself to smile back.
But a few minutes later, a pall hangs over us, as gloomy as the thundering clouds, as we take the elevator back to the wives’ floor. There’s a pushcart of lunch trays between us. Lobster bisque for the others and a small glazed chicken for me, since I’m supposed to be allergic to shellfish. We don’t speak. I try not to think of Rose, but can see nothing but her lifeless hand dipping out of the sheet as she passes. A hand that just the other day was weaving my hair into a braid. I think of the sadness in Linden’s eyes; what would he say if he knew his childhood love, the little girl who fed sugar to horses in the orange grove, is being dissected in this very house?
Alone in my room, I don’t touch my lunch. I soak in a hot bath and wash Gabriel’s handkerchief in the bubbles and then hold it up in front of me. I try to imagine another place, another time, when flowers might have looked like its embroidery. It’s such a powerful thing, sharp and dangerous and lovely. It rests on what appears to be a lily pad. I commit the image to memory and then research it in the library. The closest match I find is the lotus flower, which existed in Eastern countries and may have originated in a country called China. All I have to go by is a fraction of a page in an almanac of aquatic botany; the almanac would rather tell me about water lilies, perhaps a close cousin, but not the same. Not as rare.
And after hours of research, I still can’t find a decent match.
I ask Gabriel, and he says the attendants take the handkerchiefs from a plastic bin where the cloth napkins are kept. He doesn’t know who ordered them or where they came from, but I can keep it because there are dozens more.
In the days to come, Gabriel begins bringing breakfast while the other wives are still asleep. He hides June Beans in rolled napkins or under the plate or, once, between the pancakes. He arranges the strawberry slices into Eiffel Towers and boats with spear-shaped masts.
He leaves the tray on my nightstand, and, if I’m sleeping, I feel his presence as I dream. I feel warm ribbons reaching into my subconsciousness, and I feel safe. I open my eyes to the silver cover on the breakfast tray, and I know he was nearby. On the mornings that I’m awake, we talk in low voices, barely making out each other’s faces in the darkness. He tells me that he’s been an orphan for as long as he can remember, that Housemaster Vaughn bought him at an auction when he was nine. “It’s not as awful as it sounds,” Gabriel says. “In orphanages they teach you skills like cooking, sewing, cleaning. They keep a sort of report card on you, and then the well-to-do can bid. That’s how we got Deirdre, Elle, and Adair, too.”
“You don’t remember your parents at all?” I say.
“Hardly. I barely even remember what the world outside of this place looks like,” he says. And my heart sinks.
Nobody, he tells me, not even the help, leaves the property. They order shipments of food and fabric and anything imaginable, but they never visit stores themselves.
The only ones to leave are the delivery truck drivers, Housemaster Vaughn, and sometimes Linden if he has a mind to. I’ve seen House Governors and their first wives on TV at social events—political elections, ribbon-cut-ting ceremonies, things like that—but Gabriel tells me that Linden is not the social type. He’s something of a recluse. And why not? You could take an entire day and still not walk from one end of this place to the other. But I haven’t lost hope. Linden took Rose to
“You just work through the storm?” I say.
“Sure, unless the power’s out.”
“Don’t worry,” Gabriel says. “The house won’t blow away.” His small laugh suggests he knows that’s what I’d been hoping for. We exchange a look, and his tentative grin blooms into the first real smile I’ve seen on him. I allow myself to smile back.
But a few minutes later, a pall hangs over us, as gloomy as the thundering clouds, as we take the elevator back to the wives’ floor. There’s a pushcart of lunch trays between us. Lobster bisque for the others and a small glazed chicken for me, since I’m supposed to be allergic to shellfish. We don’t speak. I try not to think of Rose, but can see nothing but her lifeless hand dipping out of the sheet as she passes. A hand that just the other day was weaving my hair into a braid. I think of the sadness in Linden’s eyes; what would he say if he knew his childhood love, the little girl who fed sugar to horses in the orange grove, is being dissected in this very house?
Alone in my room, I don’t touch my lunch. I soak in a hot bath and wash Gabriel’s handkerchief in the bubbles and then hold it up in front of me. I try to imagine another place, another time, when flowers might have looked like its embroidery. It’s such a powerful thing, sharp and dangerous and lovely. It rests on what appears to be a lily pad. I commit the image to memory and then research it in the library. The closest match I find is the lotus flower, which existed in Eastern countries and may have originated in a country called China. All I have to go by is a fraction of a page in an almanac of aquatic botany; the almanac would rather tell me about water lilies, perhaps a close cousin, but not the same. Not as rare.
And after hours of research, I still can’t find a decent match.
I ask Gabriel, and he says the attendants take the handkerchiefs from a plastic bin where the cloth napkins are kept. He doesn’t know who ordered them or where they came from, but I can keep it because there are dozens more.
In the days to come, Gabriel begins bringing breakfast while the other wives are still asleep. He hides June Beans in rolled napkins or under the plate or, once, between the pancakes. He arranges the strawberry slices into Eiffel Towers and boats with spear-shaped masts.
He leaves the tray on my nightstand, and, if I’m sleeping, I feel his presence as I dream. I feel warm ribbons reaching into my subconsciousness, and I feel safe. I open my eyes to the silver cover on the breakfast tray, and I know he was nearby. On the mornings that I’m awake, we talk in low voices, barely making out each other’s faces in the darkness. He tells me that he’s been an orphan for as long as he can remember, that Housemaster Vaughn bought him at an auction when he was nine. “It’s not as awful as it sounds,” Gabriel says. “In orphanages they teach you skills like cooking, sewing, cleaning. They keep a sort of report card on you, and then the well-to-do can bid. That’s how we got Deirdre, Elle, and Adair, too.”
“You don’t remember your parents at all?” I say.
“Hardly. I barely even remember what the world outside of this place looks like,” he says. And my heart sinks.
Nobody, he tells me, not even the help, leaves the property. They order shipments of food and fabric and anything imaginable, but they never visit stores themselves.
The only ones to leave are the delivery truck drivers, Housemaster Vaughn, and sometimes Linden if he has a mind to. I’ve seen House Governors and their first wives on TV at social events—political elections, ribbon-cut-ting ceremonies, things like that—but Gabriel tells me that Linden is not the social type. He’s something of a recluse. And why not? You could take an entire day and still not walk from one end of this place to the other. But I haven’t lost hope. Linden took Rose to
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