Mexican Gothic(82)
The words unsettled Noemí. “Who?”
Catalina pressed her lips shut. This had happened before too, that she suddenly, dramatically grew quiet or seemed to lose her train of thought. As much as Catalina might want to say that she was getting better, she was not herself yet. Noemí brushed a strand of hair behind Catalina’s ear.
“Catalina? What’s wrong?”
Catalina shook her head and then lay back on the bed, turning her back toward Noemí. Noemí touched her cousin’s shoulder, but Catalina shoved her hand away. Francis walked over toward the bed.
“I think she’s tired,” he said. “We should walk back to your room.
My mother said she wanted you to try that dress on.”
She had not really pictured the dress. It had been the furthest thing from her mind. Having no preconceptions, anything should have sufficed. Yet she was still surprised when she saw it laid out on her bed, and she regarded it with worry. She did not wish to touch it.
The dress was silky chiffon and satin, the high neck adorned with a collar of Guipure lace, and a long line of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons running down the back. It had rested in a large, dusty box for years and years, and one might have expected moths to have feasted on this creation, but although the fabric had yellowed a little, it was intact.
It wasn’t ugly. That wasn’t what repulsed her. But it seemed to her it represented the youthful fancies of another girl, of a dead girl.
Perhaps two girls. Had Virgil’s first wife worn this too?
It reminded her of an abandoned snake’s skin. Howard would slough off his own skin, would sink into a new body, like a blade entering warm flesh. Ouroboros.
“You must try it on so the alterations can be made,” Florence said.
“I have nice dresses. My purple taffeta—”
Florence stood very straight, her chin slightly raised, her hands clasped beneath her bosom. “The lace at the collar, you see it? That was taken from an older dress, incorporated in the final design. And the buttons, they came from another dress too. Your children will reuse this dress. It is the way things are done.”
Leaning down carefully, Noemí noticed there was a tear on the waist and a couple of small holes on the bodice. The dress’s perfection was deceiving.
She grabbed the dress and ventured into the bathroom, changing there, and when she emerged Florence regarded her with a critical eye. Measurements were taken, alterations indicated with the required pins; tuck this, tuck that. Florence muttered a few words to Mary, and the maid opened another dusty box, producing a pair of shoes and a veil. The veil was in a much sorrier state than the dress.
It had aged to a creamy ivory color, and the lovely flower-and-scroll design running near the edges had been marred by ugly mildew stains. The shoes were also hopeless, and besides, they were a size too big.
“It will do,” Florence said. “As shall you,” she added derisively.
“If you find me displeasing, maybe you could kindly ask your uncle to stop this wedding.”
“You silly creature. You think he’d desist? His appetite has been whetted,” she said, touching a lock of Noemí’s hair.
Virgil had touched her hair too, but the gesture had had a different meaning. Florence was inspecting her. “Fitness, he says.
Germ plasm and the quality of the bloodstream.” She let go of Noemí’s hair and gave her a hard look. “It’s the common lust of all men. He simply wants to have you, like a little butterfly in his collection. One more pretty girl.”
Mary was quietly putting aside the veil, folding it as though it were a precious treasure and not a stained, wrecked bit of clothing.
“God knows what degenerative strain runs through your body. An outsider, a member of a disharmonic race,” Florence said, flinging the soiled shoes on the bed. “But we must accept it. He has spoken.”
“Et Verbum caro factum est,” Noemí said automatically, remembering the phrase. He was lord and priest and father, and they were all his children and acolytes, blindly obeying him.
“Well. At least you’re learning,” Florence replied, a slight smile on her face.
Noemí did not reply, instead locking herself in the bathroom again and peeling off the dress. She changed back into her clothes and was glad when the women laid the dress back in its box and silently departed.
She put on the heavy sweater Francis had gifted her and reached into a pocket, clutching the lighter and the crumpled pack of cigarettes she’d taken to hiding there. Touching these objects made her feel more secure; they reminded her of home. With the mist outside obscuring the view, trapped between the walls of High Place, it seemed very easy to forget that she’d come from a different city and that she would ever see it again.
Francis came by a little while later. He brought with him a tray with her dinner and his razor wrapped in a handkerchief. Noemí joked that it was a terrible wedding present, and he chuckled. They sat side by side on the floor as she ate, the tray on her lap, and he managed a few more quips, and she smiled.
A distant, unpleasant groan dried up their mirth. The noise seemed to send a shiver down the house. It was followed by more groans, then silence. Noemí had heard such moaning before, but it seemed especially acute tonight.
“The transmigration must take place soon,” Francis said, as if reading the question in her eyes. “His body is falling apart. It never healed right since that day when Ruth shot him; the damage was too awful.”