Our Missing Hearts (36)

This way, please, the captain says. And then Bird sees it: just beside the staircase, a little elevator, wood-paneled and parquet-floored. An elevator in a house, he thinks in awe. The captain gestures with one hand and Bird steps inside, feels as if he’s climbing into a polished nutshell.

She’s waiting for you upstairs, the captain says. He pulls a brass grate shut, caging Bird inside.

As the elevator shudders upward, Bird’s mind whirls. Around him the brass bars of the grate rattle, as if something is trying to get out, or in. He has no idea what he is heading toward. What will the Duchess be like? Will she be kind, or will she be threatening? He pictures the evil queens from storybooks, all malice sheathed in charm. Trust, he thinks to himself: in the stories you had to trust strangers on your quest. Even this elevator is decorated, as befits a palace. Miniature golden frames around sketches of ancient buildings and winged women. A small white telephone. On the back wall, a round mirror bulges and flexes, bending his face back to him in distorted form: an ogre’s, or maybe a dwarf’s.

At last the elevator opens. A living room, as big as their apartment back home. Another table; another bowl billowing with flowers. In the polished surface he can see his own face peering back up at himself. Underfoot the carpet is gold patterned. The home of nobility, for sure.

And then there she is, gliding through French doors at the end of the room: the Duchess. Younger than he’d expected: regal, tall, blond hair clipped short around her head. Pearls. A blue drapey pantsuit instead of a gown, but it is clear to him she is a woman of power. For a moment Bird’s voice deserts him, and he simply stares up at her. She doesn’t break the silence, just looks down at him in bemusement.

Are you the Duchess? he finally asks. But he already knows she is.

And who do we have here? she asks. One eyebrow raised. Skeptical.

Bird, he says, trembling. Margaret’s son.

For a moment he fears she will say, who? But she doesn’t. Instead she says, rather coldly, Why are you here?

My mother, he says, the answer so obvious it feels ridiculous to say it. I came here to find her.

What makes you think she’s here? the Duchess asks. The smallest tendril of curiosity curling the edge of her voice.

Because, he says, and pauses. Feeling for the answer inside himself. Because I want to know why she left me. Because I want her back. Because I want her to want me back, too.

She sent me a message, he says.

The Duchess purses her lips, and he can’t tell if she is perplexed or pleased or angry. For a moment she’s like a teacher, weighing the answer he’s given, deciding between praise and punishment.

I see. So your mother—she asked you to come here?

Bird hesitates. Wonders if he should lie, if this is a test. His chest tightens.

I’m not sure, he admits. But she left me this address. A long time ago. I thought—I thought you might know where she is.

From his pocket he pulls the scrap of paper, or what remains of it. Tattered and crumpled, edges smudged with blue dye from his jeans. But there it is, in his mother’s handwriting: the very address in which they stand.

I see, the Duchess says again. And you came here alone? Where’s your father?

How does she know about his father, Bird thinks with a jolt.

He doesn’t know I’m here, he says, and as the words pass his lips, it hits him again how alarmingly true this is. His father has no idea where he is; his father cannot help him or save him.

The Duchess leans closer, scrutinizing him, her eyes needle-sharp. Up close he can see that her face is only just beginning to wrinkle, that her hair is not yet gray. She’s maybe the age, he realizes, that his mother would be.

So who does know you’re here? she demands. A steel glint of menace in her tone.

Bird’s throat swells. No one, he says. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I came alone.

You can trust me, is what he wants to say. A sweaty panic slithers over him, that he might have come so far and in the end be turned away. That this dragon of a Duchess and her gilded palace might swallow him and trap him forever.

Interesting, the Duchess says. She turns away, and to Bird it feels like a very bright light being switched off. Wait here, she says, and without another word she sweeps out, leaving him alone.

Bird circles the room, unable to be still. Dusty-gold drapes at the windows, through which he can see the glitter of traffic on the street below. A grand piano in the corner. On the end table, a silver-framed photograph of a woman and a man: the Duchess, much younger and with longer hair, hardly more than a girl, and someone who might be her father. The old Duke, he decides, though the man in the picture is wearing a polo shirt and khakis, and they seem to be on the deck of a sailboat, blue sky and bluer water colliding at the horizon behind them. A stern, almost angry expression on his face. He wonders where the old Duke is. He wonders how the Duchess knows his mother. He wonders what his mother has been doing all these years, away from him. If she will recognize him when she sees him. If she’s sorry, if she ever thinks about him. If she regrets.

Outside the sky has darkened, hardening to flat, steely gray. To his amazement, he isn’t hungry at all anymore. He imagines his father arriving at home to their tiny cinderblock dorm, finding the apartment dark and deserted. Searching for him. Calling his name. It’s okay, Dad, he thinks, I’ll be back soon. He feels oddly alert and alive, his veins electrified. He is almost there. After all this time.