The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(11)

She came into the world a screaming, demanding red nymph with a full head of black hair — all stick-straight but for one perfect ringlet at the back of her head — and infant blue eyes that would later darken to a brown so deep they sometimes seemed to have swallowed the iris whole. They named her Viviane.

When they brought her home, Emilienne carried her through the house and grimaced at her husband as he announced each room with the zest and gusto of a circus ringmaster. And on your left, what is this you ask? This grand stretch of carpeted interior space? Why it’s the second-floor hallway! He introduced Viviane to the kitchen’s cast-iron sink, the built-in cabinets with lead-glass doors that stretched along the dining-room wall and above the stove. He watched Viviane’s face to see if she loved the creak of the wood floors as he did. They took her into their bedroom, where he pointed out the tiny wicker bassinet where she would sleep and the rocking chair in which Emilienne would rock her every night until the floor under it was marked with wear. He showed her the garden, where a solid river rock marked a small burial site, and the parlor, where a harpsichord sat unused yet remarkably in tune. He showed her everything but the third floor, since no one went up there anyway.

There were times when Emilienne thought it possible to love the crippled baker with his sure hands and unsteady gait. She would feel her heart unclench and stretch its tightly coiled legs, preparing to leap into the path of yet another love. She’d think, This time could be different. This time it could last. Maybe it would be a longer, deeper love: a real and solid entity that lived in the house, used the bathroom, ate their food, mussed up the linens in sleep. A love that pulled her close when she cried, that slept with its chest pressed against her back. But then Emilienne would think of Levi Blythe or Satin Lush, or steal a glance at the ghostly shapes of her siblings in the far-off corner of the room, and she’d bury her heart under handfuls of dirt once again.

Connor, for his part, did the best he could, considering. Considering he had no past experience to help him make sense of the woman he married. Connor Lavender had been a bachelor in every sense of the word until the day he came across Emilienne Roux. The only naked woman he’d ever seen before his wife had been a picture on a tattered set of trading cards he’d once found tucked behind the counter of his father’s bakery. The picture was of a full-figured brunette — her back arched in a way that was surely uncomfortable. It was the woman’s breasts that Connor remembered most, the areolas the size of small dinner plates, the nipples high and pointed. To his adolescent mind, it looked as if she had small teacups and saucers balanced atop each breast.

Connor was thinking of just this woman as he closed up the bakery for the night. He wiped down the counters, straightened the wrought-iron tables and chairs, and checked the yeast he’d left to rise for the morning. Just like every other evening. The only difference on this particular evening — on December 22, 1925 — was that while he was locking the bakery door, a sharp twinge shot down his left arm.

It was felt so briefly, Connor hardly took note. In fact, the time Connor spent considering the pain in his arm added up to approximately three seconds — just enough time to clench and unclench the fingers before his mind moved on to more important matters. His infant daughter, for example — Had she eaten yet? Had Emilienne already put her to bed? — ?and his perpetually unhappy wife. So Connor forgot about his arm (and all its connotations) and rushed to return home, where he bathed the baby and struggled through a stagnant conversation with his wife before going to bed. He slept soundly that night, dreamed a baker’s dreams of flour and egg whites, until the next morning, when his heart stopped beating. And then, in shocked disappointment, and stunned horror, I’m sure, Connor Lavender realized he was dead.

The morning of December 23, Emilienne woke from the kind of hard, heavy sleep known only to soldiers, drunks, and mothers of newly born children. Thinking at first that she’d been awakened by her child’s cry, her fingers immediately moved to untie the loose knots along the front of her nightgown, and she swung her legs over the side of the bed. But when Emilienne’s feet touched the cold floor, she saw that the baby still lay sleeping in her crib and discovered that what had pulled her from slumber was the sound of her husband’s last breath escaping his body.

Emilienne called for an ambulance, whispering to the operator, “Though there isn’t any need to hurry.”

Emilienne pulled her husband’s finest clothes — the very ones he’d worn for their wedding just one year earlier — from the closet and laid them on the bed next to his body. When she saw that the dress shirt was wrinkled, she starched and ironed it. When she saw that the red velvet vest was missing one of its large black buttons, she got down on her hands and knees and searched the floor until she found it. Then she set to dressing him. The pants were particularly difficult. She polished his cane one last time and slicked his hair back with grease from a tin he kept beside the bathroom sink. And only then was she satisfied, for it meant she’d kept the promise she’d made when she married poor Connor Lavender. That she would be a good wife to him. Up to, and even after, the bitter end.

She put her hand against his cheek. It felt cold and stiff under her touch, as if her husband’s skin had been wrapped around a rock.

With the efficiency of a woman in denial, she found his key to the bakery and hung it from a leather cord around her neck. At a quarter to five, having been a widow for not yet an hour, Emilienne carefully wrapped her baby daughter in a thick cocoon of blankets and carried her the three and a half blocks to the bakery. Emilienne walked through the shop in the dark, her shoes squeaking against the black-and-white linoleum floor. By this time Viviane was ready to be fed. Emilienne brought the baby to her breast, but both were startled when no milk would come. Suddenly the sole owner of a bakery, Emilienne thought of all the mouths she was now responsible for. If she couldn’t even feed her own child, how could she feed anyone else?