The Wonder(85)

At four, Kitty brought in a bowl of some kind of vegetable hash. Lib forced herself to spoon it down.

“Would you like anything, pet?” the maid asked the child in an incongruously cheerful voice. “Your thingy?” She held up the thaumatrope.

“Show me, Kitty.”

So the slavey twirled the cords and made the bird appear in the cage, then fly free.

Anna heaved a breath. “You can have it.”

The young woman’s face fell. But she didn’t ask what Anna meant; she just set down the toy. “Would you like your treasure chest on your lap?”

Anna shook her head.

Lib helped the girl a little higher up on the pillows. “Water?”

Another shake of the head.

At the window, Kitty said, “’Tis that picture fellow again.”

Lib jumped to her feet and looked over the maid’s shoulder. REILLY & SONS, PHOTOGRAPHISTS, said the van. She hadn’t heard the horse pull up. She could just imagine how artfully Reilly would pose the figures for the deathbed scene: soft light from the side, the family kneeling around Anna, the uniformed nurse at the back with her head bowed. “Tell him to make himself scarce.”

Kitty looked startled but didn’t argue; she left the room.

“My holy cards and books and things,” Anna murmured, looking towards her chest.

“Would you like to see them?” asked Lib.

She shook her head. “They’re for Mammy. After.”

Lib nodded. There was a kind of poetic justice in that, paper saints standing in for a child of flesh. Hadn’t Rosaleen O’Donnell been nudging Anna towards the grave all along—perhaps ever since Pat’s death, last November?

Once the woman lost Anna, perhaps she’d be able to love her without strain. Unlike a live daughter, a dead one was impeccable. This was what Rosaleen O’Donnell had chosen, Lib told herself: to be the sorrowful, proud mother of two angels.

Five minutes later, Reilly’s van moved slowly off. Lib, watching at the window, thought: He’ll be back. She supposed a posthumous composition would be even easier to arrange.

An hour later, Malachy O’Donnell came in and knelt down heavily beside the bed where his daughter was dozing. He joined his hands—his knuckles making white spots on the red skin—and muttered an Our Father.

Watching his bent, greying head, Lib wavered. This man had none of his wife’s malignity, and he did love Anna in his own passive way. If he could only be roused from his stupor, to fight for his child… Perhaps Lib owed him one last chance?

She made herself go around the bed and lean down to his ear. “When your daughter wakes,” she said, “beg her to eat, for your sake.”

Malachy didn’t protest; he only shook his head. “It’d choke her, sure.”

“A drink of milk would choke her? But it’s the same consistency as water.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?” demanded Lib.

“You wouldn’t understand, ma’am.”

“Then make me!”

Malachy let out a long, ragged breath. “I promised her.”

Lib stared. “That you wouldn’t ask her to eat? When was this?”

“Months back.”

The clever girl; Anna had tied her fond father’s hands. “But that was when you believed her able to live without food, correct?”

A bleak nod.

“She was in good health at the time. Look at her now,” Lib said.

“I know,” muttered Malachy O’Donnell, “I know. Still and all, I promised I’d never ask that.”

Who but an idiot would have made such a commitment? But it would do no good to insult the man, Lib reminded herself. Best to focus on the present. “Your promise is killing her now. Surely that cancels it?”

He writhed. “’Twas a secret and solemn vow, on the Bible, Mrs. Wright. I’m telling you only so you won’t blame me.”

“But I do,” said Lib. “I blame all of you.”

Malachy’s head drooped as if it were too heavy for his neck. A stunned bullock.

Valiant in his own dull way; he’d risk any consequences rather than break his word to his daughter, Lib realized. Would see Anna die before he’d let her down.

A tear jerked down his unshaven cheek. “Sure I still have hope.”

What hope, that Anna would suddenly call out for food?

“There was another little colleen stone-dead in her bed, eleven years old.”

Was this a neighbour? Lib wondered. Or a story out of the newspaper?

“And you know what Our Lord said to the father?” said Malachy, almost smiling. “Fear not. Fear not, only believe, and she shall be safe.”

Lib turned away in revulsion.

“Jesus said she was only sleeping, and he took her by the hand,” Malachy went on, “and didn’t she get up and have her dinner?”

The man was in a dream so deep that Lib couldn’t wake him. He clung to his innocence, refusing to know, ask, think, question the vow he’d made to Anna, do anything. Surely being a parent meant taking action, rightly or wrongly, instead of waiting for a miracle? Like the wife he was so unlike, Lib decided, Malachy deserved to lose his daughter.

The pale sun edged lower in the sky. Would it never go down?