After Alice Fell(11)
Breakfast is cleared. After a fuss over Toby’s jacket and Cathy not finding her kerchief, they depart for town. I stare at my bedroom door, waiting for the house to sigh and take a breath. But the building doesn’t settle to silence. It groans and pops, wheezes and moans. Alice once said it was like wood fairies having a dance and a prowl for sweets.
No. That’s not right. I told her that. She had crawled into her wardrobe, and nothing I said lured her out. Not even when I promised that I’d caught the Fairy Queen and locked her in the birdcage.
“It’s just the house, Alice. You’ve heard it all your life.”
“I can’t hear it anymore. I can’t.”
She would scream. I knew it was coming and that Mother was just down the hall, napping, already too ill. I yanked open the wardrobe and crept in, blocking her arms as she flailed her fists in great circles.
“I won’t let them in,” I said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Her lips tightened against her teeth. I clamped my hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t bite.
“Let me sing you a song, Alice. Let me sing a lullaby and all will be right.”
Now we lay us down to sleep
I pray dear Lord our souls to keep.
She stopped flailing, grew rigid as a board, the flats of her bare feet knocking against the other wall. I lay down beside her. Pulled her hair into ringlets round my finger. I wanted to pull it. She was too old for tantrums; thirteen, already curved like a woman and catching the cooper’s eye.
She screamed anyway, her breath hot against my hand.
I twist to the window, the memory edging away and scuttling under the bed. My skin flushes hot, unbearable under the stays in this horrible black dress that keeps the day’s heat gripped tight in its fist.
Outside is no cooler, but I can stretch my arms and take a full breath. Out back, a few loose chickens stab their beaks to the ground, clawed feet spreading and contracting with each step. Their red feathers are dulled with dust. No matter the flap of wings and the pecks between the quills, still the dust clings. They climb up and over the remains of the glass house, four posts still standing at the corners, up and over the charred boards and black soot and earth, disappearing in the cattails at the water’s edge.
Why has it all not been cleared? Surely a hazard, a strange thing for Cathy to allow to remain. All shards and sharp edges and the glint of danger that called to little boys.
It is like two separate houses: the inside a fuss of brocades and competing wallpapers, glass figurines of goats and rosy-cheeked children, settees reupholstered in damasks, and side tables of tiger maple. The exterior austere and tipping to rot.
I spy a square of fabric, pink and gay, stretched taut between a cracked globe lamp and the curved runner of an overturned rocking chair. It is a piece of quilt. I grip the corner, tugging it loose. The cloth is crusted with soot. The pattern underneath is bright still, calico and plaids, circles and squares, bits of old dresses—Alice’s, mine, a border of singed brown velvet from an old suit coat of Father’s.
I press the fabric to my chest, as if by holding it to my heart I can conjure the days Alice and I pieced it together, when her fingers were losing their childish clumsiness and gaining a young woman’s confidence. When Mother’s hands were plump and quick with the needle, and the three of us worried away the winter hours with small talk of future husbands and what to make for dessert. When Alice still spoke at all.
I crumple the cloth in my fist, shooing off a hen, and turn back to the house. But I hesitate, not wanting to sit inside in the thick heat. Instead, I stride past the vegetable garden, out to the front yard, blinking against the sudden thrust of sunlight. No elm to mitigate the glare, just a broad stump and withered grass. There’s the black crepe on the door, hanging still and limp.
It comes to me then, like a kick to the stomach. Alice is not coming back. She’s in a box in the ground with no light to give her succor. I drop to my knees, push my hands in the dirt, and can’t stop the keen that scrapes my throat.
I want my sister.
Surely there’s a coach. Even on Sunday, there must be at least one. I stumble on a deep rut in the road, glance back toward the house and beyond it the road to Harrowboro. I’ve come far. The dirt shimmers, the heat lifting and swirling. I slow at a copse, aching for shade, for a moment away from the stares of the sheep and the saw of insects.
I have no bonnet, nothing to prevent the burn of sun on my scalp. I unbutton my collar, fan my handkerchief though it’s damp with sweat.
There’s a faint clink of metal, and the clop of hooves. The Runyons must be coming back from church; they are two farms farther up and won’t deny me a ride.
I dab the kerchief to my neck and lips. Smooth my hair. Watch the chestnut nag and cart approach, Mr. Runyon’s blond hair like webbing, the long-stemmed pipe chewed between his teeth. Mrs. Runyon seated behind, just the top of her blue bonnet bobbing.
Mr. Runyon slows the cart and peers down at me. “Where you to?”
Mrs. Runyon settles her new babe to her breast and tilts her head. The bonnet is the only thing soft about her. “Are you well?”
“I was waiting for the coach.”
“Hmph.” Mr. Runyon glances at his wife, then the road behind. He pushes the pipe stem from the one side of his mouth to the other. “There’s no coach of a Sunday.”
“I need the coach.” I raise my hands, then let them fall. There’s a sharp taste of salt on my lip. I’m crying. I’m standing on the Post Road in dust-stained clothes, the handkerchief I hold stinking of soot and charred at the edges.