Author: Emily M. Danforth
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/emily-m-danforth/page,12,568862-plain_bad_heroines.html
“Collecting them as souvenirs,” Alex said, taking Libbie’s hand. “They’ll be gone. Miss Lawrence said she’d have it done before breakfast.”
“Must we kill the tree, you think?” Libbie asked as she looked up into the branches of the angel’s trumpet. “To stop tongues wagging.”
“Killing it won’t do that. Besides, there are thirty other plants here that would have the same effect. Eaten in this quantity, maybe more than thirty.”
“I don’t want to kill it,” Libbie said.
“Neither do I,” Alex said. “It’s a beautiful tree.”
Libbie looked where Eleanor had been and asked, “What could she have been thinking?”
“I wish I knew,” Alex said. She then lightly pressed her lips to the hand she was holding before pulling it, and Libbie, to her and finding her mouth. It was a kiss given and returned simply, a comforting act of normalcy during a most distressing time.
“You’re asleep on your feet,” Alex said. “Home will be best. We’ll have Caspar bring us back in time to join the girls for breakfast.”
Libbie nodded. She was grateful for Alex’s care, for the routine of it.
And yet: between them thrummed a chord of discontent that reached far beyond the immediate trouble here at Brookhants.
Alex bundled Libbie into her coat and scarf. They were headed, by carriage, to Breakwater, Libbie’s ocean home, which is where Alex would also be spending the night. Indeed, despite her small but private quarters on campus in the Faculty Building, Breakwater—beyond the woods and overlooking the ocean—was where Miss Trills spent most of her nights while she was a teacher at Brookhants, there in Libbie’s bed.* In their bed.
“Do you have the book?” Libbie asked as they were at the door.
“I nearly forgot it,” Alex said. “Thank God you didn’t.” She crossed the room and took it from behind a large watering can where she’d stashed it earlier.
Libbie had to keep herself from grabbing for it as Alex again came close. It is enough, she told herself, that she has it in her hand and it’s coming home with us.
On a clear night, the journey from campus should have lasted about twenty minutes. But now the hour was late, the clouds were thick, and the storm had arrived.
In the cold closeness of the carriage, surrounded by the even colder sound of its wheels squeaking over the snow-packed road, Alex continued to hold the red book between them: their party’s third, and unwanted, guest.
“I wish I’d thought to take this from her sooner,” Alex said, her warm breath creating a fog that would soon mist the carriage windows. “If I’d managed it before the others had noticed . . . This book has only ever been bad for us.”
“Not you, too, darling,” Libbie said. Casually, so casually, she took the book from Alex in her gloved hand and thumbed its pages. “If I had read this as a girl of Eleanor’s age, I would have thought it the whole world. And if I’d known you then, I would have asked you to read it so that we could talk about it being exactly right in all its glinting feeling.”
“You would have told me to read it,” Alex said. “And I would have, to humor you.”
The carriage jerked and they were tossed together, hard, against a sidewall before it was righted—and now no longer moving. Caspar, their driver, shouted his apology. “Hit a drift and they lost their footing.” He was off his perch, down on the ground and talking soothingly in an attempt to settle the horses as he dug at their legs halted there in the snow. “It will have to be the sleigh tomorrow,” he yelled.
That drift wasn’t helping matters, but you should know that the horses were often spooked in this particular patch of road as it cut through the woods—the trees tall and dense on either side, too many of their low branches stretching out to scrape the carriage with a horrid sound like bone fingers finding a coffin lid. And now there was more snow, the flakes sudden and angry.
As Caspar worked, the carriage shuddered with his efforts, and Libbie said, quietly, “You do know that when you say this book is bad, you sound like Leanna Hamm, and that should frighten you very much.”
“I think I am a little frightened,” Alex said. “And it hasn’t a thing to do with Leanna Hamm.” She paused. Considered. “I did not say the book itself is bad.”
“You didn’t?”
“I said this business with the book, the way it keeps turning up in tragedy and the stories they’re telling, already—that’s what will be bad for Brookhants. It already has been.”
“We are Brookhants.”
Alex nodded. But then she said, “And so was Eleanor Faderman.”
Caspar called that he thought he’d solved the problem and he must have, because now they were moving again. They rode in somber silence while the wind howled at them.
That is, until Alex said, “You know, it doesn’t matter if this book is the cause.”
“How can you say if? If it’s the cause? Do you hear yourself?”
Alex shook her head. “What matters now is that people believe it to be.”
“Leanna Hamm believes it,” Libbie said.
“There were others. And tomorrow there will be more. These things build like avalanches.” Alex was not looking at Libbie, but out the fogged carriage window, which she now wiped with the sleeve of her coat. “They start off with a few flakes and gather force, tumbling down and down until they smother you.”
Libbie shook the book at Alex. She’d had enough. “At least Mary MacLane has the excuse of her tender age to account for her theatrics. Tell me, what is yours?” She did not wait for an answer. “No, don’t. I don’t want to talk any more about it tonight.” She looked out the newly clear window and saw the bundled figure of their maid, broom in hand. “What on earth can Addie be doing? She’s mad to be outside in this.”
They’d rounded the last bend and there was Breakwater,* the windows at the top of its odd tower lit yellow like jack o’ lantern teeth.
“I’m sure she’s doing whatever she thinks will please you most,” Alex said, watching as the maid finished her final sweep of the porch—it was down to bare wood, for now—and hurried back inside the house.
“Please not that tonight as well.”
“Not tonight or any night,” Alex said as Caspar pulled them up the drive, the still-recent addition of electric porch lights casting yellow egg yolks of illumination across the snowy ground.
Libbie kept Breakwater running with the same minimal staff she’d inherited from her now-dead husband, Harold. Save for large and irregular repairs, and unless Libbie was hosting, it was really only a single family, the Eckharts, who made the house function: Caspar, whom you’ve met and who in addition to driving the carriages tended to the meager livestock and grounds; his wife, Hanna, the head housekeeper and sometimes cook; and their son Max and his new wife, Adelaide, who had recently moved from Harold’s Pittsburgh estate and who took care of all else.*
Perhaps, Readers, this doesn’t seem so small a staff to the presumably staffless you and me, but compared to other members of Libbie’s social set and the personpower required-desired to run their massive mansions across the water in Newport or Jamestown, hers was indeed a skeleton crew. And the truth is: they were all still getting used to the addition of Adelaide to that crew. Even the Eckharts themselves were still getting used to it, but especially Alex.
However small in number, the Eckharts were a capable bunch, and even despite the lateness of the hour, the house was warm and lit when Libbie and Alex pulled in that night. This was especially welcome, because here, at this house of windows, perched, as it was, above the ocean, the wind was terrible—moaning as it crashed the waves and whipped sheets of snow upon the women.
Working with effort against the wind, Adelaide managed to open the wide front door for them. She still wore her outdoor things, which were wet and heavy with snow. “I’m so glad you’ve made it back to us,” she said, taking their coats and hats. “I was worried about you.” She chanced a look at Libbie before crossing to the hall
closet, nearly running into her mother-in-law, Hanna, who had just then come into the room from the kitchen.
“We are all so sorry to hear about the girl. What a thing to happen.” (Caspar and Max had been sent for earlier to help with the search for Eleanor.) “She couldn’t have been in her right mind, poor thing.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Adelaide said from inside the closet.
“We all feel that way, Addie,” Libbie called.
“Is someone with her now?” Adelaide asked, joining them again in the front hall, her eyes wet with tears. “Surely someone will stay the night with her? One of your teachers?”
“I would have,” Libbie said. She nodded at Alex. “We both would have. But the men from Graynam’s have already come to take her.”
“Where is the child’s home?” Hanna asked.
“Baltimore,” Alex and Libbie said, unintentionally, in unison.
“What an awful trip,” Adelaide said. “Even to think of it, in winter. It’s so terribly lonely to imagine her making it now as a piece of cargo. I wish we could keep her here on the grounds with us, make a grave for her somewhere among the trees.”
“It won’t be like that,” Libbie said, bothered by the image Adelaide had conjured. “No one will be treating her like cargo.”
Outside, the wind screamed at them. At first it was a chorus of pitches, but eventually those shaped into a single low and breathy moan, one that wouldn’t end when it seemed it should have.
“Do you know how long the storm will last?” Alex asked. The four of them looked warily out the windows at the waves of pelting snow lit in yellow from the porch lights.
“I didn’t know it was to come at all,” Hanna said.
“That’s because it wasn’t expected,” Adelaide said. “Not like this. I think it’s for her.” She paused, then added, “For your Eleanor,” though it wasn’t necessary. They all knew who she meant. Adelaide sneezed, then. And once more.
“Oh, Addie, you should have come in from the cold sooner,” Libbie said. The maid did look pale. “The clearing could have waited for morning.”
“There’ll be plenty more to clear in the morning,” Hanna said. “There’s more even now.”
“Should you stay here tonight?” Libbie asked, looking between them. “The four of you? Where is Max?”
“Tending to the radiator in your bathroom,” Hanna said. “It was giving him trouble earlier. And that’s very good of you, ma’am, but I’m sure we’ll manage.” She traded an unreadable glance with Adelaide. “It’s not so very far and Mr. Eckhart will want his bed.”
“No one can say he hasn’t earned it,” Alex said.
Both couples lived in small cottages on the property. And Hanna was right, they weren’t so very far away. But then, it wasn’t usually so very late and so very terrible out when they headed to them.
After stabling the horses and again clearing the front path, Caspar Eckhart joined them in the entrance hall, a layer of snow on his shoulders and hat. When asked about staying the night he said, without hesitating, that he certainly did want his own bed. And then agreeable Max came in from the back hallway to announce that they had enough coal to last at least a week and that he was confident the radiators would remain steaming through the night, whether or not this damned blizzard kept at it. And then the four of them insisted again, as they bundled themselves for the trek, that their cottages were not too much trouble to get to if they huddled together and moved with haste.
It was snowing so hard that it was difficult to tell it was snowing at all.
Even so, the wind smashed against the heavy front door with such force that the group had trouble closing it behind them. It was snowing so hard that it was difficult to tell it was snowing at all. It just was the air, like mist or a swarm of yellow jackets: the flakes hovered across the landscape in a constant, buzzing mass.
Even after the swing of the foursome’s hand lanterns had been lost to the swirling dark, Libbie, still looking out the window in the direction they’d headed, said simply: “I wish they had stayed.”
The Eckharts had never before chosen to stay the night at Spite Manor, not that there was often cause to ask them to, but even still. They’d rather make the trek through the woods, in the dark, in a blizzard, than stay the night in Libbie’s home.
“Do you wish that all of them had stayed, or is there one in particular you’re thinking of?” Alex asked.
“I’m thinking only of the storm, Alex.”
“Of course.” And then, by way of half apologizing, Alex added, “They’re just glad to be alone together. In their own homes.”
“I remember when we once felt like that,” Libbie said. She was immediately unhappy with how churlish she sounded, even if she meant it.
But then Alex made it worse: “I’m not sure we ever have. Not here.”
Outside the wind moaned like a wailing phantom and Libbie shivered. Again.
Across Town, a Scuttle
Audrey was spooked. Just a little. It was preaudition nerves, probably, but the book wasn’t helping. Neither was the script.
Caroline was out showing houses, so right now Audrey was home alone in theirs, the final stretches of daylight thin and watery across the living room floor. Soon she’d need to get up to turn on the lamps and close the now-open patio doors.
Spooked or not, she was glad for the alone time. She had to prep. She’d settled in on the couch, a bowl of peanut butter M&Ms (her mom’s old line-learning reward system) on the coffee table, her script on her lap. And the book, Merritt’s book, was there too, though the ghostly black-and-white photograph of Flo and Clara on its cover was unsettling enough that she had just covered it with a folder.
Earlier, after Noel had dropped her off, Audrey had come in the door to find Caroline in the middle of a twice-weekly juicing session: kale, lemon, and green apple. She was serious about this. Intense, even. Green glass bottles lined one side of their fridge.
They’d hugged with the juicer still whirring in the background, Caroline teary eyed with pride. Audrey didn’t even get to spill her big news, not really, since Gray had already filled her mother in. Fucking Gray.
Still, Caroline wanted to go over everything again, which they did while she fed pieces of fruit to the masticating machine on the counter: what Audrey should wear and how she should do her hair and the kiss. The kiss! Should she do it? Caroline said yes, so long as the run-through with Harper went well beforehand. And why wouldn’t it? Of course it would.
At some point, Audrey had tried to explain the part Gray had stumbled over, this improv-but-not business, or whatever it was, this staged bonding exercise with Merritt and Harper.
But Caroline was momentarily distracted. She was tasting her mixture, frowning, adding more lemon.
“Mom? It’s weird, right?” Audrey asked again.
“Well, I think it’s more last minute than it is weird, honey,” Caroline said. “Who knows why Lily is gone. She might even be the one who dropped out, and they’re spinning it now to make it seem like they have the upper hand.” She added a scoop of turmeric paste to her batch.
“That’s not even what I’m saying is weird, though,” Audrey said. “I meant this part about all of us being forced to hang out—me and Harper and Merritt Edmunds or whatever. The writer.”
“I could’ve guessed that about Bo,” Caroline said. “These come-up-from-indie dude directors all want to prove themselves with their elaborate methods.” She was whisking a little cayenne into the juice, still distracted. “They’re always so desperate to remind you that they’ve been to film school. And that they alone have the singular vision.” Audrey laughed at the singular vision and then Caroline did, too.
“But why focus on the negative of it, anyway?” Caroline said. “It might actually be nice, you know, to have an opportunity to get to know them like this. I mean, and I don’t think it can really hurt your process, can it?”
“I mean, no,” Audrey said. “I hope I’m n
ot that precious.”
“You’re not,” Caroline said. “At all. That’s my point.” She wiped her hands and turned to face Audrey, a coppery smear now across her shirt collar. “I think it’s an incredible opportunity and you should run into it with your head high and your arms open. I think the universe wants this for you.”
“I know you do,” Audrey said. “And you got turmeric on your shirt. For the three hundredth time this year.”
“Oh, I didn’t, did I? Where?” Caroline looked down but did not see it.
“Collar.”
“Crap,” she said. When she pulled her collar out for a better look she added yet another dose of turmeric, this time in the form of a coppery fingerprint. “I knew I shouldn’t have put this on yet. Now I need to run and change.” She assessed the mess on the counter, in the sink, the juice left to bottle. “Do you think you have time to clean this up for me, honey? At least to get it in the fridge and the juicer cleaned out? You know how gross it gets when it sits.” She was now drinking from a glass Audrey had refused.
Audrey sighed at the mess, at her mother. “Wouldn’t it maybe be easier just to list the house for sale? I know an adequate realtor.”
Caroline was already on her way to change. “Adequate? Jerk.” She called back, “I’ll owe you! I’m sorry for leaving it.”
“No, I know,” Audrey said. “I’ve got it. I’ll do it. Leave it to your charming housemaid.”
“I owe you!” her mother called again. She left, in a clean shirt, soon afterward.
But now it was hours later and Audrey still hadn’t finished the cleanup. She’d bottled the juice, put it in the fridge, and composted the eviscerated remains of kale stalks and lemon rind, but the juicer’s components were all soaking in sudsy water in the kitchen sink. In water long since gone cold.