Sub Rosa, page 27
It wasn’t until First squawked in alarm that I noticed my hand turning black. Inky spots spread from between my fingers over my palm. I was scooped up like a fallen bird. “Listen to me, First,” I whispered. “Phantom hand is inside the Dowager mansion. You have to stay calm and act normal.” First jerked her gaze across the street, wildly searching Diamond’s property with her eyes. “You have to act normal,” I told her again, and she corrected herself as best as she could.
“Say, Little,” she said in an affected voice. “We really should change our outfits. Why don’t we go upstairs?” Robot-like, she turned and carried me up to the Wifey Wing.
“I got to get my hand back,” I protested.
“You think I don’t know that?” First plopped me down on our bed. “Concentrate now,” she said, switching off the bedroom light. “Look out into the night and think, Little, really think. Don’t look at the stars or the live ones in their cars. Just concentrate.”
I reached my arm out the bedroom window and pointed a blackened finger at the Mansion. My heart raced and then I composed myself again about a dozen times or more. In the fretful moments I begged, Please don’t let another thing go missing. In my level-headed moments, all I did was breathe.
And phantom hand did appear. I imagined drawing it closer with each inhalation. It still held a tiny slip of paper, my note to Isabella. First and I watched it float across the sky like the last batch of confetti in a ticker tape parade. Soon I held the note in my own hand. The black on my fingers faded as quickly as it had spread.
“Why would ya do that?” First’s moment of cool collectedness had passed. She plucked the note from my tingling fingers. Reading it, she scrunched up her nose. Help, I read as First held it up for me. Help written in saliva and lipstick smears. As if Isabella had licked the word onto the paper.
“Do you love her?” First asked. I held my breath. The question felt like a trick. “I don’t own your love, Little. You get to love her if you want to.” I still said nothing. Neither yes nor no felt like the real answer. First sighed. “Do you want to help her?”
“Yes, I want to help her,” I said. That I knew.
First folded me into her large arms. “If you want to help her, then you’d better talk to Arsen.”
XXV
I had my nails painted carnelian red—the colour First wore. Red was a First Wife colour. One hundred small bottles of red polish perpetually revolved inside a glass and mirrored carousel display. The queens’ one hundred, they were called. One hundred shades, always in stock, reserved for the Firsts.
I loitered by the display, watching “my” shade spin past, and pass again. “If you only wore it for one night—” Astrid said, as she intuitively plucked the carnelian shade I wanted and banged it down on the counter. I laid down all the money I had in my purse beside it. As she tried to claim it, I pressed my hand over hers. “I also need to know how serious Isabella’s absence is.”
“Not serious ... yet,” she said. “She has made a vow of silence. This silence will protect her, for now.”
“If you want to grow up a bit, to look like a boss lady,” said Eartha, sliding between us with a pair of scissors, “try a Cleopatra cut.” She showed me to her salon chair, and turned me away from the mirror. “Trust me,” she said as I watched a long chunk of black hair fall to the marble floor.
“Severe beauty is a good plan,” Eartha remarked. “It will work.”
“What will work?” I asked, teased by her alluded prediction.
“Whatever it is you have planned.” The two turned me around to see their finished work. Red nails, red lips, blunt bangs; I certainly looked like I meant business.
Astrid thrust a small gift bag into my hand and turned me toward the lobby. “Fragrance samples,” she said as I peeked in the bag. “And your new lipstick.”
After the Wifey Wing’s doors closed to live ones at the end of the night, I shut myself in the bathroom with my perfumes. The fragrance samples came in tiny glass tubes, like specimen containers. I chose to wear one that smelled like the burnt sugar on top of crème caramel. In the other room, I heard Arsen’s teacup clink against his saucer, and the sure-handed swish of money being counted. I dragged the blood red lipstick across my mouth and conjured Dearest’s words, Don’t you just tell him when you want him? That’s what Daddies are there for. “I’ll spend the night with you, Arsen,” I said, cracking the bathroom door open.
I couldn’t even look at First as he held my coat for me. Apart from the night Second ran away, I had always slept next to her; I’d been like a shellfish on her rock. “You want gloves?” she asked. “I think it’s gettin’ to be cold season in the city.” I squeezed her hands as she put them on me, a touch code that I hoped she understood to mean I love you, forever and ever.
“When did we get snow?” I asked, carelessly speaking like I was still a part of the “we,” the scores of city people.
“A month, or so.” I was taken aback to think that much time had passed. It didn’t make sense to me; my last trip to the Widower’s was only a week ago. There was a thunderstorm then. I remember because I spelled out “Mississippi” under my breath between thunderclaps, just like Portia had taught us at the Cherished Memory Club. Lightning flashes pierced through the car, and the Widower and I flinched in unison. After our date, I remember walking alone down the gasoline-stained driveway, turned technicolour in the rain, and wishing so badly that I could have shown Isabella the greasy purples and greens in the puddles.
Arsen was alert at the wheel, as if he was new to driving in the winter weather, and I questioned how long the snow had really been around. His car fishtailed as we pulled out of Advent Alley. A snowplow had recently been up the street out front of No’s; both the curb and the entrance to the Alley were banked in dirty snow. Yesterday’s faded bouquets and discarded candy wrappers were crushed in the frozen sludge. Any tire tracks the live ones left during their visits were covered over. Eddie Junior stood outside, wearing orange ski gloves, salting the front steps. He held the salt bag tight to his chest and pretended not to notice Arsen’s car. Arsen didn’t slow to wave at him, either. Gusts of icy wind rolled off the hood of the car. The air hissed at us. I almost asked to turn around and go back to Sub Rosa.
“Toro loves snow,” Arsen said, and I realized how much I missed his apartment, with his photos and dog hair and static on the stereo. As we drove closer and began passing places I knew—street signs I recognized, familiar buildings hooded in winter white—the more my confidence grew. I curled my toes inside my boots. I pressed my lips together and tasted the velvety layer of lipstick. I even wished I could stain his bed sheets all over again. I bit my lip; I was as giddy as the Glories at our Club meetings.
Arsen fidgeted with the thermostat on his bedroom wall before coming to bed. The sound of dry heat rushing out the vents was peculiar to me. I was surprised to find Arsen’s fingers and toes cold. Even his ass was cold under his jeans. I wished he hadn’t warmed so quickly under my hands; I enjoyed touching his goose-bumped skin. He tossed me around his bed, pinning me with one arm until I wriggled free, and then he wrestled me down again. I screamed. I laughed until I coughed. I wanted to feel worn out, I wanted to wear him out. I was pleased when he pressed his chest against mine and I felt sweat. Phantom hand guided his cock inside me and I jokingly mimicked the stunned expression on his face as I began to grind against him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, looped my ankles around his waist, kept phantom hand pressed against his back. He smothered me. I liked it.
“I don’t blame you for leaving Sub Rosa,” I said, as we lay on opposite sides of his king-size bed.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you have family. Aunties and cousins. You have those places in the photographs. How long did it take you to find them?”
“They’re not my family,” he said. The afterglow drained from his face. He was suddenly grave. “They’re make-believe.”
“What?”
“I made them up. Those photos I found in second-hand stores. You can never tell Candy. Never tell anyone.” His hand around my slender arm felt so different than it had when we were having sex. I pulled away from him.
“Why stay in the city then? Why even come here in the first place?”
“Because that’s life.” Arsen reached for me again. I was too far away for him to touch me and he didn’t move any closer. “And I want it … life. Everyone else has a real life. So, why not me?” I was dumbfounded, but I promised him that I’d keep his secret. How could I refuse, with his needy, chiselled limbs stretching across the bed for me? He hooked his toes around mine, gingerly pinched the bed sheets an inch from my body. His eyes were distant and glassy.
“I had a real life once,” I mumbled.
“Little, don’t think twice about the runaway’s life you left behind.”
“Look who’s talking. You leave the city and move back to Sub Rosa, then.”
“You’ve got the itch, don’t you?” he asked. “First gets it a lot. She wants life too, as much as she’s afraid of it. Each time she has me bring her a fresh girl from the city. Maybe it’s time for a new family member?”
“You read my mind, Daddy,” I said, as sweetly as I could. I rolled across the bed until my chin rested on his shoulder. I noticed a blot of burgundy lipstick on his neck, and I told him about Isabella. About how her creamy skin and pink-tongued kisses and her earning potential were wasting away at the Dowager’s Mansion. “It is my understanding that the orphans’ service was indebted to the Dowager because they never made their Dark Day dowries. If that’s true, then why can’t they just try again? Go back to the Dark and try again? And if they do try, and they made their dowry, could they then return to their intended House? Or any House?” Arsen puzzled over my question. “Can we take her?” I asked, exasperated.
“I want you to know,” Arsen said, slow and cautious, “that I was one-hundred percent certain that you’d make it through your Dark Days. No matter what you may have heard …”
“I’m not talking about me,” I interrupted. “You’re way too late for that conversation. I’m over it.” I sat up, leaning across him so he was forced to look into my eyes.
“I’m not sure if Isabella was one of my recruits,” he said, turning away. “Two of the Dowager’s orphans were supposed to be Wifeys of mine. You understand, Little? Only two of mine didn’t make their dowry; I make sure to choose girls who can handle the Dark. So, really, there is only a thirty-percent chance that Isabella was originally one of mine.”
“But there is a chance? Like, that’s how it works, right? Anyone can go back to the Dark and try for their dowry again?”
“That’s the idea. Except no one does that. Only you are mad enough to go twice.” He pinched a strand of my hair. “How do you know she’ll go back? And if she does, how can you be sure she’ll make it out again? I won’t be the one to drive her out there. I won’t call out her name searching for her. Worrying.”
“No one asked you to.” I pulled away, collecting my hair and tucking it behind my ear. I already had all I needed from him; he’d made the rules clear. I could take Isabella into the Dark myself. I was already planning a journey to the Dark. Maybe the whole Club would go. Like a pilgrimage. Maybe we’d see Jellyfish, and she’d show all of us our forgotten grandmothers.
“Don’t go back there, Little,” he said, clueing in to my plan. “You’ve been lucky. Lucky—that’s all.” I slid to the end of his bed and sat there, my feet inches above the carpet. Phantom hand retrieved my dress from the floor and brought it to me. “First will worry herself sick,” he said. “You don’t return, and she’ll fall apart. Besides, wouldn’t you rather have a nice new city girl? Someone you could teach and take care of in your own way? I bet you’d be good at that.”
I quickly pulled my dress on over my head and stood up. “Isabella was a city girl once. We all were. With city friends and family and stuff. Except maybe you.”
“That is not the way to get on my good side.” I turned to face him as he was inching the silk sheets over his body. I felt defiant, stronger in my red dress, while he tried coyly to cover his nakedness. Arsen always underestimated me. The only time he cheered me on was when he profited from my actions—when he opened bets on my Dark Days. I would have liked to rip the sheet from his hand then, but he was worth more as an ally than an enemy.
“Gamble on it,” I said. “There’s been nothing to gamble on for ages. I’ll make it worth your while. Under forty-eight hours return, I guarantee. Before we go, I’ll act like I’ve gone soft. That I’m bent on a kamikaze mission. No one will believe a fallen hero and an orphan will make dowry in less than two days. You’ll make a fortune.”
Arsen turned down his silk sheets and patted the bed beside him. He pretended to be neutral. “I’ll sleep on it.”
In the morning, at the breakfast table, he said, “Isabella benefits from already knowing the Rosa, and so her dowry will be set high. Diamond will want to see that she, and anyone accompanying her, enters the Dark empty-handed; no lighters, no rations, and nothing of value. So you will want to spend a week or so preparing. Pre-par-ing. Fine-tune any magic you might have.” He gave me a clumsy kiss before clearing our plates and teacups.
Throughout the apartment, Arsen’s collection of false family photographs crowded the shelves. I wondered how he’d decided on a name for each bogus auntie, each sham of a cousin. How many made-up histories did he have—only the anecdotes he’d told me, or dozens, maybe hundreds more he’d told himself? I worried about the Cherished Memory Club becoming nothing more than a bunch of memory fabricators. Would we even be able to distinguish the real memories from the made-up ones? It’s not as if anyone could even prove we, ourselves, were real. Sub Rosa had made me so fantastic and clandestine even I didn’t understand myself half the time.
Arsen shook his car keys in the air, breaking the spell. “Thanks for last night,” I said as I stood to leave.
XXVI
A place for everything and everything in its place! It’s beyond that with First and her treasured apartment. Looting the Wifey Wing—even the delicate looting I was doing—was like molesting a coma patient, or a sheep while it slept, or worse. I knew the house couldn’t feel anything, but somehow I was abusing it. Each time I overturned a photograph or flipped through the pages of a book, I was doing something very wrong. I ransacked as tidily as a ransacker could, although part of me wanted First to burst in, demand to know what I was doing, and wring a full confession out of me. Forgiveness is really what I was after, to fast forward to the part where I am wrapped in First’s forgiving arms and she tells me, in her motherly way, how she’s going make it all right and good again.
But this was my plan, my time to act alone. After all, all my famous Sub Rosa moments starred me and only me. Me in the Dark.
The Wifey Wing was peppered with money. Even with First’s shopping sprees and the payments we gave Arsen, we never spent all our earnings. I’ll just tuck this away, I’d heard First say many times.
The trick was to make it look like no money had gone missing. I took only three bills from the wooden cigar box under the sofa, hoping that First wouldn’t notice. There were fifties stuck in the French flaps of several books and hundred-dollar bills taped to the back of several photo frames. But which books or photo frames were the right ones to pinch money from? Did First have a system? She didn’t check the money daily, that much I was sure of.
After an hour of searching I’d only come up with $550, total. I kicked off my shoes and crept into our bedroom; no one else was home, but I tiptoed anyway.
Intimacy in our bedroom had become paradoxical since Second’s absence. At first, the room felt marked, as though there was a massive red stain on Second’s old bed that First and I had to ignore. But soon enough First and I filled the room with our easy closeness, our companionship now uninterrupted by Second’s jealousy and bitterness. Her bed had been stripped and remade with new linens, then covered with the gorgeous maroon and white pineapple pattern Hawaiian quilt we’d bought at the Pawn Shop. I hoped Isabella would like the quilt as much as I did. If everything worked as planned, the bed would soon be hers.
A black plastic garbage bag filled with Second’s stuffed animals still leaned against the bed—the last of her possessions that we needed to get rid of. I removed the twist-tie, and dozens of round plastic eyes stared up at me from inside the bag. I sent phantom hand in before reaching into the bag with my actual hand. I snatched up one of her old stuffed toys. A teddy bear in corduroy coveralls. Pink elephants and sock monkeys toppled out after it. I handled it like crime scene evidence. But when I discovered $200 tucked in the bear’s tiny coveralls, I loosened up a bit. “I hope to hell this is Second’s earnings,” I said, dropping the bear to the ground. More money was hidden in a hippo’s ballerina tutu and in the top hat of a stuffed frog. After manhandling all the toys, my count was up to $900. But I suspected it would take much more than that to free Isabella from the Dowager’s house.
Whatever money I found, I planned to hide near the Dark, right at the boundary, the twilight spot, ready for our journey. Plotting it out thrilled me. I could see it now; we’d simply step into the Dark, and moments later I’d have Isabella’s dowry in hand. A new Dark Days record. I’d use phantom hand to secure a hiding spot close to the Dark’s threshold, where no one would even think to go looking. I just needed to get the money first.
Pushing the quilt aside, I slid my arm between the bed’s mattress and box spring. I had to convince myself that the money I was collecting was owed to me, that I was doing something good, that First and Isabella would love each other. Our family fame would be on the rise. We’d be a House run completely by city girls turned Glories, aside from Arsen. He was an original, but he didn’t count. We could tell our city stories, our memories, while living Sub Rosa lives. We’d have it all.
