Cackle, page 8
Everything else melts away as she walks me out of the kitchen, through the mirror hallway, through the foyer. We go through a different wing, down another long hallway, but instead of mirrors, this one is lined with paintings. Mostly oil paintings, landscapes. A few seascapes. There’s the occasional tapestry.
“I feel like I’m in a museum,” I tell her.
“I do call this the gallery,” she says. “But no museum would hang my paintings.”
“You painted these?”
She nods, gazing at the paintings with her lips curled in. “I’m not very good.”
“What are you talking about? They’re amazing!”
She squeezes me. “You’re an absolute dove. Pure sunshine.”
Every compliment from Sophie is like a straight shot of dopamine.
“All right, here we are,” she says. She opens a set of towering French doors. We walk into a dark room, and by the echo of our footsteps, I know it’s big. Lights above us begin to glow awake, slowly illuminating our surroundings.
Even considering the truly extraordinary size of the house, it’s a struggle to understand how this room could ever fit inside it. It’s titanic.
A dreamy sea of marble. Ornamental plastering, appliqués, crystal chandeliers. It’s somehow even more ornate than the rest of the house. The tall ceiling is painted a rich aqua, and there are delicate gems of constellations strewn across it.
“Wow,” I say. “I mean, goddamn!”
She laughs. “I thought you might like it. I never come in here! But it’s such a beautiful room.”
She releases me and glides onto the dance floor. She does a spin, her dress levitating; then she curtsies to me.
“Really, Sophie?”
“You, my darling, do not take me seriously,” she says. She sits on the floor and produces a corkscrew, seemingly out of thin air. She begins to open the wine. “Oh. I forgot glasses.”
“We could swig straight from the bottle like degenerates,” I say.
She removes the cork with a satisfying pop! She waves me over. “You first.”
She offers me the bottle and I take it. I lift it to my lips and have a small sip. It’s great wine. It slinks across my tongue and down my throat. It leaves a sweetness in its wake.
I give the bottle back to Sophie, before I’m tempted to down the whole thing.
“Annie,” she says, “may I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure,” I say, seating myself beside her. I’ve already told her about my dead mother, my aloof father and getting dumped a few weeks shy of my thirtieth birthday. What could she want to know that’s more personal than that?
She gives me the wine back. I take a gulp.
“What do you want? Out of life, I mean,” she says. She’s now lying on her side with her head on her shoulder, arm outstretched.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Like, my goals?”
“Not goals. Wants. What do you want?”
“I guess I haven’t really thought about it. I wanted to be a teacher. I’m a teacher. So there’s that.”
“Did you want to be a teacher because you wanted to be a teacher, or was it only because you wanted to find a way to be close to your mother?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a bolt of lightning slice through a monstrous black cloud. This room is all windows, and they provide a frightening view of the storm outside. It rages over the flat green of the lawn, a series of sculpted hedges, a rose garden.
I wait for the thunder to come, and when it does, it shakes the chandeliers.
“I’m sorry,” Sophie says. “We can talk about something else.”
“No,” I say, “you have a point. I don’t know if I want things. I guess I wanted Sam. I wanted for us to get married, be happy. Be together. To have someone.”
“Were you happy? With Sam? I mean truly happy. Did you feel fulfilled? Did you wake up excited? Have a sense of contentment, of gratitude?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I drink more wine.
“Forgive me,” she says. “I thought, perhaps if I knew what you wanted, I could help. You’re such a joy, and yet you’re sad. It seems an injustice.”
“That’s nice of you,” I say. “Thank you.”
“We don’t have to talk about anything serious for the rest of the night,” she says. “We can finish the wine and I’ll get us some food and we can watch something. I keep my thickest, softest blankets down in the theater room.”
“Okay, yeah,” I say. “Yeah.”
There’s another flash of lightning, and the lights flicker.
Sophie rolls her eyes. She stands up, marches over to one of the windows and says, “Stop that.”
I assume she’s talking to the sky. “You tell it,” I say.
The clouds mumble.
“There’s a limit to my powers,” she says, though the clouds have suddenly rolled back, and I no longer hear the rain. “Shall we?”
“You want the rest of the wine?”
She shakes her head. “No, you drink it.”
“If you say so.” I finish the bottle. It puts a fuzz on everything.
We go back to the kitchen and Sophie prepares a platter of cheese and bread and different spreads. She gets another bottle of wine. It’s night now, and the house is so dark I can barely see.
Being a little drunk probably isn’t helping.
Sophie helps me down a narrow, winding staircase to a room that’s all red velvet drapes and big chairs. There’s an elevated stage flanked by gold Corinthian columns. There’s a projector screen that Sophie has to pull down.
“What would you like to watch?” she asks me.
“Whatever you want,” I say.
She puts on Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman. She opens the wine and this time she’s remembered glasses. She pours me one, and by the time I finish it, I can barely keep my eyes open.
The next thing I know, Sophie is pushing my hair out of my face and whispering, “Let’s get you to bed.”
The house is a maze, especially at night. We go up the main staircase and make a series of turns, and then we’re in a frilly bedroom. There’s a large canopy bed. The curtains and bedding both have busy floral patterns.
“The bathroom is through there,” Sophie says, pointing to a door next to a large armoire. Sophie opens the armoire and takes out a fresh set of sheets. “I’ll change these for you.”
“I can do it,” I say.
“Nonsense,” she says. “Why don’t you wash up? There should be a spare nightdress in the dresser.”
I turn to find a double dresser. I open the top drawer, and there is a single article of clothing folded inside it. A long, formless white cotton dress.
I take it into the bathroom to change. I’m so tired, so tipsy, I feel like I’m being pulled down, like there are invisible creatures hanging off of me, wrapped around my legs like difficult toddlers. I start to undress. It’s freezing in the bathroom. It’s a windowless room. It’s not small, but it feels small compared to the rest of the house. There’s a claw-foot tub, an old-fashioned toilet with a chain and a pedestal sink. There’s a vanity in the corner with a pretty round mirror, the frame accented with delicate silver butterflies.
I stumble over to peek at my reflection.
I look incredible. Maybe it’s the lighting in here, flatteringly dim. My skin looks smooth, glowing, my eyes bright. I linger so long it’s shameful, just standing around admiring my reflection. I’m so focused on me, on my face, on how my hair isn’t greasy at the roots like it usually is, on how my lips have natural color, that I almost don’t notice it.
The other face.
It floats over my shoulder, an orb of pale skin. Two eyes. A nose. A mouth. It’s small, far behind me. I gasp, the sound surprising me as I spin around to look.
There’s no one there.
I turned too quickly, and an intense dizziness destabilizes me. I collapse onto the vanity stool. I take measured breaths until the room stops spinning.
Clearly, I didn’t see what I thought I saw. It wouldn’t even be possible for someone to be standing behind me; the space wouldn’t allow it.
I wobble over to the sink with all the grace of a baby giraffe taking its first steps. I lean down and drink some water straight from the tap.
This is embarrassing. I had too much to drink. What will Sophie think?
I change into the nightshirt, or whatever it is. It makes me look like a Pilgrim. I fold my clothes and set them on the vanity, avoiding the mirror.
When I open the door, I find Sophie smoothing the covers.
“Ready for you, darling,” she says. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll take you to breakfast. Have you been to the diner yet? Tom makes the fluffiest pancakes.”
“Haven’t been yet,” I say. I want her to leave so I can collapse into bed, but I also don’t want to be alone. This room is too formal. There’s something unsettling about it.
“Good night, Annie. Sweet dreams,” she says. “If you need anything else, help yourself. Just don’t go into the east wing. That wing is forbidden.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m only joking,” she says, laughing. “It was a joke, darling. Anyway, sleep well!”
She leaves, closing the door behind her.
I feel the floor teetering beneath me. I stumble into bed, silently pleading with the room for it to hold still. A single voice cuts through the wine slush in my head.
Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.
* * *
—
My eyes are open. I’m on my back. The room is dark. I don’t remember turning the lights off, but I must have. My mouth is dry, my tongue limp. My limbs are incapable of movement. Up! I tell them. Let’s go. I need water. I need to pee. But my body refuses to move.
I stare at the bed canopy. I try to identify the flowers in the pattern, a challenge in the dark. I see a rose. A peony. My eyes go cross and I blink twice. There’s something unusual about the canopy, about the fabric, the way it’s draping. There are some places where it sags. I count four. I wonder if it’s from the chandelier hanging too low or if maybe there are some rips.
I blink again, and in that brief moment, in the darkness of my own head appears the face I saw in the mirror.
I’ve never been the type to scare easily. It’s one of the few ways in my life I’ve always been practical. I’ve never been fazed by slasher movies or ghost stories or urban legends. I was the one at sleepovers rolling her eyes, putting her hands on the planchette. I’m not scared of poltergeists or vampires or Freddy Krueger. I’m scared of real things, like economic recessions and dying alone.
So this kind of fear is unfamiliar to me, and I’m more disturbed by the fear than by the face, or the fact that the impressions in the canopy are now moving, like there’s something up there crawling across it.
The fear sends an electric jolt through my body. I catapult out of bed and stare up at the space between the top of the canopy and the ceiling.
I don’t see anything unusual, but I keep my eyes locked there. I take a few steps back to get a better view. Another few steps. My back hits the wall.
There’s nothing on the canopy. I breathe a long sigh of relief. I turn to walk toward the bathroom, and the wall seems to jump back away from me. My eyes slowly shift to the side, and in my peripheral vision, the distance between where I stand and where the wall is seems significant. A few feet.
So what was I up against? What was at my back?
The relief is sucked from my body with such force that my knees buckle. I listen for something, some noise that would confirm the presence of someone other than myself. The give of the floor. Breathing.
In listening, I discover there’s something else at my ear. Not a sound. Well, not really. It’s more a sensation. I realize I’ve been feeling it for a few seconds but have been too flustered to acknowledge it.
It’s hot air.
Humidity.
My hand reaches up instinctively.
ShhhhhhSssssss!
Someone is hissing in my ear.
I run.
I run to the bathroom, slam the door shut, lock it. I flip the light switch and look around. I slowly approach the tub and crane my neck to see inside. Empty.
I go back to the door. I wait for the knob to spin or for a set of fingers to appear in the narrow space between the door and the bathroom floor.
I think of what Sophie said earlier. A creaky, drafty old house.
I wonder what Sam would say if he were here. He’d probably still be asleep. He’s a heavy sleeper.
If Sam were here, I wouldn’t be afraid.
It’s just because I’m alone.
The realization is sobering. I go pee, wash my hands and splash some cold water on my face. I drink from the tap. I open the door out to the bedroom without any fear or hesitation, just bleak, boring logic. I get back in bed and pull the covers up high over my shoulder.
I close my eyes and pretend I’m back in the city, back in my old apartment. I pretend that Sam and I are still together, that the breakup never happened. I imagine him next to me. His occasional snores. The rise and fall of the sheets. The warmth there beside me.
I can almost feel it.
NEW DAY WITH PANCAKES
I wake up to sunlight nuzzling my face. I roll out of bed, change back into my clothes from yesterday and pull my hair into a sloppy bun.
I didn’t sleep well.
At all.
This is made painfully obvious by the dark circles under my eyes. A germ of a hangover floats behind my forehead.
As I step out of the room, I realize I don’t know where I’m going. Left, I think? I need to get to the main staircase.
I’ve never been in a house so big there’s a danger of getting lost.
I find the staircase, go down the hall of mirrors and into the kitchen. I find Sophie there, kneading dough. Her hair is in a French braid that snakes down her back. She’s wearing one of her signature long black dresses, protected by a burlap apron. She doesn’t have a single speck of flour anywhere on her.
“Morning!” she says. “Oh, pet! You look tired. Did you not sleep well?”
“I slept okay,” I say. “I have trouble sleeping sometimes.”
“Was the bed not comfortable? I’ll beat the mattress. Or I can put you in a different room,” she says, “if you’ll ever want to stay again. Perhaps it was too poor an experience.”
“No, no,” I say, my voice in its lying pitch. I imagine dogs around the world pausing in unison to consider the sound. “Not poor at all.”
“Would you like to go to the diner? It’s a lovely day,” she says, “though it might still be muddy.”
“That’s okay. I’ll go.”
“All right,” she says. She sets the dough in a ceramic bowl and puts a damp towel over it. “Let’s go.”
She leads me back through the woods. She was right about the mud. By the time we get to pavement, my boots are covered in sludge.
When we arrive at the diner, Sophie introduces me to the owner, a tiny bald man named Tom.
He bows to Sophie multiple times as he leads us to a booth in the back corner.
“I’ll bring coffee right away,” he says, hurrying off.
“Do you own this building?” I ask her.
“I own the land it sits on,” she says. “Why?”
I shrug. “Just wondering.”
I’m curious to know exactly how much real estate she owns, how much of this town, but I think it’d be rude to ask outright.
“I like to get pancakes with strawberries and a side of bacon,” she says. “But you can’t go wrong, really.”
“All right. Sold on the pancakes.”
Tom is back with the coffee, and Sophie orders for both of us.
“Coming right up,” he says. He won’t make eye contact with her. Or me.
“He’s funny,” I say.
“Nervous personality,” she says. “Annie. What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t seem yourself this morning. Is everything all right? Did I do something?”
“No,” I say. “No, I’m fine.”
As the words “I’m fine” leave my mouth, I realize how untrue they are. Sophie’s right. I’m not myself. I’m hungover, and I’m ashamed to be hungover.
I sigh. “I had too much wine last night.”
“My fault,” she says. “I’m a bad influence. I’m sorry, pet.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who drank it. I guess . . . this is the second time in the past week that I’ve gotten drunk. I don’t want to be this sad, single thirtysomething getting wine drunk multiple times a week. I don’t know.”
“Do you not like wine?”
“I do.”
Sophie takes a slow sip of her coffee. “Annie, why would you say ‘sad, single thirtysomething’?”
I’ve offended her. “I’m sorry. I just meant that’s how I feel.”
“No. No, I don’t think you did,” she says. She slowly unfolds a grin. “You think being single is a sad state of being. I promise you, it’s not.”
“No, I know.”
“Do you?”
Honestly, I don’t. I don’t want to end up alone. I don’t want to be an old maid. I want to be with someone. Share my life. Have someone love me. Want me.
“But why?” she asks.
“Sorry?”
“Why do you feel you need someone to love you, to want you? Why are you seeking that outside yourself?”
I’m confused. Did I say it out loud? Did I think out loud?
She puts her elbows on the table and leans forward. “You think you need it, but you don’t. I’m proof enough of that, don’t you think?”
