“—time for bed, dear? Your room is awaiting you—”
“—aired out and freshly made up just for you—”
“—(Oh! Take the cup from her, before it falls—)”
“—(You take it, you’re closer!)”
Not yet nine p.m., very early for Clare to go to bed. Yet it feels much later. Midnight.
Clare is so very tired, she can barely keep her eyes open. How rude she is to be falling asleep in her great-aunts’ presence . . . Barely can she rise to her feet from the velvet settee. Barely can she articulate her words, to apologize.
(What has happened to her? Clare thinks, They have poisoned me!—but the thought passes in and out of her consciousness like a short thread pulled through the eye of a needle.)
There is a moment, a juncture in time (like the moment before Clare answered the telephone back in Bryn Mawr, when she might have chosen not to lift the receiver), when Clare might have escaped the great-aunts, might have pushed her way out of the drawing room, stumbled into the dimly lit foyer and out onto the veranda and the shock of fresh air, and from there to her car parked at the curb. But she does not, for the possibility never occurs to her. She is so very sleepy. There is a childish comfort in sleepiness and in the passivity of sleepiness. And the great-aunts are so kind.
Not sure what is happening but she will obey: upstairs! A room awaiting her for days. (Years?)
Weakly, Clare lifts her suitcase to carry it up the stairs. But the suitcase (which had not seemed heavy previously) is heavy now. (She’d brought with her only a few articles of clothing, several books, an extra pair of shoes, toiletries in a plastic case—nothing heavy.) Short, squat, misshapen Morag laughs affectionately at Clare—unless it is scornfully. “Let me”—managing with just a stump of an arm to secure the suitcase against her thigh, carrying it in triumph up the stairs.
Clare rubs her eyes, stares. Is Morag missing part of an arm? Clare can’t quite see.
“—inside, dear Clare! Here—”
“—awaiting you.”
Elspeth, the great-aunt with the pale flame-colored hair, sweeps before Clare, leading her into the guest room. Clare has an impression of the glamorous great-aunt brandishing a torch aloft—but of course there is no torch.
Astonishing to see that the guest room in this strange house feels familiar to her—one of those places in which details like walls, ceilings, floor coverings are not yet defined, but rather sketchy, cloudy. I have come too soon, the dream is not prepared for me. Will there be oxygen to breathe? Yet she isn’t frightened. On the contrary, she feels as if she has come to a familiar place, a place that has been awaiting her.
“Off!—with the shoes—”
“Off!—with the socks—”
“Loosen this—”
“Loosen this—”
“And this—”
Like ether, lethargy lifts from the stiff, sun-faded satin coverlet of the four-poster bed to embrace Clare. The mattress is very hard—horsehair. (How does Clare know this? Clare knows.) Upon a goose-feather pillow her head rolls as if it has become unfastened from her body. All her limbs are limp, unresisting. Her thoughts come broken, jagged. And then they are vaporous, like clouds. High, scudding clouds blown by the Atlantic breezes.
Busily, happily, the great-aunts tug at her clothing, cooing over her as if she were a great, helpless baby. From a distance she hears (to her embarrassment) how she is “no great beauty,” but at least “she takes after him, not her. That woman was so plain.”
6.
Low thrilled voices waft upstairs.
She doesn’t remember.
She must remember!
No. I think she doesn’t . . .
She’s pretending not to remember.
No. I think she actually does not remember.
There is a pause. You are not sure if you are fully awake or captive still in this unfamiliar bed with its hard, unyielding mattress beneath a thin, frayed sheet amid bedclothes that smell of mildew in a dream that has gone on and on and on, like wading through murky water that sucks at your feet and threatens to pull you down, and so you keep your eyes shut tight as a child might do, in dread of what you might hear next.
She doesn’t even remember us—who found her.
Sudden laughter. Hilarity like small glassware shattering.
7.
“Clare, dear?—breakfast time.”
“—time for breakfast, dear Clare!”
Wakened by voices calling from the foot of the stairs.
These are elated voices, slightly chiding: Clare has overslept, it is past nine a.m.
Staring at her watch in disbelief. Nine fifteen a.m.! Usually Clare wakes before dawn, is out of bed by seven. Astonishing to her, she has slept a stuporous twelve hours in the four-poster bed in her great-aunts’ guest room. Even now her head is heavy, her vision blurred, as if, instead of sleeping heavily, she has spent the night trying to read a text too close to her eyes.
At the door, voices are daringly intimate, thrilled.
“Are you hungry, dear?”
“We have prepared a special breakfast for you, dear . . .”
Teasingly, the doorknob turns. But—at least!—the door is not pushed open.
Clare has been staring at the turning knob. Hairs stir at the nape of her neck in childish terror.
Quickly she calls to her great-aunts that she will be downstairs as soon as possible. She is so sorry she has overslept . . .
“No hurry! No hurry—”
“—our little sleepyhead.”
Laughter like glassware breaking. Clare shudders.
Disoriented, groggy from sleep, she tries to wash herself in the bathroom attached to the guest room. Here, everything is too bright: stark white tile walls, floor. Overhead, a white glare. In a corner of the ceiling, the remains of a broken cobweb, stirring just perceptibly . . .
Clare shudders. She will get rid of the cobweb, later.
In an antiquated mirror above an antiquated sink, a pale face, matted hair. Bare shoulders, breasts that look abashed, vulnerable—nipples as hard as small pits, alert and wary.
Underarms! Clare scrubs with a washcloth, fiercely.
No idea how to use the antiquated shower inside an enormous white tub. Faucets that turn reluctantly, causing ancient pipes to groan. Showerhead like a leprous sunflower.
She will have to ask the great-aunts how to operate the damned shower. No time now to draw a bath—to fill the tub with hot water, climb slipping and sliding into it as into a Roman sarcophagus.