Page 78 of Fragile Wicked Things
"You made me!" she said.
He stopped, affected by her words and lowered his hand. Humanity had returned, but I longed for the beast to strike her. Yes, he had made her and had paid the consequences for it. Above all things, it was redemption that he sought, yet he shouldn’t seek it from her.
"Edward," I said, stepping towards him. He turned away from me.
A ray of sunshine inched toward us, fanning out and brought light where once there was darkness.
Blanche sprung from the ground, her arms outstretched to take hold of me. Her fingernail scratched my arm and drew blood, but then Rochester stepped in and pushed Blanche against the Great Oak tree that had been struck by lightning. With hesitation, he held the stake against her heart. Even then, her maniacal laugh escaped her and swallowed up the air around us.
"Do it!" she told him. "Put me out of my misery."
"Forgive me," said Rochester and he thrust the stake into her, but she struggled, shifted and he missed her heart, stabbing her in her shoulder instead. She gasped and, looking down at the stake, knotted her eyebrows in absolute surprise, and her lips formed an 'o.' Blood dripped from her wound. The blue of her eyes lost their intensity, her teeth rounded and the features of her face softened, but the wounds to her shoulder and neck were not enough to kill her. Rochester thrust the stake deeper. Certainly, it caused pain, but nothing more. She looked at him, reached out to touch his face and stared as a mist rose from her hands. The sun was coming out. Her face stiffened, cracked and blackened. Rochester stared in horror at what he had done. Then I saw it. A mist was rising from him, too. He looked first at his hands and then at me. The sun was killing him.
"Inside," I yelled to him. "Get inside now." I pulled at his arm, but he stood steadfast.
"Did you see? I'm releasing her from the darkness. Free me."
"No! Edward, not like this." Again, I tugged at him, like a small child trying to drag a parent somewhere. His skin continued to burn and sizzle. All the while, Blanche laughed at us. I threw my arms around him, pled with him, and kissed his cheeks, his nose, and his lips, but he was dying before my eyes.
A curtain panel came down on Rochester, pushing him to the ground. When I looked up, I found Thomas standing near us, blood still dripping from his neck.
"Help me get him inside," he said.
We pushed a weakened Rochester toward the house and into the front foyer, where he fell to the tiled floor. Thomas closed the door behind us, out of the sun's reach. There, we knelt by a motionless Rochester under the damask cloth, its side edged in gold tassels. I fingered one of them and rubbed my thumb against the smooth, round ball, too afraid to peek underneath.
"The Vampyres are dead," Thomas said.
Rochester's blackened fingers stuck out from under the curtain, charred and motionless. The foyer reeked of burning flesh.
"Edward," I whispered and lay on the floor next to him.
There was no response. When I reached out to touch his fingers, they did not flick up in reaction to my touch. I stroked them until tears sprang to my eyes, sucked in a breath and lifted the curtain, peering into the darkness.
Rochester's cold, black eyes stared back at me.
Epilogue
1969—
To believe we map out the design of our lives is a falsehood. We are our greatest tormentors, haunted by pasts that form us. And, just as our history creates us, it can also destroy—annihilate the homes we’ve built, the families we’ve formed, decimate the shield we once believed impenetrable. We are inundated with pain at the discovery that control over our lives is a mere illusion and we can no more predict the outcome of it as we can the end of civilization. An end comes to all of us. Yet, we shed our past and dare march toward our future.
My own past is not so easily discarded. Often, when I think of Rochester, I remember the expression of quiet euphoria on his beautiful face when he set Blanche free. Expecting mercy on my part, he begged me to do the same for him, to give him that which he long desired—Peace. When confronted with Rochester’s demise under the blackening of the sun, I could no more have a hand in his true death than I could my own.
My peace lay elsewhere, far from Thornfield, so I forged ahead, hoping to find it someday.
When I returned to New York City with Thomas by my side, we lived in a pre-war walk-up at Broadway and West 109th Street. The elevator never seemed to work; the walls were thin enough to hear whispering on the other side and each time the people above us flushed the toilet, we heard the swoosh of running water and the cranking of pipes. But it was close to Columbia where I studied journalism, so we didn't mind.
I had anticipated a newspaper career—writing for the likes of The New York Times. Instead, my camaraderie with politically minded female students sent me veering off course and now I'm a features writer for "Rise Up." When I earned my first byline on an article discussing contraception, Thomas, in his excitement, ran all over town to get as many copies as he could. I reminded him he was defeating the purpose of writing the article in the first place—to get to the masses—to which he responded by distributing the many copies he had to students on Columbia's campus. An article I wrote that catapulted my career was based on my attendance at the March on Washington in '63. Thomas and I boarded a bus from Harlem and arrived in Washington at 7 am. The ride was long and quiet and we were scared. We didn't know what would greet us once we arrived, but forward we went.
I call Brooklyn home now. We first settled into a brownstone in Park Slope, which proved to be too small and dangerous to live in, yet the danger didn’t compare to Thornfield. Not staying there for long, we then found this apartment nearby. It's bigger, brighter, more expensive. We spent the last few years working on it; we painted, took down a temporary wall the tenant before us had put up and tinkered with the plumbing because we could never get hold of the superintendent. Eventually, an opportunity arose to buy the apartment and we scraped together whatever we had which still wasn't enough. Thomas begged me to dip into an account Rochester had set up for me many years before, and as it would establish a home for us and our future family, I relented. We purchased the apartment outright, the sale of the home representing only a small portion of what Rochester had given me. The rest remains tucked away, rarely dipped into and, for the most part, Thomas and I live a very modest life.
The kitchen in the back is small and isolated from the rest of the apartment, but the large room in front is where we entertain our friends. When the dining room table is not in use, the ladies and I paint signs. This one week, I was overwhelmed with three different protests that I brought a pro-choice sign to the men's only club protest. The apartment has two bedrooms, a rather large master and a smaller one we used as an office. One day, Thomas came home to find me moving everything out and into the living room. He joined in and helped me carry things out without questioning why, and when we finished, we sat on the floor of the empty room, staring at the white walls.
"Pink or blue?" he asked me.
"Green."
The next day, he painted the nursery apple green.
