Page 61 of Fragile Wicked Things
Rochester looked at me fixedly, and I could not tell if he was incensed or surprised, but I suspected it was an injury that I inflicted on him.
"Please, forgive me. My words were mean-spirited and not at all what I meant. Understand that I cannot stay."
He sat there, unmoved, in his iron silence, and all I felt was his despair and disappointment that I should not subject myself to him, to his desires; that I resisted being a comfort to him in his loneliness.
"I scarcely expected to hear you express such things," he said in a gentle tone that drew me to sit back down near him. His gentleness had such a potent force that it broke me down with grief. "Please stay. Let me hear the words 'I will be yours'."
"I will not be yours."
"You mean to leave me then?"
"I do."
He embraced me. "Do you mean it now?"
"I do."
He kissed me on my forehead and cheek. "And now?"
"I do," I said, extricating myself from his embrace.
"This is wicked what you do to me. It is not wickedness to love a monster like me who can be gentle and loving. Oh, Jane, think about my horrible life when you are gone; all chance at happiness disappears with you. What am I left with? The memory of my love in this home will diminish; my darkness will grow, and my ghosts will destroy me. Will you not yield?"
"No."
"Then you condemn me and all who come into my path." His voice rose, and he stood before me, his face inches from mine, his eyes desperate. Then, when all else failed and gentle tones and reasoning subsided, he tried to coerce me into obedience. He took my hand in his, but I pulled it away. "You will leave me then? I'm to be alone again." He sank back down, landing with a heavy thud on the sofa, and turned away, lost, as I had found him in the mausoleum.
I could not be held accountable for his happiness, so I walked out of the room, out of Thornfield, and down the drive, wiping at tears as they streamed down. I would stay at Thomas’s house in his absence.
The following day, Thomas returned with news that he had found a suitable new handler and that I should meet him in New Orleans. However, after the encounter with Rochester, I resolved that we should leave immediately and approved of the man he recommended. Arrangements had been made for him to arrive the following day, and Thomas and I were to pack what few belongings we had.
Hours later, I went to Thomas’s home, bent on leaving without saying goodbye to Rochester, but he wasn’t home. I waited a good half-hour more before Thomas arrived, looking downtrodden by the front door, lost in his own thoughts. He had not seen me.
“Thomas?”
He looked up at me without saying anything.
“Is something wrong?” He shook his head. “Where were you?” Still he didn’t answer, looked away from me and moved into the kitchen. I followed. "I want to leave at first light," I told him.
"I'll take you to the train station."
"What do you mean you'll take me? You're coming with me." A long silence followed. "Thomas?" He turned away, and then I understood without him having to say anything at all. "You're not coming with me." It was meant to be a question but came out as a statement.
"I'm staying."
"You were with Rochester just now, weren’t you? Did he offer more money?" Thomas shook his head. "He's doing it to punish me for leaving him. Your grandmother regretted her decision to work for him, and you will, too. Leave this place. Come away with me now." The mention of Auntie grew out of desperation. Had I not felt the agony of abandonment and betrayal, had I thought things through for a moment, I would have understood then what I know now. Thomas sacrificed his own happiness for me. Rochester refused to let us both go and, when presented with the situation by Rochester, Thomas decided that I would be the one to escape Thornfield.
Finally, his eyes met mine, and he said, "You must leave."
"Then I'm to be alone again," I said.
Nineteen
Horns honked. People yelled. Tires screeched. A cardinal, perched on my windowsill, whistled a sweet, long and complex song, drowning out the New York City noise, but then, stirred by the madness below, began attacking its reflection in the glass. There were times I concurred when driven by the lunacy around me. When I had first arrived, I was hustled and bustled about on the sidewalk; afraid to drive, it took some time before I could conquer the hot and sticky underground, a subway map, torn and creased from refolding, tucked away in my purse. I lived on the Upper West Side because of its proximity to Central Park and the quick jaunt to Columbia, where I would attend in the fall. Pouring over the courses, I settled on literature, history and poetry, picking up a creative writing class as an afterthought when really it most interested me.
I took a photography course on weekends and purchased a used Nikon F with interchangeable components and accessories. The man at the store counter at the corner of 7th Avenue and 32nd Street sold the camera with a 50mm lens but said I couldn't go wrong in buying a 200mm and, like a fool, I nodded, accepting everything he said as gospel. For the first time, I hung out with people I had met in class. Some were budding photographers. Others were bored wealthy students who had no interest in following their fathers into the world of finance, law, or land development and tossed their trust funds aside without a care in the world. However, I suspect that for many, it would be temporary. They introduced me to their friends who lived in tiny apartments, some with three or more roommates and threw impromptu parties, listened to jazz, drank, smoked cannabis and talked politics. Always politics, and when the topic of race relations came up, as it invariably did, they would look at me like I was one of "them," a Southern Belle who preferred the old ways. I said nothing, absorbed everything around me, every squeal, every rub of a woman's thigh, every cigarette brought to a flame, the smoke swirling about in halos above their heads.
One night, I said yes to the strange cigarette being passed around, choked the first time I inhaled, and listened with intensity as my friend, Lucille, told me to relax, to take it in and hold. After a third hit—my throat dry, my chest burning, my legs soft as butter—I lay back on a pillow, listening to the music ebb and flow and told them about a Vampyre I knew, how I was attracted to him, to his darkness, even when he terrified me, how one look could grasp me in his unbreakable grip. Out of fear, I ran. Still, I longed for him, for his closeness, his touch, so much so that I would allow him to draw the blood from my veins, to make me an immortal being, a nasty, filthy, soulless creature of the night, in the hopes of being with him.
