Page 55 of The Phoenix Bride
Father’s hand trembles, and he nearly drops the cup. I hear his breath catch, and I reach forward to take the cup from him, alarmed. His face is pale.
“Are you well?” I ask him. “Your heart?”
He presses a hand to his chest. “Only a stutter,” he says.
—
By the midafternoon, I am so exhausted that I can no longer stay awake. I nap on the couch, and in my fitful, half-woken sleep, I dream of Portugal. I dream of myself at nineteen, just graduated from the academy, when my father and I had already decided wewere leaving Lisbon. We had friends who had gone to England—the petition to live there openly was in its final stages—and they told us there was a shortage of able physicians. We were both restless men, travelers; over the course of my youth, we had gone on numerous trips across the country, even to Spain, where my father’s fame as a doctor had brought him work in Andalusia. This seemed an extraordinary opportunity for adventure.London,a city larger than life itself, was opening its doors to us.
But I don’t dream of adventure. I dream of the moment my mother says, “I will not go with you.”
We are at the breakfast table. My father drops his apple. He is less in shock at the meaning of the words than at the timing of them. My mother loves Lisbon, and we both knew she would resist leaving. But to say it likethis,before our sincerest plans have been made, before any discussion has even been had—it is not characteristic of soft-spoken, sweet, plaintive Ana. She usually asks advice even on the slicing of bread.
“Ana,” my father says. “Querida—”
“I will not,” she repeats.
The dream changes. I am no longer in the kitchen. I am younger, a child sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, staring at the crucifix my mother has hung above the front door. It is there to remind us, each time we leave the house, what face we ought to be wearing.Keep it secret, Davi. Keep us safe.
I am nineteen again. I stand in front of my mother as shepresses a packet of lettuce seeds into my hand. The coach is behind us; we are leaving. But she is only being stubborn. She won’t stay here and live as agentilewithout us. Father says she will come eventually. I know that she will come eventually.
“Tell Gaspar to plant them,” she says. “He will know the best place.”
But Father doesn’t plant them. I am planting them, in our garden in London. I am watching them grow, and the days are passing and the years are passing, and I wear a mask and grow a beak as the plague comes. I leave our house and watch Manuel driving a plague cart down the street, smiling and waving at me. The cart is empty of bodies, and he is healthy and whole. I have succeeded this time. All is well.
I take off my bird mask and my oiled coat. I go back into the house and return to my bedroom. Cecilia is in the bed; she is waiting for me to examine her. Her skirts are rucked up to her chest, a sheet draped over her hips. I press my fingers to her abdomen, drawing them down to the tops of her thighs, feeling her shiver beneath my touch. I watch her face as I do so. Then she kicks the sheet away and threads her hands in my hair, pushing me down. I bend to kiss her stomach. Her legs part, and my lips move lower, lower still. She sighs and widens her stance, welcoming me. She tastes of salt and sweet and linden flowers, wet and wanting. And I shouldn’t—Ishouldn’t—but I am lost to her; lost to the way she gasps and whimpers, the way she bucks against my mouth, the way she breathes my name. The sounds she makes are like the music she once played for me; they seem to make a song just as the spinet did. And soon she is close, she is reaching, hands scrabbling at my shoulders, trembling beneath me, begging me to continue, my name falling from her lips each time a chord, another note—
David,she says, Iwant you, I want you, I always will—
I awaken, disoriented. The afternoon sun reaches through the gap in the curtains. For a moment, I forget the dream was a dream, and I reach out beside me, expecting Cecilia to be there.
She is not there. She never was.
Margaret is not speaking to me. I am not speaking to Margaret.
Two days have passed since she discovered David and me. Since then, I haven’t left my bedroom. She always locks my door now. It doesn’t matter, really; all my resistance has been bled from me, as if I have been leeched. Perhaps I shall never do anything again. Instead, I shall sit in this bed and grow bitter, bitter like dandelion greens, sprouting from the mattress and sitting stubborn until they are plucked.
Time passes. I look out the window, staring at the summer sky. I blink, and the sun has made half its journey. The breakfast plates go untouched, but my treacherous stomach growls in hunger. David’s treatments have left me the ability to eat, but not the will to do so. I could cease eating altogether and grow illagain out of spite. Starving Cecilia is gone, but I could bring her back, if I wished to. It would be a pointless and miserable achievement.
He knew, all this time, what my sister intended for me, and he kept it hidden. He knew, and he wanted me still.
I don’t know whether to be angry or grateful.
—
I am awoken late one night by a hand on my shoulder, a hushed voice whispering my name.
“Maggie?” I mumble drowsily, and I peel open my eyes to look at her.
She hasn’t a candle with her, and her figure is indistinct in the black: the vague lines of a nightgown, the loose coils of her hair. I wonder a moment if I am dreaming.
“Come with me,” she says, wrapping a hand around my wrist.
I am so confused by her presence, so disoriented by my sudden waking, that I make no protest. I stumble out of the bed, bare feet on the floorboards, and she tugs me toward the door.
We go through corridors, down steps. Margaret says nothing to me except to warn me of a threshold, her grip around my wrist loosening gradually as we progress, as if her fear of my escape is easing. As the veil of sleep begins to fall, I wonder if Ishouldescape—but it isn’t as if I have anywhere to go. I am in my nightgown just as she is, eyes still gummy. She is my only anchor in the darkness.
We reach a familiar door and spill out onto the courtyard. This summer is warm enough that the air is the same temperature outside and in, and the stones beneath my feet still linger with the heat of the sun.
