After Alice Fell(3)
The driver turns the horses to the road. The light flicks through silver maples, planted to maintain privacy.
“She wasn’t well. If you’d been here, you’d have known.” His voice drips with accusation. “Not at the end. My God, she nearly—”
“I don’t want this argument now.”
“You made a lot of excuses for her.”
I shake my head and look down at my lap, at the tangled mess I’ve made of the thumb of my glove. I’ve picked it apart, cotton and silk now torn and in knots.
Lionel stares, too, then pulls the glass open. Just outside his window, orange dahlias and red heleniums line the drive, riotous and bloated with too much color. Just outside mine is the brown brick building that holds Alice in its bowels. Two workmen sit astraddle the far peak of roof. One fans his face with a wide-brimmed hat, staving off the heat and mosquitos. The other slaps at his arm, then turns up his palm to stare at whatever’s left of the bug before wiping it off on his trouser leg.
“I was going to visit,” I say. “When I’d settled. This week or next.”
“She’d have refused to see you.”
“Why?”
“Do you need to ask that?” He points out my window to a narrow road that meets with ours. A mule with heavy head pulls the buckboard. A simple pine casket rests in the bed. “There’s the wagon.”
The driver sits wide kneed, round backed, his chin jutted forward. He pulls the traces, slowing the mule, ceding the roadway to us. With a quick nod, he doffs his soft cap and holds it aloft as we pass by.
My chest burns with each breath. I force myself to watch our driver. I count the stitches along the back of his brown coat. The fabric is faded nearly yellow at the shoulders. He’s mended a rip in the hem.
Lionel’s wife, Cathy, will be waiting at the house. She’ll have cleared the dining room and gathered muslins. I don’t think I can take her condolences any more than I could take them when Benjamin died.
The horse whip bends and swings in its stand near the driver’s thigh, and he looks averse to using it. Other drivers flick and play the leathers on their horse’s backs, but he leaves it be, churrs and hums instead.
“Toby shouldn’t see Alice like this,” I say, my eyes following the swing of the leather. “He’s too young.”
“I’ll look out for him.” Lionel stretches his neck, first one way, and then the other, before staring out his window glass.
There’s a quick movement along the stone fence. A shard of sun reflects off a white cap and pale wrists and forearms. A girl, wraith thin, scrambles over the fence, hands waving, black hair frizzled at the forehead. She jogs next to us, reaching out to catch the doorframe. Her eyes are the palest of green, nearly incandescent against the scarlet birthmark marring her cheek and jaw.
“Mrs. Abbott. Oh please, Mrs. Abbott.” A wide scar rides along her chin and curves up as she speaks. “I need to talk to you.”
Lionel leans over me. “Get away from the carriage.”
“No, I need to talk to Mrs. Abbott. Please . . . stop the horses.”
The driver flicks his long whip so it snaps the air by the girl’s leg. “Get back to work, Kitty Swain.”
“Oh, stop. Charlie, stop.” She calls and waves, stumbles in a divot as she sprints to keep pace.
The horses are urged to a trot. The girl gives up, lifting and dropping her arms to her skirts. She stares at me, her mouth moving and something akin to pleading in her visage. But the words are lost in the horse’s clops and the squeals of the carriage axles.
A spit of sweat, icy and sharp, stings my neck. I remove my kerchief from my sleeve and dab. But I turn my head, compelled to take one last look at this pompous brick building with the inviting porch and grated windows and a cupola ringed with lightning rods. A single-paned glass window in the middle dormer catches the sun and holds it. Each wing’s roof is steep pitched—easy enough to slip.
Three stories. Four along the left wing where the ground slopes away. An accidental, unfortunate fall. Sunken eyes, gaping mouth, crisscrossed slices and scratches from the thorns. Bruising on her forehead. Blood-stiff hair.
Three stories. Four at the apex.
How did you get on the roof, Alice?
Chapter Two
Maple and elm branches arch over the road, cling tight to the edges. The trees are heavy with cicadas, the air vibrating with their chatter. Teeth on metal. The branches tap and scrape the top of the brougham. One of the insects drops past my window to the dirt.
Lionel and I pass an hour in silence. The dirt road curls to the right, a thin track between the trees. Midway down we pass the husk of a once-grand house. Now it is nothing but long windows of shattered glass and weeds crawling up the brick. The old Burton manse. Silent and empty these past ten years, ever since the murders of the poor wife and her companion.
We turn to the Post Road, follow the wind of the river until we are amidst the tumble of Harrowboro proper. The town is full with mourning, though it has been months since the war ended, since Lincoln lost his life; no one looks askance at our cortege. I stop counting the women in weeds black as mine—flicking a broom on a porch, bending to a basket to coo at a babe, balancing wash on a shoulder, exiting the dry goods, the druggist’s. Dull cottons, heavy laces, jet bead brooches, lapel pins that hold an image or braid of hair in their cases. I turn my head from the legless beggar, the newsboy lifting the afternoon paper with one arm and the sleeve of the other pinned tight. By the livery, the women thin out, their figures just ghosts of skirts flitting between the shops. Three new photography studios have opened between Adams and School Street. At least now the tintypes will be of the living.