“Look, Mom,” said Valentina. She stood and held the front of the dress against her chest. Static electricity wrapped the skirt around her with a crackle. There were no sleeves yet, and the seams were raw; Edie thought the dress was like a costume for a fairy in a Christmas pantomime. “You look like Cinderella,” Edie said.
“Do I?” Valentina went to the mirror and smiled at her reflection. “I like this colour.”
“It suits you.”
“Julia wanted me to make them in pink.”
Edie frowned. “You’d look like twelve-year-old ballerinas. We could have made hers pink.”
Valentina caught her mother’s eye, then looked away. “It wasn’t worth the hassle. She wanted whatever I was making for myself.”
“I wish you’d stand up to her more often, sweet.”
Valentina peeled the dress away from her and sat down at the machine. She began to make the sleeves. “Did Elspeth boss you around? Or did you boss her?”
Edie hesitated. “We didn’t-it wasn’t like that.” She laid the second dress flat on the table and began to roll the tracing wheel over the seam lines. “We did everything together. We never liked to be alone. I still miss her.” Valentina sat still, waiting for her mother to continue. But Edie said, “Send me photos of the flat, will you? I imagine it must be full of our parents’ furniture; Elspeth loved all that heavy Victorian stuff.”
“Okay, sure.” Valentina turned in her chair and said, “I wish we weren’t going.”
“I know. But it’s like your dad says: you can’t stay home forever.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Edie smiled. “That’s good.”
“I wish I could stay in this room forever, and sew things.”
“That sounds like a fairy tale.”
Valentina laughed. “I’m Rumpelstiltskin.”
“No, no,” said Edie. She put down the dress pieces and went to Valentina. Edie stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. She leaned over and kissed Valentina on her forehead. “You’re the princess.”
Valentina looked up and saw her mother smiling at her upside down. “Am I?”
“Of course,” said Edie. “Always.”
“So we’re going to live happily ever after?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay.” Valentina had an acute moment, an awareness of a memory being formed.
We’re going to live happily ever after? Absolutely.
Edie went back to the other dress, and Valentina finished the first sleeve. By the time Jack and Julia got home, Valentina was wearing the violet dress and Edie was crouching in front of her with a mouthful of pins, hemming the skirt. It was all Valentina could do to hold still; she wanted to twirl and make the dress flare out like a carnival ride.
I’ll wear it to the ball,
she thought,
when the prince invites me to dance.
“Can I try it on?” said Julia.
“No,” said Edie through the pins, before Valentina could speak. “This one is hers. Come back later.”
“Okay,” said Julia, and she turned and ran off to wrap the presents Jack had bought.
“See,” said Edie to Valentina. “You just open your mouth and say
No
.”
“Okay,” said Valentina. She twirled and the dress flared. Edie laughed.
Boxing Day
J
ACK WALKED into his den and found the twins watching a movie. It was midnight and usually all three of them would have been in bed by now.
“That looks somewhat familiar,” said Jack. “What are you watching?”
“The Filth and the Fury,”
Julia said. “It’s a documentary about the Sex Pistols. You and Mom gave it to us for Christmas.”
“Oh.” The twins were sprawled together on the couch, so Jack lowered himself into the recliner. As soon as he was seated he felt exhausted. Jack had always enjoyed Christmas, but the days after Christmas seemed vacant and cheerless. The effect was compounded by the fact that the twins were leaving for London in a few days.
Where did the time go? Five days until their twenty-first birthdays. Then gone.
“How’s the packing going?” he asked.
“Okay,” said Valentina. She turned off the sound on the TV. “We’re going to be over the weight limit.”
“Somehow that’s not surprising,” Jack said.
“We need to get converters, you know, to plug in our computers and stuff.” Julia looked at Jack. “Can we go downtown with you tomorrow?”
“Sure. We’ll have lunch at Heaven on Seven,” Jack said. “Your mom will want to come with.” Edie had been shadowing the twins for weeks, hoarding them, memorising them.
“That’s cool, we can go to Water Tower. We need new boots.”
Valentina watched Johnny Rotten singing silently.
He looks deranged. That’s a great sweater.
She and Julia had studiously prepared for the trip to London, reading
Lonely Planet
and Charles Dickens, making packing lists and trying to find their new flat on Google Earth. They had speculated endlessly about Aunt Elspeth and the mysterious Mr. Fanshaw, had been very pleasantly surprised by the amount of money in their new bank account at Lloyd’s. Now there was hardly anything left to do, which created an odd void, a feeling of restless dread. Valentina wanted to leave right this minute, or never.
Julia watched her father. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“I dunno, you seem kind of wiped.”
You’ve gained a huge amount of weight and you sigh a lot. What’s wrong with you?
“I’m okay. It’s just the holidays.”
“Oh.”
Jack sat trying to imagine the house/his marriage/his life without the twins. He and Edie had been avoiding the subject for months, so now he thought about it obsessively, oscillating between fantasies of marital bliss, his actual memories of the last time the twins had left home and his worries about Edie.
For some time before Elspeth’s death Edie had been distracted. Jack had hired the detective in hope of discovering the reason for her absentmindedness, her vacant stare, her bright, false cheer whenever he asked her about it. But the detective could only observe Edie; he had no answers for Jack’s questions. After Elspeth’s death Edie’s distraction had been replaced by a profound sadness. Jack could not comfort her. He could not seem to say the right thing, though he tried. Now he wondered how Edie would fare once the twins were gone.
Each time the twins left for college, things started out well. Jack and Edie revelled in their freedom: there would be late nights, loud sex, spur-of-the-moment amusements and slightly excessive drinking. But then a kind of bleakness always set in. Soon it would be upon them, their empty house. They would eat dinner together, just the two of them; the evening would stretch out before them in silence, to be filled with a DVD and perhaps a walk down to the beach or the club. Or they would retreat to opposite ends of the house, he to surf the Internet or read a Tom Clancy novel, Edie to work on her needlepoint while listening to an audio book. (She was currently listening to
Brideshead Revisited,
which Jack thought was pretty much guaranteed to produce a serious bout of depression.)
Tonight he didn’t see much to look forward to after the twins were gone. He felt grateful to them for having stuck around as long as they had, grateful to Edie and Elspeth for having arranged things so that Julia and Valentina could grow up in this ugly, comfortable house, so he could be Dad, so the girls could sit here in his room watching Johnny Rotten spastically singing “God Save the Queen” with the sound turned off; suddenly Jack was overwhelmed with a gratitude that felt like grief, and he struggled out of his chair, muttered Goodnight and left the room, afraid that if he sat there one minute longer he would cry or blurt out something he’d regret. He walked into his bedroom, where Edie slept curled up, faintly blue in the clock-radio light. Jack undressed silently, got into bed without brushing his teeth and lay there in an abyss, unable to imagine any happiness for himself ever again.
Valentina turned off the TV. The twins rose and stretched. “He seems really down,” said Valentina.
“They’re both, like, suicidal,” replied Julia. “I wonder what will happen when we’re gone?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
Julia looked impatient. “We have to go somewhere, eventually. The sooner we’re gone, the sooner they’ll get over it.”
“I guess.”
“We’ll call them every Sunday. They can come and visit.”
“I know.” Valentina took a breath. “Maybe you should go to London and I’ll stay here with them.”
Julia experienced a frisson of rejection.
You’d rather stay with Mom and Dad than be with me?
“No!” She paused, trying to quell her irritation. Valentina watched, a little amused. “Mouse, we both have to-”
“I know. Don’t worry. I’m coming with you.” She pressed against Julia, put her arm around Julia’s shoulders. Then they turned out the light and walked to their room, glancing at their parents’ door as they passed.
New Year’s Day
R
OBERT STOOD in Elspeth’s office. The twins would arrive tomorrow. He had brought along an external hard drive and a few boxes from Sainsbury’s; these stood empty and open next to Elspeth’s enormous Victorian desk.
Elspeth sat on her desk and watched Robert.
Oh, you don’t look happy, love.
She had no idea how much time had passed. Had she died months ago? Years? Something was happening; until now Robert had kept her flat almost unchanged. He’d thrown out most of the food and cancelled her credit cards. She no longer received mail. He had closed her business and written personal letters to her customers. It was becoming very dusty in the flat. Even the sunlight seemed dimmer than she remembered; the windows needed washing.
Robert went through the drawers of Elspeth’s desk. He left the stationery and the invoices. He took some packets of photographs and a notebook she’d doodled in while she talked on the telephone. He went to the bookshelves and began carefully removing the ledgers she’d used as diaries, dusting them and placing them in the boxes.
Open one,
Elspeth said.
Open that one.
But of course Robert couldn’t hear her.
He worked in silence. Elspeth felt slighted; sometimes he talked to her when he was in the flat. Photo albums, a shoebox full of letters, notebooks went into the boxes. She wanted to touch him but held back. Robert plugged the hard drive into her computer and transferred her files. Then he wiped the computer of everything except the system and applications. Elspeth stood behind him and watched.
How strange, to feel sad about the computer. I must really be dead now.
Robert unplugged the hard drive and put it in a box.
He began roaming through the flat, box in hand, Elspeth trailing behind him.
The bedroom,
she urged silently. When he got there he stood in the doorway for a few minutes. Elspeth flowed by him and sat on the bed. She looked at him: there was something about her sitting here and the way he stood there and the light, the way the light bathed the room in dusty warmth.
In a moment he’ll come over here and kiss me.
Elspeth waited, forgetting. They had done this so many times.
Robert opened the door of her dressing room. He put the box down and opened a drawer. He put a few camisoles, a couple of bras and some of her fancier knickers into the box. He stood surveying her shoes.
He’ll take the pink suede heels,
Elspeth thought, and he did. He adjusted the position of the other shoes so there was no gap.
Don’t forget the letters.
He opened a drawer full of jumpers and smelled each one. The one he picked was a nondescript blue cashmere; she imagined it must not have been dry-cleaned since she’d worn it last. He opened another drawer and scooped their sex toys into the box.
You missed one,
Elspeth said, but he shut the drawer.
Robert reached up and retrieved a box from the top shelf. Elspeth smiled. She had counted on him to be thorough, and he was. He set it beside the box full of clothing.
Robert cleared out the bathroom. He threw most of her toiletries in the bin, but stood holding her diaphragm for a moment.
What a daft thing to get sentimental about,
she thought. Then that, too, went into the bin.
He shut the bathroom door and stood next to the bed, thinking. Then he lay down on the bed. Elspeth lay beside him, careful not to touch, hopeful.
What if I don’t see you again?
He was taking the things she had given him; he was leaving the flat.
Don’t be shy, sweet. It’s just
you and me.
She cheered when he undid his belt buckle and unzipped his fly. She imagined herself naked beside him, and she was.
Sometimes he imitated her technique, but today he was rougher, more utilitarian with himself. Elspeth watched Robert’s face. She sat up and leaned over him; his eyes were closed. She touched his hair. She put her face close to his, let his breath warm her.
So warm, so solid.
She would have given anything to be alive with him then, to touch him. Elspeth knew that her touch was cold to him; whenever she’d tried to touch him he would shiver and shrink. So she knelt beside him, watching.
She had often marvelled at the play of expression in Robert’s face during sex. Desire, concentration, pain, endurance, hilarity, desperation, release: she sometimes felt as though she were watching a pageant of the extremes of Robert’s soul. Today it was determination, a kind of grim plea; it seemed to take a long time, and Elspeth began to be anxious.
Enjoy it, at least. For both of us.
She watched his hands on his cock, watched the way his toes curled, the sideways jerk of his head as he came. His body went slack. Robert opened his eyes and stared through Elspeth at the ceiling.
I’m here, Robert.
A tear rolled halfway across his cheek.
Don’t, sweet. Don’t cry.
Elspeth had never seen Robert cry, not even in hospital, not even when she’d died.
Oh, hell. I don’t want you to be so miserable.
She reached down and touched the tear. Robert turned his head, startled.