Season of the Dragonflies
Read Season of the Dragonflies Online
Authors: Sarah Creech
FOR MY MOTHER, CHAREATHA
I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
âMARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future.
âCOCO CHANEL
Contents
THE BEGINNING OF LENORE INCORPORATED: Serena's Story
CHAPTER 1 Three Generations Later
CHAPTER 5 Memory of an Attraction
CHAPTER 9 Choosing a Successor
CHAPTER 13 News at the Factory
CHAPTER 14 The Curse Manifests
CHAPTER 19 Shredding the Numbers
CHAPTER 21 Curse and Vengeance
CHAPTER 23 Naming the President
CHAPTER 28 When One Bedroom Closes
T
HE HEAVY WOODEN
doors to the office opened, and there stood the shortest man Serena Lenore could've imagined. “Come along,” her father said, one hand on Mr. Chase's shoulder. “It's time for dinner.”
Mr. Chase smiled at Serena, his thin lips spread so wide they nearly disappeared. The sight of him made her thighs lock together. Those lips, and only those lips, would eventually find their way beneath all these layers of petticoat. His head was so long, like a horse's, and his eyes too small, like a doll's. How could her father do this to her? Did he have no feelings at all? Did he not remember what it meant to be in love? Mr. Chase was a banking heir. His family owned stock in rail, steel, and now oil and even grocery chains. They invested in small men with big dreams and made fortunes. Anyone who wanted to develop real estate in the city needed the Chase family, and her father needed Serena to sacrifice herself for his business expansion. “For your future and fortune, my darling,” her father had reasoned.
“But what about love?” And to this her father had no answer. Could she say no? Serena dreamed about saying no; every night the same settee and the same tumbler of scotch in her father's hand appeared. But when she told him, he dissolved on the spot, her only living parent lost to her forever. The same dream every single night, just like the same dull days in the dull marriage she'd succumb to soon enough.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Chase would work as hard as her father and be home just as little, and this brought Serena her only comfort. Her bitterness bubbled like percolating coffee as she walked behind the two men down the mahogany hallway, which was as narrow as a coffin. She smelled vegetable broth boiling in the kitchen. She sat down at the dining room table set for sixteen, thankfully many seats away from her father and Mr. Chase. Serena recognized only a few faces at the table, like the decrepit Mrs. Barts, whose breath smelled like rotten meat. Serena's trust manager, Mr. Hart, arrived without a date, as usual, and he was seated next to Mrs. Barts. At least it wouldn't be Serena's charge to conduct close conversation with the old woman tonight. Otherwise, Serena's father had invited potential business partners to witness this momentous day in her life. She hardly knew any of them, though Mr. Chase seemed familiar with all of them. He shook their hands and they patted his shoulders, one by one, before taking their seats. Mr. Chase's mother was the only other woman in attendance.
A young man sat directly across from Serena, a man she hadn't seen before at her father's table. He'd slicked his dark blond hair into place with pomade, like waves in the ocean, and his eyes were so blue she had to look away for fear of being indecent. But he didn't look away from her. Indeed, he stared. His lips were not too thin, his skin not prematurely wrinkled.
Her father stood with a champagne flute in hand (none for Serena, of course) and said, “Tonight's very special. My daughter, Serena, is now engaged to Mr. Chase. Such a delightful match; I couldn't have asked for a better son-in-law.” Everyone turned and smiled at Serena and raised their glasses. The man sitting across from her looked at Mr. Chase and back to Serena. He mimed a small gag, and for a moment Serena really thought he was choking, until he smiled and his leather shoe rubbed against her ankle. She immediately sat up straight.
The man leaned over and spoke to the mayor as if nothing had happened at all, but no one spoke to Serena, and she stirred her vegetable soup until it went cold. Occasionally she glanced to the end of the table where Mr. Chase and her father leaned close together and gaily conversed, like lovers. “You must do it for the family,” her father had told her again and again to counter her very reasonable objections:
I don't know him. I'm not ready. I'm only eighteen.
“It's what your mother would've expected,” her father had said, and this always silenced her.
Serena knew very little about her mother, except that she had been quite the beauty, a daughter of one of the wealthiest textile merchants in the city, and Serena's father had loved her very, very much. Her nanny insisted on this point. True love. However, her mother didn't return to the woman she'd been before her marriageâwitty, charming, free. Only the birth of Serena had offered her temporary happiness. Throughout the years Serena had overheard the staff telling new hires the rumors about her mother, how her sadness brewed storms in the Atlantic, and the more she was confined to the home, the more her once-gleaming blue eyes turned the color of ashes, the more hair she shed, and the more weight she lost. Until a doctor promised Serena's heartbroken father that the only cure was temporary bed rest in Connecticut, and “temporary” became ten years. She died in her sleep when Serena was fourteen. Serena had never been allowed to visit. Her father had promised it would hurt her too much.
Wicked hurricanes would brew just for Serena. Her unhappiness would make lightning strike. Though her father had fallen madly in love with her mother, Serena wasn't convinced her mother would have wanted this kind of marriage for her, not if it felt like this.
During a main course of lamb medallions in a red wine and rosemary reduction, Serena's foot found its way into the pant cuff of the blond man. Their feet caressed for a brief moment before her father called upon him. “Dr. Alex Danner,” her father said in his booming baritone voice, “please tell us of those wild adventures of yours.”
Dr. Alex Danner cleared his throat, smoothed his tie with one hand, and then said, “In Southeast Asia there are remote islands with the world's oldest rain forests and an amazing range of biodiversity. Much like the Amazon, which most of you are familiar with, I assume.” He had captured the full table's attention, especially Serena's.
“There's an English-speaking community in Borneo and Sumatra now, as those islands are referred to, and my company's offered to send me there to study the flora,” he said. His cheeks reddened and his voice grew louder. “And to discoverâat least we hopeâcures for the maladies of our times. Tuberculosis and malaria, chiefly.”
“Is it a dangerous place?” Mrs. Barts said.
“Yes, ma'am, I suppose it is.” Alex smiled and added, “Tigers frighten me most.”
“I should say so.” Mrs. Barts fanned herself with a linen napkin.
“What do you most want to see there?” Mr. Chase said, and Serena cringed. He was the kind of man to ask others about the unknown world without any desire to experience it for himself.
Alex said, “Orangutans in their nests. They build them so high in the forest's canopy, they can be rather hard to spot. Dragonflies too. More species there than anywhere on earth. But I assure you, gentlemen, I will not go for sightseeing. I'm convinced those islands hold cures for human diseases, and that mystery is the only one I care about.”
“Of course, of course,” her father said. “Five years, is it?”
“I will make a return visit for an update then, sir,” he said.
“Very well,” her father said.
Five years.
Five years?
Serena glanced at Mr. Chase at the far end of the table, who dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief like a woman might, and she swallowed hard. Five years from now she'd have two ankle-biters with that man and she'd be used and gray, just like her poor dead mother. She wrapped both of her ankles around Alex's leg and squeezed, and he pretended not to notice. With one elbow propped on the table Alex carried on about his research to the mayor, and with his free hand he lifted one of Serena's ankles and caressed her foot in the shadows of the tablecloth.
After dinner the men planned to sequester themselves in the library for scotch and cigars and to discuss investment in Alex's project. The women gathered for a game of bridge. Alex asked to be excused and the crowd of men moved ahead without him. As he neared the bathroom Serena took his hand from behind and led him to a room beneath the staircase, glancing over her shoulder just in case her father or Mr. Chase might inquire.
In the darkness of the closet she lit a candlestick, and here he discovered her romance novels and blankets and candies, this place she saved just for herself, a place where her father assumed the staff kept dry goods or utensils. And this is where she took Dr. Alex Danner into her arms, kissed him, and said, “Take me with you. Please, you must.” He backed her against a wall and kissed her with such force she thought her corset might tear. She loved him immediately, and she knew he loved her just the same when he said, “Your eyes flicker with jungle fire.” She wanted out of that corset, that closet, that brownstone, out of New York City. She was made for much more than she knew existed. Borneo. Sumatra. Plants unseen and unnamed. Exotic smells floating on warm night air. “Take me,” she begged. “I can't stay here another moment longer.”