The Mad Scientist's Daughter (20 page)

  No response but whispering of the trees in the forest, the insects in the trees.

  "It's Richard. I told you about him? He owns his own company? Well, he asked me to marry him during the spring freeze. I don't know if you knew about the spring freeze, did you? I don't think the ground froze that far down, but well – there was the freak freeze in April. Everything glassed over."

  Cat stopped. She lowered herself into the wet grass, draping over the headstone of Mrs Patty Longbotham, dead at eighty-five a hundred years ago, and once dearly loved, dearly missed.

  "Can I tell you a secret, Mom?"

  The storm clouds had dissipated and already Cat could see the pinprick of stars against the black sky, the moon hanging like a thin-lipped smile in the northwest corner.

  "I don't want to marry him."

  All the insects in the world buzzed and buzzed.

  "Don't tell him, OK? Don't send him any… portents. But I mean…" Cat looked at the grasses shimmering in the starlit wind.

  "It's a business arrangement," she said finally. "An acquisition. He's very sweet but he sees everything in terms of business, you know? But he's… It would be secure. And I won't have to work anymore. I know you don't like me being a vice girl."

  Cat leaned her head against Mrs Longbotham's gravestone. She twirled a piece of her hair around her finger and stared at her mother's grave. The flat ground was covered with a pelt of dried-out grass. During the two weeks of spring, black-eyed Susans grew there, an enormous clump of them, their heads nodding against the slightest hint of a breeze.

  "I love you," said Cat. "I'm sorry my life isn't what you wanted it to be. But I really am trying."

  She stood up, wiped the mud from the back of her pants. Her bike waited for her in the grass outside the gate, and she rode home in the darkness, mud splattering up along her spine from the rear wheel. Crickets chirped and lightning bugs blinked on and off in the distance. By the time Cat pulled up to the storage shed, she was coated with a splatter of mud and a thin sheen of sweat from the storm's humidity. She put her bike away and scraped at the filthy residue coating her skin. Richard was still in her bedroom, pacing back and forth in front of the window.

  She had always found Finn after visiting her mother's grave, because afterward she felt empty, and Finn's touch filled her up again.

  Tonight, she wanted a bath.

  Cat slipped into the downstairs bathroom, the big, airy one with the window that looked out over her mother's old garden – the garden her father had let go to seed after her mother's death. She pulled her old silk bathrobe out of the linen closet and draped it over the sink. Turned on the water. Dropped in a spongy capsule of lavender oil. The tub was ancient: claw-footed, the porcelain patchy and worn thin. The surrounding tiles were stained from years of dripping bathwater.

  Cat took off her clothes, dropping them into piles on the floor. She took off her engagement ring. While the water filled up the tub, she opened the window, breathed in the woodsy, rainy scent from the garden. Then she slipped into the bath, dropping down until her head was completely submerged, her knees poking out of the silky, lavender-scented water. She opened her eyes. The antique light fixture overhead wavered like a ghost.

  Cat exhaled a long stream of bubbles. When she pushed herself up out of the water, it was only because she needed to breathe.

  Finn stood in the doorway.

  Cat stared at him. Water streamed through her hair, over the sides of her face, into the crevasse of her collarbone. She didn't know what to say so she slid back into the water, kicking up one leg and then the other.

  Finn didn't move except for his eyes, following the motion of her body as she straightened up and leaned over the side of the tub.

  "I missed you at dinner," she said.

  "Did you?"

  "You know I did."

  "You're getting married."

  Cat hesitated. "Why didn't you come back from the storm?"

  He didn't answer right away. His irises vibrated. Then: "I felt that my presence made Mr Feversham uncomfortable."

  "No," said Cat. "His presence made you uncomfortable." She held her breath.

  "I can't experience discomfort."

  "Oh. Right." Cat sighed and slid back into the water. "I forgot."

  "I wanted to tell you," said Finn. "That I found your thesis fascinating. Remarkable, even."

  
Her thesis.

  "Oh?" she said. "How'd you even get a copy of it?"

  Finn smiled. "I have access to all networked computers in the house. I found a copy."

  "Jesus, I forgot I put it on there." Why had she put it on the network anyway? Maybe she wanted him to find it.

  "It doesn't bother you, does it?"

  Cat shook her head, tilting her gaze to her abdomen. She skimmed her hands across the top of the water. "As long as you thought it was fascinating."

  "I did. You approached something I hadn't previously considered." He paused. "There are some points I disagree with, of course. I don't think it would be possible for you to be wholly accurate regarding my condition, but–" He stopped. His eyes vibrated. "It's difficult for me to express what I'm trying to say."

  Cat leaned forward in the water, listening.

  "There is nothing else like me in the entire world," said Finn. "That's what you wrote. I'm the only one."

  "I know."

  "I can't tell you what it means to be the only one of my kind," he said. "I can't… There is a lack in myself. But your thesis almost filled it in. It was… a start."

  "You're lonely," said Cat. As soon as she spoke, she knew it was true.

  "I… I am not sure."

  Finn stared at her from his place in the doorway. Cat was aware of her nakedness. She wondered what Richard would do if he wandered back downstairs, went looking for the bathroom.

  "I guess you couldn't wait to tell me all this," she said, her voice shaking, "when I wasn't in the tub."

  A pause so long time lost all meaning.

  "Would you like me to be honest?"

  "I thought you were incapable of dishonesty."

  "I'm capable." Finn's eyes whirred. "I wanted to watch you."

  Cat's heart thrummed.

  "Watch me take a bath?"

  "Yes."

  All the skin on Cat's body tingled. She lifted up her arm. She watched the water fall in a line across her breasts. So did Finn.

  A warm wind blew in through the open window, tousling Finn's hair.

  Cat thought about Richard's shadow, pacing back and forth in front of the yellow light of her bedroom window.

  "Close the door," she said.

  "Of course," said Finn.

  He slid the lock into place.

  Cat stood up. Water rushed over her body and into the bath. Finn didn't move. Cat took one step out of the tub, then another, and another. Water pooled on the floor. She left a trail of shining footprints behind her.

  "You're lonely," Cat said. "So you came to find me." She put one hand on his chest. He slid his arm around the small of her back.

  Outside, the wind picked up, damp with rainwater, and blew through the screen in the window, bringing inside the wild, overgrown scent of the garden.

  "I came to find you," said Finn.

 
 

 
 
 

The day of Cat's wedding the sky was cloudless and so blue it sagged beneath the weight of its color.

  At the chapel, the sunlight illuminated clouds of golden dust that lifted up in bursts off the statues of saints. She dressed in the choir room, Lucy and Miguel and Felix hovering around her like bees. The bodice of her dress was encrusted with fake jewels and pressed tight against the bones of her chest. It felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. Richard had picked out the dress a few months earlier, using his preferred tactic of purchasing the most expensive item in the store. Cat found something endearing about that, the way he believed in capitalism so much he extended it to personal relationships. She admired anyone who could navigate the world with that much self-assurance. She certainly couldn't.

  Cat barely recognized her reflection in the full-length mirror. The bodice flickered and blinked in the sunlight, but all the color in her skin had drained away hours ago.

  "Are you sure that hair's secure?" Felix asked. He held a tiny bottle of hairspray at his hip, cocked and ready like a gun.

  "If you spray that one more time I'm smashing your potting wheel," said Lucy. "I'm not even joking."

  "Stop bickering, the two of you." Miguel offered the veil to Cat, and Cat flipped it over and rested it on top of her head. "Are you nervous?" Miguel asked, his voice low.

  Cat nodded. She hadn't eaten anything for nearly thirteen hours. Her cheekbones looked hollow from the blush Lucy had applied earlier; her eyes were bigger than usual and fever-bright from the eyeliner and the mascara.

  "It'll be fine," Miguel said. There was a disapproving tightness in the skin around his eyes. "You'll be beautiful, if nothing else."

  "Yeah, you look really amazing." Felix tossed the hairspray aside. Lucy nodded in agreement.

  Someone knocked on the door. All four heads turned toward it. The door slid open. Richard, in his sleek black tuxedo. He smiled at Cat and threw his arms out wide.

  "You aren't supposed to be in here!" Lucy said.

  But Richard ignored her.

  "Let's do this thing," he said.

  And Cat's world turned to mist.

  The wedding ceremony had all the logic of a dream. Cat walked for ten hours down that never-ending faded pink carpet. Roses and baby's breath grew out of the wooden church pews. For half a second her father appeared, his face looming in close to hers. He was smiling; he was crying. She smiled back at him. Then he kissed her cheek and disappeared. Up in their alcoves, the statues shifted and whispered amongst themselves as Cat recited her vows. She heard only sounds as she spoke, guttural and ancient.

  The chapel smelled like the inside of a freezer in a flower shop, damply cold and sickly sweet.

  At only one point during the ceremony did Cat's focus sharpen. The mist melted away. She was in a church, surrounded by statues, wearing a heavy white dress and too much makeup. There were two rings on her finger: one with a diamond, the other a narrow band of gold.

  Cat blinked.

  Then she handed her bouquet to Lucy, as she had been instructed to do in the rehearsals. She turned back to face Richard on the altar and, in those few moments when her eyes belonged only to herself, she glanced out over the church. Her side was half full, dotted with old scientist friends of the family. Finn sat in the front row next to her father. Her father's cheeks were wet. Finn looked straight at her. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

  And then Cat was gazing at Richard, and Richard was taking her hand in his own, and she was back in that fog, that haze, that mist that persisted until the moment they walked down the aisle with their arms linked, organ music billowing out behind them, and emerged into the bright, burning world.

 

At the reception, Cat's head cleared.

  There was a sit-down luncheon, of course, the smell of which made Cat's head spin and her stomach grumble. Pomegranate soup and artichoke hearts simmering in pools of butter, chicken roasted with honey and pine nuts. Cat ate all of it with huge greedy bites, not worrying about wine-colored splatters across her dress. White lights twinkled overhead and in halos around the tables: the reception hall was windowless and dark except for the occasional moments when someone slipped outside and sunlight flooded through the open door and across the neat arrangement of round tables.

  After lunch, people from SynLodge stood up to make toasts and speeches. The last person to toast was Ella Halfast. At the microphone, she set down her champagne glass, a frosted pink lipstick kiss on the rim.

  "I have to say," she said, "I never thought I'd see it. Caterina–" At the sound of her name, Cat jerked her head up and looked Ella in the eye. "Caterina, congratulations. I'd
love
to know your secret." Then she picked up her glass, lifted it above her head. "To the Fevershams," she slurred.

  "The Fevershams," the audience shouted back, their glasses held aloft. Richard laughed. Cat wanted to slide under the table and disappear in the billowing folds of her gown. But before she could move, Richard grabbed her upper arm, pulled her in close, and kissed her on the mouth.

  Later, they cut the cake with an oversize knife, Richard's fingers wrapped around the knife's handle, Cat's fingers wrapped around his. The cake was covered entirely in flowers made of icing: sugar-spun marigolds and morning glories, amaryllis and alstroemeria. As the knife slid through the cake, the flowers all muddied together, turned back into icing.

  Richard slipped a piece of cake between Cat's lips, neatly, leaving his fingers in a little longer than he should have. Everyone applauded. It sounded like rain. Cat and Richard danced, though it was difficult for Cat to move in that heavy dress. Her skirts swished across the floor, across her bare feet – she had slipped off her shoes as soon as the reception started, left them lying underneath the table where she'd eaten lunch.

  The afternoon wore on and Cat drank glass after glass of champagne until her thoughts were made of air. She didn't stop dancing, even though the arches of her feet ached and burned, even though the weight of her dress pressed down on her chest. These minor inconveniences of the body were preferable to sitting down at the light-draped table at the cen ter of the room. Cat didn't want to be the center of attention, the focal point for every single person at the reception, the place where their eyes naturally turned. That role exhausted her more than dancing ever could.