The Madwoman Upstairs (14 page)

I looked away. When I held my ankle still, the pain was dull, like a protest that was losing momentum. I examined it for several minutes in silence. When I glanced back up, I was surprised to discover that Orville’s stare was still on me.

“Samantha,” he said, “are you in some kind of trouble?”

I pretended not to have understood. “Sorry?”

He opened his mouth but closed it. He turned back to his paper. “Forget it.”

I didn’t look away. “May I ask you a personal question, sir?”

“No.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

A long pause. “Have you been visited by a ghost, Samantha?”

“That’s just it. No.”

He paused. “You’d
like
to be visited by a ghost.”

“Yes, maybe. Don’t you think it would make things simpler? At least I’d have a tangible problem.”

“A ghost is tangible?”

“More tangible than nothing.”

“What is it you’re trying to tell me? Never mind, don’t answer,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

“I wasn’t asking for your help.”

“Perfect.”

“Now that you mention it, will you help me?”

I tried to pin him with my best, sorrowful gaze, but he had veiled any emotion on his face.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” I said.

“How am I looking at you?”

“If there’s anything I can’t stand at times like this, it’s apathy.”

He turned back to his paper. “Whatever.”

A tune erupted in the waiting room. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Someone had jazzed it up and slowed it down and now it sounded more like the theme song from
Titanic
. I found it incredibly depressing. Finally, I picked up
Jane Eyre
and tossed it into Orville’s lap. I might as well have handed him a wet diaper. He put down his paper and stared at the book.

“Yes?” he said.

“Can you please take a look?”

He reached for it and examined the first few waterlogged pages. “Who wrote these margin notes?”

“My father.”

At the mention of my father, Orville’s interest seemed to grow. “Was he well in the head?”

“That does appear to be the million-dollar question, doesn’t it?”

He read, “ ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I see something, and you don’t.’ What did he mean?”

“You tell me.”

“Was that note meant for you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Your father left you this book, though, yes?”

“I’m not sure who left it for me. I found this in my room today.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither.”

There was a mix of confusion and surprise on Orville’s face. I thought he might ask me a question, but although he opened his mouth he shut it, silent. After a moment, he handed the book back to me.

“I will wager a guess and assume that, like most women your age, this was your favorite novel growing up.”

I said, “Not even close.”

“No? I thought women loved
Jane Eyre
.”

“I don’t like the main character.”

“Who?” he said. “Grace?”

I blinked. “Who’s Grace?”

“Grace Poole.”

I said, “She is the servant, not the main character.”

“I see you haven’t read the book very carefully.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was interrupted by the sound of sharp heels coming down the hallway. Someone short and squat entered the lounge area. She was a middle-aged woman who had obviously been very pretty once. Now she sported a wide, gasping girth. In a green and gray peacoat and a feathered hat, she looked like a spotted mushroom. Orville muttered a low epithet under his breath. She waddled over. I recognized her; she was the woman who had led the faculty processional at my first dinner.

“Dr. Flannery,” said Orville, without standing.

Her heels clacked on the linoleum floor. The popping sound bounced back and forth between the sterile walls. She didn’t say hello, only glanced between the two of us. Her blush looked like she had instead smeared lipstick on her cheeks.

“A student?” was all she said, raising a brow. The lines on her face lifted in concert.

“How is your aunt?” he said.

“The morphine is doing its job.” She turned to me. “What’s your name?” Out came a nice little smile, one that did not reveal any of her teeth. “Tell me your name, please.”

“Samantha.” I couldn’t stand up to shake her hand, so I gave her a small, childish wave.

“Yes, you’re Miss Whipple,” she said. “I’ve heard a bit about you. James, haven’t we heard a bit about Miss Whipple?”

Orville stared at her silently. He was slowly rotating a pen between his fingers, like a baton, or some form of skewer.

“Miss Whipple rolled an ankle,” said Orville.

Flannery made a noise that sounded like “aww” but it also might have been “aaah.” She glanced back at me, tilting her head to the side in—was it sympathy? No, I don’t think it was. I wondered if she carried around the
Old College Book of Disciplinary Procedures
, and whether she was about to whip it out of her pocket and smack me across the head with it. After all, I had been alone with a professor for almost an hour. Someone, somewhere, was probably gasping.

“Doing what?” she asked me in a let’s-have-a-sleepover voice. “Nothing naughty, I trust?”

“I fell,” I said.

“Where?”

“Enough,” Orville interjected. “She’s tired, Ellery.”

“Ellery” was looking at me, not him. She really did have a nice face—girlish, bright. “Where were you, dear?”

“By Halford’s Well,” I said. “I think.”

Flannery turned back to Orville. He put down the pen. I glanced between the two of them. Once again, I was missing something.

“You do know going near that well is
strictly
forbidden after hours,” said Flannery.

“Ellery,” Orville said in a warning tone. “She fell.”

I felt my face redden. Flannery smiled, this time with teeth. They were crooked, like barbed wire. No wonder she hid them. Her face wasn’t so pretty anymore.

“Do you know how Halford’s Well got its name, Samantha?” she asked.

Suddenly Orville stood, so abruptly that it took Flannery and me by surprise. Flannery faltered, although she made an effort to conceal it.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Flannery stared back up at him with flattering confidence. She was like a dwarf who had been told to kill a giant and didn’t know how, exactly, she was going to do it.

“Nasty things, rolled ankles,” was all she said to me before she left. I heard her shoes rapping along the hallway to the door. When we were alone, Orville sat back down in his seat, breathing heavily through his nose.

“Sir?” I ventured.

But he just stared in front of him. Someone came to us with a clipboard. The doctor would see me now.

CHAPTER 7

O
n the afternoon of December thirteenth, I grabbed my crutches (my ankle was badly sprained) and made the trek to the Ashmolean Museum. Sir John Booker was scheduled to give an opening speech at the official launch of the
Early Women Writers
exhibit. Apparently, this was the fourteenth stop on his tour. I was attending only because I had decided it was time to finally meet him.

The lobby was packed, and a luminous banner read
Early Women Writers
:
Gala.
Milling between Greek statues and segments of Roman ruins were hordes of annoyingly normal-looking people. I was disappointed. I had wanted to find old women dressed in hippie uniforms and clutching small pugs. I always felt better about my preoccupation with the Brontës when I saw that other people had it worse than I did. But everyone else here seemed maddeningly average. The Brontës were just something they did on Saturday afternoons, like canasta. They were nothing but tourists in my sinking town.

I decided that my name for the day would be Elvira Erstwood. Whipple raised too many questions in this crowd. The woman at the door bought it and handed me my incorrect name tag. The art of pseudonyms was something I had learned from my father, who had learned it from the Brontës, I suppose. Dad used to have backstories figured out months in advance. Snodgrass D. Diddleworm (his pseudonym for going shopping) was a thirty-three-year-old personal shopper from eastern Kansas; Echo Woodraine (his gym alias) was a shy poet raised in Lithuania, with a killer backhand. Dad was the name he used when he couldn’t figure out what else to be.

I headed straight for the buffet table, which was located between the disembodied marble heads of Theodotus and Sotades, the Obscene Greek. I recognized some Old College faculty members: Man-with-Nice-Office was here, and so was Earl the Cubist, who at the moment was straightening his Snap-On Emergency Bow Tie with one hand and eating an unripe strawberry with the other. Orville was here too—I spotted him immediately. He was in a black suit, talking to a woman who was wearing peach stockings and a short gray dress. The look of lust on her face irritated me. I was beginning to resent all the women Orville had ever known, down to his grocer. As I watched the two of them together, I imagined what it would be like if I were with him instead—perhaps at a cocktail party in a black-and-white movie, telling women with long cigarette holders what a fine bridge player he was.

“You’re standing so far away,” interrupted someone behind me. It was a tall man with graying hair and a dictator mustache. His breath was fantastically unappealing.

I looked around and said, “From?”

“I’m Jerome.” He extended a hand; I took it. His skin was damp.

“I’m Elvira.”

“No, you’re Samantha Whipple.”

I didn’t answer.

“I recognize you from the papers,” he explained. “I was wondering whether you would come. We’re all curious to hear your thoughts on Sir John’s book.” He motioned toward a table in the back, where I could see stacks of shiny hardcovers glittering like snake eyes.

I cleared my throat. “What brings you here?”

He shrugged. “The women.”

“Charlotte, Emily, or Anne?”

“No, thin brunettes, such as yourself.”

He wasn’t smiling. He took a sip from his drink. Before I could respond, he explained, “I teach at the Sorbonne. I am giving a lecture upstairs on Eliza Haywood at four this afternoon. I also play the violin and express myself with extraordinary emotion. Would you object to a drink this evening?”

A voice came from behind me. “Hello, Jerome.”

I turned around. It was Orville, who was standing with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a Perrier. I didn’t even know he had seen me walk in. The Dictator and my professor shook hands.

“Samantha, this is Oren Smith,” said Orville.

I frowned. “Oren Smith.”

Orville explained, “He writes for the
Paris Examiner
.”

Ah, Oren Smith.

“Sorry for deleting all of your e-mails,” I said.

“Shall we meet later?” he asked.

I couldn’t respond, thankfully, because Orville led me away by the right crutch, all the way to the second buffet table. Someone had spilled water on the tray of crackers and they looked like swollen sponges.

“You’re welcome,” Orville said.

“For what?” I asked. “You’ve ruined my night of wild animal passion.”

“Take a scone.”

“That’s dim sum.”

He took one from the platter and held it out for me until I took it.

“How do you know him?” I asked.

“I met him at a lecture I gave in Paris once.”

I told him that I was also going to Paris. I meant to say “soon,” but instead I said “someday.” We entered a vast, bottomless silence. I scrambled for better conversation topics. This all would have been far less stressful in the movie version of our lives. The long silences would have been edited out. Orville and I did not say anything else, and I followed him to the third row of the seating area, where the chairs were white, plastic, and wobbly.

Our options were limited: we could either sit by the man with a cotton-ball beard and excellent Santa potential, or next to the woman who had taken off her hiking boots and was cooling her toes on the tiled floor.

“Which one?” I asked Orville, motioning between the two.

He turned back around as though he hadn’t realized I was still there. “Oh, are we sitting together?”

My face reddened. Perhaps I had been wrong to assume that some sort of bond had formed between us since the hospital. I looked around, helpless, like a show poodle.

Orville let out a breath and said, “Very well, have a seat.”

He chose to sit next to Santa, who reeked aggressively of curry. Orville helped set my crutches on the floor. There was, I realized, a copy of Sir John’s book underneath every seat. I picked mine up and gave a loud yelp. Orville, startled, turned to me.

“Is he shitting me?” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

I flashed him the title:
The Vast Brontë Estate.

“Have you read this?” I said.

“No.”

“It’s about the Vast Brontë Estate.”

“I gathered.”

“Christ,” I said. “I hate the Vast Brontë Estate.”

“Is there anything you don’t dislike?”

“Do you know this man—Sir John Booker?”

He said, “The academic community is rather small.”

I opened the book to find a full page of reviews. The
New York Times
gushed, “Rich with rare primary sources,
The Vast Brontë Estate
is a remarkable triumph.” Some other presumably important person had called it “abundantly fearless” and “quite human,” with “elements of mirth.”

I flipped through the book, breathing heavily. It was not, as I had feared, another essay about my family. Nor was there much text at all. I seemed to have stumbled upon a picture book. Sir John had cataloged everything the Brontës had ever owned, each with a photograph and a brief caption. On page three was a watercolor by Emily; on page one hundred and three was Anne’s first rhyming couplet. No analysis, no description. The pages continued, a never-ending sea of photographs:

“The Daffodil”

A poem written at the age of sixteen by Anne Brontë

Donated by the Floss family in 1892