The Madwoman Upstairs (31 page)

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You were cast out?”

“Can’t you imagine?” she said. “The story first appeared in the
Hornbeam
. Then the
Examiner
. The
Times
. Soon, there wasn’t a person in England who hadn’t seen it—an Oxford don, caught in a compromising position. I saw my reputation destroyed overnight. I resigned immediately. Years later, I was so desperate to escape England that I moved to Boston and tutored a spoiled teenage girl. Never underestimate the sacrifices you will make for love, Samantha.”

I appraised her silently for a moment. Her cheeks were the color of sour cream. It seemed as though we were no longer in the twenty-first century but instead in a strange addendum to the nineteenth, where public shame was the inevitable response to a woman’s freedom. One tryst did not seem like enough to warrant such a backlash; I wondered if Rebecca was leaving out a few key details.

“You know,” I said, “you really don’t sound as angry as you should about all of this.”

She gave me a stony smile I was beginning to hate. “It was many years ago,” she said. “I suppose I’ve learned to forget.”

With that, she returned to the couch and took a seat. She was a terrible liar. She hadn’t forgotten anything. This was the defining episode of her life, which she had crafted into a tidy story. I couldn’t tell whether she was altogether here or I was talking to the mask of Rebecca—the version of herself she sent out as her PR person. There was a cold resentment lurking beneath her calm features that I found alarming. This story was not over for her—not at all. She reached for her creamless tea, which was the color of tar, and took a long sip.

“If my dad loved you so much,” I ventured, “why did he ask you to leave Boston eventually?”

It was a terribly worded question—I had meant it to sound cordial. Rebecca’s gray eyes flashed and she immediately put down the tea with a loud clank. Any expression she had dropped right off her face.

“All right, Sam,” she snapped. “Let’s get on with it. How would you like to be expelled? In public or in private?”

I blanched. “I don’t think my father wanted you to expel me. I have a feeling you made him a promise that you’d take care of me here.”

“A promise to a dead man is like sand in the wind. And I’ve done my duty already. I saved those infernal books for you, and I put you in that bloody tower.”

My eyes widened. “
You
put me in the tower?”

“I had to pull several strings. It’s a historical landmark.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “It’s quite the hellhole.”

“Blame your father. He wanted you there.”

“How did he even
know
about the tower?”

For the second time, a perplexed look came across Rebecca’s face, as though she was unclear as to how, exactly, I had grown up to be so ignorant.

“Have you never listened to the tour that goes through your room?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But I notice you took advantage of it to leave me
Jane Eyre
. Is there a reason you couldn’t have just delivered the books all in one go, or in person—preferably both?”

“Your father had a very particular order he wanted you to read them in, and he wanted you to know they were important.”

I didn’t respond because I didn’t believe her. She looked so borderline evil that I couldn’t help but think that she had drawn out this entire process on purpose, to exact some sort of strange torture.

“So he comes to Old College before he dies, leaves you everything important, then takes an entire safe deposit box to leave me a lousy bookmark,” I said.

To my surprise, a muscle in Rebecca’s neck twitched. I had caught her attention.

“That’s what he left you?” she said, her voice at a higher pitch. “A bookmark?” Her foot started tapping—soft and uneven.

“It was my Emily Dickinson bookmark,” I clarified. “Red. Gold tassels. Looks a bit like yours?”

Rebecca was visibly uncomfortable. I don’t know how, but I had struck a nerve. She stood, then walked toward me again, quickly this time. I thought she might be going for the jugular, but instead she stopped in front of me.

“I thought there were only two bookmarks,” she said. “His and mine.”

“He gave one to all his women, I guess.”

Her poker face was even worse than mine. She took a few steps back, turned to face the fireplace, and stood there for a longer time than I thought she would.

“While you’re ruminating over there, may I blackmail you?” I said. “I know several thousand people in the press who might like to give the story of you and my father a fresh go. Don’t you think it will be a particularly interesting slant when this time, it’s told by the wronged daughter, the Last Brontë? I’m very sorry to threaten you—really, I am—but I don’t want to be expelled.”

When Rebecca turned around, her eyes were steely. I had never blackmailed anyone before, and it didn’t feel as great as it seemed to in films. Rebecca was expressionless. Her mind was somewhere else entirely. Had I won?

I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out. I said, “I’ll go.”

“Not so quickly,” she snapped. Again, she walked toward me. She was not a young woman, and up close I could see how the years had carved wrinkles around her mouth.

“Yes?” I said.

Silently, she reached out to me with one hand. “My bookmark, please?”

I didn’t know quite how to respond. I said: “I—that is—I don’t carry it around.”

Our eyes met. There was a cold malice in her face that told me how little I understood of her story—or anything, really. I took her silence as an opportunity to escape. Quietly, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, leaving her in Orville’s office.

With the door shut safely behind me, I ran down the hall and down the stairs and ejected myself from the building. I was gasping for air. I should have been relieved: I had avoided expulsion, for the time being. But as I walked into the cold, bright afternoon, I couldn’t help but think that Rebecca’s rancor was merely biding its time before it found me again.
So wise so young, they say, do never live long
.

At two fifteen that Saturday, there was a knock on my door. Three taps, followed by a loud bang. I leapt to the door to find Marvin, dressed in a scratchy black coat. Behind him was the usual pile of tourists—a smaller crowd, this time, perhaps owing to the arctic weather. Usually, Marvin apologized for taking me by surprise. This time, however, I’d been expecting him.

He frowned when he saw me. “Is everything all right?”

I realized that I was holding a broom and wearing a Sweeney Todd smile. I had been waiting for the tour all morning. My room was nearly sterile. The bed was made, the socks were gone, the bedsheet was no longer covering
The Governess.
Rebecca had suggested I pay attention to his tour, so here I was. It was possible—just possible—that Marvin was the answer to my problems.

I said, “Come in, please.”

The tour group filtered inside. Marvin seemed to be debating whether he was entering some sort of trap. My cleaning spree had left the tower looking and smelling like a newly minted hotel room.

“Please, step inside, step inside,” I said. “Come closer. That’s right.”

“Yes, yes,” Marvin said. “Do come in.” His voice was thin but loud, and he seemed to be grasping for authority. The last of the tour group squeezed inside.

“As I mentioned, this is the tower,” Marvin said. “It was built in 1361 to quarantine victims of the bubonic plague. It is known by some as the Tower of Extinction.”

I interjected: “They call it that because no one in here procreates.”

Marvin looked at me in mild surprise.

I cleared my throat. “Is it all right if I take the tour too?”

He seemed surprised, then mumbled something I did not understand. It might have been “How delightful.”

I heard a click. Someone had already snapped a photograph. It was the woman up front—baggy jeans, a pale rag of blonde hair—who was looking between me and Marvin as if waiting for the show. Marvin pointed the tour group in the direction of the back corner, and I took a seat on my bed, cross-legged.

“Some of the most famous and enigmatic inhabitants of Old College lived in this tower,” he said. “If you look closely, you’ll find that it became a tradition for each one to leave something behind for posterity, which is perhaps why the room holds so much interest for us today. Right over here—turn this way, please—you can see the exact location where Sir Michael Morehouse’s cat was buried alive. Do you see the discoloration of the brick, right about here? That is exactly where the poor creature was buried. Not two centimeters away, right here, you can also see the claw marks left by the Beast of Bologne.”

“Excuse me?”

Someone interrupted—I realized it was me. I was hugging my pillow, rocking back and forth slightly. The tour group turned to have a look in my direction.

Marvin looked back at me, eyebrow raised. “Yes, Miss Whipple?”

“Who was the very last inhabitant of this tower before me?” I asked.

Marvin looked ruffled. His mustache twitched. I wondered if I should tell him that it was slightly uneven.

He said: “I prefer to go chronologically.”

I pressed, “Did anyone live here during the last century?”

“We are not quite there yet.”

“Can we go in reverse order? I’m impatient.”

Apparently, I had chosen to unleash my inner American at a very bad time. Marvin let out a shallow breath before saying, “Yes, yes—one inhabitant. You can glimpse his faded initials over that way—do you see?”

He pointed to three very faint, quiet letters etched into the wall, about a foot below
The Governess
.

J.H.E.

I paused. “I see.”

“It—”

I interrupted him again. “The initials,” I said. “What do they stand for?”

“Pardon?”

“The initials, the initials.”

Marvin blinked. “Jack Halford, Esquire.”

“Jack Halford.”

“That’s correct.”

“Esquire?
”

“Miss Whipple, are you quite all right?”

“I mean, shit.”

Marvin’s eyes flew open. “Pardon?”

“Shit.”

Marvin looked around. Censors, censors?—where were the censors? I reached under my pillow and pulled out
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
. Rebecca’s bookmark poked out of it like a land mine. Marvin, now considerably miffed, continued talking. I stopped listening. It seemed as though I was standing on top of a tall building, seeing a city from a great distance. I flipped open the book. In enormous font at the top of page one were the words
To J. Halford, Esq.
J.H.E was Gilbert Markham’s “very old friend.” A fictional character, it seemed, had just popped up on my wall.

My chest rose and fell in quick succession. It was impossible, for a brief moment; then it was the most possible thing in the entire world. Tristan Whipple. Snodgrass Diddleworm. Jack Halford. My father’s entourage of names. Dad was here—he had been here all this time, hiding in the corners of this room. I looked around in quiet disbelief.
J.H.E.
What had my father once said?
It’s the only place you can read the writing on the wall.

“Jack Halford lived here?” I interrupted. My mouth was dry. “He was a student? When?”

Marvin, who I realized had been midsentence, turned to face me. “The Thatcher years,” he said, agitated. “Really, we’ll get there in a moment, if you’ll just wait—”

“Thirty years?” I said. “Goddammit, thirty years.”

Marvin waffled, then turned to the tour group apologetically. He explained, “Jack Halford was one of Old College’s most famous eccentrics. His misadventures were legendary.”

“Did he ever have an affair with a professor?” I asked.

Marvin snapped: “Let’s not get off topic.”

“Is that why they call it Halford’s Well?” I asked him. “Because that’s where they did it?”

“Would you kindly be quiet?” said Marvin.

The tour group stared at me blankly. Marvin cleared his throat to try to regain control of the situation. I leaned back on my bed. The room around me was fattening with significance, squeezing everyone else out. There seemed to be ghosts materializing all around me—applauding, applauding—welcoming me into the small world of people who had figured it out. Everything around me was suddenly different and precious. The boarded-up fireplace no longer seemed like a prison accessory; it was an intimate secret between friends and outcasts. All of this had once been my father’s. He had been a student here, somehow. Every time I had paced or tripped over a loose floorboard or contemplated banging my head against the desk in frustration . . . my father had done the same, once upon a time. This room—this glorious, unruly room!—was designed for people who were hopelessly lost and trying to find each other.

I stuffed
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
back underneath my pillow, wondering how my father had managed to pull off such an extensive disappearing act. Surely one could not invent a name so easily. And yet, my father always prided himself on his knack for invisibility when the time called for it. I suppose he and the Brontës had that in common.