The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense (5 page)

A wheeled and motorized mahogany ladder with handrails and a safety tether rises to an oval stainless-steel track on the ceiling, allowing an observer to circle the model, peering in the windows at any level. At various points on the ladder are controls with which he can power it left or right, or stop it at any desired vantage point.

Of Clarette’s three children, only Crispin is permitted to climb the ladder and operate it. Other nine-year-old boys might be judged too young to deserve this permission, but Crispin is responsible for his age, and prudent. He always holds fast to the handrails and snaps the tether to his belt.

Now, as he motors the ladder to the west facade, to peer in at the ornately furnished rooms occupied by Jardena, he wonders—not for the first time—why the old woman lavished so much money on this miniature when she has the real house to enjoy.

According to Giles, his mother has always been as eccentric as his late father was industrious. The patriarch, Ehlis Gregorio, was obsessed with amassing enormous wealth, and his wife was driven to find imaginative ways to spend it. Seeking to understand the reasons for Jardena’s extravagant whims is a waste of time, because she does not understand why she undertakes such things as the model of Theron Hall. She commits to such projects, Giles says, simply because she can afford to do them, and that is all the reason she needs.

As Crispin rides the ladder, the door opens below, and his brother, Harley, rushes in from the third-floor hallway. “Crispin, come quick! You’ve got to see this.”

“There are no cats,” Crispin says. “Except the ones in that drawing-room painting, and they’re not white.”

“Not cats. Mirabell. You’ve got to see how she’s dressed.”

“She can dress any way she likes. Why would I care?”

“But this is weird.”

“She’s always playing dress-up.”

“Not like this,” Harley insisted. “Mom’s dressing her, and it’s just weird.”

Before her marriage to Giles Gregorio, Clarette never had much time for her children. She says that she prefers to play with grown men. Children are her business, she explains, not a leisure-time activity. She sports or games, or cuddles, with them only on those
rare occasions when vodka and more powerful substances put her in a foolish or sentimental mood.

Since the wedding, she has become even more remote from them. If anyone is
raising
Crispin, Harley, and Mirabell, it is the staff of Theron Hall.

“I heard Mom say, when they finish fitting Mirabell’s new dress, they’re going to give her a bath in warm
milk
and rinse her with
aqua pura
, whatever that is.”

From high on the ladder, Crispin at last looks down at his brother. “That
is
weird.”

“And there’s other weird stuff like the hat they’ve made for her. You’ve got to come see.”

The model of the mansion will be here for further exploration whenever Crispin wishes to return to it.

He climbs down to a safe height before unhooking the tether and then descending the final ten rungs.

As Crispin follows his brother into the third-floor hallway, Harley whispers, “They don’t know I saw. I think Pip’s new dress is for some surprise party or something, and probably we aren’t supposed to see it until then.”

Hurrying down the back stairs, Harley explains that he was on the prowl for the mysterious white cats, alert and stealthy, when he came across the scene with their mother, Mirabell, and a housemaid named Proserpina.

Among the many chambers on the second floor are a sewing room and a gift-wrapping room. They are side by side.

Harley quietly leads Crispin into the gift-wrapping room. The single curtained window provides little light.

An interior door connects this space with the place where Proserpina, not only a housemaid but also a seamstress, repairs and alters clothes for the family and staff. The door stands about three inches ajar.

Harley crouches low, and Crispin leans over him, so they can both spy upon the activities in the sewing room.

Mirabell stands on a yard-square platform about a foot high. Their mother kneels before her, fussing with the fancy collar of the girl’s white dress. Proserpina kneels behind Mirabell, pinning the waistline of the frock for some adjustment that she apparently will make.

This is no ordinary dress. The fabric is shiny but less clingy than silk, less stiff than satin, so soft-looking. It almost seems to glow a little, as though the dress produces its own light. The cuffs and collar are made of lace, more intricate than any Crispin has previously seen.

Mirabell wears white slippers with white bows. Attached to each bow is what appears to be a cluster of red berries.

“I feel very pretty,” Mirabell says.

“You
are
very pretty,” their mother replies.

“These are like ballerina slippers.”

“They are a little,” Clarette agrees.

“Will we dance tonight?”

“Some of us will dance,” Clarette says.

“I know how to pirouette.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you do it.”

“This dress will really
swoosh
when I pirouette.”

Mirabell’s blond hair, usually straight, is curly now. Her dress glows, and her hair glimmers.

Perched on her head is not a hat, which is what Harley called it, but instead a wreath. The wreath appears to have been woven of real leaves of some kind, and with white ribbon. There seem to be acorns attached to it, as well as clusters of bright red teardrop berries like those on her slippers, three fruits in each cluster.

“If I take a bath in milk, won’t I stink?” Mirabell asks.

“No, sweetie. There are rose petals and essence of roses in the milk. Anyway, we’ll rinse you afterward with nice warm water.”

“Aqua pura.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s
aqua pura
?”

“The cleanest water in the world.”

“Why don’t we rinse with it every day?”

“It’s only for special occasions.”

“Does it come in a bottle?”

“Sometimes. But we’ll pour it from silver bowls. Wait till you see them, they’re very pretty bowls.”

“Cool,” Mirabell says. “Mommy, on special occasions, do you rinse in
aqua pura
?”

For some reason, this question so amuses Proserpina that she can’t contain a little laugh.

Clarette says, “
Aqua pura
is only for little girls and boys.”

Except that she doesn’t have wings, Mirabell is so beautiful that she looks like an angel in her white dress, the wreath a kind of halo.

Eye to the gap between door and jamb, Crispin is surprised by how much his sister looks like an angel. He half expects her to float off the floor and glide around the room.

Their mother says, “All right, sweetie. Let’s get you out of this dress so Proserpina can make the final alterations.”

First, their mother removes Mirabell’s slippers, and then she and the seamstress strip the dress from the girl, who stands now in her undies.

Crispin is only nine, Mirabell six. He has never before been embarrassed to see his sister in her underclothes. Strangely, he is embarrassed now, but he can’t look away.

Clarette rises to her feet, lifts the wreath off her daughter’s head, and places it on a small table that is draped in a white cloth. She handles the wreath as if it is a thing of great value.

Now another housemaid, Arula, enters the sewing room. She looks like that actress, Jennifer Aniston, but younger.

“Come, Little Bell,” says Arula. “Time for your special bath.”

Mirabell steps off the yard-square platform. In her bare feet and underclothes, she follows Arula out of the room, into the hall.

Harley eases away from his brother and moves toward the door between the gift-wrapping room and the hallway.

Lingering at the connecting door, Crispin alone hears the last exchange between his mother and Proserpina.

With evident amusement, the seamstress says, “If not
aqua pura
, what
do
you bathe in for special occasions?”

“Dragon piss,” says Clarette, and she shares a laugh with the other woman before leaving the sewing room.

Crispin has heard his mother use worse language than this. He is not shocked, merely confused. He can’t make sense of her comment or of anything he’s just witnessed.

When they are sure Arula, their mother, and their sister have gone to one bathroom or another, the brothers slip out of the gift-wrapping room, angle south across the hallway, and take refuge in Harley’s room, which is next door to Crispin’s.

Although they discuss the scene in the sewing room, they can’t reach any conclusions about what it means. Maybe Mirabell is going to a party this evening. But the brothers haven’t been told of it.

Harley thinks it’s unfair that their sister should be going to a party but not the two of them. “Unless maybe it’s a surprise party for us.”

“When has anyone ever given us a party?” Crispin asks.

“Never.”

“They’re not gonna start now.”

“Let’s just ask Mom what’s going on.”

“No,” Crispin says. “We shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. We just shouldn’t, that’s all.”

“How else are we gonna find out?”

“We’ll wait and see.”

Harley pouted. “I don’t understand why we can’t ask.”

“For one thing, we were snooping.”

“We overheard, that’s all.”

“We were snooping, and you know it.”

“That doesn’t mean we’ll get in trouble.”

“We’ll get in trouble, sure enough,” Crispin said. “What we’ve got to do is—we’ve got to wait and see.”

In Theron Hall, the main dining room, where the adults have dinner, is on the ground floor. They dine at eight o’clock.

The children are served in a smaller, second-floor dining room at six o’clock.

Clarette says that children eating with children, adults with adults, is a custom in that part of Europe from which the Gregorios hail.

This could be true. Crispin has known his mother to lie, but he doesn’t know enough about Europe to doubt her on this point.

Anyway, he’d rather eat with Harley and Mirabell than with his mother and stepfather. Here on the second floor, they can talk about anything they want over dinner. And they don’t have to choke down the fancy rich-people food that’s served downstairs, like poached salmon and snails and spinach soufflé. Here, they’re served the best stuff, kid food like cheeseburgers, mac and cheese, and tacos.

Their dining room is smaller than the one for the adults, but it’s no less formally furnished. The dark wood sideboards are heavily carved, and the carving has gilded highlights. The table stands on ball-and-claw feet, the chairs have high ornate backs, the cushions are upholstered in tapestries, and a crystal chandelier hangs over them.

Sometimes it seems as if no one in the Gregorio family was ever a child.

The servants who bring dinner also inform the boys that their sister will not be joining them this evening. They have heard that she is not feeling well.

Between the tortilla soup and the chicken nachos, Nanny Sayo stops by to report that Mirabell has what seems to be a migraine. Once the headache passes, the girl will eat in her room.

Clarette sometimes complains of migraines, squirrels herself away in a dark quiet room, and is unapproachable for the duration. This is the first time that her daughter has suffered such a thing.

“The condition can be inherited,” Nanny Sayo says. Before she leaves, she tousles Harley’s hair and kisses the top of Crispin’s head. “Don’t worry. Mirabell will be fine. But you must not bother her tonight.”

When the brothers are alone again, Harley says, “There’s a party, all right. This sucks.”

“There’s no party,” Crispin disagrees.

“If it’s not a party, then what is it?”

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

For the next couple of hours, nothing unusual happens.

Being only seven years old and having spent hours stalking the farthest reaches of Theron Hall for the white cats that refused to materialize, Harley is ready for bed at eight o’clock. He says that he doesn’t care about any stupid old party, but he cares enough to want to pout in bed and retreat into sleep.

Crispin is not sleepy, but he puts on his pajamas and slips under the covers before nine o’clock.

He’s lying in deep shadows, the dimmer on his bedside lamp dialed down to the palest glow, when he hears the door open and someone approach his bed. The lightness of the visitor’s step and the swish of her skirt identify her as Nanny Sayo.

She stands there for long minutes while Crispin pretends to sleep. He has the crazy expectation that she will get into bed with him, but she does not.

After she leaves, he lies watching the digital clock blink away thirty minutes.

Some things we know that we shouldn’t do, some things we know that we must do, and sometimes the shouldn’t and the must are the same thing.

He gets out of bed and scopes the hallway, where the crystal fixtures in the ceiling cast light in soft prismatic patterns.

Crossing the threshold, he quietly closes the door behind him. He hurries north along the hallway, past the sewing room.

Mirabell’s bedroom is on the west side of the hall, adjacent to Clarette and Giles’s suite. Crispin listens at the door, but he hears nothing.

After a hesitation, he raps softly, waits, and raps again. When Mirabell does not reply, Crispin tries the door, finds it unlocked, and warily enters her room.

The bedside lamps burn at the lowest setting, but they are just bright enough for him to see that Mirabell is not here and that he is alone.

If his sister endured her migraine in bed, the bed has since been made. The quilted spread is smooth, taut.

From under the door to her bathroom, a yellow light beckons like the light in dreams that promises some revelation a moment before the sleeper wakes in darkness.

No sounds come from within.

Crispin whispers his sister’s name, waits, whispers it somewhat louder, but receives no response.

Easing the bathroom door inward, he enters a wilderness of white candles in clear glass containers. They line the deep windowsill, are clustered here and there on the marble bathtub surround, stand on the floor in every corner in groups of three, and flicker on the sink and vanity counters, where opposing mirrors clone and reclone them into a receding forest of burning tapers.