Birds in a cage, p.3
Birds in a Cage, page 3
“Yes, great.”
“It’s life in your spinster thirties. At least you have company.”
Wryly, Georgina lifted one corner of her mouth. “Look at us.”
“Who needs a husband, anyhow?”
The air changed. Georgina asked, “Does it get dull in here?”
An odd question. Marcy wondered if Georgina knew what’d happened yesterday, but she was scared to bring it up. She answered, “No, I keep counting the rain stains and dead insects on the stucco, and I get conflicting numbers each time. I won’t rest until I figure out the true number.” She didn’t actually do that, but she might. There was little else she wanted to do.
Georgina settled her warm, delicate hand on Marcy’s, and the palm-flame quieted. “I’m going to teach you how to play the recorder.”
“Wait, what?”
“You can’t go on staring at the ceiling, and I can’t . . .”
Marcy shifted. She liked the idea of spending more time with Georgina, but she was unsure what to say, or why Georgina would care for a near-stranger who was related to her former husband. She tried to deflect with humor. “We could always drink.”
Georgina said, “It helps me sleep.”
“I thought—your religion forbids drinking, doesn’t it?”
A guffaw. “Religions forbid many things.”
Marcy moved her attention to the ceiling. “What do you want me to do for you in return?”
“Nothing, really, though your maman said you’re quite the storyteller.”
Maman. Her gaze snapped back to Georgina. “Did she put you up to this?”
Georgina’s expression softened, and she gave Marcy’s hand a squeeze. “No. She called me, yes, but I put myself up to it.” Marcy was curious why Maman would call Georgina, and what she’d said. “Because I know what it’s like to lose the center of your life. My parents are buried in Sétif, and it’s been . . . a bit of a lonely journey.”
Silence passed.
Marcy broke it. “André was an idiot to leave you for someone else.”
“André’s an idiot, regardless.”
“True enough.”
She expected Georgina to leave after a time, and yet she slept in André’s old room. A weekly stay became a month, and then another. To distract Georgina from the wine, Marcy told her ghost stories spliced together with hundreds of old tales. Sometimes, she’d wake up to Georgina doing one of her five daily prayers.
Despite her despair in every other part of her life, Marcy couldn’t say she was displeased.
***
Raising her head from her yellowed book, which rested in her lap, Marcy was cooing at Oscar and Charlotte when the arguing started. She willed herself calm, imagining herself at the oceanside. She recalled when she and her parents visited Noirmoutier and the Passage du Gois during a low tide. She and Papa took pictures, which were in a drawer somewhere, like his cigars.
Everything was all right. She could see what the matter was without breaking. She’d faced worse.
Achingly sliding out of bed, Marcy shut off her lamp and the radio, which was playing part of a drama. She’d been hoping to hear more about the real-life missing women. Without a sound, she inched her door open, looking into the living room. She leaned into the door’s shadow.
André paced with his heavy right limp, and Maman stood, her countenance knotted.
“I postponed this decision as long as I could,” Maman said, “and it wasn’t simple. You know that.”
He swirled to face Maman and spat, “It really shouldn’t have been that difficult. Oncle wrote that he wanted me to be his successor, and you choose Desfourneaux. That idiot!”
Marcy started. She never knew André felt that way. Henri was forgetful, but not stupid.
Maman arched a brow. “We have debts with him. He’s helping us survive.”
“I’m your nephew! I’m his nephew! Does that mean nothing? Desfourneaux’s slow, incompetent—”
“He helped Anatole with his work longer than you.”
“All he does is mumble and cry when he’s not petering about.”
Maman’s nostrils flared. André arched his shoulders. You’ve done it now. Her voice was deathly quiet. “How would you act if your only son died? If you watched him grow, and found him hanging from a rafter?” Marcy grimaced. Out of any of her possible visitors, she especially didn’t want to face Henri because of what she attempted. The poor man, and poor Marguerite. “You’ll have your chance at Anatole’s position, I’m sure.”
“Oh, how kind of you. It isn’t as if there’s an established bloodline or—”
“André, I—you are like a son to me, and you are my blood, Juliette’s blood, but you aren’t a part of Anatole’s blood.”
“Neither is Desfourneaux.”
“That doesn’t make you less, but—”
“Doesn’t it?”
Maman flared. “Excuse me?”
André snarled, eyes like small pieces of flint. “Even now, I can’t please you. What do I need to do? Find some way to regain your pity?”
Marcy murmured, “You’re both fools.” She thought she whispered it into the ether, and yet Maman and André raised their heads. Their shocked eyes weighed on her like an afterlife scale. She continued, hands balled, “None of this matters. Why must you argue?” To André, she said, “Of all things to want, so much that you’d ignore someone else’s pain, that you insult Henri and Maman after all they’ve done . . .”
He shook his head. “What does that mean?” She couldn’t tell if he was irritated or bemused. “‘Of all things to want’?”
“You want so badly to be a hired killer. Didn’t you hear what it did to Grandpapa Louis?”
Maman crossed her arms and looked at the wall opposite of Marcy. “Your grandpapa wasn’t a good man.”
“And André is?”
“Oh, why, thank you, cousin,” André said. “I didn’t know you though that about me.”
Do you hear how you speak to us? Maybe during the Great War, it was because you were a rash boy, but now?”
Her cousin stepped closer. “Pardon? Do you even have the slightest idea what you put us through a month—”
“Don’t,” Maman said, lifting her chin and glowering at André once more. “Leave her alone. You’re ridiculous. Maybe if you had a cooler head on your shoulders, I would’ve chosen you.”
Her cousin sneered. “Yes, you’re torn up about your choice, I’m sure.”
Legs going numb, Marcy’s voice rose. “You are both ridiculous, fighting over this.”
Maman blinked. “Both? I’m only trying—”
Tired, Marcy said, “You really couldn’t have chosen him? You knew he’d react like an infant.”
Maman snapped, casting her gaze to the floor, “So this is my fault, is it? Yet again? Perhaps it isn’t my fault certain people react poorly to reason.”
“Reason.” André scoffed. “That’s a word for it.”
Marcy said to her mother, “You could be calm—”
Maman pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why am I the one who must keep from being ‘emotional’ when I’m the one working to ensure we aren’t all in dire straits?”
This had devolved quickly. “I was talking to André—”
André placed a hand on his hip. “Cousin, would you like to repeat that about the infant?”
“She could’ve chosen you.” Marcy stumbled backwards to support herself on her bedroom doorframe. “Maybe she should’ve. But what does it matter, cousin, if you take on Papa’s job? What do you want to do, make him proud? Honor his legacy. You can’t.” She choked back all the tears. Not now, not ever; if she acknowledged the full breadth of her emotions, then the water would win. Papa would really be dead.
Deep pangs erupted in her chest, and sweat dripped down her temple. She was sinking into the gray. All she saw were two gaping mouths. Round, hurt eyes gleaming like the uncovered seashells she would collect in the skirt of her dress and give to Papa.
Georgina, who Marcy supposed had been in her new room, stormed by Marcy’s side and held her as she went sideways. Perhaps Georgina had been watching all along, with no chance to intervene. Her hand was tender on Marcy’s clammy one, pressed against Georgina’s collarbone.
Georgina snapped, “Look at what you’ve both done. Will you two stop being such—” Before Marcy could hear the rest of Georgina’s heated words, the world flickered out.
When it clicked on again, Marcy was resting in bed with someone in the chair beside her, a hand on her upturned one. Those soft fingers were on her fire-palm, so she winced and jerked it away, rolling her head to meet Maman’s hurt eyes.
“I’m sorry for the quarrel,” Maman said. For someone who had a piercing look that made the steeliest men falter, Maman could speak so tenderly. “When you’re rested, why don’t we go to the town square and visit the shops?”
Marcy considered it. No blood on the stones. No rising seawater. No water, no blood, no death. Her palm kept burning, as did her shoulders, knees, and ankles. She was adrift, floating under purple clouds hanging like lilacs, and she imagined Jehanne afloat beside her. Their fingers close. “I don’t think I can.” She’d rather stay here in the mire than leave and constantly readjust herself to a living room where Papa would once lift his attention away from his newspaper comics and beam at her.
Maman, eyes glazed, looked at the caged canaries.
Marcy swallowed. “What is it?”
“Did you really see your papa as a hired killer?” Maman asked, twisting her pearls around her small fingers. “Is that all?”
That’s what he was, wasn’t he? Marcy’s throat swelled, and she resolved to stare at the ceiling.
Eventually, Maman sighed. “Are you sure you don’t feel like going anywhere? Not even the chocolate shop?”
Oh, Maman knew her weaknesses well. Marcy closed her eyes, imagined her tongue coated with the sweets Papa made, the ones she’d never taste again except in these phantom seconds. Whatever was on her tongue became ash. “No.”
A sound like a cough erupted, and Marcy looked to see Maman covering her mouth, failing to keep her sobs caged. Marcy wanted to pull her down, wanted to hold Maman to her chest and let her cry until she was cleansed.
But Sisyphus’ boulder was in Marcy’s chest, and she was tired.
When Maman regained some composure, she said, “Please don’t let grief make you a skeleton.” She sobbed again. Marcy waited, hoping that when she was dragged under, Maman wouldn’t come with her. At least one of them needed to escape. “Your papa,” Maman began, voice cracking, “he always said you and André had my sense of humor, and I told him I had no humor. Whether that is true, I can tell I gave you something.”
Words floated up, spare flecks of algae. “What is that?”
Maman smiled, sorrowful. “My nose, for one, but that’s another matter.” She exhaled sharply, hands clenched in her lap, tongue wetting her lips. “We both grieve deeply, so deeply it turns our bones to iron. And I know your papa wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.”
“I don’t feel like iron.” If someone were to pinch her, the skin would crumble away. “And Papa isn’t here anymore.” He was sunken, face like drained coral, but here. Somehow. He needed to be. “So there’s little point in thinking about what he said.”
“I know you don’t believe that.” Maman sucked in both her lips, fingers fidgeting over her crinkled dress, which was blue with faded yellow spots. “I taught you as early as the womb to hold in pain like keeping a pretty pet bird in a cage.”
“There’s nothing pretty here.”
“Oh, poupée.” Maman broke again and leaned into her hands, her knuckles sticking out like fishing bobs in Acheron. “I know.” She exhaled sharply into her palms. “Don’t I know it. Darling, I’ll wait until I turn to dust with my hand by your side, but I can’t do anything, I’m damned useless if you don’t reach for me.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t move. God, I can’t move.”
Maman closed the distance between them and, with dry eyes, Marcy weakly held her and let her cry. Charlotte warbled once, as if offering condolences, or saying, Hold her closer, you idiot. Marcy patted her shoulders, wiped away her tears, but not once did she cry with her.
That morning, Maman rose, and Marcy didn’t rise with her. Instead, with few exceptions, she stayed in bed for five years.
4
May 1944
In the late evening, Marcy fell asleep to the sound of a Nazi patrol driving by and the report that a woman named Mlle Thomas had been found slain in her bed, her bathtub filled with bloody water. It was as if the deceased woman drained herself and miraculously lifted herself up to die in the other room. The reporter gave the address and said the investigation, as anticipated, was ongoing.
A golden light scorched Marcy’s dreamscape. She was in water, looking up. Her tightening chest loosened in the pale tide.
The tide took her to the winter of 1925. In their living room, same as ever with a dancing hearth, she stood by the front door in one of Papa’s jackets. Maman handed her the auto keys.
“Go anywhere, love,” Maman said. What an odd turnaround from the mother she grew up with who, if she stayed that way, would’ve hidden the keys. Now, she all but pushed her daughter out the door to have some fun. “Just come home to me.”
Marcy kissed her cheek, and Maman returned the gesture. “I promise.”
Idly fingering her pearls, Maman beamed, dark eyes alight. “That’s what your papa says.”
Papa himself, surprisingly bashful with her, touched her shoulder, swallowing. “Be safe. Come back to us.” She thought long ago the glint in his eyes was pride, but now understood it was fear.
Only when Marcy entered the auto alone did her nerves sprout to life and knock against her throat like vengeful robins. Her drive was long, and she considered having it be the only thing she did. No leaving the safe skeleton of the vehicle to venture into the unknown. Jehanne was relatively quiet, Marcy’s palm only itching a little. In the passenger seat, an old newspaper rested, its headline black bleeding on white. Something about the missing daughter of a retired general. Marcy looked away, heart pounding.
Then, in the busy street, a building glowed more than the rest like the sun on the horizon. Parking and going out the door, Marcy wrapped her jacket closer to her body as she left the auto and approached the club. The building glinted gold and orange on the rain trails and shards of street glass. Indeed, after the terrors of the Great War and the horrors in Rennes, Paris really was the city of lights.
Before the memory-dream could continue, Marcy found herself on a bed of seaweed, and the ghostly shape of a woman lingered over her. She twisted, trying to escape, trying to find the shore in the side of her eye, but hands buckled down on her thighs. The moon grinned as the murky world slid its purple tongue inside her. She tasted mermaid kisses, so like the kisses she received in the Twenties in Paris, on her mouth, salty with water and blood. These mermaids had teeth.
She woke up flushed and thrashing her head. Untangling herself from her sheets, she shook, her slip and panties were soaked in sweat and arousal. In her disorientation, her mind flitted to the fragments she heard last night about the dead woman and the mysterious circumstances concerning how she passed. Mlle Thomas, that was her name. Marcy wondered what kind of books she read, or if she liked to garden. A flame spurred in her heart.
Dead, alone. Nobody deserved that. If only she could do something besides sleeping in bed.
Hadn’t she saved others before?
Could this be the same monster as before?
Shaking her head and unable to recapture the glow of Paris, Marcy changed into regular day attire. She didn’t know if Maman would allow her to leave to solve a murder; she could lie about her purpose, or she could go out in secret and not let Maman worry. Besides, Marcy would likely not be allowed to go out alone, since the last time she did so, she almost flung herself off a bridge.
If there was anything Marcy wouldn’t allow, it was for Maman and Georgina to follow her to a dead woman’s house, and yet the scene was probably already cleaned, all suspicious elements removed.
Opening the cage for her little yellow friends, no longer young, Marcy laughed for the first time in years. She only really moved a good deal when it came to caring for them, going to cover the mirror with a spare sheet so Oscar wouldn’t be silent. Sure enough, Oscar sang by the windowsill, and Charlotte chirped in accord. Marcy turned on the radio, but kept it low. She played the recorder for her canaries, and though her fingers didn’t have Georgina’s grace, she did well enough. Georgina asked how it was a male and female canary could be in a cage together without trying to mate, and Marcy shrugged.
