Miss Lizzie Read online

  The wind that week, as it would do some fifteen years later in Lamu, simply died away. The sun hammered down upon the sand and the flat glaring silver sea, and unless you were actually bathing, the beach was unbearable: you could not walk across it, even in leather boots. In the town, everything seemed to stop. The streets were empty, their tar surface soft and spotted with shiny bubbles; the shops were shuttered. It was a time of long naps and short tempers.

  On Tuesday morning, the second day of August, after a night of shallow sleep punctuated by breathless awakenings, I woke for the last time at eight o’clock.

  I lay there for a while on the damp sheets, my hair pasted to my forehead, my skin oily with sweat. The air was still, the curtains at the open window limp. The room smelled of dampness and mold. I did not want to leave the bed, I did not want to move.

  But finally I rolled over and pushed myself off the mattress, stood and peeled away my sodden nightgown. I sponged myself down at the wash basin; for an instant, the lukewarm water against my skin provided an illusion of coolness. I toweled myself dry, slipped into a chemise, brushed my hair at the dressing table, and then found a dress in the closet, a cotton wrapper, shapeless but offering in this heat at least the hope of comfort.

  Downstairs the house smelled of last night’s cabbage. My stepmother was in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast table with Mrs. Mortimer, her neighborhood confidante.

  “Morning,” I said, nodding to them both.

  My stepmother nodded curtly back and took a bite of toast. She wore her gray cotton housecoat, its loose sleeves rolled up along her fleshy arms.

  Mrs. Mortimer, tall, brittle, birdlike, was wearing a navy blue frock printed with tiny red fleurs-de-lis. She smiled at me, blinking rapidly. “Hello, Amanda. And how are you this morning?” Childless herself, she was one of those women who spoke to children as though they were advanced housepets.

  “Hot,” I said, “and awfully sweaty. How are you, Mrs. Mortimer?”

  “Very well, thank you.” She bobbed her head.

  Strictly speaking, as the wife of the local tavernkeeper, Mrs. Mortimer was not my stepmother’s social equal; particularly not now, with the tavern, in this first year of prohibition, being operated illegally. But, strictly speaking, my stepmother had no social equals: She saw the world as divided into those above her—the very rich—and those beneath her—everyone else. What Mrs. Mortimer lacked in refinement she made up in subservience and availability.

  “Horses sweat,” my stepmother announced, “and men perspire, but women glow.”

  “Well, in that case,” said I, spiteful child, “I’m glowing like a pig.”

  Mrs. Mortimer tittered.

  I walked over to the stove and lifted the lid off the pot sitting there. Oatmeal. Again.

  “Don’t encourage her, Esther,” my stepmother said. “Amanda, why do you insist upon being disgusting?”

  Obviously it was not a question that could be answered without starting a fight. I took a bowl from the cupboard and scooped into it some of the glutinous oatmeal. “Has William come down yet?” I asked.

  “No,” said my stepmother. “And if he doesn’t get himself down here soon I’m going to go upstairs and pin his ears back.”

  I was careful not to snort: William, over six feet tall and weighing nearly two hundred pounds, was an unlikely prospect for ear pinning.

  I opened the icebox door, lifted out a bottle of milk, pried off the cardboard cap, started to pour some over the oatmeal—

  “Shake the bottle first,” said my stepmother.

  “But I like the cream,” I said. This was in the days before homogenization, and at the top of the bottle there was always a small sweet conic section of cream.

  “You like, you like. Don’t you ever think about anybody but yourself?” She wanted the cream, of course, for her coffee.

  Sighing, I put the cap back on and shook the bottle. I took the cap off again, poured the milk over the oatmeal, put the cap on once more and returned the bottle to the icebox. I carried the bowl to the table and sat down opposite my stepmother, with Mrs. Mortimer to my right.

  Mrs. Mortimer asked me brightly, “Are you having a nice summer, Amanda?”

  “I was until it got so hot.” I spooned sugar over the oatmeal. “How is Mr. Mortimer?”

  She bobbed her head again. “Very well, thank you.”

  “Can I have some coffee?” I asked my stepmother.

  “May I have some coffee.”

  “May I have some coffee?”

  “No,” she said, “you may not.” Her face was expressionless; one of the differences between adults and children is that adults do not admit the pleasure they derive from petty triumphs. “If your father wants to let you have coffee on Sunday,” she said, “that’s his business. He knows I don’t approve. But as long as it’s my responsibility, I refuse to damage your health. It’s a medical fact that caffeine can stunt your growth. Look at your brother.”

  “But William never drank coffee.”

  She nodded, smug. “Exactly.”

  A sudden loud clatter at the front of the house told us that William himself was hurtling down the stairs. A few seconds later he came rushing into the room, dressed all in dazzling white—shirt, slacks, shoes. His black hair slicked back with brilliantine, his smile agleam, he looked (to a sister at any rate) like a younger, taller version of Douglas Fairbanks. “Sorry, folks,” he said. “Can’t stay. Hi, Mrs. Mortimer. Gotta run over to Andy’s. We’re taking his jalopy up the coast for a picnic.”

  “Sit down for a minute, William,” said my stepmother.

  “Gee, Audrey, I can’t, I haven’t got—”

  “You sit down,” she said, and her mouth was grim, “or you’ll regret it.”

  She had never spoken to either of us that way before. William looked at me, puzzled; as surprised as he, I shrugged and shook my head.

  He winced with impatience, then lifted one of the wooden chairs, spun it around, and sat down on it next to me, his arms folded along the chair’s back. “Okay. What is it?”

  She looked from William to me. “The two of you think you’re very clever, don’t you?”

  William looked at me, I looked at him. He grinned and said to her, “Well, Audrey, I guess we do.”

  “You two have had things your way for a long time now. Daddy’s little darlings. Daddy’s little angels. Well, I know a thing or two about you, about both of you, that Daddy doesn’t know.”

  Mrs. Mortimer cleared her throat. “I really ought to go now, Audrey. I’ve got so much—”

  “You stay there, Esther. I want you to see what a wonderful pair of brats I’ve got here.”

  William was still smiling, confident he could handle whatever she was about to offer.

  But it was to me that she turned first. “Do you think I haven’t seen you sneaking over to that awful woman’s house? Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” From her housecoat pocket she pulled a pack of playing cards and slapped it onto the table. She reached in and pulled out another pack, slapped that beside the first. “How do you think your father’s going to like it when he hears that you’ve been gambling with a murderer?”

  I was so surprised at how wrong she had got it that I burst out laughing. “Gambling? That’s crazy!”

  At my laughter, my stepmother’s face had closed like a fist. “Crazy? You think it’s crazy? What’re the cards for, missy? What’re you doing when you sneak over there to see that woman?”

  I shook my head, petulant. “I don’t sneak over there.”

  “No?” Her upper lip curled with scorn. “Then why haven’t you told your father about it? Why the big secret?”

  Unerringly, she had located a pocket of guilt, and prodded it. I switched from defense to attack: “You took those out of my dresser. You had no right—”

  “Don’t you tell me about my rights, missy. This is my house and it’s my responsibility to watch you two.” She leaned forward. “They say she smokes too. Doe
s she give you cigarettes?”

  “No!”

  “And they say she’s not right, she’s not normal. Does she touch you? Do you let her touch you?”

  My anger had become confusion. “What?”

  Her face was twisted. “Do you take your clothes off, do you—”

  Angry, William said, “Stop it, Audrey, goddammit. Leave her alone.”

  “Oh no,” she said, rounding on him, pointing a finger at his face. “Oh no you don’t. You don’t tell me what to do. You think I don’t know about you? You think I haven’t seen you and that cheap little Grady slut? Grabbing and groping at each other out on the lawn like animals?”

  William flushed, his face turning bright red. I did not know (and do not, to this day) whether it was fury or embarrassment.

  My stepmother’s eyes were narrow slits. “Are you giving it to her yet? Are you sticking it in her? You must be, or you wouldn’t need these.” From her other pocket she pulled a small cardboard package and flipped it onto the table. Although I did not know it then, what the package held, of course, was prophylactics.

  William said, “God damn you, Audrey.”

  She laughed—a hard, dry, bitter cackle. “Curse me. Go ahead, you curse me. Your father will hear about that too. He’ll hear about all this. His little angels. His little darlings. He’s going to learn what you’re really like.”

  Through clenched teeth, William said, “You’re a rotten bitch.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, standing up and moving around the table, toward him, “don’t you dare call me that, you sneaky little bastard.” Next to him now, she slapped him viciously across the face. In the tiny kitchen the sound was as loud as an explosion. I heard Mrs. Mortimer gasp. William shut his eyes and his fingers clutched at his forearms, knuckles turning white.

  She hit him again. “Bastard! I’m not good enough for you, I was never good enough for you, I’m just fat old Audrey, stupid old Audrey.” She hit him again, backhanded. “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard.”

  William stood up. He towered over her and still she hit at him. He turned and, without a word, moved toward the rear entrance to the house. She stayed close behind, hitting at him with both hands now, left, right, smacking at him. I stood up and followed them. I was afraid that William might strike back at her—strong as he was, he might have killed her. I think I believed that I could stop him.

  Out on the back porch, her arms still flailing at him, he opened the screen door. He turned to her. She stepped back—suddenly afraid, perhaps, that at last he would strike back: He said, “You’ll be sorry, Audrey,” and then he went down the steps, closing the door behind him.

  She slammed the door open and went down the steps, stopped at the bottom and called out after him: “You bastard!”

  Without turning back, walking slowly, in no hurry, he disappeared behind the hedges. Then my stepmother turned and saw me standing there in the doorway.

  For a moment, I think, she was going to hit me. Her eyes narrowed and her body tautened. But she hesitated. Perhaps she considered how Father might have reacted if he learned of it.

  She took a deep breath, exhaled, and snapped at me, “Get out of my way.”

  I stepped back, and she tramped up the stairs and passed me.

  Mrs. Mortimer was almost at the front door. My stepmother called out to her, “Esther!”

  I stepped into the kitchen. Quickly, I sneaked a gulp of coffee from her cup: I would get something for myself, despite all this melodrama. Then I left the kitchen and ran up the back stairs to my bedroom. I locked the door behind me.

  I pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer of the dresser. The two decks, a stripper deck and a marked deck, had been underneath a box of stationery. The box looked untouched. She must have come up here last night, while I was reading in the parlor. Which meant that she had probably known for some time that the cards were there. For how long?

  I felt as though I had been violated. The woman had no right to go through my things, no right to take the cards.

  I shut the drawer, crossed the room, flounced onto the bed. What would Father say when he learned that I had been going over to Miss Lizzie’s nearly every day?

  I heard the front door shut, heard my stepmother moving around downstairs. She was alone.

  From the bottom of the stairs she called out my name. I did not answer. For a few moments I was afraid that she would come upstairs; but she did not.

  What was it that William had done with Marge Grady? What was it that Marge had done that made her a slut? And what was in the package that my stepmother had thrown to the table? What did it have to do with him “sticking it in her”? What had my stepmother meant by that? And why had the woman been so incensed?

  It was as though all these questions were too much for me. After a while, lying there, I fell asleep.

  I awoke out of a dream, one I can no longer remember. But it had been one of those dreams—we all have them, I think—which seem so foreign that they might have been dreamed by someone else, with us acting only as a means, a medium. And, because shreds and wisps of the other still cling to the wisps and shreds of ourselves, we are appalled and frightened at how frail a thing our personalities, our identities, truly are. (After we regain ourselves, of course, we forget the truth and dream, once again, that we are immutable.)

  I looked at the clock on the nightstand. Twelve-fifteen. I had slept for almost two hours.

  I sponged my face again at the washbasin, then went downstairs to find my stepmother. I knew that I had not gambled, had never gambled, and I wanted my cards back.

  Usually at this time my stepmother would be in the parlor, doing needlepoint, or up in the guest room taking a nap.

  The parlor was empty.

  I climbed up the front stairs to the guest room. Its door was at the top of the landing, opposite the door to William’s room.

  In the air was the smell of lilacs—my stepmother’s favorite scent—and it was mingled with another smell, this one heavier, metallic, vaguely remembered but for the moment unidentifiable.

  The guest-room door was open and she was lying on the bed.

  The eye can see, and the mind understand, only what they already know. (This is of course the principle upon which magic is worked.) Confronted with a thing which is new, a thing which is impossible, they will perceive it as something else, something with which they are familiar.

  And so at first I thought, absurdly, that the thin dark striping that covered her heavy body was a piece of netting, of the kind the local fishermen used, and I wondered what she was doing with it. And then I saw that her face was quite literally falling apart. Her forehead was sliced open, pink brain showing through the bloody rent, and a flap of skin hung loose from her cheek, exposing the white bone of her skull. Her left eye was gone and her right stared sightlessly upward. And I saw that the striping that covered her was, in fact, her own blood, and that it was everywhere, the walls, the ceiling, the bed. The pillow beneath her head was black with it, soaked through, and this was the smell that hung in the air behind the smell of lilacs, the stench of blood, and, backing out of the room, I could no longer breathe that thick dreadful coppery reek, my throat had closed against it.

  I tottered down the stairs and unbolted the front door and went reeling from the house. Numb, my vision narrowed to see only what lay directly before me, I staggered across the lawn, seeking out the one person nearby who might help me. Seeking out Miss Lizzie.

  TWO

  FOUR

  MY RECOLLECTION OF the next few hours is a jumble of images, some so clearly defined that the outlines of things, of people, of furniture, of the everyday realities of matter, seem sliver-edged, sharp enough to slice open flesh; others so dim and gray that they might have been seen from afar, through a window rimed with frost. Time, during this period, no longer moved in sedate measured intervals; it lurched and wobbled, leaped and stumbled; occasionally it altogether stopped.

  I remember Miss Lizzie st
anding at her doorway in the white glare of sunlight, her mourning dress as black and starched as a nun’s habit. I remember her wide smile of greeting fading away as her large gray eyes widened in concern. “Amanda?” she said, and in her voice was an uncertainty like that with which we greet long-ago friends now barely recognized. And then, more insistent: “Amanda, what is it?”

  “Dead,” I said, the words uttered by some other, distant, self. “The blood. Everywhere.”

  There was no slow dawning of comprehension; there was not even an instant of bafflement or disbelief. Her eyelids shut and she rocked back as though slapped. She must have wished desperately, I believe, to flee this stricken creature on her doorstep and the horrors that all at once she represented. But she opened her eyes, took a deep breath, firmed her mouth, and reached forward to touch me, her fingers steady, and steadying, along my upper arm. “Who, Amanda?” she said softly. “Where?”

  “Upstairs,” I said. “Mother.” This was the first time in my life, and it was to be the last, that I called the woman by that name.

  Miss Lizzie took another deep sharp breath, almost a hiss, and then her plump arm encircled my shoulder, pulling me toward her. “Come in. Come in, dear.” She led me into the parlor. As I shuffled along, legs weak, feet heavy, I felt the palm of her hand against my forehead, and her skin seemed neither warm nor cool; I had lost the ability—had lost the desire—to distinguish between sensations.

  “You’re freezing, child,” she said.

  And so I was. Despite the viscid August heat that hung about me, I moved within an envelope of dense, impenetrable cold. My teeth, I noticed, were clattering.