She poured water from the pitcher into the washbowl.
She dipped her hands into the water.
There’s no one! Come in, come in, we’re quite alone!
No one then to spy on them from the clifftops as they splashed naked in the gelid sea, no one here in Fall River either to offer her comfort or solace while she waited in vain for a further letter from Alison at home in her own country, her father returning from the post office empty-handed each day, we’re quite alone, Ah, yes, she thought, I was quite alone, and splashed water onto her face, and reached for the bar of soap in the scalloped white dish. Washing her face and her hands, she felt again the steady seep of her own blood, and thought, Alison was right, of course, so right about so many things. This was not the time for making decisions, she would be less confused when her monthly sickness had passed.
And yet, yesterday morning, the decision had not seemed at all preposterous to her, lost in hopelessness as she’d been, anonymous terrors consuming her — lost in guilt, lost in shame, lost in anxiety, lost in knowledge, lost in all save love — her menses full upon her and adding to her depression and her contrary passion. Alone in the privacy of the water closet down-cellar, she had syringed into herself a mixture of tepid water and carbolic acid, as she did each month to remove particles of dried blood and mucus and to dispel any disagreeable odor. Drying herself, fastening a fresh towel into place between her legs, pinning it before and behind to the band about her waist, her eye had lingered on the word acid handwritten on the brown bottle’s label in the druggist’s careless scrawl, and she had remembered all the talk the day before of poison, her stepmother certain that someone had poisoned the milk, the sounds later of her vomiting behind the closed and barricaded door between their rooms in this prison of a house.
And she had thought, Yes, poison, why not? An appropriate end to Eve’s sin, the apple poisoned with knowledge, the wrath of God satisfied at last in the completion of the cycle, poison unto poison, carnality purged. “To disbelieve truth is to invite deception,” Alison had said, and the truth in this house, beneath this secretive, deceitful roof, was that whatever transpired here was carnal and lustful, a sinful satisfaction of the tyrannous blood, loveless and doomed. Yes, poison, she had thought, and had adjusted her clothing and gone upstairs to tell her stepmother she was going out to do some shopping.
The thought frustrated, the purpose thwarted, the action aborted.
“Well, my good lady, it’s something we don’t sell unless by prescription from the doctor, as it’s a very dangerous thing to handle.”
“But I’ve used it before, you see. Prussic acid, that is. To clean furs. I want it to put on the edge of a sealskin cape. A soiled cape.”
The man’s obstinance. Her failure at yet another drugstore. The intolerable heat of Fall River yesterday, a century ago. The same interminable heat today, and the same persistent feeling of helplessness and dread. He’d been here again last night, pounding on the lumber pile out back. The same pale young man she’d seen at least a dozen times before, outside the house, in hurried conversation with Maggie. Just after her sister left for Fairhaven, he’d been here again, a shadow on the side steps. She’d seen no skirts; it had to have been a man.
She was suddenly confused again.
Her hands hovered over the bowl of water.
She splashed soap from her face, getting some in her eyes, reaching for a towel, her eyes stinging and beginning to tear. And suddenly there were real tears, mingling with the harsher caustic flow, and she buried her face in the towel and murmured aloud, “Oh, dear God, help me,” and knew He would not hear, knew He would not answer, for whatever codicil she had made with Him long ago had been destroyed forever on that Sunday morning in Cannes. “But I loved her,” she moaned into the towel, and silently begged God to understand that the secret she shared in this house was not the same at all, was instead carnal and base, lustful and degrading, and prayed for His forgiveness and His guidance, prayed He would deliver her from the flames into which she had thrust a tentative hand last March, when in her loneliness, longing and grief she had reached out to — Oh, help me, dear Cod, she thought, oh, please, dear God, I beg of you, and stood quite still by the dresser, the towel covering her face.
“Well, I’ll be on my way then.”
Uncle John’s voice, downstairs.
“What time is it?” her stepmother asked.
“Twenty of,” Uncle John said.
“Will you be back for dinner?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “count on me.”
“Bridget, have you finished the dishes?”
“Almost, ma’am.”
Her voice.
“Have you anything to do this morning?”
“No, not particular, ma’am, if you have anything to do for me.”
The Irish lilt of it.
“When you’ve finished setting the table, I want the windows washed.”
“Yes, ma’am. How, ma’am?”
“Inside and out both. They’re very dirty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She lowered the towel and looked at her tear-stained face in the mirror over the dresser.
Are there no looking glasses in all of Fall River then?
She had gained far too much weight this past year; her face looked bloated, her eyes puffed and swollen from the tears.
Plump? No, no. You’re what my mother might have called wöllustig.
She looked at her skin, far too pale, the fiery coloration of her hair contrasting violently with its ghostly pallor and the lifelessness of her eyes, red from her tears but drained of all other color.
How shall I face each morning without my dearest child to greet me with those pale gray eyes in her round pale face?
She dried her face and her hands, and then sighed deeply and forlornly, and put the towel back onto its rack, and stood uncertainly in the center of the room, as though not knowing what she wished to do next, or where she chose to go. She sighed again, and went at last to the door, opening it and looking out onto the landing to make certain no one was about.
In her nightdress she stepped outside and went to the large clothespress at the top of the stairs. There were nearly a score of dresses in the closet, winter- and summer-weight both. A single, green, summer-weight dress belonging to her stepmother hung at the very front of the closet, but the rest of the garments were hers and Emma’s, most of them hers and most of them blue; she favored the color; Alison said it complemented her hair and her eyes. This morning she didn’t care what she put on. The dress she took down from one of the hangers was a simple ready-made wrapper, fashioned of chintz and printed with a tiny gold floral figure on a black ground, lightweight enough for the sweltering day. She carried it back into her room, and closed the door behind her again. Moving slowly, as though pushing her way through the miasma of clinging heat, she took off her nightdress, examined it for bloodstains, and then dropped it in the hamper alongside the dresser.