Wither (The Chemical Garden #1)(13)
Author: Lauren DeStefano

“She insisted on coming down here to tell you herself,” Gabriel says obligingly.

As we head toward the kitchen, I do my best to seem disgusted, when really the smell reminds me of home, coaxes an appetite back into me.

“We’ve got bigger problems than your diet needs,” the head cook says, brushing a strand of hair from her sweaty face, nodding out the window. The sky is a bizarre shade of green. Lightning flashes through the clouds. Less than an hour ago there was sunlight and birdsong.

Someone offers me a little cardboard box of strawberries. “Shipped in fresh this morning.” Gabriel and I each take a handful as we stand at the window. Like the blueberries, their color is more vivid than what I’m used to. Their juice floods my mouth with sweetness, and the seeds get lodged in my molars.

“It’s that time of year already?” Gabriel says. “It seems a little early.”

“We might get a good storm this year,” says one of the cooks as he kneels at the oven and furrows his brow at something that’s baking. “Maybe even a category three.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, popping the next strawberry into my mouth.

“Means you three princesses will be locked in the dungeon,” the head cook hisses, and I’m just about to believe her when she claps a hand on my shoulder hard and laughs. “The House Governor takes every precaution with his wives,” she says. “If the winds get bad, you’ll all have to wait out the storm in the storm shelter.

Don’t worry, blondie, I bet it’s comfy cozy, and the rest of us’ll be up here cooking and bringing you your meals.”

“You just work through the storm?” I say.

“Sure, unless the power’s out.”

“Don’t worry,” Gabriel says. “The house won’t blow away.” His small laugh suggests he knows that’s what I’d been hoping for. We exchange a look, and his tentative grin blooms into the first real smile I’ve seen on him. I allow myself to smile back.

But a few minutes later, a pall hangs over us, as gloomy as the thundering clouds, as we take the elevator back to the wives’ floor. There’s a pushcart of lunch trays between us. Lobster bisque for the others and a small glazed chicken for me, since I’m supposed to be allergic to shellfish. We don’t speak. I try not to think of Rose, but can see nothing but her lifeless hand dipping out of the sheet as she passes. A hand that just the other day was weaving my hair into a braid. I think of the sadness in Linden’s eyes; what would he say if he knew his childhood love, the little girl who fed sugar to horses in the orange grove, is being dissected in this very house?

Alone in my room, I don’t touch my lunch. I soak in a hot bath and wash Gabriel’s handkerchief in the bubbles and then hold it up in front of me. I try to imagine another place, another time, when flowers might have looked like its embroidery. It’s such a powerful thing, sharp and dangerous and lovely. It rests on what appears to be a lily pad. I commit the image to memory and then research it in the library. The closest match I find is the lotus flower, which existed in Eastern countries and may have originated in a country called China. All I have to go by is a fraction of a page in an almanac of aquatic botany; the almanac would rather tell me about water lilies, perhaps a close cousin, but not the same. Not as rare.

And after hours of research, I still can’t find a decent match.

I ask Gabriel, and he says the attendants take the handkerchiefs from a plastic bin where the cloth napkins are kept. He doesn’t know who ordered them or where they came from, but I can keep it because there are dozens more.

In the days to come, Gabriel begins bringing breakfast while the other wives are still asleep. He hides June Beans in rolled napkins or under the plate or, once, between the pancakes. He arranges the strawberry slices into Eiffel Towers and boats with spear-shaped masts.

He leaves the tray on my nightstand, and, if I’m sleeping, I feel his presence as I dream. I feel warm ribbons reaching into my subconsciousness, and I feel safe. I open my eyes to the silver cover on the breakfast tray, and I know he was nearby. On the mornings that I’m awake, we talk in low voices, barely making out each other’s faces in the darkness. He tells me that he’s been an orphan for as long as he can remember, that Housemaster Vaughn bought him at an auction when he was nine. “It’s not as awful as it sounds,” Gabriel says. “In orphanages they teach you skills like cooking, sewing, cleaning. They keep a sort of report card on you, and then the well-to-do can bid. That’s how we got Deirdre, Elle, and Adair, too.”

“You don’t remember your parents at all?” I say.

“Hardly. I barely even remember what the world outside of this place looks like,” he says. And my heart sinks.

Nobody, he tells me, not even the help, leaves the property. They order shipments of food and fabric and anything imaginable, but they never visit stores themselves.

The only ones to leave are the delivery truck drivers, Housemaster Vaughn, and sometimes Linden if he has a mind to. I’ve seen House Governors and their first wives on TV at social events—political elections, ribbon-cut-ting ceremonies, things like that—but Gabriel tells me that Linden is not the social type. He’s something of a recluse. And why not? You could take an entire day and still not walk from one end of this place to the other. But I haven’t lost hope. Linden took Rose to parties all the time, and she said herself that if he plays favorites with me, he’ll take me anywhere I want to go.

“Don’t you miss it?” I say. “Being free.”

He laughs. “It wasn’t much freer in the orphanage, but I suppose I do miss the beach,” he says. “I used to be able to see it from my window. Sometimes they let us go there. I liked watching the boats go out. I think if I could have done anything, I would have liked to work on one. Maybe build one. But I’ve never even caught a fish.”

“My brother taught me how to fish,” I say. We would sit on the concrete slab that stopped at the ocean, our feet dangling over the edge. I remember the strong pull on the fishing line, the reel spinning out of my control and Rowan catching it for me, showing me how to bring it in. I remember the silver body, all muscle, like a tongue thrashing on the hook, eyes open wide. I freed it from the hook and tried to hold it, but it leapt from my hand.

Hit the water with a splash. Disappeared, off to visit the ruins of France or maybe Italy to send them my regards.

I try relaying this experience to Gabriel, and even though I think I’m doing a poor job of imitating the pulling motion of the fishing rod and my pathetic attempts to reel the fish in, he’s paying close attention. When I imitate the splash of the fish hitting the water, he even laughs, and I laugh too, quietly, in the darkness of my room.

“Did you ever eat any of the catches?” he asks.

“No. The edible catches are farther out, and then they’re hauled in by boat. The closer you get to land, the more contaminated the water. This was just for fun.”

“It sounds fun,” he says.

“It was kinda gross, actually,” I say, remembering the cold slimy scales and bloodshot eyes. Rowan deemed me the worst fisherman ever and said it was a good thing these fish were inedible, because if we needed them for food, we would starve with me in charge. “But it’s one of the few things my brother likes to do that doesn’t involve work.”

The homesickness that comes with my brother’s memory is not so bad. Not with Gabriel for company and a tray of pancakes and the June Bean he’s hidden in the napkin.

Linden ignores us in the daytime, but begins inviting all three of his wives to dinner each night. He tells us about his father’s research, how optimistic the scientists and doctors are about finding an antidote. He says that his father is attending a convention in Seattle, where he will compare notes with other researchers. Secretly I wonder if the Housmasters notes are about Rose. I wonder if he has named her Subject A or Patient X. I wonder if her fingernails are still painted. Cecily is, as always, very interested in everything our husband says. Jenna still looks disgusted at the sight of him, though she has started eating. I’m getting better at acting interested in what he has to say. And all the while, the windstorms make the electricity flicker, and interrupt with strange infrequent bouts of rain what would otherwise be beautiful afternoons.

And then one evening when Linden is in unusually high spirits, he announces that, in honor of our two months of marriage, he thinks there should be a celebration. A big one, with colored lanterns and a live band.

He’ll even let us decide which garden to throw it in.

“How about the orange grove?” I say. Gabriel and two other attendants collecting our plates go pale and exchange grave looks. They know the magnitude of what I’ve said. They brought Rose many meals and cups of tea as she frittered endless days away in the orange grove.

It was her favorite, where she and Linden were married, and where—she told me wistfully one afternoon, twirling a June Bean around her tongue—they first kissed.

And it was there that Linden found her a week after her twentieth birthday, unconscious and pale in the shade of an orange tree, gasping, her lips blue. That was the day he was faced with the tragedy of her mortality. His inability to save her. All the pills and potions in the world couldn’t buy more than a few fleeting months.

A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden’s face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.

Cecily, oblivious, says, “Yes! Oh, Linden, we’ve never even seen it!”

Linden dabs his mouth with a napkin, sets the napkin on the table. “I thought along the pool would be more entertaining,” he says quietly. “The warm weather’s nice for swimming.”

“But you said we could pick,” says Jenna; it is perhaps the first time she’s ever said a word to him. Everyone looks at her, even the attendants. She glances briefly at me and then at Linden. She bites a piece of steak from her fork daintily and says, “I vote for the orange grove.”

“Me too,” says Cecily.

I nod assent.

“It’s unanimous, then,” Linden says into his spoon.

The rest of the meal is very quiet. The dinner plates are all cleared. Dessert is served, and then tea. Then we’re dismissed, because Linden has a headache and needs to be alone with his thoughts.

“You’re something else,” Gabriel whispers to me as he escorts us to the elevator. Just before the doors close between us, I smile.

Once upstairs I immediately retreat to my bedroom.

I lie on the bed, sucking a blue June Bean and thinking about how the Atlantic Ocean lapped under my and Rowan’s bare feet. I think about the ferry along the pier that I would watch slice a path toward the horizon, and how secure I would feel in my small piece of the world, how lucky to be alive if only for a short while. That’s where I want my body to be cast when I’m dead. I want to be ashes in the ocean. I want to sink to the ruins of Athens and be carried off to Nigeria, and to swim between fish and sunken ships. I’ll come back to Manhattan frequently, to smell the air, to see how my twin is doing.