Chapter 2
As they sit in the garden eating lemon biscuits, Angel Draco talks about nothing at all.
He speaks of his favorite rooms and the colors he’s assigned them and says hello to the portraits lining the walls. He doesn’t ask Maureen any more questions and that makes her happy. But Maureen wishes she could ask him. The halls they pass wind and twist, and she swears the pictures on the walls move with them. A darkness seems to linger in the halls as well despite the summer light coming in through the grand windows.
For as long as Maureen could remember, and she almost always remembers, Mother had told her stories of magic. Tales of giants and goblins and their wars, and stories of a school with disappearing stairs and paintings that told you tales had you been decent enough to ask.
Towards the end of life before Heaven, Mother had set in motion a plan.
The conservatory in the garden had always been humid, but the back garden was misty, and it made the heat near unbearable. Still, Mother insisted Maureen sit with her and read. Arthur would come along sometimes too and the three of them would leave their shoes at the door. Arthur would go around tending to the plants while Mother plaited Maureen’s hair. Today it was David Copperfield, and they were on Chapter 2.
“The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back, into the blank of my infancy…” As Maureen reads, Arthur starts on the poppies on the opposite side of the greenhouse. The tug of Mother’s hands on Maureen’s scalp had always been a bit heavy handed; Nanny was gentler. But it was always the thought that counted. Maureen liked that Mother found happiness in this. But as she turned the page, Mother stopped so Maureen did too. Arthur had moved on to the chrysanthemums.
“...Mon chéri?” Mother said.
“Yes?”
“If I were to…how would you like for the…tests to stop.” Maureen didn’t know what Mother was talking about. What tests?
“Do you mean…exams?” She never really enjoyed exams; they were the days she would spend with Father. Her desk would sit in the corner of his study as he wrote silently at his own mahogany giant. It was always warm in the room, fire lit or not. But it was only ever when Father was there too. Maureen would start to sweat, then think very hard about how much she was sweating, and then it would become deeply warm. Father started to leave the windows open.
Or was the question one of those that Mother didn’t want an answer to? Just in case, she waited a bit before responding, “I don’t mind them?”
“Are you asking me?”
“I don’t mind them.”
“...I don’t mean…I don’t mean examinations I…” She sounded nervous. Father always said Mother had a nervous disposition.
Pulling her up and into her lap, she held Maureen’s face in her hands. In this position the book slipped from Maureen’s palms and landed with a hard thud on the cobble floor, missing the cushion Maureen had been sitting on before Mother’s own. “When your Father takes you to where he does his science. Do you understand?”
For as long as she could remember, Maureen has been sick. Arthur had told her that when she was little and cried, things would break. Mirrors all over the nursery or in the hall adjacent would shatter. Arthur said priest after priest would come in and out, but no exorcism or blessing helped. But soon they stopped coming, and after a while, they stopped replacing the mirrors.
She didn’t know what the sickness was called, and she had never asked. All she knew was that it meant she could never see anyone who wasn’t Father or Mother or Arthur or Nanny and that the trees surrounding her family estate were her fence. She would go to sleep most nights praying to God, ‘Heal me, heal me, heal me.’
And that was what Father was trying to do. He would take Maureen around the back and to the cellar where he had many machines and wires, and in the middle, there would be her chair that smelt of leather and rubbing alcohol.
Did she like it? Well. It meant healing. It meant getting better.
Butsometimes it really, truly hurt.
Maureen must have spent too long to answer, so Mother did for her.
“What if I told you we — you could leave this place? And go somewhere without needles, and…and with other children who can do the things that you do?”
There were other kids sick like her? But wouldn’t that be a bit counterintuitive? Doesn’t being around others who are sick make the sick worse? This was all too much to fast, and Maureen desperately wanted clarification.
Arthur, who had since abandoned his task, was standing behind Mother now with the watering can held precariously.
“You want to leave him.” Arthur looked so serious but Arthur was never serious. He was a bit like a sunflower, tall and bright. He taught Maureen violin because he was thirteen whole years old and loads better. Every weekday, Nanny would escort her down the drive to wait for him to come back from school, and every day he’d bring her back some sort of pastry for her to eat on the walk back up.
Mother didn’t look at him. “Yes.” She was never usually so concise. It sent an unpleasant shiver down Maureen’s spine and somewhere deep down she knew this would not end well at all. “Yes, I think I do.”
“I’ve sent a letter,” Angel Draco draws Maureen’s attention back, “Someone should be coming to help. Soon. Very Soon.” The sun is going down already, only an hour and a half after Maureen had woken up. Not you? She wants to ask. He is looking out over the sprawling emptiness of the yard. There are no birds, no bugs; the air is still. Just rows of flowers and vegetation, a small stone fence, and then tall grass that stretches to the trees lining the forest. Back home, the grass was always kept. There were almost always lines from the groundskeeper’s mower. When the weather was nice, Nanny and she would read to each other in the fluffy grass. Here it was shriveled, and yellowing at the tips.
“In the meantime…,” he starts, but then stops. He turns and looks at Maureen. She had been nibbling on a biscuit and quickly put it down before wiping her fingertips on the napkin overwhelming her small lap. Manners, Mother would say, are the pillars of our self respect. How do you expect to command what you refuse to have? For the most part, Maureen could follow Mother’s maxims, but sometimes it took her a long while to digest.
She was not stupid, she wasn’t. It just took time.
Angel Draco is biting at his nail absentmindedly as he contemplates the setting sun. His jaw tenses before he huffs hard and sags in on himself. He mutters under his breath with his palms outstretched and waits.
Maureen wonders if she’s come to the wrong place. Wonders if she is not in Heaven, but the house of a madman. Then, there was a zipping sound of something moving fast, and in Angel Draco’s hand was a small box and a lighter. As he lights a cigarette, Maureen can’t help the way her jaw hangs, but he does not notice.
“Listen, you are the first person I’ve met in a long while and a child at that. I don’t quite know how to do this.” He looks confused. There is fear around his eyes, the same Mother gets during dinners Father shows up to. “I don’t even know your name.” It hits Maureen that they have not been properly introduced. She used to dream of meeting someone new. She’d practice in her vanity mirror for hours whispering Hello. My name is Maureen. What’s yours? Hello! How do you do? It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
“Maureen.” She says.
He hadn’t seemed to expect a response and choked on cigarette smoke.
“Maureen…?” His voice is hoarse. He uncrosses his legs and picks up his teacup before setting it back down again. Slowly he says, “It is very nice to meet you, Maureen. Do you have a surname?” There is something in the way he says it that makes her bristle and her face heat up. What a stupid question. Of course, she has a surname. Obviously.
“Obviously.”
His jaw clenches, and his eyes flutter closed for a second before opening again. “And it is…?”
Maureen almost doesn’t say. Such a stupid question.
She gives it ten seconds before replying.
“...Black. My name is Maureen Black.”