The Glaire woman watched me solidly, stopping her stare onlywhen she blinked. I felt I should say sorry, and I didn’t know why. I lookedaround the room for a crate of bones. She coughed and I found my eyes on hers,snagged like her face was a fishhook. She had no brows or lashes or softness.Her skin stretched thinly over crow-like features. She gleamed where her fleshslipped loose to reveal bone. If she ever smiled, I thought she would crackapart.
I said, “What do you want with me?”
“Breakfast at 10, luncheon at 2, dinner at 8,” said theGlaire woman. “Go anywhere you like. But not my nursery.” Her eyes watched thedoors lining the hallway, then she stared back at me. “Not my nursery,” shesaid again, decisively.
◊
I had a room on the third floor, an octagonal little chamberlit with candles on brass hooks, the scents of verbena and cedar so strong Icould taste them. I slept because I could not think what else to do, and woketo find the chest of drawers full of clothes my size and a coffee tray steamingexpectantly beside me. I was relieved, I was in dread. If not last night, someother night. If she only wanted a husband—how impossible, that the Glaire womanshould only want a husband—or if she wanted my bones before anything else, Iwas still hers, corrupted by association, never again to belong to thenot-Glaire world.
I got sick in a porcelain toilet bowl where two dead ratsswam, their limbs interlocked, and wondered if fear or the heavily perfumed airhad been responsible for my nausea. I changed out of my father’s clothes intohers, their newness scratching my shoulders. I poured my coffee black to getthe taste of sick out of my mouth and watched out the dirty window to theground below. I thought, today perhaps she is dead. Today perhaps she will tellme she does not want me, and my debt is paid, and I can go home.
When I got the courage to go downstairs, the morning hadslipped by and I was coming up against the backside of luncheon. The Glairewoman sat at the head of the table in her dining room, eating strips of rabbitin cranberry sauce. She had no cook here that I had seen, so she must haveassembled the meal herself. Reluctantly I ate, telling myself things like keepyour strength up and make her think you want to be here. By now Ihad already decided that I would go as soon as I got the chance, leave town,leave the continent, sneak onto a cargo ship bound for somewhere I could forgetthat my father was going to pay his own debt, since I wouldn’t.
“You won’t see very much of me, after today,” she said.
That forced my eyes up from my plate. “Why not?” I said,again looking at length on her too-wide eyes and hairless brow.
“I must find a father for my child,” she went on.
I felt a stab of something like embarrassment, likeresentment, like hurt. Here I was trussed up like a lamb on an altar holding aknife to my own throat, and she didn’t want me.
“Did your mother tell you,” I began dizzily. I felt I couldnot stop my mouth from moving. “Do you not know—”
“My mother taught me,” she said, “never to disappoint aman.”
What a thing for the Glaire woman to say. “What do youmean?” I managed, staring down at my plate and wondering what hid inside thatrich tart sauce, that made me open my mouth when I should have kept quiet.
“Do you think your father was the first man to get curiousabout the Glaire woman?” she said. “Boarded-up windows, thrice padlocked doors,blackberries tangling on the walk, and they want you all the more. Promisingtheir bodies, their souls, their sons. They’d do anything to get inside here.”She shut her mouth, opened it for a moment, then shut it again.
“Naturally,” I said, understanding not at all. I would go toCalcutta, I thought, or Amsterdam, or Saigon, or somewhere very far. I wouldchange my name, rub ink into the roots of my hair, break my own nose twice. Noone would know that the hideous old Glaire woman had the perfect chance todevour me, paused with her fork poised over my heart, and said, “No, thankyou.”
◊
I shivered at the dock, a job application in my hands,feeling weak, feeling distracted. If I came back, it would take me. Shewouldn’t but the house would. It had opened its mouth to me. The woman said nobut the house didn’t. If the house had me, she would have to have me too. Idropped the paper on the wet dock and saw the print blur, redacting my name, myage, my address. The big man in his fish-scented boots regarded me withsomething like pity and said, “Go home, let Mother tuck you in,” and I laughed,watching my breath fog the air, watching my hands shake as I pushed the paperback at him.
I would go nowhere, I would change no names. I had notrealized before I left the house. I knew now. I hurried down the dock, runningwhen I felt steady enough on my feet, then running when I didn’t, stillquicker, halfway into a crawl before I reached the house. I threw myself on thebrick walk and felt blood drip hotly down my chin as I stared up at theblack-eyed creature, magnificent, voluptuous, who waited for me to come home.The clouds passed frothily around her face and the moonlight shone white on herclapboard sides, and I staggered to her, leaning on the back door until at lastthe old hinges gave and I was inside, full of her scents and sounds, doubledover with how my adoring hurt.
◊
I woke in my bed feeling hungover, my head reeling, my bodytoo heavy to move. The ceiling spun in slow circles. The candles were not
