13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [71]
Not by me, anyway.
Our Father who art in heaven, Amen.
By some prodigious effort of will, I fling myself out. Out and away. I float. Oh, be in your own body for a second—breathe.
My name is Trevor Neville Stratton. What happens next after Louise is kissed by her father is not in the documentation.
It is possible that she yields entirely to his kiss. It is possible that her body goes limp, and that her father holds up her weight as he stands up from the chair, and turns her around so that the dining table presses against the back of her upper thighs. It is possible that he hoists her up and pushes her back on this table, parting her legs and pressing himself against the heat of her as he grows hard, readying himself to take his daughter the way a man usually takes his wife. It is possible that she breaks away from his kiss. It is possible that she gasps in horror and puts her hand up to her sullied lips before turning from him and running away before he can say a word. It is possible that she locks herself in her room and cries for hours, cries so hard that she vomits into a trash can, hoping to God that He will obliterate the soul-rattling memory of this kiss the way He seems to like obliterating everything else.
I cannot know; I am not her.38 I can merely conjecture because such singular occurrences are not in the record.39
40
I am
No Where (help me!)41
My name is Trevor Stratton and today is—uh—
Calm yourself, Trevor. Still your tremor.
My name is Trevor Neville Stratton and today is—
Today is
a Friday in the middle of an unusually warm November in the year 1928. This is what the book tells you, the same little book that Louise marked with an X on June 19, and another X precisely one month later. Her period had been due on June 19, which she realized with much trepidation a few days later when it didn’t come. The hope of it was a strain to her: Could it be after all this time? A happy accident? She watched her body, waiting for nausea, or tender breasts, or any sign. It told her nothing. Then on July 19, blood came—a great deal of it, with much pain. She suspected that perhaps the gush was not late menses but an early miscarriage; it didn’t matter, the result was the same. It was not even worth mourning this nonexistent incipient life. Still, the idea of it rippled through her and left its mark: the two Xs bracketing her month of foolish hope, the only days she singled out in Cleper’s little calendar.
This morning, on Friday, November 16, the rising sun is attempting to pierce a misty morning, and Louise hovers in a space in between. She cannot tell whether she is asleep or awake, but she is quite certain the illness that was beginning to manifest the previous night is now blooming fully upon her. She is burning and freezing at the same time; her half-formed thoughts race so fast through her head that she cannot gain purchase on any of them. As her limbs tremble, she is enveloped by a roar. At first it sounds like the rushing of water, but eventually it resolves into a crackling hiss with jumbled voices in it, something like a radio with several stations coming in at once. The voices resolve into a chorus—
C’est la Carmencita.
Non, non, ce n’est pas elle…42
The fever surges and Louise’s entire body twitches. She whimpers. All the muscle fibers inside her are wound so tightly that she is afraid that they will start snapping one by one, infinitesimally tearing her apart.
L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser—43
A flower is tossed by a slowly arcing arm, serpentine and suggestive. Louise is suddenly so hot that she throws her covers off.
Si il y a des sorcières,
cette fille-là en est une.44
The flower is infinitely delicate. A breath of wind could cruelly rip off its soft, tender petals (no, no, don’t fall apart), and there is a burst of electricity in the hollow under Louise’s heart.
(please)
“LOUISE?”
At the sound of her name, her eyes pop open. There is someone in the room, someone with a male voice—an unfamiliar male voice.