Trigger warning: (not graphic) mentions of abuse and addiction. Just in case. Because I love you all.
Back pressed up against the door, I cradled my burning face in my hands. Dinner had been humiliating. Not that anyone had spoken to me, of course, or even about me. Aside from Henry's knee brushing mine accidentally under the table, or Mary's barely-hidden grin, everyone had ignored me as they usually did. All was normal in the household Bertram. But the knowledge of my mistake, and the fact that other people in the room were aware of it, were amused by it, was too much. I sighed, a sound that went on and on and on. Maybe I should just never leave my room. Nothing could happen to me if no one saw me during the day.
Maybe then Nola would be happy.
She had certainly been excited to see Mary. Until dinner, I hadn't realized how much the adults around the table loved the Crawfords—truly loved them—how much their presence brightened up the dull everyday workings of Mansfield life for everyone else. Until dinner, I hadn't realized that anyone else considered Mansfield to be dull. It was something we had in common, even if they would be insulted if I suggested it.
My mind flicked back to my ill-advised kiss with Henry under the tree, and I burned with embarrassment. What had I been thinking? Of all the wrong people in the world to kiss, of all the—what was it? Six billion? Eight? in the world, I had to choose Henry Crawford. I knew what he was. I knew how he was. I had been lonely, yes, and I had been upset and scared, but I had never before stooped to the level of idiocy where I was hovering now.
I groaned.
"Fawn? Are you okay?" It was Mary's voice, calling through the door.
I froze. Maybe if I stayed very still…but no, she knew I was in here. She wouldn't leave until I answered.
Still, I hesitated, making her wait, feeling some slight satisfaction at not jumping up to give her what she wanted.
She waited almost exactly thirty seconds. "Fawn? I heard you in there."
Sighing, I stood up, straightening my locked knees with a grimace. The door squeaked open and then she was in my room, looking at me with a wrinkle of concern between her eyebrows. Just like Ned, I caught myself thinking, then resented the thought, and resented my resentment.
You're a mess, Flannery Price.
"So." Mary cocked her head to one side, trying to get a good look at me in the darkening gloom of my unlit bedroom. "About earlier."
I waited, body tensed. I didn't want to talk about earlier.
"Sorry about it. I just…I don't know, you've never seemed like you really…and then…Sorry. Not clear." She waved her hands in front of her face as if to ward away what she'd just said. I stared at her, startled. I'd never seen her like this before.
"So. Start again." She smoothed herself back into her earnest, socially adept self. "Hi. My name is Mary," a grin leaked around the edges of her serious expression. "I would like to apologize to you for my earlier behavior. It was unbecoming, and made you uncomfortable."
I waited. She waited, too, still with the grin hiding just beneath the surface. I didn't think it was particularly funny. She sighed and, adopting a more serious tone, said, "Look, Fawn, I never wanted to make you uncomfortable. I was just surprised. And, I have to say, really happy, too."
I stared at her, my mouth falling open just slightly. She watched me, eyebrows lifting with amusement. "Weird, right? But here's the thing: I know you're young, and I know you have your fair share of challenges, and I know things can be hard for you sometimes, but I gotta tell you that my brother is way more into you than I have ever seen him be into anyone else. He's like a little kid when he talks about you."
Nothing she said made any sense, and I waited again for the punchline to come when she would laugh at my credulity. It never did.
"Fawn, you can't be serious. You saw how he was with Mireille. Is he anything like that with you?"
That point didn't make sense, either. Mireille was Mireille, and I, clearly, was not. Why would someone like Henry Crawford be the same for her and for me, when we were so different? And why, really, most importantly, would Henry Crawford be attracted to me in the first place? Unless it was because there was no one else around for him to focus on. That would probably explain a lot, come to think of it.
"He won't stop talking about you. He never talks about anyone he dates. He's crazy about you. Which, yeah, I know, weird because you're a lot younger, but you've got an old soul, you know that? You're pretty damn wise. You should think about that."
What it was, precisely, that she wanted me to think about eluded me. My wisdom? Henry? How young I was compared to everyone else? I wished I had the kind of personality that could throw people out of my room. I wished, for the first time, that I had been raised by my mother. She would have taught me to be rude to people. I could use a little rudeness.
Immediately after that thought, chagrin swept through me. There was a reason my mother hadn't raised me. I wouldn't be rude. I'd be dead.
I couldn't wish that kind of behavior on Mary, even when she made no sense.
Mary sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Sorry, honey. I know this is all new for you. And confusing. And weird. I get it. I just came from seeing Ned, and—" She looked at me, watched me try to not react to hearing Ned's name. "You miss him, too, don't you? I miss him. I missed him when we were together in New York. He's—well, he's happy. He's in his element, having all these philosophical, metaphysical conversations with grumpy old people all day. He's reading the Bible and writing essays on it and, God, I don't know, probably saving his soul and having the time of his life, and I was just so bored for most of the time, so I'm probably trying to get my brother together with you so I can ignore how I feel about Ned. He was happy to see me, don't get me wrong, and I was happy to see him, but it was different, because he was in his world and I was this guest in it, and I kept wishing he'd be something normal, like a lawyer or a professor or something, but instead he's going to seminary, and I could feel people's eyes judging us every time we kissed. Do you think you can talk to him about it? I tried, but he wouldn't listen to me. He'd listen to you, though."
I tore my eyes away from her, walking toward the window to look out over the garden. Even the small amount of interest I'd had in the conversation before had withered away into nothing. I didn't want to hear about Ned, not like this. Ned, who still hadn't called. Did he think I would try to persuade him to be a lawyer, if he called me? Did he think I would try to get him to listen to what Mary wanted? I wasn't sure. I hadn't been sure before, and I definitely wasn't sure now.
Mary was in love with Ned. I could hear it in her voice, see it on her face. Ned was in love with Mary. I knew it by the way he almost never talked about her with me. He talked about everyone and everything else. If I loved Ned the way I said I did, I should want him to be happy. Mary made him happy. I should want that for him.
I was having a hard time being loving. I was having a hard time being accepting. I was having a hard time with Mary.
Was it just that she loved the same man as me? Or that she'd appeared right when I'd figured it out? Was it that she was beautiful and whole and smart and that people loved her?
What was the matter with her? What was the matter with me?
It had started to rain. The tree under which Henry had kissed me was bowing its leaves to the fall of raindrops, the moisture giving the grass a silvery sheen. The sky looked oddly light, as if once it rid itself of its burden it would fly off, or be burned away by the reemergence of the sun.
I hate it here. The thought came unbidden, but came it did, and it was stuck. The realization made me grip the windowsill, swallowing and swallowing until the lump in my throat dissolved. I hate it here. I want to leave.
Except I had nowhere to go.
"Fawn?" I didn't turn. I wasn't ready to look at anyone.
"Fawn, I'm sorry. I forgot. I keep forgetting. You don't need to talk to Ned for me."
I nodded, my back still to her.
The silence stretched on. Rain pelted the glass in front of my face.
I had nowhere to go. Nowhere I was brave enough to go, anyway. And no money to get there. And no skills for once I'd arrived.
I was stuck here. I was stuck here, probably forever.
"Fawn? Did you paint these?" The question came suddenly, and it took me a moment to realize what she'd said. Once it hit, I whipped around to find her knee deep in the debris of my closet, holding up two paintings, one in each hand, and looking down at a third. She turned back to look at me with a fierce kind of joy, and expression mixed with true wonder.
I stood frozen, my heart beating through my ribcage. No, it said, wrong, it said, don't touch. It doesn't belong to you.
I had never felt less safe. There was no way I could say those things.
Mary turned to face me, holding each painting with a kind of reverence.
"Why didn't anyone tell me you could paint like this?"
Here is a story, as true as I can tell it:
The sisters went on their separate ways one morning in late August. Neither of them travelled very far from home. Neither of them went home again.
The elder sister became friends with the kind of people she had always looked at with envy. Her first boyfriend drove a Rolls. The second drove an Aston Martin. It mattered to get them in order. When she was old enough to get married without being trashy or stupid, but still young enough to not be called desperate, she married her third boyfriend, a man whose family owned four or five islands in the South Pacific, islands that had been passed down through the family since the 1880s.
Old money.
She had wanted to enjoy her fortune, and for a while she did. They travelled to Paris every year. They spent winter in the Alps. They went to the theater. She had a new gown for every black tie event. There were several black tie events. She drank good wine and ate excellent food and was thoroughly satisfied, even when her husband decided he wanted a career at a university, of all places. They would live near his family. His family were the right kind of people. She was sated, if not satisfied.
She wasn't sure if she'd never loved her husband, or if she fell out of love with him when they stopped travelling together. She wasn't sure if it had been him alone or him and his money that had been attractive to her. She found she didn't particularly care. Nor did she particularly care for the sedate, boring life that came with being attached to the academic year.
What she did love, though, were her nieces. She had two, and two nephews as well, but she'd never connected with boys the way she had with girls. And her nieces were beautiful—intelligent, funny, well-dressed, proper. They were the right sort of woman. Or would be, with enough guidance. She found a joy in those girls the way their mother, drug-addled and depressed, never could. She found a peace with them the way she never had with her husband, not even in Paris. Not even drinking pink Egly-Ouriet from impeccable stemware.
The elder sister had pursued money and had fallen in love instead. Not carnal, romantic love, but a lighter, more profound, more interesting kind of love. She had never wanted children of her own, but the elder sister didn't need her own children. She had her nieces, her real nieces. Her beautiful, clever, well brought up nieces.
The right people.
The younger sister looked for love, and looked for satisfaction. She couldn't tell the difference. Her first boyfriend told her he loved her, then left her. Her second boyfriend was with her for two years, but was also with someone else. She started drinking on the nights her left her alone. She hated being alone. Her third boyfriend, the sweet, blond Will with his Irish snub nose and the trashy Southie accent, would never leave her. Not ever. She loved that about him. And she loved the first baby they had together, a little earlier than the elder sister would have approved of. She loved that baby, but didn't love the way he cried, and didn't love the way she couldn't go out at night after they had him, and didn't love his temper tantrums. She didn't love the way he dragged her out of bed at night, when her head was hammering and her stomach was turning over and he needed something but she didn't understand his baby talk. She didn't love the way she lost her temper with him. Every so often, at first, then every day.
And then there was the second one. Quieter than the first, and just as cute, with her big eyes and brown hair, and her father's cheekbones, but just as needy. She wouldn't even cry when she wanted something. She'd just look at you, and look at you, and there was no way of telling what she wanted, and she wouldn't tell you, and then she wouldn't speak at all, just stare.
Younger sister lost her temper more and more, until she made the first baby cry, and her husband swear, and through it all the second baby just stared and stared.
Younger sister left the house more often. If she'd been more educated, maybe she could have helped her second baby. At least, that's what she told herself. If she'd known more. If she had more money. If her husband had more class. If she had more options. Instead she had nothing. Just a beautiful, drunk husband and a beautiful, angry son and a beautiful, silent daughter, and it was too much. Younger sister left the house to go drink where little eyes couldn't watch her. She avoided her daughter's eyes. She stopped even trying to play with her.
None of that made any difference. Younger sister was still angry.
Angry, and, it turned out, violent.
Which was a surprise even to her, though it felt far more powerful than searching for love ever had.