Chapter I #6
We were all quiet when Bernadette entered the kitchen.
There was a more formal dining room, but we always ate in the kitchen nook surrounded by windows.
Bernadette was wearing old flannel pants and a white T-shirt with pinprick holes all over the sleeves and collar.
With her pixie cut, her black eye, her one visible green iris—now she looked French.
“Bernadette, sweetheart,” Mom said.
“I got hungry,” she replied.
None of us knew what she’d talked to Mom and Dad about, just that she’d been in her room ever since.
“Fuck,” Clara said. “It looks amazing.”
“Language,” Dad said, without any real gumption.
“You like it?” Bernie asked, touching the ends of her hair.
“I love it,” Clara said. “You look so motherfucking—sorry, Dad—cool.”
“I’ve always wanted to do it,” Bernie said, then looked at me. “You talked me into it.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I said quickly, seeing Evelyn’s eyes widen.
Evelyn lifted her head and studied Bernadette quietly, then nodded. “It does. It really suits you.”
“Thanks, Evie,” Bernadette said, shrugging. “It’s just hair.”
She got herself a plate and took her empty seat between Clara and me. She pulled one of Clara’s braids.
“Should I get bangs?” Clara asked.
“Absolutely,” Bernadette said, at the same time Evie said, “No!”
“What is it with hair?” Dad murmured to no one in particular.
“You wouldn’t really understand,” Mom said. She herself had long, long hair that she mostly wore in a sloppy bun on the top of her head, unless she was going to a fancy event for her job, in which case she switched to an easy, elegant chignon. I loved that word. Chignon. It sounded so French.
“Is chignon French?” I asked.
Bernadette nodded enthusiastically (French in high school). “It means nape of the neck.”
“What’s a chignon?” Dad asked.
“You wouldn’t really understand,” Mom repeated. “Evelyn, darling, are you going to eat your potatoes or just continue to subject them to the wrath of your fork?”
Evelyn pushed her plate away, stood up from the table, and left the room. It happened very quickly. We were all sort of surprised, because even though it wasn’t uncommon for someone to storm away from a Farthing dinner, it usually wasn’t Evelyn.
“Did I miss something?” Dad asked.
“You wouldn’t really understand,” Clara said, beating Mom to it.
“Can’t I have just one night to be the upset one?” Bernadette said.
“Nobody can ever just be happy in this household,” Dad mused.
“You were upset last night, too, so,” Clara said.
Bernadette nodded. “Fair point, Cece.”
“Do I need to go and talk to her or do you think I can finish my dinner first?” Mom asked, an actual question that we took a moment to think about first.
“I think she’s upset about Bernadette’s hair,” I said. “No offense, Bernie. I don’t think she likes it.”
“None taken,” Bernadette said. “Evelyn doesn’t love change. She gets that from you, Dad.”
He pointed to himself, exaggeratedly admonished, like, me?
We all nodded.
He shrugged.
We went back to our dinners.
I knocked on Evelyn’s bedroom door after dinner and when she didn’t answer, I let myself in.
I could tell she’d been crying because her windows were open.
She didn’t like to cry unless her windows were open.
And I could tell Henry had been there because it smelled like jasmine, although he wasn’t there now.
“Where’s Henry?” I asked.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just asking. Jesus, Evelyn, what is going on with you?”
She was sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, between the two windows. There was a strong breeze and her hair blew around her face. She sighed deeply and I watched her chest expand and contract.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I know I’ve been cranky.”
“Are you really this mad at me about the hair thing?”
“I’m not mad at you at all,” she said.
“Well? What’s going on then?”
I sat down on the bed and leaned against the headboard, snuggling my feet under her feet. She always had warm feet.
“It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“Something to do with Bernadette?”
She looked at me sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, it started last night. Are you upset that she’s home?”
She blinked, blinked, blinked, the rapid-fire blinking that usually meant someone was trying not to cry.
“No,” she said finally. “Of course not. I mean … It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?”
“It’s just. Seeing her … If she can’t do it…”
“Do what, Evie?”
“College. School. Life.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“She’s the strongest one of us, and she came home.”
“Right, but it’s not … It’s not going to be, like, permanent. She went back before, remember?”
Halfway through her freshman year, Bernadette had come back for Christmas break and then flatly refused to return to school.
She’d missed the first two weeks of her second semester.
She’d thrown a full glass of water at Clara’s head when Clara asked her to pass the salt at Christmas dinner.
Like, not just the water. The glass, too.
Dad had stood up from his chair, very calmly, walked over to Bernadette, pulled her up by her arm, and gently led her upstairs.
Clara had cried. Mom had comforted her. Evelyn and I had stayed very still, very quiet, listening to Bernadette’s echoing sobs as Dad brought her to her room.
We didn’t see her again until New Year’s Day.
She came downstairs wearing a crushed green velvet dress.
Clara kept one eye on Bernadette’s water glass throughout that dinner, and afterward, when Mom brought out dessert, Bernadette had apologized to everyone, but mostly to Clara, even though she insisted, and she just wanted to make this clear, that she hadn’t actually meant or tried to hit her.
“This feels different,” Evelyn said.
“Different because she hasn’t attempted to murder one of us yet?”
“Don’t be mean,” she said, but smiled.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Next year. Graduating high school. Moving on, moving out. I’m not ready,” she said.
“Take a gap year,” I said, mimicking the wide-eyed innocence Clara managed to have every single time she gave one of us that suggestion.
But Evie didn’t smile. She just closed her eyes and took a long, thin sip of air. When she opened her eyes again, they were wet.
“I don’t want to leave,” she said in a very small voice.
“You don’t have to leave, Evie,” I said.
“No, I mean. Ever.”
“Well … You don’t want to live with Mom and Dad forever.”
“This house,” she insisted. “I don’t want to leave this house.”
“This house? I mean, it’s nice, sure, but won’t it be a relief when you don’t have to climb three flights of stairs to get a pair of socks?”
“You’re being so obtuse,” she said, almost smiling.
It clicked for me then. The smell of jasmine. “Henry?”
She bit her bottom lip so hard that when she stopped biting it, I could see her teeth marks in the red flesh.
“He doesn’t have anyone else,” she said, her voice quivering, the tears welling up in her eyes.
“Well, he has me,” I said. “And Clara.”
“And when you leave? When you both leave?”
I honestly hadn’t thought about it. It had never really occurred to me, what Henry’s life (well, death) had been like before the four of us. Or what it would be like after we’d gone.
“I mean … We can’t just not live our lives. Because of Henry,” I said, feeling like a huge asshole even as I said it. “I don’t mean … I mean, I’m sorry. I know that’s terrible, but … You can’t just…”
It clicked for me again. Puzzle pieces falling into place.
“Oh,” I said. “You love him.”
The tears were spilling out of her eyes now, running down her cheeks, and it occurred to me then just how much our house full of girls cried.
“I don’t … I don’t know,” she said. “I just know that I don’t want to leave him, okay? I’m not ready to leave him.”
“Well you have … some time,” I said. Not the greatest advice in the world, but to be fair, I felt very put on the spot. Evelyn had a crush on Henry? My sister was in love with a ghost? I needed a few minutes to process that information before I came up with any advice worth giving.
She didn’t say anything. She just nodded her head a little.
“Maybe you’ll…” I didn’t finish that sentence.
What was I going to say? Maybe you’ll fall out of love with the ghost that haunts our house?
Maybe you’ll fall in love with someone else?
To be honest, I was surprised I had never picked up on the fact that my sister was having a secret love affair with the spirit that haunted our four-story brownstone.
But maybe I shouldn’t have been that surprised.
Evelyn was the only one of us who could actually touch Henry.
I’d always thought it had something to do with their proximity, the bedroom that was now hers but had once been his.
The rest of us, if we brushed against him, felt only a slight thickening in the air.
A coldness. To Evelyn, he had always been as solid as anyone else.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. She took my hand and then crawled slowly toward me, so we ended up hip to hip. She put her head on my shoulder.
“Please don’t tell them,” she said.
“I won’t.”
I saw ghosts and my sister was in love with one.
If only Persephone could see us now.