14 Girl #3
Mid-May; two months earlier
It was as if he magically knew when she was getting ready to drift into another realm, into death, that he came to the boat to rescue her.
He told her he had learned his lesson, by what had happened to the girls before her.
He would never let her die on the boat. He told her the woman had gotten very angry with him.
She had taught the girl everything she knew, it had taken a lot of effort and training at the Finishing School, and the girl was valuable to them.
So he would unlatch the companionway door, enter the cabin, kneel by the mattress, speak to her in a low, soothing voice.
He would remove the restraints and gently wash her places where the metal cuffs had chafed her skin.
He always brought fresh water and an antiseptic that stung.
He would fill the cup and tip it against her lips.
He would bring a dark-green thermos and feed her consommé with a silver spoon, and she would sip hungrily, as if she were a wounded bird being fed with a dropper.
The woman had trained her, but she hadn’t said anything about handcuffs or being fed with a dropper.
She had left those parts out. The training had only been about parties and gowns and makeup and conversation and promises of trips to the island and to Europe and sailing on yachts and how the men loved it when you acted shy.
Sometimes this man spoke to her in French, using a phrase here and there.
He told her that he would take her to France—to Alsace or the Loire Valley—places where the story began, where chateaus—real castles—were located.
She had studied French in school—she had read novels in French such as L’étranger by Albert Camus and Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan; poems by Francois Villon and Arthur Rimbaud.
His accent was terrible, and she had to pretend to take him seriously.
Then, when she was strong enough, he would blindfold her again.
He would tape her mouth shut. He would lead her into the fresh air, across the dock’s rough boards, across the grass, and up the hill.
They would enter the house. She had never seen the house from the outside, but she sensed it was grand.
When they reached her bedroom, and he untied the blindfold and ripped the tape off her mouth, she could see, feel, and smell all the beautiful things.
He reminded her the walls were made of stone and the locked door lined with lead, and that even if she screamed, no one would hear her.
Although there was no real light in the boat, here in the mansion, in her special bedroom, there was plenty.
A chandelier with crystal prisms sent rainbows dancing all around the room.
Gilded lamps stood on ornate white tables on either side of the big bed.
The walnut headboard was carved with flowers and angels, antiqued with gold.
The mattress was thick and so comfortable, covered with crisp white sheets and a featherlight white down comforter.
The floors were polished wood, covered with plush blue-and-white Aubusson rugs that he told her were very old.
He had bought them at auction, just for her.
Or for the girl before her, she was never really sure.
There was a marble fireplace with brass andirons shaped like monsters, and when the fire was lit, their eyes glowed orange and flames shot from their mouths.
Above the mantel hung a black-and-white photo—a still from the film they always watched.
They read the books, too, and sometimes the imagery seemed so different, it was hard to believe it was the same story.
She felt nervous, waiting for the party to begin.
One wall had bookshelves from the floor to ceiling, and they were filled with hundreds of books.
Novels, volumes of poetry, atlases, books about history, nature, dreams, psychology, travel, and more.
She read all the time, sometimes a book every day.
Mostly, the books were about them—about him.
Well, not him by name—but his inspiration for all of this, for the gifts he gave her.
He gave her a diamond ring, to wear on her left hand.
It was too big, so they made it fit by wrapping a piece of adhesive tape around the band.
The stone was enormous, shaped like a pear.
But she wondered if he had once given the ring to a girl who was bigger than she was, who the ring would fit better.
Had that been the girl who had died on the boat?
The girl who had scratched marks into the glass of the porthole?
Her reading pleased him. In the days before the party, he would visit her in the evening.
He brought her dinner, served on a tray with gold-rimmed porcelain plates and sterling silver forks embossed with a coat of arms—he never gave her knives.
If dinner was meat, he would cut it up for her himself.
Then he would sit in the silk-covered armchair by the fire and watch her eat.
After dinner, they had tea from a blue-and-white teapot, and he asked her to tell him about what she had been reading.
Especially what he called the legacy books: the various editions of “La Belle et la Bête.” He loved when she read in French; he kept interrupting her to make sure she knew that he was her special one, that other men might attend the party, but she had to know that she was his.
Of course he didn’t know that all the men wanted that, and the woman had trained her to make them believe that each was the most important.
There were several editions of “La Belle et la Bête,” each one an antique volume with pages as fragile as butterfly wings.
She liked the oldest version, printed forty-nine years before the French Revolution.
So did he. Occasionally they watched the film—the original, an old black-and-white print, in French.
He told her that ordinary girls—the other girls who came to the party—liked the animated version, but that she was not an ordinary girl.
There were tall windows with long pale-blue velvet draperies tied back with gold cords.
But the window glass was wavy, the kind that gave privacy, that allowed light to enter the room but did not allow her to see anything outside.
The only thing she was sure of was that a tall tree grew close to the house, and sometimes she saw the branches moving in the wind, and the light would cast shadows of the leaves on the blue-and-white carpet.
She imagined breaking the window glass and jumping on the branch closest to the wall, shinnying down and escaping.
The woman had instructed her about many things.
There weren’t many rules in her bedroom, but there was one that had to be obeyed without fail: She had to close the curtains at night—or anytime she turned the lamps on.
If she did not obey, if she forgot, she would be taken to the boat and left there until she was too weak to lift her water glass.
So she never forgot and always obeyed.
He told her he would love her until one of them died.
That the rule about the curtains was to protect her—to protect him too.
To make sure they could stay together. Because if light escaped the room, and someone saw the windows illuminated, they would be torn apart forever.
He said that the last girl who had stayed here—not the party visitors, but one like her, who had been his special girl—had disobeyed and opened the curtains after dark.
He said that after she did that, she had gone away.
Gone where? she asked.
It doesn’t matter, he said. The point is, we couldn’t be together after that. I don’t want that to happen to us.
She acted as if it would be the worst thing in the world, to be sent away from him.
But she didn’t feel that way at all. Sometimes, when she lay awake in the warm bed, she felt as if she might explode with anxiety and rage.
She would think of things he had told her: that tragedies sometimes happened on the boat.
That she should be glad it was dark in there, so she couldn’t see dark swipes on the walls, where the woman had tried to clean up the blood.
And that tree outside the window would beckon.
He had said there were layers of disobeying, that not closing the curtains was just the first layer. He said that she wouldn’t want to find out what the deeper layers were, as Girl #2 had found out before her.
Did Girl #2 drown? she asked.
No, she died in a different way.
What about Girl #1? she asked.
She is fine, he said, she is just fine. But in the way he blinked hard and looked away, she didn’t believe him.
He would always assure her that she was his favorite by far, the most beautiful of all the girls who had come before her.
He would tell her that her beauty was intoxicating, more powerful than the richest wine.
His words slipped and slid; he couldn’t keep track of his lies.
He told her whatever he thought she wanted to hear—if only he knew how pathetic she considered him, that she never believed one word he said.
She would think of the boat, and the restraints, and how she knew the girl before her had died there.
And those thoughts led to this plush bedroom—all the luxuries, even the marble bathroom and the lavender-scented bath oil, and the thick white towels—and she felt as if this bedroom was even worse than the dank, cold, smelly place with its rust-red streaks and grimy windows.
He told her that this bedroom was her castle—their castle—but she knew that wasn’t true.
It was her prison, her tomb. He said they would be together until one of them died, and deep down, she knew that she would die in here or in the place, just like Girl #2.
Even if she tried to jump to the tree branch, it was a long way down to the ground; she could fall and die.
But she could try.
And then he told her how she could be set free. He told her she only had to do one thing.
It was time for her to graduate. She would no longer be a pupil; she would be a teacher.
She pretended to go along with him, because maybe “graduation” would take her to a different place, somewhere she could escape from. And she would take him down—for herself, and for all the women.