A Great and Terrible Beauty
"Is your mother coming this year, Fee?" Pippa asks.
"She's visiting friends. In Italy," Felicity says, finishing her crown. She places it on her head like a fairy queen's.
"What about your father?"
"I don't know. I hope so. I'd love for the three of you to meet him, and for him to see that I have actual flesh-and-blood friends." She gives a sad smile. "I think he was afraid I'd become one of those sullen girls who never get invited to anything. I was a bit that way after Mother"
Left.
That's the word that hangs in the air, unspoken. It joins shame, secrets, fear, visions, and epilepsy. So many things unsaid weight the distance between us. The more we try to close the gap, the more its heaviness pushes us apart.
"How long has it been since you've seen him?" I ask.
"Three years."
"I'm certain he'll come this time, Fee," Pippa says. "And he'll be very proud to see what a lady you've become."
"I'd loan you my new kid gloves but my mother expects to see them on my fingers as proof that we're somebody," Pippa sighs.
"What of your family?" Felicity turns her sharp eyes on me. "Are they coming? The mysterious Doyles?"
My father hasn't written in two weeks. I think of my grandmothers last letter:
Dearest Gemma,
I hope this letter finds you well I've had a touch of neuralgia but you shouldn't worry as the doctor says it's merely the strain of caring for your father and will abate when you are home again and able to help shoulder the burden as a good daughter should. Your father seems to be comforted by the garden . He sits for long stretches on the old bench there. He's given to fits of staring and nodding off but otherwise is at peace . Do not fret about us. I'm sure my shortness of breath is nothing at all We shall see you in two weeks' time along with Tom, who sends his love and wishes to know if you've found him a suitable wife yet, though I feel certain he said this in jest.
Fondly,
I close my eyes and try to erase it all. "Yes, they're coming."
I shrug. "I haven't given it much thought."
"Our mysterious Gemma," Felicity says, appraising me a bit too closely for comfort. "We'll find out what you're hiding from us yet."
Pippa joins in. "A crazy aunt in the attic, perhaps."
"Or a sexually depraved fiend who preys on young girls." Felicity waggles her eyebrows. Pippa screeches in mock horror but she's titillated by the very idea.
"You forgot the hunchback," I add with a false laugh. I'm widening the distance between us, sending them off to another shore.
"A sexually depraved hunchback!" Pippa squeals. She is most definitely recovered. We all laugh. The woods swallow our sounds in echoing gulps, but we've startled the younger girls across the lake. In their crisp white pinafores, they seem like misplaced loons dotting the landscape. They blink at us, then turn their heads and resume their chatter.
The September sky is uncertain. Gray and threatening one moment. A patchy, promising blue the next. Felicity lays her head back against the grassy bank. Her hair splays out and around the center of her pale face like a mandala. "Do you suppose we'll have any fun at Lady Wellstone's Spiritualist meeting tonight?"
"My father says Spiritualism is nothing but quackery," Pippa says. She's rocking the rowboat slightly with her bare foot. "What is it exactly again?"
We both sit straight up, thinking the same thing.
"Do you think" she starts.
".. that she could contact Sarah or Mary for us?" I finish. Why hasn't this thought occurred, to me before?
"Brilliant!" Pippa's face clouds over. "But how will you get to her?" She's right, of course. Madame Romanoff would never call on a pack of schoolgirls. We've got about as much chance of communing with the dead as we do of sitting in Parliament.
"I'll do the asking, if you'll help me get to Madame Romanoff," I say.
" Leave it all to me," Felicity says, grinning.
"If we leave it to you, we'll end up in the soup, I fear," Pippa giggles.