Chapter Four, part two

Charlie lowered his clarinet. “Is someone there?”

“Yes.” It was velvet voice. Violet. Her footsteps sounded on the tile floor as she took a few steps into the room, paused, then walked swiftly to a seat near his. He heard the cushion exhale as she sat. “I’m Violet Van Waters. I don’t think we’ve met properly.”

“No,” he said, sitting up straighter, “except that I was an ass to you the other night.”

“Oh—” That seemed to fluster her. She sputtered through a response. “No, it was me, I…I didn’t realize. About your sight. I do apologize.”

He sighed. People never knew how to act. He waved his hand as if it was the least of his worries. Which was ridiculous. His blindness was the worry that tore at him day and night. Though it was nice to pretend otherwise.

“Has…has your sight been impaired for very long?”

Oh, so she wasn’t going to shy away from the topic. How refreshing. “Since January. Five months.”

She inhaled audibly. “That’s a tremendous shock for a very short time.”

Every day, he mentally agreed. A tremendous shock every day. “I would be lying if I said I was used to it. I still see things in my dreams—bright colors and people. It’s a never-ending surprise that I can’t turn the light on in the morning and flood out the dark.”

“You must have been so frightened at first,” she whispered. Was she leaning toward him? He hoped he was looking at her face.

“Terrified. There’s something about living in darkness—things feel both very far away and very close at the same time. So close I can barely breathe sometimes. But far away, too, even when people are right nearby.” He remembered his family’s visits to see him at Presbyterian Hospital when he’d first returned, how lonely their presence had made him. Not being able to see their faces had gnawed at the ground under his feet. Of course, it didn’t help that they hadn’t touched him. He felt less alone sitting here, with her, than he did in a room with his own parents.

“I—that sounds overwhelming. I can’t imagine,” she said. And yet, he thought, she’d done a better job of trying than most people. “Do you mind talking about it?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Do you know that, before Earl told me, I hadn’t realized you couldn’t see? How do you get around? You don’t carry a stick or anything?”

He felt a grin bubbling up from his feet. How hard he had worked in hopes that one—just one—person wouldn’t notice! “I count. Steps. And to be fair, I try to position myself before people enter a room, so they don’t see me fumbling for the furniture. When I first came here, I thought my head would explode. A new house. One so big. But I have most of the rooms paced out now. It’s something to do when everyone else is outdoors. I can’t read, you see. If I’m not talking with someone or playing,” he lifted his clarinet, “I’ve got very little to do.”

He didn’t add that people hardly ever wanted to talk to him. At home, his mother liked him to keep quiet, out of the way. That was why he’d jumped at the chance to come here—though naturally he’d been nervous. But his rationale was that if Earl Tibbens was here, there would be gin. Truckloads of it. So, if nothing else, Charlie could wrap himself in the cotton wool of drunkenness and let the time float by.

He knew he’d be solitary, even here. As it turned out, things were better than he’d expected, especially at night when everyone was drunk, and he was drunk, and they were all drunk together. But still. This set was pretty tight. Some of them had grown up together. They weren’t looking to add a blind man to their club.

“One of the toughest things,” he went on, “is not being able to take notes. I never had a stellar memory for numbers, so keeping track of all these step counts doesn’t come naturally. And I can’t write anything down.”

“How do you do it, then? Glory, how do you even keep the rooms straight in a place like this?”

“Well, I bet I circled the second floor twenty times before I felt I had the basics down. My room, the main stairs, the back stairs, this loggia. I’ve tried to make a map in my mind. And it helps that every room has a different—I don’t know. Smell? Quality? Like this room. This one’s a snap, so easy to differentiate, what with the flooring and the open-air windows. It always smells like the beach.” He paused to let his buoyancy settle back to normal. She was going to think he was a babbler. But it was such a thrill to be able to tell someone his tricks. “What does it look like?”

“This room? Oh! It reminds me of a Roman bath. The floors are mosaic tile, edged in, what do they call it? A Greek key? Or something similar. And there’s a very Greek-looking repeating wave motif. The walls are stone. Marble? The whole affair is quite white and gleaming. There are three window bays, each with two high arches that run all the way to the ceiling, or nearly so. But the real glory are the ceiling panels, three of them, each with a great golden starburst and the prettiest pale blue detailing you’ve ever seen.”

He could tell by her voice that she was gazing at the ceiling as she described it. Good God, he was dying to know what she looked like. What was the shape of her neck as her head tilted up, face to the ceiling, waiting for those sunbursts to shine down on it? He longed to ask for the color of her hair. She could lie, of course, and it would never matter, not to him. He was desperately grateful for the notes of curiosity in her velvety voice. Did he dare push his luck further?

No. He should let her retreat, back to her own set—the set of the sighted. She had done her charity for the day. She deserved to be released.

---

Violet sat as still as she possibly could. Charlie reminded her of a bird: happily eating seeds one minute, startled and on the wing the next. It was astonishing how his face had lit up as he talked about finding his way through the house. Once, he’d almost smiled, and two of her ribs had caught for an instant, hooking her breath. His eyes tended to fix in one place while he spoke, then he’d pause, and shift, and they’d settle on a slightly different spot. For a time, it had been just at her collar bone, near where her broach closed the top of her blouse and having that patch of skin under his gaze—even an unseeing gaze—had sent a pink flush up her neck. She was still warm from it.

She longed to ask if she could help him in any way, but a hunch told her that it might make him fly off. How wretched to not be able to read. What did he do with his time? How did he settle down to sleep at night? How did he—

“How do you get the news?” She blurted, then regretted it. Hardly anyone else in the house seemed to care about what was happening in Europe.

He touched the keys of his clarinet. “I don’t. Not here, at any rate. At home, my father’s valet sometimes reads me the headlines. Do you know what’s been happening? With the war?”

Ah, so he did care. And now she was sorry she’d brought it up because the news wasn’t good. She lowered her voice. “It’s tough going, I’m afraid. There’s more news from the aftermath of Verdun. They’ve counted more than 5,000 dead now. And they’ve confirmed that a thousand have been taken prisoner.”

He sat back in his chair. Silence settled over them both.

“Were you in France?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. After a long while, he said, “It’s strange how war eats men up in waves, isn’t it? I was there in my time, and my band of fellows threw their dice and were either killed or survived. Now there’s a whole new group of fellows holding the dice in their hands.” He shook his head and resettled his gaze on her shoulder. “What did you think of yesterday, with the medium?”

Violet groped for words. “I wished I hadn’t had to take part, that’s for certain.”

“Same,” he agreed. “Earl tells me we’ll have to do it again next Tuesday. He said Mrs. Belmont does it every week when the medium is here.” He pressed his lips together. “I have to say, I’m a skeptic, but even so it’s such an emotional thing. Do you find that?”

Violet beathed the word yes.

“Today,” he said, “I’ve been trying to remember whether Mrs. Voldore shared anything that was personal or specific to me.”

“You mean, if she really had information that only the dead could give her?” Violet ran her hands up and down her sleeves.

“Exactly. Maybe I’m just a doubter, but I tend to suspect fraud—or trickery, shall we say—before genuine spiritualism.”

“Fraud would be a relief. I’d love to discover how she knew I’d quarreled with my mother. I’ll be honest, it was upsetting to think she’d heard it straight from the source.”

“Maybe it was a lucky guess. All young people argue with their parents. She didn’t specify when. Or about what.”

“No.” Violet brightened. “No, she didn’t. But what about you? She said your person was a brother of the crimson. Was that accurate?”

He fidgeted with his clarinet keys. “It’s accurate. But a lot of fellows from the ivy leagues went over. It could have been good guessing.”

“Or maybe someone gave her information.”

“Yes.” He stopped fidgeting and leaned toward her, his eyes on the front of her blouse. “You know what? We should keep an eye on her. Well, you could keep an eye, and I’ll keep ears. We might be able to catch her chatting people up, gathering tidbits to drop in the next séance.”

“Hmm. Or we might catch someone spoon-feeding them to her. But how? Isn’t she staying with Alva?”

“She’s here at the Breakers now. Mrs. Belmont needed space at Marble House for someone important, and she got the bump.” He pointed over his left shoulder, to the northwest corner of the house. “She’s at that end, far corner. This floor. It took the staff two trips to bring up her bags. Apparently, her trunk was quite heavy.”

The sound of crunching gravel and shouts from below indicated that the others had returned from golfing.

“Let’s do as you say,” Violet agreed, speaking quickly. “I’d give just about anything to know she’s a fake. Here, if you ever have news, you could suggest a duet—piano and clarinet. There’s a gorgeous Steinway in the grand salon. The others don’t seem interested in playing music and would probably wander off to do something else, so we could talk in private. Do you know any rags?”

He seized his clarinet, face bright, hair tumbling over his forehead. “Maple Leaf. Easy Winners. The Entertainer, of course.”

“Perfect,” she said. “We can begin tomorrow.”