The Pages of Time

Gilded Summers-13

“Your mother, she is…snotflea,” Ginevra attempted. I laughed. She said it wrong, but she got it right. I didn"t want to speak of my mother. Or Ginevra"s mother. They were both absent in our lives, though a different sort of absent. I"m not sure if it made a difference, or which was worse.

“The first thing we need to do is to improve your English,” I announced, then immediately felt sorry for my words. Had I insulted her? It was the last thing I would wish to do to this new friend of mine, for I did feel that we would become friends. We can never know when a similar soul will pass our way, or what sort of dress it may hide behind. My fears fled with her rapid nodding, the spark bursting in her dark eyes.

My taut shoulders dropped; I breathed again. “I think you should start with reading. If you read out loud, it will help when you speak.”

I saw the truth then in the slump of her shoulders and the slow slide of her features lower down her face.

“You don"t know how to read, do you?” I asked softly.

“Si, Italian.” She screwed up her shoulders along with her pride.

Si“Well, that"s wonderful,” I praised. She needed me to. “Then I shall teach you to read in English and to write, of course. Would you like that?”

“Yes. Very much.” Her words were simple; her smile was so much more.

* * *

I scampered down from our perch on the tree. I ducked out, like Alice from the rabbit hole, and onto the lawn. On my own, there was no reason to hide, and I made for the house, crossing the vast yard at a leisurely pace. I skipped as I did so often when I was younger. The shadow of Ginevra, the smiling one, skipped beside me. Her ethereal, unsuspected place beside me made the summer sun brighter. Summer had just begun. I looked forward to the days of it quite differently than I had done when we first arrived in Newport that year.

Was I silly to think of Ginevra so fondly already? Perhaps. Was I wrong about the affectionate connection so quickly forming between us? No, not at all. The resemblance of us—not of the physical sort—was far more powerful than the contradiction.

I looked up to the house, past the two sets of stone stairs, the two wide terraces, the statues rising up at the ends and anchoring the middle. I looked up to the windows, the windows to my room. I saw a curtain fall back into place.

My steps quickened as I groaned.

I rushed into the house, through the Conservatory, and up the main stairs to my room.

She stood there waiting.

“You"ve kept me waiting, again.” Miss Jameson stood with her fisted hands on her narrow hips. “This time for more than an hour.”

“I"m dreadfully sorry,” I said, and I was. For all that I treasured the time beneath the beeches with Ginevra, my manners were ingrained. To keep someone waiting so long was simply not done.

“Do you think I have nothing better to do than to wait for you?” she demanded.

From across the hall and through the foyer I heard voices, words spoken with the same sharp tone. Ginevra, in the sewing room, received the same sort of greeting as did I.

“No, of course, not Miss Jameson,” I lied. In truth, she didn"t have anything better to do. She was there to teach me, to add to the regular lessons of school, nothing else. The nothing else, reminded by my absence, was where her anger truly lay. “I do apologize. I will try to do better.”

“Oh, you will do better.” There was a threat to her words. “What were you doing?”

“I…I…,” I stumbled, “I was out in the gardens sketching.”

Miss Jameson knew of my love for drawing, for painting. My façade was a believable one.

“Where is your sketchbook?”

I looked down at my empty hands. I was a terrible liar.

I laughed. I didn"t fake that any better.

“Well, silly me, I must have left it in the garden,” I tried to laugh again. Again, I failed. “I"ll go get it.”

“You"ll do no such thing.”

I knew that would be her answer and sighed with relief. My sketchbook was in the small desk, in front of which she stood, statue-like, with arms crossed, a foot tapping.

“You will sit yourself down and work on these math problems.” She pointed to my desk chair and the papers waiting there for me.

I quickly did. As I struggled with the numbers—for working them didn"t come easily to me—she paced behind me, watching me work, sharply instructing me when I did my figuring wrong.

Her patience, already worn thin, nearly disappeared.

“Such a waste of time,” she muttered as she paced, lips so tight all she could do was mutter, arms crossed equally as tight across her scrawny chest, “these girls have no need for such knowledge. They"ll never use it. No, not these girls.”

It was a condemnation not only of me, but of all the girls of families such as mine, girls whose only goal in life—decided for them—was to marry the right man, have children, and become the next cog in this exclusive machine that was the social life of the rich. They told us this truth, verbally beat it into us, from the moment we could start listening. I listened, merely listened. We choose what we truly wish to hear.

I was smarter than my brother…my brother who was pushed to learn about business and railroads and running large companies. Learning he had no interest in. His was a life so full of promises, of potential. He took for granted what I longed for.

“How dare you?!”

The thunder raged not from the sky, but my door, and my mother standing in it.

I jumped up from my chair, my feet twisting on themselves, stumbling as my words did. “I…I"m sorry, Mother. I lost track of time. I"ve apologized to Miss Jameson.”

My governess stood casually, her fingers tapped merrily upon her folded arms; a smirk slithered across her lips, splitting her face. She showed no surprise to see my mother.

“I saw you!” Mother screamed, lunging toward me with a pointed finger. I backed away, my buttocks slamming hard against my desk. If I could have climbed over it, put it between us, I would have. “I saw you with that girl, that foreign servant. How dare you?”

The monster of anger that was my mother chased away my thoughts, my words. I was the fox, and she was on the hunt.

“Do you know what they would say if they saw you?”

“They” could be any number of people.

“You could ruin us. I will not allow it!”

A gust of wind blundered through the open window, pushing against my back, pushing me forward.

“But, Mother, she is…she is in a strange land. I thought only to be kind and—”

“Do not speak to me.” Mother"s face was just inches from mine, yet I hardly recognized her. “You will only listen. You will never, ever, see that girl again, never spend a second with her. Do you understand me?”

I understood too well; such understanding did not serve her cause.

“You"re being cruel, Mother. Such people deserve our—”

“Enough!” Mother bellowed; her gentile veneer, one she practiced with such constancy, broke like a thin crystal champagne flute under the crunch of a heavy boot. “You refuse to listen to me, don"t you? As you always do.”

Her enraged gaze scoured my room. Fiery eyes latched and held.

“Well, I shall make you listen.”

Faster than I ever saw her move, Mother flashed across my room, grabbed my kit and paints and brushes, grabbed my canvas, and made for the door.

Grief did not belong only to death.

“Where are you taking those?” Desperation plunged me toward her.

Mother stopped at the door, turned back. Evil shattered her beautiful face into grotesque shards.

“If you spend time with trash, then to the trash these will go.”

“No!” I pleaded. It didn"t matter.

“The rest of it, Miss Jameson,” Mother instructed, “be sure it all goes.”

That woman"s pinched face lit with satisfaction. “Yes, Madam.”

Far too happily, Miss Jameson quickly gathered what was left of my supplies and made her way to the door, stopping at the threshold.

“You, return to your work.”

I fell into my desk chair, battered as if beaten. Mother had never gone this far to bring me in line. Or had I stepped too far from it? I dropped my face to the papers before me but could see nothing past my tears, nothing but the loss of my most precious items.

* * *

Another night, another dinner alone. I sat in the dark room, lacquered black walls made glorious by the use of gold fleck paint and bright reds of the colorful Chinese figures. My only companion was my pain. I was as dark as the walls, with not a speck of gold in sight.

Mother and Father walked in, both resplendently dressed; he in his waistcoat atop his white shirt and tie, swallowtail coat cut short in front, top hat in hand. She with a beaded frothy dress whose tail shushed along the polished floor, her wide-brimmed laced and flowered hat perched at just the perfect tilt upon the pile of her red hair.

My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.

“I hope you have learned a valuable lesson today.” My mother stood by my side, looking down her straight, pert nose at me.

I put the fork down.

“I have.” I lied. “I"m sorry, Mother,” I said truthfully. I was, very sorry she had seen me with Ginevra; sorry I had not been more careful.

I looked to my father knowing he knew, knowing my mother had informed him of every little tidbit of the day. I searched his face, looking for what I needed, not finding it.

He said nothing.

Mother sniffed at me, unconvinced. “You"ve lost your painting, and I"m not sure you should continue your lessons either.” That dig was for my father, not me.

She circled away from me as she drew on one long satin glove, head shaking, but just slightly, so as not to upset the creation on her head. “Dancing, etiquette, managing a household, now those topics should command your attention, not math, or science, or art.”

I longed to pick my fork back up and poke her with it, not hard, just enough to prick some sense into her. My fingers gripped it until my knuckles turned white.

I turned to my father. The frustration returned. I knew it was by his instruction I partook in such lessons, why would he not defend them, defend me.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Father did all he could not to anger his young wife, not to feed the fire of her ire.

He looked at me, at my thunderous thoughts darkening my face. My skin was pale but worse ridiculously opaque, no matter how I practiced the stony countenance of my set, of my station. It was nothing but time wasted. I didn"t know how to be anything but me, a me of confusion and contradiction.