Abandon

FORTY-SEVEN

M

olly Madsen sat in the bay window, eating the wedge of chocolate cake from the Curtices’ Christmas basket and looking down at the commotion on Main Street. It had been years since she’d seen this many people out on the town at once—entire families webbing north through deep snow, many still buttoning their slickers and coats and pulling on their mittens, a ubiquitous look of fear and confusion on all the faces.

Molly heard footsteps out in the hallway, followed by a soft knock. She rose from the divan, crossed the room barefooted, and opened the door. A young blond woman stood in the hallway, enveloped in a white woolen cape.

“May I help you?” Molly asked.

Lana noticed that under the sheer bed linen, draped like a shawl over her shoulders, Molly was naked.

On many occasions, Lana had glimpsed her sitting in the bay window from the street below and thought her pretty. In proximity, Molly Madsen looked hard-wintered, pupils dilated from laudanum. Her five-year self-imposed confinement to room 6 had turned her skin the sun-deficient gray of a dead tooth, and though her pitch-black hair dropped to her waist, you could see her scalp on top, where her hair had thinned and become laced with silver. Seam squirrels—lice—crawled under the hair on her arms.

The room reeked worse than a bunkhouse—spoiled food, oranges, a hint of old perfume.

“You’re the piano player,” Molly said, and when she smiled, Lana saw her lips smeared with chocolate icing and bits of cake stuck between her rotting teeth. “Jack and I have so enjoyed sitting in the window, listening. The music carries quite well. It’s a sure cure for putting me to sleep. Was that Beethoven you were playing this afternoon?”

Lana reached into her cape, pulled out a pencil. She stared at the tan-colored wood of the door frame, trying to conjure words that had for so long existed only in the safety of thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d written anything, but it was easier to recall the letters than to amass the nerve to create them, with no words spoken, no direct communication with another human being in three years, since that Christmas night in Santa Fe.

Molly said, “Can’t you talk?” Lana looked up, forced herself to make eye contact. Her gloved hands trembled as she pressed the pencil tip into the wood.

When she’d finished, Molly scanned the tiny writing on the door frame, said, “It’s Engler. Mrs. Jack Engler. Why on earth would I come with you?”

Lana scrawled an answer, overwhelmingly strange to converse with another person, even like this. The piano had been her larynx for so long.

Something awful happening.

Molly read it, said, “Well, I can’t leave yet. Jack should be here any moment, and what would he do if I was gone when he returned? I have to be here to greet him. Do you understand?”

A draft wafted through the hallway, blew open Molly’s shawl, her nipples erect in the chill.

Lana wrote: Leave note.

“What if he didn’t find it? He’d be distressed if I wasn’t here. Jack’s very protective. No, I think I’ll wait in our suite. But thank you for the invitation. We’ll come along when he arrives. Where is this ball being held?”

Lana shook her head, eyes welling up with tears.

“You know, I have the perfect dress for it. A rose-colored evening gown. Jack first saw me in it in San Francisco, knew instantly he had to have me. Would you care to see an albumen print of my husband? You’ve never seen a more handsome man, I assure—”

Lana tried to grab her arm to pull her out into the hall, but Molly withdrew into her suite and slammed the door.