4

the Woods

Marion’s mind was a plate laden with sinewy foods – tough to chew, hard to swallow, impossible to digest. Some of these thoughts made her sick to her stomach, so she pushed them aside for later. She would process them when her insides stopped swimming.

She sought the comfortable seclusion of the Turtle Room, her quiet place. But that would involve crossing the threshold of her sister’s house. She hated Peggy more than anyone right now, though she barely knew why. She didn’t need to know. Sometimes her emotions sprang from an abstract source. That didn’t mean she was unstable.

“Am I unstable?” she asked a gray squirrel, squatting on a thick bough with an acorn clamped in its jaw. The squirrel didn’t answer, which was a very good sign.

The young woman quickened her pace as the last molten rays of sunset sank below the trees. She was not afraid of the woods at night; in fact, she considered it a beautiful hideaway. Cool, dark, and private – uncomplicated. And she wasn’t lost – not in the physical sense. She could navigate by the stars. But she couldn’t spend the night there. Someone would worry – Peggy or Trevor, or Charley, perhaps. She was caught on society’s web by a single thread, but trapped nevertheless.

As she wove her way through the mossy trunks, Marion began contemplating marriage. Not so much the act, but the requirements. The wedding vows. The most important one, she realized, was the part about “in sickness or in health”. Everything about a person boiled down to those two opposing conditions. One was either healthy or sick – well or unwell – at any given time in his life. Marion believed that this vow – the promise to love someone unconditionally – should apply to all relationships. Once again, she thought of her sister, but in a more positive light.

Peggy had always been there for her on the outside, fighting for her rights and her safety, straining her patience trying to calm her down or cheer her up – riding the rollercoaster. Peggy defended her sister while the rest of the world – friends, doctors, and parents – had long since turned its back on the hopeless crazy. (They hadn’t foreseen the day when suddenly, out of the blue, the chink in Marion’s brain would shift into place, and she would be normal at last.) She should’ve been spilling over with gratitude for Margaret’s charity, but she still felt…neglected. As if she didn’t belong.

Peggy had a husband now – a real marriage – and someday she would have children to care for as well. She didn’t want to be stuck baby-sitting her adult sister for the rest of her life, and Marion couldn’t blame her. She owed Peggy a big one.

She decided to go home, pack up her things, and leave as silently as she had come. She would ask to stay at Charley’s house until she figured things out.

-

Diana had woken up less than an hour ago and was now sitting on a plush sofa watching her Saturday morning cartoons, with a bowl of Frosted Flakes clutched in her hands. Tom had Jerry tucked between two slices of bread and was just about to eat him when the doorbell rang.

The teenager set her bowl on the coffee table and dragged herself into the entrance hall, still yawning and stretching. What happened next was like something out of an old horror movie, except that it was daytime.

She opened the massive oak doors and there, shivering on the front porch, stood a youngish woman with windblown hair, faded scars, wild eyes, and bits of leaf and pine needle clinging to her clothes. Diana nearly screamed, but quickly got a hold of herself. Since when was she afraid of people? This ghastly vision was no scarier than many of the city’s street-dwellers.

“Wh-who are you, and w-what do you want?” she stammered, guarding the doorway with her small but wiry frame. The wild lady stared past her, into the house. Her arms were suspiciously laden with travel bags.

“Is Charley home?” she asked in a meager voice, answering a question with a question.

“Yeah, but he’s sick,” Diana said, wondering which of the townsfolk was bold enough to call on her guardian by name. Usually it was Mister Lawson this, or Mister Lawson that. The commoners were intimidated by wealth. And disability. Charley was just a natural people magnet!

“Poor dear…” she muttered. “May I come in?”

“That depends,” Diana scoffed, stiffly crossing her arms. “Are you going to stick me with a knife, or steal our belongings, or set the house on fire?”

“Of course not, silly goose! Why would you even think that?”

“Because I know people, and I watch the news, and bad things tend to happen when you let a stranger in.”

“But I’m no stranger!”

“What are you, then?” demanded the child. “A beggar? Because we don’t want any of those either.”

Suddenly and without warning, Diana was lifted a foot off the floor and carried into the hall. She kicked and screamed bilingual profanities for all of five seconds before she was gently placed back on her feet.

“My deepest apologies, little one,” whispered the woman with a wickedly smug grin on her lips. “My name is Marion, and I wish you wouldn’t call me a beggar.”

Diana was left sputtering helplessly while the nut-job advanced into the room and halfway up the stairs. Finally she regained her senses and ran after her, shouting for all the house to hear. (She hoped one of the servants would come to her aid.)

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Marion gasped and froze in her tracks, as if caught unaware. Diana seized her by the shoulders and turned her around. The woman’s face was pale as marble, and her bottom lip trembled uncontrollably. She sank to the stairs in terror, the scene before her melting away to white: white floors, white walls, strong hands wrapped in white latex, and the noxious pitch of bleach.

“Please! Not again…” she begged. “I’ll be good this time…”

Diana realized there was something not-quite-right about Marion. Her silvery scars caught the light and shone out, her eyes were ringed heavy with shadows, and she looked very old and very young at the same time. No longer afraid, the teenager bent close to the stranger and traced her forefinger along the largest scar, which cut a line from her temple to her chin. Her skin was cold to the touch.

“Someone has hurt you,” she whispered. “Over and over and over…”

Marion nodded feebly, but did not utter a word. She didn’t have to say anything. Diana took her by the hand and led her down the steps, into the parlor. She pointed to an armchair by the fireplace and invited her to sit. The woman complied. She became a statue, lifeless and stiff – her eyes like two blank stones. Diana thought of the porcelain Athena in her bedroom and shuddered.

“Um, just stay right here while I get someone.”

“Mm.”

“Promise not to move, okay?”

“Okay.”

Diana retreated slowly from the room, carefully watching Marion from the corner of her eye. She started running as soon as she reached the hallway.

-

Charley had a bad case of the flu, or something like it, though Diana wasn’t worried in the slightest. (Rich men had doctors; they didn’t drop dead from disease.) The butler was attending his master’s bedside. She knocked twice, softly. Tullman opened the door just a little and stared down on her with an irritated crease in his brow.

“What’s the trouble, Miss Diana? If you can’t tell, I am rather busy at the moment, and it would be wise of you to transfer your request to the housekeeper or another servant.”

Diana rolled her eyes in chagrin. She was sure the old man had never liked her from the start. (Perhaps it had something to do with her violent outburst when they first met.)

“Well, sorrrry, Mister Pompous-British-Accent! It’s just that we have an…unusual visitor, and I thought you should be the one to greet her.”

“Has this visitor given a name?”

“Marion.”

“Where is she?”

“In the parlor,” Diana replied, while grabbing his bony hand. “Come on!”