At her home in Maine, Margaret hung a sign above the door to nowhere: MIND THE VIEW. She called the door the Witch’s Wink. And now the hotel Witch’s Wink was open, and now Margaret stood by it, holding Clara—opposing me and Michael as we stood in the frame of the door to the rest of the suite. A door directly across from a door. What was the word for a space between spaces? A purgatory? No, because the root word, purgatorum, meant a cleansing. A limbo? From the Latin limbus, a border or an edge. That wasn’t right either—this wasn’t an edge, it was an in-between, an other. A photonegative appearing between one life and the next, between one self and the self that would come after. A great green room. In music, a rest.
Margaret held Clara, and they stood there at the edge of the open door, and I still couldn’t make myself go to them.
Through that door I could see the lake, thickly frozen, the snowflakes falling fat and luscious, collecting on the surface like cream at the top of good milk. They were meandering, lazy. Every so often the wind would hurry them along with a quick, walloping roar, and Margaret’s dress and stockings would be dotted with new melt. Clara’s onesie was damp with drool and spit-up, hardening into an icy shell. She would not survive the chill; already I could hear her coughing in the chesty, wet way that raises the hackles on a mother. Here I was, wheezing in sympathy, and I still couldn’t make myself go to her.
When I was pregnant, they said: Don’t drink wine, don’t eat sushi or lunch meats or soft cheeses, don’t lie on your back. Don’t have coffee or clean out the litter box, don’t go in the hot tub, don’t sit still for too long, don’t jump. Refrain from all of these things, and your reward will be a perfect little baby. When Clara was new, they said: Don’t put her in the car seat in a puffy jacket, don’t let her sleep with blankets, don’t lie her in bed on her stomach, don’t give her honey or water or juice. But I could follow these directions to a T, and still lose her. I could build my life around making sure she was protected, the crux of my life could be the maintenance of her health and her perfection, and still I could lose her. There were so many ways I could lose her, and here she was, the door wide open, coughing, cold, now scrabbling across Margaret’s chest.
They never said: Do not invite a ghost inside you. Do not invite a ghost inside your home.
I didn’t want to be waiting, forever, for disaster. I didn’t want to be stuck living in before, in thrall of some impending after. I was ready for the after.
Margaret was looking out at the lake, and Michael was looking at Margaret. In her book, Michael had written: “My father’s death had been my father’s death, but my mother’s was in some strange way a part of my own.” How long would Clara belong to me? Without her there to suckle, my milk would swell my breasts to veiny, blown balloons, but would eventually dry up. Women who lost their babies didn’t lose their milk immediately—they had to use cabbage leaves to help the milk stop, had to sit with the pain. Women who delivered stillborn babies still had to reckon with their postpartum bodies. Even childless, they were bloody and ragged and swollen and sore; in their bodies lived the ghosts of these babies. Where would Clara’s ghost go?
“If only someone would marry you.” Michael sighed. “If only some rich man would come and take you off my hands.”
If only someone would come take you off my hands.
Margaret took a step closer to the edge.
Who would Michael be, without Margaret? It didn’t seem fair that Margaret—who’d lived only thirty years when she met Michael, who would live only two more years without her—had to sacrifice herself so that Michael could find out. I saw now that if I wasn’t going to write the story Michael wanted from me, she was going to let herself live it. She’d make Margaret smaller. She’d make Margaret nothing. She’d erase the story that biographers had told—the story that was written around Margaret—in favor of a story in which she was the star: the story of a benevolent poet queen, her body corrupted by the depravity of her most loyal servant.
Or was that my story? Was that me?
Who would I be without Clara?
“Your art lacks a certain sophistication, Bun,” said Michael. “Like you, it’s unserious and trite.”
“I disagree,” I said half-heartedly, but Margaret seemed not to hear me. This was a battle of both wills and wits, and if I chose to play seriously, I would be playing with the lesser hand. Michael was known for her persuasion, her rhetoric. She’d convinced wealthy men to back her plays, to publish her, to marry her.
“You’re already dead,” I said. “Both of you.”
Margaret’s one leg was out the door, dangling from the frame.
“Michael will change her mind,” I said, one last perfunctory attempt. Michael shook her head to signify she wouldn’t. “This isn’t how things end for you, not really. This isn’t actually how you die in real life.”
Margaret stepped out the door, looking back at me, mouthing I’m sorry. And though I knew I should feel something, I felt nothing. Just the long flight of a body, the downward drop of a body, holding Clara.
I HAD CHOSEN. I knew which one I was.
Michael turned to me; she took me by the shoulders. “All you have to do now,” she said, “is close your eyes.”