Beneath the furious skies of March, the land shudders, turns over, and goes back to sleep. Lazy bitch, the sky grumbles, and after considering the dormant body for a minute gives it a sound kick, sinking a boot into the brittle soil. The sky kicks again, then again, sets to beating and pummeling the earth, tearing at it in a wild effort to dispel a winter’s worth of resentment. And since violence waged against an unresisting body has an intoxicating thrill all its own, the frenzy can only escalate. Lazy good-for-nothing bitch! screams the sky. Snow turns to sleet, the lakes and streams turn to slush, the soil thaws into mud. Take this you loaf, you worthless vagabond! Spasms and throes will exhaust the sky eventually, but until then it will do its utmost to destroy the thing it ought to nurture. No gentle rains ease the land out of its deep hibernation this year—spring comes in the form of torrents, eruptions, explosions, detonations, and by the middle of the month the frozen earth has been turned into a paludal hell.
But it’s not the first time that the land has been abused, and despite the madcap weather and the absence of the sun, a few new plants succeed in reaching the surface of the drenched soil. Tiny shoots grow into clublike spikes and sprout stems, buds the color of frog skin unfurl, and in the cup of the leaves timid flowers emerge. Wild calla, jack-in-the-pulpit, skunk cabbage, green dragons—these are the hardy plants of early spring, and though this year they keep their petals clenched against the storms, they fill the air with the intense fragrance of new life, scents that recall cinnamon and spoiled milk, stirring the animal world to life. Whiskers tremble, hides ripple, snouts root through the wet mulch to find the young shoots, and all the while the rain lashes wildly, enraged more by this early evidence of life than by the land’s indolence. For a few days it even seems possible that every living thing will be washed away by the flooded streams and rivers.
Yet behind the clamor of the rain, you can hear a few of the saucier animals laughing at the inclemency. These are the ones who defend themselves against the weather not with shelter but with sex—their courtships are more boisterous than ever, and their pleasure is infectious. On a soggy carpet of myrtle the rabbits flatten their ears against the rain and clamber onto one another’s backs, not just indifferent to the weather but virtually unaware. The foxes that prey upon them are made giddy by the taste of their lusty flesh and as soon as they have finished with their dinner they rush back with their mates to their soaked bowers, where they tumble and romp with a vigor they haven’t felt for months. Flashes of color in the trees indicate that the songbirds have begun to return from the south, and the flocks of geese heading north are like victory flags of troops returning home. Shriek and spit to your heart’s content, says the land to the sky, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rain relents. There is not enough strength in heaven to keep up the assault, especially in the face of such blithe spirit. Once again, life proves itself indomitable, and for a few balmy days the proverbial lamb gets ready to lead the world into April.
But then, almost as an afterthought, on the last day of March the sky cracks open and lets loose its fiercest blizzard of the year—over the course of two days, snow buries the land in huge windblown drifts, erasing all signs of spring. By the third morning, it looks as though the calendar has played a wicked trick and spun the world back into the darkest midst of the fiercest winter in memory. For the first few hours after dawn the forest and meadows are absolutely silent, as though paralyzed by shock. Toward noon, a single cardinal alights upon the top of a hemlock and begins to sing. As the day warms, the snow starts to drop in wet clumps from the branches, and here and there a rodent digs its way out of a burrow. Slowly, warily, spring returns. The sky watches from the distance, laughing up its sleeve.
* * *
Stuffed! Her flayed skin wrapped around an artificial form, her hair wound into a topknot, her mouth extravagantly furnished with ivory teeth. Stuffed! Mary Craxton stuffed! What a sensation that would be! Hal could advertise, send out flyers announcing Craxton’s Scientific Establishment’s latest acquisition: The Missus Herself. Stuffed! An animal among animals. Hal could take the show on the road and make a million dollars in no time.
Of course, he means no disrespect. His mother remains snugly in her grave, her reputation uninjured by Hal’s flight of fancy, and Hal remains on the sofa, half listening to the drip-drop of melting snow. Even with a tartan blanket covering his legs, a fire blazing, the furnace raging below, his kneecaps feel like disks of ice. Not long ago he had thought he would purchase a flat in London’s Mayfair and set up home there. But thanks to his mother, Hal Craxton is only one step away from poverty, soon to be cast into the pit of the working class. He might as well throw himself into the belly of the furnace, for his grievance against his mother is too much to bear.
But Mary Craxton stuffed! Now that’s a thought to tickle a man out of a sour mood. Stuffed! A seventy-five-year-old female aristocrat, a unique specimen of a precious breed, more authentic than a waxwork copy. Hal had never much liked his mother, truth be told, never enjoyed her company, not even as a small boy. She ignored him through his childhood, and once he was grown and free to travel, she blamed him for ignoring her. Her letters became increasingly cantankerous and more often than not deteriorated into a nonsensical harangue. In recent years, he had begun to wonder whether the old lady was certifiably mad. Unfortunately, he hadn’t bothered to arrange a proper psychiatric evaluation. Hal had chosen to stay as far away from her as possible, making infrequent visits simply to remind his mother that he was her only son and sole heir. All for naught, as it turns out.
For an excruciating two days after his mother’s fatal stroke, her body had lain in her bed, tended only by the housekeeper, while the men shoveled out the snowbound Manikin. Two long days! With her pale lips pressed tight, her skin the spongy color of buttermilk, her eyes closed in determined indifference, she seemed more powerful in her death than she had ever been in life. For two restless days and two sleepless nights Hal had to endure her company. The men worked slowly, distracted from their main task by unrelated incidents—the housekeeper’s daughter, apparently, had run off on a lark to New York City. And then there was the business with the horse. Slashed, according to Lore Bennett, by some vengeful poacher. None of it meant much to Hal, who couldn’t think a clear thought until his mother’s body had been removed from the house and carted off to the undertaker’s in Millworth.
If Hal had known what Mr. Watts, Esquire, was going to reveal to him the day after his mother’s funeral, he would have wished his mother had been immortal. Or he would have refused the lawyer entry. But Hal had no suspicions about his mother’s plans—when his father died, it had been implicit, if never legally confirmed, that the entire estate would eventually pass to the surviving son. So when Mr. Watts arrived uninvited at the Manikin, Hal had opened a bottle of his finest scotch, poured two glasses, and solemnly toasted his mother’s long and worthy life.
Mr. Watts was a wiry man whose egg-shaped head was topped with white stubble, and while he read the will Hal had studied the deep creases in his forehead. The wrinkles kept bobbing up at the ends so that they seemed to be smiling, though the lawyer maintained his serious poise from start to finish.
“I, Mary Alicia Weber Craxton … being of sound mind and in full possession of my senses…”
Get on with it, Hal had thought to himself, waiting for his name to emerge from the jargon. Mr. Watts must have noticed his impatience, for he cleared his throat and told Hal to pay close attention. Before the lawyer had finished the paragraph, Hal grabbed the page in order to read it for himself:
“… and for no thought of remuneration but purely out of the largeness of my heart and a keen desire to help, if possible, the cause of Mankind, do hereby divide evenly said residuary estate among the following charitable organizations.…”
“Absurd!” Hal had roared in protest, causing Mr. Watts such a start that his spectacles had fallen off his nose onto the table. “She was out of her mind. You, Mr. Watts! Charity! Everything to charity? That’s madness!”
“Calm down, Mr. Craxton.”
“Calm! I’ll calm you!”
“Then you want to challenge the will?”
“Of course I do! Charity! My mother didn’t have a charitable bone in her body!”
“In a codicil, Mr. Craxton, your mother does bequeath the zoological collection to you—valued, she thought, at approximately five thousand dollars. But there is more—an in terrorem clause at the bottom of the page. Read it for yourself, if you like. It states simply that if you, Henry Craxton Junior, sole surviving son, wish to challenge your mother’s directions, your inheritance will be reduced to nothing, and the said zoological items will be distributed among museums and universities—institutions to be selected by the estate’s executor, namely, myself.”
“What are you saying?”
“Your mother wished to be remembered as a saint.”
“She was a witch!”
“Have you ever heard of Jeremy Bentham, sir?”
“My mother was not of sound mind when she made these decisions, Mr. Watts—you should never have allowed this. You’ve acted unlawfully, and I will see to it that you are disbarred!”
“Jeremy Bentham was one of the great legal scholars of the nineteenth century, and of all time, I should add. To this day, his skeleton, topped by a wax replica of his head, is displayed within a glass case in the halls of University College, London. The bones are clad in Bentham’s own robes, and one hand is curled around the knob of his walking stick, which he called fondly Dapple. It is a remarkable display, Mr. Craxton. And beside the case is a typewritten extract from his will, stating that the testator desired to preside, on certain occasions, at gatherings of his friends and disciples. The direction is still observed, I’m told, at banquets in his honor. Imagine!”
“You put my mother up to this!”
“No, sir. It was her own idea entirely. The hand of the dead presides. This is what Bentham sought to prove. The testator, by the terms of his will, may control the distribution of his property. But there are differences of opinion on this matter, you may be sure. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, ‘The earth belongs always to the living generation.’ The rule against perpetuities is designed to protect beneficiaries like you, Mr. Craxton, who have a vested interest in your mother’s property, and this may be the policy that enables your lawyer, whoever that may be (should you want to take this matter to court), to invalidate your mother’s directions regarding the disposition of her property. But I repeat: Any challenge to the will results automatically in the enforcement of the in terrorem clause.”
“Leaving me destitute.”
“Exactly. Your mother will rest peacefully in her grave, and you will learn to work for a living. In the final codicil of the will, by the way, she provides for your basic expenses for six months.”
“Ah, a generous Yankee.”
“Truly.”
“So I will have to go looking for work.”
“That was her intention.”
“Good day, Mr. Watts. The housekeeper will show you out.”
“My card, sir, should you want to contact me.”
“Good day, Mr. Watts.”
And that was that, though no sooner had the lawyer left the Manikin than Hal Craxton was shouting for Red Vic to get the truck ready, and they drove at breakneck speed toward Buffalo, where Hal knew an attorney, until, twenty miles south of the city, Red Vic lost control of the truck and swerved across the icy road into a tree. Neither of the men was injured beyond a few bruises, but the collision smashed in the truck’s front end and damaged the radiator beyond repair.
The cost of hiring a man to drive them back to the Manikin would have seemed trivial to Hal in his past life. But in his new life the expense enraged him, and the day after the accident he fired Red Vic. The gardener was the next to go—Sid Cheney, who had witnessed the signing of the will. Traitor! Saucebox! Then Hal told the laundress and the chambermaid to pack their bags and get off his property, relishing for a brief moment the exhilaration of tyranny. He had no qualms about sending his mother’s servants away—he planned to get rid of them all as soon as the case was resolved, which, according to his lawyer, could take months, even years.
Hal’s strategy was a conventional one: he was contesting his mother’s claim to sanity. So far, he hadn’t had much luck gathering proof. He had his own observations and a handful of her strongly worded letters. The remaining servants at the Manikin refused to provide any concurring testimony, and his mother’s physician, who hadn’t seen his patient for over a year, proclaimed her thoroughly and honorably sane in his short deposition. So two weeks turned into months, the will remained stalled in probate, and Hal remained inside the house, never setting foot outside, relying on the housekeeper to keep the interior cozy and the cook to keep him fed. Young Lily Stone stayed on through January, and he appreciated her cheerful, babbling company at meals, even felt himself stirred by the glimpse of a bangled arm as she reached for the saltcellar, the shallow dip of her cleavage, the triangles of dark hair in front of her ears. But she was useless to him ultimately, since she had nothing to say about his mother’s sanity, and after she left in some haste during a short-lived February thaw, he didn’t miss her.
By the beginning of April, Hal Craxton, who’d been traveling around the world for the last decade like a man fleeing prosecution, has grown to enjoy this torpid routine. What is outside but snow and ice, and then rain and mud, and now snow again, drifts up to the windowsills, and branches with pale, furry buds scattered across the yard? In such a godforsaken place, home to a solitary man is like a mother’s lap to a young child. Not his mother’s lap, though—he never found any refuge there. Thanks to her, he’s a broken man. His life is over, for all practical purposes, and it’s just a matter of waiting for the end.
Or is it?
For weeks, his mind has been veering back and forth between resignation and hope, between the past and the present. While he waits, he experiences the house as though it would be his forever. Oddly enough, he’s come to wish that his mother had left him just the Manikin. Nothing else, no stock holdings or treasury bonds—only this great monstrosity of a house. Instead, she left him a collection of stuffed animals and denied him the thing he has come to need most. Cruel woman.
But he has one of the best lawyers in the state working for him, so all is not lost, not yet. There’s still a chance he’ll win his petition. He, for one, is more convinced of his mother’s madness than ever. Who wouldn’t go mad out here in the boondocks of the north, nothing but dead animals for company? The hand of the dead presides. The recollection of these words, quoted by Mr. Watts in defense of Mary Craxton’s will, returns to Hal as he sits on the sofa. The hand of the dead presides. This is how the absurd notion comes to him—gazing at the Craxton Collection, he summons up the image of his dead mother raised from her grave and mounted on the platform among the animals. The hand of the dead, stuffed! Mary Craxton, stuffed!
A few minutes later, he’s startled out of his daydream by the April sun, which suddenly emerges from behind the cloud cover. The reflection off the snow blinds Hal so he can’t see what he hears: the sound of boots stomping through the deep slush. He shields his eyes and squints—not that it matters much who is out there. But still he stares until he can make out the stooped figure trudging toward the back terrace. He recognizes the old taxidermist, what’s his name, still hanging on here—Hal had meant to give him notice weeks ago. In his self-pitying mood, though, he feels a vague kinship with the man. Boggio, yes, that’s the name, Boggio. There’s no need to oust him. Spare the old fellow. He can stay on at the Manikin as long as Hal has any say about this property.
“We’ll be one of a kind soon, you old beggar,” Hal murmurs. Poor old Boggio. Silly old Boggio. Necessary old Boggio. In a tremendous moment of insight, it occurs to Hal that the Manikin’s resident taxidermist must have plenty of strange and relevant stories to tell.
* * *
Sun at last, the final thaw, and somewhere Ellen’s Peg sits on a bench eating a sandwich and absently scattering crusts to the pigeons. That’s how Ellen likes to think of her: a city girl on her lunch break. Peg has proved that she can hold her own among the millions who would rather see such a girl lying in an alley and bleeding from her throat than to have to compete with her for a job. It is spring in the far-off city, and Peg could very well be sitting on a park bench enjoying the weather.
Listen to the finches chirping—they’ve built a nest in the yew outside the living-room window. Listen to the drip, drip, drip of melting snow. Sunlight on snow has a purifying effect. And with Peg’s latest letter in her hand, Ellen feels that no matter what happens next, she’ll manage. Look at her daughter’s success—Peg struck out on her own, quickly found a job in a Manhattan hotel, and now, after three months, she’s the second assistant to the managing steward. It’s a small hotel with only five maids employed full time. Still, a promotion through the ranks is no small accomplishment, Ellen knows, and perhaps in a few months, if not sooner, Peg will have enough influence to make space on the staff for her mother. At the very least, Ellen can share her daughter’s room for a short while. Forget about the mistakes of judgment the girl has made. Peg is independent now, and she’s offered (generous, grown-up girl!) to help her mother during the difficult days ahead. So Ellen doesn’t need the Manikin anymore. On the contrary, she’s eager to join her daughter in the city and would have done so already if she had been a different sort of housekeeper, without any sense of loyalty or obligation. Not that she owes Hal Craxton anything. But she does owe his mother, who employed Ellen for nearly ten years and came to depend upon her so completely that Ellen was expected to be present when she bathed or ate or moved her bowels. Or died. But Ellen wasn’t there for those final minutes, and Mrs. Craxton had to suffer alone. For that, and for their many years together, Ellen feels obliged to keep the Manikin in order as long as it remains in the family.
The only immediate family left is Hal. Ellen tends to him with the same cold but diligent attention she gives the furniture. He still has some hope, however unfounded, that he’ll be able to retain ownership of the estate. He’s wasting his time here, obviously, and Ellen’s time as well. She wouldn’t have been sorry if he’d fired her along with Red Vic and the others. Billie was the last to go, and since her departure back in February, Ellen has given up trying to keep the house impeccable. Instead, she works to slow the quickening deterioration.
While she sweeps she occupies herself with more pleasant memories so she won’t have to think back to the beginning of Hal Craxton’s reign, when Mrs. Craxton was newly dead and Ellen’s Peg newly missing. That time is over and done with, thank you! And since Ellen can’t erase it from the past, she simply, and successfully, keeps her mind directed elsewhere.
So she doesn’t disturb herself by thinking about Peg’s diary, or Mrs. Craxton’s stroke, or the inexplicable violence done to Emily the mare. She doesn’t recall how on that terrible Christmas, darkness snatched the light away early in the day, and all night long the blizzard taunted those who were still living, clawing at the windowpanes, ripping tiles from the barn roof, whipping down chimneys, dousing candles with drafts, and forcing snow beneath the door so that by morning there were drifts in the front hall. She doesn’t bother to remember how, after she’d discovered that Peg’s winter coat, some clothes, and a suitcase were missing, she had gone straight to Lilian’s room and demanded information. The girl had insisted that she knew nothing and then had burst into tears. The weeping girl—this is just a vague image in Ellen’s mind, like the impression left by a wet leaf upon slate. And the worry that escalated into panic as the night wore on—no, Ellen has no reason to dwell upon that! The hours of not knowing. A captive in the Manikin, restrained by Sylva from rushing outside in her stocking feet while the men searched the surrounding woods. Was her daughter lying wounded, bleeding, sinking into the quicksand of snow? Was she frozen in ice, her skin a blue-gray like the color of Mrs. Craxton’s fingernails? Was she dead? Dying? Through that horrible night, Ellen had subjected her daughter to every cruelty she could think of in order to prepare herself for the worst, then retracted each thought because she couldn’t bear it, and then forced her mind to continue. Peg was a reasonable girl, but reason doesn’t help much when there are maniacs at large. Her daughter was made of flesh and blood, flesh and blood, flesh and blood. In Ellen’s panicked imagination, Peg had shrunk to the size of a toddler again, a vulnerable, downy child who couldn’t even turn a somersault, much less survive in a blizzard.
The next day, Lore and Peter had combed the countryside for some sign of Peg, and though they didn’t bring her back, they did return with reassuring news. Peg had made her way to Kettling, and, according to the stationmaster, she’d boarded the milk train to Syracuse early that morning. From Syracuse to where? That’s what Ellen didn’t know for six more days, and while she tended Mrs. Craxton’s body and paid her last respects, the only scene she could picture was that of Peg on a train traveling west across a snowblown prairie, her forehead resting against the icy windowpane.
But Peg had fled in the opposite direction. A week later, a telegram finally arrived confirming that she was in New York City and already gainfully employed. From then on, as the letters began to follow, Ellen’s conception moved closer and closer to the reality of Peg’s experience. Though Ellen hadn’t set foot in New York since she’d disembarked from the steamer in 1902, she found she could picture vividly the slush packed along the curb; she watched with her mind’s eye as Peg hurtled from sidewalk to street and followed her daughter as she weaved through the lunchtime crowds.
And this is what fills her mind now, while she keeps the house in order: thoughts of Peg, her own flesh and blood. Peg feeding pigeons during her lunch break. Peg alive, her existence first felt as kicks and hiccoughs in Ellen’s womb. Yes, this is a pleasant thought—Peg frolicking and flailing, a tireless thing. She looked like a stump of beetroot topped with mouse-colored hair when she was born, and Ellen couldn’t help but laugh at her as she kicked her tiny padded feet in the air. Tempestuous sprite. Little steamy head, Peg’s father used to call her in his letters home. And how is my little steamy head? From the moment of Peg’s birth, until Ellen was widowed, the world had seemed as noisy, as humorous, as significant a place as it was in her own childhood.
Herself as a child—remember? She is like a woman recovering from a high fever, and in her weakened state her oldest memories return to her with false yet convincing clarity. Now Ellen sees her own seven-year-old self squatting on a pebble beach, the muscles of her legs invisible beneath the smooth flesh. And she includes her daughter in the scene, as though Peg were her sister. Two young girls prying up a rock at the edge of a tidal pool, their hair damp and stringy, their faces patched with white from the chalky sand. Next she adds to it the lilt of a woman’s voice: “Ellen, Peg!” Two children absorbed by the minute population inside a shallow tidal pool and pretending not to hear the woman’s voice calling them to supper. It is the voice of Ellen’s mother, who died when Ellen was eight. Peg’s grandmother. While Ellen pushes the carpet sweeper around the living room she is so deep in this unreal memory of childhood that she forgets what she’s doing. Two girls squatting by the sea, watching the mouth of a barnacle open and close upon brown algae. Two girls at a tidal pool. Mother and daughter. Ellen leans against the sweeper’s handle, too immersed in the past now to continue with her work.
And what about her husband? There is little reason anymore to resist the memory of loving him. His boyish seriousness when he proposed to her. How awkward, their early embraces, until they’d learned to trust each other. He’d chosen her, a penniless and plain girl, to be his wife, and her primary emotion before he’d gone marching off to war had been gratitude. And during the war, fear. And after she’d lost him, determination. Her adult life had been spent keeping up with work that needed to be done. There had hardly been time to mourn him once the first burst of sorrow was behind her.
There is time now. Mr. Craxton has practically forgotten her existence, her daughter is a grown woman with a decent job, and the Manikin will have a new owner soon. Ellen tends to the housework by rote, halfheartedly; her main interest is in herself these days. She is like a statue that has been brought to life—no, brought back to life—by the shock of almost losing her daughter.
Herself as a child. As a young bride. She was only seventeen when she married, and though her husband hadn’t had much money of his own, he’d had the kind of tireless ambition that guaranteed her own future security, she’d felt certain. But war has a way of changing one’s plans. Because of that war—the Great War, the first and last war of its kind, surely—Ellen is living the life she’d originally expected for herself.
Memories of that other life fill her with tender melancholy: her husband’s whorl of black hair on his chest, his buttocks slippery from sweat, his warm breath. She’ll never love another man. Whatever she thinks about Lore Bennett, she’d never want to marry him—or anyone else who might want her for a wife. Ellen Griswood, thirty-six-year-old widow. A man would marry her simply to procure a housekeeper for himself, free of charge. But if she’s going to work she expects to be paid. Already her daughter is earning ten dollars a week, nearly twice as much as Ellen earns here at the Manikin, evidence enough that there are jobs to be had out there. With her years of experience, Ellen is sure to find other employment. Good riddance to the Manikin!
But she’ll miss this unruly manor, she’ll miss its quirks and mysteries. Most of all she’ll miss the sovereignty she’d inherited with this position. Keys to twenty-seven rooms. Everything inside the Manikin, valuable or not, living or inanimate, has been her responsibility for nearly a decade. Not for much longer, though. Even now, as she bends down to straighten the fringe of the living-room rug, she wonders whether it is for the last time. All the dust and dead beetles that have found their way beneath the rugs—will they be swept away by someone else? Once all the furnishings have been auctioned off, the Manikin will stand empty, a pariah inhabited by ghosts. No, of course there won’t be ghosts. Ghosts are tricks of weary minds.
Take Mr. Craxton—a conjurer if ever there was one. Ellen hears him entering the living room, identifies him by his white oxfords, since that’s all she can see behind the sofa from her crouching position. It doesn’t occur to her that she will startle him when she stands up, but that’s just what happens—he gives a little shout, as though he were walking through shallow water and had been pinched by a crab.
“God’s sake!” he says, and Ellen prepares for a torrent of angry words. God’s sake, woman, do you have to sneak around here like a criminal? Who do you think you are making me jump out of my skin like that! Instead, in a voice so timorous and wounded that Ellen almost feels sorry for him, Hal Craxton says, “Dear Mrs. Griswood. I thought you were my mother.”
Ellen tries to force out a nervous laugh, but the only sound she succeeds in making is a soft click. She can’t think of anything to say, and in the silence that follows she perceives a change in the nature of his gaze. One minute he is looking at her with relief, the next minute he is full of almost manic glee.
“Were you hiding from me?” he teases, moving around the sofa to position himself closer to her. “Were you trying to scare me? You moved my mother’s chair to give me a fright, didn’t you, eh?”
“I didn’t touch it.”
“Perhaps you jostled it without realizing.”
“I know I didn’t touch it.”
“Then we’ve just had a visit from a ghost!”
“Ridiculous!”
“You are a formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Griswood, if you don’t mind my saying so. Yes, indeed, you’re not even scared of the dead!”
“There’s enough to fear from the living.”
“Not in my mother’s case. Tell me, Mrs. Griswood, did you like her? I mean, did you consider her a friend?”
“She was my employer.”
“She was insane.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“She was mad.”
“She was devoted to you.”
“She might have fooled you and the rest of the staff. But I have proof that my mother wasn’t of sound mind when she executed her revised will. The old taxidermist, Boggio—he’s come forward. Old Boggio will save the day!”
“Boggio?”
“I will keep the Manikin, despite my mother’s wishes. And you, I hope, will remain as my housekeeper.”
Now it’s Ellen’s turn to start—her breath catches in her throat as she tries to take in this proposal. If she will remain.… Of course she’ll remain, if she’s invited! Of course she’d like to go on doing what she’s been doing for ten years, even if Mrs. Craxton had intended otherwise. If she’s not forced out, she won’t leave.
“I never thought to ask Mr. Boggio his opinion before today. As it turns out, he’s the one who knew my mother best.” He slides into his mother’s wheelchair, which he himself insisted on leaving in place beside the sofa. “Boggio has told me a story. A very strange story about my mother. A story concerning the disposal of her remains. He told me that two months before her death, my mother commissioned him—God forgive her—to preserve her body for public display. In other words, Mrs. Griswood, to stuff her!”
“You’re the one who’s mad!”
“My mother wanted to be stuffed! Stuffed! What better evidence than this that she had lost her mind.”
“That’s a lie, Mr. Craxton!” Ellen does feel like his mother’s ghost now; she feels that the right to admonish him is hers alone.
“Boggio has agreed to testify.”
“You’ve bribed him, haven’t you? You’re paying him to perjure himself.”
“Have you ever heard of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Griswood?” He pushes the wheels to rock forward slightly against the resisting brakes.
“I didn’t know the details of your mother’s will during her lifetime. But I can say with complete confidence that she did not want to be, to be…”
“Stuffed!”
“You’ll be punished for your disrespect.”
“So you do believe in ghosts.”
“She bequeathed her estate to charity.”
“The estate belongs to the Craxton family. I am all that’s left of the immediate family now, and I’m going to retain what is rightfully mine. Old Boggio has a story to tell, a story worthy of Poe! What better proof of insanity than this?”
“You will send Boggio to jail?”
“You don’t understand. We’re going to keep the Manikin, thanks to Boggio. ‘We’ includes you, Mrs. Griswood.”
“What about your mother’s reputation?”
“What’s a reputation to a corpse? Come on, Mrs. Griswood, my mother was crazy, you know that as well as I do.”
“I will not testify.”
“I’m not asking you to testify. In fact, I’d rather you kept quiet. Boggio and I will do all the talking.”
“Your mother’s intentions, Mr. Craxton, are perfectly clear.”
“As clear as chocolate cake.”
“Excuse me?”
“The chocolate birthday cake she had the cook bake for me every year. I’ve always hated chocolate. I’ll tell you about my mother’s intentions.”
“She bequeathed her estate to charity.”
“You will stay on, I hope. I mean, after the legal questions have been resolved. But I won’t ask you to make such a decision now, in the heat of the moment. It will take time for me to sort things out—you should use that time to consider your options. You are a talented housekeeper. I can see why my mother valued you. You are also an excellent woman.”
With no more warning than this last compliment, drawled with such significance that the sound of each word hangs like a clarinet’s whole note in the air, Hal Craxton pushes himself out of the wheelchair and smiles. It is a smile that diminishes even as it arouses, a smile that mocks any pretension of dignity. From a distance measurable by inches, Hal Craxton smiles at Ellen Griswood with the brazen, insulting, and yet seductive power of a man who has learned to manipulate women. For a few irresistible seconds, Ellen endures his grin, her own expression oddly childish now, gently afraid, as she admits what his eyes are telling her: that she, despite her class and prudish resolve, could be persuaded to desire him.
“Excuse me, sir.” She slips past him and flees upstairs to the safety of her attic room.
* * *
If Hal Craxton is what people used to call a libertine, he is not without a modicum of self-insight, which makes possible, in turn, a small degree of transformation in his character. When his dialogue with Mrs. Griswood took that unexpected turn into romantic innuendo and then into a charged silence, he felt himself changing into the sort of man who would find a woman like Ellen Griswood “excellent.” First he called her a talented housekeeper. How he moved from there to the more consuming praise he’ll never know. But rather than recoil in afterthought, he is pleased with himself. That he should even consider this widowed housekeeper a desirable woman surprises him. If he can’t seduce a young girl then he generally goes for the spike-heeled, debauched type. So the fact that he can even entertain this new fancy intrigues him. And when she runs off like a scared animal, he must restrain himself from pursuing her. But he does let her go, telling himself that there will be time enough to bring the old girl around. Around to what? A single romp, or something more serious?
The thought of Ellen Griswood’s teenage daughter lies at the murky edges of his memory. He’d stolen a few kisses from the child … when was it? Last summer? A year earlier? There had been nothing unusual about the encounter. But the memory adds momentum to his burgeoning interest. Not that he longs to make the teenage girl his own. No, he wants the mother. And he wants her more because she is the mother of that beautiful girl. So what if Mrs. Griswood herself is far from beautiful? Her harshness, a worn yet brisk quality to her manner, and a certain cloistered aura all make her a unique example of available women. What will he do with her? He’s not sure yet, but he already knows that he must take her more seriously than all his other lovers. And isn’t this realization itself an accomplishment?
But right now there is work to do, testimonies to rehearse, letters to write. He’ll turn his fate around and reclaim his rightful inheritance, thanks to Boggio. That old beggar will say anything for a dime. And as soon as Hal has his leisure back, he’ll invite Mrs. Griswood to celebrate.