Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 20- Two Brothers

Voices crushed in around her.  Snow fell outside and the crackle of a fire burst in spurts around the voices.

"This one," Louisa said, a white lily in her hand,"no that one."

No one elicited a response from Claudia, and she gave none. In order not to be overwhelmed by the dizziness of looking at flowers for a wedding with Victor, while her heart pictured flowers for another wedding to an impossible man.

"This color, no this one is better, no a little paler I think," Louisa said.

Words rolled over Claudia as pins and hands tugged at her waistline fitting a wedding dress full of white flounces to her form. Claudia fidgeted as the seamstress went to grab another pin. The sitting room was warm and bright but it was her mother's domain. Filled nearly to the brink with expensive artifacts as if these could somehow replace human kindness.

"Tut, tut child, you haven't any softness left to you. Stomach as firm as a man's!" the seamstress commented.  

Claudia shrugged and did not inform her that this was the effect of making love on horseback and pressed to the dirty ground. Nor did she say that her body was a reflection of her mind.  She was no longer their soft little girl.

Instead, again and again another declaration bloomed up on her lips.  I will not marry Victor.  The words wilted before they crested her lips. "I prefer the yellow actually."

"No, no yellow is no color for a wedding."  Her mother said in a voice as hard and sharp as a knife. "You must be careful, Claudia. Every choice has a consequence."

Even these small decisions were beyond Claudia.  She was a flower—she was to smell sweet and be chosen for her color and bloom.  The poison did not matter until it was visible.  

No yellow then.  There was to be no joy.  That was not what a wedding was.  A wedding was propriety and duty.  The mother's eyes which saw the yellow stain across her flower watched her for signs of decay incessantly.

"I like the yellow," Julien said from his quiet corner where he was allowed to watch as long as he was the proper mouse of a child. "It's sunny."

"Hush, brother," Claudia said before her mother's cold voice could slice the little boy open.  Her breath spoke for a moment of the forest smell and a man she could marry with yellow flowers if she wished.  She said, "of course Mother is correct."

She closed her mind and tried to imagine her yellow wedding beside the devil.  No image came.  And then an image did come but of Bennett out under the sky with his shirt tossed aside.  The feel of his hand on her breast slipping over her stomach roused easily in her mind.  She could not see him repeating his vows to her.  She could not picture sewing in the sitting room of his house.  Her heart jolted at the memory of his face.

I love him.  She felt him in her blood and like a perfume over her skin.  To marry him was less and more than a dream. It was a confusion her mind could not even create.

Victor she could greet with a smile and lower her sewing to her lap.  Victor would swear his vows to her in the eyes of the church.  This was the world of angels and God.  That was the world in which Victor belonged; the world in which she was a wife.

Her devil did not belong in that world.  She knew perfectly well at that moment that she would never refuse Victor.  She would never keep her promise to her love.  She could not.  That was not something that could exist in God's light.    It would dissipate in the light of day.

How horrid that Mother was correct.  Yet how much those cruel eyes saw.  

Claudia looked at the older woman.  I will become her. All that will be left of me is thorn and poison.  Yet the secret of Bennett would remain a night-bloom in her heart.  It would always be hers as she lived a bland and good life.  Mother could never take that—it would be her secret that poison and thorns would never touch.

Claudia reached out and brushed her fingers over the stem of a rose. Its thorns teased her hand like a promise of life to come.  He will be my pain in the night.

Her eyes traveled to Julien where he sat. His foot striking the ground, he met her eyes and grinned.  This too, she thought, I will hold onto. He is my piece of heaven.  He can never be touched by Mother's cold or the poison that has made a happily damned woman of me.

"We'll get a yellow flower for you, my Julien," Claudia said.  She leaned over and allowed the prick of a pin to press into her waist.  Taking the yellow flower from its resting place, she tossed it to Julien.  "You can put it in your jacket."

Mother shook her head, but it was not a denial.  A smile brushed over her thin lips. "Take your flower and play, Boy."

Julien crept from the room, his hands tight around the flower.  It was his life being expelled from moment to moment—never having a moment to settle in.  The younger son and a child still, his voice was even more meaningless than Claudia's.  She wished it could stay like that. For when he became a man, surrounded by this family, how could he be anything other than they were?

"You are bleeding on the dress," the seamstress accused.

"Perhaps you should be more careful with your needles," Louisa snapped.

Claudia played with an engineered curl falling from her head.

"You have a dinner with Victor tonight," Louisa said.  Claudia had no doubt that her mother knew of every explicit moment she'd shared with Bennett.  She knew of every touch and every word. "Don't be a fool."

Mother was like God, all-knowing and filled with hatred for all joy.  She would not move against Claudia as long as a pretense of propriety remained.  This wedding would happen.  The disgusting daughter would be taken away.  The memory of her own mistake of love would disappear.

Once I am gone, Claudia thought, Mother will let the flower in her heart die.  Memories of sunlight on her soul would die, and all that remained would be thorn, and she will be happier.  She will be victorious over all the useless love in the world.  She will be the holy creature God intended us all to be.

"Is this nearly finished with?"

Claudia looked up to Roderick in the doorway.  The elder brother leered at both women.  They were nothing to him.  He had come for the dinner.  Early as usual.  Father and Roderick would be drunk before the dinner even began.

Claudia, the perfect flower, smiled at him.  "Soon, of course, dear brother.  Why do you not join father in the smoking room?"

"I have come to greet the ladies of the house."

"As is proper," Louisa said. Claudia and not Roderick was the intended recipient of this knowledge. And the only word that seemed to matter was proper.

"And honored we are," Claudia responded.  

Recognition dawned. The look in his eyes was familiar and having watched the expression on Bennett she was stunned to find it there in her step-brother. A thrill passed through her.  Roderick watched her with lust.  He had for quite some time, and she wondered how much of his hate was tied up in shame.

He was old enough indeed when Claudia arrived with her mother.  As a child, she had known she was little more than a servant to him.  He hadn't even seen her but for occasional small cruelties to prove he had power, and she had none. If she wished it Claudia could make him a servant now.  His desire gave her power. Having been powerless her entire existence, this idea was intoxicating. "It is always such a pleasure to see you.  You could stay with us a while if you wished."

"I have no wish to sit through your fitting."

"How silly of me.  I shall change soon and be finished with it.  Perhaps you will take a walk with me, Brother.  It feels like ages since we've spoken."  Awareness of the body she lived in and the wickedness of men had changed the world.  He is too blind to see the change in me.

Curiosity killed caution.  She wanted to know the triumph of using this power before a wedding took it from her.  She wanted to have the upper hand with Roderick once before married life transported her to a lonely country house.  

Let me use my poison to infect the world.