Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  All the blood drains from my head. He does not say this with malice; for his statement to be hateful he would actually have to know some of the people he wants to eliminate. He and Spencer, they are only trying to change the world, to make it a better place for their children.

  By getting rid of someone else's.

  I stare at them through the open doorway; it is like seeing a saucer of milk go sour before your eyes. Spencer grins amiably. "Genocide's not legal."

  "Only if you get caught," my father laughs, and he picks up his cue again. "Stripes or solids?"

  Before I know it I have pushed myself into the doorway. I am white as a sheet; Spencer's cue rattles to the ground and he is at my side in an instant. "Cissy?" he says frantically. "What's wrong? Is it the baby?"

  I manage to shake my head. "The baby . . . is fine."

  My father frowns. "Darling, you look like you've seen a ghost."

  Maybe I have, because I have just watched something that clearly has been here all along, even if I was too blind to bear witness before. Spencer pries the teaspoons from my hand. "You aren't up to this. That's why we have Ruby, isn't it? Come. Let's get you off your feet."

  "I don't want to be off my feet," I say, my voice escalating. "I don't want . . . I don't . . ." As I push Spencer away, the teaspoons clatter to the floor. I burst into tears.

  My father grasps my shoulders firmly. "Cissy, you're overwrought. Sit down, now."

  "Listen to your father," Spencer agrees.

  The problem is, I have been. And I no longer know who I am.

  "Call Dr. DuBois," Spencer says quietly to my father, who nods and lifts the telephone receiver.

  Spencer kneels beside me and puts his arm around my shoulders. What does one do with an insane wife? "Cissy?" he says, his bewilderment twisting my name like ribbon candy.

  Silver winks at me, a conspiracy at my feet. "Oh, Spencer," I sob. "Look at what you've done."

  Every woman in the Vermont House, with the exception of Mrs. Farr of Monkton, who was absent, favored the [passage of the 1931 sterilization] bill.

  --Burlington Free Press, March 25, 1931

  Dr. DuBois sets his stethoscope in his ears. As I lay back on my pillows, he shields me with his body for privacy and begins to unbutton my blouse. I remember too late that I am still wearing the medicine pouch Gray Wolf gave me.

  My eyes meet the doctor's. Before he can touch the pouch I grab the edges of my blouse and pull them together. I shake my head once, sharply, staring hard at Dr. DuBois, whose brow has furrowed in a frown. Without breaking my gaze, I slide the buttons back into their holes, and wait for him to make the next move.

  He is Spencer's puppet, but I am his patient, and to my surprise, that actually counts for something. Dr. DuBois tugs his stethoscope from his ears and hangs it around his neck. His eyes pose a question I have no intention of answering. "Well, your baby is fine," he says briskly. "I think all you need is a good rest." He shakes two sleeping pills from a medicine bottle and watches carefully as I put them into my mouth and take a drink from the cup of water he's holding out. "That's a good girl. You should feel better in no time. But you know, Cissy, that you can call on me whenever you have anything you need to . . . ask."

  With that, he rises and approaches Spencer, hovering in the doorway. As they begin to speak quietly, I roll onto my side and spit out the pills I've tucked high in my cheek. I slip them into my pillowcase.

  I cannot take a nap, because then I won't be able to meet Gray Wolf as I am supposed to this afternoon. Of course, now that Dr. DuBois has come to visit, I will have to concoct some new excuse. Maybe I will say I'm going to the stationer for vellum, to write invitations to our dinner party. What they do not understand is that I don't need pills, and I don't need rest. What I need is someone who does not want me to sleep through my own life.

  The bed sinks as Spencer sits down beside me. I roll toward him, my eyelids half-lowered. "I'm already getting tired."

  "You aren't the only one," Spencer answers, and his voice is full of edges.

  In that moment I forget how to breathe.

  "Why is it that Dr. DuBois--the physician you've gone to see six times in the past two weeks, for various aches and pains--has no recollection of these visits?" His face is stained crimson, which makes the blond roots of his hair stand out like platinum. "What on earth could my wife be doing that would make her lie to me?" He has my shoulders in his hands, and shakes me. "Not just once, but over and over?"

  My head snaps back on the stalk of my neck. "Spencer, it's not what you think . . ."

  "Do not tell me what I think!" he roars, and then suddenly collapses into himself. "Cissy, God, what have you done to me?"

  Seeing him fall apart, I push myself into a sitting position and cradle his head in my lap. "Spencer. I was going out for walks. By myself. I just wanted to be by myself."

  "Yourself?" Spencer murmurs against my skin. "You were by yourself?"

  I stare square into his eyes. "Yes."

  Stealing, lying . . . I wouldn't be surprised to find unreliability an inherited trait.

  "Look at me," I say wryly, gesturing at the swell of my belly.

  "I do," Spencer answers. "I am." He cups my face in his hands and kisses me lightly. When he pulls away, he is holding an apology between his teeth. "I'm sorry, Cissy." I squeeze his hand as he gets to his feet. It is not until he takes the key to the bedroom door from his dresser that I realize he has not been asking forgiveness for what he has done, but for what he is about to do. "Dr. DuBois agrees with me--you can't be left alone. Especially not now, when your emotions are running so high with the pregnancy. He says that you're at risk to . . . to hurt yourself again."

  "And God forbid I do it where someone else could see. What would people say if they knew Spencer Pike was married to a woman who belonged with the rest of the feebleminded in Waterbury!"

  Spencer's hand strikes my cheek with a sound like thunder, and shocks me into submission. He stares at his palm, as surprised by his actions as I am. I touch the pads of my fingers to my face, feeling the print of him rising like a second skin. "I'm doing this," Spencer says stiffly, "because I love you."

  The minute the door closes behind him and the lock turns into place, I get out of bed. I try the windows, which are stuck as always. I bang on the door. "Ruby!" I yell. "Ruby, you get me out of here this instant!"

  I hear her scratching on the other side of the door. "I can't, Miz Pike. The professor, he says so."

  I beat my fist one last time against the panels. Thrashing around has only made the close room even hotter; my hair sticks to the back of my neck and my shirt is damp. A princess in an ivory tower, that's what I am. But if the prince knew, at heart, that I am a toad, would he fight so hard to keep me?

  Crawling around on my hands and knees I plug in the electric fan and hold my face close. Immediately I am cooler. I wonder if this is what the air in Canada is like. I wonder if Gray Wolf will worry, when I do not come.

  As the fan spins I speak into it, a child's trick, so that my voice sounds like someone else's. "Nia Lia," I say. I am Lia. "N'kadi waji nikonawakwanawak." I want to go home.

  Henceforth it shall be the policy of the state to prevent procreation of idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded or insane persons, when the public welfare, and the welfare of idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded or insane persons likely to procreate, can be improved by voluntary sterilization as herein provided.

  --"An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization," Laws of Vermont, 31st Biennial Session (1931), No. 174, p. 194

  "I'm thinking about caramelized onions," Ruby says.

  She sits on a chair beside my bed, my only visitor. Outside, on one of the trees in the backyard, a bird is making a nest. A red thread unwinds from its beak, like a magician doing sleight-of-hand with a handkerchief. "Fine."

  There is nothing sharp in my bedroom. Nothing I could swallow or use to string myself up. I know, because Spencer has had Ruby canvass the space. What