My legs and hips feel sore when I stretch them against the satin sheets. I peel back the blankets, assess myself. I’m wearing a plain white slip. My skin is tingling and hairless. My nails have been rounded and polished. I’m back in my bedroom, with its window that doesn’t open and its bathroom so pink it’s practically glowing.
As if on cue, my bedroom door opens, and I don’t know what to expect. Gabriel, beaten and limping as he brings me a meal; a parade of first generations coming to exfoliate, fluff, and perfume what’s left of my skin; a doctor with a needle and another scary table, this time on wheels. But it’s only Deirdre, carrying what looks to be a heavy white package in her tiny arms.
“Hello,” she says, in a tone that’s gentle as only a child’s can be. “How are you feeling?”
My answer wouldn’t be kind, so I don’t say anything.
She flits across the room, wearing a wispy white dress rather than her traditional uniform.
“I’ve brought your gown,” she says, setting the package on the dressing table and undoing the bow that was holding it together. The dress is taller than she is, and it drags luxuriously along the floor as she holds it up. It glitters with diamonds and pearls.
“It should be your size,” Deirdre says. “They measured you while you were out, and I made some alterations to be sure. Try it on.”
The last thing I want to do is try on what is clearly my wedding gown, just so I can meet House Governor Linden, the man responsible for my kidnapping, and Housemaster Vaughn, whose name alone made Deirdre go pale in the elevator. But she’s holding up the dress and looking so sympathetic and innocent about it that I don’t want to give her a hard time. I step into the gown and allow myself to be zipped in.
Deirdre stands on the ottoman at the dressing table to tie the choker for me. Her deft little hands make such perfect bows. And the gown is a remarkable fit. “You made this?” I ask her, not hiding my amazement. A blush spreads across her apple cheeks, and she nods as she steps down.
“The diamonds and the pearls take the longest time to thread,” she says. “The rest is easy.”
The dress is strapless, shaped like the top of a heart at my collarbone. The train is V-shaped. And I suppose, from an aerial view, I could be a satiny white heart as I make my way down the aisle. At least I can’t imagine a lovelier thing to wear on my way to lifelong imprisonment.
“You made three wedding dresses by yourself?” I say.
Deirdre shakes her head and gently guides me to sit on the ottoman. “Just yours,” she says. “You’re my keeper; I’m your domestic. The other wives each have their own.”
She opens a drawer in the dressing table, and it is lush with cosmetics and hair barrettes. With a rouge brush in her hand, she gestures to the buttons on the wall just above my night table. “Press the white one if you need anything, that’s how you can reach me. Blue is the kitchen.”
She begins to paint my face, blending and brushing colors onto my skin, holding my chin up to inspect me. Her eyes are serious and wide. When she’s satisfied, she starts on my hair, brushing and weaving it around curlers, and prattling on about information she feels will be useful to me.
“The wedding will be held in the rose garden. It goes in order of age, youngest first. So there will be a bride before you and a bride after. There’s the exchange of vows, of course, but the vows will be read for you; you won’t be required to speak. Then there’s the exchange of the rings, and let’s see what else …”
Her voice trails off, into a sea of description; floating candles; dinner arrangements; even how softly I should speak.
But everything she says blurs into one hideous mess. The wedding is tonight. Tonight. I have no hope of escaping before it occurs; I haven’t even been able to open a window; I haven’t even seen the outside of this wretched place. I feel sick, winded. I’d settle for being able to open the window not to escape but to gasp in the fresh air. I open my mouth to take a deep breath, and Deirdre pops a red candy into my mouth.
“It’ll make your breath sweet,” she says. The candy dissolves instantly, and I’m flooded with the flavor of something like strawberries and too much sugar. It’s overwhelming at first, and then it subsides, tastes natural, even settles my anxiety somewhat.
“There now,” Deirdre says, seeming pleased with herself. She nudges me so that I’m facing the mirror for the first time.
I’m stunned by what I see.
My eyelids have been painted pink, but it is not the obnoxious pink of the bathroom here. It’s the color between the reds and yellows at sunset. It sparkles as though full of little stars, and recedes into light purples and soft whites. My lips are done to match, and my skin is shimmering.
I look, for the first time, like I am not a child. I am my mother in her party dress, those nights she spent dancing with my father in the living room after my brother and I had gone to bed. She would come into my bedroom later to kiss me while she thought I slept. She would be sweaty and perfumed and delirious with love for my father. “Ten fingers, ten toes,” she would whisper into my ear, “my little girl is safe in her dreams.” Then she would leave me feeling like I’d just been enchanted.
What would my mother say to this girl—this almost-woman—in the mirror?
As for myself, I’m speechless. With her talent for color Deirdre has made my blue eye brighter, my brown eye nearly as intense as Rose’s stare. She has dressed me and painted me well for the role: I am soon to become Governor Linden’s tragic bride.
I think it speaks for itself, but in the mirror I can see Deirdre behind me twisting her hands, waiting to hear what I think of her work. “It’s beautiful,” is all I can say.
“My father was a painter,” she says with a hint of pride. “He tried his best to teach me, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good. He told me anything can be a canvas, and I suppose you’re my canvas now.”
She says no more about her parents, and I don’t ask.
She touches up my hair for a while, which has been curled into ringlets and pinned back with a simple white headband. This goes on until the watch on Deirdre’s wrist begins to beep. And then she helps me into my un-sensible high heels and carries the train of my dress down the hallway. We descend in the elevator and weave through a maze of hallway after hallway, and just when I’m beginning to think this house has no end, we come to a large wooden door. Deirdre goes ahead of me, opens the door just barely, and pokes her head in. She appears to be talking to someone.
Deirdre steps back, and a little boy peers out at me. He’s her size or close to it. His eyes sweep across me, head to toe. “I like it,” he says.
“Thank you, Adair. I like yours, too,” Deirdre says. There’s such professionalism in her young voice. “Are we almost ready to begin?”
“All ready here. Check with Elle.”
Deirdre disappears behind the door with him. There’s more talking, and when the door opens, another little girl peers out at me. Her eyes are big and green; she claps her hands together excitedly. “Oh, it’s lovely!” she shrieks, and then disappears.
When the door opens again, Deirdre takes my hand and leads me into what can only be a sewing room. It’s small and windowless, cluttered with bolts of fabric and sewing machines, and everywhere ribbons drip from shelves and lay strewn across tables. “The other brides are all ready,” Deirdre says. She looks around herself to be sure no one else can hear, and then whispers to me, “But I think you’re the prettiest.”
The other brides stand in corners of the room opposite each other, being fussed over by their domestics, all of whom are dressed in white. The little