3 of Swords: Aunt Marie

Separation and doubts that cause suffering and pessimism, but after the confusion is overcome there will be renewal.



The house echoed in those days. Big and ancestral, the building was filled with the sounds of previous inhabitants who had left their marks upon it. In the upper rooms could be seen the remnants of young people. In the nursery, the walls and floor told the stories babies who had been swaddled there and toddlers for whom the grand staircase had been an insurmountable mountain of climbing. The rooms that overlooked the west lake had almost certainly once been the haven of young women, many of them if the muted colors and now-tattered lace were to be trusted.

But I, at the front gate, saw none of that. I had been evicted, cast out from a place once home. Now, I waited, static, hoping that for entrance and forgiveness.

“Lady Marie will see you,” the aging footman who had met me at the gate intoned. “However, I have been asked to remind you that she is an old woman. Your visit must be brief.”

I agreed, and we walked in silence along the gravel drive to the front door of the manor house.

In the front hall, Lillian, my aunt’s housekeeper, met us. She dismissed the footman (who was new since I’d left) and led me up the stairs to sitting room attached to my aunt’s bedroom. We didn’t talk.

My shoes echoed hollowly up the stairs that spiraled in a languid arc to the second floor. From the top of them, I could see out to the grove of pine trees and sat to one side of the park.

“She’s just about to settle in for a nap,” Lillian informed me.

I informed her that I was perfectly aware of the limitations to my visit. I needed to at least see her and try to make things right.

Lillian opened the oak-paneled door for me.

Inside, one of the maids had drawn the curtains so everything existed in a world of fluctuating shadows. My aunt, the family matriarch and the person who had ostracized me from Hill House, sat beneath one of the arched window in a rocking chair made of complex curves and whorls. From her severe bun to her velvet house shoes, my aunt had not changed one bit.

She stared at me impassively.

“Aunt Marie,” I began, but had no idea of how to continue. I clutched my jacket closer around my shoulders to fend off the chill, although it came perhaps from the ice in her eyes.

After a long moment, the old woman opened her mouth. Words creaked out in the same halting pace I’d learned to fear and respect as a child. “Why are you here?”

I moved closer to her, hoping that the words were invitation enough to do so. “Aunt Marie,” I said again, “I wanted to apologize. I know that I have upset you, but I miss you. I want to come back.”

“No.”

What few hopes I had left that this enterprise would be successful fell.

“You have disgraced yourself, and you have disgraced this family. Go.” She raised a wrinkled, shaking hand and pointed to the door I’d come in through.

***

“It was an accident, Marie. You know that.” Lillian stood in the old woman’s peripheral because she knew that her employer hated it. “You can’t remain self-righteous forever. You’ll lose them all.”

“Yes, I know.” Defeat tinged the woman’s voice, much quieter now that the child had gone. “I don’t have to forgive and forget yet.”

“You’re going to choose the life of a horse over the life of a child?”

“Not a child anymore.”

“True. All the more reason to forget.

“Arrange a family dinner for Sunday. We’ll talk about it then.”

Lillian nodded and left the room. In the last moment, she turned and faced her employer. “I found the boy who killed the horse, Marie. Last week. He admitted to killing Duke and offered to pay for it. He’s grown now, a kind and apologetic man. You’d like him.”

Marie’s eyes hardened, and she told the now-empty room, “No, I wouldn’t. Duke’s murderer deserves whatever he gets.”

From a niche hidden by the curtain, Marie pulled out the little doll that had once been a child’s favorite plaything. Not ready to forgive and knowing that she could never forgive, Marie took out the box of hat pins. So, it had been a little village boy and not someone in the family.

With each pin she pushed into the doll, Marie could feel a little bit of herself let go. She felt herself lancing the wounds of her anger, and the vitriol that had built up there for year slowly poured out.