Chapter 1
1922, Cypress, Kentucky, USA
“Did you hear a word I said?” I know better than to raise my voice at my husband, but I’m tired of repeating myself. Tucked into his lab like a hibernating bear, Leopold forgot to eat lunch again. I refuse to suffer his wrath when he passes out from hunger.He hasn’t touched the tray I brought him as requested. It took twice as long to cut the sandwiches into bite-sized pieces, but he won’t eat them if he can’t write or study his notes at the same time. I’ve learned that much in our ten-year marriage.
Ten long, lonely years of marriage.
“You said the garden is full of flowers,” Leopold replies without looking up from his stacks of paper. He writes as he speaks. The urge to rip the paper from under his penny pencil, tear it into tiny pieces,and sprinkle them over his head burns within me.
“Not even close,” I say through clenched jaws. I slam the tray on his papers so hard that sandwich bites jump off it and scurry for cover between the pages. “I said your lunch sat here for five hours, and you haven’t touched it. The apple slices are brown when you promised you would eat them first. If you don’t ingest some fruit, you will contract scurvy and lose your teeth.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Harriett. You know I haven’t time for your theatrics. Next year, the World’s Fair will be in Los Angeles—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I interrupt with a wave of my hand and an eye roll. “You have one more year to prepare your presentation. You are changing the world as we know it—bringing back extinct species…blah, blah, blah.”
Before the frenzy to prepare for the World’s Fair, we traveled to Boston and spent time with our friends. Those visits were my socialization for the year. We stayed with my cousins, Elenor and her husband, Murdock, in the heart of the American social scene. Dancing all night in speakeasies, callers in the morning, luncheons in the afternoon with sidecar cocktails, and giggling with Elenor between them kept me alive the rest of the year. The memories of our shenanigans fuel my life force as I clean, cook, and coax my husband to do the minimum to stayupright. The hardest part of my job as Leopold’s wife is ensuring he eats, sleeps, and bathes. Heaven forbid I ask him to ingest fresh air and sunshine or engage in human contact.
I even feed his caged “patients.” Animals, surgically enhanced and cross-bred, snap at me as I clean their enclosures. I wish I could blame them for my childless marriage or console myself by calling them our children. But Leopold doesn’t show them affection after he makes his measurements and takes his photographs for the journals. No wonder I have a kinship with the little beasts. They live a lonely life, full of pain until death. Dying things get my husband’s attention. His eyes light up with the chance to autopsy the poor wretch to find out wherehewent wrong. As if he were more than a man…
“Harriett,” he shouts. He slams his pencil on the desk, creating a shower of crumbs. “I wish you were supportive of my life’s work.”
If I were more supportive, I’d be the brassiere holding it up.
Leopold didn't notice when I ditched my corset. Or if he did, he didn't say a word. It is the fashion to wear a long, slimming corselette or trade in one’s corset altogether for a bandeau. Since we live in the middle of nowhere, I don’t wear either one. Under my dress is a simple chemise. While I love thefreedom of no one noticing my body, it's been many years, and depression has set in. I'm at the point where I would suffer the harshest whalebone corset just for a spin on the dance floor with a well-spoken stranger. An actual conversation about what's going on outside of this swamp would be a dream come true.
“Right, because I've never put my wants and needs on hold for your life's work,” I snap. I want to say that I ended my life for his life's work, but that would just make him angry. Well, angrier. Even my hair, which used to brush my cheekbones in the latest style, is a cloud of frizz at chin length. What I wouldn’t give for a short jaunt to a salon!
“Harriett, Harriett, not again,” he wails. “You knew your place when we married. I have been nothing but open and honest about your role in this household and the type of marriage we have. I never promised love and romance or parties with friends. My home was enough in the beginning. What changed?”
“Nothing changed,” I say with a defeated sigh. He's right. He never promised friends, but I thought the implied promise in marriage was that he would be my friend or —gasp—my lover. When I confessed how dismal our marriage was to Eleanor, she said my feelings were normal. She said the longing I felt and the lack of love I perceived were simply Mother Nature’s way of telling me it was time to have a baby.
Boy, did Leopold laugh when I asked for ababy!
I was humiliated and never brought it up again. Is it truly the lack of motherhood that drills a hole in my heart? I never played with baby dolls, so why would I want one now? Why am I expecting more—a pregnancy, no less—from a man who couldn't perform on our wedding night? No, I was a fool to think I would get more than unrequited love when the sight of me sprawled out on our marriage bed for the first time wasn't enough to stir his passions.
When my complaints trail off, Leopold returns to his scribbling. There's a small victory when he shoves a sandwich piece between his lips. I leave the plate but take the tray of cold tea and brown apples back to the kitchen. I should serve them again tomorrow. It's not like he'll notice. But punishing him won’t make me feel better, so I slip the apple slices between the bars of the nearest cage. The mouse-headed snake chirps with glee and swallows one whole.
I need some air.
My apron strings snap on the rusty hook next to the back door of the kitchen. I must contact the gamekeeper to replace the hook. Mr. Breyers is the one staff member we have on our estate. His services aren't for us—not all of the creatures my husband creates are vegetarian. However, Mr. Breyers iskind enough to do odd jobs and repairs around the house in addition to minding our stock animals.
He works for us in exchange for the tiny cottage on the edge of our property. What does he do in there? Never married and never visiting town, except for church on Sundays, Mr. Breyers is a solitary twin of my misanthropic husband. Any attempt I made to befriend him fell apart before it started.
The sun beats down on my face and bare shoulders as I walk past my garden in my housedress, uncovered. Scandalous, but who’s watching? It will be time to harvest the tomatoes and peppers soon. Then, I must quickly turn the soil to plant squash. They need time to plump for a fall harvest. All of my husband's creatures with rodent features love squash. While marriage was supposed to make me wise, I'm sorry I had to learn that happy creatures bite less often.
To the west of the house, far enough that I doubt anyone could see me there from inside, is the swamp. I don’t know if Leopold inherited the land or bought it himself, but it must have been cheap because the soil makes a horrid farm. Slightly elevated to the east and without the stability to run a plow, no crops will grow on over half our acreage. Water runs under the ground to the Ohio River for ten months of the year. Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I stole one of Mr. Breyers’s rafts and sailed down the river…would I meet danger or a rugged stranger to be my companion?
With one last glance over my shoulder, I indulge in the wilderness. The cold mud between my toes as I remove my shoes is a delicious contrast to the sun heating my bare arms. If I had a lady’s maid, my tanlines would frighten her to tears. Reeds of the swamp come up to my waist, obscuring our closest neighbor’s view of me—not that Lovecraft ever comes to call upon us.
Wading in the brackish water, I feel like a siren. If only I could lure a handsome sailor to my side. I wouldn’t drown him like a true siren except maybe in conversation, affection, and the obsessive adoration that only an ignored wife can give. As if listening to my thoughts, the plants beneath the surface coil around my ankles. They stroke lovingly over my feet and between my toes. I splash my way to the northernmost tip of the lake, where the submerged rocks allow me to step into deeper water. I lift my dress higher and higher to avoid staining the fabric. If the cost of soap weren’t outrageous, I’d float the cotton on the surface as I twirl around.
The plants follow me, twining up my skinny calves. Are they an aquatic fern or cattail? I’m too protective of my elicit swimming to ask Leopold to borrow my father’s botany books to research what type of plants live in this swampy lake. I’ve neverseen these long reeds covered with spore pods before. They must be spore pods because the suction of the round cups on my skin reminds me of tiny kisses. No fern has such strong fronds, though. Another one of Leopold’s hybrids? No, he doesn’t know botany…not like my father did. Growing up as a scientist’s only child, I thought I could handle being Leopold’s wife. All it taught me is why my mother left.
My loveless marriage turned my hatred of her into compassion.
How funny, these plants sense my shift in mood! In soothing circles, they climb over my knees to caress my slender thighs, stroking my flesh like a lover. My mind is calmed, but my nerves ignite. I step on a rock deeper than I’ve ever gone to give the plant more access to my body. Against my hammering heart, I clutch my dress and chemise. I’m afraid of falling into the black water and drowning.That’s all.There’s no way a plant pleasures me. Ridiculous to receive more affection than I have in a ten-year marriage from a plant.
My face tilts to the sky. A moan escapes my lips, but my moment is interrupted when the plant tendrils reach my bloomers. The suckers investigate the ruffled edges first with tiny nips to the lace. Let them snag the stitches; their dance on the water’s surface is worth the hours I will mend them. I love the rounded tips smoothing over the tangle of appendages that dip in and out of the cuffs. Bright green with mintundersides, dotted with peach cups, I’m fascinated by them. They look like plant material but move like snakes. But what snakes investigate with their tail instead of their face?
