Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 Read Online Free PDF

must enter. It is not at the top of a tower, nor deep in the basement. There is simply a locked door at the top of the stairs, a window from the outside. Were the roof less steep, perhaps I could crawl around and peek in the window.
    Our son has done so. His mouth and eyes tell nothing of this venture, even when I sigh and pause from washing the dishes to look at my left hand. He is good at pretending not to see. The door had a lock that cannot be picked, but he knows the secret of the golden key. Cover the others’ blood with your own, and no one will know.
    * * * *
    The Schooling Here
    My son has grown old before my eyes, no calendar to measure time. He comes into the library to watch me, and asks questions about “out there.” He teaches me how to be a robber. We practice walking silently, first without shoes on the hardwood, finally in heavy boots through clots of paper. My discarded drawings.
    He brings locks, little delicate silver ones, heavy brass doorknobs, and dismantles them. Puts them back together, methodically, slowly. He looks pained at the noise I make, grating the metal pick on the metal parts. When I drowse in the big leather chair, he steals my books and returns them in the wrong places. I cannot wade silently, I cannot slow my heart or breath. I cannot watch unblinking, the sound my eyes make wet and staring in the dark, the sound that always gives me away.
    * * * *
    A child's bones are more fragile, and less solid, than an adult's. So many bones in the walls, they dance, they leer. And this, they tell me, is normal. The handle on his knife, the pen in my hand, hollowed reeds of the once-living. The cups we drink out of. I tell my son about Africa, how people would drink out of enemies’ heads. About how they massacred Indian women and children, too. He does not believe me, although he knows better than not to believe me. I tell him things that his father cannot know, cannot say.
    Every man, woman, and child carries around a bag of bones, here. They clink. There is no Halloween with skeletons dangling. A jack'o'lantern is a toy they could never begin to understand, because here no one knows how to cast away evil spirits. They are the evil spirits. Someday my son will travel to the crossroads, make a deal, and get lost. He will never come home again, and then he will know that everything I have told him is true.
    The walls are filled with ideas that drip out of my head after I read. I am too tired here, weakened. My boy grows in leaps and bounds, sometimes forwards and sometimes backwards. He is wearing footie pajamas, the key concealed by his forearm, unlocking my door. He leads me down darkened hallways to the kitchen, where the fire is dull and red, warm. There is warm bread on the wooden table. My boychild takes a silver knife and cuts apple slices and cheese, warm bread. He wraps me in a quilt that I will make from my wedding dress, his baby clothes, a graduation gown.
    I fall asleep in front of the fire and it is only my husband's wrath that awakes me. I have left him alone, I have refused to leave my library. I have become a little like them—I slip out unseen, I do not keep all promises. I refuse to sit with him at parties; I only eat what is brought to the library. Yet once he is asleep, he cannot help but hear the tread of my feet on the flagstone, the whisper of a door hinge. Try as I may, I cannot be one of them. Try as I may, I cannot hide. The tremor of my wings, the molecule of blood on the golden key, these cry out to him.
    In Italy, the fishermen's wives used to poison them. If the men spent too many nights away, their dreams would be filled with roaring monsters, krakens on the horizon, dark mouths open and bloody. The plan worked. The errant fishermen would sail home and eat their wives’ food, stews and bread; the dreams would stop. No one wanted to ever leave. Like a molecule, ownership can be measured in the sway of your bones, in the minutest decisions. We all own a molecule of