Dead Beautiful

“If you’d like, you can stay in this room for the night. I thought it might be...comforting. Of course, I can have your things moved to one of the guest chambers if it doesn’t suit you.”

I spun around. “No, I want to stay here,” I said quickly. My suitcase, which was virtually empty due to my lack of packing, was sitting in the corner of the room.

“Good. Good.” My grandfather led me to a set of French doors in the corner of the room. “And this,” he said, turning the knobs, “was her closet.”

I stepped inside, the smell of potpourri tickling my nose, and pulled the string dangling from the bulb.

In the light, the closet was transformed from an old storage room into an enchanted boudoir filled with rows and rows of jewelry and shoes and clothes. Beautiful clothes, in styles I had never seen before. The mere sight of them filled me with an unexplainable childish excitement, and I ventured deeper, running my fingers along the racks, the hangers clinking together behind me. The fabrics melted beneath my fingertips—silk, crushed velvet, suede, taffeta, cashmere, fine cottons. I had to remind myself that I didn’t like clothes like this. They were expensive, extravagant, snobby. My parents used to tell me I didn’t need material things to define who I was, but now I couldn’t help but want to put them on.

“These were your mother’s when she was your age. I think she was about your size. Anyway, they’re yours now.

Everything in this closet adheres to Gottfried’s dress code, so take whatever you think you’ll need.”

I glanced at the clothes, trying to imagine my mother at my age wearing the sweaters, the skirts, the dresses, the Mary Janes, the cloaks. I couldn’t. I fingered the sleeve of a sweater. It was so soft.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Lunch will be served at half past one.”

I nodded and watched my grandfather’s reflection in the mirror as he bowed out of the room.

I spent the next hour examining my mother’s clothes. She had boxes full of barrettes and rings and headbands; drawers packed with silk pajamas, scarves, earmuffs, and lamb’s-wool mittens. I thought they might smell of her, but instead they just smelled like lavender, which made it easier to forget that they were hers, that she was gone. The only trace of her I could find was a single brown hair clinging to a cowl-neck sweater. I pulled it out and examined it in the light. The hair was longer than I had ever seen her wear it. I imagined her in one of the plaid jumpers in front of me, her long hair held back with a ribbon. “What am I going to do?” I asked her, my voice cracking. I thought of my father next to her, his hair short and parted on the side. He wore a shirt and tie, just like he did in the pictures of when they first got married. “Dad,” I said into the empty closet, “what do I do now?” A row of extra hangers clinked together above me, mocking the silence. Suddenly I felt incredibly angry. It was unfair. Why did my parents have to die? Why did I have to find them? Now all of my memories of them were polluted by the image of them dead in the forest.

With a single movement, I knocked the hangers off the rack. They clattered to the ground, and I kept going, throwing her box of jewelry to the floor, her collection of headbands and barrettes, her scarves and mittens and hats, then sank into a sobbing heap, clutching my mother’s clothes to my chest. What would my dad say if he were here? I thought back to when I hadn’t made the lacrosse team last year. “Crying only makes your problems last longer,” he had said. “Why don’t you go practice? That way you’ll make it next year.” Wiping my tears on the bottom of one of my mother’s dresses, I picked myself up and stood in front of the mirror. I wanted to see something of her in me, but all I saw was my plain, thick hair, the bangs that always got in my eyes, my freckled face, and my gray eyes, now swollen and red. Was I like her?

I searched through my mother’s drawers until I found a pair of scissors. Standing in front of the mirror, I took a lock of hair in my hand. I closed my eyes and cut it off. I continued until half of it was gone, and my hair fell just below my shoulders. Finally feeling free, I shook my head, the wisps fluttering to the ground and collecting on the floor like spaghetti. Satisfied, I took a dress off a hanger and tried it on, examining my reflection. To my relief, it fit perfectly.

After packing three suitcases full of skirts, dresses, oxford shirts, cardigans, cable-knit tights, and plush winter coats, I felt adequately prepared for whatever weather the New England winter had in store for me.

“You cut your hair,” my grandfather said, aghast, when I walked downstairs for lunch.

I nodded. “I wanted a change.”

“It looks very nice,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, with a slight smile.

After a lunch of tea sandwiches and cucumber salad, Dustin invited me to play a game of croquet. Manning a croquet mallet, I followed him to the back lawn. After only fifteen minutes he was already beating me by six swings. Frowning, I stepped up for my turn. I didn’t like to lose. After a moment of deep concentration, I swung. It was a swift hit and I rested the croquet mallet over my shoulder while I watched the ball roll all the way to the other side of the lawn, in the complete opposite direction of the ring I should have been aiming for. Dustin chuckled, but I scowled and ran over to my ball. It was resting at the edge of the woods, where a thicket of birch trees shaded the grass. Dustin called out to me, but I ignored him and bent down. Just as my fingers grazed the ball, I jumped back.

A pulp of feathers and dried blood was resting in front of it, the bones jutting out at unnatural angles. Unable to control myself, I screamed.

Dustin ran over to me, surprisingly agile despite his age and the stuffy suit he was wearing. He summoned a garden worker as my grandfather approached and surveyed the scene. “Get rid of it, please,” he said to one of the gardeners, patting me on the back. “Just a dead bird. Nothing to be frightened of.”

“Right,” I said, standing up, embarrassed that I had caused such a fuss. This had happened to me before. Even as a child, I seemed to find my way to dead things.

“Let’s go inside.”

Dusk settled over the mansion. My grandfather and I dined at one end of an exceedingly long table, and he attempted to make small talk about the subjects I was interested in at school. I told him I wasn’t sure. I had always been good at history. Both of my parents had been high school history teachers; my father had specialized in ancient Greek civilizations, and my mother had taught on the Roman Empire. So when I did well in my history classes, they’d always encouraged me to read more on my own.