Birds in a Cage Read online

  BIRDS in a

  CAGE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Except when it’s not, but again, these people are used in a fictitious manner and only came out slightly scarred from the experience.

  Copyright © 2019 by Emily Deibler.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, without prior permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 9781721722211

  Printed in the United States of America.

  2018.

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  1

  February 1939

  After their morning coffee, Marcy drove Papa to his four-hundredth execution. The guillotining would happen at Paris, and she needed to drop him off at the train station where her cousin André and Papa’s friend Henri would be waiting to help carry the Widow’s parts to their compartment. In the purple pre-dawn, snow covered the ground like a wedding dress train, but the roads were thankfully without resistance. The only noises were Papa’s short, quick breaths, and the radio muttering low between them.

  Marcy looked over, forehead pinched. Her long, curled bangs fell in her eyes. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, poupée, just a little winded from climbing in. How are you holding up, old woman?”

  “Oh, you know, aching joints.” She pushed her hair back. “That’s me, Papa. An old spinster.”

  More than once, she acted as Papa’s guide and protector, especially since they discovered his heart condition. When he couldn’t drive himself, they braved the blue smoke leading to the railway till it was a crossroads, a bank where they’d happen upon a ferry with skulls and tadpoles around it. Today was one of Marcy’s few times she left the house. Maman urged her to leave more often, which made Marcy smile. Once Maman kept Marcy home for her safety, and now Maman ushered her out for her sanity. Maman and Papa gave Marcy birds as friends, and those birds were far less argumentative than André when he called.

  Despite insisting that she should guide and protect him, Marcy didn’t know why she drove Papa because she hated the stinking specter of death.

  The radio said, “—dedicated seamstress. Mlle Marie Thérèse Dubois has been missing for three days. If you have any information—”

  Missing, probably dead. Another person to mourn, another man for the police to find.

  Another man for Papa to kill.

  Her mood soured. Old, dark memories came to the surface. Marcy shut off the radio, gave an abrupt jerk of her head, and asked, “When will you stop this?”

  “‘This’?”

  “Your work, your duty. The guillotine.”

  “I can’t. I told you, the state won’t let me retire.”

  Her stomach roiled. “Why can’t you just stop? God, Papa, you’re too old for this!”

  “And how will we support ourselves?”

  “We have Grandpapa’s money left over.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Henri will help us.”

  “We shouldn’t depend on him. He’s given enough.”

  “Don’t you give too much? Why don’t you fight more? Maman said when I was thirteen and trapped in the manor, you let the officers take you. Why not fight against this?”

  “I told you why. I do it for you! My duty, this is for us.”

  She looked at him for as long as she safely could. His mouth was taut, temple shining with sweat despite the cold. “Your duty is monstrous.”

  The quiet lasted a minute. Only the rumbling of the auto pummeling the road interrupted the silence, that and the shaking of the Widow’s mocking parts.

  “How long have you felt this way?” Papa asked.

  Her knuckles ached as her grip tightened on the steering wheel. She could feel the hooks in her throat as if she were a Stygian catfish; the blade, the Widow, scrutinized her from the backseat. She felt it.

  “Papa, I was in a pit where chil—there were heads ripped from bodies, and it made me think of the first time I saw death when you killed that man.

  “I protect little girls and boys from monsters like that man at the manor.”

  “You didn’t protect me.”

  “Marcy.” She didn’t dare meet his gaze again.

  If he resisted more, if he’d been home when she called for help, and he and Maman came to the manor, Jehanne, her dearest friend and second kiss, may’ve lived. She couldn’t prove that theory, but it rolled around in her mind for years.

  She couldn’t reconcile this soft-spoken old man with the man who pulled the rope to release the thirsty blade, and yet Jehanne was a killer too, a killer Marcy never condemned. There had been light and urgency in Jehanne’s movements. When she killed Moreau and Rais, it had been to save everyone. Papa . . . well.

  Papa rubbed his chest and coughed, and as her sudden anger lessened, her guilt rose. Thank God he stopped smoking at her urging because his breathing and heart may’ve suffered more than they already had in this cold. Her irritation cooled to regret, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize.

  As always, Papa was complacent. And aren’t I complacent for helping him now?

  She parked the auto on the sidewalk. They would go into the station and meet with André and Henri, who were waiting away from the cold, and the two men would go to retrieve the guillotine parts. When Marcy and Papa went to descend the underground station’s concrete steps, Papa reached for her hand. She pretended not to see it. As they went down in silence, Papa stumbled and shook his head. Once they reached the bottom, Marcy stopped, eyes on the rose in his jacket buttonhole. He kept rubbing his chest.

  The station was a teeming, asphodel gray-white world. Papa, as tall as he was, looked like he’d be washed away by the hurrying bodies. She wanted to hold his hand, but her pride kept her from doing so. They pushed toward André, sad-eyed Henri Desfourneaux, and owl-eyed Marguerite Desfourneaux, Henri’s wife, whose beret curled around her head like a self-assured cat. André gave a prompt tilt of his derby, his other hand on a black cane.

  Papa froze, and Marcy turned to him, so they faced one another. His mouth was open, cheeks pale. She barely heard any greetings or the murmurs of life in the station.

  “Papa?”

  “Poupée,” was all Papa said, eyes startlingly bright, and he vomited on her flats and the tiles between them. Papa tried to stymie his sick with a handkerchief, visage twisted in a grimace as his derby fell to the ground.

  Marcy’s hands hovered. She couldn’t process what was happening. “Papa? Papa?”

  “What’s wrong, Oncle?” André moved to grip Papa’s shoulder, but Papa collapsed against Marcy, his saliva falling on her cheek. She and André gently but clumsily moved him, so he rested flat on the station tiles.

  Bodies flooded around them. “Call an ambulance!” Marcy screamed, unable to do anything else but watch over Papa. Did they have telephone booths here? “Someone, please!” Marguerite darted off, disappearing amid the gathering people, waves of black coats like a murder of crows.

  “God, God.” Marcy felt faint. “Papa, I’ll take you home, I promise.” Her words came out on their own. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” He stared at her, and she couldn’t tell what was in his eyes. She feared he was having a stroke and would be bedridden.

  He lifted his hand to her cheek, and she held it. André and Henri stayed with her on the cold stones, André’s hands furiously switching between digging into his scalp and hovering over Papa. He settled on helping Henri cr
adle Papa’s head like a newborn. Papa’s eyelids shuttered. Marcy may’ve shouted, but she couldn’t remember telling her lips to move.

  The ambulance arrived, and the people scattered to make way for the workers; the workers carefully moved Papa to the stretcher. Marcy and André followed them. They were far too slow. She swore it took an hour to go up the stairs, and she feared Papa would spill out onto the steps.

  When they were outside, wind blistered her cheeks. Marcy pointed to André and said, “Please, monsieurs, he’s our father.” There was no time to clarify Papa and André’s relationship. It didn’t matter now. The ambulance worker gave them a swift wave.

  She remembered nothing of the trip.

  Roughly two hours since the ride, Marcy and André stood by Papa’s hospital bed, waiting.

  “Come now, Oncle,” André joked, hands reaming an invisible hat. “You’re never one to be late. Don’t make them postpone the execution for your sake.” His beamed, a shallow, trembling gesture. “The state already finds reasons to reduce your pay.” André’s smile crumpled, brows furrowing. He sucked in his bottom lip and averted his gaze.

  Marcy couldn’t leave the room until Papa woke up. Her eyes flitted from Papa to the clock, a bulging whale’s eye with dark lines over the milky cataract. 7:53 a.m. She could wait longer. Her bladder only hurt a little.

  Someone needed to call Maman. No. Papa would be fine. No need to worry her. The doctor, who went to retrieve something or another, said Papa’s heart was stressed and needed a moment to stabilize. Papa needed sleep. And then he’d wake up. She could already hear Maman softly joking with Papa again and André fretting over how the damned government needed to let his uncle retire after they’d denied him once.

  Two hours and four minutes. If she didn’t keep her grip on the time, her mind would slip away.

  Moving, André knelt by her to pray, and, still standing, Marcy offered her own litany. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry.” She’d say as much when he woke up. “I love you, I can’t live without you.” She bent, cheek brushing a button and ruffled rose, like when she was a baby and Papa fell asleep on his back with her drooling on his shirt.

  Marcy kept her hands and head on his chest, and André, now behind her, wrapped his arms around her. They both trembled and stayed like that until Papa shuddered and his heart, which had gone wild in his neck and wrists for a moment, slowed. She wanted to scream at him, scream for the nurses and doctors, but she couldn’t move. She waited for a rumble deep within him, a whisper. She looked to the clock.

  Papa’s pulse stopped under her fingers. He gave a single rattle, his final breath, his tired heart stilling under her cheek.

  2

  Her life ended, vision darkening. Like water, always water. Like cigarette ash, red to black. Yet she didn’t faint. André sobbed against her, and she couldn’t remember the doctor and nurses’ exact condolences. When had they come to pull the sheet over Papa? She hadn’t told them they could. The ocean was in her ears.

  Why wasn’t she crying?

  In the yellow waiting room, she couldn’t remember how she came to stand in that space at all. Who told the Desfourneauxs? The water was her world.

  Henri lost all coherence, and Marguerite kept one hand on his back and the other on the handkerchief pressed to her lips.

  “Someone . . .” André broke down. Marcy waited, it must’ve been an hour, for him to raise his head again. “Someone needs to call Tante.”

  Marcy found her voice before she found her words. “I’ll do it.” It’d be cruel to let Maman hear it from anyone else.

  Marguerite lowered the handkerchief. “No, little chou, you just sit right there.” Marcy already crossed the room to the tiny telephone with its cool, jaundiced glower. Rotating the wheel, she put in her home number and prayed for no answer.

  “Allô?”

  “I—Maman.” The stretch of time before Maman’s response was the time it took for Marcy to run over to the ocean and taste the ocean’s salty spittle before running back and laughing with her cheek on Papa’s knees. She was cold and wet, but happy.

  “What is it, poupée? Are you and your Papa still in Paris?”

  “Come to the hospital where I was born.” The hospital’s name hurt too much, and waiting for Maman’s response made her forget it anyway.

  A pause. “Why? Are you all right?”

  Marcy’s resolve faded. It was then she realized.

  She had nothing to her life now. No helping Papa with the rose garden. Or driving. That went well, didn’t it?

  What would the roses do without him? They loved him more than God. God stole Marcy’s grandmothers, grandfathers, aunt, brother, amante, and father. She counted all her losses like rosary beads, thick and swelling against her throat.

  “Please come to the hospital.”

  “Poupée, what happened?” Marcy said nothing, staring at the wallpaper but not taking in its pattern. “Marcy, listen to me, I don’t know what’s happening. Are you all right? Marcy, hello, Marcy? Is your papa o—?”

  Marcy set the telephone down and said to the others, “She’ll come.” How, she didn’t know. Walking? I should be driving to the house, but can I drive? Where is the auto, still at the station? Marcy had her own auto, but did Maman know where the keys were? She should’ve told Maman where the keys were. Where were they?

  “André?” she blurted. He was sitting in the corner,

  His head snapped up, his face swollen. “Yes?”

  “Where is the auto?” She paced one length of the room to the other, counting the tiles—sixteen and a quarter. “Papa’s—where is the auto?”

  He looked at her like she’d shed her skin. “How the hell would I know?” Eyes widening at his sharpness, he said, “I’m sorry.” He went back to crying.

  Marguerite somehow moved from the chair to Marcy’s side without her realizing. She recognized Marguerite was touching her arm without feeling anything. “Sit, little chou. Henri and I can retrieve the auto later.” Marcy didn’t sit. The water pulled her deeper into herself, into the frozen warmth of oblivion where she thought of nothing. She almost felt nothing too. Almost. Her left lung hurt like a rotted tooth, a chamber of her heart gone bad.

  She kept standing, and Marguerite stood with her. After a time, the door to the waiting room opened and, too soon, Maman appeared in a white dress and long, vanilla wool coat with the sash untied.

  Maman’s face, pink from exertion, went white as she looked at everyone, and she shrank.

  André went up to her and, Mary bless his soul, tried to explain. “Oncle had a heart attack and . . .” Like his words, his knees buckled; he leaned and wept into Maman’s shoulder, barely keeping his hold on his cane. Maman’s eyes were glassy, staring at nothing. Marcy wanted to be a rain stain on the wallpaper, a crumb beneath the armchair where everything was dark and lost to the eye. She wanted the valleyed smoothness of Papa’s hand and salt on her tongue as they sat together on warm sand.

  More than anything, she wanted to look away when Maman met her eyes.

  When Maman and André parted, Maman approached Marcy like one might inch toward a frightened stray. She clung to Marcy the American way, with both arms around her. Only then did Maman start to cry. “We’ll be all right, poupée. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Her cheek smelled faintly of a rose, of Papa’s morning kiss.

  Marcy pulled away. “I killed him.”

  Stunned, Maman whispered, “What?”

  Her words were quick, jagged. “We argued, and the stress weakened his heart.”

  “No, no, no, please don’t.” Maman cupped her mouth and sobbed into her palm while Marcy stared. She was hurting Maman, she could tell; she was useless and had been for years, postponing adulthood and remaining inside where she could whistle to her canaries and never worry about running into a Gilles de Rais to ensnare her, or a Jehanne to leave her.

  For employment, she’d tried sorting through folders, being a petty government clerk as Maman had been. She manage
d to drive several hours to Paris for pleasure, and yet the work routine had made her bones heavy. Eventually, she unsettled her peers with one too many odd observations of shadows and curiosities only she saw. She was all but sentenced to her home, so she wouldn’t inconvenience anyone but those she loved. Whenever she would rant about the scarlet in the curtains or the fire pressed against the center of her left thumbnail when she curled her fists, that final chip of Jehanne’s soul she needed to carry, Maman would hold her hand and lead her to the garden. Maman’s touch was the only thing that would ground her. Maman and Papa had been the two people to keep her from being lonely after she’d realized how the rest of her days would go.

  Everything she’s done for you, and you are as selfish and useless as ever.

  Marcy needed to carry her mother across the river to safety, but instead found the water, which once settled at her ankles, threatening to surge above her shoulders and drown them all.