Work Text:
Edgar hatches a plan over breakfast. A late breakfast, yes, because Edgar has nobody left to ring her awake with the shudder of her velvet curtains. She's since torn down the curtains, snapping the oak-wood rod in her waking mid-afternoon anger.
Edgar shouldn't rely on others to wake up in a timely matter; yet, yet, yet.
She fried two eggs. Shells cracked down the middle perfectly. An isosceles chip landed in the yolk, but Edgar found little motivation to dirty her hands while digging out the extra calcium. She'll be careful.
With her single pan cooling off in the sink and her breakfast-lunch-dinner plated on butterfly-winged fine China, Edgar shuts herself off in her study and pours over her daily reading—the last letter authored by her parent's summer maid.
Melly had stuck out to a nineteen-year-old Edgar. She was back home, practicing her portraiture in her childhood home. Her teacher pointed out that portraits are a means of capturing a person in a singular moment while expressing their lifetime: a methodology beyond photography because the painter controls the curves and curls of one's expression. The folly of photographs is its strong suit—capturing a snapshot of likeness, undoubtedly real as it is indifferent.
The white veil caught her eye first, then Edgar's paintbrush in an unfortunate series of tripping hazards.
"Murphy's law," the maid mutters. Edgar didn't know this Murphy character, but she quickly moved on as the blue-stained fabric landed on the floor. "I had just gotten this one, too."
Edgar spent all summer trying to capture that brief glimpse in the privacy of her candle-lit studio. She spent most of her evenings watching the other woman work, her body poised over stumps and mossy rocks Edgar had been tasked to overturn—her body swinging down in a perfect arc as Edgar scrambles out of the net's way.
Then, humoring Murphy (because as the nights cooled down and Edgar shared more and more midnight-washed tea with another, Melly described a man who wanted things to go sour if they could. She thinks he's hilarious in the way artists find rotting apples delicious.), the shell lodged between her teeth rather fucking painfully. She's only triumphant in making the situation worse. Edgar's tongue pushes the chip further, cutting into sensitive pink and drying her gums of blood.
She continues her eggs and is pleasantly unsurprised when the salt does nothing to wash out the copper.
It stings.
+++
He doesn't touch a single dish at dinnertime.
Instead, he complains—he wanted something else, after all.
Stupid woman. Bitch.
+++
"I turned twenty-one this week." Edgar wrote on Monday. Her parents beckoned her back for the weekend to celebrate; she followed, even if her birthday was nothing but an excuse to party. Edgar finds she can swallow down truth easier with a chasing shot of stinging red, an indescribable burn catching her sleeves, pulling her into an endless, boiling whirlpool. Her lungs inflate like carnival balloons, guts twisting into the malformed approximation of a poodle.
Drunk on gifted wine, Edgar composed, "Do you wish to know what I desired for this year?"
(She seeks what made such a horrid sound.)
"You." Edgar finishes a bottle and pops the cork of her second. "I'm lonely. Nobody here shares our vision. The conversations are meaningless." She downs another glass. "My brick walls are more enthralling, but I have to eat."
Paper-Melly remains silent. She expected some humorless response, "I've never been compared to clay and mortar before." She could almost feel her bandaged hands, rough gauze layered across as the pins of her craft steal bits of her away. "Your mind is enthralling, Ms. Valden."
Edgar shuts her sketchbook, unable to bear the beats of her heart.
"Why don't you come to my estate?" Edgar rants, ink dipping into the plum-purple depth of her wine glass. "Did you hate working for my family so much? I won't be as demanding, promise! I'm the neatest Valden—the cleanest! Purest!"
The canvases haphazard washed with ultramarine blue and burnt ochre stare up at Edgar as she stumbles into her bed. She's only blocked out two things consistently: charcoal eyes and the red flush she tries so desperately to hide.
(A white swan trapped in spring-trapped metal jaws.)
"Edgar, darling," Melly's handwriting loops with glee. "I distinctly remember teaching you how to wash your paint rags. You were so surprised I didn't buy new ones each time."
(Her feet break away in desperation before Edgar could free her.)
+++
The photo enclosed only shows the very bottom of Melly's chin, a veil obscuring her warmth. The whole affair was reserved, guests limited to the groom's mother and grandmother (and a portrait of his great grandmother painted by a prodigy).
"Is this your wedding dress?" Edgar had written, ink red with envy. "You don't look good in white. It's unflattering." Obtusely, she commented: "I would have dressed you in a passionate maroon Strategus aloeus" and in her attempt to connect, she continued: "Or the tomato-red of the ladybugs eating the aphids ravaging my garden."
Edgar stamped her foot over the photo attached. That damned Plinius dog wished for a quiet affair—as if Melly wasn't worth the world's attention. Lucky dog, really. Edgar didn't care, finding the composition to be wholly uninspiring.
Was it the subjects or the setting? Was it because the photographer cared little for focal points?
"My garden is unkempt." Edgar declared. She doesn't have the will to ask Melly for her help again, something between "too shy" and "terrified of rejection." Melly always filled in gaps Edgar didn't know she had—she felt rather pathetic after Melly moved. She was the Valden family's most memorable maid and Edgar's best friend.
She's so much more, now. But Melly cast aside her maiden name.
"Yes," is her simple reply. The ghost of a sentence unwritten mars the page beyond, an uncomfortable negative space. Edgar hated the white lace against her skin, the white expansive of the unfilled canvas.
She had pressed the diamond of her wedding ring into the paper; Edgar has larger stones.
On the next page, "Strategus aloeus is as maroon as Purple Cabbage is purple," Melly humored. "I don't like beetles too much. Nor do I like cabbage. It's far too tasteless—I prefer carrots. Carrots and onions have this brilliant crunch. Oh, purple onions aren't purple either. Their skins can dye linens purple. It's anthocyanins. They're good for you."
Edgar thought she hinged on vegetables too much. She pins Melly's drawings of her vegetable garden above her bed.
"Have you been eating well?"
Edgar looks at her plate of eggs—two yolks, fried and peppered—and pork sausage links the butcher sold for half-price. It's the same single meal as always, though Edgar finds she's able to stomach less and less. The afternoon sun warms her arms as Edgar taps the inked end against her scratch paper.
"I'll capture the iridescence of bee wings!" Edgar proclaims. "There is nothing ugly about nature's opaline."
Her "—right?" begging for affirmation stays implicit.
+++
Edgar doesn't know how to get around the town, so she does what an artist does best: observe.
The Postman retrieves her outgoing mail late evening. Her estate sits at the tail end of a farmland stretch, outside the forest, removed from the daily toil of seeding rows and plucking fallen fruit.
Edgar has only posted for one person.
"I am unhappy with my living situation."
Edgar's stomach, satisfied by two fried eggs, grumbles in response to the whiff of fresh-baked bread rolling down cobbled streets.
She spent the whole day anxiously waiting by her window, pasted to the uncomfortably cramped nook she used to store coats and bags. Edgar tries to recall the brief glimpse of her calling, the reason Edgar had been born so talented in the field of arts.
Unable to get the face right, too selfish to relinquish the kind smile, Edgar and her faltering memory stalk after the Postman,
"Because if I had the choice, I would rather start over with (someone like) you."
+++
Hunters put down dogs after failed catches on the Valden estate. Her father's motto was something along the lines of, "There are younger mutts who can do better." Perhaps overt perfectionism is a Valden family trait since her mother spent hours at her vanity, since Edgar broke her back over wooden easels and mirrors shattered out of frustration.
As a young girl, Edgar didn't understand the needless bloodshed. She found so much life in the wrinkled rolls of senior dogs. Yes, they were too slow to snag game, but the Valden's had generations of dogs primed and ready to leap at necks and tails.
Feet stuck in shoes meant for show and not distance, the painter rests on the hooked seat of a bent tree. Melly had written about the snake-like trunk of her apple tree coiling around a metal pole.
Gardening spade and a shovel for composting mulch: inspiration can come from anywhere.
+++
He was sitting alone at the dining table.
He's clawing at his throat, rigor mortis settling in the tips of his purple fingertips.
A cold plate of soup catches flies.
+++
Edgar's chest heaves, dirt-guilded fingers guided by the intricacies of the human form, a still-statue of anatomy she's spent her life studying, attempting, capturing.
"You thief!" she shrieks, white-speckled pills pelting across her skin. "You stealing pig!"
Stomach acid bubbles over: foam froth mouths gurgling forth from a distinguished candle. His body reacts to poison poorly, pathetically. Edgar would be able to stomach Melly's gifts, thankful for her thoughtfulness.
She slams the blunted spade end once more. Clumps of unrooted grass fling onto the ceiling. Art was never supposed to be "clean."
"What were you thinking?!" The rest of the pills clatter across the floor. "How am I going to cover this up?!"
Edgar didn't have the arm strength to dig a hole deep enough, her shallow grave filling with rainwater. The wolves, coyotes, bears—Edgar didn't know the wildlife beyond the staple hunter's competition—would be grateful for her.
"I can't—" Melly hiccups a breathless sob, sliding down the stained wallpaper. Whites of her nightgown dye red, left in a pot of boiling skins. "I wanted to do this one thing! Take control of my life! Why did you steal this from me?!"
("I have chosen to be born again.")
"I'm not afraid of the dirty work. You," don't have to bear the blame; can continue research with only the weight of knots twisted over bushes and logs, where I can untangle your woes; shouldn't have to bother marring your delicacy any longer. Melly tore her uniform chasing a bee, a boring worker without a hint of yellow. Edgar thought she got caught up after some fly when Melly displayed her hole-riddled glass jar. Her knees were scraped raw, trailing dirt into the Valden estate.
("I will live the best life I can, within my means. I'll set my means.")
Melly trailed through her studio, the room with the bay windows and glass doors out to the rose and thorn-prickled bushes surrounding the forest. Edgar's studio was the only room left pristine, not a speck of contamination floating about the untreated wood.
("Even if I never write you, my dear friend. My only friend. I wish we weren't friends.")
Edgar isn't a novelist, mouth faltering. "You couldn't have done a better job than me," she decides. "There is zero room for error."
("I wish I could have studied in your garden, instead.")
Because Edgar Valden is still a Valden at the end of the day, and the Plinius family's eldest son cast ripples in the upper-class social circles with his global ventures. He wasn't suicidal by any means, hinged on the promise of great fortunes across his family's ports. He gloated about taking his wife on an extended vacation to the Galápagos.
The dogs howled goodbye each night, knowing they would not make it to the morning. Such intelligent creatures, with vivid eyes and graying fur, bespoke acceptance far beyond this selfish human's.
"She is well-read for a woman," that damned mutt makes the ballroom laugh. Wasn't this her birthday? "She could learn a thing or two about real achievement."
Because Edgar Valden understood life better than anyone, so doesn't that make her an expert in death?
(From a young age, the young aristocrat always got what she wanted.)
"I've found finishing work to be the hardest part, but you've seen my study."
(Bold, brash, daring—Edgar breaks out of the confines of the natural world as plain people perceive it.
Despite the shower Edgar desperately needs from the rotting rainwater and the aftermath of her painter's passion—in her poor planning, Edgar forgot to bring her smock—Melly falls into her arms. The movement of "embrace" is often depicted by melting colors, bodies free of their physical constriction.
Edgar craves how she bleeds into her, two becoming one. Desperate, fleeting touches and the erratic heartbeat of—pitter-patter. Nature washes away the grime of humanity and soap scum.
Outside, downpour. Windows opened, shattered, inviting.
+++
Tea kettles whistle as Edgar slides four peppered sunny-side-ups onto a large plate, resting atop greasy sausages and stir-fry onions. Impatient steam only screams louder as she takes care to garnish the yolks with thinly cut green onions—well, Edgar's attempts at cutting thinly—the greener bits creased in inch-long segments.
Honey-colored browns and the reddish hue of an underpainting swirl out from the tea leaves as Edgar pours two cups of tea. The other pot empties over a rusted hunting knife, ugly mish-mash coppers and wood rot slinking down the drain.
The purple rice she spooned into two metal bowls earlier is still steaming. She sprinkles sesame seeds because Melly is a very health-conscious woman behind the packs of buttery crackers she decimates.
The least Edgar can do is prepare tea and a late breakfast while Melly. The other woman apologized for her lackluster fridge. "He was going to go grocery shopping tomorrow." She muttered, pinning her hair up before setting off to her garden. Edgar stared at the red curling down her neck, extending from the perfection brushed across her cheek.
"I have too much food at my house." Edgar gloats. "More than enough for two people. I could host banquets."
(Let me provide for you.)
Because Melly studied human anatomy, too, and grafted a promise onto her ring finger.
+++
The frantic wife describes her missing husband in bored blacks, pleading for any information. Her good friend offers to pay a hefty sum for any leading information, letting Melly stay at her estate as the Plinius household is much too painful to sleep in alone.
Her willowy smile is a pleasant sight to wake up to, Edgar finds, watching as she bites the tip of her thumb in concentration. Damp hair drapes across her shoulders.
Throat still begging for sleep, Edgar coughs out her morning greeting.
"Good morning. What would you like for lunch?"
Melly is eating through a pile of sunflower seeds. Edgar didn't recall having any in her cupboard.
"Yes, sleeping beauty, it's well past noon," Melly answers her unasked question. "I went around town today, finished my errands. I bought a snack. I hope you don't mind."
"I don't. My money is to spend, after all," Because Edgar wishes to spend her life sharing, giving, proposing. Her stomach rumbles. "I'm not sure what I'm hungry for."
So terrified he had gotten into an accident, she sent the police out of town. He had this last-minute business trip at the pier, you see. He should have made it home in the morning—it's an unlucky coincidence that it stormed heavily the last night she saw him alive.
"Do you want eggs? Ah, but I always made you eggs, didn't I?" She lays her cheek on the pillow of her palm, unconsciously hiding her birthmark. Paintings overcleaned by a hasty preserver, original paint scraped off in hideous patches of white. "You must be bored of the same food."
Melly's hands in hers, selfishly for her, the sticking salt exfoliates Edgar's fingers. "I don't mind." Not if it's your cooking. "Eggs are good."
In Edgar's thriving vegetable garden, wildflowers bloom from loving worms and nutrient-rich compost.
(Because it has to be the eggshells she tosses out and her Melly's green thumb. She sees a body in the fields, the artist she is, and is delighted to watch the buttercups outline Michelangelo's David.)
Perfectly seasoned. Edgar barters a whole link for the yolk-having half of Melly's egg.
+++
