The Davis house, which was supposedly inviolate, had never felt more shaky. As the storm outside whirled on violently, raindrops crashing through the thick Virginia air, Violet Davis sat awake in her sewing room. She was seated at a small desk made out of oak wood, the majority of its surface occupied by a large sewing machine. Her hands, now still, rested on the gray soldier uniform she was halfway through stitching for her son, George. She was staring out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond the foggy glass.
“Violet?” She looked up, shaken. Her husband, Matthew, stood in the doorway to the small room, a candle in his hand. He gazed into her pale face blearily. “Darling, what’s wrong? It must be past midnight. Come back to bed.”
“In a minute,” she motioned absently, turning away. “I need to go out to… to use the outhouse.”
“Don’t be silly,” Matthew said groggily. “No one should be out in this weather. You’ll use the toilet in here.”
“It’ll smell up the room all night,” Violet said, still not meeting his gaze. “Then I really won’t be able to sleep.”
“You’re a hopeless insomniac, Mrs. Davis,” Matthew replied with a yawn. “I’m heading back to bed if you care to follow me. If you’re really quite stuck on this idea of going to the outhouse, wake one of the servants to accompany you. And for goodness sake, don’t come to bed wet.”
Violet stood up jerkily, testing for feeling in her limbs. Lately she’d felt like a marionette, her arms and legs numbly moving almost without her consent. In a sudden movement, she thrust the gray soldier suit into the waste bin and unlatched the window in front of her to let the air in. “My name is Violet Davis and I want…” she whispered out loud.
But she was unable to decide what exactly it was that she wanted. She wondered if perhaps she was not smart enough to put it into words.
She left the master bedroom and entered the second floor landing. Her eyes caught on the flowery green wallpaper, the pattern swirling and repeating a thousand times over. Through the door on the opposite side of the landing was the childrens’ nursery. The servants slept there to take care of any midnight emergencies with the young twins so that Violet and Matthew could sleep in peace.
Matthew Davis came from a long line of plantation owners in Mississippi, raised on molasses, buttered biscuits, and southern gentility. Violet Davis had been born Violet Montpelier on the bayous of Louisiana with a father who could barely stand to look at her. Her mother had purportedly died when she was very young, but whispers around town told a different story: that one fateful day Jeanette Montpelier had gone out for a walk at night and never returned.
As Violet rested her hot forehead against the door to the nursery, the question that had plagued her throughout childhood flitted into her mind once more: What sort of mother could abandon her child and husband? She raised her thin fingers to open the door to the nursery but couldn’t bring herself to turn the ornate golden knob. Straining against the white, wooden door, she made believe that she could hear George and Winnifred breathing inside. Safe.
Violet turned suddenly and forced herself off the second floor landing and down the steep stairs into the main foyer. The frame of the house creaked as strong winds pressed against the house from all sides. Her house.
Violet’s marriage in Mississippi had been a grand affair, a joining of two rich families in a fabulous display of wealth. Gilded carriages had carted all the important families in the surrounding areas into Vicksburg for the large outdoor wedding and splendid feast that followed. Violet had been the star of the evening: resplendent in her mother’s white lace wedding gown and sparkling jewels. Every family in attendance managed to congratulate the Davis’ on their daughter-in-law, with radiant tresses of mahogany hair, eyes the color of bourbon, and a fierce, compelling laugh. But that woman had been Violet Montpelier, and upon becoming Violet Davis, everything about her had changed.
Matthew had moved his wife and two young children to Richmond when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and it became clear that no amount of diplomacy would quell the growing crack between the northern and southern United States. They lived in a wealthy neighborhood, still surrounded by glittering houses, still invited to sumptuous parties. But Violet hated Virginia. Something about the air made her feel ill.
She was always pale these days, always trembling and shivering and weak in the knees. She was always traipsing around the house, only half-knowing where she was. The other half of her was wandering in some deep recess of her own mind, searching for a home within the Davis house. She found herself unable to hear conversation over the rending thrum of the thoughts in her head, pulsing in circles on their well-worn path. She often forgot to mark time as it passed, startled to find that the sun repeatedly rose in one instant, and sank back into the horizon the very next second. Only the nights were restless and interminable.
The main foyer of the house was lit with two candles, each in the lamp of the two statues that flanked the large parlor doors: Comedy and Tragedy. Violet stumbled towards the front door, her satin slippers unable to protect her from the chill of the marble tiles. She was no stranger to the cold, it seeped into her bones even in the middle of a Virginia summer.
She opened the large front door with shaky hands. The storm had grown even wilder in the past few minutes. Fat raindrops slammed into the wooden floor of the wraparound porch and Violet found herself drenched within seconds. The air seemed to simmer with repressed humidity and something darker, deeper. Unable to see through the wet darkness, Violet clutched the porch railing and hesitantly began to step down the stairs.
George was always playing about the porch, climbing the railing up to the awning or running around the house in circles. “He needs a brother,” Matthew told her often. “It does a boy good to grow up with other boys.”
“Perhaps it does a boy good to grow up with a sister, too,” Violet always replied. She had grown up with neither a brother nor a sister, but she figured that either would suffice. Having another son was unfathomable to her. She was only twenty seven, but she believed that her days of motherhood were already behind her. She loved George and Winnifred and she yearned to be there for them, as a mother should. But she suspected that she was not a good mother and they would lose nothing if she was no longer a part of their lives.
Violet stumbled onto the sidewalk in front of the house. Her hair hung loose and wet about her shoulders. The heavy night air seemed to envelope her, hug her in a smoky embrace. Suddenly, she threw back her head and laughed raucously, allowing cold raindrops to pool in her open mouth. She was so soaked that she no longer felt the rain or the chill, she felt almost as though she was perfectly warm. Raindrops skittered off her pale cheeks and clung to her cotton nightgown.
“What am I doing here?” she asked the sky suddenly. What was a respectable woman like her doing out in the rain? What was a mother doing catching her death of cold? What was Violet Montpelier doing in Virginia? What was she doing here? “This existence…” she began, but trailed off.
It was no matter. The sky understood. A flash of lightning lit up the air above her, bathing the neighborhood in a light so bright Violet almost believed it was daytime. Suddenly, in perfect clarity, she could see the houses around her, with white marble pillars propping up their awnings, meticulously kept front lawns, and large picture windows. She could feel something building in the deafening silence around her, an intensity that clutched at her as it grew.
As the sky rumbled with thunder, Violet let out a scream. The force of the sound came from her lower chest and from her stomach, violent and angry. She screamed until her throat felt raw and red, until her ears had gone numb from noise.
Deafening silence settled down on the neighborhood once more.
She was drenched but no longer felt chilled to the bone, no longer shivered as she stood in the still night. It was, perhaps, the closest she had ever come to understanding herself. She began softly humming to herself as she quietly and quickly headed back towards the front door. She paused with her pulsing fingers inches from the doorknob, deciding to test her voice.
“My name is Violet Montpelier and I want…”
Her brain stalled. So much energy in the air and she still could not articulate what it was she was missing.
I could walk away now, Violet thought intensely. A walk at night.
In the end, she turned the knob and walked back into her house.
In her room, she peeled off her wet clothes and retrieved a new nightgown from the closet. She pulled her wet hair back into a tight bun and moved mechanically into her sewing room, closing the open window. She pulled the gray soldier suit from the waste bin, smoothed it onto the oak desk, and promised herself that on the morrow, she would be a better mother. Her own words fell upon deaf ears.
Quietly, trembling, Violet headed back towards her bed. She lifted the mosquito net carefully and climbed in beside Matthew. He stirred and turned towards, awakened by her movements. “How was the bathroom, dear?” he mumbled, eyes still half-closed.
“Alright,” Violet replied noncommittally.
“Sleep well,” Matthew told her, already slipping back into slumber.
“I will,” Violet said, and settled in for a long night of staring listlessly at the ceiling.
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Niharika Banerjee is a college student from New Jersey. In her spare time, she enjoys reading (big surprise), going for unreasonably long walks, or talking too much with her friends.
© 2024, Niharika Banerjee
Halfway Down the Stairs 