White Rabbit Chapter 24

24.

Delores, in present time, still lies on the ground unconscious in the Underworld. The only change is the ice storm that hit suddenly and deliberately making beautiful ice crystal formations forcibly out of everyone and everything. The once wretched wiry tree branches look most remarkable and creak and groan under the delicacy of their sudden weight. It is 6:30, and there is neither a sun, nor a moon, just a blanket of grayness. A frozen Woodrow kneels to a frozen Delores’ side, one hand cradling her head and another holding a cup to her mouth. Being the last to freeze, Cleopatra is preserved in the scene with her front legs in the air disobediently. Everything in its stillness is beautiful, pristine—virginal. And nothing is going anywhere.

            Delores handed the driver the address written on a pompous monogrammed slip of stationary by her mother. She looked at the train station as she left trying to figure what had happened and how Alex De Wolfe disappeared and what he meant insinuating Delores was a werewolf. Was it some joke that she in her naivety didn’t comprehend? Unlike most teenagers, Delores understood quite well that she was immature and sometimes it took a special consideration of facts and evidence for her to understand how so. She blamed it on the hormonal upheaval in her circuits, the cauldron that her head had become like lava from a volcano that will someday form islands but that were only gooey pretty streams of magma pouring into the baby blue ocean that tourists snap thousands of pictures of, yet to be anything, form anything, but as pretty and as volatile as they will ever be. She watched the buildings get smaller and seedier sinking her spirits as to the prospect of her living arrangements suspecting her mother and accusing her of blatant treachery. But after a few right turns and a left her spirits rose with a sudden escalation of property values and the rows of crackhouses and liquor stores gave way to progress, large buildings, delis, fresh markets, libraries, and soon completely to old money mansions and townhouses in a historic district of the city.  Crispus Attucks may have been killed on this spot, or Sam Adams may have tarred and feathered someone there, she thought playfully, delighting in the thought of being in a city soaked in the blood of liberty. Delores was well read on history by her own doing. Schools don’t require students to know much beyond coloring pictures, multiple choice exams, and being able to write a few lines about Lincoln and Washington, knowing which came first, the Civil or the Revolutionary War, and the approximate decade JFK was assassinated—where being extra credit (John Fitzgerald Kennedy, for the students).

            The cab came to a halt at a magnificent white brick house tucked cozily in between as well houses with an abundance of heritage. A black wrought-iron fence wrapped around it containing wonderfully manicured hedges and thick old ivy. It was dusk and there was a porch light on and a lady in front at a small black wrought-iron table with a young girl around Delores’ age having tea, so it appeared. It never rained. They were both pretty and Delores felt awkward and strange as she tried to unlatch the gate and make her way to confirm that she was at the right place, though she had confirmed such already by looking at the numbers on the paper and the numbers on the house repeatedly as though they might change. Her armpits sweating, hands clammy. The lady called, “You have to flip up the back-latch, my dear.”

            “Oh.” Delores managed and stumbled through dragging her rolling suitcase. She packed light. She looked down at the sidewalk as she approached.

            “Dear, you are much too pretty to be looking at the ground. Head up.” The lady suggested politely.

            “Thank you. I am sorry.”

            “You cannot spend your life being sorry. Apologize only when you hurt or offend someone, not when you hurt or offend yourself.” The lady invited Delores to sit. A Hispanic lady in a blue maid’s dress retrieved Delores’ bag and smiled profusely. Another servant brought her a cup and poured tea for her.

            “Milk, honey, sugar?” He offered. He was black, bald and had a thin mustache. A very handsome older gentleman with the likeness of a TV character that she but couldn't place. She liked all three but said no.

            “No girl drinks tea without one of the three.”

            “Pardon me?” Delores said with the saucer and cup already in hand. Her feeling of inferiority was rising.

            “Which would you like in your tea?” The lady said plainly.

            “Um.”

            “No ums, dear. Milk, honey, sugar. No ums.” Smiling.

            Delores gave in. “All three.”

“Better,” the lady smiled. The man who was standing by provided Delores all three, as she wished. Sugar. Milk. Honey. In that order. Then he disappeared and the lady introduced herself as Lady Goodyear and the girl to her left as Ms. Whitney Bowe of Arlington, Virginia, the way one might announce a beauty pageant contestant. Immediately, Delores could tell Whitney to be of good character. Lady Goodyear was very polite and even the corrections she offered were helpful, well intended and absolutely without any contempt.  “And he,” motioning to the man with an open palm, “is James. The lady earlier, Rosetta.” Never maid, nor butler, nor driver, names only. And always someone’s first name, never a title, or the last, indignantly formal. Though, it would be two months before Delores would realize that her first name was Agnes. And she would never know that Agnes Goodyear was once Agnes Portugal, who was once Agnes Sunbury, who was once Agnes Hawthorne, who once Agnes Mueller, who once Agnes Baneberry, and once simply, born to the world, Agnes Anne Loughton, in the year of the Lord, 1653, cursed to live the slow elongated life of a vampire and making the most of every moment.