Chapter Text
Helen wakes to silence.
Silence is never usually this flawless and Helen has to ask herself the question. Is there a chance, however infinitesimal, that she might be dead?
Dead.
The word, the concept, triggers a memory. A body lying wrecked in the middle of the Agapé’s courtyard. Droplets of blood trickling down, dripping along the bridge of a nose. A nose she knows. Buried in her hair, pressed against her neck. A nose holding up a pair of glasses to eyes she has looked into more than any others in her forty four years on earth. Blood seeping into the dirt around a magnolia tree. Blood splattered on the paved stones delineating the home of the magnolia tree. The left glass cracked, shattered even, just as much as the long body lying crooked and twisted for all to see. Helen had blood on her fingers and hands by then. Sticky but cold against her skin. She remembers she was breathing in an erratic pattern. Not five in, seven out. It was more 1 in, everything out. His eyes were open but couldn’t see, hers were closed and the sight didn’t leave her.
Ernest.
She had whispered his name. Yes, she must have had. At least once, before the world dissolved in a pair of frightened blue eyes. Or perhaps she had screamed. Not his name, but she can recall an inhuman shriek near her and the burn of her throat afterward, scorched earth but through skin.
Helen isn’t dead and she has woken to silence. It’s unsettling after fifteen years of light snores lulling her in and out of sleep, whispers of I’m leaving for work in the morning, leaving her alone to savour the peacefulness of their shared bed. This particular silence feels damp and heavy, like a weighted blanket thrown over her head or his body labouring over hers after a shower.
Helen lies on her back and stares at the ceiling. White, pure white, everywhere. The paint was redone not long ago, when they vacationed in Vienna. She suddenly recalls the taste of hazelnut-flavoured chocolate and wafer dust in her husband’s mustache.
Her head turns automatically to the left. The other side of the bed is empty. The sheets don’t carry the curves of his body anymore, the mattress does. But the imprint will fade even if she rolls her body in it to be sure. His pillow smells faintly of aftershave and hospital soap.
She blinks, once, twice, as if Ernest might reappear if she doesn’t look directly at his side of the bed.
He doesn’t.
Helen is alive. Ernest is dead. Silence reigns.
It bothers Helen. The alive, the dead and the reigning part equally, but not in that order. If there is even an order?
Winifred should have been there by now. Every morning the tortoise shell cat leaps onto the mattress, pawing at her shoulder until she rolls over. Today there is no soft thump, no purr, no whiskered face pressing against her neck.
Helen sits up, her fingers find her glasses easily. She tells herself she is sad because her husband is dead—and she is, trully—but she forgets. Not to be sad, the emptiness is unbearable, but that this is her life now and, under the numbness, a colder emotion eats away at her. Shame, yet unnamed and shapeless, coils in her stomach. She pushes it down, it remains in the wings. It’s the next act of the show.
Outside the bedroom for two, now occupied by one, the apartment smells sweetly acrid and stale. It’s breakfast, boiled coffee and lilies turning in their vases. She pads into the hallway barefoot.
Sunlight spills across the kitchen table. Her mother-in-law sits there, already dressed in her older woman from old money uniform. She’s responsible for the burnt coffee, she isn’t used to Ernest’s top of the line, annoyingly complex yet simple coffee machine. Her eyes water at Helen’s disheveled state.
“Helen! You’re finally awake,” the older woman still says brightly. “That’s good. You know, I’m sure Ernest won’t mind if you…”
Her use of the present tense makes Helen’s skin crawl.
“Get yourself a proper coffee machine. Or help, I could ask Martha to come here for you for a week or two. Afterwards, you should feel better and this is not a big apartment. Do you think you’ll be keeping it? I know Ernest’s cousin is searching for a new place and this, this, would be perfect for him.”
And the woman keeps talking, her voice rising and falling, in an uninterrupted stream of snide remarks that slowly morph into pity and anecdotes about her son’s childhood. She doesn’t seem to notice the cat mewling softly from behind the pantry door. Helen opens it carefully, Winnie has her tail high, her fur sticking out from it, and seems ready to bolt. But Helen crouches down, her arm outstretched and calls her gently until the cat accepts to take refuge in her arms. Helen scratches her little head and whispers sweet nothings into her fur until the cat relaxes, her purring grounding Helen. She stands back up and faces her mother-in-law again.
“Why was Winnie in there?” She asks.
The question takes the older woman aback, she was in the middle of narrating some inane story about Ernest’s childhood.
“It kept wanting to go into your bedroom and Ernest doesn’t like it,” her mother-in-law answers, frowning. “I put it in timeout.”
“Ernest loved Winnie. Now, he’s dead, she misses him and she's a cat,” Helen says flatly. “She doesn’t do timeout.”
Her mother-in-law raises an eyebrow at her.
“Helen, I know you’re very upset. But Ernest is—”
“Was.”
“Always complaining about it.”
Helen’s pulse throbs in her ears.
“He wasn’t.” Helen chokes, holding Winnie closer but her tears are already brimming. “If we were to go through his phone right now, you’d see just how many pictures of her he used to take. Ernest loved Winnie.”
Mrs. Menville stares at her daughter-in-law like she has called her dead son the most vicious insult.
“He did have something for strays and lost causes.”
A sob escapes Helen’s mouth before she can say, “Please, go,” in a terribly pathetic small voice.
The other woman pauses then stands, scraping her chair on the floor and Helen winces. Winnie leaps out her arms and disappears into the hallway leading to the bedroom.
“Ernest is my son, Helen.”
“He was my husband,” the widow counters dangerously low. “This is my apartment and I want… I need you to go. Now.”
Helen doesn’t wait for her to obey. She knows she will and she knows she’ll start getting calls in an hour or so because her mother-in-law will have complained about her rude daughter-in-law to anyone who’ll listen. Helen doesn’t care. She’ll disconnect her landline anyway. For now, she just wants to be rid of her.
She walks to the tall living-room windows, oblivious to the show of noises Abigail is making while packing her things.
Across the courtyard, in the opposite apartment, Madeline Ashton stands framed in her own window, her hair is loose, her eyes dark.
For a long moment neither move. Then the door slams behind Helen. She raises her palm to the glass. Madeline does the same. They don’t smile, they don’t wave. There’s just two hands, separated by distance and glass, mirroring each other in silence.
The cold from the window seeps into Helen’s skin. She doesn’t know what she is yearning for.
A week earlier
Brenda Rizzo loves her job. Most days, anyways.
She pretends she doesn’t, because it’s what the tenants and home owners of the Agapé complex want—or so she thinks. In buildings such as this one, her being sour faced and cranky while Warren, the doorman, is affable and sweet is as expected as archetypes of the Commedia dell’Arte. The inhabitants of the building like their theatre tidy.
Brenda doesn’t mind the role. Being called a bitch once her back is turned helps her decide who deserves a little grace. And it pays to know exactly who you’re dealing with before you ever fix their sink. The sigh, the raised brow and scowl are her weapons.
The Agapé—originally named after some Robber Baron of the Gilded Age Brenda doesn’t give two fucks about unless he’s played by Morgan Spector—is two buildings pretending to be one. It's an architectural marriage that only money can sustain. Joined at the hip in the late eighties, it sits like a mismatched couple over the courtyard. Which is why you have two very distinct categories of inhabitants separated by this one very tangible element.
The East Wing is the original building with its old stones and pedigree. Apartments have been passed through families for generations. This is the cultured, snobbish and old New York side. The West Wing is all glass and skylights, built for financially stable younger people who can afford to leave as soon as something shinier comes along. This is the Wall Street and then influencer New York, with their gym bodies and designer dogs.
They are a few exceptions to rules of course.
For instance, the board president, Viola Van Horn with her sensational sense of style, her law firm and gallery owner wife, Lisle, should fit in the newer building, or so Brenda often thinks, but has been living in the old building for a good twenty years now. Meanwhile, Brenda sees established actress Madeline Ashton as a quintessentially old building person—but maybe it’s the Broadway of it all—when the blonde quadragenarian, too beautiful to be real before noon, owns one of the most expensive units in the new building.
Brenda doesn’t favour one side over the other. She likes fueling the rivalry to win the bets she makes with the doorman, but she mostly remains fair.
The only soft spot she’ll never admit to having is for Dr. Ernest Menville and his wife, Helen. The plastic surgeon and his seemingly discreet niche author wife have secrets, Brenda likes that. Secrets make people interesting. Secrets make the Agapé breathe and Brenda less bored.
From her perch behind the lobby desk, she sometimes thinks the courtyard itself listens, the way it carries sound between the two wings. Sounds of laughter, arguments, music, the occasional scream, etc. the magnolia trees have heard and seen. They've heard and seen everything and much more than Brenda ever had.
And nothing could have prepared Brenda Rizzo for what she saw that Monday morning.
That day, the sky is blue, the air warm, magnolia petals are scattered like big confetti on the stones of the courtyard.
It’s early but not too much, Brenda approximates the going-to-work rush to be very close. For the time being, she is at her desk, halfway through a second cup of black coffee, when a blood curdling scream resonates in the courtyard. It’s a woman’s voice. Soon, it’s joined by another. This one is feebler.
She looks up from her crosswords, frowns, and goes outside.
For a moment she thinks one of the old biddies from the East Wing has slipped and fallen because she only sees Simone’s and Joelle’s backs huddled together before one of the magnolia trees. But then, she pushes past them with a sigh and stops dead in her tracks. Frederik, an old bachelor who likes to call the old women of the building his little ladies, is kneeling beside a large puddle of something dark and red. There’s a body in the middle of it. A body without glasses. They lie, one lens cracked, a few inches from his face.
Ernest Menville.
It’s not the kind of man you expect to see lying in the dirt, eyes open to the sky on a sunny Monday morning right before rush hour. Brenda’s breath leaves her body.
“Don’t touch him! Back up!” She barks at Frederik, then turns to the doorman who is jogging up to her now. “You! Call 911! Tell them we have a…”
“He’s dead.” Frederik says, his face ashen.
Simone gasps. Joelle holds onto her hand.
Brenda’s watch beeps to signal seven thirty and just as she had predicted, people begin to spill out of both wings. They stop in the courtyard, some scream, others flee back upstairs like startled pigeons, and then come back with others in bathrobes and slippers. Most have their phones out and it drives Brenda mad. She fights the wave of curious people alone until Frederik decides to take a stand and a cleaning lady shows up to her aid. They manage to have people take a step or two back but the courtyard stays filled with people and murmurs of disbelief.
“Brenda!” Warren calls, struggling to make his way back to her. “They’re coming very soon.”
“We’ve got to make them back off further, get them to leave even.”
Warren nods but as he goes to turn on his heels, he catches a sight of the body behind Brenda. He faints in her arms. She curses loudly. One of the health influencers from the West Wing and the old ladies help her lay Warren down by a bench, Simone even goes so far as tucking her scarf behind his head.
Then something even worse happens. The courtyard falls eerily silent and Brenda just knows.
“Hold her back.” She pleads with the crowd who starts to part. “HOLD HER THE FUCK BACK!”
But Helen Menville appears, barefoot and wearing a too-large robe over her nightclothes. She’s extraordinarily pale. She must have been called down.
“Mrs. Menville, please, don’t—”
It’s too late, Helen is already on her knees beside her lifeless husband. Her hands have found his face, his glasses, his blood.
“Honey, you can’t—”
Her inhuman cries drown the chaos in Brenda's head. People finally jolt back awake and try to pull her away, but she fights like a cornered animal, clutching at him, her fingers slick with blood. Brenda is powerless. Warren, having regained consciousness, sits uselessly against the bench. He is white as plaster.
This is when a voice cuts through the chaos.
“You're hurting her.”
Brenda turns. Madeline Ashton, in full work out garb, her hair up in a ponytail, parts the crowd of onlookers as if it were a gauzy curtain. No one stops her, not even Brenda who’s too stunned by her arrival, even though she knows about her early Monday morning run.
The blonde kneels beside Helen. She doesn’t touch her, not yet. For a second, Brenda hopes they will start bickering again. Everyone knows about the never ending quarrel between Madeline Ashton and Helen Menville. In a way, it is symbolic of the rivalry between the East and West buildings. But no, Madeline seeks and finds Helen’s gaze. It is not exactly a recognition of grief Brenda sees passing between the two women. The sentiment seems heavier and older.
Helen’s body trembles violently then and Madeline reaches out, finally placing a hand on her shoulder. Her touch seems to break the spell.
“Helen?” She whispers.
The redhead turns toward her, face streaked with tears. She has blood on her cheek. Madeline’s lips thin, the other tumbles into her arms. The blonde seems to have expected it and she doesn’t fall or even falters. No, instead, Madeline helps Helen up, slowly and steadily. Brenda can’t believe what she hears, a soft “I’ve got you, Helly. I’ve got you.” so tender it makes even her heart ache.
And Madeline leads Helen away from the crowd, one arm firm around her waist, the other shielding her from the gawking faces.
Brenda stands there, dumbfounded, heart hammering in her chest. She looks down at Ernest’s body behind her and at the magnolia blossoms falling onto his still chest.
Outside, sirens near the building.
A long time ago, when phones had cords and Madeline Ashton and Helen Menville were Madeline Stanton and Helen Sharp, children with dreams, also known as early summer 1988
The Agapé courtyard is bigger then—or maybe it only seems that way because they are small. The magnolia trees in the courtyard are young, their branches low enough to climb, their blossoms already big and pink and heavy with perfume.
Madeline Stanton is not seven yet and she stands on the lowest branch of one of the trees. Her bare feet are dirty and she’s wearing a scarf Mrs. Sharp has gifted her mother as a cape. Her laugh rings out, bright and unafraid, and up to the patch of blue sky above her.
Helen Sharp sits below her on a blanket spread on the grass. She’s a picture of caution. Her dress is a pale yellow. It has been pressed and Helen is worried it’ll crease if she sits like this any longer. There’s a book open beside her, Mary Poppins Comes Back, its spine is cracked, which would make her anxious too if she wasn’t busy watching Madeline with a mixture of awe and horror.
“Maddie, you’ll fall,” she says.
Madeline grins.
“No, I won’t. It’s not high, come on!’
Helen frowns up at her, shielding her eyes from the sunlight with her hands.
“If I fall, Daddy will be cross.”
“Then don’t fall.”
“That’s not how it works!”
“Mary Poppins never falls.”
“That’s a movie.”
“It’s magic,” Madeline corrects her. She lifts the broken umbrella she has found near the bins. “She jumps, and the wind catches her, and she flies away.”
Helen frowns.
“Mommy will be even more cross if I dirty my dress.”
Madeline scoffs.
“Your mother is no fun.”
Helen blinks, caught between offense and fascination. No one ever says things like that about Virginia Sharp. She wants to retort that her mother makes Louise Foxworth, Madeline’s mother, laugh sometimes. But Madeline jumps. The umbrella snaps inside-out mid-air. Still, the little girl lands on both feet, her cape flaring out behind her. The shock of it startles Helen into delight. She laughs and claps for Madeline who dips into a low bow.
Louise Foxworth appears from the lobby.
“Helen! Madeline! Come on, it’s snack time.”
Her voice carries warmth and the promise of sweet treats. The girls hurry to collect their things, Helen more careful than Madeline who wants to toss all of their treasures in the blanket, gather its corners and use it to carry them back inside the Sharp’s residence. It’s more convenient, Helen must admit, but the prospective mess makes her little head swim.
In the apartment, Virginia surveys her daughter’s appearance before she allows her to have her snack in the kitchen.
“But don’t ruin your dress, darling. We have company tonight.”
Helen nods dutifully, even though she doesn’t really understand why it’s important her dress mustn’t be dirtied when she’s never really allowed to stay for dinner. Mrs. Foxworth assures her she’ll make sure Helen’s dress stays clean. Mrs. Sharp smiles, it makes Helen feel fuzzy, though the curving of her mother’s lips happens above her head.
Madeline rolls her eyes when they sit side by side with their milk and soft warm brioche with raspberry jam.
“Does your mom ever say anything fun?” Madeline asks very seriously.
“Only when she’s with your mother, I think.” Helen answers automatically, though she doesn’t sound sure. “I’ve heard them giggle.”
Madeline raises a doubtful eyebrow as she stuffs her face with her slice of brioche.
“My mom’s not fun.” She manages to say.
Helen disagrees. Louise is warm and kind and Madeline’s lucky to have a mother who looks at her. Her little blonde friend smears a streak of raspberry jam across her mouth.
“Look, I have lipstick like your mom!”
Helen giggles because Madeline looks like she had her makeup done by her great-aunt who’s not all there anymore, as the adults often whisper. But then, Madeline hands the spoon to Helen.
“Now you.”
The redhead hesitates.
“I’ll be sticky, Maddie.”
Madeline sticks the spoon in her mouth instead.
“Then you can’t come with me when I’m famous.”
“Famous for what?”
“Everything,” Madeline replies, spreading her arms as if she’s already on stage. “Movies, singing, maybe even my own perfume, one that smells like cotton candy. Madeline Poppins smells so sweet!”
Helen laughs at the stage name.
“You can write my posters,” Madeline says decisively. “I like how you write.”
“I don’t want to write posters, besides I don’t think it’s real work. I could, maybe, write stories.”
Madeline brightens.
“Then I’ll be in them!”
“Maybe, if you’re good.” Helen answers cheekily.
“I am good,” Madeline insists, crossing her arms. “And when we’re grown up, you’ll write our story. Because I'll be rich and you'll still be my friend.”
Helen laughs softly.
“I don’t think it works that way.”
“You just have to believe. I’ll take you with me when I go see the world. You can write and we’ll live in a big house where nobody will tell us what to do.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Yes it is. We just have to promise.” Madeline holds out her pinky finger. “Pinky swear we’ll be together forever.”
Helen hesitates. She glances toward the door—toward the place where her mother’s voice floats faintly, talking to someone about something Helen doesn’t understand.
Then she looks back at Madeline, who’s waiting with that fierce, impatient light in her eyes. Helen hooks her little finger around hers.
“Together forever,” she whispers.
They seal their promise with solemn nods and matching smiles. Louise starts clearing the table even though they're not done. Neither of the girls protest, Helen is too well brought up for that while Madeline is still high on the promise.
“Helen, honey, go wash your hands, it’s time for your harp lesson.”
The two girls groan in unison. Helen hates how it makes her little fingers feel. Madeline hates that she has to stay quiet in the kitchen, where no one can see her. She tugs on Helen’s dress as the dutiful little redhead is about to leave her behind, all alone. Helen's brows furrow behind her glasses.
“Run away with me, Helly.” Madeline says with a grin. “We can live in the magnolia trees.”
Helen shakes her head but still smiles at her.
“Next time, maybe. If you’re good.”
The little blonde sticks her tongue out at her before she lets her go.
Later, when the sky turns lavender and the courtyard is empty, Helen sits by her bedroom window, watching Louise and Madeline cross the courtyard. She’s not sure where they go but Madeline always turns back, waves, and blows her a kiss through the dark. So Helen always lifts her hand to the glass and catches it.
The night Dr. Ernest Menville fell to his death
Ernest Menville isn’t particularly displeased with his life. It could be better perhaps, but all things considered, he takes great comfort in the fact that it could have been much much much worse. He has a job he’s passionate about and he’s respected for it. He has a wife he loves. She’s smart. She’s funny without advertising it. She’s really lovely looking when she wants to be and generally pretty when she doesn’t. She loves him too, or at least he hopes she does. She’s neurotic at times, eerily quiet at others, but Ernest doesn’t mind that. She’s not perfect, but neither is he, so why bother. He has a wife who’s there when he comes home and who cares about things that involve him.
They have a cat, named Winifred. They both adore her. No children. It never happened and they both agreed they were fine with it. So they have Winnie and she’s more than enough. Their life is full between her, Helen’s depression, Ernest’s hyperfixations, and their neighbour. It’s especially full because of her these days.
Because Madeline Ashton has a way of making everything about her. She’s too loud, too beautiful, too demanding of the world’s attention. Ernest pretends to be immune, of course. He isn’t. No one is. Helen certainly isn’t, that he knows.
They have something greater than his and Helen’s fifteen years of marriage and twenty of being together. That he knows too.
So life, he thinks, is good enough. There’s peace in the routine of morning coffee, rounds at the hospital, the soft click of Helen’s keyboard through the walls.
He thinks about how he hasn’t helped her get the light duvet from the high cupboard yet and how she won’t be able to get it down herself.
He thinks about how the air feels different. He had leaned over the railing just a little, with a frown and some terrible fear. But not of falling, that didn't even cross his mind.
He thinks of Helen’s hands. How small they looked the day he proposed, trembling slightly even though she said yes with no apparent emotion or hesitation.
Ernest’s last clear thought is of Helen’s laugh as she held Winnie up to Madeline’s face, to annoy her, just two days ago.
But he isn’t sure of any of it, because he’s falling, past the magnolia blossoms, past the light, into silence. And he isn’t really there anymore. His heart gave out between the seventh and sixth floor.