Charisma by Orania Papazoglou

didn’t bother her. This kitchen was always cold. Like a lot of kitchens in a lot of houses on Edge Hill Road, it was a vast place designed to allow half a dozen servants to work at once. The stove, the refrigerator, and the sink each commanded their own room-size corners. The fourth corner was free of cabinets and held a heavy round oakwood table, large enough to seat ten. The nineteenth century had never heard of the thirteen-foot work triangle.
    Outside, it was cold and dark, only six o’clock in the morning. Through the windows over the sink, she could see the trees that ran in two neat rows on either side of their lawn, leaving the center clear. The trees were covered with snow that seemed to have congealed on them. It was the worst weather she could remember in this part of the country at this time of year, and it both depressed and annoyed her. The depression was simple: she had always imagined herself coming home in the spring, as if the freedom she would feel on leaving the constraints of convent life would be reflected in the weather. The annoyance was harder to figure. It had something to do with the fact that constant onslaughts of snow and ice made her feel trapped.
    She found the kettle behind a pile of bread pans Andy had used to make Anadama loaf, filled it at the tap, and put it on to boil. She had come downstairs without shoes—jeans and a turtleneck, knee-socks and one of Andy’s plaid flannel shirts, but no shoes—and as she stood at the cupboard next to the stove it began to bother her. She had a lot of reflexes left over from seventeen years at Saint Michael’s and places like it. She got up at five no matter when she went to bed, and she was on her feet and halfway through the Litany of the Holy Names of Jesus before she knew what she was doing. Worse, she found it almost impossible to talk at meals. It had been so long since she was allowed to, she’d forgotten how. Lately, Dan and Andy had been looking at her as if she were diseased—brain damaged, maybe, the way people got on too much booze and dope. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time someone in this house had been brain damaged as the result of an addiction, although she didn’t think she was. Religion wasn’t that kind of an addiction.
    (Right.)
    She got out a cup, a saucer, a spoon, a tea ball, and the tea. The tea was an expensive blend, ordered from Fortnum and Mason in London. The spoon was from her mother’s second-best set of silver. The cup and saucer looked like they’d been picked up on sale in Sears.
    She stuffed the tea ball full of tea and threw it in the yellow teapot she’d unearthed her first night home. Then the kitchen door swung open, and she turned around to find herself face to face with Dan.
    “Good grief,” she said. “You look like the man in the Arrow Shirt ad.”
    Dan flicked a finger at the lapel of his suit, which was gray and lightweight wool, as if he were setting out for the office in summer. All his suits were like that. He had them made to order at J. Press.
    “I’ve got a press conference at nine,” he said. “Did you see the paper? I left it out for you.”
    “I saw it. I haven’t read it yet.” Actually, she had no intention of reading it. The idea of a child murdered turned her stomach. The fact that it had happened right down there, at the bottom of this street, made it worse. Edge Hill Road was always full of children. They were one of the things the neighborhood specialized in, like Chanel suits and Bentleys.
    The idea of Dan making his career out of this kind of thing revolted her even more, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She didn’t think he’d have the faintest idea what she was talking about.
    “I really just got up,” she said. “I mean, I’ve been awake but I just got down. The two of you moved everything while I was away.”
    “The cleaning lady moved it. She doesn’t think. She just puts things away the first place she finds room for them.”
    “Whatever.”