The Society of S Read Free

subject. Once he said such questions made him sad.
    I wondered what lavender honey might taste like. The only honey I’d eaten came from clover, according to the label on the jar, and it conjured the green flavor of summer meadows. Lavender, I thought, would have a stronger, sharper taste, floral with perhaps a hint of smoke in it. It would taste violet blue — the color of a twilight sky.

    In my father’s world, time had no meaning. I don’t think he looked once at the grandfather clock in the library. Yet he kept a regular schedule — largely, I suspect, for my sake. Every evening at six he sat with me while I had the supper that Mrs. McG (I’m tired of writing out her name, and that’s what I called her, anyway) always left in the warming oven: macaroni and cheese, or tofu casserole, or vegetarian chili. It all tasted undercooked at the bottom and burnt at the top, bland and wholesome. After I’d finished, my father ran my bath.
    Once I’d turned seven, he left me alone to bathe. He asked me if, as a big girl, I still wanted him to read to me before I fell asleep, and of course I said yes. His voice had texture like velvet. When I was six he’d read me Plutarch and Plato, but Dennis must have said something to him, because after that he read Black Beauty and Heidi and The Princess and the Goblin .
    I’d asked my father why he didn’t dine with me, and he said he preferred to eat downstairs at a later hour. There was a second kitchen (I called it the night kitchen) in the basement, along with two enormous furnaces, a laboratory where my father worked with Dennis, and three bedrooms originally intended for servants. I rarely visited the basement; it wasn’t explicitly forbidden me, but sometimes the upstairs kitchen door to the basement was locked, and even if it wasn’t, I knew I wasn’t wanted there. In any case, I didn’t like the smells: chemicals from the laboratory, gamey cooking from the night kitchen, mixed with the odor of hot metal from the furnaces. Yes, I preferred the smell of starch. My father’s cook and all-purpose assistant, the loathsome Mary Ellis Root, ruled the basement domain, and she always looked at me with eyes that radiated hostility.

    “How did you like it?” Mrs. McG hovered over the breakfast table, twisting a towel in her hands. Her face was shiny and her glasses needed cleaning, but her spotless red and green plaid housedress, belted at the waist, had been ironed, and its skirt fell in crisp folds.
    She was asking about the honey cake. “Very good,” I said — almost truthfully. The cake, a slice of which I’d eaten for dessert the previous evening, had a wonderful dense richness; if it had been baked a bit less, and if the pan had been greased more liberally, it might truly have been delicious.
    “If I’d made it at home, I’d have used lard,” she said. “But your father is such a strict vegetarian.”
    A moment later Mary Ellis Root slammed open the door that led to the basement and stormed in.
    “What did you tell the courier service?” she said to Mrs. McG. Her voice sounded hoarse and low.
    Mrs. McG and I stared blankly at her. It was unlike her to set foot upstairs, and never this early. Her black hair bristled with static, and her eyes blazed, yet she never made eye contact with either of us. On her chin three long dark hairs grew from a bumpy mole; they quivered when she spoke. Sometimes I imagined yanking them out, but the thought of touching her made me nauseous. She wore an enormous black, greasy-looking dress that smelled of metal and strained to contain her, and she paced the room like a beetle — impervious to anything but its insect agenda — pausing only to slam her fat fist on the table.
    “Well, are you going to answer me? It’s almost ten and no one has come.”
    The silver courier van stopped at our house two or three times a week, bringing supplies for my father’s research and taking away flat white cartons labeled SERADRONE. On the