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“So, baby girl, good luck taking care of yourself
So I said fine, 'cause that's how my daddy raised me
If they strike once, then you just hit 'em twice as hard
But in the end, if I bend under the weight that they gave me
Then this heart would break and fall as twice as far.”
Ethel Cain, Sun Bleached Flies
———
Ophelia waited until Laertes was definitively asleep before she began to slowly ease herself out from under his arm.
Even in repose, his face was stormy, his eyebrows furrowed, his mouth forming a frown, the lines in his forehead pronounced. This, Ophelia knew, was her fault, at least in part. It was her fault their father was dead, her fault for not heeding anyone’s warnings, her fault that Laertes had been brought back here. But she was going to fix it. She just had to make sure he didn’t wake up first. He had always been a light sleeper.
Inch by inch, she crawled out of bed until she was standing over her sleeping, troubled brother. She would miss him, but he would be okay. He would be angry and want to settle the score, but it would be to no avail. Hamlet, she was certain, was long gone by now. Him and that friend of his had to have run. If they were smart, they would run away and never come back, and Hamlet was nothing if not smart.
“Goodnight,” she whispered to Laertes, kissing his forehead, a pitiful mimicry of their childhoods, of the many nights when he’d put her to bed in this exact fashion. His eye twitched, but he didn’t wake. She lingered by him for another moment. He would be happy if only he could get past the anger first. He was not half as brave as everyone thought he was. He was only very good at pretending. Deep within him was a little boy who hit first so no one would suspect how frightened he really was. He was a lot like Hamlet in that respect. He was like a child too.
But within Laertes there was an inner core of strength that Hamlet did not possess. She didn’t have it either. Her brother would be alright. He’d go back to France and learn to live with the grief. She was setting him free.
Ophelia couldn’t linger any longer. She left her room and made her way to the front door. Sitting down on the floor, she pulled on a pair of Laertes’ boots and grabbed the keys to his truck—left behind when he went to France—from the hook by the door. Also on the hook were her own house keys, but her father’s and Laertes’ were absent. Her father’s, she imagined, were in evidence at the police precinct. Laertes’, she noticed after giving the room a cursory look, were on the kitchen table.
Carefully, she picked them up and hung them on the hook so he would know where to find them. He would be frustrated if he had to search for them.
She unlocked the door and shut it quietly behind her without locking it. The boots were too big for her, but they felt sturdy. She needed sturdy now. Putting a hand on the wall for support, she made her way to the elevator. Despite her fever, she had never felt so clear-headed in all her life.
Pressing the button for the garage, she leaned back against the wall of the elevator. She saw herself—distorted—reflected in the steel of the elevator doors. Her hair hung around her face in damp, lifeless strands; her pajamas were too big for her by far, and Laertes’ boots were untied.
The image broke in two when the doors opened. Ophelia unlocked the truck and climbed inside, using the handle inside the door to hoist herself up. Leaning back in the seat, she took a moment to rest her eyes. She was so tired.
Forcing her eyes back open, she saw that ten minutes had passed. Rubbing her eyes, she began to back out of the parking spot, putting in Laertes’ pin, rather than her own, when she got to the gate that would lead her to the outside world, this apartment left behind one last time.
———
Unlike Laertes, she didn’t remember their lives before their father had gotten in with Hamlet Sr. She was too young. She didn’t remember the days of overdue bills, the debts that their father had racked up trying in vain to save his wife’s life, the sterile smell of the apartment that lingered long after their mother had breathed her last.
Her life opened and began with their move to D.C. and their father’s friendship with then Senator Hamlet Dane I. Hamlet Sr. had taken a shine to Polonius, something that had at last made him believe he could be more than a failure of a man, a lawyer-father manqué.
Maybe that was where the great divide between her and Laertes came from. She had accepted their new reality with ease and let herself sink into it. She learned the rules, followed them, and played the game. Laertes couldn’t. He hated D.C.. He hated having to play games and he hated the vipers they’d been locked in with. Their father called it idiocy. Ophelia thought he was just too honest, in a strange way. Laertes was too much himself to abide by anyone’s rules but his own.
The reverse was her problem. She didn’t know that she had a self to fall back upon. She went to college because it was expected of her. She dated boys she didn’t love because her father approved of them. The only time she’d felt free was when she was high, drifting away from herself. Her entire life was one fugue-state. She’d grown so small.
———
She really had loved Hamlet. He was the only one who had ever looked at her like she was a real person, not something to protect like Laertes had, or something to make use of like her father. She wasn’t glass to him but rather something to lean upon. He fell asleep in her arms most nights, his head resting upon her chest. It was the only time he was ever quiet, the only time he was ever still.
Those nights in the usually empty Dane apartment were some of the only times she’d felt like she could be herself, like she could even learn to know the true Ophelia, whoever she was. She called to her, reached out to her, but she always disappeared with the rising sun, fading back into nothingness, beyond her reach.
But then it had all ended, Hamlet had gone back to New York and never called, and she realized the simple truth: it was over for her. She had ruined herself to fit into this world. She was a nothing person, a net zero. The only things she was good at—singing and writing, neither of which she told anyone about for fear of ridicule—meant nothing. They would get her nowhere. She had thought she was playing by the rules of the game, but she wasn’t. She had fooled herself. She was three years into a degree program that she only sort-of liked. She had no job prospects or marketable skills. She could not imagine becoming a politician, but what else was she primed for? It was the only dance she knew the steps to.
Laertes might have been too much Laertes to truly abide by anyone else’s rules, but he was selfless enough to try. She was too little herself and too selfish for either. She wanted to run away until she reached the edge of the world and take the plunge into the unknown. That would be more tolerable.
She wanted it once to be her. Just once—
———
The blare of a horn. Flashing lights. Ophelia swerved just in time to avoid the oncoming car. She must have dozed off.
“Watch the fucking road!” the driver screamed at her through his open window, flipping her off.
Goosebumps danced up her arms. The night air was piercing. She couldn’t remember a colder winter in all her life. But she made no move to roll up the window. She wanted to enjoy the cold, the freshness of it, its sharp clarity.
“Beauty will save the world,” Hamlet had told her once, his lips pressing these words into her neck as he thrust into her.
“Why did you say that?” she asked after, when he was lying on his stomach beside her, his deft fingers tracing the lines of her palm.
“I didn’t. Dostoevsky did.” He smiled crookedly up at her. “Who wouldn’t when he was looking at you?”
Beauty will save the world. Ophelia had never found much beauty in swampy D.C., but maybe she just hadn’t been looking hard enough. Pulling the truck over to the side of the road, she got out—stumbling slightly—and looked around her. It would be dawn soon, but it was yet still night, and the city was quiet. She heard no birds singing, saw no signs of life but for the occasional car zooming past.
Above her, the moon shone high in the sky. She turned her face to it, letting her eyes drift shut.
“My middle name is Diana,” she’d told Hamlet one night early in their dalliance—she couldn’t call it a relationship, could she?—as they were sitting on the balcony, passing a cigarette and a bottle of wine between them.
“The virgin goddess,” Hamlet said contemplatively.
Then, he’d laughed.
———
Ophelia arrived at the Dane house as the first hints of daylight began to light up the sky. The truck threw her forward when she parked, but she hardly noticed it. She turned the truck off, nicely set the keys on the dashboard, and jumped out, landing on the ground with a soft thump.
She’d always loved that house. It was Colonial, elegant, and vast. As a girl, nothing had delighted her like dinner at the Dane’s. At the first opportunity, she’d slip off unnoticed—her father and Hamlet Sr. too busy discussing politics to notice, Laertes and Hamlet too busy verbally sparring to pay anyone else any mind—and explore the many rooms. Those were among her most peaceful memories. The silence was not overbearing to her but comforting. The only sound was her own footsteps. There was no one but her and this old house. That was what freedom felt like to her then, before she discovered painkillers and starvation.
She used her old knowledge to climb over the far-right corner of the fence, which the cameras didn’t ever watch. Her hands gripped the stones, her feet found their footing, and she smiled for the first time in months. Even once she made the drop onto the other side, curling into a ball to protect her neck and head from the brunt of the fall, she kept smiling. Pain shot up her side, but she was able to stand. The garden was covered with slush. Already, the snow from the storm that had blown South was beginning to melt. In a few months, the flowers would bloom once more, the apple trees would bear fruit, and the birds would return to nest.
Looking up at the house, she saw that two windows were still lit. One she knew was Hamlet Sr.’s old office, now his brother’s. The other room was one of the many guest rooms. She wondered who was in there now. Perhaps Ross and Guin—but no, it couldn’t be. Their room was at the front of the house.
A figure passed behind the closed curtains, disappeared, and reappeared again. Whoever it was, they were pacing. Ophelia had the absurd thought that it was the ghost of her father, unable to move on, tethered to the place he had died in. She raised her hand both in salutation and farewell, but the figure continued their silent pacing, paying her no mind.
As she made her way to the pool house—pausing to pick up a few pretty stones—she wondered where her father was buried, if he was buried yet. She hoped Claudius had given him his due honors. He had given his soul to the people within these walls. It would make him very happy to know he’d been appreciated.
To her surprise, the backdoor of the pool house was unlocked. She didn’t believe in God or signs, but perhaps she was wrong. She crossed the threshold.
Inside, all was still. There was not so much as a ripple disturbing the serene surface of the pool. She dropped to a crouch and held her palm a hairsbreadth away from the water. Nothing changed. There was no sign she was there at all. After a moment of this, she stood. Exhaustion tugged at the edges of her, edges that had torn long ago and been unraveling ever since.
There was comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool. It was no oxy, but it was peaceful. She wanted peace. She was tired of fear and all this grappling. Once, she had loved this house, with its many nooks and crannies, its grandeur and antediluvian style. Now, standing in the middle of this resplendent space that had once been a greenroom, she realized she had been fooled.
A gilded cage is still a cage, Hamlet had told her only a few days prior.
She inhaled deeply. She would miss Laertes, but this was for the best. He would see that one day. He had protected her for so long, and now she was protecting him, driving him out, taking him off the board.
She was ready. It was peaceful here. A cage, but a peaceful one. She was always going to die shackled, but at least, in this way, it was a choice all her own. She would soar and fly away. She would find the place where the true Ophelia lived and learn her ways.
The stones heavy in her pockets, she stepped off the edge of the world and took the plunge into the unknown.