#dr. marrow

One man for one woman, realized Eleanor, as she also took Todd and Mary into account, although Mary had quickly fallen under the spell of the house and been ushered into town by Todd. It was as if the house had paired them up, long before any of them had met. But the house had gotten it wrong. Where Eleanor and Theo were supposed to have one man each, Theo had two and Eleanor had none. 

It was so obvious that Luke and Dr. Marrow were infatuated with Theo. And Eleanor couldn’t blame them. Theo had an air about her that was sophisticated and carefree. It was soft and sharp. It was honey and vinegar. A person couldn’t know if they were going to get a hand squeeze or a slap from Theo at any given moment, though it seemed she favored gentle touches for Eleanor and cutting remarks for the men. 

Perhaps that was the problem. Everyone saw Eleanor as some type of weak individual. A child who had skinned her knee. A baby seeking food in the dark of its own hunger. None of them viewed her as an adult, as a whole person. As someone with hopes and dreams and wants. Everyone knew that Theo wanted things. Of course, she did. She wanted them and she got them. Luke wanted things, too. Whether or not he got them was irrelevant – he made his desires known and he went after them. And Dr. Marrow. He got what he wanted. Didn't he, after all, want all of these strangers here in this house? And all he had done was put an ad in the paper, and just like magic, people materialized within the house, subject to his every whim, eager to do what he asked them to. 

Eleanor never got what she wanted. She didn’t even get what she needed. A car? An apartment? A single night of restful sleep? It was laughable, to think that Eleanor would ever get anything she wanted. And that included at least one man’s attention in Hugh Crain’s old house. She didn’t necessarily like the men at the house – Luke was too cocky and Dr. Marrow was too clinical – but she still wanted someone to pay attention to her, and just her. Wasn’t she special? Wasn’t she worthy of a conversation that didn’t drift to what Theo was wearing? Wasn’t she allowed to show emotion without being labeled neurotic or vulnerable or a good conductor for the energy in the house? 

Perhaps she just wanted Theo’s attention. It had been hers, all alone, when they’d first arrived at the house. Just her and Theo as they explored the rooms and snuck into the kitchen and danced in front of spinning mirrors. But it had been snatched away as soon as the men arrived. As soon as the patriarchy had slipped into the house and spread its fingers into every corner, tightening its grip on Eleanor and Theo and even Mrs. Dudley. 

It frustrated Eleanor to no end that Theo’s attention on her had been turned from a friend’s to an annoyed older sister, or a zoo visitor, or a science student doing a dissection. A sort of pitying look full of disdain, half-removed, already looking for a means of escape. Theo had been pressed under the thumb of the men and her friendship had turned into something sour. Theo was a woman now, in the gaze of men, and Eleanor was just a little girl. She was a child to be put up with. A baby to be rocked to sleep and then shut up in its crib until morning. A nuisance ushered away in the arms of a nurse, or governess, or nanny while the adults sipped brandy in front of a fire and spoke intellectually together. 

What had happened in their short time together that Dr. Marrow and Theo had developed a relationship? They might have thought it wasn’t obvious, that their heated debates could be passed off as a strong dislike for one another, but Eleanor could see through it. Perhaps they only thought they were fooling her because they saw her as weak-minded, but she wasn’t. She saw the truth. Sometime during their long sleepless nights in the house, Theo and Dr. Marrow had fallen in love. 

Or, perhaps, it wasn’t love. But it was something. It wasn’t hate. Eleanor knew hate. She knew it stronger than any other emotion in her life. It bubbled up like acid and burned her throat and peeled the skin off her hands until she thought she could turn into a million droplets of blood and seep into her mattress and disappear. It was the feeling she got in the pit of her stomach when she awoke to the sound of her dead mother banging her cane against the wall, screaming for help. It was the pounding headache behind her eyes when she saw her sister and brother-in-law and nephew selling the apartment and being generous enough to lend her a twenty-year-old car. That wasn’t what Theo and Dr. Marrow had. 

It wasn’t lust, either. That was what Luke felt toward Theo. He didn’t actually care about Theo as a person. He only cared about what she was wearing and if she was too scared to sleep alone in such a big, scary house. Luke had nothing but lust in his heart toward any woman (well, any woman except for Eleanor, who remained, always, a perpetual child in his mind). Theo had enough lust in her life, Eleanor suspected. She didn’t need or want anymore. Luke was only a threat in that he continually interrupted Eleanor and Theo’s conversations just to get closer to Theo, much to Theo’s chagrin. 

There was something deeper between Theodora and the doctor. Eleanor saw it when Theo stepped in to defend Eleanor, demanding that Dr. Marrow leave her alone. The emotion wasn’t because of Theo’s love of Eleanor. It was because of her love for Dr. Marrow. Something had transpired in the house, under the watchful eyes of Hugh Crain, in the darkest corners of haunted bedrooms and empty hallways, between the two of them. Had it happened when neither of them could sleep? Had it happened, like a bolt of lightning, when the two first met? Had it started when they’d begun their correspondence via letter, when Dr. Marrow sent out his advertisement and Theo had responded? 

It didn’t matter. It had happened all the same, and it would never stop. Even if they all went home immediately, Eleanor would always know that Theo and Dr. Marrow had connected on a level that Eleanor would never be able to understand, would never be able to experience. Even if she returned home to her little apartment (which, she couldn’t, because her sister had undoubtedly sold it already), she would know that something had happened while she was at the house. She would always remember the way Theo and Dr. Marrow looked at each other. How Dr. Marrow’s voice softened when he asked Theo questions, or how Theo’s eyes sparkled when she made a smart remark to Dr. Marrow. 

Eleanor would always remember how the two of them had become entwined down to their souls while Eleanor had been haunted, not just by the memories of her past, but by the ghosts of the present. How quickly Theo turned on her when they found the paint splashed across the wall. Welcome home, Eleanor. How deep Luke dug his claws into Eleanor to blame her for the things that were happening. How Dr. Marrow looked at her in disgust when Eleanor realized that everything was real – the ghosts, the voices, the spirit of the house coming up out of the dark to hold tight with tooth and claw. How no one believed her, and labeled her fragile, even though that was the whole point of the experiment, wasn’t it? 

Isn’t that what Dr. Marrow wanted – for these fractured minds to turn like kaleidoscopes until the colors spilled out and no one could tell the difference between what was real and what had been imagined? Didn’t he bring them all there so that they could conjure up the spirits of the house and wake up the dead from their sleep? And Eleanor had done it – for him – for Theo – for Luke – and they hated her for it. She’d done something wrong. Again. Eleanor Vance, perpetually wrong. An ink blot mistake on the white paper of everyone else’s life. 

If she were a Rorschach test, every answer given by Dr. Marrow or Theo or Luke would be the same. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. 

What was she supposed to do when their time at the house was up and they were meant to go home? What was she supposed to do when she left in her car and returned to no home, no family, no friends? Theo and Luke and Dr. Marrow would continue on, straight and determined like arrows, while Eleanor was scattered like seeds in the wind. She’d never see them again, never see Theo again, as long as she lived. But she would think of her. And she’d think of Luke and Dr. Marrow and the way they looked at Theo, and the dinners Mrs. Dudley cooked, and the chime of Hugh Crain’s grandfather clock, and the light dancing off mirrors, and the lion-head flue in the fireplace swinging like a pendulum. She’d think of the apartment her sister stole from her and her mother’s body lying in her rotting mattress and the money dwindling out of her savings account day by day. 

But no one would think of her.