The Signature of All Things

her twenty-first birthday had come and gone the previous week without notice—not even from Prudence, who could usually be counted upon for a small, thoughtful gift.
    Well, what did she expect? She was older now. She was the mistress of the grandest estate in Philadelphia, and the head clerk, it now appeared, of one of the largest botanical importing concerns on the planet. The time for childish things had passed.
    After Alma left the binding closet, she stripped down and took a bath—though it was not a Saturday—and went to sleep at five o’clock in the afternoon. She slept for thirteen hours. When she awoke, the house was silent. For the first moment in months, the house needed nothing from her. The silence sounded like music. She dressed slowly and enjoyed her tea and toast. Then she walked across her mother’s old Grecian garden, glassed over now with ice, until she reached the carriage house. It was time for her to return, if only for a few hours, to her own work, which she had left in midsentence the day her mother had fallen down the stairs.
    To her surprise, Alma saw a thin tendril of smoke uncurling from the chimney of the carriage house as she approached. When she reached her study, there—as promised—was Retta Snow, curled up on the divan under a thick wool blanket, sound asleep and waiting for her.
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    “R etta—” Alma touched her friend’s arm. “What in the world are you doing here?”
    Retta’s large green eyes flew open. Clearly, in the first moment in which she awoke, the girl had no idea where she was, and she did not seem to recognize Alma. Something awful came over Retta’s face in that instant. She looked feral, even dangerous, and Alma found herself jerking back in fear, as though recoiling from a cornered dog. Then Retta smiled and the effect passed. She was all sweetness again, and she resembled herself once more.
    “My loyal friend,” said Retta in a sleepy voice, reaching for Alma’s hand. “Who loves you most? Who loves you best? Who thinks of you when others rest?”
    Alma looked about the room and saw a small cache of empty biscuit tinsand a puddle of clothing piled carelessly on the floor. “Why are you sleeping in my study, Retta?”
    “Because things have grown impossibly dull at my own house. Things are rather dull here, too, of course, but at least there is the chance at times to see a bright face, if one is patient. Did you know that you have mice in your herbarium? Why do you not keep a pussycat in this room, to manage them? Have you ever seen a witch? I confess, I believe there was a witch in the carriage house last week. I could hear her laughing. Do you think we should tell your father? I can’t imagine it’s safe to keep a witch about the place. Or perhaps he would merely think I am mad. Though he seems to think so, anyway. Have you got any more tea? Aren’t these cold mornings unutterably cruel? Do you not long terribly for summer? Where has your black armband gone?”
    Alma sat down and pressed her friend’s hand to her lips. It was good to hear utter nonsense again, after all the seriousness of the last months. “I never know which one of your questions to answer first, Retta.”
    “Start in the middle,” Retta suggested, “and then work in both directions.”
    “What did the witch look like?” Alma asked.
    “Ha! Now you are the one asking too many questions!” Retta leapt up from the divan and shook herself awake. “Are we working today?”
    Alma smiled. “Yes, I believe we are working today—at last.”
    “And what are we studying, my dear best Alma?”
    “We are studying Utricularia clandestina , my dear best Retta.”
    “A plant?”
    “Most certainly.”
    “Oh, it sounds beautiful!”
    “Do be assured that it isn’t,” Alma said. “But it is interesting. And what is Retta studying today?” Alma picked up the ladies’ magazine lying on the floor by the divan and thumbed through its incomprehensible pages.
    “I am studying the sorts of gowns in which a fashionable girl should wed,” Retta said lightly.
    “And are you choosing such a gown?” Alma replied, just as lightly.
    “Most absolutely!”
    “And what will you do with such a gown, my little bird?”
    “Oh, I had a plan to wear it on my wedding day.”
    “An ingenious plan!” Alma said, and turned toward her laboratory bench to see if she could begin putting together her notes from five months earlier.
    “But the sleeves are quite short in all these drawings,