The Healing of Tobias Strong
by Lisa Voorhees
part 1
On this rainy, desperately cold night, the wind screams against the windows and a bright fire burns behind the grate, but none of its warmth touches my bones. Encased within a worn velvet armchair in the darkest corner of the sitting room, I stare at the gold filigree box on the mantelpiece: specifically, the drawer with the pearl handle.
My last name may be Strong, yet the passage of time has proven me to be anything but. I, Tobias Strong, cannot open that drawer, cannot face the enormity of what’s inside, let alone remove myself from the ruins of this chair once the sun sets and the mansion goes quiet. Not since I lost Mirrimah.
A knock sounds at the door, and I am jarred out of my troubled reverie. No one has visited the mansion in months, and I am not expecting company. I have nothing to offer a guest but silence and my wan countenance.
I creep toward the door. Cobwebs sway along the wainscoting, and I brush them aside nervously. My heart quails at the thought of entertaining a stranger.
The hinges squeal in protest, and the door creaks open. The rain-battered creature on the other side regards me with as much bewilderment as I do her. Richly clad in layers of black taffeta with an ebony broach at her throat, she gazes at me through the dull, dead eyes of a plague doctor’s mask. Her tiny, gloved hands grasp the handle of a closed parasol and a leather traveling case. She has all the familiarity of Tannaz, my late wife’s mother, yet what has become of her face?
“Tobias?” she says, a quaver to her voice.
I touch my own face, worried over how horror-struck she seems. Have I become unrecognizable, even to my own kin?
“Tannaz, please, won’t you come inside?”
She steps past me, her wary gaze lingering on me as she sets down her burden on the hallway tiles and unties the ribbon at her throat to remove her hat. Disturbingly, the plague doctor mask remains in place.
I invite her to the sitting room and resume my comfortable post in the armchair. She takes a seat near the fire, her gaze never straying far from my face. Equally, I cannot tear mine away from hers.
Finally, Tannaz pulls off her gloves and stretches her hands toward the flames. She tells me of her journey, how saddened she was that I never responded to any of her letters, that she longed to know how I was faring, how I spent my days, and if I had kept up with the other family, as well as my friends.
I offer perfunctory evasions which, oddly, seem to satisfy her. Hesitant, she tilts her head at me. She begins to speak and falters; I detect a slight catch in her voice, but I refrain from any sign of an outward reaction.
I hardly want to know what she sees when she’s looking at me.
“How long has it been since you last traveled?” I say, in order to avoid any difficult questions.
“I haven’t visited anyone in weeks. You are the first person I’ve chosen to call on, Tobias.” She glances sideways, then brushes invisible raindrops from a fold of her taffeta gown. “I apologize for not making alternate arrangements in advance.”
I leap to action with the first response that comes to mind. “That is not necessary. Of course you will stay here; you are family,” I say, hoping she does not sense my unease. I haven’t been able to shake off my discomfort about the presence of her mask.
“How is the garden?” I ask.
“The greenhouse is overgrown. I find...” her gaze drifts toward the fire and lingers there before returning to me, “I have no energy for such pursuits as I used to love.”
The dark hollows of the plague doctor’s mask bore into me. The hideous beak with its sutured margin muffles her voice, as if she’s talking to me from behind a padded screen.
“That mask of yours...” Tannaz whispers.
I stare at her.
“Why are you wearing that?” she asks.
My stomach churns. Sinking dread overtakes me. “Wearing what?”
She wiggles her fingers in the air. “That... frightful mask.”
“I wasn’t aware of it.” She has been staring at me for the same reason I have been staring at her, neither of us wanting to mention the embarrassing truth. Now that it is in the open between us, I feel a measure of relief. Fresh anxiety, however, takes hold of Tannaz.
Her fingers feather along her jawline. Her breath catches in her throat. “Do I appear the same way to you?” The great dark eye sockets loom large. The sadness in their depths is fathomless.
To bear witness to the grief she holds locked inside is more than I can bear. I rise and incline my head toward her. “Excuse me,” I say. “There is something I must attend to.”
I leave the room without glancing back and hurriedly retreat to my chambers, to examine my face in the mirror there. True enough, the dead holes of the plague doctor’s expressionless eyes stare out at me from my own reflection. The tip of the beak chinks against the glass so that I have to back up to avoid breaking the mirror.
My heart hammers. I must rid myself of the mask, the sooner the better. I do not wish to frighten Tannaz or add to the burden she already carries. I scrape my fingers along my jawline, searching for any false layer I can find. A frustrated growl escapes my throat. My hands fall to my sides, unable to distinguish any means of detaching the apparatus. The mask appears to have melded itself to my very flesh.
Distressed and considerably more rumpled, I return to the sitting room only to find it empty. A lingering impression remains on the couch, but Tannaz has drifted elsewhere inside the mansion.
Thorough exploration of the hallways surrounding the kitchen proves fruitless. I can only presume that next to the desire for a soothing cup of tisane or a fresh biscuit, my mother-in-law has left in search of her sleeping quarters, so I climb the stairs to the second floor.
The guest rooms extend to the right of the landing, but I pause at the entrance to the hallway on my left. At the end of it, the doorway to the master suite sits shrouded in darkness.
Tonight feels destined to be different. Halfway down the hall, light from a gas lamp spills onto the carpet. The air is charged with a certain energy, combined with the lingering scent of her sandalwood and vanilla perfume.
I follow its trail and hesitate outside the door of Mirrimah’s boudoir. On the opposite side of the room, Tannaz is standing next to the vanity, openly admiring the painting hanging there: a woman riding sidesaddle through a field of blossoms, sunlight casting off the petals in an impressionistic array. A butterfly sits on her extended finger; the woman faces the sun.
I had thought Tannaz meant to escape my ghastly appearance behind the plague doctor’s mask. I realize now her intent was to snoop in the private quarter of the mansion. I should not feel as offended as I do, but I am piqued.
Tannaz hears my footfall on the threshold. “This takes my breath away,” she says.
“It was a favorite of Mirrimah’s,” I say waspishly, my shoulders stiffening, “and I would have preferred you ask before coming in here.”
She pulls her gaze away from the painting and strays toward the middle of the room. Her hands flutter like nervous birds, and she cups them together in an effort to quiet them. “How is your painting going?”
A stutter flails in my throat. She can’t possibly know about the painting, the one I was slaving over before Mirrimah died.
“I haven’t stepped inside my studio for months,” I say. A whooshing sound assails my eardrums, a harbinger of my mounting anxiety.
“May I show you to your rooms?” I offer my arm but she ignores it, rigid as a pole. Behind her mask, the blank holes of her eyes reveal nothing of her true opinion.
“Mirrimah told me you were working on her portrait,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
I cannot tell whether or not this pleases her. My gut tells me she is frightened more than she cares to let on, but the mask — that bloody mask! — strips her face of all emotion.
“Is it finished?” Tannaz says.
I snap out a reply. “It is not. May I please show you where you’ll be sleeping?” I extend my arm a second time.
Tannaz refuses and takes a step closer to her leather case and parasol. I didn’t notice them earlier. She must have carried them with her when she left to venture upstairs.
Her chin lifts a fraction; her chest fills with a measure of pride. “I’d like to stay here tonight, if you don’t mind.” The statement holds no question. She intends to sleep on the settee.
I gaze at her with a mixture of wonderment and dread, but to argue with her requires more energy than I care to expend.
How can I deny her the proximity to her daughter’s belongings? I fear the burden being thrust upon me at the same time as I long to respond to Tannaz’s grief, to assuage her hurt in whatever way I can.
My heart swells painfully and my throat constricts. I move toward the door.
“Tobias, wait,” Tannaz says.
My hand rests on the knob.
“Will you ever return to your work in the studio?”
I hesitate in the doorway, halfway between two worlds: the solitude of my dark house ready to shelter me on one side, the garish light of a bold question I am loath to answer on the other. “I don’t know.”
Copyright © 2025 by Lisa Voorhees
