The Garden of Blue Roses

by Michael Barsa

  I drove to the massacre site at dawn. In our age of interactive displays the single wooden sign and commemorative plaque generated little interest. To most people it was just a grassy field and a bunch of trees. I knew I'd be alone. I heaved the fertilizer sack out of the trunk and dragged it like a dead body to a green trash receptacle. Somehow I managed to pitch it inside. Then came my tools and clothes—anything that might link me to what had happened.

  Aside from this single outing I endeavored to adopt my typical routine. I returned to bed and set my alarm clock at maximum volume. I shot up like a cannonball. After some quick ablutions and a change of clothes I appeared, smiling with my usual pleasantness, at breakfast. Marta was already up and about the kitchen. She seemed much improved—or was skilled at hiding pain. I slid into my place just as she brought me a cup of cocoa on a saucer.

  "How are you feeling today?" I asked.

  "Fine, thank you."

  But there was a shiftiness to her eyes. She seemed to be avoiding my gaze. It was like when I was a child and I'd done something naughty—something only she'd noticed. "Did you sleep well?" I asked.

  "Oh yes."

  "Any dreams?"

  "I never remember them."

  Klara descended for breakfast with her usual quietness, sipping her morning tea and scanning a day-old newspaper. She looked tired. Her eyes were puffy and dark. Everything was taking its toll. She was wearing a bright red dress with three-quarter length sleeves tied in knots, hardly the sort of thing for gardening. But did I dare hope?

  "Henri sends his regards," Klara said to Marta.

  "He's not coming?"

  "He said he needs to look after Mrs. Silfer's geraniums today."

  I blew on the cocoa's steam, sending it into spasmodic, lucky waves. Not only would I be free of the man, but my raid upon the roses could hardly have been more perfectly timed. Now the sodium nitrate would have all day to burn and bind, to destroy the garden and Henri's false pretenses along with it.

  "It looks like a beautiful day," I said to Klara with a sigh.

  "I suppose it is."

  She turned the pages and paused at the headline "Ancient Rituals, Modern Oppressions." There was a photograph of a dour African girl with a red cloth around her head—no doubt more grist for her charitable mill. I picked up the financial pages. I've always taken comfort in the stock market's rational precision: Mattson, + 1/32; MaxEr, - 1 1/2. I had no idea what these companies did—I imagined men in starched shirts pouring over spreadsheets while uttering words like "efficiency" and "gross production" and "value added"—the words themselves evoking skyscrapers and airport lounges and computerized cars, the engineering of anodyne calm.

  "Anything interesting in the paper?" I asked.

  She didn't look up. "In Africa they still practice genital mutilation on girls as young as five or six."

  I shook my head. "Barbaric."

  Marta returned with a tray of soft-boiled eggs in decorative ceramic cups. That's when Klara finally put down the paper. "It's important that you rest," she said, carefully taking the tray. Marta tried to protest, but Klara would have none of it. "Go. We'll be fine." She watched Marta hobble into the entrance hall. I could swear Marta was putting it on for Klara's benefit—she hadn't been limping a few minutes ago. When she'd gone Klara sighed and turned to me. I stared at my egg, knowing what was coming. I'd known it since yesterday.

  "We need to talk," she said. "About what happened to Mother and Father."

  I gave my egg a whack, cracking its delicate cap, so like an old man's skull. I saw them at the police station on those slabs, their coffins descending into frozen ground. I remembered even then having a moment of doubt, wondering if those coffins were empty. "We know what happened."

  "Everybody assumed it was an accident because of the icy roads. But what if they couldn't stop? What if their brake lines had been cut?"

  "Why are you asking me this?"

  I could see the struggle in her face. "Henri found things in the woods."

  "Things?"

  "Hidden in our old clearing. An auto guide and wire-cutters. You know that. You followed us."

  "I came to tell you about Marta."

  "So you don't know anything about them?"

  I looked at my egg, dribbling yolk.

  "I'm sorry, Milo, I have to ask."

  "Why?"

  "Only you and I knew about that clearing. It was our special place."

  "So why did you take Henri there?"

  She paused with her little spoon in the air, a bit of egg white on her lip. I could swear I saw it trembling—whether out of anger at my insinuation or embarrassment at what she'd been doing, I couldn't tell. "He was the one who . . . He wanted to show me wild nature. It's a quality he wants to capture in the garden."

  I nodded, looking into her eyes, so skeptical yet so trusting—the eyes of a broken bird: vulnerable, wide, yet still imbued with that reptilian gleam. Do you see what this means? I told those eyes. Do I have to spell it out for you? "He led you there."

  "We started walking down the path and he noticed the stone marker."

  "I suppose he also found the wire cutters and auto guide?"

  "He'd run ahead and gotten to the clearing first."

  She said this in an almost dreamlike fugue, as if starting to piece it together, how Henri was the sole source of everything against me. Here was another pinprick of doubt, another hole in that man's conspicuously constructed image. If I could make enough such holes, I knew the entire edifice would fall under the weight of Klara's own self-doubt, the self-doubt that must already be wondering why am I attractive to that man? Why is he here? And then, out of the dust and ruin of her fantasy, would come the truth as only I could reveal.

  "I see," I said, taking a spoonful of creamy yolk.

  She pinched her lips and sat a little straighter, gathering herself in long-habitual opposition to me, unwilling to let the fantasy die. "I'm sorry, Milo. This is not one of Father's novels."

  "'My dear fellow'" I quoted Sherlock Holmes, "'life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.'"

  "Nor is it one of your games."

  "I know," I said. I was about to say more, but I decided to be cautious, to avoid revealing my evidence. "I'm following up on a few things and should have more to tell you soon."

  "What exactly are you doing?"

  "Everything I can to protect you."

  "From what?"

  "Yourself."

  I shot the word straight at her, seeing the hesitation in her eyes, the slight flinch that told me I was onto something. "You knew him," I ventured. "Before the accident."

  "Who?"

  "Henri."

  "Don't be ridiculous. He was living in Burlington."

  "You went there several times last autumn."

  "That was for a fiction writing class with Jason Patrick."

  Jason Patrick was Father's great rival in the realm of reclusive literary horror novelists, one who taught at the University of Vermont. Father called him the "vanilla thriller miller" for how he ground-out bland plot after bland plot. "I thought you'd given up writing," I pointed out.

  "It's not something you ever really give up, is it?" She took a spoonful of egg, then put down the spoon and wiped her lips with a cloth napkin. "Anyway you know how things were then, with Father working on his long-awaited sequel. I had to get away."

  It's always the smallest things that transport my mind. Take spiders. There's a web below our roofline that I can just see from the corner of my bedroom window. One minute I'll be observing its creator sidle toward a trapped fly and then an entire hour will have passed. The same is true for a dripping faucet. Have you ever observed how long a drop of water can cling, distended, to the edge? I've read about viscosity and fluid dynamics, but it still thrills me to watch a little wa
ter bubble hang there and slowly, slowly succumb to the pull of gravity. There is something poignant in the moment of breaking that reminds me of films like Casablanca or Star Trek II—films in which Humphrey Bogart or Mr. Spock say to their lover or comrade to go on without them, and the lover or comrade hesitates, and then does. I watch the water fall helplessly into the sink, and I want to cry.

  I concentrate intently on the minutia of modeling. I can spend an entire morning hollowing out the insides of a tiny ship's cannon with an even tinier bit of wire. It's an escape into another time—an escape from time itself. I feel detached from my surroundings and at the same time most alive. It frees my mind to work through difficult problems, to mull things over from every angle. Sherlock Holmes has his violin and his pipes, while I have my models and my Greeks.

  After breakfast I painted Athenian colors on the trireme's oars. I applied the pale blue and white paint with my second-most exacting brush—a Spanish Escoda Tajmir. Its long bristles hold plenty of paint, and its thin tip applies it precisely. I also smoothed down the oar handles with sandpaper until they fit neatly within the slaves' pre-formed grips. Then I added a rare touch of verisimilitude. I washed one of Marta's sewing needles and sterilized it with a match flame. I held my breath and jabbed it into the end of my thumb. I squeezed, pooling the blood atop the skin before dipping in the needle. I carefully dabbed it across each oar handle.

  Klara spent the day on the chaise, writing a letter—no doubt to the State Department or Amnesty International or some other organization that might help those poor African girls. That evening we watched the first part of a televised adaptation of Great Expectations. She was distracted, picking at the collar of her blouse. I sensed all the things she wanted to say to me—all the things locked up inside. But I was the one who asked the questions that night.

  "Do you have a formal contract with Henri?"

  "Hmm?"

  "A legal document? Executed by a lawyer? Notarized with his legal name and social security number and everything?"

  "Don't be silly. He's a gardener, not a bank trustee."

  In the morning I was in the study carving the Athena's head at the tip of the trireme's ram when I saw Klara dash across the patio, one hand on her straw hat and the other waving in frantic little clutches of air. Henri was in the garden. He had his hands on his hips. He didn't move. He said something cutting—I could see the bitter curl of his mouth. She stopped short, a hand still on the hat, the other frozen in mid-wave until it joined its counterpart atop her head in an almost childishly protective gesture. Henri turned away. He was standing over a rose's bleached and spotted leaves. He plucked one of them and tossed it aside. Then he slipped out a gardening knife. His thumb rubbed the top of the blade. It was a pent-up, angry motion, yet a strangely intimate one—of a man who loved his steel. In a flash he swung it. I saw a glint, a blur, the top of a ruined flower slowly toppling, then another and another, scythed away by his quick and expert violence. Nobody moved after that: not him, not Klara, not I. I got the sense he was embarrassed by what he'd revealed, while I kept thinking: I've seen this before. Exactly this. I watched Klara inch toward him and put a hand on his shoulder. She whispered something. He nodded. Then she turned and caught my face in the little study window, while hers remained hidden in the angled shadow of her hat.

  I bent low and took up my Exacto knife again. My hand was shaking. I was conscious of how alone I was. I stared at Athena's hair, each line of it swept over the hull as if wind-blown. Then time passed and I calmed, I began to carve once more, focusing on the triangular blade, the wood shavings falling like dry snow.

  Eventually I looked up. By then everyone—Klara, Henri, the workmen—had moved to the garden, working in furious silence to shovel up the top layer of soil and upend it into wheelbarrows. This was my chance. I exchanged the smock for a blazer and hurried through the entrance hall. The driveway was empty except for those crickets that sing on humid mornings—that never want the night to end. The Peugeot gleamed between a pair of pickup trucks. I ran a finger over the question-mark I'd gouged. I wondered if he'd noticed it—if part of his anger stemmed from the fact that he knew that I knew him. I pulled out my notebook and peered through the windshield and copied down the VIN number. Then I went into the kitchen and pulled the telephone book from its drawer. I located the company I'd seen in a recent television commercial.

  "CarInfo," said the man on the phone.

  "Yes, hello," I said, relieved not to be talking to a machine. I claimed I was buying a used car and needed a full report on the owner and vehicle. "I have the VIN."

  "Perfect," he replied, drawing out the "r" like those drug addicts in college. "We can mail you a report for $49.99, OK?"

  "Just hurry."

  "I only need your info and a credit card."

  A credit card. "Hold on." Klara's purse was in the alcove off the entrance hall—a slim black leather thing with stiff loop handles. The clasp opened with a snap, and I pulled out her wallet with its MasterCard. Just then I noticed something at my feet—a shiny plastic square. It must have fallen out. I picked it up. It crinkled between my fingers. It took several moments before I recognized it from my college dorm.

  Trojan.

  Klara said nothing to me all afternoon, hurrying past the study when she was inside and never again glancing at my window. Supper was painfully silent. Her face was waxy from congealed sweat and a little sunburned; she kept fingering the low neck of her blouse where it met her ruddy skin. How many condoms did she have? I closed my eyes and saw them bursting from her pockets, spilling out her brassiere, piled atop her nightstand and covering the MG's floor. Where did she use them? And how often? Did it give her pleasure or was it just something she suffered to alleviate her loneliness?

  Later we watched Part Two of Great Expectations. That's when she finally turned to me, scrutinizing me above the rims of her television glasses, lowering her head an inch or two while raising her eyebrows the same distance as if they were held in place by invisible strings. "Is there nothing you don't hate?" she said, her voice sour from being bottled up so long.

  "I don't hate you."

  "You have a funny way of showing it."

  I turned back to the television, on which a particularly spooky scene in Miss Havisham's dining room was playing. The room was illuminated by a dim gas lamp and curtained with cobwebs. Our hero, young Pip, stood at the entrance, his mouth an amazed little O.

  "You never appreciate what I do for you," I said.

  "Like trying to ruin the garden?"

  "Is that Henri's latest accusation?" I said, my voice slipping a little. "When will he stop?"

  "You added sodium nitrate."

  I tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in my throat like a pollen-induced tickle. "Where would I get sodium nitrate? And how would I even know what it's supposed to do?" She held me in a steady gaze. I refused to twitch or turn away. "You've always been vulnerable to the suggestions of men who flatter you," I went on. "Men who are trying to take advantage."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Like your ex-husband. And Father."

  It was an inspired afterthought, but I saw how she perked up, ruffled and alarmed—saw I'd hit a nerve. "Why do you mention Father?"

  "He used to praise you for everything. It affected you. You played to him. You thought he could do no wrong. Henri is doing the same thing."

  "That's ridiculous."

  "A dashing French gardener? Interested only in your gardening technique? That, my dear sister, is ridiculous."

  I turned back to the television, where Miss Havisham was laughing at a stream of spiders pouring from a rotten banquet table. Even this was not as revolting as what poured out of Klara's mouth next: "Is it because I'm finally happy? Can you not stand to see me happy?"

  Poor Pip's blanched face suddenly filled the screen.

  "Listen, I'm sorry about what happened in the
past, Milo—how I treated you, how Mother and Father treated you. But there's nothing I can do about that now. We have to live our lives. And that means taking responsibility for our actions, not always blaming someone else."

  "What was that?"

  "Taking responsibility for our actions," she repeated in a slow voice, spacing out the words so their import was impossible to escape.

  I've always admired the ability of small animals to cheat death by playing dead. It is the ultimate example of gaining freedom through abject submission. I looked at her straight on, without blinking, and said: "What do you imagine I'm doing?"

  "You really have no idea how sodium nitrate got in the soil?"

  I shook my head. "Maybe Henri isn't quite the gardener he makes himself out to be. Or maybe he's deliberately trying to blame me in every way he can. Either way you should be very careful. There is more to that man than meets the eye."

  "What do you mean?"

  I wasn't sure how much to say, so I said nothing at all. Klara didn't say anything either. She just turned back to the television, and for the remainder of the film we did little more than stare in parallel at the screen. At one point I inquired whether she wanted a chocolate from the kitchen (she always kept several boxes of them with her favorite marzipan centers), but she raised a hand and motioned me to be silent as if even the hint of continued conversation were too painful to bear.

  Keith wondered sometimes whether he'd been made,

  An emanation from the Master's head,

  Sprung forth at that man's words?

  The notion seemed absurd . . .

  And yet he couldn't shake it.

  At times he also felt, when gazing in the mirror, naked,

  That he wasn't of this world, as if his flesh itself were plastic,

  Illusory, a pantomime of nature, some fantastic

  Shroud to hide the monster deep inside.

  Was that what made him keen to peel it all aside

  In others? To check if he was different or unique