The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

by Joyce Reardon

  Instead of a rose in that window, it is a face that Sukeena and I now see. As clear and as apparent as if I’d instructed the artisans to fashion it in this regard so many years ago. But how could they have? She wasn’t born yet. For you see, Dear Diary, the image in that lovely window is not a rose at all, but a portrait. It is the face of my child, April. Just as she looked the day she disappeared. As the wind blows eerily in our ears, her lips move. And she talks to me.

  16 NOVEMBER 1921

  I return to your pages after too long an absence. John’s proclivity toward moodiness has increased with each month. He seems tired so much of the time. He returns from the city late, late at night with odd smells on his clothing. (The closest I have come to experiencing these same odors was while visiting Madame Lu.) His husbandly appetites have subsided. He has not visited my chambers in nearly three months. I cannot speak of my fears on these pages, but I imagine the worst for poor John. While his fortune continued to grow, his partnership dissolved, a good friend had “an unfortunate accident” in his Health Room, his daughter disappeared and his home began building itself without him. (A protracted battle erupted between John and our contractor when the contractor accused my husband of shopping out work to a moonlighting crew, for a great deal of carpentry work is often accomplished overnight within the walls of Rose Red. No explanation has been given, but the contractor has been replaced by one who asks no such questions.)

  In the midst of his “depression” (what the doctors are calling it) John has twice tried to force me to travel to Switzerland (once, this summer, and again, in late September) to attend a health clinic where he hoped I might find peace from my affliction with fever. Reunited with my daughter as I am in my late-night visits (wisely, I have told John nothing of this), I refuse to budge. Nothing can take me from Rose Red now. (Sukeena believes this was the intention of the house all along. Perhaps a bit jealous herself, my maid believes this rambling palace is somehow in love with me and wants me all to herself.)

  The reason for this entry in your pages, the cause of my alarm, is that to-day John issued an ultimatum that I was not to visit the Tower any longer. He ordered it boarded up and padlocked. Although I long to understand his reasoning—does he sense a change in me?—I cannot, of course, allow him to make such impossible demands. I wonder if John himself did not stray up to that lofty place late one night and see the face, hear the voice himself? Perhaps it proved too much for him. Perhaps he snapped and has slid downhill ever since. Perhaps, only now, can he begin to come to grips with what happens in that magic place and strive to prevent me from experiencing it myself. I have never understood John Rimbauer, and I understand him even less now, but we have had a conversation about this demand of his, and for the first time in our marriage, I threatened my husband with his life.

  I suggested that poison might find its way into his food, a mechanical failure might befall his motorcar, a dockside whore might run him through with a knife. The biggest threat of all, I saved for last. I offered to reinvite his recent houseguests—we’ve entertained a series of prominent bankers of late as John negotiates a pipeline deal—and to parade them down the back hallways that afford my husband the opportunity to regard their wives in a full state of undress and while taking their toilet. (I dare say the loans would dry up quite quickly!) After a brief consideration, John removed his ultimatum, but the look he gave me chilled me to the bone.

  I fear what little peace still exists in this house is now destined as a part of our past.

  9 JUNE 1922—ROSE RED

  My husband has taken a turn for the worse. Violence surrounds him, follows him like a shadow. He eats alone, leaves the house early in the morning and sometimes stays away for days at a time. I’m told by those who should know that he has been seen gambling (quite heavily) in the Chinese district south of the city, that he has lost a considerable amount of money and that a certain intemperance has left him in need of regular visits to that community, sometimes several times a day.

  To-night, he threatened our headwaiter with a carving knife, ostensibly because the beef was prepared too rare. (I don’t see the problem—John is hardly eating at all any longer.) He then threw a tureen on the floor, shattering it, and causing the girls who work in the Dining Room to flee and not return. Our headwaiter quit—walked out. We will need to replace him to-morrow—that is, if news of John’s temper has not reached everywhere in this city, which I fear has resulted in a protracted difficulty in Mr. Tammerman securing domestics of any quality. Rose Red has turned. She is in a season of decline. I attribute this to John’s reduction of the construction budget—he has cut building by half. And whereas our fine home now accommodates over thirty-five thousand square feet of living space, can sleep forty-two and feed several hundred in grand style, she could have been more grand, more luxurious had John not started pinching his pennies.

  To-night, Sukeena and I spoke of this at length—for even she now acknowledges that we have seen less of April during this time of slow growth. Rose Red must be allowed to expand. The faster the construction, the more visits from my daughter. My husband and I vary greatly in our opinions on this matter. I do not know if my maid suggested it, or if perhaps it was I, but a very clear need exists for the departure of John Rimbauer. He is in my way, in Sukeena’s and the staff’s way and is now in the way of the house herself.

  Something must be done. I fear it is up to me to decide exactly what.

  19 FEBRUARY 1928

  Dear God in Heaven! Give her back to me!

  Sukeena has gone missing! Last seen in the Health Room! No sign of her anywhere, I wander this tomb’s endless hallways wondering why everyone who becomes so close to me ends up stolen from my life. Robbed from me. I hate this house. Despise it! I will never invite Adam back again.

  The staff is nearly sick with looking for my maid, so many hours—days now!—have we been at it. The house is impossibly large. Believe this or not, Dear Diary, we all have witnessed physical transformations. Hallways change structure and appearance behind your back. Rooms disappear! What is going on? How can it be? A physical structure, a building, and yet fluid as water. A chameleon. She no longer requires growing larger—she reinvents herself internally. Once a hallway, now a ballroom; once a basement, now a dungeon!

  I ordered all Sukeena’s plants uprooted from the Health Room (for upon her disappearance, it bloomed more richly than I have ever seen—every plant at once in full blossom!). I watched that task carried out—watched it with my own eyes from up in my chambers, recalling my past observation of other events down there as well. Seven workers took three hours to clear the room down to bare soil. By the time they reached the west end, the east had sprouted new plants. By the following morning, the plants were six feet tall—taller than they’d ever been, and in full bloom. That is Sukeena providing that bloom—her love, her energy, her powers.

  We all—every one of us!—heard Rose Red laugh last night. Laugh at me. At us. It was the most frightening sound I’ve ever heard.

  If there is a game to this, she has clearly won. They are all gone. My loved ones. I am alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone in my silence, alone in this house.

  I shall fire the entire staff (before she gets another of them!).

  I shall dwell in this place alone for a time. Let her suffer. Let her fail. Perhaps then we can strike a bargain, this house and me.

  Perhaps then she’ll allow me to visit Sukeena as I do April. My husband taught me well: everything is negotiable.

  AFTERWORD

  MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S DIARY ENDED HERE, AND WERE IT NOT FOR THE WORK OF JOYCE REARDON’S RECENT EXPEDITION INTO ROSE RED, IT MIGHT HAVE ENDED HERE FOREVER. HOWEVER, I WAS A PART OF THAT EXPEDITION AND HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE TO DISCOVER IN THE ATTIC A SECOND INSTALLMENT TO THE DIARY, HIDDEN IN THE WALL OF THE TOWER, IRONICALLY, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A FALSE DOOR INSTALLED BEHIND AN OLD DISCOLORED WATERCOLOR OF A RED ROSE HANGING ON THE WALL. (I BELIEVE GREAT-GRANDMA MAY HAVE PAINTED THAT WATERCOLOR HERSELF.)<
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  THE ENTRIES THAT FOLLOW ARE DISTURBING TO SAY THE LEAST, BUT THEY DO CONFIRM SOME OF WHAT WAS DISCOVERED DURING THE REARDON EXPEDITION, THE INTENTION OF WHICH WAS TO PSYCHICALLY AWAKEN THE SLUMBERING BEAST OF ROSE RED. AS THE OLD SAGE HAS SAID, “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR …” WE KNOW NOW, THROUGH THIS CONFIRMATION, THE CAUSE OF AT LEAST ONE FATALITY, AND PERHAPS IN THE YEARS TO FOLLOW WE SHALL UNCOVER MORE. MUCH OF THE LATE DIARY IS WRITTEN IN A “CODE,” AN ENCRYPTION THAT HAS YET TO BE BROKEN. MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER HAD EITHER UNSPOKEN TALENTS OR A CONNECTION TO A PLACE THAT FEW, IF ANY, OF US WILL EVER ACCESS. WHAT FOLLOWS ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE SECOND DIARY.

  —STEVEN RIMBAUER

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 2000

  (JOYCE REARDON’S FINAL EDITORIAL WAS RESPECTFULLY MOVED TO CONCLUDE THE DIARY.)

  19 FEBRUARY 1923—ROSE RED

  4 P.M.

  Winter has proved especially vexing and tiresome. I put into your pages now what never must be revealed to any living person. I have, for this reason, made amendments to my last will and testament, ensuring your destruction, Dear Diary, should anything happen to me.

  For the past several months, and more so, in recent weeks, Sukeena and I have conspired—yes, I choose my words carefully—on some way to do away with John Rimbauer. Try as I have to drive him from this home in recent months, my efforts have been to no avail, in part because my husband is no longer the man he once was. His trips to the Chinese sector are more a part of his life than anything here. He returns disoriented and confused, and he strikes out in terror at anyone in his way. He has become far more than a nuisance. Last week, when he violently took liberties with Julie, the fifteen-year-old-daughter of Mrs. Cruthers, our housemaid, I promised an end to it. This very evening, my maid and I shall deliver on our promise.

  8 P.M.

  I am told by Sukeena that the first part of our devious plan is now in place. She visited my husband in his upstairs office at teatime—a visit she had never made once in all her years in our service—and I’m told the conversation went something like this:

  (To give you the benefit of imagination, Dear Diary, I should tell you that Sukeena’s full black form when clothed loosely in white Egyptian cotton is so provocative that my husband banned her from this dress early on in her service. I should also add that during the days of John’s visits to my chambers with my maid “in attendance,” he never “knew” her, in the biblical sense. He watched. He leered. But he never knew her. As odd as this may sound—and it does so to me even here on your pages—I believe this omission of the act has been out of respect to me, and I also believe it has thrown him into internal turmoil that has, these many months, resulted in a string of self-destructive acts.)

  “Evening, sir.”

  “Sukeena.”

  She says he was seated behind his great English partners desk, a fire burning in the fireplace, a brandy held in hand. His dark blue velvet and black satin smoking jacket. Charcoal gray trousers. Ascot. Cigar. The snifter of brandy.

  “Is there anything you are needing, sir?” Sukeena is my maid, not his. Surely her approach—this arrival in his private chambers—must have struck him oddly.

  “Such as?”

  “Anything at all.” I can just imagine her lilting tone, the shifting from one broad hip to the other, the way she does. When Sukeena moves, it is like a cheetah. John has always been slightly afraid of the big cats.

  “Anything?”

  “Anything, sir.” She added, “Miss Ellen, she asleep, sir. Took some bourbon with milk not an hour ago.”

  I am prone to finding my sleep quickly when under the influence of spirits. No one is more aware of this than my husband.

  He looked at her with a cocked head and curious eye.

  “I be wondering, sir. About things. About you. About you and me, sir. A woman can’t help but wonder.”

  “You’ve been wondering about … ?” Astonishment. I imagine the laudanum must dull my husband’s good senses. (He has not shown any such senses in many months.) Lull him. Fool him. How else could others trick him into parting with his money so easily? This man who amassed a fortune only to squander it away. I wish, Dear Diary, I could summon even a modicum of sympathy for my dear John, but reason does not allow me such luxury. Except for a brief period of courting, I have known him to be a selfish man. I served a purpose in his life—the same way a railroad tycoon can provide his oil transportation—I offered legitimacy of his offspring. He poisoned my womanhood with his dalliances, made me barren and robbed me of the one thing I could offer. He takes women like he takes meals—often and hungrily. He lavished no love upon his daughter and yet offered his son anything he desired, including a way out of this house. With his good looks and winning smile, he has cajoled many a businessman and every woman into surrendering whatever it is they hold dearest, all the while believing John Rimbauer was doing them a favor. The only thing I’ve ever see frighten him is this house—my dear Rose—and so it was to Rose I turned in my hour of need.

  “I … I told you not to wear that clothing around this house, woman! It’s not proper.”

  “I be having a problem sleeping, sir. Thinking about … Sukeena sorry if my dressing gown does not please you.”

  “Please me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He rose slowly out of his chair, the fire crackling. “Please me?” he repeated.

  “It’s not something I ever speak to the Miss about. You can see that, sir.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Something I got-to know. A woman got-to know.” She paused, then turned for the door. “Was thinking about da Tower, sir. Put a quilt in the Tower, I did. Heavy quilt. The one from Sveden. You know the one. Maybe Sukeena take her sleep in the Tower.”

  She left his study then, fully confident that behind the haze of the laudanum and the brandy, the cigar and that ruddy confidence of his, my husband would follow like a puppy to its mother. Sure enough, he did just that.

  She walked luxuriously, strolling down the great wide halls of Rose Red as if in a processional, my husband trailing a few yards behind. Down the hall, she turned into his own changing room, and this must certainly have shocked him. She walked straight into his closet, opened the secret panel at the back and entered the narrow hallway that led directly to the attic. By now he must have thought her possessed of black magic, for he never missed a step, ducking through his own clothing and following that path he had followed so many times before. Even then with lurid thoughts occupying him.

  I see it in my mind’s eye as a spectacle: Sukeena in front of him by a few steps, my husband’s slightly drunken gait following a few paces behind. His heart racing with anticipation—this cherished prize that has remained out of reach all these years. In our African camp, I got to Sukeena before John did, as she was assigned to me as my handmaid. I can only imagine the frustration this caused in him now that I know what was always on my husband’s mind. Now that I know it was there in that camp that he exposed himself to sinful disease. I have wondered many times what our lives might be like had I taken to God the way so many women do. Would we now be blessed? Why did I choose to pray to the dark side, make alliances with powers beyond my understanding? God, too, is beyond my understanding, so why not God? How much better this might have all turned out. Forgiveness instead of revenge, faith instead of accusation and hardship. (Perhaps now is the time. I hear it is never too late to turn to the Christ. Just think: all that I have imagined, all that I have suffered through, and yet still a chance for salvation!)

  Up my twisting and complaining staircase did they come, Sukeena now leading my frightened husband by the hand. The winds began calling behind the creaking of that lumber, “Da … da. Da … da.” My husband’s blood ran cold; despite the brandy, his eyes grew large with fear. He stopped his ascent, nearly pulling Sukeena over, who had the lead.

  “Come,” she said.

  “I can’t. Do you hear that?”

  “Hear only the wind, sir,” she lied. “Mustn’t be afra
id of the wind.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. The Tower get all sort of the winds.” She reminded him, “The quilt, sir. When we to lie down, the wind no longer make the sound.” She tugged on his arm. “The master not afraid of a little wind?”

  When one needs John to budge, one resorts to his playing against his own impressions of himself. This trick worked. He fluffed himself up, expanded his chest and took after my maid once again, slowing ascending the misshapen staircase leading to the Tower.

  She threw the door open.

  It had to be the right night. We knew that in our early stages of planning. First, a full moon—for these are the nights that April will visit. Second, that time of night when the moon sits just above the horizon, fully lighting the stained-glass window there. We knew what would be said. The stress of an infirm wife. His daughter disappearing like that. The gambling. The visits to Chinatown. The social pressures that wealth can bring.

  Sukeena entered the Tower first. The voice was so clearly April’s now. “Da … da …,” it said. John stepped in behind, and the door gently swung shut behind him. In the stained-glass window, the lovely rose changed before our eyes into a ghostly specter of my daughter’s misshapen and withered arm. The wind asked, “These are your gifts to your children?” My husband stood as if his shoes had been nailed to the flooring. The hand in the window, my daughter’s hand, plain as day, beckoned him, her finger waving him toward her. “Da … da. Come … Look …”

  If all those years ago in Africa a person had told me that someday the spirits would join me in the fulfillment of my wishes, I might have imagined pure love between husband and wife—worldly travel and long sumptuous meals that added not a pound to my frame. A family of six children. Songs by the fire in the evenings and a game of whist with friends after supper. I might never have imagined this.