A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  Chloe’s rich molasses voice floated from behind a curtain of sweet pea vines, and mingled with a soft, warm wind that rustled the leaves. The flowers’ scents infused the sultry air, perfuming the entire garden. Chloe bustled among the green bean topiaries and pretended not to notice Helen’s struggle, but instead practiced aloud the nursery rhymes Helen had taught her. She formed her lips around the words, “Ring around the Rosie,” working to improve her English pronunciation. She seemed to relish the pattern of rhymes.

  Helen smiled as she listened to her chanting. Chloe’s accent embraced the Rs with soft whispers, carrying an “H” sound before the “R” in “hRing” and “hRosie.” Suddenly Helen hoped that Chloe’s English pronunciation would not improve. She wanted Chloe to stay just as she was, and to speak English in that whispery accent forever.

  “Chloe,” Helen called, and the girl was at once by her side, lifting her off the ground and helping her to the stone garden bench.

  “Sit there, Dearie Missus,” Chloe said. “I finish with the herbs.”

  Helen obeyed and watched Chloe fuss over the small harvests in the garden, continuing where Helen had left off at the sage and spring onions. Helen raised her eyes to the privy beyond the path, estimating how long it would take her to get from the garden to the tiny building. She had no need to go at the moment, but when the urge did come it would be sudden and demanding, the same way the sickness itself had overtaken her.

  She had awoken one morning with abdominal cramps and the need to rush to the water closet. Fortunately, Rémi had outfitted the Terrefleurs main house with full indoor plumbing, and the bathroom lay just opposite the ladies’ parlor. The sickness that had gripped her that morning had prevented her from returning to the tent city to help with the relief effort, a routine she had begun after missing the train to join her mother. She had helped administer inoculations in the tent cities, but had never actually inoculated herself. Foolish in retrospect. At the time, she’d thought she was naturally protected from any flood sickness—workers’ sickness. Now, a week later, she was still confined to Terrefleurs, and growing weaker by the day.

  The privy outside the garden was a holdover from the time before Terrefleurs had indoor plumbing, only a few years ago. Helen was now ever so grateful that it had not been torn down, otherwise she would not have dared venture outside at all.

  A wave of nausea hit her, dampening her brow and causing her to sway on the bench. The garden dimmed, and she had a sensation of falling but could not stretch out her arms to steady herself. Suddenly, strong, gentle hands hooked under her elbow and she realized that Chloe was at her side again.

  “Dearie Missus. Enough, it is too hot. Time we go inside now, eh?”

  “You’re right Chloe. It’s just too hot.”

  She tried to look directly at the girl, but the broiling sun injured her vision, and the garden looked silvery-gray and full of ghosts. “Give me just a minute, though, all right?”

  Chloe dipped a handkerchief into a watering can and knelt before Helen, dabbing at her face with the cool, damp cloth.

  “Do not to worry, Dearie Missus. The oak gall I give you, it make you feel good health soon.”

  Her face was smooth and confident, but Helen wondered if her voice belied a twinge of deep concern. Helen had been taking the oak gall all week, but the sickness only worsened.

  “Chloe,” she said, pondering the pasty substance the girl had been administering as medicine. “What exactly is an oak gall?”

  “It come from the oak tree,” Chloe said. “It hang on the oak sticks, in little balls.”

  She curled her fingers to demonstrate, her back straight and her chin lifted.

  “Oh,” Helen said, somewhat relieved. “Sap?”

  Chloe shook her head. “No, not the sap. Not the blood of the tree.”

  She bit her lip. “It hang on the oak tree, but it do not come from the oak tree. The insect make it. How you say? It make the sting?”

  Chloe made a buzzing sound, and fluttered her fingers like wings.

  “A bee?” Helen said.

  Chloe pursed her lips. “Mmm, bee? I think.”

  “It comes from bees? So oak gall is a kind of honey.” Helen smiled at the pleasant remedy.

  But Chloe pinched her brows. “No. Not honey. Not the bee. What is insect like a bee? It is long, and bigger?”

  “A wasp?” Helen offered, puzzled.

  “Yes, that is it. The wasp. She make the oak gall. The oak gall is her baby, inside the case, before the baby is born. It is like the egg.”

  Helen blinked. “Larvae?” She stretched out the word in alarm. “You’ve been giving me the larvae of a wasp?”

  Chloe cocked her head. “Hmm, I do not know this, larvae. That is the wasp baby before she is born?”

  Helen answered dully, “Yes.”

  Chloe brightened. “OK, so that is it!”

  Helen frowned, and the wave of nausea returned. She tried not to think of the paste of wasp’s larvae working its way through her digestive tract. She had complete confidence in Chloe’s healing abilities, and she had seen the girl tend the sick with more efficacy than the doctor in the area. Nevertheless, Helen wished she hadn’t asked the origin of this particular remedy.

  Suddenly, Helen burst out laughing. “Chloe, you are a dear.”

  Chloe smiled, clasping her dark hands around Helen’s frail white ones.

  The gardener’s son, the harelip boy named Laramie, turned at the sound of Helen’s laughter. He was grinning with his split smile, an innocent dove with enormous eyes. Too young and sweet to be aware yet of his deformity.

  Helen closed her eyes as a breeze lifted black wisps of hair that had escaped from the knot beneath her hat. The wind rustled the garden vines, and further beyond, it played among the magnolia and acacia and oak.

  When Helen opened her eyes, she could see that Chloe’s head was bowed, and that the garden still looked silvery-gray, as if it lay under moonlight and not full sun. And she knew.

  “Chloe,” she said, stroking her face, and feeling wetness on the girl’s cheek. “You’ll look after Rémi for me, won’t you?”

  Chloe sank to her knees and buried her face in Helen’s lap, sobbing. Helen stroked Chloe’s thick, rough hair, tied in large florets on either side of her head like beautiful, exotic flowers.

  “Promise me, Chloe.”

  She could see the welt that crept from the girl’s back and along her neck. She was so young and bright and beautiful and strong. Had endured so much. Helen could only wish to be that strong. What made her think she could help those shocked, desperate people at the tent city, and then walk away unharmed?

  Chloe’s weeping subsided. She raised her head. Helen gave a start at the girl’s expression: flat, dead.

  Chloe said, “I promise. I will look after him.”

  Helen closed her eyes. She felt herself recede under a tide, a beautiful, exhilarating drift. A sensation like she was on a barge on the Mississippi River, only the motion of it was freer, flying on a channel of air, not water. She could hear Chloe shouting at someone but she sounded very distant. And then Helen felt hands encircle her. She forced her eyes open again and saw Rémi. He was lifting her. She reached up and curled her arms around his neck. He carried her through the garden, to the stairs, into the house.

  seventeen

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  MADELEINE HEAVED HER FATHER onto the bed when she heard the phone ringing. The alarm clock registered 9:08 P.M. in red LED digits.

  “Thank you honey,” Daddy said with a sway as he tugged at his shoes. “Guess I had one too many.”

  “More like four too many,” she said as she ran for the hall phone.

  She hoped it wasn’t Ethan on the line. She’d let him believe she was going to run the flowers over tomorrow. In truth, she wanted to get it over with now. She hadn’t actually said one way or another, but she didn’t correct him when he’d voiced the assumption that she was going to do it in the morning. She didn’t
really need any help. Didn’t want to put him out.

  She managed to press Send while the phone was still ringing. “Yes?”

  “Madeleine. You did not tell me you were going.” That rusty voice.

  “Chloe?”

  A pause. “I would have come with you and your father.”

  “I’d been leaving messages for you to call me back, Chloe. How did you know I’d gone out there?”

  “You did not leave messages for this.”

  “Well, I did call you because I want talk about Sev—”

  “We are agreed to find out about Marc Gilbert together, yanh? If you said you were going to Houma I would have gone.”

  Oh yeah? I’ll tell you where you can go!

  The nerve! As if Madeleine had to check in with the old crank every time she wanted to—

  But the thought was suddenly stillborn in her mind. As if Chloe had somehow reached through the phone line and killed it. And Madeleine would have bet one of Ethan’s laboratory pennies that from somewhere on Toulouse Street in the Vieux Carré, Madame Chloe LeBlanc was staring in her direction at this moment.

  Madeleine said, “Look. We didn’t even set foot in the old house. I just took Daddy out to Bayou Black to collect some pretty aquatic flowers for a florist I know.”

  “Samantha.”

  “Yes, Samantha. And I have to go because it’s late, and I have to take the flowers to the shop.” Madeleine reached down and hoisted Jasmine up into her arms.

  “I will send someone to assist you.”

  Madeleine paused. “What? No, I’ll be fine.”

  “I send someone to assist you. It is not safe on Magazine this late.”

  “No. Seriously, Chloe, that won’t be—”

  But the line went dead. Madeleine snorted, slamming the cordless back onto the charging cradle. Jasmine struggled to be let down again, and hopped out of her arms.

  eighteen

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  MAGAZINE STREET LAY IN shadows as Maddy pulled into the alley. She hoisted herself out of the truck and eyed the oleanders near the rear entrance. A time or two, she’d found someone sleeping back there. In fact the last time it had been one of Daddy’s street buddies, and she’d let him sleep in the upper level of the warehouse in the empty office space above the flower shop.

  No one in the oleanders tonight. The evening swelled with a fresh breeze, Magazine Street was vacant, and the damp air formed swirling halos around the streetlights.

  She let down the tailgate and tugged on one of the collection bins, and found it heavy. Miserably heavy. If Oran really was coming to help, she was ready to lay down her pride and let him, by God.

  She abandoned the bin, setting it on the open tailgate, and walked to the front entrance, unlocking it.

  The street lamp spilled amber light through the open door, and in its faint illumination the inside of the shop reminded her of the bayou. Plants dipped and played in the wind, rustling and casting long shadows. She groped for the light switch and didn’t find it. But as her eyes adjusted, there seemed enough light to get around.

  In a pool of illumination from the south window, Samantha’s rustic wooden farmhouse table stood near the wicker chairs. The mere sight of it invoked a phantom smell of coffee. Likely Samantha would create the water display there. Madeleine cleared the table of potted ferns so that its surface lay clean and empty, and she ran her hand along the smooth, buttery wood. Its worn surface spoke of offerings that spanned a lifetime. She looked around for something to protect the surface from the flower bins, and found one of Samantha’s canvas tarps. She snapped it open, drifting the fabric over the table.

  Something warm and alive brushed her leg.

  She jumped. “Esmeralda?”

  The cat darted around a corner. Mazes of light stole through the windows and front door. The cat moved with a foxy way about her, as if she was getting away with something. As she slipped behind a shelf of plants, Madeleine saw a flash of white in her mouth.

  “Esmeralda, what do you have there?” It looked like a little white mouse, like the kind the scientists use in lab experiments, or that the pet stores sell as “feeders.” But most mice running around the city were gray.

  Esmeralda lighted upon the plant shelf, turning her face away from Madeleine as if to both show off her prize and hoard it to herself.

  “Drop it!” Madeleine said, repulsed. “You can’t have that thing in here.”

  She stepped toward the cat, hand outstretched. Esmeralda let out an ill-tempered growl and tucked it down deeper into her fur.

  “Esmeralda, drop that poor thing, or take it outside!”

  She clamped a firm hand on the back of the cat’s neck. Esmeralda spun around and hissed, dropping it on the shelf.

  Madeleine stared, blinking, as her vision adjusted to the darkness. It dawned on her that she was not looking at a mouse at all. Realization snaked through her belly before her mind even registered what it was. It was a human finger.

  A scream erupted from within her, and she jumped back, tangling with Esmeralda. The cat escaped and slinked to the corner of the shop, watching from under the plant shelves with a twitching tail.

  The finger was slender with pink polish on the torn acrylic nail, and around it a gold ring glinted in the darkness. Black streaks and a white bone jutted from the ragged end where it had been severed just below the knuckle.

  Madeleine screamed again, shock rippling through her body. She turned her back to the horrible thing and slapped at the walls for the light switch. Instinct told her to turn and run, because she also felt the sensation that someone was behind her, and for some absurd reason she was certain that it was the girl Severin. Filthy, grimacing Severin, watching from between dark shelves of potted plants, possessing the knowledge of how a severed human finger might have found its way into a flower shop.

  Someone was there. Not Severin. She couldn’t catch a breath. Her mouth turned to sand, and she was unable to speak his name.

  Zenon stood broad-shouldered, arms tensed with the exertion of carrying a water-filled bin of bayou hyacinths.

  “Madeleine?”

  He set the collection bin down onto the painted concrete floor. She shook her head, trying to breathe.

  Zenon said, “I heard you screaming, chére. What’s going on?”

  Did Zenon have something to do with that finger?

  He took a step toward her, and she stumbled backward.

  He lifted his hand. “It’s all right, chére. It’s all right, ’tite.”

  His calming tone of voice sounded wrong, so wrong; and inside her head alarm bells were buzzing.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  Hands still raised, he took another step forward. “Miss Chloe sent me here baby. Sent me to help y’all out. Did something happen? Is there someone in here?”

  He panned the brick walls.

  She backed away a few more steps, and her hip brushed the plant shelf where that horrible thing lay. She looked down.

  But what she saw now was in complete disconnect from what she had seen before. On the plant shelf lay a bit of white and pink felt fabric with a plastic eye and a string tail—a catnip mouse; a cat toy.

  No finger.

  And no Severin in the shadows.

  Madeleine was shaking. She had seen a finger. A human digit. She was certain she had seen it. Saw it right down to the detail of nail color and jewelry.

  She considered the possibility that perhaps with all the shadows, and Sheriff Cavanaugh’s spook tales ringing in her head . . .

  But no, she saw what she saw. She released her breath in a spasm.

  Zenon took another step toward her. “What made you scream?”

  “It’s just that . . .” She swallowed. “Esmeralda startled me. And my eyes, I think they were playing tricks in the darkness.”

  She hugged herself, turning her back, and stepped further away from him.

  “What you think, chére? You walking away from me like I’m gonna
come after you?”

  She turned to glare at him, steadying herself with the farmhouse table, and swallowed. “Look. I’m nervous and tired. It’s nothing.”

  He came closer, his voice low and soft. “What made you scream? You tell me.”

  There was no way she was going to do that. How could she explain it? At once so foolish and unnerving. A tear fell down her cheek. But then a sensation stole over her.

  Answer the question, chére.

  She lifted her chin toward the stamped tin ceiling, and though it made no sense, though she had no idea why she was doing it, she heard herself telling him: “I thought I saw a human finger.”

  His head drew back in surprise, but his face also seemed wary. “What? Are you messing with me?”

  “I told you it was probably nothing. Trick of light, or something.”

  His eyes narrowed, his posture aggressive. “A trick.”

  “It’s just that it looked so real. The nail polish, and there was this braided gold ring. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  His eyes searched her face and he seemed to be considering what she’d just told him. Finally, he said, “It’s OK. I’m here.”

  He stood now only a foot away from her. And it actually gave her relief, his being so close. To know that he was strong, and even cocky, and that if someone tried to attack her right now, Zenon Lansky would prevent it.

  She shook her head. “Ridiculous. It was only a cat toy. I’m embarrassed even to admit it and it’s hardly worth mentioning.”

  She slid her finger under her eye in a quick gesture that she hoped would look like she had removed a speck of dust.

  He caught her wrist, and ever so slowly, with a gentleness she wouldn’t have imagined him capable of, he used his free hand to brush a tear from her other eye. He was standing far too close—so close she felt the heat that radiated from him. She wanted to jerk away from him but her body remained rigid.

  His voice came softly, and yet at its core she still heard the aggression. “Don’t you say it ain’t worth mentioning. Don’t you say that, no.”