Let the Dark Flower Blossom

by Norah Labiner

  I cannot find the secret to their possession.

  Beatrice is baking a cake.

  If her father dies in the night, she will belong to me.

  What will I do? With such a thing as Beatrice Lemon?

  Who is small and fragile.

  Who has dark hair. And gray eyes.

  Who might fall from the branch and break a wing.

  Who has freckles across her bare shoulders.

  Who knows nothing about the world.

  And everything about the wilderness.

  Like the smell of snow.

  And the taste of blackberries.

  Who feels despair at the bodies of dead birds.

  Whose skin is like snow and blackberries.

  When first I came to her island—

  Beatrice was a girl.

  I saw her by the water’s edge.

  She was a child.

  She called out to me from the beach.

  Your name is Schell, isn’t it?

  She opened her hands.

  And held a clamshell, halved.

  How will I learn?

  How to get to the end of things?

  Beatrice turns the spoon round in the bowl.

  She knows things that I cannot know.

  She knows her way through these rooms.

  Each door with its own possibility.

  What one dreams is always possible.

  I am winding through the maze.

  I am bound by my own infinity.

  If I keep telling my story—

  The doctor will live.

  Awaiting always the ending.

  The ending that never arrives.

  I begin.

  I’ve begun.

  I began.

  I saw Roman and the girl.

  I looked at Ro.

  I looked at the girl.

  Ro said, “Jesus.”

  The girl’s hair, tangled and matted with blood.

  That was one day in South Dakota.

  When I was young.

  And could justify anything.

  Even why I thought—

  She looked beautiful.

  A girl in the snow.

  I’ll start again.

  The farmhouse.

  The snow.

  The winter.

  January 1980.

  The girl buried in the woods.

  And that night the four of us sat around the fire.

  Wren said, “Tell the story already, Ro.”

  Ro said that a terrible fate might befall the teller of such a tale.

  We sat waiting.

  We drank champagne.

  And felt a certain terror.

  Even with the crackle of wood in the fire.

  At each sudden spark or flame.

  Ro began.

  To tell his story.

  “This is the story of a brother and a sister.”

  It was Ro’s ghost story.

  And as he spoke—

  Wren sat rapt.

  Eloise kept drinking champagne.

  Ro told the story.

  Ro set the scene.

  The autumn evening.

  A tire swing creaking in the wind.

  The rustle of dry leaves.

  The apples ripening on the trees.

  The girl ate an apple.

  The boy left his bicycle by the gate.

  He went to the house.

  There was a light in an upper window.

  The door opened.

  He called out.

  No one answered.

  He took the steps—

  Slowly.

  He was on the second floor.

  Slowly.

  He was walking the dark hallway—

  He had his hand on the doorknob.

  He opened the door to the bedroom.

  The girl was under the tree. Waiting for him.

  She felt a chill all along her skin.

  As she ate the apple.

  She heard nothing.

  Only the leaves.

  And the wind in the branches.

  She dropped her apple to the ground.

  And she ran to the house.

  She ran.

  She ran up the steps.

  She took the steps two at a time.

  She stumbled in the darkness.

  She came to the bedroom.

  The door was open.

  She went in.

  She went into the bedroom.

  And there she saw—

  The moon.

  The bed.

  Father.

  Mother.

  And the boy standing over them—

  With a bloody knife in his hand—

  Ro stopped.

  Just like that.

  Wren was wide-eyed.

  Wren said, “Go on.”

  Go on.

  Wren was leaning against me.

  There was salt and warmth to her skin.

  “Tell me how it ends. Please,” said Wren.

  Eloise looked up.

  Eloise looked at me.

  She looked just like me.

  And I looked at her.

  I looked just like her.

  Eloise turned away.

  Wren was so close.

  Her breath was warm.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  She wanted to know what the boy had done.

  She wanted to know about the knife and the moonlight.

  Wren was waiting for the story to end.

  It was nothing without the ending.

  And there was nothing like an ending.

  Wren’s lips parted.

  Her mouth opened.

  Wren said, “Oh.”

  “Ro,” she said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  And here I saw.

  I could feel.

  And see.

  What a story could do.

  Ro stopped.

  Ro wouldn’t take her to the end.

  Of the story.

  Wren fell back. Against the sofa.

  In a soft cry.

  He turned toward the fire.

  Ro wouldn’t end the story.

  For a moment I thought that he was being kind.

  Then I remembered the girl in the woods.

  Wren had her hand on my arm.

  I could feel the flutter of her heart.

  I knew that the world was his.

  To do with as he wanted.

  And my story—

  Was no longer mine.

  It was his.

  And he could change it.

  As he willed.

  And as he wanted.

  It was his.

  Wren said, “Shel your hands are so cold.”

  She put my hands between her thighs.

  We sat before the fire.

  And Ro told my story.

  He went where he wanted.

  And no one could stop him.

  From going where he wanted.

  Even if there was nowhere to go.

  In Roman’s version of the story:

  I was the one who killed my father.

  And my mother.

  I’ll start again.

  That summer night in Chicago—

  After dinner; Ro and I saw two girls on the street. And we caught a taxi. Ro wiped his brow. He grinned. He looked out the window as the city went by in lighted darkness.

  “I never thanked you. Did I?” he asked.

  “For what?” I said.

  “The typewriter,” he said.

  We got to his hotel.

  And walked a hallway carpeted with roses.

  He unlocked his room.

  He sat upon the bed.

  In his oyster jacket.

  And his white shirt untucked.

  There was a bottle of scotch on the table.

  He opened it.

  He poured us each a glass.

  I took my glass.

  I stood at the window.

  The curtains were open.
/>   I looked out.

  I drank.

  I asked him the question.

  I asked him.

  “Do you remember that girl in the woods?”

  He drank.

  He loosened his tie.

  “What girl?” he said.

  “What woods?” he said.

  We drank.

  The room was cool.

  The coolness of the room made the hot night more miserable.

  “Hey,” he said. “Do you know what my mother said about you?”

  I waited.

  “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,” he said.

  He laughed.

  He leaned back against the pillows.

  “I always stay here when I’m in town,” he said.

  He said, “Once—this was years ago—I was in the bar. It was snowing. I thought that I saw your sister in the lobby with,” he said. He drank. “The girl, the little girl.”

  “Susu,” I said.

  “Is that what they call her?” he said.

  He raised his glass.

  “To Susu,” he said.

  “She’s going to be married,” I said.

  “I’m here for her wedding,” I said.

  “Let’s drink to the bride,” he said.

  He drank.

  “I’m getting sentimental,” he said.

  “You were always sentimental,” I said.

  “Was I?” he said.

  “I loved her,” he said.

  “Who?” I said.

  He set his glass against his forehead.

  “Do you want ice?” he said.

  “I could have them send some up,” he said.

  I didn’t want ice.

  “My sister—” I began.

  “Your sister?” he said.

  “We don’t have to do this now,” he said. “Do we?”

  “This isn’t about her,” he said.

  “It’s about the story,” he said.

  “What story?” I said.

  “If you want to do this now,” he said, against the pillows of the bed, “I’ll order up some chocolate cake.”

  He reached for the phone.

  Spilled his drink.

  Distracted, set the phone down.

  Held the glass in both hands.

  His face was damp and pale.

  He laughed.

  “I saw her,” he said. “Your sister. With the girl. In this hotel. This very hotel. I come back here. Because maybe I will see her again.”

  “Sheldon Schell,” he said.

  “Where’s my cake?” he said.

  “There is no cake,” I said.

  He said, “You were always so literal.”

  “Your sister,” he said.

  “Her hair smelled like smoke,” he said.

  “Her fingers tasted like chocolate,” he said.

  He laughed.

  He fumbled for his cigarettes.

  The pack was empty.

  He looked inside the empty pack.

  “Where the hell is that cake?” he said.

  He crumpled the cigarette pack.

  And threw it to the floor.

  He said, “Shelly, you know—if it weren’t for you. If it weren’t for you and your sister and your typewriter, I never would have become a writer.”

  “So thank you,” he said.

  “—For being a liar,” he said.

  I did not speak.

  He looked at me.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Don’t be so downhearted.”

  “At least you have a sister,” he said.

  He filled his glass.

  He drank.

  “All the poetry in the world won’t save us,” he said.

  “From what?” I said.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “From what we did,” he said.

  “What did we do?” I said.

  “You really are something,” he said.

  “I always said that you were something,” he said.

  He said, “Put it in your book. I’ll be the first to read it.”

  I looked out the window.

  I said, “There is no book.”

  “What?” he said.

  “There is no book,” I said.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “All these years,” he said.

  “The story,” he said.

  “It wasn’t a story,” I said.

  “It was about a girl,” he said.

  “What was it?” he said.

  “You tell me what it was,” he said. “If it weren’t—wasn’t a story.”

  There was a book on the table.

  Left open—spine-side up—pages spread.

  The face of a serious young man with eyeglasses stared at me from the jacket.

  I closed the book.

  “Is it good?” I said.

  He laughed.

  “It’s a mystery,” he said.

  He raised his glass.

  I raised my glass.

  “Be true,” I said.

  He drank.

  He coughed.

  He laughed.

  He clapped his hands.

  “Be true,” he said.

  “It was a helluva rule for a liar,” he said.

  The glass rolled on its side.

  He picked up the fallen glass.

  Looked down into it.

  He looked at me.

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  “It’s my heart,” he said.

  “Don’t kill off your protagonist,” I said.

  He laughed.

  He might not have said heart.

  He might have said ticker.

  I might not have said protagonist.

  I might have said main character.

  He was weary.

  He was drunk.

  He was. He might have been dying.

  But then aren’t we all?

  I said, “Never talk about truth in a truthful way.”

  He raised himself on his elbow—

  And then fell back.

  “There is no story,” I said.

  “No girl, no book?” he said.

  “No story?” he said.

  “What the hell,” he said.

  “No girl?” he said.

  “No book?” he said.

  He rested his head on the pillow.

  He slipped off one shoe.

  It fell to the floor.

  He cradled his glass on his belly.

  The glass slipped.

  His eyes closed.

  I noticed.

  Just then.

  The faint scent of licorice.

  Like the story says.

  And the hills were like white elephants.

  The glass fell from his hand.

  And rolled across the carpet.

  I left the room.

  I closed the door.

  The next night I went to his lecture with Susu.

  It was two days before her wedding.

  And she found a dark spot on her white dress.

  She took this as a portent.

  I took her to see him.

  He talked about television.

  He told the old stories.

  And he gave me Salt’s book.

  He took Susu by the arm and whispered—

  I couldn’t hear what he said.

  Caught up in the clamor of Ro’s readers.

  She bent her face against his.

  Her dark hair.

  Her silly name.

  She pushed her dark hair from her face.

  Susu and I walked out into the night.

  I looked at the book.

  I asked her if she wanted it.

  She said, “Oh god no.”

  And laughed.

  She opened the book.

  “What did he say to you?” I asked her.

  She tilted her head.

  The summer night.

  She said, “In the room the women come and go talking of Joe DiMaggio.”
<
br />   “I don’t know what it means,” she said.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Whatta riot,” she said.

  “Whatta mystery,” she laughed.

  And she took my arm.

  She didn’t want the book.

  She was so tired of serious young men.

  It is night. Beatrice and I had a quiet dinner. Of mushrooms, artichoke hearts, dried love apples, bread, pomegranate jam, and almond butter.

  She rose and collected our plates.

  “Why don’t you go to Father’s library?” she said.

  “I’ll bring you coffee,” she said.

  “And you can finish the story,” she said.

  “I’ll bring you cake,” she said.

  Beatrice said, “Don’t tell me how the story ends.”

  It is not a story.

  It was never a story.

  And I did not write it.

  I did not write a book.

  I did not begin.

  Not until I knew that Roman was dead.

  Not until Salt asked.

  And then I began this story.

  I thought Salt wanted a story. He wanted my typewriter. He wanted a machine and instead he got a ghost.

  I wanted to believe in Salt.

  I wanted to see for myself—

  If Ben Salt could save us.

  Because all the poetry in the world won’t.

  Salt has been here and gone.

  He came to my archipelago.

  He was here. He was real.

  Or at least: real enough.

  If he is a monster.

  Then he is my monster.

  Beatrice in the kitchen has fallen asleep at the table.

  I find her.

  With her head cradled upon her folded arms.

  She wakes.

  Her gray eyes open.

  Like Pallas Athena.

  Who was born of her father’s wisdom.

  Her dark hair is tousled, and her face is soft. She gives me her sleepy girlish ramble of words alluding to her dreams and eluding what monster chased her through them.

  And I see only her father.

  There is a saying that the hand of God is in every story.

  It is just as likely that at night the great black cape of Mephistopheles shrouds the sky.

  And that the descent to hell is the same from every place.

  I will start here.

  I will keep my vigil.

  I will keep telling my story.

  It is not a story.

  It is a confession.

  It is not a confession.

  It is a thing.

  Like a flower.

  Or a bird.

  Like a knife.

  Like an ax.

  Like snow.

  Like a table.

  Like a chair.

  Or the girl tied to it.

  Like a grave.

  Or the girl buried in it.

  I’ll start again.

  I met Prudence Goodman.

  Who was good.

  As her names implies.

  Who painted abstracts in pink and blue.

  And just when I thought—

  That I could escape the past.

  Pru took ill.

  Or the illness took her.