Madapple

by Christina Meldrum

  “That’s Sappho,” Susanne says. “You’re a plagiarist, Rune.”

  “And hello to you, Muse,” he says. His hair is mop-thick and dark as the mole, and it hangs into his glasses now and obscures his eyes. “Would you prefer Emily Dickinson?” He pushes the glasses up, but they slip back down. “‘I felt a funeral in my brain,’” he says, feigning an accent, “‘and mourners to and fro, kept treading, treading, till it seemed that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, a service, like a drum, kept beating, beating, till I thought my mind was going numb.’” He turns to the preacher. “Why the morose tone when I walked in? Who are you burying now?”

  The preacher presses her thumbs into the inner corners of her eyes.

  “Aslaug, meet Rune,” Susanne says, “my dear brother, who is never a show-off, and who is interminably gracious.”

  Rune looks at Susanne, the preacher, me.

  The preacher lowers her thumbs. “It’s Aslaug, Rune. Your wish came true.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Susanne says.

  “Are you worried she’ll steal your show?” Rune is speaking to Susanne, I know, but he’s looking at me. He kneels down close to me. He lifts his right hand, and I notice his two fingers are webbed, like Susanne’s. “I’m sorry, Aslaug. I’m sorry about your mother. We read about it…I didn’t know…I didn’t mean…”

  He reaches for my hand. There’s a tingling in the tips of my fingers where he touches me, a prickling coldness that starts there, then rushes up my arms, through my shoulders, into my chest, where it settles, becomes heavy. There is a fluttering in my belly. Butterflies? I’d read this analogy, butterflies in the stomach. Except the butterflies are unruly: they escape into my spine, surge up my neck.

  “You were my first friend,” he says. “I really loved you.”

  “I don’t remember,” I say. Yet I feel so strange—so much emotion—maybe I do.

  “Can we get more light in here?” he says. “I’d like to see her.” Although the building has electricity, unlike my Hartswell home, the church is old—clearly older than electricity—and there is no electric light in the vault, only a kerosene lamp.

  The preacher carries over the lamp and sets it on the table. Sanne removes the chimney, rotates the wick upward, lights the wick, replaces the chimney, and the vault brightens.

  “My God, Aslaug,” Rune says. “It’s so strange to see you as a woman. You’re beautiful.”

  A woman? I think. I’ve never thought of myself as a woman. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as beautiful. Flowers are beautiful. Butterflies.

  “You don’t remember anything?” he says to me. “You don’t remember anything about our time together?”

  I shake my head.

  “Your mother would be poring over her books, trying to uncover the great mystery of your birth. Mor, here, would be reprimanding her, telling Maren that God was going to condemn her lost soul. Sanne would be running from Maren to Mor, and back again, trying to figure out which one of them was right. And you and I? We were artists. We knew even as toddlers God can’t be understood but through art. So we colored in Maren’s magnificent books. Tore pages from Mor’s Bible to make collages. They thought we were wreaking havoc, but we knew we were speaking with God.”

  “You don’t remember that,” Susanne says. “You only know what I told you I remember. And I don’t remember that.”

  “Of course you don’t, Queen of Sheba. You were too busy asking Maren questions. Tugging on Mor’s clothes, seeking King Solomon’s wisdom. Even as a six-year-old, you were an insufferable bore.” Rune stands and puts his arms around Susanne; she makes a halfhearted effort to push him away.

  “So what were you discussing when I walked up?” he says, poking Susanne’s waist. “Aslaug’s miraculous birth, yet again?” He looks at me. “Sanne doesn’t want to believe our father was a lecher and a child molester.”

  “Stop it, Rune,” Susanne says, and now she does push him away.

  “We’re a nuclear family and an extended family all wrapped up in one.”

  “That’s really enough, Rune,” the preacher says.

  “I don’t see the point in not facing the truth,” Rune says. “I’ve had to face reality since I was a kid, right, Mor? Would it have been better if I’d buried my head in the proverbial sand?”

  “It’s not the truth,” Susanne says. “Mor knows it’s not the truth. Look at Aslaug’s eyes, Rune. And her hands—no syndactyly. And her hair. Where’s Mikkel?”

  Rune lifts my hand with his webbed one. Then he looks at my eyes. “She just got lucky.”

  “No,” Susanne says. “She has Maren’s eyes. She has Maren’s everything. There would be some part of Mikkel in her, but there’s none.” She looks at the preacher. “How do you explain it, Mor?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything, Sanne. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Maren thought there was another explanation.” Susanne opens her hands, her arms. “Do you see all these books, Aslaug? Do you know why they’re here? Because your mother thought they would explain the mystery of your birth. No matter what lies Mor’s told you, your birth was a mystery to Maren. Mikkel’s not your father.”

  “I didn’t tell her any lies—” the preacher says.

  “Bullshit,” Susanne says.

  “That’s enough, Sanne,” the preacher says.

  “Leave Mor alone,” Rune says.

  But Susanne seems undeterred. “Why did Maren study all these old texts, Mor? Because she was trying to understand the mystery of Aslaug’s birth.”

  “It was just a charade,” the preacher says. “Maren was just trying to divert attention from the truth.”

  “Mor knows all about charades,” Susanne says to me.

  The preacher stole my dreams. But now Susanne has handed them back: she’s given me back the mystery of my father, the mystery of me. And Rune? He’s stirred my dreams up.

  So I stay. I stay for more than one night. And then many nights. I stay to learn more about my birth, my mother’s past; I want to understand what my mother herself believed about my life; I want to understand what was driving her to keep us isolated the way she did, to study the way she did. She was looking for something—trying to understand something. And I have a glimmer, it seems, as to what that something was.

  But I also stay because of Susanne, because of Rune. As much as I sense the preacher’s ambivalence, I sense Susanne’s interest. And from Rune, I sense a kind of affection I’ve never felt from anyone else, ever.

  The old crones are pleased, I think: I’m finding my fate.

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Cross-examination?

  —Yes, Your Honor. Detective Ignis, you were not able to conclude who set fire to the Charisma Church, the former monastery, were you?

  —No.

  —In fact, you found no physical evidence whatsoever linking Aslaug Hellig to this crime, did you?

  —No physical evidence, no. Other than she was at the scene of the crime, and she was the only one there who seems to have lived through the fire.

  —But that doesn’t indicate she started the fire, does it?

  —No.

  —Other than the two bodies, what, if anything, did you recover from the fire?

  —Well, the building was stone, so much of the structure itself remained intact, but most everything inside was destroyed. We didn’t recover much, really. Some kitchen items, candlesticks, tools, that kind of thing.

  —What about books?

  —Objection. Leading.

  —Sustained.

  —What else, if anything, did you find?

  —We did find a few pages from books and notebooks. Some remnants of what looked like paintings. And some personal items, like a comb, some hair clips….

  —You mentioned finding some pages from books and notebooks. What kind of books?

  —Objection. Relevance.

  —I’ll allow the question, but
please get to the point, Counsel. Go ahead and answer.

  —I don’t know what the books were, but the odd thing about all the pages we found is that they were written in foreign languages.

  —Which languages?

  —Greek. Hebrew. There was one we couldn’t figure out. Come to find out, it was this ancient language. Something like runic, I think.

  —Did you say “runic”?

  —Yeah.

  —Thank you. Now, regarding the body you recovered that was not clothed. You have no way of knowing why the woman was not wearing clothes, do you?

  —No.

  —And there is no way to determine how she became undressed, right?

  —That’s true.

  —She herself could have removed her own clothing before the fire, correct?

  —She could have, yes.

  —You found no evidence suggesting Aslaug removed the woman’s clothing, did you?

  —Well, there aren’t many options—

  —But you have no evidence to suggest the victim didn’t remove her own clothing, correct?

  —I have no evidence either way. I can’t say how the woman came to be undressed. All I know is that during the fire, the woman wasn’t wearing clothing. Whether Aslaug removed the woman’s clothing, or the woman removed her own clothing, or the woman had sworn off clothing, I just can’t say.

  —Okay, Detective. I have no further questions, Your Honor.

  KING’S CROWN

  2003

  It’s Thursday morning, two days after I arrived at this church and began scaling this family tree: these overlying branches of irony and cruelty and strength and warmth and wonder. And I wonder: On which of these branches was I birthed? What of these traits will grow in me?

  I sit up and dab sleep from my eyes, look around the tiny room. The bedroom I’m using sits beneath the sanctuary, near the bedrooms of Susanne, Rune and the preacher. There is little here but a bed and a bureau and a toilet, and a basin for washing, and a mirror of Mother’s haunting face. Some paper. A pen. And a nightstand made from a wooden box. The ceiling is low; the walls are stone. There are no windows in the room, except a diminutive one in the door leading to the hall; the hall light shinnies through the window, into the room.

  I’ve not had opportunity to question Susanne about her theories of my birth, her theories of my mother. I’ve not had opportunity to question Rune. The preacher ushered me away that first night. She took me to this room, prepared my bed, spoke only of practicalities. And yesterday was a day of electricity and running water and telephones. It’s not as if I’d not known of these things. I’d seen lights in stores, and telephones; I’d read about how each worked. I’d seen water sprinkling lawns, and fountains spewing. And, once, I’d used a public bathroom when Mother and I were in Bethan. I stood there, flushing the toilet again and again, and turning off and on the spout, until Mother pounded on the door.

  But now no one pounds on the door.

  I reach to the left of the bed, to the switch, and I turn on the light. I envision the excited electrons, the liberated light photons, the wavelength of the emitted light. Mother knew of electricity, too, of course—she taught me of it. But she never seemed to long for it, as I did. She behaved as if her knowing of it was enough—as if the reality of electricity, the sensation of it, was superfluous.

  I turn off the light and climb from the covers, stand on the bed, unscrew the warm lightbulb, look at its glass mound, its filament. I climb down, lay the bulb on the floor, slip on one clog. I crunch the glass gently with my heel, and I imagine the argon gas’s release. I wait several minutes while the metals cool before I disassemble the wires and filament. Then I uncoil the filament; it’s nearly impossible to uncoil it, it’s so thin—a hundredth of an inch, maybe. I stretch it; it spans longer than I do. I know the electrons zip along through it, bump into the atoms that make up the filament, heat the atoms up. I scribble an image of the bulb on the paper near the bed, make notes of what I’ve learned through this disassembly to ensure I’ll remember.

  I’ve piled the glass shards and metal scraps on the floor and I’ve just removed the cover to the back of the toilet when I hear the sound. It’s a rustling of sorts. A scurrying. Maybe a mouse. I ignore it. I lay the cover on the seat, push the flusher, watch the valve lift, the water drain, the valve fall, the water fill. Then I hear it again, the sound. It comes from the hall.

  I realize someone might walk in. I replace the cover. I scoop up the pile of shards and metal and dump them into a corner of the bureau drawer. I lift out a dress from the drawer. Susanne gave me clothes to wear—mine were lost in the car. But she’s taller than I am. I take off the nightgown, pull the dress over my head; its sleeves hang to my knuckles and its skirt tangles my legs.

  I unlatch the door. Rune stands there, his glasses cock-eyed. He takes a step back, opens his mouth as if to speak. Says nothing. Then starts laughing.

  “What?” I say.

  “Lovely style. You’ll fit right in in Bethan. I think that look is called grunge.”

  “What look?” I look down at my clothes: the dress is on backward.

  He reaches up and flattens my hair. “Ever heard of a mirror?”

  “It never occurred to me to look in it,” I say. And I feel myself laugh. And I think, What a strange thing, laughter. This breathy release. It’s weightless, and yet it lifts weight away. Like the gas that seeped from that broken bulb, invisible but essential. Its presence changes everything, it seems. Yet I’ve lived my life without it.

  “I made pancakes,” Rune says. He adjusts his glasses now, rakes his fingers through his hair. “Blueberry. I picked them.”

  I can’t help but think of the blueberry hill behind our house, and of the pink-edged sulphur. I can’t help but wonder if I’ve found my blueberry home.

  “I wasn’t sure if you were awake…,” he says. “I thought you might want some.”

  Listening to his voice now, I think of the night before. I watched as he and Susanne rehearsed their songs, before I attended the evening service. His singing voice is full and rich, and fertile, it seems, like it settles in and just keeps growing. I could feel it inside my body, even after his voice went silent. And when I closed my eyes, it seemed I could see his voice in color, swirling and stretching itself around me.

  Only a handful of people came to the service last night, far fewer than the evening before, yet participating in the service made me feel part of something far bigger than myself. Much of what happened during the service was foreign to me—much of the preacher’s message I found confusing—and yet being there felt expanding, like my world was opening up. Like the preacher was opening my world up.

  Rune slathers butter on the pancakes and dribbles warmed maple syrup. He looks up at me as he pours, and the dribble grows: he drenches the stack. The wet pancakes sit in a brown-blue pool, but Rune doesn’t seem to notice. He slides a purplish red jam across the wet pancake.

  “What is that?” I say, pointing to the jam.

  “Jam? Don’t tell me you’ve not heard of that either.” He folds a napkin, unfolds it. His fingers are lean and long; his wrists narrow. And his arms are lean and long. And his neck. There’s a beauty about his body, the way he holds it, moves it. A beauty in its lines. A sort of graceful power. Like lightning to the earth: defined and luminous, yet still ethereal. “I’m starting to think you truly did come from another planet. That’s Sanne’s most recent theory, have you heard?”

  “No,” I say, and again I laugh. And again it seems some ingredient fundamental to me has only now switched on. “I’ve heard of jam. But what’s in the jam?”

  The jam looks just like jam Mother would make from highbush cranberry. She’d call it her king’s crown jam, because it was bitter, smelled disagreeable. “The king is tolerable,” she’d say, “only when he’s so sweetened, he’s barely recognizable.”

  “Berries?” he says. He touches my lips with his webbed fingers but pulls his hand away fast. Too fast, it seems. I
s he uncomfortable because he touched me? I wonder. Or because he touched me with his webbed fingers? “Be quiet now, and eat. I slaved away and here my masterpiece is getting cold.”

  He watches as I cut the pancakes, as I take a bite into my mouth. It is king’s crown jam—the taste is like nothing else. I wonder where he got the berries. I didn’t expect anyone but Mother and I collected these berries for jam. The taste of it, mixed with sweet syrup and still-warm pancakes, confounds me: I didn’t know food could taste like this.

  “So I guess this means you like it?” Rune uses the napkin to dab jam or syrup or berries from my lips. And this time he doesn’t jerk away. “You can slow down. I promise, I won’t steal your plate.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “It’s delicious.” I can imagine the grin on my face—what Mother would say. But for the first time I can remember, I don’t care. At least not as much. I take another bite.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he says, but he doesn’t rise; he doesn’t explain.

  I finish chewing. “Are you going to show me?”

  “What?” he says.

  “The surprise?”

  “Oh, right.” He reaches over and takes the fork from my hand. He stabs a sloppy mound of pancake and lifts it to his mouth. He stabs another mound, lifts it to mine. Then he reaches beneath the table and picks up a small trunk from the floor.

  “What’s in there?” I say through the sticky mouthful of syrup and king’s crown and pancake. I motion toward the trunk, trying to distract him from whatever is welling in me. The butterflies again? Or just one butterfly, with windlike wings.

  He pushes away my plate, sets the trunk on the table next to me. “Why don’t you look?”

  The trunk is a dirty white with brown leather straps. It’s as old as Mother’s suitcase of money. The money, I think. Where is it?

  I unlatch the case and lift the lid. The case is full of photographs, and childish drawings and paintings. I expect I know what the photos are, and part of me wants to slam shut the lid, not because I don’t want to see them but because I so want to see them.