Poison Flowers

by Nat Burns

  It wasn’t just the idea of losing the cottage. Another adequate place would come along, she was sure. There was the whole question of studying under Dorry, something Marya realized she desperately wanted. A student necessarily had to be on good terms with her instructor, especially in martial arts training, which can be hazardous if mishandled. She thought again of the framed pictures in the lobby of The Way of Hand and Foot and wanted to scream in frustration.

  This insanity had to be some sort of a test, she told herself, gazing blindly at her computer screen.

  “Hey, Marya,” Carol called, pulling her from her self-torture. “Phone for you on line two. And it’s a maaan!” She raised her eyebrows suggestively, and Marya frowned at her as she picked up the call.

  “Miss Brock? This is Henry Giles.”

  “Oh, Mr. Giles, listen, I’m really sorry for causing so much trouble. I can’t understand why she dislikes me. I’ve never done anything to her, I swear.”

  “Please, don’t worry about it. Dorry is just that way. She eats reporters for breakfast. Don’t let her ruffle you. Once you get to know her, you’ll find she’s quite reasonable. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

  “That may be, but, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll avoid Miss Wood in the future.”

  He laughed. “Funny, those were her exact same words about you. That’s why you’ll pay your rent through my office. I hope that won’t be a problem for you?”

  Marya fell silent, wondering if she’d heard him correctly. “What do you mean? Did I get the cottage?”

  “Sure. Did you doubt it?”

  “She said she wouldn’t rent to me!”

  Giles chuckled. “Dorry says a lot of things. After a few minutes, I got her to see reason. Being a realtor, I’m pretty persuasive, especially when it comes to making money. You do still want it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Marya said, smiling so broadly that her face hurt. “How on earth did you get her to agree to it?”

  “I just told her what a nice person you are, so you’d better not disappoint me on that front. I gave her my word that you would never bother her or spy on her or anything, so I hope that’s not what’s on your mind. If it is, you’d better tell me now.”

  He paused expectantly and Marya hastened to reassure him her intentions were honorable.

  “Good. Any problems you have with the cottage call me, not her. All business dealings are to be through me, okay?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Good. Can you drop by here this afternoon after work? I’ll wait for you because there’s some papers you need to sign and I need the first month’s rent and a month’s deposit. Then you can move in whenever you like.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I’ll be there. In about half an hour, in fact.” Marya was delirious with relief. Maybe, with time, Dorry would reconsider her feelings about her, as well.

  “I’m on Preston, just off Collier. Go down two stoplights, turn right and you’ll see a big sign out front, Coastal Realty.”

  “Yes, got it,” Marya said as she scribbled the directions.

  “And remember, leave Dorry be. She has a temper and I’d hate to see you on the receiving end of it. Anything you need should be handled through this office. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t,” she said, heart chilling anew despite her excitement.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I knew where she’d been. Watching the house again. It’s what she always did when she had a day off and sometimes even during the day when she pretended to be working. I’m not sure why she hated the woman so much. They’d been friends once or so she said. Sometimes I doubted it.

  I closed my phone and tapped it against my chin as I looked around to make sure no one else was nearby. The house appeared to be deserted. Mama said she had parked at a house just down the road a ways so his was the only car parked in front.

  The man was following her. She told me she had led him into the woods west of the house. I left my car and started along the edge of the wooded area. Then I saw him. He was standing next to a tree, wearing a pale blue shirt and tan trousers. He was older than I expected but that was okay; maybe he would back off easier. He was watching something, one finger crooked around his chin. I figured it was Mama.

  I followed his gaze and had to swallow hard. Mama stood in a clearing, her shirt off and fanning herself with a handkerchief. The white of her bra was blinding in the forest and I looked away, embarrassed.

  I moved closer to the man and grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. He cried out and Mama was there within seconds.

  “What are you doing, spying on my mama,” I whispered against his ear. He craned his neck to look back at me.

  “It is you,” he said, eyes wide.

  Mama was shrugging into her blouse. “There’s an envelope in the front seat of his car,” she said. “Get his keys.”

  I fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out a key ring. I handed it to her.

  “What now?” I asked and the man grunted.

  “Yes, what will you do now? She will find out, you know, and she will tell,” he told Mama.

  “And that will be a good thing,” she replied, straightening her collar. “But it will be on my schedule, not yours. You had no business nosing around.”

  “They’re both like sisters to me. I won’t let you blackmail her any longer. It’s just wrong.”

  Mama got that angry look in her eyes. “What’s wrong is him not living up to his responsibilities…and them thinking they’re so much better than the rest of us. That’s wrong.”

  “Listen,” he began, but Mama cut him off.

  “No, you listen. My sweet baby is just as deserving as that other one.”

  She looked at me. “Take him over to the cellar. Tie him up tight. Then you come and pick me up at Bird Island. Hurry now, I mean it.”

  I recoiled. Was she asking me to…? I smiled even as my heart leapt in my chest. I could be bad. It was okay.

  Mama turned away and disappeared into the trees.

  “So, let’s go for a little walk,” I said as I goose-stepped him through the forest, heading back to the car.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Brocklyn! Where the hell is Denton?” The shout came from Ed, buried in his office. This was the third time he’d asked the same question, and Marya still had no answer.

  “I don’t know, Ed,” she called. “I haven’t seen him in two days. I’ve told you that.”

  Marya sighed and returned to her perusal of plant catalogs. Settling into her new home had been going well except for her mother’s determination to press her with various household staples. After the third armload of sheets and towels from her, Marya had returned it all, with the firm request her mother give her what she really needed, plants for the empty planters swaying above the cottage’s deck. Bless her mother. Her feelings hadn’t been hurt a bit. She had cheerfully handed Marya some catalogs and told her to write up an order for whatever she wished.

  Waking each morning to the call of the gulls was becoming a pleasant addiction. Marya had taken to visiting the beach each morning before work, making note of the subtle variations of sea and sky. It seemed the ocean off Begaman Cove had developed a life of its own, choosing a new color and style for each day. The never-ending motion of the waves and the slap of foam on the shore invigorated Marya, energized her.

  She found little to change in the house proper. She had merely repacked her boxes, loaded them into her car and then unpacked again. The large living area now bore most of her books and what few mementos she possessed, making the place her own. Outside, she had taken advantage of a natural rise in the yard and constructed a type of meditation garden for herself. The project had occupied and excited her for the past several days and now it was done.

  Sitting at her cramped desk in the newsroom, Marya let her thoughts drift to that special place of her own and allowed a soothing peace to overtake her. She imagined herself sitting on the square wo
oden platform, a platform painstakingly sanded and smoothed by her own hands. She mentally inhaled the sweet smoke of incense as the small ceremonial fire warmed her face. Wind chimes sounded in a soft breeze and the rustle of bamboo fronds voiced nearby.

  A sudden slam against her desk brought her back to the present with cruel harshness.

  “Brock, this is getting crazy. There’s no answer at his house. He hasn’t called in all day. What did he do, just take off for the Bahamas? Is he having some sort of midlife crisis? Did he go gaga over some younger woman?”

  Ed stared at her with helpless frustration, his palms pressing into the piles of paperwork on her desk.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Ed. I haven’t heard or seen anything that would help you. I wish to goodness I had.” She shrugged her shoulders, eyeing him with helplessness.

  “Well, move over to his desk and try to pick up some of his slack, will you? I’ll get the others to help too, but stuff is piling up at his station like you wouldn’t believe. When he does get back, you’d better bet he’s gonna catch hell from me.”

  Mumbling under his breath, Ed moved toward his office.

  Leaving her imaginary porch garden with some regret, Marya put away the catalogs and got back to work, moving across the way to Denton’s tidy desk area. If she was going to do double duty as copyeditor and reporter, she was going to need every second of the day.

  Marya didn’t leave work until seven that evening when the last page of newsprint had been copy edited. She was beginning to worry about Denton. His e-mail box was overflowing; his computer was flashing with overdue messages the entire time she’d been on it. Marya didn’t know him that well, but she didn’t see him as the sort of irresponsible person who would take off without a word to anyone, leaving so many incomplete projects behind. He had seemed to her to be the levelheaded one in the office, the one who brought wild ideas into focus, who brought impossible story ideas back to reality. Taking a deep, needed breath as she climbed into her car, she hoped nothing had happened to him and that he would come back to work soon.

  ***

  Driving along Collier Street, Marya took a right onto Route 17 which would take her toward the South Myrtle Beach area. Dorcas Wood having turned out to be such a prickly harridan, she felt she owed it to herself to check out some of the other martial art schools along the coast. She had seen several listed in the phone book and hoped she might find one she liked just as well, one whose master didn’t hate her.

  An hour later her mouth and mind were curved into a bow of disappointment. One worn, unkempt school of karate had proven unacceptable. The art of karate was not her discipline, anyway. A more likely candidate had been a small t’ai chi ch’uan school, but she decided t’ai chi, the art of moving meditation, would have to wait until she mastered the highest taekwondo belt.

  Master Wood’s, it seemed, was the only studio which adhered to the same martial art philosophy she did. She saw martial art training as a way of life, a path of self-improvement that must, pretty much, be traveled alone. Tournament competition was fine for some if that was what their own personal path encompassed, but it was not her way. She preferred the path of solitude, of quiet accomplishment under a master’s tutelage. Trophies meant nothing to her, and every studio she had entered thus far had displayed trophies indicating competition as a measure of their worth.

  Why couldn’t Master Wood be more agreeable? Obviously she and Marya held to the same philosophy. The framed pictures in Dorry’s lobby had portrayed that same private path of personal growth that Marya believed in. Why did Dorry have to hate her so? She wondered about this hatred, especially as it related to her status as a master. Shouldn’t Dorry be past that type of tawdry emotion? Deep inside she recognized the fact that masters were as human as their students, but shouldn’t someone who had trained so long and hard that she had won a black belt of rank many times over be able to set aside her feelings and train her with equanimity?

  Her outlook brightened suddenly. Of course she should! This was not her problem to deal with; this was something that Dorry needed to work through. Marya knew then that the right thing to do was to return to Master Wood’s dojang and work as hard as possible following her own path. Dorry would come to see her as an ally eventually—because she would prove herself to her.

  Full of new purpose, she decided to turn around and go home. As she pulled to one side, her eye was caught by a large window advertisement featuring a dobok-wearing taekwondo artist executing a high sidekick. The neon sign above the building read Barnes Taekwondo in tall red letters. Seeing no trophies in the window, she decided to stop one last time.

  A smiling man with a blond crew cut and wearing a white taekwondo tunic greeted her just inside the door.

  “Can I help you, miss?” His tone was polite, but somehow she sensed sarcasm beneath his politeness.

  “Yes, I’m interested in training in taekwondo. What type of programs do you offer?”

  “How old is your son?” he asked, eyes examining her curiously.

  “Oh, I don’t have a son. This is for me.”

  He paused a long moment.

  “Well, we have a six-week sign-up session just starting. It’s a hundred forty-nine dollars to join. Then if you want tournament training, sparring, like that, it’s an added sixty and you have to buy all your own gear.”

  “I’m not interested in sparring,” she said when a lull fell in his dialogue.

  He smiled widely, “I didn’t think so, but I’m supposed to tell that to everyone, even the women who come in. I suppose you’ll want to try the class for a week or so before you decide whether you want to sign up for the long course, right?”

  His patronizing smirk was getting under her skin in a major way, and she could feel her cursed Irish temper getting the better of her.

  “Look here, you cretin,” she said in a low voice, her tone steely but still under control. “I wouldn’t take your blasted class if you were the last school in a nuclear holocaust world. Your attitude toward women is appalling.”

  Her voice had risen against her will, and an older man, a master wearing a dark blue dobok, appeared in the dojang entryway. He studied the situation for a moment, then spoke, his voice commanding. “Thomas, what is going on here?”

  Thomas bowed his head and gestured respectfully to the master. “The lady is seeking instruction, sir!”

  The master’s gaze traveled to her face, and his deep brown eyes impaled her. She bowed and extended her hand.

  “Marya Brock, sir.”

  He took her hand and returned her bow. “Fred Barnes. A pleasure to meet you.”

  An awkward silence fell, then Barnes spoke. “You seek instruction in the way of hand and foot?”

  “Yes, sir, but I am afraid our paths differ. I hope you will excuse my intrusion.”

  She glared at Thomas and moved toward the door.

  “Please, Miss Brock.” Barnes’s voice arrested her. “Forgive my student. Obviously he has had a poor teacher. It is simply this; not many females come through our dojang. Those who do are very young and do not usually stay. This has colored our perception of women in the martial art.”

  She moved closer. “Then how do you explain a master such as Dorcas Wood? I mean, look what she has accomplished. She even has her own school.”

  Barnes’s back stiffened noticeably, and he drew in a sharp breath of air. “You know Dorcas Wood?” His eyes studied her unmercifully. “How do you know her?”

  Marya backed off, confused by his vehemence. “I was going to train under her but I…I wanted to see other schools first.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes. Thomas watched his master cautiously, his mien unaccountably nervous.

  “She is a good teacher,” Barnes said finally as he slowly opened his eyes. “You would do well in her school. Many women go there and are pleased by her method.”

  Another long silence fell.

  “Please excuse me now,” Barnes whispered. “I must…return to
my class. Thomas, you will assist me.”

  The two men left and Marya stood alone, thoroughly puzzled by the encounter.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fortifying herself with the reminder that Master Wood’s antagonistic feelings toward her were not her problem, she approached The Way of Hand and Foot dojang Wednesday evening. She was nervous. It had been a long time since she had entered a new school, and she longed for the familiar, comforting faces of her old dojang. Making the best of the situation, she entered the lobby with her head held high.

  She found the women’s changing room within minutes and slipped from her street clothes into her practice uniform. The feel of the soft, comfortable, very worn material centered her. She began to look forward to a good workout. Carrying her belt loosely in her hand, she bowed and stepped into the dojang, the carpet rough on her bare feet.

  Several students, mostly lower belt ranks since they were the remnants of an earlier class, stood about the practice area. Many were stretching, others stood in small groups talking. She sought a deserted corner and after tying her belt around her waist, began stretching muscles that had been wearied by a day of sitting at a desk.

  “Hi there. You’re new.”

  A young woman had suddenly appeared before Marya. She was a brown belt, one ranking below Marya’s, and she carried herself with the self-confidence of an experienced student. She smiled and extended her hand, bowing in the traditional taekwondo manner. Marya returned the smile and with a bow, took her hand firmly in hers.

  “I’m Marya Brock,” she told her, “from Seattle, Washington.”

  “You’re a long way from home, Marya Brock,” the student said, her eyes twinkling with merriment. “Karen Jenkins, from right here in good old Schuyler Point.”

  She released Marya’s hand and clasped her own hands behind her back, her legs spread in the relaxed stylized posture of the martial artist.