The Garden of Blue Roses

by Michael Barsa

  I tried to involve Klara. She'd just returned from Boston following her divorce. That must have been a terrible fight too—the war wounds lingered all summer in her listless eyes and hands. I suppose I hoped our mutual tragedies would bring us closer, that we'd compare tales of the terrible world and feel grateful to have each other. In my wilder moments I even thought we might strike out on our own, escape our house and our past. Once I turned the camera up to where she sat on her bedroom's balcony and asked if she spotted the enemy or if reinforcements were on their way. But she didn't acknowledge me, not even when I waved a white handkerchief at her, not even when I asked her to photograph the scene for posterity and write brief enthusiastic columns for the readers back home. Her own interest in writing and journalism had disappeared by then—her typewriter consigned to a box of expired medicines beneath her bed. I overheard her on the phone telling a friend that she didn't think anything was worth recording anymore, that the world was too much with us anyway.

  I think she was quoting poetry.

  It was late afternoon. Klara still hadn't returned. Her promise had meant nothing—the promise, twice repeated, that: I won't be long. I watched the sun sink and turn blood-red, ushering the night—a night I feared I'd have to face alone, or not alone because the walls themselves were already beginning to whisper: "Are you there, Milo?" I whirled around, saw the crack of the study's door, the shadows shifting on the other side. "You can't hide from me anymore than you can hide from yourself, my son."

  At last came the MG's roar. By then I was in the dining room. The clock was ticking. On the table lay a platter of pork roast and potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Marta had prepared it in the morning and laid it out just so. I listened as Klara stamped her sensible shoes and flung off her coat and strode into the room like a Cossack. "I'm starving," she said as she slid into her seat and stabbed a piece of meat.

  "You were gone," I managed, "all day."

  "So many things to do."

  "But you promised not to be . . ."

  "What was that? You've got to speak up, Milo."

  For a time after her marriage she'd thrown herself into various charitable efforts, letter-writing campaigns on behalf of foot-bound Chinese girls, that sort of thing. She'd even briefly taught literature to troubled youths at an academy in rural Ohio. She didn't last long among those thugs—not after a student masturbated into the pages of The Catcher In The Rye during class. Tonight I wondered if something similar had caught her fancy, if that light in her eye were the familiar flame of self-delusion.

  I tried to be cheerful.

  "I meant to ask whether you were petitioning to save the rabbits again," I said.

  "Rabbits?"

  "The ones they use to test cosmetics?"

  "Ah. No."

  I waited for her to say more. She didn't. "Or perhaps the local Red Cross was conducting a blood drive?" I ventured. "And you decided to volunteer?"

  She shook her head and kept chewing. It was as if she hadn't had solid food in weeks. She paused only to ask about my day. I told her about my progress on the trireme. "Really? You've done that much already?" Her lips hardly moved in front of that working jaw.

  "I would've done more if I hadn't been interrupted."

  "Visitors?"

  "More of Father's fans."

  I closed my eyes and saw them: overweight, middle-aged, in their flannels and bomber hats. One especially large woman had stepped forward to read something off a sheet of notebook paper—a tributary sonnet of sorts. It was horrible; I tried to slam the door, but she lunged for my hand, pulled it toward her and pressed it against her tear-soaked face. I described this to Klara in gory detail—that woman's soft fat paw, moist cheek, flaring nostrils reticulated with capillaries. "She smelled like processed cheese," I said, "and she wouldn't let me go."

  "So what did you do?"

  "I kicked her."

  "What?"

  "It was self-defense. Our home is our castle, Klara. That's what the law says."

  "My God, Milo. What did the poor woman do?"

  "She hardly felt it under all that fat."

  She looked at me sternly, and I recalled how after the funeral she'd been the one to handle visitors—Father's slick-haired dentist Dr. Farraday, his drunken wife Billy Jean, the muttering manager of the Barnes and Noble, and a woman calling herself Petal who claimed to be Mother's "holistic healer"—relishing the role of Keeper of Mother and Father's Flame. She'd even begun talking about conducting house tours and readings on the patio, perhaps converting the attic into a public museum.

  "I'm sorry, Klara. I suppose I felt unsettled, being here by myself."

  She paused, her fork half-raised, as she absorbed my suggestion that it was really her fault. "There was a garden show in town," she said. "I didn't expect to be so long."

  "You spent all day at a garden show?"

  "There is much to learn."

  I imagined this to be another of her self-improvement programs, like the time she'd taken a course in Bonsai. "Well I hope it was enlightening," I said.

  "Very."

  But something gave me pause—the way she glanced down as if embarrassed by this answer, then quickly changed the subject to cleaning the linen tablecloth. She had that distant look in her eyes again—distant, watchful, and maybe a little afraid.

  That night we watched a wildlife program on television—lions devouring zebras, monkeys pummeling other monkeys, the narrator intoning that this was nature at its starkest. We were in the two high-backed chairs with extending foot rests, sharing a bowl of popping corn. Klara had her feet up, the skirt draped halfway up her pale veined calf. I thought of shrimp, that satisfying snap when you bite into them.

  "I'm sorry again about today," she said. "About being gone so long."

  "Are you going out tomorrow, as well?"

  "Not out, no." She shook her head, then pulled a woolen blanket around herself and said: "There are things I need to do here at home."

  I looked at her as she continued staring at the screen, its images flickering across those blocky glasses she wore for television. "Do?"

  "Improvements." She reached blindly for the corn, which she began feeding between her lips. "Getting the house and grounds into shape."

  "What are you talking about? The roof?"

  "Among other things."

  "I'm sorry. I'm at a critical juncture with my trireme and even the thought of a repairman pounding—"

  "We've got to have it fixed. Did you notice the stains down the kitchen walls after last week's rain?"

  I had no idea what to say. I never noticed such mundane things as stains on the walls.

  We watched an elephant raise its trunk and emit a haunting scream. "Well I suppose I can concentrate on some quieter things around the patio," she went on. "Would you like that?"

  "Yes. Thank you."

  My attention was then diverted by the elephants laying waste to a tree. As a result I didn't realize what had just happened. Sometimes I blame the television—an instrument of thoughtlessness. But not in a million years could I have known what she meant. I had only a hint, a vague suggestion. Behind the glasses I saw her eyes. They sparkled. With excitement. Looking back I try to give her the benefit of the doubt. I tell myself she must not have known what she was doing. Or who he really was. But in truth I'm not so sure. Because she was also nervous. Biting her lower lip. She must have been thinking about him. About the actuality of him. Him? It?

  I'm not sure of the proper pronoun anymore.

  A local gardening columnist is crucified on her trellis, her favorite flowers at her feet. A week later a middle-aged woman is decapitated, her body slung across a waterfall. How are these killings connected to the nearby town of Arlington, Vermont, former home of Norman Rockwell? It has become the epicenter of a terrifying new art form known as "Blood And Guts," whose practitioners in
clude the elusive figure of The Master and his star pupil, Keith Sentelle, the Albert Bierstadt of murder, who stages bloodbaths among dramatic nature scenes. But even The Master is unprepared when Keith tries to break free of his influence, to become a modern master of death. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Psychopath is John Crane's most complex, chilling creation—an exploration of the cold indifference at the heart of murder, nature, and artistic creation alike. It is an instant classic that will haunt well after the last breathless page.

  He arrived the following afternoon while I was in the midst of a delicate operation requiring a smock and surgical gloves and a wire contraption I'd designed myself—an oversized gyroscope with tiny clips added to the ring. The clips held a galley slave suspended like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. I was painting his upper body—muscles, wounds, tattered clothes—spinning him to get all sides. Could I capture the grimacing agony of a life in chains? A life spent rowing the giant triremes? I was using my thinnest horsehair brush—perfect for a ruffian. Time became a distant historical concept measured in ages, not hours. Pericles' funeral oration seemed far more immediate than my measly lunch.

  Still there were signs if I'd been attentive enough: leaves on the patio stirred into a vortex by the breeze, or the robin that banged angrily against the study window, nearly causing me to smear the galley slave's face. But it was an eerie silence in the lambent afternoon that finally gave me pause—a silence that was false, because even then he was making his way up the driveway and around to the back of the house. I didn't hear him; I heard what he caused, the hush that came over our world. I laid down my brush and listened. Through the never-ending howl of my tinnitus I heard the ineluctable tick-tock, tick-tock. I exchanged my smock for a blazer and ventured into the living room. It was the pendulum clock—the only thing that moved. That and the dust glittering in the light of a tall brittle window.

  "Klara?"

  I drifted to the French doors. She'd been on the patio, reading one of her interminable Victorian novels and making occasional flourishes of a pencil in a sketchpad. Now I saw the novel and sketchpad abandoned in the empty depression of her chaise.

  Still I hesitated. I was on the precipice of something—even then I knew. Could I ignore the signs and turn back? The patio stones, the insects, the beating sun—everything waited for me to decide. In the end I just did it, held my breath and swatted my way to the end of the patio like the outdoorsman I never was. I remembered Klara earlier that day adjusting her hair in the entrance hall mirror, twisting the premature strands of grey beneath their darker counterparts. "Just freshening up," she'd said to my questioning stare.

  "What for?"

  "Do I need a reason?"

  I descended the mossy steps. To my right lay the crumbling remains of an old stone banister. Its base was topped with the head of a stern, garlanded Roman that Mother had purchased in Italy many years before. Beyond the banister stood a line of overgrown bushes. I peered through them and spied a flash of blue. I leaned across the Roman's face where his proud nose used to be until I saw it: the eggshell blue of Klara's blouse. She was bent over, stabbing a small metal spade into the earth.

  And she was not alone.

  I spied blond hair and a weathered face that appeared hazy in the broken light. He was behind her, guiding her with sharp jabs of a finger—a snake's tongue shooting at the ground.

  "Hello?" I called out.

  Klara jerked. The spade fell from her hand. She didn't pick it up, just slowly raised her eyes. "Oh Milo, it's you."

  I moved forward. "Is everything alright?"

  The figure behind her remained hidden in the shrubbery. She whispered to him before saying: "Milo, I'd like you to meet Henri Blanc. He's a gardener. Henri, my brother Milo."

  He stepped out from behind her. The first thing I noticed was his shirt: blindingly white and open at the neck, blond chest hair emerging like weeds through a cracked sidewalk. "A true pleasure," he said, holding out a hand. He smiled—confident, at ease—his face well-lined from the sun and his hair held in a ponytail meant to look more casual than it was. I recalled an image from one of Klara's magazines—a famous actor (Brad Pitt?) on vacation in Cannes—and I thought Henri resembled this man. His eyes were a pale green and his voice low and serpentine—the vowels accented with a Western drawl and the consonants with a French trill that created the simultaneous impression of a cowboy and a fairy. Ple-ZHURE.

  He came toward me. That's when I noticed more: how shallow and dead his eyes were, how waxy and fake his skin. Before I knew it his hand had enveloped mine—an iron-cold embrace that gave me chills despite the balmy weather. "How fortunate that you could come for such a quick consultation," I said, trying to free myself. But he wouldn't let go; his grip was like a cage, drawing me closer until I smelled his breath—earthy, like rotting mushrooms. He grinned: "I am a lucky man."

  Finally I managed to writhe free, recoiling until I'd nearly backed into the old Roman. "I hope we won't impose upon your time too long," I breathed.

  "It's no imposition at all," said Klara, oblivious to what had just happened. She smiled in a prim, proud way—a parent introducing a child to the neighbors. "He's been working for Elizabeth Silfer, whom I had over for tea recently?"

  The image of that shambling mound of ruined womanhood rose like a spot of bile in my mind and momentarily blotted out the gardener. She was an old friend of Klara's, one she'd met again by chance in the local china shop. Time wreaks havoc, I know, but that kind of transformation—from bony pig-tailed girl to a walking jelly—was like the crushing sadness of a child's death. You always wonder what might have been.

  "Anyway," Klara continued. "Elizabeth has graciously freed-up Henri for much of the summer."

  "For the rose garden," Henri added with a smile, as if sharing a delicious secret.

  "The what?" I managed.

  Klara ignored me, waving the spade across the bushes like a wand.

  "Over here we could put several ramblers. Albertines perhaps? Or Canterburys?"

  Henri raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps Bonicas and Carefree Wonders?"

  Her mouth became a whorl of pleasure. "Such profuse blooms."

  They began talking as if I wasn't there, about floribundas and hybrid teas and something called lady's mantle. Wittgenstein once claimed that private language was impossible. He'd never heard this.

  "We can under-plant them with some fragrant old-fashioned pinks," Henri began, ambling closer to Klara now and touching her elbow, caressing it almost. "So the colors will balance. And the scent. Yes, we can achieve a perfect harmony among all the senses. Perhaps Gran's Favourite, which has the scent of cloves?"

  "Oh and Henri is willing to do landscaping, too," Klara beamed at me.

  "The setting is just as important as the flower," he said. "There is no beauty without context."

  Beauty without context. I saw how Klara hung on his every word, how her breath fluttered like an excited bird's. Was she blinded by his cheap charm? Or by a misguided sense of beauty: the prospect of transforming our grounds into some hideous floral theme park? That wasn't beauty, I wanted to tell her. It was manipulation. True beauty comes from leaving things alone, from watching nature at a distance and wondering what untouched treasures it contains. That's what Father once said, why he'd always resisted Mother's desire to landscape. It would have ruined the mystery.

  "What's that rose with decorative hips?" Klara asked him.

  "Ah, the Burnet."

  "Yes!" She nodded—an eager child—and he smiled as if he despised her already—as if winning her over was proving too easy. "You wish to have Burnets?"

  "Please, many."

  He paused.

  "What's wrong?" she asked. "Is there another one that's better?"

  He tilted his head, gazing past her, studying the landscape. "There is. Only a little more expensive."

  "I don't care. I want
the garden to be sublime."

  Their conversation soon turned to sun angles and prevailing winds. Klara led him away, walking along the shadow lines, keeping him close. I watched the way the sun bounced off Klara's straw hat to create an aura of light, yet was absorbed into Henri as if he wasn't really there. Then he bent to examine the soil. He took a pinch of it and rubbed it between his fingers. That's when I saw the scar. Up his left thumb, jutting into the hollow of his wrist. I was sure I'd seen it before. But where?

  I drifted back to the study—to its dust-mote stillness, congealing paints, galley slave that hung half-formed, not quite a man but not quite anything else just yet. I took it all in: the desk, the bookshelves, the warships bristling across the shelves—all those hours I'd spent on every last detail. Only through the fog of memory did I eventually hear them: the patio doors, creaking steps, Klara's laughter and the tinkling of icy summer drinks. The fog of memory that had heard it all before: Klara and Father's languorous afternoons, their epic discussions about politics, theater, art. I put my ear to the door, expecting to hear more of the same, but then came something new: a click of a pen and that serpent's voice: "My accountants, they insist: please make it out to cash."

  A chuckle. "I feel like I'm signing my life away."

  I opened the door.

  They were on the sofa, side by side, leaning slightly toward each other, their heads only inches apart as their thighs casually grazed. He had one arm folded like a bat's as he tucked the check into his loose shirt pocket. It was a protective, menacing gesture—the fingers beaking down, the eyes alight. I actually found myself searching Klara's neck for a bite mark—the neck she held open to him, pale and enticing. It was almost to break that spell that I said: "Hate to interrupt."