The Garden of Blue Roses

by Michael Barsa

  Maybe I should suggest some menial work to Milo. Who is going to take care of that boy in the future unless he starts taking care of himself? Yesterday he showed me his plans for a bomb shelter. There was a long tunnel going into the side of a mountain and then down several hundred feet. The tunnel had maybe fifty or so doors, all electrically wired and elaborately encrusted with spikes and daggers and trip-wire-activated machine-gun barrels. It must have taken him days to draw it all. Then at the end of the doors was a little room with a light bulb and a table and chair and some stacked provisions and, of course, more guns. There were also two long tubes that ran from the room to the top of the mountain—for air, he said, one to let the air in and the other to let the air out. He seemed so proud of this design. He even drew himself, in his jacket and tie, sitting at the table in that room, smiling. He was smiling, Father. In the picture he was sitting there all alone behind those fifty doors, just smiling. He said he was finally safe.

  I wonder if there's a reason why he feels this way, if something's been happening . . .

  November 18:

  Father,

  I'm not angry. No, that's not the right emotion at all. I'm worried. Don't you see that? Milo has been getting worse again. He won't even respond when I talk to him. But the other day he let slip that when he was a boy you asked him to write things down in that diary of his. Horrible things that he saw or felt. "For the material," you kept saying.

  November 20:

  Father,

  Mother told me that you've agreed to do a reading at the Barnes and Noble in Manchester next month—that you'll be previewing the long-awaited sequel! Have you finished it? I'm excited for you, really, but I also can't help wondering: Does this have anything to do with how Milo is acting?

  My old friend Missy Saberhagen was going to come over for tea tomorrow, but I've told her to postpone it because of the expected snowstorm. She's married now and has a brood of little ones. I think about children, sometimes.

  November 22:

  Father,

  I asked Milo to have tea with me and he looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. "Are you inviting another of those stupid guests?" he said. I said no, that no one was coming because of the snow but that he and I could have tea if he wanted. I want to get him used to social situations and to interacting with people in more normal ways. It's good practice. I didn't tell him this, of course, I just said that Marta had made some biscuits and that it would be a shame to let them go to waste. To my surprise, he shrugged and said OK. I sat on the sofa and he sat in a chair and we had tea and biscuits. He was generally well-behaved. You know he can be well-behaved when he wants to be. We talked about normal things like the weather and politics. He said he hoped the Republicans would do well in the next election because of all the scandals involving Clinton. I made sure to tell him that while it was certainly unseemly, what happened, I hoped people would focus on the candidates' specific policies. He needs to hear that sort of thing, I think, just simple reasonable conversation. We didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, but he managed to carry himself in a polite, civilized way. Maybe he's learning.

  But then at the end he said something strange. He said you couldn't write anymore, that your sequel was garbage, but that he could. What does this mean?

  I want to meet you after the reading. I'll wait for you in the attic. We could finally talk. You can't ignore me forever, you know.

  November 25:

  Father,

  It was so good to finally see you today. It really was a Happy Thanksgiving. You're looking well, surprisingly well for being cooped up so long. You have a few more grey hairs since the last time I saw you, but not too many more. You just need to brush your hair down a bit so it's not all over the place. For the reading, I mean.

  I'm sorry supper was so awkward with Milo. I suppose he still has a way to go in his social development. It was unintentional, I think, his spilling gravy all over my dress. At least he seemed to feel bad about it. He was actually quite contrite in his way. He came up to my room afterwards and looked at the floor and said he was "very sorry about the dress." He even offered to clean it. I just laughed and said no. Then he asked if he could stay in my room while I read. I said alright, and he asked if he could take a look at my photo boxes. I gave him the boxes and he just sat there flipping through them one-by-one. When he was finished he put the lids back on and stared out the balcony door. It was nearly midnight when I said it was getting late, and he jumped up and left, murmuring about having work to do.

  December 1:

  Father,

  Is it just on holidays, now, that you come down? Am I going to have to wait until Christmas to see you again?

  December 4:

  Father,

  Suddenly Milo is worse again. For the past few days he's been constantly scribbling in his diary. He's got that excited horse-laugh of his. It makes me ill just to hear it. It's his "work," he says, and I know he's not talking about his models. He's talking about you. And yes, I understand, you're scared now—you don't want anyone to know what you've been doing with him. To him. You don't want to destroy your reputation. But I can do that as easily myself. If you won't stop this, I will have to. You will leave me no choice.

  December 6:

  Father,

  Mother tells me the reading is next week. I'm not even going to ask anymore. I'm just going to say that before you return, I'm going to go up into the attic to wait for you. You owe this to me. You can't expect that we could share what we did and then simply cut everything off. It doesn't work that way. It's not that simple. There's something I never told you that I have to tell you now.

  December 12:

  Father,

  Milo says you're afraid of something. But he doesn't know what. Is it me? Are you thinking of backing out of the reading tomorrow just to avoid seeing me afterwards? You can't hole yourself up there forever. Anyway Mother would never let you off the hook. Not this time. She's gotten it into her head that she might be able to sell her own paintings there, to feed off of your celebrity. That's what I suggested to her, anyway. A little insurance, I suppose.

  Don't think me manipulative. I just want to talk to you one more time, alone, like we used to do. That's not so much to ask. I'm thinking of returning to teaching again. Chancellor Smith says I can have my old position back. Maybe I should give it another try. So one more conversation, Father. I think you already know what I have to tell you anyway. I practically gave it away a couple of months ago with the Milton. "Thyself in me they perfect image viewing / Becam'st enamor'd . . ." You know how the rest of it goes. I know you know it: "and such joy thou took'st / With me in secret, that my womb conceiv'd / A growing burden."

  It never grew very much. I never let it get that far. There was a clinic near school. It's where they send the girls. It was easy to say I was visiting one of them. There are always a few there at any given time. The doctor was named Sylvia Jones, a tall African American woman with short curly hair. She smiled a lot in a wide, easy way, which took me by surprise a little bit given the sort of work she does. But then I saw why. She took me to her office, a small whitewashed room with harsh lighting. But behind her desk was a child's drawing. "Yours?" I asked. She nodded and showed me a photograph of her with her husband and children—two daughters, aged thirteen and ten, and two sons, aged seven and three. Then she asked which of the school's girls I was there to talk about. She had all seven files on her desk. I looked down and saw their pictures clipped to the front. They were smiling. I realized it was because they were so young, they had the habit of smiling for the camera no matter what it was for. That's when I started to cry. Something came over me at that moment. It was so terrible, I thought, all that smiling. It must have been what had gotten those girls into trouble in the first place.

  I also remembered how, when I was a little girl, you said I smiled coolly, like a queen. You didn't like it.


  I'll be there waiting.

  Waiting. She'd been waiting. In the attic. To confront him. He'd been afraid, distraught—I could see his pale hands clutching the steering wheel, his eyes flickering in the reflected light of snow. One turn of the wheel would be all he needed. One turn to escape, to write his own ending. Because now I saw the truth. He hadn't needed to bring anything to read because he'd had no intention of ever getting there. Had I suspected? I must have. For all Klara's haranguing of me and accusing me of unnaturalness—for all her claims to be protecting me against Father—she was the most unnatural one. She was the one whose relationship with Father was horrible. Yes, I finally saw her for who she was—someone who could never accept that Father needed me more than her, who'd manipulated him into loving her no matter what twisted form that took.

  I pulled up the wastebasket and vomited. For the longest time I hung my head, breathing through the acid chunks of food. Then I took the letters, all of them, and flung them into the bilious muck. I swept in the photos before continuing to the bookshelves, hugging the putrid receptacle to my chest. I was determined that nothing should remain—certainly nothing Klara might care about. The marbled notebooks I stuffed down in a giant handful. Then came those precious unknown literary works. I tipped them in one at a time. When the basket was full I kept going, spilling them onto the floor, glancing at their titles typed neatly across the spines—Stopping By Woods, National Geographics, Doors, The Stranger, Sleeping on Trains, The Gemini—all those early books that would never grace a bookstore's shelves, all those stories that would never, ever be available to redeem Father's miserable critical reputation. Not that I thought they could. For years I'd seen first-hand what an awful writer he was, how like a blind babe he was without me. I found Queen Dad in a box stuffed into the top of the shelf and quickly read enough to see its prose—yes, prose!—was dead, desiccated, unworthy of repeating. I won't even excerpt it here. I'll just leave a blank to show its nothing quality—a soothing, merciful void like this:

  I scattered its pages across the floor, then kicked them and fell to my hands and knees and began ripping them to shreds, stuffing the smaller bits into my mouth, chewing them to a pulp, swallowing them down, down, down, until I vomited them up all over again. What had Father once said, quoting Whitman? Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting? Frail, yes, but lasting, no. No one would ever read them now, just like no one would read the awful early drafts of the novels he did publish, the onionskin pages he'd hoarded for years on the off-chance that history should look kindly on his work. I hurled these against the walls, then took the letter opener and mangled the keys of his Remington typewriter. I thought to myself: I'm protecting him. And: I should have done this ages ago.

  I don't know how long I stayed up there. Time meant nothing anymore. Hours swam by like elusive fish. By the time I clambered down it was early evening. The shadows were long, the daylight a dying red—the red of police lights, cooling embers, solitary traffic signals in the rain. I went to my room and peered out the window. The gardening trucks were gone. Only Henri's Peugeot remained.

  That's when I heard his voice.

  Not Father's but Henri's.

  He and Klara were coming up the stairs. I couldn't make out their words. They were whispering. Then they saw me. They stopped. I laughed. She must have thought I was having a nervous breakdown. But I was merely trying to stop myself from weeping.

  "Are you alright, Milo?" he asked. "We are worried about you." I laughed again. It was the we that got to me—the we that spoke of plans, hushed conversations, fake teary-eyed concern.

  I looked down at my vomit-stained pajamas. "It's funny you should say that," I managed. "Because I feel the same way about myself."

  Henri tilted his head to one side. He was doing a magnificent job, really—his hand clutched tenderly atop Klara's, eyes benevolent with care. Even his sleeves were no longer rolled up. Still I sensed that tattoo.

  "It is a good sign," he said. "That you are worried."

  "You think it shows I'm redeemable?"

  "That you will accept help. As a former soldier, I know how important this is. Those who are alone . . ." His voice drifted off.

  "Help from you?" I said, making it sound like a joke.

  Now it was Klara's turn to chime in. "From professionals," she said. "Doctors or psychologists."

  "You can go to them," Henri added. "And tell them everything."

  Everything?

  Suddenly I saw it, the most terrifying element of their plan. That I'd become so frightened that I'd leap at the opportunity to tell someone, especially a supposedly benevolent professional. And where would that lead? What further confessions might I make? Even a simple revelation of Henri's supposed "evidence" against me might be enough to brand me as dangerous and a threat, might vitiate any doctor-patient privilege and lead me straight into the arms of the police.

  I realized I was holding my breath. The audacity, the subtlety of these designs nearly overwhelmed me. It almost made me wonder whether Henri really had been a police investigator—it was a trick worthy of a professional.

  That's when I noticed Klara staring at me. She looked worried. Paradoxically this gave me hope. I blurted out: "He's not who you think he is." There was more desperation in my voice than I'd intended. But she just muttered: "I'm sorry, Milo. You're the one with the over-active imagination."

  The beautiful imagination that created me.

  He was smiling.

  I had no choice. I closed the door on them. Then swallowed down the bile rising ineluctably in my throat.

  Eventually I heard him leave. He strode out to his car with a slow, jangling stride, limbs loose, hair loose and hanging messily across his face. It was obvious what he and Klara had been doing in her room. Still he glanced up at me as if to say: You're creating me even now, don't you see? He shook his head and dragged a boot heel across the gravel. At first I thought he was making a symbolic line I couldn't cross. But he didn't stop there. More lines came furiously, and when he was done he laughed and hopped in the Peugeot and drove away, leaving those etched symbols behind, which eventually coalesced into a single dreadful word:

  LIFE.

  Water, that necessary ingredient to life, was coursing through our old pipes. Klara was taking a shower. The pipes were humming. No, she was humming. Beethoven? It didn't matter. Afterwards she knocked on my door and asked matter-of-factly if I was hungry. I said nothing. I was still staring out the window. Her footsteps faded down the stairs. At one point I opened my door and heard the television's high whine. I'd always suspected she watched it while eating alone. I did the same whenever she left me.

  I waited until she'd gone to bed. Then I went outside. The word was still there. I thought about photographing it as proof, but I knew Klara would only think I'd done it myself. So I kicked gravel over it and went back inside, up the stairs, down the hallway and into Mother and Father's room, straight up the ladder to fetch the wastebasket. I lowered it onto the bed. Papers spewed everywhere. I stuffed them back in. I thought about dumping them into the turret, but I needed to be sure of their fate. So I carried them outside, across the patio, and emptied them into the ditch where I'd once burned my baseball uniform. Then I strode up for the next word-filled load. I did this nearly twenty times, thankful for our old stone walls—and for Klara's oblivious exhaustion. I hauled down everything, including Father himself, who'd grown mercifully silent, until the bookshelves were bare, the desk devoid of everything but the old Peruvian shrunken head and that famously negative review of Museum Collections by The Boston Globe's A.W. Peer: "What John Crane has given us seems, like many an item in museum collections these days, to be nothing more than a dead object from a dead age. His attempt to reincarnate the Victorian social novel has only resulted in the creation of an ugly, inarticulate Frankenstein. We should all do ourselves a favor and put it out of its misery."

  I thoug
ht about that last line as I poured modeling turpentine over everything. Its dizzying stench nearly overwhelmed me. I stepped back and lit a match. The flame pulled to one side. I was afraid it might go out, but it didn't—it burned right down to my thumb. Only then did I drop it, a little falling star, exploding the darkness with a conflagrant roar. I jumped back, shielding my face, watching the ivy on the wall shrivel and brown. Glowing bits of Father and his opus mingled with Klara's hopeless missives, curling together into the half-moon night, their embers like vanishing fireflies.

  Afterwards I stared at the moon and the darkly swaying trees, the wisps of high cirrus clouds. Would they come with lights flashing and sirens blaring? Guns drawn, charging into the house? Soon—I knew it would be soon. Everything was coming to a head.

  There was no time for sleep. I pilfered several of Marta's rags and scrubbed every bare surface of the attic. Scrubbed it with bleach to destroy every last molecule of dust: of Father's hair, his skin, the threads of his threadbare clothes. Back downstairs I drifted through the living room and into the study, past the ticking clock, the crumbling Encyclopedia Britannica in the bookshelves, the moonlit reflections of the long-dead day painted in the china cabinet's glass. I began with the trireme. I swaddled it in rags. I hoisted it up the ladder in a wicker basket and installed it atop the desk, where its hull matched the exposed overhead beams. Then I returned to the study for more parts, loading these into the basket with my scalpels and brushes and paints.

  I spent two tireless nights hauling everything up—the galleys, dromans, cogs, schooners, destroyers, battleships, submarines—my entire gun-bristling armada. The basket fit everything but the larger vessels: the battleship Missouri and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Kitty Hawk. For these I had to use cardboard boxes from the basement—a damp low-ceilinged place at the bottom of the stairs whose door I had to force open with my shoulder because no one had been down there for years. Certainly I never had. Not since I was a child, when Klara had locked me inside after I'd cut out the eyes of her frog doll—and I'd scrabbled at that door until my fingernails bled.