Grim

by Anna Waggener

  “No,” he said, his tone flat. “It’s not that easy.”

  He knew that Rebecca was staring at him with her mouth hanging open, and that Matt watched the three of them from his car, hoping that this reunion went as smoothly as possible. He knew that the shadows in his father’s eyes came from surprise rather than regret. He knew that he should stop talking and walk away before anything else happened.

  “Shawn, I’m not trying to make anything easy. I know it can’t be.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You don’t need to be so hard on him, Shawn,” Rebecca broke in.

  Shawn turned to his sister. “How can you stand there and say that, Rebecca? He made our life hell.”

  “He did not.”

  “He beat her, Becca. He beat Mom.”

  “He never hit her on purpose.”

  Shawn’s mouth went dry. His throat felt tight and stuffed inside a too-small neck.

  “You believed him?” he said. “You believed what this drunk bastard said? That bullshit he sold us with bedtime stories, about loving us?”

  “I did love you, Shawn,” his father said. “Both of you. All of you. I still do.”

  Shawn glared at his father. He ignored the sun-spotted skin and the scruff of his beard and the silver creeping into his hair. “I’m going for custody, Shawn. Of you and Meg.”

  “No,” Shawn said. “I won’t go back to that, Dad, and you’re crazy if you think that I’ll let you get hold of Megan. I don’t want to see you again, or hear from you, or hear about you.” Shawn shot a look at Rebecca. “Don’t try to scare me.”

  The comment could have been for his sister, or for their father. It didn’t seem to matter. Shawn walked away from the conversation, rain spilling off his umbrella, and collected Megan from Matt’s car. Rebecca had to jog to catch up with them before they left the cemetery. On the drive home, no one said a word.

  The first hints of a path started out in the woods as fragments of crumbling, weathered stone. If Jeremiah hadn’t been leading, Erika would have lost herself long ago. He picked his way through the forest, turning every now and then, until the cobbles began to run together and form a road. “Highway of souls,” Jeremiah said, and Erika couldn’t tell if he was joking. The longer they walked, the bigger the trees grew, taller and thicker than redwoods, leaves as big as place mats, and the path curved around them, or plowed straight through the arches left by rotted-out trunks. After a few hours, the straight lines of buildings could be seen through the green and brown ahead. Jeremiah took Erika’s hand.

  “Welcome to the city proper,” he said.

  “The city of what?”

  “Limbo.”

  Jeremiah and Erika cut through the woods to make better time. They didn’t even pause when they finally broke out of the forest. The city walls were fifty feet high and made of smooth, dove-colored stone. The road ran up to it and then split, making an easy circle around the perimeter. The wooden shingles of houses could be seen over the wall’s crown, and the upper stories of tall, skeletal complexes with broken windows and gray laundry out to dry. In a few places, a thin, oily smoke curled and drifted, tingeing the air. In other places, towers with arched windows shot up to overlook the city. Erika couldn’t make out faces in the watchtowers, but saw movement every now and then, the flicker of a silhouette making itself known.

  The buildings climbed, staggering higher as they reached a craggy hill with sides so sheer and chipped they looked to be chiseled out of the granite by giant hands. The city walls twisted up the incline and disappeared into the shoulders of the hill. On the flat top of that overlook sat a palace, shining white over the city that it protected, or was protected by. It had its own gates, visible even from the road outside the city, black and impassable, to sift out the rabble.

  Just ahead of Erika and Jeremiah, past a flat expanse of green, stood a massive arch that the road ran into like a tongue. To the left of this gate waited another triptych of statues. All three of them seemed to be modeled on the same woman, following the stages of her life. Maiden, mother, crone. Each sat patiently in a high-backed chair, the first with flowers in her braids, the second with flowers in her hands, the third with flowers at her feet. The maiden looked just like the statues that Jeremiah had kissed, though happy and proud, with her chin tilted up. But as she aged, her expression turned from one of expectation to one of defeat, and her back grew more crooked with time pressing down. Jeremiah went to the oldest of the statues and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “My ears, Megaera,” he said gently. He put a piece of black ribbon over her knee and waited as her stiff granite fingers moved to pick it up.

  With a smile, Jeremiah turned back to Erika. “All together now,” he told her. “Shall we go in?”

  She only shrugged, feeling worthless.

  “I’m sorry, Erika,” he said, taking her by the arm. “I’m sorry about what I said before. But we’re almost home. My home, at least. We’ll be safe soon, and then we can talk.” He led her to the gate. “I’m a prince here,” he added. “Of sorts.”

  “Jeremiah, I —” Erika broke off and looked at her arm, following Jeremiah’s fingers as they slid down to her wrist, and then to her palm, and then wove themselves between her own. “I feel crazy,” she said, still watching. A plea, not a statement.

  He stepped back to her and tipped up her chin. Took her shoulders in his hands. “Of course you do,” he said, looking sorry. “I’ve been a terrible guide.” He cradled the back of her head, just above her neck, in his right hand, and pulled her close into a hug. He smelled the way Matt did — she’d placed it now and hated herself for not realizing before. Hated herself for barely thinking about the man who she’d left behind while she put her whole life and sanity into the hands of someone else. But she hadn’t recognized it because the smell was different. Not softer or stronger; not too much sandalwood or too little orange peel. Different because he wasn’t Matt. She worked two loose fists between her chest and Jeremiah’s and pushed away.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”

  His hand slipped away from her hair, trailing a curl with it, which he let settle against her collarbone.

  “Erika,” he said, “I owe you. I owe you more than you realize right now. But if you don’t come inside with me, I cannot help you.”

  Erika took a breath, unable to break eye contact with Jeremiah. She thought of John. Of all the men she’d ever put faith in and lost parts of herself over. Of Matt and the way he loved her kids like a dad would. He was her promise that things didn’t have to turn out in shambles. She nodded and took Jeremiah’s hand. He pressed it, looking relieved but not surprised. Armed with her consent, he finally led her through the arch.

  Erika shivered, her body struck by the full weight of sudden winter. Jeremiah’s palm, so warm, burned against her own.

  “It’s no longer summer in the city,” he told Erika, and dropped her hand to walk on ahead. “When you leave the woods, time comes back to you.”

  Erika crossed her arms to hold in the escaping warmth. She looked around.

  The woman at the gate was a pitiful sight. She sat off to the side, just inside the border, and waited with an empty tin can in her lap. Her hair, mussed and greasy from going unwashed, fell down a crooked back. Dirt, food, and what looked like blood stained the cloth that she used as a wrap. Beneath it, her skin stretched itself so tight over her bones that she seemed painted on. The fingertips that held her alms can were pointed, joints clearly defined. Her face and shoulders looked sharp and chipped beneath the shadows of a falling sun.

  Jeremiah walked past her.

  “Give her something,” Erika said. “I know you have something.”

  Jeremiah glanced around, puzzled. “Who?”

  “Her. Jeremiah, please.”

  His eyes found the old woman and the tension in his joints released. “Oh, Erika,” he whispered. “If Earth’s richest man gave half a penny to each pauper in the Middle Kingdom, he
’d be a pauper himself before the line even dwindled, and no one would be the happier. They only eat to make themselves feel more alive, but one day they’ll realize that their bodies are just shells. It isn’t charity they need — it’s courage.” He tapped Erika’s shoulder and motioned her forward. When he turned away, she fished through her pockets for change and dropped it into the woman’s tin. The coins clattered loudly against the can, but neither the beggar nor Jeremiah acknowledged it. Erika followed him on into the city.

  Limbo resembled the poor places of Manhattan, Erika thought, but without electricity or water. It smelled stale. Old food, old piss, old air. She tried to breathe as lightly as possible. Houses gaped open without window glass or curtains to line them. The streets were littered with garbage, crawling with beggars. Children ran naked, leathery skin thick on their undeveloped bodies. Babies, too young even to crawl, screamed from within the hollows of empty houses. Erika walked, hands over her mouth, as if in a trance. She stared ahead, too shocked at the poverty to register half of what she saw.

  Jeremiah took to the city as if he were strolling through Central Park. Erika wondered whether all of Limbo was this destitute, or whether Jeremiah was trying to make a point — an appeal, as it were, for her gratitude. This is how much worse off you could be, Erika Stripling. But Erika didn’t feel humbled, only terrified, and she didn’t relax until they stopped at the gate of an old manor.

  “A prince?” she asked quietly.

  He nodded. “Of sorts.”

  Only in comparison with the rest of the city could you call Jeremiah’s home a palace. White and double storied in the Palladian style with large windows and clean, classical lines — no amount of architectural beauty could hide the fact that it had long ago fallen into disrepair. A shell of ivy, still dead with winter, cocooned the walls and roof while the front gardens choked on weeds and stiff brown grass. The paint itself was chipping from its brick, and lines spiderwebbed the walk. Two candelabra edged out the night through the windows on either side of the front door.

  “Are all the princes so Victorian?” Erika asked.

  Jeremiah chuckled. “Victorian would be too peaceful,” he said. “But we’ve been settled in the long eighteenth century since before I was born. Disease, famine, revolution everywhere. A very productive era for death.” He closed the ironwork gate as they passed through. “I understand,” he went on, leading Erika up the crumbling walk, “that we were quite taken with Damascus for a while. Many regret ever leaving the Crusades behind.” The door creaked open before he even knocked.

  “About time, then.” The plump, pear-shaped housekeeper was an English maid, all powder-pale skin and tightly wrapped silver hair. A white lace cap, a straight dress cut at the ankles, and a heavily starched apron made up a uniform so hackneyed that it bordered on parody.

  “Martha,” Jeremiah said. “This is Erika.”

  “Oh?” A long silence followed, and Erika felt herself being appraised by a mother’s eye. “Your mum had her hair.”

  Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Would you mind dressing her?”

  In answer, Martha stepped back from the entryway with a half curtsey. Erika and Jeremiah stepped over the threshold together, his hand on the back of her upper arm.

  The hall was papered with a curling print of gold vines and flowers. At the center of the room stood a large, round cage, as tall as Jeremiah and at least four feet across. The bird inside didn’t live up to the dimensions of its home, its body white and no larger than a pigeon’s, its head tucked against its breast. Erika poked a finger through the fine silver wire, but the bird just inched to one side without raising its head, plumed tail shivering as it moved.

  “That’s Kala,” Jeremiah said.

  “She doesn’t like me much.”

  “She doesn’t like anyone around here much.” He nodded to the housekeeper.

  “Come, miss.” Martha took Erika by the hand and led her to the staircase.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll have dinner made,” Jeremiah called after her. “I’m afraid that I have to work on your behalf until then. You can entertain yourself, I expect.”

  As she rounded the left branch of the staircase, Erika looked over her shoulder, but Jeremiah had already disappeared.

  It began with a white rose, but it had never been innocent. The king would say it had been later; he would swear on it to his wife, to his children, to himself, but innocence was nothing more than a lie he began to believe. A lie he needed to believe.

  Long ago, he had seen the game played by his father. He had seen the cards laid out; had seen the moves and had learned what they meant. He hated to admit now that he was thankful for knowing how to raise the stakes. He hated to admit that the quiet sorrow of his mother might prove to be the same in his own wife, and that he no longer cared.

  He should have stopped.

  He didn’t want to.

  When the king saw the roses budding out, he should have ignored them. He should have kept himself away. He should never have pointed one out to his attendant with such direct orders. He should never have waited for a reply, and should never have read it when it came.

  The scrap of paper arrived small but carefully folded, the corners curling out into the petals of a lily. So flawless, so painstaking, as if she’d stayed awake all night to match the perfection of the flower that the king had never even touched. Alone in his rooms, it took him a quarter of an hour to open, because he would not let it rip.

  “I’ve always wanted a garden,” she’d written.

  He should have burned it.

  He should have had her banished.

  He should have known better.

  But it was just a flower, after all.

  Martha led Erika down a dark hallway and through a door that sighed with age. The room Jeremiah had chosen for her had obviously been neglected for some time. The bottom third of the walls were plush raspberry velvet, the rest a buttercream paint that had begun to peel. Dust blanketed the tall four-poster bed and settled along the lines of the curtains, giving a fur coat to the burgundy silk. An old bureau, a wardrobe, and a mint-colored wing chair, faded and threadbare, made up the rest of the room’s furniture. The door on the back wall stood open to a small bath with a tub, toilet, and single-tap sink.

  “You’ve had a bad crack on the head, miss,” Martha said. “I’ll bring some bandages for that. And clean clothes for you.”

  “Is there warm water?”

  “I could have some boiled.”

  “If it’s no trouble.”

  Martha nodded.

  “And a towel,” said Erika.

  “A towel, of course.”

  “And soap, please.”

  Martha looked her up and down. “Hm,” she said, and then turned on her heel and left the bedroom.

  Erika watched her leave before scanning her new haunts. She felt small and out of place in the middle of so much old-world opulence. Too much history mingled with the dust of the house, and too much pain dripped beneath the paint and the flocked wall. History and pain that she had no business seeing.

  To block out these problems that didn’t belong to her, she focused on her own. Now that she had some privacy, she allowed herself to begin to lay out the pieces. She didn’t know how to put them together just yet, but she needed to see what her options were. Shawn, Rebecca, and Megan. She took a deep breath.

  Shawn looked at his hands and saw that they were small, and tanned from summer, but, for some reason, this didn’t surprise him. He was crouched beneath the hickory tree in the backyard, an old tennis ball by his knee. He picked it up and felt the summer dust rub against his palms. He remembered this afternoon. It was late July, and he was nine years old.

  The screen door crashed shut as John Stripling walked down the back steps.

  “She’s asleep now,” he told Shawn. He sounded proud.

  “Why’d you hit her?”

  His father’s eyes clouded. “I did not hit her, Shawn. I neve
r hit her. I only put her to bed. Why would I hurt your mother? I love her.”

  “Are you going to hurt me too?”

  “Have I ever hurt you before?” He answered himself before Shawn had a chance to open his mouth: “Of course not. Your mother’s so tired she doesn’t know what she’s saying. I only put her to bed, Shawn. Can’t you see that?”

  “I can see her bruises.”

  John Stripling jerked Shawn up by the collar of his T-shirt. “Now you listen to me,” he said. A sour taste of whiskey caught far back in Shawn’s mouth as the smell seeped from his father’s pores. “Don’t talk like that. You walk around lying like that and some cop is going to believe you. Cops like to believe little kids when they say lies like that. I don’t want your mother to have any more trouble out of you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shawn struggled to look innocent as his father tried to fish out the lie.

  “Yes, Dad,” John Stripling said, finally satisfied. “We’re not an army family.”

  “We’re not a family at all.”

  “Shawn.” He yanked his son’s shirt harder this time, so that the front collar made Shawn’s throat flush red.

  Erika came running out of the house.

  “Get your hands off him!”

  “Back inside, Erika,” John said. “Go to bed.”

  “Go to bed?” she screamed. “Is that all you can ever say to me?”

  “I won’t speak to you like this.”

  “Damn you, John!” She gave him a hard slap across the face.

  There was a long, dead pause. Shawn held his breath.

  John dropped his son’s T-shirt and grabbed his wife instead, taking both of her arms in his hands and pressing them together, so that her whole body curved in. “Get inside,” he said under his breath, and pushed her up the steps.