Rosethorn

by Ava Zavora

  "It's not her. A child's buried here." She stood up but did not look at him.

  "There's no name, no born date and no died date, just the year, 1894. And there's a figure of a lamb on top. Only dead children have lambs on their headstones. It was probably stillborn or died very soon after it was born."

  She started to shake, but kept her arms firmly crossed against her chest. When the shaking subsided, and she was sure her voice wouldn’t have the tell-tale quiver, she continued.

  "She probably still did run away, who knows why. But he couldn't let her go, not her memory, not this house, not their child that might have lived. Some people don't ever let go."

  "Yes, I suppose you're right." Her ears pricked at the change in his voice. A slight hardening. “I was hoping for a different ending. I was hoping she didn't leave him, that only death could have taken her from him, but that's my sentimental nature talking."

  She turned to look at him but couldn't see his face.

  "I guess we'll never know," she countered, swiftly finding her other voice, the one that was sharp and merciless she had kept honed for the day when she would need it.

  "I don't suppose you found letters or a diary in a hidden room explaining just exactly why she left? I'm sure she didn't just turn her back on him without an explanation or a goodbye. She would have at least owed him a 'Sorry, I'm not in love with you anymore. I've found someone else,' - that is if she ever loved him to begin with. It would have been cruel and unforgivable to do otherwise."

  He turned to her so that his shoulders blocked the house, his outline darker than the twilight sky. She did not realize when he had turned off the flashlight.

  "Who cares about the reasons why? The fact is she left when she could have stayed. How long do you think he waited for her before realizing she was never going to return? A year? Five? How long, Sera?"

  "One night of being alone in this empty house would have been enough, I would think. But he would have held on longer than a night, longer than a year, longer than he should have, and then would have come the day when he would have to shut the door, lock the gate, and just walk away because there is nothing that is worth that much pain."

  Her anger blazed bright enough to light the deepening dusk, hot enough to match the absent sun, so that at last she saw his dense shadow flinch just a little.

  "You said some things." She continued without waiting for him to reply. "Buried? Forgotten? By all means, let's have at it."

  A curt laugh and then he turned around on his heels to walk back to the house. He did not light the way for her and she did not ask him to slow down to keep from stumbling in the unfamiliar path. She followed him back to the house and they entered the front door, all in heavy silence.

  "We have to go back up," he said gruffly over his shoulder as he started to go up the stairs.

  Once they reached the landing, he turned off the pendant light hanging from the second story ceiling, without explanation, leaving the house in darkness. He turned on the flashlight and headed down the hall towards the door to the attic. Mounting another set of narrow stairs, they reached the attic floor with its low, sloping ceilings. He bent down and moved to the large dormer window facing south, which he opened. Without hesitation, he stepped outside to the platform-like broad ledge and waited for her.

  "Careful," he said, his hand out. Ignoring it, she held onto the window frame and stepped out next to him.

  "Let me guess. Your second theory--he pushed her to her death."

  In a voice less accusing than the one by the forlorn grave, as though he was trying to soften all the hard, accusatory things that they had already flung at each other that night - "I think that this was meant to be what they would call a widow's walk back east. If you look out, you can see the road from here. Back then you could have seen for miles clear across town, so that there was a place the captain's wife could stand to see if he was on his way home. I'm guessing he never got around to putting up the railing."

  She looked out over the dark valley, past the fields and what used to be Mrs. Haviland's farm, to the some lights twinkling in the far distance. "Fascinating. Another mystery illuminated. Thank you."

  "That's not why I brought you up here." He pointed the flashlight to the western horizon, then turned it off. "Be careful,” he again, his hand on her arm without her permission. The entire valley was in darkness. "Do you see them?"

  Her eyes swept over and over the patch of sky he had pointed to, a wash of indigo seeping into black, not seeing anything but vestiges of dying rays sinking into the horizon. He stayed silent, expectant, his hand firmly hanging on to her.

  She looked again and was about to turn to him, when she saw it, or rather, them, and drew in her breath.

  A crescent moon of silver was rising above the earth. Below it, shining just as brightly was a glowing orb and above, another orb, massive and pale, then a reddish object beyond that and a pale sphere, all forming a spectacular arc set against the twilight sky.

  "You'd have to wait another hundred years to see something like this." Quietly said, not looking at her.

  Blinking in disbelief, she looked again, and found another tiny sphere sparkling just above the horizon, not unlike a star, a diamond next to luminous jewels. Five planets and the moon on an invisible string necklace had been flung out into space.

  "They're all moving on the same path called an ecliptic, on the same plane, but at different speeds. For instance, Mercury-that's the lowest one, the one closest to the horizon, orbits the sun every 88 days, while Venus, the brightest one, just above the moon, has an orbit of 225 days. The bigger ones, like Jupiter, takes almost 12 years, and Saturn takes 29 and a half years. And because they're moving, tomorrow, they'll be in a different order. So to see them like this, all together, in this particular configuration from earth is---"

  "Once in a lifetime." She finished as she faced the darkening horizon, her arm burning where he touched her.

  They watched as Mercury sank lower and lower, until it disappeared. Only four planets and the moon remained.

  Once again, he had done it. She shook her head. How, she didn’t know. She had been to the pyramids, spent the night in the Sahara, stomped grapes at a Tuscan vineyard. But no matter where she went or what she saw, Andrew always had a one-of-a-kind surprise that managed to surpass it all.

  "I'll take that beer now."

  To make room for him, she scooted back, almost stumbling as he brushed against her to enter the attic.

  "Here," he said as his hand ran down her arm. She felt him place the flashlight in her hand, before stepping down. After he left the attic, she sank down to her knees, hanging to the window for support.

  "Shut the door, lock the gate, walk away," she whispered, eyes riveted to the spectacular sky, where night had fallen and the planets and the moon were no longer alone.

  As if mocking her, the universe at that moment had chosen to unveil countless brilliant stars.

  By the time he returned, handing her an ice cold bottle, she had recollected herself. She was sitting down, legs swinging off the ledge. She took a long sip, the bitter brew warming her instantly. He sat down next to her with a bottle in his hands.

  Becoming bolder in the dark, she watched his lean shadow. She could smell the detergent from his freshly laundered clothes and knew that if she were to touch his bare skin, it would still be warm from being in the sun all day.

  Like a night from some other lifetime of the girl she used to be, they perched on the edge of a precipice.

  "So what's up with the other four planets? You couldn't get them to show up for tonight?"

  "You mean the other three? Because we're on one already."

  "That's what I said, three."

  "They'll show up eventually, if you wait long enough. If you've got nothing else to do at three a.m., you can probably catch the others making an appearance."

  Always a lightweight, the beer had hit her and she started to feel slightly dizzy, watching the shadowy man beside
her and not the unusual and breathtaking display beyond them.

  "A few days ago," he continued, his voice low and soothing, "three of them, Mars, Venus, and Saturn, formed a triangle. If you had been looking at them from somewhere in the Middle East, the triangle would have been set just above Bethlehem in the West Bank, just as it did about two thousand years ago. Some believe that this configuration might have been the Star of Bethlehem."

  "A few days ago I was in Paris," she said gaily as she turned her eyes back to the sky, "in my boyfriend's apartment. I'm moving there actually." She felt him shift suddenly and smiled to herself. "I just came home for a few days to let my grandmother know. So I'll be doing my planet-gazing from a Paris rooftop from now on.

  He considered this with long, quiet sips.

  "If you were in Paris, you wouldn't have been able to see them,” he after awhile. "Or any big city. Too many lights, too many buildings to block the horizon."

  "General contractor, astronomer." She could hear the derision in her voice and despised herself for it, but could not stop nor did she want to. "Able to conjure dead infants and align the moon and planets -just five of them, but who am I to quibble-in one night. Any more secrets up your---"

  She stopped abruptly as her eyes caught his bare feet and the images of him opening the door that night, the way he had shown her with restrained pride what he had done with the old house, and what he had planned to do, the way he had looked at her, even now when she could not see his face sliced through her, just as sharp and pitiless as her anger.

  A deep sigh shuddered in her, bloated with her own foolishness.

  Not knowing what else to do, though she felt the world starting to spin, she took a long swig of beer, grimacing as she swallowed. She drew up her legs and addressed the stars cautiously.

  "If you don't mind a personal question, just exactly how much did you make flipping houses?"

  A long silence, during which neither of them moved.

  "Enough," he said finally.

  "And are you going to flip this one too? Pardon me, it's none of my business what you do with your property," She said quickly as she realized she was not ready nor will she ever be. She was dizzy with the beer and the stars and the way he smelled. She was dizzy with all the ways he was familiar when he shouldn’t have been. Dizzy with all the feelings - the anger, the sadness, the longing - which should have died a long time ago but hadn't.

  "Sera-," he started.

  "Why," she interrupted, "Why this house?" She dared not say any more. It outraged her, that he owned the house and would live in it, make plans and grow old with someone other than her.

  "Still the same, aren't you? Different clothes, different hair, but underneath it all, still the same angry queen of the wounded."

  "Oh, hardly the same, Andrew. Not quite so gullible or naive. And if I am wounded, you should know a little something about that."

  She got up abruptly and was rewarded with her head spinning violently. She felt around for the window frame, dropping the beer bottle in her haste. She heard it bounce off the platform then crash to the ground below after a few moments, shattered.

  "Wait," he said as he got up, his hand on her arm again.

  "Don't-" She wrenched her arm away as she clung to the wall. "Feel so free to touch me." She stepped back into the attic. "Thank you for the beer. I'll show myself out."

  "Why did you return, then? Just tell me that."

  She stopped but didn't turn around. "To see if it was real, any of it." She made for the stairs.

  "She said it wouldn’t bring you back."

  "What?"

  "Miss Haviland. When I asked - begged - to buy this house from her. She knew all along about us, that this was our place. And she said that it wouldn’t bring you back. 'It'll drive you crazy.' she said. And you know what, she was right. In every room, when I least expect it, there you are, rising out of the water."

  He had come off the ledge and was now standing right behind her, a mere breath away, and still she didn't move.

  "Walking to me, telling me that-"

  “Don’t." A faint protest for she was flushed, dizzy, intoxicated with how close he was, his breath against her neck, the whole of the universe straining against the bit of air between them.

  All he would have to do was touch her once more and it would all be undone.

  She turned around, the words locked and rusty in her throat so that she could barely pry them out. "I had an abortion, Andrew."

  Recoiling from her as if she had thrown him knives. "What?"

  "Three days after graduation. You were away. Senior trip to Mexico. At least that's what your mom told me."

  The last useless phone call to his house she remembered, made on the way to the clinic after she had Allison pull over to the gas station phone booth, then standing there with the phone in her hand long after his mother had hung up, trying to keep from retching out the medicine she had taken on an empty stomach.

  He now doubled over, as if she had just punched him in the gut, "Why didn't--"

  "I tell you?" She was surprised at that moment to realize that there were no more words like knives she wanted to throw at him. She shook her head, drained.

  "I did try," she said, more gently than she would have thought possible. "All the calls you didn’t answer. All the letters you sent back to me, unopened. But in the end,” she sighed, “It wouldn't have mattered. Whether you knew or not. I would have done the same thing either way."

  Recovering fast from his shock, Andrew straightened, his whole body rigid.

  "Right. You certainly didn't care about me, why would you let something as insignificant as a baby ever stop you from doing what you wanted?"

  The moonlight now weakly shining through the open window partly revealed his face to her, handsome, unlined, yet embedded with long years she did not witness, a stranger's features with no trace of the boy she had known.

  She saw, too, the true visage of their shared past, a brief time that was, when viewed from this side of the stained glass prism, inconsequential.

  He approached her, one-half in menacing shadow. "Been everywhere by now, haven't you, done everything you said you'd do, and soon you'll be living in Paris with your French boyfriend. I am impressed,” He sneered. “But tell me one thing, was it all worth it? You couldn't wait to drop all the things that were going to hold you down, could you? Me, a baby, we meant so little to you. Why did you even come back, Sera? There's nothing here that could possibly have any hold on you."

  Sober now, she met his hostile eyes fully.

  It was time to let go.

  Without a word she turned her back to him and let drop what she had fished from her pocket, a now meaningless token to which she had blindly chained herself all these years. The necklace and bullet clattered dully on the wood floor behind her.

  Emptied, her heart stopped briefly, then continued beating. She would be fine.

  One more step, then another after that, all the way to another continent if she had to, away from the sheer precipice, but rapid footsteps followed her, an urgent hand on hers pulling her back, as if it was always meant to happen like this, and she was falling once more in his arms, relinquishing all defenses as she succumbed to his kiss, as ravenous and clumsy as the first time, impatient for his hands to find her underneath her clothes, and groaning when he finally did for it was unbearable, what his touch brought.

  The moonlight was on him, recalling a distant and imagined hour, uncovering at long last the boy she loved in this man's body. There was nothing more painful or more rapturous than falling like this, at that moment when he came beating back into her heart.

  Chapter 24

  Surely she had done this before, carefully closing the sliding glass door behind her and tiptoeing up the stairs, leaving the lights off so that her grandmother wouldn’t wake up, avoiding the creaky floorboard on the hallway, then stopping, amazed, as she caught her reflection on the large mirror on the wall, sixteen again, her face radiant
because she had just come from Andrew’s arms.

  “What are you doing?” she asked the girl in the mirror.

  Sixteen again and making a mad dash to get dressed as she realized how many hours they had lost in each other’s flesh. As before, or perhaps more bittersweet this time around, reluctantly parting for the night.

  “When?” he had asked as he held her hips captive with his hands, fingers dangerously playing with her.

  “I have to get dressed, Andrew,” she had moaned, half-heartedly trying to pull her jeans up, but giving up as they tumbled back to his bed.

  “Stay."

  “You know I can’t. I’ll have enough to answer to as it is. The café closed hours ago." Laughing as she tried to push him from her in an empty gesture of resistance.

  “God, why is to so hard to let you go?" Had she ever felt like this back then?

  He finally let her get dressed, and kissing, buttoning, then unbuttoning, he walked her to her car. She had been fastened to him in a way she would have ridiculed in others, she blushed to recall now, then had driven away from him, disheveled and almost unrecognizable to herself.

  She was grateful that her grandmother, surprisingly, had been asleep, and so did not see the girl reflected in the mirror, with those eyes that betrayed everything.

  Back in her old room again, she ignored her blinking cell phone, did not check her e-mail, and instead looked out to the window to search the dark sky. Trees blocked the horizon so she couldn’t see what Andrew had pointed out to her before she left, that the rest of the missing planets had indeed appeared as he said they would.

  She wanted to see them again as proof of the past few hours, as if his scent on her and this feeling of falling with only air above and air below weren’t enough. As before, nothing mattered except that he was falling with her.

  After the urgency of being found and during their slow exploration of each other, they had spoken as if they were the only two people in the world, with the whole universe rearranging itself to suit them, time suspended as the past came crashing to the present.