Let the Dark Flower Blossom

by Norah Labiner

  Pru watching a game show on television. Pru with scissors lopping off loops of her hair. Pru smashing plates. Let anger be general, she used to say, I hate an abstract thing.

  Pru becoming more and more unreal in my memory.

  “Your name is like an admonition,” I told her the night we met.

  Riding the streets on our bicycles.

  With nothing behind us and nothing ahead of us.

  A girl in November—

  With a name of admonishing restraint.

  Like the streets that she rode on her bicycle in the darkness. As she coasted downhill, as she flew far beyond me. “What does that mean?” she called back to me.

  “What does it mean?” she repeated.

  She called out in the darkness.

  When she came to a wooden bridge over a swollen creek, she stopped.

  She held up and waited for me.

  She waited on the bridge, looking into the cold moonlit water.

  In her plaid coat, her knotted scarf, her black dress.

  Pru asked me—“What’s the worst thing that you have ever done?”

  And then she was off again—

  Pru not sticking around for an answer.

  19.

  Through dinner (at that Spanish place, where they pour chocolate martinis with just a wonderful burning dash of cayenne—) Louis Sarasine talked about bones with Dr. Ira Black, the paleontologist, and his wife Tiggy, the defense attorney (who answered her cell phone at the table three times during the tapas alone) while Eloise (was thinking: what if I took all the treasures in the world—the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold—and carried them in a sack out to sea?) rested her face upon her hand and just couldn’t decide what she wanted.

  They toasted to Louis Sarasine’s success in swaying the jury.

  “Survivor’s guilt,” said Ira. “What a strategy.”

  “Louie, you’ve got to let me pick your brain,” said Tiggy. “About my new case—”

  Louie looked at his wristwatch.

  “Shall I start billing now?” he said.

  They all laughed.

  Tiggy had taken on the defense of five high school football players accused of gang-raping a girl, who just so happened to be, Tiggy said, the town whore.

  “It goes beyond guilt and innocence, doesn’t it?” said Louie Sarasine.

  Tiggy said yes. Yes, exactly. It was about belief—

  She said, “Is there anything in the world better than a case in which you really believe?”

  Was there anything in the world better than a chocolate martini? Eloise thought not. And so she had one or two. The boys had raped the girl. There was DNA evidence. And it was no point in the favor of Mrs. Black’s clients that they had videotaped the attack. Still, Tiggy assured Louie and Ira and dear drunk Eloise that these boys were genuinely good, really good kids. And that her clients were not in an indefensible position. There was no question regarding their guilt; but certainly there were things more tangible, said Tiggy, more relevant, than guilt or innocence.

  The restaurant was crowded. Amidst the talk, the salsa music, the clatter, the spice, the sweet, the caramel flan and café con leche, by the glow of candles, burning up, burning down—

  Eloise was aware of—the scent of rose and pepper.

  And smoke and chocolate—

  Her face resting upon her hand.

  Her hand resting upon her warm cheek—

  The pearls roped around her neck.

  She was thinking about Zigouiller.

  And all the broken things in the world.

  Why had he come back?

  May whatever breaks

  be reconstructed by the sea

  with the long labor of its tides.

  So many useless things

  which nobody broke

  but which got broken anyway.

  “Don’t you agree, El?” Tiggy said.

  Yes, yes, Eloise gave a murmur of assent.

  And later back at home, Louis said how funny it was that Eloise had agreed with Tiggy that the boys weren’t responsible for what they had done. Because he always thought Eloise was the vengeful type. Louis was going to take the dog out. Did she want to come with him? She liked to walk Zola on snowy nights. She said oh that she was going to take a bath before bed. He said, again? didn’t you bathe before dinner? Eloise pretended that she didn’t hear him. Eloise had already closed the door. She was running the hot water. She had to get that perfume off her skin.

  20.

  Beatrice called me to the garden this morning.

  The tiny bodies of two birds lay in the snow.

  And Beatrice stood looking out toward the water.

  She is not otherwise squeamish. But she cannot bear to see the bodies of dead animals.

  The birds were small and pink and raw, unfeathered. I saw evidence of footprints in the snow. The murders—though I did not say this to Beatrice—looked like the work of my cat. My cat—like my island—does not really belong to me. He comes and goes; he sleeps in the sun. When it rains he yowls at the kitchen door, demanding shelter. He is a predator. And he lives as such—stalking mice and rabbits, catching birds; at the shore entranced by minnows; pawing at small darting frogs and snails. He fears only snakes. A beautiful killer, this cat: black with green eyes and a ragged patch of white fur on his flank where a sharp-taloned foe once gave him trouble. I found a shovel and dug a shallow hole for the birds. Beatrice made no pretence toward speech or prayer or profundity. She turned away, and I saw that her gray eyes were dark.

  We walked in the light falling snow through the woods to her father’s house. It is the best house on the island. Not because it is the largest, though it is, but because of the devotion Dr. Lemon and his daughter pay to its care, its practical warmth and the comfort of the rooms, to the orderly yet chaotic beauty of their garden. I used to find the doctor in the garden on fine summer evenings, asleep beneath the twisted limbs of his beloved crabapple tree in full white flower, with his book fallen to his side, among the birds bathing in the ruined fountain, and the ripening of fruits upon the vine. In a moment, he would wake. His eyes at first showed dazed wonder at the breadth of his kingdom, then bewilderment, then recognition; and finally, sadness. For he went from discovering the world to understanding that it would soon be lost to him. And by way of a game we played of allusions, he would offer me the snippet of a specimen dream. He said: Behold I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled. I took his arm and we walked into his house. In the elegant dining room, Beatrice set the wineglasses upon the white damask cloth. There were flowers in the summer, and—no matter the season—candles burning, for the doctor enjoyed formality. And as we ate at his table, he talked of apes; or time; or that great cataclysm of desire that had led man to invent the concept of if. For both logic and morality; reason and punishment and reward alike proceeded from the very idea of a future. It was only later in the evening that Dr. Lemon asked me if I could identify the source of his quotation. If I could, he showed satisfaction. If I could not he was just as pleased to teach me. It was Gideon, he said, and sighed, full of hidden portent, who saw his enemies vanquished in a dream. And then he vanquished them as such. For what one dreams is always possible.

  Beatrice loves her house. It is a museum of her father’s things: in abstract, his lessons; in concrete, his chessboard, his collection of antiquities, his terra-cotta gods and marble goddesses. How many nights did I sit with him, while I confessed, turning over in my hands, a miniature Sphinx? or studying the face of a little ivory Buddha? as the doctor’s own face showed no sign of judgment or dispassion. From under a glass dome an antique clock tolled the hour. What could time mean to us? The doctor listened while I told my story. Beatrice brought cake. And her father’s medicine. She stood in the doorway. And then she disappeared. She was small and strange. I watched her. I used to see her on the beach collecting shells. When she was a child; she held out her hands to me, laughing. She cares for the doctor in his illness
. I too have come to rely on her. She comes to me through the woods with the dogs. I go to her in the evening; I sit at her father’s bedside. When he has taken his medicine and fallen to sleep, I drink a glass of port in his library with Beatrice. The doctor’s daughter has gray eyes, and I cannot but help myself from touching her arm or her cheek or her mouth or her hair. She does not turn away. The doctor is dying. I feel, in his library, in the pages of his books, his presence.

  21.

  Eloise had the idea that the course of her life was being penned by some unseen hand.

  22.

  I buried the two birds by the garden wall.

  23.

  Eloise walked in her high heels the length of the long hallway upon the plush crushed plum carpet patterned with roses, until she came to the room. She was thinking of licorice. Everything that one so longs for tastes of licorice. The door opened. And what did she do?

  24.

  Snow covers the path through the woods. I came home and lighted the fire. I borrowed a volume of Hawthorne from the doctor’s library, but the twice-told tales only darkened my mood. I took down from my shelf a book by Henry James. Pru had no patience for novels. She much preferred to watch television. Or we would go to the movies. She had a terrible habit—she might suddenly burst into laughter during the silence of a dramatic moment. The audience hated her. They didn’t seem to understand, did they? how funny she found tragedy. How much she loved the movies.

  25.

  Zigouiller told Eloise that he was heading back to Paris soon for a role in a World War II epic. He asked her: did she remember his old apartment? and how they had eaten chocolate oranges and smoked Turkish cigarettes? Eloise was naked on the bed. The alarm clock rang. He knocked it to the floor with his open palm. And said damn, he had to get to the theater.

  26.

  Pru’s abstractions—her paintings—are done in her colors: in pink and candy-blue, in orange and lemon. She called them self-portraits. I don’t suppose that it matters what you call a thing. A name doesn’t change the essential nature of a thing. The later paintings have a creeping darkness downward descending to the edges.

  27.

  Eloise fastened her black brassiere.

  Zigouiller said, “When you were young, you were so beautiful. But I prefer your face as it is now.”

  28.

  Pru—I must go on about this for a moment more—strayed from abstraction in the end. She painted one realist canvas. It was her last. It is a scene, a depiction in green and gray and black, with a sudden almost terrifying whiteness—of the visitation of Leda by the Swan.

  It is hanging here in my study against the flowered wallpaper.

  I am looking at it now.

  CHAPTER 11

  Susu imagines that she is the heroine of a novel

  IT WAS THE BIRDS that last morning strange green fluttering against the open doors to the balcony calling crying over the chipped and crumbling stone balustrade where soon we would have bread and butter and black plums and oranges where down below in the street on bicycles girls rode along wheels clattering. We drank coffee boiled in a silver pot and poured out steaming with a fine sugary layer of spice and grounds rising to the top and then cream and honey and cakes that we ate with our fingers. The manuscript on the low table—he held his cup. He reached for a spoon. On the balcony the rinds the peels and crumbs and seeds at our feet. He looked at me. He set the spoon on the saucer. He touched my cheek, my hair, the tangled ribbon. He unknotted the knot. It was not a ribbon, was it? It was a rope. It was a string. A looping loop of string. He took it. He picked up the manuscript. The pages were stained with coffee and jam, with butter from his fingers. He took the pages. He took the ribbon. He bound it round the pages. He tied it in a knot. And he said, “The story that I am about to tell you is—”

  CHAPTER 12

  Eloise mistakes cruelty for a species of kindness

  AN HOUR INTO THE BOOK CLUB’S DISCUSSION OF Here Comes Everyone by Benjamin Salt, the languorous and beautiful Rachel Rabinovitch, then sprawled across the sofa balancing a wineglass on her stomach, announced that if she heard anyone (“that means you, Greta—”) utter the word postmodern again she was abso-loot-ly going to puke. At which, Boo Boo Tannenbaum burst out laughing and nearly overturned her plate of fromage, olives, black grapes, figs, and savory canapés; the plate was caught before it crashed down upon Eloise Sarasine’s Persian rug by the recently divorced Min Murray, just as the newlywed Greta Conroy refilled her glass with the temperamental ruby Shiraz and asked, “Is there anything better than a good story?”

  Greta turned toward the evening’s hostess.

  “El, you chose the book. You liked the book, didn’t you?”

  Eloise sat in the lamplight.

  The rich chinoiserie of the room threw into relief her dark mood.

  She was dressed in black.

  She seemed so distant this evening.

  So faraway.

  She seemed like a bird.

  Doesn’t she, didn’t she, look like a bird?

  A raven, no, no, a blackbird—

  In a tree, speculating upon the difference between vengeance and wrath.

  Her hands were small and delicate.

  How could she cling to the branch?

  She said that it didn’t matter to her who liked the book or who didn’t. One finds what one finds in a book. Wasn’t that the very point of reading a book?

  “Not all books are for all people,” said Eloise.

  “That’s the mystery of it,” said Min.

  “Oh,” said Boo Boo. “I love a good mystery.”

  Rachel said, “Eloise, tell them about that famous writer—”

  “What writer?” said Greta.

  “Don’t you know?” said Rachel sitting up, smoothing a hand over her dark hair. “El, tell her about that writer who was in love with you, who wrote that book—”

  “Really?” said Greta. “That’s so romantic.”

  “He’s dead now,” said Min. “He was murdered.”

  Rachel made a gesture; the turn of a knife.

  Boo Boo said, “You’re awful.”

  “It’s all so awful,” said Greta.

  “It was a long time ago,” said Eloise.

  “That writer,” said Greta. “That dead writer. Did you love him?”

  Eloise set her glass upon the table.

  She was of two minds, like a tree in which there are two blackbirds.

  Her emerald bracelet caught the candlelight.

  She said, “I was great with him at that time.”

  ” Because she was a liar.

  And because she was something of a thief herself.

  2.

  Does the act of naming an object or idea immediately diminish it; relegate it to the land of named things? Pru’s illness—existed before it was named—it grew, unspoken within her. It began as a part of her, and then it took over and consumed her, bite by bite. In that hungry and desirous manner that she might have eaten a plum.

  Do you suspect some small speck of demise growing within you?

  If it has already begun, how will you stop it?

  There is nothing quite like the factual certainty of a plate smashing against a wall. Or a lilac bush bursting into bloom. As the illness ate. I read to her. She tired of words, until she could tolerate only Pound’s Cathay poems and Eliot’s Prufrock. She drank cream soda through a straw. And she would repeat aloud in a sweet morphine dope, the lines that I had just read.

  If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

  Please let me know beforehand,

  And I will come out to meet you

  As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

  We lived in Little America, Minnesota.

  Pound was from Idaho.

  And Eliot from Missouri.

  Because there was no future, we talked about the past.

  We talked about either and or.

  I said that art is called art because it is not nature.

&
nbsp; “T. S. Eliot hated girls,” she said.

  She loved him anyway.

  Pru said, “The silent man in mocha brown

  Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;

  The waiter brings in oranges

  Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;”

  His rhymes helped her as much as morphine.

  Proo from St. Looey.

  The hot summers were dry and hopeless.

  The winters were unrelieved.

  Pru.

  With her tangled hair.

  With the rise of her hip and the fall of her heel.

  What did Eve say to the asp?

  This bites!

  She spent her days in bed.

  She worsened.

  And then she spent her days in a hospital bed.

  Is one bird more rare or remarkable than another?

  Is one person so much more remarkable than another?

  And does this quality, this spectacularity that can be found in such small details as a scarf knotted around a white throat or a key fallen from a hand in a darkened hallway—have more to do with the moment or the memory of the moment?

  Memory has made me a spectator of my own past.

  I watch each scene play out again and again.

  I can say that Pru liked cinnamon candies. A soft sort of jelly heart that burned the tongue. And she ate them one after the next at the movies.

  That she lived for a while.