The Paper Garden

by Caitlin Vance

  Margaret smiled meekly and glanced at the woman, then quickly moved her gaze to the floor. Her shoulders hunched into her body, as if she were a scared little turtle and not an adult professor of Gender Studies. James waited several seconds, as if he still expected Margaret to answer. Then he said, “engagement rings.”

  “Great! Follow me,” said the woman.

  Margaret and James sat down in some armchairs in front of a long glass case of rings. Margaret felt suddenly unprepared. She had never tried on an engagement ring, did not know how much diamonds actually cost, and did not understand the rules about which types of gold looked good on which skin “undertones.”

  “So,” the woman said, “do you have any idea what sort of ring you’re looking for?”

  Margaret scanned the endless collection of rings, arranged in lines like rows of corn. “Not really.”

  The woman nodded. Margaret knew the woman could sense how uncomfortable she was. She feared the woman would interpret this to mean she did not love James.

  The woman removed the glass lid off the case and picked up a ring. Another woman appeared behind the first, holding a tray of chocolate and nuts. “Would you like some snacks?” asked the woman. “How about something to drink?” Margaret felt as if she were in a hotel she couldn’t afford, and again, the woman could tell. Margaret also wondered why they would offer chocolate to customers trying on rings. The rings must get smudged.

  “No, thank you,” said Margaret, as James reached for the almonds. Margaret put the ring on. She turned her face from side to side. She looked like a grandmother. She was not used to seeing any rings at all on her fingers.

  The woman laughed. Margaret felt obligated to try on several more rings and to pretend to like some of them. Margaret learned that diamonds cost several thousands of dollars, even the ones that weren’t that big. She communicated with her eyes to James that she wanted to leave, so they did, after the woman wrote down all the rings Margaret pretended to like, and James’s phone number. Margaret knew they would not call James.

  On the way home, they passed a row of houses with the Christmas lights still up. Margaret used to like Christmas, like most happy people. Now, when she saw Christmas decorations, she felt panic because she was reminded of Andrew’s mangled body on the hospital bed, blood and dirt covering his broken teeth. He was hideous. Margaret had the sense he was possessed by a demon. Now, when Margaret felt the cold in winter, she thought of the head-shaped dent Andrew had made in the frosted ground beneath his mother’s balcony. Margaret had told Andrew’s mother she would fill the dent in with dirt; the mother didn’t want to see it. The mother closed the drapes on the sliding glass door to the balcony, and didn’t open them again. Margaret had put her hands in the dent and felt the cold dirt every way she could. She even put her head in the dent, imagined how that would feel, falling from so high up.

  “What’s wrong?” James asked.

  Margaret didn’t answer right away. Sometimes she had trouble forming words. James understood this problem, and was always patient with Margaret, but she could tell that this time, he needed her to answer. He knew she was upset, and he probably needed to know it wasn’t his fault. He was probably worried she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to marry him.

  “I love you,” she said, in an attempt to buy time, try to figure out what was wrong so that she could tell him. She rubbed his leg and smiled. He smiled back.

  “I love you, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t know what’s wrong.” She noticed that she needed to urinate, and dreaded going home, where she’d have to use the bathroom in the cold, haunted, abandoned apartment downstairs before going up to sit idly in front of the space heater like a cat.

  James glanced at her sympathetically, like she was a child he was glad to take care of. He gave her this look often. Margaret had dated bad men in the past, then finally listened to her friends and pretended to value herself and find a respectful partner. Because James was not an asshole, or at least, not anymore, Margaret sometimes took this as license to stop trying and just act like a child. For this, she felt guilty.

  “Margaret, if you don’t want to get engaged right now, that’s okay,” he said. “There’s no rush. The point is that we love each other. We can wait as long as you want.”

  She couldn’t believe how nice he was to her. “No, no,” she said. “I want to. I just have some things to think about. Maybe we can go to another store tomorrow.”

  He put his hand on hers and smiled. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  At home, James went upstairs while Margaret used the restroom in the abandoned apartment. He had offered to go with her because it was scary, but she told him she could handle it on her own. She insisted. James always wanted to be where she was. He looked a little sad to leave her, that she said she didn’t need him.

  It was now dark, and Margaret reluctantly turned on the main light/ceiling fan, which once again began to spin. In her mind she heard the sound of sharpening knives. She imagined sharpening icicles, diamonds. She thought for a moment about the problematic diamond industry, why someone in Africa should die just so some white American woman could have a pretty stone in her ring. She shrugged the thought off, and was surprised how little this idea bothered her. She thought of eating meat, how it secretly gave her a small, sick pleasure knowing an animal had died so she could have a meal. She thought of the slaughter, blood pouring out of a fresh throat. She wanted to hunt, like Andrew had taught her to do. She wanted to kill something. Killing was decisive, final. Andrew had joined the Marines not out of some dumb patriotism, but because he wanted to be a killer without going to prison. And he was a killer. He still sent her text messages regularly, saying nothing, saying, It’s raining hard, saying, I killed a deer. I ate her heart. She took her time responding to the messages, in order to feign disinterest, when in reality she read the messages over and over until she had them memorized and could repeat them to herself in her mind.

  She kept the bathroom door open as she urinated. Again, she noticed that she was bleeding. Men were carriers but they did not suffer. They took something sinister from one woman, and passed it onto the next, maybe even without noticing or caring.

  Margaret heard a deep breathing. She thought of Andrew, how he had wanted to stop breathing. While he was in the hospital, he held his breath, still trying to die. He didn’t know this wouldn’t work. The body knocks itself unconscious, then breathes normally. The body wants to live. Andrew was bad for her, and Margaret hated him. After Andrew moved back in with Margaret after four months in the fancy mental hospital, he never washed the dishes, the laundry, or his own body. He slept until 2 pm, restlessly. He crushed Margaret’s body when he rolled over in the night. Margaret was now committed to hating Andrew the same way successful spouses were committed to loving each other: she worked on the hatred every day. It gave her a small, sick pleasure to know he still loved her.

  The breathing in the apartment got louder and heavier and seemed to radiate from the ceiling fan. The apartment was cold and Margaret could see her own silent breath. “You don’t need to breathe anymore,” Margaret said to the ghost. “You’re dead.” There was a soft laughter. Margaret rolled her eyes. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands. As she looked in the mirror, she again noticed that she had become thinner. She felt something like two hands, one on each of her thighs, rubbing her. She smacked her thighs and the hands stopped. She shivered, watched her breath take shape in the mirror like an icicle melting into a cloud, a diamond spreading into a stain on the air. She left the bathroom, glancing at her ass as she left, just to see what it looked like. Again, the hands rubbed her. She smacked them away. She thought of the time her father asked her if Andrew was good in bed. She told him never to ask that again, and finished cooking lunch for him. It was strange to think Margaret’s father had never met James, and instead died thinking she would mar
ry Andrew. And her mother died knowing nothing of her, not really.

  Margaret entered the main room and saw that the annoying little strings that had dangled from the ceiling fan were gone. Instead there were several bones, like a rib cage had been taken apart and the bones hung up like sick ornaments. The ribs looked phallic and dripped blood onto the floor, making a sound like a leaking faucet and staining the floor red. “Good,” Margaret said. “Something for the shit landlord to clean up.” She spit on the blood stain, and rubbed it in with her foot. She remembered her father telling her not to spit. “Your mother wouldn’t have liked that,” he had said. She wished she could have heard her mother say it herself. It was not her father’s fault that her mother died, but Margaret did not like that she learned how to be a woman from a man.

  The laughter turned to growling, then to choking, gasping. Margaret wondered why it was so difficult for people to commit suicide. Her own body felt so fragile, like she could die at any moment in any number of ways—her veins cut open, her bones crushed by a heavy truck. Why was it so hard for Andrew to take his own life? He killed whole crowds of people just by throwing grenades, like baseballs. Easy. The ghost continued to choke, now in an obviously fake way, as if mocking something.

  The door to the apartment opened. It was James. “The water’s back on, sweetie,” he said, standing in the doorway, not coming inside. He looked beautiful, not like a boyfriend but like a painting, like the nude on the wall. He looked sweet. He loved her, and she would love him in a committed way, working on it daily. She was done with killers. What was so bad about trying to heal?

  Margaret went to James and kissed him. She pulled him inside the apartment and shut the door. She planned to have sex with him in the awful place, but quickly realized she could not. Instead, she said, “I’m bleeding again.”

  James took her hand and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He hugged her and stroked her hair. She had trouble understanding how someone could change so much. He kissed her forehead, then said, “I think you should go to the doctor again.”

  Margaret looked at the ceiling fan, which still dripped blood, although it was obvious James could not see that. She wanted to slap him for not seeing. She wanted to slap him for not being a killer, for being some half-assed version of a bad person, not able to fully commit even to evil.

  “Why should I go to the doctor?” she asked. “It’s your fault. You should have to go to the doctor, not me. But you don’t have to worry about anything.”

  “I know,” he said, lowering his gaze like a dog who’s done something bad. “It’s not fair—”

  “Shut up,” she said. She had to marry James. She couldn’t go back to dating. She didn’t want to risk giving any other men this disease; they could give it to other women. Women like her, who would probably be better off just focusing on their careers rather than trying to find husbands. Husbands had been proven for centuries not to make women happy.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said. “Get outside.”

  “But—”

  Margaret waved her hand for James to leave. “I’ll be right there.” James went out the door.

  She switched the light and the ceiling fan off. The darkness extinguished the dangling bones and dripping blood, silenced the breathing. She locked the door behind her, sealing off that part of the house. She imagined plaster filling in the small gaps below the door, so that not even an ant could get in. She would never go back there. In her new life, she would have neither the need nor the desire for a place like that.

  James stood there in the dark, waiting for her to come closer to him.

  She saw an ant crawling towards the door. She squashed it with her foot.

  THE MIRACULOUS

  PREGNANT VIRGIN

  Once upon a time, a twelve-year old girl was tending her family’s sheep in a field when the sky opened up and an angel descended. The angel was so bright and perfect that he was like a statue carved of gold, except he wasn’t a statue, he moved and spoke like a living thing.

  Mary was terrified. “Don’t be afraid,” said the angel. “I am an angel of the Lord, come to deliver a message.”

  Mary couldn’t imagine what type of message the Lord could possibly have for her. She was just a shepherd’s daughter, not anyone important like a king or a prophet.

  “Mary,” said the angel, “although you have not yet begun to show, you are currently with child.” The angel pointed at Mary’s belly.

  Mary gasped. “But that can’t be!” she said. She was a virgin, after all. Unless someone had raped her while she was asleep, there was no way she was pregnant. Had someone raped her while she was asleep?! She started to panic.

  “There is more than one way to get pregnant,” said the angel.

  “What?” said Mary. “I only ever heard of the one.”

  “It’s the Lord’s baby that grows inside you,” said the angel. “He is the Son of God, and he will be King.”

  “Isn’t the Lord everyone’s Father? But most babies also have a human father?”

  The angel looked slightly annoyed. “Well, yes, but this case is different. There is no human father this time. It’s just the Lord’s baby. He is the Son of God, the messiah, the savior of mankind.”

  “The messiah?” said Mary. “I don’t understand. I am human, but the Lord is not human. How can—”

  “Everything will be fine,” the angel said. “The baby will be human, but he is also a deity. You will birth him, and you will name him Jesus.”

  “Actually, I’ve already picked out names for my future children. The first was to be called William, after my father, whom I love dearly—”

  “You will name him Jesus,” said the angel. He fluttered his wings, then spread them. He seemed to be showing her how big they were, like a wolf baring its teeth. “The Lord is not somebody you want to piss off,” the angel said. “Ever heard the story Noah’s Ark? How about Jonah and the Whale?”

  Mary nodded. “Well, yes. I’ve heard those stories.” It’s just a baby’s name, Mary thought. The angel was making quite a threat referencing the Lord’s past as a mass murderer. Mary could not imagine the Lord would slip back into serial killer mode over something so insignificant as one baby name. Mary thought perhaps the Lord would have a more cosmic view of things. But the angel’s message was clear: Mary must comply, not just with this, but with everything going forward. This whole thing was going to be on the Lord’s terms, that was clear. “Okay. Jesus it is,” Mary said.

  “Good girl,” said the angel. Then he flew back into the sky, where all the angels live with the Lord and some of the people who have died (the good ones).

  “What the fuck?” said Mary. The sun was setting. She put the sheep back in the barn and rushed back into the cottage. Her parents were preparing the evening meal of eggs, bread, and wine.

  “Mother, Father,” Mary said, “I’ve just seen an angel, and he says I’m pregnant.”

  “Take her to the loony bin at once,” said Mary’s father. “Angels don’t appear to females.”

  Mary’s father had already sold her to an older man named Joseph. They were not yet married, but they would be soon, and then Mary really would have to get pregnant.

  “Mary,” said her mother, “Are you pregnant? Oh, dear—Joseph cannot know! He’ll never marry you if he finds out you’ve been ruined by another man—”

  “But the angel said it was the Lord’s baby,” said Mary. “And I haven’t been ruined. Nobody stuck anything up inside me, I promise—”

  “Shh.” Mary’s mother looked her up and down as if examining a cow to determine whether or not it was ready for slaughter. The mother put her hand on Mary’s stomach, closed her eyes, and began to hum. All else was silent for several moments. Then Mary’s mother said, “I’m afraid it’s true. You’re pregnant.”

  “I guess you
’ll have to eat for two!” said Mary’s father. He dished up the food, and gave Mary more eggs than usual.

  “Oh, gross,” said Mary. She did not like the idea of childbirth or even pregnancy. The infant was like a leech growing inside her, sucking up all her blood and the nutrients from the food she ate, and him not even asking first, and her stupid body just giving everything away to the baby for free.

  “So, whose baby is it?” asked Mary’s father.

  “I told you!” said Mary. “The angel said it was the Lord’s baby.”

  “Well,” said the father, “there’s only one way to find out.”

  The next morning, Mary’s parents took her to the doctor, who lived in a cottage on the edge of town. “Our daughter is pregnant,” said the father.

  The doctor grimaced. “But she is not yet married!” he said.

  The father shrugged.

  “It’s the Lord’s baby!” said Mary.

  The doctor raised his eyebrows at the father.

  “I’m a virgin!” said Mary.

  “We need you to check if she’s a virgin,” said the father.

  And so the doctor had Mary lay down on a table. He lifted her dress and poked her with cold tools. She felt strange, painful sensations she’d never felt before. “Ow!” she said. The doctor took the silver tools away.

  “It can’t be,” said the doctor.

  “What?” asked Mary’s mother.

  “The girl is a virgin. The baby is the Lord’s!” The doctor knelt down and bowed to Mary. Then he got up and kissed her hand. “You have been blessed with a great honor, Miss Mary.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” said Mary’s mother, beaming. Her father was beaming too.

  “Hmm,” said Mary. She did sort of wonder why the Lord hadn’t asked her first, before magically impregnating her. Wasn’t the Lord supposed to be perfect? Wouldn’t it have been polite to ask first? This was all rather alarming. And perhaps the Lord could have also spoken to her directly about it, instead of sending his angel employee to deliver a message.