Let the Dark Flower Blossom (38 page)

I am a very rich man.

Here in my prisonhouse.

On an island of fathers.

A refuge of birds.

Here on my island.

I did not write a book.

I wanted the perfect story.

I stocked my cellar.

I watched Beatrice.

I watched as she ran through the woods.

I saw her from the distance.

And she grew.

And she came to me.

I never wrote my story, no.

I told it again and again. Perfecting it—

To Dr. Lemon.

Infecting him with the sickness of words.

I told him how Pru died, in summer.

And all the knowledge in the world couldn't help her.

I told him.

That I did not pity her. I said that—

My father wanted to build a box.

A box that would neither open nor close.

And would contain memories. I said—

My father had the crazies, and my mother did not pity him.

My sister and I were twins, the same and not the same—

As same as any he & she can be—

We had to be very quiet.

So we invented a game.

A game to pass the hours.

We wrote stories.

Each of us taking one sentence.

Like a twist, and then a turn, down a hallway.

Through a maze.

Leading to some undeniable conclusion.

We built a story.

We wrote together.

Our book.

Waiting for an ending that never came.

I wrote my initials on the page.

I locked the story in the box.

There was one key.

It was my sister's, and I took it from her.

Then it was my key.

I kept it.

I had the box. I had the key.

I had the story. And then—

One day, or—no, wait—

It was night—

Mother and Father died.

And Eloise found the bodies.

She told me what happened, her story. We sat—

Under the apple tree—

And she told me.

I was angry. I was envious.

It was her story.

I wanted her story.

We called our story a game.

To pass the hours in silence.

Can a story be a game?

Salt is gone.

He took with him his girl.

His head full of words.

And my favorite ink pen.

Oh well, let him have it.

I have others.

He took Inj.

Let him have her.

I have others.

I have a sister.

Here comes the tragedy.

Here come the ghosts.

Here come the girls.

Here comes everyone.

I have tragedy.

Let Salt have the words.

I have more.

Let him have the story.

It is not a story.

It is only the space around a story.

It is the grave.

It is not the body.

Snow is falling.

I'll take up the shovel.

I'll begin again.

Sugar-drunk on orange soda and Everclear, on the first night in Virgil's Grove, Eloise in the men's bathroom in my dormitory wrote on the mirror in red lipstick:
BABYLON MUST FALL
!

She always knew just what to say.

And Ro loved her for it.

Love?

Isn't that stupid?

Roman loved Eloise.

He did. And that was the problem.

With kings, with gods—

Love is destruction.

Call it what you will.

The wrecking ball.

An upped jig.

A cooked goose.

The wrack and the screw.

Crash, bang, boom.

A real hullaballoo.

Destruction.

A love story.

The perfect story.

The story is a sickness.

The story is a flower.

The story is the monster.

Don't tell stories.

They spread.

They infect.

They conquer.

They ruin.

Don't tell stories unless you keep a coin for the ferryman.

He exists only for the sake of your journey.

He demands his due.

One day Salt will understand this.

And that will be a terrible day.

Or maybe it will be night.

Who knows what a monster can create.

Once it rises from the table.

And is born into belief.

Salt loved Ro.

Salt believed in Ro.

Ro fed on belief.

Awaiting his own destruction.

The ghosts demand retribution.

Beatrice told me that she could not stop Salt. She could not stop him from reading the story. Salt read my manuscript. In her father's library.

In this room.

He did not read this page.

For it had yet to be written.

He will steal the story; this much is certain—

And the story that he steals from me will be a lie.

It will spring forth like water from a rock.

It will be a story of love and destruction.

A masterpiece.

It will be the story of the life and death of Roman Stone.

He ran ahead through the woods.

I can go on without him now.

I have seen Salt. I have seen his hands.

Like furious little doves.

One night on the Isle of the Father.

Salt lay upon the operating table.

A lump of wax and ash.

A creature composed of stories.

I shaped his face.

I cut his jib.

Hoisted his petard.

I glued his fingers to his hands.

I gave him the words.

And he said them.

Then he broke free—

He rose from the table.

He cried out in a howl.

—for all the things that he wanted.

Like any other monster.

Or a child.

Tell me a story!

I could not give him the machine—

I await the ghosts.

The count is 0 and 2.

And what will I do?

This one goes out to the cheap seats.

Here is—the document.

It is not a story.

When I was young I longed to move the stars to pity.

Now I find the greater heartbreak in a dancing bear.

I cannot stop myself.

From telling it again.

And trying to get it right.

When the telephone rings.

When there is a knock on the door.

I think: Are they coming for me?

Have they found her yet?

Have they found the girl we buried in the woods?

One day they will come for me.

And what will I do?

Oh, I know.

I'll start again.

Each night the doctor forgot the story that I had told him the night before. He forgot that I told him about Father and Mother. He forgot what I told him about Eloise. He forgot that I told him about Pru. He forgot that I told him about the woods.

This was the nature of Dr. Lemon's disease.

He forgot.

And I confessed again.

I remembered.

This was the nature of my punishment.

I could not forget.

I drank plum brandy.

Down to the bottom of the glass.

I told the doctor how I watched his daughter in the blackberry brambles.

How I waited for her.

How small and strange and beautiful she was.

How I watched her.

Year by year.

As the literal became the figurative.

And she collected by the shore her shells and stones.

I told the doctor.

That Eloise found Father and Mother.

In their bed in the moonlight.

I told the doctor—

That my wife destroyed me.

For I came to understand that I did not love her.

I loved her sickness.

That I had known it was there, growing in her.

Even when she did not yet know.

I sensed it gnawing at her.

Destroying her.

I told the doctor.

That Ro and the girl and I started out into the woods together.

In the snow.

The three of us walking in the woods.

We came to the pond.

She tied her skates and went onto the ice.

She was skating in circles on the frozen pond.

Ro and I sat drinking whiskey from his flask.

He called to her.

She skated the loop of an eight.

And back again.

She came back.

She sat with us.

Ro had a silver flask.

He gave her booze.

She drank.

She drank more.

She was taking off the skates.

Untying them, white skates.

Ro talked to her as though she were a child.

He started to tell a story.

It was the story of Pandora.

Who opens a box and unleashes all the woe in the world.

And hope too.

Her cheeks were flushed.

Her mouth drooped slightly.

We were sitting on a fallen tree near the edge of the frozen pond.

She sat between us.

“Is it an old story?” she said.

Her eyes were blue.

“Tell me another,” she said.

He kissed her.

“Tell me another story,” she said.

He held her face in his hands.

“I'm cold,” she said.

He put his arms around her.

He asked her what she wanted to be.

He asked what she wanted to do.

And where did she want to go?

She said, “I want to go to Hollywood.”

He kissed her.

She didn't stop him.

Her mouth was damp.

She rested her head on his shoulder.

She turned just slightly—

She looked at me.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Watching us?” she said.

There was nothing childish about her then.

“Go away,” she said.

“Make him go away,” she said to Ro.

I looked at Ro.

He thought it was funny.

He reached into his coat for his cigarettes.

The girl took off her woolen cap.

She ran a hand through her hair.