Fairy Circle (2 page)

After about two miles, she reached the business part of town. She passed the Happy Grocer, Gary’s Old Thyme Wieners, which was in a pretty Victorian house with brightly-colored, scalloped edging, passed the post office and Frank’s Diner, and rode around the corner of main street where the brick pharmacy stood. The Black Chicken was in the next little brick building. She pedaled into the parking lot and peeked out from behind her hair. She parked her bike behind a keeling evergreen decorated with faded candy wrappers.

Her lips started to get twitchy as she slunk past the sale signs that hung in the store windows. When she opened the glass entry door, a small man in a big plaid shirt and polyester slacks came charging forward, waving a lottery ticket in her face. She started swatting without thinking, as much as to get the lottery ticket away as to dispel the smell of cabbage and smoky skin.

“
This is it! The winner!” he let her know, then ran to the hood of his big, red Road Master to scratch it.

“
Sweetie, you can’t stand there all day, got the flies to think about. Food in here, you know.” A sallow-skinned woman, fortyish, fake-smiled at Saffron from behind the register counter. Her brown teeth were not included in the ads of the good times you can have with Marlboros. She tilted her Michael-Jackson nose up. Clearly, she was queen of all she surveyed.

Saffron scurried across the threshold and presented herself at the counter like a terrified recruit.

“
What can I getcha?” The woman smacked her gum.

“
Do you need help?” White lights danced into Saffron’s vision and blurred the image of the lady’s cigarette teeth.

The woman reached under the counter, laughing. “Of course I need help! Who doesn’t need help? I gotta kid at home that I need ta feed and keep in Wii games and music downloads. Now he wants a Kindle.” The woman looked Saffron up and down, her lips still pulled in a thin smile.

The woman was at least three inches shorter than Saffron, but Saffron automatically gave her the upper hand by letting her own body shrink into a more pronounced hunch. She tried to fake-smile back at the woman, but just managed to look like she had shut her finger in a door. “I’m looking for a job.”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,
she thought.
Ruh-row dumb ass; me need job.
She longed for the rough, brick outside of the building to rub her forehead on. Then she smiled wider, her bottom lip shaking as the woman smirked at her.

“
Yeah, I get it.” The woman presented Saffron with the one page form she had pulled out from under the counter. “Just fill this out. I’ll give it to tha ownas as soon as they get back. They’ll call ya.”

Saffron’s smile dropped and she stood up straight without realizing it. Her nostrils flared. This queen wasn’t even the owner. Not the boss! Saffron could hardly believe she wasted her best mumbling kiss-ass routine on this woman. She snatched at the application and took it over to the lottery ticket station. There, amongst the shavings of a million ‘winining’ tickets she white-knuckled a half-chewed pen and quickly filled out some of the application, fretting over the other empty rest of it because she had done nothing in her life. Nothing.

Saffron walked the application back to Bea, the woman’s nametag read, and handed the paper over with a grimace she was convinced, this time, was a nice smile. Bea squinted at Saffron, studied her like a moldy roll, and proclaimed, “Ya know, this job’s not easy.” Now she was sounding downright vicious. “It’s not like you’re gonna get hired, then come sit around here all day.”

Saffron had no idea what to do with this information. “O…kaaay.” She jerked her head around to look at the door. “You know, I gotta.…” She sighed heavy. “I’ll be right back.” Then she took off through the door, jumped on her bike, and pedaled like the Wicked Witch of the West was after her all the way home.

Chapter
2

S
everal watchers came that night, always up for a game, just before two in the morning. They settled in the willow on the edge of the woods beyond her front lawn. But, they were too late - Saffron was already dreaming. They hung from the gnarled limbs until they became bored, and then scattered like a murder of crows.

Saffron dreamt of a rough woman who lived in a thatched hut on the shore of a different grey and raging sea.

The woman took care of everything - herself, her home, and some petty livestock. Everything but her own children who, in five years of marriage, had never come into existence. Her coarse, orange hair was windblown, its kinks dull and colorless from lack of attention. The skin on her hands was chapped and scarred from hard seaside labor. Yet, she was strong, and often when she rose with the sun, she possessed a warm light that marked her pretty to those who cared to search.

She was waiting for her husband to return from a holy war, a crusade she had never understood but supported blindly as his passions were her passions. She longed for the day when she could strip him of his mail to cast it to the white and foaming jaws of the sea. She cared not for war and the other vices of men, but thought only of her home, a family, and the sun on her garden, the moon on the water.

She had waited months for his return, then over a year. When two years had passed, she was one day out hanging clothes to dry in the briny air. The glare of the sun reflected off the white, salted grass, setting her eyes in a perpetual wince of which she was hardly aware. The rider was obscured, wavering in the haze and dust of the path as his horse clopped toward her. She wiped her hands on her patched apron, breathed deep the wild-rose-scented air, and bit her bottom lip as she waited to greet the man she finally recognized as her husband’s best mate. She let out a cry at seeing him back, and ran to receive him with hugs and babbled prayers of thanks. After several moments, he held her from him and looked sadly into her eyes. She asked harshly, “Is he dead, then?”

“
No,” the rider replied softly. “If only that he was.”

She gaped at him, and stepped back, unsure of his meaning and stricken by the horrific statement spoken with such bland indifference.

He was brief - her love had found union with another and he would never be coming back. He, the revered friend, came only to tell her out of conscience. He knew she would otherwise wait for that Devil’s whelp - that it would kill her to learn the truth. He hoped she could start anew, and with someone better deserving of her adoration.

He left her crumpled and crying under the dripping laundry. After a time, she sat up, her eyes as vacant as a doll’s as she stared out to sea. She only half heard the crash of the waves, the cry of the gulls, and the wind that furled the clothes on the line. When the sun reached its zenith, she used the washpole to pull herself up and began to walk.

Her head was hot. She
walked toward the pounding surf, to its heavy coolness, wishing it to surround her, to feel it chilling her toes, caressing her calves and crawling up between her legs, to her navel, to cover her breasts. She needed it to lap at her neck and, most exquisitely of all, she needed it to take her head in its arms and muffle the noise in her ears.

When Saffron woke up, there was a copper sting in her nose. It was the tang of snorting water, the taste of the sea, and of her tears. An abrupt sob bubbled up and out of her throat as she lay cloaked in the anguish of the dream. He had deserted her. It was a pain so raw, so real, that even now her shoulders ached from the strain.

Saffron realized she was huddled against her bedroom door. She had tried to escape again. Twice in one month. What was happening? Tears spilled as she crawled back to bed.

***

Later, Saffron heard her mother unbolting her door. Audrey knocked, then came in. When Saffron didn’t answer, she chirped, “Yoohoo. It’s a new day. Rise and shine.”

Saffron wanted to scream. Why was her mother bothering her? Didn’t she have anything else to do? A painting to finish? Derek to play house with? High school “friends” of Saffron’s that she hadn’t spoken to since fourth grade to hire? So those “friends” could come over and wonder why Saffron stayed up in her room all day… Saffron turned over and squeezed her eyes shut.

Audrey frowned at the back of Saffron’s head, “What’s the matter?”

Saffron would have to say something. Her mother could be persistent. She rolled over and yawned. “What do you mean, Mom? I’m fine.” Then she stretched, tussled her red waves with the fingers of both hands, and scratched her scalp. Pretending nonchalance was almost unbearable. But it wasn’t like Audrey to give up in the first few seconds.

And soon enough, Audrey spoke. “Did you look into that job?”

Oh, so Audrey was going to come around from the back, right? A little sneak attack, huh? Yeah, foiling with another subject ought to do the trick. As if Audrey didn’t know Saffron had pedaled out of the yard yesterday. Saffron knew the whole world knew she had pedaled out of her yard yesterday. A thriving metropolis this town was not.

Saffron slapped the bed. “Mom! Yes! Now do we really need to talk about that? I’m waiting to hear back from them.”

Audrey’s eyes flashed, then she used her very low voice. “Saffron, what is wrong?”

As if.
If she ever told her mother what was really going on at night, Saffron knew
her mother would commit her somewhere. If she told her mother the truth, the years and years of truly disgusting truth, Audrey would have her straight on the bus bound for Club Wily Wackos for Wanton Ladies before another full moon grew. Or, maybe her mother would make her go to Sexaholics Anonymous class. Were you a sexaholic when you kept on having those kinds of dreams even when you didn’t want to? Sweat pooled on Saffron’s forehead, ready to trickle. It was already so humid out.

Jesus Christ, she would. She’d make me sit in a roomful of those people.
That would be worse than a hospital. Saffron hated hospitals - the disinfectant stink of them, the wandering inmates of them, and the sickly green-painted concrete blocks of them. Hell no, no hospital. Saffron had never fessed up to Audrey and she wasn’t about to give in this morning. Audrey would know nothing about the dreams, the little bits Saffron had remembered in vivid detail and the murky millions she could have guessed at.

The dreams had started when she was young. Without a single book, without a sneak preview of a stolen dirty movie with friends, without a school bus education, and before she really understood what the farm animals were doing, Saffron Keller knew about sex in detail. She couldn’t fathom how you could learn so much from a dream, about a subject you had never researched or experienced. Saffron also learned about hunger, lust, betrayal, and how love can cripple you. It was all right there at night, played out like a movie.

She told no one. How could she explain such a thing? It was the one subject even Oprah hadn’t covered, and Googling, which had provided help on every other subject known to man, was a big fat zero. Trying to Google for scientific evidence of the origins of your sex dreams always resulted in disturbing side roads. So, she didn’t Google about that anymore. You couldn’t Google ‘Swiss cheese’ without some perv taking you down a disturbing side road.

Over the years, she learned to deal with her dilemma much as most people dealt with theirs. She denied it. She ignored it. Time passed.

Audrey tried again. “You seem so
different
lately. Derek said you demanded the radio be left on all night, and the lights…” She reached for a lock of Saffron’s hair, twirled it around her finger.

Saffron’s face erupted red as she squeaked out, “Well, Mom, you
were up all night too. Should we be concerned?”

Silence. Audrey wouldn’t rise to the bait.

Saffron mumbled, “I want to get up, take a shower…”

After a moment, Saffron felt Audrey move off the mattress, heard the shuffle of her Minnetonkas and the clunk-clicking of her amber bracelets as she walked toward the door. She sighed from the doorway. “Breakfast will be ready soon.”

***

“
Mom?”

“
What?”

“
Why is it so important to you that I go to the school? I mean, why can’t I go to school online? You’ve done online courses and look at you; you’re a pretty smart chick. I’ll get a degree online and you can get off me. Hell, I’ll get three degrees. This is the cyber future. We can even get groceries delivered, along with everything else. No one leaves the house anymore.” Saffron smirked and dug into her blueberry pancakes.

Audrey folded her arms across her misshapen hemp t-shirt. “Saffron…” it was the warning tone.

Still, Saffron pressed on. “I mean, what’s the point of going to
the
college
if you really don’t feel like it. I really don’t feel like it, Mom. I can get my doctorate even, over the Internet. Then I won’t have to work that stupid job. I can do schoolwork all day.” She blinked twice and waited for Audrey to answer.

Audrey manhandled the dish she was drying. “Saffron, I earned some online credits because I’m not afraid to go get them from anywhere. You are terrified of going everywhere, so that’s where you need to go, anywhere
and everywhere,
until you see that it’s okay, you’re not going to get hurt, you’re not going to lose your mind or whatever it is you think is going to happen.”