Let the Dark Flower Blossom (7 page)

Wren spoke of the cause of her sisters in struggle.

In my bedroom—

Naked, but for her eyeglasses. Adamant, adamantine—

Ranting about the military industrial complex.

She loved peace. She hated hatred.

And she hated Ro. Other girls were taken in. Other girls fell for him, but not Wren. She was certain that he listened to us, his ear to the bedroom wall. He represented the myriad woes of the world. He was a tyrant. He had driven empires into the dust. He was not simply patriarchal; he was
the
patriarchy. It was as though he had risen from the pages of a history book to taunt her. She talked with a sharp fondness of the guillotine.

There was one thing about Ro that did impress Wren. Not a thing, really, to be fair and grammatically accurate; a person: Ro's mother, the first Mrs. Stone, the brainy Swedish pinup who ditched the glitz and glamour of a film career to dig irrigation ditches with
UNICEF
. She gave up caring for her own child to care for the children of the world. Wren called Ro's mother an icon. It was true, no one looked more beautiful in the throes of an
IRA
sympathy hunger strike. Who else had donated her payout for appearing in
Playboy
to the plight of California's migrant grape-pickers? Who but Astrid Stone had made the bandoleer a bold fashion accessory on the Paris catwalks? No one protested with more panache than Ro's mother.

I only met his mother once.

It was that October, in 1979.

The Orioles and Pirates were in the World Series.

Astrid Stone showed up at our apartment. Unexpectedly—for she never announced her travel plans in advance. It was a bright warm autumn day. She was wearing a fur coat. And oversized sunglasses. She came in, looked around our dismal digs. She took off the dark glasses. She took off her fur. She dropped the coat on the floor. She was wearing a leather skirt and black lace blouse with nothing beneath it. She sat on the sofa, crossed and uncrossed her long legs in high black boots.

“Roman,” she said in her glacial Nordic drawl. “Baby, you live like a pig.”

And she lighted a cigarette.

She didn't like being in the States; it made her edgy. She thought that she had been followed to our apartment. There were important people in the world who wanted to see her shut up. That's what she said anyway. In her see-through blouse. With her face an exquisitely feminine version of her son's face. She had come to raise money for an orphanage in El Salvador. She was on her way to New York to roll Ro's father for some dough. Certainly Roman understood that she had to keep her plans secret? She had to stay one step ahead of her enemies.

Ro made Cuban coffee. She drank it black. She held the cup flat on the palm of her left hand, while grasping the handle with her right.

She lowered her voice into a whisper. She asked Roman to go check the street for suspicious strangers. And while Ro excused himself—he actually went outside to look around—I was left alone with the first Mrs. Stone.

She got up and went to the window.

She drew the curtain aside only slightly and peered out.

She sat back on the sofa.

I was sitting across from her.

She looked at me.

“You're the boy who lost his parents,” she said.

“Lost?” I said.

“Not so the right word?” she said.

“Dead?” she said.

“Died, no?” she said.

She set her cup upon the table.

She ran a hand through her hair.

She opened her handbag and found a silver case. She took out a cigarette, offered me one; I declined. She tapped it against the case.

She leaned toward me.

I lighted her cigarette.

She tilted her chin upwards.

Her neck was long and swanlike and white.

She exhaled smoke.

Her eyes narrowed in the smoke.

She told me then how in a church outside Mexico City she had seen a statue of the weeping virgin. She told me that she had seen swarms of locusts descend upon green fields and leave nothing in their wake. She had seen starving children; destruction; war; flood; ruin; and she thought each day would bring the end of the world.

What was I going to do while I waited for the end of the world?

She asked me, “What are you going to do?”

I told her that I was going to write a book.

Smoke spiraled upward in the sunlight.

She laughed.

“When you tell about me,” she said, “don't forget to say how beautiful I was.”

Ro returned reeking of pot to report no nefarious or likewise shady activity along the quiet streets of Virgil's Grove. Astrid Stone was appeased. They spoke for a while, mostly about Ro's father. And then his mother put on her dark glasses and fur coat and left.

ROMEEN BAYBEE
, I typed,
WHY YOU LEEEVE LIKA PEEG
?

Ro dug out from his secret stash of treasures.

A magazine.

He handed the magazine to me.

Open, pages spread.

I looked.

She was beautiful.

I studied English literature. Eloise took courses in linguistics, and Ro was in economics. I scribbled in my notebook. I went on about art. I used words like
truth
and
beauty
. Eloise talked about signs and signifiers. And Ro was fascinated by currency.

Ro told me about his stepmother. And what they had done. He talked about Mary Clare. How goddamn happy he would be if it were just the two of them; how maybe he would do away with the old man, hunh? Why not? It was just an idea. It was just a goof. It wasn't real. How would you do it? he asked. With a gun, with poison? And there I was. Sitting at the kitchen table with my typewriter. Oh, I was thinking about words, words, words. Ro sat beside me at the table. With a knife jamming the bread. Saying how damn sweet the world was. Wasn't it?

“Would that make a good story, do you think?” he asked me.

A story about a boy and his stepmother plotting to kill the old man?

“It's a little cheap, isn't it?” I said.

“The crowds in the Colosseum had a taste for blood,” he said.

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“The world may change,” he said. “But not me.”

And he was pretty damn happy about it.

As he ate his dark bread.

And stared out the window.

“Want to go to the old farmhouse?” he asked me.

“What old farmhouse?” I said.

“Just a place my father keeps,” he said.

He was planning to go over winter break.

“Bring the girl too,” he said. “What the hell.”

“I can't,” I said.

“You can't?” he said.

“Why not?” he said.

He tilted back in his chair.

“Rock, paper, scissors me for it,” he said.

“For what?” I said.

He pulled his chair close to the table.

We hit the table, one, two, three.

I was paper.

He was rock.

He lost.

“Is Eloise going?” I asked.

He lighted a cigarette.

Then tipped back in his chair.

And smoked.

While I wrote.

In silence for a while.

Then he said, “So it's yes?”

I said, yes.

“You really can't help yourself, can you?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“From stealing lines,” he said.

I told him that I'd rather be a liar than a thief.

He told me to shut the fuck up.

The farmhouse.

The snow.

The winter.

New Year's, 1980.

Ro, Eloise, Wren, and I.

The four of us sat around the fire.

Wren wanted a ghost story.

Ro said that he knew one so terrible—

That the telling of it might curse him forever.

We drank champagne.

And felt a certain terror.

Even with the crackle of wood in the fire.

At each sudden spark or errant burst of flame.

“Should I go on?” said Ro.

Ro began.

Wren sat rapt.

Eloise was eating an orange.