Rose Madder

“Yes, I think so,” Rosie said.

“It was pretty confusing, but that must be about how it happened.”

“But here’s the part I don’t get. You guys hid in the closet-”

“Yes-”

“-and in comes Norman like Freddy Jason or whatever his name is in those horror pictures-”

“Well, not exactly like-”

“-and he charges around like a bull in the old china shop, stopping in the bathroom long enough to shoot a couple holes in the shower curtain… and then he charges out again. Is that what you’re telling me he did?”

“That’s what happened,” she said.

“Naturally, we didn’t see him charging around, because we were in the closet, but we heard it.”

“This crazy, sick excuse for a cop goes through hell to find you, gets pissed on, gets his nose pretty much demolished, murders two cops, and then… what? Kills a shower curtain and runs? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes.” There was no sense in saying more, she saw. He didn’t suspect her of anything illegal-he’d’ve been cutting her a lot more slack, at least to start with, if he did-but if she tried to amplify her simple agreement, he might go on with his terrier-yapping all night, and it was already giving her a headache. Hale looked at Bill.

“Is that how you remember it?” Bill shook his head.

“I don’t remember it,” he said.

“The last thing I’m clear on is pulling up on my Harley in front of that police-car. Lots of fog. And after that, it’s all fog.” Hale tossed his hands up in disgust. Rose took Bill’s hand, put it on her thigh, covered it with both of her own, and smiled sweetly up at him.

“That’s okay,” she said.

“I’m sure it will all come back to you in time.”

Bill promised her he would stay. He kept his word-and fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow borrowed from the little sofa. It didn’t surprise Rosie. She lay down beside him on the narrow bed, watching the fog billow past the streetlight outside, and waited for her eyelids to grow heavy. When they didn’t, she got up, went into the closet, turned on the light, and sat crosslegged in front of the picture. Silent moonlight informed it. The temple was a pallid sepulchre. The carrion-birds circled overhead. Will they dine on Norman’s flesh tomorrow, when the sun comes up? she wondered. She didn’t think so. Rose Madder had put Norman in a place where birds never went. She looked at the painting a moment or two longer, then reached out to it, feeling the frozen brush-strokes with her fingers. The touch reassured her. She turned off the light and went back to bed. This time sleep came quickly.

She woke up-and woke Bill up-early on the first day of her life without Norman. She was shrieking. I repay! I repay! Oh God her eyes! Her black eyes!”

“Rosie,” he said, shaking her shoulder.

“Rosie!” She looked at him, blankly at first, her face wet with sweat and her nightgown drenched with it, the cotton clinging to the hollows and curves of her body.

“Bill?” He nodded.

“You bet it is. You’re okay. We both are.” She shuddered and clung to him. Comfort quickly turned to something else. She lay beneath him, right hand locked around her left wrist behind his neck, and as he entered her (she had never experienced such gentleness or felt such confidence with Norman), her eyes went to her jeans, lying close by on the floor. The ceramic bottle was still in the watch-pocket, and she judged there were at least three drops of that bitterly attractive water left in it-maybe more. I’ll take it, she thought, just before her ability to think coherently ceased. I’ll take it, of course I will, I’ll forget, and that’ll be for the best-who needs dreams like these? But there was a deep part of her-much deeper than her old girlfriend Practical-Sensible-that knew the answer to that: she needed dreams like those, that was who. She did. And although she’d keep the bottle and what was inside it, she wouldn’t keep it for herself. Because she who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it. She looked up at Bill. He was looking down at her, his eyes wide and hazy with pleasure. His, she found, was hers, and she let herself go where he was taking her, and they stayed where they were for quite some time, brave sailors voyaging in the little ship of her bed.

Around midmorning, Bill ventured out to get bagels and the Sunday paper. Rosie showered, dressed, then sat on the edge of the bed in her bare feet. She could smell their separate scents and also the one they made together. She thought she had never smelled anything nicer. Best of all? Easy. No spot of blood on the top sheet. No blood anywhere. Her jeans had migrated under the bed. She hooked them out with her toes, then retrieved the little bottle from the watch-pocket. She took the jeans into the bathroom, where she kept a plastic clothes basket behind the door. The bottle would go into the medicine cabinet, at least for the time being, where it could hide very easily behind her bottle of Motrin. She fished in the other pockets of the jeans before tossing them in the dirty clothes, a housewifely habit so old she was completely unaware she was doing it… until her fingers closed on something deep in the more frequently used left front pocket. She brought it out, held it up, then shivered as Rose Madder spoke inside of her head. A souvenir… do with it as you will. It was Norman’s Police Academy ring. She slipped it over her thumb, turning it this way and that, letting the light from the frosted glass of the bathroom window shine off the words Service, Loyalty, Community. She shivered again, and for a moment or two she fully expected Norman to coalesce around this baleful talisman. Half a minute later, with Dorcas’s bottle safely stowed in the medicine cabinet, she hurried back to the rumpled bed, this time not smelling the fragrance of man and woman that still lingered there. It was the nighttable she was thinking about and looking at. It had a drawer. She would put the ring in there for now. Later she would think what to do with it; for now all she wanted was to get it out of sight. It wouldn’t be safe to leave it out, that was for sure. Lieutenant Hale was likely to drop in later, armed with a few new questions and a lot of old ones, and it wouldn’t do for him to see Norman’s Police Academy ring. It wouldn’t do at all. She opened the drawer, reached forward to drop the ring in… and then her hand froze. There was something else in the drawer already. A scrap of blue cloth, carefully folded over to make a packet. Rose madder stains were scattered across it; they looked to her like drops of half-dried blood.

“Oh my God,” Rosie whispered.

“The seeds!” She took out the packet that was once part of a cheap cotton nightgown, sat on the bed (her knees suddenly felt too weak to hold her), and laid the packet on her lap. In her mind she heard Dorcas telling her not to taste the fruit, or to even put the hand which touched the seeds into her mouth. A pomegranate tree, she had called it, but Rosie didn’t think that was what it was. She unfolded the sides of the little packet and looked down at the seeds. Her heart was ru