Rose Madder

“One for the vixen,” she said, and threw it into the bowl. At once the water bloomed a sinister rose madder red. It looked like the residue of a sliced wrist or a cut throat. The smell that drifted up to her wasn’t blood, however; it was the bitter, slightly metallic aroma of the stream behind the Temple of the Bull. It was so strong it made her eyes water. She plucked the second seed off the cloth and held it in front of her eyes.

“One for Dorcas,” she said, and threw it into the bowl. The color deepened-it was now not the color of blood but of clots-and the smell was so strong that tears went rolling down her cheeks. Her eyes were as red as the eyes of a woman elbow-deep in chopped onions. She plucked the last seed off the cloth and held it in front of her eyes.

“And one for me,” she said.

“One for Rosie.” But when she tried to throw this one into the bowl, her fingers wouldn’t let go of it. She tried again, with the same result. Instead, the voice of the madwoman filled her mind, and it spoke with a persuasive sanity: Remember the tree. Remember the tree, little Rosie. Remember-“The tree,” Rosie murmured. “remember the tree, yes, got that, but what tree? And what should I do? What in God’s name should I do?” I don’t know, Practical-Sensible answered, but whatever you do, you better do it fast. Bill could come back any minute. Any second. She flushed the John, watching as the reddish-purple liquid was replaced by clear water. Then she went back to the bed, sat on it, and stared at the last seed lying on the stained cotton cloth. From the seed she looked to Norman’s ring. Then she looked back at the seed. Why can’t I throw this damned thing away? she asked herself. Never mind the goddam tree, just tell me why in God’s name I can’t throw this last seed from it away, and be done with it. No answer came. What did was the excited pop and burble of an approaching motorcycle, drifting in through the open window. She already recognized the sound of Bill’s Harley. Quickly, asking no more questions of herself, Rosie put the ring in the soft blue swatch of cloth along with the seed. Then she refolded it, hurried across to the bureau, and took her bag off the top. It was scuffed and dowdy, this bag, but it meant a lot to her-it was the one she had brought out of Egypt with her that spring. She opened it and put the little blue packet inside, stuffing it all the way to the bottom, where it would lie even more securely hidden than the ceramic bottle in the medicine cabinet. With that done, she went over to the open window and began breathing in great lungfuls of fresh air. When Bill came in with a fat Sunday paper and an outrageous number of bagels stuffed into a paper bag, Rosie turned to him with a brilliant smile.

“What kept you?” she asked, and thought to herself: What a fox you are, little Rosie. What a f-The smile on his face, the answer to hers, suddenly faltered.

“Rosie? Are you all right?” Her smile brightened again.

“Fine. I guess a goose just walked over my grave.” Except it hadn’t been a goose.

May I give you one piece of advice before I send you back? Rose Madder had asked, and late that afternoon, after Lieutenant Hale had brought them the shocking news about A

“It looks so pretty this way!” she said.

“Yes, I guess it does,” Rosie replied, “but I hate it anyway.” So the beautician did her thing, and the surprised protests she expected from Bill when she saw him that evening did not come.

“Your hair’s shorter, but otherwise you look the way you did when you first came into the shop,” he said.

“I think I like that.” She hugged him.

“Good.”

“Want Chinese for supper?”

“Only if you promise to stay over again.”

“All promises should be so easy to keep,” he said, smiling.

Monday’s headline: ROGUE cop SPOTTED IN WISCONSIN Tuesday’s headline: POLICE MUM ON KILLER COP DANIELS Wednesday’s headline: ANNA STEVENSON CREMATED; 2,000 IN SILENT MEMORIAL MARCH Thursday’s headline: DANIELS MAY BE DEAD BY OWN HAND, INSIDERS SPECULATE On Friday, Norman moved to page two. By the following Friday, he was gone.

Shortly after July 4th, Robbie Lefferts put Rosie to work reading a novel about as far from the works of

“Richard Racine” as it was possible to get: A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. It was the story of an Iowa farm family, except that wasn’t what it really was; Rosie had been costume designer in the high-school drama society for three years, and although she had never trod a single step in front of the footlights, she still recognized Shakespeare’s mad king when she encountered him. Smiley had put Lear in biballs, but crazy is still crazy. She had also turned him into a creature that reminded Rosie fearfully of Norman. On the day she finished the book ('Your best job so far,” Rhoda told her, “and one of the best readings I’ve ever heard'), Rosie went back to her room and took the old frameless oil painting out of the closet where it had been ever since the night of Norman’s… well, disappearance. It was the first time she had looked at it since that night. What she saw didn’t surprise her that much. It was daylight in the picture again. The hillside was the same, overgrown and rather ragged, and the temple down below was the same (or about the same; Rosie had a sense that the temple’s queerly skewed perspective had somehow changed, become normal), and the women were still gone. Rosie had an idea that Dorcas had taken the madwoman to see her baby one last time… and then Rose Madder would be going on alone, to whatever place creatures like her went when the hour of their deaths had at last rolled around. She took the picture down the hall to the incinerator chute, holding it carefully by the sides as she had held it before-holding it as if she feared her hand would slide right through into that other world, if she should be careless. In truth, she did fear something like that. At the incinerator shaft she paused again, looking fixedly one last time at the picture which had called to her from its dusty pawnshop shelf, called with a tongueless, imperative voice that could have belonged to Rose Madder herself. And probably did, Rosie thought. She lifted one hand toward the door of the incinerator chute, then paused, her eye caught by something she’d missed before: two shapes in the tall grass a little way down the hill. She ran a finger lightly over the painted surface of those shapes, frowning, trying to think what they might be. After a few moments it came to her. The little blob of clover-pink was her sweater. The black blob beside it was the jacket Bill had loaned her for the motorcycle ride out Route 27 that day. She didn’t care about the sweater, it was just a cheap Orion thing, but she was sorry about the jacket. It wasn’t new, but there had been good years left in it, just the same. Besides, she liked to return the things people loaned her. She had even used Norman’s bank card just that once. She looked at the painting, then sighed. No sense keeping it; she would be leaving the little room A