Rose Madder

X. ROSIE REAL

Bill and the black woman-Dorcas, her name was Dorcas, not Wendy after all-were no longer on the narrow path behind the temple, and Rosie’s clothes were gone, too. This raised no concern in her mind. She merely trudged around the building, looked up the hill, saw them standing beside the pony-trap, and started toward them. Bill came to meet her, his pale, distracted face full of concern.

“Rosie? All right?”

“Fine,” she said, and put her face against his chest. As his arms went around her, she wondered how much of the human race understood about hugging-how good it was, and how a person could want to do it for hours on end. She supposed some did understand, but doubted that they were in the majority. To fully understand about hugging, maybe you had to have missed a lot of it. They walked up to where Dorcas stood, stroking the pony’s white-streaked nose. The pony raised its head and looked at Rosie sleepily.

“Where’s…” Rosie began, then stopped. Caroline, she’d almost said, Where’s Caroline?

“Where’s the baby?”

Then, boldly:

“Our baby?”

Dorcas smiled.

“Safe. In a safe place, don’t you fret that, Miss Rosie. Your clothes’re “round to the back of the cart. Go on and change, if you like. You be glad to get out of that thing you wearin now, I bet.”

“That’s a bet you’d win,” Rosie said, and went around. She felt an indescribable sense of relief when the zat was off her skin. As she was zipping her jeans, she remembered something Rose Madder had told her.

“Your mistress says you have something for me.”

“Oh!” Dorcas sounded startled.

“Oh, my! If I went n forgot that, she’d rip the skin right off me!” Rosie picked up her blouse, and when she pulled it down over her head, Dorcas was holding something out to her. Rosie took it and held it up curiously, tilting it this way and that. It was a cunningly made little ceramic bottle, not much bigger than an eyedropper. Its mouth had been sealed with a tiny sliver of cork. Dorcas looked around, saw Bill standing some distance away, looking dreamily down the hill at the ruins of the temple, and seemed satisfied. When she turned back to Rosie, she spoke in a voice which was low but emphatic.

“One drop. For him. After.” Rosie nodded as if she knew exactly what Dorcas was talking about. It was simpler that way. There were questions she could ask, perhaps should ask, but her mind felt too tired to frame them.

“I could have give you less, only he may need another drop later on. But have a care, girl. This is dangerous stuff!” As if anything in this world is safe, Rosie thought.

“Tuck it away, now,” Dorcas said, watching as Rosie slipped the tiny bottle into the watch-pocket of her jeans.

“And mind you keep quiet about it to him.” She jerked her head in Bill’s direction, then looked back at Rosie, her dark face set and grim. Her eyes looked momentarily pupilless in the darkness, like the eyes of a Greek statue.

“You know why, too, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rosie said.

“This is woman’s business.” Dorcas nodded.

“That’s right, that’s just what it is.”

“Woman’s business,” Rosie repeated, and in her mind she heard Rose Madder say Remember the tree. She closed her eyes.

The three of them sat at the top of the hill for some unknown length of time, Bill and Rosie together with their arms around each other’s waist, Dorcas a little off to one side, near to where the pony still grazed sleepily. The pony looked up at the black woman every now and again, as if curious about why so many people were still up at this unaccustomed hour, but Dorcas took no notice, only sat with her arms clasped around her knees, looking wistfully up at the latening moon. To Rosie she looked like a woman mentally counting the choices of a lifetime and discovering that the wrong ones outnumbered the right ones… and not by only a few, either. Bill opened his mouth to speak on several occasions, and Rosie looked at him encouragingly, but each time he closed it again without saying a word. Just as the moon snagged in the trees to the left of the ruined temple, the pony raised its head again, and this time it gave voice to a low, pleased whinny. Rosie looked down the hill and saw Rose Madder coming. Strong, shapely thighs flashed in the pallid light of the fading moon. Her plaited hair swung from side to side like the pendulum in a grandfather clock. Dorcas gave a little grunt of satisfaction and got to her feet. Rosie herself felt a complex mixture of apprehension and anticipation. She put one hand on Bill’s forearm and gazed at him earnestly. “don’t look at her,” she said.

“No,” Dorcas agreed, “and don’t ask no questions, Billy, even if she invites you to.” He looked uncertainly from Dorcas to Rosie, then back to Dorcas again.

“Why not? Who is she, anyway? The Queen of the May?” “she’s queen of whatever she wants to be queen of,” Dorcas said, “and you better remember it. Don’t look at her, and don’t do anything to invite her temper. I can’t say more'n that; there’s no time. Put your hands in your lap, little man, and look at them. Don’t you take your eyes off them.”

“But-”

“If you look at her, you’ll go mad,” Rosie said simply. She looked at Dorcas, who nodded.

“It is a dream, isn’t it?” Bill asked.

“I mean… I’m not dead, am I? Because if this is the afterlife, I think I’d just as soon skip it.” He looked beyond the approaching woman and shivered.

“Too noisy. Too much screaming.”

“It’s a dream,” Rosie agreed. Rose Madder was very close now, a slim straight figure walking through jackstraws of light and shadow. The latter turned her dangerous face into the mask of a cat, or perhaps a fox.

“It’s a dream where you have to do exactly as we say.”

“Rosie and Dorcas Says instead of Simon Says.”

“Yep. And Dorcas Says put your hands in your lap and look at them until one of us tells you it’s all right to stop.”

“May I?” he asked, giving her a sly up-from-under-the-lids glance that she thought was really a look of dazed perplexity.

“Yes,” Rosie said desperately.

“Yes-you-may, just for God’s sake keep your eyes off her!” He folded his fingers together and dropped his eyes obediently. Now Rosie could hear the whicker of approaching footsteps, the silky sound of grass slipping across skin. She dropped her own eyes. A moment later she saw a pair of bare moon-silvery legs come to a stop before her. There was a long silence, broken only by the calling of some insomniac bird in the far distance. Rosie shifted her eyes to the right and saw Bill sitting perfectly still beside her, looking at his folded hands as assiduously as a Zen student who has been placed next to the master at morning devotions. At last, shyly, without looking up, she said: “dorcas gave me what you wanted me to have. It’s in my pocket.”

“Good,” that sweet, slightly husky voice answered.

“That’s good, Rosie Real.” A mottled hand floated into her field of vision, and something dropped into Rosie’s lap. It flashed a single glint of gold in the pale late light.

“For you,” Rose Madder said.

“A souvenir, if you like. Do with it as you will.” Rosie plucked it out of her lap and looked at it wonderingly. The words on it-Service, Loyalty, Community-made a triangle around the ringstone, which was a circle of obsidian. This was now marked by one bright spot of scarlet. It turned the stone into a baleful watching eye. The silence spun out, and there was an expectant quality to it. Does she want to be thanked? Rosie wondered. She wouldn’t do that… but she would tell the truth of her feelings.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” she said, softly and unemphatically.

“It’s a relief.”

“Of course you’re glad and of course it is. You shall go now, back to your Rosie Real world, with this beast. He’s a good one, I judge.” A hint of something-Rosie would not let herself believe it could be lust-crept into the voice of the other.

“Good hocks. Good flanks.” A pause.

“Fine loins.” Another pause, and then one of her mottled hands came down and caressed Bill’s tumbled, sweaty hair. He drew in a breath at her touch, but did not look up.

“A good beast. Protect him and he’ll protect you.” Rosie looked up then. She was terrified of what she might see, but nevertheless unable to stop herself. “don’t you call him a beast again,” she said in a voice that shook with fury.

“And get your diseased hand off him.” She saw Dorcas wince in horror, but saw it only in the corner of her eye. The bulk of her attention was focused on Rose Madder. What had she expected from that face? Now that she was looking at it in the waning moonlight, she couldn’t exactly say. Medusa, perhaps. A Gorgon. The woman before her was not that. Once (and not so long ago, either, Rosie thought) her face had been one of extraordinary beauty, perhaps a face to rival Helen of Troy’s. Now her features were haggard and beginning to blur. One of those dark patches had overspread her left cheek and brushed across her brow like the underwing of a starling. The hot eye glittering out of that shadow seemed both furious and melancholy. It wasn’t the face Norman had seen, that much she knew, but she could see that face lurking beneath-in a way it was as if she had put this one on for Rosie’s benefit, like makeup-and it made her feel cold and ill. Underneath the beauty was madness… but not just madness. Rosie thought: It’s a kind of rabies-she’s being eaten up with it, all her shapes and magics and glamours trembling at the outer edge of her control now, soon it’s all going to crumble, and if I look away from her now, she’s apt to fall on me and do whatever she did to Norman. She might regret it later, but that wouldn’t help me, would it? Rose Madder reached down again, and this time it was Rosie’s head she touched-first her brow, then her hair, which had had a long day and was now coming loose from its plait.

“You’re brave, Rosie. You’ve fought well for your… your friend. You’re courageous, and you have a good heart. But may I give you one piece of advice before I send you back?” She smiled, perhaps in an effort to be engaging, but Rosie’s heart stopped momentarily before skittering madly onward. When Rose Madder’s lips drew back, disclosing a hole in her face that was nothing at all like a mouth, she no longer looked even remotely human. Her mouth was the maw of a spider, something made for eating insects which weren’t even dead, but only stung into insensibility.

“Of course.” Rosie’s lips felt numb and distant. The mottled hand stroked smoothly along her temple. The spider’s mouth grinned. The eyes glittered.

“Wash the dye out of your hair,” Rose Madder whispered.

“You weren’t meant to be a blonde.” Their eyes met and held. Rosie discovered she couldn’t drop hers; they were locked on the other woman’s face. At one corner of her vision she saw Bill continuing to look grimly down at his hands. His cheeks and brow glimmered with sweat. It was Rose Madder who looked away. “dorcas.”

“Ma’am?”

“The baby-?”

“Be ready when you are.”

“Good,” said Rose Madder.

“I’m eager to see her, and it’s time we went along. Time you went along, too, Rosie Real. You and your man. I can call him that, you see. Your man, your man. But before you go…” Rose Madder held her arms out. Slowly, feeling almost hypnotized, Rosie got to her feet and entered the offered embrace. The dark patches growing in Rose Madder’s flesh were hot and fevery-Rosie fancied she could almost feel them squirming against her own skin. Otherwise, the woman in the chiton-in the zat-was as cold as a corpse. But Rosie was no longer afraid. Rose Madder kissed her cheek, high up toward the jaw, and whispered, “I love you, little Rosie. I wish we’d met at a better time, when you might have seen me in a better light, but we have done as well as we could. We have been well-met. Just remember the tree.”

“What tree?” Rosie asked frantically.

“What tree?” But Rose Madder shook her head with inarguable finality and stepped back, breaking their embrace. Rosie took one last look into that uneasy, demented face, and thought again of the vixen and her cubs.

“Am I you?” she whispered.

“Tell me the truth-am I you?” Rose Madder smiled. It was just a small smile, but for a moment Rosie saw a monster glimmering in it, and she shuddered.

“Never mind, little Rosie. I’m too old and sick to deal with such questions. Philosophy is the province of the well. If you remember the tree, it will never matter, anyway.”

“I don’t understand-” “shhh!” She put a finger to her lips.

“Turn around, Rosie. Turn around and see me no more. The play has ended.” Rosie turned, bent, put her hands over Bill’s hands (they were still clasped, his fingers a tense, woven knot between his thighs), and pulled him to his feet. Once more the easel was gone, and the picture which had been on it-her apartment at night, indifferently rendered in muddy oils-had grown to enormous size. Once more it wasn’t really a picture at all, but a window. Rosie started toward it, intent on nothing but getting through it and leaving the mysteries of this world behind for good. Bill stopped her with a tug on the wrist. He turned back to Rose Madder, and spoke without allowing his eyes to rise any higher than her breasts.

“Thank you for helping us,” he said.

“You’re very welcome,” Rose Madder said composedly. “repay me by treating her well.” I repay, Rosie thought, and shuddered again.

“Come on,” she said, tugging Bill’s hand.

“Please, let’s go.” He lingered a moment longer, though.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’ll treat her well. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happens to people who don’t. Better than I want, maybe.”

“It’s such a pretty man,” Rose Madder said thoughtfully, and then her tone changed-it became distraught, almost distracted.

“Take him while you still can, Rosie Real! While you still can!”

“Go on!” Dorcas cried.

“You two get out of here right now!”

“But give me what’s mine before you go!” Rose Madder screamed. Her voice was squealing and unearthly.

“Give it to me, you bitch!” Something-not an arm, something too thin and bristly to be an arm-flailed in the moonlight and slid along the madly shrinking flesh of Rosie McClendon’s forearm. With a scream of her own, Rosie pulled the gold armlet off and flung it at the feet of the looming, writhing shape before her. She was aware of Dorcas throwing her arms around that shape, trying to restrain it, and Rosie waited to see no more. She seized Bill by the arm and yanked him through the window-sized painting.

There was no sensation of tripping, but she fell rather than walked out of the painting, just the same. So did Bill. They landed on the closet floor side by side in a long, trapezoidal patch of moonlight. Bill rapped his head against the side of the door, hard enough to hurt, by the sound, but he seemed unaware of it.

“That was no dream,” he said.

“Jesus, we were in the picture! The one you bought on the day I met you!”

“No,” she said calmly.

“Not at all.” Around them, the moonlight began to simultaneously brighten and contract. At the same time it lost its linear shape and quickly became circular. It was as if a door were slowly irising closed behind them. Rosie felt an urge to turn and see what was happening, but she resisted it. And when Bill started to turn his head, she placed her palms gently against his cheeks and turned his face back to hers. “don’t,” she said.

“What good would it do? Whatever happened is over now.”

“But-” The light had contracted to a blindingly bright spotlight around them now, and Rosie had the crazy idea that if Bill took her in his arms and danced her across the room, that bright beam of light would follow them.

“Never mind,” she said.

“Never mind any of it. Just let it go-”

“But where’s Norman, Rosie?”

“Gone,” she said, and then, as an almost comic afterthought:

“My sweater and the jacket you loaned me, too. The sweater wasn’t much, but I’m sorry about the jacket.”

“Hey,” he said, with a kind of numb insouciance, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” The pinspot shrank to a cold and furiously blazing matchhead of light, then to a needlepoint, and then it was gone, leaving just a white dot of afterimage floating in front of her eyes. She looked back into the closet. The picture was exactly where she had put it following her first trip to the world inside it, only it had changed again. Now it showed only the hilltop and the temple below by the last rays of the waning moon. The stillness of this scene-and the absence of any human figure-made it look more classical than ever to Rosie.

“Christ,” Bill said. He was rubbing his swollen throat.

“What happened, Rosie? I just can’t figure out what happened.'” Not too much time could have passed; down the hall, the tenant Norman had shot was still screaming his head off.

“I ought to go see if I can help that guy,” Bill said, struggling to his feet.

“Will you call an ambulance? And the cops?”

“Yes. I imagine they’re both on the way already, but I’ll make the calls.” He went to the door, then looked back doubtfully, still massaging his throat.

“What’ll you tell the police, Rosie?” She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “dunno… but I’ll think of something. These days invention on short notice is my strong suit. Go on, now. Do your thing.”

“I love you, Rosie. That’s the only thing I’m sure of anymore.” He went before she could reply. She followed a step or two after him, then stopped. From down the hall she could now see a hesitant, bobbing light that had to be a candle. Someone said:

“Holy cow! Is he shot?” Bill’s murmured reply was lost in another howl from the injured man. Injured, yes, but probably not too badly. Not if he could produce a noise level that high. Unkind, she told herself, picking up the handset of her new telephone and punching 911. Perhaps it was, but it might also be simple realism. Rosie didn’t think it mattered either way. She’d started to see the world in a new perspective, she supposed, and her thought about the yelling man down the hall was just one sign of that new perspective at work.

“It doesn’t matter as long as I remember the tree,” she said, without even being aware that she had spoken. The phone on the other end of her call was picked up after a single ring.

“Hello, 911, this call is being recorded.”

“Yes, I’m sure. My name is Rosie McClendon, and my residence is 897 Trenton Street, second floor. My upstairs neighbor needs an ambulance.”

“Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of his-” She could, she most certainly could, but something else struck her then, something she hadn’t understood before but did now, something that needed doing right this second. She dropped the phone back into its cradle and slipped the first two fingers of her right hand into the watch-pocket of her jeans. That little pocket was sometimes convenient, but it was irritating, too-just one more visible sign of the world’s half-conscious prejudice against southpaws like her. It was a world made by and for righthanders, as a general rule, and full of similar little inconveniences. But that was all right; if you were a lefty, you just learned to cope, that was all. And it could be done, Rosie thought. As that old Bob Dylan song about Highway 61 said, oh yes, it could be very easily done. She tweezed out the tiny ceramic bottle Dorcas had given her, looked at it fixedly for two or three seconds, then cocked her head to listen out the door. Someone else had joined the group at the end of the hall, and the man who had been shot (at least Rosie assumed it was he) was speaking to them in a gaspy, weepy little voice. And in the distance, Rosie could hear sirens coming this way. She went into the kitchenette area and opened her tiny refrigerator. Inside was a package of bologna with three or four slices left, a quart of milk, two cartons of plain yogurt, a pint of juice, and three bottles of Pepsi. She took one of these latter, twisted off the cap, and stood it on the counter. She snatched another quick look over her shoulder, half-expecting to see Bill in the doorway (What are you doing? he would ask. What are you mixing up there?). The doorway was empty, however, and she could hear him at the end of the hallway, speaking in the calm, considering voice she had already come to love. Using her nails, she pulled the sliver of cork from the mouth of the tiny bottle. Then she held it up, wafting it back and forth under her nostrils like a woman smelling a bottle of perfume. What she smelled was not perfume, but she knew the scent-bitter, metallic, but oddly attractive, just the same-at once. The little bottle contained water from the stream which ran behind the Temple of the Bull. Dorcas: One drop. For him. After. Yes, only one; more would be dangerous, but one might be enough. All the questions and all the memories-the moonlight, Norman’s terrible shrieks of pain and horror, the woman he had been forbidden to look at-would be gone. So would her fear that those memories might eat away at his sanity and their budding relationship like corroding acid. That might turn out to be a specious worry-the human mind was tougher and more adaptable than most people would ever believe, if fourteen years with Norman had taught her nothing else it had taught her that, but was it a chance she wanted to take? Was it, when things might just as easily go the other way? Which was more dangerous, his memories or this liquid amnesia? Have a care, girl. This is dangerous stuff! Rosie’s eyes drifted from the tiny ceramic bottle to the sink drain, and then, slowly, back to the bottle again. Rose Madder: A good beast. Protect him and he’ll protect you. Rosie decided that the terminology of that last might be contemptuous and wrong, but the idea was right. Slowly, carefully, she tilted the ceramic bottle over the neck of the Pepsi-Cola bottle, and let a single drop fall from the one to the other. Plink. Now dump the rest down the sink, quick. She started to, then remembered the rest of what Dorcas had said: I could have give you less, only he may need another drop later on. Yes, and what about me? she asked herself, driving the minuscule cork back into the neck of the bottle and returning it to that inconvenient watch-pocket. What about me? Will I need a drop or two later on, to keep me from going nuts? She didn’t think she would. And besides…

“Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat the bastard,” she muttered. She didn’t know who had said that, but she knew it was too plausible to ignore. She hurried back to the phone, holding the doctored Pepsi in one hand. She punched 911 again, and got the same operator with the same opening gambit: watch yourself, lady, this call is being recorded.

“It’s Rosie McClendon again,” she said.

“We got cut off.” She took a calculated pause, then laughed nervously.

“Oh hell, that’s not exactly true. I got excited and pulled the phone jack out of the wall. Things are a little crazy here right now.”

“Yes, ma’am. An ambulance has been dispatched to 897 Trenton, as per request Rose McClendon. We have a report from the same address of shots fired, ma’am, is your report a gunshot wound?”

“Yes, I think so.” “do you want me to connect you with a police officer?”

“I want to speak to Lieutenant Hale. He’s a detective, so I guess I want DET-DIV, or whatever you call it here.” There was a pause, and when the 911 operator spoke again, he sounded a little less like a machine.

“Yes, ma’am, Detective Division is what we call it-DET-DIV. I’ll put you through.”

“Thanks. Do you want my phone number, or do you trap calls?” Definite surprise this time.

“I’ve got your number, ma’am.”

“I thought you did.”

“Hold on, I’m transferring you.” As she waited, she picked up the bottle of Pepsi and wafted it under her nose, as she had the other, much tinier, bottle. She thought she could smell just the slightest tang of bitterness… but perhaps that was only her imagination. Not that it mattered. Either he’d drink it or he wouldn’t. Ka, she thought, and then, What? Before she could go any further with that, the phone was picked up. “detective Division, Sergeant Williams.” She gave him Hale’s name and was put on hold. Outside her room and down the hallway, the murmuring and the groaning replies continued. The sirens were much closer now.

“Hello, Hale!” a voice barked suddenly into her ear. It didn’t sound at all like the laid-back, thoughtful man she had met earlier.

“Is that you, Ms McClendon?”

“Yes-”

“Are you all right?” Still barking, and now he reminded her of all the cops who’d ever sat in their rec room with their shoes off and their feet smelling up the place. He couldn’t wait for information she would have given him on her own; no, he was upset, and now he had to dance around her feet, barking like a terrier. Men, she thought, and rolled her eyes.

“Yes.” She spoke slowly, like a playground monitor trying to calm a hysterical child who has taken a tumble from the jungle gym.

“Yes, I’m fine. Bill-Mr Steiner-is fine, too. We’re both fine.”

“Is it your husband?” He sounded outraged, only a step or two away from outright panic. A bull in an open field, pawing the ground and looking for the red rag which has provoked it.

“Is it Daniels?”

“Yes. But he’s gone now.” She hesitated, then added:

“I don’t know where.” But I expect it’s hot and the air conditioning’s broken.

“We’ll find him,” Hale said.

“I promise you that, Ms McClendon-we’ll find him.”

“Good luck, Lieutenant,” she said softly, and turned her eyes to the open closet door. She touched her upper left arm, where she could still feel the fading heat of the armlet.

“I have to hang up now. Norman shot a man from upstairs, and there may be something I can do for him. Are you coming over here?”

“You’re damned right I am.”

“Then I’ll see you when you get here. Goodbye.” She hung up before Hale could say anything else. Bill came in, and as he did, the hall lights came on behind him. He looked around, surprised.

“It must have been a breaker… which means he was in the cellar. But if he was going to flip one of them, I wonder why he didn’t-” Before he could finish, he began to cough again, and hard. He bent over, grimacing, holding his hands cupped against his bruised and swollen throat.

“Here,” she said, hurrying across to him. “drink some of this. It just came out of the icebox, and it’s cold.” He took the Pepsi, drank several swallows, then held the bottle out and looked at it curiously.

“Tastes a little funny,” he said.

“That’s because your throat’s all swollen. Probably it’s bled a little, too, and you’re tasting that. Come on, down the hatch. I hate hearing you cough like that.” He drank the rest, put the bottle on the coffee-table, and when he looked at her again, she saw a dumb blankness in his eyes that frightened her badly.

“Bill? Bill, what is it? What’s wrong?” That blank look held for a moment, then he laughed and shook his head.

“You won’t believe it. Stress of the day, I guess, but…”

“What? Won’t believe what?”

“For a couple of seconds there I couldn’t remember who you were,” he said.

“I couldn’t remember your name, Rosie. But what’s even crazier is that for a couple of seconds I couldn’t remember mine, either.” She laughed and stepped toward him. She could hear a trample of footfalls-EMTs, probably-coming up the stairs, but she didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him with all her might.

“My name’s Rosie,” she said.

“I’m Rosie. Really Rosie.”

“Right,” he said, kissing her temple.

“Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. Rosie.” She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his shoulder and in the darkness behind her closed lids she saw the unnatural mouth of the spider and the black eyes of the vixen, eyes too still to give away either madness or sanity. She saw these things and knew she would continue to see them for a long time. And in her head two words rang, tolling like an iron bell: I repay.

Lieutenant Hale lit a cigarette without bothering to ask permission, crossed his legs, and gazed at Rosie McClendon and Bill Steiner, two people suffering a classic case of lovesickness; every time they looked into each other’s eyes, Hale could almost read TILT printed across their pupils. It was enough to make him wonder if they hadn’t somehow gotten rid of the troublesome Norman themselves… except he knew better. They weren’t the type. Not these two. He had dragged a kitchen chair into the living-room area and now sat on it backward, with one arm laid over the back and his chin resting on his arm. Rosie and Bill were crammed onto the loveseat that fancied itself a sofa. A little over an hour had elapsed since Rosie’s original 911 call. The wounded upstairs tenant, John Briscoe by name, had been taken to East Side Receiving with what one of the EMTs had described as “a flesh-wound with pretensions.” Now things had finally quieted down a little. Hale liked that. There was only one thing he would like more, and that was to know where the hell Norman Daniels had gotten himself off to.

“One of the instruments is out of tune here,” he said, “and it’s screwing up the whole band.” Rosie and Bill glanced at each other. Hale was sure of the bewilderment in Bill Steiner’s eyes; about Rosie he was a litde less sure. There was something there, he was almost sure of it. Something she wasn’t telling. He paged slowly back through his notebook, taking his time, wanting them to fidget a little. Neither of them did. It surprised him that Rosie could be so still-if, that was, she was holding back-but he had either forgotten an important thing about her or not fully taken it in to begin with. She had never actually sat in on a police interrogation, but she had listened to thousands of replays and discussions as she silently served Norman and his friends drinks or dumped their ashtrays. She was hip to his technique.

“All right,” Hale said when he was sure neither of them was going to give him a string to pull.

“Here’s where we are now in our thinking. Norman comes here. Norman somehow manages to kill Officers Alvin Demers and Lee Babcock. Babcock goes into the shotgun seat, Demers into the trunk. Norman knocks out the light in the vestibule, then goes down into the basement and turns off a bunch of circuit breakers, pretty much at random, although they’re well marked on the diagrams pasted inside the breaker boxes. Why? We don’t know. He’s nuts. Then he goes back to the black-and-white and pretends to be Officer Demers. When you and Mr Steiner show up, he hits you from behind-chokes hell out of Mr Steiner, chases you guys upstairs, shoots Mr Briscoe when he tries to crash the party, then breaks in your door. All right so far?”

“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 running like a racehorse in her chest. Dassn’t keep them, she thought. Dassn’t, dassn’t. Leaving her late husband’s ring beside the lamp, at least for the time being, Rosie got up and went into the bathroom again, the open cloth held on her palm. She didn’t know how long Bill had been gone, she had lost track of time, but it had been quite awhile. Please, she thought, let the bagel line at the deli be long. She put up the ring of the toilet seat, knelt down, and plucked the first seed off the cloth. It had occurred to her that this world might have robbed the seeds of their magic, but the tips of her fingers went numb immediately, and she knew that was not the case. It wasn’t as if her fingers had been cold-numbed; it was more as if the seeds had communicated some strange amnesia to her very flesh. Nevertheless, she held the seed for a moment, looking at it fixedly.

“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 Anna Stevenson (who hadn’t been discovered until that morning, due to her oft-expressed dislike of unauthorized visitors in her office) and then departed, Rosie took that advice. It was Sunday, but Hair 2000 at the Skyview Mall was open. The hairdresser to whom she was assigned understood what Rosie wanted, but protested briefly.

“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 Anna had found for her soon, and she had no intention of dragging any more of the past with her than necessary. She supposed she was stuck with the part of it that was lodged in her head like bullet-fragments, but-Remember the tree, Rosie, a voice said, and this time it sounded like Anna’s voice-Anna who had helped her when she had needed help, when she’d had no one else to turn to, Anna for whom she hadn’t been able to mourn as she’d wanted to… although she had cried rivers for sweet Pam, with her pretty blue eyes always trained for “someone interesting.” Yet now she felt a sting of sorrow that made her lips quiver and her nose prickle.

“Anna, I’m sorry,” she said. Never mind. That voice, dry and slightly arrogant. You didn’t make me, you didn’t make Norman, and you don’t have to accept responsibility for either of us. You’re Rosie McClendon, not Typhoid Mary, and you’d do well to remember that when storms of melodrama threaten to engulf you. But you have to remember-“No, I don’t,” she said, and slammed the painting together on itself, like someone closing a book with authority. The old wood upon which the canvas had been stretched snapped. The canvas itself did not so much tear as explode into strips which hung like rags. The paint on these rags was dim and meaningless.

“No, I don’t. Not anything, if I don’t want to, and I don’t: Those who forget the past-”Fuck the past!” Rosie cried. I repay, a voice answered. It whispered; it cajoled. It warned.

“I don’t hear you,” Rose said. She pulled the flap of the incinerator open, felt warmth, smelled soot.

“I don’t hear you, I’m not listening, it’s over.” She shoved the torn and folded picture through the door, mailing it like a letter intended for someone in hell, then stood on tiptoe to watch it fall toward the flames far below.