I knew I was dreaming even as I rose from the window seat. Everything hazy, like a memory, but also too real. The rot and damp stuck to my clothes. The floor of the once grand ballroom glittered with shattered glass and caked-on bat shit, but elegant white curtains wafted in the empty panes. They fluttered like wings around Mrs. Bespatikos— or whatever that thing was that sat where Mrs. B had just been sitting. She pointed, and I obeyed and walked toward the garden. The creature’s monstrously huge eyes bore into my back, and I heard the crinkle of wings and the endless buzzing.
The garden was a choking mass of plants, and yet somehow devoid of life. Rows of root vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, beets. Bright edible greens. Spinach, lettuce, chard. Twisting vines laden with peas, tomatoes, and grapes. Fields of roses, carnations, peonies, dahlias, and tulips.
All in vibrant color and full bloom, ready to be harvested, but… it was an unnatural growth. They felt…hungry. This garden was the Devil’s attempt at Eden, full of envy and flash, devoid of wholesomeness.
And at the edge of the garden, where the twisted shadows of the forest threatened to advance, there was a young woman. She was the loveliest thing in the garden. Delicately curling blond hair crept out of her beekeeping veil.
Her long white gown hid the fact that she was pregnant, but when she looked at me with sad blue eyes, I knew she was ashamed I knew her shame. Her eyes begged me to remember her, to call out to her, to whisper her name.
But I didn’t know her from Eve, that original spoiled woman. I’d like to know her. I felt I ought to know her. I’d never seen someone so pretty in my life.
She lifted one of the roses close to her face. To smell?
No. She opened her mouth wide and pushed the rose, thorns and all, down her throat. She grabbed another, and the sharp stems cut her lips as she ate. Blood dribbled down her chin as she stuffed herself with flowers.
“Stop!” I called out to her. “You’re hurting yourself. Listen, there’s got to be a better—”
But when I stepped toward her, the fog in the garden became a blanket. It cocooned around me. Warm, cozy, dissolving me into mush. Threads covered my face, but I sleepily kept looking at her.
When I woke up, I’d be better for my long rest.
But that girl… so pretty. So much pain.
I had to help her. Had to help… “Annie.”
Her self-loathing disappeared into fear. She spat blood and petals and reached for me. “Paul!”
The sound of my name woke me from my stupor. I gasped for my life, fighting against the thick devil’s mist wrapped around me, swinging my arms until I was free… of my blanket.
I sat up, and a cold breeze ruffled the white curtains of my bedroom.
Where am I? Who am I? I mopped my brow and exhaled hard, shaking off the nightmare, the memory of that girl.
“Jesus H. Christ.” I touched my heart and the stringy muscles; the hard boniness of my chest grounded me in my own reality. “What a nightmare!”
My brothers would tease the shit out of me if they knew I had such nightmares. I hadn’t even left home more than a week ago. Left Illinois to go to Pennsylvania to be a handyman for 50 dollars a week. At a boarding house — the ad said young ladies on vacation, but the truth was they were all unwed mothers. I might have turned around and headed home just from the shock, but it had been a long drive, and 600 dollars for three months’ work was more than I could make slinging milkshakes.
Besides, I’d already taken to Mrs. B.
“You can’t blame me for discretion, young man.” She’d said primly, standing on the top step of the porch while I stood on the packed earth of her driveway. I was still looking down at her, for she was a… a very little person. “There was no man in town who would do that job, and I need a strong back and a good driver to help me care for the girls.”
She smirked, revealing a little more humor than she thought was appropriate. “You will help us poor women, won’t you, Mr. Schaeffer?”
I got out of bed, rubbing my hand over my face to clear away the feeling of that clinging fog dissolving me. Out of habit, I wandered to the window and looked at Mrs. B’s pride and joy.
The garden—the envy of Eden— glowed in the wash of pre-dawn light. Ordered rows of fruits and vegetables. Delicious. Every other row or so, the beehives stood sentry. So many that the warm drone of their wings reached my open window. The wilderness took over at the edge of the garden, as if the tall trees melted into the ordered rows of rich farmland. Somewhere beyond those trees, a stream gurgled along with the bees.
Maybe I’d find that stream and divert it to the garden. Dig out a little pond for the ladies to wade in.
In the shadows of the trees, I could barely make out the thing that marked the end of the garden. The statue of an angel and the rosebush growing beside it. That’s the woman who haunted my dreams. Unnervingly lifelike statue. Smiling like she’d just fallen in love. Sometimes when it rained, it looked like her eyes shone with tears of joy.
Someone knocked on my door. Low. Near the ground.
“Hold on, Mrs. B!” I rushed to get decent. I mean, I wore underwear, but since that’s my boss’s eye-line, I figured I’d better cover up with the terrycloth robe she’d given me.
I was still tying the belt when I opened the door. “Good mornin’ Mrs. B.”
“Mr. Schaeffer, good morning to you.” Mrs. Bespatikos smiled slyly at me, already put together with pristine order. Her black and gray hair was piled in a tidy bouffant pinned with a cloth flower on top. She carried my laundry in a basket.
The basket was almost wider than her little arms could reach, so I took it from her at once. “Mrs. B! You gotta let me carry the laundry. Especially when it’s my own.”
“I wanted to save you the trip.” Mrs. B rolled her shoulders as if fitting them back into their joints properly, then joined her hands together in front of her. “I hope you don’t mind the ladies taking the liberty of washing your clothes.”
I might have minded a week or so ago, when I still thought of all unwed mothers as bad girls. But Mrs. B’s girls were so polite and mild, I could hardly imagine how they’d gotten into such trouble. They’d surely learned their lesson. “Not at all, Ma’am. As long as you don’t mind me carrying all their laundry down for them.”
I unpacked the basket of white-washed denim and white work polos and set them on top of my dresser to be put away later.
“Just be sure to help the girls with seniority first.” She meant the girls ready to pop. “And be careful with yourself, they’ll all run a nice boy like you ragged.”
She jingled a pair of keys out of her breast pocket. “And if you want your keys cleaned, please use the kitchen sink.”
I blushed and took the car keys. “Sorry, Mrs. B.”
The cool metal in my hand felt strange for a moment. It reminded me of driving— what was her name? Prettiest bobbysoxer in town— to the White Cow for milkshakes. I owned a beat-up Ford that had belonged to my older brothers before they enlisted.
But I’d never driven a girl anywhere. I didn’t get tied down to any woman, not when I was going to Penn State next year.
“Nonsense, I’m glad you’ve taken to the car. I know it’s in terrible shape.”
The keys in my hand were for a brand new ‘52 Hudson Wasp— a sleek red car straight out of my dreams. Mrs. B didn’t know how to change the oil or maintain the tires at all, so the little four-door sedan had been ready to crash when I got here. I had it running like a kitten, going 0-60 in 17 seconds— not that I want my boss to know I’d been clocking that time.
“What’s the errands today, Mrs. B? Will I be out before breakfast or after?”
“After.” She handed me a piece of paper from her vest pocket. “I’ll want your help in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.”
I followed when she walked into the hallways that stretched forever. A clean gray hardwood floor, a white banister that overlooked the open sitting room below, and a line of black identical doors. The ladies wouldn’t emerge from their rooms until the breakfast bell was rung.
Mrs. B took the stairs quickly. “Then there’s some shopping in the town, and a young lady from the train station— Julie is her name. She shall be coming alone.”
“Sure thing.” I glanced over the list. Same as always. Sugar, butter, milk, flour, soap in truly enormous quantities. “Julie. Coming alone.”
Something niggled at my mind about the soap … a joke I’d made on my first day— no, I was remembering the tour she gave to the ladies. She’d been talking about their chores. Not the sort of thing a man did. I’d calculated the cost of room and board, with the terrible thought that the unborn children were sold to make up the difference. My first view of the garden. Rows and rows of women wearing all white. Some thin as rails, some round as houses. All wearing white gardening frocks and hats to protect them from the bees and the sun.
That’s it! I’d quipped. “We must go through your weight in bleach every week, Mrs. Bespatikos.”
And all the girls lifted their heads at the sound as if laughter was a foreign thing and unwelcome. I’d never felt so self-conscious in my life as when all those ruined women looked at me with fear. I tugged at my pants pockets and stared at my muddy shoes and brown trousers. A dirty stranger in their clean world. I was ashamed to be the same species as the males who’d tricked and abandoned these angels.
But hadn’t someone been glad to see me? A pretty blonde girl had leaped up and dashed into my arms. What was her name…
“Mr. Schaeffer, are you with me?” Mrs. B stopped at the foot of the stairs.
I shook myself back to the bright morning and jaunted down the stairs. “Yes, Ma’am. Three stops in town today.”
“Four. Train station last. Post office, groceries, and Agway. We need two sacks of fertilizer. The ones bigger than me.” She chuckled and headed into the kitchen.
“The five-pound bags,” I teased, but wrote on the list: 2 fifty-pound sack fertilizer.
She laughed. “Sassy boy. If you leave straight after breakfast, you ought to be able to make it back in time for lunch and then go to the train and bring Miss Julie and her bags here in time for dinner.”
Mrs. B told time by food, not by the hours of the day. When we entered her kitchen, it smelled fragrantly of fresh coffee. She had two dozen eggs on the counter, freshly harvested, berries and apples ready to be washed and put in a bowl, and a string of sausages to fry up on the griddle.
All that was missing was starch.
I walked past her to the huge sack of potatoes leaning against the corner, by the pickling barrel, and hoisted it up and brought it to her counter. Mrs. B set a cup of coffee beside both of us as I counted out two dozen potatoes. She gave me a little wink as she stirred my coffee with a honey-filled spoon.
Then we both settled in with our knives and got to peeling in amicable silence.
I was only allowed to help until three of the ladies wandered sleepy-eyed into the kitchen. Coffee was forbidden to them — just a private luxury for those who were not pregnant— but they graciously allowed me to warm them some milk and honey before chasing me out of the kitchen. I always tried to help, bring in the tablecloth from the line outside, set the table, but they were loath to let a boy do such things.
“Just sit at the table with your coffee like a proper man, Paul!” Margaret insisted. “Stop getting in the way and making things all crooked.”
“Fine, fine. But who’s going to fetch me the morning paper and my slippers?” I got a good smack, but all the other ladies— there were six by now— laughed at my antics. And that’s all I wanted.
Rachael took a moment to gather the correct air of dignified disdain, then scolded me. “No one wants to fetch a newspaper for a scruffy man. Go shave.”
L.J. Longo 