Lucy used to hate the flaccid cherry blossom branch ceaselessly tapping against our window; the builders stuck that only hole to the outside near the ceiling light fixtures- an afterthought. Lucy’s gone now, of course, most of the girls come and go throughout the summer, always come up with an excuse to leave. Bertha said that the fresh, country air did her much good, Matilde cried home everyday until her mom couldn’t take it, and Sydney told them that her boy was going off to Normandy and she wanted to say goodbye. They didn’t come back.
My first night at the institution was a stuffy June night, for the most part spent lying on my goose-feathered coffin watching silently as the sky was being slowly suffocated by creeping accents of fluorescents; I think at this point there were 14 flowers on one branch of my tree. The next morning, Eddie had hitched a ride from a lawyer friend, crept along the backyard’s tangle of murderous dandelion covered cobblestones and slashed five ripe shoots. It was my birthday and he felt he ought give me something; however, they don’t let visitors bring food, clothes, or really anything that’s seen as a threat to our safety.
Today should be much of that-woken at 8, lessons, eat a lunch of fried green tomatoes and gummy bread at 12:45, then handed the afternoon to do whatever chores are needed- all tasks with no beginning or end. I try to fight this monotony by setting the contraband Mickey Mouse alarm Eddie snuck in to 5:30 and lay on my bed until I hear the EEeeee of Ms. Pilar’s copper bed frame against the stone, that’s my tell-tale to know the my days have reset.
Eddie said he’d stop by sometime today or tomorrow; by the spiteful look Ms. Pilar just gave me when I passed her in the hall with the frowning portraits, I know he’s arrived. She does not like Eddie. But then again, nobody really likes Eddie, he talks too much with his hands, he laughs too freely, and thinks too much of himself. Ms. Pilar said it’s because Eddie’s Guatemalan, they’re all one smack on the head from retardation, she really does enjoy telling me these things.
What else can one say about Eddie? I can’t say I know him like the number of tiles on my ceiling (48), but he tells me he’s a writer and when I ask him if he can show me his clippings, he clams up like the reject oysters Tom the fisher brings us in Summer, and says they’re in progress, I have my doubts there’s a pearl under that rough shell of barnacles.
I don’t mind his I’m-almost-there attitude. Besides Eleanor, my old racket friend whose mother I suspect sends her here out of pity, I don’t receive visitors. So, I manage with Eddie’s quirks just like I manage with Ms. Pilar’s hair that always finds it way to the bottom of my cereal bowl.
Slinking past Ms. Pilar’s disapproving gaze I almost wander past the glass doors to the exquisitely furnished sitting room, long term residents know it’s a facade for visiting parents easily tricked by the gold and mahogany mouldings. I settle myself on an end stool propped next to the mantelpiece so Eddie’s got to turn his head a bit to talk to me.
“And there she breezes by, like the gust of wind that killed my Zia Francoise, you’re looking a bit skinny, Pilar trying to starve you out, eh?”
Eddie assumes Ms. Pilar listens to our conversations, so he tries to weave in an insult every once in awhile to show how little he cares for her and her malicious looks.
“I think I’ve been gaining weight, actually. Whenever I hunch over, I have three rolls of fat.”
“That’s your opinion, is it?” Eddie takes out his roll of thin cigarettes, the kind the Swedish actresses dangle from their hands, but you never see actually smoke. “You got a light? No, of course not.” He leans across to dip his cigarette in the open fire.
“Now listen, no, see, I’m already losing you,” he waves the smouldering orange end so smoke forms a cloud over his uncombed hair. “I’ve got something important to say, we’ve had some nice times in here but I, I don’t think you’re doing any worse or better off when they first stuck you in here.”
I look up from my intense gaze at the licking flame.
“Yes, even your blank stares, they’re exactly the same from when they shut the front door on you. People need change! People are these machines that constantly need an oiling and parts replaced and you just stay here like the floorboards- but at least the floors get mopped.” Again, all I do is stare through my fly away hairs Ms. Pilar tries so hard to pin down.
“Stop doing that! It’s unnerving to be stared down and listened in on!” Eddie looks left, right then up and down as though Ms. Pilar was hiding in the plaster. “Is there anywhere we can talk without that woman or the girls creeping about?” He’s really getting worked up, so much that the combination of the cigarette smoke and the growing flame makes the sweat on the back of his reddening neck condense and stick to the velvet.
“Come outside.” I remember a patch of daffodils all the way to the edge of the woods always just on edge of blossoming but never quite reaching the ripeness of the nearby crab apple tree. In my earlier days, I would occasionally paint using natural environment and a couple of times, because of the sickly, hot butter color these daffodils produced, I crushed the pedals into a fine pulp for my palette.
We have to sidestep all the weeds with needles to get to the patch; they don’t landscape much here, nothing showy where parents don’t visit. Before Eddie takes his seat, he lays down his tweed blazer to protect his trousers from the putrid residue the aged moss produces. “This is better, sometimes I feel as though they record all our conversations and sell them to the boys in the bar for a dollar a minute.”
Ignoring his acid swipe. “I get certain freedoms.”
Eddie snorts a sort of harassing, nasally snort. “And you would think a piece of celery is a feast if they didn’t feed you for a week.” The more philosophical Eddie’s conversations lean, the more he is at ease.
We sit for a bit, I pick at the powder speckled petals just starting bloom while he brushes the half melted snow off his patched-up Oxfords. “Well, I think we’ve shot the crap for a while, I think I can talk to you about what I came here for.” Eddie pauses, with all the care of a general pushing forward for an assault. “You’re a measly 17, right, well don’t you think it’s the right time to leave?”
I continue picking the daffodils. “You see, if you stay here past 18, then that’s it!” He claps his hands, he really is getting more animated with every thought. “They got you for the rest of your life, doesn’t it scare you?”
“What else is there for me.” I almost can’t hear myself speak.
“It’s, there’s, there’s more to it.” I think he expects me to ask another question, I’ll just let him ask himself. “You’ve never thought? Of a way to get out? Yeah, I guess you don’t have the imagination, but oh boy, you’re lucky that I’m here. I was thinking, thinking about how when you’re married, you’re technically not in their possession anymore. You’re your own person and you can walk anywhere and live anywhere.”
“And you’ve got where we live figured out.” I pieced together his little plan, I’d see if he’s thought it properly through.
“Oh! Well, hang on, you didn’t let me finish. If we get married, I can write and you can figure out what you want to do or do nothing at all. And, yes, I found this apartment in the city right next to a botanical garden, so you’ve got that the same. You told me about your own fund they put in your name, we can walk into the bank Mr. and Mrs. and tap into that until I find something real.”
I close my eyes and try to imagine looking down on the street from an apartment real high up. People’s eyes averted, looking anywhere but somewhere. Little China dolls I played in the spring of my youth, they feel so cold and common in my hands.  I try to imagine.
“It’s really simple, actually. I found a youngish minister who if we sneak in and say is my friend can marry us- marry us right here!”
“And you? Do you love me?” A sudden gust of humid wind is mustered from deep inside of my stomach just needed to know right, precisely at that moment.
I notice a bead of perspiration gather at the cusp of his lips.“Crazy! Well, you know how I feel, I hate using words like that, I’d rather say I like being with you, that’s how you feel right, this isn’t some Anna Karenina-throw-yourself-on-a-train-passion, it’s the right kind of love, don’t you agree?”
I see myself as a struggling fly in a spider’s web, the more I say, the more he wants me to talk. I don’t want to say anything else, oh dear, what am I getting myself into?
“Really, this place has cocooned you for too long, I promise, on the outside you’ll come into your own like a moth or er a butterfly, yeah, that’s more romantic.”
“I guess.”
“Are you getting cold feet already? I can just get up and leave, but I’ll tell you when I leave, I’m gone.” He pauses for a reaction, I hate that he thinks I’ll get a rise from it, I hate that. I hate it like the daffodils who look deep into my third eye, I hate it like my hand casually brushing the rusted iron hidden in the underbelly of this stone mess, I hate it like the stench of the rotting wood the ants infested
“No, no it’s not that, it’s just, what can I wear to the wedding?” I ask only half interested.
He bites the crumb I provided to resume business. “I hardly think it matters, but alright if you want I’ll bring my mother’s Quinceanera dress, you can cut it like the girls at The Factory, it’ll be great. I gotta run to an appointment with a prospective publisher,” he says with an air of self importance. “But same time next time around, darling?” Eddie gathers his things and gives me a peck on a cheek, it’s light and lacks the raw sensuality the pictures tell me it’ll be like, and off he runs, not bothering going through the house to check out.
I stand up in midst of the wind which has in the mean time been picking up pace, look at the sore that is my house and dust off the pedals I’ve been unconsciously deflowering. I think it’s a Tuesday.