Green, White, Red

I love her. I never say a word to her. I fill her orders: tablets for upset stomach, for flu, for migraine. She is too thin and her nerves are sensitive, like a horse: She trembles every time someone rings the bell on the shop door. She wears a long coat and whatever I sell her goes into its pockets. I don’t know how old she is, though she is younger than me; I don’t know her first name. To everyone she is Thom McLean’s niece: that girl Thom McLean’s niece, though she is old enough to be married, old enough to have a child.

He loves her. When the McLean’s are in town they walk together, the uncle’s arm wound around the niece’s waist, and the uncle smiles at everyone. He kisses her, on the mouth, and that, too, everyone sees. He does it right in the street. Not even children kiss that way, in the middle of the sidewalk; he holds her tight to him, and he always laughs afterward. His laugh is loud, it runs through the streets like water, like a flood. It moves everything out of its way.

I am the only one in town to come from somewhere else. The very first day I took the black crepe from the windows, she walked in; she bought a box of matches. I asked my wife who she was, the woman with the red hair, the tall woman in the green coat: and my wife frowned, she said oh her, that’s Thom McLean’s niece, not saying it nicely. I took my wife by the wrist and squeezed until she gave me the girl’s name, as sweet as a drop of honey.

He is the only one in town from somewhere else. She sees him through the glass, spooling crepe around his palm. She walks up and down the street twice before going in and asking for a box of matches. She fumbles—with her change, with her purse, with her own hands. He touches the coins that spill from her fingers: warm.

I can smell her. I can’t explain it. I know the path she takes through the woods, and even when she is out of sight, far ahead of me, I can follow her step for step. There are certain trees she touches, and the bark is smoother where her white fingertips draw across them. I want to touch what she has touched, but my hands are so much bigger than hers, I dare not disturb the marks she has made. What is the name of the scent I’m following? It is most certainly a secret.

He can smell her: After he turns the key in the lock of the shop door, he traces the path she takes, every evening, through snow and dirt and grass. He never goes as far as her house, has never seen its face: He stops always before turning into the clearing that marks her uncle’s estate.

Once he finds a green silk ribbon on the path, and when he sees her again there is no ribbon, and her hair is loose. He keeps the ribbon in his chemists’ smock and feels it all day. When he sees the niece the ribbon comes alive in his pocket: They call to each other—the niece and the ribbon—a bone singing for its body.

Her uncle’s favorite color is green; he always has a green tie, and the ribbon she wears is to match it. Everyone says it’s to go with their eyes. And sure enough the child’s eyes are the same, the child being a baby boy so big it is impossible to imagine him coming from her body, which is smaller than ever, her hair wild around her head, half-combed. The bottom button on her blouse is undone and the baby boy’s finger finds her hair and pulls, suddenly, savagely, and she cries out as the baby struggles in her arms. There is nothing she can do, with that evil blood inside of him, the same that is in her. The hot Maclean blood, blue blood, run out over barren generations, and only the girl and her uncle left, and the child, who won’t let go of his mother’s hair.

I knew what her trouble was when she crouched in the corner of the store to be sick, unable to make it outside, gripping the edge of a shelf. Too thin to be a mother, though I could sense the new life sucking at her blood. I offered her a towel and she took it, turning her head away to clean herself—a miserable animal with a spot of vomit on the hem of her dress. My shop boy took her elbow: I let him. He asked to walk her home. But she would only go alone.

Her body rids itself of everything except the baby. It sticks to her the way a fungus cleaves to a leaf. She cannot ask the chemist to help her, and even if she could she would be sick as soon as she opened her lips. The rag he gives her to fix her mouth is white, just like the chemist’s jacket, and she is embarrassed by the mark she makes on it, the smell, everything that comes from her seemingly a stain.

What I want to give her: It’s natural. It’s the same as what’s in apple seeds, or tobacco, or the hard heart of a peach. And it is bitter; it smells like almonds, though it looks like water. I saw a boy eating a handful of cherries outside the shop: He spit the pits into the gutter, his lips red, his tongue red, and I thought: yes. Yes, this, for her, a cure, as innocent as fruit.

What he gives her is poison. If his breath turned to poison, and he could put his mouth next to hers, and sigh, and she in her sleep would swallow it, that would be the best way. From his heart to his lungs to her lungs, to her heart. But instead, all his love is in a glass dropper, the bitter liquid squeezed into the brown jar, which he seals with wax. If he could feel her head fall against his shoulder, if he could feel her skin exhale its heat, he would be happy; but he can only imagine. It will happen very quickly, she won’t be in pain. She won’t ever feel pain again, or have her mouth kissed, or taste a sweet, or comb her hair, or know the rain on her face, and this seems right. To both of them.

Her uncle comes to buy a bag of licorice. It’s the only time I’ve seen him so close, and why he has stopped here—him and not her—I don’t understand. I won’t serve him. I make the boy do it. I just look at him, and he looks back as the boy slides licorice from the silver plate into a paper bag. The boy asks MacLean if there will be anything else; still looking at me, the uncle says no, nothing else, and he hands the boy a half dollar and doesn’t take the change.

The uncle comes in. His eyes glitter as they take in the holiday displays; they count every speck of dust on the shelves. If he eats candy, he will only take licorice, and the chemist has the best—the chemist, who looks more like a hunter, with his rough hands and dumb stare. Rumor has it the chemist beats his wife, but she can take it—she has big bones. The town is thick with men like this, and Maclean stands out among them like a prince, guiltlessly spending the last of his family’s fortune. He buys more licorice than he can eat: It sticks to his eyeteeth, and he sucks it off with a snap. The collar of his coat is made of fox, and when the boy is caught looking at it, the uncle leans forward and says, go ahead, you can touch it, it’s soft. But the boy won’t do it, his hand is suddenly lead, and Maclean laughs, he takes the licorice and leaves.

In his dreams, he lifts her heavy braid, and puts his nose in the place beneath it, at the top of her neck, where her skin turns into hair. When his eyes open it’s still dark, and he lies staring at the ceiling, steeped in her dream flesh. Would he love her if the uncle hadn’t touched her first, cancelling out all other men? He can’t say she is more beautiful than any other woman, more intelligent, more graceful or good. His desire blooms in the other man’s gutter; so be it.

She came in for something for the baby, who was cutting his teeth. He cannot stop crying, she said. The skin beneath her eyes was thin, sunken. If he could touch her, he would touch her hair, rub a red strand between his fingers; he would touch her face, her hand, her shoulder. He would touch her feet and sink down into the earth beside them. But he only looks at her hair, her face, her hand. He does not touch her shoulder, or lay at her feet. Instead, he puts his hand near hers on the counter, very still. The clock ticks on the wall.

You can’t help me, she says, clearly, not in her usual whisper, but she doesn’t look at him, she stays looking at the counter, at both of their hands.

He presses the small glass bottle into her palm anyway. She makes a fist around it.

She had been crying. All day I was on edge, ready with the glass bottle, and her ribbon in my hand, twisting between my fingers. The edge of it was black with dirt. As she stood there I wound the ribbon around the neck of the bottle, slow, so she could see, and she watched, not it, but me. I could feel her eyes. And the green ribbon with the brown glass, her colors, beautiful. I wrote on a piece of paper, in pencil, it won’t hurt you. But the graphite was soft and smeared and she may have read I instead of it. Either way, she believed me.

She finds herself in the woods. She takes the bottle from her pocket, unwinds the green ribbon. She pours what’s inside into the ground, darkening the earth. The smell of marzipan. The child was at her breast, all day, and she can still feel him there, his fingers pinching her flesh, his wailing wet face smashed up against her chin. She’d left him home, screaming in his basket, the dogs eyeing her coldly as she closed the door on them. How much would it take? A drop on her finger, pressed into his mouth. It would penetrate the wet net of his gums, be carried away on his blood. Her uncle will return any minute and find the basket, the coat she left behind. How cold she is, now. Her body shakes. She bares her teeth against the dirt and sucks.

I find her deep among the trees. I turn her over, to see her, to wipe the dirt from her brow: May no man, or any hand of nature, ever cover that beautiful face. Miles away Thom MacLean is calling her name, but for him the woods are empty. I know the name of her scent, now: It has always been death. I drop the ribbon across her eyes. Even when her face is only bone it will be still beautiful. And only I will know where it has gone.

turn left

turn right

flee towards the exit!