the r0z garden

“How did it feel?”

“It hurt!”

	She didn’t laugh. Marilyn knew what she meant, but couldn’t rightly tell her. Impulsive, flagellant mania, a frantic, desperate release. A little death. It feels like it feels. Or rather, she felt tired of explaining how it felt. 

“I don’t fucking know. It happens t0o fast. Try it for yourself and get back to me.”

	Exiting that office was like sprinting out of a darkroom after three hours of tense color-correcting. Cold, snowblind sunlight; pale blue sky and crumpled amber leaves desperately clinging to Japanese maples. (Given to the city several decades ago by a city in Hokkaido) 
Therapy, like sex or bad news, is best followed up with nicotine. “Women’s cigarettes,” she thought, toying with her white, lengthy toothpick of a cigarette. A twiggy, slender baton that could be snapped in half with only a snide glance. Like Virginia Slims, the ideal woman is lanky, anemic, and easily broken. 
	A little girl walked towards her. Thick, muddy rain boots adorned with rubber duckies; tangled space buns and a wrinkled black dress emblazoned with a big, fat, beglittered jack o’ lantern. Marilyn choked back oohs and ahhhs as she cradled the ballerina cigarette in her palm and walked far off the sidewalk. Children shouldn’t see these things, and certainly never breathe them in--let alone spooky little itchy witchy  princesses of the night. Her bus flew by as she deliberately flanked the radiant, precious little sweetheart. It was a necessary loss. She stomped her cigarette beneath her boots & resolved to wait for the next one. Marilyn didn’t miss the next bus, nor the transfer. She stared at her feet and wondered if car crashes really hurt that much. After a melancholy 42 minutes exactly, compression brakes grind to a halt.
	Four creaking flights of stairs later Marilyn waded inside her apartment, kicked off her boots, and stashed her (disappointingly unnecessary) umbrella. A very expectant boyfriend and a large order of Chinese takeout waited at her best friend’s old kitchen table. Her heartbeat picked up the pace anticipating, surely, some sort of intervention. At this stage in relationships, spontaneous gestures of this type almost exclusively materialize as a sign of remorse.

Do I drink too much? Smoke too much? Has he noticed I’ve gained weight? Has he noticed I’ve lost weight? Is my hideous, blubbery corpse ruining our sex life? Is he not attracted to me anymore??? 

“Your mother came by,” he spoke with a sigh. It was worse than she thought.

She paused.

“So? Why?”

“She wanted to talk to you, and to give you these.”

	Cheap, clear tupperware just opaque enough to still see through. Cookies, dozens of them; the type you buy as dough cut into perfect little decorated portions, slap onto a baking tray and call “homemade.” You eat a couple doughy cutouts behind your mother’s back, salmonella be damned. They’re jack o’ lanterns, all jack o’ lanterns. That bitch. Marilyn tried to disguise her shallow, trembling breaths as dismissive, condescending giggles. An awkward, whooping noise, but a worthy attempt.

“Marilyn, I really think you should talk to her.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” Marilyn laid her hands on his knees, spoke in the most lilted bedroom voice ever conjured and looked up with glassy, helpless blue eyes. “that’s what boyfriends are for.” Hands sliding up his thighs, lip bitten, puppy dog eyes painfully wide; sexuality weaponized to an unprecedented, intercontinental ballistic scale. 

“Lynn, I’m serious.” Marilyn made a hasty, cross-legged retreat. “She’s been in therapy for months, she’s sober and living with a friend up north. She’s sorry, Lynn, and she really means it. I know she’s done some unspeakable shit-”

“Exactly,” she cut in, pointed and crimson in the cheeks, “un-fucking-speakable.” Marilyn couldn’t keep up the facade of coyness. She burst into furious tears.

“She doesn’t expect a lengthy dialogue. She understands if you want to yell, swear, fucking use me as a punching bag while you get it all out. She’s braced herself for that. At the end of the day of course she wants to be a part of your life, but she knows she may never be. She knows what she’s done, and she can’t change it, but she wants to express all this remorse herself.”

“Nico, she brought me into this world with nothing and by adulthood I had even less. All I have is scars and fucking memories I wish my shattered excuse for a brain would forget. She destroyed every chance I had; every vaguely functional part of me, every hope at being somebody. She fucking killed me, Nico!” Marilyn swiped the cookies onto the floor and collapsed into her own lap, exhausted. She’d never screamed like that before. Had she ever screamed at all? 

“I’m sorry” she wept, over, and over, and over. “Sorry” was every shallow breath and pounding heartbeat. She stared into the polished tile floor and saw only her mother’s reflection, and their resemblance was deafening. The realization that daughter could echo mother tore reality to threads, freezing her in time and space. An endless stream of panicked, watery apologies. Dizzy. Drowning. Dying. 

	Calm reassurance couldn’t stifle the nuclear meltdown in front of his eyes. Nico gently picked Marilyn up, laid her in bed, and held on tight enough to suffocate anyone less emotionally volatile. After 30 minutes of constant pressure (if crying persists, please call 911) sobs slowly faded to sniffles. Her eyes were glazed porcelain saucers, glossy and damp.

“I love you.”

	Slow, I promise. Gentle, I promise. Her fingers can’t quite clasp around his Herculean shoulders. She remembered when they first met, how frighteningly capable his hands seemed. It scared her, truthfully, but they cradled her like crystalware. There was a time when Marilyn would’ve said sex was inherently reductive. Violent. Something that happens to you, that erodes you little by little. Not anymore.
	1:47am. Pee. Snack. Cigarette. Not necessarily in that order. Above the stove the light glows dull and yellowed like old linoleum. Nothing in the fridge piques her interest but the white noise. Famished, she scanned the kitchen for something, anything to quell her hunger when she spied the box: 48 Pillsbury jack o’ lanterns. She approached with deft, bombsquad caution and gently pried open the lid with one finger, revealing a small square envelope, far too small for even plastic explosives. Too flat. Slowly, she took a bite of a now-blind pumpkin. Pillowy as a cloud, a distinct, vaguely caramelized vanillin flavor and golden crisp from a sheet pan seemingly older than the state of Oregon. Envelope in one hand, cookie in the other. Second cookie in the other. Third cookie in the other. She set the envelope down, wiped her hands on her oversized shirt, and picked it up again. Eggshell blue. She took a deep breath and hurriedly ripped it open before she could possibly change her mind.
	Inside it was a grainy, Kodak Gold photograph with a 99 burned into the corner. The dark, flash-swamped picture was soaked in rich purple halation and showed a toothy, lanky little girl standing over her pièce de résistance: a jack o’ lantern nearly half her size with crescent moon eyes and an oblong nose flashing a single-fanged grin. She’s a costumed, beaming, blue-eyed witch with a face full of freckles she’s not yet self-conscious about. There’s a hand-written note on the back:

“Sorry will never be enough, 
but know I’m always here and I’d do 
anything in the world for you. 

Happy Halloween Mary-Lou

I love you,
541-627-9568”

	Trembling, Marilyn dropped the photo to the ground, desperately fumbling for her purse in the dark. She sprinted out onto the patio, darling, nymphet cigarette between her teeth, slamming the heavy glass door and leaning back against it, cursing at the moon. Quiet tears like distant meteors shone as they rolled across her freckled cheeks.



	2:05am. Three dial-tones crawl by before a sharp ka-chunk, and a breathy, cracking voice ekes out:

“Mom?”