Let the Dark Flower Blossom Read Free Page A

eucalyptus aromatherapy treatment meant to alleviate canine ennui. All the girls in her book club were raving about it. Snow was falling over Lake Michigan. And Mrs. Sarasine, a woman who never let a moment idle by, who kept herself from certain dark thoughts and uncertain realities by keeping busy, sat before the window, staring out at wintry Chicago, still in her silk-trimmed cashmere robe. There were any number of ways that she could have put her time to use. At her escritoire (oh Moth-er , her daughter used to say, call it a desk for Christ’s sake ) a stack of cards awaited her, with thank-yous, and how-are-yous, with regrets to extend and envelopes to address; there were phone calls to return. She could have gone to the gym (forty laps four times a week in the heated Olympic-size pool); she could have attempted a batch of those chess tartlets. There was that black dress (hadn’t it looked good in the mirror?) to return to the store. No, no: even if the snow would let up, she didn’t feel like braving the first rush of the season downtown; though, usually the holiday shoppers, the displays in the windows, the Salvation Army kettle ringers, put her in a pleasant frame of mind. It made her think that perhaps there was hope for civilization.Should she go to the bookstore and find a new pick for the book club? It was again her turn to choose. The telephone rang, but she did not answer. She studied her fingernail polish. The color was called Shell. And this, whether the delicacy of the pale lacquer or the recollection of the word, caused her almost but not quite beautiful face to soften.
3.
    My island is called on old maps— L’Île-du-Père , but that name has long since fallen away and now it is known as Pear Island. French missionaries settled here three hundred years ago. They brought evangelical dreams. They wanted to speak the word; but, instead of divinity, they spread disease: smallpox, typhus, plague, influenza, measles. And then having thusly conquered the New World, the missionaries themselves were beset with a mystery ailment. Some died of fevers; others went mad. Those who survived the illness were left lunatics—lunar antic—; they wandered at night along the shore searching for the lost father for whom they had come so far, to such a strange place. Or so goes the legend that the tour guides tell to summer visitors as they show the old houses, the town square, library, the inn, the haunted woods, sandstone bluffs, and spare beaches. In the summer the ferry runs round-trip twice a day—to and from the island to the mainland. Now it is November. The last blackthorn apples have been collected from the trees. The roses have gone to ruin. The days are short and dark. There are few year-round residents. Soon the ferry will cease for the season. This is my world: an island in Lake Superior off Wisconsin’s northern peninsula. This is my island—or at least I imagine it as such—. I call my island Perdu; I came here a widower wanting to lose my memory, wanting only to forget.
    Pear Island is a sanctuary for wild birds.
    And there is no small amount of either irony or symbolism in such a statement of fact.
    My house is a gateman’s cottage. It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a cellar, and a study that looks out upon the lake. The furnishings were left here, and I have kept them. The walnut chairs are battered but solid. The kitchen table isn’t too bad, with a volume of Poe set under the wobbly leg. It is in an aged armchair in the book-cluttered study, that I spend—or waste, that I ravage or run out the clock on—my time.
    The walls are covered in faded floral paper. There is a flowery scent, as well, vague—an odor of desire or sickness—. My bed holds the shape of some ghost body. The previous owner was an old man; he died and was buried on the mainland. The cemetery here is full up with the crooked crosses of missionaries and lunatics.
    Once on a