***
The autumn winds brought a simmer to the oppressive heat that had settled over the southeast like a heavy fog. The humidity was beginning to break, and as Tabitha pushed back the open window panes she was reminded, if only for a brief moment, of the promise of winter, of grey fur and deep green forests. A hush had fallen over the garden in the coolness of the evening. She sat in the window’s ledge and gazed below at her lady of sorrow.
“What drew you to her?” she had asked Mona once.
“I didn’t purchase her; I just built up the rest of the garden around her. She’s always been here. Sometimes, when I’m in the garden alone, I ask her who’s she’s searching for.”
“You think she’s searching?”
“Sure. Aren’t we all?”
“Tabitha,” Mona called, knocking on her door, bringing her back.
“It’s open,” she said.
Mona walked in with a curious expression on her face, the kind that suggests bracing oneself for some impending storm. Tabitha closed her laptop and placed it on the bed. She had been having the dreams again, like the ones that began in the cottage in Oregon. A thin, dark haired man, not quite human, paralyzing and taking her. Last night, in her mind, he had restrained her with handcuffs, and when he kissed her, his mouth was covered in a dark violet stain that tasted like wild berries. The coming in her body awoke her. Her wrists ached, like they had chafed against the cuffs. She and Mona had sat up and drank roobis tea. They watched the moon in silence until the light began to fade through the cracks between houses and Tabs was able to go back to sleep in the safety of the morning. Mona, ever the Freudian, saw it as a portent of deep sexual repression, convinced that Tabitha would wither and fold in upon herself like a dying flower, or go mad from wanting what she would deny herself.
Tabitha smirked and couldn’t help but sound bitter when she replied, “Why bother with the drama of the real thing when it appears my body is all too capable of manifesting its own twisted pleasures?”
She laughed until a tear rolled out the corner of her left eye. She brushed it away and placed a finger over her mouth, lost in thought.
“Besides,” she said, “if we were seriously going to psychoanalyze this, I’d tell you that the dreams have only corroborated the obvious, that I like fucked-up men and I like it rough; I could have told you that without them.”
“I’m just worried about you, that’s all,” Mona replied.
Tabitha gave her a bittersweet smile and said, “A few sex dreams and insomnia? I don’t think I’m bound for the sanitarium just yet. I don’t think it would even raise eyebrows anymore.”
“How’s it coming?” Mona asked her now, closing the door behind her.
“It’s almost finished. The publisher wants it by December. I just haven’t decided on the ending yet. A happy ending or…a real one.”
“Can’t it be both?”
Tabitha laughed. “Yours never are.”
“Yeah, well. Some of them are, in a way.”
“Yes, dark ‘happy’ endings- these fairy tale women who succumb to the happy tradition of burning the wolf’s clothes or cutting the soles of their feet to fit the glass slipper. They savor puncture wounds or become as transparent as vapor. They get what they want, but not without a sacrifice. Sure, they’re happy in the moment, but what happens in the ever after? What happens when they begin to resent the fact that they had to be the sacrifice, and that what they wanted was never real, because why should they have had to sacrifice at all, if it were?”
“You’re right. Traditionally it is the heroine who sacrifices, especially in darker tales. But think about it. Think about the dark nature that binds their lovers. They’re trapped in blood-driven, flesh craving blackness. They live in fur prisons, in false skins. Some have no blood of their own. Some have forgotten what it means to breathe without the monster raging in them. It’s violence and lust and the infernal elation that only comes through the frenzy, the animal. The heroine bewitches them with a purity they can never have. What could they possibly give of themselves that would be of any redeemable quality?”
Tabitha thought for a long time.
“I don’t know.”
“Say what you mean,” Mona said, lounging back across the bed and flipping through a nearby book.
“If it’s redemption they want, how could they possibly expect the heroine to give it?”
“Maybe the heroine’s love is redemption enough,” Mona said, turning another page.
“Yes, but they don’t change. They go on being the monster.”
“But we don’t know that,” Mona said, closing the book and lodging a finger inside to hold her place.
“We never see past the sacrifice. Who knows what lies for them centuries down the road?”
Tabitha smiled to herself. Mona went back to the page she was reading.
“Did you write this?” Mona asked.
Tabitha looked over at the page she held open. “Yeah,” she said.
“‘My head is heavy/ overflowing with the knowing/ you’ll never burn your skin/ what’s your small white sin/ don’t make it me, oh make it me/ what’s you blackest sin/ don’t make it me, oh make it me…’ That’s beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, that reminds me- someone’s here to see you,” Mona said.
“What?”
Mona rose from the bed and pulled Tabs from the windowsill.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re ready for this.”
Tabs skidded to a stop and pulled her arms away from Mona. Mona stopped.
“I’m not moving from this spot until you explain,” Tabs said.
Mona sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t want to make a big deal. I thought if I just nonchalantly mentioned it in passing the shock of it wouldn’t hit you.”
“Shock of what?” Tabs asked, lowering herself onto the bed.
Mona came and sat with her.
“James is here.”
“Just James?”
“James is the only one here…in this house, right now.”
Tabitha exhaled slow, methodical breaths.
“That means-“
“He wanted James to come and talk to you first. That way, if you still didn’t want to see him, then at least he came and at least he tried. I think he needs this, Tabby. The closure. I think you do too. Now come on,” she said, pulling Tabs to her feet again and guiding her to the door.
They walked down the curving staircase. Tabs took every turn in a weightless daze. Her mind was full of everything and nothing. Her heart swelled with an old enemy and she felt like she was walking into a funeral parlor or even into her own death, not to see and old friend.
James was standing with his back to them, studying some artwork on the wall. When Tabitha saw him, she was amazed to find an overpowering sense of joy rise in her heart. He turned and saw her, and she broke away from Mona and ran to him, arms outstretched.
“James!”
He hugged Tabitha so tightly Mona feared he might break her. When they broke away, they both laughed, each shooing tears off the other’s face.
“Hey darlin’,” James said.
Tabs dropped her head to his shoulder and brought her arms to rest around him. They held each other like this for a long time. Finally, when they stepped away Tabs asked, “What are you doing here?”
James looked at Mona and back at Tabitha.
“We’re both here, Tabs.”
“Why?”
Her voice was breathy and hushed. She motioned for them to sit on the nearby couch. Mona excused herself to get them all a drink.
“He got the letters you sent him. He threw the first one out without even reading it. The one you called the bullshit goodbye.”
“Hmm, I figured he would,” Tabs said with a smile.
“He keeps the other one in his pocket. He’s read it so many fuckin’ times the fuckin’ ink’s wearin’ off of it.”
“And,” Tabs said, running her t
humb back and forth over her hand without knowing it.
“He needs to see you, Tabs. What you said in your letter…he needs to give you his side of it too. And I know you’ll say he could have just written you back, but- he needs to see you.”
Tabitha sighed, turned away, her fingers covering her mouth.
“He’s changed a lot,” James said suddenly. “I think you’ll find he’s changed a lot. But, I want to let him explain all of that to you. Will you see him, Tabs?”
“Did he tell you what was in my note?”
“Naw, you know how he is. But I can tell you that, whatever it was you said, it brought him back from the edge.”
Tabs was frightened. James took her hand.
“He was really in the shits for a long time, Tabs. I don’t really want to go into how bad it got; it was just bad. I know how bad he hurt you. I was there, remember,” he said, taking her chin in his hand.
“But I gotta tell you- livin’ with you gone, and with how it ended and not knowin’ what happened to you- it really fucked him up, Tabs. Give him a chance to make it right. Let him see ya, would ya?”
“Okay,” she said, feeling as if her world was falling away, and letting the release overtake her. “When?”
“Whenever you want.”
“Tomorrow night,” Tabs said. “That will be alright.”
“Cool,” James said, visibly relieved.
Mona came back with the drinks, a fruity, green tea concoction that tasted as exotic as street markets in the desert.
“So,” James said to them, “I brought some movies.”
Tabs laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“Naw, I just missed our movie nights. I figured we could, you know, re-assimilate with something old and familiar. You can fill me in on where the hell you’ve been some other time,” he said, jabbing her in the ribs. “You know. When you’re ready…So, I hope Mona’s a good sport with horror.”
“Oh that’s right up my alley,” Mona said, slipping off her flats and settling in with the fat, sleek kitty that had settled onto the nearby longue.
“Won’t he be…?” Tabs began.
“He’s keeping busy tonight,” James said.
He handed Mona a copy of Rosemary’s Baby, the one they never got to watch. The sight of it filled Tabitha with sadness.
“James,” she said, grabbing his arm.
He looked at her.
“I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I’m sorry I wouldn’t answer you, that day on the bus.”
He ran his hand over the side of her face.
“Hey, it’s okay. I get it, darlin’.”
He brought her forehead to him and kissed it.
“I’m just damn glad to see ya again. Now let’s watch the damn movie.”