1. Paul
Ana asks me where she left her vases. She is always hoarding vases. "Why don't you look in the kitchen cupboards?" I ask her. I am being ironical. Ana never stores her vases in places you might guess.
There is a query in her footsteps, a circumnavigating quality that leaves me in the center. She surrounds me in the fraying silk of her dress. You can see why I might become disturbed. "Sit down sit down sit down sit down sit down," I tell her.
It seems like only weeks ago we met. The fields were brimming with daffodils, their yellow petals drifting in gusts of wind. Park rangers muttered admonitions. When I first saw Ana, she stood beneath a maple tree. A freckle here. An elbow there. There was nothing not to love.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked.
"The serenity is unnerving," she said.
My mind grows unstable. Ana is here, and she is not here. I have done something sinister.
Ana collects plants. Cacti, herbs, shrubs, and bushes speckle her room—they fracture the pale light from the window.
"In my next life, I will be a hibiscus," she tells me. She dances about the room with a watering can.
When we make love, Ana chants: "Dahlia, dahlia, dahlia, dahlia." I suspect there is something inhuman within me. In the morning light, I listen for her steady breathing.
My mind is going. Going, going, going, going, going, gone. Where is she now? Ana who took my brain and quenched it between her palms. Ana in high heels and pajamas. "Where are you in the vast expanses of ether?" It's only the liquor talking. The liquor and a hint of genius. The leaves drop to the earth and muddy themselves in rainwater.
Ana, stop it this instant.
Ana, the mountains beckon from the borderlands.
Ana, I've chosen to erase you.
Ana, wait for me on the Ferris wheel.
On Wednesdays, I wait in the shadowed recesses of the barn. Horses' hooves shuffle in scattered hay. A drop of whiskey tickles my throat.
I think of Ana riding in summer. There is a delicateness, a fragility in her that even the horse suspects. She fords the stream, the tips of her toes dangling in water.
2. Elizabeth
When Ana was a child, she lived for other people's dreams. "Did you have any dreams last night, Mom?" she'd ask me. I would sit down for breakfast and pretend to think. Then I'd make up a story—goblins and ghosts, fairies and gremlins. I never could remember my real dreams.
Later, the stories turned violent. Murders in the night, battlefield heroics. This was around the time Jacob started drinking. It's not that I meant to dwell on the macabre; I could still remember my fairy characters. What had changed, somehow, was my willingness to let them live.
When Ana met Paul, I knew right away there was something wrong. It's like Paul was Jacob and Jacob was Paul. The same darkness in their eyes.
The first call came years ago:
"I'm scared," Ana said.
"I know," I said.
"Do you remember the way Dad changed?"
"Yes."
"The lilac is wilting on the mantle."
"Yes."
"Please please please please please please help me to understand."
One winter day, I'd gone for a walk to clear my head. What I couldn't fathom was the silence when I returned. The smell of whiskey stifled me.
For hours, I believed Jacob would get up from the floor. His chest pinned a twisted arm. A trail of sweat lined his cheek.
When I couldn't stand it any longer, I took out a broom from the cupboard and swept and swept the shattered glass.
3. Jacob
Stop. Stop telling me this. Even here, I am peppered with words.
You don't understand—for me, the drinks were my life. A person can't in good faith cut his own throat.
When I look down, I see people walking in circles. The history of their footprints eludes them. And you would tell me that I am the lost soul?
Elizabeth.
What could I have done differently?
My loneliness is a death unto itself.
When you found me on the floor, what did you feel?
A wave of relief washing over you?
The end of your pain was my final gift.
Ana, your father is gone. Good riddance, you say? No, I think there's something else you feel.
Remember the first time I took you to the greenhouse? The orchids quivered in your small hands. The passionflower vines trailed to your feet. You asked me if you could sleep there—curl up on the soil—and I said, "Only flowers sleep here, Ana."
A few years later came the first of the troubles. You must have heard the screams while you slept. I only wish I could do it all over.
4. Ana
I used to think that death was like a dark sheet between you and the world—the sound of voices gone faint in the peace of nothingness.
When it came to me finally, it felt more familiar than that. Like a book on the bedside table that you've read halfway through. It's something you're already into before you thought you were committed.
The dahlias haunt me. They leave me reeling with their constant observation. Once, I wanted answers; now, the finality of their colors baffles me. Mother, why didn't you warn me? Mother, the watering can waits for me. Mother, flick off the bright lights of the greenhouse.
Now, there is nothing to the world but visions.The nervous tremor of Paul's hands.Mother sipping her tea on the back porch.
Paul believes I am still with him.That's his fate, I suppose—the perpetual ignorance of an ailing brain. I see him waking in pools of sweat, wandering the halls. I thought by now I'd be able to forgive him. There's a kind of peace that even death doesn't bring.
BIO: John Wheaton is an attorney and writer in Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in Bricolage, Glossolalia, the SN Review, and the Bookends Review. John loves surrealist fiction (think Donald Barthelme!) and can often be found perched on a seat in the library or hunched over a chess board at a Seattle coffee shop.