The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (26 page)

of such wickedness. Such sweet wickedness it was! Love, as I have

never known. I want my husband to hear, to pierce his heart the

way he pierced mine so many years ago.

Alas, it is not to be. My rumblings from my perch echo from

the acres of rooftops and I spot Sukeena through the glass roof of

the Solarium. She has broken free of her interrogators and is

appealing in cloistered silence to me, with the pained expression

of the only one who cares. “Don’t do it!” her expression calls out.

“Don’t jump!”

I look on as a uniformed policeman approaches her in the

Solarium, the policeman not seeing me but me seeing him. I look

on as Sukeena spots his arrival. She lifts her arms like a musical

conductor and throws her head back in a haunting display of the

quiet powers she possesses. He retches, gripped by a pain in the

stomach, and I am reminded of our encounter in the Cairo market,

all those years before. I watch, as impossibly the thorny vines

of Sukeena’s remarkable indoor garden, lush as it is with African

creepers and exotic botanical varieties from our year abroad,

come alive with alarming speed. I watch as that dense greenery

runs up the glass as if a thousand snakes, sprouts racing from the

soil demonically. I watch as that policeman, already halted in his

approach, is suddenly tangled and overcome by the twisting,

creeping choke of that instant jungle. As he is consumed.

Sukeena shaking her hands invitingly. The density of the tangle

overcoming even my view of the events below as the glass is

obscured.

And then, I see the policeman no more. My maid’s delicate

hands fall back to her sides. In stunned amazement I watch as the

overgrowth recedes as quickly as it came, suddenly alive with color

194

and bloom—a paralyzing red of bougainvillea, orchid and, dare I

admit it, roses. More red roses than I have ever laid eyes upon.

With that canopy removed from overhead, my friend dares to

look once again in my direction. We are quite some distance, and

yet her face is close enough to feel her warm breath, to drink her

earthy perfume. She shakes her head in denial. She will not allow

me to jump, will not allow me to end it. Will not leave April

unfound and Adam without a mother, only that monster of a

father, my husband, to help him fashion a life, to control her

destiny. I am condemned by my love. Of this blue-skinned

woman. Of my magical son. Of a driven man I once allowed to

impregnate me with his seed and thus spoil my fertility forever.

What a fool I feel, exposed like this in an open window, as several

of the of?cers break from the forest with their lights, called by my

shouting and ranting and raving.

And then I see him. John. Below me and to my left, at one of

the many doors leading to the garden. Sukeena sees him too,

195

though he does not take note of her. The three of us. Me on the

ledge. John, blithering and drunk and terri?ed he has lost his

daughter to this tomb we call home. Sukeena, surrounded by her

murderous blush and bloom of a thousand red blossoms.

I laugh wildly. Hysterically. Maniacally. I laugh for the policemen

to hear. I laugh for my husband to be sick. I laugh at the

moon and the clouds, the wind in my ears speaking as Rose Red.

“She lives,” says the wind. “She lives in the dower . . .”

Only then do my ears forgive me, only then do clarity and

alacrity impose themselves, a comprehension by the ear prepares

me for the understanding that is to follow. It is not “dower,” as I

once supposed. The word I am to hear is “tower,” and Rose Red

is whispering clearly that this is where my daughter’s future lies—

where my daughter now resides.

The Tower.

A tower not yet built.

196

3 a.m.—rose red (sukeena’s chambers)

I shudder to relate to you, Dear Diary, the tragic events of the

past several hours.

Not long after the dramatic occurrence in the Solarium, and

my brief encounter with my husband, did a sense of dread invade

me that rivaled the disappearance of my dear child only hours

earlier. I knew in an instant that this dread involved Sukeena and

that my own intervention was required to spare my sweet friend. I

have suffered much in?rmity these several years, nearly always

cautious in my walking about not to lose balance and fall to the

?oor like some invalid. Yet on this night the eyes I must have

raised with the staff as I ran down the West Wing’s second-story

halls and ?ew down the Grand Stair, my feet barely lighting as I

descended. Drastic action was required of me—I knew this without

so much as a single thought. My response was born from

within me, having little or nothing to do with any kind of thought

process—and for this reason I trusted it, I suppose, or at least I

followed it without question.

“No, John!” I heard myself calling out in an unfamiliar tone,

a tone a wife should never use to address her husband. Especially

in public. (I tell you, Dear Diary, it was not my voice at all, but

one given to me, just as the quickness of limb was given to me.

Just as the voice in the séance was given to me. This, in turn, begs

a greater question upon which I hope to expound at a later date:

that is, if not my voice, if the voice of Rose Red, as I ?rmly

believe, then why was she speaking through me in an attempt—

vain, as it turned out—to save Sukeena? Has this house come to

listen to my handmaid? To talk to her? Do they share some connection

about which I am previously unaware?) “You let her go!”

I roared at him in a voice that was not mine.

John knew that other voice. He is smarter than other men.

Wiser. More experienced. He recognized that voice immediately

197

as being the voice of the grand house. Paralyzed, he stood, ?atfooted,

as I ran—ran!—toward him, my dress rising behind me

like a shadow. Two policemen had Sukeena by the arms and were

dragging her toward the open door, beyond which I could see a

car waiting. The police in this city are a model of corruption and

in?uence peddling. (Mayor Gill, now in his third term, has

attempted to change our image by closing the bawdy houses and

198

saloons that people the water frontage. He would not dare touch

the police, for they control this town, including the actions of the

mayor!) If Sukeena was placed in that car, I knew well that I might

never see her again. As I approached my husband at full speed, a

thought sparked through me: what if April had not disappeared at

all? What if my husband had ordered her removed brie?y by one

of the loyal staff ? What if this evening’s anxiety was nothing more

than the result of a deftly scripted act of deceit intended to lay

blame on my maid and win her forcible removal from our home?

What if his plans called for her beating, her jailing and the pox or

other illness that seemed to claim the lives of so many of this city’s

jailed? April is removed for one night, and John reclaims the

power over his wife and destroys the one person in this house who

has more power than him. (Discounting the house itself, of

course!) Had my husband tricked me, tricked us all, including

the police (whom he may have bought off ) in an effort to regain

his single authority?

John caught me unawares. He extended his arms in advance of

my fast approach and knocked me off my feet, throwing me down

onto my behind, where I skidded across the polished wood and

came to rest against the wall, directly beneath my own portrait.

“She . . . heard . . . her . . . scream!” he roared. “The only

person to claim to hear anything!”

“She heard the house scream,” I cried, for I was quite aware of

Sukeena’s ?rsthand report.

He snorted derisively at me. “It was our daughter, Ellen. Our

daughter’s last sounds. And this woman must answer for it.”

“Answer for it? This woman? Does she answer for the disappearances?

For your partner’s suicide?” I caught him with my

de?ance. “It . . . is . . . this . . . house. And you know it!”

“I know nothing of the sort.”

An of?cer remained in the open doorway. Beyond him, I saw

Sukeena violently thrown into a police wagon, her head striking

199

200

the frame. She glanced back in my direction. It was the last I saw

of her. I have not seen her since. John nodded toward the of?-

cer—my husband clearly giving his okay—and again my thoughts of

conspiracy surfaced. John had a greater hand in this than I

thought. The man pulled the door shut.

“No!” I cried out.

“A cop has disappeared, Ellen,” my husband said.

“The woods,” I said, making no mention of the sudden bloom

in the Solarium. “There are dozens of them in the woods. One is

lost is all.”

“They found a belt—a policeman’s belt—on the ?oor of the

Solarium. Sukeena was in the Solarium at the time. I think it’s

time you faced up to the fact that your . . . what is she

exactly? . . . your friend . . . grew jealous of your time with our

daughter and has brought her harm. Indeed, has removed her

from the face of this earth.”

“You bastard, John Rimbauer.”

He bent down and slapped me across the cheek. Tears leaped

from my eyes, like beads of juice from an orange slice.

“I’m sorry . . . ,” he mumbled. In our ten years together, my

husband had never laid a hand on me in this way.

Perhaps it was the jarring that this blow caused me—my husband

unleashing his anger. Perhaps it was simply the right time

for me to see the truth, as unadorned as it so often is. For me,

that slap of his was like sunlight through a magnifying glass—

directed, ?erce and intense. A light so bright as to be blinding.

Surprisingly, my husband had it half right. He had nailed it

on the head: jealousy. The clarity of that thought! I thought I

heard the voices of choirs in my ears. Jealousy. But half right was

all. He was wrong about the source of that jealousy—felt over the

past two years as I focused my every waking moment on the love

and progression of sweet April. Not Sukeena at all. But Rose Red.

201

She’d grown jealous. And she’d fed off the substantial life

force of my child as a way of extending her own longevity and

striking out at me all at once. Two birds with one stone. Rose Red

has claimed April. She has removed Sukeena as well.

She has me all to herself now. And I shudder at what that

means.

202

20 february 1917—rose red

Horror of horrors, do I dare relate what I know now about the

events of the past three days? I know not how much of what has

happened was the result of my husband’s instruction, his determination,

and how much simply the result of a corrupt and bigoted

police force. Naturally, I would prefer to believe the latter,

as I must continue through this lie of a marriage to the former,

and thereby, perhaps, the blame for it all should be laid at my

feet, and mine alone. When I think back now to what I might have

done to save my dear Sukeena . . . Had it not been for fear, had

it not been for grief over the loss of my sweet April, perhaps I

would have been in the presence of mind to formulate some plan,

to articulate my degree of concern, to make demands upon my

husband and those clearly under his control.

Sukeena has failed to return from the police station, or wherever

it is they have taken her. Three full days have passed since

April’s disappearance, and I am teetering on the brink of suicide,

haunted by my husband’s continued stalking of this house like a

cat after a mouse and his approval when the police hauled off my

handmaid late that night in a pitiful rainstorm. Finally, about an

hour ago, I received word, through surreptitious means that I

dare not go into, not even in your trusted pages, Dear Diary

(except to say that one of the staff is close friends with a young

woman whose brother serves on the police department, and that

through this connection I have been privy to information that

otherwise should have never reached my ear). The word is this:

Sukeena has been under lock and key in a basement room in City

Hall for the past three days and nights. She has been denied food,

sleep and even the common decency of a toilet. I am of information

that she has been beaten, berated and quite possibly violated

in the way only a woman can be violated, while her captors con-

203

tinue to demand and await her confession–a piece of ?ction she

has quite properly, steadfastly, refused to provide them. I am of a

state, so wrought with grief and overcome with anxiety that I am

in one of my fevers, con?ned to bed, and only weakly able to

make this account in your pages tonight. Immediately upon hearing

of Sukeena’s treatment, her predicament, I wrote my husband

a brief note upon my personal stationery and had it delivered by

Yvonne, a woman I trust implicitly. My note read something like

this:

Dear Husband,