Ribbons (10 page)

Matt pulled out one of the cigars and held it up to his nose. He took a sniff. He didn’t know how cigars were supposed to smell, but this one smelled like a horse barn he had once crashed in over night. Not a bad smell, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to light it on fire and force it into his lungs.

“It’s a brothel,” said Matt.

“A what?” asked Thug Guy.

“A whorehouse,” he said. “It’s called the Golden Delicious.”

“So you are pimp now?”

Matt put the cigar back in its box. “I was told that I was not.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Thug Guy came back on. He sounded cheerful. Too cheerful. “Good news! Am coming for visit.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Matt said.

“It really is,” said Thug Guy. “And when I get there you will have something for me.”

14

Foster sat on the playground swing outside the orphanage. He didn’t push off or pump his legs. The swing didn’t move at all. He just had to be outside right now and the swing seemed like a good place to sit. He needed the fresh air. He had almost hyperventilated when he’d left the girl in the motel room, not out of fear but in a desperate attempt to flush the metallic scent of blood and death from his nostrils. He could still smell it if he sat too long in the TV room. That could have been his imagination, though. Either way he needed to be outside.

The rusty chains gave a slight squeak as he shifted his weight, and he stared down at the music box in his lap. He didn’t dare open the lid. Instead, he turned it upside down to look at the engraving on the bottom. The symbol looked more familiar now. It wasn’t one that he had drawn on
her
, but it might have been another word in the same language. There was also a single line of text carefully written in small letters underneath the symbol:
I wish I had more to give
. The ink was blue and faded, probably from a ballpoint pen. Some of the letters were missing entirely. Foster used to touch the message when he was a kid, imagining it was the closest he would ever get to the woman who’d written it. When the letters had started to fade, he’d stopped touching it, fearing that it might rub off and be gone forever.

He absently traced a line in the dirt beneath him with the tip of one shoe. Then he stopped when he realized what he was doing. It was just a line. Not
the
line. No patterns or symbols. He did notice something on his shoe, though. The stain stood out clearly on his cheap sneakers. Blood. He bent down and frantically rubbed his thumb over it to wipe it off. As he did, his vision started to blur.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t until a teardrop hit his shoe that he realized he was crying. That made him cry harder. He buried his face in one elbow and let the tears flow. Each sob emptied his lungs a little more until he had to gasp it all back in at once. That gave him the strength for a wail. He wasn’t just miserable. He was angry. With a primal grunt, he blindly flung his music box off into the weeds of the playground.

He took three deep breaths and blinked back the last of the tears. He stood and sighed, then looked around. His music box had landed near the merry-go-round. It was a small one, of course—no horses, just handles. It didn’t even spin anymore. It listed on its side with one edge buried in the dirt. Foster reached down to pick up the box and heard something click underneath the rusting ride. He bent down on one knee to look.

A small fuzzy creature peered out at him like a tiny bridge troll. It was a toy of some sort. It kind of looked like a bird but at the same time it looked like a fat rodent. One eye was open wide while the other was frozen in an eternal wink. Its mouth looked like a stubby beak, and its fur might have been purple before years of exposure had drained the color from it. Somehow, it moved.

Ancient plastic gears clicked and grinded as it came to life. An ear twitched, and its good eye blinked. Then it spoke. “Ooh . . . Ha ha ha!
Zzzt
—”

Foster flinched, setting him off-balance. He dropped the music box and threw himself backward. He didn’t get very far before plopping down on his butt. He started to scramble to his feet when it spoke again.

“What’s wrong? Nobody wants to give you a push?” the thing said.

Foster eyed the toy as he snatched up the music box and held it to his chest. The toy seemed familiar suddenly. What was it called? A . . . a Furby, he thought. But he was pretty sure that had never been one of its standard phrases.

“Relax, Foster. It’s me.” It still sounded like the Furby, but he recognized the cadence of the Woman in the Garden.

Foster caught his breath and drew up his legs to sit a little more comfortably. The Furby waited patiently, cocking its head from side to side and making a little humming noise. Finally, Foster was ready to talk.

“I’m still here,” he said. “You said I could come with you.” He wasn’t sure if he was angry, or pleading, or whining. “You let
her
in.”

“I need my daughters with me before I can open the garden to others,” said the Woman in the Garden. “We need to make it ready.”

“Daughters?” Foster said. “You need more?”

“Yes.”

Foster shook his head. “Why? How . . . how many?” He didn’t let her answer the questions. “You didn’t say anything about that before.”

“You were eager to start,” she said.

“I wasn’t.” Foster tried to convince himself. “I wasn’t! I just want to leave. Nobody wants me here.”

“I do,” she said. “I need you
there
. . . for now.”

He sniffled. “It’s hard.”

“Come inside,” said the Woman in the Garden. “It’s snack time. You’ll eat and calm down. And then we can talk some more. I want to show you something.”

Foster made his way back to the TV room. He didn’t bother taking the Furby with him. It had returned to being a lifeless, forgotten toy as soon as she’d stopped speaking. He did have a snack, though. All those tears had left him thirsty. He pealed the top off a plastic tray of cheese and crackers, then washed that down with some flat soda from a half-empty two-liter bottle.

“Better?” the Woman in the Garden asked.

Her voice seemed to come from the storybook like it had in the motel room. The book was open to a pop-up scene of a vegetable garden. A friendly scarecrow hung from a pole in the back, while the Woman in the Garden watered a strawberry patch in front. Foster knew that if he pulled the tab at the top of the page, it would make the strawberries grow. There was another woman he hadn’t seen before bent over tending the plants.

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“I want to show you the good you’re doing,” she said. “I left you a window into my world. It’s here by my story.”

The storybook wasn’t by a window. He had tossed it next to his duffel bag over by the wall that he used to practice his drawings. He did see the red plastic View-Master, though. It was already loaded with a reel. He picked up the toy and looked skeptically at the plastic lenses. He used his breath to fog them up and then cleaned them with his sleeve. Then he held the View-Master up to his eyes.

In it he saw the garden in a rounded, square frame. It was flat compared to the pop-up book, but the rows of vegetables appeared more realistic and the scarecrow looked like it didn’t want to be friends anymore. The woman bent over tending the patch of strawberries wasn’t just a vague illustration—he saw Vicki. She was wearing a simple white dress, something a Mennonite wouldn’t be ashamed to own. Her face was expressionless, and she stared right at Foster with eyes that were a solid milky-blue.

Foster flinched when the Woman in the Garden whispered in his ear. “See? Nothing to be sorry about. She’s right where she needs to be.”

Foster took a closer look. Vicki didn’t look happy. More like a doll posed for a photo.

“Are you sure she wants to be there?” Foster asked. “She looks sad.”

“She is sad. And lost. And pathetic,” said the Woman in the Garden.

Foster pulled the lever on the View-Master and changed the scene.

Now the Woman in the Garden was standing with Vicki under the oak tree. One of her arms was wrapped around Vicki’s shoulders while the other reached out to the owl in one of the branches. Vicki held a white bunny in her arms, and her head was cocked to one side as though she was about to ask a question. Her face still didn’t show any emotion.

“I thought you wanted her there,” said Foster. “You said she was coming home.”

“I do want her here,” she said. “And I want her to be worthy of being here. She will be soon.”

“When you talk like that, my head hurts,” Foster said.

“Pull the lever,” the Woman in the Garden told him.

Foster pulled, and a new picture clicked into place.

This time there was no garden. There was a forest trail. The forest was impossibly dense, with the background fading into mist. A young woman was walking the trail. She glared back over one shoulder. It was hard to tell if she was worried she was being followed or angry at what she was leaving behind. She may have just finished crying. In her arms she carried a small potted tree. Foster recognized its leaves—an oak tree. He also recognized the girl. She would grow up with that tree to become the Woman in the Garden.

“Look, I didn’t start this,” she said. “I was orphaned just like you. I didn’t have a choice. I had to grow up fast and find my own way.”

“Didn’t you tell me this story already?” Foster let the View-Master drop from his eyes. He expected to see her standing right next to him, but she wasn’t there.

She whispered to him anyway. “Not all of it. Pull.”

Slide. Click.

The new frame showed a naked man standing in the garden. Her garden. He was backlit like some kind of rock star. Animals seemed to be paying homage as he looked down at his own hands in awe. It was a bit melodramatic . . . and, Foster hoped, disproportionate.

“You went to Sunday school right? Genesis. Chapter one, verse twenty-six. It’s like the
first
page of the Bible,” she explained. “‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’”

“Creepeth?” Foster asked.

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped. “Pull.”

Click.

The naked man looked surprised to see a naked woman standing next to him. She had her own special effects and entourage of animals. It was her again—the younger version of the Woman in the Garden.

The Bible refresher continued. “‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and
female
created he them.’”
The Woman in the Garden repeated herself for emphasis. “Male
and
female.”
Then she continued, “‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,’ and blah, blah, blah.”

“So, you
are
Eve, then? I thought you said there was another woman named Eve.” Foster was just trying to get it right for himself now. “You don’t seem like the Sunday school Eve.”

“No,” said the Woman in the Garden, “that bitch doesn’t show up until the next chapter.”

Click.
Foster didn’t remember pulling the lever that time.

A naked man was laying in the dirt, his eyes rolled back into his head. He was still in the garden, but it was night and all the plants were silhouettes or blending into shadows. Except where the plants were splattered with blood. The man’s chest had exploded open, pale ribs jutting up toward the sky through blood and gore. One of them was jagged where it had been broken off. The Woman in the Garden was sitting on the ground cradling the man’s head in her lap. She was covered in blood, too. Her eyes were squeezed tight, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“‘And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,’” she said. “This is from Genesis, chapter two, verse twenty-one. ‘And he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.’”

Foster was too shocked to say anything. His finger worked on its own.
Click.

A woman was standing under an apple tree. This had to be
that
Eve. Her skin was translucent. The only thing that looked solid about her was one of her ribs. The rest of her was in various stages of being put together, layer by layer. A snake was curled up in the apple tree watching her being made. A man was also watching in the background. Adam’s chest was whole again. His eyes were a solid, milky-blue.

“And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” The Woman in the Garden paused. When she continued, she spoke slowly and clearly, letting each work sink in. “I am nobody’s rib.”

There was one final frame in the View-Master. Foster slowly clicked it into place.

The Woman in the Garden was kneeling down planting the sapling she had been carrying earlier in her pot. She was in a new garden with seedlings just starting to poke out of the soil. The dark forest from the first frame was in the background. Foster thought she was alone until he spotted the owl watching from one of the distant trees.

“So you left?” Foster asked. He was whispering now, too.

“I had to,” the Woman in the Garden said. “I would have been mother to you all. And I wanted to be. So now I’ll care for the sad, and the lost, and the forgotten. But they have to find me first. Like you have.”

Foster set the View-Master down and rubbed his eyes. “That story kinda just sounds like a typo. Like it just got told out of order.”

“Doesn’t matter. If people want something enough, they’ll believe in it.”