The Marigold Plate: Prologue

Ellen Russo (circa 1977) average housewife of the post-Nixonian age. She bears its standard ration of affliction. She frets over her weight, her husband, the safety of her daughters. On sunny days, when all seems well, her eyes distract to the horizon -- where the mushrooms clouds will be on the day they push the button. But her deepest dread is of the dark, that lays in wait... beyond the drapes:

The drapes. There was something wrong with the drapes.

Ellen Russo would later tell that to the police. In the psychiatric ward of Mercy General, she would tell it again — to the doctors, to the nurses, to the beige walls, to the ceiling tiles, to the tapioca on her food tray — repeating it numbly through the tranquilizers: the drapes, the drapes, the drapes.

The drapes were open in the girls’ room, and they shouldn’t have been. She’d closed them. She must have. She always did at night. She didn’t like the windows after dark, particularly on the nights that Ben worked late and she was alone with the twins. Even when they were covered, they disturbed her. She could feel the dark out there, pressing against the thin glass — waiting, watching.

But then, Ellen Russo was a nervous nelly. That’s what her husband told her. He also told her there was nothing there in the night that wasn’t there in the daytime. She held onto that, repeating it to herself and the girls. And she even believed it, when the sun was out or he was home. It was easy to trust in the sanity of the world when Big Ben was around.

Ben Russo was a burly bear of a man: hairy, big-bellied, free with his laughter. He treated his wife with the same good-natured condescension he showed his daughters. She was, he joked to his friends, his third child. He could sometimes be unkind (small jabs of sarcasm, occasional bursts of temper) but when he was near, Ellen always felt safe. His presence in the house suffused through the rooms like a radiant warmth driving off the fears that nibbled at her. Yes, things were different when Papa Bear was around — Ellen was different. She could laugh alongside him at Nervous Nelly Ellen, as though she were some neurotic character on a sitcom.

But tonight, he wasn’t home. He was at work. That’s what he said.

“Working late again, honey. We’re behind on that Speed-Co project, and I’ve got to have the specs done by Friday. Don’t wait up for me."

So, it was just her and the twins tonight… and her nerves nattering like a radio station she couldn’t turn off. Her nerves: she wanted to laugh at them, but they didn’t seem funny or neurotic. They seemed sane. They seemed like sound parental instinct, the mother animal in her detecting the approach of something… she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But it was there, distinctly there — a sourness in the air, like the odor of just turned milk. And there were other things (small things) she could put her finger on. The ceramic fruit bowl on the kitchen counter for example, it had been turned slightly (about a quarter rotation), and the lamp on the end table was dimmer than normal (as if someone had switched the bulb), and the drapes in the girls’ room… she had closed them earlier (hadn’t she?) and here they were, open again. She strode into the room past the chattering girls.

“Time for bed,” she said.

“No,” the girls wailed.

“It’s ten o’clock. I’ve already let you stay up way past your bedtime.”

“Five more minutes,” Megan pleaded.

“Five more minutes,” Ellen said, closing the drapes. “Then it’s lights out."

“Six more minutes,” Mary said. “We are six now, so we should have six more minutes."

“Okay, six minutes,” Ellen said.

“Seven minutes!” Megan yelled.

“No, you’re only six remember, so you only get six minutes."

“What if we were seven?" Mary asked.

“Then you could stay up another seven minutes."

“What if we were eight?”

Ellen looked at her, suppressing a smile — Mary the negotiator. “Then you could stay up eight minutes. Now I want you to put these toys away.”

They climbed off their beds and started to pick at the clutter of stuffed animals and Barbie accessories strewn over the floor, too intrigued by this new bedtime policy to upset it by disobedience. Then Mary paused.

“Wait,” she said slowly, the wheels of conjecture spinning. “What if we were… one hundred?”

“Well, then you could stay up an extra one hundred minutes,” Ellen said.

“What if we were one thousand years old?”

“Then I guess you could stay up a thousand more minutes."

The twins looked at each other, Megan’s mouth dropping into a long O.

“A thousand minutes,” she whispered.

“Hold on,” Mary said, her eyes wary. “Is that a deal?”

Ellen deliberated a few moments.

“It's a deal,” she said finally, “When you are a thousand years old, you can stay up an extra thousand minutes."

“Yes!” Megan said. “How about when we are a thousand and one?" She could negotiate too.

“It will still be a thousand extra minutes,” Ellen said. “One thousand minutes is the limit. Isn’t that fair? I have to draw the line somewhere or this whole thing will become ridiculous."

Megan nodded, smiling. “Yes Mommy, that’s fair.”

But Mary was more cautious. She knew a little something about deals. You could get screwed if you didn’t watch it. Exactly what getting screwed entailed she wasn’t sure, though she’d overheard her father talking about it many times. Nonetheless, she was determined to avoid it.

“We’ll need that in writing,” she said. Something else she’d picked up from her father: if you got it in writing they couldn’t screw you.

“Alright,” Ellen said, “I’ll put it in writing."

They leapt back onto their beds and began to jump up and down, thrilled with the concession they had won.

“A thousand minutes, a thousand minutes,” they chanted. “We get to stay up a thousand minutes!”

“Yes honeys, but not tonight,” Ellen said as she walked to the door. “And I want these toys picked up now. Otherwise the deal is off."

The girls jumped back down to the carpet. Ellen turned in the hallway and caught one final glimpse of them as they hurriedly gathered their toys. It was a scene she would play and replay afterward: the last time she saw the twins joyfully inhabiting a normal world.

She went downstairs to the living room and grabbed the remote control off the sofa, clicking on the television set: a 23-inch Zenith Chromacolor Space Command. The cathode ray hearth of their suburban home. Ben bought it two years back with his year-end bonus as a Christmas gift to himself. Ellen fretted slightly at the extravagance, but then — aside from her weekly grocery allowance — she wasn’t really privy to the family finances. Ben made the money and paid the bills. And if, in addition to the mortgage and the car payments on his canary yellow Camaro, he thought they could afford a Zenith Chromacolor Space Command, she could only trust that he knew best. In the meantime, she’d grown dependent on the remote — her magic wand to ward off silence.

The gray screen flickered to life with the Channel 8 Report. Ben was an avid consumer of the nightly news. Ellen was not. The Watergate hearings a few years earlier, and more recent images of Saigon’s collapse (desperate natives clinging to departing helicopters, communist flags waving over a U.S. embassy) had unsettled her. Something in her stomach — a subtle vertigo, as if the earth was gently teetering and she might fall off if she didn’t watch her step. No, she didn’t care much for the news, except on the nights Ben was gone. Then the anchorman’s monotone (idling in the background) seemed to calm her, conjuring something of her husband, chasing away the chill of his absence.

She wandered into the kitchen and set to work on the dishes, murmuring as she washed and rinsed: “Working late again. You’ve been working late a lot honey. Maybe you should ask for a raise with all the work you’re doing. If you are working. Is that what you’re doing honey? Are you working?”

She shook her head like a horse trying to shoo off a cloud of gnats. She had no right to her suspicions. Ben was a good man and a wonderful father. Good old Papa Bear, the protector and provider. She mustn’t be disloyal. Perhaps she should call him. It would be good to hear his voice, listen to his laughing reassurances. She could ask him to pick up some bread on the way home. There was only half a loaf left. That would get them through to the weekend, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more. She could stick it in the freezer till they needed it.

And if he doesn’t answer, what then? Maybe he’s not really at work. And why does he reek of soap when he slips under the covers at 1:00 a.m.? Ask him that sometime and watch him get angry.

“Stop it,” she said to the soapy bowl in her hand, and bit her tongue. The pain was quick and sharp, and her eyes watered at it. But it had the intended effect, dispersing the rambling paranoia, waking her from the cramped room of her thoughts.

A reporter’s voice droned from the television:

“Authorities still refuse to make any official pronouncement on the rash of disappearances. But inside sources now tell us that police believe at least ten of the missing children were abducted by one individual.”

Oh God, she thought, just what I don’t need to hear. She looked around for the remote. Where did she leave it? She walked back into the living room. The end tables, the couch, the recliners — she didn’t see it. Where was it?

“According to our count, the current number of missing children — and Mike, this is children from the Dormition metro area, under the age of ten, and not believed to have been taken by a family member — that number currently stands at twenty- three.”

“Where is it?” she said loudly, interrogating the room as though it was intentionally and maliciously concealing the remote from her. She needed it, she honestly didn’t know how to change the channel or switch the damn thing off without it.

“Twenty-three? You said twenty-three missing children?”

“That’s right Mike. Over the last two years, twenty-three children. About one a month.”

Was the volume increasing? “I just had the fucking thing,” Ellen said, pulling the cushions off the sofa.

“And there is no task force on this case? I mean what is being done?”

“A lot of people are asking that question. A lot of parents, and even some law enforcement officials have privately expressed to me their bewilderment that more isn’t being done, given the magnitude of this case. Just last month a young boy of eight, Jeremy Bucknell disappeared from his yard...”

She yanked the plug and the voice cut out abruptly. “Thank you,” she said, basking in the welcome silence. She definitely needed to learn where the on/off switch was on the television. Already she was thinking of how she would tell this story to Ben; how she would make it sound like yet another humorous chapter in the adventures of Nervous Nelly Ellie. Ben would laugh in that warm condescending way she found oddly comforting, and he would show her where all the hidden buttons were on the television. Then he would give her a reassuring kiss, a kiss that said:

I still love you dear, even if you are a little dim… and pudgy and your tits are drooping, and every day seems to bring a new sag or wrinkle to your face and (let’s be honest) even in your prime you were never much to look at. Unlike that new girl in accounting (now there’s a hot little number). I still love you though, because I’m a good guy… but I would much rather be nailing that girl in accounting. You know, the girl I’m standing next to in that group photo I keep on my desk at work, the one from last summer’s company barbecue out at Lake Bascomb. Remember that barbecue I didn’t invite you and the girls to? Yes well, I’d much rather be with her. And really Ellen, let’s face it: I’m not working late, you dumb shit. I’m in a room at the Ramada right now with her. And she’s doing things to me you couldn’t imagine, you fat prude.

“Stop!" She fairly shouted the command and bit her tongue till her ears rang and she tasted blood. The pain was remarkable, but it halted the bad thoughts, stopped them cold. Her head was silent once more. Silence, in fact, engulfed the whole house.

Silence

A small warning light began to blink in her mind. The twins: they were only silent when they were asleep or up to some mischief or….

She took the stairs two at a time. When she opened the door, she found them both sitting on Megan’s bed staring at the window. The drapes were drawn wide, the outer darkness pressing blackly against the glass.

“I don’t want you opening these drapes,” she said. She walked to the window and pulled them shut. As she turned her foot caught on the Barbie corvette and she stumbled and stubbed her toe on one of the legs of Mary’s bed. The sudden pain flared into anger.

“Girls! Did I not ask you to pick up your toys?”

“We didn’t do it,” Mary said.

“I know you didn’t do it! Did you put away a single toy since I left?”

“We didn’t open the drapes,” Megan said.

“What,” Ellen said. She looked back at the drapes, the checkered fabric hanging in mute concealment of the window. “They didn’t open themselves, did they?”

No answer.

“Well did they?”

“Yes,” Mary said quietly, “they did.”

Ellen stared at them and they stared back, their eyes darting at intervals to the covered window. Later, amidst the endless iterations of that evening in her memory, she would come to recognize the look on their faces as fear. But that night — through the fog of frustration and the smarting pain of her stubbed toe — she read only disobedience in those small faces, a sly contempt she had often seen in their father. How they resembled him.

“Go to bed now,” she said coldly. “And don’t open these drapes again."

“But we didn’t open them,” Megan whined.

“Shut up!” Ellen yelled.

The girls stiffened. Their mother had never told them to shut-up before. Shut-up was a bad word, not as bad as “shit” but still you weren’t supposed to say it. It was mean.

“Bad enough you don’t do what I ask, you have to lie about it too! I’m so sick of all the liars in this house! In the morning we’re gathering up all these toys and taking them back. “

“No!” the twins moaned, their faces puckered with the onset of tears.

“Oh yes! Now get in bed. Get in bed now!”

The girls went to their separate beds and lay down crying.

“Put your covers on!" Ellen’s voice had acquired the tone of a drill sergeant. The girls pulled their matching covers up to their chins — pink fleeces illustrated with farm animals.

“Stop crying!”

“I can’t... stop.” Megan said, her voice hitching miserably.

“Stop it now!”

The girls pursed their lips and shook quietly, their sobs bottled into small noiseless jerks. Ellen switched off the light and shut the door firmly behind her.

“I don’t want to hear a peep out of there until morning!”

She was seething. Where was Ben? He should be dealing with this crap, not her. Why did she have to be the camp commandant? Now she was wound up. She’d never get to sleep tonight. She took a deep breath, and then another. She needed a glass of wine. She walked downstairs to the kitchen.

She wasn’t supposed drink alcohol. It didn’t mix well with her medication. It gave her blackouts — it did other things too. But wine wasn’t like hard liquor. One glass wouldn’t hurt, it would just help her relax, help her sleep. One glass of Lavender Valley’s Burgundy Blush to smooth the ragged edges away.

She knelt and opened the door beneath the sink and reached all the way back to where she kept the green bottle, positioned strategically behind the gallon jug of Clorox. Mommy’s secret stash. Papa Bear didn’t like her drinking. He said it made her act like a fool. He said it frightened the girls. One morning he finally made her pour out all her booze in the sink. It was the morning after they’d hosted one of his poker nights. She had embarrassed him in front of his pals, though she couldn’t remember what she’d done, and he never gave her any details. That was alright, she didn’t really want the details. But he did say she behaved like a whore — a drunken whore, to be precise.

She poured herself a coffee cup full of wine. Me? I’m just having a cup of coffee. Nothing to see here. She downed the wine in three swallows. The relief was immediate, tranquility flooding her like a warm bath. No, Papa Bear didn’t like her drinking but… you know… Papa Bear could go to hell. And that whore in accounting (now there was a whore), she could join him. She refilled the cup.

She awoke on the couch, disoriented, her heart thrumming in her chest as if… as if something was wrong. Yet nothing appeared to be. The house was quiet — just the tranquil hum of the refrigerator. The end table lamp was on, the clock above the television read 2:59 a.m. She had nodded off, that was all. Fortunately, she had awoken in time to dispose of the wine stained coffee cup and the empty bottle before Ben walked in. Thank God for small mercies. But what had awoken her?

She sat up, swinging her feet to the carpet, and promptly noticed the big bay window — bare, unguarded. The drapes were drawn back from it like the curtains of some darkened stage. Outside the night loomed visible on the glass while the living room and her own hunched unkempt self (hair going off at random angles, face a puffy sagging mask) hovered in stark reflection. The afterglow of the wine transmuted what might have been alarm into mere puzzlement. Hadn’t she closed those drapes? She certainly had. The closing of the drapes was a ritual she observed faithfully every night after dinner. She stood up and paced the downstairs on listing legs (her stride still drowsy from the nap and the wine) and inspected all the windows. They were all undraped, each one an open portal through which the night peered in. She was suddenly aware of herself as she must appear from the other side of the glass: a frumpy, sweat-shirted hag, drifting through the house like a drab fish in an aquarium. Hysteria began to tickle at the back of her throat. Who did this? Who had exposed her like this?

The girls, little shits, they did this!

As if to answer the thought, a soft almost furtive noise came from upstairs: the distinct sound of a window sliding open. The girls!

She sprinted up the stairs, adrenaline clearing her head and straightening her step. She threw open the bedroom door and flipped on the light — and froze. For a moment her stunned mind could only inventory the room: the open drapes, the open window, glassless space gaping into the dark. Mary lay rigid in her bed, wide eyed like the victim of some paralyzing venom. Megan was gone, the rumpled imprint of her shape marking her absence in the covers.

Megan! -- she attempted to scream. But her mouth would not engage, and the name resounded unvocalized within her skull. She could not scream, she could not move, her whole body had grown mannequin-stiff. Despite the adrenalin thundering through her limbs she could do no more than witness what she could not stop and could not awake from.

Through the open window came a thin white arm — long fingered and covered in black script, like a stark parchment written in a dead tongue. It paused over her remaining daughter then snatched her by the hair and dragged her roughly out and over the sill. Her small foot, covered in a green Tinkerbell sock, was the last thing to disappear out the window, swallowed by the dark. Then the window snapped shut like a set of teeth, and the drapes slammed closed... all by themselves, mommy.

Ellen’s voice returned.

The screams began.