She would fulfill Elaine K. Bernstein’s requests.
For a price.
She would make several very specific requests. On the outset, these requests would appear to serve the woman’s purpose. They’d come across as considerate. Even helpful. But in the end, they would benefit Mrs. Smith. They would give her everything she wanted. And cost Elaine K. Bernstein everything she held dear.
With her claws hanging over the typewriter keys, Mrs. Smith’s mind drifted to another time.
A time when fireworks meant setting fire to bamboo stems. The minor explosions stayed firmly on the ground. They did not illuminate the whole sky or fill the air with thunderous claps. They didn’t drop debris into the ocean. Fish did not feed on bits of charcoal, paper, or plastic because humans wanted to create their own stars.
Swimming through her memories, she remembered when a man had gifted her with fireworks.
She’d just begun a new life cycle, which meant she could easily adopt a human form, and she’d chosen to masquerade as the beautiful and mysterious widow of Captain Josiah Smith.
Suitors and sycophants came out of the woodwork, showering her with costly gifts. One of these suitors, the man who’d presented her with fireworks, had also brought her chests of treasure from the East. Her servants had carried them to her boudoir and thrown back the lids to reveal embroidered silks, jade ornaments, ivory carvings, foo dog figurines, porcelain vases, and exotic plants for her conservatory.
The man was generous by nature, and he gave cuttings of these plants to several acquaintances. Before long, pots of oriental bittersweet were thriving in the protective glass rooms of a dozen Gold Coast mansions.
Two brothers who owned a nursery in Flushing wereenchanted by the new plant and became the first to propagateCelastrus articulates. However, they weren’t the first to plant oriental bittersweet in the ground. That honor belonged to a female gardener hired by Mrs. Josiah Smith.
Mrs. Smith’s servant buried the seeds in the loamy soil right before the spring rains. Shunned by her fellow humans for having a child out of wedlock, the woman whispered to each seed as she dropped it into its dark hole, willing it to cover the land, the houses, the electric lights. Willing it to choke and strangle whatever it touched.
The plants thrived. They drank in the sunshine and nutrient-rich rain. They climbed over the arbor. Surged over the stone walls. Became a green wave cresting over the garden gate.
In late summer, their fruit turned yellow and split. The red berries looked like beads of blood. Sparrows and starlings plucked the berries off the vine and carried the seeds in their bellies.
The birds flew to neighboring yards. They flew to other counties. Other states. Along the way, they deposited their droppings. The seeds burrowed into the earth. The rain found the seeds in their wombs of soil and compelled them to wake.
The oriental bittersweet grew and spread. Grew and spread. It became an infestation. An invader. An enemy.
Though Mrs. Smith did not feel love, she did feel tenderness toward certain living things. The oriental bittersweet pleased her. She admired its tenacity and its invasive power. The humans had taken so much land for themselves. Perhaps her dogged vine could take some of it back.
Mrs. Smith reached an impossibly long arm to the window overlooking the garden and raised the shade. A century ago, servants had filled the garden with things the humans found attractive. There’d been roses and boxwood bushes, benches and sculptures, gravel paths and a reflecting pool.
Now the benches and sculptures had disappeared under layers upon layers of bittersweet vines. Riding over the backs of thorn bushes, the vines fanned out in all directions, their tendrils tirelessly reaching, reaching.
Let them cut you, thought Mrs. Smith.You will only grow stronger. You will come at them from below. From the deep. From the dark. As will I.
Then an idea came to her, and her mouth curled in a serpentine smile.
Using a single hooked claw, she began to type.
11
Una
That Sunday, Una and Kristofer were the greeters for the early worship service at the Cold Harbor United Methodist Church.
For most of the year, this service was primarily attended by the oldest church members. They’d shuffle in, eager to get a seat in one of the stiff-backed pews near the front, as if proximity to the shining altar cross could erase their sins as their Day of Judgment grew closer and closer.
On summer Sundays, the grannies and grandpas at the early service were joined by the sailing families. They showed up at the last minute, damp-haired and harried, hoping to cross piety off their list before hustling home to change clothes and then jump back in the car and speed to one of the many North Shore yacht clubs.
For now, the church building was still dozing. The organ was silent. The wooden pews weren’t groaning. The bells had yet to toll the hour.
Una grabbed a handful of programs from the wooden table in the entranceway and took her place outside the chapel doors. It wasn’t even nine in the morning and already the air was sticky with humidity.
There was no sign of the sun. Clouds drooped from a gray sky, and mist crept over the grass, as diaphanous as a bridal veil. The world felt hushed and heavy.
“You’re pretty as a picture,” Kristofer said as he took up his position across the sidewalk from his wife.
