Frances Lindemann

Daffodils, or, A Difficult Woman

Excerpt

Martha watched a large bee burrowing its way deeper and deeper into the center of a flower, its filmy wings crushed back against the furry body. They passed the poppies, spreading their reds promiscuously in the hot air; the ranunculus, the hyacinth. There seemed latent in all of them the possibility for sudden change, a monstrous metamorphosis. Despite the warmth, Martha felt her insides grow cold with fear or repulsion. At the back of the garden, the part from which you could just catch glimpses of the sea through the shrubbery, a cluster of daffodils, their orange tongues wagging.

“Late, this year,” said Clarice. “So they won’t last long.”

“May I take some, then?” said Martha.

“Take some?”

“For my room.”

Clarice looked at the girl for a moment, then made her way slowly into a nearby shed, where she dug around in a drawer for the gardening scissors. She returned to the girl, clasping them triumphantly, and handed them to her. Martha bent to cut the green stems. As she stood hunched over the dirt a lock of hair fell from behind her ear, covering the side of her cheek. Streaked with sunlight, it was golden, the color of the daffodils. Clarice watched them fall one by one, giving their heads a little shake.

The late afternoon heat had begun to set in outside. When Martha had collected a handful they went into the house. The corridor was airy and cool. Somewhere there was the sound of water trickling between plants—a fountain, perhaps—and the girl pictured nymphs, mermaids singing. But she could not see the source of it.

“I’ll show you to your room,” said the old woman. “I must sleep now, before dinner.” 

They passed candelabras mounted on the wall, small potted trees, doors opening onto other rooms and other views. Clarice opened the door at the end of the hall and waved the girl inside. “I hope you’ll have what you need. If you don’t, you may tell me so at dinner: eight o’clock.”

Martha stood alone. The room was bare but colorful: a four-poster bed made up with patterned sheets, a large red walnut wardrobe in the old-fashioned style, a spotted mirror. Her face was caught, suspended. She stood for a while to see if she could catch it altering itself. Beneath the age patterns on the glass, the thin scar running parallel to her left eyebrow remained like a stubborn talisman, stitching her to her reflection. In the bathroom, she turned the hot water up as high as it would go, but it ran out quickly, and she spent the rest of her shower in the cold. The nubby towel on the rack was too short for her long body. She rubbed herself down with it and lay naked on top of the bed, watching the goosebumps bubble up on the surface of her thighs. Vaguely, she thought: evidence. Her eyes were closing, almost against her will—she was very tired. She thought she saw markings on the wall across from her, stick figures done in pencil, like tiny cave drawings; but perhaps she was only delirious with fatigue. Then her eyes shut entirely, and she slept.  

O

In subsequent days, Martha was to learn that the hours were always like this: savored slowly, in broken-up pieces, like candy. They spent the morning on the terrace, drinking coffee and eating toast in silence. The old woman liked to begin anew her forays into speech as they walked in the garden, and the young girl listened, trailing her fingers behind her along the tough waxy stems. 

Around noon the old woman retired for her nap, declaring it the hottest part of the day. The girl put on her bathing suit and took her book out to the lawn chairs, where she lay in the sun and stared at the sky—which was in front of her, rather than above her—until her mind had emptied itself so thoroughly that it became the sky, and her thoughts the clouds passing upon it. 

Sometimes she would take the old bicycle from the garage and go into town for a gelato. As a child, chocolate had been her preferred flavor, but on her third afternoon she ordered pistachio and, feeling now that she had truly entered into adulthood, never looked back. Licking her pale green fingers, she wandered down to the beach. Chalky white cliffs rose high above the green water, and from further down the shore came a child’s cry, of delight or of fear. Where the cliffs closed in on the ocean, the waves became choppy from their own gathered tension, and leapt up high against the rocks. The sea was washing the stone clean of all associations. Across the bare sky an enormous bird spread its wings. A blue heron, the girl thought, though she could not say for certain whether they really occupied this part of the world, or whether the name had come to her only because she used to see them sometimes in the past.

In the evenings they had a drink together, a drop of whiskey or a small glass of bitter Italian amaro. At home it would not have been allowed. She liked the feeling of it, a votive candle lit inside her stomach, the palpitation of its slow burn. And after all there was something prayerful about those evening hours, in which the hydrangeas turned their twilight-colored faces inward and everything that had been flat and dry and extended in the heat became cool, close, shaded with depth and complexity of color. It was then that the old woman spoke to the girl about her past; and the girl listened peacefully, as though she were a small child again, her chin pressed into her sticky fingers and the images of the stories passing before her like the shifting shades of a magic lantern.

About the Author

Frances Lindemann is a writer from New York City. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories.