That Damned Vine

It was the vine - I know it was. I knew it from the first. You know how you get a feeling? You can’t explain it but you just know. And I knew. Laurie did too.

Oh my God, what did we do to my child? Why did we come here? Why did I let him persuade me to come here? It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

Laurie said “Mommy, what’s that green stuff?” You know? How a three year old would say it. “What’s that green stuff, Mommy?”

“It’s ivy sweetheart. It grows on walls.”

“Is it alive, Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetheart.” And she looked at it like she couldn’t understand how something could grow on a wall.

Roger loved it. Said it made the whole picture perfect. That it was just the kind of house he’d dreamed of ever since he was a boy. A stone cottage in the country with a rose garden in the front yard and a weeping willow in the back. And the ivy.

“I’ve always wanted ivy,” he said. And he even touched the ivy, stroked it, petted it. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

“Want to touch it, baby?” he said to Laurie, offering to hold her up and put her hand against the dusty leaves.

She pulled her hand back and hid it behind her back. Her eyes were huge and you could see she knew something, understood something, something we couldn’t see or understand.

“Don’t Roger ” I said, reaching for her to pull her back.

“Don’t what?” he laughed, delighted by the feel of his tapestry of green leaves.

“Don’t make her touch that stuff. It’s not good for her. Think of her asthma.”

For a moment he pulled back from the vine, pulled back from its fascination, pulled back and held Laurie closer to his chest. She clung to him as if he was the only safe place in the world, and I felt such a rush of .... I don’t know, love I guess. It felt like love, like all the treasure of the world was in that moment, in that precious child and those surrounding arms that held it safe.

Then he turned back and began scanning the pattern of leaves that made their way up the wall and even up over the rim of the roof eave in one spot.

“I’ve dreamed of this, Elly, dreamed of this practically my whole life. It is absolutely perfect.”

And as he told me this, it was as if I could see the dream too, see the cheery fire in the fireplace and smell fresh bread baking in the kitchen. I saw muslin curtains at the window and a hooked rug on the hard wood floor, and an easy chair with a printed chintz cover complete with doilies and everything inviting me to sit down.

It was as if the house had arms that were soft and warm and welcoming. I could imagine it whispering words of approval and reassurance. “My how you’ve grown. And how beautiful you’ve become. Roger is a lucky man, my dear. And just look at that angel.” as Laurie stared dumbly at the scene.

The vine, it was the vine I tell you, always the vine. He’d have never made us live there if it hadn’t been for the vine.

I know, I know, I’m to blame too. I should never have given in.

Laurie cried when we set foot inside the house. Not a scream exactly, or that might have made me resist his urging more strongly. It was more a muffled cry, like a hurt animal, an animal that knows it is too weak, too small, to protect itself; an animal forced to trust a bigger person who is taking it into danger.

I know that’s how she felt. That’s how I felt. I stepped across the threshold of that door as if I were stepping into the outer ring of hell. But the crazy part was that there was nothing scary inside the house. It was bright and clean and warm and cozy, it was a dream so pleasant, so secure I was all the more confused by my sense that something was dreadfully wrong about this place.

Roger paced through the rooms with little cries of pleasure as each room showed one more treasure. “Look at that hobby horse in the corner ” he cried, “I had one just like that when I was a kid. Imagine that. And that apron by the kitchen table; it’s an exact copy of my mother’s from years ago. Why, it’s like this whole house had been put together out of my happiest memories.”

And it was. Exactly. And that’s why it frightened me so. It was too perfect, too much like a dream.

“This is scaring me, Roger, I mean it.”

“Scaring you? Don’t be silly. It’s perfect.” And once again the aroma of fresh bread and the sparkle of the sunlight on the crystal in the hutch surrounded me, wooed me, lulled me with its perfection. Without realizing it was my voice speaking, I heard myself saying, “It is perfect Roger. Total perfection.” Even while I was saying it, my mind was saying, “This is crazy. I smell bread that isn’t even here and roses that aren’t blooming.”

But he leased it. “Just three months, Elly” he assured me, “just enough time for me to finish up the revisions on my play. You know how important it is for me to have peace and quiet when I’m working. This will be ideal.”

And it was. He made a study out of the front bedroom and retreated there almost immediately after we moved in and the sound of his typewriter assured me he was really working on his play. Each evening, we’d review his progress and I was amazed at how productive he had become. He’d never written this quickly, this steadily, and, yes, this well - back in Hartford. It was a miracle.

The spell of the house was working on me, too. I became quite domestic, attempting new recipes in the kitchen and working on a quilt for Laurie’s bed. My attempts at food preparation was more successful than the quilt. It was supposed to look like a congregation of ducks praying in a Colonial Church, with an immense tabby cat in clerical garb for the preacher, but somehow I couldn’t get the perspective right, and the cat kept assuming a strange sneer that looked anything but pious. Still, I was mostly satisfied, and even a bit surprised that I was so content in this isolated world.

For we were isolated. Rarely anyone came to our door, other than the mail man Normally, that would not have bothered me. but the truth is, I was lonely. Our friends were all off on holidays or busy with their work and didn’t have time to come see us. And Roger really needed to keep at his writing so they left us alone.

Laurie had the hardest time. The vines. She kept complaining about the vines. I asked her what was wrong and she wouldn’t answer. She just looked at me out of those huge dark eyes, asking me to read her mind. But of course I couldn’t. All I knew was the vines worried her. Especially at night. They crept into her dreams, I think. They wound their tendrils around her imagination until she felt like a mummy wrapped in green cloths. At least, that’s what I think she was trying to tell me. She would look at me with dumb fear and pluck at her face and her arms, as if trying to pull the groping leaves from her skin.

I tried to tell Roger about it, but he didn’t seem to hear. His mind was in his play, his body only half aware of the space around him. But I remember now one thing I didn’t pay attention to at the time. His fingers, when he was not at his typewriter, they had a way of plucking at his skin just as Laurie’s did.

As for me, I was especially careful to keep myself clean. I washed my hands constantly, anxious that I not miss a grain of dust I might have picked up off those leaves that clung to the walls of that immaculate house.

One morning Laurie came to me and held up her finger for me to kiss. It was a familiar gesture, her way of seeking Mommy’s healing. There was a red spot on the finger that looked almost like a burn, although I couldn’t imagine any place where she could have hurt herself. There was no open fire in the house or anywhere else nearby. I kissed the finger and expected to see her smile, but she didn’t. Instead, she held the finger to my lips again, and even a dozen kisses did not seem to give her the soothing she sought.

Soon there were other spots, and I thought “chicken pox” although where she’d have been exposed to that I had no idea. Besides, it wasn’t really like a pox - it was as if something had been rubbing against her skin, rubbing and making it raw. I used lotion to soothe it, but the spots did not go away. The child was growing increasingly uncomfortable with them, and I did all in my power to be sure I kept her skin as clean and dry and soft as possible, but every morning, the rash had spread.

I watched Roger to see if he was getting spots too, but apparently he was immune to whatever was causing the problem. But he still seemed to be plucking at something invisible that scaled his arms and shoulders and up into his scalp. I began itching myself after a while, although there was nothing there. Sympathy pains, I called it to myself and put it out of my mind. Only I couldn’t put Laurie out of my mind.

“Should I take her to town and look for a doctor, Roger?” I asked him. “Hm?” he muttered, engrossed in his manuscript as usual. “These spots on Laurie, I can’t make them go away.” “What spots, sweetheart?” he asked absent-mindedly. “Here. Look. Right here.” He looked, rubbed them a little with his fingers, glanced vaguely at me, and said, “I wouldn’t worry. Doesn’t look serious to me.”

I started to argue with him, but something caught my eye and distracted me. It was a robin perched on a portion of the vine next to the front window, and it’s color was so bright, and its expression - if you can say a bird has an expression - so perky, I felt a sudden rush of wholesomeness and peace and order. A ray of sunlight flashed through the window and splintered against a crystal bauble near the mirror over the fireplace, and the whole room seemed to explode with rainbows. I was mesmerized by the vision and forgot about Laurie and going to see a doctor.

Now when she showed me red places on her skin, I kissed them away with a pat and a soothing word and sent her back out into the garden to play.

I’m not sure I’d have done that if I’d thought she might get into the ivy. I still dreaded that vine. But she avoided it, just as I did. It was not her friend, any more than it was mine, and while Roger still admired it, we stood aside and let him have it to himself.

It was time to finish up our stay. The play was completed and my quilt done. But we seemed to be caught in a strange lethargy. The air, that once was light and invigorating had become heavy, and the stillness, rather than being peaceful, was sullen and brooding. Though nothing had changed in the house, it had lost its freshness. Now it looked tired, neglected, almost ugly. I was ready to leave but Roger was not. A new idea had struck him for another play, and he thought he might at least be able to pull it into some semblance of an outline. Meanwhile, his publisher was urging him to reconsider one of the issues in the play he’d just completed, that could develop into a serious rewrite. “No hurry about getting back to Hartford, you can tell this is a good place for me to write.” he told me. “Oh Roger,” I moaned, “just when we were starting to pack to go home.”

“Home?” he flared up, something he rarely ever did. “Where’s home for us, my dear? It’s wherever we are, remember.” And I remembered. Remembered his almost fanatic fear of staying put in any one place. He explained the fear by speaking of the fire that had destroyed his childhood home. It took all his memories, all his secrets, all his attachments to mother and father and a particular place on earth. “I’m a gypsy, Ellie. Don’t try to fence me in.” The thought frightened me a little, but it tantalized me too, for I had never wandered. I was a homebody who liked the feel of roots gone deep into the soil.

Roger represented open skies and wide ranges and mountains to climb and seas to sail with surprises at every turn and adventures without end. I felt a tingle of aliveness when I was with him that thrilled me. I longed to be as free as he, as careless, as liberated in body, mind and soul. “Ready for adventure?” he’d say, “Bon voyage” I’d reply.

So it was strange that this place could hold him when he feared being trapped in any one spot. But he didn’t think of it as a trap. For him, our dream cottage was an extension of an adventure that suited him so perfectly, he had no need for it ever to end.

I should never have agreed. I should never have given in. Oh, my baby, my sweet Laurie. How could I have forgotten? Why didn’t I see the danger? If you only could have told me. It wouldn’t have had to happen.

But yes, it would. Roger was stronger than I. He always got his way. There was no robin to distract me, no exploding rainbow off the mirror on the mantle. There was nothing at all. It just was decided. Roger began the new rewrite while researching for the new play and I discovered a quilt pattern that intrigued me. It had green leaves like the ivy and somehow the idea of sewing the leaves satisfied something inside of me. I didn’t know what. Maybe I was telling myself I was stronger than the vine. I was mistress in the house, not it.

Laurie no longer came to me for kisses. Her skin was rough all over now, kisses did not help. It was almost as if something was scratching at her in the night, something that was restless and persistent and she bore it without complaint. I did notice that some tendrils of the ivy had actually worked their way through her window and I wondered briefly if they could find their way to her bed. It seemed unlikely, but I moved the bed just in case. The ivy did not move at all.

Only now I know it did.

I found the marks of the tendrils where they had attached their little suckers on the wood of her bed. I’d been doing the laundry and was stripping the sheets from her bed when I saw them. I didn’t think much about them at first. Just little round marks on the wood. The wood was old. Time had discolored it. That was all. But then I noticed the dust on her pillow slip. It was musty, gritty, slightly acrid; it made me sneeze when I pulled it off her pillow. I’d seen dust in the room, but not that much. It was turning everything gray.

I examined it carefully and knew it had come from the vines. It had to. It had its unmistakable smell. Worst of all, the red blotches on Laurie’s hands I had once doctored so carefully with lotion were leaf shaped, as if the vine had attached itself to her each night while she slept. That horrible vine had been wrapping itself around my child while I was oblivious to her danger.

Roger was furious when I told him. “You’re insane,” he shouted at me. “You act as if the ivy would harm our child. How can you say that? No one could believe such a crazy idea.” His words hurt me terribly. I tried to protest. Tried to tell him what I had seen.

“It was there. I swear before God, Roger. I saw it with my own eyes. It is trying to eat our child ”

“No. No. You’re out of your mind. There’s nothing wrong with the ivy, or this house. We’re perfectly safe here. You’re imagining things.”

Even when I took him upstairs, took him to the room, to Laurie’s bed, made him look at the sheets, look at the wood, look at the dust, he still objected, still denied, still insisted I was imagining it all. There was a feverishness about the way he spoke, an eagerness to convince me I was wrong I’d never seen in him before.

“Ivy doesn’t attack people, Ellie. You know that. Those marks don’t mean a thing. It’s just old, scarred wood. That’s all. Come on, sweetheart, be reasonable. It’s been a long time since you’ve had a panic attack like this. Don’t let your imagination trick you.” And he tried to hold me in his arms as if to protect me and soothe away some old nightmare that stubbornly refused to go.

And it was true. There was a time I had had bad dreams, when I got scared and couldn’t be comforted. His reminding me of those times was almost as bad as what I was seeing happen to Laurie now. What scared me even more was the strangeness in his eyes, the urgency of his words trying to reassure me.

“It’s a wonderful house, Ellie. It loves us. I can feel it in every room. It’s the home I never had before. It would break my heart to leave it.”

I was horrified to hear him. “Can you hear yourself, Roger? Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yes, and it’s nowhere as crazy as you sound”

I was shocked, I was frightened, I was bewildered, I didn’t know what to think.

On the one hand everything he said made sense. I had never seen him so happy, so productive, and even if he was a bit preoccupied, detached from me, still he was kind, gentle, and in his way, loving. But at the same time, I knew what I had seen. The ivy. It was not our friend. And it wanted Laurie. I knew that better than I knew my own name. I had to get her away.

That last night I was so frightened, hurt, distraught, I literally could not think. It was all I could do to put Laurie to bed - but not in her bed, not this time. I tucked her in bed beside me. Roger would have to find his own place. I resolved to guard my child with my life if I had to. I would stay awake. I would let nothing enter my room. Not even Roger.

I don’t know if he understood why I’d locked the door. I don’t even know if he tried it. I fell asleep in spite of myself, too exhausted to keep my eyes open. I’d heard the keys of his typewriter still pounding downstairs when I drifted off. The next thing I knew it was morning and the house was still.

I unlocked the door and crept down stairs to find Roger. He was not there. The room where he wrote was empty, dull, lifeless, almost as if no one had been in it in years. The other rooms were vacant too, with no sign of life or light in them. I went back up the stairs and entered Laurie’s room

It was the smell I noticed first; the dry, dusty smell of old leaves and dirt from ages past. The window, which usually let in the sun, was choked with leaves. The vines filled it completely. Their tendrils had found their way to the bed and wrapped themselves around the body of my husband, as if it were trying to suckle a sick child. As I moved toward the bed, the vines quivered, and began to shrink back. A spasm ran through the vine and then it grew still. My husband’s body did not move.

I stepped closer and the vine wriggled. It was like a child expecting a reprimand from its mother for having been naughty. Then the leaves rose up in defiance and spread out like a hooded snake proud of its victory.

I must have fainted for I knew nothing more until I woke up here in this hospital room. I tried to tell them what I saw but I don’t know if they believe me. They can see where the ivy touched the bed, but my husband is gone. Like he never existed. Like some story I made up in my head.

Now all there is is Laurie. What’s happened to my child? Why won’t they let me have her? It’s that vine. I know it is. That damn vine!