White Oleander

"My neighbors are calling the police," she said out the broken window. "You better go."

 

He stumbled away, and in a moment we heard him kick the front door. "You fucking cunt. You won't get away with this. You can't do this to me."

 

She threw open the front door then, and stood there in her white kimono, his blood on her knife. "You don't know what I can do," she said softly.

 

AFTER THAT NIGHT, she couldn't find him anymore, at the Virgins or Barney's, at parties or club dates. He changed his locks. We had to use a metal pasteup ruler to open a window. This time she put a sprig of oleander in his milk, another in his oyster sauce, in his cottage cheese. She stuck one in his toothpaste. She made an arrangement of white oleanders in a hand-blown vase on his coffee table, and scattered blooms on his bed. I was torn. He deserved to be punished, but now she had crossed over some line. This wasn't revenge. She'd had her revenge, she had won, but it was like she didn't even know it. She was drifting outside the limit of all reason, where the next stop was light-years away through nothing but darkness. How lovingly she arranged the dark leaves, the white blooms.

 

A POLICE OFFICER showed up at our apartment. The officer, Inspector Ramirez, informed her that Barry was accusing her of breaking and entering and of trying to poison him. She was completely calm. "Barry is terribly angry with me," she said, posing in the doorway, her arms crossed. "I ended our relationship several weeks ago, and he just can't let go of it. He's obsessed with me. He even tried to break into this apartment. This is my daughter, Astrid, she can tell you what happened."

 

I shrugged. I didn't like this. It was going way too far.

 

My mother kept going without missing a comma. "The neighbors even called the police that night. You must have a record of it. And now he's accusing me of breaking into his house? That poor man, really, he's not all that attractive, it must be hard for him."

 

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway. Oh Inspector Ramirez, her eyes said, you're a good-looking man, how could you understand someone as desperate as Barry Kolker?

 

After he left, how she laughed.

 

THE NEXT TIME we saw Barry was at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, where he liked to shop for ugly gag gifts for his friends. My mother wore a hat that dappled her face with light. He saw her and turned away quickly, fear plain as billboards, but then he thought again, turned back, smiled at us.

 

"A change of tactic," she whispered. "Here he comes."

 

He walked right over to us, a papier-mache Oscar in his hands. "Congratulations on your performance with Ramirez," he said, and held it out to her. "Best actress of the year."

 

"I don't know what you mean," my mother said. She was holding my hand, squeezing it too tight, but her face was smiling and relaxed.

 

"Sure you do," he said. He tucked Oscar under his arm. "But that's not why I came over. I thought we could bury the hatchet. Look, I'll admit I went too far calling the cops. I know I was an asshole, but for Christ's sake, you tried to destroy the better part of a year's work. Of course my agent had a preliminary draft, thank God, but even so. Why don't we just call it a draw?"

 

My mother smiled, shifted to the other foot. She was waiting for him to do something, say something.

 

"It's not like I don't respect you as a person," he said. "And as a writer. We all know you're a great poet. I've even talked you up at some of the magazines. Can't we move on to the next phase now, and be friends?"

 

She bit her lip as if she was seriously considering what he was saying, while all the while she poked the center of my palm with her nail until I thought it would go right through my hand. Finally she said in her low rich voice, "Sure we can. Well, why not."

 

They shook hands on it. He looked a little suspicious but relieved as he went back to his bargain hunting. And I thought, he still didn't know her at all.

 

We showed up at his house that night. He had bars on all the windows now. She stroked his new security door with the pads of her fingers like it was fur. "Taste his fear. It tastes just like champagne. Cold and crisp and absolutely without sweetness."

 

She rang the bell. He opened the inner door, gazed at us through the security mesh. Smiled uncertainly. The wind rippled through the silk of her dress, through her moon-pale hair. She held up the bottle of Riesling she'd brought. "Seeing we're friends and all."

 

"Ingrid, I can't let you in," he said.

 

She smiled, slid her finger down one of the tars, flirting. "Now is that any way to treat a friend?"