Tulips

Content warning: domestic violence, assault, mental illness

I looked up to see a woman in a grey jacket staring at me. One of her eyebrows was raised and her nose was turned up at me. She shifted in her seat and looked towards the window on her left. She held a large pink-faced baby in her lap. The baby was in a light blue dress covered with white daisies. The baby was pointing at the man who had his hand on the long pole commuters hold on to for dear life twice a day.

Once at 6AM when surbubia opened its mouth and spilled its residents out into the city centre, and again at 6PM when it opened its mouth again carrying tired, half-asleep passengers back into their beds in their larger than city houses and green backyards.

I am very familiar with this train ride. I buy a return ticket once a week, Wednesdays, and I join the throng of eager workers and students in the descent into the city.

The 6AM journey is so much more glamourous than the 6PM one. I like to imagine that the people who painted a dreamy image of this city and its occupants must have taken this train once and never again. They would have seen teenage girls with their neatly ironed uniforms, businessmen in their crisp navy blue suits, and white-haired grandmas with their hair pinned up in a style more popular in the 60s and believed that this was the way the city was.

It is very easy to have one impression of a city, or of a person when you do not look deep enough when you choose to ignore everything that goes against what you want to see.

This day, the day I caught the woman with the daisy baby staring at me, it was Thursday, all around us, the people were elegantly dressed and ready for the day. There were some girls who I knew went to the art institute in the city, because of the flair and character their outfits had. Polka dots, tulle, and faux fur. There were the ladies of the financial district in their crisp suits. There was the woman in the elegant grey jacket across from me, there was her baby with the daisy dress, and there was me.

I was wearing a smoky purple dress, the one that I bought from the city the last Wednesday I went, I really liked this dress when I saw it displayed in the window. It had peaches and apricots painted on. When I left the house on that day I sat accross from the daisy baby, I was not thinking about what I looked like. I didn't even change out of the dress I had been wearing the day before. I looked at my feet to see that I was wearing the rubber slippers I only wear in the house. I was confused, then my phone rang, I put my hand in the dark green bag on my shoulder and took it out.

I lifted the phone to my ear but it was my alarm, I looked at my phone again and I was greeted by reflection. My reflection surprised me, she did not look like me. Under her lower lids, the skin had sunk in as if they missed the eye sockets and wanted to share a hug. My reflection was crying, her tears lined her face and split into rivers and streams. I touched my face and saw that it was wet.

I was confused, I turned on my camera to see my reflection better, to see if she would say anything. I saw that her lips were fuller and red. But I know that I had not had any recent cosmetic treatments. I opened my mouth to say something to my reflection, and I saw the bright red liquid, it was as red as the fat tomatoes I sliced the night before.

I was confused. I started to cry, and the woman in the grey jacket held the daisy baby closer to her chest. I tried to wipe off the tomato liquid that I saw on my dress, but the orange apricots and the pink peaches were unrecognisable, even in the dark train.

The train stopped for the second time, I was still confused, and I needed to see a better picture of my reflection, so I came down onto the platform. There was only one man there, he was in a yellow raincoat and his dog barked at me when he saw me. The man did not look at me, but he said hello while staring straight ahead as if he, like the woman in the grey jacket did not want to look at me.

The sun had started to rise at this time, I took off my jacket and I looked at the pretty dress my reflection was wearing. I was staring at her through the metal surface of the platform. She was covered in tomato liquid. I did not know why. She had stopped crying now, but she looked like she had seen a ghost. I wished she would speak to me.

I decided to leave the platform to find someone who could speak to my reflection and make her respond. All this time, she only said the words I asked her back to me.

I saw the path that led to the small shop my husband and I used to go to when he was still alive. I walked along the path and at the same time, buttoned up my coat to hide the tomato liquid.

The shop was closed, I pressed my face and saw that the clock said it was still one hour until it would open at 9AM. I kept walking until I found myself standing by a man in a uniform. He was handsome, he looked like my husband did, the last time I ever saw him.

I smiled, but I remembered I had red tomato liquid on my teeth, I thought to myself that he would not like that. I looked at my reflection on my phone, I saw that I did not like what she looked like. I pulled out the sunglasses from my bag, I looked again and lingered. He noticed me looking at me and started to walk towards me.

He said good morning to me, I nodded at him. He said his name was Patrick Hill. I almost smiled, my husband had been called Patrick too. I wished that my eyes were not sunken, or I'd have fluttered my long lashes at him. He asked me my name, and I shrugged.

He motioned to my handbag and asked for an I.D card, I put my hand in my bag and felt around. I felt the handle of the giant shears I used to trim the rose bush in my back garden. I did not remember putting them there. I felt the keys to the big brown door at the front of the house, the keys to the black Audi SUV and finally, I felt the rough skin of my green wallet, that came complimentary with my green handbag.

I opened it and handed him my I.D card. He looked at the card, then at me, then at the card. He put the card back in my hands. Rose Rivers. That was the name written on the I.D card that had my face. It said the woman was 5'9", she had light brown hair, and that she was 34.

I looked closer at the flat plastic item in my hand. And at my hand. There was tomato liquid on the places I touched the card. My fingers looked as if I had been painting with a class of 6 year-olds.

I looked at Patrick. He smiled at me. I was confused. I did not know what was happening. I had to see my reflection, to know if it was okay to speak. To let Patrick know everything that had happened.

I thought that if he saw that I had the red liquid in my mouth, he would know that I had only been making sauce. I was not who he was suggesting I was.

"My name is Rose Rivers" I heard my mouth say these words. "Hello Rose" "Y-you can call me Rosie, that's what everyone calls me" He gestured towards the wicker chairs in front of the shop.

"What's happened?" He smiled at me again, and I know that he knows the truth, most of it, the rest of it, I would let him know.

"Am I in trouble?" He shrugged and said; "Why don't you let me know what happened."

"All right, Jamie and I, we were married for 5 years, he worked in the city, he had very important clients." I put the important clients in air quotes. "I work in the town where we live, I don't need to - my husband constantly reminded me- but I love it."

He nodded as if he understood what it was like to be rendered helpless and worthless by another human being.

"Sir, I am not a bad woman, I was not a bad wife, I was not the best, I admit. Jamie came home to an empty kitchen more times than necessary, but I have a job too, I work, I went to university, I have a postgraduate degree for God's sake." I wiped below my nose.

"However, to Jamie, to James Patrick Rivers, I was awful. I didn't tend the garden, I didn't have his suits picked up from the laundry when he needed them to. As if I were his assistant or his personal maid."

"All of this trouble began two weeks. I had just returned from giving lectures at the city university annex in our town. I work out of there 4 times a week and only go into the city on Wednesdays. I wasn't meant to be home on this Wednesday, but a last-minute scheduling matter meant my lecture was cancelled and I home early for a change."

"I walked into the house, it was quiet as usual, only one thing stood out. A box that had been delivered to our house, the house Jamie and I lived in. It had come from Julie's my favourite boutique in the city. I smiled because I thought Jamie was surprising me, my birthday was the next morning"

Patrick nodded again, at this point, I knew that he was only playing a part. I was as well, but it seemed that the final curtain was due to fall.

"I pretended not to see the parcel and went out again to run some errands. When I returned, the parcel was gone, and Jamie, my now deceased husband was home. The next morning came and went without any acknowledgement of any sort. In fact, I woke up to a birthday card that was not even signed by hand and daisies, I bloody hate daisies. In the evening after I returned from work, I received a text. "Off to Mum's for the weekend" That was all the text said."

"Now, like any wise woman would do, I went to the Julie's the next time I was in the City, and I was told that my husband, the dearly beloved James P. Rivers had indeed been shopping. The silly little shop girl told me all he had bought not realising she was killing me. Luckily this dress I liked was in the window, so I asked her to pack it up. He had bought her this dress too."

"I went home on an earlier train that day, yesterday, I took a shower, I put on this dress, I wore the perfume that he gave me for our anniversary, it came in a wooden box, for the fifth year."

"When he walked through the door, I was waiting. He was surprised to see me, but he did a really good job of acting oblivious. So I asked him why he hated me. He said he didn't understand what I was saying. Then he asked me if I did the bloody gardening. He didn't even notice my dress"

I felt the tears form in my eyes, and I could barely see Patrick. I could hear that the shop behind me had now opened. I did not even realise when the proprietor opened the door and turned the sign around from closed to open.

"I screamed at him, I told him that I knew about everything he was doing. I told him I had seen the packages, I told him I had been to Julie's, I even told him I had spoken to his mum last weekend, but he didn't budge. He didn't care that I knew everything."

I caught a glimpse of my reflection, and I could see that she is weeping, she was hurting tremendously. Her shoulders were shaking continuously and her lips were bleeding. I licked my lips and taste blood.

Patrick offers me his handkerchief. "Easy, just get it out"

"So I asked him to come to the backyard to see all the work I had been doing, to let him know that I was still a good wife, I listened to him, I was taking care of the roses. But he looked at me and said to me "We are getting a divorce, I'm leaving you". When I heard him say this, I got so angry, I swung at him. He dodged and came towards me, he started to hit me, no beat me, as if I were a prop in a boxing gym. He hit me over and over and over again. So I took the shears, I stuck them deep into his neck. That's all. I was defending myself."

Patrick was silent, I thought he'd hold me close and kiss the scars that my dead husband left. He was really silent. He didn't say anything else for a while.

Then he said; "Rose, your story is very compelling, and I sympathise with you. I just have one question. If you say you did not go into the garden, how did you get the garden shears".

I looked at him, and threw my head back, and laughed, I laughed so much that he began to back away slowly. I pulled the shears from my bag and I stabbed Patrick Hills.

The last words I said before he fell to the floor were "I am the widow, my husband is dead, sympathise with me"

The next time I saw Patrick was when he testified at my sentencing trial.

The verdict was that I was not guilty of two counts of attempted murder due to insanity. Me? Insane?

Turns out that my nasty husband survived the incident, I still don't know what happened, but I have been committed to this facility for the past 3 years. I do not get any regular visitors, except when my parents come to see me twice a year.

I like to come here and sit in the gardens overlooking the orchard, surrounded by bouquets of my favorite flowers, Tulips.