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Five years old and in a bright Sunday dress, Young Charlie sits on the parlor floor and plays with her new doll, a present from her Uncle Charlie. He sits in an armchair, occassionally looking away from his newspaper to give his namesake a smile.
Mother is in the kitchen, hovering over a mixing bowl. She speaks to her brother through the open doorway.
“Charles, dear, I know it must be exciting to travel across the country the way you do, but don’t you get tired? It would be wonderful if you settled down.”
Uncle Charlie has a deep throaty laugh. “When I decide to slow down, Emmy, you’ll be the first to know.”
Mother frowns. “But wouldn’t you like a wife? Someone to be your companion, to travel with you.”
“I’ll marry you, Uncle Charlie!” Young Charlie says with all the enthusiasm of her age. Hopping onto her feet, she abandons her doll to offer him her small, chubby hand.
As with many of her early memories of Uncle Charlie, Young Charlie remembers the scent of her mother’s rose bushes wafting in through the open window. Outside the window the sky is blue, perfect, and cloudless.
Uncle Charlie pinches her pink, cheerful cheek; she looks at him and, even at five, knows that no one smiles quite like Uncle Charlie. “Charlie and Charlie, what a pair we would be.”
***
Years pass and a man falls out of a train.
The hell of it is, she doesn’t regret killing him.
***
Charlie returns to her bedroom the night Uncle Charlie dies.
No one changed the sheets, of course; Mother is under sedation and Charlie is too tired, too frayed, to remove the last remnants of her uncle’s presence.
Not bothering to undress, Charlie pulls the covers aside and slips between the sheets. She presses her face against her pillow. It smells like him.
She has nightmares about speeding trains, a hand clamped over her mouth, and merry widows waltzing, waltzing; waltzing into hell.
***
“You’re wearing one of my roses.”
Young Charlie stands at the bottom of the staircase, peering up at her uncle as he walks down to meet her.
“So I am,” he says with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Standing in front of him, Young Charlie straightens the lapels on his jacket. Her hand brushes the rose tucked into his pocket; the petals are dark pink with faint hints of crimson around their edges.
“Of course I don’t mind,” Young Charlie replies after a beat. “I got those roses especially for you. Somehow I just knew you’d like fresh flowers in your room when you got here.”
“You’re a very sweet girl, you know that?” Uncle Charlie’s smile is warm and charming, and Young Charlie’s heart swells to have him back home after so many years away. She’s excited to show him around town; she imagines what her friends will think when they see him walking beside her.
He kisses her forehead and heat spreads across Young Charlie’s face. She’s close enough to smell his cologne.
Uncle Charlie’s eyes are affectionate but his voice is low and strangely serious. “Don’t grow too old, whatever you do.”
***
Charlie keeps the emerald ring in a tiny box at the bottom of her wardrobe. She knows she can never give it away—the initials could be traced back to Uncle Charlie, and to the woman he killed to get it. The beautiful, sad illusion Charlie maintains would be pulled away like a curtain, revealing the dark specter behind it (a specter that, in her imagination, has an unmistakable silhouette).
On quiet nights when Charlie is alone in her room she uncovers the ring and runs her thumb over the smooth, green jewel in its center. She never slips the ring on her finger.
The roses resting on her wardrobe fade and wither.
***
Sitting at the table next to Charlie is a man in a gray suit who smokes a long Cuban cigar. Inside the warm café she sips her coffee quietly and closes her eyes; the smell of smoke stirs her memories.
She remembers the feeling of a hand twisting her wrist.
***
Young Charlie stands outside her bedroom door—his door, his room, she corrects herself. What's hers is his now, for as long as he's visiting.
The girl's hand lightly touches the brass doorknob. Leaning in, she listens for something—a cue, a voice that doesn’t come.
Charlie bites her bottom lip and walks away to Ann’s room, her nightgown rustling with her movements. A floorboard groans under her foot. She pauses when she hears a door creak open behind her. She knows she would see a pair of intense eyes looking at her if she turned around; she doesn’t, knowing her own eyes would betray her if she did.
***
Charlie is grateful to Jack, really; he carries her secret, and sometimes she fears that she would go mad if not for Jack.
But Jack squeezes her hand in his parked car and talks about things like marriage and the future, and Charlie has to turn her face away when he tries to kiss her. He understands so much and yet so little.
Weeks pass and Jack gives her a ring, a sparkling little diamond. Jack, the poor sweet dear, thinks Charlie cries because she is happy. He wants to help her and part of her thinks that she loves him for it, but she knows her finger will never wear a ring again.
***
Charlie visits his grave only once. Her arm is linked with her mother’s and above them the sky is blue and placid.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie whispers, though no one hears her.
It is a blazing California day in Santa Rosa; the roses in Uncle Charlie’s wreath begin to wilt even before they touch the earth.
***
He was supposed to save them.
Mother is never the same after the accident. She is pale and distant and presses her hand over her heart whenever she hears a train whistle. Mother stops attending her women’s club meetings (“I can’t go where he’s been,” she tells Charlie one evening, clutching her string of pearls, “Not when everything already reminds me of him.”) and the light in her eyes dims.
Father frets, mostly. He throws away all of his crime magazines and rarely speaks to Herb. There is no more room for morbidity in their home.
Ann and Roger are children. Their sadness quickly fades, and in time they forget the sound of Uncle Charlie’s voice, his face, and the tricks he taught them; to them he will be only the “dear, darling uncle” that their mother always spoke fondly of.
Charlie survives, and remembers.
***
“Not yet, Charlie…let it get a little faster. Just a little faster…faster…now.”
***
They walk along the sidewalk under the moonlight. Jack lets go of her hand.
“You still love him, don’t you?”
The wind carries the scent of dying roses.