Frozen Flower

Frozen. Like my heart, he says. He’s ridiculous. Like he knows my heart. Why would I trust him? He’s a man, unworthy of trust, like all other men. He’s said that he appreciates me plenty, but I’m just the girl who works for him in the bookshop, that’s all. He’s a prying bastard, anyway. The other day he just picked up my affirmations notebook and started reading, like it was nothing. I just had to pull it away from his hands; none of his business, I said.

Whatever. I mean, who does he think he is? He acts like he knows me just because he says he understands the kind of affirmations I work with. But what does he really understand? My situation? The affirmations in my notebook? My notebook!

Damn it. Speaking of which, it’s two already, time for the affirmations. I have to take it as it is. I should do this because I don’t like the alternative: upping my meds. I just want to be off them as soon as I can. I’ve told them that I’m over him, effing Gaston… effing cheater. But the doctors don’t believe me. No one believes me.

I should head into the back room, then… it’ll be good, at least I’ll be away from that creepy frozen flower. Why does he even keep it? And right there, in everyone’s view. This could be such a lovely place, actually, if he’d only keep those death symbols out of sight. Such a large, luminous place, staring out into Pullman Street to one side and Merchant Green on the other, and inside a perfect labyrinth of shelves containing the most delicious treasure ever created by human hands, with Fiction here and History there, and Business and Tourism and Maths and Sciences in every other direction. Smells fresh and clean, too, as if the air from the park came in even through the closed windowpanes. My dreams come true. My dreams come true if it wasn’t for him at any rate. I would quit if I had anywhere else to go. But I wonder if there is any other bookstore that would be as perfect as this, with its oak panelling and little busts of lords and ladies from days of yore looking down at us from each corner of the ceiling, and its arches and huge windows…

Yes, I know, I’m delaying, I admit it. I should get down to this. Remember the ugly alternative –those revolting meds, or being sent to the hospital again– and get down to this, Bella. Just get into that backroom that is definitely not the best place to keep books but what the hell, serves as a nice enough hiding corner. I should talk to him about the humidity, though; every day it smells stronger and stronger and I think that place is due a fix-up. Anyway. Affirmations. I don’t know how much the affirmations are helping, though. I’ve been doing them for so long. Too long. And the burning sensation in my throat is still there.

Right… Right, breathe…

Let’s sit down and get this over with. Is the door closed this time? I’d better check it; I don’t want Mrs Potter or Lucius to come in while I’m doing this.

Okay. Right. Door closed, I go… One: it’s okay to take it step by step, it’s okay to take it step by step, it’s okay to take it step by step. Two: I am a confident, strong woman, I am a confident, strong woman, I am a confident, strong woman. Three, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself. Four, I am in charge of my own decisions, I am in charge of my own decisions, I am in charge of my own decisions. Um, I am in charge of my emotions, I am in charge of my emotions, I am in charge of my emotions.

Right. Is this really helping? People say it is. He says that it is… but what does he know?

Okay, a lot of people I’ve spoken with say that he’s come a long way, although a long way from what I don’t really understand. Mrs Potter came up to me the other day as she cleaned the carpets and asked me how I was doing; she’s a sweet old lady, but I have the feeling that she doesn’t have a clue as to what men really are. Sure, she’s got a perfect family, with the delightful Christmas scene and the summers at the beach and the evening strolls at the park with her daughter and her grandson Mark; funny little boy, sweet as only eight-year-olds can be. I honestly hope that he won’t be stained with the erring ways of manhood... He’s had a good example, so Mrs Potter says; she’s the only woman I know who’s happy with her son in law. A handsome banker, far as I know, honest and caring and very intelligent. Wish Fray was anything like that. When I told Mrs Potter that I could not bear his intrusions any longer, she said that I should be grateful to have someone by my side who has gone through the same thing and that I should accept his help. Fray Prince, sure! The name itself inspires trust! I’ll bet that any mother who’d named their child Fray has a ghastly reason to do so… I don’t care if he is a Prince. Not that the family name Prince really means anything these days, so there.

I come out of my hiding place and continue my work day. And I cringe at that frozen thing, standing there and staring back at me every day, as if it knew what goes on in my heart. What strangeness of the man, I must say… so many other things he could have put on his desk to liven it up, but no, it has to be that frozen thing, its colour never waning, its petals never falling… it just stands there in its capsule as if taken from a silly, stupid, unreal fairy tale… The strangest thing is that it sits by a picture of one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life, with her long black hair and her deep dark eyes, and that white complexion and expressive mouth; so I just have to wonder why he keeps them together, beauty and death side by side. I don’t know who she is, no one ever mentions her. The only time someone said something about her was when little stout Mrs Potter commented that I was just as beautiful as her, with my brown hair and my brown eyes and pale skin, even if that’s where the physical similarities end. I took it as a compliment and let it go, making a point of not asking any kind of question about her from then on. Anyway, as far as I know, Fray is single, but then again I’m not like him and I don’t pry into his personal life. At least regarding someone so attractive that he keeps half secret, and half touching that thing there… Not that the flower isn’t beautiful; it really is, but just the feeling that it was frozen in mid-life gives me the creeps. One day I put it away, not standing the sight of it any longer, but he pulled it out again, saying that it is what kept him alive, after all the horrible things that had happened to him. What does he even know about that? Men never do: they don’t know about abuse, they don’t know about pain, they don’t-- He doesn’t know about horrible, not like I do. I’m sure he’s a beast, like all other men.

Oh, here he comes now, all tall and mighty, feeling like he’s above me, I’m sure. I don’t care. Bella, he’ll say, have you finished arranging the historical fiction? Of course I have, you idiot, it’s my job. OK, I won’t say it like that; I can’t risk losing another job. My father can’t afford to take care of me anymore. Never mind, really, since I still have to arrange from P onwards, so why should I even act mad this time?

Why is he looking at me sideways as he talks to Lucius? Are they talking about me? I wish he’d stop doing that. Poor Lucius, so long and thin he seems sickly half the time... he gets in trouble for putting up that horrible little clock on the desk every week. It’s an antique, and it isn’t really that pretty, but I mean, if Fray can have his everlasting dead flower then why can’t Lucius have his antique clock?

I have to set to work so that Fray doesn’t start his monologue on depression and getting better and putting the mind to work and all that crap. I wish I could yell at him. Just put him in his place a little bit, that’s all. I just really can’t afford to. I watch him approach me. I won’t fall for that full head of spun gold or those eyes of eternal sky… no, I won’t fall for them. He sits by me and he says that I should keep going with my affirmations, that they’re doing me good, that soon I will be as fine and well as he is. I want to say, Really? Another one just trying to push me around. But I tell him instead that I need to finish up the historical fiction, and there I go and start my job, after all that’s what I get paid for.

I look at the book spines on each shelf, systematically taking out the books that have been left in the wrong order or even the wrong section by distracted or lazy customers. I put them in my trolley, arranging them alphabetically, and making different piles for the different sections. It seems like a boring job, but I can tell you right now that it helps clear my head and relax a bit. It’s almost like meditating. Take out a book, arrange it in the pile it belongs to, then go back and put every stray volume in their rightful place. It’s actually liberating. Maybe it has to do with the actual ordering part of the task… I mean, it’s almost like arranging the shelves in your own head: take out an emotion, arrange it with the others that might be out of place, and put it where it belongs. Then it’s not so noisy up there; all the emotions stop yelling inside my brain because they’re already in their rightful places, so now they’re at peace and I can work with them individually if needed. The problem is, some of those emotions change place again during the rest of the day or at times during the night, so I have to start the process again in the morning. Exactly like with the books here at the store.

So I arrange my piles, only three different ones this time, and go back to the start of P on Historical Fiction. That’s when I see her. In the back cover of a novel set in Medieval France, Rosalinda Prince, her long black hair falling over her shoulders, her deep dark gaze looking up from under her lashes at the lens; and a rose, a single rose between her fingertips. For some reason I walk towards the desk. I know it cannot be the same rose, but something draws me there. I sit on the chair and do a quick online search. Rosalinda Prince, dead in 2006, I find. On his desk there is the frozen rose, and there is also the photograph that I take for granted each day, the gorgeous woman with the black hair and the black eyes: Rosalinda Prince.

That’s when I remember him telling me about his ex-wife… the memories start coming back, slowly, creeping up my spine and settling on the part of my brain that experiences recognition. I remember the day I met Fray at the anger management group, two years ago; how he seemed like a beast, all gruff and violent and full of hair. I asked myself what could have possibly gone so wrong in his life that he had let himself go so bad. I’d tried to be kind and understanding to him, reaching out and attempting to get everyone else to soften him up. Fray would not have any of it. He screamed at us each chance he got, and he even punched a couple of guys on the face for prying in his business. Go figure. Then he opened the bookshop, and he invited us all to the opening night. I remember thinking it was strange that he still kept the picture of his ex on the desk, along with the flower that she’d given him for his buttonhole the night they crashed; but back then I used to think that they’d been through a nasty divorce and that she’d really hurt him, hence the aggressiveness… never did I imagine that she had died. Pain. So he knows it after all…

I feel a presence at my back. Didn’t mean to take your spot, I say to Lucius, just needed the computer for a bit. But it’s not Lucius.

Fray looks at me, his eyes seem overcast sky. Then he looks down at the book and back at me again. I see you understand where I come from now, he says. I nod my head and let him put a lock of my hair behind my ear. The affirmations are helping, he says, broken record that he is. I let myself remember that I was admitted in the hospital after Gaston got to me one night. The memory comes back now about how I spent two weeks in the hospital, not remembering where I was or even who I was; that when I got out I was referred back to the anger management group, that everyone had greeted me happily and welcomed me back and that I did not understand a thing of what was going on. Then the explanations of what had happened flooded onto me by a dozen different people, but nothing made sense. I started eluding reality and doubled my angry demeanour. I pushed back the notion of my hospital weeks to the furthest corner of my brain and sort of started over. No more yelling or demeaning; no more fists or bloody lips or black-and-blues; not even any more childhood laughter and running around in the rain, I went as far as to obliviate a lifetime, good or bad. Now I recall that I broke up with Gaston two years ago, right after I joined the group, then he’d popped up again in my life and gave me the beating that sent me to memory loss.

Then I woke in the hospital bed, with no notion of why I was there and why everyone said it was “two years later” (two years later from what, I asked again and again, and no one really told me –I guess they were all trying to forget just as much as I was). Now Fray’s eyes bring everything back, wave after wave, suffocating and refreshing at the same time; suffocating because there’s too much to come to terms with, refreshing because it’s liberating to have the chance to do it.

With those pupils reflecting back my own astonished gaze I put two and two together: when I came out of the hospital, Fray was a different person, and all he wanted to do was help us all in every way he could. By then he wasn’t going to the group anymore, so that’s why I hadn’t made the connection; but he’d kept an eye on me and offered me a place at the bookstore when he learned that my father was almost bankrupt because of the hospital bills and that I hadn’t been able to keep a job for months. He has told me this before, once or twice, but I was still in denial.

No no no, I went every single time. He did not, he had not, come out of the woods while I was still there. No one had dared evolve and turn from beast to prince and abandon me to my luck!

But no one had. The group, my dad, they had stayed with me through it all, brandishing invisible swords to fight my invisible dragons so that I would not have to see them become real. And Fray. He was always there as well, standing tall in front of me, all his nastiness shed and bringing new hope to those of us who still had to cope, exactly as he is now. I look back into his crystalline stare and smile. I remember now, I tell him. Took me a while, took me a year, but I remember now.

He smiles back, and holds my hand. I just had to wait for you to come back, he says. Took you a while, took you a year, but now you’re back.

I feel as if snow is melting in my heart. I look at the rose, a symbol of undying love, of eternal faith. I know that now a rose will start growing inside of me, too, with the first signs of spring coming back into my life.

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Thank you for reading my short story today - this modern day adaptation of Beauty and the Beast is very close to my heart and I hope that you have gained the soothing that I got from writing it. If you wish to read more of my fiction, feel welcome to visit my profile for more short stories. There is also some thought-provoking non-fiction too, if you'd like to take a look.

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