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Rosebud
Matthew L. Rossi


        A miser wakes up in the middle of the night to the sight of three
ghosts looming over him. At first he can scarcely believe what he’s seeing.
He blinks and rubs the last remains of sleep from his eyes, but when he
opens them again, the ghosts are still there, faintly visible through the
curtain around his four-poster. It’s quite a sight, the three of them,
floating there, cast in the moonlight above the antiques and Second Empire
furnishings, and the piles of money the miser hoards about himself like a
dragon.

        These are the ghosts of his past, present and future. The miser
knows this because he knows who he is. He knows his mounds of wealth, his
isolation, his proclivity for scoffing and spitting at beggars. And as he
stares at the three of them he realizes they must have come for him to take
him on a life-altering journey which will transform him through the course
of the evening. He knows they will give him warnings and ultimatums, chide
him about his ill-humor—they will show him his whole life from beginning to
end. They will show him such horrors if he doesn’t amend his ways that he
will be moved to radical change and become a great philanthropist. The miser
looks forward to the attempt. He reclines across his pillows, anxiously
awaiting their first move. But the ghosts do nothing. They show him nothing,
transport him nowhere. They give no warnings, make no ultimatums. They don’t
even speak. They just stay in their positions around his bed and stare at
the miser. The miser stares back, through the night until the first pastels
smear across dawn’s canvass.

        The following night is the same, as is the night after. They appear
from nothing at the stroke of midnight, the miser wakes up, suddenly aware
of a heaviness in his room and they stare at each other until the cock crows
and the spirits vanish into the air from which they first came. Some nights
the miser gets up and does some work, putters about the house, looks for
dust on the antiques and curses the servants. Others he sits in the chair at
his desk and tries to read, but cannot. Always the ghosts follow him, their
presence making the air thick and stuffy. Once the miser has the nerve to
try to touch them, but meets with no success. The Past is too intangible.
Like a stream of smoke caught in the breeze, the ghost of the Past is
forever in the act of remaking itself even as it passes on—forever coming,
forever going. When the miser reaches out to touch it, his hands pass
through without so much as registering a breeze. And the Present is
untouchable because it is too quick. Always flitting this way and that, it
is a diaphanous glass fairy who dances on the air before the miser, always
just a hair’s breadth beyond his extended fingers. Only the ghost of the
Future could possibly be touched. In the night when it comes to the miser,
it is like an indentation in the shadows. It is like an empty space, a
cut-out portion of reality, a confluence of darkness and shade. The miser
does not dare touch it for fear it will suck him into itself and refuse let
him go.

       Eventually, the miser figures that the ghosts must be waiting for him
to make the first move. He’s no dummy—he knows the old stories. He knows
that when spirits of time visit people like himself they want something from
him. They want the miser to change his ways. They want unexpected acts of
generosity, bursts of joy that make those closest to the miser think he’s
gone mad. They want laughter, love, joi-de-vivre, humanism. So that’s
exactly what the miser gives them. He begins to donate ridiculous sums of
money to charities—poorhouses, elderly homes, free hospitals, scholarship
funds. He gives his employees massive raises and better benefits. He buys
them all new cars. When this doesn’t work he gets rid of all his assets—his
home, his cars, his business. He leaves himself just enough money to make
the rest of his life comfortable, then less, then like Siddhartha he gives
the remainder of his fortune away and is forced to move out to the street,
just another fallen prince in an alley full of lunatics. He tells his story
to anyone who will listen. He tells them he was once Napoleon. It is not so
far from true.

      The ghosts come with him. At night he sits at the threshold of his
refrigerator box (a lucky find) and watches them, wondering what on earth
they want. They have never spoken to him. They have never made a sound.
Always they watch, their eyes full of accusation and disappointment. The
miser feels it. He weeps to think of it. One night out of grief and
frustration he cries out, "My god what is it? What are you here for? What do
you want?"

       The Past makes to speak and its voice is instantly caught and ferried
away by the wind. And the Present flickers its eyes and grins but seems far
too anxious to say anything. Only a shrill laugh escapes from its lips. But
the Future moves closer to the miser, right up against the refrigerator box
so that the miser thinks it might consume him after all. It reaches into
itself, finds a seam in the palpable nothing therein and parts the streams
of darkness like robes. Light pours through the crack, at first blinding and
cold. The miser recoils. But as the robes open wider, it dulls and grows
warm like sunlight through closed eyelids. Inside of this light there is
plump, rosey-cheeked little cherub. He smiles brightly, his eyes aglow, and
holds out his hand for the miser. On his knees the miser instinctually
reaches into the light, which sticks to him like honey. He knows this
stance, has assumed it many times in his life as a beggar. His hands out,
palm opened, the miser leans deeper into the honeyed light—always he
believes the robes will fold around and trap him at any moment—until his
hand almost touches the child’s. The child, still smiling, drops something
into the miser’s hand and giggles.


            "Thank you," the miser says, lowering his head and withdrawing,
"thank you."


          The child smiles the knowing half-grin of the victorious and winks
at the miser before the ghost of the Future seals the seam in itself and
everything is cast in darkness again. The miser stares into his palm, eyes
readjusting to the night and almost weeps at what he sees there. A single
blue marble, battered and chipped like an enormous sapphire just dug from
the ground sits in the miser’s hand. He knows this bauble—when he was six
his father bought it for him and he thought it was the most beautiful jewel
he had ever seen. He thought he was a king when this was in his hand. This
memory leads to others. He remembers fighting behind snow forts and sipping
cocoa on those glorious unexpected days off from school, the first girl he
kissed on a spring morning behind the bleachers at the high school track. He
remembers his mother tucking him in and singing lullabies.

          He sings them back to himself, lying in his box and rolling the
marble about between his fingers. Each night thereafter he does the same,
lying awake remembering simple things, the easy joys of each moment of life
and sings to the night about the twinkling of stars. This goes on night
after night. The alleys is filled with songs and the miser is so full of
bliss that he hardly notices when the ghost of his Past goes away, followed
some nights later by the ghost of the Present. For weeks it is just the
miser and the ghost of his Future left to watch each other, the miser always
remembering and singing. Then as winter approaches, the ghost of the Future
disappears. The miser watches as it evaporates, a sense of fondness and loss
welling in him, then keels backward. The singing in the alley is replaced by
the low rattle of a last breath, then there are only the sounds of the
street.

        At the end of the alley a child has stopped to listen to the singing
and watch a shadow dissipate. "Don’t stand there," his father calls to him,
"there are lunatics down there," and the child moves on, fingering the shiny
glass bauble in his pocket and feeling like a king.

 



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