The Lady of the House of Hades

Stephanie stared out at the weekly farmer’s market shoppers from behind the main display table of her mother Deborah’s booth, drumming her fingers on the cashbox. Bedding plants, flowers in pots, and cut bouquets on ice formed fragrant, colorful walls on all sides of her. Her mother made her rounds, chatting with her fellow sellers and most likely shopping as well, while Stephanie was shackled to the booth, watching the same old people milling around in the sun-lit town square.

A sleek, black car caught her eye as it slid into a parking space between Deborah’s old, beat-up, green pickup and someone’s bright pink Volkswagon Bug. Stephanie sat up straighter. A man got out. He was gorgeous, with dark hair and very pale skin, wearing dark sunglasses and a gunmetal-gray suit. He was in his late twenties, maybe older.

He walked up to the booth. Stephanie automatically put on her salesperson smile. The man smiled back, fingering the petals of a snapdragon as he did so. “Beautiful,” he said. His voice was soft and deep.

“Thank you. My mother and I grow them in our garden,” Stephanie replied.

He laughed a little. “I wasn’t talking about the flowers, but they’re lovely too. I’m Rich,” he extended a hand.

“Seems so,” Stephanie said. “Is that a limousine?”

He laughed again. “No, I mean my name is Rich. Richard.”

“Oh. Silly me. I’m Stephanie,” she replied, shaking his hand. It was cold, despite the warmth of the day. “So, where do you live? In the city?”

“Yes. I own a little nightclub, the House of Hades.”

“I don’t know where that is. I’ve never been to the city before.”

“Never? Not even to shop? How did you manage that?”

Stephanie twirled a broken stem between her fingers. “I don’t get out much. Mom and I mostly stay around the house, work in the garden, stuff like that.”

“You should visit the city. It’s beautiful. Of course it’s beautiful here, too.” Rich sneezed. “Excuse me,” he said. “Allergies.”

“I’d like to see it. My mother never wants to go, though. She thinks it’s an ugly, dirty place.” Stephanie’s cheeks heated.

“It is,” Deborah said as she approached. “Enjoying our fresh air?” she asked. She handed Rich a tissue from her purse. “Or is it too fresh for your city lungs?” She laughed too loudly, as if forcing air out of her lungs. Her teeth clenched in a hard grin. “Are you buying anything or just flirting with the help?”

Stephanie’s cheeks felt like they were about to burst into flame, from anger or shame. She broke the stem in her hands into little pieces, hating her mother for butting in yet again. Every opportunity she had for leaving this tiny mountain town was squashed by Deborah; there wasn’t enough money to send her to college, she had to help in the garden and couldn’t get a job, she shouldn’t be running around with the townies.

Rich held out his hand to Deborah. “You must be the gardener. I’m Richard Lysander.”

“I know who you are.” But she shook his hand firmly, knuckles white.

“The flowers are beautiful.” He pulled a checkbook from an inner jacket pocket. “How much for the lot?”

Deborah’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Finally she managed, “All of ‘em?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do with all these flowers?” she asked, narrowing her eyes a little.

Lysander clapped his hands together. “My apartments could use a little color.”

“And the flats? The bedding plants?”

He grinned. “I was thinking of putting in a garden room. A greenhouse on the roof or something.”

Deborah named a price, too high. He wrote out the check, peeled it off, and stuck it in her hand. He, Deborah, Stephanie, and his driver loaded everything into the car. Rich reached in the backseat, pulled out a bouquet of white lilies, and put them in Stephanie’s hands. “Perhaps I will see you again,” he told her. He got in the car, wedging himself carefully between piles of flowers. The driver shut the door, nodded gravely to both ladies, and got in.

Stephanie held the bouquet, frozen, as her mother scowled at the retreating limo. “City folk,” Deborah grumbled. “He cleaned us out.” At twice what she would have gotten otherwise, but she didn’t mention that. She eyed the bouquet, sniffed. “Funeral flowers.” Stephanie said nothing. “Be careful, Stephanie. It’s men like that who seduce naïve girls and leave them brokenhearted.” She started back to the booth. “Come on, let’s pack up.”

Stephanie brushed her cheek against the blossoms. “I’d like to think I’m not so naïve a girl,” she murmured.

The heat of summer overtook spring, and Rich kept coming to the booth. He bought Stephanie a bouquet from Deborah every Saturday until Deborah decided she didn’t need her daughter’s help at the booth after all. “It’s been unfair of me, to work you so hard,” she told her daughter. “Stay home and rest, enjoy your books. Have yourself a picnic in the field. I’ll be home for supper.” Stephanie didn’t get a chance to really argue; she woke up Saturday morning to the sound of the truck rumbling down the dirt road, away from the house.

“She didn’t even wake me up,” Stephanie muttered. “I won’t get to see him.” The black limousine pulling in to the farmer’s market was the highlight of her week. She made herself tea and wondered for a moment how long it would take to walk down. Her stomach ached and fluttered. So this was lovesickness.

At noon, she dragged an old, plaid blanket and a picnic basket out to the field. “Maybe the sun will cheer me up,” she said to herself as she arranged everything.

She didn’t hear his footsteps approach, didn’t even know he was there until his shadow fell upon her. With a start, she turned. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to spook you,” Rich said, kneeling beside her on the blanket. He was holding a single red rose. “No one answered the door, but I saw you out here when I was walking back to my car. Your mother said you were sick.”

“She would. And she let you come up here with a rose for me?” Stephanie said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“I told her it was for a lady friend of mine.” Rich twirled the stem between his fingers. “Which is true enough.” He smiled slightly. “It seemed to set her at ease.”

Stephanie barked a short laugh. “Of course she didn’t think it could possibly be me!” Rich held the rose out to her. She took it. “She’d go nuts if she knew you were here.”

“I know.” He watched as Stephanie smelled the rose, closing her eyes. He lay a cool hand on her cheek. “I think I’m in love with you, flower girl.”

“I wondered what kept you coming back.” Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him through lowered lashes. “I know I love you, mysterious dark man,” she said with a crooked smile as she reached up to remove his sunglasses.

Rich squinted against the bright noon light. Stephanie shielded his eyes with her hand. They were as black as the dark earth that fed the grass beneath them. She felt as though she was falling into them.

His kiss caught her and pulled her under.

The nights were nearing the killing frost, and Deborah was selling off the last of the late-autumn flowers. On the Saturday that Deborah said was her last for the season at the farmers’ market, Stephanie went out into the field. The grass was straw now, brittle and bleached like bone, and there was more color in the trees than in the garden. They would start clearing it out after today, pulling dead vegetation, spreading straw to protect against the frost. Then the planning for next year. Then the long boredom of winter, trapped inside the house with no chance of seeing Rich until the flowers bloomed again.

The wind picked up. Stephanie heard the crunching of footsteps behind her, but she didn’t turn. Rich’s arms went around her; she leaned back against him.

“So, I suppose I’ll never see you again,” she said, her voice choked.

“Come with me.”

“What?” She turned.

Rich smoothed her wind-tossed hair back slowly. “I’ve never met another woman like you. I love talking with you. You’re pure, honest, but you’re intelligent. You deserve more than this village can offer.” Then he reached into his pocket, took out a velvet jeweler’s box, and snapped it open to reveal a gold ring with a diamond as wide around as the tip of her pinkie finger. “Marry me, Stephanie.”

Her hero had arrived. “Yes,” she said. “When?”

“Whenever you want.” Rich cradled her close to him and slid the ring onto her finger.

Stephanie snuggled in. “A soon as humanly possible.”

Stephanie took in one last lungful of the clean mountain air of her home. Then she rolled up the tinted window of the limousine, cutting off all noise of the cars they passed, and even the engine. It seemed like the car wasn’t even running, that it was just being pulled like a chariot by invisible horses down the swath of highway. The sunset behind them was brilliant, peach and pink, deep purples, like the flowers in her mother’s garden at the height of summer.

Then the smog enveloped them. All the color bled out of the sky, leaving only a line of blood-red at the horizon as the pallid clouds blackened to a starless vault. The city loomed ahead. They drove through a tunnel and emerged in a canyon of obsidian-glassed skyscrapers. To Stephanie it was as though the stars had fallen from the dark sky to rest in the windows of the buildings, in the signs, streetlights and the jewels of ruby, emerald, and topaz that winked on and off to direct traffic. Many of the buildings seemed carved out of stone, with flourishes of arches and gargoyles. Monsters frozen in a Gorgon’s glare.

“What do you think of the city, my love?” Rich asked.

“It’s like nothing I’ve seen before,” she admitted. “Breathtaking.” He smiled.

There was no sign outside the club known as the House of Hades; everyone who knew about it knew where it was. Stephanie didn’t know they had arrived until the car stopped and the door was opened for her. They stepped out into a swirl of snowflakes. Rich stepped to her side; she suddenly realized how tall he was, how he towered in the long, dark coat he wore over his suit.

Silently, Rich led her down the stairs, beneath the crust of the asphalt, into a shadowed tunnel. The air grew colder, damper. The smoke of their breathing mingled. A crowd of people milled about before an iron door at the bottom. They leaned toward it, seemed to yearn for it, sickly, tiredly, as though rest and solace lay beyond. The doorman, impeccably suited, was a skeletal, elderly man whose sharp eyes warned that his age had not diminished his power in the slightest. Some he let in, once they had pressed bills into his palm. He turned away those who could not pay the cover charge. Next to him, on a thick chain, a particularly vicious-looking Doberman with gnawed-looking ears snarled at any who dared too close, who tried to edge forward past the doorman without giving up the toll.

Rich urged her forward, though she cringed and held back at the sight of those snapping jaws. The doorman made a bow. “Welcome back, Mr. Lysander,” he said, his voice the sound of dusty bones scraping.

“Thank you, Ron. This is my bride, Stephanie,” Rich replied. The doorman bowed to her as well, then stepped back to open the door for them. The dog lunged forward, and was yanked back by his chain. Stephanie yelped and jumped back, clinging to Rich’s arm. “Down,” he scolded, lowering a hand to the dog’s head. The beast cowered beneath it, flattening his belly to the ground with a whimper.

They went in. The door boomed shut behind them.

The air was thick with smoke, oppressive and hot compared to the frosty bite of outside. The only color was in the fire that blazed from the fireplaces, giving off a wavering light that lit the jewels and gold some of the patrons wore. There was no music and the talking was low. The floor and walls were stone, the furniture and bar of dark, polished wood. The ceiling seemed to hang so low that Stephanie wondered how Lysander managed to not hit his head on it.

Stephanie felt herself drawn to the dance of the fire, wondering about the gleaming, colored liquids in their faceted crystal decanters, how they felt on the tongue, if they burned or slid down cold. The only bar she had ever been in was her uncle’s, and that was a rough place, boisterous and loud, where fights broke out every second and lovers met in dark corners. Nothing like this elegant place.

Rich led her through a door in the back, down shadowy hallways barely lit by dim bulbs in elaborate sconces. Alone with her, he spoke. “Your mother won’t be happy with us,” he said.

“Do you think she’ll come after me?” Stephanie asked.

“She should be grateful her daughter has found such a suitable husband,” Lysander said. “Why have you married to a farmer’s brat when you can be the well-kept wife of a respected and successful businessman? You’re smarter than that, Stephanie. I knew it when I first saw you, and the more time we spent together, the more obvious it became. Why waste that potential?” They had come to a door; he took out a key to unlock it. He hesitated as he turned the doorknob. “I have something special to show you,” he told her. “Close your eyes”

She shut her eyes tightly. “No peeking,” Rich said, reaching a hand out to take hers as he opened the door. She let herself be led blindly through corridors and rooms. “You’ll see the rest later, but first things first,” Rich said. They had stopped. “You can open them now,” he said.

It was the bedroom. The bed was huge, hung with curtains, and black, everything black, except the profusion of flowers around it, in crystal vases. Stephanie gasped, stricken by their beauty, knowing he must love her to have filled this foreign room in this city with the fresh vitality of her home.

“Rich, they’re beautiful!” she breathed, rising on tiptoe to reach his lips. He lifted her, his lips caressing hers tenderly, then fervently, burning hot.

She didn’t get the chance to look at the flowers close up; he was already removing her coat, then her clothes, laying her back on the bed, covering her with his thin, pale body, unleashing for her the passion so well hidden from others that they assumed him bereft of it. It was only after he had fallen asleep that she reached out and touched a blossom. It wasn’t real. None of them were real. Silk flowers of the highest quality, cunningly hand-crafted and dyed, perfumed so closely to their real scents that even her nose betrayed her. Only the rose petals crushed in the sheets around them were real, and those lay bruised and shriveled, oozing their dying fragrance.

Stephanie had never seen so much wealth. Each room was almost the size of her mother’s entire house back home, and was filled with expensive and tasteful furniture. The glass-topped coffee table, the gold bath taps, the teak armoires filled with fine designer clothing. Carpet with pile so thick it reminded her of soft spring grass. Leather couches as warm and soft as skin. Rich took her out clad in velvet and silk, hung with jewels. They went to parties, dinners, theater and art galleries. His business associates had read Shakespeare and Wordsworth. They talked for hours about the Impressionists, about foreign policy, things that Deborah wouldn’t have known a thing about. They listened to Stephanie, and it seemed to her that they were impressed that a country girl could be so cultured.

“And you never went to college?” a gentleman asked at one party.

“No. My mother needed me at home, so that’s where I stayed,” Stephanie answered. “I just read a lot of books.”

“Oh how dull that must have been,” a lady remarked. “You must be awfully grateful to Richard for rescuing you from all that.”

Stephanie felt a jolt as though a hornet had stung her. Condescending bitch, she thought, but she gritted a smile and said, “Yes, very much.”

As days of snow changed to stretches of warmish rain, Stephanie began ache for the little house on the mountain. She missed her mother’s gardens brimming with life, and yearned for the sunlight. She dreamt of coming down to breakfast, coffee bubbling in the old aluminum stovetop percolator, sitting at the scratched-up kitchen table across from her mother as they wrote up the day’s to-do list. Digging her hands into rich earth, getting the knees of her jeans dirty. She woke up crying, huge sobs that made her shudder in her sleep until Rich woke her up. She lied that it was nightmares.

She handled paperwork, appointments, assisting her husband. The days ran together, each the same as though she was rolling a rock up a never-ending hill. “How long as it been since I’ve seen the sky?” she murmured to herself one day. The only way she could see even a patch of it was to look straight up and peer through the tops of the buildings, and even then the shroud of fog looked less like sky than a stone slab.

“What was that, dear?” Rich asked, looking up from his desk.

Stephanie looked down at her paperwork. “Nothing, sweetheart.”

They still went to social events with Rich’s colleagues. Stephanie found herself crowded into tiny rooms, paneled with dark wood and padded with velvet, with crowds of people. Their droning conversation sounded more like a drawn-out moan with every glass of wine she drank. She felt like a sideshow now, the way they cooed over how smart she was despite being “from the sticks.” Like she was Rich’s pet lapdog, a dumb animal who had mastered some unique skill. Often she sat at a table, hands folded in her lap, feeling as though she was unable to move, unable to think through the wine.

One afternoon, in the car on the way back from a meeting, Stephanie began to feel suffocated. She resisted the urge to open the windows, knowing that it would let in only thick, oily air that would taste of dirt and smoke. She felt like she was riding in a coffin, shining black and lined in gray velvet, the air still and finite. She felt herself wilting, withering.

Rich had created the garden room he joked about, to help ease her homesickness. The ceiling was hung with UV lights so the plants would live, the walls painted with pastoral murals. In the center was a fountain, splashing cool water that would entrance Stephanie for hours of daydreaming. She escaped to it now, to splash water on her face, to push her nose into blossoms and close her eyes to conjure up an image of home. But it was all fake. The lights above weren’t the sun. The air that cycled through the vents was stale. The plants were trapped in plastic pots, arranged in a square room with its four walls painted by someone who had seen nature only in books.

Stephanie found Rich in the office they shared. “What’s wrong, Stephanie?” he asked as she began to cry. It all came out: her homesickness, how trapped she felt, that she needed to go home.

Rich was silent for a moment, rubbing her back as she soaked his shirt. “Will you come back?” he asked, the sad waver in his voice tugging at her heart.

She wrapped her arms around him. “Of course I’ll come back,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Rich shook his head. “Your mother hates me. Besides, someone has to keep the business running. And I don’t belong there.” He forced a smile. “Go on. Enjoy your vacation.”

Joy rose in Stephanie as her lungs filled with the fresh, clean air that poured through the car’s open windows. She drove up the mountain road as the sun was rising, the colors seeming to burst into the sky as she broke through the layer of smog into the clean air. The sight almost had her in tears. She was coming home.

Barefoot, she walked through the dewy grass and down the path of smooth pebbles to her mother’s house. Raising a hand to knock, she paused and turned to look straight up at the sky, to reach out her hands. She had forgotten how wide this place was, the sky not a low ceiling but a canopy as high above and untouchable as the stars. The meadow to her right was as she remembered it: a sea of tall grass, billowing in waves as the breeze swept across it. To the left, the forest stretched out, smelling of rich, damp earth. Daffodils poked their leaves up through the earth in the little beds to either side of the door.

Deborah answered her knock. She looked at Stephanie as though she were a ghost come back from the dead before crushing her in her embrace. “Stephanie? I was afraid I’d never see you again!” she cried.

“I missed you so much, Mama!” Stephanie said. She drew back. Deborah seemed older than she remembered; her face was furrowed, her wheat-colored hair blended with strands of silver and gray.

“Come on in; I was just fixing breakfast,” Deborah said. Stephanie sat at the table, and Deborah began ladling eggs and sausages onto her daughter’s plate. “Does he feed you at all? You look pale and thin.”

“I’ve been under the weather lately,” Stephanie said. “More like under the smog.”

“It isn’t healthy,” Deborah said, piling toast on Stephanie’s plate. “You need mountain air. Try some of that jam on your toast. It’s strawberry rhubarb.”

Stephanie pushed a sausage from one side of the plate to the other. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.”

“I would have written you, but… at first I was so angry with you. I thought well, if that was the way you wanted, then fine. I wouldn’t rescue you.” Deborah twisted her napkin in her hands. “But the longer you were away, the more I was afraid I’d get a letter back unopened.”

“I’m so sorry I worried you, Mama!” Stephanie cried.

“You’re here now, that’s all that matters. I know I was too overprotective, and you took the first chance you could to escape. Surely you’ve realized your mistake. Don’t let Lysander intimidate you from getting a divorce—“

“I don’t want a divorce, Mama.” Stephanie said. “He loves me—“

Deborah snorted and pushed herself back from the table. Stephanie followed her out the back door, to the garden.

Stephanie looked down at her feet. She was a grown woman, wearing a sober gray pantsuit, with dirty bare feet like a girl. “He knew I was homesick. That’s why he encouraged me come here; I didn’t sneak away.” She regarded her mother calmly. “I know he’s not who you would have chose, but he is good to me.” Deborah stood with her arms crossed, impervious, as though she hadn’t heard.

“As you can see,” Deborah told her, “I’ve been neglecting the garden.” By now, the garden would have been cleared of leaves, mulched and turned, ready to be planted. Bright green grass and weeds were beginning to peep out through the tangle of dead vegetation. The roses hadn’t been pruned; their thorny vines tangled over the path. Hard, brittle seed pods clung stubbornly to withered stalks, surrounded by piles of papery brown leaves from the previous fall. “I never did clear it out in the autumn like we usually do. I started, but…” Deborah broke off and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re usually here to help me.”

“Well I’m here now, Mama. I can stay for a few months, but I’ll come back every year, to help you fix up the garden, just like we used to. Isn’t that better than nothing?”

Deborah let out a deep sigh, then smiled. “Stephanie,” she murmured, hugging her daughter again. “I’m glad you’re home, sweetie. Now get out of those city clothes. Your old overalls should still fit you. We have a lot of hard work to do to set this place to rights.”