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until they rot, and fall apart
“There she is,” woman says with a gesture to the bright mess of flowers in front of them.
His gaze falls over the windows behind the cart. The chipping green paint on the handles. How the daisies overflowed and the lilies that threatened to take over the entire thing. The stone pavement below them with remnants of flowers past and present scattered about.
Anything but the yellow-haired woman behind the roses.
He says nothing to the woman next to him, dressed to the nines, inappropriately for the day. Her choice of outfit would give one her impression is to charm the queen into an invitation for the next royal coronation. That bonnet would be good competition for the flower cart before them. And a dress with a low neckline that she wears with a scowl.
“Well,” Lovett barks, “you could at least look at her.”
And finally, he does.
There are little wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. Cheeks sag slightly and she wears a somewhat glazed expression as she moves from buds to blooms.
The same beautiful woman he was taken from.
“ Well? ” Lovett drawls, brushing her shoulder against the back of his. “Are you gonna talk to her or just stand there with your jaw wide open?”
He continues to stare.
What does he say to the woman he loves after fifteen years without her?
“You made me come all this way just for you to–”
“It wasn’t me who neglected to tell the truth about where my wife was, was it?”
Lovett doesn’t make a sound.
Aboard The Bountiful that was all he thought about. Yellow hair, rosy-cheeked infant, soft hands and soft words. What would he say to all that? How could he possibly react after years of deprivation?
He wanted to say something beautiful.
Logically, he knew that he would see those yellow tresses again and weep into them.
He can’t weep. He can’t even move now.
“I didn’t waste –”
He doesn’t listen to Lovett’s complaints.
How can he focus anything on anything else?
He takes a step forward. Lovett switches to prattle on about his sudden movement–not an encouragement, just an observation. He rips himself away from her until he can no longer feel her fingertips. A little freedom in itself.
And he is standing face-to-face with the yellow-haired woman.
She doesn’t notice him at first, face barely peeking out between petals, but she forms a soft smile at his presence and brushes off her apron. The same grace as when they used to dance nights away.
“May I help you?”
Those four words are a dagger through his breastbone.
May I help you?
What did he expect?
Swallowing back how much disappointment crushes him, he asks if sunflowers come in a color other than yellow. He barely catches her answer. Sunflowers match the exact shade of her hair. He doesn’t want them to look any differently.
“I told you she wouldn’t recognize you,” Lovett says as they make their way back to the shop.
He still doesn’t want to believe her.
He can’t.
It was poison. Poison and a flower cart.
“It’s a miracle, she was able to get away from that judge,” Lovett told him and he could feel the weight of her reluctance on his own shoulders, “she was this close to Bedlam’s walls when she escaped. As for your little girl… well, she wasn’t so lucky.”
“ Wasn’t? ”
“The judge adopted her. Like his own. Poor dear is lucky though, gettin’ raised in that high and mighty house. Better than being with a mother that doesn’t remember her.”
“She doesn’t remember our daughter?”
“Not a lick of it. Any of it.” Lovett leaned back in her chair. “Doesn’t remember my face neither.” She looked up at him. “Doubt she’d remember you. Poison did a real number on that woman. Be grateful it ain’t worse.”
He stood then. “Show me.”
Lovett laughed. “Show? You wanna be forgotten by your own wife?” Another chuckle. “Listen to me: my advice? Let her –”
“ Show me. ”
And Lovett was right: his wife had forgotten him.
Floorboards creak beneath him as he trails from one edge of the room to the other. He had vowed revenge when he came back. Even if his wife and girl were gone, he had some sort of control left. The judge’s fate wasn’t exactly his own. Dead or alive, he would watch the man bleed. Throat gashed open, razors dripping with ruby blood–that was all he imagined.
As he paces, he can only see the ghostly look in his wife’s eyes.
It’s me , he wishes he’d screamed, I’ve come home again. I said I would! I am your husband!
He can see her expression. She would only stare back.
The sun rises, blossoming the walls into a shade of red he could choke on. The sun has risen. People are beginning to join the lines at factories or opening bakeries, tailors, grocers. Perhaps, even a flower cart.
A glance in the mirror. Is this the man Lucy would recognize?
The first time they met, he was wearing a coat of the fashions of the time and a tall hat. The coat is long-gone, but he replaces it with memory of the one he tucks ‘round his shoulders. It is a different hat. That hasn’t changed too much, has it?
Like a young man again, he takes to the streets. The flower cart isn’t close to home. Isn’t close to where her parents and sisters used to live. It is somewhere he doesn’t understand, yet has memorized. This is where his wife is. Where his wife is, he should be .
He paces the cobblestone road as he waits for the cart to roll by.
She pushes it herself. Smile and hum on her lips as if she doesn’t find the work tedious or difficult at all.
She’s gotten stronger.
He’s frozen in his place.
In the corner of his eye, he sees her face. He glances behind him. No one there. Who…?
“I remember you!”
His heart pounds in his ears with every step towards you. “You–?”
“You were here yesterday. Asking about the sunflowers.”
Sunflowers.
Sunflowers, yes.
Yesterday were the sunflowers.
“I picked some for you,” Lucy admits as she looks through her selection. “Just in case you came back, I wanted you to have them. They’re yellow! I still haven’t seen any red ones in person.” She grins without realizing how much it crushes his heart. “Here!”
He stares at the bunch in her hand before allowing a shaky hand to reach for the flowers. He holds them the way he wishes he could reach for her.
“What’s… your name?”
“Lucy,” she says with a hint of a chuckle. “Just Lucy, really. My man hasn’t put a ring on me quite yet. I’m still waiting for him to come home.”
“He…?”
She nods. “He had to sail away. I’m waiting for him, though. When he comes back, he’ll bring me a wedding ring.”
Does she notice the way his knuckles flash white?
“And what will your name be when he comes?”
There, she hesitates. Gaze falls to her apron, fingers begin picking at the thread keeping the garment together. (Just like she used to.) With a sigh, she looks back up. Expression turns into something wanting to be mischievous.
If she remembers him or not, he still knows that look.
“It starts with a B . That’s your hint.”
Barker. Your name is Barker .
“ B? ”
On May 7th, 1828, you became Lucy Barker and I carried you home and–
“Yes, B . Lucy B will be me.”
“Beautiful,” he says because it is.
He pays for the sunflowers and he turns.
These don’t belong to him.
“Here,” he says as he offers them back to his wife.
Lucy tilts her head to the side. She laughs. “You bought those. Fair and square.”
“I know.” He pauses. “But I’m giving them to you. They match your hair.”
With some reluctance, she takes them.
“Well… they’ll look awfully beautiful in my window.”
She used to keep flowers on their windowsill, too.
Business has been reopened. He goes throughout the days without a second thought as he shaves the necks of customers. They chatter on about their stories. His mind is lost elsewhere.
The judge, Lucy, the green flower cart.
If he had done anything wrong to make God force him to suffer with his wife so close yet not close at all, he doesn’t understand what it was.
He doesn’t sleep. Lucy should be right next to him.
He doesn’t wander into their old room next to the shop. Lucy should be whistling in there.
He doesn’t look at the pies in the shop. Lucy should be asking Lovett for some after burning a meal.
She haunts him even as she still breathes.
The next time he approaches the cart, she is wearing a red ribbon in her hair.
Does she remember that he gave it to her after their wedding?
Lucy knows him. Doesn’t ask for his name, but they exchange polite conversation. He feigns interest in purchasing. She teases him about a beau she doesn’t know is her.
It’s every day he comes now.
Until the cart isn’t there.
He waits. Tries to decide whether to stay or go before he spends another hour on the block. He memorizes the shops. Does Lucy buy her dresses from the shop on the corner? Does she know she used to work at a dress shop with her mother? Does she purchase her vegetables from the stand? Does she remember how she can’t cook? (Or at least– couldn’t back before?) Does she look up at the same sky, still believing he’s somewhere away in the world?
He leaves.
The cart is there the next.
“Oh,” Lucy says when she sees him; her eyes void of emotion. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he replies.
“Sunflowers? Tulips?”
“Are you…?” Hesitation. “Are you alright?”
She stares back.
“You weren’t here yesterday.” I missed you .
“No. I wasn’t.”
They stand in silence.
“Carnations?” He gestures. “Those yellow ones there?”
“What?”
He clears his throat. “I’d like a bouquet of the yellow carnations.”
And Lucy drifts back to earth and nods. Soon, the bunch is in his hands and soon, he is giving them back to her. She sticks out her lower lip as she studies them. He is used to her hesitation. It never bothers him.
“Is something wrong?”
Lucy blinks, looks down. She doesn’t meet his gaze again as she usually does. “It was a bad day.”
“What happened?”
Do either of them realize his tone is of husband trying to comfort his wife?
She sighs. “There are certain dates that bother everyone, aren’t there? It was one of those dates.” She finally looks up. “Thank you for the flowers. Thank you for never giving me roses.”
“Your lover… did he bring you roses?”
“No, no. My Benjamin? He couldn’t afford it.”
Benjamin .
She does remember him.
Not his face, but him .
There came a day when he was working under the blistering Australian sun where he looked across the fields and could no longer find his wife in them. Not in the weeds, the grain, the dirt. Her face was gone no matter how much he tried to find it. Her hair was yellow, this he knew.
Now, her face has traces of white in between. Still silky and long, but the years are written across her. Smile lines have gotten deeper. Eyes are a little less bright. Yet the wrinkles around her face, the freckles on her hands, the wear in her shoulders paint the picture of the same beautiful woman he loved then and loves now.
He wishes they could lay together. He could ask her about the scab on her forearm and she could point out how his beard grew curly, too. They could stroke gray hairs. They could listen to creaking bones. It would all be the same nonetheless. They are still the same.
“His name is Benjamin?”
Lucy strokes the petal of one of the flowers in her hand. “Yes. Benjamin.”
Benjamin B.
“My name is Benjamin.”
She looks up at him and his chest tightens. Is that enough? A first name, a look and she remembers everything–remembers him?
Her red lips spread in a smile.
“What a very nice coincidence, Mr. Benjamin.”
There is a scream lodged in the back of his throat. I am your Benjamin! I am he! I am! I am! I am!
Instead, his face cracks into something of a pathetic smile and he turns.
“You really ought to stop going there. There ain’t any point, is there?”
He lets Lovett ramble around him. She goes from cupboard to stove to table to knife in fluid motions only she could master. She has sat him at her table. He doesn’t have anything left in him to protest. His mind belongs to a different time. To years ago when he would be greeted by humming and baby coos.
“You need to start a new life–move on.”
He doesn’t realize if he’s glared or not.
How can he move on from his very life itself?
“You used to speak of the judge. Why don’t you start on about that again? Give yourself something to look forward to?”
She slams a plate with a pie on it in front of him. He stares back at the dish as if a worm might wiggle its way out of the crust, which isn’t a preposterous idea at Mrs. Lovett’s shop.
But the judge… The judge is the root of all of this .
And if the judge were dead…
She could come home.
They wouldn’t have to hide.
Plan sets into motion. Beadle wanders between streets, frequently on Fleet Street. With a smile, with a charming word or a few, Beadle is lured into the shop. Beadle’s mouth is unable to keep shut. He promises to tell all about the barber services of Mr. Sweeney Todd. Excellent, my friend , Todd says back.
And the waiting begins.
He only catches glimpses of Lucy between the days. Not daring to go any closer, just in case. Just in case.
Then, finally, the day comes.
The judge is aged. Graying hair is now stark white. He has become stouter, shorter. It makes him wonder why he was ever afraid of the man. How could someone this pathetic ever be able to rule him the way he had?
Perhaps, the judge is thinking the same thing as he raises his blade.
His body is still slumped over in the chair. It had taken him long to die. He had simply watched his body twist and seize and cast him with horrific glances. It wasn’t hard to watch. It wasn’t easy either. No, that’s not the word. It didn’t give him the pleasure he expected it to.
Very well. Soon he will have Lucy back.
The next day, he is clean. The judge’s body rotted in a furnace. Lovett congratulated him, seemed more excited about the fact he murdered the man than he had.
He wears the same coat, the same hat, as he approaches the flower cart.
“Well, I haven’t seen you in quite a while, Mr. Benjamin!” Lucy greets him before diving into a frenzy about the new flowers she has and the ones she no longer carries.
“Lucy,” he says quietly. There isn’t any point in wasting time. “Your said your man’s name is Benjamin.”
“Yes! Benjamin!”
“Benjamin B.” He glances down, though he doesn’t dare keep his stare away for longer. “Benjamin is… my name.”
She nods. “Yes. I know that.”
“Lucy, his name is Benjamin Barker.”
“Whose?”
“That man’s. Your man’s.”
Her head tilts to the side. He continues before she questions him.
“My name is Benjamin Barker.”
“You are Benjamin…?”
Head tilts, eye turns. He holds his breath.
The judge is dead. We’re safe. Let’s go.
“I don’t know you.”
“No.”
No, this isn’t the way our lives were supposed to go. No, this isn’t who you really are. No, this isn’t who I really am. No, we are greater than this. No, where is my ring? No. No. No. No.
Where is his wife?
Where is her husband?
Lucy shakes her head. “No. My Benjamin is softer than you.”
“ Lucy ,” something in his voice hitches. “Lucy, I am me. My hands are… worn.”
Stained with blood.
“No.” Again, she shakes her head. “You are not my Benjamin.”
“I am .”
“No–”
“That day,” he says before he can stop himself. “That day you weren’t there. That was the anniversary of the day he–”
“No!”
He stops.
She stares.
A sharp breath.
“No. I don’t want to remember.”
“You don’t have to.”
There are tears in her eyes. This is where he is supposed to take her into his arms, cradle her head and whisper soft things. This is where husband and wife remember their vows and share sweet caresses. They stroke soft skin or kiss the backs of necks. That is them.
This is not them.
“Can you… remember me?”
Lucy shakes her head.
“We have a daughter,” he says, suddenly inspired. “Johanna, remember? Johanna Barker. She has yellow hair, like you. It was starting to curl, like me. Her first word was… her first word was bird . Then, bye. She said that to me… When they carried me away.”
Her gaze is cast down. Eyes squeeze shut.
She knows something. All he has to do is push through this veil in order to find her again. For her to find herself again.
“On the day I–”
“Why did you leave?”
“What?”
She darts back at him. “Why did you leave? My Benjamin would never –”
“He took me away. The judge. He took me, but he’s gone–”
“My Benjamin would have fought him.” A shaky breath. “My Benjamin wouldn’t have let them. He wouldn’t have let him… My Benjamin wouldn’t leave me.”
She is the right Lucy. But for the first time, he wonders if he is the right Benjamin.
“But your Benjamin did. You told me he was away and you’re waiting for him to come back home.”
Lucy flinches.
“I’m home now, Lucy. Your Benjamin has come back. Just like I promised I would. I’ve come home again.”
“I’m…”
“What is your name, Lucy? Lucy B?”
“Barker?”
He nods. “Barker.”
“Barker? No, not Barker. Not Barker!”
“Barker, yes , Barker! I am your husband, Lucy!”
“If you–” she sticks her finger out at him “-- are my husband, that means all of it actually happened.”
He softens. “It did, Lucy. All of it.”
“No. I run my cart. I buy flowers. I sell flowers. That is the end of it. That is my life.”
“Lucy…”
She stands in silence. Silence that burns into his heart; that makes him feel how the judge might have felt when he slit his throat. He can feel Lucy’s blade gliding across his skin. It will happen if she can’t remember. It will hurt more than any knife, any sort of torture they came up with in Australia. He would welcome it over Lucy’s rejection.
He never prayed, but he thinks a silent one to himself now. God, help her .
Finally, she sighs.
“You may be my husband,” she says, “if you continue to buy flowers for me.”
He nods, tries to promise that he will.
“I will not go home with you. I can’t. I need to get to know you again.”
Another nod. Another secret promise.
“And you need to get to know me again.”
“Lucy, I do know–”
“No, you don’t. And that’s alright. We’ve both changed. I think. It’s been fifteen years I’ve been pushing this cart around London town. How much has happened in that time? Everything.”
“Alright.”
He comes bearing gifts every day. Anything he can get his hands on that used to belong to her.
She is less interested in the doll. Tenderly, hesitantly, she takes his hands.
“We have a girl, don’t we?”
“Johanna,” he says.
“Johanna,” she repeats. “I remember you holding her. Where is she?”
“I don’t… I don’t know. She’s gone. Escaped with a sailor.”
“Did you know him?”
“Yes.”
“Was he a good man?”
“The best.”
“He will take care of our girl?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t like the idea of her being so far away from them, but how can he face their daughter now that he’s become what he has?
“Good.”
He understands the reason she does not start ripping the city apart is that she knows Johanna doesn’t really belong to either of them anymore. She hasn’t for years. They don’t know their girl.
He returns the next day with orange blossoms. She teases him about not purchasing them from her own cart until he reminds her that she doesn’t sell them. From there, he tells her about their wedding day. How she wore orange blossoms on her head. He drags the flower cart to the church they were wed at and there’s something that flickers over her face.
“Yes,” she says, “I know.”
“You remember the day?”
He has taught himself not to hope, yet in that moment, his soul pleads with him to.
“No. Not the day. I know this place.”
It isn’t the same. It will never be the same. But they are getting closer.
Then, he brings her home.
Evening has fallen. She is paranoid, yet accepts his hand as he walks her back to their street. To where they made love for the first time, where their daughter was born, where they lived their lives until they were taken away from them.
She greets Lovett like a stranger greats stranger and wanders every inch of the shop. Lovett purses her lips to snap, but he lifts his hand in a warning. Give her time, let her be . Perhaps, she will never know they were neighbors.
Lucy wanders to his shop.
She looks in their room.
“This is where we used to sleep?” she asks.
“Yes.” That is where I would hold you .
A nod. “This was our window.”
“Yes.” You used to put your flowers there .
She looks until she is satisfied. She asks him to bring her back and does not say a word until then.
“It could be my home again, someday.”
With that, she closes her door.
“They’re onto ya, Mr. T.”
And he doesn’t run. He packs.
Every item of his wife’s goes into his bag. His razors that she gave him. A strand of hair she gave him years ago. Every piece of their lives are packed into that bag with a few bank notes and coins.
They had this dream long ago. He never expected it to fall this way.
He runs to the flower cart.
“Benjamin–!”
“Lucy,” he says and it kills him to interrupt when she’s smiling like that, “I have to go. I can’t explain now, but I have to go . Now. And, I want you to come with me.”
She pauses. Looks at the flower. Down the street. At him.
She takes a breath.
“I don’t know you,” she says.
His heart falls.
“But I think I love you.” Lucy traces over a handful of petals. “I feel safe around you and I think I always will. It feels like love to me. I don’t know you, but–” she leans over the cart and takes his hand “--I want to spend the rest of my life knowing you.”
He intertwines their fingers and kisses her knuckles. She smiles.
They leave the flower cart behind.