Kintsukuroi & The Flowers by John Jeffire

John Jeffire

John Jeffire was born in Detroit.  In 2005, his novel Motown Burning was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishing Awards.  Speaking of Motown Burning, former chair of the Pulitzer Jury Philip F. O'Connor said, “It works. I don't often say that, but it has a drive and integrity that gives it credible life....I find a novel with heart.” In 2009, Andra Milacca included Motown Burning in her list of “Six Savory Novels Set in Detroit” along with works by Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jeffrey Eugenides.  His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2009.  Former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine called the book “a terrific one for our city.”  His short story “Boss” appeared in Coolest American Stories 2022, which won the International Book Awards Prize for Fiction Anthologies.  In 2022, his novel River Rouge won the American Writing Awards for Legacy Fiction, while the manuscript for his novel Detroit South won the 2025 Claymore Award for Literary Fiction. 

Kintsukuroi —for Konnie

She sets sail by stars to a wreck of reef

Submerged in shadow.  Adrift, a stormleaf

That cannot settle, this woman I’ve braced

Tremoring as she relives the quick taste

Of her own blood spotting a kitchen floor.

I stand watch on shore.  I release the door,

Hold of pain, sirens singing memory

Through the keel, whispering that all will be

Whole, swept away, the calm he shattered quick

As her wrist pieced, battened, the fog wall thick

But a course waiting to be mapped.  I hear

My own words and taste the salt in her fear.

Gold and God find the fissures, flood the breach—

This mended vessel weathers every sea.

The Flowers

Sandy says their rooms in Atlanta are overpriced and hers reeks of cigarettes and mildew.  At breakfast, she questions who could have chosen such a flea-bag hole, and her younger sister Margie looks to her husband Carl before commenting that the internet reviews were for the most part positive.  Hours of silence later on I-75, they stop to use the bathroom and stretch their legs at a rest area in Florida.  Carl and Margie look at maps and tourist pamphlets in the lobby as Sandy paces the tight rows of the gift shop, picking up trinkets, scanning the price tags, then placing the items back on the smudged glass shelves.

“We got plenty of time to shop when we get there,” Margie calls from the open entrance.  “You’ll pay double for anything good you find in here.”

Sandy continues her search.  Margie sighs and approaches her.

“C’mon, the train’s leaving the station, sis.  Carl’s out at the car already.  We got another five hours to go at least.”

Sandy does not look up. 

“I am not a child,” she intones.  The tanktopped, flipflopped customers pause and look.  “And I will not be treated like one.  If I want to buy a gift here, I will buy a gift here.  Even if it’s ten times more expensive than in Lake Worth.  It is my damn money, do you understand?”

Margie glances at the other customers.

“I never said not to buy something if you want it so bad,” she whispers.  “It’s just that we’ve got another five hours to go and…”

“I don’t give a damn if we’ve got another five weeks to go.  I will not be talked to like a child.  And if you’ve forgotten, that’s my car we’re driving in, so if I want to take five goddamned minutes to buy a damn keychain, I’m damn well going to take five extra damn minutes.”

Margie glances about the shop and then at the check-out counter. 

“Sandy, c’mon, we were having such a nice trip.  Don’t…”

“We weren’t having a nice trip.  Maybe you were, but I’m obviously not part of the we you’re talking about.”

The other shoppers return their items to the shelves and slip out.  A cashier advances toward the sisters like a teen about to ask her parents for $20 and the keys to the family car.

“Is…something wrong, ladies?”

Sandy turns on the girl.

“It’s none of your damn business.  Fuck off.”

The girl’s eyes widen, her mouth falls agape.

“You, you don’t need to be snotty, ma’am.”

Sandy places her index finger beneath the girl’s nose.

“Listen, missy, what part of fuck off don’t you understand?”

The youngster’s lower lip quivers as she looks back to the cashier’s station for help.  Another girl is on the desk phone and seconds later a gray-haired, thick-bellied security guard shuffles toward them.

“These them?”

The young girl nods.

“We’re gonna hafta ask you to leave, ladies.”

He reaches out and takes Sandy by the elbow.  She recoils.

“Keep your hands off me.”

“Sandy…”

“Don’t ‘Sandy’ me.  The two of you, who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like this?”

“I’m not talking to you like anything, sis, you’re…”

“Ma’am, you have to leave.”

“I’m leaving.  You and your white trash gift shop.  Real southern hospitality.”

“Ma’am, now, let’s go.”

“Sandy, you’re making a scene…”

“Jenny, dial 911.  I’m gonna need back-up here.”

“Yes, I’m making a scene.  So what?  You sleep in a filth-infested rat trap all night and see if you don’t make a scene.  And what isn’t a scene anymore?  Hmmm?  You want to know what a scene is?  Do you?  Because I can show you a real scene if you want me to.”

“Sandy, I stayed in the same hotel as you…”

“That’s it, ma’am.  I'm going to have to forcibly remove you from the premises.”

“I told you, keep your damn hands off me, you old fool.  You understand me?  I’m leaving, you see, I’m walking out, right out that door there, right there, you see it, but I’m not letting you put your hands on me.”

“Ma’am…”

“Cut the ‘ma’am’ crap, huh?  I said I’m leaving.  Are you deaf?  There’s no need to touch me.  I don’t need to hold daddy’s hand.  I’m walking out and I sure as hell don’t need any help.  Just let me alone.”

Outside, the car is parked at the curb, Carl leaning back against it with arms folded.  Sandy continues to scold the security guard.  Margie walks behind them and raises her palms to the sky, signaling Carl that Sandy has gone off again.

“We’re outside, sir.  You see this?  This is outside.  You were going to take us outside.  Well, this is outside, so you can go back inside now and leave us the hell alone.”

“Sandy, please,…”

“I’m not doin’ nothin’ ‘til you’re off the property.  The police’ve already been called, ma’am, and you’re still technically on the property.”

“Shut up, Margie, you started all this.”

“I didn’t start…”

“Sandy, let’s go, in the car, just get in.”

Carl opens the passenger door.

“Oh, so you’ve decided to join in, too, huh, Carl?  That’s just great.  Anyone else you want to invite over to hassle me?”

“No one’s hassling you…”

“Bullshit.  I know when I’m being hassled.  You haven’t stopped hassling me since you got the keys to my car and took everything over.”

“Look, whatever, Sandy, that guy said the police are on the way.  We need to leave, now, so please just get in the car.”

“I’m on public property and I’m not doing anything wrong.  I don’t have to get in the car and I don’t have to leave this sidewalk.”

“Ma’am…”

“You shut up, too, you old coot.  Christ, you give a retired half-wit a uniform and he thinks he’s John Fucking Wayne.”

“Sandy, please, you see those lights?  The police are coming.  Let’s just go.  We can argue about it in the car.”

“I am not taking orders from you, do you hear?”

“Please, Sandy…”

Margie attempts to take Sandy’s arm.  Sandy’s hands fly at Margie’s face.  Blood.  Margie screams and falls backward to the pavement.  Carl moves.  His wife is on the ground cowering before her older sister, her face bleeding, her hand cupped beneath her chin to catch the flow from her nose.  Damn Sandy.  Has to ruin everything she touches.  Cannot just leave anything or anyone alone.  Fine one minute, lunatic the next.  He paces to Sandy and she looks into him.  His mind goes white and he lets loose a right hand to the side of her head.  She staggers sideways, arms windmilling like a drunk, then joins Margie on the pavement.  Carl freezes, unsure what he has just done.

The police burst from the cruiser.  Margie sits up, tears mixing with her blood.  Sandy props on an elbow, her mouth open in disbelief, eyes bewildered, waking from a terrible dream.  Carl looks at his wife Margie, as if she might explain what has just happened, then at Sandy, and then turns to face the approaching police.  He holds his hands away from his body, giving up.  The hands of the approaching policemen rest on the butts of their guns.  The old security man, his mouth open, looks out to the highway at a semi hauling the massive propeller of a wind generator.

          *

The family cabin in Mannistee Lake.  Everything smells like wet dogs and brown newspapers stacked in the mudroom.  Their bed is a mile high, creaky and spooky and full of hills and valleys.  The air always lulls them to sleep once the fight to confirm the presence of wolves, grizzly bears, and monsters is lost.  Margie and Sandy are put to bed by their mother, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.  Father is already on the front porch with the cooler.  The moon glows through the cloudy bedroom window.  All sounds soon disappear.  Sleep comes quickly.

Sunlight splits the room.  

It is morning.  Margie must pee.  

But she cannot move.

Her legs are pinned.  Her Snow White pajama bottoms bind her ankles.  Sandy is lying on top of her legs.  Margie looks down and sees the top of Sandy’s streaky blond hair and her head moving up and down.  She feels wet down there.  Panic.  Sandy’s tongue is licking her.  She has to pee.  What is Sandy doing?

“Sandy?”

Sandy does not stop.  Her head keeps moving.  Margie feels Sandy’s hair on her stomach.  Does it feel good?  Bad?  What is Sandy doing?

“Sandy, stop it.”

Sandy looks up, animal eyed.

“This is what grown-ups do.”

Sandy is her older sister.  Margie lays frozen. 

          *

Carl is not entirely ugly.  He is short, but he is fit from physical labor at the plant and hunting and his dark hair is thick and full.  He knows music, all kinds of music, and when he gets drinking he can carry a tune, closing his eyes as his voice cozies in with all the cigarette smoke and small talk.

“…she’ll put on her make-up….”

The radio is playing in the background but it is Carl’s voice that holds Sandy.  He has not shaved, it’s Saturday, and a shadowy scruff covers his cheeks, chin, and neck, making the slow curve of his lips speak to Sandy.  His eyes are closed, and after an evening of gin he is lost in the slow, beautiful song.

“…we go to a party and everyone turns to see….”

His voice is raspy but also frail.  Margie and Ellen are talking about the closing of their favorite lingerie store on Gratiot Avenue while Jim and Tony discuss the futility of the Lions and their latest loss.  Sandy looks at Carl, who is lost in his own world, singing against the clutter.  Who does he see in his mind as he echoes the voice on the radio?  Margie?  Sandy wants to kiss Carl, kiss him hard on those full, curled lips in the darkened hallway that leads to her bedroom and taste the gin on his mouth.

“…my darling, you were wonderful tonight.”

The song ends and Carl finishes his drink, his eyes still closed.

“I’ll get you another, hon,” Sandy coos, standing, placing one hand on Carl’s shoulder, retrieving his empty glass.  She squeezes his shoulder before she heads off to the kitchen.

They play cards long after midnight, talking, listening to the radio, laughing at things they will not remember in the morning.  Two empty bottles of gin sit next to a vodka and a whiskey.

“Gotta pee,” Carl says to no one.  Margie is asleep on the couch.  Ellen sits in the good living room chair, her eyes closed, a glass of melting ice in her hand.  Sandy’s husband Jim fiddles with the radio, trying to find a station playing good music. Tony’s chin droops onto his chest as he sits across from Ellen, his fingers interlaced as if in prayer.

Carl weaves to the bathroom at the end of the darkened hallway.  Sandy looks about the room and Jim with his back to her, mumbling under his breath.  Jim is an idiot.  He’s still driving the wrecker at the dealership.  No ambition.  No dreams.  He buys a bag of weed each week and spends longer nights out with his coworkers.  He’s gained five or ten pounds every year since they married.  Even his hands are fat now.  

Sandy drifts down the hallway.  She has no weight.  She is nothing.  Free.  She stands outside the bathroom.  She can hear water running inside.  Carl clears his throat, coughs.  She looks one more time for Jim.  He has left his station in front of the stereo and is now probably on the deck smoking a joint or pissing onto her flowers.

The bathroom door opens.  Carl turns the light off and nearly collides with Sandy.  She has trapped him.  Her mouth open, she grips his hips and pulls him to her.

“Sa….”

She will not let him speak.  No one in the house but them.  Her tongue fills his mouth.  One arm drapes his neck and draws him in roughly while the other finds his butt and squeezes.  His tongue meets hers.  The gin is sweet.  She closes her eyes.  When was her last kiss?  A real kiss, a hungry, living animal thing?

His hands find her shoulders.  They are strong.  Her bedroom door is just off to the right.  She can lead him in.  He will follow.

His hands grip hard.  He pushes, breaking their bond.

“Sandy.”

Carl turns her away from him and points her down the hall.  Her husband Jim stands at the end, a stationary, formless silhouette.

          *

Margie’s mother holds her on the bed.  They lean against the wall in the bedroom she shares with Sandy.  How old is she?  Three, maybe four?  The closeness she feels is good—how often does her mother actually hold her?—but the screams coming from her parents’ room do not allow her to embrace the moment.  Sandy is screaming.  She wants someone to help her.  Please, someone help her.  No one answers.

And then Margie’s father enters.  There is no sound.  Her mother cowers, shielding her, cornered against the wall with no escape route.  He sends a fist toward them.  The wall behind her is sprayed with blood.  From her mouth?  Her nose?  Margie knows nothing.  But she remembers the blood is never fully washed from that wall.  For years, a rust-colored shadow remains to remind them that the incident was real and not some nightmare from a child’s imagination.

Sandy never speaks of what happened in the other room. No one asks.  What happened is a ghost that walks the house even after their father builds the new addition and the old bedroom walls are painted rose yellow.

          *

Margie never expected Steven to contact her again—Sandy would forbid it.  He is crying, barely able to sputter out his words.

Margie has not spoken to Sandy in six months, since the trip to Florida.  After hitting Sandy, Carl was taken to the local jail and then released after she refused to press charges.  Go home, and stay away from your sister, the police said, and they did.  Margie and Carl took a cab to the airport from the police station and flew back to Detroit, leaving Sandy and her car to fend for themselves.  They called Steven, Sandy’s latest husband, who was on his yearly hunting trip.  Sandy only planned the Florida journey because she was angry Steven didn’t ask her permission to go hunting and was going somewhere without her even though he did this every year.  Sandy really wanted her sister Margie to go to Florida, she said they could drive her Caddy, even take Carl, she had not had one of her episodes in a while, so Carl took a week off work.  They gave their side of what happened.  It was not the story Sandy told.  According to her, Carl and Margie stole her car and then physically beat her at a rest stop when she attempted to escape.  Her face was swollen where Carl had punched her.  She hated Carl and Margie.  They could rot in hell for kidnapping her.  Steven, embarrassed by another incident, hid safely silent in Sandy’s shadow.

“Marge, oh, Margie….”

“Yes?  Steven?”

“Oh Margie, it’s Sandy.  Sandy’s gone.  She’s gone, Margie…”

“Steven, what?  What’s happened?”

“She’s gone.  She’s dead.  Oh God, Sandy’s dead….”

Her sister is dead.  Her only sibling.  Until six months ago, her closest friend.

“How, Steven?  What happened?  God, tell me what happened.  Steven, I need you to tell me what happened.”

“She, she shot herself.  Oh God, why the hell she do it?  Oh God, Margie, she’s gone.”

Steven is Sandy’s third husband.  He is a military vet and owns several hunting rifles and pistols, which he keeps locked up in their basement.  Last year, Sandy insisted he get her a pistol she could handle for times he was away hunting or on business.  Margie questioned Steven at the time.  Sandy was not always taking her medication and her moods were getting worse—should she have a gun?

“Shot herself?  How?  Her gun?”

“Yes, oh God, yes, her pistol.  Margie, she used the pistol I bought her.”

“Where are you, Steven?  Are you at home?”

“Yeah, at home.  I’m at home.  Can you and Carl come over?  I, I don’t know what to do.  The police are here.  Oh, Margie, I’m so sorry.  I can use some help right now.  Can you talk to the police?  They want to ask you some things.”

She can hear voices as the phone is passed.  It is true, the officer confirms, Sandy is dead, condolences are offered.  Could she come over to answer some questions in person and help with Steven?  Carl and Margie only live 10 minutes away.  At the scene, the police are all around the house, walking in and out the front door, loitering on the lawn.  An officer escorts them inside.  Margie embraces Steven, who shakes uncontrollably.  Carl places a hand on Steven’s shoulder. 

“They think I might have somethin’ to do with it.  Christ, how the hell can they think that?  I told them, go ahead and give me a bath in all them chemicals you got, I didn’t fire no weapon.  Do whatever you got to do, I didn’t do nothin’.  I couldn’t hurt her.  Never.  I ain’t got a damn thing to hide.”

“They’re just doing their job, Steven.  They have to ask those things. It’s okay.”

Steven is not a killer.  As much trouble as Sandy could be, he was the perfect husband for her.  He took her tantrums, rage, and unreason and returned complete loyalty.  He was totally dedicated to a woman who more often than not treated him as a baggage handler.

In the kitchen, Margie answers the officer’s questions.  Yes, Sandy had some problems, mental problems.  No, she did not always take her medication.  No, Steven had no motive—in fact, they were set to go on a vacation to Bermuda in less than two weeks.  Yes, Steven loved her despite her moods.  Yes, Sandy owned a gun.

“Can I see her?”

“The forensic people aren’t done yet and, truthfully, I wouldn’t recommend it even if you were permitted to enter the bedroom.”

“I…understand.”

Margie is released and joins Steven and Carl in the living room.  Steven invites her into the conversation.

“I was tellin’ Carl, just this morning she says, ‘Honey, I’m feelin’ better.’  And I think, great, finally, maybe she’ll snap out of it.  She’s been stayin’ in our room almost every day, never comin’ out except to eat.  Well, I says, why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go shoppin’ for the trip.  Get you some new outfits.  And she smiles, really smiles, and I’m thinkin’, she’s finally gonna be herself again.”

He pauses to wipe tears.  Carl places his hand on Steven’s back.

“Anyways, she gets all ready and we head out the front door to the car, and then she starts screamin’.  I’m like, what the hell is going on here?  Well, there she is on the steps, lookin’ down at the flower bed in front of the porch.  All her yellow roses she planted, those were her favorite, they were a little wilted.  It’s been hot, Margie.  Everything’s wilted.  I water everything but they were a little wilted.  She goes back in the house and I goes in and she’s hitting herself in the head with her fist.  She’s sayin’, ‘Everything is shit.  Everything.  Everything is shit.’  And she just keeps going on like that.”

Steven could not get Sandy to calm down and she stormed to the bedroom and slammed the door before locking it.  He went back outside and watered the roses and all the other flowers around the house and then finished up some other chores in the garage.  He never heard a gunshot.  When he went back inside, he started to make dinner for the two of them and tried to open the bedroom door to tell her to get ready to eat.  She would not answer his begging to unlock the door, so he looked in the kitchen junk drawer and found the key.  He could not describe what he saw inside.

Margie looks to the bedroom door.  

          *

They did a half-assed job.  That’s what Sandy would have said.  Oh, she would have bitched up a storm.  Even before her mind had begun to desert her, she would have reamed the cleaners.  Steven had called the home owner’s insurance company and they sent out a crew the next day. This was supposed to be their specialty.  Removing any trace of tragedy.  Restoring the setting to what it had been before.

Margie enters the bedroom.  Steven told her she could look through Sandy’s clothing and make-up and other belongings and take whatever she wanted.  Sandy did have nice things.  After three husbands, she had a full collection of leather jackets and all kinds of jewelry and the best face creams and moisturizers.  Margie could use them.  She is not a vulture.  Not at all.  But Sandy no longer had any use for any of these items.  Her sister, until six months ago her closest friend, might as well have them.

The room is Sandy’s.  On one wall, Steven’s army medals are framed, but everything else is hers.  Her elephant statues and landscape paintings that followed her to every house she ever lived in as someone’s wife.  Her ferns in the bay window.  The burnt cinnamon color of the walls.  All Sandy.  

Margie steps to the bed.  This is where it happened.  Her sister had placed the gun to the right side of her head and pulled the trigger.  A fresh comforter stretches across the mattress.  Margie sits on the edge and feels the firmness.  How could Steven ever sleep in this bed again?  Knowing what had happened?  Was the mattress stained in blood underneath the new sheets and mattress pad?  How could they ever really get the stain out?  Maybe it’s a new mattress.  She looks at the headboard.  It is a hard-carved Amish sleigh bed, ornate little flourishes everywhere, another of Sandy’s treasures.  

Then she notices.  Something built up in the tiny crevices of the flowery designs on Sandy’s side.  She draws near so that her nose is nearly touching the wood.  She uses her nail and digs in the grooves—little bits of brownish ash fall onto the pillow case as she chips away.  She understands, but keeps working.  What is landing on those pillow cases are bits of her sister’s dried blood, bone, and brain.

Margie stops.  The bed seems a mile high, full of hills and valleys and ghosts.  She brushes the pillow cases.  The flakes are tiny petals that flutter onto the comforter and down into the carpet below.

Her sister is gone.  She wants to leave the room but her legs are weightless and pinned, held to the bed by something heavy yet unseen.

She feels tears pushing out from somewhere inside her, but she closes her eyes tightly, refusing to let anything go.