Briar Rose (8 page)

ing t of it the

Usly

"It, 71 11 hundred years," said Gemma.

1 4Y, Gemma? Whya hundred years?" Beccaasked. They werepeeling apples in preparation for making applesauce. Gemma made the bestapple-sauce, better even than store-bought, Becca thought. Sylvia and Shana hated it though.

"It's lumpy, " Shana said. "It's bumpy.

"It's got the pips, " Sylvia added, giggled, then refused to eat her share.

"A hundred years, a thousand years, " Gemma said. "It doesn't matter.

Dead is dead. "

"But they weren't dead, " Sylvia reminded her. 'Just sleeping.

"That's why a hundred years then, " Gemma said. "It took a hundred years and then a prince of a nearby country . . . "

"Was it America?" asked Becca, America being the only country she knew about.

"Was it England?" Sylvia was in hard school. She knew these things.

"Was it France?" Shana was, too.

"I see England, I see France . Sylvia said. "I see Shana's underpants. "

"Do not."

"Do, too."

"Do not. Gemma, she does not.

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"I see them, too, " Becca said, though she couldn't see them and im ately felt bad about telling a flb.

"The prince came from a nearby country . . . " Gemma tried agai even she could see that no one was listening, underpants being much interesting than princes in this day and age.

Stan arrived exactly at seven, as if he had been waiting outside until the town clock tolled the last stroke of the hour. Becca opened the door just as promptly, not being able to bear the wait any longer.

"Dr. Berlin, Mrs. Berlin," he greeted her parents formally, al-Page 40

most-Becca thought-as if he were picking her up for a date.

:'I have things spread out on the dining room table," she said, 'Good. Let's get to work."

"You certainly don't believe in foreplay," Dr. Berlin commented.

Becca felt her cheeks bum but Stan laughed. "Not on stories anyway," he said. "Get in, get it over with, get out."

They walked into the dining room, Becca relieved that her father just nodded and went upstairs.

If he had said another word, Becca knew she would have throttled him.

"So, give me the Cook's tour," Stan said, gesturing to the pieces of paper she had so carefully arranged around the table, "A second eye and all that."

She walked him around, telling him the few facts she had been able to glean from the photographs and the papers. When he bent over to look at a particular piece, he pushed his glasses up onto the top of his head in order to read. They went all around the table before he offered a comment.

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"Pretty sparse gleanings." The glasses were back down on nose.

She nodded.

"And you've gotten almost as much as you can from this, a as I can tell. Time for some footwork."

"What do you mean?"

"Tomorrow is Saturday. You and I are going to visit Fort wego."

"But that's . She had no idea how far away it was.

"Five to six hours from here. I have a friend from college lives there. We can stay with her. I'll drive. You navigate."

grinned. "I judge people by how well they read maps."

She stopped herself from asking how good a friend from co the Oswego lady was. After all, it was none of her business. Ins she nodded again. "Map reading is always my job on family My mother's terrible at it. She gets east and west mixed up.

Shana and Sylvia always fought too much. I got the job by de and I'm pretty good."

"Somehow I knew that," he said. "Let's make an ear start.

don't forget to bring all this along. Samantha might be able to some connections." His sweeping gesture took in everything o table top.

"Samantha," she whispered. Of course.

"See you tomorrow morning. Seven. No later." He tu abruptly and walked to the door, calling out, "Bye, Dr. Berlin.

Mrs. Berlin."

When Becca closed the door behind him, her parents were s ing in the door of the family room.

"That was a mighty short date, dear," her mother said.

"It wasn't a date. We're going to Oswego tomorrow."

"Oswego?"

"In New York State," Becca explained.

"That's a good six hours from here," her father said. "Goi stay over?"

"I don't ... yes ... no ... probably."

"I told you he didn't believe in foreplay," her father said.

"Jerold!"

"We will be staying-if we stay over-with a friend of Stan's
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college," Becca explained slowly, as if talking to someone in a foreign language.

"That's nice, dear. Who?" Mrs. Berlin asked.

"Her name is Samantha."

"Of course," Dr. Berlin said.

"I am twenty-three years old," Becca said.

"Old enough," Mrs. Berlin said and taking her husband by the arm, led him back into the family room.

Becca ran into the kitchen and got herself a glass of cold water, drinking it right down and wondering what she could possibly wear.

in the end she wore her grey wool pants because a dress would hamper exploration but jeans might be too casual for any possible interviewing. If she had expected Stan to take as much care with his appearance, she was disappointed. He arrived at seven dressed as he always did, in corduroy pants and an open-necked shirt, and the same corduroy jacket he lived in at work.

There was a picnic basket in the back seat and a blanket. She didn't exactly raise her eyebrows, but he must have seen something in her face.

"It's still a little cold to sit on the ground for a picnic here," he explained. "Even if you are used to squatting by the waterfall every day, rain or shine. But we're going north. It'll be a lot colder there."

It was-and it wasn't-like a date. They talked about the weather, about politics, about safe office subjects. The closest it got to personal was when she asked Stan about the search for his birth mother. The way he stopped and started and inserted elliptical explanations, she knew it was not a story he told often. To her horror, she found herself blurting out, "Why? Why don't you ever talk about it?"

Stan was silent for a long moment, the car speeding along the highway. It seemed the longest moment Becca had ever sat through.

She was just formulating an apology, knowing this had to be done with careful thought, when he sighed.

"I guess once I was done with it, once I knew who she was-and the fact that she really didn't know who my father was-I was satisfied. The story was finished. Over. Complete. I'm like that with all the stories I work on. She wasn't a part of my life and I wasn't 68

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a part of hers. I had all the answers I was going to get. So I got with it. "

"Will this be the same thing?" she asked.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning when I find the story .

"If you find the story. You don't always, you know."

She nodded thoughtfully. "If I find the story-will it be ove:

"I guess that depends," he said.

"Depends on whaW'

"On whether it's a happy-ever-after ending or not, like all g fairy tales," he said. He sped up to pass a line of poky cars.

"Gernma's Briar Rose never ended happy ever after."

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"How did it end?" He pulled into the right lane and glanced at her.

She shrugged. "With a kiss. And a wedding."

He laughed. "Isn't that happy? I like kisses." He paused.

weddings."

"The prince isn't mentioned in the last line. It's as if he disapF

after the ceremony. Only the princess and her baby daughte main. Watch out!" The car ahead had suddenly slammed oi brakes.

Stan expertly braked and simultaneously turned the A

slightly to the right. "Asshole!" he muttered.

Becca wasn't sure if he meant the driver ahead-or himself, It was almost seven, hours when they turned into Oswego, picnic having slowed them down about an hour. Stan's picnic consisted of pieces of barbecued chicken, wine, bread, cheese, celery sticks. Plus two yogurts. He had forgotten the spoons.

Becca had laughed, while digging around in her purse. "Ta she'd cried, triumphantly, holding up a battered plastic spoon had seen better days.

"A lot better days!" Stan said, wiping it on his shirt.

They took turns with the spoon and somehow, after that, t were much more relaxed between them.

Once they passed the first signs to Oswego, Stan handed piece of paper on which there was a series of directions in his u scrawl. Becca read them out to him with enough time to spa: the lane changes and left turns, of which there were many.

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"That's my girl," he muttered, but he said it with a grin, to let her know that she was neither a girl nor his.

They slipped into a quiet residential street in the middle of the afternoon.

11 There-number nineteen," Becca said, pointing. The house was from the 1930s, nondescript but comfortable-looking, and much too large for a single person. Becca wondered about that.

She had studiously avoided asking very much about Samantha, and Stan had been uncharacteristically silent about her as well, except to say she was an illustrator. Of children's books. Becca suspected bunnies and duckies, an effective silencer for someone like Stan. Again, Becca wondered how good a friend Samantha had been. On the college paper together, he had said in passing. Had she gone from raise-the-barricades cartoons to bunnies-in-britches?

A dark-haired child came running across the lawn of number 19, her chubby cheeks spotty with the exercise. For a moment Becca hoped it was a Samantha clone. Then she was followed by a second child, and a third. They ran into the house next door. Becca sighed out loud.

"It will be good to get out and stretch," Stan said, mistaking the reason for her sigh.

"Yes."

They were still retrieving their overnight bags, when the front door of number 19 opened, and a slim blonde came onto the porch.

(She would be blonde, Becca thought. And slim.)

"Stan!" the blonde called, waving.

"Well, hello stranger," Stan called back, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"Good directions."

"Some things I'm good at," Samantha said. Somehow Becca Imew that was not all she was good at.

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"And you must be Becca. Come on in. Have you had lunch? Linn won't be home until seven, and the kids will eat early, but I saved out something for a snack."

Becca felt a great grin spread over her face. Linn. No wonder Samantha and Stan hadn't gotten together. "We've had lunch, thank you. What a lovely house."

She meant every word.

Linn was equally tall and had been blond once upon a time. He was now mostly bald. After the requisite jokes about Linn and Sam and

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parties at which no one could keep them straight, Becca confessed that she had assumed Linn was the other half of a lesbian partner-ship.

"Me-gay?" Samantha had laughed at that, heartily seconded by both Stan and Linn. A little too heartily, Becca thought. But the others didn't seem to notice.

The children had eaten noisily, sparring through their own meal-the chubby-cheeked girl and a boy still in that androgynous three-year-old stage. But they were quiet through the grownups' meal, having settled in front of the television for a Disney movie.

During dinner Samantha and Stan reminisced some, but mostl) the talk was of politics. Linn was more conservative than Stan, anc they argued in a mild sort of way about events in the Sovie

Dis-union, as Linn called it, and in the Muddled East. Samantha'

style was to potshot at them both, asking leading questions tha kept the argument going, as if she enjoyed watching them go heac to-head. Becca was uncomfortable and couldn't have said wh) though she guessed it had more to do with style than substance, In the middle of dessert-a truly delicious cr6me brCilee (somethin else Samantha was good at)-with both children draped over h(

begging for bites, Samantha said suddenly, "Of course poor Becca waiting for answers to all her questions. Otherwise it's a long way I

come for a meal. Let me put the monsters to bed, Stan, and yc explain."

Becca turned sharply to Stan and he put his hands up in a gestu of surrender. "What she means is that she and Linn have inviti some of the Oswego people who were living around here in t]

forties and may be able to remember stuff. Linn's been on the boa of the Fort museum and Sam did some illustrations for their bi chures. So they are pretty linked in with what went on back ther

Just then the bell rang and Linn got up. He opened the door a ushered in two men and a woman, all in their sixties or seventi

Linn introduced them around and settled everyone in the livi room with coffee.

The tired-looking man, with a shock of white hair and poucl.

blue eyes that had been piercing before exhaustion paled th down to a watery color, was Randolph Feist. He had been

Oswego high school teacher.

The woman, Marge Pierce, smoothed her hennaed hair do~

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not once but twice, before sitting. She commandeered the over-stuffed chair, offering as her reason for doing, "Lived here all my life." Her ankles were puffy and her feet seemed shoved into the tiny shoes.

Becca's attention was taken most by Harvey Goldman. Small, compact as a runner, he had a face the shade of old parchment that had been written over and scraped down too many times. What had been written, she guessed, had not always been pleasant.

They passed a few minutes in small talk-the weather, the drive up, how Oswego had changed over the years. "Not for the best,"

Marge offered. She repeated it immediately. "Not for the best."

In the middle of Marge's second opinion on the state of Oswego affairs, Becca suddenly got up and went into the hallway where she had left the rosewood box. She brought it back into the living room, cradling it in her arms as if it were a newborn.