Mystical Rose (3 page)

Careful, he said. Oh, be careful.

Now it would have been my turn to be surprised. Concern was not something I was used to hearing in the voices of guests. Not concern for me. Guests belonged to a different world. Rich, seasonal transient, foreign, they looked and talked and acted in a way that would have been impossible for me and my friends. Horse shows and polo matches and car rallies through the town. My friends would line King Street East to stare at the fashions and jewels on their way to the Arlington Hotel for the Saturday Grand Hop. Imagine a party with guests filling the whole lawn, and electric lights strung out along the hedges, and a dance band playing in the middle of the swimming pool filled with orchids! Mr. Davey told me about it; he’d driven the Rolyokes. A swimming pool filled with flowers and music — I still think it’s a beautiful idea.

Oh, be careful! He watched closely, never moving from where he stood but never quite still. His hands fluttered about on their own. He jigged up and down, as if he had springs inside his clothes, while I looped the rope over a sturdy upper bough and threw the coil down to Adam, the head gardener.

Excuse me, Mr. Robbie, he said.

Oh, hello, Adam, said the young man.

Ready, Rose? called Adam. I turned around carefully on my branch, reaching into the crotch of the tree where I’d left the saw.

Rose? said the young man. Rose?

Straddling my branch, I took a quick look down through the criss-cross of leaves before starting to saw.

Rose? he said to Adam.

Better stay out of the way, Mr. Robbie. That branch is going to come down.

And that’s how you met? Wow! Talk about romance! Ruby exclaimed. You a servant girl and he a son of the manse. You had it all, Rosie, she said. Her face was flushed. Of course she’d had a bit to drink by then.

Wait, there’s more, I said. It gets better.

I must have had a bit too. And yet it wouldn’t have been too late in the day, would it? We were upstairs, above Ruby’s hat shop. I could see the lake through her front window, which looked down Glen Manor Road. Late summer afternoon, Sunday, and quiet. You wouldn’t believe how quiet Toronto could be on summer Sundays in the forties. I wonder where Harriet was. Movies? Band practice?

What’s a manse? I asked.

Nothing like that ever happens to me, said Ruby. Her hair hung down like a curtain in front of her face.

What about Montgomery? I said. I’d have met him by then.

What about him? He’s a good-for-nothing, a salesman. A great guy to have around if you want to buy a knife, but not romantic.

Yes he is, I said. He can be. Anybody can be romantic. Romance is about you, not about circumstances, I said.

She tried to digest this, but it wouldn’t go down. Bullshit, she said. And upended her glass. Rum, I think. That went down. She usually drank rum. Her father had been in the merchant marine.

I sawed through the big rotten bough, but it didn’t move. Adam shouted at me to hurry up. I pushed and pulled, but I couldn’t free the rotten branch from the surrounding network of leaves and interlocking smaller branches. I cursed the stickiness and the bugs, cursed the loyalty of little fingers clutching the healthy parent tree which was no longer attached to it. Finally I climbed up, wedged myself against the rippled trunk and kicked at the fresh-cut end of the rotten branch, a gleaming white oval. It wouldn’t budge.

The branch is stuck! I called down to Adam.

I felt a vibration against the trunk of the tree.

What should I do? I can’t get it to move. Are you climbing up? I called. I felt the vibration again. The rotten branch slid downwards, and then stopped. I couldn’t reach to kick it now. Then I heard the young man calling my name.

Midsummer day, 1927, and choking hot. It was very close up there, surrounded by leaves.

Hello? Rose?

The young man’s voice came from nearby.

Where’s Adam? I asked.

On the ground. I say, where are you?

I climbed down a few feet and peered through the leafy curtain that hung between us. He looked excited.

Why did you climb up, sir? I said. He was standing on the top rung of the big wooden ladder that I had climbed up an hour previously.

Is your name Rose? he asked me.

Yes, sir, I said. Then, louder, Adam, the branch is going to fall! I called. He waved his end of the rope from down below. He was a local man, middle-aged, consumptive, with a big moustache and belly, too thickabout, as he put it, to be climbing around like a monkey.

Please be careful, sir, I said.

My name’s Robbie, he told me, with a nervous smile, extending his hand. I held out my own hand. Stretching towards me he overbalanced. The ladder teetered, then came back upright. Instead of resting against the trunk of the tree, the top of the ladder lay against one of the horizontal branches. As we shook hands, the ladder began to slide along the branch.

Adam shouted and lumbered forward, but he was too far away to reach the ladder in time. It was going to topple.

And then, with a noise like tearing cotton jersey, the rotten branch slipped through the tangle of foliage. Adam had let go of his end of the rope, so that, instead of being lowered gently, the branch fell heavily to the ground, the rope streaming after it like a banner.

Robbie gave no sign of being in danger. He smiled charmingly — an amazing full-mouthed smile — and kept hold of my hand. My indrawn breath stuck in my throat. I choked in admiration. Nice to meet you, Rose; I’m Robbie Rolyoke, he said. Using my hand to guide him, he leapt nimbly onto the branch as the ladder, twenty-five feet of solid hardwood, slid away from us and dropped with a twisting crack right on top of the fallen branch.

Rolyoke? I said. I mean, Mr. Rolyoke, sir?

My dad’s Mr. Rolyoke, he told me. I’m just Robbie.

I watched the wreckage from above, peering down through the hole in my refuge, fascinated, distanced, safe.

Harriet’s smile is not charming. There there, Mother, she says.

Feeling better then now, dear? asks the woman on the other side of the bed. What do you call her. Suitcase?

Hello, I say.

Where were you, Mother?

I look around the room. Four beds, including mine. My daughter. A … not suitcase. Nurse. What d’you mean, where was I? I say. I was here. Wasn’t I?

I look at my hands. Sometimes I can tell where I’ve been from them.

I’ve been here all along, I say.

I wonder, says Harriet. You seemed a long way away.

We’re back, though, aren’t we? says the … nurse.

I smile up at her, a motherly woman with an accent from Scotland. I was never motherly enough. And I’ve never been to Scotland. I start to cry. I’m crying because I’ve never been to Scotland.

Now, now, says the nurse. That’ll not help us, will it, dear?

I try to tell them.

I’m sorry, I say to Harriet.

There there, she says.

So, do you play cards? he asked me.

No, I said.

Do you ride?

Not really, I said. We had a horse but he died.

Any beaux?

I looked away.

Forgive me, he said. I didn’t mean to pry. I just … what do you do for fun, then, Rose?

I stared at him, Robbie Rolyoke, Lady Margaret’s son, a nervous excited young man sitting next to me in midair. Our hands on the branch above were very close together.

I don’t know, I said.

He understood, I think. He nodded. His face was red. Sweat trickled down into his collar.

It was sunny, the first time Harriet took me to the doctor’s office. The first time it was sunny. The next few times it was rainy. The first time the sun made my eyes hurt. She helped me up the steps. Why are we here? I asked. I’d been asking all morning. I’m not sick, I said. For the first time in months I wasn’t sick. I was all better. I’d had a bad cold, at least I think it was a cold, lots of coughing. No one thought to take me to the doctor when I was coughing. Not me, not Harriet. Not Robbie. Well, Robbie was dead. Mama was dead too. Doctors are busy people — no point in bothering them, she always said. But I was better now, finally, and now Harriet was taking me to the doctor.

Why are we here? I asked again. This time we were in the feather duster — I mean the waiting room. Harriet made a face and told me to shush. I looked around the room and saw a roomful of long faces and trembly limbs.

Harriet looked angry. Don’t do that, Mother, she told me. What was I doing, I wonder. My hands were clean, but she wiped them anyway. The sun was making me blink. I got up to close the
curtains. Harriet was talking to another lady, whose mom was fidgeting and crying. Poor thing, sitting in the … I swallowed. Come back, Harriet called.

I frowned back at her from the hallway. Wonder what I was doing there. Just getting a drink, I told her.

She came to get me. Wiped my hands. They were a little dirty now. Don’t do that, she told me. The sno-cone called Harriet’s name.

That’s what she looked like — white uniform, tapered down from the shoulders, cherry-coloured hair. Harriet Rolyoke? And Rose? The doctor will see you now.

I stood up and walked all by myself. You look just like a sno-cone, I told her, beaming. She didn’t say anything. Probably used to that. I’m eighty-six years old, I told her. Proudly. And I don’t know why I’m here.

The doctor couldn’t see me. Hello, I told him, waving, but he kept talking to Harriet. When did your mother start to forget things? he asked.

Now that’s a stupid question, isn’t it? I’ve been forgetting things for years, ever since I can remember. And why ask Harriet? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t live with me. She comes over to turn off things I’ve left on and read me the news. I’m the one forgetting things. Why not ask me. Hello, doctor, I said. He pointed his teeth at me but kept looking at Harriet. All those years I tried to get men interested in her, to no avail. It’s finally worked. The doctor is infatuated. A good-looking man too, soft curly hair and dark skin. Too bad Harriet’s over sixty. And bossy. And, please forgive a mother’s honesty, not really beautiful.

Are you Jewish? I asked the doctor. He looked through me, nodded to Harriet. I guess he was saying yes.

Harriet was embarrassed. Please be quiet, Mother. You asked that the last time you came here, she said.

Oh, I said. Thinking, So this isn’t my first visit to Dr. Sylvester — there, I remembered the name at last. Does that sound Jewish? All I remember of the Old Testament is what we had to learn in Sunday School, and I don’t remember any Sylvester.

It was sunny, that day. I’m sure.

He gave me a test. Harriet left the room and I was all alone with the handsome doctor. Not a pinprick, pee-into-this, breathe-into-that kind of test; this was question and answer. I had to smile, the questions were so silly.
In what way are an egg and a seed alike?
He stared at me as he asked this, so concerned.

Eat them both for breakfast, I told him.

He wanted more.
Why are dark-coloured clothes warmer than light-coloured clothes?

Seriously, like this had an answer. Do I look like a fashion designer? I said to him.

Or,
What should you do if while in the movies you were the first to see smoke and fire?

Depends, I said.

On what?

On whether it’s a tragedy or a comedy, I told him. If it’s a comedy, you can laugh. The doctor, now I’ve forgotten his name again, got a bit upset. This is serious, he said. If it’s a serious movie, I guess you can worry, I said.

I was getting hungry but he didn’t offer me anything to eat. What he did was start saying numbers. 5, 9, 4, he said. I smiled politely. He waited. You’re supposed to repeat them, he said.

Repeat what, I asked.

The numbers I just gave you.

Why? I asked.

Because we’re trying to determine how good your memory is, he told me. It’s a test.

I’ve never been very good at numbers. I remember my daughter being incredulous at how I kept my books at the flower shop. It comes of not ever learning how to subtract, you see. I don’t like to tell people, but it’s the truth. I must have skipped that part of my schooling. I’m very good at adding up; if a customer bought a dozen long-stemmed roses and a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers for his girlfriend I would be able to tot them up — $6.99 for the roses and $8.00 for the flowers — and tell him that he owed me whatever it was. I could even make change from the twenty-dollar bill. But I could never figure out the difference between what I paid for things and what I got from the people who bought them. Why I didn’t go bankrupt I’ll never know. Maybe I did go bankrupt and never noticed.

They say poverty marks you, that you never really get over being poor. I think that’s true, but not only about money. What do You think — sorry, there I go again, You don’t think anything. You know. Well, I have been poor in spirit, poor in love, and that has marked me. Forgive me, I loved Harriet as well as I could. Better than I was loved as a girl.

Goodbye, Mama, I said from the doorway of our house on Forth Street in Cobourg. She didn’t answer, she wasn’t there. I would have been seventeen, conscious of my uniform, of the picture on the mantel in the parlour, our only memento of Daddy. I didn’t want Mama around when I said goodbye. I didn’t know what she
thought of goodbyes, of our new house, of me. I didn’t know her. Poor in spirit. Mr. Davey was waiting outside to drive me to the train station. A brilliant fall day, leaves whirling down the street in fragrant clouds of colour. Me and Miss Parker spent it in the train, Cobourg to New York to Philadelphia. She knitted, and criticized whatever I was doing. I read for a while, then gazed out the window and thought about a place with a million people all living together. A huge place, bigger than a thousand Precious Corners. It boggled my mind. In the movies you saw cities a block at a time — except for ancient Babylon. I couldn’t imagine a real city, full of real people. Sit straight, Rose, said Parky. Don’t gawp and roll your eyes, anyone would think you were a halfwit.