Mystical Rose (18 page)

What’s wrong, little girl, said Mr. Cuyler. You don’t like apples?

I wanted the apple, but I wanted the seeds more. I saw the flowers in my mind’s eye, covering the ragged front of our farmhouse lawn. It was a slow dusty morning in early summer, and the clouds in the high blue sky looked like white dots.

You like flowers? he said. I nodded, and held out the apple, ready to trade present fruit for future beauty. He nodded his understanding, smiled and then reached into his cart for another twist of flower seeds.

Here, he said, nodding

No, said Mama. My mama.

No, Rose, you can’t take it. Thank you, Mr. Cuyler, but we don’t want any flowers or fruit today.

But —

Good morning to you.

What it cost my mother. She was proud, often talking about her family in the fen country, on the east coast of England. There was a cousin who was a lawyer in Ely. What it cost her to deny me my gift. What it cost, later, to ask for help, for food. Our neighbours were so good, so tactful, I never noticed that we were begging. Mama accepted help for the necessities — getting to market, food when there was none, or none but cabbage. But she wouldn’t take
help for frivolity. She never wore new clothes. I never had a toy, except the dolls Uncle Brian brought when he was doing well. Blue eyes and red cheeks and hair I combed until it fell out.

Mr. Cuyler went up to my mother and spoke to her in a low voice. He jerked his head at me. She shook her head. Mr. Groenveld backed the cart around and stood at the horse’s head, waiting. The two of them were alike, tall and well made, strong and quiet, waiting patiently. I couldn’t help noticing that Mr. Cuyler slapped at himself while he was speaking to Mama. At his clothes, his shirt and pants. He took off his hat and slapped it all over his jeans. Dust rose off of him in clouds. Nervous around women, I guessed. I stared at the farm cart.
DUTCH BLOOMS
said the sign on the side. Would I have been able to read it yet, or am I remembering another year?
CULTIVATED BEAUTY
.

Goodbye, sir, I said to Mr. Cuyler.

Come inside now, Rose, said Mama.

Yes, Mama, I said, but I turned back when Mr. Cuyler called my name.

Pray for rain, he said in a low voice, staring up into the almost clear blue sky and slapping himself.

All right, I said. And I did, that night. I almost forgot, but I remembered just before I went to sleep. The clouds were scurrying past the open window by then. We prayed for rain together, David and I.

Harriet wide-eyed and shouting at the foot of my bed. Sunshine slanting down the wall to hit the empty breakfast tray.

Are you all right, Mother? Did he hurt you?

Who? I said.

That bastard — I’m sorry but that’s what she said. You know.

Who are you talking about, dear? I said, blinking up at her. Harriet is so passionate — funny word to use for an old spinster like her. She gets upset about things, I mean. That’s passionate too, isn’t it? She wasn’t angry at me this time, was she?

You know who, she said. That disgusting old man. Morgan.

I frowned. You mean Albert?

Bastard, she said.

The sun was in my room in the mornings, and in the common room in the afternoons. I wasn’t the only one who liked it. Others would follow it around the room like me, sliding their chairs over. I wore a sweater these days, old wool cardigan with buttons made in the shape of … of those things with … those things on them. Forks. No, not forks. Anyway, it was winter — last winter — and Harriet was angry and upset about something.

His son is talking to him now, she said.

Junior?

How can you be so calm? The Villa is upset. There’s a committee dealing with the problem. I suppose it’s the sort of thing you should expect in a place like this, but apparently it’s not that common. There have been some cases in the United States, but they’ve never seen it here before. You and Albert are the first.

Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea? I asked.

I know they can’t watch you all the time, but still! Are you feeling any after-effects this morning?

I decided to try to be candid with Harriet. She was my daughter; she’d understand.

What are you talking about? I said. She was so upset.

She was always getting herself upset about other people. When she got the investigator’s job, she used to take files home with her, pore
over them, write out life stories for the people involved, when they first experienced pains in their lower backs. We are the court of last resort, she told me. The people’s choice for representation. I used to laugh at Harriet’s boss, calling him the Omnibus Man, but she took it all very seriously. Even — now what was his name, forget my own next. Even money, eventide, even Stephen. That was it. Stephen was a crusade. Cost her the job, but she wouldn’t change her mind.

He can’t walk! she told me, pounding her hand on the table so hard the sangria spilled. My daughter. Sometimes I want to hold her and rock her until she stops crying. His legs and lower back are wrecked, she said. He’s in a wheelchair and it’s his company’s fault and they won’t pay. I’m his case officer. I’ve talked to him. I’ve talked to his doctors. I believe him, she said. We must get him a settlement!

Light blue eyes wide open, staring, passionate. Her father’s eyes. My own are hazel, brown with flecks.

Stephen Bluestone was a forty-nine-year-old spackler, injured on the job two years back and hadn’t worked since. He’s my age, Mother, and he may never walk again! cried Harriet. He blamed the injury. The Workmen’s Compensation Board didn’t believe him. I didn’t know what to think myself; it was all I could do to believe that spackling was a career.

He appeared several times before the Workmen’s Compensation Board and the Ministry of Labour. He took his case to the newspapers. Well-meaning friends organized a petition that didn’t get signed by very many people, and a rally on a day that rained. The Workmen’s Compensation Board didn’t change its mind. Stephen Bluestone took his case to the ombudsman’s office.

We’re his last hope, said Harriet.

It rained enough to soak the ground thoroughly. Then the sun shone. Then it rained some more. Then the sun shone again. A lovely summer for farmers: warm, wet, sunny. The hay grew too fast and wouldn’t dry properly, but everything else did well. Fruit and green vegetables grew quickly, and did not get blasted by storms. The corn was taller than me before school was out that year. From the top of the hill next to Gert’s place you could see for miles in every direction; all around the land looked in good heart.

Closer to home, the cabbages were good and big, the root vegetables came up well, and the stunted twisted trees at the far end of the north field bore fruit — the only time in my memory they did so. Small reddish-brown apples, soft enough to bruise easily, bitter to the taste. Gert turned up her nose at them, but I ate enough to feel sick.

And the gravel beside the drive, and the muddy ruts themselves, turned in the course of the summer into a confused little puddle of colour. Flowers of several kinds, an odd and brave display. Not lavish but not pathetic — something from nothing is never pathetic. I thought it was a miracle at first. Then I remembered Mr. Cuyler telling me to pray for rain.

I ran from bloom to bloom, sniffing. I traced their shape into the dust. I wove them into my dreams at night. I copied them into the school notebooks I’d brought home for the summer. I asked Mama what the names were, what kinds of flowers they were. She didn’t know.

Parker crept around cat-footed, the spying, tale-bearing old biz-zom that she was. I found her leaning against the bathroom door, late on a winter’s evening when I was returning with our scuttle of coals. Are you ill? I said, and she jumped out of her skin.

No, no, she mumbled, straightening herself out. She’d come undone, a rarity for her. Our bathroom was way out of sight and mind, an upper-floor boxroom with no running water. Nothing to hear or see there for her, with us off duty and getting ready for bed. It was cold too. Maureen was shivering when she came out. Silly to wash your hair as much as she did; you’re just asking for pneumonia.

Get to your room this instant, I told her. The new girl is making up the fire.

One scuttle for all three rooms, Parker reminded us, turning to go back downstairs.

I heard her outside the bathroom door, gasping away, said Maureen in a whisper when Parker had gone.

Breakfast at a cheap New York hotel in September 1949 — bacon and eggs, biscuits and coffee — was fifty cents, so we went down the street to a diner and had the same thing for two bits, which was still a lot. Ruby was hungover, to my relief. I didn’t want to talk.

The woman in the booth behind me kept saying, Didja see … to someone who never replied. Not once. Didja see that China … that the mayor … that the Giants … that the garbagemen … I turned around to see who it was ignoring her, but she was alone. Maybe she was talking to me. I smiled. She looked through me. Maybe she was talking to You.

Ruby slopped coffee into her saucer.

Oh my God, Rose, she said. Oh my poor Montgomery.

What?

She frowned down at the newspaper in her hand, reading intently.

Is it about China? I said.

She scrambled out of the booth. I have to phone, Rose, she said. I have to phone right away. Remember Monty’s cruise? Well, he was going on the
Noronic
, she said.

I knew the name but couldn’t remember where from. So? I said.

Hello, everybody, I said from my bed, glad I had thought to brush my hair before breakfast. You never know when you’re going to have to look your best. No one said hello back. I tried again. Hello, Dr. Sylvester. I smiled up at him. What a dresser. Ruby would have loved him, except I wonder — funny now that I come to recall — I wonder if she liked Jews. She was cold and distant when she talked to Mr. Fleisher from down the street. We never talked about religion, but she called Mr. Fleisher a pushy guy — You know, the way they are, she said. I’d never had any clothing made to measure
so I said I didn’t know the way they were, but maybe she wasn’t talking about tailors.

Dr. Sylvester nodded at me. He looked embarrassed. He started talking to the people next to him, a man in a hurry and a pregnant lady in a suit. The announcement came over the intercom:
Good morning, everyone. Today is Tuesday the third of March
. Pause. Then the year. Was it just last year? The pregnant lady smiled at me then. The lady on the other side of her from Dr. Sylvester whispered something in her ear, and she nodded.

Harriet sat on the bed next to me. She patted my hand. She looked embarrassed, like Dr. Sylvester and the night nurse. There was a feeling of embarrassment throughout the room, faint but definite, like the central heating.

Shall we begin? said the man in a hurry.

I’m sorry about the people on the
Noronic
, the hundred and something men and women and children, but I didn’t think about them at the time. My face would have gone as white as a sheet I’m sure — and I said to Ruby, Sank? It sank?

She wasn’t thinking about the hundred and something dead either, only about Montgomery. She handed me the paper and ran to the back of the diner, hips wobbling under her burnt-orange skirt, rummaging in her purse for change for the pay phone.

Bottom of the front page, with a big headline:
HARBOR TRAGEDY! FIRE ABOARD LINER KILLS ONE HUNDRED
! I read the article all the way through, with my thoughts whirling like falling maple keys — bravery, death, destruction, Pier Nine, fruitless, evening dress, worst, authorities, inquiry, captain, second deck, wastebasket — no, wastebasket was later.

And relief.

That it wasn’t me? That I didn’t know anyone? No.

I was relieved that it was a fire.

You think of maritime disasters, you think of sinking. You assume the ship went down. That’s how people die when they’re onboard ship. That’s the chance you take when you cross that rope bridge at Southampton. Or wherever. Air disaster, you assume: it fell out of the sky. There are other kinds of air disasters, but that’s the one you think of first. It’s the one you are afraid of. No one is afraid to fly because they think the plane is going to get caught in an earthquake.