The Marble Quilt (20 page)

“But, darling,” Rose had said, “didn't you tie something to the antenna, like I told you the last time?”

“Yes I did. Only isn't that the joke? For the life of me I can't remember what.”

“Dinah, no! Bad girl!” Rose hit the window, which shuddered. “Listen, Minna, don't worry. Just sit yourself down in the air-conditioning, and I'll be there in a jiff.”

“As soon as you can. Otherwise the ice cream will melt. Oh, and Rose”—here Minna's voice grew soft, even coy—“I promise it will never happen again.”

They hung up. Rose went into the garage. Really, Minna was getting to be a bit of a
trial these days. When Rose was a girl, and Harriet had said something cruel to her, Minna always sat her in front of the mirror, brushed out her hair, and counseled, “This too shall pass.” And usually Minna was right: the wrong did pass, though Rose never came to understand why Harriet hated her so much. Now she wondered if that hatred had passed through the generations, like the hook of the nose or of the lip, to Audrey. Audrey, like her grandmother, was clearly not the kind ever to let go of a grudge. Instead she would build a citadel from the wrongs that had been done her, and gain what sustenance she could from leeching other people's woes.

Who was the father, anyway? “My father,” Rose said to herself, climbing into the Cadillac and lighting a cigarette. For she couldn't remember Minna ever having had even a single boyfriend. She was the schoolteacher, the caregiver. And yet there must have been someone. Somewhere along the line, someone whose name was never mentioned, yet who had a name, a family with its own
meshugaas
, its own medical history to be charted by some enterprising niece. And where was that family? Was it big, with even more nieces and nephews for Rose to confuse? (Remembering that you could get a ticket for not wearing one, she put on her seat belt.) God, it was hot … Stupid to have stuck it out in south Florida for the summer, when in the old days she and Burt had always gotten away in August, gone north to the Cape. But Burt was dead, and she had Minna to attend to. Minna, quite simply, could not be left on her own.

Oh, what a foolish thing to do! And why had they done it? For it must have been a conspiracy. Not that anyone would have ever thought to question them, since as it stood Effie was pregnant all the time anyway, it made sense that she should be pregnant. And Minna … who would have ever guessed it of her? Never married. Up until today, Rose
had wondered if she had ever even loved.

She pressed a button. With a creak, the garage door opened, admitting a light so harsh Rose had to squint against it. Where were her sunglasses? In her bag? She rummaged for a moment, found them at last, put them on (the world became pink), then, turning the key, felt the first gusts of hot breeze that presaged the air-conditioning hit her wrists. Lastly she switched on the cassette player—on the highway, Mozart calmed her—and looking over her shoulder, lurched backward, with a great shudder, onto Ixora Avenue.

Cautiously, even timidly, Rose made her way to the highway. Near a red light, a station wagon bore down on her, its driver, a young woman with children in the back seat, flashing her brights, making a face Rose could see quite plainly in the rearview mirror. Seconds pulsed by, the light changed, and she rose up onto the interstate; her tormentor passed her, disappearing into a haze of motion. Ten miles of blind panic now separated Rose from Minna, ten miles of off-ramps and merging lanes and terrifying low-slung vehicles with oversized tires, windows tinted black, chain metal frames for the license tags. As if edges meant safety, she kept to the slow lane the whole way, sandwiched between a pair of trucks that let off plumes of exhaust but also offered, in their immensity, a measure of protection. Yet she was nothing as compared to Minna, who drove so slowly that she'd actually gotten a ticket for it. Yes, there was a speed limit on the other side too; you could get a ticket for going under it. Really, she had no business being behind a wheel, George said; she was a menace, and not only to herself. Only, who had the heart to stop her, when she valued her independence more than her life? For that was the thing everyone said about Minna: “She loves her independence!” Never asking
anything of anybody, until lately.

Was that the reason, then? Would a child—would Rose—have compromised her beloved independence?

At last the turnoff neared. Where Minna lived was a world of old people. All the businesses catered to them. Clever entrepreneurs traded in urban nostalgia, peddling bagels with a schmear, take-out Chinese food spiced down to suit elderly stomachs. It always made Rose a little uneasy, coming here. After all, unlike her sister, she had moved to Florida as a vital woman of middle age. She had raised her boys in a nice neighborhood with frangipani and banyan trees, street games after school, and on Halloween so many trick-or-treaters they ended up having to give away the hard candy moldering on the piano.

Minna, on the other hand, had arrived already old. For three decades she'd been living in her one-bedroom apartment with its view of the Intracoastal, in a squat, modest building which had once shared the waterfront with no one, but over which, every year, more gleaming towers crouched, throwing shadows onto the patio, stealing the sun.

It was George's sensible opinion that Minna couldn't go on like this much longer. She could barely get herself dressed anymore. A nice old folks' home, he counseled, or one of those places where they
think
they're on their own, but there are nurses. And yet why was it that whenever George talked about putting Minna away, within seconds he invariably brought the conversation around to what he called Rose's own “situation”? “Why not sell the house?” he'd ask. “Now that you're on your own, it must be an awful lot to keep up with. Buy yourself a little condo instead.”

The exit snuck up on her, as it always did. Alarmed by its sudden appearance, she cut
across three lanes of traffic, enraging a truck, which honked and startled her. Off the highway a red light gave her a moment to collect her thoughts. Back when she and Burt had first moved here, farmland had shouldered the interstate on both sides. But now everywhere she looked there were warehouses, and warehousey strip malls, and supermarkets, including the Publix where Minna had lost the car. From where she waited, Rose surveyed its parking lot, stretching all the way to the cyclone fence that blocked off the highway.

Finally the light changed. She turned right, pulled up to the curb in front of the market, and, leaving the engine running, hurried through the doors to find Minna. There she sat, slumped on a bench by the telephone. Her white hair fell over her forehead in a wave. She was wearing a striped jersey and stretch blue jeans. Even though she was asleep, one of her hands lolled protectively over the handle of a cart brimming with groceries. And what on earth made her think she needed all that stuff? It would only go to waste.

“Darling, I'm here,” Rose said, patting Minna's shoulder, at which point Minna's eyes opened.

“Oh, Rose! I must have dropped off.” She hoisted herself to her feet; made to take hold of the grocery cart.

“No, I'll get it,” Rose said, and pushed her away with a gesture so violent that Minna's hands flew instinctively to her face.

“Darling, what a relief it is to see you,” Minna said, once they were safe in Rose's car. “You can't imagine how vulnerable I felt, sitting there by myself, with all that food.
People stared.”

“It's all right, I'm here now.”

“A man stared … a long time. I was afraid.”

“Only I do think that in the future you might consider asking Mrs. Lopez—”

“And then I thought, what would I have done if you hadn't been home? Sat here until the market closed, or you came back?”

“Nonsense, you would have called Mrs. Lopez and she would have fetched you.”

“But her car's in the shop. She takes the bus.”

“Well then, I'm sure the police would have helped.” (In fact, if George had had his way, she wouldn't have rescued Minna at all. Instead she would have left her to stew in her own juices, learn her lesson the hard way.) “Anyway, now we need to concentrate on finding your car. Where do you think you left it?”

“I'm sure it was on the left. And not too far back.”

“You didn't happen to write down the row number, did you?”

“I didn't think I needed to. Because I'd tied the whatchamacallit to the antenna. The whosiwhatsit. And I thought … Oh, look! Yes, I remember now, it was a dog toy. A little rubber blowfish, with spikes all over—look, there's one!”

“But, Minna, that's a Toyota. You drive a Ford.”

They turned right. To Rose's surprise, practically every car in the parking lot had something tied to its antenna: stuffed dolls, balloons, brightly tinted clothespins. It was inevitable that there should be repetition, which was why so many anxious-looking old men and women were now pushing their carts through the heat, eyes open for signs of home, trying to stave off the terror of being lost. None of them was as lucky as Minna,
with Rose at the ready to rescue her.

“Honey, forgive me for asking, but you do have your keys, don't you?”

“Yes, of course. That's the first thing I checked.”

“Good. And you did lock up—”

“Of course I locked up! What do you take me for?”

“Nothing, darling, I just thought it was worth making sure—” Suddenly Rose braked. “There,” she said. “There it is.”

“Oh, thank God!” Tears welled in Minna's old eyes. “I didn't want to say anything, but the truth was, I was scared.”

“I know,” said Rose. For Minna's car had been stolen before. It had been stolen because she had left the keys in the ignition and forgotten to lock the door. Another time she
had
locked the door, but left the engine running. Both times Rose was summoned.

With a great effort, Minna climbed out of her sister's car and got into her own.

Minna's progress was glacial. It took them nearly twenty minutes to get back to her apartment building, which was three quarters of a mile from the Publix. “Thanks, honey,” she said when they finally pulled into the parking lot. “Say, you want to come in for a minute? Have a cup of coffee?”

“Of course I'll come in.” Rose popped the trunk. She got out of the car, picked up a bag of groceries.

“Be careful. Don't hurt yourself.”

“What choice do I have? I can't leave this stuff to rot.”

The apartment was on the ground floor. “Sit down,” Minna said once they were inside,
and she was easing herself into the lounger in front of the television. “Take a load off. You want some ice cream?”

“No thanks.” Rose unpacked.

“I got chocolate marshmallow. Your favorite.”

“No, I wouldn't care—Minna, what on earth do you need with three gallons of ice cream?”

“Someone might drop by.”

“But no one ever drops by! When was the last time in twenty years that anyone dropped by? And look—you've got three in the freezer already. That's six gallons.”

“But Georgie loves ice cream.”

“Georgie lives in New York now. He only comes down twice a year.” She put the ice cream away. “Honey, you've really got to start using your head, otherwise—”

“Or that Audrey. Lily's girl. What if she drops by? You said she was coming this week.”

Rose closed the freezer. “Yes, Audrey might. It's interesting, she's doing a medical history of the family. For her thesis. She seems very bright.”

“Lily's always been a strange one, hasn't she?”

“Takes after Harriet.”

“Momma was very hard on Harriet. Especially after she got thrown out of nursing school.”

“Momma always seemed to resent all of us girls for being girls.”

“You can say that again.”

Rose sat down across from Minna. “You know, Audrey's dug up the most incredible
stuff for her study,” she said. “For instance, in Harriet's attic, she found some old ledgers where Momma wrote down every time one of us got sick. Plus all the medical reports, the doctors' bills …”

“Momma was very organized. It's a pity women couldn't go to work in those days. She would have made a great CEO. She was much smarter than Poppa. Poor Poppa. Without her, he would have run the store into the ground.”

“Yes, Minna, but as I was saying, Audrey found all the old medical bills, even from Cape May.”

“You mean when you were born?”

“I've always wanted to know more about that summer.”

“Well, Momma was sick. She had terrible morning sickness to start with, plus she had bleeding, so the doctor said she needed to stay in bed until it was time. And with all the kids, and the heat—it was murderous that summer—there was no use in her staying home. So we went to Cape May.”

“To a hotel.”

“Not much fun for me, I can tell you! Just a girl, and cooped up in that room all day with Momma.”

“And was Poppa there?”

“He came when he could. But basically it was just the two of us. Momma and me, I tell you, we sure got on each other's nerves! Talk about cabin fever. And of course she was nervous, knowing that Poppa was running the store by himself. He couldn't keep books very well, not to mention the women coming in all the time. Momma was never easy in the head when she couldn't keep an eye on him.”

“And then she had me?”

“We stayed on a few days more so she could recuperate. Then we went home.”

“But, Minna, honey”—Rose leaned closer—“those bills that Audrey dug up, there's something funny about them. The name on them isn't Momma's, it's yours.”

“Mine?”

“I mean, you're listed as the patient.”

“Oh, then they must be bills from a different doctor. I remember I had a terrible flu—”

“No, they're from the obstetrician. Dr. Homer Hayes.”