Mystical Rose

by Richard Scrimger

  I squeeze her hand.

  She spares a moment to look down at me.

  Harriet, I say. She doesn’t respond.

  Harriet. I say it louder. Harriet Harriet. Do you hear me?

  She pats my hand. How much time do we have? she says.

  She’s not talking to me. She can’t understand me.

  The man says something. A white uniform, very formal — what is he, a doctor? He doesn’t look particularly medical. Not like my nice Dr. Sylvester. There was a man, now. What large dark eyes, like two of Ali Baba’s oil jars. Deep, rich, shiny, fattening — oh, to have eyes like that. To marry eyes like that. To be able to stare into them whenever you liked.

  A simple test, Dr. Sylvester said, giving me a cardboard clock with movable hands. Big hand, little hand. I thought of all the hands, withered old hands like mine, clutching the little cardboard hands of the clock. I thought of all the old men and women like me, trying to understand what the doctor was asking us to do. Trying to do what we were told because it was important to someone — not to us. Certainly not to me; I’ve never been any good at telling what time it was.

  Once a policeman came in to buy flowers, and said I’d have to go to court because the store was open too late.

  And what time is it anyway? I asked. I’ve no head for the hours, they just fly by.

  It’s well after six o’clock, missus, he said, pointing to his wrist-watch. Too late, he said.

  Too late for what? I asked.

  Too late for the men that write the laws downtown, he said.

  He’d come in with a smile and a kind word, bought carnations for his wife and waited for me to wrap them, then pulled out the summons. Piece of paper.

  How’d you know to come here? I asked.

  Neighbour complaint, he said, writing busily. Friendly fat policeman with a moustache and a well-licked pencil.

  Who? Which neighbour? I had my suspicions — this was still wartime, most people were worried about Hitler, not extra-hours businesses. Was it the guy from the BP station on the corner? I asked.

  The policeman handed me the summons.

  It was, wasn’t it, I said.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and found an apple. Took a deliberate bite.

  That bastard, I said. Just because he can’t sell gas after six.

  Harriet had been doing her homework in the back room. She came into the shop as the policeman left, taking the flowers with him.

  When’s dinnertime? she asked. I’m starving.

  I didn’t say anything.

  What’s wrong? She recognized the summons in my hand. Is that why the policeman was here? Are we open too late again, Mother? We are, aren’t we.

  What time is it? I asked.

  What’s going to happen? Remember what the judge said last time?

  That bastard McIntosh, I said.

  Don’t swear, Mother. Do you mean Mr. McIntosh? From the gas station? Has he been complaining again?

  Is it really after six o’clock? I said.

  We were standing in the door of the shop. A cold clear winter evening. She pointed to the tower on the firehall across the street. I could just make out the hands on the big clock.

  It’s practically seven, Mother — see?

  Not really, I said.

  Are you finished? Dr. Sylvester asked me very gently. I guess I’d been staring into space for a while.

  Ten past eleven, right? I said, frowning down at the bent and withered clock hands, at my own hands, which weren’t withered at all but lumpy — great bumps of chalk and bone that rear up suddenly, like volcanoes from the earth’s crust.

  I might have set it at ten past eleven. That’s the time he wanted me to do. Does that say ten past eleven? I asked him.

  He smiled kindly. I don’t think he hated me — probably on account of my profile. He must have a tough life, though, shepherding thousands of uncertain old people through the Gates of Ivory. Watching their minds curl up at the edges like drying paper. Knowing that every time he saw them they’d be farther and farther away — and they’d never get better. None of them. Who’d be him? Mind you, who’d be me? Who’d be anybody if they could help it?

  Dr. Sylvester shook his head kindly and put the clock away. End of the test for today. We’ll do some more another time, he said, writing something in my file. Probably not about my cheekbones, though they had been praised in their day.

  Was that the reason behind McIntosh’s accusation, do you think? Was he truly in love with me? That’s what Harriet said, but what did she know? A little girl with geometry homework, what would she know about true love? He was an ordinary-looking man, middle-aged, middle-sized, hair that was neither brown nor black nor grey, but sort of a blend of them all. His chin was kind of long, and his nose was high-bridged. He had very short eyebrows — they only went halfway across his face, which meant he always looked a bit taken aback.

  Why did you call the cops on me? I asked him, the day after my summons. He was in the store to buy flowers. Loved flowers, he said, but had no one to give them to. Over the grime of years, his hands were red and raw with washing. The nails were clean.

  What do you mean, Rose? he asked. He had a high, soft voice.

  Last night a policeman came to my shop and charged me with operating after hours, I said. He was tipped off by a neighbour.

  Why do you think it was me?

  It was you last time, I said.

  He looked down at his boots. Neither of us had mentioned the last time.

  How do you know it wasn’t that guy from the bakery?

  Geoff?

  Yes. Geoff.

  His eyes darkened on the name. Not that Geoff Zimmerman and I were anything more than friendly acquaintances. His bakery stood between the hardware store and Ruby’s hat shop, about a block east of my flower shop. I bought my bread and baked goods at Geoff’s place. If he was there, he waited on me himself, a bear of a guy, handsome and hairy, with a habit of looking away from you when he talked. Looking away from me anyway.

  Mr. McIntosh bought some gardenias and hesitated at the door. Why don’t I give them to you, Rose? he asked.

  Because they’re already mine, I said. If I take them back, all you’ve given me is money.

  Would this have been my first winter in the shop? My second? I felt pretty damn lonely. Mr. McIntosh tried to be sympathetic. What a fine man your husband must have been, he said. I’m so sorry I never got a chance to meet him.

  Thanks, I said quietly, and had to repeat myself. Mr. McIntosh was hard of hearing, the reason he wasn’t fighting in Europe.

  Robbie’s fighting had all been in the Atlantic. There’s a picture of him somewhere, in his blue uniform smoking a cigarette. And another one of the ship — not a boat, there’s a difference — getting swamped. I remember Robbie and Harriet laughing over that picture, but it made me scared the moment I saw it.

  Good luck, Robbie, wherever you are.

  No one knows exactly how senile dementia works, Dr. Sylvester told Harriet. I was there for another test, I think. Wellesley — that can’t be right. That was Ruby’s name. Ruby Wellesley Millinery, it said over her shop. Anyway there was a whole series of these tests to prove that I was really losing my mind. Unnecessary. They could just have asked me. Rose Rolyoke, are you losing your mind? I’d have been able to tell them all right. Saved a lot of trouble.

  Harriet frowned intently as the doctor talked, every now and then turning to look at me with the strangest mixture of compassion and exasperation. Reminded me of the time I found her in court, after I’d lost her.

  Yes, she said to the doctor. She thinks of that often.

  Thinks about what, I wondered.

  It must have been traumatic, the doctor said.

  Harriet gave me the look again.

  My father died a violent death. I didn’t witness it, but I heard about it at the trial. Uncle Brian didn’t hide anything; he was still too upset. They’d been out hunting moose in the Ganaraska Forest, he and Dad
dy. After a no-luck day they were passing an evening with a bottle of Mr. McAllister’s rotten whisky, when a bull moose wandered right up to the edge of their campfire and began nibbling at a blueberry bush. The men scrambled to get their guns and fired from point-blank range. Uncle Brian described how the moose stared at them calmly with one big wet eye, while the blood poured out of the wound in his side. Made me feel guilty inside, to see the suffering in the dumb animal, he said. But apparently Daddy got excited — strange for him, who never seemed to care about anything. He kept firing, even after the moose turned and loped off. Reminded me of what happened to Victor.

  Daddy said he wanted the moosehead for the house. Come on, Brian, he called, reloading his gun, grabbing the axe and plunging into the brush after the animal. Brian stopped for a last drink, and followed the sound of my father’s passage through the underbrush, heard a shot, and then another, and couldn’t locate them. He wandered around, then sat down and slept for a while, and dreamed about a crowd of men nailing the moose to a cross — like the moose was Jesus, he told the judge, who told him to go on — and the sound of the hammering got louder and louder and finally woke Uncle Brian from his sleep, sweating and crying out. The hammering was real. The sound of the blows echoed through the forest. Uncle Brian sprang to his feet, lost in the woods at night, and afraid. The noise was coming from dead ahead of him.

  The moon was near full, and it was possible to pick his way with care. Uncle Brian described to the court how he walked. Like a Red Indian, he said, careful not to let a twig snap under my boots, and the beating of my heart was all mixed up with the pounding noise ahead of me. It was like I was listening to the heartbeat of the forest, he said, and the judge told him to please get to the point.

  The noise stopped, and the forest was silent and still. Uncle Brian kept walking, hardly daring to breathe. And then, treading silently as they do, rearing high above him, was the moose, huge spread of antlers clearly silhouetted in the moonlight. The beast was upon him in an instant. He fired instinctively, in self-defence — the moose being capable of derailing a freight train, as he explained. Only of course it wasn’t a moose. It was my father, labouring along with the moose’s head on his shoulders — the head he had with so much labour hacked off with his axe.

  If Daddy had been a moose, Uncle Brian’s shot would have taken him high on the foreleg, near the shoulder, a crippling blow. But with the extra four feet of head and antlers on top of his own head, the solid shot — no pellets for Uncle Brian — hit Daddy square in the throat. People aren’t horses; there are lots of places you can hit them so that they die fast. Daddy died instantly.

  Dog spoon laughter edge quarterback, said Dr. Sylvester, in a nice wool suit. I beg your pardon? I asked. I assumed I’d heard wrong, but no, it was part of the test.

  He repeated them, and then wanted me to say them back. I cleared my throat, something sticking there from breakfast, and repeated them flawlessly. I’ve always been able to do that. Song lyrics too. Remember Minnie the Moocher? Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi?

  The past is always knocking on the door of the present, said Dr. Sylvester, this time in a nice linen suit. Was he talking to me? A pleasant image that, only the past isn’t always polite. Sometimes it knocks the damn door down and comes barging in.

  I believe, said the doctor, that the past cannot be suppressed without cost. In wilfully suppressing the past we are living two lives at once — our real life and a fantasy life where the past hasn’t happened. Do you follow?

  He wasn’t talking to me. Harriet nodded.

  As we get older our minds lose their agility. We can no longer keep the past out of the present. And so, in people like your mother, past and present co-exist. Short-term memory gets swallowed up by long-term memory. She is living in the present — but the present is 1927. Or 1912. Rose — he knows my name, how lovely. I smile at him. Rose, what date is it today?

  The verdict should have been accidental death, but Uncle Brian felt so guilty. I shot Jesus Christ, he told the court. That’s who it was, in the woods, larger than any other animal. I knew what I was doing and I shot Jesus, only it turned out to be my brother. I deserve to die, he moaned. If you let me go I’ll only do it again.

  Mama had tears in her eyes when they led Uncle Brian away, and I knew something important had happened because Mama hadn’t cried in years, never did cry but from relief.

  Funny how relieved you can feel in a courtroom — I cried too, when I entered the small courtroom in the basement of City Hall. The varnished hall outside was full of smoking women, but it wasn’t the smoke that made my eyes water. It was relief at finding her. Not Mama. Harriet. I’m always getting them mixed up.

  I showed my yellow summons to three or four different people before someone told me what the trouble was. That’s the date of your hearing, said an old tired guard, pointing at the top of the cardboard. The thirteenth. That’s tomorrow.

  Harriet was ahead of me, pacing up and down the shiny tiled floor in her winter coat and new Christmas galoshes.

  Tomorrow, I said to the guard.

  Uh huh, he said.

  I sighed and called Harriet. I walked slowly out of the big stone building, part of a crowd of preoccupied people. Sleet was coming down, and umbrellas and coat collars were going up. The newspaper boy in front of the cenotaph was shouting about victory in the Ardennes. No empty seats on the streetcar, of course. We stood and swayed on this chilly, soggy, crowded, and totally wasted afternoon while the streetcar jostled its way down Queen Street. Everyone around me was reading war news stories. I got a seed catalogue out of my purse and tried to pay attention to the loveliest words in English, words of hope and glory, of trust that the coming year would bring forth beauty.

  Look at this one, Harriet, I said, pointing to a perfectly shaped Dorothy Perkins in, reputedly, a vivid pink. The photograph was black and white, but you could see that the bloom was large and perfectly shaped, petals crisp and curling.

  Harriet wasn’t beside me. I searched through the strap-hangers while fear rose hot and bitter in my throat. My daughter was not in the streetcar. We were across the Don River already, out of the downtown. Closer to home than City Hall. The bathwater flooded over the sides of my mind. I had left without my daughter. I had no mental picture, no actual memory of Harriet’s departure from City Hall. I leaned over to pull the call-stop bell.

  Dr. Sylvester was interested in my actual memory, my ability to make pictures in my head. I’m going to tell you a story, he said once. I don’t know what kind of suit he was wearing, which visit this would have been. Harriet wasn’t in the room. I smiled because I loved stories. Still do.

  This one ended and I thanked the doctor. He asked me what I thought and I told him the truth, that I was very glad he’d taken the time to tell me the story. You’re a busy man, I said with my fluffy wide smile, and old people like me like to hear stories from the world outside. I live in an apartment now, I told him, and I don’t get out much. He frowned, wanted to hear more about the story. How much did I actually remember? he asked. Did I have any mental pictures?

  I remember the first time I held a man in my arms, I said. I can close my eyes and see the moonlight playing on the muscles of his back. A cold winter moon. We lay in a castle overlooking the river, and he was kind and good and mysterious to me.

  Dr. Sylvester’s frown deepened.

  The westbound streetcar, taking me back to City Hall, was almost empty. I can feel the swaying carriage, feel the hard wooden back of the seat next to mine. I stared out the window to the right, and left, in case Harriet had decided to walk home by herself. The driver called out the stops — Church Street, Victoria, Yonge, Bay Street — and then I was running through the still-falling rain, up the worn slippery stone steps, looking for someone to tell my story to, a uniformed someone who would lead me away from the crowds to a quiet room where my daughter would be sitting safely, waiting for me.

  No one had seen her. No one knew her. The lost and found was full of o
ld hats. I began to cry.

  The lady in charge of the lost and found had a hump on her shoulder and dyed blonde hair. She looked at my summons. I suppose you’ve tried your hearing room, she said. I shook my head. My hearing isn’t until tomorrow, I said. She looked at the yellow cardboard again. The thirteenth is today, she said.

  She led me to the basement, down a hallway filled with the smell of cigarette smoke and stale, unwashed, made-up women. The tall, narrow wooden door was closed tight. She put her humped shoulder to it and opened it for me. There was a hearing in progress, judge and official reporter, police witness, and my Harriet on her feet, asking questions. Are you wearing a watch? she asked the fat smiling policeman from last month.

  Yes, miss, he said politely.

  I turned to thank the lady from the lost and found, but she was gone. The tall door had closed behind her. I took a seat at the back of the room, settling into my relief like sleep, letting it wash over and renew me.

  Without looking at your watch, do you know what time it is right now?

  Not exactly — not to the minute, miss.

  And are you in the habit of checking your watch every minute, officer?

  No, miss, but —

  Did you check your watch when you were in the flower shop?

  Not while I was in it, but —

  Is there a clock in the flower shop? A visible clock? Anywhere in the store.

  No, miss.

  So you don’t know what time it was, when you were in the shop. Not to the minute.

  No, miss. Not to the minute. But it was plainly past six o’clock.

  Then why, officer, if it was plainly past six o’clock, did you buy flowers yourself, while you were in the store?

  I watched the smile grow on the judge’s face. He didn’t try to hide it.

  Did you take the flowers home, officer? Harriet asked the policeman.

  Why, uh, no, miss. I gave them to a … to a friend that night.

  Did your friend like the flowers?