Mystical Rose

by Richard Scrimger

  What are You smiling at? It’s Shakespeare, isn’t it? You don’t have to patronize me. So I never matriculated, so what? You’re as bad as Harriet, with her oboe and her anthropology. But I was so proud of her. I cried when she walked across the stage to get her handshake. You remember that. I gave everyone who came into the shop that week a free camellia japonica — surpassing excellence.

  “Are you sure, madam?”

  “Yes, yes, quite sure.”

  Mama’s upset. Her hands are cold.

  “Steward, do you know — have you seen my husband?”

  “No, madam. I have not. Shall I look for him?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I fret in my mama’s cold hands.

  “There, there, sweetheart. Mama’s here.”

  I never felt complete, as a mother. Nothing to do with fulfilling myself or personal achievement, I never felt whole, walking up my street with my baby in my perambulator, on my way to pick up pork chops or clothespins. There was a part of me that wasn’t real, that searched and did not find. And while some of me, the outside of me, was concerned about prohibition and electric power and trade unions, and how long the Depression would last and whether Robbie would be able to keep his job in Accounts Receivable, the inside part of me wondered if I was real. What was a mother, anyway? What was a wife? A daughter? Sometimes it seemed to me that I wasn’t any of these things.

  I went back to Cobourg once. No, twice. How could I forget? Twice. The first time we stayed at Mama’s, Harriet and I. I remember her breath steaming through the scarf I wrapped around her little head. She’d have been less than a year old, born at home that spring, and she wriggled. A real handful, my stepfather called her. Bill met us at the train station in a big touring car with a big holly wreath hanging in the side window. That’s right, it would have been shortly after Christmas. Cold for southern Ontario.

  Mama and Bill lived in the old Daniel place on King Street, a big house with a circular carriage drive. The roof needed new slates, and the bricks needed pointing. I knew about these things because our house needed them too. It was a solid establishment, not beautiful but dignified. Mama stood on the front porch to greet us. Her breath steamed too. She had a fur wrap against the cold. She was a respectable lady now. Like me. We’d both married well.

  It was an awkward visit. Robbie was in Montreal, on business, leaving right after Christmas and not due back for weeks. But that wasn’t the awkward part. The awkward part was Mama. She kept, I don’t know how to put it and I suppose I might have had it wrong, but it seemed to me that she was always comparing herself to me. We’d both married recently, into wealthier families. We were both living better than we ever had in our lives before. We ought to have been happy for each other. But we weren’t. I wondered why.

  The bells are ringing. I’m coughing. I see my daughter’s face. For a second she looks like she did when she was little, and curious. Shall I tell you about when you were born? I say.

  What did you say, Mother?

  It was the middle of the night, I say, and your father was asleep. And suddenly something happened inside me, and I woke him up.

  What?

  I didn’t know what was happening, I say. Neither did the doctor, exactly. But it was time for you to be born, my angel.

  I can still see Robbie’s face, concerned and solicitous, What’s that? he kept asking. What is that on the sheets? Is that supposed to be there? Upstairs in our little room. The only upstairs room in the house.

  He belonged in the house. He never belonged in the mansions in Philadelphia or Cobourg. He belonged on Waverley Street. You know how they say someone never had a chance. Too poor, too sick, too sad. Too much to cope with. Well, Robbie was rich, healthy, and happy, but he never had a chance. Until he married me, a serving girl, and ran away from his inheritance and went to work and came home to a little house with a garden, the best thing that ever happened to him, he said. This was the chance he never had.

  We stared at the sheets. Disbelieving.

  Call the doctor, I told him.

  Are you in pain?

  No, I said.

  But that’s blood. Is it supposed to be there?

  No, I said.

  Can Harriet hear me? She pushes her chair away from my bed so that she can stretch. The plastic cup full of ice chips is at her elbow. The bells are ringing. Her eyes are remote, as if she’s listening to a story she’s heard before, or else just bitten into a doubtful tomato.

  Bill Scanlon was a good and loving man. A banker, like Uncle Brian. I wonder if Mama thought about that. He was nothing like Uncle Brian. I sat on Bill’s left at dinner, and heard what a nice day it had been, what a pleasant holiday season. They had received cards from forty-eight families, said Bill. Wasn’t that a pleasing sign of respect for a newcomer like himself?

  Mama asked him to pass the cruet, and he knocked over the salt cellar. Immediately, he picked up some of the spilt salt and threw it over his left shoulder. Mama sighed. That’s a nice looking salt cellar, I commented, trying to make her feel better.

  She sniffed. Just plated, of course, she said. I assume you have a solid silver one at home.

  I smiled and couldn’t think of anything to say. Thank — well, thank goodness Harriet chose this moment to set up a cry. We had her in a cradle in the small room beside the living room. The parlour, Mama called it. On my way through the door I surprised a look on her face: fierce, angry, envious. I felt uncomfortable. I knew who she was upset with, and why.

  Of course it was me. But not because I had married Philadelphia old money. Not because my father-in-law controlled a troubled commercial empire, at least that’s how the newspapers put it. She hated me because of Harriet. Because I had a baby and she didn’t.

  Dr. Wilson lived around the corner. His children were always offering to mow our lawn or shovel our walk. I heard his voice in the downstairs hall, comforting Robbie, who sounded hysterical. Put some water on to boil, the doctor said. There’s a good chap. We’ll all have a cup of tea. He wore a shirt and pants over his pyjamas. He smiled down at me in a friendly way, asked how I was.

  Is the baby coming? I asked. It isn’t supposed to be for another two weeks; you told me, doctor.

  Maybe I was wrong. It happens, you know, he said.

  There wasn’t very much blood. I asked if that was good.

  I don’t know, he said.

  And I don’t seem to be in pain. Not at all, I said.

  He nodded, went away for a moment to wash his hands.

  Well, not too much pain, I said when he got back.

  His thinning dark hair was tousled and stiff with yesterday’s pomade. He needed a shave. He had a bulbous nose and glasses. His hands were warm.

  But I didn’t come out yet, Harriet would say, looking up from her bowl of soup. This conversation would have happened around the dinner table, just the two of us while Robbie was in the North Atlantic, winning the war. That’s what the newspapers said.

  No, you didn’t come out right away, I’d say. With a grimace of remembrance. Not yet.

  Robbie showed us pictures of the HMCS Stadacona, his first leave. Isn’t she a beauty, he said. Clean lines, narrow entry, turns practically in her own length. I could hardly look. So scared. Twenty-five knots top speed, he told me, 2800 tons displacement. Wow, said Harriet, peering. In the picture the seas were taller than the ship, heavy with menace. Where are you, Father? she asked. Somewhere under all that flying water, he said with a laugh.

  Nineteen forty. It was like having a stranger in the house, a man I’d never seen before and wouldn’t see again. Not an adventure, though. And not romantic. I’ve never been more scared.

  Was I waiting for him to die? Is that it? Or was I waiting for him to turn into Daddy?

  He didn’t of course. Never got the chance to. But he wouldn’t have, I’m pretty sure. He was more alive in the war, not less. He talked about it when he was home, which wasn’t often — a week at a time, after three or four convoys in a r
ow.

  I’m scared all the time, he told me, walking in the park in the spring, smell of dog and new growth, Harriet at school. We’re all scared, from the captain on down. But we have a job to do, and the job becomes more important than how you’re feeling. Do you understand?

  I said I did.

  During Action Stations I run aft to my post as fast as I can, check all the depth charges, assign the men their duties, and report to the lieutenant on the bridge. And then I wait. And the time passes in waiting. The waiting becomes the job. I’m scared, and so are the men, but even waiting is more important than being scared. I don’t like them telling jokes, because jokes make the waiting easier. I don’t want the time to go faster. I want to do a better job.

  So intense, so serious. With his cap pulled down and the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he looked just like a recruiting poster. My Robbie. He knew what he was. He knew what he had to do. I understood the pull of a uniform. Girls like a man with confidence. I reached my arm around him and gave him a hug. He looked down, startled. Not used to this kind of display from me. Then he put his arm around me, and we walked on, arm in arm, alone in our own fears.

  Not afraid of fire, or being buried alive. Not afraid of accident or sickness, or falling from a height. Not afraid of bullets, not even after last year. Maybe a bit. I’d never seen a pistol before. So disappointing and small. And the poor youngster holding it, shaking in his shaking hand, a baby really, for all the terrible language, I could tell by the need in his face. And the tears that came when I said, Oh you poor thing. Anticlimax, both the weapon and the wielder, except that they can kill you.

  Not afraid of ropes or dark places, or snakes. Not afraid of blindness or going crazy — which is probably just as well.

  Not afraid of anger. Lady Margaret Rolyoke stood in the doorway of the ugly summer mansion I knew so well, a bubbling cauldron of hurt and disappointment and rage. She didn’t speak to me, of course. Why did you come? she demanded of her son.

  This was my other visit back to Cobourg, a warm day in early summer. A new servant at the screen door behind Lady Margaret, pretty, gaping at us. I knew the face but not her name. She recognized me all right. Everyone knew me, I discovered when I got off the train. I was the local girl who ran off with the Rolyoke boy. The station master’s son called me ma’am, which pleased and shocked me. He was my age.

  A horse and cart waiting behind us, with enough luggage to last a few nights. Light rain falling from a sky of pewter. A crying baby, a standing horse, a best dress which I could get into again, now that the baby was a year old. All these imperatives.

  The familiar grounds looked beautiful. The flower beds were well forward — hard work by Adam. I couldn’t help noticing daffodil and elder blossom — compassion and regard, supposedly.

  Harriet wiggling. Robbie standing still. A look in his eyes I didn’t recognize at the time, but remembered later. Tense, troubled, decisive. Robbie saying, I thought you’d like to see your granddaughter. She can walk now.

  Lady Margaret not looking. Not looking at the baby I held in my arms. Not looking in my direction. Staring at her son with eyes of flint. That woman cannot come into my house, she said and then, turning finally to face me, You — virulent harpy, spitting with the force of her words, cheeks mottled like a rare seashell, pointing her finger with deadlier intent than the poor mugger did his pistol — you cannot come into my house.

  Back to her son. That woman — me, you understand — is evil! she said, sounding like Jimmy Sunday. She cannot enter here.

  Robbie’s face slammed shut like a door in a gale, but he didn’t move for a long time, while the servant looked on in horrified fascination. It takes a while to say goodbye, doesn’t it. At least I assume that’s what Robbie would have been doing — saying goodbye.

  I didn’t know what he felt. Back in the cart, his face was slack and shut. I suppose he’d thought the grandchild would change his mother’s feelings. Are they expecting us? I’d asked, before we left. He strapped up a suitcase and told me not to worry.

  I didn’t know what he felt now. You want to know someone, to understand what drives them, what they’re worried about, where they go when they go away. Easy enough with the mugger, what was his name again, Jack, Joe, something like that. Not Jack. It seems a long time ago, for all it was just last week — last year, I mean. Robbie has been dead for over half a century and yet it’s like he just died yesterday.

  Joe, the mugger, was in pain. All the time, in the shock of a criminal action, in the tension of the moment, inside himself, pain. I saw it clear as television. Maybe because I was an older woman, and in pain myself.

  You poor thing, I told him, and he curled up like a flower at sunset. His gun drooped. I can’t give you any money, I told him, I don’t have any. Sorry, I said. Behind him the coloured lights flashing from the corner store, and the traffic passing, and the empty night.

  I thought of Ruby, all the things I hadn’t done for her.

  I live near here, I said. Would you like to come up for a cup of tea?

  I’m sorry, I told Robbie. I’m sorry about your mother.

  He nodded.

  I wonder where your dad is? I asked.

  He looked at me, and his eyes were empty. As if he wasn’t there at all. What’ll we do now, Rosie? he asked. A little boy who realizes that running away from home means not coming back. Where’ll we go? he asked.

  I asked the cart driver to take us to the Arlington Hotel.

  We rolled away with a jerk, and Robbie, sitting beside me, put his arm around my shoulders. His face, under the empty eyes, was a smiling mask. I wonder what mine looked like.

  Does it hurt to have babies? I can’t tell you the number of times Harriet asked that. So interested, who could have foreseen she’d never have any? All right, who else? I wonder if she wanted them? I wonder if she tried to have one, and couldn’t? What are You frowning for? I’m her mother, don’t I … no, I suppose not. None of my business. I hate the word barren, though. So technical — makes a woman a piece of geography.

  You’re still frowning. Why?

  Well, look at Harriet, brought up with soup on the table and roller skates on her feet. Brought up with school for as long as she wanted. I would have given so much to be able to go to school until I was twenty-two. By the time she graduated I’d been working hard for I couldn’t say how long. And what had she done? Found out about Samoan aboriginals, and Arcturus, and played one of Beethoven’s symphonies in a concert filled with proud parents.

  I’m sorry. I know I sound petty. It’s just that so much of my life seems to have been taken up with service to an unknown end.

  Did Robbie love me? Did he? He seemed to. He said he did. But did he? There’s no one I can ask, nothing I can point to to say, yes, he did.

  I don’t even know if I loved him.

  I don’t understand, Dr. Wilson muttered.

  What, is it? Is there a problem? I panted between contractions.

  No problem. None at all. The doctor smiled at me.

  Is the baby going to be all right? I asked.

  Sure, the baby will be fine when he comes out. Or she. The doctor took a sip of cold tea.

  Robbie came in again. He’d been coming and going for a while. I don’t like it, he said. She should be in the hospital.

  Dr. Wilson looked embarrassed. Sorry, my boy, he said.

  The doctor had privileges, that’s what he called them, at the General Hospital, and I should have been there, but Toronto was in the middle of an influenza outbreak, and there were no spare beds. Dr. Wilson offered to get me to another hospital, but he warned that he would not be able to attend the birth there. And it’ll be more expensive, he added. Robbie choked, said it didn’t matter, we’d pay anything to keep me out of danger.

  Didn’t he say that? It would have been like him. It’s the way I remember it.

  Dr. Wilson laughed and said I wasn’t in danger, and that if I went to hospital I’d probably end up catching in
fluenza myself. Nasty places, hospitals, he said. Full of sick people, you know. My advice to all my patients is to stay healthy, he said. Stay away from hospitals.

  And so I was born at home, Harriet would say with a sparkle in her eye, on a blustery spring morning, to save a fifty-dollar fee.

  Now now, I’d say.

  And I was a beautiful baby.

  That you were, I’d say.

  And bald.

  Yes. A bright bouncing baby girl, with eyes the colour of a star-filled twilight, and dimples in your head from the doctor’s fingertips.

  And my father was there.

  He was, I’d say. Well, in the next room, drinking tea and smoking, and calling out every few minutes to ask if it was over.

  I’m glad, Harriet would say, that I was born.

  So am I.

  Am I bleeding again? I asked the doctor, when it was all over.

  No. He smiled down at me and the baby. The cleanest birth I’ve ever been at. You both did a marvellous job.

  She was asleep on my stomach, little unnamed girl.

  Then what was the bleeding before? I asked with a yawn.

  If I didn’t know any better, Dr. Wilson began.

  Hmmm?

  Well, when I was examining you, to see if you were dilated. …

  My eyes were closing. I tried to pay attention.

  It was just a membrane, he said.

  Membranes bleed? I wondered.

  Oh yes, he said. When they’re broken. Rest now.

  Hearing that we were in town, at the hotel — and news like that travels at the speed of sound — Mama invited us to dinner. She would have invited us to stay, she told me, but Bill’s brothers were visiting from the east coast.

  Robbie sat beside Mama, who was nervous and hyperexcited to be entertaining one of Cobourg’s famous imports in her own house. The rich Americans spent their summers in a kind of forbidden city, partying and dining among themselves, seldom venturing downtown, never attending local functions. And here was the scion of a rich Yankee family, one of the Cobourg four hundred — though actually I suppose there would have been about forty, don’t You think? Forty Families of Distinction — at her own dining table. She felt proud and inadequate, socially fulfilled and yet filled with doubt.