Mystical Rose

by Richard Scrimger

  Harriet phoned to tell me about the outcome of the Bluestone case. I hadn’t lived in my apartment for very long, and I was still getting used to the clouds being so close to me.

  Hello, Mother, she said.

  Hello, dear. You sound funny. Are you all right?

  I’m a little tired. They gave the judgment on the Bluestone case this afternoon, she said.

  And?

  And we lost.

  Oh, I am sorry. I know how hard you worked on it, dear.

  Oh, that’s okay. Stephen is happy, she said.

  Something in her voice. Excitement, and fatigue. Outside my living-room window was a big grey cloud, hanging like a kid’s mobile, close enough to see every bumpy detail but out of reach even if I stood on tiptoe.

  The Appeal Board turned us down, she said. They claimed that the evidence wasn’t compelling. The premier made a speech about the importance of the ombudsman’s office. And the ombudsman made a speech about the importance of the independent investigative process, giving cases like Stephen’s a chance to be dealt with impartially. Sanctimonious old fart, she said.

  I was surprised at her. I’d never liked Mr. Sherman, not even when he was a lawyer, but I’d always thought Harriet had.

  And then what happened? I said.

  I don’t quite know, she said. It’ll be on the six o’clock news. Why don’t you watch it and tell me what you think.

  But the something was still in her voice. Are you all right? I asked.

  I’m tired, she said. I think I’ll go to bed now.

  Poor Ruby. Poor rum-swilling Ruby, bereft of love, of hope, of will, of friends. Who’d have thought Monty Belinski meant so much to her? She changed after his death. Not on the surface, but underneath she changed, like that house down on Wheeler Avenue when the owner knocked out a wall to make room for his grand piano. This would have been about the same time, back in the late forties. Harriet and I were living two streets over in the same kind of house, with almost the same view of Kew Gardens and the lake. The absent wall turned out to be an important one. Without it the house started to sag. It looked almost the same from the outside, but not quite. A month later it was condemned. And that’s how it was with Ruby. She drank a lot, and went out with men, but she always had. She looked and sounded about the same, but inside she was a different person. As if Montgomery had in some way been one of her load-bearing walls.

  Probably not an exact parallel, because what happened to the Noronic was a tragedy, and what happened to the guy on Wheeler was just dumb. The neighbours felt bad, do You recall, and tried to set up a fund for him so he could afford to rebuild his house. And raised thirty or forty dollars, a week’s salary back then. He took it and disappeared, whatever his name was. I never heard what happened to the piano.

  The local TV news was read by a young man with an intense voice and puffed hair. It still is, I think. A different young man. Surprising developments in the Bluestone case, he said. Shots of the premier and the head of the Workmen’s Compensation Board. Shots of the ombudsman and Stephen Bluestone, whom I recognized from newspaper pictures. I didn’t think he was very attractive. Wide faced and flabby, and his hair too long. All a matter of taste, I suppose. He looked out of place amid the dark panelling, dark suits, bright lights.

  I saw Harriet, behind the ombudsman, sitting off to the side. I couldn’t help noticing that she had a pimple on her forehead. She always used to get them when she was nervous. The TV camera stayed on her. The newsman was talking with a golden-haired parliamentary correspondent who said she had never seen anything like it. Like a miracle, she said.

  The news showed a few seconds of the premier’s speech. I don’t know what he said because I was staring at Harriet in her dark suit. So professional, apart from the pimple. Stephen sat on the other side of the stage. He looked sad and awkward and in pain, sitting down in a plastic chair with his crutches around his ears and the camera in his face.

  There were news stories coming up about sick babies and the dollar and a giraffe at the zoo who wasn’t feeling well. Unless it was the dollar that wasn’t doing well, and the giraffe that had babies. I thought we would move on, but the camera stayed on Stephen Bluestone.

  Watch, now, said the correspondent. The camera kept rolling after the speeches. I saw Harriet beckoning to Stephen from across the room. She looked excited — I tell You I can’t see what she saw in him.

  Anyway, the camera was rolling and Stephen stood up straight, and walked towards Harriet. Without the crutches. So crippled he can’t move his legs without pain, hasn’t walked a step in eighteen months, the ombudsman’s office and half the local medical association convinced he’s a victim, and suddenly, like magic, he walked right across the stage and the crutches clattered to the floor. And everyone’s mouth opened wide.

  I feel everything at once. I am old and young and drowning, living again a life I never got over. Dying in the present and the past. I’m drowning. I can feel the water bubbling up all around. I want to cry out, but the words won’t come. I cough and cough. There there, says Harriet, stroking my hand. Hers is very moist and trembly. I call out but I’m drowning, I’m drowning. The world is moving around me, back and forth, up and down.

  You must prepare for the worst, says a voice I know. A nurse’s voice. I can see, very fuzzily, a white uniform. My eyes aren’t what they would have been.

  Help me to sit her up, says the nurse.

  I cry out. And again.

  I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard that, says the nurse. No matter what they’ve done in their lives, how old they are, how accomplished, how many children and grandchildren they have, at the end they cry out for their mothers.

  Poor dear, says Harriet, stroking my hand.

  I’m so hot.

  It was a couple of years after the Noronic disaster — not too much after, I still had those nightmares, though they were becoming less frequent — that he died. Mr. Rolyoke died, I mean. It didn’t make much of a stir in the news. I found out when my bank manager told me that the fifty dollars a month wouldn’t be coming any more. I couldn’t tell exactly how I felt. I felt like there was a hole someplace. Not just in my allowance, but in my heart, maybe, because I would think of Mr. Rolyoke every month when I got the fifty dollars — and I didn’t know why. He’d never visited, not through all of Robbie’s and my life together, all of Harriet’s life. I didn’t cry but I felt as if something long-standing and important had left me. A part of my past was gone forever now. Harriet was grown-up — talking about going on to law school now that she’d graduated. One of her teachers put the idea in her head. A hard worker, Harriet, everyone said so.

  You could get a job right now, I told her. Sitting at the table in our room behind the flower shop, smell of mignonette and meadowsweet and rose. Sun slanting through the north window to light the northeast corner of the room it only hits in the evenings in June; turning it all gold and glowing. You’ve got your degree, I said. You’re a smart girl, anyone would be glad to hire you.

  She got that look that said there was no use arguing, and went back to the pamphlet from the Upper Canada Law Society. I went to tidy away the dinner dishes and tried to figure out where the money was going to come from. Not from Lady Margaret, I knew.

  Then Geoff asked me to marry him. On his knee, in front of the fireplace in our front room. His face was red with exertion as he climbed back to his feet, puffing. I told him I was flattered, and that he’d have to give me time. Then I stared hard at myself in the mirror and wondered what to do.

  You see, I explained to Ruby, if I marry Geoff, Harriet can go to law school. I can’t send her on my own.

  Geoff owned three bakeries by then, rode around in a big black Cadillac. His nails, that day in the front room, were manicured. I thought I was going to die when I noticed. Maybe he had them done specially, the day he asked me to marry him.

  What about you? asked Ruby. Do you love him?

  Do I … He’s a nice man, I said. Meaning it like
a compliment, but Ruby laughed.

  So you don’t love him. Well, you’ve known him forever. Have you taken him to bed?

  Ruby!

  What? I said something? Pardon me, Miss Joan of Arc, I seem to remember a weekend in New York with one of the Wright brothers …

  I probably blushed. Is that all you can think about? Sex? I said.

  Would I have said sex? Right out like that? Really. Well, if You say so.

  What do you know about love? I asked Ruby.

  She turned away, and I felt bad. Harriet was out with a girlfriend. We were alone, Ruby and I. She was sitting in an overstuffed wing chair with a drink in her hand. I’m sorry, I said. Have something. Have a … a mint candy. They were in a bowl on the side table, where everyone keeps their candies. I think they’d been there since about 1937. It’s a mystery about mint candies. I don’t eat them, so the bowl was always full. I’ve been to other houses with mint candies, and they don’t eat them either, and the bowls are full there too. What a world.

  Stephen’s face, filling the screen. Questions from all around him.

  It was her, said Stephen. The investigator from the ombudsman’s office.

  The camera swung around. The ombudsman was frowning.

  So you were pretending all along, said the news people to Stephen.

  Of course not, he said.

  Were you trying to make the ombudsman’s office look bad? asked the news people.

  Of course not, said Stephen. I tell you, she cured me.

  Who?

  Stephen pointed. She did it, he said to the news people. It was her.

  And there it was on the TV screen, as big as life, my daughter’s face, flushed and smiling, and on her forehead a pimple the size of a shiny red dime.

  It was a nine days wonder, the compensation case that didn’t get any compensation and got better anyway. They couldn’t decide if it was a miracle or not. Neither could Harriet. I don’t know what I did, she told me. I wasn’t trying to do anything. I remember wishing he would get better.

  A nine days wonder, like I said. And on the tenth day Harriet was fired.

  Uneaten candies in a bowl. It’s a silly idea. Flowers are nicer. More work, mind you, nipping away the dead blooms and refreshing the water — but much more satisfying to look at. There were flowers instead of mint candies in the big house. Plenty of places to put them. The downstairs receiving rooms alone — there were two, a classical and a modern — looked like furniture showrooms, big and busy and crammed full of smooth flat surfaces. And they all needed dusting, the mantels and stands and occasional tables and, in the classical room, a little Louis three-legged thing I was always afraid to touch in case it fell over. Twenty-two rooms in the place, not counting the kitchens and servants’ quarters. Twenty-three with the gallery overlooking the front hall. Twenty-three vases for me to polish and fill every morning, twenty-three vases to empty every evening. Plus the two in the cars. Ten bedrooms, two libraries, games room, front hall downstairs (large vase engraved with Ainslie coat of arms, and always at least one spray of purple) and gallery upstairs (small vase with Rolyoke coat of arms), two receiving rooms, small dining room, large dining room, three drawing rooms, and, last but not least, Lady Margaret’s upstairs sitting room with the view of the back lawn and lake — I mean river. This was the place in Philadelphia. The house in Cobourg was smaller, the lake was nearer, and there wasn’t a conservatory.

  What a room that was! Big enough for a ballroom, full of sinuous colourful shapes, growing in defiance of the outdoors. A thick glass door connected the conservatory to the south side of the house. I can still remember the smell of the place, rich and moist and earthy. And warm enough to grow spring flowers in winter. The power of the seasons at my fingertips. Robbie showed me how to change the temperature with a switch on the wall. Not Robbie, Mr. Rolyoke. I walked up and down the rows of plants, feeling like Eve on the sixth day.

  I remember kneeling with my back to the door, cutting blossoms for the day. Electric light flickering overhead. Clouds of condensation on the windows.

  I sensed his presence before he spoke. I didn’t dare turn around.

  Beautiful Rose, he said.

  I couldn’t help smiling. He was always paying me compliments, silly boy. Not a rose, sir, I said. It’s a wild orchid.

  You flatter me. But I wouldn’t have known that at the time. I still didn’t turn around.

  Bewitching Rose, he said. Humorous, perplexing Rose. When will I be able to see more of you?

  I’m sure I don’t know, sir, I said. With a delicate hand to my mouth, stifling a yawn. Miriam Hopkins had done just the same thing the week before. Perhaps you’ll see more of me when I stand up, I said.

  I don’t know what I expected: a laugh, a hand on my shoulder. I tensed, but it wouldn’t have been with fear. I really don’t think it was fear, do You? He didn’t do anything, and when I finally did turn around he was gone.

  I went back to cutting.

  I cannot see. Hazy hazy, the world has wrapped itself in a … What has the world wrapped itself in, Harriet? I ask, staring up into her battery-operated … fuck, what are they called? Eyes. Unfuck. Sorry. I don’t usually use words like that — You know that. Ruby will have told You. So will Mama.

  She’s upset, Harriet says to the nurse. What is it, Mother? She bends down and shouts it in my ear. I wince.

  I want to sit up, I say.

  There there, Mother.

  She hasn’t heard me. She’s holding my hand like it’s a TV remote. Point and click. I struggle against gravity, trying to sit up. I pull against her hand, working my long slow course up a hill. I can’t make it. I give up and lie back.

  Up, I say. Please, up.

  Harriet bends down. Tears in her eyes. There I got it that time. Eyes. She lifts me very carefully into a sitting position, holding me in her arms so I won’t fall. My daughter. Never had any children of her own, but she has a nice soft touch. There you go, she says.

  I nod my head. Let out my breath. About fucking time, I say.

  And of course everyone hears that. Harriet stiffens with shock but the nurse laughs. I don’t know why I’m so coarse all of a sudden.

  The view is breathtaking; I’m not. I cough and try to breathe again, light breaths, my lungs moving slowly and carefully. I look out the window and see traffic lights. I see the shadow of our bus against a storefront nearby. Convenience. Candy, magazines, cigarettes. Two boys are arguing out front. One of them grabs something out of the hands of the other one. The first one grabs it back. It’s a magazine. It rips. We lurch on.

  After a couple of minutes I get tired and Harriet lets me down onto the pillows. I pat her hand. She nods, blinks. A nurse changes a bag that’s coming out of my lungs. The bus sways gently; we must be moving around a bend.

  Have you put out the flowers?

  Yes, Miss Parker.

  All of them? All twenty-two vases?

  Twenty-three, Miss Parker. Yes.

  Saucy. Here, then — help Jane finish cleaning the breakfast pots and pans.

  Yes, Miss Parker.

  Demure, eyes down. Just three of us in the back kitchen, and Jane was happy to have the help. A minute later Robbie came in. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything about seeing me earlier that morning. Parker would be sure to draw all sorts of conclusions. He’d hardly opened his mouth to speak when I felt the strangest thrill running up and down my spine.

  Any more tea? he asked, in a husky whisper. He looked awful, I noticed. Dressing gown and hair all awry.

  Certainly, Mr. Robbie, said Parker with a tight smile.

  And could I have some honey to put in it?

  Of course, sir. That’s a nasty throat you have, sir.

  He coughed again. Kept me awake all night, he said. I just got out of bed.

  Jane splashed hot water on me. I jumped back. Sorry, she whispered.

  I didn’t answer. It hadn’t been Robbie in the conservatory.

  Oh, Robbie. I tried to be true to yo
ur memory. I don’t mean about Wilbur; that was a surprise, and it was about me, not you. I couldn’t marry Geoff. Rich, kind, manicured Geoff. I woke up after a bad night — not a drowning nightmare, but a tossed and troubled sleep — and knew what I couldn’t do.

  I’m sorry, Harriet, I said.

  That’s okay, Mother.

  What’ll you do if you can’t be a lawyer? I said.

  I can still be a lawyer, she said.

  Stubborn girl. She’d found out that you could start out as a law clerk, and then write the examinations anyway. She’d even found a lawyer who would sponsor her. What could I say? What would any parent have said? Good for you, I told her. Now eat your breakfast.

  The sound at the door was fainter than breath on a window. I knew it more than I heard it. Come in, I said, my own whispered voice ringing like a great bell in the silence. I strained my eyes in the pitch dark of the third-floor back, wanting to see his face, his hand on the door, wanting to see the door opening. But I saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing until I felt him next to me.

  Happy birthday, Rose, he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Beautiful Rose. Do not be afraid, he said. His breath smelled like smoke.

  I could not, cannot now, say what happened. Did he speak again? I wonder. I have neither sound nor picture in my mind, only a glorious series of sensations, a kind of sense-movie.

  Did he say goodbye? I don’t know.

  5

  Assumption

  Mama, oh Mama, where are you going? Mama, why aren’t you there? Will I be safe with you gone? Will you miss me? Will I be safe? Will I be safe?