The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

  Drew put her viola case on the floor with a bang. Snap out of it, she told herself. Here she sat in this studio, wasting her chance with Jack as she questioned every life choice she’d made since high school graduation.

  Jack turned to her. “How do you think the final version sounds?”

  Drew’s eyes snapped up to meet his green ones. She was unable to think of anything to say except, Quit talking and kiss me. “Um, good,” she said instead, and wished she hadn’t. She hated it when someone told her she was “really good,” after a performance. Good could mean anything—Okay, Great, I was asleep. Good meant you didn’t care. “Fantastic. It’s going to be a hit.”

  He nodded and looked back down at the papers with a pleased smile. She wasn’t attracted to Jack because he was about to hit it big. Drew liked him because of his clear, wavering tenor; because he closed his eyes when he sang; because he had tousled blond hair like a Lab puppy’s; because the muscles of his tanned skin were visible under his white T-shirt. And when he smiled at her (often and more than he smiled at anyone else—Drew counted), pleasant shivers, as if she’d just tasted an ice cream cone, traveled all over her body. “More robust,” he said to Drew after the first rehearsal this morning.

  “Robust like Arabica beans?” She nodded toward his coffee.

  “Robust as those coffee beans they have to dig out of squirrel poop.” Everyone laughed.

  All day they’d been flirting, bantering, and now Drew thought this was her big chance. She stared at him from under her thick ebony lashes. In certain lights, her eyes were as amber as pieces of petrified tree resin, the effect magnified (she hoped) by the thick black eyeliner that had been Drew’s signature look since the age of fourteen. Without the eyeliner, Drew thought her half-Asian eyes disappeared into her face.

  She glanced at her phone. It was nearly three, and the traffic on the 405 was only going to get worse. If she wanted to get home, she’d have to leave immediately or be gridlocked for two hours. That was what her love life came down to: traffic-based decisions. Come on, she willed. We haven’t got all day. She smoothed down her denim mini and crossed her long legs in a casual attempt to get him to look at her.

  “Hey,” she said huskily to Jack, who finally finished organizing his papers. “Feel like getting a drink?”

  Jack blinked, blatant surprise and mild dismay on his suddenly awfully young-looking face, though he was her exact age. A mottled flush settled over Drew’s fair skin. Well, shit. She’d read that wrong? Really?

  She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Reading things wrong.

  To cover herself, she rolled her shoulders. “Alcohol. Relaxes the muscles. You know.” She pointed vaguely at her chin, which she knew bore the mark of her chin rest. “My neck. It’s super sore.”

  “Ah, yeah.” Jack snapped the folder closed. “We’re meeting at the Black Crow around the corner. If you want to join us.” He flashed her a quick, friendly smile. But that was all it was. Friendly.

  The studio door opened and a young woman walked in. At least ten years younger than Drew, who was thirty-four and therefore decrepit by Los Angeles standards. She smiled at Drew, her big teeth so young they still had those serrated edges. “Hey, Jack. Ready to load the van?” She had long brown hair, like Drew, and high cheekbones and full lips. All not unlike Drew. Even her frame, a tallish five-seven and bones thin enough to wrap a hand around and overlap a finger, was about the same size as Drew. But this girl had that youthful sleekness Drew was starting to lose, as if Drew’s skin had already begun pulling away from her bones. It didn’t seem fair, to deteriorate physically so fast in her mid-thirties, before she even had the chance to have a baby. Drew swallowed, aware suddenly of the gap between her and this woman, the unspoken biological need that made men desire younger and younger women, no matter how close to her age the men were.

  When she first moved to L.A. for college, Drew had been horrified by all the plasticky-looking people. Women with enlarged lips looking for all the world like wax candy, with their bolted on breasts and shiny waxen skin. The weirdest thing, she thought, was that nobody acted like this was anything out of the ordinary, these aliens walking amongst them. Now she seriously considered joining them.

  Back then, Drew felt so superior about her own skin situation. “Half-Asian skin, baby,” she told people, and held her hand up for a high-five. “Doesn’t get wrinkly until you’re at least sixty.” The indestructible twenties, when you’re superior to everyone and everything. Back then, she would have been this girl, smiling with perfect confidence at this elderly interloper. Nobody could take a man from Drew. How bitchily powerful that had felt. She hadn’t felt like a bitch at the time, of course, but now she sees that she probably was.

  Jack lifted his beautiful face for a kiss from the other beautiful face. “Priscilla, Drew.”

  “Hello,” Priscilla chirped, picking up the accordion folder. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Drew echoed numbly.

  “See you at the bar, maybe.” Jack nodded at her and exited the glass-walled studio, Priscilla close behind.

  Drew dropped her head, staring at the pocked black plastic of her viola case. There was no sound in here except for the air faintly whistling through her nose, a by-product of seasonal allergies. Suddenly she saw herself how Jack must see her. A semi-employed cougar, practically Basic Instinct–ing herself at him. Pitiable. She caught sight of herself in the glass between the sound booth and the studio. Her eyeliner’s streaked into the fine lines beneath her eyes. Well, great. The cherry on it all.

  In the pet grooming office, Drew shudders at the memory and pretends that this soda is making everything all better, forcing herself to drink it all fast so she gets a throbbing headache. “That hit the spot,” she says to a picture of a hairy mutt, a grooming guide stuck up on the wall, arrows pointing at all the places that needed trimming with various shear sizes.

  She fires up the laptop so she can wire Liza another two grand, her stomach tensing at the dwindling balance. Honestly, she isn’t sure how Liza stays in business. Liza comes from a rich family, the offspring of someone who’d invested early in Wendy’s, so this business is mostly a way for Liza to stay busy. A vanity operation. But lately money hasn’t been being deposited, and Drew doesn’t know where it’s gone, or if it’s gone for good.

  Drew waits for the laptop to hum to life and regards the empty plastic cup sitting in front of her, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse hold hands and proclaim in Gothic script, The Happiest Place on Earth. She doesn’t know precisely when her life turned into this big sticky oatmeal cookie of a mess. One, two wrong turns—detours, really— and she’d veered completely off the path to wherever she was headed. But Drew kept thinking that if she only turned around, turned right, she could find her way back.

  If she had a destination. Something’s got to change.

  She takes a small black spiral-bound notebook out of her bag. She’s carried one around since she was a kid, to write down ideas for song lyrics and music notes. Drew used to set it on the toilet tank outside the shower because that’s where she thought of her best ideas, and the notebook would get wet and curled, the ink running. When she was in the band, she’d fill up one every two weeks.

  This one still looked factory-new. She opens it to the second page, the first page having been filled with a grocery list, and stares at the dogs on the wall and tries to will a new song to come to her.

  All she hears is the refrigerator whirring.

  Her phone buzzes again and she lifts it to her ear. “I’ve almost got it done, Liza, but you need to deposit more money by the fifteenth for the rent.” It’s October 2, she notes.

  “Hey.” A younger voice, not Liza’s raspy twang. As familiar to Drew as her own. Her big sister. Rachel clears her throat.

  “Rachel,” Drew says. She wasn’t expecting her sister to call. Fear laces up her insides. “What happe
ned? Mom? One of the kids?”

  “Everybody’s fine.”

  Drew exhales. She talks to her sister on the phone a grand total of maybe five times a year, if they’re lucky, and lately they hadn’t been. Their conversations had grown shorter and shorter over the years, until it was simply an exchange like, “Happy birthday! The kids want to talk to Aunt Drew.” On major holidays, Drew stops by to see the children, but she’s never felt quite comfortable staying for too long. Like she’s intruding on her sister’s impenetrable family unit. That’s just how it was between them. Rachel getting kicked out had turned them into virtual strangers.

  When Rachel and Drew were young, they were inseparable. Or at least Drew had felt that way, tagging along after her older sister wherever she went, until Rachel hit her mid-teens and became the problem child, leaving Drew behind as the everlasting gobstopper in her family. Drew, the musical talent. How her parents had pinned their hopes on her.

  Then their roles had reversed. All of Drew’s potential had evaporated when she picked up the tambourine for the band. It is Rachel now who has it all. Rachel who turned her sinking ship of a life around and made it into something beautiful, with her great kids and truly great husband. Pillar of the community, that Rachel.

  Drew has the feeling Rachel gave up on her years ago. Wrote her off as Eccentric Sister, she who will never get her life together. Drew can actually feel Rachel rolling her eyes through the phone every time they speak. It’s that visceral. The Rachel Glare. Her sister’s never been good at hiding feelings. Drew’s teeth grind automatically, thinking of Rachel’s judgment. She’s got bigger problems. Her phone beeps again. A Liza call awaits. “Can I call you back in like two minutes?”

  “No.” Rachel sounds determined. “This is really important. It is about Mom, though.”

  The office phone rings now, and an e-mail pops up in front of Drew. WHERE ARE YOU CALL ME, Liza has written. Drew groans inwardly, and, fed up with Liza and her constant demands, silences the office phone and swivels away from the computer. “What can I help you with?” She sounds formal yet cheerful, how she imagines a midwestern front-desk clerk to be. Maybe that’s where she’ll move. Where people aren’t so concerned with appearances, and she can be a real person.

  “I went to visit Mom today,” Rachel says.

  Drew sits up straight, her spine popping. “How is she?”

  Rachel takes a big breath, and Drew knows she’s trying not to cry. “She was Mom again for a minute, and she told me to get something from her house.”

  She pictures her mother’s face, Mom again, as Rachel says, Mom with recognition in her eyes, instead of the blank Mom they know now, and bites her lip hard. These moments are getting rarer. “Did she tell you about a secret treasure chest buried in the backyard?” Drew says, both to keep the tone light and to tamp down the stinging in her own eyes.

  Rachel either doesn’t get or ignores this bit of humor. “No. It’s some kind of book. In the sewing room,” Rachel continues. She hesitates. “I don’t know what kind of book it is. She said you would know. Do you remember her showing you a book in there?”

  Drew shuts her eyes, pictures her parents’ house, which she’d left as soon as humanly possible, at the age of seventeen and a half, escaping to USC. The sewing room is downstairs. Drew rarely ventured in there. Sometimes, when nobody else was home, Drew would go in and look around, just because she was bored and lonely and nosy. But all she can remember are fabrics and a big sewing machine. A material-cutting table. “I can’t think of her showing me any book. I’m sorry. Did she say why she wants it?”

  “No. But I just know it’s important, Drew. You should have seen the way she grabbed me. Her expression. It was like she was starving and asking for food.” Rachel’s voice is flat, which means she’s afraid. There’s no reason to be afraid about a book, Drew thinks. They’ll go find it. No big deal. Rachel’s always overreacted. Always has. Once, a huge gray moth flew into the family room while they were watching TV. Rachel grabbed Drew and threw her off the couch, out of the moth’s path. “I thought it was a monster,” Rachel had said later. “I was protecting you.” Drew had a bruised thigh for two weeks from that protection.

  Drew pictures all the books she’s ever seen Mom handle. An Italian cookbook. Curious George. Amish Country Quilting. Her mind goes blank. Their mother was never known as a big reader. Besides, Drew was never close to her, the way Rachel had been. “Why don’t you just go over to Dad’s and look?”

  “Yeah.” Rachel gives a little bark of a laugh. “I should. I will. I was just wondering if you remembered, so I’d know what I was looking for.”

  Oh. Yeah. Getting a book out of their father’s house should not be a two-person operation, but Drew had forgotten, for a second, that their father had disowned her sister. Does she want Drew to come down and help? Then she should ask, Drew thinks stubbornly. Is she supposed to be a mind reader?

  Yet something in Rachel’s voice gives her pause. Rachel hates, more than anything, to admit weakness. She’s the type of person who’d bleed all over the place instead of just accepting a damn Band-Aid from you. Does she want help, but is afraid to ask? Afraid Drew will blow her off?

  Drew’s phone buzzes again. Won’t Liza leave her alone for just a minute? Drew hits SEND on the bank transfer. The page refreshes itself, and her pulse skitters. The balance is down. A lot down.

  DREW CALL ME IMMEDIATELY, Liza’s text reads.

  She clicks the screen dark on her phone, turning her full attention to her big sister. Rachel’s never asked for help with Mom. Not once. You’re too far away. I can take care of her. Tom and the kids will help, Rachel always said, rebuffing Drew’s offers. No doubt Rachel thinks this makes it easier for Drew, but instead it makes her feel unwanted.

  Drew comes down to visit sometimes, on the weekends, where she sits with her mother, trying and failing to think of anything to say. She usually reads a book aloud, out of the library cart, to fill the time. Then she heads back to L.A. before traffic gets too bad, thinking, sometimes, of calling her sister—but then thinking there’s really no point, because Rachel will just say, Oh, we’re really busy today, not going to be home until bedtime. Which was probably, in fact, a hundred percent true. Anyway, Drew had stopped trying.

  Drew clears her throat, imagining going down to help for a couple of days. Suddenly, walking away from this store, from this nonlife, seems like a pretty damn good option. She needs to recalibrate.

  She hears her sister breathing on the other end of the phone. How Drew always tried to crawl into bed with Rachel, to be lulled to sleep by that sound. Drew has an urge to put her arms around her sister, to tell her both of them will be okay. She thinks of her niece and nephew—Chase a teenager, Quincy in college—and it feels like someone pitched a ball into her stomach. They’re so old now, and Drew has mostly missed it all. If she doesn’t know them well, who will come visit Drew when she’s in Mom’s situation? She wants to see them, too.

  Does Rachel want her help? Will she be offended if Drew offers? Drew pauses. “I could come down there and help you find the book tomorrow. If you want, that is. It’s not a problem.” Please want, she prays.

  There is a silence for a moment. “Yes, I would appreciate that, thank you,” Rachel says softly, and that’s all that Drew needs to hear. She closes the laptop with a snap.

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