Rose's Garden

by Carrie Brown

  He’d given up the job in the spring, when Rose was so ill that he didn’t like leaving her alone in the house.

  Now he shrugged into the coat, stepped outside to the porch. He put the yellow hat on his head, moved out into the water. It was raining so hard that Conrad could hardly see where his feet landed, his legs dropping away into nothing, into a quicksand of black. His stride faltered.

  He passed May Brown’s, lights ablaze as usual, and imagined her retiring to bed in a profusion of electric bloom, her skin blue under the hectic glow, her eyes closed. How could she stand it, he thought—the memory of waking to Paul dead beside her, his eyes staring into nothing.

  He understood that he veered away from the treacherous content of his own mind, wishing instead for an impossible emptiness, a place to rest that was still and blank as a sheet, sheared of anything that might cause him pain. He wanted to retrieve from his life only the moments of happiness, wanted to string them faithfully, to create a chain of linked associations he could run his fingers through, a set of charms against his own fear. But images of Rose’s last weeks seemed to overlay everything. His entire life—and hers—had coalesced into the span of those last, terrible days. That was all there had ever been.

  When he turned the corner at the bottom of Paradise Hill, he could hear the river. It made a hairpin turn there after its straightened course through town, fanning out into shallower water and running down behind his house and out into the rough fields beyond, where Horace Fenton’s cows stood stock-still, ankle-deep in the bracing cold water.

  Conrad and Rose had liked having the river so close, had picnicked on the rocks in the summer, chilling beer bottles in the crannies between boulders, dangling their feet in the pools, sometimes swimming in the basins boiling with ampoules of green air. Rose had planted primroses in the sandy soil by the willows. He remembered standing on the highest terrace, looking down at her as she knelt on the ground, a tiny figure, the broad brim of her hat bobbing as she bent to her work. She had seemed so small beside the river, he had thought, the scope of her ambition too large, impossibly large. And he had been anxious, watching her work. She imagined too much, risked too much.

  But over the years, rising each time from the despair that overcame her with the reflexive habit of a parasite buried deep in the body, she had covered every square inch of their property on her hands and knees. Patient, penitential, she had fitted into the shallow topsoil thousands of bulbs and corms and roots. She had never sought a cure, he realized, beyond the habit of her own life. She had been prepared to give her pound of flesh for every acre on which she staked a claim, the price for living in this world just as much, exactly, as she could stand to spare.

  And what had he done? He had come along behind her, flooding the world with gold, stopping everything in its tracks before it could change, wither off, die. Rose had just kept planting, replacing one thing with another, seeding the earth under her feet with a thousand tiny, voluntary worlds.

  He passed into town and walked slowly along the deserted town square, rain drumming his head. The pavement ran with water. The gas lamps at the double doors to the hotel burned through the sheeting rain, two yellow cat’s-eyes. Here and there a ghostly blue glow emanated from the rear rooms of stores where security lights were turned on.

  A single car, a battered green one, was parked at a haphazard angle in front of the Congregational church.

  The walk had calmed him now. The sight of so much that was familiar felt reassuring and friendly—the notched brick of the bank’s walls, the downspouts training water with a joyful music into the storm drains, the stilled spokes of the silver wheels in the bicycle shop window. Neat loops of shiny black fencing ran around the green, and the bandstand with its gilded trim, fragile as a spiderweb, was illuminated under the bursts of blue lightning. Conrad was warm now, his stride sure and long, his body breaking through the rain.

  He looked at the buildings around him, shining with the rain’s reflective light, and realized what a marvelous job it would have been to gild the whole square, not the walls themselves but their outlines, like Christmas lights tracing each door and window, filaments of gold laced together, hung in the air.

  And he remembered the moment when he had showed Rose how the anode worked, when he had finally perfected it, his thrill at watching the gold spin from the tip of the instrument, like a vein fountaining gold blood. She had been in the bath that morning, and he had come up the hill from his workshop, a rose in his hand.

  “Watch,” he had said, bursting into the bathroom, for it was perfect now. And holding the flower out to her, he had touched the anode to the petals, saw them flood with gold as the liquid spilled over their waxy surface.

  Rose’s face, pink from the warmth of the bath, had lit up. She had held the flower in her hand, turning it and turning it.

  “It works!” she had said wonderingly, smiling up at him, delighted. And he had remembered his boyhood fantasies then, his first poor flock of pigeons flying obediently from his outstretched fingertips as he let them go, flying from the chimney of his top hat, from inside his sleeves, from inside his heart, his audience astonished, their hands before their mouths at his magic.

  “Well, yes,” he had said, excited, watching her. “It doesn’t hold much, and the flow’s still too uneven. But the mix is about right. I just have to figure out a continuous-feed device or something. Then I could do a whole mountain with it.”

  And then Rose had stood up in the bath, water sliding over her tiny breasts and down the cleft of her buttocks. She turned her shoulder to him.

  “Here,” she said, looking back at him, wagging her shoulder.

  “What?” He had recoiled, laughing. “I’m no Midas, Rose. It’ll burn you!”

  “Oh, just try it. Just a little,” she’d pleaded.

  And so Conrad, at first hesitating, had leaned forward finally, touched the anode to the soft impression of her shoulder, a magician with his wand. She had winced as the drop of gold fell to her skin, crystallizing there, burning into her flesh. But it had stayed, a golden beauty spot, the only mark he’d ever put on her. And she had been so pleased.

  Now he scanned the buildings, imagined them fringed with gold, the prettiest sight in the world. He reached out to the walls as he passed down the street, Harrison Supplee’s hardware store, the heavy walls of the courthouse, the dense stone of the bank. He skirted the bandstand, once, twice, splashing up water, his yellow coat flapping open, grazing the ground. And then he passed the Congregational church, bent his head back to admire once again the steeple rising white against the black sky. And as he did so he saw something wavering in the crow’s nest of the open belfry. He hesitated, perplexed. Pigeon? Owl? Bats in the belfry?

  But it didn’t move again, and so he walked on, his slicker shining in the rain, until he passed from the square and vanished into the scrims of rain, leaving no footprint, no mark behind. And it was not until he neared his own door that he heard the bells, solemnly pealing into the storm and up to Paradise Hill.

  HE’D BEEN SO happy, walking in the rain, remembering Rose’s pretty shoulder, the transforming power of gold, that the sound of the church bells confused him, their sequence recalling to him the dark granite church near the Sparkses’ house in Brooklyn, its bells ringing for a wedding or the close of services. He and Rose had stopped sometimes to watch the wedding parties flow from the opened doors, the bride gliding forward, the onlookers pelting her with fistfuls of rice, the groom ducking, shielding his new wife’s unveiled and tender face from the scattering grain. He and Rose had stood across the street, arms linked, watching the milling crowds on the church steps, the bride handed carefully into a waiting limousine, the dark car pulling away slowly, the falling notes of the bells raining down.

  What is this? he thought now, listening.

  The music of the chimes filled his head as he passed through his doors, and though the rooms were dark he could see clearly, each object floating up toward him, asking to be
remembered. It was a perfect day, ribbons of pale blue light undulating over the gleaming floors, flowers from the garden standing in vases around the rooms, grasses trailing from bouquets, the kitchen table heaped with tomatoes and squash, pink potatoes and the intricate, unfurling heads of lettuce, a copper beetle trembling on a leaf.

  And what was this? Rose, bare to the waist, washing her hair in the sink, humming lightly, the golden beauty spot on her shoulder shining, winking at him. He stood and watched appreciatively the way her shoulder blades worked like tiny wings, the soft crescents of her breasts, her long hair raining water, the comb spinning droplets in the air. As the water sailed from the comb, blue and silver, Conrad saw how each drop contained a tiny world—the sunny kitchen, the flared skirt of the garden, the swell of Paradise Hill, the White Mountains beyond, the high delirium of the blue sky—all of it on the head of a pin, tiny and immaculate and bright. And Conrad was filled with wonder and love at what a good life it had been. That he had been born, that winged creatures had alighted on his hand, that this woman had eased into his life in childhood and stayed by his side, working her magic, seeding Paradise Hill with flowers, encouraging in his heart a thousand generosities and acts of love—all this was to him, at that moment, the most miraculous of miracles, the ordinary world rich and mysterious and fragile as a dream.

  And he put out his hands to turn her toward him, to show her the look on his face, the rapture there. But as he stepped forward into the shower that fell from her swinging hair, as she turned toward him, the comb lifted in surprise, he saw how each droplet had begun to darken. Like film exposed to light, the edges curled with shadows and smoke. The universe suddenly clouded. Each drop of water, with its perfect replica of the world he knew, blackened and flew apart, and Conrad stumbled against the table edge, collided with a chair, and threw up his arms.

  IT WAS THE storm, he realized. He was breathing heavily, staring into the dark, his hands gripping the back of a chair. The lights were out. It was a simple thing, easily understood. A transformer burnt by lightning, a tree crashing down over the sagging hem of utility wires. But he’d had her there, for a moment. That had been real, too.

  His breathing quieted, but against his clouded eye the furniture grew immense, without depth, its familiar contours bulging and swaying. Carefully he felt his way along the counter toward the sink. He kept a box of kitchen matches on the windowsill there, candles in the drawer. He rummaged until he found a stub of candle, then struck a match and set the candle in a saucer on the table.

  How cold he was now, and how wet. He realized he was still wearing the slicker and shrugged out of it, taking it to the pantry and hanging it on the hook on the back of the door, where it dripped a dark pool onto the stone floor. On the shelves, Rose’s glass jars of preserves shone in the faint light from the candle. He remembered kneeling painfully with the dustpan and whisk broom to sweep up the shards from a broken jar, Rose standing behind him, holding on to the counter. It was when it had first begun, her illness. She had been putting up blueberries, but her grip on the slippery glass was unsure, and she had dropped three jars that morning.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she had said, looking away from him, holding on to the counter’s edge.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he’d said. But when he’d stood, the dustpan filled with broken glass, he had looked at her and she had been miles away, and so thin. He’d noticed that, and the trembling in her hands, too. She had met his eyes then, a long look, and in that moment everything that was to come, though they couldn’t really have known it, shouldered up between them, a mountain suddenly rising from the plain, their first sight of what would separate them.

  He made his way now into the dark dining room, found more candles in the center drawer of the sideboard. He lit another and was walking back into the hall when a frantic pounding came at his front door, startling him. Hot wax spilled onto his wrist.

  He stood by the silent clock for a second, rubbing his burned skin.

  Who was at his door at this hour? In the middle of the night?

  But when he opened the door and May Brown burst into the hall, her raincoat buttoned up over a nightdress, he realized that of course it would be May. Who else would wake up because it had grown suddenly dark? She must have sensed it, even lying there asleep.

  “I’ve been knocking,” she said, wild and accusatory. “I was afraid you weren’t home. Though I couldn’t think where you would be if not here.” She swung a flashlight, trained it up into his face. He winced. “Actually, I took a walk,” he said, and leaned around her to close the door against the wind and rain. He took a step back and regarded her white, terrified face under the pleated folds of a clear rain hat, the cellophane sort that folds up into an impossibly tiny square. “Here,” he said, gesturing toward her. “I’ll take your hat.”

  She gave a trembling sigh and then reached up to untie the bow beneath her chin. She handed the hat to him. He took it from her and hung it on the hat stand. “Take off your wet coat, May,” he said. “I’ll get you something of Rose’s to put on over your nightgown.”

  He found Rose’s blue gardening smock in the hall closet, averted his eyes politely while May hung up her raincoat and put on Rose’s smock, overlapping it across her chest as if she were cold.

  “I’m sorry,” she said then. “Rose was right. I should have had a generator. It’s black as pitch.” She said this last word as though the night were something dirty, something that had crept in uninvited under her door. “I couldn’t see anything. I had to talk to somebody. I thought you might be up. Do you mind?”

  “I’ll make us some tea,” he said. “Come on. I’ve got a candle in the kitchen.”

  She followed him down the hall, chattering away. “Quite a storm out there, isn’t it? I can’t believe you were out walking in it. How long do you think it will last? I didn’t hear a weather report.”

  “Lord, May, I couldn’t say,” Conrad said, pulling out a chair for her and collecting two more candles. He lit them, trying to make the room as bright as possible, and set them on the table, then turned to fill the kettle and light the burner on the stove.

  May leaned forward, raised her palms toward the candles as though they might warm her.

  He reached into the cupboard, found the teapot and two mugs, set them on the table. The arrangement looked insufficient. “Are you hungry?” he said. “There’s some—” But then he realized that there wasn’t anything to offer her, and he saw, looking up guiltily, that she understood this.

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “Just tea. Tea would be lovely. I’m sorry, Conrad. I’m just so terrified of the dark. And I thought, Well, Conrad, he’s alone, too. Maybe he won’t mind the company.”

  “I don’t mind,” Conrad said. “I can’t seem to sleep anymore anyway.”

  May nodded. She understood this, too. She looked around the room, turning her hands before the candles, toasting them. “Isn’t it funny,” she said slowly after a minute, “how she still seems to be here.”

  Conrad turned around from the stove. “Do you think so?” he said, staring at her.

  May looked vaguely around her again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, very much so.” Her eyes flew toward his face and then away. “Do you talk to her?”

  Conrad thought about this question. “No,” he said at last, honestly. “I don’t think so.”

  “Paul talks to me,” May said then quietly. “Just the other day, I’d lost my keys. And while I was looking for them, all over the house I looked, I heard him say, right in my ear, ‘They’re in the blue bowl, May.’ And there they were. And that’s not the first time,” she said, glancing up once, quickly, and then away again. “It’s happened a lot. Oh, I can’t say how many times. I thought he might say something to me tonight when the lights went out. But he didn’t. I guess they don’t know everything,” she finished.

  Conrad laughed at that thought, that even the dead, with their heavenly perspective,
couldn’t see what lay around the next corner.

  Steam twirled from the kettle spout. He brought the kettle to the table and filled the teapot. Then he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “So, here we are. Two widows. I mean, a widow and a widower,” May said, wrapping her hands around her cup.

  Conrad said nothing, staring into his mug. Voices in your ear, apparitions at the sink. Angels in the garden. Maybe it was all part of it, he thought. Part of what came afterward. The mind protests so mightily against the absence, that it creates these momentary restorations. But he hadn’t created Lemuel, he thought. That was beyond him.

  “I saw that girl Hero on your porch the other day,” May said then, and Conrad’s head jerked up. He had forgotten she was there.

  “I guess she misses her, too,” May went on. She took a sip from her cup. “I thought maybe she’d gotten friendly with you.”

  “No,” Conrad said. “Actually, I’ve never been able to talk with her exactly.” He looked over at May. “What do you know about her?”

  May shrugged a little. “Not very much. Not any more than you do, I suppose. I know she was out at that hospital for a while, poor thing. And I remember that she was a sickly child. Paul and Eddie were friendly, but Eddie never talked much about her. And I didn’t know Kate well. I think it was difficult for all of them. She’s never been—healthy.” She thought a moment. “But Rose said she’d been doing so well, out at the cemetery. Being out there, working in the gardens, had helped her. I imagine Rose did some intervening to see that Hero got the job out there. I thought it would be lonely and grim with all those—you know—” She looked back at Conrad shyly, apologetically, and then lifted her eyebrows in a sigh. “But Rose said Hero told her it was peaceful. She can’t take people too much, I don’t think. Too much hubbub for her. She has breakdowns, Rose said.”