Rose's Garden

by Carrie Brown

  Conrad looked down into his mug and frowned slightly. “But she could take Rose,” he said. “She talked to Rose.”

  “Anybody could talk to Rose,” May said.

  Conrad nodded. He knew that was true. Complete strangers used to take up with her, sharing confidences, bringing her gifts. It was just something about her. And Rose knew she’d helped Hero, that her kindness had been appreciated. He could imagine their first meeting, he thought, how Rose would have walked right up to Hero with some wildflower in her hands and asked Hero about it. And that would have led them to walking over the gardens together, talking about flowers, puzzling over some odd specimen, an unusual trillium or an unknown narcissus. Hero could have talked about flowers, he sensed, more easily than about anything else. At least at first.

  And later, after they’d become friends, when Rose knew she was dying—had she asked Hero to do this, to take care of him after she was gone? Had she written out the recipes? Or had it been Hero’s idea? Were these anonymous baskets of food her way of thanking Rose, of continuing to love her?

  Rose had always known how to approach people, how to make them comfortable. Conrad realized he wanted—though he understood that there was desperation in the wish—to help Hero now.

  “Well, what was she doing on your porch then, I wonder?” May said suddenly, as if just remembering the thread of the conversation.

  “She brings me food,” Conrad said after a pause. “She’s been doing it all along. Ever since Rose died. I only just figured out who it was.”

  May looked up at him, openmouthed. “Is that right?” she said. “She’s been cooking for you?”

  Conrad nodded.

  May smiled at him. “Well, that’s something. Isn’t that something. The kindness of strangers. Although, I guess Hero isn’t a stranger, is she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Conrad said then, thinking. “I think she’s the original stranger.”

  May nodded wisely. And then, with a little gasp, she said, “Wait. I almost forgot. I found something for you, speaking of strangers.”

  She reached into her nightgown. “I’ve been clearing out things, the cupboards and so forth. I don’t want to leave anybody a mess when I go.”

  “Oh, May! You’re still a young woman, for God’s sake,” Conrad said then quickly, but as he spoke he saw how ridiculous that was. Of course, she was old. She was probably older than he, though maybe not by more than a few years. He and Rose used to make fun of Paul and May, quarreling and complaining at each other as they worked in their garden, May gesticulating here and there, Paul waving her off, moving stolidly from one task to the next. And yet they had been there every evening once Paul got home from work, moving together in a perpetual, companionable argument, building their garden. Paul raised gladioli, which May cut as fast as they bloomed, bearing armloads of them to Conrad and Rose. “Aren’t they something?” she agreed proudly, as Rose exclaimed over them. “He has such a way with them. I don’t know how he does it.”

  But now May was an old woman, her gray hair cut short and curled tight to her head like a cap, not like Rose’s, which she had always worn long, even when it turned gray, braiding it behind her head and winding it in two coils pinned at the nape of her neck. He saw that May’s fingers, as she held her hand toward him, were knotted and bent, splattered with liver spots. Her wedding ring had bitten into her flesh; the skin bulged around it.

  “Paul took this,” she said, handing him a photograph. “You know how he was with the cameras, always taking pictures. Such a mess in that darkroom. And of course I haven’t any idea how to dispose of all those chemicals and things. I’ve just been putting it off. I expect they’re pure poison.” She sniffed. “But I found this. And considering who was in your garden the other night, I thought you’d like it.”

  It was a picture of Lemuel and Rose, taken, Conrad judged, a few years before Lemuel’s death. Rose must have been fifty or so, Lemuel nearing eighty. In the photograph, marked at the edges with Paul’s blue pencil crop marks, Lemuel and Rose stood side by side in the tunnel of trees near Conrad’s loft, the river a suggestion of black behind them, the trees in full leaf. Lined on Lemuel’s and Rose’s outspread arms were the pigeons, their wings raised, and on Lemuel’s head perched one of the pouters. It was a trick Lemuel had perfected with his own flock, taught to Conrad and then to Rose, touching them lightly to adjust the position of their arms and then stepping back, putting his finger to his lips in a kiss. In the picture Rose’s eyes were closed, her mouth smiling, but Lemuel’s eyes were wide open, as if he knew that something was about to happen. The impression, if you just glanced quickly at the picture, was that Lemuel and Rose had sprouted feathers, were ready to lift from the ground. Conrad remembered the feeling, though he hadn’t done it in years, the tickling of the pigeons’ feet on his arms, the sensation of weightlessness, the sudden certainty that he could, on an act of faith, fly.

  “Don’t move,” Lemuel would always say, backing away from them in a crouch, his eyes holding the birds captive. “Don’t even breathe.”

  The first time Conrad had stood there in a kind of ecstasy, the grid of the city spread out beneath him, the wind in his ears, until Lemuel had clapped his hands and the birds had startled, released him, flown up into the sky.

  “You don’t want it to last too long,” Lemuel had said, striding back to him that first time, pumping his hand as if in congratulations. “Lasts too long, it starts to seem like everything else.” He’d pinched his fingers together. “Just for a moment. That’s the trick.”

  But in the picture, Paul’s picture, how long had they stood like that, waiting for Paul, fussing with his camera, to take the shot? Lemuel was a man of infinite patience, Conrad knew, of mystical certainty. In a brief experiment with beekeeping, Lemuel had installed several hives on his rooftop one year, had enjoyed the elaborate garb required to tend to them, the veiled hat and white suit. But within a few weeks he had persuaded himself that the protections were unnecessary, and he liked to move quietly among his bees in just his shirtsleeves, claiming that the occasional sting was advantageous to his health. And after a while, grown bold, he had learned how to gather the bees around his head and face in a swarm—a bee beard, he had called it, delighted—without once being stung. Conrad, terrified, had marveled at Lemuel anew then, had imagined that not everyone could take such risks with the world. You had to believe, Conrad knew, but he thought he would never have so much faith.

  And now, in the photograph May had passed to him, Conrad again saw Lemuel’s insistence, his firm insistence on the world’s own patience, its willingness to tolerate, even tenderly, a man so devoted to mystery that he dove into it again and again, foolishly and with pride, with a challenge in his eyes, with love. For Lemuel had stood there longer than a second for that picture, Conrad thought, as if, as you grow older, you can’t get enough of the magic of being alive, the knack for it leaving you a little bit every day. So you start hunting it down, bearing down on the body you love as if each time will be the last, as if now you need to take risks to court it, lure it back to you, show you are still able, still willing. So Lemuel, too, had hung on, holding his breath while the pigeons gripped his arms. He had been unable, unwilling, to let go of that moment of transport, that moment when he might fly.

  “Thank you,” Conrad said now to May. “It’s a good picture.”

  May bobbed her head, pleased. “I thought he must have looked just like that,” she said, leaning over and looking at the photograph. “In your garden.”

  And then Conrad realized she meant the angel. He looked at the picture again and saw the difference. Because in the picture, you could see how it was still Lemuel, still just a man there, performing a trick, a sleight of hand, how he knew it was no mystery, not really. And in the garden that night his face had shown something else—had shown, in fact, the mystery itself, now a part of the man, now the substance of the man himself. And Rose, standing there beside her father, the man who had always dared he
r to fly, her eyes closed—well, she had flown now, hadn’t she?

  Conrad set the photograph down on the table and rubbed his eyes. And then he looked up and fixed May with his gaze, her cropped head, her old hands, her familiar face.

  “May,” he said. “Can you dance?”

  “Well, I—whatever do you mean?”

  “You know,” he said, standing, taking her hands, raising her from her chair. “Dance. To music.”

  And then he led her, rushed with her, to the living room, stopping in the center of the carpet, Rose’s wildflower meadow. “Wait a minute. Don’t move.” He bent before the cabinet, heaved out his old shortwave radio. He clicked it on, bent over the blue tube, and fumbled with the dial in the dark. A babble of voices, someone speaking German, foreign languages, surged into the room. At last he found music, Strauss, a waltz.

  And then he returned to her, a tiny old woman standing alone in the center of the room, and he held out his arms to her, courtly and gallant, and swept her up. They passed the French doors, and he kicked them open with his foot. The sound of the rain barreled into the room, almost drowning the swinging chords. Conrad reached up and pressed May’s hand into his shoulder, caught her hard again around the waist, and stepped into the pattern of the waltz, his own cold hand holding hers, moving her in time—step, spin, step; step, spin, step—winding and winding around the room in the dark, making circles on the floor, trying to remember the steps, his own heart clenched in his chest against everything that was gone.

  Ten

  WHEN THE FIRST crease of gray light appeared at the horizon, Conrad stood up from his chair at the window. Rain fell outside with the steady noise of a waterfall. May sat slumped on the blue sofa, her eyes closed, her thick ankles protruding from under her nightdress and Rose’s gardening smock.

  She opened her eyes in confusion when he touched her lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll take you home,” he said gently. “It’s almost light out now.”

  He led her down the hall, opened the door. They stepped out onto the front porch. Conrad handed her down the steps, opening an umbrella over her head. They walked across the spongy grass, Conrad’s hand under her elbow. At her door he waited while she fumbled with the latch and let herself in. She turned back to him.

  He smiled up at her. “You’ll be all right now?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s nearly day.”

  Conrad tilted his umbrella, squinted up into the rain.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded. “You never forget how to dance.”

  She smiled. Her hand rose briefly to her mouth.

  “Sure you’ll be all right?” he asked again.

  “I’ll be fine now,” she said, and smiled again, like a girl. “Thank you.”

  Conrad turned around and walked back down May’s front path. Crossing into his own yard, he passed around the side of the house, out to his terrace. He looked down Paradise Hill, out into the rain streaming through the early morning light. What he saw shocked him, for the river below was not just high, not just swelled up to its rocky banks, but branching over it in tiny rivulets, threading through the grass. The thin trunks of scrub trees floated up from a froth of water where there had once been dry land. Conrad walked to the edge of the steps, stared down the hill. His pigeon loft was now only a hundred yards or so from the river’s edge, across a meadow that Rose had sown with wildflowers, the shifting heads of poppies, the wild, twirling faces of daisies and black-eyed Susans.

  He descended to the loft, slipping now and then on the slick stones of the path. The gray morning sky was full overhead, pouring water. Inside the loft he shucked off his raincoat, moved among his agitated birds, talking quietly, pouring fistfuls of grain into the pans. “That was a nasty night,” he said. “Thunder worry you?”

  His helmet pigeon, the one he used as a decoy to draw down the others, bobbed its bare black head at him. The Gazzi Modenas—offspring of the flock Lemuel had passed on to him—and the nuns—soft-feathered pigeons Conrad appreciated for their affectionate quality (though Lemuel scorned their ability as fliers)—stepped lightly in their cages, back and forth, the embroidery of their bronze and white feathers shifting. Pasquale rustled on his nest, and Conrad suffered a pang for the beautiful Evita, borne off in the owl’s talons. At the cage where he’d installed the lost pigeon, Hi Roller, he stopped and cocked his head at the stranger. “Settling in?” he inquired after a moment. But the bird averted its one eye, stared away from him.

  In his workshop he stood at the open door and stared out into the rain. He looked out over the river, saw its furious pace down through the meadow. The mountains were invisible, drenched in low clouds. They acquired, for being unseen, a disproportionate height, a vague menace.

  Conrad tried to gauge how much rain had fallen to have made the river rise so fast, and swiftly calculated the slight incline across the meadow to his loft. Were his pigeons in any danger? He’d feared for them only once before, during a week of intermittent rain when the river had risen like this, just enough to lick over its banks. Then, he and Rose had boxed the pigeons and driven them up to Harry’s, though the rain had stopped the next morning, the water receding by afternoon to its usual height.

  And then he remembered the reservoir, the choked dam, what Nolan had said. Was it really possible? He tried to imagine it, the stalled flocks waiting in the trees there, suddenly blown skyward as the dam exploded, a tangle of torn roots and broken branches, the sky full of beating wings, a massive alarm. And the bells, the church bells. Had he only imagined that sound last night, the doleful sound of warning?

  He put his hand to the joist by the door, pushed slightly at it, testing its strength. Drops of hardened resin clung to the pine boards, little amber-colored beads, as if the wood were still alive and might, under some enchantment, sprout new buds, new branches, the whole building bursting into leaf, a forgotten bower.

  And then, without waiting another minute, he hurried back up the hill, climbed into his truck, and headed into town.

  The only place open this time of day would be Eddie’s, he knew. Though the Vaughans owned a house in town, Conrad didn’t think Eddie ever stayed there anymore. After Kate’s death, Eddie had seemed to prefer closing down the restaurant at night and sleeping a few winks on the cot in the back room by the giant, round dishwasher, with its comforting tumult of suds and clinking plates. The state of the Vaughans’ house, which had gradually fallen into disrepair, had been a subject of some annoyance on the part of the garden club, which liked to hold an annual tour through that part of town, where the houses were oldest and considered most charming. Conrad remembered Rose shaking her head over it one day, coming home from a meeting about the tour.

  He had been sprawled out on the sunny terrace on a settee, having come home the day before from a long trip to Philadelphia, where he’d been gilding the gates to a new park on the Schuylkill River.

  Rose had sat down at his feet and taken off her hat. “It’s not so much of an eyesore,” she’d told him, grumbling. “They’re all so exacting.” She heaved a little sigh of annoyance. “And I think Eddie’s girl is living there. I wish they wouldn’t disturb her about it.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she fix it up?” Conrad had asked lazily, shoving Rose over a little to make room for his feet.

  She adjusted her position, turned to look at him thoughtfully. “Connie,” she said at last, “you’re just a fountain of good ideas.”

  And Conrad, who hadn’t cared about the garden club in the least, had reached up and pulled Rose down on top of him. “What have you been doing while I’ve been gone, anyway?” he’d said, nuzzling her neck.

  Driving into town now, he thought about Eddie, thought about a hot breakfast. Pancakes, a couple of eggs, toast, hot coffee—the notion filled him with longing, and he headed down Paradise Hill toward town. But as he neared the bottom of the hill, he saw that the road in front of him was awash with water. Conrad braked, held hard against the steering wheel as the truck
hit deep water and shifted sixty degrees across the road. After a moment, though, the tires caught, and he righted the wheel, plying slowly through the current, plumes of spray spinning from his wheels.

  Conrad glanced to the side, took in the dark houses, black pools of water lying in uneven patches over the lawns. Here and there, cars were sunk up to their hubcaps. At one house the yellow front door was open, and a man in a bathrobe and galoshes stood frowning out at the street, surveying the water lapping his picket fence. This was where the river turned, just behind these houses, Conrad realized. No wonder the water was so high here.

  He steered slowly through the water, fearful of stalling the engine. Where the road began to rise slightly, he was able to pull out of the confining stream and turn into town. In the square, water ran high along the curbs, lapping the sidewalks. A thicket of broken branches crowded the storm drains. The awning of the hotel was torn, flapping in the wind and rain, and the canvas tenting for the bandstand had pulled away in parts, as though a giant hand had ripped it and flung the strips over the drenched grass. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. It was Saturday morning, Conrad remembered, and still early, a little before six. Maybe everyone was still asleep.

  When he turned down the hill toward Eddie’s, he saw lights for the first time and realized that Eddie must have a generator. He could hear its low hum. He pulled the truck off the road, glancing out into the channel of the river, now racing high and thick between its mortared banks. Eddie, a black umbrella over his head, was standing across the street from the restaurant, balancing on the edge of the river bulwark like a small, dark insect, looking down into the churning water.