Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  When Rose had first applied for a job in the hospital, she expected to work with patients. Changing dirty sheets for fresh ones she pulled taut. Bracing a frail waist. She had a broad back and strong legs. She liked helping people.

  But not sick people, she realized. Patients who banged their bedside tables, flaunting the right to be miserable — the only power left to them. They loathed their disease, and by extension, anyone associated with it. Even helpless and in bed, they were bullies, rude and demanding. Not all the patients, no, but enough of them to make work as a nurse or an orderly demeaning. Rose saw how the nurses fled certain rooms, their mouths pinched with exasperation.

  Rose worked in Dietary, delivering tube feeding. She started her shift by counting out cans she packaged in paper bags labelled with the patients’ names and room numbers. She measured formula into Styrofoam milkshake cups. The different tube feedings had different ratios of protein, electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals. Rose checked the dietician’s list once. She checked it twice. An earnest Santa Claus.

  Her trolley loaded, she wheeled it to the elevator, which she took to the fourteenth floor. At the first nursing station the coordinator verified the number of bags and cups Rose carried to the med room. At the second nursing station the nurse in charge signed without even glancing at the cart.

  When Rose felt a tap on her right shoulder, she already knew to look to the left.

  “Can’t fool you anymore.” Kenny grinned. He had freckled teddy-bear cheeks and a teddy-bear belly. He worked as an orderly on Six South.

  “What are you doing here?” She was glad to see him — a friendly face in a not-always-friendly hospital — but shook her head in reproof.

  “Have to borrow an IV pump.”

  “From here?” He’d used the IV-pump excuse before.

  “Twelve, eleven, ten … it’s faster to take the stairs than wait for the elevator.”

  Not if he stopped to look for her on every floor. She pushed her cart to the next nursing station. Even as he joked and clowned, she kept a few steps between them.

  “Hey, man.” An orderly coming out of a patient’s room touched knuckles with Kenny. “You cruising this babe on my turf ?”

  Rose ignored them. She waited for the coordinator to finish on the phone and sign her list. Only two bags of cans. Rose left her trolley at the desk and carried them inside the nursing station.

  Kenny was gone when she returned, but an hour later she saw him on the fifth floor ambling down the hallway with a bag of blood.

  “Don’t you have to get that to the nurses?”

  “It’s got to warm up first. Think about it. Whammo! Ice-cold blood — direct from the fridge into the veins. You could kill a patient.”

  She clicked her tongue in disbelief.

  “Some old geezer? You bet.” Kenny liked to talk as if he understood anatomy and procedures simply from working in a hospital. She’d heard him once, explaining the risks of surgery to a man on a stretcher.

  “Listen,” he said now. “When are you taking a break?”

  “I’m behind today. I’ll just have time to get back to the kitchen.” When she finished delivering tube feeding, she carried late supper trays to the patients’ rooms.

  “How about when you’re done, are you free? I can take my supper late. I’ve got news for you, kiddo.”

  She stopped pushing her trolley. “About a place?”

  He winked. “Told you I’d find one.”

  “Where?” She watched his face as if she could decode the answer in his freckles.

  He held up his bag of blood. “Gotta get this upstairs. Meet me at seven-thirty at the Vietnamese place across the street.”

  The restaurant was small with tables pushed close together. People sat with their heads bent over noodles they poked and scooped with chopsticks. The air was damp and warm, and smelled of fried fat, bouillon cubes, and green onion.

  Kenny waved from a table by the wall. As Rose sat down, the waiter slapped a plasticized page on the table before her. “Have a Tonkinoise,” Kenny said. “It’s good here.”

  She didn’t know what that was. She’d never used chopsticks. And did she have enough money to eat in a restaurant? “I’m not hungry. I ate in the kitchen.”

  “Leftover mashed potatoes?” He groaned. “Rose, Rose, Rose.”

  He poured tea into tiny bowls and started complaining about the charge nurse who’d expected him to do four bed changes before he left for supper. Four! She wasn’t the one who had to push the beds, the patients, and their belongings from room to room. He tapped a chopstick on the table like an angry finger.

  Rose waited. He always talked in circles. Eventually he would land on what she wanted to hear.

  A few weeks ago, when he kept asking where she’d lived before she came to Montreal, she told him about the cabin in the woods.

  “Oh yeah? Where?”

  “Near Rivière-des-Pins. About an hour north.”

  “A cabin in the woods.” He whistled through his teeth. “By a river, eh?”

  “More like a creek.”

  “I’ll bet there’s speckled trout.” He began to talk about fish and lures and the best time of day to catch those babies. “We can drive up on the weekend. How far did you say, an hour?” Then he noticed her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Why not? If I had a cabin in the woods, I’d be there all the time.”

  Rose hesitated. “I lived there with my mother. She died.”

  Kenny blushed and mumbled, “I didn’t know. Sorry.”

  Except for her roommate, Yushi, Rose hadn’t told anyone in Montreal about Maman. There was no one else to tell, but also no explaining how, without Maman, the air in the cabin was too still. Everything had lost its pulse. Maman’s chair at the table. The spoons and knives and forks in the drawers. The wood stove. The dishes. The woven rag blanket on the bed in the attic where Maman used to sleep, and where her parents had once slept. Rose’s bed was the sofa where Maman had slept when she was growing up. Rose had always felt comforted by these routines, repeated through the lives that braided around hers. She hadn’t known what to do — alone, without Maman.

  Even now, in the city, it hurt to think about her. Her wan cheeks and how she’d had to sit to catch her breath. Or in the night, when Rose heard her choking. In the morning Maman never mentioned it, so Rose didn’t either. She washed the bed linen, scrubbed the blood spots from the pillowcases, didn’t ask what they were.

  Sometimes, though, Rose let herself remember the forest. The breathing silence between the boles of the trees. The gritty slide of pine needles underfoot. The warble and twitter of birdcall. The intense flavour of a single, wild strawberry. She held the essence of those memories deep inside. She didn’t have to go back to relive them.

  Where memory didn’t help was with weaving. Her body missed the dance step of her feet on the treadles. The wondrous meld of the fibres — colour and texture — becoming cloth. Even here, in the city, across the distance, she could feel how the loom in the shed next to the cabin waited. Sometimes she dreamed that she sat on the bench before the span of hundreds of threads fed neatly, all in order, through the heddles. Or she walked down a street and stopped before the window of a yarn store, transfixed by the soft nests and skeins of colour.

  If only she could bring the loom to Montreal. But even if she found a way, which seemed impossible, where would she keep it? A loom was all angles and frames, as wide as a double bed. It couldn’t be pushed into a corner. She had to be able to walk around it — with added space for equipment. A loom needed a room of its own.

  The apartment she shared with Yushi was already crowded. If Rose put the loom in her bedroom, where would she sleep? She had nowhere to keep a loom in Montreal, but once she started thinking about it, she couldn’t stop.

  For a few
days after she’d told Kenny about her mother, he didn’t mention the cabin in the woods. He clowned the way he always did, walking ahead of her down the hallway, hands cupped around his mouth. “Mesdames, Messieurs! Get your Osmolyte here!”

  She was standing before the elevator with her cart when he sidled up, carrying a stuffed net laundry bag over his shoulder. “Hey, Rose, I was thinking … I know you don’t want to go to your cabin, but what if we went to the river and caught some trout?”

  “It’s not a river, I told you. I don’t think there’s trout.”

  “We could still look.”

  “There must be lots of places where you can go fishing.”

  “Where other people go. This is different. It’s where you grew up.”

  “The only reason I’d go …” she began.

  “Yeah?” He hefted the bag on his shoulder higher.

  “Would be to get my loom.”

  “A loom … like for knitting?”

  “For weaving. Making cloth.”

  “So let’s get it.” He jiggled his legs.

  “It’s too big. I’d need a van.”

  He grinned. “Van can do.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was serious. A teddy-bear joker.

  “My buddy’s got a van.”

  She stared at a yellow poster for an EKG workshop. Getting the loom was only half the problem. “There’s no point. The loom won’t fit in my apartment.”

  “How big of a place do you need?”

  “Right now it takes up the whole of a shed.”

  The elevator binged and the doors slid open. Rose wheeled her trolley on, expecting Kenny to follow. But he headed off down the hallway, the laundry bag on his shoulder swaying to the roll of his walk.

  Rose hadn’t eaten at the Vietnamese restaurant and now, in the bus on the way home, she was hungry. All she’d had since noon was a crumbled edge of shepherd’s pie that was too small to serve a patient. She hoped Yushi had cooked.

  She and Yushi lived on the second floor of a brick duplex. No matter how softly Rose climbed the outside metal stairs, her steps reverberated like a giant’s trudge. Kabunk-nk-nk-nk. Kabunk-nk-nk-nk. She kept expecting the downstairs neighbours to burst out of their apartment and glare. After all these months in the city, she still wasn’t used to hearing people talking, their music — and even more private sounds — through the walls and the floors.

  She found Yushi in the front room sitting cross-legged on a chair at the table, a food magazine open beside her empty plate. The table was an enormous rosewood oval with a scrollwork apron and carved legs. Yushi had inherited it from her great-aunt, who’d brought it to Canada from India. Yushi’s grandmother, the great-aunt’s sister, had married and moved to Trinidad, where Yushi’s mother was born. The elegant table didn’t match Yushi’s cropped hair and washed-out T-shirt, but she felt fierce about its herstory and that it was hers now. For lack of space, it was pushed against the wall across from the sofa.

  Without taking her eyes from the page, Yushi said, “There’s bean ragout.”

  Rose padded down the hallway to the kitchen. Even before she lifted the lid off the pot, she could smell fresh rosemary. Yushi had made a stew with fava beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms. She used to work as a cook in a restaurant in Toronto. Now she had a job as counter help in a patisserie at the Atwater Market. Rose wondered why she wasn’t working as a cook but didn’t ask. She’d never understood how people pushed for details beyond what was volunteered.

  She ladled stew onto a plate, poured a glass of water, grabbed a fork and a placemat. She always sat at the short end of the table so she could see Yushi. Nudging out her chair, she said, “I’m coming to the market tomorrow. One of the orderlies at the hospital knows a place near there where I can keep my loom.”

  “One of the orderlies at the hospital.” Not a question, a statement.

  “You know I want to get my loom. I told you.” With her fork she prodded the curved layers of an unfamiliar vegetable. “This is good. What is it?”

  “Fennel.” Yushi stretched against the high back of her chair, eyes on Rose. “How will you get your loom to Montreal?”

  “He offered to get it. His friend has a van.”

  Yushi’s level gaze and crow-feather hair. Thin and brown as she was, she in no way resembled Maman, but her precise, unhurried manner reminded Rose of how Maman always thought before she spoke. “He likes you,” Yushi said now.

  “He’s crazy about fishing. He wanted to go even before I told him about the loom.” Rose thought of the wayward hair that sprouted from the neckline of Kenny’s blue uniform. How the hang of his tunic didn’t quite mask his soft stomach. Sometimes her arm brushed against his. She never felt excited or wished he would move closer — the way she had when Armand strode through the trees toward her. Years ago, but she still remembered how her blood thrummed with expectation. How she’d longed for the slide of Armand’s fingers under the edge of her clothes.

  “I think you like him, too.”

  Rose didn’t look up from her food, afraid that her memory of Armand’s hands on her body might show on her face. Armand was a secret then. He was still a secret now.

  Yushi flipped shut her magazine and unfolded her legs. “If you’re coming to the market tomorrow, stop by and say hello. I’ll sneak you a pastry.” She took her plate to the kitchen. A moment later Rose heard the TV from her room.

  She didn’t think Kenny liked her — not in the way Yushi meant. He’d said he wanted to go fishing. Why shouldn’t she believe him?

  The trees, still leafless, stretched their branches to the sky. The buildings on the other side of the canal were reflected in the water. Kenny walked, oblivious to the cyclists whizzing by on the path, but Rose kept stepping behind him. Kenny always looked around in surprise and joined her again. He pointed out the train bridge that crossed the canal. He said the buildings, which were condos now, used to be factories.

  “The canal looks great, doesn’t it? They really cleaned it up. When I was a kid, it was one big polluted soup. The factories dumped all kinds of toxic junk. Factories and the ships. They stopped shipping before I was born, but my dad used to come down here and watch them — big ships with smoke stacks. He still talks about growing up along here with all the factories. My granddad worked in a nail factory, can you believe it? A whole factory just for nails!”

  Kenny swept his arm through the air. “I’m giving you the big tour today. The scenic route. When you come down here, it’ll be faster to cut through St-Henri.”

  Rose couldn’t visualize the past he described, nor what he meant by the scenic route. She saw old brick buildings. Silos tattooed with graffiti. Banks of grass and trees hemmed in by asphalt. The canal, which didn’t look wide enough for ships, was bordered by slabs of concrete. Somewhere, nearby, traffic roared along a highway.

  Kenny stopped before a three-storey brick building with large windows of many panes. Some windows were curtained, some checkerboard-covered with squares of coloured foil or paper that spelled out words. IMPRIMERIE JULES. CRÉATIONS BIX. A man stood outside a loading dock before a block of pink stone. He crept his fingers across the stone’s rough surface, set a pick at a spot he’d found, grasped the mallet that poked from his carpenter’s apron.

  “There’s another artist for you,” Kenny said. “You’ll meet all kinds of friends here.”

  Rose followed him to the front of the building, puzzled by his words about artists and meeting friends. He pulled out keys knotted on an elastic band and unlocked the steel front door. The floor was concrete, the air dusty and cold. Doors along the hallway sported logos and posters.

  Kenny used the second key to open an unmarked door. He bowed and motioned for Rose to precede him. She hung back, peering into the dimness. He strode past her and yanked aside a long curtain. Through its grid of many panes, the window looked onto the canal. The room was l
arge but filthy. Scrap lumber and metal debris littered the floor. Spider webs drooped in long bibs down the walls, which were gashed with scars.

  “What do you think?” Kenny grinned. “A great big room for your loom! You can make as much mess as you want.”

  What did he mean, make a mess? Weaving was orderly and neat. She couldn’t imagine her loom here.

  “And don’t worry about the rent. The owner said it’s all right. His uncle knows my uncle. He doesn’t like these studios empty because people start to break in, and once you’ve got squatters, then you’ve got problems. Big time.”

  She felt uneasy with his talk about break-ins, the garbage in the room, how isolated it was from the streets of the city. Then she saw the porcelain sink against the back wall. She’d seen an old sink like this in a farmhouse kitchen. She approached with slow steps. The inside was splashed pink and green. The deep red of fresh blood.

  “That’s just paint,” Kenny said. “I can try to strip it. But if you clean it, it’ll be clean, right? Doesn’t matter what it looks like.”

  His enthusiasm echoed dully against the gouged plaster and spatter of wreckage. She still didn’t know what to say.

  “Hey!” He opened his arms. “You’ve got a place now, Rose! We can get your loom. We’ll set you up, you’ll see.”

  “It’s too —” she began weakly.

  “It’s perfect! And hey, if you need shelves, I can build them. I’m not an artist, but I can do that.” He stood before her beaming, convinced he’d given her the best imaginable prize.

  Fara

  Through the month of May and into June, Frédéric continued to visit houses. Fara said she would come if he found a place with walls, roof, windows, and floors intact. No pond in the cellar. A bedroom large enough for their king-size bed. And please: no repeats of the last house, with the sullen adults grouped around the kitchen table, waiting to have their fate decided.

  She still didn’t see why Frédéric wanted a house, though with the freakish heat wave this past week, she could hardly stand to come home to the oppressive cage of their apartment at the top of a sixplex, a bull’s eye under the scorching sun. The air baked. Sweat oozed. Garbage rotted. Travel by bus at rush hour was a stop-and-start nightmare.