The Rose Thieves

by Heidi Jon Schmidt

  Because there are only partial, shifting loves, and a world to be pieced from them.

  “Of course, Carson,” Kate said. “I’d love to hold your hand.”

  Audrey: Keeper of the Flame

  Audie was with child. She sympathized, suddenly, with everything alive—tent caterpillars eating the trees, spider egg sacs hanging in the window casement. If she cleaned them out, it would be a jinx. Her mother called to give her advice, Pop was building a crib, but Steve didn’t give a damn. In fact, he even said he didn’t give a damn once, at midnight after a prepared-childbirth class. “Do you really think I give a damn?” he asked. He didn’t mean the baby, he meant the class; but the class was for the baby.

  He didn’t care about the wood stoves either—he let Audie handle the situation. Everyone left Audie to handle the stoves.

  Ma called her in the evening after Steve had left for work. “I’ve decided to settle this divorce myself,” she said. “I’m going to take your father’s stoves. That should be enough. I’ll throw them down the stairs.”

  “How will you get them?” Audie asked. She was adding to a long list of names, girls on the right, boys on the left. Hubert, she wrote … Bright in spirit. “They’re impossibly heavy.”

  “He can carry them up here on his back.”

  Penelope … A weaver, Audie wrote.

  “I need a wood stove. I can’t pay for oil and food on what he gives me.”

  “Do you need two wood stoves?” Audie asked.

  “How much do you think he spent on those stoves? Hundreds of dollars. Thousands of dollars, but we couldn’t get together the money to buy a new gas stove to cook on.”

  “What does the lawyer say, Ma?” Audie could feel the baby press its foot, or its elbow, out toward her side.

  “I’ll get them,” Ma said. “It doesn’t matter what the lawyer says.”

  Audie returned to her list. No one name seemed right for the child who was gently pressing out her boundaries as she sat staring at the page. The house was so quiet with Steve at work that she was startled each time the heat came up; the rush of warm air through the grate was too sudden, like a massive sigh. She wrapped an afghan around herself and tucked in the ends. When the phone rang again, she hated to uncover herself to answer it.

  It was Pop. She sat down again with her list of names.

  “She wants the stoves,” he said.

  “I know.” She attempted sympathy. “What are you going to say?”

  “She can have them,” he said bitterly. “This thing has been going on too long. She’ll trick me out of them somehow anyway. She said she’d give me the gold plates, so I gave her the rug, but now the plates aren’t in any of my boxes and she swears she doesn’t have them.”

  Nathan, Audie wrote in the boys’ column … Great gift.

  “Besides,” Pop continued, “the stoves are in New Hampshire now. If she can get there to pick them up, she can have them. They’re the last things we own. After this, there’ll be nothing left to fight about.”

  “She’ll get Steve to go pick them up.” Audie could remember the vein standing out along Pop’s arm as he tried to lift one of the stoves into the van, the day they brought them home.

  Her father lowered his voice. “Ask him not to, Audie,” he said.

  “He’d love it,” she told him. “It will get him out of prepared-childbirth class.”

  * * *

  “Ma wants the wood stoves,” she told Steve when he came in. “She says if he gives her the stoves, she’ll stop asking for alimony.”

  “Well, that’s a step in the right direction,” Steve said. “Do you want a cigarette?” He lit one and threw the match into the fireplace.

  “I can’t. I’m pregnant.”

  “What does she need two wood stoves for?” Steve asked. “She doesn’t want them for herself?”

  “I don’t know what she’s going to do. She’ll probably give them to us, like everything else of his. They’ll take up the whole living room.”

  The room already held her father’s oriental rug and every anniversary gift he’d given to Ma—the crystal pitcher was filled with straw flowers, and two antique clocks kept different times on opposite walls. Audie almost wished to have the stoves; if she kept all her parents’ possessions, she might be able to make some order out of them.

  They had brought the stoves home from an auction ten years ago, in early October. Audie went with Pop to keep him company. She had packed him a lunch: pieces of ham and cheese, the bread Ma had made the day before, eight apples. He loved apple pie, apple crisp, baked apples stuffed with raisins and brown sugar. He loved Ma’s cooking best when Audie helped her. He said the apples she picked were the sweetest by far. The auction was five hours away, in the White Mountains, and Audie thought eight apples would be a good number for that long a drive. It was perfect weather, Audie’s favorite weather—cool, with the leaves glowing against the gray sky. They sat on the van’s high seats looking down the length of the valleys and up the heights of the hills. Classical music was on the radio—Audie would hear a Haydn sonata years later and recall suddenly a rocky brook flowing through a pasture, thinking it was something from a dream.

  “If we can find a good wood stove,” Pop said, “we’ll have to lengthen the road.” He had cut and stacked almost two cords of wood at the back door already—he wanted to heat the whole house with it. They were building a road up to the waterfall. Pop would find the best grade along the hillside behind the house and cut trees in a wide swath across it. They had been working on the road for five years, and Pop told Audie that when it was done, they’d build her a house at the end. When she was very young, she had believed this and thought she would live there as an adult, with her brother and sisters, growing her own food and swinging into the pool beneath the waterfall from a branch of one of the overhanging trees.

  She sliced the apples carefully with Pop’s pocketknife and handed him the slices one by one. When the radio station faded, they turned it off and sang. Neither was on key, but they made up in effort what they lacked in tune, and Pop agreed that the two of them were almost as loud as all six of the family. Audie got hoarse, though, and the sky got darker. They rode silently, watching the wind brush wet leaves up and over them. For miles they were the only car on the road.

  A dirt road marked by a tiny auction sign ran off at the low point of a valley. On the left side was the remnant of a field, filled now with blackberry bushes. It was the first treeless space they had passed in miles.

  “I’d enjoy living in this area,” Pop said. “Plenty of room, no stray dogs running the deer. We’d only have to go into town every few weeks for supplies. Chucky and I would fish and hunt, and you girls would help your mother in the garden. We’d need a very big garden. You’re safer out here than anyplace else—we’d have our own food, our own fuel, the family would be all together.” The air seemed thinner to Audie—the mountains rose around them as steep as buildings, standing sharp against the sky. She wondered how many people would come so far for an auction.

  Every folding chair was taken, though, when they arrived. Audie began to sort through a trunk full of old fabrics; a square of crimson silk disintegrated in her hand. The stoves, when she saw them, appeared softer than any cloth. The soapstone walls were like white flannel set in cast-iron lace. Pop drew his hand across the smooth surfaces, and the stone came off on his fingers like chalk. He started the bidding and kept his hand up as the other dreamers—even the wealthy men and the dealers—dropped out. Audie stood beside the stoves, as if she could shield them from a covetous glance, but she stepped aside when Pop turned to smile victoriously at her, and the stoves were so beautiful that she almost expected the auctiongoers to applaud.

  “These stoves will keep us warm through the coldest winters,” Pop said as they drove back along the empty highway. He reached across and pulled her braid. “Cozy, warm, and happy too.”

  It was the phrase Audie had used in her earliest childhood to explain well-be
ing. Looking out through the corridors of the White Mountains then, from the high seat of the van, she could understand her father’s vision; she saw that the radiated warmth would draw everyone in together and hold them there, closer to the flame.

  The stoves did keep the house warm that winter. Too warm, Ma thought. She would come in and throw open the windows on the coldest night.

  “How can you sit in this room?” she asked, pulling the pins out and letting her hair fall. “You’ll get terribly sick.” It seemed awful, suddenly, to be sitting in such a warm room, playing cards together beside the stove.

  “It’s because you’ve just come inside, Lila,” Pop said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She marched upstairs to take a shower.

  Audie pushed open the bathroom door.

  “Is that you?” Ma asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was your father. How are you, sweetheart?”

  “I’m good.” Audie spread a towel over the radiator and sat down. The steam, permeated with Ma’s soft perfume and plain soap, covered her glasses and the mirror. She had nothing to say. She cleared a patch of window and pressed against it to see the snowy hill behind the house. Pop’s road up the hill was lit blue, but she could find no source.

  “Is there a moon tonight?”

  “It’s almost full,” Ma said. “Everything’s sparkling outside.” She stepped out of the shower and wrapped her hair in a towel. “It’s so cold! Those stoves make the downstairs so hot it’s impossible to breathe, and they leave it freezing up here.” She used the wet towel to dry her legs, wrapped it under her arms, and turned out the light. “Come sit on my bed and we’ll talk,” she said.

  Audie followed her down the hall. The big bed was covered with newspapers.

  “Your father has managed to make twelve sections out of the Friday Times,” Ma said.

  Audie could see the moon from the bedroom window. It was as bright and small as a dime, and the land stood out as one cold plain in its light.

  “Close the curtains, honey, and put this around you.” Ma wrapped the extra quilt around Audie’s shoulders and got into bed. “Why are you so quiet?” she asked.

  “Just thinking,” Audie said. Downstairs she could hear Pop slam the stove door on another log. He was playing poker with Chucky and the girls. They laughed no matter who won the hand. “Let’s make a plan,” she said. She and Ma had always made plans together. They had planned how to live on a Caribbean island without any money, how Audie would go to a magnificent ball with a duke, how they would lay out the rooms in Audie’s house by the waterfall when the road through the woods was built. “Let’s plan my wedding.”

  “Again?” Ma laughed. “We’ve already planned it a thousand times, and you’re not even fifteen.” She was knitting a sweater of the deepest red wool. On the shelf behind her, stacks of shiny magazines were softened with dust. Photographs were propped up on them—of Audie’s brother and sisters, her grandmothers and aunts. Some had tipped over, but the one of Audie stood sturdy in the light. She was sitting on the porch steps with two blond braids tied in red ribbons, smiling at the camera in absolute trust.

  “I’ll be married at home,” she began, “in the winter. Katie and Grace will wear blue velvet dresses and I’ll wear a white one, matching but fancier.” The lamplight enclosed her with her mother and the photographs. She sat back against the wall and pulled the quilt tighter around her. “We’ll decorate the whole house with white lilacs. We’ll have them flown in from France.”

  She fell asleep at the end of the bed that night. Later, wakened by her father, she went downstairs to call in the dog. The stoves, standing in the dark of the living room, were two soft, lucid presences. Such cool firelight glowed through the white stone!

  * * *

  Audie did marry Steve in the winter, at Springfield City Hall. They went to the Motor Vehicle Department to have Audie’s name changed on her driver’s license, and to Steve’s favorite restaurant for lunch, then home, to call Ma in Brimfield and Pop in New York and Audie’s sisters at work and her brother at school. Everyone was hurt, not to have been invited, but Ma had refused to come if Pop did, Pop had wanted to have the wedding in the church where he and Ma were married, and Audie had to call up everyone with compromises every other day, until finally white lilacs had seemed the dream of a foolish child.

  * * *

  “Steve, will you get me some ice cream?” Audie asked. He was looking over her shoulder at the list.

  “Nathan!” he said, “Nathan? Penelope? Good old Audie, always prepared.”

  “What names do you like?” she asked.

  “Luciano. Arabella.”

  “Arabella means spiderwoman,” she said.

  “Good. She can be a TV star.”

  “Butterscotch ripple? Please?” she said. “Isn’t there any name you’d like the baby to have?” She illuminated the first letters of the names, causing the stems of the letters to blossom.

  “All right, all right,” Steve said, “but it’s filthy in here. You know that.”

  The house was dirty. It needed vacuuming, and paint. The room for the baby had a broken window sealed over with cardboard. “Let’s go buy wallpaper for the baby’s room,” she said.

  “Audie, we’ve got three months. We don’t have to jump up and do it now.” He came behind her and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s take a rest from this stuff. Let’s go to the movies. We can’t think about the baby all the time.”

  Abigail … My father is joy, she wrote. “Pop’s going to let Ma have the stoves,” she told him.

  “She’s the spiderwoman in your family, all right. But you take after her, Arabella.”

  “That’s not funny, Steve,” Audie said.

  “Well, you have to admit she’s running your father around in circles.”

  “He needs the exercise,” Audie snapped. She poked his belly. “So do you.”

  “Don’t push me, Audie. Look at your own waistline.”

  * * *

  The cobwebs continued to collect, and with the warm weather came ants. Audie had heard that cucumber would repel them. She cut one into spears and left one on each cupboard shelf. She read cookbooks at work, whole cookbooks of reheatable meals for Steve’s late dinners, and cookbooks of baby food. She bought seeds for her garden—beans and sunflowers and peppers and dill. She could picture herself spraying water over the crops with her infant on her hip, but she could not think, yet, of tearing up the weeds.

  At home, opening the cupboards, she found her cucumbers writhing with glistening ants. Her project had failed, or succeeded. By the time she had all the ingredients for Italian chicken stewing in the slow cooker, it was dark. She took a peanut butter sandwich into the living room and turned on the lamp. In Steve’s absence the house was filled with vague sounds: from the basement, from the attic, on the front porch. The dog crawled into the closet and whined. Even when she realized what the sound was, she wouldn’t venture into the dark to coax him out. When Steve came home, he found her asleep on the sofa. He turned the bedroom light on and carried her upstairs to bed, where she rolled onto her back like a weighted clown toy, still asleep. The phone rang.

  Audie could hear Steve answer. “Well, she’s not fast asleep,” he said. He held the receiver to her ear, and she wondered if it would be possible to sleep and listen at the same time.

  “Can Steve go get the stoves for me?” Ma asked. “Your father will give me two hundred dollars to have them picked up, and then you can keep them. Will you ask him?”

  “We don’t need a stove, Ma,” Audie said. Her list of names was still downstairs.

  “Just ask him, Audie. I’m not asking anything of you.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask.

  “How is everything, honey? Did you get the baby’s room all papered?”

  Sleep slipped away. “We did,” Audie said, “and Steve fixed the window and I’m making a little quilt for the crib. I’ll appliqué a big red heart on it.”

&nbs
p; “Audie, you’re going to be a wonderful mother,” Ma said.

  “I’m putting the phone on my stomach. Listen to the baby’s heart.” She pressed the receiver into her nightgown, and Ma swore she could hear.

  Trying to sleep again, Audie planned the design for the quilt more intricately than before. She could picture the border of leaves and flowers carefully embroidered and the heart brilliantly red against the quilted ground.

  * * *

  In the morning their bedroom was reorganized by the light. The sheet lay over them like a landscape. Audie’s belly was a sunny hill. Stretching, Steve broke the light and reached down to bring the dog up onto the bed.

  “We’ll go get the stoves, make two hundred dollars, and give them back to your father,” he said.

  “You’ll be taking them under false pretenses.”

  “Not if I bring the stoves here before I give them back. If they’re ours, we can give them to whoever we choose.”

  “If you go get those stoves, Steve, we’re keeping them.” Audie pulled a strand of her hair across her face and examined it in the light.

  “Are you turning straw into gold, Rapunzel?”

  “Don’t mix your fairy tales. We have to get them straight before the baby comes.” She heaved herself across the bed and sat on him.

  He gasped. The dog yapped, grabbing Audie’s exposed foot in his teeth. As she struggled to free herself, Steve turned her over and trapped her under him.

  “Did you ever see a camel upside down?” he asked.

  Audie whispered to the frantic dog, “Get him, Bonzo!”

  The dog leapt over her back at Steve.

  “You’ll pay for this insolence!” Audie bellowed, rolling over. She had Steve locked between her legs, but couldn’t sit up over her stomach to pull his hair.

  Steve reached back and pulled Audie’s arm, yanking her down toward the bed. They rolled together, hip over head, across the mattress. Audie felt the dog under her, squealing. She laughed, and could hear Steve laughing as they rolled, gathering Bonzo in undertow. When they came to the edge, Steve landed on his feet and Audie slid to the floor laughing, gasping, still fighting the sheet that came with her and the dog as he tumbled down over her head. The baby kicked furiously.