The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  He nodded eagerly. “Ok. We’ll meet at the main entrance. At five o’clock.”

  The day had a whole new face to it. Maya could almost feel it in her body as she wound her way through the garden back to Edith, the soda can, with its last remaining sip, in her hand. The sunshine was more golden, and the green of the trees shone more brightly. A gentle breeze teased her hair.

  We’ll see what happens, she thought. All in all, it seemed it hadn’t been the dumbest idea to spend her day at the nursing home.

  9

  May 1st fell on a Monday. The night before, Franca had mixed a bowl of punch and they’d all celebrated the beginning of the month. Mae and Kevin had also been there. Mae was talking to Beatrice again, but the tension between them was impossible to overlook, and as far as Franca knew there still had been no words of reconciliation spoken. Beatrice hadn’t heard anything from Alan in almost two weeks, and Franca suspected she was listening rather closely when Mae talked about what Maya was up to. You couldn’t have known it to look at her, however. She drank her punch, looked out at the ocean, and her composed demeanor betrayed nothing of what might have been going on inside her.

  “Maya, thank God, has finally gone to visit my mother,” Mae had reported. “Mom was shocked at how pretty she was. She seemed relaxed.” She cast a look at Beatrice from the side. “She seems to be doing well.”

  “How nice,” said Beatrice.

  “Everybody has to grow up sometime,” Mae went on, “and maybe Maya’s now gotten to that point. It could be the case, right?”

  After everything that Franca had heard about her, she doubted that Maya would ever get so far, but she said nothing about it. When it came down to it, Maya and Alan were no business of hers, no more than the tension between Mae and Beatrice. Though by then she knew significant parts of Beatrice’s life story, she still felt a certain shyness about insinuating herself in the old woman’s affairs. She felt the distance that, in spite of everything, remained between them. She had the impression that Beatrice wished to see that distance respected.

  They had been able to sit on the back porch until late into the night; the evening had been warm and bright, and the light on the western horizon had been slow to fade. As usual, Franca had taken up an observer’s role. She noticed that Kevin was nervous and unusually pale, and that Helene was enmeshed in thoughts of her own. Franca remembered that May 1st was the anniversary of Erich’s death. It was likely that Helene was yet again reliving those dramatic hours in memory, fifty-five years later. And on top of this there was the constant hail of poison arrows between Mae and Beatrice. Really, thought Franca, this is in no way the idyll that at first glance it might appear to be.

  By midnight they had all put back rather too much punch, and Beatrice offered to let Kevin and Mae spend the night at the house. Mae declined at once, she could only sleep in her own bed, she said, and she needed to have her things around her.

  “But you’ll stay, Kevin,” Beatrice asked, but Kevin, too, refused. “No, I have to get home,” he said hurriedly.

  He’s lost weight, Franca thought. His cheeks have gotten very thin.

  He looked somehow less put together, no longer as stylish and perfect as before. His hair was a touch too long, as if he were putting off an overdue haircut, and he was sweating profusely. He was obviously not doing well, but it couldn’t be seen whether he was struggling through a psychological problem or if he felt physically ill. He didn’t seem at all inclined to speak of what was happening with him, and instead he very quickly said his goodbyes.

  “If he gets stopped by the police, he’ll lose his license,” Beatrice said uneasily. “I’ve never known him to be so careless. Plus, he seemed extremely nervous to me. I’d really like to know what it is that’s got him so preoccupied.”

  The next morning they all slept very late. It was still completely quiet in the house when Franca woke. She blinked in the bright sunlight, sat up, and could barely stifle a cry of pain. Her head was pounding, her eyes were burning.

  “Oh god,” she mumbled. “I had too much to drink.”

  Carefully, she climbed out of bed, crept to the window and looked outside. The May day was spread out before her, radiantly sunny, fresh, and showing a rare clarity. In the distance she could see the ocean glisten and sparkle. Usually, thin wisps of fog lay over the water at this hour, but even these had already dissipated.

  A perfect day, Franca thought.

  She pulled on her bathrobe and crept as quietly as she could downstairs. Her throat was burning, and she absolutely needed a glass of water.

  The glasses and plates from yesterday were still set out on the table. In the large pitcher the punch was glowing, a bright, strawberry red. Franca shuffled through the kitchen. Every step resounded in her skull.

  I wish I knew where they kept the aspirin here, she thought.

  While she stood in the kitchen, leaning against the sink and drinking her water in tiny sips, she heard steps outside. Someone seemed to be walking around the house. Right afterwards, Kevin’s face appeared in a windowpane in the door leading out to the porch. Franca gave such a violent start that she almost dropped her glass.

  “Lord, it’s only Kevin,” she said to herself firmly, and opened the door for him.

  He came in at once, obviously relieved to have encountered someone who was awake.

  “Ah, Franca, how nice to see you,” he said. “I know it’s still pretty early in the morning, but …”

  He left the sentence dangling in the air, unfinished, didn’t know himself how to explain what had driven him out of bed so early. If he’d been to bed at all. Franca doubted it. Kevin looked like he hadn’t closed his eyes, like he’d barely been near a bed.

  “I wanted to ask you if you’d like to come over tonight,” he added in a hurry. “I mean all of you. Helene and Beatrice. Today is the anniversary of Helene’s husband’s death, it’s always hard for her. I thought I could cook something and we could take her mind off it for awhile.”

  “Oh — that’s a nice idea,” said Franca, surprised. “I’d be happy to come. Beatrice and Helene are still asleep, but I’m sure they’ll also be pleased.”

  “Good then, okay, so maybe you could give me a call when everything’s been settled,” said Kevin. He stepped from one foot to the other, seemed indecisive, highly nervous, tense. It seemed to unsettle him not to have met Beatrice and Helene. But he couldn’t have counted on that at this hour, Franca thought.

  “Do you really think the two of them will say yes?” he asked again.

  There seemed to be a lot riding on it for him. Franca studied his waxen face and asked herself if money trouble was in fact the only thing robbing this man of sleep and peace.

  “I don’t see any problem,” she said in a friendly way, “and I’ll come no matter what.”

  “Good, alright, then at seven o’clock tonight at my place, yes?” Kevin asked. With an exhausted gesture he brushed the hair off his forehead. Franca saw that a thin film of sweat covered his face.

  “Are you alright?” she asked. “You look rather awful. Would you like some coffee maybe?”

  “Would you happen to have any cognac?” Kevin asked in return.

  Puzzled, she went and got the bottle and a glass from the dining room. He knocked back the cognac in one motion, restated the time for that evening for Franca, and then said goodbye.

  Franca made herself a strong coffee, went again in vain search of an aspirin, and then went back to the living room with a book. Her heavy head and lack of sleep soon made themselves apparent.

  In spite of the coffee, she fell asleep in her chair.

  Alan sat at the breakfast table, reading the Times and asking himself why he kept having to read the same paragraph over again instead of taking it in on the first go-round. Why couldn’t he manage to concentrate? Before him there were tea, oran
ge juice, soft-boiled eggs, toast, an assortment of jams, cheeses, and a few slices of lox. He had made every effort imaginable to set a nice table and get hold of the things that Maya liked to eat. He had pulled off a proper Sunday breakfast — and this on a Monday morning. At eight o’clock he had called his secretary and told her he would not be coming in that day.

  “But … your appointments …,” she had replied, shocked, but he had interrupted her. “Cancel them all. I won’t be back until tomorrow.” Then he had hung up.

  On Saturday he had gone shopping, had ambled through the grocery aisles at Harrod’s and had taken his time in seeking out only the best and most appealing of everything. He had actually wanted to go shopping together with Maya, but she had already announced that morning that she would be going to visit Edith and spend the day with her.

  “Again?” He had asked, eyebrows raised. “You’ve seen her twice already in the last week!”

  “I know. But on the weekends it makes her particularly happy. A Saturday at the nursing home can drag on for a long time.”

  “I’m really astounded. You’ve complained this whole time that I don’t think of you, that I’m always gone, that you’re forever left on your own. Now I’ve got time and would like to spend a Saturday with you, and on this of all days you make other plans. You could just as well have visited Edith next week!”

  She had looked at him with concern. “I wasn’t thinking properly. Sorry, Alan. But if I cancel on Edith now, then …”

  “No, no!” He’d waved her off, resigned. “By no means. Of course you can’t cancel on her at such short notice, she’d be too disappointed.” He had thought for a moment. “But if I were to come with you, then …”

  To him it almost seemed like she was horrified at this suggestion.

  “She’s not doing too well. I think she’d rather just be with me. If you’re not upset …”

  “No, no!” Of course he wasn’t upset. But uneasy. Something was off. He had known Maya since she had come into the world, he knew her all too well. Maya had never shown any particular sense of familial attachment. A certain affection bound her to her grandmother Mae, but this rested chiefly on the bank notes that Mae was so generous about giving her granddaughter. Certainly she liked Edith as well, but it didn’t seem at all like Maya to visit her at the nursing home three times in ten days. He knew the horror she felt around old people. This was a part of life that she avoided whenever possible.

  It really topped things off when she had then gone out to Henley on Sunday as well. He’d been making a breakfast that was meant to have looked like today’s, but in the midst of his preparing it Maya had stormed in and announced she would be gone all day.

  “Edith is not at all in good shape. I’d just like to be with her today. Please understand!”

  Now, seated at his lonesome breakfast on this May 1st, a slew of unsettling thoughts went through his head. Was he maybe just imagining things? Maya had told him that she wanted to change. She had shown him that she was serious about it.

  Had she shown him?

  That first evening, certainly. He spooned some sugar into his tea and stirred it around, lost in thought. He saw her in front of him, smartly dressed, restrained, her makeup decent — completely different from the dazzling creature she usually presented herself as. But that was exterior, that was the mask. That was simple.

  She’s been home every evening, he reminded himself. Always, when I came from the office, she was here. Lying on the sofa, reading, watching TV, happy to see me.

  What was it that had him so worried, then? On Saturday he had crept through town, he had gone shopping and made a desperate and futile effort to fight back a sense of threat that was growing ever more intense. Eventually it had taken full possession of him, and it had not let go since.

  He had stood inside Harrod’s and thought: It can’t be! I say to her: We’ll go shopping. Shopping is the magic word with her. She knows perfectly well that there would be a whole lot in it for her. Normally she would have dropped everything and dragged me into the very stores that she’d scoped out the week before. And instead she goes to visit Edith Wyatt at the old folks’ home!

  He had spent Sunday reading on a bench in St. James’s Park and feeling very lonely, and early in the evening, when he had gone home, he had been hoping Maya would maybe be back already and they could go get a drink somewhere and then later go out to dinner. But the apartment was empty and quiet. He made himself a gin and tonic, but he knew already that he would turn to the harder stuff if Maya didn’t come soon. He had been very restrained with his drinking since she had been there. He didn’t need anything in the evening if she greeted him with a tender smile, if she threw her arms around him, if she kissed him and he breathed in the smell of her, that smell that he felt was so sweet, warm, and familiar. So desirable, and belonging only to him. Something — his heart, his soul, or whatever it was — wound tightly within him if he only thought about it. My god, he thought helplessly, if I could just finally be sure!

  All of Saturday and all of Sunday his fingers had been itching to reach for the telephone and call Edith. To inquire whether Maya was still with her or if she had already set out. In reality, though, to find out if she had been there at all.

  He’d felt like a miserable little snoop, and each time he’d pulled his hand back at the last moment, hadn’t gone through with the call. Because he didn’t want to spy. Maybe also, however, because he didn’t even want to know.

  At ten o’clock yesterday evening he had drunk his first whiskey, the second shortly thereafter, and then the third. He had felt awful, he had been shivering. Where the hell had she been for so long. At midnight, despair had taken hold of him. Even on Saturday she had been home earlier than today, Sunday, but of course with her way of life it could be all the same to her if a day off or a work day awaited her the next morning, either way she slept till all hours. But could you stay that long at a nursing home? It seemed to him barely imaginable. He had gone to bed at half past twelve and despite the many whiskeys had found no sleep, had tossed and turned and listened to the ticking of the clock. At some point he had heard the door downstairs, had stared at the display on the clock radio by the bed. Half past two. There would be no convincing explanation for it, even with the eagerness on his end to believe whatever she would say.

  Not now, he had thought, just not now, I have to think, I need some time, I can’t rush anything.

  He had pretended to be asleep and thought as he did so that the bed must have been shaking under the loud beating of his heart. Maya busied herself in the bathroom for a while and then snuck into the bedroom on tiptoe. She made the greatest of efforts to creep into bed with him as noiselessly as possible — of course, he thought aggressively, she’ll do whatever she can not to wake me, just so I won’t find out at what impossible time of night she’s rolling in here.

  At some point in the early morning hours he had fallen asleep, but already at half-past six he had been awake again. The short sleep had left him more exhausted than restored. He could hear Maya’s even breathing next to him. Bright sunlight seeped between the slats of the blinds, had long dispelled the night-like darkness of the room. All he saw of Maya was the long hair that lay spread out over the pillow. She had buried her face deep in the pillow, pulled the sheets tight around her body. It would be hours until she was awake.

  Now he sat before the beautifully set table, asked himself why he had even bothered to go to so much effort and why he was neglecting his career on Maya’s account, and he tried to ignore the pain hammering away at his head. He had drunk too much whiskey and had to overcome the aftereffects somehow. After he had kept up a — by his standards — far-reaching abstinence from alcohol for almost two weeks, he was having a particularly tough time with the hangover. He asked himself if he would ever manage to renounce alcohol as his soul’s chief comforter.

  You g
et so damn run down, he thought and rubbed his pained eyes, and you can even watch as it’s happening, and even still you can’t stop.

  He looked at himself. His gaze was merciless, there was no trace of the leniency that he would otherwise bring to bear against even his cruelest opponents. He saw a forty-three-year-old man who sat alone at the breakfast table on a Monday morning, skipped out on work, and was not even in a condition to touch any of the delicacies in front of him. Whose years of enjoying alcohol to excess were all too clearly carved into his face. Who had bags under his eyes and whose skin was far too pale, its pores too large. Who was actually a good-looking man, but was clearly teetering at the very edge of a borderline: the ground beneath his feet could give way, he could finally tip over once and for all, and in five years could look like a sixty-year-old alcoholic. On the other hand, there was just enough time left — he could still change course. The frankness with which he looked at himself showed him the one option as clearly as it did the other. He was still young enough to recover. He could still banish the traces from his features. He still had a chance.

  But how could he seize it, when every day it was made clear to him anew what a thorough mess he’d made of his life! A slew of short, wild love affairs in place of a long, healthy relationship based on trust and companionship. Why wasn’t he married, with two kids, a little house with a patch of yard and an old sheepdog? Why was he caught up in an affair with a woman who was twenty years younger than he and who took up with just about every man who crossed her path? Who used him and took his money, fed him phony promises over and over again, turned him into a laughing-stock, toyed with him however it suited her, and for years stood in the way of a possible other relationship that without a doubt could only be better.

  I should throw her out, he thought, no question she was with some guy yesterday and the day before that. She was probably betraying me all last week. And is even shameless enough to hand me this story about great-grandmother Edith, whom she keeps visiting in the nursing home out of pure selflessness.