Tending Roses

by Wingate, Lisa

  My roses grew wild and died as I busied myself with feeding and diapering, nursery rhymes and sickbeds. I missed those bright blooms that had been mine and felt it unfair that I must leave my hard work there to die. But I did not think of it overmuch. My mind and heart were occupied with the sorrows and joys of motherhood.

  The day came, it seemed in no time, when my children were grown and gone, and I again found time to tend the roses. I could labor over them from dawn until dusk with no children to feed, no husband needing meals, and few passersby on the old road. My flowers have come thick and full and beautiful again. From time to time, I see neighbor children come to pick them when I am silent in my house. I close my eyes and listen to their laughter, and think that the best times of my life, the times that passed by me the most quickly, were the times when the roses grew wild.

  The sense of sadness in those last words was overwhelming. For a moment, I glimpsed my own future, considered a day when I would sit alone in a quiet house trying to fill my time, at the end of things rather than at the beginning. The beginning of a journey is always uncertain, but with uncertainty comes hope. Never had I appreciated the value of that. Through all of my adult life, I had wanted to know exactly where I was going and what path to take to get there. I had never considered the beauty of where I was. Sitting there in Grandma’s kitchen, holding her book, I thought of her as a young woman not able to see that something wonderful was passing. Not appreciating the noise until she was surrounded by silence.

  For the first time in my life, I was very glad just to be where I was.

  Joshua stirred upstairs, and I left the kitchen, setting Grandma’s book on the table, just as I had found it. When I reached the upstairs bedroom, Joshua was lying in the crib, stretching his hands into the air and watching faded plastic horses dance on an old crib toy Grandma had hung above the bed. Gazing at him from the doorway, I wondered if my grandmother had once stood in that very spot watching my father in that old wooden crib, and if my mother had once stood there watching me.

  The feeling of missing my mother was suddenly overwhelming. The six years since her death seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. Here at the farm my grief felt fresh. This was the place where I remembered her most, where she was never busy with patient consultations and college courses. This was where I loved her most, where we picked blackberries and baked cobblers and roasted hotdogs on the stone grill out back, where we really spent time together. I wondered if she had felt that way about it too, or if she even found time to think.

  Josh grew restless, and I picked him up and sat in the rocking chair by the window, feeling the weight of him on my chest and gazing at the waning day—thinking of Grandma’s story about the roses and about the fact that time is so invisible, you never see it passing.

  I was drifting somewhere among the crimson-rimmed clouds when Joshua grew impatient and made it clear he was ready for a bottle. Leaving my thoughts behind, I went downstairs to feed him and fix supper. The book was gone from the table, and Grandma was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, looking slightly chilled. She reached for Josh and fed him while I worked on creating a casserole from leftover breakfast sausage and some of our salvaged vegetables. The kitchen was heavy with the odor of paint from the utility room, but Grandma didn’t mention it.

  Ben walked in the door just as I was putting the plates on the table. Hanging his coat on the hook, he looked over his shoulder with a frown. “Why does it smell like paint in here?”

  I gave him a warning glance as I finished setting the table and started serving the food. “Must be the casserole.”

  He knitted his brows in confusion, but just nodded, afraid to say anything else. “O.K.” And he sat down, wisely keeping silent until he could survey the lay of the land.

  We sat there quietly for a while, at peace until Grandma heard a sound somewhere in the house and decided to start up about the plumbing. “That septic drain is going to back up in the cellar, I can tell by the way it sounds.” She paused in the middle of a bite of casserole, listening. “Oh, if it backs up, it will be expensive to fix. It is too much paper, that’s all. Too much paper down it with so many people in the house. We will all have to be more careful, and no . . .” A semi roared by on the county road, and she paused in midsentence, then seemed to lose her train of thought. “Oh, those awful trucks. The way they come racing through. That little Jordan girl might be on the road.”

  “Grandma,” I scolded. “Stop worrying.”

  She gave no indication that she’d heard me, but turned to Ben instead and reported, “We nearly ran right over the little Jordan girl today.”

  “Grandma!” I squealed.

  Ben gave me a quizzical look.

  Rubbing the growing ache in my head, I rolled my eyes. “It was nothing,” I said to Ben. And to Grandma, “Eat your casserole.”

  Ben smirked at me, trying not to laugh, then bent over his plate shaking his head. Grandma huffed and ate some casserole, then decided to fill Ben in on the day’s successful salvage operation. That cheered her up, and by the time we finished eating, she had a gleam in her eye and a plan for how the three of us could get the potatoes stored in the cellar and the apples peeled, boiled, and made into apple butter and preserves. To my complete amazement, Ben complied, and we spent a couple of hours storing up food for the next century. After he had carried the potatoes to the cellar, he even helped to mash and strain the apples. The extra helpfulness and the overly cheerful tone of his voice told me that he was up to something, but I didn’t dare ask about it in front of Grandma. Whatever it was, he knew I wasn’t going to like it, and he was trying to butter me up.

  He brought it up after Grandma went to the little house and Joshua was put to bed. He took a deep breath and dropped the bomb as we were cleaning the last of the canning supplies. “Kate, I have to go out of town for a couple of days.”

  It took me a minute to register what he was saying; then a pang of disquiet went through me. “What?”

  “I can’t help it,” he went on quickly. “James needs me at a job site to solve some detail problems. They’ve got some steel that’s not fitting like it should and it’s holding up the job they’re on. It’ll only take a couple of days, a week at the most.”

  “A week?” My disquiet erupted into full-scale panic. “What if Grandma sets the house on fire again? What if Joshua gets sick and needs to go to the doctor? You know any kind of infection could put strain on his heart, and . . .”

  Ben reached out and grabbed my shoulders. “Josh is fine. Grandma will be fine. It’s only a couple of days. We need the money.”

  “You already agreed to go, didn’t you?” I looked at him, and suddenly I knew there was no point in fighting. He’d already decided.

  He nodded, looking guilty about it. “James really needs someone who can get this figured out in a hurry and get the job on-line. His detailer wants them to remake all the parts, but I looked at the design on-line, and I have an idea. I told James I think I can save him a lot of money and man-hours.” Beneath the surface guilt there was that look of excitement and job lust that he always got when presented with a challenge. Once again, he was Superman, out to save the world from poorly designed buildings and metal parts that didn’t fit.

  I knew there was no point in arguing anymore. He was going. Sighing, I pressed the palm of my hand against my forehead, wondering if the rest of our lives would be Ben coming in on one flight and leaving on another. I had a flash to the two of us in some former life planning all the traveling we would do together. “When do you fly out?”

  “First thing in the morning, and it’s a two-hour drive to the airport, so I’ll be gone early.”

  “Promise you’ll be back before any of the family gets here. You know James’s jobs always run overtime.” Being left alone with Grandma was bad enough. I couldn’t face the idea of being there without Ben when the family arrived for Christmas.

  “I’ll be back.” He sat at the table, and I sat with him
as he went on, frowning. “Stop worrying about them coming. It’ll be the same as always—they’ll fly in, make a little small talk about jobs, houses, cars . . . whatever, and then they’ll fly out. Aunt Jeane will take care of all the details, like she always does, and that will be the end of it.”

  I sighed, afraid he was right, afraid he wasn’t, and wondering why I cared. Things with my family had been hopeless for so many years now, I thought I’d learned to accept it. We weren’t at war, but we weren’t at peace, and mostly we just stayed away from each other.

  It seemed to matter more now that we had Josh and now that Grandma was one step away from a nursing home. “I was just hoping things would be . . . different,” I admitted, even though I didn’t know what I was hoping for.

  Ben scoffed, reaching over and rubbing my shoulder. “Don’t get your hopes up, Kate. Your dad’s too wrapped up in himself to care about anyone else, and I’ll be surprised if Karen even shows up at all. Neither one of them gets along with Grandma, and you know they both hate this farm. They’ve never made any secret of that.”

  “I know.” Something sharp twisted inside me. “I guess, once in a while, I just wish things were better.”

  “But they’re not.” He sighed, probably because we’d had the conversation before and he was tired of going over the subject of my family. His family was so unemotional, it made mine seem like a certifiable disaster. “Stop torturing yourself, Kate. Just forget about it.”

  “You’re probably right.” But I knew he wasn’t. No matter how much you want to cut your family out of your heart, you can’t. The bond is born when you are born, like an organ in your body. There is no surgery to remove it. When it is diseased, you live with a dull ache telling you that something inside you is not right.

  I rubbed my eyes as they started to burn. Then I stood up and walked to the window to look out at the little house. “I’m afraid Grandma is going to go off the deep end when they tell her they want to take her to a nursing home and get rid of the farm.”

  I heard Ben get up. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe Grandma will like the idea of being in St. Louis close to your Aunt Jeane.”

  I sighed, shook my head, and turned from the window.

  Chapter 5

  THE clatter of pans awakened me sometime in the early morning. Opening one sleepy eye, I watched a squirrel trying to raid the bird feeder outside my window. The noise in the kitchen stopped, and I wondered if Grandma had seen the marauding squirrel and gone outside to chase him away. On one hand, she practically hand-fed the squirrels; on the other, she hated it when they got into her bird feeders. Like everything in her world, she felt they should know their place.

  Rolling over slowly, I reached for Ben, but realized that he was already gone. I dimly remembered him kissing me good-bye and leaving while it was still dark outside. The reality of him being away filled me with a profound sense of loneliness. I closed my eyes, knowing I was being childish, and trying not to think about it.

  A voice inside my head admonished me for being so emotional. It’s just postpartum hormones, Kate. Don’t be such a baby. Get your head together. He’ll be back in a few days. No point going off the deep . . .

  A strange, putrid smell assaulted my senses suddenly, cutting short my thoughts.

  “Eee www,” I muttered, my empty stomach rolling over as I stood up and slipped my feet into my house shoes. Whatever Grandma was cooking, it smelled like rotten eggs. She . . .

  The jingle from a public-service commercial twittered through my mind: If you sniff that rotten-egg smell, turn off the gas, open the windows really fast . . .

  My heart leapt into my throat. The propane! My mind cleared, and I rushed toward the kitchen. The smell there was stifling, but the room was undisturbed except for a smattering of mixing bowls and an open flour sack beside the stove.

  Over the hum of the refrigerator, I heard a faint hiss coming from the oven. Covering my face with a towel, I rushed forward and turned off the dial, then threw open the window and screen door, gagging. My legs trembled like wet spaghetti as I rushed from room to room in the house, opening windows and doors.

  Sitting on the stairs as the smell faded away, I held my head in my hands, thinking about what might have happened if I hadn’t awakened when I did. Josh was still sound asleep in his bed . . . helpless . . . What was Grandma thinking, turning on the oven and not lighting the pilot? And then to walk away while propane spewed into the kitchen . . .

  A desperate anger welled up inside me, and I grabbed my coat, then stormed out the door, slamming it behind me. “Grandma!” I hollered, heading for the little house. “Grandma, come out here!”

  She poked her head out the door, her blue eyes wide over two circles of fresh pink blusher on her cheeks. “Katie, what’s wrong?”

  I stopped at the bottom of the steps, gripping and un-gripping my fists. “The house is full of propane gas! You left the oven on and the pilot wasn’t lit.”

  Confused, she stepped out, darting a glance toward the house, then back to me. “I haven’t used the oven this morning. I was going to make a coffee cake, but there wasn’t time. I have to be ready for church.”

  “Grandma, you did use the oven,” I insisted, my temper boiling hot into my throat. “You got out the flour. You got out your mixing bowls, and you turned on the oven, but you didn’t light the pilot.” I waved a hand toward the house. “The kitchen was full of gas. I could smell it all the way to my room!”

  Looking dazed, she shook her head. “That pilot on the oven must be broken. . . .”

  Mouth hanging open, I stared at her in complete shock. “Grandma, you won’t ever leave the pilot lit! You light it every time with a match—don’t you remember? You said it wasted gas!”

  The mist cleared from her eyes like fog evaporating from a mirror. Fingers trembling, she brought them to the sides of her face. “Oh, Katie, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the propane.”

  The hairs rose on the back of my neck, and my mouth sped ahead of my self-control. “I’m not worried about the propane. I’m worried about getting blown up in my sleep!” I looked away from her, not wanting to see her expression of horror and dismay. I was too angry, too scared to care how she felt. “From now on we’re leaving the pilot lit. It’s made to stay on all the time. It doesn’t use that much propane. Don’t turn it off again.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said a second time. “Oh, Katie, I can’t believe I . . .Idon’tremember . . .”The word disappeared into a sob.

  “Don’t cry,” I muttered, my anger suddenly spent. “It’s all right now. I opened the windows and cleared out the gas.” Too exhausted and frustrated to comfort her, I turned away. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

  The smell was gone from the house when I returned, and by the time I’d showered and dressed, it was gone from me. I felt bad about being hard on Grandma, so I went looking for her to smooth things over.

  I found her on the porch, rocking in the glider and drinking a cup of coffee. If she was upset with me, she didn’t show it. She smiled as I came through the door. “I must say, I don’t know when I remember such a stretch of mild weather in December.” She paused to take a deep breath of the sun-warmed winter air, looking toward the driveway. “And where is Benjamin gone to this morning?” She didn’t mention the propane incident, so I didn’t either.

  “He had to go out of town for a couple of days on a job. He flew out this morning.”

  “My, that boy is a hard worker.”

  “I guess he is,” I muttered, but I failed to completely conceal my irritation that once again he was not at home when a crisis arose.

  Grandma was acute about those things, and as usual, she honed in, looking for a worry to pounce upon. “Is something wrong?”

  Shaking my head, I pretended to rub my eyes because they were tired. The truth was, I felt lonely and lost, and I wondered if I could survive two more weeks with Grandma. I had the ov
erwhelming urge to run home to my house and my job, and forget all about smoke damage, coffee-stained floors, defective sewer pipes, and spewing propane. I wanted Grandma Rose to be completely sane again and the crisis to be over. “No. Everything’s fine.”

  “I see,” she said, and I was afraid that, as usual, she was seeing more about me than I wanted her to. Looking me in the eye, she took a deep breath, and for a moment, I thought she was going to offer some grandmotherly advice. Then the expression on her face went blank, and she patted the seat beside herself, saying, “Well, sit down for a while. This is just the kind of morning when the roses smell heavenly.” She pointed to the trellis in the yard, but of course the vines were winter-bare. “I planted some Peace roses and some Mr. Lincolns at the cemetery last spring.”

  A quick stab of panic went through me at the mention of the cemetery, and I wondered if she was going to press me about visiting my mother’s grave. She always went there on Sundays after church. I wasn’t ready to go and didn’t know when I would be. I hadn’t gone there since we’d laid my mother in the ground.

  I sat beside Grandma on the glider, and we rocked slowly back and forth in silence. Pulling my knees to my chest, I rested my chin on them and watched a cottontail hop lazily around the lawn, looking for something to eat.

  After a moment, Grandma laughed under her breath and shook her head, watching the bunny.

  I glanced sideways, wondering why she was laughing when only a moment before she had been stirring up turmoil.

  “It’s terrible to get old.” She was smiling as she said it, though. “I was thinking I would roust old Trooper for not keeping the rabbits from the yard.” Another chuckle burst from her lips, and she slapped her hand to her chest. “That dog’s been dead for twenty years!”

  Throwing her head back, she laughed until tears squeezed from her eyes. I couldn’t help laughing with her, and we kept at it for a long time, rocking and laughing, then finally catching our breaths. Our noise frightened the cottontail from the yard, and we laughed harder, both thinking that now there was no need for the dog.