The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Thank you,” Marian says, automatically.

  “Marian!”

  It is Valerie Annis, trim in urban black trousers and bright red boots.

  “I’m so glad you’re here! You’re saving me a phone call,” says Valerie.

  “Valerie.” Marian’s greeting is perfunctory. “You’re looking well.”

  “Oh, I’m in dreadful shape. I’m getting a facial at Arden later, but I came for some concealer. You know, you can’t do the kind of work I do without seeing it all over your face the next day. The Ascendant should include a face-lift in the benefit plan. I keep telling Richard.”

  “You don’t need a face-lift,” Marian scolds. “You look great.”

  “No, but this is what I want to tell you,” Valerie rushes on. “I’m doing a little piece on your cousin. He’s such a sweetie. Do you know he invited me to his wedding?”

  “He…what?” Marian is aghast. “You’re going to the wedding?”

  “Why not?” she says. “We got very chummy at your house that afternoon. And I walked him over to Mort Klein’s place afterward. Of course I’d been to the house before,” she adds.

  “Really. I never have.” Marian looks longingly into the men’s department, where escape by escalator beckons.

  “Well, I always go to the Living Landmarks party. They always invite me. It’s so gorgeous the way they do it up. And Richard loves it when we get old money and new money into the same story.” She stops herself and gives Marian a look. “I’m sorry, I forgot about your being a Warburg. You’re very naughty not to have told me before. What are you, ashamed?”

  Marian sighs. This is a variant of the what-kind-of-feminist-changes-her-name? reproach, another issue in which she has no great interest.

  “I’m not ashamed. But we’re pretty minor characters, you know. Most of the interesting stuff was already a few generations in the past by the time I was born.”

  Valerie regards her intently.

  What does she want me to say? thinks Marian. That I bang on the door of the Jewish Museum and say, “Let me in! This used to be my house!”

  “So have you met her?” Valerie says suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “The kid. You know, the girl your cousin’s marrying.”

  Marian shakes her head. “No. I suppose I will at the wedding. You know, Valerie, Barton and I aren’t especially close.”

  “But aren’t you curious?” she says.

  Yes, Marian nearly says, but she assembles a dignified smile, instead. “I’m sure she’s lovely.”

  “It’s just so classic,” Valerie says. “I mean, Mort Klein practically wets himself whenever he gets to rub elbows with you people, and here’s his daughter marrying into the clan.”

  Marian stares at her, amazed at the degree of tackiness a supposedly sophisticated chronicler of society can attain. “Yes, well…I need to leave, Valerie. I don’t have much time. I have to find a dress.”

  “For the wedding?” Valerie says eagerly.

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Well, I’ll come, too. Then we can have lunch. My appointment’s not till two.”

  “Oh…” Marian thinks frantically. “I wish I could, but I’m meeting someone. A student.”

  “Another student!” Valerie raises an eyebrow, plucked to within a hair of its life. “You were meeting a student the last time I saw you.”

  “Different student,” Marian says firmly. “But it was nice seeing you. I suppose I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  Valerie smiles, showing small, crowded teeth. “I can’t wait.”

  I’m sure you can’t, thinks Marian, stepping away, back into the cloud of scent.

  How dumb is Barton? she thinks, grabbing the escalator handrail in the men’s department. Isn’t it enough that he’s blatantly marrying for money? Does he have to haul out a megaphone to tell everyone? Doesn’t he have the wit to see Valerie Annis for the user she is? Marian frets her way to the second floor, where packs of pubescent girls roam the racks and the music of the nanosecond blares at ear-splitting volume. One flight up, Marian leaves the escalator and begins, dejectedly, to look through the designer sections. She has not been here in several years, and everything strikes her as too colorful, too insubstantial. There are miniskirts trimmed in gold, and hot pink in abundance, astoundingly expensive dresses with chunks of fabric deliberately torn from them. All around Marian, the thin blond women of the avenue lift hangers and consider the clothes (which remain tethered to the racks by their anti-theft cords), then replace them and move on. Marian wanders, idly (guiltily) wishing for the kind of Bloomingdale’s her mother enjoyed, with elegant, matronly dresses and servile staff. Something basic! she thinks. Something understated!

  Something suitable for a forty-eight-year-old woman, neither white-blond nor rail-thin, forced to attend the marriage of a cousin she detests and a girl who, sight unseen, thoroughly baffles her.

  Is that so much to ask?

  Finally, in the back, light years from the enclaves of the most lauded designers, Marian finds something she can work with, an unexciting crepe de chine of almost black, with sleeves to the elbows, a square neckline, and a hem that hits just below the knee. The dress falls close to her body below the waist, without actually touching it—a neat trick, Marian thinks, and not unflattering—and the style is so classic that, trying it on in one of the grubby changing rooms, Marian experiences an uncomfortable jolt of recognition at the image.

  “Hi, Mom,” Marian hears herself say, very softly.

  Her mother stares back.

  Marian’s mother died at fifty of cancer, retroactively diagnosed as uterine. Thirteen years later, by the time of Marian’s own illness, what had once been so horrific as to be unmentionable was actually considered a “good” cancer, or so the entire staff at Sloan-Kettering had seemed at pains to assure her. That the illness meant the end of Marian’s desire to become a mother herself was, naturally, a sad thing, but given the multitudes of the dying (including the terrible fifth floor, with its bald and swollen children), Marian understood that she should feel fortunate. On the day of her departure from the hospital, she had shared an elevator with a small girl and a nurse, and a third person—a fiddler dressed in a clown suit with a cracked plastic bulb over his nose. The fiddler played them down to the surgical floor with a jaunty tune, and the little girl gazed up at him with a ridiculous grin on her face. Marian, afraid to look at any of them while they were so confined, stepped out of the elevator to watch the small band disappear around a corner, then wept.

  But you don’t know! Marshall had said that night as she tried to describe the scene. This could be part of a wonderful story, about how she was cured of cancer and went on to live a long, happy life!

  Yes, yes, Marian had nodded frantically. Because she was in pain still from her own surgery and this was making it worse, and because having said this to him she wanted not to say anything else, especially what she was really thinking and really mourning: that the girl in the elevator was her own girl, and they had lost each other forever to the accompaniment of that happy music and that horrifying clown.

  My daughter, she thinks now, still looking at herself. Who wasn’t.

  Not that I was much of a daughter, myself, Marian tells herself, beginning to remove the dress. Her mother’s disappointment had been so oppressive that Marian took flight from it as soon as she could leave. Of Mimi Warburg’s own sorrows and shadings Marian was ignorant, because she had not asked when she might have asked. And now Marian wishes, wishes, that she knew what it had been like for Mimi at forty, and forty-five, and forty-eight, a once beautiful woman with an unlovely daughter, a disengaged husband, and a rapidly dispersing retinue of admirers. The sadness of that overwhelms Marian, and she remains for a moment in the drab safety of the dressing room, fully clothed and seated on the stool. Then she picks herself up, pays for the dress, and leaves Bloomingdale’s by the men’s department entrance.

  Now the day is bright, the air crisp
, the fog risen and gone. Across Third Avenue, outside the movie theaters, lines of teenagers snake in opposite directions. Marian crosses the street and walks east on Sixtieth, quelling her nerves by checking her watch, which only confirms that she is late. It occurs to Marian that she has not specified what she would be wearing, or given any other means of identifying herself, but in fact Marian identifies rather quickly the person she is meeting: a thick girl with cornrows and a dark blue parka, standing awkwardly alone beneath the canopy of Serendipity. Hers is not the only black face in front of the restaurant, but Marian knows it is the right one. The girl gives Marian a half smile as she approaches.

  “Soriah?” says Marian.

  The girl nods, squinting into the sun.

  “I’m Dr. Kahn.”

  Soriah Neal frowns. “Doctor?”

  “Or Professor. Or Marian, if you prefer.”

  “Okay,” the girl says, though Marian is unclear about which she’s agreed to.

  “I made a reservation for lunch,” Marian tells her. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  Soriah nods again, and again offers the half smile. “It’s crowded.”

  “Yes, this place has always been very popular. I used to come here when I was your age.”

  She gives Marian such a stunned look that Marian laughs. “Yes, it’s true. I was actually eleven once. It was a very popular thing to do on Saturdays—go shopping at Bloomingdale’s and then come here for lunch. That’s why I thought you might enjoy it.”

  Marian leads Soriah inside, making her way through the adolescent girls wedged tightly into the narrow aisle between display cases. The maître d’, an oily man in a Hawaiian shirt, smiles insincerely at her, and after some dissembling, leads Marian and the girl up the steep stairs to the second-floor dining room. Marian shrugs off her coat, sticks her Bloomingdale’s shopping bag under the table, and awkwardly takes up the menu, an oversized broadsheet in a Victorian font. “Would you like to take your coat off, Soriah?”

  “Okay,” says the girl, and does.

  “They have good hamburgers here. They have chili. And foot-long hot dogs.”

  Soriah looks lost. “What are you going to have?”

  “Oh, I used to like the burgers. And the frozen hot chocolate. I haven’t been here in years.”

  “Why not?” she asks, and Marian shrugs.

  “I guess I haven’t had any eleven-year-old girls to meet for lunch.”

  The girl smiles shyly at her menu. “Did you say frozen hot chocolate?” She looks up.

  “It’s sort of like chocolate slush. Trust me on this one. We’ll order two.”

  The waiter takes their order. Marian plucks one of the thick breadsticks from a glass at the center of the table. Soriah looks avidly around, paying particular attention to one table in the corner, which is crowded with girls her own age. They wear braces on their already straight teeth, and diamond studs in their ears, and full Abercrombie & Fitch regalia on their boyish bodies. Soriah Neal wears dark blue jeans and a shiny white shirt that strains over her significant breasts. She is not wearing a bra, Marian notes, but seems to accommodate the problem by sitting with her shoulders hunched forward. Though Marian has been edgy all morning, it hadn’t occurred to her that conversation would be this difficult. “You know,” she says finally, “I don’t think there are too many kids who’ve read my book. Can I ask how you came to read it?”

  Soriah bites her lip and takes a gulp of water. “Well…I go to this program after school on Wednesdays. It’s in the Francis Martin library?”

  “Is that near your house?” says Marian.

  “Pretty near. I have to get driven home afterward, though. My tutor…well, she’s not really a tutor. I mean, I don’t need a tutor. I do really well in school.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Marian says.

  “But her name is Professor Reynolds?”

  Marian frowns. “Professor?”

  “Yeah. She teaches at the college up there? Fordham College?”

  Marian bites off the top of her breadstick and nods. “I know Fordham.”

  “On Wednesdays we go to the library and get a book. First we talk about the book we read last week, then we pick a new book. And I was reading about a woman who got kidnapped by the Indians? In Pennsylvania? And became like one of the Indians even though they killed her family?”

  “Do you mean Mary Jemison? In the 1750s?”

  “Yeah,” Soriah says. “So we were talking about that, and she said—Professor Reynolds said—she knew another book about a girl whose family was attacked by Indians, almost the same year, but this girl escaped and had an amazing life. And it was your book.”

  “Yes,” Marian says. Incredibly, she has not made this very basic and very interesting connection herself.

  “That’s how I read it. I’m sorry if I didn’t say I like the book in my letter. I did like the book.”

  “No, no,” Marian says, beginning to relax. “No, it’s okay. Most people wouldn’t write a letter about a book if it hadn’t meant something to them. Even when I get letters from people who hate my book, I know they’ve gotten something out of it, or they wouldn’t bother.”

  The waiter arrives and deposits two immense chocolate slushes before them, each topped with a mound of dense whipped cream and shavings of chocolate. Soriah stares at hers.

  “Isn’t this dessert?”

  “It should be, but for some reason they serve them first here. If you want to wait till after, though, you can wait.”

  “Are you having yours now?” she asks hopefully.

  Marian smiles. “I will if you will. I never had much willpower.”

  Soriah takes a careful sip. The slush is so thick it’s hard to draw through the straw.

  “I’ll let you in on a secret technique,” Marian tells her. “Use the spoon until it has a chance to melt a bit. Eat from the top, then you can use the straw to drink from the bottom.”

  The girl smiles, showing white teeth. She is really sort of pretty, thinks Marian. But she needs a bra.

  “What other kinds of books do you read with Professor Reynolds?” Marian asks.

  “Well, I like to read about people’s lives. I like to read about scientists, because when I try to read about the science on its own I get confused, but when I read about the person who did the experiments, I understand it better. We read a book about Rosalind Franklin last month.”

  Marian looks at her. “Really? And you understood that?”

  “Well, some of it. But before that I read the book about the double helix? That the man who discovered it wrote? And I didn’t understand that. So Professor Reynolds said I should read the one about Rosalind Franklin, because she did a lot of the work that the man used when he discovered the double helix, but he didn’t give her any credit.”

  “That’s absolutely right,” Marian says, mystified. “Your Professor Reynolds sounds like an amazing teacher.”

  “Yeah!” the girl says, animated at last. “If I didn’t go see her, I wouldn’t know what to read. I’d just be reading the books in the school library.”

  “What’s the matter with the books in the school library?”

  “Oh,” she says, “I’ve read most of them. They’re mostly about girls who like boys, or whatever. Or basketball. I don’t like basketball.”

  “But,” Marian says, “what about your teacher? Can’t your teacher help you find books to read?”

  Soriah rolls her eyes. “You know, there’s so many kids, and half of them are always taking up her time because they can’t sit still or whatever, or they can’t read at all, and she’s just rushing around all the time trying to keep everybody quiet. So the rest of us do our work in the class but when it’s done there’s nothing to do.”

  “Has your…” Marian is about to say “mother,” but she remembers Soriah’s letter. “Has anyone suggested that you move up to the next grade level? You might be more comfortable with older kids.”

  “Oh,” she says, offhandedly,
“I did that. I did it in first grade. And last year.”

  “So”—Marian calculates—“you’re actually in seventh grade.”

  “Eighth,” the girl corrects her. “I’m in eighth. I’m supposed to be in sixth, but they’re, like, doing two plus two.”

  Soriah leans forward and sucks heavily on her straw.

  Marian sits back as the burgers arrive. Soriah picks up the top bun and coats her hamburger with ketchup, then she takes a large bite. Marian, who is not very hungry, watches her eat.

  “Soriah?” Marian says. “What’s up with your mom?”

  Soriah puts down her hamburger.

  “I told you. In the letter.”

  “Yes, I know. But why is she in prison?”

  “Drugs,” says Soriah, matter-of-factly. “Why’s anyone’s mother in prison?”

  “You have friends whose mothers are?” Marian asks, treading gently.

  “Well, one. But I know a bunch where their mother’s not, you know, in the house. So they live with their aunt or their granma, or whatever.”

  “Who do you live with? An aunt?” Marian self-consciously bites into her hamburger, so as not to seem too interested.

  “My granma. But she’s sick.”

  Marian sets this information aside, for now. She is trying to get clear on the mother, first.

  “What was your mother’s sentence, Soriah?”

  The girl sighs. “Fifteen years. Nine years to go.”

  “Fifteen years! What was she convicted of?”

  “I told you,” she says, looking past Marian again to the chattering girls in the corner. “Drugs. They caught her with crack, but it was her boyfriend’s. I mean, I’m not saying she didn’t use it, but it was his, and they didn’t believe her. Or they maybe did, but it’s, like, a rule if you’re caught, you have to get fifteen years.”

  “Mandatory sentencing,” Marian confirms. “They thought it would make people stop using drugs if they knew they’d get those long sentences. But I don’t think it’s worked out that way.”