“Shut your eyes,” she said.
The familiar scritch of the scissors cutting her hair lasted only a couple of minutes. Rose wished it had lasted longer.
Ama blew lightly on Rose’s face to clear away tiny hairs and said, “There, now you can see the world again. And the world can see you.”
Rose stood behind Ama and brushed her hair, forgetting to count—trying to build up courage. Finally, she just blurted out, “Iris told me you were really Harriet Jane’s daughter. Is that true?”
Ama waited a few seconds before she said, “Yes.” After a while, she added, “Strange. It’s affected my life so much, but I never talk about it.”
“So we’re alike,” Rose said. “We both had mothers that didn’t keep us.” If she was going to be like somebody, she was glad it was Ama.
“Except you’ve always known you were my granddaughter, and that you had a mother out there somewhere. I didn’t know until I was eighteen and Harriet Jane came home from Italy after my dad died that I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
Ama told her about finding out on a hot August day in the cemetery.
“Annie didn’t know either. Mom and Harriet Jane told us at the same time that we weren’t sisters like we’d always thought. They felt we needed to know.”
“So is it still a secret?” Rose asked. “And that’s why we did the family tree wrong?”
“It doesn’t need to be a secret anymore. Nobody cares. We did the family tree that way because I grew up and lived my life as Clara and Ralph Hoffmann’s daughter, with four older sisters. That’s who I am.”
“Were you upset when they told you?” Rose asked.
“It was upsetting to hear that nothing I’d known and loved my whole life was true or real. The dad I adored, who taught me to love farming, was so unbending that he wouldn’t forgive Harriet Jane even a little bit for her choices. He banished her. He did let Mom go out and stay with her the last five months of her pregnancy, and see her through my birth, then bring me home as his daughter. Everybody just loved me to pieces as I was growing up, but how harsh he was to Harriet Jane. Nobody deserves to be shut out of the family.”
Rose wondered if Ama was thinking of Lily, or even Iris, when she said nobody deserved to be shut out of the family.
* * *
Ama reached up and took Rose’s hand and stopped the brushing. She pulled Rose around to sit on the floor between her knees and began to brush Rose’s hair.
“Could we change the family tree?” Rose asked. “Move you, Iris, and me to where we belong? And add Lily.”
“We can change it on paper,” Ama said after a while. “But where a person fits in her family isn’t that black-and-white.”
“Why is our last name Lovell?” Rose asked. “Shouldn’t it be Smith?”
“Long story,” Ama said.
“Tell me.”
“When my mother—who was really my grandmother—was a girl…”
“Clara,” Rose said.
“Yes, Clara. When she was about your age, everybody who lived along the road for a couple of miles was a Lovell. Your great-great-great-grandfather Lovell had four sons, and those men all farmed and raised their families out here. My mom used to tell me stories about them. Her aunts and uncles and cousins. She told me who had horses. Who had puppies. She told me about the Great Depression. About the first tractor. About well water and outhouses. About the organ in the parlor of her grandparents’ house.” Ama sighed. “They were all Lovells. Then Mom—Clara—married a Hoffmann, and her four daughters were Hoffmanns. But when Harriet Jane ran off and bad blood developed between her and her dad, Harriet Jane changed her name. Not only her first name, but her last name.”
“Lotus Lovell,” Rose said.
“Yes. And she named me Tulip Lovell. That’s what my birth certificate says, though I had no idea until I found out I was Harriet Jane’s daughter. And when I married Larry, I took his name, Smith, but went back to Lovell after the divorce. And when I adopted you, I gave you the Lovell name.”
“I would rather be a Lovell than a Hoffmann or a Smith,” Rose said. “For one thing, it begins with love.”
Ama patted her shoulder. “People around here probably thought it was odd. It probably made some suspect what others had already figured out—that I was Harriet Jane’s child. But nobody cared anymore. All this land was once owned by Lovells. It supported five families for years. People always called the farm the Lovell place.”
They were quiet for a while as Ama brushed. “Just think of the family tree as a little wrinkled,” Ama finally said. “I imagine most family trees are.”
Rose nodded. “You want to hear a lame riddle?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence. Pete fell off. Who was left?”
Ama groaned. “Oh, that is lame. You won’t believe how far back in our family that silly riddle goes. Where did you hear it?”
“From Iris.”
Ama was quiet.
Rose actually liked the riddle. At first, she’d agreed with her mother that the riddle described Iris, making the same mistakes repeatedly. But the more she learned about her family tree, the more she suspected they had all made mistakes, some of which were repeated by the next generation. Or the next.
“Who in the family tree am I most like?” she asked.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed you look like your mother,” Ama said. “Except she has Annie’s freckles and you don’t.”
Rose nodded. She was gradually getting comfortable with looking a little like her mother.
“And I think you love the farm as much as I do,” Ama went on. “And you’re brave and bold and creative like Harriet Jane.”
Rose smiled, though Ama couldn’t see.
“The way you’ve devoted yourself to Lily and just naturally understood how to take care of her may be Clara’s genes coming through.”
Ama quit brushing and laid down the brush.
Rose sat there for a while, leaning against Ama.
When they’d made the family tree and Rose had given her oral report, everybody except Ama had been just a name with dates and events and a few stories. Sort of like down the road at the cemetery on Memorial Day. But now she was starting to feel those people as part of her. She looked at her hands, which were like her mother’s. They made her feel more complicated. And scared. And strong.
·· nineteen ··
THE day before Iris’s arraignment in court was rainy. Lily was cranky and threw a fit when Rose tried to get her to sit on the potty chair. She screamed so loud Myrtle went out on the porch. And she kicked the potty chair so hard it fell over.
Rose sat on the edge of the bathtub watching her sister writhe on the floor. “Oh, Lily,” she said.
Lily stopped for a second, then screamed louder.
Ama came in and sat beside Rose. Lily’s screaming was making Rose’s head hurt, but it didn’t seem right to go off and leave her. Rose longed for a pajama day—one of those rainy summer days when she didn’t have to do anything at all, not even get dressed. The things she might do flickered through her mind, and they involved paper and creativity and quiet. Though today was probably ruined no matter what because of worry about what would happen tomorrow.
Gradually, Lily wound down, and when Ama opened her arms, Lily let Ama cuddle her.
Sometimes Rose didn’t like Ama cuddling Lily so much—especially when Lily was being a pill.
“Did I act like that?” Rose asked, certain Ama would say no.
“Yes, you did,” Ama said.
“Really?”
“You outgrew it, and so will Lily. And then life will be sweet and calm until teen age. And then it will all start up again.”
Rose wasn’t going to be stormy in teen age. But how did she know that for sure? She used to know things for sure, bu
t not any longer.
“When Iris hit teen age, your grandfather and I were getting divorced,” Ama said. “I should have been a better mother.”
Rose wouldn’t have believed that a week ago.
“I’m ashamed of the ways I let her down.” Ama looked miserable when she said, “And I hid my shame behind anger.”
How could Ama have been so different then?
“When Harriet Jane came home and I found out the truth, I didn’t know who I was for a while. I think that’s why I went off to college and drifted toward things that weren’t me. And when I tried to get back where I belonged…here…I was married to somebody who didn’t know me at all. Who couldn’t understand my roots. Poor Iris fell into the large, lonely space between us.”
Iris looked lonely in the few pictures Rose had seen in the photo albums.
Ama was cradling Lily when she said, “I did not do right by Iris. Maybe that’s why she’s such a hapless soul.”
“Hapless?”
“Unlucky. She couldn’t help who her parents were. When she was born.” Ama reached out and put her hand on Rose’s cheek. “You turned up at the worst of times and the best of times.” Ama took a deep breath and let it out. “I do love you, sweet Rose. More than words can say.”
Tears came to Rose’s eyes and she nodded. “I know,” she whispered. Now if Ama would just fold Lily into their lives to stay…
The rain, which had let up for a while, began to come down like it was being poured out of a giant bucket. Wind gusted against the window and the lights dimmed but came back on.
Ama sighed. “I’m not going to be able to do anything on the farm today. It will be too wet even if the rain stops.” She stared at the wet window. “Let’s make cookies. To keep our minds off tomorrow.”
* * *
In the kitchen, they got out cookie sheets. Lily turned a plastic bowl upside down over the tiny flexible dolls from Aunt Carol. It reminded Rose of how she’d felt in Iris’s apartment, squeezed together and penned in without air or light.
“Let the dolls out, Lily,” Rose said.
Lily ignored her.
Rose didn’t want Lily to throw another fit, so she didn’t tell her again. And anyway, dolls didn’t really have feelings. Even if they did, what was the difference between being under a mixing bowl and being inside an old wardrobe? Either place was dark and stuffy. Rose had hated living in Iris’s apartment so much she decided she’d run upstairs later and free the dolls from the wardrobe. She was too old to play with them, but they could live in Great-aunt Phoebe’s room—all of them together. Old musty ones, shiny plastic ones, chatty ones, cuddly ones.
“Why do you think my mother is so messy?” she asked Ama.
Ama paused where she was getting out ingredients. “I don’t know. I can tell you Annie was a terrible slob. I was always picking up after her, and I was the little sister.”
Really? Aunt Annie the doctor?
Ama creamed the butter and sugars with the mixer. While she did that, Rose measured the flour, baking soda, and salt. When the cookie dough was finally ready, they washed Lily’s hands and let her help drop dough onto the baking sheets.
“Watch she doesn’t put any in her mouth,” Ama said. “Raw eggs.”
Sure enough, Lily’s hand, holding a wad of dough, moved toward her mouth.
“No, no,” Rose said. “It will make you sick.”
Lily dropped the dough and Myrtle hurried to snarf it up. “No, no!” Lily said. “Sick!” She looked at Rose. “Ose!”
“It’s okay,” Rose said. “It probably won’t make Myrtle sick because she’s a dog. But it might, so don’t drop any more.”
“Otay,” Lily said.
Rose beamed. Another word. In the few days they’d been home, Lily had fluffed up, brightened up, cheered up. And she’d gotten heavier and taller, or so it seemed to Rose. Lily was changing as fast as Peanutbutter, who was now walking around the barnyard with Rose without fuss.
Caring for Lily was so much easier with Ama’s company, in a big cozy house, eating yummy food.
“Do you think if Iris lived here with us she might be a good mother to Lily?” Rose asked.
A whole merry-go-round of emotions crossed Ama’s face. And just posing the question made Rose feel dizzy. She hadn’t really meant to ask it.
Ama didn’t say anything. She kept dropping dough on the baking sheet. When it was full, she slid it into the oven. Then she asked Rose, “Is that something you want?”
Ama’s face was now blank of expression as she looked at Rose, waiting for an answer.
What Rose really wanted was for things to go back the way they were before, when life was perfectly simple and perfectly happy and perfectly predictable. But she had found Lily, and now the way things were before, could never be again.
“If Iris comes to live here, she might decide to leave again and want to take Lily with her,” Rose said. And Lily was putting down roots and blossoming like a real flower. “And if she took Lily…” Rose looked into Ama’s eyes. “I would have to go too.” She felt sick saying it. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to do it. But she’d have to try. She couldn’t let Lily go back to being all on her own with a mother who didn’t pay attention to her.
Iris was like a squirrel—pretty and fun and interesting—but who knew what she might do next? She didn’t think far enough ahead to bury a few walnuts.
“Do you want Iris to live here?” Rose asked Ama.
Ama was washing Lily’s hands when she said, “I don’t know. After you got settled in with me, I didn’t want her around you. But that was a long time ago.”
“That time she came to visit, when I was little, were you angry with me for sitting on her lap?”
“Oh no, Rose. Did you think that?”
Rose nodded. “All these years I thought I’d done something so bad I couldn’t even remember it. I asked Iris about the visit and she told me.”
Ama touched Rose’s cheek. Her hands smelled like soap and cookie dough. “As you’ve probably noticed, Iris tends to turn up without warning. That morning, I’d taken Myrtle out and I came back inside and you were on her lap and her arms were around you. I thought she’d come to take you. And I went a little crazy. But I never thought you did anything wrong.”
Rose felt as if she’d been walking around most of her life with a pebble in her shoe and had just gotten rid of it.
Ama made a cup of coffee and sat down on the bench at the kitchen table. Lily climbed up beside her and onto her lap. Automatically, Ama’s arms went around Lily and she kissed her on the head.
“Assuming Iris won’t have to stay in jail until the trial, her living here would really change things,” Ama said.
That was what worried Rose.
“It might not work,” Ama said.
Rose shook her head in agreement. “Maybe Iris is mainly lonely.”
Ama sighed. “I’m sorry for that.” She was playing with Lily’s dark curls. “Iris is probably not going to give up her friends or her habits,” she said.
After what felt like a long time, she added, “But I’d like a chance at a do-over. It won’t be perfect. But maybe it won’t be a disaster. And even if it fails, the world won’t end.”
Rose felt the truth of that. Her old, perfect world had ended. But a world that wasn’t so perfect could live a long time. Just look at the messed-up Lovell family tree. Yet here she was.
·· twenty ··
SCHOOL was starting in a week and Rose had a new hairstyle. One Sunday morning, when it was still cool and the smell of the hay Ama had cut the day before hung in the air, Rose and Iris had gone onto the porch. Iris had laid out scissors and clippers she’d borrowed from the salon. She’d fastened a cape around Rose and gone to work. Iris remembered the four things Rose had said in the apartment to describe herself—especially that she wanted
to be some kind of artist when she grew up and that she could do anything she set her mind to.
Iris had worked silently for a long time. Haircuts from Ama took two minutes and Rose knew exactly how she would look when Ama was done. The same way she’d looked before. But Rose felt her hair and head being touched in a way that was new. It felt unsettling.
When Iris finally led her into the bathroom, Rose stared at herself in the mirror. She’d been reshaped into a clearer version of herself. She looked taller. The bob emphasized her jawline so she could see the Hoffmann stubbornness. And this new girl, with the long neck and lively gaze, might well grow up to be an artist.
When Maddy got home from England and saw Rose’s haircut, she begged Iris to style her hair too. Maddy had seen and done a lot across the pond, as Aunt Carol called the Atlantic Ocean. She’d gotten to know her cousins. She’d seen the Tower of London and Big Ben. She’d gone on a Harry Potter tour and a Buckingham Palace tour. She’d taken a cruise down the Thames. Maddy could hardly believe she’d come back to find Iris in her old room across the hall from Rose.
It was different having Iris in the house. At first, it had been really uncomfortable. Rose wasn’t used to sharing, and now she had to share with Iris as well as Lily. And Rose was used to the upstairs belonging only to her. She was used to freedom and privacy.
The first few days, Rose had absolutely hated having Iris there. Rose couldn’t settle in at night because Iris was rustling around and her cell phone was always making noises. She left things like apple cores in her room and the smell bothered Rose. Some days Iris didn’t get up to go to work. She kept the door shut and came out only to use the bathroom. When Rose saw her in the hall, Iris looked as if the saddest thing in the world had happened and she could never be happy again. But in a day or two, she was back to work and her usual carefree and careless self.
Rose could tell Ama was struggling too. Once, when Iris stayed out all night, Ama was in tears when Rose came downstairs in the morning. And Ama and Iris were stiff with each other. They didn’t actually argue, but there was no ease between them. They didn’t have any special routines. They didn’t know each other’s hearts the way Ama and Rose did.
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