Mystical Rose (23 page)

My apartment building loomed over the rest of the block. Harriet walked me to the elevator. Do you want to come up? I asked.

She nodded, still without speaking, and we got in the elevator together. Mrs. Collins had her little dog on a leash. Hello, Artie, I said. Then blushed. I mean, Alfie, I said.

Alfie is the dog. Artie is Mrs. Collins’ dead husband.

She frowned. Alfie panted. I reached down to pat his head, and he jumped up. Excited little guy. I stumbled, and might have fallen, but Harriet was there to catch me.

Oops, I said. She didn’t say anything.

Clumsy of me. Thanks, dear, I said. She still didn’t say anything.

Goodbye, Alfie, I said. He yipped.

Harriet had a hold of my elbow as we walked down the hall to my apartment. I shook her arm free to get out my key. I trembled. My hands took longer than usual to find the lock. I wanted to cry out: Can’t a body forget? Can’t I forget a dog’s name and not have to worry? Can’t I trip like anyone else? I’ve got arthritis for heaven’s sake. I’m allowed to trip. I’m not crazy. I’m older than I used to be — and so are you. I’m still able. I can still rhyme off the seven times table; I know that liverwort signifies confidence and lobelia dislike. I can recite my Third Form Test Poem. So I close my eyes with the element on, so what? Who am I hurting? The place is cold in the winter anyway. I can use the extra heat.

I don’t want you to worry about me, I told Harriet. She nodded.

I’m fine, I said, putting the kettle on the stove to boil and setting out the tea things.

Haven’t you ever forgotten a name? I asked her. Or an address or — I stopped. Couldn’t think of anything else. She nodded.

Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time, I said. When you were born you weighed seven pounds seven ounces, I said. You were twenty-three inches long. Your father named you after his grandmother. I never knew her. I wanted to call you Gert after my best friend when I was a little girl.

Harriet started to cry.

I poured tea into two cups. Set out milk but not sugar because neither of us takes it in tea. Here, I said. Drink up.

I took a sip. It was the right colour, but it tasted awful. The rain beat against the window. Harriet kept crying. I took a coy look into the pot, wondering what in the name of goodness I’d hidden there this time.

Crying into her drink. What did that remind me of? I’d say 1957, though I could be mistaken. Nothing particularly exciting happened in 1957. Not to me — I’m sure You’d say different. It was a Friday night, I remember, and I’d been out with someone from a seed catalogue company. I got back late for me, which wasn’t that late, and found Harriet in my living room, drinking and crying. Come to think of it, she wasn’t crying, she was just drinking. Ruby was crying and drinking.

Hello, there, I said.

Oh, Mother, how are you?

Harriet never cried. A couple of scrapes when she was small, and that was it. At Robbie’s funeral she’d stood patiently beside me while the graveyard emptied. No, she hadn’t — she’d cried and held onto the lieutenant’s hand. I’d been the one standing patiently.

Maybe I wanted to remember it differently.

Make yourselves at home, I said.

I hadn’t seen Ruby in months. She looked awful, hair plastered down, eyes large, collar open to show a raddled and unwashed neck.

How are you doing, dear? I said to Harriet. I went over to kiss her on the cheek. She smiled. I wasn’t used to seeing her drink. It didn’t make me feel good.

I had liquor in the house, but I hardly ever touched it. Did I? Well, Harriet didn’t. I can’t tell You how I felt, seeing my daughter and my — I suppose she was still my best friend, even though I didn’t see much of her any more — my best friend tipping the bottle for each other, a pretty pair of tavern cronies.

You should feel sorry for your daughter, said Ruby, speaking very distinctly so as not to slur the words. I asked why.

Because she’s never going to get what she wants, said Ruby.

Is that so, Harriet? I asked, and Harriet gave me that scary smile of hers.

That’s right, Mother.

Don’t worry, sweetheart. There are plenty of men out there, I said.

Ruby laughed, harshly. Like glass breaking.

That’s my lie, she said. My line, I mean. She laughed some more. Tell me that one. Tell Harriet some other lie.

I knew better than to try to take the bottle away. I sat down with the two of them in the kitchen. What is it? I said to Harriet. What happened?

I never failed any examinations. Not one. Harriet failed a lot, for such a hard-working girl. I passed all my grades in school. She failed her driver’s test too, the first time she took it: The instructor said she was concentrating too hard. I never learned to drive — not even a horse and cart. Billy Burnham gave me the reins, and I slapped the mare’s back with them, but you can’t call that driving. The mare knew where she was going anyway.

Harriet wrote brilliant essays, but her examination work was always poor. The teachers encouraged her to keep taking the tests, and after a few tries she always succeeded. She even matriculated in mathematics. When she failed the law examinations she sat right down to studying so she could write them again. But then it was too late. They changed the law, so that you couldn’t be a lawyer without going to law school first. Harriet would have been — what did I say, 1957? — she would have been twenty-seven. Doesn’t seem old, does it? But it was too old to go to school.

So Harriet would never be a lawyer.

She let herself into my apartment, dragging a big suitcase after her. I couldn’t remember giving her a key. We’d just said goodbye — Harriet still tearful — a few hours ago. I couldn’t remember inviting her back.

Isn’t that nice, I said. But what about your job?

I’m taking a couple of weeks off, she said. Harriet was a law clerk with a big firm now. Lots of lawyers telling her what to do. She didn’t seem to mind. I’ll stay here with you until we can straighten out where you’ll be living, she said.

Do I have to move? I said. I don’t want to move. I’m comfortable here, staring out the window at clouds, I said.

Mother, you’re eighty-six years old. I can’t look after you. I can’t afford to hire a nurse.

Maybe I’ll die before there’s a room for me, I said.

Harriet sighed. And then I fell and broke my ankle. No, that’s not it. What happened is I broke my ankle, and fell. They took X-rays and went Tsk tsk. Sorry, I told them.

I moved into Warden Grace Villa when I got out of the hospital. Cane and all.

I’m surrounded by fog, drifting through the present like an abandoned ship, the wreck of the Rose Rolyoke. Chilling thought. I’m propped up in my bed in the bus, staring through the window at familiar trees and parking spaces. Through the fog I can see the concerned expression on Harriet’s face. I can hear the conversation around me. I can feel my chest rising and falling, feel my diaphragm working convulsively to force fluid from my lungs. I can feel my heart beating.

I am tired.

They are carrying bodies off the bus. First off is Mike’s mom with her face covered. I know her, knew her I should say, though I suppose I am getting to the point where I can know her again. Too bad I never liked her. Next off the bus is Dr. Sylvester on a stretcher. My head is killing me, he says. Poor man, not so handsome in his bandage. The orderly drops one end of the stretcher. Dr. Sylvester swears. Next off is the card player with the hearing aid.

You like him, don’t You? I can tell. You reach out and pat him with Your poor hand. Why? He’s a sad and sorry dog, isn’t he? He
whines and weeps and forgets what suit is trump. He bosses the nurses and insults the rest of us. No one likes him, not even the volunteers in the gift shop. His card partners make fun of him when he’s not looking at them, or when his hearing aid isn’t working. So why are You so fond of him? I know You like all of us: Dr. Sylvester, the dead woman, me. It’s Your job, after all. But I do wonder why Your face lights up so for Mr. Nathan — there, I remembered his name. Maybe I’ll get better after all.

I see and hear and feel through a fog, a curtain of fatigue which makes everything shadowy. I don’t mind. I cough. I don’t mind. Harriet is bending over me. Her face is close. I can see the pores in her skin. I go inside the pores, inside my daughter, feel her skin sweating, her heart beating. Feel her sorrow. I don’t mind. She sighs, and I come out of her and back into me.

You’re shadowy too. That’s odd, You were so clear a minute ago. A time ago. Am I drifting away from You? I don’t mind. I ought to, I know, but I don’t.

I am tired.

Harriet is so worried. I try to tell her not to worry. I try to tell her that it is all right, that everything will be all right. I try to comfort my daughter. I cannot make the words come. Something comes but I don’t know what it is. I don’t mind.

Mother? Mother?

That’s Harriet.

Can you hear me, Mother? Mother, do you know me?

Yes, dear. Yes, my darling. I know you. I love you. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I don’t mind.

Doctor! Doctor Berman! Come quick!

I stare up into the doctor’s intent face. Luxuriant growth of hair all over: eyebrows, eyelashes, side whiskers. I look past his face, and
see the peeling paint on the top of the ambulance bus. And the sign: in case of emergency. When else do you use this vehicle? Oh well, this isn’t an emergency. An emergency is unexpected.

I’m cold.

Harriet would never be a lawyer.

And Ruby would never be a wife and mother.

And I would never be a —

My teeth are chattering. I can’t understand it. Mama, Mama, help me. What is this feeling? My life, flashing before my eyes?

“Last chance, ma’am.” A dignified voice, like Daddy’s. A white uniform, like a doctor’s.

“She’s sinking fast now,” says the white uniform.

Overhead, the birds flutter against the bars of their cage. No emergency exit for them.

Almost ninety years; lots to look back on. But there are still questions. My life is passing before me in pain and shadow, and there’s so much I don’t understand. Maybe You could — would You mind? — answer some niggling questions. For clarification and peace of mind. I’ll try not to ask about anything that isn’t my business. It’s my life, though. I’m entitled to know about me, aren’t I?

First off, I guess I want to make sure. Tonight, quietly in my sleep? I guess that’s the way most people want to go. Except for those idiots who want a blaze of glory or a beautiful body next to theirs. Quietly, in her sleep. That’s what the obituary will say. Am I right? At Warden Grace Villa, from complications arising from pneumonia — or maybe they won’t bother with that part. When you’re almost ninety it doesn’t really matter. Flowers in lieu of donations. Zinnia:
I mourn your absence
. That’d be nice. Or
persimmon blossoms:
bury me amid nature’s beauty, for I shall surprise you by and by
.

The last time I saw Ruby was in front of Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. A weekend afternoon in the sixties. A rally, is that right? Black and white together, we shall overcome. Proud of themselves for doing the right thing. Sounds silly, doesn’t it, but it wasn’t silly. Now, why would I have been there? Not to march. I wouldn’t have cared, would I?

Oh. Are You sure? I would? And my sign said the same thing?

I don’t know what to think. I’m pleased. It’s not like me to care about people I don’t know. I suppose Harriet must have told me. She’d have cared all right. Still does. People from places I can’t credit: Bosnia, cardboard boxes, the Philistines … She cared about everyone but herself, like, well, like You. Yes, I am pleased that I’d have been there.

And marching down Yonge Street to City Hall — that would be the new City Hall, wouldn’t it? — I saw Ruby. She was sitting at a counter in a small restaurant, watching the demonstration go by and drinking. Hair in a kerchief, which I’d never have seen her wear before. She was alone, and for a moment our eyes met through the pane of glass and the crowd of singing people. And I thought, I used to know this woman well. Not a day went by but she’d be in the shop, talking about a new hat design she was trying out. Or a new boyfriend. Or she’d be full of a magazine story on the secrets of the ancient Egyptians or how to tell what your perfect mate looked like. I knew her better than anyone in my life then, except my own daughter.