Mystical Rose (5 page)

After a big and successful party Lady Margaret took one of my best arrangements into the kitchen and tore it to pieces, stem by stem, running the stems through her nails, crushing the blossoms into juice. We’d already been sent to bed; I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I watched from behind the door, fascinated. The look on her face was one of intense rage.

Maybe the party hadn’t been such a success. I hurried up to my bedroom. I would have been alone by now, in the room beside Parker’s. Sometimes I could hear her grunting in her sleep.

Robbie’s face was round, pale, fleshy, with always a faint sheen of sweat near the surface. His eyes bulged faintly behind the glasses. His brown hair, parted neatly on the left and brushed backwards, never seemed to grow. He was enthusiastic and vague at the same time; he’d come back to the hotel all excited about a great house he’d seen, it’d suit us to the ground, big kitchen and living room, great view of the park, and a nursery for the baby — only he’d be unable to remember the address. Or the location. Which park? I’d ask. Could you see the lake? Was it on a hill? West or east of Yonge Street — you remember Yonge Street, I’d tell him — the big street with all the theatres? He’d smile, shake his head, and laugh at himself. It was an eighty-cent cab ride, he’d say.

I got in touch with a real estate agent, an old sourpuss with those big ears that really old skinny-headed people get. Remember how excited he was when he found out our name. Any relation to
the textile company? he asked. And when Robbie nodded, he said, You know the stock just hit eighteen dollars a share. Tell me — do you think it’s due to split again? September, this would have been. Robbie giggled and said he had no idea. We called the real estate office after we moved into the house on Waverley, to ask something about taxes, but the phone had been disconnected.

The voice rattles in my ear, like a key in the locked door of my prison cell. I wonder what he’s saying. His arms are in front of him, gesturing. Like he’s praying. He looks worried, great blisters of sweat on his face. Harriet nods in earnest agreement. Hospitals are so military, like battleships of caring. This guy will be an officer of sorts. He points at me, points at Harriet, makes his gesture again. He looks earnest but he sounds like a shovel full of gravel.

My daughter is wearing a beautiful dress. I didn’t know she had one like it, quite takes me back to another era. I’m in bed, lying down. I want to sit up but can’t. My head feels heavy and my arms are as weak as a baby’s. My daughter is holding my hand.

What does that mean? says my daughter. I perk up. I can understand her. The rest of the noises that filter through the world to me are meaningless, but I know her voice. My daughter is speaking, and I can understand what she is saying.

I squeeze her hand.

She spares a moment to look down at me.

Harriet, I say. She doesn’t respond.

Harriet. I say it louder. Harriet Harriet. Do you hear me?

She pats my hand. How much time do we have? she says.

She’s not talking to me. She can’t understand me.

The man says something. A white uniform, very formal — what is he, a doctor? He doesn’t look particularly medical. Not like my nice Dr. Sylvester. There was a man, now. What large dark eyes, like two of Ali Baba’s oil jars. Deep, rich, shiny, fattening — oh, to have eyes like that. To marry eyes like that. To be able to stare into them whenever you liked.

A simple test, Dr. Sylvester said, giving me a cardboard clock with movable hands. Big hand, little hand. I thought of all the hands, withered old hands like mine, clutching the little cardboard hands of the clock. I thought of all the old men and women like me, trying to understand what the doctor was asking us to do. Trying to do what we were told because it was important to someone — not to us. Certainly not to me; I’ve never been any good at telling what time it was.

Once a policeman came in to buy flowers, and said I’d have to go to court because the store was open too late.

And what time is it anyway? I asked. I’ve no head for the hours, they just fly by.

It’s well after six o’clock, missus, he said, pointing to his wrist-watch. Too late, he said.

Too late for what? I asked.

Too late for the men that write the laws downtown, he said.

He’d come in with a smile and a kind word, bought carnations for his wife and waited for me to wrap them, then pulled out the summons. Piece of paper.

How’d you know to come here? I asked.

Neighbour complaint, he said, writing busily. Friendly fat policeman with a moustache and a well-licked pencil.

Who? Which neighbour? I had my suspicions — this was still wartime, most people were worried about Hitler, not extra-hours businesses. Was it the guy from the BP station on the corner? I asked.

The policeman handed me the summons.

It was, wasn’t it, I said.

He reached into his jacket pocket and found an apple. Took a deliberate bite.

That bastard, I said. Just because he can’t sell gas after six.

Harriet had been doing her homework in the back room. She came into the shop as the policeman left, taking the flowers with him.

When’s dinnertime? she asked. I’m starving.

I didn’t say anything.

What’s wrong? She recognized the summons in my hand. Is that why the policeman was here? Are we open too late again, Mother? We are, aren’t we.

What time is it? I asked.

What’s going to happen? Remember what the judge said last time?

That bastard McIntosh, I said.

Don’t swear, Mother. Do you mean Mr. McIntosh? From the gas station? Has he been complaining again?

Is it really after six o’clock? I said.

We were standing in the door of the shop. A cold clear winter evening. She pointed to the tower on the firehall across the street. I could just make out the hands on the big clock.

It’s practically seven, Mother — see?

Not really, I said.

Are you finished? Dr. Sylvester asked me very gently. I guess I’d been staring into space for a while.

Ten past eleven, right? I said, frowning down at the bent and withered clock hands, at my own hands, which weren’t withered at all but lumpy — great bumps of chalk and bone that rear up suddenly, like volcanoes from the earth’s crust.

I might have set it at ten past eleven. That’s the time he wanted me to do. Does that say ten past eleven? I asked him.

He smiled kindly. I don’t think he hated me — probably on account of my profile. He must have a tough life, though, shepherding thousands of uncertain old people through the Gates of Ivory. Watching their minds curl up at the edges like drying paper. Knowing that every time he saw them they’d be farther and farther away — and they’d never get better. None of them. Who’d be him? Mind you, who’d be me? Who’d be anybody if they could help it?

Dr. Sylvester shook his head kindly and put the clock away. End of the test for today. We’ll do some more another time, he said, writing something in my file. Probably not about my cheekbones, though they had been praised in their day.

Was that the reason behind McIntosh’s accusation, do you think? Was he truly in love with me? That’s what Harriet said, but what did she know? A little girl with geometry homework, what would she know about true love? He was an ordinary-looking man, middle-aged, middle-sized, hair that was neither brown nor black nor grey, but sort of a blend of them all. His chin was kind of long, and his nose was high-bridged. He had very short eyebrows — they only went halfway across his face, which meant he always looked a bit taken aback.

Why did you call the cops on me? I asked him, the day after my summons. He was in the store to buy flowers. Loved flowers, he said, but had no one to give them to. Over the grime of years, his hands were red and raw with washing. The nails were clean.

What do you mean, Rose? he asked. He had a high, soft voice.

Last night a policeman came to my shop and charged me with operating after hours, I said. He was tipped off by a neighbour.

Why do you think it was me?

It was you last time, I said.

He looked down at his boots. Neither of us had mentioned the last time.

How do you know it wasn’t that guy from the bakery?

Geoff?

Yes. Geoff.

His eyes darkened on the name. Not that Geoff Zimmerman and I were anything more than friendly acquaintances. His bakery stood between the hardware store and Ruby’s hat shop, about a block east of my flower shop. I bought my bread and baked goods at Geoff’s place. If he was there, he waited on me himself, a bear of a guy, handsome and hairy, with a habit of looking away from you when he talked. Looking away from me anyway.

Mr. McIntosh bought some gardenias and hesitated at the door. Why don’t I give them to you, Rose? he asked.

Because they’re already mine, I said. If I take them back, all you’ve given me is money.

Would this have been my first winter in the shop? My second? I felt pretty damn lonely. Mr. McIntosh tried to be sympathetic. What a fine man your husband must have been, he said. I’m so sorry I never got a chance to meet him.

Thanks, I said quietly, and had to repeat myself. Mr. McIntosh was hard of hearing, the reason he wasn’t fighting in Europe.

Robbie’s fighting had all been in the Atlantic. There’s a picture of him somewhere, in his blue uniform smoking a cigarette. And another one of the ship — not a boat, there’s a difference — getting swamped. I remember Robbie and Harriet laughing over that picture, but it made me scared the moment I saw it.

Good luck, Robbie, wherever you are.

No one knows exactly how senile dementia works, Dr. Sylvester told Harriet. I was there for another test, I think. Wellesley — that can’t be right. That was Ruby’s name. Ruby Wellesley Millinery, it said over her shop. Anyway there was a whole series of these tests to prove that I was really losing my mind. Unnecessary. They could just have asked me. Rose Rolyoke, are you losing your mind? I’d have been able to tell them all right. Saved a lot of trouble.

Harriet frowned intently as the doctor talked, every now and then turning to look at me with the strangest mixture of compassion and exasperation. Reminded me of the time I found her in court, after I’d lost her.

Yes, she said to the doctor. She thinks of that often.

Thinks about what, I wondered.

It must have been traumatic, the doctor said.

Harriet gave me the look again.

My father died a violent death. I didn’t witness it, but I heard about it at the trial. Uncle Brian didn’t hide anything; he was still too upset. They’d been out hunting moose in the Ganaraska Forest, he and Daddy. After a no-luck day they were passing an evening with a bottle of Mr. McAllister’s rotten whisky, when a bull moose wandered right up to the edge of their campfire and began nibbling at a blueberry bush. The men scrambled to get their guns and fired from point-blank range. Uncle Brian described how the moose stared at them calmly with one big wet eye, while the blood poured out of the wound in his side. Made me feel guilty inside, to see the suffering in the dumb animal, he said. But apparently Daddy got excited — strange for him, who never seemed to care about anything. He kept firing, even after the moose turned and loped off. Reminded me of what happened to Victor.

Daddy said he wanted the moosehead for the house. Come on, Brian, he called, reloading his gun, grabbing the axe and plunging into the brush after the animal. Brian stopped for a last drink, and followed the sound of my father’s passage through the underbrush,
heard a shot, and then another, and couldn’t locate them. He wandered around, then sat down and slept for a while, and dreamed about a crowd of men nailing the moose to a cross — like the moose was Jesus, he told the judge, who told him to go on — and the sound of the hammering got louder and louder and finally woke Uncle Brian from his sleep, sweating and crying out. The hammering was real. The sound of the blows echoed through the forest. Uncle Brian sprang to his feet, lost in the woods at night, and afraid. The noise was coming from dead ahead of him.

The moon was near full, and it was possible to pick his way with care. Uncle Brian described to the court how he walked. Like a Red Indian, he said, careful not to let a twig snap under my boots, and the beating of my heart was all mixed up with the pounding noise ahead of me. It was like I was listening to the heartbeat of the forest, he said, and the judge told him to please get to the point.

The noise stopped, and the forest was silent and still. Uncle Brian kept walking, hardly daring to breathe. And then, treading silently as they do, rearing high above him, was the moose, huge spread of antlers clearly silhouetted in the moonlight. The beast was upon him in an instant. He fired instinctively, in self-defence — the moose being capable of derailing a freight train, as he explained. Only of course it wasn’t a moose. It was my father, labouring along with the moose’s head on his shoulders — the head he had with so much labour hacked off with his axe.

If Daddy had been a moose, Uncle Brian’s shot would have taken him high on the foreleg, near the shoulder, a crippling blow. But with the extra four feet of head and antlers on top of his own head, the solid shot — no pellets for Uncle Brian — hit Daddy square in the throat. People aren’t horses; there are lots of places you can hit them so that they die fast. Daddy died instantly.