The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (6 page)

She sighed and tried to join the conversation going on around her.
I won’t say anything to Blanche about this unless something real happens
, she decided.

When two-thirty came, Rose bounded the steps to the south door to meet her sister. Blanche was already there, looking out, her petite figure almost overwhelmed by her black hair. Her books were held in front of her defensively as she gazed at the chain link fence at the other end of the parking lot. She looked upset again.

“What’s wrong?” Rose asked worriedly.

Blanche nodded with her head towards the fence. “That’s where I usually see him standing.”

“Who?”

“Bear. He wasn’t there today,” Blanche said.

“Are you sure it was him the other times?” Rose glanced skeptically towards the fence, where Rob and a group of other guys were standing in clumps, talking.

“I’m almost positive.” Blanche turned towards her sister, tossing her heavy curtain of hair back over her shoulders. “Rose, he really might be a drug dealer, for all his talk about poetry and whatnot.”

“Can you picture Bear hanging out with people like those?” Rose asked derisively, mentally excluding Rob from that group.

“I don’t know. There are a lot of contradictions in him,” Blanche admitted as they started to walk home.

“Well,” Rose decided to be amiable, “who knows if we’ll ever even see him again?”

Chapter 3

IT WAS ROSE’S turn to do the dishes that night, so while she and Mother chatted in the kitchen, Blanche slipped out to the living room to play the upright piano that stood in one corner against the wall. She used to practice all the time, but now only played occasionally as a way of consoling herself when she had a bad day. Dad had bought the piano for her and its worn walnut surfaces reminded her of him in a way that was distant enough to be comfortable. She pulled out her sheet music, spread it out in front of her, placed her hands on the keys and began.

First, some scales. Then, Mozart’s “Rondo,” because it gave her fingers a good workout. Then the “Arabian Dance” from
The Nutcracker Suite,
a Chopin interlude she was learning, and Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”

She tried her hand at a new duet for piano and violin that Rose had gotten from her violin teacher. Back in the country, she and Rose had often played together for their family and friends. Rose still took violin lessons—now from a teacher at school—but Blanche had laid aside her study of piano, maybe for good. She ran quickly through the piano part of the new duet once, then put it aside and took out the “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven.

From far off in the city came a car alarm, and the wailing warning of a police siren. Blanche shivered to herself and moved the bench closer to the piano. Fingers adjusted, she began to play the first bars of the “Moonlight Sonata” and let the notes murmur from her fingers in a ceaseless repetition that carried her away down a broad river in her imagination. When she felt she had the current going sufficiently, she moved her right hand into the melody, let the notes drop haphazardly from her fingertips, like rain on the surface of a pond with a deep undercurrent. She let the melody slide away until she felt like playing it again, barely glancing at the music. This definitely wasn’t the conventional way to play the “Moonlight Sonata,” but it was very relaxing.

Eventually she began the rising melody of the piece, the uncertain question that drove her eyes back to the notes and made her left hand unsteady. Striving to keep the continual motion of the lower notes, she pounded out the hard, short, anxious notes of the climax, then let her right hand fall. Beethoven never answered the question in this piece. The left hand just kept doing what it had been doing all along, until it eventually sank to the lower end of the keyboard, and then into silence.

Blanche was still, contemplating the vibration of that last low note when the doorbell sounded. The delicate tranquility she had experienced was shattered.

“I’ll get it,” Rose sang out, drying her hands on a dishtowel as she went to the door. Blanche remained on the piano bench, wary.

“Oh, it’s Bear again,” Rose sounded surprised. Blanche heard the house door open, and Rose say, “Come on in, Sir Bear!”

 Unsure of what this portended for their family, Blanche stared at the black and white bars in front of her.

 “I just wanted to drop off a thank-you gift and bring back the boots and stuff,” Bear was saying.

“Well, come on in!” Rose replied merrily.

Mother came from the kitchen looking like a Swedish housewife in an old denim dress with her long hair braided and pinned up. She stood smiling at Bear. “Welcome again, Bear,” she said.

Bear came into the living room uncertainly, a small package in one hand and a lumpy grocery bag in the other. “I just thought I’d get you a little gift to thank you for saving my toes last night,” he said, a bit sheepishly.

“That’s very kind of you, Bear,” Mother said. “Please take off your coat and stay a while. We were just finishing in the kitchen.”

“I was going to make hot chocolate—would you like some?” Rose took Bear’s coat, hung it on the old-fashioned coat stand, and skipped to the kitchen to get out the mugs.

“Uh, sure,” he said bit awkwardly. With his coat off, he looked a little smaller in a khaki flannel shirt and old jeans. He sat down carefully on the sofa and crooked his fingers through his matted dreadlocks. His eyes met Blanche’s as she sat guardedly in her corner. She saw that he realized she knew about him.

“You play piano?” he asked.

“Not in front of other people,” she said quickly, getting up from the bench and sitting down on the chair.  She lingered tensely to see what he would do next.

“You know, I’ve seen you before,” he said finally, when Mother moved into the kitchen to help Rose.

Blanche said nothing, waiting.

“At St. Catherine’s,” he said. “On the school grounds.”

“I’ve seen you there, too,” she said flatly.

A faint red came into his cheeks. “I keep pretty lousy company, don’t I?” he observed, quietly.

“It’s your choice,” she said offhandedly.

Rose came into the room with mugs of hot chocolate.

“I feel like talking poetry,” she said cheerfully. “Blanche, where’s that poem you got today?”

Blanche felt aggravated at being forced to share something that she found moving with this outsider. But what could she say without being rude? So she went to fetch the paper.

Mother opened Bear’s package. “Italian cookies!” she exclaimed. “Bear, how did you know to get our favorite kind?”

“I didn’t know, but I’ve always liked them, too,” Bear admitted, clearly pleased.

“The perfect thing with hot chocolate!” Rose said approvingly, and went to fetch a plate. She arranged them artistically in a spiral on the plate and set them on the coffee table for nibbling. Mother and Rose both ate them with relish, but Blanche didn’t take any until after Bear had helped himself a few times.

Rose read the poem by A. Denniston with interest and passed it to Bear, who perused it with a frown on his face.

“I like the rhyme scheme,” Rose said. “Really good for someone our age. What do you think?”

Bear coughed. “Well, I think it’s a bit overdone myself,” he admitted. “But I can be pretty critical.”

“The images are good,” Mother said, looking it over as she rocked on her rocker.

“Well, what don’t you like about it?” Rose wanted to know, sipping her hot chocolate.

“It’s an okay rhyme scheme, but I get the feeling the guy who wrote it didn’t know much about death, or suffering,” Bear said. “He just seems to answer the question too easily. It’s sort of trite, really.”

Blanche cupped her warm mug in her hands and felt her cheeks flame with annoyance at his criticism, almost as though she had written the poem herself.

“I think it’s a remarkable attempt,” Mother said, taking another cookie. “It makes me think of our apple orchard back home.”

Mother handed the poem back to Blanche as Bear asked casually, “Where’d you find a piece like that?”

“Sister Geraldine read it to us in class,” Blanche said quietly, still hot. “She said it was the best poem she’d ever seen written by one of her students.”

“Did she?” Bear shrugged. “Well, I still like Robert Frost’s poem—the one it’s copying off of—better.” He paused, and quoted, “‘So Eden sunk to grief. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.’”

There was a stillness in the room, and Bear looked so pensive that Blanche almost forgave him for not appreciating A. Denniston’s poem. She admitted to herself that he really did seem to have a genuine love for poetry.

“Sister Geraldine is one of those rare specimens of people,” Rose announced, after some musing. “I don’t think she’s really who she says she is. Well, I suppose that she really is a nun, but she’s more than just an old schoolmarm. I think she was a queen who became a nun. Or better yet, a battle-maiden who forsook her shield and sword for holy vows.” She eyed Bear carefully. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I’m not sure,” said Bear, looking interested.

“Have you ever felt that there was something going on in life that not everyone was aware of?” Rose asked, turning her mug around in her hands. “As though there’s a story going on that everyone is a part of, but not everybody knows about? Maybe ‘story’ isn’t the right word—a sort of drama, a battle between what’s peripheral and what’s
really
important. As though the people you meet aren’t just their plain, prosaic selves, but are actually princes and princesses, gods and goddesses, fairies, gypsies, shepherds, all sorts of fantastic creatures who’ve chosen to hide their real shape for some reason or another. Or have forgotten who they really are. Have you ever thought that?”

“You know, Rose, I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people who have forgotten who they are in the larger scheme of things,” Bear said thoughtfully.

“Can you imagine anything more tragic?” Rose asked. “To be born a princess—native and to the manor born—and then to forget who you are and settle for being something horrible like an—an accountant!” Then a terrible thought struck Rose. Turning to Bear, she asked, “By the way, what do you do for a living? You’re not an accountant, are you?”

Breaking into open laughter and subsequently choking on his cookie, Bear asked, “Why? Do I look like one?”

“No. But I didn’t want to hurt your feelings in case you were an accountant in disguise,” Rose explained.

“Well, I just pump gas part time, so you don’t have to worry about me,” Bear chuckled.

“Oh, good. That makes sense,” Rose nodded. “You seem like that type.”

“I’m grungy enough,” Bear agreed.

“No—I mean the type who knows about hard work ennobling the soul,” Rose objected.

“Rose, I don’t think you’re being fair,” Blanche said. “Would it really be so bad to be an accountant? People have to make a living somehow. I don’t see any contradiction for a princess to be a house-cleaner. Or a hairdresser, or a waitress.”

“Yes, princesses are still princesses even if they’re poor,” Rose agreed. “Can you imagine a princess who works as a counter girl in a fast-food restaurant? Imagine if all the people who come in to place orders were to realize that their meal was served by a princess!”

“I think it would be hard for a real princess to have to do menial work like that,” Blanche reflected. “She might think it was beneath her.”

“Oh, but a
real
princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,” Rose objected. “That would be one of the signs.”

“I think that if a real princess was lost in this modern world, and she could be whatever she wanted, she would be a musician,” Blanche said slowly. “A violinist, or a harpist. That would be the only place where she could find solace for her lost kingdom.”

“So your theory, Rose, as I understand it,” said Bear, “is that everyone in the world just might be something extraordinary, but very few of them know it?”

“Oh, a few know it. Or at least, they have an inkling.” Rose took a generous sip of her hot chocolate and sighed.

“Yes, you can tell Sister Geraldine knows,” Blanche reflected. “Everything
means
something to her. You just look into her eyes and know that she sees things as they really are, not as they seem. She sees the purpose and the implications of everything.”

“Even improper grammar,” said Bear, smiling. “No doubt.”

“Well, of course,” responded Blanche. “You can’t find truth so easily in disorder. Grammar—and biology—and chemistry—and math—they keep things in order. We wouldn’t know much without order. Good grammar
does
matter.”

“It’s as though what we call reality is a huge chess game,” Rose said, still sketching her marvelous vision on the conversation, “but today, most people don’t realize what’s going on. They don’t know anything about chess. So they don’t understand most things that take place. Only a few people know what’s really happening any more. And even if you do know, it’s hard to keep that inner vision.”

“True,” Mother said. “But when you catch a glimpse of the real meaning of life, it’s easier to find others who also have that insight.”