The Truth about Mary Rose (3 page)

“It’s a bet,” said my mother, and she opened the door and landed a sharp one on my backside as I went running off down the hall.

Except for the kitchen and bathroom, every room in my grandmother’s house had something about Mary Rose hanging up on the walls. The medal that was awarded to her posthumously by the mayor hung over the fake fireplace in the living room. Surrounding it were newspaper and magazine articles that my grandmother had framed. In both the dining room and my grandmother’s bedroom, the famous picture of Mary Rose at the window hung on the walls. The photographer had given my grandmother a blown-up picture, which was the one in the dining room in a big, fancy, gold frame. You really couldn’t see what she looked like in that picture. Most of it was smoke, and off in the upper right-hand corner, was a tiny figure at a window holding out its arms. Like some of the pictures you see of the Pope blessing the people. But you couldn’t see Mary Rose’s face. All of my grandmother’s pictures of her were burned in the fire. Afterwards, she rounded up a couple of baby pictures from her first husband and some snapshots from other relatives. They were framed and hung up in the other rooms, but you couldn’t tell from them what Mary Rose really looked like.

My mother said she and Mary Rose looked alike, but Mary Rose was smaller, thinner and more delicate. My mother is tall and thin. She has blue eyes and hair that she said used to be blond. She said I do not look at all like Mary Rose since I am dark like my father, and tall and strong and healthy as a horse.

I always thought I knew what Mary Rose looked like. There is a picture of Joan of Arc in one of my father’s art books. She is praying, and there is a light on her face. She is very beautiful. I think Mary Rose must have looked like that. I showed it to my mother once, and she said no, Mary Rose didn’t look anything like Joan of Arc. But it’s been thirty years since Mary Rose died, and I think my mother must have forgotten.

My grandmother is a widow. Her second husband, Ralph Petronski, died two years ago. He was my mother’s and Mary Rose’s stepfather, but Uncle Stanley’s real father. My grandmother broke her hip in May, so when we moved to New York in June, my mother said we should go and stay at my grandmother’s house. She said she would look after my grandmother until she was better, and then our family could find our own place. My father didn’t like the idea, but he got to collect that five-dollar bill from my mother. Right away. The first night.

We were sitting around the dining room table. Uncle Stanley was there, and Pam and her three sisters, Jeanette, Olivia and Margaret. But Aunt Claudia wasn’t there. She said her legs were swollen, and that the doctor said she had to lie down. But everybody knew it was because she hated my grandmother.

“Well, Lou,” my grandmother said, “they certainly are paying you enough to teach art.”

My father was looking down at the slice of frozen chocolate cake on his plate. I didn’t think it was so terrible, but I guess he was used to his own baking.

“It’s not enough,” my mother said. She was handing around the cake. “Whatever they’re paying him, they’re getting more than their money’s worth.”

“It’s like I always said,” my grandmother went on. “There’s no country like America. It doesn’t make a bit of difference who you are or where you came from, if you aren’t lazy and just make an effort, you can always get ahead.”

My father took a bite of the cake, and smiled at my mother. I guess he was thinking about that five-dollar bill.

“Mama,” said Uncle Stanley, “this cake is delicious. I think I’ll have another piece.”

“Anybody can get a job in this country,” said my grandmother. “It has nothing to do with what color a person is, or where he comes from. A man with a family has no excuse ...”

“Mama,” said my mother, “please don’t start in again after all these years. Let’s just have some cake now and talk about other things.”

“But what did I say?” said my grandmother.

“She always says that,” Pam whispered to me. "Every time she and my mother get together, sooner or later, my mother gets mad, and Grandma says, 'What did I say?' "

My mother sat down and pulled Jeanette over to her. “When am I going to hear you play the violin?” she asked, smoothing Jeanette’s hair. “Your dad says you’re very, very talented.”

Jeanette is eight, and kind of a prodigy. She plays her violin all the time. Whenever I spend a weekend at Pam’s house, Jeanette is always practicing.

“I brought my violin with me,” Jeanette said.

“Well, go and get it,” said my mother.

“Can we go upstairs?” Pam asked.

We went upstairs to the little bedroom where I’m sleeping. It used to be my mother’s room. After the fire, her mother and stepfather bought this house, and she lived here until she went away to dentistry school in Lincoln. It still had the same furniture that was there when my mother used it—a bed with a pink flowered bedspread, a chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and a mirror hanging over the chest. Pam and I looked in the mirror together.

“We don’t look alike,” she said. “You’re prettier.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said, although I really am prettier. “And I do think we have the same kind of mouth.”

“I’m supposed to look like my mother, except I’m tall like my father.”

“And I’m supposed to look like my father, except I’m tall like my mother.”

We both laughed, and that’s when we started liking each other. Downstairs, Jeanette was playing her violin. Pam closed the door.

“My mother is so happy your family is here,” I told her. “She always used to talk about your father and how cute he was. Whenever one of my brothers does something she likes, she always says, ‘That’s just like your Uncle Stanley.' I guess I always thought of him as kind of little. I had no idea he was such a tall man."

“He’s six-foot-four,” said Pam. “I think he and your mother look alike even though they’re only half sister and brother.”

“Hey, does that make us quarter cousins?” I asked, and Pam cracked up over it. She thinks I’m very funny.

After Jeanette stopped playing the violin, we went downstairs again.

My grandmother was saying, “Well, I don’t know why you have to look for another place. You could live here rent free.”

“Mama,” said my mother, “money is no problem. Luis is making plenty of money, and I’ll be starting a practice ...”

“Yes, Lou is making plenty of money now, but we don’t know how long that will last. And I’m sure if you don’t have to work, you won’t.”

“I love my work,” said my mother. “I work because I want to, not because I have to.”

“...so you could live here rent free, and I could fix up an efficiency apartment for myself in the garage, the way the De Lucas did—down the street—in the pink house.”

“Mama,” said Uncle Stanley, “would you like me to come and do a little weeding in your garden this weekend?”

“... plenty of room. You couldn’t ask for a nicer place. I could have the upstairs bedrooms painted, and maybe put up new Venetian blinds in the living room. And you wouldn’t have to worry about the kids. This is a good neighborhood.”

“Oh!” said my mother. “And what do you mean by that?”

“I could come the following weekend too,” said my Uncle Stanley.

“... very safe. A nice class of people. But they’re all broad-minded. You wouldn’t have any trouble with them, Lou, I can promise you that. And, of course, the kids—well, the boys are as blond as you and Stanley used to be, and Mary Rose really isn’t dark the way Puerto Ricans are.”

“Mama! Stop it!”

“What did I say?” said my grandmother.

My grandmother was always saying things that made my mom mad. My mom would explain to Ray, Manny and me that we shouldn’t get excited at some of the things Grandma said, and we should always try to see things in perspective. She said Grandma’s generation had many prejudices that our generation was free of, and that the best thing was to try not to argue with her.

But my mom argued. She and my grandmother argued over lots of things. They even argued over Mary Rose.

“Not for a minute,” my grandmother was saying. They were in the little room behind the kitchen where my grandmother was sleeping since she broke her hip. It was still too hard for her to get up the stairs to the bedroom. “Not for a minute is she ever out of my mind.”

“Poor Mary Rose,” said my mother. “I wonder what she would have been like as an adult.”

My grandmother made an impatient sound. “She was marked from the start. I knew from the beginning she was too good to live.”

“Oh, Mama,” said my mother, “how can you say that?”

“Now, Veronica, you weren’t her mother so you don’t know. But I tell you, when I first saw her after she was born, and I looked at that beautiful, little face, I knew.”

“Mama, how about a cup of tea?”

“I really can’t complain about you and Stanley. And I don’t ever want you to feel that I’m putting you down. I’m proud of the two of you. There aren’t too many girls who go on to be dentists ... and who put up with everything without complaining.”

“Now, Mama, don’t start ...”

“And my Stanley is no slouch either. He makes a good living, thank God, and he’s a good father, and a good husband—too good a husband if you ask me. But like I was saying, you were both very good children. We didn’t have any money, and you didn’t have what kids have today, but I did what I could ...”

“Mama, you were a very good, devoted mother, and Ralph was like our own father. There’s nothing you have to regret.”

“... busy in the store all the time. If I had only been home that night, who knows ...”

“Mama, there’s no point in ever thinking that way.”

“I know, I know,” sobbed my grandmother. She was crying now, and so was my mother, and so was I. “But she was such an angel, such a perfect child.”

“Poor Mary Rose,” sobbed my mother.

“I never had to raise my voice to her. Not once in my life. Such a good, happy, sweet child. Always helpful and considerate.”

“Mama,” said my mother, “she was wonderful, and we all loved her very much, but you really can’t say she was perfect or that you never had to raise your voice ...”

“I never raised my voice,” insisted my grandmother. “Never!”

“Now, Mama,” said my mother, “you certainly did, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t make her into something she wasn’t. She was a real child with real virtues and real faults, and let’s remember her the way she was.”

“She had no faults,” said my grandmother. “Look at the way she died—saving other people’s lives—a child, not even twelve.”

“Yes,” said my mother, “she had some fine things in her, but I still think we should remember her as she really was.”

“I do,” said my grandmother. “And she was perfect.”

“She was not perfect,” said my mother, “and if anything, you yelled at her more than you yelled at Stanley and me.”

“I never did,” said my grandmother. “Never!”

“Poor little thing,” my mother said.  “She was so delicate and dreamy and kind of sloppy. She wasn’t like Stanley and me. She didn’t play outside like other kids. Don’t you remember? She used to stay in our bedroom and daydream all the time. She collected all sorts of junk—magazine clippings, newspapers, lipstick samples—and she made up her own world. She kept all that stuff in boxes, and you’d yell because the room was such a mess.”

“I never yelled at her,” shouted my grandmother. “And she had no faults. You’re just jealous, that’s what it is. After all these years, you’re still jealous.”

“That’s not true, Mama. She had plenty of faults, because she was a real person like the rest of us. She used to eavesdrop. Don’t you remember? It made you furious when you caught her. Just like it makes me furious,” my mother said, opening the door and dragging me into the room, “when my Mary Rose does the same thing.”

“She never eavesdropped,” said my grandmother.

But my mother was too busy telling me off to hear. “All you have to do, Mary Rose,” said my mother, “is just knock at the door and say you want to come in and join us. I won’t have you listening outside! It’s sneaky and dishonest.”

She shook my arm, not really hard, but I burst out crying, and said, “You never tell me anything important.”

“Now why are you going after
her?”
said my grandmother. “She’s only eleven. What’s the matter with you, Veronica? Come here, Mary Rose. Come here, darling.”

I knelt down next to her chair and laid my head on her chest. She’s got such a big, comfortable, warm chest—not hard and bony like my mother’s. She knelt over me, and kissed my head and stroked my back, and said what a wonderful girl I was.

After a while she said to my mother, “I’m so happy you named her Mary Rose. It was worth everything to me. You’d think Stanley with his four girls could have named one of them Mary Rose, but that wife of his— that woman would die rather than give me a bit of pleasure. But at least you did the right thing. You didn’t let anything or anybody stop you. It sort of made up for all the years I suffered over you—such a smart, pretty girl you were—and a doctor too. You could have married anybody ...”

“Mama!”

“What did I say?” said my grandmother.

My grandmother had certain TV programs that she never missed. Like “The Newlyweds” or “The Dating Game.” If my mother was around, she would go out of the room while my grandmother was watching, or if she was in the room, straightening up, maybe, she wouldn’t exactly say anything, but you would get the message anyway that she thought those TV programs were pretty stupid.

It was fun when my mother was out. My grandmother would watch all her programs, and she and I could laugh and get excited without feeling there was somebody around who thought we were stupid for enjoying ourselves so much.

My grandmother liked “The Dating Game” especially. She and I always tried to guess who was going to date who. Sometimes she really disagreed with how it all worked out.

“That girl ought to have her head examined,” she might say, or, “I would never go out with a man like
that.”