The Truth about Mary Rose (7 page)

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find,” my grandmother said. “It’s no treasure. Just some old magazine clippings.”

My mother said she hoped I found Mary Rose’s box. She said Mary Rose actually had about ten or fifteen boxes, filled with different kinds of things she collected.

“One of them had all sorts of ideas for interior decorating,” my mother told me. “You know she and I shared a bedroom. It was a little, dark room, and it looked out on the backyard with all the washlines. We had some old furniture, and poor Mary Rose was always trying to turn that room into something out of her box. One Christmas, she saved her money and bought a blue satin bedspread, and got Mama—your grandmother—to buy her matching curtains. She was so excited when she unwrapped them, and she laughed and chattered about how beautiful the room was going to be ...” My mother shook her head.

“Well, what happened, Mom?”

“We made the bed with the new bedspread, and hung up the new curtains. Mary Rose really straightened up the room that morning ... She swept and dusted and put fresh doilies on all the furniture to hide the scratches. Then we all had to go out of the room, and close the door, and come back in to see what it looked like when you came in from outside.”

“Go on, Mom, what
did
it look like?”

“It looked terrible!” said my mother, “worse than before. The furniture was so old and scratched, and the spread and the curtains were so new and brilliant ... So then she convinced Grandma to let her paint the furniture a baby-blue color ...” My mother began laughing. “What a mess!”

“But, Mom, what did it look like?”

“It must have been the wrong kind of paint. It chipped, and after a while, the spread got creased, and Stanley spilled a cup of Ovaltine on it.”

“You never told me that story before, Mom. How come?”

“I must have forgotten. But coming back to New York, and having you dig around for that box brings it all back, just like it was yesterday.”

“What was in her other boxes?”

“I can’t remember all of them. There was the one on interior decorating ... one on fashion ... one on make-up ... one on etiquette. Let me think ... there was one on hotels, you know, with bridal suites and beautiful rooms where rich and famous people stayed. I think she had one on countries she wanted to visit. Was there one on perfumes? I think ... yes ... there was one on hair styles ... poor, little thing.”

That seemed to be the way my mother thought of Mary Rose, as a poor, little thing. Back in Lincoln, when she used to say “poor, little thing,” I thought she meant because Mary Rose died the way she did. But now she meant it in a different way.

I didn’t like that story about the bedspread. I didn’t like it either when my mother referred to Mary Rose as “poor, little thing.”

I guess Mary Rose was the only one in the family who really had taste and loved beautiful things, and maybe there were some people in that family who just couldn’t understand. I mean, I love my mother very much, and I think she’s great and all that, but I was pretty sure that Mary Rose must have had plenty to put up with from her and Stanley too. Spilling his Ovaltine over her beautiful, new spread!

My room is not beautiful. I mean, back in Lincoln it wasn’t beautiful. And my bedspread is washable because, I admit, I can get it pretty messy. But then I
know
I’m not as wonderful as Mary Rose. But I keep on trying.

She would have made that room beautiful, I know, even though my mother shakes her head, and says, “poor, little thing.” If she had lived, she would have turned that dirty, dark, old room into something shining and beautiful—like herself. I know!

Wednesday morning, I was down in the basement sweeping up a pile of those little colored pebbles you put on the bottom of fish tanks. I accidentally dropped the bag they were in as I was moving three tennis rackets to get to a box covered with a plastic tablecloth. I heard my mother beep the car horn three times, which meant she needed help.

The car was filled with bags from the supermarket.

“Give me a hand, Mary Rose,” she said. “Where’s Manny and Ray?”

“Gone. Ray’s off playing ball, and Manny is riding the Staten Island Ferry with guess who?”

“She’s a nice girl,” my mother said.

I picked up a package and headed for the kitchen.

“What a day!” my mother complained, after we brought all the groceries upstairs. “It’s just too hot. Why don’t we all go to the beach?”

There were drops of sweat on her upper lip, and her hair looked damp and droopy.

“Do we have to go?”

“No,” said my mother. “You don’t have to go unless you want to. But I think I’ll take Grandma. It’s just too hot to hang around here.”

“Do you need my help? I mean, if you take Grandma, you’ll have the wheel chair, and I guess I ought to help.”

“No,” my mother said. “This time I think we’ll try leaving the wheel chair home. Grandma can manage with a cane, and she can always lean on my shoulder if she has to. I’ll park up close to where the benches are. It will be good for Grandma to walk. The doctor says she should be doing more walking.”

And Daddy’s running out of patience, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” said my mother. “We’ll buy lunch out, and you can swim the whole afternoon.”

“Uh, uh,” I said.

“You look tired,” my mother said. She felt my head with her hand. “I hope you’re not lifting any of those big boxes downstairs.”

“No, Mom,” I said.

Of course, what she didn’t know was that I was tired from waking up every night about 1
A
.
M
. My father was out so much of the time, and didn’t get home until late. I never planned on waking up at 1
,
but it seemed to work out that way. I’d wake up at 1,
head for the bathroom, hear them talking, and stay to listen.

That’s why I was tired. That’s why I also knew that my father’s patience was running out. He wanted our own place. He wanted it very much. He had started to look, and he told my mother last night that she should hire someone if my grandmother really needed live-in help. My father said he wanted to be settled before school started in September. He was going to look for a place in Manhattan. At the same time, he was also looking for a studio. He still hadn’t found a studio, and he wasn’t happy about that either.

“Well, all right, Mary Rose, and if Daddy should call, tell him not to take anything until he speaks to me. I have something to tell him.”

“Mom, why can’t we stay here with  Grandma?”

“We are, Mary Rose. For a while. Until she’s better.”

“But why can’t we stay here after she’s better?”

“I don’t think it would work out. It wouldn’t be good for anybody.”

“It would be good for Grandma.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said my mother, “but I’m positive it wouldn’t work out all around.”

“It’s nice up here in the Bronx,” I said. “Ray likes it, and Manny does too. I don’t want to live in Manhattan.”

“Who said anything about living in Manhattan?” asked my mother. “Mary Rose, where did you hear
that?”

“It’s fun being near Grandma. I like it here.”

My mother said thoughtfully, “There’s a house for rent about ten blocks away from here. A man who’s a ceramist lives there, but he and his family are going to Japan for a year, and we could have the house in a week or two if we want it. I saw it this morning. It’s a nice house, with a wonderful studio. Not much of a garden, and the kitchen’s small, but a really large, light studio.”

“I’ll tell Daddy if he calls.”

“Well, maybe you could give him the address if he calls. And he could go, have a look. Just say it’s up to him—whatever he thinks best. If he likes it, he could give them a deposit because I’ve seen it, and I’d be satisfied.”

“OK.”

“And, Mary Rose ...”

“Yes?”

“Just tell him I said it’s entirely up to him. Whatever he decides will be fine with me.”

My grandmother didn’t want to go to the beach without me. She said she didn’t like the idea of leaving an eleven-year-old girl alone in a house. Strange men were always coming round ringing doorbells, and looking for an opportunity to steal all your valuables, and worse. She heard of an incident, just a couple of blocks away, where this old, respectable-looking woman came to a lady’s door and said she was collecting money for crippled children, and the lady let her in the house, and she must have sized the place up because a couple of days later some robbers broke in, and stole her TV set, and all the watches and money in the house.

I promised Grandma I would lock all the doors, and only open them for Manny or Ray. When they were gone, I went back down to the basement, swept up the fish pebbles, moved the tennis rackets, and removed the plastic cover from the box it was covering. There were some window screens in the box. Nothing else.

The phone rang. I ran upstairs to answer it. My father said, “Hi, Mary Rose. Is Mom there?”

“Nope. She took Grandma to the beach.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “It’s a real scorcher today. It must be about a hundred degrees down here.”

“It’s not bad up here in the Bronx,” I said.

“Well, all right, Mary Rose, tell Mom I’ll be home for dinner tonight. It’s just too hot to go anywhere.”

“Oh, Dad, Mom said to tell you she saw a great house for rent. It’s got a really neat studio, and I can tell she just flipped over it.”

“Where is it?”

“About ten blocks from here. She said to give you the address, and she wants you to look at it. She says it’s up to you, but, Daddy, I can tell she thinks it’s fantastic.”

“Ten blocks away!” my father said. “I really wanted it closer to work.”

“I love it up here, Daddy,” I told him, “and Ray and Manny have lots of friends. It would be great for them. And Mom wouldn’t have to worry about us up here.”

“Mary Rose,” said my father, “you’re beginning to sound like your grandmother.”

“Oh, Daddy, please!”

“Well, I’ll go and look at it, but ...”

“Mom says it’s up to you, but if you like it you can leave a deposit, because she says it’s super fantastic.”

“She said
that!”

“No, but I know she thinks so.” I gave my father the address, and hung up.

It was so hot! It was hard just holding your head up. My grandmother didn’t have air conditioning. She said it wasn’t healthy. But she had one of those big floor fans in the living room. I turned it on, and sat up close to it. I could feel the cool blast of air drying off the wet spots on my face, and under my hair. I thought what now? Where do I go. I’ve looked everywhere in the attic, and everywhere in the basement, and I can’t find it. I let the wind blow in my face, and I couldn’t think of what to do next.

I closed my eyes, and I said to myself, I will ‘count to three, and when I say three, it’s going to come to me where Mary Rose’s box is. So I closed my eyes, and counted
...
1
...
2...3
...
I
opened my eyes but the cold air from the fan was coming at me too fast, and my eyes hurt. I turned off the fan, closed my eyes, and counted again ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ...

This time, I kept my eyes closed, and listened. That heavy stillness felt like it was wrapping itself around my head, but I didn’t open my eyes. Where is it? Where is Mary Rose’s box?

There was a noise in the room, out of the heat and the quiet air. I was so frightened that I opened my eyes, but there wasn’t anything. I didn’t want to close my eyes again. I didn’t know what had made that noise, or maybe I did know or thought I knew, but I was afraid to close my eyes.

I put the fan on again, and the noise of it whirring made me feel better. I walked upstairs to the attic. All of the boxes of photographs and letters and papers had been put into piles by my mother. One of them ‘said, “Check with Stanley.” Another one said, “Veronica,” and another one said, “Mama—throw these out?” I looked up in the storage closet but there weren’t any boxes there. The three large boxes containing the curtains stood in front of the closet waiting for my father to put them back on the shelf.

My grandmother had said, “Behind the curtains,” and I’d already looked.

Behind the curtains.

You just couldn’t expect old ladies to remember everything.

Behind the curtains.

I opened the first box, and yanked out some heavy wine-colored drapes with a faded pink lining. There were several of them in the box, and nothing else. The second one had those frilly sheer curtains that old ladies hang up in their kitchens. There was a pair of white ones with blue-checked borders, and a pair of yellow ones with daisies, some bathroom curtains, green and shiny and wet smelling, and down at the very bottom—was Mary Rose’s box.

Behind the curtains.

The first thing I did, before I opened it, because I knew it was her box, the first thing I did, was to kiss it.

But I didn’t open it right away. After I kissed it, I rubbed my hands over it. It felt like any other shoe box, but older. I’m holding a box that’s thirty years old in my hands, I thought. I’m holding Mary Rose’s box.

The box had
TRED
-
RITES
written in the middle. It was a yellow box, but the color was an old yellow, and there were blue shoes walking around the border of the box top. On the side of the box, it said:

LDS.   RD.   SNKR.

5

It must have been a box that once had held a pair of shoes worn by Mary Rose. Five must have been her shoe size. She was my age when she died, a little older, because she was nearly twelve and I am just eleven and a half. But she wore a size five. I wear a six and a half. Her foot, I thought, must have been small and slim and beautifully shaped.

There was a lot of string around the box to keep the top on, and the contents from spilling out. I took off the string, and lifted the cover.

It was Mary Rose’s box. I knew it was Mary Rose’s box before I opened it. And it was her treasure box. There were gold rings, watches, ruby necklaces, diamonds—lots and lots of diamonds, pearl chokers, sapphire bracelets, solid gold charms and rings. I didn’t take any of them out of the box then but I put my hands in, and felt how cool and smooth they were. One of the gold rings I slipped on my finger, and I thought, I’m wearing a ring that Mary Rose wore. I moved the ring off my finger, covered up the box, and slipped the string back over it.