Thorns of Truth (40 page)

“I don’t know.” Rose shook her head. “Selling it would seem wrong somehow.”

“It’s yours now,” Rachel reminded her. “You can do what you want with it.” She drew in a breath that seemed to set her back on course, like a sailboat that had been on the verge of capsizing. With quiet bitterness, she said, “You’ve gotten what you always wanted—Brian. You might as well have the house, too.”

A flicker of guilt caused Rose to drop her gaze. She felt as if she were crossing a dangerous intersection.
Proceed with caution,
every instinct shouted.

“There
was
a time when I’d have gone off with Brian, in a heartbeat—even if it meant his leaving you.” Rose paused, knowing she had to weigh each word carefully. “I haven’t forgotten how much I loved him … but that was a long time ago. We’re not even the same people anymore.”

“Maybe Brian sees it differently.”

Rose looked at her, more bewildered now than anything else. “Rachel, what are you saying?”

“You tell me.”

Rose felt herself growing warm, despite the cool shadows that had slipped out from under the old house’s copper-lined eaves. “You’re asking the wrong person,” she said.

Color rose in Rachel’s cheeks, and her eyes glittered. In a hard, flat voice, she said, “I know. Nothing happened the night he took you home. Brian already told me that. But you and I know the truth has more than one face.”

She was referring to Sylvie, Rose knew. But it seemed as if Rachel’s grief and confusion over her mother’s death had gotten tangled up with her fears about her husband.

“If you know that,” Rose said, “then you must also know that what was true yesterday isn’t necessarily what’s true today.” Gently, but not too gently, she added, “A word of advice: don’t go looking for skeletons in empty closets.”

“What are you saying? That I’m imagining things … that I don’t know what’s going on?” Rachel crossed her arms over her chest.

“Neither. All I’m saying is that you won’t find out how much Brian loves you by asking
me
.”

You’re a fine one to preach about love,
a voice in her head chided. What had she done about her feelings for Eric except try to squash them? She’d seen little enough of him since the funeral … but not, as she’d told Eric, because she was so busy. The truth was, she was avoiding him. She’d told him she couldn’t marry him, yes. But until she could look him in the eye, and say with absolute honesty that it was because she didn’t love him enough, how could she face him? It would never happen—she
couldn’t
stop loving him—and she would only risk stirring up feelings that were better left dormant.

Rachel’s shoulders sagged, and she cupped her hands over her face. “Oh God, I miss Mama so much! She’d have known what to do. She would have made it better.”

“The way she did with us?” Rose challenged.

Rachel shot her a stricken look over her steepled fingers. “I wish it had been different for you growing up … but that would have meant
my
not having had her as a mother.”

“It wasn’t up to either of us,” Rose reminded her. “We weren’t given a choice.”

“I still can’t quite get used to the idea. Not just of Mama’s being gone, but of our being …” Rachel took an unsteady backward step and leaned against the low stone wall, using the back of her arm to wipe her eyes, the way Rose imagined she had as a little girl. “What
are
we? Not sisters … but it
feels
that way, doesn’t it?”

“We’re …” Rose had started to say.
We’re friends.
But that wasn’t quite true, either. Not at the moment. “… survivors of the same storm, you could say,” she finished.

“What now? Where do we go from here?”

“We’ll do what we’ve always done. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

Rachel fell silent, seeming to ponder this—a minute that stretched into several. Finally, glancing at her watch, she said. “It’s late. I should get going.”

“Go ahead,” Rose urged. “I’ll lock up.”

She was in no hurry. The truth was, she needed some time to herself. A moment alone in Sylvie’s house—
her
house now— simply to think.

About where she was headed. And what, if anything, could be salvaged out of the muddle Sylvie had left behind. She felt so lost. And confused, too. Wasn’t this what she’d wanted—for the world to know she was Sylvie’s daughter? Why, then, did it feel so hollow?

Some instinct made Rose grope in her coat pocket—the same coat she’d been wearing the day Sylvie had died. Her fingers closed over something small and metallic—the key Sylvie had given her. In all the confusion, she’d forgotten it. Now it lay gleaming in the curve of her palm. Sylvie had mentioned a desk drawer, she recalled. With something in it she’d wanted Rose to have.

You’ll know when you see it.
Sylvie’s words echoed in her head.

In the small office that had been a butler’s pantry when the house was originally built back in the 1850s, Rose found what she was looking for. A locked drawer in the beautiful old Chippendale desk—where Sylvie had written to her many friends, paid bills, kept her meticulous accounts. She fitted the key into the brass keyhole shaped like a tiny grass harp.

The drawer slid easily, as if it had been opened often.

But instead of finding more of what she’d seen so far—ledgers lined with neat columns, boxed receipts, canceled checks in bundles bound with rubber bands—Rose was confronted by something entirely unexpected: a bundle of letters.

Dozens of letters that had never been sent. Loosely tied together with a faded red ribbon. All of them handwritten, on various types of stationery—some yellowed with age, but all bearing the identical salutation: “
My dearest daughter.
”

Tears filled Rose’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks, unnoticed, unchecked. She scanned the letters, one after another—
decades’
worth. Letters rich with all the feelings and observations Sylvie, for one reason or another, had been unable to share with her.

August 12, 1977.…
Today you became a mother. When I learned you’d given birth
—
a boy!
—
I was overcome. So many feelings. Mostly joy, but some sadness, too. If only I could be a grandmother to little Drew …

And ten years later …

November 22, 1986 …
When I saw you on television, the way you handled yourself with all those reporters and cameras crowding in, I felt such pride! You were so poised … so
regal …
standing there on the courthouse steps. My daughter the lawyer …

Rose sat without moving, her trembling hand the only part of her that seemed able to function. Page after page, some brittle with age, slipped from her lap onto the carpet, like so many autumn leaves. It was almost too much to contemplate—the extent of what Sylvie had kept inside. Even after they’d been reunited, Sylvie had gone on writing these letters, sharing her innermost thoughts with a daughter who might never read them.

It was the most recent letter, written only a few months earlier, that affected Rose the most. Sylvie’s revelation that she was dying, and her appeal to Rose—a sort of last wish—for understanding, if not forgiveness, of Sylvie’s inability to acknowledge her true daughter openly.

Yet she
had
acknowledged Rose at the end. The courageousness of that act, as well as the unalloyed love evident in every line of these letters, touched a far corner of Rose’s heart she’d believed was sealed off to her mother for all time.

In the deep, cold well of her sadness something tremulous was taking hold. A feeling that was too new, and maybe too alien, to have a name, but which brought an odd flicker of comfort nonetheless. Slumped in Sylvie’s chair, her lap full of her mother’s letters. Rose did something she hadn’t done in ages.

She bowed her head, and prayed.

For Sylvie. For Drew and Iris. For Mandy. And Jay—the youngest of them all, who in some ways was having more difficulty coping with his father’s death than her other children.

She prayed for Eric, asking God to be gentle, and not let it cause too much hurt when the time came for her to let him go—free him to look for that woman in his mind’s eye, who Rose could never be.

But mostly, she prayed for herself.

Eric punched the blinking line button, and the caller’s voice came squawking through his earphones. “You want to know what it’s like? It feels like you been kicked in the stomach.” An older woman, who sounded as if she’d been crying. “People nowadays, they got no respect. They treat you like you was dirt.”

“We’ve got Gloria from Hoboken on the line.” Eric leaned into the mike, finding a place on the wood-grain Formica desktop—strewn with tape reels, scripts for ads, loose pages from press kits—to prop his elbows. “Gloria, what was going through your mind when you got fired after thirty years on the job? You must have been pretty upset. What reason did your boss give?”

“He said I couldn’t keep up no more … that the other ladies on my shift were complaining. But that’s a lie, he never had
nothing
on me.” A note of outrage rose in the bitter voice at the other end.

“What do you
think
was his reason?”

“I don’t
think.
I know. It’s ’cause of that health plan BS y’all are talking about. He’d’ve had to pay extra, on account of my bad back. Way he figured it, why should he have to shell out for an old lady who’s retiring in a few years anyway?”

“Gloria, what do you do for a living?”

“You mean what I
used
to do? I worked in a commercial laundry plant. You know, sheets and towels, that kind of thing, for hotels and stuff. I was real good at it. I was manager of my shift.”

“In thirty years, you must have seen your fair share of work-related illnesses, then. Did your job require any heavy lifting?”

“Well, sure … we had them big presses. Some you really had to wrestle with.”

“Gloria, does your bad back have something to do with the heavy lifting you did at work?”

“Yeah, sure. Everyone in that place bitchin’ ’bout something or other.”

“Sounds as if you might have grounds for more than just a discrimination suit here. Have you spoken to a lawyer?”

“Humph.” She sniffed. “What am I s’posed to pay a lawyer with? Food stamps?”

“Stay on the line, Gloria. My producer will take your address and send you the names of attorneys who handle cases like yours on a contingency basis.…”

“Con—
what
?”

“You won’t owe a cent, Gloria. Only a piece of the pie if you win. Good luck with everything …” He punched the hold button; the call would be picked up by his producer, Greg, now giving him the thumbs-up from behind the soundproof Plexiglas of the engineer’s booth. “For those of you who just tuned in, I’m Eric Sandstrom, and some of the folks we’re hearing from today are wondering if their HMO is actually doing them more harm than good.…”

The rest of the show passed in a blur. Eric felt as if he were on automatic pilot, punching line buttons, responding to callers—most of them wanting to gripe on air. He wasn’t without compassion for those who’d been genuinely screwed over. It was just that the meter measuring his sympathy appeared to be temporarily out of service. He was functioning okay, he could even think of intelligent things to say, but it was as if his feelings were baffled in carpet and foam, just like this studio.

When the signal came—Greg holding up a hand with his index and middle fingers extended to show they had only two minutes left—Eric wrapped up the hour with a taped commercial for a group medical practice in New Rochelle, which may or may not have been an intentional bit of irony. At that moment, he wondered if maybe everyone would be better off placing their trust in Native American medicine men. In his opinion, what people needed as much as doctoring was a dose of magic, a sprinkle of Stardust, a pinch of faith. Some things, he thought, were better off left unexplained.

Wasn’t that where he’d gone wrong with Rose? Not only pushing her too hard too soon, but attempting to make sense of the irrational, get her to see something that existed only in his mind’s eye. What the hell had he expected? To Rose, it must have sounded crazy. The wild imaginings of someone whose brain was pickled from booze. And yet …

When was falling in love ever logical? When was there ever a right time? He understood why she was scared. Twice, she’d had the kind of love he was offering snatched away from her. And there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. Either of them could get sick or die. All he could promise was that he’d never willingly leave her. But for Rose, damnit, that wasn’t enough.

These past weeks, they might as well have been in different time zones. He’d hardly seen her since the funeral. And their phone conversations were usually so brief and strained, he found himself half-listening for the hiss of long-distance static, the minute whirrs and clicks of trunk lines spanning the imagined miles between them.

I should have waited. She wasn’t ready.

He’d been too impatient. And now—despite his grand vision and bursting heart—he could do nothing but sit back and wait … and hope.

It was slowly killing him.

To a recovering alcoholic, he reflected grimly, patience wasn’t a virtue—it was a discipline. Something you strapped on every morning when you got out of bed. An alarm calibrated to react to the slightest tremor, arming you against your own impulses. Each day, each new challenge, was a catwalk suspended high off the ground, requiring the balance and nerve of an acrobat.

Eric, in a surge of defiance, thought,
You don’t want what I’m offering? It doesn’t come with a guarantee? Well, fuck you, lady.…

Just as quickly, his anger faded. This cramped studio was getting to him. He’d been holed up for hours. He needed to get out, stretch his legs. Otherwise, he’d go nuts.

Twenty minutes later, having gone over tomorrow’s schedule with Greg—back-to-back interviews with a right-wing Republican senator and a former Hollywood stuntman—Eric was walking briskly up West Broadway. After a few blocks, his head began to clear. He was once again seeing the point of it all, the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Rose. He was seeing Rose.…