The Rose Variations, page 14
“I was about to write you,” she told Guy, tensely. “Please, I just heard about the grant myself, only the day before yesterday.”
Lila and Josie approached across the meadow as Ursula stepped out-side. Natalie, swiping at tears, peeped out through the open door.
“You’re letting heat out,” called Lila.
“I am not delivering your baby,” Ursula told Natalie. “I’ve got to go back first thing tomorrow. Which is when you go out and get yourself a doctor. Agreed?”
Natalie looked from Ursula to Rose to Guy. “All I want,” she sniffled, “is to sit in a stupid rocking chair.”
“It’s being reglued,” Lila said and pushed past them into the house. “In or out?”
Natalie took a step backward and Lila closed the door.
“The baby seems fine,” Ursula said. “God looks after fools. She’s fortunate.”
Natalie opened the door again and peeped out. Her belly swelled toward them. “I can’t come out in the cold,” she said bleakly. “That would be bad for the baby.”
There was the immediate question of where people would sleep that night.
“Emma,” Rose told Ursula. “A woman I know nearby, a friend. You and I will go to Emma’s.”
“You’re just going to leave me here?” quavered Natalie.
“I thought here was where you wished to be,” said Rose.
Natalie sighed and closed the door, and Guy turned to Ursula. “I don’t see how you can call her fortunate.”
“That’s because you’re a sucker,” Ursula retorted.
“And you’re fucking rude.” He turned on his heel and walked away, and Rose noticed anew the length of his stride and his grace. She was indeed coming alive again.
“He’s going to sleep in the barn,” she told Ursula.
“Well, you better get Natalie out of here before someone wrings her neck for her. That would be bad for the baby.” Ursula barked out a laugh. “So this is paradise.”
“Yah, well,” said Rose, “post-snake.”
“Paradise, either way.” Ursula took a step out into the yard and spun under the prickling stars. “I ought to move out here.”
“To the Goat Pasture?”
“God, no. But to someplace quiet. To wherever you are, Rose.”
“You have to go tomorrow morning? This isn’t a visit, Ursula. It’s a hit-and-run.”
Ursula sighed. In the nearly twelve months since their previous visit, her hair had grown out. Rose was the one with the haircut now. Ursula’s good, thick, healthy hair fell, chestnut-brown, again to her shoulders, but her face still seemed tired. They wrapped their arms around each other and Rose dodged the thought that her only true friends were people she almost never saw.
There was Emma, however. She was making friends with Emma.
They climbed into the rental car, she and Ursula, and rolled down the windows and screamed into the chill all the way to Emma’s. Ursula hollered to the fence posts and the withered fields and the sky that Rose had won a concert grant and was on her way to greatness. Beside Ursula, her worry over Lila dwindled and her anguish over Natalie drained away. Rose didn’t need to confide in Ursula so much as to roar alongside her.
They began to spin the tale of the Pregnant Maiden of the Goat Pasture. Arriving at Emma’s, they repeated it all for her—Rose mimicked the mischief and Ursula the pathos. Though amused by their monkeyshines, Emma grasped the difficulties and proposed to take Rose and Natalie in for a time. Natalie would not have to face the city. Rose could drive over to rehearse with Lila—Emma sensed discomfort there—and then drive home to Emma’s.
“Do it,” said Ursula.
Rose was staggered by the offer. “But you live alone,” she said. “What about your privacy?”
Emma’s answer came bold and merry. “I’m no bleeding heart—don’t worry. It’s a big house and from time to time I enjoy taking in strays.”
“But you haven’t met Natalie.”
“The Pregnant Maiden? Can’t wait.” Emma shot Rose her wide-eyed grin.
The next morning, Ursula went and in the evening, they packed up to move—Rose and Natalie with Guy, who stayed over to help, though there wasn’t much to carry: a box of clothes and books, a file cabinet of manuscript pages, Natalie’s knitting bag, the pine cradle, and Rose’s cello.
Good-byes at the Goat Pasture were muted. Rose would be back within the week to plan her concert with Lila. Only Wilma and Noah bundled up to wave them off, just as they’d come out in greeting upon Rose’s first arrival. She recalled her first view of the house, with its many windows that had seemed to examine her from every angle. Now, in the dark, the shades were drawn, the eyes closed. Then the short caravan, Rose’s station wagon and Guy’s truck, rounded a bend and the house dis-appeared from sight.
Emma shook hands gravely all around and sat Natalie down to discuss the birth. A doctor was mentioned, and a hospital nearby.
“Emma understands,” Natalie whispered to Rose with reproachful good cheer, though Rose wasn’t fooled. Whatever Natalie might say, she’d been taken in hand.
Emma settled Natalie in a little room at the top of the stairs, right next to a bathroom so she wouldn’t have far to go. Guy was given sheets and blankets for the front-room sofa, and Rose was directed to the bedroom beside the kitchen, below the stairs.
Warmed by the proximity of the kitchen’s wood stove, her memories of the hammock in the frigid barn hurtled into the past. Wide awake, clean from a bath, at ease, almost happy, she sat up in bed. Guy was no more than a few feet away. She wanted to go to him. And why not? A burning log collapsed in the stove. Under the sound, Rose crept to the door. The knob, turning back, gave only a slight crackle, but as she slid over the threshold, the floorboards groaned. He was only past the staircase and around the corner, but it wouldn’t do to wake Emma. She paused and sat down where the moon cast shadows of oak branches on the bottom stair.
Creaking footsteps, not her own, approached. She heard a whispered exclamation and slow, muffled progress. It had to be Guy. He’d had the same thought and was coming to her. Giddy, she stifled a laugh and moved up the stairs out of the moonlight where she couldn’t be seen. His shape loomed below her. She watched for him to reach for her doorknob and to find the door open. But, instead, he turned and started up the stairs and, before she knew it, was tripping over her, gasping and grab-bing the railing.
“Guy,” she whispered, shocked, shoving down what was welling up inside her, unready to know what she now knew. “Guy, where are you going?”
Chapter THIRTEEN
He wanted to take them both, Rose and Natalie, to live with him up north. And the baby. The stonework was finished and he’d frame up the house by spring; there’d be plenty of room. “I see,” said Rose, “a harem.”
He hustled her up the stairs. The little room under the eaves held a wicker armchair stacked with towels and a narrow bedstead where Natalie lay waiting, the covers pulled back in welcome, her breasts loose inside the open neck of her nightgown and her hair tumbling free. Guy shut the door behind them. The air smelled of freshly bathed skin, Natalie’s, and of sweat, Guy’s, an odor that tugged familiarly, nauseatingly at Rose.
She’d thought she could reach out and draw him back to her, had she? Too much had happened. Things beyond her imagination had happened. The music that had been a constant inside her since the news of the grant, the surging and trilling, went silent.
“No, of course not a harem,” Guy was saying. He’d never meant to touch Natalie. That was wrong. But she needed holding. Anyone could see she needed to be held. Rose should be the one to hold her. They’d all be together and things would straighten out.
“Ah,” said Rose. “I’m the chaperon.”
“What?” gasped Natalie. “What are you saying? She’s not a part of it.”
“Oh, I’m not—no fear.” Rose’s throat tightened and her stomach heaved.
“Rose, I’m sorry,” Guy said, and murmured to Natalie to lie down.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” said Natalie.
“You need your sleep. We can figure this out later.” He put a tentative hand on her head. “We’ll go now. You sleep.”
“Never tell me what to do,” declared Natalie.
She swung herself up out of bed and into the wicker armchair, dis-placing the stack of towels, which cascaded to the floor. She arched and gasped. Guy reached a hand behind her and began rubbing circles on the small of her back. It seemed to Rose a practiced gesture.
How exactly had they managed to get this going right under her nose? They’d gone for a walk once or twice to build up Natalie’s strength, Guy had said. Strength, was it? But hadn’t he slept with Rose in the barn every night he’d stayed over? And Rose was never away from the farm, except the previous two nights. She’d slept one night at Alan’s and then the previous night she’d spent with Ursula at Emma’s. That was when.
Natalie caught Guy’s free hand and held it. “It’s not wrong—what we are to each other. Don’t we have a right to be happy?” She stared up at Rose. “Don’t I?”
Guy stood caught in the headlights. Well, Rose would not spare him. Had he actually, the past two nights, crawled in with Natalie across the hall from Lila? Natalie would not have consented to sleep in the barn, so he must have. The disgrace of it, the creepiness—the pair of them trooping down in the morning, shamefaced or defiant in front of Lila and the rest.
“I see,” said Rose. “I get it, Guy.” She waited till his eyes met hers. “Natalie’s almost me—right? You can pretend it’s your baby.”
“I’m not you,” said Natalie.
“You shut up,” said Rose, quaking with rage, her self-possession deserting her as Guy massaged and massaged her sister’s back.
Natalie was undaunted. “You did have his baby, but you killed it.”
Guy shot a hand up to Rose in appeal.
“What else did you tell her?” asked Rose. “What I’m like in bed? The sounds I make?”
“What do you care?” Natalie broke in. “You barely pay attention to him. You hardly know he’s alive.”
Then Rose was on her, roaring. The heel of her hand struck Natalie’s chin and knocked her jaw upward, crashing her teeth together. Rose clamped down on her sister’s shoulders, but Guy stepped between them, freeing Natalie, and put a hand over Rose’s mouth and held her back as she roared, wordless, into Natalie’s face, roared out all her freezing nights in the barn and all her lonely girlhood, the butt of Natalie’s jokes, that outrage not dead and buried, but mounting up in a long, unbroken blast. How could someone as sloppy, as trivial as Natalie get her hands on Guy? How could Guy allow it? Roaring at him now, roaring out their lost days and nights, their chance meeting, their wondrous hours—her Guy, her bear in the oats wrested from her, her hope and pleasure swallowed up in the bloated figure of Natalie.
Rose ripped Guy’s hand away from her mouth and quieted her voice. “Okay,” she said. “We’re not waking Emma, but you’re not staying, either. You’ll have to go. Both of you.”
“Right now?” said Guy, ready to obey her.
Natalie drew a sharp breath. There came a whooshing and her night-gown was drenched, thigh to foot. She stood. “Oh, god,” she said and rushed out.
Guy let Rose loose. She swiped at her hands and arms, ridding herself of his touch. A puddle ran from the wicker chair to the floor. Rose bent and stacked up the towels and took one to wipe up the wet. She wouldn’t look at him.
Emma called from the bottom of the stairs, “Hello, up there. Every-thing all right?”
Natalie opened the bathroom door. “Active bladder,” she called.
“Ah, yes,” Emma said and padded off to her bedroom at the back of the house.
Natalie reappeared and lowered herself, groaning, toward the bed, and Rose and Guy cracked heads, bending to try to help her down.
“Leave me alone, both of you,” she said. “I’ve got to change my nightgown.”
As if she had anything to hide, Rose thought. But they went.
“Rose,”Guy said, behind her on the stair. “I’ve only held her and kissed her a little. It’s never gone beyond kissing.”
She laughed mildly. She’d seen Natalie waiting to take him into her bed. He had crossed over a very wide river and sunk the boat on the other side.
“First thing tomorrow, you go,” she told him and quickened her step through the dark, and then he wasn’t behind her any more.
Emma, in plaid flannel pajamas, stood brewing tea in the kitchen.
“The noise woke you up. I’m sorry,” Rose muttered.
Emma handed her a cup of tea. “My hearing’s not the greatest any more. No, you didn’t wake me. I was on a prowl and saw the light upstairs.” But even halfway deaf, Emma could not have failed to hear Rose roaring that way. She still felt the vibration in her chest. Her teacup shook in her hand.
Emma reached and put a finger on her wrist. “What is it?”
Rose flinched. Again, she saw herself step into Natalie’s room, Guy ahead of her, Natalie’s face showing fierce exultation till she saw Rose. Again, she heard the placid little voice: You barely pay attention to him. You hardly know he’s alive. There was truth to that. She’d neglected Guy, pushing him away when it suited her, leaving him to tag along till she was ready for him again.
“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Emma. “You didn’t get her into this. That young man of hers—he’s the one responsible. He’s here tonight; all well and good. But has he put a ring on her finger? Has he put a roof over her head? Does he have any plan at all?”
Rose barked out a laugh. Apparently, it had not occurred to Emma that Guy might be—might have been—Rose’s boyfriend.
Guy and Natalie. It even made some sort of sense. Maybe they belonged together. Preoccupied as Rose had been with her troubles at the farm, with her grant and its promise of a new start in the world, she had failed to follow where love was going. Love was, as always, on the move, pushing things out of its path, strengthening or breaking things. The strength Guy had built up in Natalie, or Natalie in Guy—it hardly mattered who started it—the building into a we had cast Rose out, a lonely I, and just when she’d started to desire again. What her grant could do for her seemed nothing, seemed ashes, compared to what love could do, not to strengthen, but to disgrace her. She was going to have to live this down. She could start by telling Emma. She made herself meet Emma’s eyes.
“Well,” Emma was saying. “You’re just the sister.”
Right. This might not be about her at all, but the story of Guy and Natalie. And Rose was “just the sister,” the one who’d unwittingly brought them together.
“It’s easy to get wrapped up in other people,” said Emma, “to lose sleep they ought to be losing.” She frowned. “Have I said too much?”
“No, Emma, you’re dead on. I’ll let them lose the sleep.” Rose pulled herself to her feet. She’d explain it all to Emma another day. She glanced through the doorway toward the darkened staircase. “Do you have a dog?”
Emma shook her head. Rose shrugged—she’d thought she heard a panting sound somewhere in the house just then.
She went back to her bed and dumped herself down. Let them lose the sleep. She forced her eyes closed and saw Guy standing at Natalie’s bed. His clothes dropped away and his cock sprang upright. She told her-self to quit—not to do this to herself. He’d said there had only been holding and kissing. But, really, why should they stop there? Nothing was stopping them. Certainly not Rose, not the sister who’d brought them together. Natalie on the bed would be harder, but Rose could do it—spread her sister’s legs apart beneath her huge belly or hump Natalie up on all fours so he could enter from behind.
Natalie cried out. An actual cry, distant in the house. And then another—an alert, gasping cry. Rose and Emma converged on the stairs.
On the bed stripped of all but a bottom sheet and towels underneath her and a belt looped either side of the footboard, leather belts of Guy’s, homemade stirrups, Natalie lay, pressing out her feet, her arms stretched overhead, her hands clamped to the bars of the headboard.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” said Emma.
“No,” gasped Natalie. “Not the hospital. Not lights and steel tables and strangers.”
“You can’t do it this way. It’s too risky.”
“Guy, don’t let her,” panted Natalie.
Emma turned to him. He stared, unseeing. Natalie drew a breath and brayed.
“Call the ambulance, for Chrissake,” said Rose.
Emma dropped to her knees and tugged the towel smooth under Natalie, and reached for the stack of towels on the floor—Emma’s towels. “You had this all planned, I see.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “I didn’t know.”
“Well,” said Emma, “why should we argue? I, myself, came into the world this way, right in this house, as a matter of fact, possibly in this room. We’ll need a sheet of plastic to protect the mattress and boiled water, lots of it. And basins. Have you sterilized the towels?” she asked Natalie, who sat up, shaking her head and shivering.
“Lean back,” said Emma. “No rush. How long have you been in labor?”
“Since supper.”
“And your waters broke—”
“An hour ago.” Now Rose understood the source of the flood that had drenched Natalie’s nightgown and puddled the chair. Natalie regarded her. Between them was the unspoken accusation: Rose had shouted at Natalie, had struck her while she was in labor.
Rose returned the stony look. She had not known Natalie was in labor; Natalie hadn’t seen fit to tell her. Emma sent Rose to the kitchen to fill and heat the teapot, the double boiler, and the soup kettle and to turn on the oven for sterilizing towels. Rose turned from Natalie. She’d be the sister; she’d heat water and carry basins. But she hated Natalie all the same.
In the hour it took to boil water and cool it and fill pitchers and gallon jars and set them in a row outside the birthing room, Rose turned herself into a bystander, coming and going, passing Guy on the stairs. He reached to touch her shoulder once and she quickly moved out from under his hand.
