The Rose Variations, page 33
“Hello,” said Graham. “Hello,” his actual, living voice said to her before the line went dead, the phone service knocked out by the storm. She switched on the radio to road and airport closings, dangerous wind chills and predictions of record snowfall. Out the window, a fog gone solid beat against the porch, came straight on, then battered from the sides, and beneath the racket outdoors, an interior creaking could be heard, an echoing in the empty rooms above, a wandering in rooms occupied, the entire building settling in for the siege.
It was afternoon, but it could have been the middle of the night. Avoiding a too-early bedtime, she scrubbed and pared the rutabaga and tossed it into the oven. An hour later, though it could have been a week or a year in her pocket of warmth within the roaring storm, she wiped her mouth and leaned down from her plate with a lump of goat cheese for Jewels, who took it and worked it unhurriedly in her jaws.
Curled up in bed again, she and her cat slept.
Morning, calm and silent, showed, under a brilliant sun, sidewalks indiscernible from lawns, fences merged with garbage cans, and the unplowed street, little more than an indentation in a snowfield. Phones still dead and college closed, she might take her news across campus to Atkinson at home, but how far could she get in snow up to her thighs? Bedazzled by the glare pouring in from the windows, she was snowbound.
Soon enough, snow shovels began to flash silver, blue, and orange up and down the street. Snow blowers whined. In the past, Alan had hired neighborhood boys to shovel, but, given the nearly four feet of snow now, there would be no boys to spare. Someone would have to clear the snow from the condo sidewalks and the driveways behind the garages.
Rose would do it. She was a Minnesotan, was she not—and intended ever more to be? She pulled on two pairs of jeans and a woolen stocking cap and, in the basement, found mukluks, an old feather-filled vest, leather mittens, and assorted brooms, shovels, and ice choppers. She’d make quick work of shoveling and then march over to the Atkinsons’ duplex and give the news of her symphony premiere.
Other tenants called out to offer help, but she turned them down cheerily. She’d do it herself. She wanted to. To prove what? She had nothing to prove any more.
The snow was heavier than it looked. The wind had compacted it into dunes, undulating over where the sidewalk had been. She dug in. Growing hot quickly, she shed hat, then jacket and then prickly vest, and worked in her shirtsleeves.
Snow slid from roofs and branches under the steady sun, dumping small avalanches onto pathways she’d cleared. It was noon before the side-walks were done. At lunch, she drank what seemed a gallon of water and, girding herself with the memory of long days of labor at the farm, went out again only to find that the city plow had been down the alley, leaving a ridge in front of the driveways to the garages.
Nothing to do but keep shoveling, to pile this new, even heavier stuff onto banks already heaped high, banks she herself had heaped high as her head, and now higher. To think she could move so much snow, so much anything, had at first amused her, but then she grew tired. In the rhythmic pitch of her shovel, thoughts came flooding, foolish thoughts and girlish wishes. She was not a woman pitching snow, but a shy girl pounding a piano all alone. And then not alone. She glanced up from her shovel and no one was there. Yet she felt observed and mocked, as though her sister sat on a snow bank and mocked her—Natalie, who was so wrong about practically everything, was right at least about this one thing: that in all Rose’s striving was something ridiculous. Or could it be Graham watching blankly as she wore herself out, filling her shovel and slinging it?
She worked on, finishing the job she’d started. At sunset, the temperature dropped. She plunged her shovel into the bank by the back door but did not go inside. Instead, she stepped again into the alley and turned not toward campus and the Atkinsons’ duplex, but another way. Pulling the woolen cap over her snarled, sweaty hair, she went with a purpose but without a plan, slowed only by the few derelict sidewalks where the snow had not been shoveled but tramped to a furrow.
Around her, porch lights were coming on, jack-o’-lanterns being set on snow banks. Halloween was back—bright orange rind and candle fire. Tiny electrified strings of plastic pumpkins and bats and skulls multiplied the sparkles in the air.
Turning into Graham’s alley, she saw no lights at all. She’d heard his voice on the phone line just the night before—his actual, living voice. Could he have filled his backpack and gone off again in the midst of a blizzard? Graham’s rooms at the top of the carriage house seemed entirely dark, but, above the snow bank, from a window in the garage where he stored his broken pianos, a faint glow came and a grinding hum could be heard. Boosting herself up onto the bank there and scraping snow from the window, she looked down into a bright, empty room.
All traces of pianos and piano parts were gone. Narrow, interlocking hardwood boards lay over what had been a cement floor. Graham stood at the far end, guiding a floor sander. A studio. Her studio. She pulled off her mittens and tapped the glass.
He looked up, frowned, and shut off the sander. He seemed not to recognize her and she quailed. Still, what could he see up in the window but a dark head, backlit by sunset?
“It’s me, Rose,” she said, when he appeared at the gate.
“Hi,” he said faintly. “Want to come in?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got something to say.” She didn’t dare accept his hospitality—not yet. “Maybe the snow will improve my acoustics,” she added. Though the joke was feeble or just peculiar, the thought of the night they’d first met gave her courage: the night before her Guild con-cert, she the only one in the seats, he on stage tuning her piano and possessing the courtesy and the boldness to speak to her for the first time. She felt again the confusing pleasure of his alert eyes upon her. This time, she would speak first.
She cleared her throat. There came a rustle at the entrance to the alley. Beneath the streetlight, a large overcoat herded several smaller overcoats, hung with sacks for candy. A skeleton followed, jittering Day-Glo bones.
“Hold on a minute,” Graham said and went back inside. She felt vaguely alarmed to see him go. But he always had, in their short past, come back when he said he would.
Here he came with his thermos and a bowl of candy—Heath Bars— and a jack-o’-lantern with a small, amazed face. He boosted himself up beside her, sculpted a ledge for his pumpkin, and lit the candle inside it. She might have taken from all the nervous busyness that he was excited to see her. But, distracted by his nearness and, lacking permission to touch him, distracted by the sight of his hands pulling on gloves, pulling up over his head the hood of his sweatshirt, leaving all but his face hidden, she shivered, stunned, loving him as strongly as when they’d been naked, chest to chest.
The evening air was mild enough, though cold radiated from the snow bank and dampness seeped upward through her pairs of jeans. He filled the thermos cup for her. Lifting the cup, she inhaled her own sweat smell. Whatever she had to say sat in her throat, a painful welling. She glanced down into the empty garage bay.
“You did it. You built the studio.”
“Yup. Almost done.”
“It’s great. It’s going to be lovely,” she said. “I’m so stupid.”
“You don’t need to think I built it for you. That would be pretty pathetic.”
A chirping at the streetlight—a tiny queen hopped impatiently while her green-caped sister adjusted a warty mask.
“Hey, trick or treat,” called Graham and scrambled down the bank with his bowl. Queen and witch froze, and then reached for the candy, doing him a favor.
“It’s too dark back here,” he said, resuming his seat on the snow bank. “Nobody wants to come down my alley.”
“I do,” she said. I do—the wedding words, but out of place, out of kilter and too dramatic. Who did she think she was—a bride? A queen commanding a suitor?
“I miss you,” she said. This was so, and in no way exaggerated. Even sitting beside him on a snow bank was a relief, a break in the relentless missing of him.
He nodded, not looking at her.
“We didn’t even break up properly,” she added. “Nothing was said.”
He sighed, puffing out his breath.
“So. First, I want to say I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I don’t want you to be sorry. Just go ahead and do whatever you have to do.” He laughed painfully. “Okay. That was bullshit. I admit that’s bullshit. It’s not what I want. But it’s what I wish I wanted.”
“I have news,” she said quickly, not daring to know what he wanted. Quickly she told of the symphony premiere and her near-certainty that tenure would be granted.
“Well,” he said. “Good for you.”
But that wasn’t it—tenure wasn’t it. Tenure was beside the point. “I expect to be myself again,” she ventured and opened her hand to him.
He took it, squeezed it, and let it go. Half a dozen teenagers trooped beneath the streetlight in thrift-shop coats and ruined hats, on their way to some party. He shook his bowl of Heath Bars, but the teenagers weren’t interested in candy. He unwrapped a bar and broke off half, put it in her cup, and poured in more coffee. A straggling girl, hatless, appeared in the streetlight, hurrying to catch up.
“What I mean is,” she said, “if I made up one sort of self, it seems to me I can make up another.” It was the sort of thing a teenager would say, and she did have that awkwardness, though less of the stiff dignity, thank god, and perhaps no dignity at all, leaning back against the hardening snow, bracing herself for his answer. Her jeans stuck to the bank beneath her. The night was growing dark. The cold was beginning to insist.
“Rose,” he said, “why should you have to be anything else than what you are?”
“Because I was nothing to start with,” she said, inviting argument of the wrong kind—he’d feel obliged to tell her that she was not nothing but someone very special, a gifted composer, and blah blah blah. It wasn’t what she was that was in dispute, but how she was. Had been.
She thought she was already different, speaking up like this. Wasn’t she already the new Rose?
Chapter THIRTY
So, what do you say?” she asked Graham.
He owed her an answer and he hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t she been direct?
“I want another chance with you,” she said, and noticed that her voice had grown mournful.
The straggler reappeared under the streetlight and looked about her.
Rose pulled herself together. “That way,” she called briskly and pointed. “Your friends went that way.” But the girl seemed bewildered and turned instead toward them, stepping high over the rubble. Bare-legged, wearing what seemed to be bedroom slippers, she slid and fell. They staggered down the bank to her.
Rose looked into the girl’s face—an aging, freckled girl. Doris Atkinson. “Doris, what are you doing out here? Where are you going?”
“Someplace,” Doris replied blandly.
“Graham, this is Doris. She’s married to my department Chair. Remember, I told you about Doris?” Alzheimer’s, Rose mouthed, and took Doris by the shoulders.
Rose hadn’t seen Doris up close in years. She looked very much the same, pert and trim. She wore a wool suit, well fitted to her small shape, and though her legs were bare, she looked well tended: the milky, freckled skin moist; the eyes bright.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Rose asked her.
“Of course,” said Doris. “That’s the price for going someplace.” Her fingers agitated, trying to pry Rose’s hands from her shoulders.
Rose gave a short laugh. “I know what you mean.”
She turned to Graham. “I’ll take Doris home,” she said. “I’ve got to see the Chair anyway.” She was going to have to walk away from Graham, back into her grief at missing him.
Doris let her feet slide out from under her and Rose lost her balance.
“I’d better come,” said Graham.
“I can manage,” Rose told him and, squatting, brushed snow from Doris’s legs.
“You need help,” said Graham.
“Please get up,” Rose told Doris. Suddenly furious, she swung around to Graham. If they were done, he should say so. “Just tell me,” she blurted. “Just say there’s no chance, if that’s your answer.”
He glared back at her. She wrestled Doris to her feet and took one arm. Graham took the other, and the three set off.
“I can’t just come when you beckon and go when you change your mind,” he said.
“Not fair,” said Rose. “I have never—not once—changed my mind about you.”
“Slow down,” said Doris. They slowed, Rose unwillingly. The streets were far from empty. A tall shape raised bat wings. A small shape dropped a wand.
“You disappeared for weeks,” he said. “Or you were only technically present.”
“True. But you’ve forbidden me to say I’m sorry.” She turned them down an alley, the shortest way to the duplex, and then they were climbing the back stairs, Rose tugging Doris up each step while Graham blocked her exit from below.
Chairman Atkinson swung the door open. “Good god, Doris,” he cried. “Here she is. Rose found her. Rose MacGregor,” he called over his shoulder. “Come in, one and all. The police are out looking. Call off the police. Pardon our disarray.”
The Atkinsons’ apartment, though changed in ways that Rose did not at first identify, was in no way disarrayed. Lamps glowed; cleanliness and order prevailed; and the smell of fresh baking hung in the air. Now that Doris was home, she seemed pleased to be there and seated herself in a kitchen chair and folded her hands expectantly.
Then the force behind the cleanliness and order walked in—Frances Gilpin. This was natural enough:Frances was the one who lent an extra hand; the Chair would call Frances in an emergency. Despite her enormous belly, Frances knelt easily before Doris and tugged off the snow-caked slippers.
“Rose, thank you,” she said and bid Graham hello.
Rose stood with her back to Graham, waiting for him to excuse him-self and go.
At the sink, Frances filled a basin with warm water. The Chair muttered into the phone. The doorbell chimed, and Max stepped into the room and picked up a basket of candy.
“Don’t let Mrs. Atkinson loose,” he advised and went off to answer the door.
Of her own dishevelment—jeans soaked, hair matted—of her need of a bath, Rose was dimly aware. She heard the hollow clunk of an empty boot and turned to see Graham pulling off his other boot. He pulled off his hood and there was his dear face, entirely revealed to her, his eyes on hers. They were not done.
“Have you two met?” Frances asked, and Rose, for a startled moment, prepared to have Frances introduce her to Graham.
“This is Graham, Rose’s boyfriend,” Frances told the Chair.
“Graham Lowe,” said the Chair. “The piano tuner, I believe?”
“Yes,” said Rose, fiercely proud of Graham. The men shook hands.
Frances lifted Doris’s feet, one by one, and lowered them into the basin.
“And how are you, Rose?” asked Frances.
Rose registered the trick question—how are you?—the sign that all was not well with whomever was asked how.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “Actually, I’m terrific.”
“You’ll tell us all about it?” said Frances. “We’ll have cocoa? Apple-sauce cake?”
“Applesauce cake,” agreed Doris and lifted her feet for Frances to dry. “Rose MacGregor,” said Doris. “We sublet our apartment to her once.”
“Why, that’s right,” said Frances. “Absolutely correct. Good, Doris.”
“This is Frances Gilpin,” said Doris blithely. “She took my husband away.”
“No, no,” murmured Frances. “He’s right here beside you.” Harold leaned and planted a kiss on his wife’s forehead.
The doorbell chimed and chimed. They were running out of candy. Max gave away the last of it, and Frances turned off the porch light.
Around the old mahogany dining-room table that, when she had lived there, Rose had shoved out of sight, they all sat down for cocoa and apple-sauce cake. The table now stood in the living room, however, where the couch was pushed to the wall and a folding screen hid what had been the dining room. Behind the screen, Rose glimpsed a small cot and a familiar satchel of wooden blocks.
Into the middle of the table, upon a tablecloth as snowy as all out-of-doors, Frances placed the cake—an old recipe of Alan’s via his chef boyfriend. Doris crowed at the sight—the crusty, cinnamon-speckled square—and, given the first piece, picked it up in her hands and bit down, squirting applesauce. Frances made quick work of Doris’s face and hands with a napkin. Max nudged a spoon into Doris’s hand. And Rose finished what she’d begun, telling her news about Santa Fe. In the boldest of possible terms, in superlatives, Alan had coached her—as she remembered only after she was done. She forgot to put it in superlatives, and it hadn’t taken long to tell.
Graham, seated next to her, sent her a nod of encouragement. Here he was, her love. She might have known he wouldn’t say yes all at once. But if she had—ahead of time—stopped to think how long he might take to answer, she might have lost her nerve and not come to get him, and then what?
“A symphony premiere. Congratulations are in order.” The Chair hoisted his cocoa mug. “That should fetch a pretty penny,” he added.
“Not really,” said Rose. Large sums rarely came to living composers, unless they wrote for the movies. The Chair would know that. Why mention money?
“You should be very proud,” said Frances, with a show of warmth. She picked up the spoon Doris had chucked aside and began feeding her. As the spoon lifted to Doris’s mouth, Rose felt an odd shiver, half longing, half repugnance, recalling how, with Alan and Frances, she had some-times felt herself to be the child. Still, it had gone both ways, hadn’t it? What of the weeks she’d spent mothering them through their disaster? Was there anything really so wrong with that, with mutual dependence? People seemed to lean on one another if they grew at all close. Trusting entirely in grace and love might not, after all, be servitude, but, instead, how things had to be. She knew she had leaned on Graham. She might be leaning on him now. But she’d give him his turn to lean on her if he let her.
