Richard presses the buzzer. A dry, rasping sound echoes off the cracked, peeling walls and bounces up from the marble vestibule floor that needs cleaning. A muffled voice calls, “Who is it?” although we have let Rosie know, in advance, the exact hour of our arrival, and we are almost right on time.
“It’s us,” Richard announces.
A moment’s hesitation and then the door opens and Rosie’s head peers cautiously around, fearful, perhaps, that someone has succeeded in imitating her stepson’s voice. Reassured, she slides back the chain with an important click and ushers us into her dark, musty hallway. Her slippered feet lead the way, shuffling across creaking floorboards past the kitchen and into the living room, where she turns and offers her withered cheek for the obligatory kiss of greeting. I pat her back awkwardly; she smells of cookies (she works in a bakery) and age. She chides us for being late, “as usual.” “You never come,” she says in her shrill voice as she helps us off with our coats, “and when you do, you arrive late and leave early.” For the first time, her eyes light up, as if delighted with pronouncing this truth. I’m mildly embarrassed but Richard appears not to be; he’s had years in which to become accustomed to Rosie.
“Sit, sit, don’t stand there as if you’re ready to fly away,” she says.
I obey quickly, childlike, having to restrain myself from folding my hands in my lap. The chair I’ve chosen is uncomfortable; I shift my weight to accommodate its lumps, hoping that Rosie won’t notice. But she is already on her way to the kitchen to put on the coffee, her gray topknot bobbing dangerously.
The living room, crowded with things, is made busier now by Christmas decorations that dangle everywhere. Faded green plastic garlands span each of the windows, hang over every lampshade, and droop in irregular curves from the molding just beneath the high ceiling. Porcelain elves and angels and reindeer abound, vying for room on the shelves that line one wall.
Tables and chairs of varying designs and degrees of antiquity huddle together, bow-legged and dust-free. A sagging daybed with a mended coverlet serves as a couch, and little white balls are sprinkled strategically around the edges of the worn brown carpet. Rosie, according to Richard, who explained it all to me on my first visit, believes that mothballs help keep varmints away. She also believes that no help is required in her kitchen. When I offered last time, she informed me that she can do her own work, thank you. I think about Richard’s father, whom I never met, and wonder, wickedly, whether he died in self-defense.
Richard and I carry on a conversation in tones made synthetic by Rosie’s presence a room away. Finally, the coffee is bubbling and our hostess is headed back to us. We stop talking and turn our faces expectantly, in unison, toward her. She gives us the once-over as she perches on the highest mound of the daybed. Fixed in the spotlight of her steady gaze, I cast about desperately for something to say and remember, belatedly, the bright red Macy’s shopping bag I’ve brought. I reach into it for the first gaily wrapped package. I hand it over, pleased with myself: it’s a pair of slippers exactly like the ones she wears but without the holes. My eyes travel to those sad little openings through which Rosie’s yellow, ridgy toenails poke.
“Thank you,” Rosie says, and places the box carefully beside her.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” I blurt before I can stop myself. I try not to see the sideways look Richard is sending my way. Rosie stares at me wordlessly, then rips the paper with an efficient slash, rending dozens of happy Santas in two. She lifts the cover of the box and asks, “What size are they?”
“Seven, medium.” I know I’ve gotten it right. The first time I was here I had the foresight to examine the insides of Rosie’s white bakery shoes, which were parked neatly by the bathtub. Inside the left one, the size, though smudged by time and perspiration, was still legible.
“They’ll never fit,” she says, already replacing the lid. “They’ll have to go back.”
Bewildered, I cover my confusion by dipping into the shopping bag for the second box, the large rectangular one containing bath towels. Surely Rosie won’t say they’re the wrong size? But my bitter thought is wasted, for, without any prompting from me, the package remains unopened.
Rosie reaches for a plain white business-size envelope from the scarred table beside her and hands it to Richard. “Merry Christmas. Money is so much more practical than gifts. No worry about size or fit.”
For my benefit. And speaking of fits, perhaps I should indulge myself by having one right here and now. But riveted by that ominous stare, properly chastened, I remain silent.
Richard makes his annoyance on my behalf obvious and seems, in fact, about to deliver one of his famous barbs. Instead, he clamps a cigar between his teeth and reaches into his pocket, one hip raised, for matches. “Mind if I smoke?” he mumbles around the cigar, and Rosie’s reply is quick: “Go ahead if you have to.”
He removes a string of rosary beads from the only ash tray in the room and lights up. I have the feeling that the question and answer, unchanged, had been traded each time Richard visited, back before my time, when he was married to his first wife, who refused to accompany him when he paid his duty calls on birthdays and holidays. I’m rapidly learning to appreciate her stand.
The coffee is ready and Rosie serves it, along with some goodies from Stein’s Bakery. Cigar smoke wafts its way toward those high-up garlands as we labor through various topics — the weather, the kids (my stepchildren, who wouldn’t come), Richard’s father (isn’t it a shame he died so soon after marrying Rosie, when he had been a widower for so long?), but it isn’t until we get around to Rosie’s job that she springs to life.
“You don’t find many bakeries using ingredients like Stein’s, nosiree. They use only the best; they use butter, real butter.”
“I believe it,” I say. “These. . . .”
Rosie ignores me. “People come from miles around to shop at Stein’s. You should see the lines on the weekends, the people waiting to get in. They go all the way around the block.”
I munch on a chocolate chip cookie and widen my eyes to indicate approval.
“And they treat me like a queen,” Rosie continues, her voice quivering with happiness. “Mrs. Fuller says they could never do without me. She says she doesn’t know what they’d do if I ever quit.”
I sip the strong coffee and wonder when we can leave.
It’s time, at last, and I retrieve my coat and the slippers, peck the slanted cheek, and promise to come again soon.
Outside, the treeless, car-lined street is quiet. Christmas lights wink in the window of a house across the way. I gulp the cold, black air and reach for Richard’s hand, feeling free.
JUNE
“Can you believe it? I still can’t believe it. Rosie, of all people. Who would’ve thought? Rosie was always so strong. Look at the way she gets up at the crack of dawn every day and goes to work in that bakery.” Mrs. Mason keeps mixing past and present tense, as if uncertain as to which is correct in these circumstances. “I always thought, when I watched her walk down the street, how does she do it, at her age? I still cannot get over it.” Mrs. Mason chops the air with a freckled hand, its bright pink nails underscoring each word. “You never know, you just never know.”
The women, five of them, sit in a tight little circle in a small spot of late afternoon sunshine in front of the apartment house, their webbed beach chairs as close together as the slanted legs permit. Richard and I tower above them, exhausted, ready to leave, but cemented there by an unwillingness to deny them this time of pleasure — this going over, in minute detail, of the exciting events of the night before.
It was Sunday; our phone rang at 11:45 p.m. It’s on Richard’s side of the bed, so he picked it up. “Yes, this is he,” he said, and listened for what seemed like a very long time. When he hung up he was shaking his head. “They think Rosie is blind. The officer, the one who called, said she can’t see.”
“What officer? Who’s they? Rosie can’t see?”
Richard studied me as if I held some clue concerning what he had heard on the phone. “A policeman called,” he said. “It seems that one of Rosie’s neighbors heard a commotion in the hallway this evening. It was Rosie. She was running up and down the hall screaming . . . screaming obscenities, as a matter of fact. Rosie . . . who wouldn’t say ‘damn,’ for God’s sake.”
“Wait a minute, Richard, I thought you said she was blind. How could she be running around if she’s blind?” It didn’t occur to me to ask how she got blind.
“I’m just telling you what the policeman said, Jen. He said that the super of Rosie’s building called the precinct for help and when they arrived, and got Rosie calmed down, they found that she apparently can’t see. Mrs. Mason, one of the neighbors, is staying with her tonight, but they want us to come as soon as we can. Tomorrow morning.”
We arrived early Monday. Charlie, the super, and Mrs. Mason were waiting for us. They led us to the living room. It was a mess; the furniture was covered with dust and there were crumpled tissues everywhere.
Rosie was sitting on a chair, bent grotesquely in half. Her head was between her knees, so low that it almost touched the floor. Long strands of hair had escaped from her bun and were brushing the carpet.
Charlie said, “Mr. Carbone is here, Rosie. He. . . .”
“Richard, is that you?” Rosie’s voice was thick, coated with fear.
Richard went to her and touched her shoulder gently. “Yes, Rosie, it’s me.”
“I can’t see, Richard! It’s so dark. Oh God, it’s so dark!”
“Rosie, sit up, I want to talk to you.”
“No,” Rosie wailed. “Don’t make me sit up. Just help me!” She groped for his hand. “What will happen to me, Richard? Please don’t let them take me away; don’t let them put me in a home!”
“Nobody’s going to put you in a home, Rosie. Come, sit up now and we’ll talk.”
Richard made all the arrangements. The visit to the eye doctor, where we learned that Rosie’s vision must have been dimming for years. Of course, I should have known, suspected something: the time we had taken her out to dinner and she had poured beer (her one vice, she called it, a glass of beer with supper) over the tablecloth, missing the glass; and the desperate way she had clung to me when we left the restaurant — Rosie had never touched me before.
But the prognosis was good. Rosie’s cataracts were operable and she would see again. An appointment, two weeks hence, was made for the operation, and a nurse was hired to care for her meanwhile.
“. . . so proud of you, Mr. Carbone.” Mrs. Mason is still speaking. “She’s always saying, isn’t she, Florrie, how proud she is of Frank’s son. And you, too, dear, what a nice girl Richard married, she says. Tell Mr. Carbone, Florrie, what Rosie always says.”
A warm breeze takes little tufts of Florrie’s sparse brick-red hair and lifts them skyward, exposing gray roots. She sinks lower in her chair and fumbles with the buttons at her bosom. “Uh, yes, Rosie always talks about you. She enjoys your visits so much . . . looks forward to them. Can’t wait till you come, she says.” Florrie hesitates, uncertain as to whether more is expected of her.
Mrs. Sloane comes to the rescue. “Rosie keeps to herself, you know? She’s not unfriendly, I don’t mean that, she’s just. . . .” She gropes for the word and finds it: “. . . private. Rosie is a private person, isn’t she, girls?” Four heads nod dutifully. Gratified, Mrs. Sloane continues. “She keeps to herself, mostly. Oh, she does stop to say good morning and exchange a few word now and then. Especially about you two. She can’t say enough good things about you two.”
So. Rosie, the same Rosie who has never paid us a compliment, not once in the more than two years we have been visiting her, sings, in our absence, words of praise. Are they, I wonder, the boastful responses of a lady pressed by inquisitive neighbors for news about her sometime visitors, or are they sincere, these words? I don’t know; I know only that the knowledge of their existence moves me.
“And she takes care of herself since Frank died.” Mrs. Sloane is warming to her subject. “Never asks anybody for a thing. Never gives trouble to anybody. She. . . .”
Mrs. Mason, feeling control of the conversation slipping away, interrupts. “Last night I was the main one.” In happy emphasis, she presses a palm to her chest. “I was the one who heard Rosie screaming. I was the one who called Charlie, who called the police. Yes, I was the main one.” Her mouth crinkles upward.
“We’ll always be grateful to you, Mrs. Mason,” Richard says. “Jennifer and I will never forget what you ladies have done for Rosie.”
He turns to go but Mrs. Mason holds him with one more nugget. “I remember how your father always said, after he retired and Rosie was still working, how he wished she would quit and stay home with him. He used to sit and talk to us, you know.” She twinkles at the memory. “But no, Rosie wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’m better off working,’ she’d say, ‘you can’t get into trouble that way.’ ” Mrs. Mason nods sadly. “But after your father passed on, we all agreed it was a good thing Rosie still had her job, to keep her mind off things, right, girls?”
A short time later, Richard and I take our leave. The animated buzzing of the ladies follows us out to the curb.
Rosie will be operated on in two weeks. I try to make my mind a blank; try not to think of two weeks of darkness.
JULY
The poster taped to the smudged wall opposite the admittance desk reads:
Lend us a pint of your blood this year And hope that you don’t get it back.
I stare at it, allowing my mind to wander over its implications, while Richard deals with the terrible starched efficiency of the nurse at the desk. He is finished, finally, and a pinafored aide, overweight with bumpy pads of fat straining to escape her uniform, appears. She wheels Rosie, with Richard and me trailing obediently, through surprisingly noisy corridors to the inner reaches of the hospital.
We enter Rosie’s room. Two empty beds, with a penciled sign tacked over one of them: Patient is blind. God, it sounds so final. The aide bends over to pat crisp white sheets and her skirt, already too short, rises to dangerous new heights.
“C’mon now, hon, we going to get you undressed and into bed,” she says.
Rosie stiffens. “No, don’t touch me,” she snaps. “I want Jennifer to undress me.”
I look at the aide imploringly, but she merely shrugs and says, “OK, ma’am, look like you got no more need of me.” And she leaves. The squooshy sound of her rubber-soled shoes hangs in the air.
Richard follows her out. “I’ll be waiting in the hall, Jen.”
Resentful, hating myself for it, I remove Rosie’s dress and slip; they slide off easily, revealing a panty girdle. It clings to her like a second skin as I struggle to peel it from her frail and wrinkled body. I curse her silently for wearing it, afraid of hurting her, but she sits docilely, uncomplaining, a whole new Rosie.
When I’m finished, I help her from the wheelchair to the bed. She looks shrunken and small and almost disappears inside the hospital gown that floats loosely around her. I tuck her into the covers, fluff up flat pillows that refuse to be fluffed, and sit on the edge of the bed. I take her hand in mine, squeezing it, patting it, searching for the proper words of comfort, reluctant to utter the platitudes that come to mind.
It’s Rosie who breaks the silence. “So you’ll come tomorrow, right? After the operation? You’ll come to see me?”
“Yes, Rosie, we’ll be here.”
“OK, as long as I know you’re coming. I’ll see you tomorrow then, right?”
“See you tomorrow, Rosie.” I kiss her cheek. Looking backward over my shoulder, I start toward the door. Rosie’s head is tilted slightly to one side; her cloudy eyes follow in my direction.
I locate Richard, who goes in briefly to say goodbye. Then back along the corridors, through the revolving doors, and out onto the steamy concrete. The heat hits me, presses against my skin. Richard and I walk slowly, hand in hand without speaking, to our car. I think of Rosie sitting propped up in bed, patiently waiting to see again.
NOVEMBER
Furniture still crowds the living room, but it seems so empty. I sit alone, listening to the murmurings from the bedroom — Elvira and Nathalie, the women who took care of Rosie during her last year, and Richard. Their voices are solemn, hushed, proper for such an occasion.
Outside, the honk of a horn, the whimper of a dog, very close — just under the window, I think — and the whoosh of traffic on the main street a block away cut thin, delicate slices through the stillness.
I feel out of place, too large, in this room of carved oak and graceful figurines. I should go in and help Richard and the ladies, help them sort through Rosie’s clothes, but I don’t move. The events of the last few hours hold me, rooting me to my chair: the morning visit to the funeral home for the final look at the puffed-up shell that used to be Rosie, the smooth chauffeured drive in silence to the cemetery, the stumbling over uneven grass between the markers until we came to fresh soil, where we stood stiffly, our shoulders hunched against a cold November wind that kept tearing the priest’s words away before I could begin to make sense of them.
So I wait, alone, in Rosie’s living room among the things she treasured, feeling her strength, which has not yet entirely dissipated. I see her now, watering spindly plants, dusting ancient tables, moving across complaining floorboards to put on the coffee. Why hadn’t I ever told her I prefer tea? During all the years after her operation, I had suffered through Rosie’s strong, bitter coffee, unable to bridge the gap between us. Was it my fault, Rosie? Should I have tried harder? Faced with the awesome finality of death, I am sentimental, and ready to accept blame.
Richard is finished, at last, and after seeing Elvira and Nathalie out, he tells me that it’s time to go. He asks if I want to take something home, something to remind me of Rosie. I don’t mention that I need no reminder, but choose a ceramic donkey who looks cheerful in a bright blue hat. He’s hitched to a yellow wagon; in the wagon is a frail plant in grainy, light-brown soil.
“This is what I want.” I pick it up carefully, cradling it in my hands. Specks of dust dance in the sunlight that shines on the table where the plant had been. I’m already planning to change its soil and give it a bright spot in our dining room window. I picture it weeks from now, strong and lush and green.
This story originally appeared in Amelia, a literary quarterly published in Bakersfield, California.
— Ed.
