A Rose by the Door Read online

  For the past three years, she had grown closer to Nathan than any other living person. She’d mentioned this to him with great care so many times after they’d first gotten married. “Nathan, you’ve told me so much about your home. So, why don’t you ever take me there? Why don’t you ever call and talk to your mother?”

  “We’ll go there someday, Gemma. I promise you that. My mother will want to meet you. But not now. I can’t handle that yet.”

  “What is it, Nathan? Why can’t you tell me about this? Why can’t you open up to me and let me help you?”

  “Leave this alone, Gemma. There isn’t anything you can do to help. I’ve get everything I want now, right here, with you and Paisley Rose. That’s the only thing I want you to concern yourself about.”

  What could have happened that tore the two of you apart, Nathan? What could have been so shameful that you wouldn’t have shared it with me?

  The time had come for Gemma to move again. This time, she moved the checker forward toward Mr. Kornruff’s oncoming man. “How’s that?”

  “Much better,” he told her, grinning. “You’ll make a checker player yet.”

  “I’ve got a long while to go.”

  “You’ll get there. You learn how to play checkers as fast as you learned to wash those windows out there, you’ll be beating me in no time.”

  Gemma lowered her eyes to the board and didn’t raise them as she pushed a second checker onto a second black square. “You mind if I ask you something?”

  “What is it?” He pushed another checker forward, too.

  “You said you know things. About people’s history. About people’s secrets.”

  “Yes.”

  Gemma pushed a third checker out into the center of the board. “Do you know anything about Mrs. Bartling? The lady we’re staying with?”

  “Bea Bartling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I do. I’ve known Bea a good long time.”

  “How long is a good long time?”

  “Since before Ray walked out of his job building houses for Homestead Construction. That must have been twenty-four years ago or so.”

  “He just walked out?”

  “Yep. Left them pregnant with no insurance, him doing such a fool thing as that. After their son was born, it took them a good three years to pay off the bill over at Garden County Hospital.”

  “That was when Nathan was born?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yep. Sure was.”

  “So . . .” Gemma’s pulse was pounding so hard, she thought the man across the checkerboard from her might be able to hear it. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure. Fire away.”

  She positioned another checker then lifted pleading eyes to him. “Can you tell me why Nathan left home when he did? I’d really like to know.”

  “Hm-mmm.” Orvin Kornruff studied the game. He clutched his fingers over his mouth, squeezed his whiskery chin, and stared at the black and red squares on the board for an inordinately long time. At last he picked up one of his men and began jumping Gemma’s red checkers. One. Two. Three. “You want to know why Nathan left. Now, there’s a hundred-dollar question for you.” He removed the checkers he’d jumped and stacked them in an organized stack beside his left elbow. “Bea Bartling has been as tight lipped as a soldier whenever anybody’s asked her about that. If somebody in Ash Hollow knows the answer, I sure don’t know who it is.”

  “Oh, well.” Gemma shrugged her shoulders, resigning herself to losing this game. She didn’t want Mr. Kornruff to sense her sharp disappointment. I’ll find out the answer some way. Even if nobody else in Ash Hollow knows, I’m the one who knew Nathan. “Guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I just thought it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

  Bea wandered from room to room in her home, closing the windows, turning on each separate air conditioner unit, making ready for the heat for the day.

  She paused in the doorway of Nathan’s silent, empty room.

  The same sensation came over Bea every time she stood in this place. The intense longing to step inside. The awful fear of going there, of facing her deprivation, of admitting to herself that her son would not return.

  Bea couldn’t stop herself. She took one step into the room she had kept ready for her son’s homecoming all these many months and years. She had pictured it so many times. How Nathan would come to the door, how she would take his hand and lead him here.

  “See, Nathan,” she had planned to tell him. “I always knew you would come back home. I kept everything ready.”

  Every child who has ever needed me has been let down.

  The last time she had attended a vacation Bible school program, Nathan had been eleven.

  “Look, Mama,” Nathan said as he dragged a dark-headed little boy toward her through the crowd. “I made a new friend. This is Jacob.”

  “Hello, Jacob,” she said, not paying much attention. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Very solemnly, Jacob extended his hand to hers. “Hi.”

  She shook his proffered hand. “You must not be from around here.”

  “They just moved here,” Nathan interrupted. “He’s two year’s younger than me, but he’s really nice. Can he come over and play sometime? He likes to play baseball. Do you think we might be able to play on the same team?”

  “I don’t know.” Bea narrowed her brows and released Jacob’s hand. She didn’t know the answers to so many questions at once. She felt backed into a corner. “We’ll see.”

  “Can Jacob come to our house today?”

  “No. Not today. You’ve spent enough time with him here. We have errands to run this afternoon.”

  “Can Jacob come tomorrow? It’s Saturday. Dad will be home.”

  “I don’t know about tomorrow. We might want to do something for a family day.”

  “Jacob could be a part of our family. Couldn’t you?” Like a traitor, Nathan turned to the small, dark-headed boy beside him and involved him in this uncomfortable conspiracy. “Jacob could come, too.”

  Jacob answered very quietly. “I could probably do it.”

  “I don’t know, Nathan,” Bea said, her voice thin, taunt. “Jacob has his own family. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow and see.”

  Even now, the memory of that day—the humility and the desperation of the things that followed—felt huge in her, holding her to the spot so she couldn’t move.

  I was afraid of Jacob. I didn’t want to let him in even then. And I didn’t understand why.

  All of a sudden, Bea couldn’t get out of Nathan’s room fast enough. She stepped out into the hallway, heard the buzzing of the air conditioners cooling the house from every room.

  That’s how I lived my life with Ray, with Nathan, with all of them. Always afraid, when I should have been secure. Always secure, when I should have been afraid.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Look where it’s gotten me now.

  Without turning back, she closed the bedroom door behind her.

  As Gemma walked from the museum to work that morning, she could see Alva Torrington clear down at the other side of Main Street, going after the front window of The Cramalot Inn with a razor knife, scraping off the rose.

  “What is she doing out there?” Gemma asked Charlene as she signed in on her time card and started tying on her apron.

  “Oh, there’s no telling. You don’t know Alva as well as I do. She’s always coming up with something.”

  As if she’d heard them talking about her, here came Alva, marching in through the door with such ardor that the tinkling bell almost fell off its bracket. She pushed the razor knife inside her apron belt in much the same gesture as she would holster a weapon, tramped to the back storeroom, and came back brandishing a paint can and a wooden-handled brush. She set both of those items on the counter in front of her two waitresses. “Who wants to help me paint?”

  Gemma lifted her hands to show that, when it came to paintbrushes, she was helpless. “I’m still learning to wait
tables.”

  “Okay.” Alva hefted the can and waddled across the room under its weight. Brown paint sloshed around inside. “Charlene, that means you. You come do this, would you?”

  Charlene flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I already painted that rose out there, Alva. I don’t know why you weren’t satisfied with that.”

  “I’ve decided I want you to paint a giant meat loaf instead.”

  “I don’t think that can be done.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s like playing Pictionary. You start out thinking something’s easy to draw, then you get into it and realize there aren’t any identifying details that’ll make it look right. If I try to paint a meat loaf, it won’t be anything except a big, brown rectangle.”

  “Well, I want you to come up with something. Don’t want to be advertising famous roses around here any more. It’s misleading.”

  Gemma removed a fresh coconut crème pie from its domed pedestal and began to cut the pastry into precise, ordered triangles. “How so?” She didn’t look up.

  “Those roses used to be something joyous. Now they’re just something sad. Bea Bartling isn’t coming out in her yard to show them to tourists now that Nathan’s gone.”

  Gemma didn’t flinch at the sound of her husband’s name. She kept right on at what she was doing, paring deep into the crust with the knife, making eight perfect pieces.

  When she was finished, she put the pie under its dome and ran the knife under a stream of hot tap water, watching the whipped cream melt away.

  I’ve got no business falling apart every time somebody talks about Nathan, she lectured herself. This is Nathan’s home. He’s going to be talked about every place I go.

  Alva spoke up proudly, oblivious to Gemma’s silence. “I’ve decided to run a contest. Gemma, you can cover extra tables while Charlene’s out creating us a master-piece, can’t you? I know it’s busy in here, but if she doesn’t start now, we won’t get it finished before we close.”

  Charlene started stacking coffee cups one on top of the other. “What kind of a contest?”

  “You get out there and start painting and you’ll find out about it soon enough.”

  Gemma started cutting the cherry pie. “I can cover the tables.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Charlene worked out side. Each time Gemma glanced up and saw her face through the broad front glass, she seemed more and more engrossed with her artwork. Gemma watched as her friend began to make little flourishes with the brush, adding detail to one side of the picture, stepping back to see if it worked. Twice she came in to mix paints and add different colors. Gemma grinned as Charlene added gray in tiny curls to imitate warm fragrance rising. At last, a good hour after she’d gone outside to get started, here came Charlene back in again, looking pleased with herself, a swath of brown paint across her nose, her eyes sparkling. “Just wait until you go out there and see it, Gemma. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did!”

  “You aren’t finished, Charlene, so don’t even think about getting cleaned up yet.” Alva set the small stepladder out so it looked like an aluminum A standing beside the cash register. “I got words for you to write out there, too.”

  “Words? What words, Alva?”

  “Got myself two waitresses to keep busy these days and I’m aiming to increase business.”

  The lunch rush waned, but Gemma kept busy. She took orders, delivered full platters and poured over four carafes of fresh, hot coffee, glancing up every so often to watch the mysterious words appear backwards beyond the glass.

  When Charlene finally finished, Gemma held up the weight of her apron, the coins jangling in her pockets. “You’re getting all my tips today, aren’t you?” Charlene asked. “Alva never thinks about things like that when she asks me to do projects.”

  “I’ll share with you. Don’t worry.”

  “You know what that contest is? If somebody comes in here and eats two pounds of meat loaf without stopping, he gets it for free. If somebody doesn’t eat the whole thing, it costs twenty bucks. She’s even put up a sign down at Sandhill Texaco so she’ll get people coming into town from off the highway.”

  “What if we don’t want people coming in off the highway?” Gemma asked, not once stopping to think that she had just come in off the highway a week ago herself.

  Her question was lost in the chugging of the old Dodge truck that pulled up and sat running, blue smoke issuing in dirty puffs from the muffler, a good two feet away from the curb. The green-and-white mountains on the license plate meant Colorado. The driver finally cut the engine and swaggered into the Cramalot, standing in the open front door a minute or two too long, like he wanted to be certain the place was good enough for him before he shut the door and came on in.

  Gemma got a sick feeling from the very start.

  One of the things she could tell he saw when he looked around to see if he liked the place was her. When his murky green eyes rested on her, his mouth took on the approving shape of someone saying the word prune.

  Dread coursed through her.

  Gemma didn’t know how to put off someone’s advances any longer. It had been too long. And, oh, goodness, not nearly long enough.

  She kept right on doing what she was doing, stacking clean glasses from the dishwasher tray onto a shelf beside the pop machine, sorting them according to size— tiny, narrow ones for the juice; medium, fat ones for the milk; taller ones for the folks who ordered Pepsi or Alva’s hand-squeezed lemonade.

  “What’s a fellow got to do to get a table around here?”

  Gemma glanced around for Charlene, but the other waitress was nowhere in sight. She tugged her skirt down, stuck a menu beneath her arm, grabbed a glass of water and directed him to a table as far away from the kitchen as possible. She set the water down in front of him, making sure when she did so that her wedding ring was in plain view. “I’ll be back in a minute to see what you want.”

  “Hey, hon,” he said, catching her arm just as she turned away. “They got you on the menu? You’re what I’d really like.”

  The ceiling wobbled. Of all the battles Gemma had fought these past days—the night Nathan never returned home and she had to telephone the police from a pay phone to find out he was dead, the morning Joe Stedman set their belongings in the yard behind the meat-packing plant and said he needed her out of the trailer since Nathan wasn’t there to work anymore, the day Mrs. Bartling turned them away and they’d spent the night on the old bed at the museum—this simple, small one turned out to be the most brutal.

  There isn’t anybody in this world who’s going to protect me. I am alone. Totally alone. I could die, too, and there’d be no one anywhere who cares what happens to me. And no one to raise Paisley.

  “If my husband were here,” she said to him, “he would punch your lights out.”

  “Well. . .” The fellow made a big show of looking around the room for her husband. “I sure don’t see him standing around. You got me shaking in my boots, honey.”

  She poised her green order pad in the air, willing her hands to remain steady and her gaze to remain level on his. “You want to order something for lunch or not?”

  He leaned back in his chair, still appraising her. “I’ll have that meat loaf special. The whole two pounds of it. I’m aiming to show y’all what I can do and get the whole thing for free.”

  Gemma didn’t take the time to write his order. She scurried away from him, scribbled the ticket at the counter, and hung it on the stainless steel wheel beside the grill. She didn’t return until she had no other choice but to deliver his dinner roll.

  “I’m on a deadline, you know,” he announced to her as he picked up the pat of margarine and peeled off the paper. “But I could push it back maybe an hour or two. What time you get off from this place? I could take you out.”

  “Mister, please. Just leave me alone.”

  “After this, I got to drive this truck all the way over to North Carolina. You ever been to North Carol
ina?”

  “No. Never been any place but Nebraska.”

  “In North Carolina, they’ve got real pretty little hills.

  Hems you in, all those hills. Gives you something to hold on to. All covered with trees that turn about a hundred different colors when the weather gets cold.”

  “Don’t want to see any trees. I like it here where you can see the sky.”

  “Could always use the company of a pretty little thing like you.”

  The sudden, awful possibility presented itself, enticing and easy, terrifying her.

  I could go. I could walk out of here and never look back and leave all this pain behind me. Somebody else could raise Paisley. Somebody else could grieve over Nathan. Somebody else could struggle to make ends meet and find a place to live and keep that old junk-heap of a Toyota running.

  I could runaway from all this and nobody would even know where I’d gone.

  Gemma shoved her hands inside her apron pockets and found all those coins jangling around inside, a quarter here, two dimes there—the very thing she depended on to save her. “Don’t you even talk that way,” she said to Mr. Meat Loaf Special, sounding frantic. “Don’t you even mention me leaving like that.”

  She saw him stretch out his legs even longer and figured he must have crossed his boot tops under the table. “You know, I got you all figured out.” He folded his beefy arms over his chest. “Only one reason such a beautiful woman with a wedding ring would be acting so uptight. He’s gone off and left you here alone, hasn’t he? Some good husband you’ve got.”

  Something heavy slammed into the pit of Gemma’s stomach. “That’s not true,” she lied. “You hush up. Just hush up.”

  “I’d be willing to bet you’ve probably got a kid stashed away somewhere around, too. Aren’t I right?”

  Oh, if he only knew how right he is.

  “What’s your name, Pretty Little Miss Nebraska?”

  “The name’s Charlene.” Charlene sidled up next to both of them and plopped a plate crammed with meat loaf in front of him. “Your order’s been ready for five minutes. Two pounds just like you ordered. If you can eat all this meat loaf, mister, then I’ll eat my shoes.”