A Rose by the Door Page 21

  “Is he too heavy for me to lift?”

  “No. He’s soft and light.”

  “Well, you’d better go get him, then.”

  Paisley retrieved the gigantic bear and climbed in. Care Goodsell showed her how to hang on, each hand clutching the rim of the wheelbarrow beside each little hipbone. Off they clattered along the stone footpath, with Paisley’s laughter rising like a steeple bell. Bea and Gemma watched them go.

  After they’d seen them off, Bea and Gemma dug their holes twice as big as a lazy person would dig them. They dug them twice as wide, twice as deep. They worked fist-fuls of humus and compost into each trench, knowing it was properly mixed when the planting beds smelled rich and cool.

  Bea had brought everything necessary to feed the roses—decomposed leaves, well-rotted cow manure, and Osmocote Granular. As they added each ingredient, Bea began to speak.

  “Once these roots establish themselves, they’ll find what they need to survive. These roses have pioneer spirit. Just like the folks who came out west.”

  If God is who He says He is, He knows I’m struggling from lack of faith.

  “A gardener will tell you to do this in June. But anyone who knows these roses will tell you they’ll transplant whenever the spirit strikes.”

  If God is who He says He is, He knows I blame Him for not listening.

  “These roses won’t go deep at first. They’ll want to stay the same depth they’ve been in their pots. But water and nutrients will draw their roots down.”

  If God is who He says He is, He knows I think that He’s forsaken me.

  If He’s there, He knows.

  They’d set their roses aright and had begun to pack earth firm around them when Gemma asked, “Would you tell me about Nathan’s funeral, Mrs. Bartling?” Bea peeked across to see Gemma’s face downcast, her hands flattening the dirt. She hadn’t made any move to suggest that this subject held any higher importance than the hot summer weather or the exorbitant price of gas. “You’ve never told me anything about that day.”

  Bea’s hands halted in the dirt. Then, with her thumb, she began to make circles in the dirt, watching ants skittering away, not wanting Gemma to know she’d glanced up, that she thought this question was anything different. “Guess I figured there wasn’t anything to tell.”

  “Was it a good service? Would Nathan have liked it?”

  Circles, circles in the dirt. Then Bea placed her weight hard on the heels of her hands. Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head.

  “I don’t know if it was good or not. I don’t know if it was right.”

  Gemma nudged a grasshopper away. “What do you mean?”

  “All I could think to do at the service came from years before. Little-boy songs. Little-boy remembrances.”

  Bea noticed that the dirt in front of Gemma was already flat. But the young woman kept pressing. Pressing. “Little-boy things are good. He would have liked that.”

  “I didn’t know how to say who Nathan was becoming. I couldn’t share how my boy had grown to be a man.” Bea began to smooth the earth with a small rake, leaving runnels in the dust beside her. “I wish—” Even though she stopped speaking mid-sentence, it seemed she’d completed her thought aloud. I wish we could have done it together.

  Gemma’s eyes locked on hers, a myriad of unspoken possibilities passing between them, hard-wrought, precious. If things could have been different. If Nathan had brought me home. If I had only known you.

  Bea filled the tin watering can from the spigot beside the stone footpath, conveying it back to douse the fledgling roses. Together they listened to the agreeable noise of moisture soaking into the soil, the sound of something deep and thirsty being satisfied.

  Gemma sat back on her heels and shaded her eyes from the sun. Bea saw her keeping a careful watch on Care Goodsell and Paisley in the distance as they trundled along the footpath in the wheelbarrow.

  She’s a good mother, Bea thought. I like how she looks after her child.

  Gemma began to remove the unwieldy gloves that Mr. Goodsell had lent her, tugging off one roomy canvas finger after another. “There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Gemma stated, lowering her voice. She didn’t speak again until she shed the index finger, the ring finger, the pinky. And then, “Would you tell me why Nathan left home? I can’t stop myself wanting to know. In all the times we talked about it, he never would say.”

  Lord, Bea thought I will never be able to escape my own unfaithfulness. My unfaithfulness to you. My unfaithfulness to a child.

  Bea felt like she was tottering, balancing, struggling to break free of something that threatened to topple her over an edge. She yanked the bobby pins from behind her ears and stabbed them back in place again, impaling her scalp. She’s asking me questions I never wanted to answer.

  “Only Nathan could know why he acted the way he did,” she lied. “Don’t ask me to second-guess Nathan’s reasons.”

  Gemma picked a handful of native grass from the ground and began to shred blades of it, separating each one into green, pulpy strings. “You said you were the reason. You said it was your fault.”

  Because I was weak, Gemma. Because I didn’t fight. Because I wasn’t reliable.

  “Don’t. Please. If Nathan didn’t answer it for you, then don’t make me answer it, either. Let dead things be dead. Please. It isn’t your life. It’s ours.”

  Blessedly, here came the wheelbarrow over the knoll of the hill again, with Care Goodsell at the helm, directing the little cart around headstones and brilliant clumps of flowers. Paisley waved.

  The unanswered question stood between them. It isn’t your life. It’s ours. Bea did not wave to Paisley. Neither did Gemma.

  Mr. Goodsell made a great show of dumping the little girl out right at their feet. She hugged his knees and he hugged her back. But the whole time he was hugging, Care Goodsell was looking into Bea’s eyes. He was looking into her eyes and it seemed to Bea like he was looking into her heart as well.

  “Something not good’s going on around here,” he said. “Something not good at all.”

  “How are we doing with these roses?” Gemma handed him his gloves. “We did everything you said.”

  The gardener pulled on his gloves and loaded his hackberry branches into the wheelbarrow all in one big bundle. He balanced the old garden rake counter-clock wise atop the load, its rusted prongs zinging like a harp.

  “While Paisley and I were going along, we happened to have a little talk about things. Thought you might be interested in what we figured out. We figured out that faith is like a rose.”

  “What?”

  “Faith is like a rose.”

  Bea stooped low and began gathering her planting supplies. Watering tin. Spades and trowels. Empty pots. “I know what faith is like,” she said to him. “Everybody who’s been to Sunday school knows what faith is. Have you ever been to Sunday school, Mr. Goodsell?”

  He grinned and showed his teeth as if she’d said something funny. “No.”

  “Well, then, there you have it. Maybe you ought not to be talking about something you don’t know.”

  “On the rose, you’ve got the roots, the leaves, and the blossoms. Healthy roots make healthy leaves and blossoms. Faith isn’t about doing the right thing or being moral. Faith is relying on God’s own roots inside you. Faith is knowing that what’s underground has the potential to make a lovely bloom.”

  “Maybe,” Bea said. “Maybe I can see that.”

  “Leaves so green a person thinks they never did see such color. Petals so soft and yellow they remind you of a sunrise. That’s evidence of where the roots are. Those petals are a person who’s trustworthy. Those leaves are a person you can rely on. You find a person full of faith, and that makes you realize God is faithful. You find that God is faithful, and that’s how you are filled with faith. It’s a reflection, like light on a lake. One mirrors the other.”

  “Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you that you would
know about roses and faith, too?”

  Mr. Goodsell didn’t answer. He started off down the path, the prongs on his rake still zinging, while the lone wheel sang a trio of notes that blended with his off-key whistling.

  “Any more advice on planting, Mr. Goodsell?” Bea called after him, all of a sudden aching to see him go. “Anything else I’ve forgotten that I need to know?”

  The gardener parked his cart for the second time and shaded his eyes. “You sure you planted with humus?” he bellowed back. “With compost?”

  Bea nodded, laboring up onto tiptoe in her ancient Naturalizers, as if she could raise her voice by raising herself on her toes. “I’m sure. We’ve done that!”

  He shouted and waved. “That’s good. A rose likes to be fed.” The last of his voice blended with the wind and his whistling and the arpeggios of the squeaking cart as he pushed it forward.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Things were different for Gemma and Bea after they spent the day together at the cemetery.

  All that talk about faith, and Gemma noticed Mrs. Bartling seemed distracted, quiet, given to staring out the window at the azure sky for long, silent intervals, with a melancholy in her eyes that seemed—in its way—magnified and more profound than in those first days after Gemma and Paisley arrived.

  I never should have asked her why Nathan left home. I never should have tried to find out.

  Four silent days together, and Mrs. Bartling announced one morning that, next Monday, she would return to her job at Nebraska Public Power. A victory of sorts. But one that seemed solemn, cheerless.

  Alva T. had given Gemma the day off because she hadn’t had a chance to arrange childcare. As Mrs. Bartling left for the day, Gemma and Paisley sat sedately on the sofa, their hands curved in their laps, still wearing their shabby pajamas. For a moment, as she headed for the door, she paused, turned back as if she might smile, as if she might say “I’ll miss you.” But she didn’t.

  She looked from one of them to the other with a pensive sadness on her face.

  We remind you, don’t we? I see it in your eyes sometimes when you think I’m not looking. You see us and remember what you did to make Nathan go away.

  Why did Nathan go away? What did you do?

  “You’ll be okay here by yourselves?” Mrs. Bartling asked somberly from the front door. “You know how to turn on the air conditioner if you need to?”

  “I know how. I’ve seen you do it.”

  “If the toilet makes the sound that scares Paisley, you just have to jiggle the handle.”

  “I know how to do that, too.”

  And then, she left.

  Mrs. Bartling had been gone only an hour when the telephone rang. Gemma climbed up from the floor, where she’d been helping Paisley with a hundred-piece basket-of-bunnies puzzle, to answer. “Hello? Bartling residence.”

  “I’m looking for Gemma Franklin. You know her?” asked a rough-tempered male voice.

  Gemma gripped the telephone receiver with both hands, her pulse quickening. “I am her.”

  “This is Joe Sampson. Mechanic over at Sandhill Texaco. You got a minute to talk?”

  “I do.”

  “Got a buggy here that’s ready for you to pick up. This old ’83 Toyota Corolla.”

  “It’s ready?”

  “There’s folks in this town who’d say you’re crazy, putting all this money into a rebuilt engine. Before you did this, you should’ve gone over to Cornerstone Motors in Scottsbluff to see what they could find for you.”

  “I don’t want a different old car, Mr. Sampson. I’m satisfied with the one I’ve got.”

  “Well, since you’re so satisfied with it, when are you picking it up? It’s taking up too much room in my garage.”

  Gemma opened the drawer beneath the phone and pulled out the notepad Bea always kept handy. She dug beneath the phone book, searching for a pencil that had lead. “I was given an estimate of nine hundred dollars. Can you tell me if that’s what it’s going to cost?”

  “You want the total? Uh. Just a minute here. Let me find it.” From over the phone line, Gemma heard him rustling through papers. “Let’s see. Rebuilt engine. Add labor. Add the sales tax.” He made a series of frightening grunts as he tallied up the total. “Yep, that’s right. Here we are. Young lady, I hope you’re sitting down. This isn’t pretty. You’re looking at nine hundred sixty-six dollars and thirty-two cents.”

  Gemma wasn’t sitting down. She stood with her backbone straight as a fencepost and scribbled the number on the pad. She stared at it. She drew a circle around it. Then she drew another circle. And another.

  Five weeks ago, that amount of money would have seemed like enough to make a downpayment on Memorial Stadium where the Cornhuskers played.

  Five weeks, in which Alva Torrington had been paying Gemma a fair wage. Five weeks, in which the customers at The Cramalot, all of them except Walt Snell, had been more than generous in their tipping.

  Gemma didn’t have to open the cedar box to count her money. Before he had died, her daddy had told her once, “A smart woman knows every morning how much money she has in the bank.” She already knew how much she’d saved, to the exact penny.

  Fifty dollars and seventy-four cents was all she needed. Fifty dollars, and she’d make half that in wages and tips tomorrow.

  She’d make the other half the day after that.

  “I’ll be over to pick it up on Thursday,” Gemma told him. And then she hung up the phone.

  Thursday. So soon.

  Sooner than she’d ever imagined.

  “Who was that, Mama?” Paisley asked, her mouth full of Cap’n Crunch cereal they’d both been eating straight from the box.

  “The car mechanic. Our car’s fixed.”

  The little girl reared to her knees, cardboard pieces of puzzle scattering to the floor around her. “Mama, I don’t want to leave.”

  “I can’t help it, honey bananas. It’s time.”

  The little girl’s woebegone voice crescendoed into a wail. “I wanted to be here longer. I wanted to see the roses grow.”

  “We came here to get to know her, honey bananas. We didn’t come here to live.”

  “Oh, yes, we did. We came because we don’t have the trailer anymore. We came because another little girl is sleeping in my bed.”

  “Listen to me. You have to try hard to understand what I’m telling you.” Gemma cupped Paisley’s face in her hands and scrunched the child’s wet cheeks in earnestness. “It’s a grownup thought and you’re only a little girl.”

  “What?”

  “Every time Mrs. Bartling looks at us, it makes her look back at herself and think bad things. She thinks of things she should have done differently. She thinks how she lost time with her son because she made him go away.”

  “Couldn’t she look at us, Mama, and just see us?” Tears came to Gemma’s own eyes at last. She shook

  her head, grief-stricken. “No. I don’t think so.” “But, Mama. I love her. I’ve even told her.” “Sometimes when you love somebody the most, you

  want to do what is best for them, even though it hurts

  you the worst inside.”

  “I wanted to make her happy.”

  “I did, too, sweets. But sometimes there’s things that

  go too deep for happiness.”

  Gemma’s decision had already been made. She would find a baby-sitter for Paisley and work another two weeks perhaps—enough to make gas money to get along to another town.

  She’d save enough for a few groceries and a security deposit on another trailer.

  She’d ask Alva to write her a recommendation and she’d apply for a job at another restaurant somewhere.

  She and Paisley would survive. They had survived be fore. Maybe, when they got settled, Gemma would buy stamps. Maybe she’d send Grandma Hardeman a postcard. Maybe she’d send a return address and let her grandmother know where they’d gone. Maybe, maybe, Grandma Hardeman would care.

  And mayb
e she wouldn’t.

  That afternoon after Paisley went down for a nap, Gemma roved throughout Mrs. Bartling’s house like an abandoned waif, feeling more lonely and lost than she’d felt on the day they’d scrounged beneath the car seat for coins for a candy bar and hitched a ride to Sandhill Texaco and found the name Bartling in a phone book hanging in a phone booth by the road.

  As she roamed, she remembered the details she’d discovered and cherished the day they’d first arrived, the faded patterns in the wallpaper, the roses by the door, the tiny bird’s nest with the icicle woven among its twigs.

  She’d cherished such things when she came because Nathan had made them familiar.

  She treasured them now because she had seen Mrs. Bartling hold them dear.

  Gemma had a thought. Maybe she should offer Mrs. Bartling her photograph before they left. The one of Nathan at the courthouse. On their wedding day.

  Maybe Mrs. Bartling would offer one of Nathan’s little-boy pictures in return. Maybe the one in the hallway with Nathan missing teeth.

  But, no, she couldn’t part with her wedding picture. It was too dear a price to pay.

  We remind you, don’t we? You see us and remember what you did to make Nathan go away.

  Gemma found herself in the hallway outside of Nathan’s old room. With one tentative hand, she pushed open the door.

  That’s the last thing Mrs. Bartling would want around the house. A picture with me in it.

  The hinges creaked as the door opened wider. This was her chance. Guilt swept over her.

  We’re leaving. It might never happen if I don’t do it now. Just this once, and no one need ever know.

  Gemma nudged the door open all the way. She glanced over her shoulder as if she expected someone to catch her, but nobody was there.

  She stepped inside.

  For three long beats she stood in the middle of Nathan’s room, uncertain what should happen next. The room smelled stale and musty, redolent with moth-balls. Gemma trailed her hand along the topstitching of a comforter spread on one of the single oak beds. “What did you runaway from, Nathan?” Gemma whispered. “Why would a boy have a room and a mother like this and not come home?”