Rose's Last Summer

by Margaret Millar

  “I just figured she was making up a birthday list and didn’t have anything else to write on. Isn’t that reason­able?”

  “It might be, if Rose had developed into the type of person who remembered anyone else’s birthday.”

  “Rose could be very thoughtful at times,” Mrs. Cush­man said cautiously. “She gave me a nice Christmas pres­ent last year, five pounds of caramels. I thought that was real nice of her, considering she couldn’t chew caramels herself on account of her dentures. For instance she could have given me peppermint patties and eaten half of them herself. Or maraschino cherries.”

  Dalloway began to circle the room, looking at every­thing but not touching anything except the pressed flower he had taken off the bureau. His feelings about Rose were stronger here in this room than they had been at the fu­neral. He was depressed by the sordid litter of stuff she had left behind her, and impatient at Rose herself. How like her to make a birthday list on a map (and that’s all it was, probably) and then go off and die in somebody’s garden. She had no sense of propriety, never had had any.

  “Maybe you’d like to be alone with her memory for a while?” Mrs. Cushman suggested.

  “No,” Dalloway said. “No, thanks. I came here actually with the idea of finding something worthwhile to give my daughter, Lora, as a keepsake of her mother.”

  “Her mother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why, Rose never breathed a word—”

  “She had a very faulty memory about some things.”

  “Well, my land, I just can’t feature Rose as a mother.”

  “Neither could she.” Dalloway smiled, trying to conceal his hot rush of anger. It was as powerful now as it had been thirty-two years ago, the day Rose had left him.

  “Fancy Rose having a daughter and never breathing a word about it, not even when she was hitting the bottle. It’s just a miracle, Rose being the blabber she was—not wishing to speak ill of the dead.” Mrs. Cushman put her head to one side and glanced around the room like a plump, inquisitive robin. “There must be something here you could take home to the little one.”

  “Lora is over thirty.”

  “She is? Why, yes, I guess she must be. It’s too bad Rose took all her pictures with her.”

  “Pictures of what?”

  “Herself. She had the walls covered with them. I’m not so sure it was plain vanity either. She used to be very criti­cal of them. Look at that silly pan, she’d say, or, look at that stupid expression.” Mrs. Cushman wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “We had many a good laugh together over those pictures, I can tell you. Nobody could be funnier than Rose when she was in a good mood. But I guess you know that.”

  “Yes.” Nobody could be funnier, and nobody could be sadder.

  “Which most of the time she was—in a good mood, I mean. Not lately, though. Lately she’s been real touchy, fly off the handle at anything. I often heard her talking to herself, too, talk, talk, talk, like she was ordering people around. Except there weren’t any people around. I asked her about it one day and she said she was just rehearsing because she expected a big part in a movie any day. Same old story, I heard it a million times. She couldn’t get it through her head that she was finished.”

  “What finished her?”

  “She finished herself. Too many good times and parties, they ruined her looks and her health. Rose dearly loved a party.”

  “I know.”

  “My, she must have been a lively one when she was young. I bet she led you a merry chase.”

  “Yes.” The merry chase was over, the lively one dead.

  Dalloway turned and walked out of the room, unaware that he still had the red rose crushed in his right fist.

  Mrs. Cushman puffed along at his heels like a toy loco­motive. “You don’t have to run off so sudden-like.”

  “Sorry, I have an engagement. You’ve been very kind,” he added, seeing her disappointed expression, “and very helpful.”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d stay and we could have a little chat about Rose?”

  “Perhaps some other time.”

  “I wish there was more I could tell you, like the names on the map.”

  “There might be,” Dalloway said. “Did she ever men­tion any of those people to you—Minnie, Baker, Bernard, and so on?”

  “She knew a Minnie that’s a checker down at the Safe­way, but only in the line of business. Not likely she’d con­cern herself with that Minnie’s birthday.”

  “It doesn’t seem so.”

  “As for Phil, there’s a Phil Dickerson lives over on Bagnos Street, but he’s just a boy going to high school, delivers for Fred’s Drugstore on the side. I don’t know any Bakers or Bernards, not that I can recollect offhand. You know what I think? I think all those people were people she knew a long time ago, not ones she was asso­ciating with in the here and now. They were figures from her past, in my opinion. And there’s only one person that Rose ever let down her real back hair in front of, and that’s Frank Clyde.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Indeed.” Mrs. Cushman echoed the word lovingly. It was a good word and she intended to use it frequently in the future. When one of the boarders complained about something, Mrs. Cushman would say “Indeed?” rais­ing her eyebrows just as Dalloway had done.

  “Why?”

  “Why did she talk to Frank, you mean? Well, first and foremost, she liked him. She never let on she did, she even insulted him, but you could tell that underneath she considered him a real good guy. Which he is.”

  “I agree. I’ve met him.”

  “Grade A, in my opinion, and I’m not the one to say that about everybody. I’ve met too many Grade C’s in my lifetime and they look all right on the outside but just try cracking their shell, if you get my meaning.”

  “Quite.”

  “Quite.” Mrs. Cushman beamed with pleasure. She liked the way Dalloway talked, the nice crisp words he used like “quite” and “indeed.” A most distinguished man. She wondered if he was married.

  Dalloway saw her wondering and edged toward the front door. “Thank you for your trouble, Mrs.—”

  “Cushman. Blanche.”

  “Ah—yes, I believe I’ll go and have a talk with Mr. Clyde.”

  He opened the door decisively, and Mrs. Cushman knew in her heart that he was walking out of her life forever. She made one final move to stop him.

  Crossing her arms on her chest, she said ominously, “You know what I think? What I think is, Rose was murdered.”

  10

  The Clydes’ house was one of a row of identical al­most-new stucco houses in the west end of town. Even the plantings were identical and had been chosen for their rapid growth: flowering maples less than a year old were already as big as trees and in full bloom, and castor beans the same age loomed above the flat roofs, their smooth red trunks glistening like oil in the afternoon sun.

  Miriam came to the door, a pretty, dark-haired young woman with a demure smile and sharp intelligent eyes. She had on a T-shirt, denim pedal-pushers and a blue cotton apron that looked as if she had made it herself. She wore this strange costume with a certain style and self-assurance that seemed to say, I can’t afford to buy good clothes but with my figure I don’t have to.

  “Mr. Dalloway? I’m Miriam Clyde.”

  “Very glad to know you.”

  “Come in, won’t you? Frank will be back in a minute. After you phoned he decided to go down to the office and pick up the file on Rose.”

  “I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a file on her.”

  “There is. I’ve read it.”

  “You have?”

  “Surprised? Don’t be. When a man is as wrapped up in his work as Frank is,” Miriam added cheerfully, “I have to get wrapped up with him to survive.”

  The liv
ing room and the furniture in it were obviously new, but already they bore the marks of living: a child’s handprint on the woodwork near the light switch, strands of dog hair on the loveseat by the fireplace, black scars of rubber heels on the hardwood floor, and a deck of cards spilled over the piano like fallen leaves.

  Miriam made no attempt to pick up the cards or apol­ogize for the room. She accepted a certain amount of disorder as she accepted the weather and the quarterly payments of income tax. She was a fighter, but she never fought the inevitable or started a battle that she wasn’t sure of winning. The main battle was money, and though it was still going on, Miriam was confident of final vic­tory some day.

  “I realize this is an intrusion,” Dalloway said, “coming here on Frank’s afternoon off.”

  “Frank doesn’t mind.”

  “You must.”

  “Oh, I do, a little. I don’t mind you personally, Mr. Dalloway—just the general idea of never getting any free weekends. Frank carries that office of his around like a turtle carrying his shell. It goes with us to the beach, the movies, and down to the corner drugstore.” Her sudden, bright smile took the edge off her words. “Sometimes I think my kids will get the impression that the entire world is populated by Frank’s patients.”

  Dalloway returned her smile. He liked this calm, can­did woman and he wished that Lora could have acquired some similar qualities, a sense of humor, perhaps, or a hard core of common sense. Lora was an idealist without ideals, a rebel without a cause, a woman who affected to despise money and yet was completely dependent on other people for support.

  He said aloud, “It would be handy, anyway, having an office you can carry. And the turtle can’t afford to despise his shell.”

  “I guess not.” From the backyard came the shouts of children and the shrill barking of a small dog. “Frank’s like a turtle in another respect. He’s always sticking his neck out.”

  “Oh?”

  “He has no time—no right, even—to go around investi­gating Rose’s death.”

  “Is that what he’s doing?”

  “That’s what you’re doing, why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “More or less.”

  “Mostly more, though?”

  “Very well, mostly more.”

  “Why?” Miriam said. “Why is everyone so suspicious about Rose dying?”

  “You aren’t?”

  “No, I’m not. I think both you and Frank simply feel frustrated by her death. Frank didn’t have a chance to finish his job on her, and you didn’t have a chance to ques­tion her about your daughter.”

  “You seem to be full of both theories and information,” Dalloway said, sounding amused. “As a matter of fact you may be right about my part of it. I do feel frustrated. I think it was extremely inconsiderate of Rose to die be­fore I could talk to her. I’m not sure whether she would have been able to tell me any news of Lora or not. I be­lieve she would. When Lora was in one of her sullen moods, she frequently toyed with the idea of a reunion with her mother. You get the picture?—one sensitive, artistic soul crying out to the other across the bourgeois wilderness.”

  “I’m afraid my imagination boggles at the idea of Rose being sensitive and artistic.”

  “Mine boggles even more, in Lora’s case. She has the hide of a rhinoceros, as so many people do who confuse sensitivity with egocentricity. When she makes a childish fuss at the dentist’s, for example, she always manages to convince herself that it’s because she feels more pain than ordinary people.”

  “Oh, everybody thinks that, about feeling more pain than other people. That’s my opinion, anyway. You don’t have to agree. Frank says I make too many sweeping state­ments. But how else can you get a good argument started?”

  “Do you want a good argument?”

  Miriam laughed. “I wouldn’t mind. Frank never ar­gues.”

  “Choose your subject.”

  “That’s easy. Rose.”

  “It’s a wide field. Narrow it down.”

  “All right. Was she murdered or not?”

  “I’ve never claimed she was murdered.”

  “Claim it now, for the sake of argument.”

  Dalloway rubbed the side of his jaw thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I can’t. It doesn’t seem very reasonable. No one gained anything from her death. She had no money, no securities, no jewelry—”

  “Nothing tucked away for a rainy day?”

  “Rose was living in the rainy days.”

  “I know,” Miriam said, with a sober little nod. “We tried to help her as much as we could. We took her to a ball game one night—she was bored stiff by the game but she liked the crowds—and she came here for dinner a few times. At first I was afraid that she’d, well, you know, act up a little in front of the kids, especially if she’d been drinking. But Frank said she wouldn’t, and she didn’t. She was very reserved and sweet. I don’t think she liked the children much, but she talked to them in a grownup way and she played with the dog. She was very fond of dogs. Are you?”

  “Fond of dogs? Oh yes, moderately.” Dalloway looked as if he was trying to keep from laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re one of these women who judge people by whether or not they like dogs.”

  “I certainly am. Frank says it’s a very unscientific system and he’s always citing cases of murderers who were dog-lovers, like Dr. Crippen. Naturally there are exceptions. But I do think that there’s something outgiving and gen­erous about people who are sincerely fond of dogs. Cats are a different matter. Cats are for introverts, lonely peo­ple and rather timid people who are afraid of a dog’s gusto and his demands. Cats don’t give or take, they walk alone, and so do the people who own them.” Miriam paused for breath. “There. That ought to start an argument.”

  “Why do you want an argument?”

  “To get rid of my aggressions. I have quite a few.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Certainly. So have you. I get rid of mine—some of them—not by spanking my kids or beating my husband, but by talking. Oh yes, and once in a while I break a dish. That’s more expensive than talking, though.”

  A car stopped outside, its tire-savers screeching against the curb. A moment later Frank came into the house car­rying a manila folder under his arm.

  He shook hands with Dalloway and grinned across the room at his wife. “I see you’ve been entertaining Mr. Dal­loway with a few theories.”

  “How can you tell?” Miriam said.

  “You’re looking smug.”

  “Oh, I am not.” Miriam went over to the large mirror on the mantel to see if she was looking smug or not.

  Frank turned back to Dalloway. “I brought the report on Rose. It’s not complete, as I explained to you before. We’re seldom able to get a complete report on anyone unless there’s been a series of previous commitments. In the case of Rose, I have only what information she volun­teered, plus a few of my own interpretations which may or may not be right. So don’t expect much.”

  “I won’t,” Dalloway said.

  “Actually I had no business taking Rose on as a patient. I don’t think there was anything wrong with her men­tally. She was a little punch-drunk. She’d been a cham­pion, in her own way, and then suddenly she couldn’t even get a bout scheduled. “Those are her own words, I’m quot­ing from the report.”

  “Am I to be allowed to read it?”

  “Certain parts. A lot of it is personal.”

  “To Rose or to me?”

  “You’re mentioned in it several times.”

  “In a favorable or unfavorable light?”

  Frank seemed uncomfortable. “Well, you know Rose.”

  “Unfavorable, then.”

  “Yes. That’s understandable. She suffered a great many guilt feelings after abandoning you and the child. In or­der to tolerate these feelings, she had t
o convince herself that you were quite the villain.”

  “I imagine Rose’s life teemed with villains.”

  “They were pretty numerous.”

  “Any references to those names I told you about that she’d written on the map?”

  “Two.” Frank untied the tapes on the manila folder. “Phil and Bernard. Phil was the name of her last husband, Philip Lederman. He was killed in a sailing accident a few years ago. He was alone at the time, there was no sus­picion of foul play.”

  “And Bernard?”

  “Bernard,” Frank said dryly, “was a Pekinese.”

  “A dog?”

  “Yes. She had him when she worked on the old United Artists lot. She carried him around everywhere she went, on the set, in restaurants, trains, etcetera. Here are the two references if you want to glance at them.”

  Dalloway accepted the typewritten pages with a little frown of annoyance. The reference to Bernard was a straight quote from Rose:

  “Bernard was the smartest little dog you ever saw. Hon­est to God, Frank, that dog could read my mind better than you can. Bernie could always tell when I didn’t like people; he’d snap at them. Once he bit the headwaiter at the Ambassador. God, it was funny. I had to pay three hundred dollars’ damages. I’ve never set foot in the Ambassador since. It was the principle of the thing—three hundred dollars for a lousy little dog bite…”

  Dalloway looked up, still frowning. “This can’t be the right Bernard.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “It’s only a dog, after all.”

  “Try the Phil reference,” Frank said. “Page eighty-nine.”

  Page eighty-nine began with Frank’s own words.

  “Patient arrived in a depressed mood, dressed care­lessly, hair uncombed. Complained of a sleepless night. Face pallid, respiration uneven. I advised a physical check-up. Patient protested, claiming it was unnecessary, she couldn’t afford it, she distrusted doctors, and so on. She seemed afraid. After a time she admitted this.

  “Patient: ‘I had the screaming meemies last night. I woke up around 4 a.m. and it was dark, pitch dark, and quiet. I had the feeling that I was alone, absolutely alone, that everybody else in the whole world had died and there was just me left in that awful quietness. And then gradu­ally I realized it wasn’t so quiet, I could hear the sea. My window was open and I could hear the sea very faintly, that terrible incessant noise, I hate it. It reminds me of Phil. I told you about Phil, didn’t I?’