Rose's Last Summer

by Margaret Millar

  Greer had turned a page and was reading again, softly and slowly and without emotion as if he didn’t intend to be overheard and was merely forming the words with his mouth like an inexperienced reader.

  May 12. Tonight we had a preview, Willett and Rose and Ethel and I, though I didn’t count. I was only the audience. I lay in bed and watched. Willett was himself and Ethel was herself, but Rose was me. I rather enjoyed it and I have a suspicion that Ethel did, too. But Rose was nervous and Willett broke down completely and cried and kept asking me why, why we had to go through with this terrible thing. For the fiftieth time I told him why. I explained it to all three of them. Willett did not need an explanation. What he wanted was reassurance; he wanted me to say, no, no, Willett, I’m not going to die. I could not say it. I wish I could.

  May 13. After last night’s emotional tension I am very tired and I am beginning to wonder if my plan will work out. For months I have lived with the idea of it; the actual execution is a different matter. There are difficulties which I didn’t anticipate. Willett, for one. I have made him swear on the sacred Book that he will carry out my plan, no matter how many misgivings he may have about its legality. Both in mind and heart he is reluctant, but he has sworn. If the time should ever come when these pages are read by an agent of the law, I repeat, this plan is mine alone. Willett and Ethel are acting under compulsion; any blame or criti­cism must be given to me.

  The other difficulty is Rose. I suspect that she drinks, and I know that she has a faulty memory. Since she is to become me, she must learn and learn accurately what I have been doing lately and where I have been and what my little hobbies and weaknesses are. Dependence upon the radio during these last years has made me a baseball fan. Rose is very bored by the game. She simply cannot remember which teams belong in which leagues. Nor can she remember dates and places. I had Willett bring home some road maps and Rose wrote notes in the margin, making a little game of it. I believe this will help her memorize more readily. Our personal relationship is not a friendly one. She respects me, and I am dependent upon her. She is me, and she will be me longer than I will. In its macabre way, the situation is amusing. I cannot laugh out loud, my breathing is uneasy, but I can smile inside. I can weep inside, too. Life these days swings from farce to tragedy and back again, back and forth, with all of us clinging to the pendulum like squirming little puppets. When I look at Willett and see his torment, I almost choke with tears. And then quite suddenly Ethel comes up with one of her exquisitely inane remarks and back goes the pendulum again. It will never stop. One of these days I will release my hold on it, but the pendulum itself will go on swinging and so will Ethel, Willett, and certainly Rose, who swings more violently than anyone.

  May 16. This afternoon I went over with Ethel and Willett the details of my plan for what may be the last time. It is, in essence, a simple one. Some people will consider it only as an attempt to defraud the government. Others will see it as I do, an attempt to protect my children from what I consider unjust claims.

  I am not by nature interested in business and finance. In­terest was thrust upon me by two events: first I inherited all of my husband’s stock, and second, I learned from my doctor approximately three years ago, that I had a bad heart condi­tion which might prove fatal at any time. I told no one about it. Instead, I went directly to my husband’s lawyer. I had everything I owned divided into three equal parts and given to my children—an outright gift, no strings attached.

  But there were strings, invisible strings which I discovered later. I will try to explain them simply. According to law I was allowed to give away to each of my children, or anyone else, up to thirty thousand dollars by cash or its equivalent, free of gift tax. Sums beyond that are subject to gift taxes. They are not Highland. The children managed to pay them without sacrificing any of their stock in the factory. The factory is their livelihood. None of them can support them­selves, not even Shirley. She is clever enough, but she has to look after her four children.

  For a while I felt quite pleased with myself, believing that the division of my property had accomplished a number of things which I thought desirable:

  there would be no squabbling over money after my death, and above all, the factory would still belong to the family and would continue to support them comfortably if not luxuriously. I became resigned to the idea of my death because I thought my children’s future was taken care of. I had nothing to leave to them; they would not have to pay a penny of inheritance taxes which I consider exorbitant and in certain cases quite unjust.

  It was about a year ago when I discovered that my sense of security about the future was founded on ignorance. It happened quietly as important things often do, quietly and without warning. Shirley and I were at home and Shir­ley was reading one of those obscure secondhand books she likes to collect.

  Suddenly she looked up at me and asked me how I was feeling.

  I told her I felt quite well, all things considered.

  “Your sticking to your diet, aren’t you?”

  “I’m half-starved all the time,” I said sharply. “I’ve lost seventy pounds.”

  “Have you been to the doctor lately?”

  “Last month.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said I was doing better than he expected.”

  “You mean there was an improvement in your condition?”

  I told her the truth. “There was no improvement, no. I’m simply not disintegrating as rapidly as he thought I would.”

  “Do you suppose you’ll live for a year?”

  It was an odd question, but I was not surprised. Shirley is an odd girl, unemotional, except where her children are concerned.

  “Would you care if I didn’t?”

  “Care? It’s not really a matter of caring.”

  “What is it a matter of, then?”

  “Taxes.”

  “Taxes. What are you talking about? What’s that book you’rereading?”

  She told me, then. I won’t attempt to reconstruct her words. I will explain it more personally, as it affects me. If I live another two months, to the middle of July, it will be exactly three years since I divided my property among my children. Three years—that is the arbitrary legal time limit. If I live that long, everything will be well. If I don’t, the property I gave away will be presumed to have been given in anticipation of death, and under those circumstances it will be taxed not as a gift but as an inheritance. This would not apply to accidental deaths or ones that could not be fore­seen. But it applied to me. I had disposed of my property in anticipation of death. My doctor knew it; it was a matter of record. A funny law, isn’t it? If I lived three years, not a day more, it would indicate that I hadn’t anticipated death. Yes, it’s quite a funny law.

  “This is awful,” Shirley said. “Don’t you see?”

  “I see.”

  “I can’t afford to pay inheritance taxes without selling some of my stock. You know what that means.”

  I knew. Little by little, they’d sell. Little by little, other people would take over the factory. How well I knew.

  Shirley was watching me with that half-grim, half-humor­ous expression she often wears. “I guess you’ll just have to hold out for a year, won’t you?”

  “Yes, I guess I will.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  “Of course.”

  No, Shirley, I didn’t think I could. But there were ways.

  Devious ways, perhaps. That’s why I couldn’t ask you to be a party to them, you or Jack. It had to be Willett—he loved me more.

  The bluebottle fly had returned to the window with a rush of wings, its vigor unabated. Ethel watched it, but she no longer felt it was a part of her. Its incessant buzzing seemed silly, its energy without purpose, and the reckless charm of its existence an illusion.

  Willett loved her more, she thought. Yes, it�
��s true. He loved her too much. I didn’t have a chance while she was alive. Now she’s gone, and when this is all over perhaps the factory will be gone too, and Willett and I can start a new life.

  Greer turned a page.

  May 18. I am very weary but somehow more hopeful to­night. Everything is settled. Rose is ready to move in at a moment’s notice if anything should happen to me. Ethel has kept the maid, Murphy, out of my room so she will not suspect any substitution when it is made. If it is made. I feel so hopeful that I’m almost convinced it won’t be necessary. If it is, however, Willett has his instructions. In the middle of July it must be established that I am still alive, perhaps by means of some legal action like a will. There should be no trouble about the difference in signatures. Illness has already changed mine so much that I can hardly believe it is mine. Even now, as I write, I look at this hesitant, shaky script and despise it.

  So much for that. On July, the fifteenth, I will be alive, perhaps really, perhaps apparently. Willett and Ethel will then return to San Francisco and resume their life.

  But what of Rose?

  She’s the problem. Obviously she cannot continue to be me forever. She cannot take my place among my friends and family, in my home. Even if it were remotely possible, I couldn’t stand the idea of it. No. Rose must die. She must die as me. If I die as her, she must die as me.

  Once or twice lately I have caught her looking at me queerly. I believe she knows what I am thinking. When she is sober, there is fear in her eyes, but I have no sympathy to waste on such a woman. Rose has seen much life, many beds; why this childish greed for more?

  I was amused, at first, by her mimicry. No longer. It has become more cruel and cunning and exaggerated as if she is saying to me, see this irritable and autocratic old woman? It is you.

  Yes, I have come to despise her. But I am not sure which I am despising, the Rose who is Rose or the Rose who is me. Rose. I dislike the very name. That old song keeps running through my head: The last rose of summer left blooming alone, all her lovely companions have faded and gone.

  Rose hates to be alone. She should join her lovely com­panions.

  May 19. Murder. The word occurred to me in the middle of the night. I woke up with it on my lips. Then I went back to sleep, and when I woke up again there were church bells ringing. The incongruity amused me. Murder and church bells.

  It is Sunday. Murphy had the day off so Rose came out this afternoon. She had been drinking, using alcohol to dis­solve her fear. But it wouldn’t dissolve. It has become too hard and dense; a diamond of fear, nothing can dissolve it, nothing can make a mark on it.

  She sat by the window, mute and morose.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “I’ve been talking.”

  “Oh, you have? To whom?”

  “A friend of mine. You don’t know him. His name is Frank.”

  “And did you talk quite frankly?” I smiled at the pun, expecting that Rose would smile, too.

  “I never talk frankly anymore. I talk like you, pretending to be frank but never saying the truth.”

  “You find that unpleasant?”

  “I hate it.”

  “You hate me, too, Rose. Don’t you?”

  She wouldn’t answer.

  I spoke to her again in a soft, friendly way: “Perhaps you hate yourself, too, Rose. We are almost twins.”

  She sat all huddled up in the chair, watching me, hugging her knees as if for warmth and comfort.

  “Practically twins,” I repeated. “Come here. Stand beside my bed, look into the mirror. What do you see?”

  She came and stood beside my bed and looked into the mirror on the door.

  “What do you see, Rose?”

  “I see two dreadful old women,” she said quietly, and picked up her coat and left.

  The door closed behind her, and its mirror sprang back at me like a beast out of ambush.

  I could not take my eyes away. The dreadful old woman fascinated me. Surely it was not I. I had picked up my coat and walked out of the door. I could hear my own footsteps on the stairs.

  “Ethel,” I said. “Ethel, Ethel, Ethel!”

  When I became conscious again, Ethel and Willett were bending over my bed. I felt quite cleansed, pure. My body was light as a bird’s, my mind extraordinarily clear. There was nothing it could not have solved in that moment, no mathematical formula too involved, no problem too diffi­cult.

  I said, “Willett, I must talk to you alone.”

  “You mustn’t talk. I’ve sent for the doctor.”

  “Cancel it.”

  “No. No, I can’t, I won’t.”

  “Cancel it,” I said. A doctor. I didn’t need a doctor. My mind was so clear and bright. There was nothing it could not solve.

  “The doctor will help you,” Willett said.

  I called him a name, just a quiet little name, and he went downstairs and canceled the doctor’s call.

  When he came back up again, he sat on the edge of my bed and his breathing sounded hard and painful.

  “Willett, you love me?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “You would do anything for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the time comes,” I said, “when the time comes, Rose must disappear.”

  “I know that. It’s all been arranged. She has promised—”

  “Promises are only words, only air going in and out of the lungs and shapes of sounds in and out of the larynx. Promises are nothing, Willett. You understand?”

  “They’re all I have.”

  “You must have more. You must have certainty.”

  “There aren’t many certainties in this world.”

  “There are two,” I said. “Death and taxes.”

  “You should be resting, Mother.”

  “Death and taxes,” I repeated. “She’s not a good woman, Willett. It isn’t as if she were. No one will miss her. No one will care.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She’s a dreadful old woman, really. Haven’t you noticed? Don’t you hate the way she looks, the way she talks? Don’t you think she’s dreadful?”

  “No. No.”

  “Those eyes, mean, hard, little eyes. They would be better off sealed.”

  “Mother—”

  “Seal them.”

  “You’re not rational, Mother.”

  “Make Rose a certainty. Seal those horrid, little eyes.”

  Willett looked at me with such sadness. Then he got up and leaned over me and pressed his hand on my forehead and touched the lids of my eyes. “Go to sleep, Momma, you’re tired.”

  I am tired. But I must not sleep. I must plan. Willett thinks I am losing my mind. He doesn’t understand, he hasn’t looked into that mirror, he hasn’t seen what I have. To­morrow I will show him what springs out at me when the door closes. Tomorrow he will see that dreadful old woman . . .

  But tomorrow was too late.

  She went to sleep with the pen in her hand, and the sound of church bells in her ears, and in the morning she did not awaken.

  The drawing room was still hot, still humid. There was too much of everything in it, too much sun and furniture and gilt, too many mirrors.

  Ethel looked at Willett across the excess of everything and spoke to him without words: Take it easy, old boy. Everything will be all right. You still have me.

  27

  The front left, second-floor room of Mrs. Cushman’s boarding house was beginning to look normal again. Rose’s clothes were strewn across the bed, a tomato and half a dozen oranges were ripening on the windowsill and Rose herself was rehanging her pictures on the wall. She had on a red plaid dress that Ethel had given to her. The dre
ss was two or three sizes too large and made her re­semble a scarecrow, a fact which Rose used to her own advantage.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Just look. I’ve lost pounds.”

  Mrs. Cushman looked, and said with feeling, “You poor thing.”

  “I damn near starved.”

  “We’ll feed you up real nice, Rose. Don’t you worry, you’ve got some good years in you yet. And just to think not more than a week ago I went to your funeral.”

  “Was it nice?”

  “Real nice. The minister said some lovely things about you. Better than you deserve, if you’ll pardon my tactless­ness.” Mrs. Cushman’s eyes narrowed in thought. “As a matter of fact, it seems to me you always get a little better than you deserve.”

  Rose did not take offense, because she couldn’t afford to; but she tucked the remark away in a corner of her mind for future reference and rebuttal. “Things have,” she admitted, “turned out very well.”

  Mrs. Cushman stood quietly for a moment, torn be­tween her desire to see justice done and her desire to remain the friend and confidante of someone who was very nearly murdered and who’d already had a funeral.

  Justice won. “It don’t seem right that nobody was arrested.”

  “You have a small mind,” Rose said crushingly. “Ex­tremely small.”

  “Small mind or no small mind, somebody should of been arrested.”

  “They couldn’t get enough evidence to take into court. Besides, we’ve all suffered enough.”

  “I wonder.”

  “When I think of myself imprisoned in that room, hun­gry, chained to the bed, practically—”

  “Huh.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be unpleasant about it, Blanche, I’ve a good notion to pack up my bags and leave.”

  “You haven’t got anywhere to go.”

  “Oh, haven’t I? Well, I’ll have you know that Dalloway is yearning to have me back, and Lora wants me to share an apartment with her, and Ethel offered me a job in San Francisco, and Frank and Miriam would be delighted if I—”