The Girls on Rose Hill
A Novel
by
Bernadette Walsh
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter 1
Rose
The noon sun blinded me and it was all I could do not to turn around and crawl back into bed. I was tired. Bone tired as my mother used to say. I rummaged through the straw basket and found a scratched pair of plastic sunglasses my granddaughter left behind last summer. I grabbed the thin iron railing and made my way down the porch's steep steps one step at a time, the way my mother had in her last few years. Old. I was getting old. I'd flown up and down these stairs since I was a child but last month I missed the third step and twisted my ankle. Now, like my mother before me, I had to be careful.
I peered through the damaged glasses. My brother's anchored sailboat bobbed merrily in the high tide. In the distance, several men fished off of the Centershore bridge, their low murmurs carried by a light breeze. One of the men wiped his bald head with a rag. A small bead of sweat trickled down my own brow. Summer used to be my favorite season but this month's string of ninety degree days had sapped my energy.
I walked over to the shed, painted the same robin's egg blue as the house, and hesitated, almost involuntarily, before I stepped inside the dank, termite ridden structure. The sharp tang of fertilizer mixed with kerosene still reminded me of my stepfather. Sixty years on, I could almost see his broad shoulders block the narrow doorway, his thin lips a hard line. I shook my head and forced the image out of my mind. A stepladder lay just inside the shed's door. I dragged it out into the sun and over to a large lilac bush. Although it was June, a few flowering branches remained. They would make a nice addition to St. Ann's mid-week altar arrangement.
"Hello, Rose," Barbara Conroy said. Barbara and her late husband had lived next door for close to forty years. I couldn't remember the last time our greetings had extended beyond a hello and a weather observation. Yet as a long time neighbor, Barbara's habits and schedule were as familiar as my own. Barbara carried a tray of sandwiches for her weekly historical society meeting.
I forced a smile. "Hi, Barbara. Hot enough for you?"
"It's brutal." She placed the tray in the back seat of her new silver Mercedes. Since her husband died last spring, Barbara had enjoyed spending all the pennies he'd pinched over their long marriage.
I waved one last time to Barbara and turned my attention to the lilacs. Every Wednesday I freshened the altar's flower arrangements, although attendance at the daily masses was sparse. Still, Monsignor Ryan appreciated my efforts.
I wiped my sweaty palms on the faded housedress my daughter tried to throw out last summer and then grabbed the heavy gardening shears out of the straw basket. I climbed to the top of the stepladder and reached for a large unwilted blossom. As I lifted the shears over my head, a sharp pain pierced my skull. The gardening shears fell to the ground. I shouldn't have gone out in this heat, I thought as I climbed down the ladder. I reached the last step when another flash of pain, stronger than the last, ripped through my head. Then darkness.
* * *
Two weeks later I found myself installed in a small single room at St. Francis Hospice. Invasive brain cancer. No treatment options. No hope. Three months at most. It seemed I'd meet the Lord a little sooner than I'd expected.
"I said, do you want me to put more water in this vase?" my sister-in-law Lisa shouted in my left ear.
"Sorry, yes. That's fine," I said, my voice, despite my effort, no louder than a whisper.
"These are pretty. Are they from your garden?" Lisa asked loudly as she walked to the small adjoining bathroom.
I wanted to tell her I had cancer, I wasn't deaf. Instead I replied, "Yes. Ellen brought them yesterday." My daughter, Ellen, had brought offerings from my garden every day since she'd arrived from Washington. If I live much longer, there won't be a blade of grass left.
"Well, she certainly didn't cut them very well, but then Ellen was never one for flowers, was she?" Lisa bustled back into the room and a small stream of water dripped from an overfilled vase. "I can't believe she's staying all alone at your place. Paul and I told her she was more than welcome to stay with us. The kids are away at camp this month so there's plenty of room. But no, she said she wanted to spend time at home. I was surprised to hear her call it that. Home. When was the last time she was back anyway?"
"I don't remember," I lied as I looked out the small window next to my bed. The window faced a small courtyard with a statue of Our Lady in the center, surrounded by a bed of day lilies. A young woman placed a small bouquet of flowers at Our Lady's feet.
"I don't think she's been back twice since Kitty died. I would've thought that she considered D.C. her home now. Not like Paul. He's always loved that old house. He was born there after all," Lisa added as if I didn't know.
"So was Ellen." I looked at the young woman praying in the courtyard, her dark hair a curtain across her face. The bright orange of the day lilies was like fire against her black hair as the blossoms danced in the breeze. I stared at the flowers and an image of my Auntie Margaret's back yard in Bay Ridge flashed across my damaged brain.
Margaret's front yard, like that of her Brooklyn neighbors, consisted of a small postage stamp lawn. All proper and controlled. In the back she'd created a magic garden for me and my cousin Molly. Paths lined with rows of beautiful wildflowers criss-crossed the small yard and bright orange day lilies softened the back fence. We would hide for hours among the flowers. Molly and I crept along the rough wooden fence, orange blossoms caught in our hair, the day my mother and Peter came to take me to the house on Rose Hill.
My hands were covered in dirt and Auntie Margaret tried to rub them clean with a soft handkerchief, her eyes red with tears. My mother stood next to a strange man. He was tall with a large nose and enormous hands. My mother handed him a small suitcase and then hugged me. My grubby fingers stained her pale green dress. "Rosie, I have the best news. You have a new daddy, and we're going to take you with us to live in a beautiful house by the sea. Isn't that marvelous? Aren't you the luckiest girl in the world?"
"Are we going on vacation? Can Molly come too?"
"Of course Molly will visit us. But no, this isn't a vacation. You're coming to live with me. With us," Kitty said, in a bright, chirpy voice.
"But I live here," I said, bewildered. "I live with Auntie Margaret and Uncle John and Molly and baby Jack."
"Yes, you did live here. Now you're going to live with your own mommy and daddy," Kitty
said, her voice hardened as she glared at Auntie Margaret.
I looked at the sour-faced man. "But I don't know him. I don't like him!"
The man glanced at his watch as if he hadn't heard a word I'd said. Tears slid down my cheeks.
Auntie Margaret took me in her arms. "Hush now, child," she said in her soft brogue. "There's no reason to cry. You'll love your new home with your mammy. And we'll all come out to visit you soon."
"Kitty, we need to go," the man said.
Without another word, my mother lifted me up in her arms and carried me out of the yard. I looked back through my tears. Auntie Margaret crouched down beside my cousin Molly, Margaret's black hair framed against the fire of the day lilies.
Lisa's grating voice brought me back to the hospice room. "...and so I offered to send my gardener over to your place, but Ellen wouldn't hear of it. Really, it's no problem. After all, she'll need to get back to Washington, to her job and her family soon I would think, and someone will need to take care of the house. Paul and I would be happy to do it." Lisa squeezed my thin hand in her plump one.
"Happy to do what?" Ellen asked from the doorway.
"Ellen, I didn't see you there. I was just telling Rose that our gardener would be happy to take care of Rose's garden. It's no problem."
"This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the garden, Lisa. My mother shouldn't be bothered with such details," Ellen said in what I always thought of as her lawyer voice.
"I was only trying to help." Lisa then turned to me and said in a louder voice, "Rose, you must be tired. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Good bye, Lisa," I said. "God bless."
Lisa was barely out the door when Ellen sat on my bed and said, "God, what a vulture. Could she be more obvious? She and Paul practically live in a mansion and she can't wait to get her fat mitts on your place. Honestly, I don't know how Paul can stand her."
"She means well."
"You always say that," Ellen said, irritation lacing her words. "For years you've said she means well. What does that even mean? And why does she shout at you?"
"I don't know."
"Because she's an idiot, that's why. God, let's stop talking about her. I didn't come here to bitch about Lisa again." Ellen walked over to the window. "It's a nice, bright room anyway."
"Yes. It's got a lovely garden."
"Maybe if you're up for it we can go there tomorrow. Oh, and your friend is down there." Ellen gestured toward the statue of Our Lady.
"I know, it's a comfort." I paused and then against my better judgment added, "She could be your friend too, Ellen."
"It's a little late for me." Ellen took in a deep breath, like she always did when she wanted to control her temper. I'd say what I thought was something innocuous and not likely to set her off, Ellen would snap at me, I'd backtrack and take back whatever offensive word escaped my mouth, she'd get more annoyed. We'd danced this dance for years now. Ever since Ellen hit school and realized that it wasn't normal to live with your grandmother, your uncles and your awkward, ex-nun mother. The house on Rose Hill may have had a white picket fence, but that was about the only thing about it that was normal. My Ellen spent her childhood keeping up with Joneses in our affluent town, and the Joneses didn't have mothers like me. Mothers who didn't come paired with fathers. Mothers who kept secrets from their daughters.
But now that her pathetic excuse for a mother had come down with cancer, the "bad kind" as my mother would say, Ellen had managed to control her temper. For the most part anyway, although her constant tongue-biting was unnerving.
Ellen sat on the chair beside my bed. Her normally glossy blonde hair showed an inch of gray roots and her high cheekbones were sharper than usual, as if she'd lost weight too quickly. It was strange to see my elegant daughter look anything but perfect. To distract her I asked, "When is Veronica due in?"
Ellen smiled for the first time all day. "Tomorrow morning. Her train should be in around eleven. We'll stop by here in the afternoon."
"Good." My eyelids felt like lead. "Good."
Chapter 2
Ellen
The morning breeze was cool. Thank God the heat wave finally broke. One more night in my mother's sweat box of a house and I swear I'd drown myself in the Long Island Sound.
The salt-tinged breeze washed over me as I sat on the front porch and drank coffee out of Granny's favorite red mug. What would Granny Kitty say if she could see me sprawled on her front steps in my wrinkled shorts? She'd probably drag me inside the kitchen, the proper place for drinking coffee, and harass me until I put on something decent.
But Kitty wasn't here, nor was Rose, and with only my daughter Veronica with me, I was now the matriarch of the house. Oddly giddy at the thought, I wondered if there were any other house rules I could break, as though I was thirteen and not forty-three. I savored my strong coffee, so unlike the hospital's watery concoctions, and watched two young boys from the local yachting club maneuver their sailboat under the Centershore bridge. The briny wind carried he taller one's little boy curses.
I looked at the diamond watch my husband bought me last year. Only an hour until I was due back at the hospice center and the weeds and flowers weren't about to pick themselves. I looked at the little boys again. How I wished I could climb into the boat with them and sail away from mother and this old house and the hospital stench that seemed to have become permanently lodged in my nostrils. Unfortunately an escape from this particular unpleasant chapter of my life would not be so easy.
I picked up the battered gardening basket I'd bought my mother many birthdays ago, walked to the rose bushes that lined the walkway and cut the few remaining intact flowers. My grandmother had told my mother when they had first moved to Centerport that she'd planted the rose bushes in honor of the five-year-old Rose, and that the winding lane, Rose Hill, was named in Rose's honor. For years my mother believed my grandmother until a neighbor told her old Mrs. Frohller, Kitty's mother-in-law, had planted the roses long before Rose was born and long before Mrs. Frohller's son Peter ever met the pretty Irish widow. Still, as Mrs. Frohller's rose bushes eventually withered and died, Kitty, and then Rose, replaced them and tended the rose bushes with care.
If my mother and grandmother had each been blessed with a green thumb then I'd been cursed with a black one. In the two weeks my mother'd been at St. Francis, I'd managed to kill three spider plants and the ficus in the hallway didn't look too healthy. If my mother could see me awkwardly hack at the roses, she'd gently admonish me in that pained way she had whenever someone other than herself handled her treasured flowers. Well, she's not here to see, I thought grimly. I reached for a large yellow blossom and impaled my thumb on a thorn.
"Shit." I brought my bleeding thumb to my mouth.
"Are you okay?" My daughter asked in a sleepy voice behind me.
I laughed and turned to face her. "Yeah. I was attacked by a flower." I arranged my features into the face I usually presented to my children—that of a cheerful, competent, loving mother—and smiled. "Are you hungry? I have fruit and yogurt in the kitchen."
Veronica ran her fingers through her unruly auburn curls. "Oh, Mom, I could really use a bagel."
I handed her the straw basket. "Okay, you take this inside and I'll make a bagel run."
I shook the dirt from my hands before I opened the door of my new silver German sedan. After years of driving squat sexless mini-vans with their three row seats and sensible beverage holders, I'd finally treated myself to one of the sleek expensive cars my husband Brendan favored. With Veronica soon off to NYU and the twins safely tucked away in their top-tier colleges, I no longer needed to cart around hockey skates, lacrosse sticks or gaggles of giggling cheerleaders. When Brendan complained about the price, I told him I'd served my time and deserved some comfort and style. Guilt always opened his wallet.
A half hour later, after she'd convinced me to cook her a full breakfast, Veronica dug into a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. My twenty-year old twin bo
ys, Michael and Timothy, older than Veronica by eighteen months, had inherited my heavy blonde locks but there was no doubt that this red-haired sprite was my daughter. We both shared my grandmother Kitty's cornflower blue eyes and curvy figure and we both had the wide set eyes and high cheekbones donated by Mr. Mystery, which was how Kitty had always referred to my unknown father.
"More tea?" I asked.
"Please." Like the Queen of England, Veronica held out her mug while I poured. My Granny always called Veronica a "right little madam" and I supposed she was. My fault, of course. I'd indulged Veronica and used the excuse of our "girl time" to escape my rowdy sons and inattentive husband—weekend trips to dance competitions, shopping at Georgetown's nearby high end boutiques and, of course, our weekly mani-pedi sessions. The housekeeper still made her bed and I wasn't sure Veronica even knew where the washing machine was. My pampered daughter was in for a rude awakening next year at college.
Ah, who was I kidding? I was the one who'd be in for a rude awakening. After twenty years of the welcome distractions provided by three children, I'd be left alone with an enormous house and an even more enormous emotional gulf between myself and Brendan, who, to be honest, felt more like a slightly annoying roommate than a husband.
Unaware of my traitorous thoughts about her father, Veronica sipped her tea and stared out the small kitchen window. "Mom, what's going on back there?"
I'd managed to keep the front garden somewhat in check, but hadn't touched the backyard which, in this heat, was overrun with weeds. Lisa was right, I did need the help of the gardener to maintain my mother's horticultural paradise. I could probably use one in the house too since the ficus was clearly on its last leg. However, I'd kill every plant in Centerport rather than admit Lisa was right. Stubborn. I'd always been stubborn, a trait my Granny always said I must've inherited from Mr. Mystery rather than my meek mother.
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