The Truth about Mary Rose

by Marilyn Sachs

  “The important thing,” said my mother, “is that you told me, and I think you’ll probably feel better now. It’s always good to get things off your chest. You see them in perspective. Maybe even through somebody else’s eyes. To me, Mary Rose was a pathetic, vulnerable child who was more to be pitied than feared. Poor, little thing! I guess if she had lived, it would have all worked out for her. She would have grown up—like the rest of us—maybe even better. Who knows? Look how she saved your life and how she alerted everybody in the building. Stanley, you have to admit she had some wonderful things in her.”

  Here is where I began crying. Softly, so nobody could hear me. Crying for myself and Mary Rose.

  “She didn’t,” Uncle Stanley said.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t save my life, and didn’t save anybody else’s either.”

  “Stanley! Stanley!” my mother said, and her voice sounded scolding. “You know she did.”

  “She didn’t,” Uncle Stanley cried.

  I was crying louder now in the closet, but nobody heard me.

  “Do you remember,” Uncle Stanley continued, “how you used to stay with me at night when Mama and Papa were away?”

  “Sure I remember,” my mother said. “I could never get you to go to bed. You’d think of a million excuses to get out of bed, and I’d have to tell you lots of stories before you’d settle down.”

  “I used to like it when they were away because it was so much fun when you took care of me, but once in a while, you weren’t home either, and then Mary Rose had to look after me.”

  “There was a party that night,” my mother said, “at Lorraine Jacob’s house. It was the first time I danced with a boy. I remember.”

  “And Papa smoked a cigar. He gave me the ring, and when they left she wanted it. He never knew she wanted those rings so much. If he knew he would have given them to her. Isn’t it funny how he never knew? How I never told him, and how she never told him? But she always knew when I got one.

  “That night, all night, she tried to get it from me. First she said I could play with her lipstick samples. I said no. Then she said she’d be my slave for half an hour. I said no. Then she said a vampire would come and suck the blood from my neck that night, and that she knew the magic word to make sure he’d come. I said no. She pulled my hair, and smacked my face, and kicked my knee. So I ran into the bedroom, got into bed and cried, but I wouldn’t let her have it.

  “I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I remember, she was standing over me, and I knew as soon as I opened my eyes that she’d pulled the ring off my finger. The first thing I said was, ‘Mary Rose, give me back my ring!’

  “I haven’t got it, stupid,” she cried.

  “She was holding the box under her arm, but she spread out her fingers to show me the ring wasn’t on any of them.

  “You put it somewheres,” I yelled. “Give me back my ring or I’ll tell Mama.”

  “ 'Shut up!’ she said. 'I put it in my box to keep it safe. There’s a fire, so get up! Here!' she handed me the box. 'Go on, take it downstairs. I’m going to get my other boxes, and then I’ll come too. Hurry!' "

  “I started crying, so she pulled me out of bed, and gave me a push. I could smell the fire, and see smoke coming out of the kitchen.

  “ 'Take the box, stupid,' she said. 'And you better not drop it or lose it or I’ll get you good.'

  “Then she went into your bedroom, and I never saw her again, except at the window. All she could think about was getting her boxes out safely. That’s all that mattered to her. Not me and not anybody else. She went back to get her boxes, and that’s why she was trapped.”

  “But didn’t she come out into the hall with you?” asked my mother. “Didn’t she ring all those bells, and tell the people to get out?”

  “No,” Uncle Stanley said, “she didn’t.”

  “But people said she did. They said she rang the bells and warned them. It wasn’t only one person who said so.”

  “She didn’t,” Uncle Stanley said. “I know she didn’t. She never came out of that room.”

  “But people heard her.”

  “No,” Uncle Stanley said. “They didn’t hear her. They heard me.”

  “Stanley!”

  “I rang all the bells going down, and I shouted ‘Help!’ and ‘Fire!’ Mama always used to smack me when I rang bells, but this was one time I knew she wouldn’t smack me. So I rang the bells, and I was happy, and I held on to her box, but later, when I got outside, and there was all that yelling and screaming, and the smoke was in my eyes, later I wasn’t happy. And then somebody looked up at the window, and she was standing there, and somebody else said she had rung the bells, and warned everybody. It all got mixed up in my mind. I thought she’d be mad at me because I rang the bells, and I held on to that box because I didn’t want her to be mad over that too. I didn’t know what it meant when the building collapsed. I was only afraid she’d come after me, and people tried to take away the box, and I couldn’t tell them.”

  “But, Mama ... ,” my mother said.

  “So after a while it was too late to say anything. And Mama began to make a whole fantasy out of Mary Rose, and what happened. So I never told her, and I never will. I don’t want to either, because even now, it’s hard for me to talk about Mary Rose. But I could never name a child of mine after her, because to be perfectly honest with you, Veronica, I never really liked Mary Rose.”

  I must have been crying very loud by then. Maybe I was even screaming. Because suddenly the light in the closet was on, and Uncle Stanley was saying, “But, Mary Rose! What are you doing here?”

  My mother was saying, “I knew this would happen. I told you over and over again, one of these days you were going to hear something you weren’t going to want to hear. It serves you right.”

  But I was crying so hard that after a while she picked me up, and sat down on that bench with the lavender and white striped cushions, and rocked me back and forth in her lap like I was a little kid, and didn’t say anything at all.

  Chapter 10

  My father came out to get me the next morning. I couldn’t stop crying so he took me back to my grandmother’s place. He brought me upstairs to my bedroom, and said I should change into my pajamas, and get into bed. He was going downstairs to make some rice pudding. He said he would tell my grandmother that I had the flu, and that he was going to stay home the whole day to take care of me.

  I got into bed, and put my hot, swollen face down on the cool, dry pillow, and felt it go wet underneath me.

  “Mary Rose! Mary Rose!”

  My grandmother was whispering to me from the doorway. This was the first time since the accident that she’d come up the stairs.

  “Grandma,” I sobbed, “you’re not supposed to be climbing up the stairs all by yourself.” I tried to wipe my eyes so she wouldn’t know I was crying but my whole face was wet.

  “Don’t worry about that, Mary Rose,” she said, walking over to the bed. “What’s hurting you, darling? Why are you crying like that?”

  “Oh, everything,” I said truthfully, wiping one eye and feeling tears oozing out of the other.

  “Is the pain in your stomach? Is it on your right side?”

  “No, Grandma. Please don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  There were worry lines all over her face as she stood over me. She put a hand on my forehead, and I thought to myself how she would be crying too if she knew what I knew. It made me angry at her. I wanted her to go away.

  “I just want to go to sleep.” I lay down and turned away from her.

  “Yes, that’s the best thing. And, Mary Rose ...”

  “What?”

  “How would you like me to ask your father to bring up the TV set so later when you wake up, you can watch TV? I could come up and watch too.”

  “No! I don’t want to watch TV! I hate TV!” I just wanted her to go away, and leave me alone.

  “Oh!” That’s all she said. I
could hear her moving away from the bed. I knew she was feeling bad, and I also knew that I was the one who made her feel bad. It made me feel even worse.

  I sat up in bed, and the tears were really streaming down my face. “Grandma!” I cried. She hurried back, sat down on the bed, and put her arms around me.

  “My sweet girl!” she said, kissing me a few times on different parts of my face. Then she patted my back, and I patted hers, and we both felt better. After a while I lay down again and my grandmother stood up and said, “You take a good rest now, and you’ll feel better. You’re not hot, but I still think your father should call the doctor. He says he has to make rice pudding. I don’t know why he can’t call the doctor and make the rice pudding. Or even why he has to make rice pudding at all. Jello is much lighter on the stomach. But there are some people who you just can’t talk to ...”

  By the time my grandmother left, I had stopped crying. I was exhausted. My face felt like it was all puffed up, and my body ached like I had Charlie horse. It was good being in bed. Later, when my father came upstairs with a dish of rice pudding, I began to feel better.

  Not good. Just better. Better than horrible. It’s like being miserable, but not as miserable as you used to be. But still miserable.

  I sat up in bed, and my father handed me the dish. “Eat, eat,” he said softly. “You’ll feel better.”

  How many years had he been saying the same thing? He watched me eating. It was so good. I hadn’t had any breakfast. “Slow down!” he said. “Don’t gulp like that. You’ll get a stomach ache.”

  When I finished, he took away the dish and asked if I could sleep now. He thought it would be the best thing if I could take a nap. I’d feel like a new person when I woke up.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I said. “Did you hear? Did Mom tell you what Uncle Stanley said?”

  My father shook his head. “I never liked it,” he said. “I told your mother, right away, when you were born. Why name a beautiful, new, little girl after somebody dead and gone? Why name her after anybody for that matter?”

  “But that’s not the point, Daddy.”

  “It is the point. The dead is the dead, and the living is the living, and most important of all is that each person should be himself or herself, and nobody else. A dead sister—what’s that? I have five living sisters—three of them beautiful, and one of them good and charming as well as beautiful. Did I say name this baby after my sister, Dolores, because she’s good and charming and beautiful? No! Because she is she, and you are you, and somebody who died in a fire thirty years ago is somebody else, and somebody who died is gone and finished.”

  I started to cry again, and my father said, “No, no, never mind me! I’m upset, and I’m upsetting you too. The important thing is that it’s over. Forget it, Mary Rose! Forget the whole business!”

  “It’s not over,” I said. “It’ll never be over. I thought she was so great, so good and noble and she was mean and horrible, and she never even saved those people. And worst of all ...” I was really crying, “... worst of all, I’m stuck with her name, with Mary Rose. It’s a terrible name. I hate it.”

  My father put the empty dish of rice pudding down on the floor, and sat down on the bed. “But it’s not her name anymore. It’s your name.”

  “No, it’s her name. And she was mean and selfish and jealous. Why should I have to be named for somebody like that?”

  “First of all,” my father said, “it’s your name, not hers. There must be other people in this world named Mary Rose too. Each of those people is Mary Rose—different and apart from any other Mary Rose.”

  “But, Daddy ...”

  “Wait, I’m not finished. That’s number one. You are Mary Rose and Mary Rose in Pennsylvania is Mary Rose too, but different from you, and Mary Rose in Egypt ...”

  “Oh, Daddy, there’s no Mary Rose in Egypt.”

  “How do you know? She could be the daughter of an American doctor in Cairo, or an actress who lives in Port Said. But, anyway, that’s just number one. Number two is—how can you be so sure that Mary Rose was mean and horrible?”

  “Because Uncle Stanley said so.”

  “Maybe Uncle Stanley thought she was, but your grandmother didn’t.”

  “Grandma’s just making it all up—about how beautiful and kind and super Mary Rose was. It’s a lot of baloney.”

  “And your mother didn’t think she was mean and horrible.”

  “Maybe not, but she thought Mary Rose was a ‘poor, little thing’ who was different from everybody else. It’s just as bad.”

  “But it’s different,” my father said. “It’s different from what Stanley said, different from what your grandmother said, different from what you thought. Maybe if you talked to other people who knew her, they would tell you something different too.”

  “And she didn’t save anybody’s life. Uncle Stanley did.”

  “And how can you be sure of that?”

  “He said he was the one who rang all the bells going down the stairs, not her.”

  “He said he was the one. But everybody else said she did. I don’t say he wasn’t telling the truth. I only say how can you be sure his story is the right one? Or the only one. How can you trust to the memories of a frightened six-year-old child? How can you be sure that even if he did ring the bells going down the stairs, she might not have gone up the stairs and rung the bells there? I just say how can you be so sure his story is the only one to believe?”

  “I’m so mixed up,” I said. “How can you believe anybody? The way you’re talking, I’ll never find out what happened or what she was like.”

  “And that’s all right too,” said my father. “Just think about yourself. Suppose your grandmother was asked to say what you were like. She’d say you were the most beautiful, intelligent and wonderful girl in the world, right?”

  “Along with Pam, Jeanette, Margaret and Olivia.”

  “Right. But she’d say that. If someone asked your mother, she might say you weren’t too bad, but you did have this little habit of listening in to other people’s conversations. Right? And Manny or Ray would say you were a pest.”

  “Not all the time.”

  “And maybe Pam would say you were fun to be with, and Miss Winkler, your old math teacher would say you weren’t very bright, but maybe Miss O’Neil, the art teacher, would say you were.”

  “And what would you say, Daddy?” I was feeling sleepy.

  “I?” said my father. “I would say you ... you ... were the most wonderful ... rice pudding eater in the world.”

  “Oh, Daddy!”

  “So be fair. That Mary Rose has been dead for thirty years, and she’s not here to speak for herself. If she was, she could tell you what really happened, and what she really was like. But she’s dead. So leave her be. Let her rest in peace. That’s what it means—you know—rest in peace. It means the dead should rest in peace from the living, and vice versa.”

  I was really feeling sleepy now, but my father was all wound up, the way he usually gets when something excites him. He started talking about all the dead people who’d been wronged by the living, and all the living people who were persecuted by the dead. As an artist, he said, you had to forget the past and live in the present. Who cared what Cezanne or Rembrandt or Michelangelo thought? Not him! He cared only for what he thought, and, more important, for what he did. Sure, he said, he liked to look at their paintings, but now was now, and you’d never catch him painting Adam and Eve on a ceiling upside down, or spending years painting the same mountain over and over again. Not him! Let the dead bury the dead. The past was the past, and now was now, and when he painted, he said thank you very much to all the great painters of the past and, “Scram now, and let me work!”

  I fell asleep.

  I slept the whole day. And I dreamed about her. About Mary Rose. But I don’t remember what. Only that I woke up at night again. Maybe it was one o’clock, maybe not. But everybody in the house was sleeping. Nearly everybody.

&nb
sp; I jumped up and opened the door, and there she was, bending over, listening in.

  “Mary Rose,” I yelled, “you’ve been listening in to my dreams.”

  “Well, you’ve been listening in to mine,” she said.

  She walked into the room, and looked at everything—at the curtains, at the bed, at the chest, at the mirror.

  “You’re not real,” I said. “You’re black and white, like in the newspaper. You’re just a dream I’m having.”

  She was looking all around. “Where is it?” she said.

  “Where is what?”

  “My box.”

  “It’s at Uncle Stanley’s house.”

  “I want it back,” she said. “That’s why I came.”

  “I don’t have it,” I said. “You’ll have to go there to get it.

  “OK.” She started walking out of the room.

  “Mary Rose!” I called, “Mary Rose!”

  “Yes?” She turned around, and waited for me to ask my question. I can’t really say what she looked like. She was smaller than me, but she was like that picture in the newspaper, so nothing was clear about her, except I knew she was Mary Rose.

  “Why do you need that box?”

  “It’s the only one I don’t have.” She sounded impatient.

  “But why do you need it now?”

  “You really are stupid,” she said. “Now is the time I need it, not any other time.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’ve got everything set up right. The countries, the houses, the clothes—everything I need, except for the jewelry and my picture.”

  “Your picture? You mean the newspaper picture?”

  “No! No! My picture of me, my real picture. It’s in my jewelry box.”

  I knew she meant that picture of the sexy, redheaded woman with the big, fake diamond ring on her finger.

  “But Mary Rose, you didn’t look like that,” I told her. “You didn’t look anything like that.”

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “I looked exactly like that. And once I get my box back, I will look like that again.” She pointed a finger at me, and her voice sounded frightened. “You didn’t do anything to it, did you? Is it still there?”