For Whom the Roses Grow

by Rebekah Blackmore

  For Whom the Roses Grow

  Rebekah Blackmore

  ©Copyright Rebekah Blackmore 2016

  All Rights Reserved.

  1

  January 21, 1909

  My dear Cousin,

  I am pleased to hear that you are doing well. I must ask, what is it that made you decide to stop pursuing your education and continue as a nurse? I am extremely happy to hear that you are interested in coming to work with me in Mrs. Anderson’s home, but I was under the impression that you were hoping to continue your journey to become a teacher. We must speak of it the moment that you arrive.

  I told Mrs. Anderson of your request, and she has agreed to take you on as her newest assistant. Be warned, she is quite the beast, and has only been able to keep her longest assistant for a mere six weeks.

  Regardless, it will be a treat to have you around, even if it is just for a few weeks. When you arrive in St. Louis, get a cab from the train station. Tell the cabbie that you would like to go to Mangrove House. I guarantee that he will know what you are talking about.

  I have a surprise for you. Our mothers would hate it so.

  I can’t wait to see you.

  Yours,

  Susanna

  Jo reread the letter for the tenth time that morning before folding it back up and tucking it into her satchel. She had told the driver were to go, just like Susanna had told her to, but she was still worried about whether they were going in the right direction or not.

  She leaned forward and knocked on the thin window of glass that separated her from the driver, who was sitting in the open front of the car and shivering. He was wearing a dark top hat and a thick woolen overcoat, but it wasn’t enough to keep out the chill. Jo was thankful that the passenger seats were closed on all sides, but she couldn’t help but pity the man, especially when a few small snow flurries began to spin and dance in the air.

  After a few seconds, Jo knocked on the glass again. The cabbie glanced over his shoulder before taking a hand off the steering wheel and tilting the window pane down. “Is there a problem, miss?” he asked, turning back towards the road and putting his hand back on the wheel.

  “I just wanted to make sure that this is the right way to Mangrove House. This road doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  The cabbie nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s where we are headed. Believe you me, I know these directions like the back of my hand. Everyone does.” He glanced over his shoulder again and winked. “You know, they say that the house is haunted. They say that’s why Mrs. Anderson never comes down from her bedchambers.”

  Jo made a face. Susanna had told her about Mrs. Anderson’s isolated state. She wanted to ask more about what the cabbie knew about Mrs. Anderson, but when a heavy gust of window blew through the open pane, she decided against it. She leaned back and crossed her arms, rubbing her skin through her pressed white blouse.

  The cabbie understood the silence, and reached under his seat to pull out a blanket, which he tossed to Jo, before closing the dividing window and continuing to drive. Jo picked up the blanket and wrapped herself up in it immediately. The blanket was damp and only succeeded in making Jo even colder. After a few minutes, though, her body heat mixed with the woven strands of yarn, and she began to warm up.

  By the time that the cab had reached the Mangrove House twenty minutes later, Jo was feeling pleasantly warm, although the dampness of her blanket had seeped through her thick skirt and onto the white wool of her hose. She tried to use her hands to dry the fabric, but it didn’t work as well as she had hoped, and only succeeded in making her legs itch from the loose threads.

  Jo looked up at the house, and immediately she knew that everything that Susanna had said over the last year and a half about Mrs. Anderson’s wealth and the resplendency of her land was true, although it was in much rougher shape than Jo had expected. There were large windows making up every level with dark shutters that kept the inside of the house private, and wide steps that took up a good quarter of the front of the house. The building itself was made of dark stone, and the roof was a red-orange color. There were vines covering the stones, the lawn was overgrown, and in one of the attic windows, Jo swore that she saw a face, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.

  The cabbie parked the car in front of the house, and turned to look at Jo. He pulled the window back and gave her a smile. “We are here, ma’am. Do you need any help carrying your bag to the door?”

  Jo shook her head. “Thank you, sir, but I believe I will be fine.” She folded the blanket back up before passing it back through the window to the man. She handed him the fare before opening the door and stepping out onto the cobblestone street.

  Once her feet were on the ground, Jo reached back into the cab and pulled out her luggage. It was small and compact, holding only a few black skirts and white blouses, as well as her Sunday best. She pulled it out of the cab and held the ochre paisley bag against her thigh, taking a moment to bump it up to her hip before walking across the yard

  Jo turned and gave the cabbie one final wave before making her way up the steps to the front door. She knocked as the cabbie drove away. It took a few minutes, but eventually, a young woman came to the door. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and a white apron, her chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place by a mess of pins. She was holding a silver tray with a galvanized tea pot, a pair of small tongues, a floral tea cup, and a bowl piled high with sugar.

  “Can I help you, miss?” the maiden asked, adjusted her stance so that she was holding the door open with her hip.

  Jo cleared her throat, and pulled the letter from Susanna out of her luggage and opened it for the girl. “I am here to be Mrs. Anderson’s new assistant.”

  The maiden glanced over the note before nodding. She pushed the door open more, gesturing with her free hand into the house. “Come on in,” she said, looking down at Jo’s bag and nudging it into the doorway with her foot. Jo did what she asked.

  “Thank you.”

  The maiden moved away from the door and let it fall shut. “Mrs. Anderson is sleeping right now, but if you would like to go and see your cousin, Susanna is in the kitchens.” She gestured down the hall with a nod of her head. “I am going there myself, to drop this tray off, so if you want to follow me, go right ahead.” She gave Jo a small smile. “I’m Dessie.”

  Jo smiled back. “My name is Joanna, but most people call me Jo.”

  Dessie nodded politely and held her hand down the hall. She waited for Jo to pick her bag up before leading the way to the kitchens. While they walked, Jo looked around the house. The outside of the house was spectacular, but the inside was oddly plain. There were a few sporadic tables and chairs lining the halls, but there weren’t any paintings or photographs lining the hallway wall. Dessie and she passed a living room right before they got to the kitchen, but the curtains were drawn, and the two chairs and the sofa were covered with a dusty-pink sheet. In the corner of the room, there was a table with a blue porcelain vase, but the flowers had wilted away long ago.

  Dessie walked a few steps ahead of Jo before she noticed that the newest member of the household wasn’t following behind. She looked over her shoulder, a sad look passing over her face. “Mrs. Anderson used to be so happy, but she hasn’t let Susanna or I open the blinds or replace her flowers in nearly three years.” She shook her head. “We’re the only ones that she’s let work here, too. There were a few more girls, but after she lost her husband and her son . . . we were the only ones she wanted to see, and that was only because she had been close to my mother before she had gotten married, and she just had a bond with Susanna. It was really sad, what happened.”

  Jo stared at the vase for a few mor
e seconds before asking, “What happened?”

  “Cholera.”

  Jo grimaced. She had her own experiences with cholera. Her mother passed away two weeks before her fifteenth birthday from the disease, and her father had passed away a mere month before Susanna told her about Mrs. Anderson’s need for a nurse. It was why Jo accepted the position, actually. Being in her parents’ home with only her brother, his wife, and his children was more than she could handle. She needed to get away, and she needed to do it fast.

  “Jo? Are you all right?”

  Jo startled as Dessie snapped her fingers in front of Jo’s cerulean eyes. “Yes, I am fine. I apologize.”

  Dessie studied her for a minute before turning around and continuing to lead the way to the kitchen. Jo did her best to shake away the feelings of melancholia, but it was difficult. When she saw her cousin, though, everything changed.

  Susanna was rolling a long sheet of dough over the top of a mound of blackberries in a thick pie tin, humming a tune to herself and spinning on her toes, making her long navy skirt waft bits of flour into the air around the table.

  Dessie cleared her throat to get her attention, but Susanna was too far into her song to notice. Dessie tried again.

  By the time that Dessie cleared her throat for the third time, Jo had begun to grow impatient, and she faked a cough before yelling, “Sussie!” as loud as she could.

  Susanna startled, and she tossed the rolling pin over the table and onto the floor in flurry of berries and bits of dough. She let out a yelp and pressed a hand to her chest when she saw who was standing across the room. “Joanna! You’re here!”

  She pushed the pie tin away and slid across the floor, her stocking feet making a path through the powder. She threw her arms around Jo and kissed her on the cheek, holding her as close as possible before spinning her around. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

  Dessie stepped around the cousins and set the tea set next to the pie. She finished doing up the top and cutting slits before sliding it into the coal-oven that rested against the back wall. Once the door was shut, she copied Susanna, and slid across the room, although she didn’t move nearly as fluidly in her black Mary-James as Susanna did in her hose. She hugged Susanna around the waist and pecked her on the nose before reaching over and pinching Jo’s cheeks as if she was a little girl. Jo squirmed and backed out of the women’s embrace.

  Jo began to laugh as Dessie wrapped her arms more firmly around Susanna and attacked her face with kisses. “I guess this is the ‘surprise’ that you mentioned in your letter?” she teased, eying the obvious attraction between her cousin and the maid.

  Susanna nodded, kissing her lover's cheek in return. “When Dessie's mother comes to visit, we stay in our opposite rooms, but we are married in the biblical sense the remainder of the time.”

  “And Mrs. Anderson, does she know?”

  This time it was Dessie who responded. “If she does, she has yet to mention it to the either of us. The only time she talks much anymore, in fact, is when she needs something.”

  “Well, that shall make it easy for her and I to get along, then.” She leaned against the wall, dropping her bag, which had begun to pull uncomfortably at her arm, onto the ground.

  She eyed the girls' linked hands with a soft smile. She was glad that her cousin had found someone to share her life with. Unlike the rest of their family, Jo did not have a problem with Susanna preferring women to men, especially not when Jo had the same preference herself.

  She thought back to the letter, remembering what Susanna had said before mentioning the surprise, about how Mrs. Anderson was unable to keep a nurse for more than a few weeks. She decided that now would be the best time to bring it up, before she got pulled too deep into working for the woman. “Why does Mrs. Anderson keep hiring nurses if she doesn’t want anyone else in her home?”

  Dessie and Susanne exchanged a nervous look before separating. Dessie went to check the pie, and Susanna stepped forward to take Jo's hand. “After she fired everyone, she became extremely bitter and withdrawn. It was my idea to hire a nurse for her, and she refused to acknowledge the idea until about a year ago, when a high fever cost her the use of her right hand and most of the strength in her legs. She gets so angry at herself for not being as strong as she would like, and takes it out on her nurses. She has been . . . vicious, to say the least. She still doesn’t want a nurse, but Susanna and I cannot do everything on our own,

  “Is that why the furniture in the parlour is covered with sheets?”

  Susanna nodded. “Dessie and I could keep everything clean, at first, but after a while it was easier to just keep the rooms Mrs. Anderson was not using closed off. Its why we keep the blinds shut so often, too, to keep down on the dust.” She sighed. “Mrs. Anderson really is a sweet woman. She only acts so cruel to keep her heart safe.”

  “Dessie said the same thing.”

  Susanna let go of Jo’s hand, sucking her lips inward so that they formed a tight line. “Come. I will show you the rest of the house, and you can decide for yourself what you think about staying here.”

  2

  Jo followed Susanna through the three levels of the house, marveling at the resplendency and elegance that the house breathed, even with sheets covering much of the furniture and the heavy curtains drawn. The flooring alternated between a rich cherry-oak wood and a lush garnet-colored carpet, and the walls were painted hunter-green.

  The first floor didn't have much besides the kitchen, the dining room, and the parlour, but Susanna showed Jo a hidden staircase behind a tapestry in the kitchen led Jo to a library that she was nearly as large as the entirety of her father’s house. There had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of books that Jo had never read, and she couldn’t wait to find a few spare minutes to sink her teeth into one of the tomes.

  The second floor was made up of Dessie and Susanna’s rooms, as well as a large room that, per Susanna, used to belong to Mrs. Anderson’s son, Casey. The door seemed to be locked, but Susanna jiggled the knob and jabbed one of the pins from her hair into the key-slot. “You know, I haven’t seen this room since Casey and Mr. Anderson died,” she admitted, moving the pin around until the tumblers clicked.

  Susanna pulled the pin out and stuck it back into her hair before twisting the knob and pushing the door open. She motioned for Jo to follow her before stepping into the room.

  Jo wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but the room she found herself in was not it. There were the typical aspects of a child’s room, such as a cradle and a bed, but what shocked Jo most of all was the way that the room seemed frozen in time. The pillows on the bed were rumpled, there were indentions in the mattress from where Casey had lain dying, and the candle next to his bed had melted down to the wick, spots of wax resting along the base of the candle holder in small, jagged piles.

  Jo stepped further into the room to get a closer look at everything. There was a thick layer of dust coating nearly every surface, and there were moths flitting around next to the window. She reached out and wiped some of the dust away from the bedside table before looking over at Susanna, who cleared her throat to get her cousin’s attention.

  Susanna nodded her head towards the cradle. “Do you see that dress in the cradle? That was Dessie’s when she was little. Her mom gave it to Mrs. Anderson when she gave birth to her daughter, Molly, when Casey was only a few years old.”

  Jo gave Susanna a puzzled look. “I didn’t know that Mrs. Anderson has a daughter. Did something happen to her, too, like it did to Casey and Mr. Anderson?”

  Susanna nodded. “Molly passed away a few weeks after I started working here. She was almost two. Doctor Lenaldi came in to examine her body, but he was not able to figure out what had happened to her. He said that it was unfortunate, but that sometimes children just aren’t strong enough to deal with the world in the same way that we do, and those children are taken back into Heaven as early as possible.” Susanna gave the room one more wary look before gesturi
ng with her head towards the hall. “Come on. I don’t think that we should be in this room any longer than we must be. Besides, I still must show you where you are going to be sleeping, and we need to wake Mrs. Anderson up in . . . ” she pulled a pocket watch out from in-between her sash and the waistline of her skirt, glancing down at the face, “a quarter of an hour, so that we can give her her medicine.”

  “And the medicine is to help her with . . . ” Jo trailed off, trying to remember what it was that Susanna mentioned earlier, in regards to the fever that Mrs. Anderson underwent. She knew that Mrs. Anderson lost the use of one of her hands, and that her legs had grown weak, but she could not recall any other shortcoming? Susanna and Dessie didn’t mention anything else, but perhaps her “medicine” was just one of those witch doctor potions that Jo knew had grown so popular back in her hometown right outside of Omaha, Nebraska. Jo had seen plenty of people take them day after day just to make themselves feel right with the world. Jo’s uncle, for example, took a potion made of crushed lotus flowers to deal with the death of his sister after Dianna Hart (Jo’s mother) had passed.

  Susanna picked up on what Jo was thinking, and she shook her head. “No, this is medicine that one of the physicians in town prescribed to help her deal with the pain in her legs.”

  “Oh.”

  “She has to take it multiple times a day, in a few different ways. She hates it.” She reached down and took Jo’s hand and led her out of the room. She pulled the door shut behind her. They walked over to the stairs, and went up to the third floor. There was a lamp on the table at the top of the stairs, but the fabric of the shade was hanging in choppy strips, and the bulb had been shattered and left in pieces around the base of the object. There was also the remains of what looked like a bowl, and a tattered lacy table-runner.

  Jo tried to keep her eyes facing forward and focused on her cousin, but that was easier said than done. The hallways were filled with darkness and, while it would make sense that the lights would be off during the day, the curtains were drawn, and the lanterns lining the hall were in the same state as the lamp on the table had been.