Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  “That’s why you should be working in a kitchen, not boxing pastries and putting up with Petitpois.”

  Yesterday Yushi had been waiting to serve a woman who kept asking her friend which of the crème fraîche, mousse, whipped cream, and chocolate desserts she thought had the fewest calories. Yushi, head lowered, had muttered, Buy an apple. The woman hadn’t heard, but Régis, working next to Yushi, tittered and stage-whispered, Did you say buy an apple? This time the woman heard. Régis cleared himself by protesting that he’d only repeated Yushi’s words. He was Pettypoo’s favourite. Cécile called him her yappy French mutt. Yushi had been scolded and warned yet again about her comportement.

  Yushi scraped batter off her hands. “Cover this with a towel. We let it sit till it’s risen. Then —” She nodded at the stove.

  Cod fritters, tamarind chutney, cold beer.

  Maddy turned on the outdoor light to make sure nothing had been left on the deck. Racoons and skunks nosed along the alley at night. She didn’t want any beasties to get the impression her backyard was a place to find snacks.

  She’d said she would clean up the kitchen and had sent Yushi home, since it would take her an hour to cycle up to the Plateau. Maddy hadn’t said what she itched to mention again — that if Yushi lived closer, for example, upstairs, then she wouldn’t have to cycle anywhere.

  Maddy had tumbled some of the leftover fritters into a plastic container for Yushi to take home to Rose. Funny, their relationship — whatever it was. She’d wondered if they might be lovers, except then Yushi had said she thought Rose had a boyfriend at the hospital where she worked. The other day, when Rose stopped by the patisserie, Yushi had slipped her a bag. If Petitpois had seen, Yushi would have been fired on the spot. Why take such a risk? Sure, the staff were allowed to help themselves from the basket of damaged goods — with the strict understanding that only the pastry chefs would decide what was damaged and that the damaged pastries were to be consumed on the premises. No doggy bags.

  Maddy wiped down the stove as the dishes soaked in hot, soapy water. Why did Yushi feel so responsible for Rose? Maddy had asked if they’d known each other before they’d become roommates but they hadn’t. Maddy clicked her tongue, impatient with herself. How could she feel jealous of a social misfit like Rose?

  Rose

  Rose couldn’t weave properly with Leo on the bench beside her, blocking the movement of her hand and distracting her with his nearness, but he’d wanted to watch close up and she was pleased he was so interested. He leaned forward, peering at how the slits in the reed kept the threads evenly spaced. She’d explained how the pattern was controlled by the heddles. His hair hung forward, the straggly ends grazing the cloth.

  Two days ago, when they were walking and had stopped to lean on the railing by the canal, he’d leaned forward and kissed her. She wished she could feel the soft pressure of his lips on hers again. The melting, electrifying fizz along her skin. When he finally pulled his head back to look at her, she did what she’d wanted to do since the first time she’d seen him. She reached up and squeezed a loc. It felt like uncarded wool.

  “Watch out,” she said now as she pulled the beater forward, “or I’ll snag your hair.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Mmm,” she mused. “It would make a nice bumpy bit.” She traced a finger across the cloth, showing where.

  “Is that the nicest you can say, a bumpy bit?” He sounded offended, but he was smiling, his glance lingering on her ears, where she still wore Yushi’s gold earrings.

  Rose tapped the shuttle across with one hand and reached to grasp it with the other when Leo’s hand cupped hers. He took the shuttle from her fingers and smoothed them open. “Such smart hands,” he murmured. He kissed each finger.

  The gentleness of touch was new to her. His lips on her eyelids. Her hand on his chest. Both were still careful of each other, fingers exploring the edges of clothes, mouths soft.

  She marvelled at how he paced the slow unfolding of desire. Each caress along her arm tingled. His warm breath on her neck. The tip of his tongue.

  She’d thought she’d known desire with Armand, but it was only the ravage of his appetite. After the first few times, when he’d led her deeper into the forest to the woodpile and hesitated, not knowing if she would bolt when he showed her what he wanted, their rendezvous were matter-of-fact and rapid. He unzipped his fly as soon as he saw her between the trees. He sat on the chopping stump so she could kneel between his legs. He’d already spread the blanket — his one concession to nicety — on the ground. His breath grew quicker as she kneeled, until he gripped her shoulder. Then she stood, shucked her pants, and lay on the blanket. The rest of her body or undressing didn’t matter. She’d thought he would want to see her breasts because of how he used to watch her through the window. When she understood he didn’t — her breasts were too small, still growing — she felt embarrassed and kept them covered. He only wanted her mouth and the hole between her legs. Before he pushed into her, he unrolled a rubber on his sexe so they wouldn’t make a baby. Rose couldn’t remember how she knew about rubbers stopping babies, but she did. When he finished, he folded the blanket and pushed it high under the eaves of the lean-to where he piled the cut logs.

  Now, remembering, she wondered why she’d simply obeyed him the first time in the forest when he nudged her head to his crotch and said, Ta bouche. Your mouth. She didn’t protest or question his commands. She didn’t even find what he wanted strange — no stranger than anything else people did or expected.

  She soon guessed that what she did with Armand was what the other kids at school wanted to do with each other. She felt proud that she was doing it already — and with a grown-up. She was doing it for real. She knew Maman could never find out. Armand’s wife or the people in the community, either. When Armand saw her in Rivière-des-Pins, he acted as if he didn’t know her. The meetings at the woodpile were secret. Everyone had secrets. Maman, too.

  As a fourteen-year-old, having a secret so important had fed the pulse of her thoughts and all her imaginings. She ached when a few days passed and she hadn’t gotten a signal to come to the woodpile. She needed Armand to need what she gave him. She thought about when she would be older and Armand could marry her. His wife would be dead and she, Rose, would live in the farmhouse.

  Even when it all stopped and Armand never spoke to her again, she didn’t question the rightness or wrongness of the longing she still felt for him. She believed it was love, and didn’t everyone set a high value on love?

  But if that had been love, then what was this feeling she had with Leo? She leaned against him and felt embraced. As they walked along, she snaked her arm around his waist and tucked her hand in his back pocket. Felt the rhythm of their hips walking together. Leo didn’t make her feel desperate, but happy.

  Rose was wheeling her trolley around a cluster of blood-pressure pumps when she noticed an elderly visitor creeping along the wall ahead of her. The woman seemed to know where she wanted to go but couldn’t make herself get there. The silky folds of her dress drooped off her scrawny frame. Her swollen feet were crammed into low-heeled pumps. She clenched a white handbag.

  Her steps tottered, then she swayed. Her handbag dropped. Rose sprang forward to catch her in the cradle of her arms, her legs and back braced to keep the woman off the floor. Stick bones inside a slippery dress, the skeletal grimace of dentures in a papery face.

  Burly arms slipped under Rose’s. “Let her drop, let her drop. Let go!”

  Rose heard but didn’t move.

  “It’s okay, let go! I’ve got her!”

  Rose slid her arms away and watched the orderly lower the woman to the floor. Steps pounded from every direction. Rose’s cart was shoved aside as a nurse came running with an emergency cart stacked with equipment. An oxygen mask was strapped to the woman’s face, a blood-pressure cuff wrapped around her skinny arm
. Sharp voices called, “Madame! Madame!” Hands probed her neck and yanked wide her eyelids. Nobody straightened the indecent splay of her legs. Rose wanted to, but she stood outside the circle of backs and arms in lab coats. The bodice of her dress had been ripped wide to expose the woman’s flattened brassiere.

  Arms jabbed under the woman’s limp body to lift her to the stretcher an orderly had careened down the hallway. Tubing trailed from the oxygen mask, the blood-pressure cuff, a machine on her finger. A nurse loped off, shouting, “I’ll get the elevator!”

  Where were they taking her? Rose wanted to follow but couldn’t abandon her tube feeding. She stepped in front of a doctor who’d hung back to read a message on his phone. “Where are they taking her?”

  He glanced at her hospital uniform and said, “Resus. ER.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Are you a family member?”

  Rose shook her head.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”

  She wanted to clutch his lab coat and insist on a halfway intelligible answer. He must have some idea! He was a doctor! But she watched him walk away, feeling that she hadn’t acted quickly enough either. She should have rushed forward when she saw how the woman’s steps wavered. Made her sit and called for help.

  The handle of the trolley felt solid after the tumbling collapse of the woman’s frail limbs. She had to glance at the room numbers to remind herself where she was. Seven South. She blinked at the list on her clipboard as she reached the nursing station.

  An orderly, a short man with a broad, smiling face, said, “You caught her, right? You’re Kenny’s friend.”

  She couldn’t recall having seen him before. He was still talking. “Most people are too scared to get involved. Not my job, they say.”

  He was the kind of man who would talk whether she was listening or not. She read down her list. Two Styrofoam containers and three bags of cans. She pushed her cart to the kitchen.

  When she returned, the orderly was telling the unit coord-inator and the nurses how Rose had saved the woman from cracking her head on the floor. He pointed at Rose. Flustered, she kept steering her cart past the nursing station.

  The unit coordinator waved. “I didn’t sign.”

  Rose walked back with her clipboard.

  “You’re all in a flap, eh?” The coordinator, an older woman with glasses, laid her arm across the clipboard.

  Rose didn’t know what she meant by a flap. “I hope she’s all right.”

  The coordinator pursed dry lips. “What’s all right at that age? Every day she comes to see her husband, but he doesn’t know who she is anymore.” She reached to answer the phone and Rose retrieved her clipboard.

  Pushing her trolley to the next nursing station, Rose thought of how the woman had worn a pretty dress with white shoes and a matching purse to visit her husband. Even if he didn’t know she was his wife, maybe he recognized a woman who dressed nicely and came to see him. Maybe the coordinator was wrong.

  Rose was one floor down when she heard someone calling. Kenny trotted down the hallway, out of breath. “Hey, you’re a hero.” His elbow jostled hers.

  “Who told you?”

  “Renzo, when I got laundry.”

  She slowed as she reached the nursing station and handed the unit coordinator her clipboard. “Just this.” She lifted the brown paper bag of cans to show him the label. He never signed unless he saw what she brought. A nurse walking past held out her hands. “Is that mine? I’ll take it.”

  Kenny hovered. “So how does it feel to save someone’s life?”

  Rose shook her head. All she’d done was react.

  “That was great, Rose. Hey, do you want to hear about the cabin? We cooked up steaks on the stove. ”

  Steak would be a first for that ancient wood stove. And who did we include? Jerome?

  “When it gets dark out, the stars, man! And it’s so quiet in the woods.” Kenny had dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s creepy but good creepy, just the cabin and the trees all around.” He shivered and grinned. “And the owls. Jerome stood outside hooting like an owl. From one part of the woods, then another, you could hear the real owls coming closer. They couldn’t figure out who this new owl was.”

  Jerome hooting like an owl? She couldn’t picture it. Not the same Jerome who used to hang an elbow out the window of his rundown car with a joint pinched between his fingers.

  An orderly, ambling down the hallway, tipped an invisible hat to Rose.

  “Told you,” Kenny said. “Everyone knows you caught that lady.”

  She didn’t believe him, but then she thought that if everyone knew, then anyone could find out what had happened to the woman. “I want to know if she’s all right. I asked one of the doctors, but he wouldn’t say.”

  Kenny’s face sobered. “You know where they took her?”

  “Recess?”

  “Resus. Layton works in Resus. I’ll find out.” He pivoted on his heel and jogged off.

  When Rose finished delivering her tube feeding and returned to the kitchen, the supervisor told her to sit down and rest. The others would deliver late trays. She wanted Rose to tell her what had happened.

  Rose climbed the metal stairs to her apartment, feeling sad, not even trying to walk softly. Kenny had come to the kitchen to tell her the woman had died. Was it any comfort to think she’d been on her way to see her husband? Rose wasn’t sure.

  She unlocked the door and began to slip off her running shoes, but was startled when Yushi bolted into the hallway. “I’ve been waiting for you!” She nudged Rose aside so she could strap on her sandals. “Come on.”

  “Where?” Rose followed her down the stairs again. She hadn’t eaten yet, but it was unusual for Yushi to be so excited.

  “Puppet theatre at the park.”

  “Aren’t puppets for kids?”

  “Don’t be such a snob.” Yushi strode past the carpet store; the second-hand appliance shop; a bar where, late at night, old-fashioned-looking men in black coats and ringlets rolled up their sleeves and played pool. The sun was already setting, its fuchsia glow warming the staid fronts of the brick and stone buildings. For those few moments, grimy balconies were transformed into elegantly worked gilt baskets.

  A woman with blond, ropy hair like Leo’s walked out of a dépanneur. Rose nudged Yushi. “How does she get her hair like that?”

  “I don’t know how white people do it. I think African hair will just grow like that if you let it.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Yushi snorted. “I’m not African. I’m Indian. Don’t get your coloureds mixed up or you’ll step on some toes that’ll stomp back hard.”

  Yushi cut across the park to where a wooden stage had been erected. The curtains were still closed. They were dark blue and painted with glittery zigzags, suns, stars, and moons. Behind the back structure of the stage, legs in baggy pants and sneakers stepped back and forth. They moved in such a tight knot that Rose kept expecting them to trip. Out front on the grass, children sat cross-legged on blankets, facing the curtains with perfect trust that the magic would soon begin. Parents stood farther back. Some had brought folding chairs.

  Yushi scurried up behind the children. “Sit!” She patted the ground next to her. Like the children, she stared at the curtains. A bump of movement against the cloth made some children giggle with nervous anticipation. Others asked high, clear questions and craned their necks to search out their parents under the trees.

  A horn blared and the curtains jerked open on a brightly lit backdrop of painted clouds and trees. As the box stayed empty, some children wondered out loud what would happen. Then, from the bottom edge, antlers wiggled into view. They were attached to the round head of a puppet boy. “Tu sais quoi?” he cried. “It’s not my fault I’ve got antlers. I was born like this. It’s just the way I am!”


  The children shrieked with happy laughter. Rose slid a look at Yushi, who grinned.

  Other puppets cajoled the boy not to be upset that he looked different. His antlers were unique. Because of them, he could do special things other little boys couldn’t. He could hook objects from high off a shelf. He could block a ball with his antlers. All the other kids would want him on their team. His mother, his older sister, and his teacher listed reasons why he should be happy about his antlers.

  The children squirmed on their bums and shouted. The little boy next to Rose cried, “I love you!”

  The horn sounded a deep bass note of threat, and a new crowd of puppets bumbled into the frame. Mean boys with square shoulders and nasty, drawling voices. “What’s that on your head? What are ya, some kinda reindeer? Why don’t you go up north and look for Santa, see if he likes you? Ha-ha-ha!”

  The children in the audience grew still. The puppet boy with the antlers was confused by the taunts and couldn’t defend himself. Rose stared in disbelief. What kind of show was this?

  “Yeah! Go on! No one wants any weird antler-boy around here!”

  “Stop it!” some of the children in the audience screamed. “Leave him alone! Go away!” Rose’s hands closed into fists.

  The mean boys kept jeering, but as the children in the audience kept shouting to defend the boy with the antlers, the puppet boy grew taller and the mean boys smaller until they disappeared below the edge of the box. The children laughed in triumph. The puppet and his good friends ended with a song.

  Yushi brushed her jeans as she stood. “Good, wasn’t it? I love puppets.” Around them children abandoned their blankets in a mayhem of small milling bodies to run back to their parents and tell them what they’d seen.

  Rose and Yushi headed across the park at an angle. Rose said, “What if none of the kids say anything? How does it end?”