Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  “I don’t know. I guess the boy gets beaten up and has his antlers ripped off his head.”

  Rose’s steps slowed.

  “I’m teasing.” Yushi knocked her arm. “One of the kids always starts. And if no one does, I guess someone prompts them. Why were you late today?”

  Rose frowned, remembering again. “An old woman at the hospital fell down.”

  “Did she break anything?”

  “No, I caught her. But she died.”

  “Not because of anything you did.”

  “No, but I was thinking about getting old like that. She had no one with her or to help her. I just happened to be there.”

  “In death we’re always alone.” Yushi’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Rose saw how she looked at the ground and guessed she was thinking of her mother. Sometimes Rose wondered if that was what drew them together, both losing their mothers.

  They climbed the curve of stairs to their apartment. Rose had begun to feel hungry. She hadn’t eaten at the hospital — hadn’t even thought of it. She kicked off her shoes and went to the kitchen to saw a bagel in two and drop the halves in the toaster. As she waited, she licked a dollop of peanut butter off the knife.

  Yushi followed and leaned against the side of the refriger-ator. The door was covered with magnets Rose had discovered at the dollar store. Purple eggplants, red tomatoes, yellow bananas, green peppers. The plastic foods were fake, but she loved the idea.

  “Don’t you ever wonder about your father?” Yushi asked.

  “No.” Rose popped the toaster and flipped the hot bagel on the breadboard. She smeared on peanut butter and took a big bite.

  “Why not?”

  Rose shrugged.

  “Aren’t you even curious?”

  Rose had thought about it. Of course she had. She wasn’t sure she could explain. “He never tried to see me. What does it matter if he’s my father if he never acted like one?” And what if Armand was her father? Which was worse, an unknown father or Armand as her father? The question was far more confusing than Yushi could guess.

  “Maybe he didn’t know about you. Maybe your mother never told him.”

  Rose, her mouth full of peanut butter, opened the refriger-ator to grab the milk. She’d thought of that too — how Maman had never told her about her father and maybe hadn’t told him either. She’d come to Montreal and left again, never to return. Maman and her secrets.

  “What about that?” Yushi insisted. “What if he doesn’t know about you? That’s hardly his fault.”

  “He knew about her. He never tried to find her.”

  “Come on, Rose. Cut the guy some slack. You said yourself you lived hidden in the woods.”

  “Where would I even look for him? I don’t know where she lived when she was here.”

  “You could put an ad in the paper. Or post online.”

  “For someone who had a girlfriend called Thérèse in 1978?” Rose smirked at her. Now Yushi was being ridiculously naive.

  “Okay,” Yushi admitted. “Maybe you’re right. An invisible father might be better than some of the ones out there.”

  Rose had overheard Yushi a few nights ago arguing on the phone with her sister. Yushi refused to go to Toronto to visit their father. Let him disinherit her. She didn’t care.

  Rose was close enough to finishing the bolster for Yushi that it was time to start planning a new project. Decide what to make — and for whom.

  From outside the window she heard a rustle of movement in the weeds. Leo appeared, holding up a bag. “Apples! Can you wash them?”

  She reached for the bag through the pane.

  She and Leo met every day now, except for when they had to work. If Rose didn’t live so far away, they could have seen each other in the evening when she finished work. She had begun to wonder if it was possible to sleep in her studio.

  She hung back when she stepped outside with the apples and saw Leo talking with the sculptor, who turned at the sound of her steps. “Mademoiselle,” he said graciously.

  “Would you like an apple?” Leo offered. The sculptor declined. Leo moved away to join Rose, slinging an arm over her shoulder as they walked to the canal. They sat, half-collapsed against each other, in the grass. Rose told him about the puppet show in the park.

  “Your roommate sounds like fun.”

  Rose shook her head. Yushi had a sense of fun, but fun wasn’t the word to describe her.

  Leo had taken out his knife and was cutting an apple in pieces. “These are the best — Lobo. First of the season. Do you like them?”

  What she liked was being with Leo, but there was so much she still didn’t know about him. Whenever she asked where he lived, he nodded at the canal. Over there.

  Over there were abandoned factories and grain silos. A concrete and brick wasteland where no one had worked for forty, maybe fifty years. The watchman’s shed at the top of a tower, against the sky, was a shell of rusted metal.

  Leo was reaching for the bag. “Want another apple?”

  “No, no apple. I want you to show me where you live.”

  His face grew still. “You won’t like it.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  He shrugged, slowly unfolded his legs, and stood.

  She expected him to head to the road, but he kept following the path through the grass by the canal. He didn’t talk. His hand brushed hers but he didn’t try to hold it. How poor could his place be? Didn’t he remember that up until last year she’d lived in a cabin without running water or electricity? She knew he didn’t have much money. He wore the same jeans every day. He’d never mentioned a roommate or family.

  As they approached the chain-link fence around the deserted complex of towers and silos, Leo glanced behind them. He waited until a string of cyclists passed, then pulled aside a ragged curl of fence for her to step over.

  This close, the hulking buildings looked more empty than ever. Eerie and dangerous. Leo and Rose skirted broken chunks of concrete and brick that must have fallen from higher up. The tough stems of weeds scraped at her bare legs. Shards of glass in the dirt winked reflections of sky. Rose gazed up the length of a shaft as high as the silo it had once serviced. The rusted metal was still in place but biscuit-crumbly with decay.

  It didn’t feel safe to creep around these dank-smelling ruins. Was it a shortcut? She kept hoping they would turn a corner, step through another hole in the fence, and stand before a yellow-brick duplex not so different from the one where she lived.

  “Leo?”

  “Shh.” He motioned for her to flatten herself against the cool wall of the silo. He leaned back too, waiting in silence. People shouted to each other as they cycled along the bike path, which was out of sight from here.

  When it was quiet again, Leo reached into a crevice to dislodge a slender rope. He gave it a jerk, and from higher up, a knotted mass unfolded and dropped. It swayed then hung still, becoming a ladder.

  Rose craned her head back, squinting at the knotted rungs that scaled the wall.

  “It won’t take our weight at the same time,” Leo said. “You go first. I’ll keep an eye out. They can’t see the ladder from the bike path, but sometimes someone stops to have a piss.”

  “Up here?” Rose’s mouth stayed open as she gazed up the ladder.

  “Are you afraid?”

  Not afraid, but puzzled. People thought that growing up in a cabin in the woods was strange, but this was even stranger.

  “When you get to the top, sling yourself on the floor. I’ll be up as soon as you’re off.”

  Rose didn’t understand, but she grabbed hold of the rung over her head and started climbing. The tightly coiled rope dug into her instep. It was some form of nylon, strong but slippery. She fixed her eyes on the wall before her. Metal abraded by the weather. A bubbled map of rust. Up she went, hand by hand, step by
step. Progress seemed slow until she glanced down and saw how far she was from the ground, which was strewn with rubble and wreckage, jagged edges. Don’t look, she told herself. Don’t slip. Bolts large as monster eyes bugged out from the corroded wall. A breeze fingered her hair. She heard a squawk offside and glanced at a crow that had settled in disdainful profile on a pulley contraption. Birds had their eyes on the sides of their heads. When they seemed to be looking away was when they watched you. Watch me, she thought. Watch me climb this ladder. She trusted the coiled and knotted nylon more than the rusted metal wall. Rope was yarn in a heavier guise.

  When she reached for the next rung, her hand bumped wood. She was at the end of the ladder, her head level with a platform. Leo had said to sling herself onto it, but how could she get her leg high enough? At the far end of the platform she saw a crate with a mug on top. If this was Leo’s place — if he did this every day — she could do it, too. She scrambled as well as she could, grunting from the effort, banging her leg, and propelled herself headlong onto the floor. She lay still, getting her breath. Above her, a simple geometry of metal struts braced the ceiling. Three walls looked solid, but this wall, where Leo had strung his ladder, had crumbled. Past the hacked edge of the ceiling, she saw the watchman’s shed — higher even than she was. This close, it was a shell splotched with holes and rust. No one had sat there for a long time.

  She rolled over to look at the city below. The flat ribbon of the Lachine Canal nosing toward the port and Old Montreal. The converging gleam of rail lines. She guessed which of the blocks along the canal was the building where she had her studio. From this angle the sculptor was hidden. The tower of the Atwater Market where Yushi worked looked like a toy.

  She looked toward the high-rises of downtown and there, poking up from a building between the canal and downtown, were the gigantic metal letters of a sign. FARINE FIVE ROSES. The red lights that outlined the letters flashed on for a few seconds, then off for a few seconds, and then on again.

  She heard a scrape of movement and Leo’s woolly head appeared. He grabbed a handhold she hadn’t noticed and hauled himself up. Still on his knees, he began to tug on a string attached to the ladder. The string scrunched the ladder into a tight accordion of rope.

  Leo sat back and looked at her. “Just us now. And the birds.” He swept a hand across the view spread before them. “My penthouse.”

  She swivelled away from the view, more curious now to see where he lived. A rolled mat and a sleeping bag hung from strings hooked to the struts. Another hook held a canvas bag crammed with clothes or food. Of course. Anything left on the floor would get chewed by whatever rodents foraged in deserted factories this high off the ground.

  “Does anyone know you’re up here?” she asked.

  “Just you. And probably a few other squatters, but they’ve staked out their own places. They leave me alone. The only real problem is the graffiti acrobats. They can climb anywhere. But no one bothers to graffiti these old silos anymore. That” — he waved at the boxy blue letters sprayed across a brick wall higher than the one they’d scaled — “that’s already years old.”

  “But you don’t want anyone to find your ladder.”

  “Damn right I don’t. I’m not supposed to be up here — no one is. I’m trespassing. So are you now.”

  His shoulder was close to hers. He questioned her with his eyes. She watched his face, letting him understand her answer. When he tilted forward with his mouth parted, she met him.

  Leo’s hand lay on her ribs. His rhythmic breath warmed her ear. The sleeping bag was thrown across their hips and the narrow mat he’d unrolled. They’d kicked free their clothes.

  Her eyes traced the struts that criss-crossed the ceiling. Against the far wall, by the crate, leaned a whisk broom. She thought of Leo climbing the ladder with a broom so he could sweep the floor, and she smiled. The solitude of his aerie was as close to the solitude of her cabin in the woods as she had ever felt in the city.

  The open wall faced the sky, where clouds drifted lazily. Leo stirred against her. His hand slid to her breast and cupped it. “Rose.” It was like a purr deep in his throat.

  She whispered, “What’s that sign, Five Roses?”

  “It’s flour. You’ve never seen the bags in the store?”

  “My mother used to tell me a story about five roses. A little girl who lived in the woods, and her only friends were five roses. They told her things. They …” How could she explain why the story felt so important? “They gave her her name. They called her Rose.”

  “Perfect name.” Leo rubbed his nose up her neck, nibbled around her ear, and kissed the earring. “Your mom liked to tell stories?”

  She turned so they lay forehead to forehead, their breath mingling. “That was the only story she ever told.”

  Leo kissed her. “She made up a story about roses just for you.”

  She liked the thought and that Leo had said it. She liked how surely his hand slid to her hip.

  Maddy

  Maddy was sliding a rectangle of mousse and cake into a box. Off to the side she sensed a bustle of movement. Sharp steps and Pettypoo’s high-hipped rump, then a savage slap that would have been offensive in private, and in a workplace was probably illegal.

  Maddy glanced and saw Pettypoo and Yushi glaring at each other. “What the fuck,” Maddy muttered.

  “Pardon me?” The woman waiting for her cake was holding out a platinum card.

  Yushi spat words at Pettypoo, who whirled off with flushed cheeks. Yushi stared after her, shoulders stiff, mouth grim. Angry spikes of hair.

  Maddy’s next customer asked which desserts had no nuts.

  “There are several, but all of the cakes come from a kitchen where nuts are used. We cannot assure you that a cake that does not contain nuts has not come into contact with nuts.” The nut spiel was a jingle Maddy recited at least twice a day.

  “Oh, it’s not for an allergy.” The woman leaned across the counter as if to confide a great secret. “I think I’ve got fibro-myalgia, and when I looked online, I saw I shouldn’t eat nuts.”

  Why didn’t the woman go to a doctor and get herself tested? In her place, Maddy would eat every nut in sight — before it was forbidden. With no expression, she pointed out the desserts that featured chocolate, fruit, mocha, whipped cream, caramel.

  As the woman debated out loud with herself — because Maddy had no intention of being drawn into a dietary consultation — Maddy leaned toward Cécile, who was setting macarons noisettes on a tray. “What got into Pettypoo?” she whispered.

  “Did you see her? She’s crazy. Yushi was fixing a sign that slipped and Pettypoo thought she was reaching for a bread without gloves on.”

  Maddy looked across at Yushi. Her face seemed calm, even indifferent, but she shot a baguette into a bag with such force that Maddy expected it to tear through the paper.

  Maddy followed Cécile downstairs. They untied their aprons and crumpled them into balls they lobbed into the laundry hamper inside the locker-room door. Yushi was sitting on a bench, knotting her green running shoes.

  Cécile said, “We all saw that upstairs. We’re witnesses. That was an act of aggression. You should charge her with assault.”

  Yushi didn’t lift her head.

  “Come on, Yushi,” Cécile said. “You have to stand up for yourself.”

  “She’s right,” Maddy said. “If you don’t do anything, she’s going to keep bullying you.”

  “Sure, she’s right.” Yushi scowled. “So what? Pettypoo is nuts. I don’t want to get sucked into her crazy vortex.”

  “No,” Cécile said. “She’s nuts with everyone. With you, she’s ballistic.” She’d pulled off the shirt with three-quarter sleeves she was obliged to wear to hide her tattoos and stood before them in a tiger-stripe push-up bra, her stomach lean and tanned.

  Maddy had a fleeting instant of envy
. Never would she look that young and fit again — if she ever had. She looked at Yushi. “Pettypoo’s out of control. Even for her. You have to talk to Zied.”

  Yushi snatched her knapsack from her locker. “Or quit this funny farm and find a new job.”

  Maddy bit her lip. That was another option, yes.

  Cécile had squeezed into a ribbed tank top. “You could do way better than counter help. You could work in a kitchen.”

  Yushi shrugged and asked Maddy, “Are you coming?”

  Maddy grabbed her helmet and slammed her locker shut. “Bye, Cécile. À demain.”

  At the last of the fruit stalls, Pierre-Paul stood behind his bins of apples. His wife wasn’t there, but he gave them only a distant nod. He’d finally got the hint that Maddy wasn’t playing. She still felt his eyes on her back. On her ass.

  Fog had crept across the city and along the canal. The buildings of downtown had been swallowed by a duvet of grey.

  “What do you think you’ll do?” Maddy asked.

  “About what?”

  “Pettypoo.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Yushi bent to unlock her bike. Her movements were so brisk, her bike already wheeled from the rack, that Maddy thought she was going to cycle off without her. But Yushi waited until Maddy had her bike free. And though Yushi didn’t speak again, she cycled with Maddy as far as the turnoff to the Pointe.

  “Bye,” Maddy called as Yushi continued along the canal into the mist.

  The fog thickened, but Maddy didn’t think it would rain and decided to go for a cycle by the river. She stopped at home first to change into shorts. On a day like today she would be alone on the path. Urban fact #42: people only remembered they had bikes when the sun shone.

  She liked this sense of cycling into nothingness, not able to see farther than the asphalt before her, a damp bristle of grass, the trees shrouded in fog, an edge of grey water. It felt as if she were making the path unroll before her.