Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  She grinned when she saw the woman in baggy shorts with her hair tucked in a French twist, the decided motor of her hips and legs stomping the stress of the day underfoot. Maddy passed her with a silent mental salute. Hey-ho, sister!

  As she cycled, her brain whirred to come up with a solution for Yushi. She didn’t want her to leave the patisserie, but the patisserie wasn’t a good place for her to be — and if you were someone’s friend, then you wanted the best for that person, not what happened to suit you.

  Her knees pistoned up and down. Fog breathed thick and cool around her. Even the birds that usually squawked and called were silent.

  The mist over the river thinned just enough that she made out a narrow shape gliding along … a canoe with one figure at the bow, another at the stern. She slowed, lightly squeezing her brakes, to see more clearly — but knew she shouldn’t stop or the vision, which was what it seemed, would disappear. The upright grace of the two figures. The tent of long hair to their shoulders. The canoe slipping low through the water. Iroquois used to hunt and fish along these shores when the land was called Teiontiakon.

  As Maddy thought the words, the mist closed again, obscuring the mystery of the river.

  The day at work had been long and dull without Yushi. Maddy was paired with Régis, which always put her on edge. She wasn’t surprised Yushi had called in sick after yesterday’s scene, but she wished Yushi had let her know. She would have called in sick as well. One down, the counter could manage. Two down and Pettypoo had to tie on an apron and serve customers.

  She pulled her bike onto the sidewalk by the dépanneur and said salut to the man who sat tilted on the kitchen chair. She said hello so he would know she knew he was there and expected him to watch her bike, which she leaned against the storefront.

  “Thalut!” His greeting was slurred by his toothless, frilly lips.

  Walking into the store, she nearly tripped over a man on the floor, reading aloud from a book that looked like the Bible — columns of dense print with numbered verses. His performance was earnest, if tortured and difficult to follow. Yet, chin in hand at the cash, the Korean store clerk listened. The stumble of words followed Maddy down the aisle to the beer refrigerator, back to the cash, out the door again. She slipped the man on the kitchen chair a loonie.

  At home she opened a beer and walked onto the deck. It was still warm enough to sit outside, but autumn was coming. The maple tree against her back fence was still green, but high up it sported a single tuft of crimson. It did that every year — her own personal harbinger of winter.

  From across the fence she heard Fara and Frédéric’s door open and saw Fara step out.

  “Hi!” Fara called. “How are you?”

  “Good, thanks. And you?” Maddy heard how fake her friendliness sounded. She should have told Fara and Frédéric about Ben trying to get through their gate.

  “Busy day at work. Nice to come home.”

  But what if they’d called the police? That was all Ben needed, added to everything else that he’d already gone through. She’d told him to stay away and hoped he’d listened.

  “It’s starting to feel like home, too.” Fara was still talking. “We’ve got the furniture in place and all the big problems fixed. You know what really helped?” Fara lifted her chin at the house behind her. “Frédéric’s cousin installed French doors between the hallway and the dining room. You know, where the … It changes the look of the room and the hallway completely.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, I’m glad you did. It’s better to know than not know. If you don’t, you keep wondering where …” She bugged her eyes dramatically.

  “But it bothered you —”

  “No, no, no!” Fara said too quickly. And again, “No, no.” Even shaking her head.

  Maddy recognized a woman who could be stubborn in denial past her own best interests.

  “Once we’re completely settled, we’ll have you over for supper. We might even have a housewarming party. The people where I work really want to see the place. I’ll let you know when.”

  “Great,” Maddy said, hearing again how glib she sounded. If she saw Ben again, even just standing at the back fence, she would tell Fara and Frédéric. Alert them, too, that he might still have a key.

  Fara turned on her heel. “My phone’s ringing. See you!”

  Maddy opened her palm in a flat wave at the now empty backyard.

  Maddy hunkered before a small hibachi, brushing balsamic marinade across rounds of eggplant and halved red peppers. Drips hissed on the hot grill. Yushi sat behind her in the rattan chair. No cooking lesson today. Maddy had planned a simple supper of grilled vegetables and couscous salad.

  Jim posed in haughty disbelief on the corner of the deck, not convinced yet that the delicious odours of grilled meat seared into the metal were truly no more than ghosts of past suppers. He stared without blinking at Maddy, as if that might make her change the menu.

  “Sorry, Jim. That’s life.” Maddy reached for her glass of wine on the table.

  “You don’t have to watch the barbecue all the time,” Yushi said. “It cooks by itself.”

  Maddy pushed herself up from her knees and groaned. “My old knees can’t take it.”

  “You could have put the grill on the table.”

  Maddy shrugged. She could have and should have. She hadn’t thought of it.

  The cowl turtleneck of Yushi’s bulky sweater made her face look smaller — but no less resolute. She’d told Maddy she would be quitting the patisserie as soon as she found another job. Work at the moment was only bearable because Pettypoo was keeping a frigid distance and never addressing her directly. Zied had given Pettypoo a spittle-flecked, operatic dressing-down that everyone in the kitchen had heard from his office. Not that Zied cared if an employee was spanked with a red-hot spatula — but not in view of the customers.

  Maddy realized Yushi had no choice but to leave. Even if Pettypoo could be made to behave, who wanted to work for a boss who loathed you? “Have you applied for any jobs yet?”

  “I hate interviews, with their stupid questions — like if I know how to crimp a pie crust. A pie crust!” She huffed. “I’d like to see them make a sour cherry buttercream without it curdling.”

  Maddy piled the grilled eggplant and peppers on a plate. They were going to eat inside at the table by the kitchen window. “Can you bring my glass?” she asked. “Sour cherry butter-cream sounds delicious. Tart and rich — great combo. What would you put that on?”

  “Anything. A genoise, a chocolate torte.”

  “You should be working as a baker.” Maddy poured more wine as Yushi helped herself to couscous.

  “This is Montreal. You’ve got French cooks de la France applying for kitchen jobs. I’m a Canadian Trini who masquerades as Irish. Who would believe I can make a croquembouche?”

  “Anyone who’s tasted your cooking.”

  “That makes a sum total of you and Rose.”

  “How’s she doing?” Maddy asked. She still wondered why Yushi, who’d cut so many ties with her family and her past, felt responsible for her sullen roommate.

  “She’s devoted to weaving. Some days she doesn’t even come home. She sleeps at her studio.”

  Maddy, about to bite into charred eggplant, stopped her fork in mid-air. “Maybe she wants to move out.”

  “We’ve got a lease. She can’t just take off.”

  “You could sublet. On the Plateau, it would be easy.”

  Yushi wasn’t listening. “You should see the fabric she weaves. She made a bolster for my bed in this really intricate design.” She zigzagged a finger in the air. “I think she should quit her job and weave all day long. She could sell her pieces.” It was rare for Yushi to sound so enthusiastic. “She could,” she repeated. “She used to sell when she lived with her mom. That’s how they
made a living. And you can tell she loves doing it.”

  Maddy’s lips parted as an idea began to form.

  “She’s a real pro, too. Before we stuffed the bolster, she showed me how she finished all the edges on the inside — where no one even sees them, but they’re all smooth and tucked away.”

  Maddy grabbed her wineglass and raised it to the fairy dust of fantastic ideas — wherever they came from. “That’s it! That’s what you’ll do! You don’t have to work for anyone. You’ll make your own desserts and sell them to restaurants. Your tortes and your genoise and your marzipan roses. Once people taste them, they’ll be gung-ho. They won’t even ask where you trained.”

  Yushi gave a curt shake of the head. “You don’t know what’s involved. You need a big kitchen. You need equipment — bowls and cake forms, an industrial mixer, a processor to grind nuts.… And then how do you get the cakes to the restaurants? It’s not like selling Girl Guide cookies door to door. If you’ve got cakes layered with mousse and whipped cream, you need a van — a refrigerated van.”

  “You sound like you know about it.”

  “Where I worked in Toronto, the baker before me left the restaurant and went into business for herself.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yeah, but that’s Toronto. This is Montreal.”

  “I beg your pardon? You’ve been working in a patisserie for almost a year and you aren’t aware that people here have a serious sweet tooth?”

  “What about the van and the equipment? And a kitchen. I’d need a kitchen.”

  “Here.” Maddy swept an arm at her stove and counters. “That room, too.” She tossed in the large double front room off the kitchen. “You want a bigger stove? More counters? I’ve got a whole house, Yushi! And I’m living here by myself. I can do what I want.”

  Yushi considered the length of the room.

  “We can rent a van to start. A refuelled van — I mean, refrigerated.” Maddy’s words tumbled in her excitement. “I’ll talk to my hotshot brother. He knows how to start a business. He’ll help us out. He’ll invest.” Maddy wasn’t sure about that, but it sounded good. If he wouldn’t invest, he would tell her how to borrow.

  “I can’t drive.”

  “Why would you drive? You’re the pastry chef. You bake. I’ll drive.”

  Yushi was listening — not believing her yet, but she was listening. Maddy would show her this could work. Because it could!

  Rose

  Rose folded the blanket over the sleeping bag, stuffed the pillows over the blanket, and closed the lid of the chest. Then she propped the sponge mat against the wall. Tidying away the bedding reminded her of life in the cabin — how she’d stripped the sofa of the sheets and her blanket every morning, turning her bed into a sofa again.

  She and Leo had bought a chest at the furniture store where she’d bought the chair for sitting at her loom and the dresser for her shuttles and spools of thread. When the man in the store met Leo, his always warm intonation grew even more rich and relaxed. Leo’s voice changed, too. The man said he was from Jamaica, Leo that his grandparents lived in Barbados. Rose had never seen Leo act so boyish, cocking his head and looking aslant at the man as if he were much shorter, peering up at him, slapping his leg and laughing.

  Later, after they’d carried the chest to her studio and were sitting on the sponge mat drinking tea, he told her about his grandparents, whom he’d visited when he was four and eleven. He talked about flying fish and the sea. Running between the men, who drank rum in the shade of the palm trees, and the women, who sat in groups scraping vegetables they cooked in huge cauldrons. He started to say, Once when my ma … But his face grew still and he stopped. Rose wasn’t sure what his expression meant. He’d never before spoken of his mother — or his father. And though she felt shy about prodding, she wanted to know. What about your mother? she asked gently. Leo closed his eyes. Is she … Rose decided she could say it because her own mother was dead. Is she dead? No, he said dully. But she doesn’t want me around. She made it damn clear. Rose waited, but he didn’t say more. She sat closer and touched his face to stroke the hurt away.

  The bedding packed out of sight, Rose surveyed the studio. Leo had cautioned her against anyone discovering that they slept here. It probably wasn’t legal — though, as she pointed out, they were more equipped here than she and Maman had ever been in the cabin. They had a sink for water and washing, and the toilet in the hallway on the second floor. They were only missing the wood stove.

  Not every night, then, but some nights she and Leo slept here. With the canvas drawn across the window, no one knew they were there. In the morning he made them tea before he left for the garage. She washed at the sink. Her hair had grown long enough that she could scrape it into the stub of a ponytail. She worked at her weaving until it was time to go to the hospital.

  Rose wished they could stay here always. She had to stop herself from buying a table and two chairs and a hot plate. She’d wanted to make a key for Leo and had gone to four hardware stores. Each place said they could make a copy of the key to her studio, but not the main door. That key had a security code. Rose hadn’t asked further, not wanting to excite suspicion. Leo couldn’t always return during the day to get into the warehouse while the main door was still unlocked. When she worked, she couldn’t be here before the evening. They were both conscious of being seen sneaking in and out at night. She didn’t want to lose her studio. What if Kenny’s uncle’s friend decided she was a squatter?

  Leo, too, held to his tower aerie. The same man who slept pressed against her still felt most at home in an abandoned factory, high up over the city where no one could get to him once he’d pulled the ladder up after himself. She didn’t understand, but she accepted it was what he needed in the same way she’d needed to flee the woods and her cabin and come to the city.

  Rose glanced at the dollar-store clock on the dresser. Outside the window, a pod of cyclists in yellow-and-black Lycra — wasps churning their legs — streamed past. On the floor she had balls of purple, blue, and red wool she was feeding onto her warping reel. She was going to make cushions for the studio — to toss on the sponge mat, for leaning against the wall.

  Rose looked up from the sidewalk as she approached the duplex. There was a light on in the front window. She hadn’t been home for the last two nights. Yesterday she’d called before Yushi got home and left a message on the answering machine. She unlocked the door as softly as she could and slipped off her shoes. She heard no music, no TV, no slide of pots from the kitchen. Light spilled from the front room into the hallway.

  Yushi sat cross-legged on a chair at the large table, head bent, writing. Loose-leaf pages were scattered almost halfway across the length of the table. On the chair next to Yushi was a ripped plastic package of paper. Yushi snagged another few pages and kept writing. Lists, it looked like. Some pages with no more than headings across the top. Here a line, there a line.

  She looked so absorbed, Rose didn’t want to interrupt, but it didn’t feel right to keep watching. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Yushi kept writing. Then, “Did you eat?”

  “At the hospital.”

  Yushi sucked her teeth. Even intent on whatever had her so engrossed, she was present enough to scoff at hospital food. She grabbed a fresh page, wrote another word at the top, then reached across the table to push all the pages together. She straightened the stack and dropped it on the package of paper. “I didn’t eat yet. How about I make us an omelette?”

  Rose loved Yushi’s fluffy omelettes, with their creamy ooze of melted cheese and herbs. In the studio she and Leo ate bread and cheese and vegetables, or ramen noodles that only needed boiling water. She was happy because they were together, but she wished she could cook Leo a real meal. She’d invited him to the apartment, but he wouldn’t come. He didn’t explain, except to say he felt safe in St-Henri and along the canal.

 
Rose washed her hands and joined Yushi in the kitchen. Yushi had set the skillet on the stove and was cracking eggs against the edge of a bowl. “You want to slice those tomatoes? And there’s basil in the fridge.”

  Rose slid the cutting board out from beside the canisters and took a plate from the cupboard.

  “I’ve got to thank you, Rose.”

  Was Yushi teasing her?

  “I’m impressed with how committed you are to what you’re good at — to weaving. You are really good at it, too.”

  Rose looked at Yushi sidelong. Yushi had said she liked the bolster but she wasn’t usually so insistent with her compliments.

  “You showed me,” Yushi said.

  She’d shown Yushi the inside of the bolster before she’d stuffed it, but that couldn’t be what Yushi meant.

  The melted butter bubbled as Yushi poured beaten egg into the skillet. “Maddy wants to help me start a dessert business. I’d make cakes to sell to restaurants. I’ve been” — she lifted her chin at the hallway — “thinking of recipes and ingredients. Things we’ll need.”

  Rose stopped slicing tomatoes to look at Yushi. She didn’t for an instant doubt that Yushi could make exquisite desserts, which could — and should — feature on restaurant menus. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah.” Yushi sounded calm but then gave a nervous shiver.

  Suddenly Rose felt bad that Yushi had told her this great good news while she’d been keeping secrets. “I’ve met someone,” she blurted.

  Yushi stopped running the spatula around the edge of the omelette. “Are you serious?” She ogled Rose then grinned broadly. “Do tell.”

  Rose raised her arms high over her head and laced her fingers in a peak. She had to remember to stretch now and then while she stood bent over the loom with her hook.

  The raspy caw of a crow made her glance at the window, but it was a real crow settling itself on the post of the fence. What was she thinking? Leo didn’t have to pretend to be a crow when he wanted to see her. They weren’t trying to fool anyone — like Armand calling from the woods with a mourning dove’s long, yearning coo. As himself, as a man, he’d never sounded so tender. She tightened her lips and bent again to the reed. All these years she’d hoarded memories of Armand, reliving and refurbishing them, believing they were wondrous in the way that a person assured herself a mirror made a room larger, ignoring the hard, flat wall it hid.