Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1) Page 4

  “You look busy.”

  I nodded, too distracted to explain because I’d just spied another photo of Rose and it had sucked all the breath out of me. In this one she was a smaller, older, more faded version of the woman in the earlier photos. Although I was sure it was her, the merry smile had gone and so, too, had the carelessly upswept hair that spilt exuberant curls over her temples. Worse, the confident tilt of her head had gone as well. This was a photo of a careworn woman fast approaching middle age. I stared at it. Had she been ill when it was taken?

  Daniel peered over my shoulder, his fingers warm on the nape of my neck. “Who’s that?”

  I fidgeted him away, too immersed in what I was doing to want to talk about it. “It’s a photo of my great-great-grandmother.”

  When I failed to elaborate he tried another question. “Where did all these photos come from? I don’t remember seeing them before.”

  “Ma gave them to me. I said I’d sort through them for her.”

  Although he would have had to be deaf to miss the dismissal in my voice, he didn’t give up. Instead he picked up the photo album Ma had sent over with the boxes, and opened it. Seeing the blank pages, he added two and two together and made five. “She’ll enjoy having pictures of all her family in one place.”

  As Ma had pictures of every member of the Pavalak family displayed all over the house, I knew the last thing she would ever want would be more of them gathered together in an album. It was the reason so many of them were all jumbled together in cardboard boxes, and it was also why I’d never seen most of them. I didn’t bother to explain it to Daniel though, not when he was being so patronizing. I added the latest photo of Rose to the small pile I’d already put to one side and then tumbled the rest back into the boxes. By the time I’d finished, Daniel had boiled the kettle and made a mug of tea for each of us.

  As I sipped mine I realized, with a guilty start, that I hadn’t given a thought to our evening meal. Daniel was ahead of me, which wasn’t difficult given that there were no pans on the hob and no cooking smells coming from the stove.

  “Shall I do some pasta or would you prefer cold meat and salad? We could have it with the baguette I brought home. A few minutes in the cooker will freshen it up.” He pointed to the long white paper bag on the kitchen counter and I knew at once that the loaf was past its sell by date, or at least it would be by the next day. For some reason it riled me.

  “It would be nice, just for once, to tear pieces off a really fresh loaf instead of using up other people’s left overs,” I snapped.

  He turned away so I couldn’t see the expression on his face as he opened the fridge and began to pull out the ingredients to make a salad. Actually I didn’t need to see his face to know it would be patient and long suffering and just a little bit hurt…not a lot hurt because Rachel was still not quite herself so she couldn’t help behaving like a bitch at times. Of course he wouldn’t ever have called me a bitch, even to himself. I knew I was being one though and after a moment’s reflection I knew why.

  “How long has Millie Carter been working at the shop?” Although I tried to keep my voice casual it had an edge to it.

  He sighed as he switched on the stove. “She said you came in today.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “When you start listening, Rachel.”

  His words took me by surprise and for a moment I was silent. He turned and looked at me. “I’ve had to make a lot of decisions since Leah was born, decisions we would have shared once upon a time. Employing Millie was one of them, and her need was as great as mine.”

  “You mean when Patsy left in a hurry and you forgot to tell me about that, too.”

  His eye’s darkened to black, a sure sign he was getting angry. “I didn’t forget to tell you. I decided you didn’t need to know about her daughter’s illness when you were still so poorly yourself.”

  I picked up the stale baguette and placed it on the top shelf of the stove. “Well I’m not poorly now, so you can include me in all your decision making in future, and we can start by revising Millie’s hours.”

  He ripped open a pack of cold meat, something he had brought home from the shop the previous evening but which we hadn’t eaten because we’d gone out instead. “Listen to yourself Rachel, and then tell me honestly whether you want to be that unkind…you, who has sisters and a mother at your beck and call whenever you need help, and a husband too, God help him.”

  The last remark was muttered under his breath but I heard it and it made everything spill over into a stream of invective I wasn’t proud of. By the time I’d finished complaining about his selfishness and how he was putting Millie Carter’s needs before Leah and me, I almost believed it. I think Daniel gave up listening before I was halfway through, which was probably a good thing, and by the time I had enough sense to shut up, the salad was ready and so was the bread.

  We didn’t have much to say to one another after that. I didn’t ask him about his day, and he didn’t ask about mine. We washed the dishes in silence too and then he spent the rest of the evening going through the month’s accounts while I returned to the photos.

  My heart wasn’t in it however, and when Leah stirred for her night feed I hurried through to the nursery, glad to have something else to do. I didn’t expect Rose to be there because for some reason I’d persuaded myself that she was an early morning apparition. I was wrong and this time she didn’t smile when she saw me. She just looked sad. Then, while I was still wondering why seeing her no longer frightened me, she slipped past me and out of the door.

  I half expected to hear Daniel speak to her but he didn’t. Instead he turned on the TV, and when I joined him after I’d settled Leah back into her crib he was watching the highlights of a football game. There was a glass of whiskey on the table beside him which I knew meant he was going to stay up late and that it was my fault. For a moment I considered snuggling up beside him on the sofa and trying to persuade him that deep down I was still the Rachel he had married but then I shrugged. If that was how he wanted to play it then I was going to bed. If he was determined to do all the early starts to make life easy for Millie Carter, then I needed all the sleep I could get.

  Chapter Five

  Daniel left earlier than usual the following morning. Although he kissed me like he always did, I knew it was just from habit, not because he wanted to. It made me mad all over again even though deep down I knew I deserved it. To take my mind off how I felt I pulled out the box of photos as soon as Leah had finished her breakfast. I should have washed and dressed her, but she seemed perfectly happy watching me from her bouncy chair, and she grinned gummily whenever I spoke to her. I spoke to her a lot.

  “Look at this one, Leah. This is a picture of your great-great-great-grandma when she was younger than me. She was pretty, wasn’t she? As pretty as you are going to be when you grow up.”

  By the time Leah was ready for her morning nap we had been through the whole box, and the small pile of old family photos I had picked out the previous evening had grown considerably. At first I had only looked for pictures of Rose but then I decided to include all those other pictures of people in period dress. People I knew nothing about but who, with luck, might trigger those parts of Grandma’s memory that hadn’t yet succumbed to the cruel ravages of dementia.

  By the time Daniel came home that evening I had finished the album, and because I was feeling so pleased with myself I had kept Leah up so she could spend some time with her daddy while I cooked the supper. The smile that lit up Daniel’s face when he found us both in the kitchen waiting for him twisted the little knife of guilt I’d been harboring in my heart all day, and when he kissed us both it twisted just a little bit more. I thrust Leah at him.

  “Now you are having to leave so early in the mornings, I’ve decided to keep her up a bit later in the evenings so she can see you before she goes to sleep.”

  I wasn’t getting at him. My decision to keep Leah up had far more to do wi
th my guilt than with our recent argument about Millie Carter, but he still reacted. I saw the tension in his shoulders and the sudden hardening of his jaw as he settled Leah into a more comfortable position. I decided to ignore it. Nothing good would come of trying to explain myself. Instead I made him a mug of tea, checked that the chilli beef I was cooking was bubbling away at the right temperature, and then followed him into the sitting room and told him about the album.

  “Leah was in charge of all the decision making,” I said. “She directed the whole project from her chair. I only used the photos she approved of and I abided by her rule of no more than four per page maximum. She’s going to be a real taskmaster when she grows up.”

  He grinned at me, the old Daniel grin that once upon a time would have had me wondering if I should turn off the stove and make for the bedroom, or whether it would be better to eat first and then spend the rest of the evening in bed. Having Leah had changed all that of course but it was good to know I remembered, and from the expression on his face, Daniel did too.

  Resting Leah securely on his knee so that he could take a sip of tea from his mug, he spoke to her. “So you’re a chip off the old block, are you? An organizer like your mother.”

  I nodded as I put the album on the sofa next to him, enjoying our silly conversation because it meant we were back on track again. “She’s a real slave driver. It would have taken me days to do this by myself.”

  He drained his mug and put it on the floor beside the couch. “We’d better look at it then hadn’t we, young lady? Come on, I’ll turn the pages and you can tell me who all these strange looking people are.”

  Leah, enjoying the attention, gurgled contentedly as he propped her on a cushion beside him so they could both look at the album. I stood behind the sofa and watched as he turned the pages, wondering how much Grandma would remember about her childhood, wondering how much she would remember about Rose.

  * * *

  At that point the evening had potential. Daniel put Leah to bed while I finished cooking the supper and later, when we’d eaten and I was washing dishes at the sink, he put his arms around me and nuzzled my neck the way he knew I liked it. It had the effect it always did. As he kissed the soft skin where my neck joined my shoulder something shifted inside me. It was a sort of blooming so that every bit of me became receptive to his touch. I turned in his arms, my hands still wet with suds, and kissed him. It was a kiss that would have gone on for a very long time and might have ended up in the bedroom if my sister Hannah hadn’t rapped on the outer door before letting herself into the porch.

  With a sigh of frustration, I left Daniel to finish the dishes while I went to greet her. She was wearing her usual harassed look, the one that said I’m your sister and you’ve been ill so I have to check on you even though I have a list of far more important things to do. Her concerned smile was genuine though.

  “How are you? How is Leah? Ma said you had a bit of a setback while I was away.”

  Hannah is the clever one in the family. She’s a pediatric consultant and she is always attending conferences somewhere or other, leaving her own children to bring themselves up. Ma used to complain about it when they were small but now they’re older she leaves them to get on with it.

  I returned her smile. I knew she had come for all the right reasons and I know, too, how shitty her life is. While she works all hours, her husband stays at home waiting for the muse to strike. This means he has a pile of unpublished manuscripts on the corner of his desk as well as a body odor problem because he wears the same T-shirt day after day. Ostensibly a house-husband, he neither cooks nor cleans, and he only communicates with his children when he absolutely has to. This means both boys spend most of their spare time in their bedrooms playing computer games amid a suppurating mess of dirty socks, sweaty gym kits and the crumbs from left-over pizzas.

  “I’m fine. I think I was probably sleep-walking or something and I woke up a bit too suddenly,” I lied. “If it had been you or anyone else, nobody would have taken any notice, but because it was me, Daniel and Ma worried I was becoming paranoid again.”

  I was surprised at the expression of relief that swept across her face. She really did care; she wasn’t just being dutiful. Another wave of guilt pierced me as I remembered the times I had complained about her to Daniel, saying she should spend more time at home sorting out her own life instead of interfering in ours. He had taken her side of course, saying she was just worried about Leah and that as soon as I was well enough to care for her full time then she would stop calling so often. Now, seeing how tired she looked, and seeing the sadness that was always a shadow in the back of her eyes, I forgot I had ever resented her.

  “Come in and have a glass of wine, or there’s coffee if you’d rather. I was just about to make some anyway.” I pushed open the door to the sitting room.

  For a moment she hesitated, then she nodded. “I’d love to. I’m sure Paul and the boys can manage without me for another hour or so.”

  The truth was that when she did go home she’d be lucky if any of her menfolk even looked up from whatever they were doing. She knew it and she knew I knew it, so we changed the subject, talking instead about Leah. When Daniel joined us he asked her about the conference she had just been to and we talked about that for a bit too. Then, searching for something else that wouldn’t bring us back to her own family, I remembered the photo album and fetched it. It was news to her because she hadn’t seen Ma or any of my sisters for a week or so, but as soon as she saw what I was doing she was enthusiastic.

  “What a lovely idea. I remember reading about something like this in one of the medical journals a few years ago.”

  “So you think it will work? You think it will help her to remember things about her own childhood, things about Granny Rose?” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.

  She nodded thoughtfully. “It might do because very long term memories are usually the last to go. It’s worth a try anyway,” she started leafing through the album until she got to a photo of a church with a bridal party gathered outside. It was such a small picture that it was almost impossible to pick out individual people, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with Rose because the dress was early twentieth century. I had only stuck it in the album in case there was someone in it that Grandma had known in her youth.

  Hannah pointed to it. “This is a picture of Grandma’s wedding. Look, there’s her sister all decked out as a bridesmaid, and there’s her Uncle Robert giving her away because by then her father was dead.”

  I shifted across to sit next to her and peered to where she was pointing. The tiny black and white figures were almost undecipherable unless you knew who was there.

  “How come you recognize it?”

  “Because Grandma used to have a much larger version in her sitting room when I was a little girl. And look, there’s Grandma’s mother and father, and I think that old lady next to them is Granny Rose. I guess the other couple are the parents of the groom.”

  I’d lost interest in the tiny picture, however. I was intent on tracking down the larger one. “Where do you think it is now?”

  My sister shrugged. “No idea. Grandma took it down years ago, once we all started to overload her with photos of her great-grandchildren. It’s probably in that old chest of drawers in the barn, unless someone threw it out when we cleared the furniture from her bungalow.”

  I knew I’d be rummaging through that chest of drawers first thing the following morning when I took the photo album to show Ma. I didn’t say that to Hannah though. Instead I asked her what else she could remember about the early days of Grandma’s life.

  “Not a lot although I do remember her saying her grandmother used to play the church organ. It was quite odd actually. I’d just taken a psychology exam and when I told her about it, she was quite scathing. She said that in her day people found other ways to cope with unhappiness instead of talking about it all the time. Then she sort of implied that playing the organ
somehow made her grandmother’s life bearable. Now I know better I wish I’d asked her more about it, but I was a young ‘know it all’ medical student in those days so I just dismissed it as outdated rubbish.”

  Something shifted deep inside me. Was that why I was so bad tempered all the time? Did I need something to take me out of myself the same way that Hannah needed her tiny, intensive care babies and the children with heart murmurs and leukemia to make her life bearable? She filled every one of her waking hours caring for them and trying to save them and I suddenly realized it was so she didn’t have to think about her shitty home life and her failing marriage. I didn’t say it of course. Instead I poured her a second glass of wine while I wondered what it was that Rose was running away from when she played the organ.

  * * *

  Leah started moaning for her ten o’clock feed just as Hannah was getting up to leave, so of course she stayed a bit longer to check her out. Watching me lift her from the crib she smiled. “You’ve done it Rachel. Despite everything you’ve been through you’ve got Leah into a secure routine and she’s thriving. Look how content she is. She knows she has to go straight back to sleep as soon as she’s finished.”

  Praise indeed. My pediatric consultant sister telling me I was doing something right. I could feel myself swelling with pride even as she bent and kissed first me and then Leah, and tiptoed from the room. As I shifted into a more comfortable position, taking care not to disrupt Leah’s sleepy suckling, I heard her say goodnight to Daniel, and a moment later the glare of headlights swept across the dimly lit nursery.

  For once Daniel was still awake when I finally made it to the bedroom but by then neither of us had the energy to pick up where we’d left off. Instead we talked softly about Hannah, and about Grandma, until our eyelids began to droop.