Free Mystical Rose by Richard Scrimger Page A

harm but hard to kill off entirely. I sympathized with flowers. Nursing Harriet may have had something to do with my mood. Lots of time awake, with nothing to do except be there. Love. I remember thinking about love flowing out of me with my milk, filling my baby up so that she rolled over and went to sleep stuffed with love. She burped love and cried love,and threw love up all over her new nursery clock, a birthday present from Mama and Bill. Robbie, just home from work, looked pleased at the mess. He hated that clock, which chimed out the first notes of a Silly Symphony every hour. When Harriet smiled up at her daddy, standing in the nursery doorway in his last year’s suit and tie, he began to chuckle.
    I miss that chuckle of Robbie’s. I’ve lived more without him than with him, but I still miss him. Whenever I think about it it makes me feel guilty. I could have loved him better.
    Why are You shaking your head? What do You know about it?

Ice on my lips. Now there’s a memory. Ice chips. I remember following the cart down the Dale Road to the McAllisters, who had an icebox. Wood shavings and a smell of dampness and horse. Bix was the horse’s name; I can’t remember the man’s. He would saw a big block of ice and carry it with tongs, or else in his apron with his arms wrapped around it like a baby, a little ice baby. And when he was gone we’d — Gert and Jack and I would — steal ice chips from the cart. Well, they were going to melt anyway, weren’t they?
    My family didn’t have an icebox. We used the back pantry as a root cellar. I remember Jack and I — wait a minute, where are these memories coming from? I haven’t thought about Jack Dupree in a very long time. He was a strong healthy boy, wiry muscles and thick dark hair, shoulders that tanned to the colour of cherrywood every summer, but that would have been a lot of summers ago. Seventy-five summers ago. He’s got to be dead. Not that I’m doing so much better.
    Oh, Jack. The times we never had. I remember a note he sent, spring of eighth grade.
Behind the barn
. And that was all. As ifthere weren’t thirty barns in the vicinity. But I knew which one he meant, as he knew I would. Thirteen years old, studying provinces and capitals and Christopher Columbus. And a note, slipped into an atlas —
Behind the barn
. Without a time. But I knew which time he meant, and which barn, and I guessed what he wanted to do. And do you know what? I wanted to go. I never told him. I’d like to have been able to tell him, I wanted to. To go to the barn and be with him. But I knew I couldn’t. Nothing to do with being a nice girl, I just knew I couldn’t. It didn’t make me feel any better about it. I was still sorry. Knowledge isn’t easy.
    You know that, don’t you? You know everything. Maybe You could try to explain it to Jack. I’m not going to get it right.
    Are we going to see Dr. Sylvester again soon? I ask Harriet.
    I cough. My side hurts. Harriet wipes my mouth. The bells are still ringing.
    Dr. Berman is here now, she says. Don’t worry, Mother.
    I miss Dr. Sylvester. He’s such a handsome man. Don’t you think so, dear?
    I know
you
do, Mother.
    And his voice, I say. With that voice he could have been on radio. I loved the stories he used to tell me. Do you remember the stories he used to tell me, Harriet?
    My daughter looks at me with that mixture of affection and anger that we reserve for the beloved ill. Do you really remember them, Mother?
    Oh yes, I say. There was one about an airline. And another about a hockey rink. I think it was a hockey rink. And another one about a man with a pet who got lost. Or a car that broke. Something he had, and then he didn’t have it. Very good stories,the way the doctor used to tell them. Do you remember them, Harriet?
    She sighs, shakes her head at me. A tough time of life for her, the sixties. You don’t feel old, but everyone is treating you that way, and you start to wonder if maybe they’re right. I