Free The Truth about Mary Rose by Marilyn Sachs

to kiss it.
    But I didn’t open it right away. After I kissed it, I rubbed my hands over it. It felt like any other shoe box, but older. I’m holding a box that’s thirty years old in my hands, I thought. I’m holding Mary Rose’s box.
    The box had TRED - RITES written in the middle. It was a yellow box, but the color was an old yellow, and there were blue shoes walking around the border of the box top. On the side of the box, it said:
    LDS.   RD.   SNKR.
    5
    It must have been a box that once had held a pair of shoes worn by Mary Rose. Five must have been her shoe size. She was my age when she died, a little older, because she was nearly twelve and I am just eleven and a half. But she wore a size five. I wear a six and a half. Her foot, I thought, must have been small and slim and beautifully shaped.
    There was a lot of string around the box to keep the top on, and the contents from spilling out. I took off the string, and lifted the cover.
    It was Mary Rose’s box. I knew it was Mary Rose’s box before I opened it. And it was her treasure box. There were gold rings, watches, ruby necklaces, diamonds—lots and lots of diamonds, pearl chokers, sapphire bracelets, solid gold charms and rings. I didn’t take any of them out of the box then but I put my hands in, and felt how cool and smooth they were. One of the gold rings I slipped on my finger, and I thought, I’m wearing a ring that Mary Rose wore. I moved the ring off my finger, covered up the box, and slipped the string back over it.
    I carried the box down the stairs with me to my bedroom. I locked the door, and spread them out one by one on my bed. They didn’t all fit, so I put some of them on the floor, and sat in the middle of Mary Rose’s treasures. Some of them had faded, on others the paper was stiff, and beginning to crumble. But most of them were still as bright and shiny as when she first cut them out of the magazines thirty years ago.
     
Chapter 8
     
    I didn’t know what I was going to tell Pam— I mean about how I opened Mary Rose’s box and didn’t wait for her. I never should have promised. I know that. It’s like promising you’re not going to breathe or you’re not going to sleep.
    That night, when it was bedtime, I put everything back in the box. But I couldn’t sleep. It came one o’clock, and I listened to my parents’ conversation as usual. Daddy said OK about the house, and Mom kept saying was he absolutely sure it was all right. She wouldn’t mind at all living in Manhattan, and she realized that living up here in the Bronx would mean a long trip for him every day on the subway. He said no, the studio was fine, and if she liked the house and the neighborhood, that was fine too. Then she said well how did he feel about living so close to her mother. He said that was fine too. And then my mother said, “What’s wrong, Luis?”
    It seemed there were a whole lot of things wrong.
    First of all, my father was disappointed in what was happening between him and his son, Philip. He had been looking forward to New York because he thought it would give him a chance to spend a lot of time with Philip. But although he still wanted to spend a lot of time with Philip, Philip didn’t seem to want to spend much time with him. And when they were together, there didn’t seem much to talk about.
    Then there was the New York Art World. My father hated it. He hated the people and the talking and the parties and the money, and most of the work other artists were doing. I guess he hated just about everything. He had just sold another three paintings, and tomorrow a reporter was coming to see him from an art magazine to do an article on him, and he hated that too. And then, he wasn’t painting. He hadn’t painted since we came to New York.
    My mother said she thought most of the problems would fall into line once we were settled in our own place. But if not, she wanted my father to remember that we weren’t married to New York and could