Stillbird

Mary was six when her parents had their wedding, and when she realized that she had been unhappy, for she realized that now she hoped that things would be different. Rose of Sharon rewarded Charles for his gesture with a great deal of tenderness, even cheerfulness and talked fast and excited to Mary and Charles about the birds, the garden, the weather, the woods. She began to make friends with the women of the county, who grudgingly forgave her her beauty that never seemed to fade, not with work or sun or wind. She took pleasure in milking the cow and gathering the eggs and picking the wild berries with her daughter and husband. She even read to them at night by the fire, fairy tales mostly, from books that had belonged to Charles’s father, fairy tales from Scotland and Ireland as well as history books, but Rose ignored the serious histories, preferring the aura of an even older antiquity in the tales.

  Some nights Mary had nightmares about the stories, and her mother was by her side the instant she began to cry, comforting her and hearing the story of the bad dream and telling her it was only a dream. Some nights Mary was afraid to go to sleep, afraid to dream, but then she braved it, knowing her mother would be there if she woke up crying. Mary would always remember that winter as a kind of tapestry filled with the characters of the stories and her dreams and intimate moments in the dark with her mother and her father, who always followed, sleepy and sweet to her bedside. And filled, too, with the fragrances of cooking with her mother, standing on a stool to reach the table to roll out the dough for strudel and sniffing the cinnamon, learning to knead the bread dough, redolent with the sweet strange smell of the yeast, secretly tasting on her finger the apple wine brewing near the wood stove. And filled with the colors and patterns of the fabrics her mother sewed into dresses for her, always with a ruffle around the hem. And the button- eyed face of the rag doll her mother made with the remnants, the doll she dressed like her daughter, and Mary loved the doll until she left it one day by accident in the barnyard, running from a rooster gone crazy when she went alone to collect the eggs, and her mother found the doll in the mud and screamed and cried as if the doll were her own child, and ever after, that button-eyed face appeared in dreams as a demon to frighten Mary, and Mary couldn’t tell her mother she woke crying from a dream about the doll, somehow she knew she couldn’t tell her that.

  With the spring came a madness so clear that Charles took Rose away to a hospital in a town almost all the way to Roanoke and he didn’t bring her home for weeks. When he did, Rose of Sharon was silent and seemed tired all the time. Slowly she found her strength and her energy and by summer, was lively again and ready to dance. Her husband was grateful then and so was her daughter, and Charles and Mary thought, in the simplicity of relief, that all was well forever.

  On the Fourth of July they went to the dance in the town, the town being by then a post office, a general store, a sawmill and some houses. The dance was in a large open room on the second floor of the building that housed the post office. There was an old man, who played fiddle, and his son, who played the banjo, and a caller for the square dances. Mary sat and watched during the intricate square dances, but in between those, were the other dances where old grannies danced with each other and parents danced with toddlers and some folks even danced alone, doing some fancy footwork to impress the crowd. Rose of Sharon twirled Mary around in a dance, the picture of lovely young motherhood, and a young man back home to visit his grandparents watched them and felt his heart wrap around her whirling form, like a string around a top. That night everyone danced with everyone else and it was okay for the young Duane to ask Rose to dance while Charles danced one with Mary. It was a waltz and they talked some. Neither one of them ever took their eyes from the other’s, and it was a miracle they didn’t dance into people, but they waltzed around the room perfectly, as though they had been dancing together forever. Some folks noticed, but Charles was busy with Mary and happy and breathless when he got his wife for the next square dance. Duane sat out the rest of the evening, watching Rose thread through the room, the room itself and everyone in it touched with an aura of magic for the young man due to leave the next day.

  But Duane couldn’t bear the thought of leaving even though he knew that Rose was married and a mother, and he stayed and got a job at the sawmill and lived with his grandparents, who were glad to have him. They ran the general store even into their eighties, and soon Duane convinced his grandmother to retire and stay home and bake and he would stand behind the counter now, having left the sawmill job, and wait for Rose of Sharon to come in to buy some calico and coffee and yeast and candy. She did love candy. Usually it was Charles who had come into town to do their business, but he was encouraged now that Rose had the energy to come with him, and while he negotiated for seasoned lumber, she could mull over the fabrics for Mary’s new dress. Sometimes Mary went with her father, sometimes with her mother, and Mary didn’t like the way the young shopkeeper talked to her mother, and she asked a lot of questions that her mother didn’t answer. “He’s just nice is all,” she’d tell Mary and give her daughter a piece of the hard candy. “You want the red one?” she’d ask, and Mary would nod yes, not really caring and worrying, always worrying.

  Duane suggested to his granny that she revive the old sewing bees she used to have at her house. It turned out to be a good idea and a few women were delighted to come in once a week and talk and sew, and he told Rose about it, and she surprised all the women by coming a couple of times. But they weren’t surprised when she stopped. After the first couple of weeks, she went straight to the store, which Duane closed for lunch, and they made love in the back storeroom on a bed he made of sacks of beans and rice and covered with his coat. She was only a few years older than he was, but her motherhood made her seem a goddess to him, and he could hardly contain his joy that she would deign to take him as her lover. But then he wanted more and he began to plan a way to have her all the time, thinking that was what she wanted, too. He started making trips to Roanoke and Covington, looking for a job that would pay him enough to rent a house for the two of them, then he thought they should go further, all the way to New York perhaps, or out west, somewhere nobody could ever find them. He didn’t tell Rose because he didn’t want to get her hopes up, so he just looked and planned and waited to tell her the good news when the good news was certain. She complained sometimes about his frequent trips and laughed that she had to actually go and sew with his grandmother and think of things to tell the ladies there, because if she stopped going once a week into town alone, Charles would wonder and ask questions. Duane felt a twinge of discomfort that she was so adept at deception, but he attributed it to the great love they shared, and he thought about all the deceptive things he had had to do and say to get them even this little time together, and he thought about his plans and was proud of his self-control in not telling Rose anything until he could surprise her with a perfectly laid plan: the city, the job and the house all arranged for. He was too young and selfish to even think about Mary. And when he occasionally did think about Mary, he reasoned that she seemed to prefer her father anyway, and that there were plenty of women in the county who would jump at the chance to marry Charles and be a mother to his daughter. It helped to think of Mary as Charles’s daughter; he hated to think of Rose being with Charles, having carried his child, so Duane didn’t think that far back.

  So went the fall and then the first snows came and it was a long and cold winter, so the snow never completely melted before another blanket of it fell over the town and the hills and homesteads. Charles always came into town with Rose now the winter had come and they came into town very seldom. Duane felt like he was dying a slow death, and once Rose found herself alone with him and told him to be patient and they would meet again in the spring, in the woods, in a special spot she had found, a magical place, she told him, and she seduced him with words all over again, and her words, rehearsed like a prayer every night, helped him get through the winter; her words and his plans.

  Som
etimes Charles came into the store alone and sometimes he talked to Duane one man to another, never dreaming Duane’s secret. He thought Duane was simply shy like he was, and he liked him. In fact, the two men were very much alike in many ways, but neither knew this for sure. They talked about the war, and finally Duane began to ask questions and became somewhat animated, speculating on the excitement of battle. He had been a child during the war and was bitter that he would never have his chance to distinguish himself.

  “I wouldn’t worry. I was thirty when I went. But you really shouldn’t be hoping for another war. You think it is exciting because all us old soldiers come in and talk about our own best moments, when we were brave and saved ourselves and our friends and our country. We talk like that because we are too ashamed to tell the truth about it.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I mean, and you don’t have to be repeating this to your granddad, I mean that it’s all we could do to save ourselves, and more often than not, we watched companions die because there wasn’t anything we could do to save them, sometimes, by accident, we could do that, do some act of bravery, but you know that bravery means you think about what you are doing. We didn’t have time to think about anything. This wasn’t a war like the old wars, this was worse. All kinds of modern weapons, like the magic tricks of the devil was what this was. I got all those medals and I don’t remember even once feeling brave. For me the most excitement was when I got letters from my wife, and it was those letters got me through alive, and they had their own magic, those letters.”

  Duane fell silent then, but Charles had tapped memories that kept flooding his brain, and he liked this young man and he talked on most of the afternoon, sitting by the wood stove, and no one came into the store because a storm was whipping up, and Charles himself should have been on his way. All Duane remembered later of that day was a story about a soldier leaving for home and being caught with an arm in his duffle bag; a souvenir, he said, and he’d tried to preserve it with formaldehyde but the sergeant, who checked everyone’s papers before letting them pass onto the ship bound for home, wouldn’t let him take it, and there was a ruckus while they tried to decide how to dispose of the arm. Charles pondered the humor of all those men who had killed other soldiers with bayonets, had run through fiery fields where dead bodies and body parts lay all around them, all those men so disgusted by that arm and confused about what to do with it. Someone suggested that they throw it to the dogs, who were starving anyway: “It’s an enemy arm after all, not like we have to bury it or anything.” And Charles laughed then, thinking about how appalled everyone had been, even he had been, at the thought of tossing that arm out to the dogs. But of course the formaldehyde would have killed the dogs, so the arm had to be taken by someone in charge onto the ship and thrown overboard, no one caring if the formaldehyde killed a few fish. Charles wondered out loud how many dogs had eaten the carrion of the battlefields before the bodies could be buried. Duane just looked at him then and mentioned that the storm was getting heavy, and Charles had to leave his wagon in town and walk home through the storm.

  He relished the adventure and felt strong and healthy as he walked into the wind, thinking of home. It was after dark when he finally saw the light burning in a window, hoping it was his own, but it was a neighbor’s he was lucky to reach that night, and they put him up until he could have the daylight to find the road home. In the swirling storm he had walked around in circles and spent the night at the edge of the town he had left hours earlier. He could have been lost in the night and frozen to death, the folks told him, and he thanked them for being there and laughed, telling them he had been thinking about the war that afternoon and maybe remembering how he’d survived that helped him survive the storm. By then he could take his wagon, and he arrived home in time for breakfast. Rose and Mary had worried themselves to sleep and were making plans to come into the town to ask about him and they were glad he had spent the night safely. “I knew you’d make it okay because you always did,” said Rose, and he hugged her and told her it was thinking about her wonderful letters that had saved him, that her letters were magic and she was an angel who made his life so worth living he couldn’t die. Rose made herself a vow, which she meant for the moment, to be faithful to him.

  Duane found someone to help his grandparents in the store and left to seek his fortune, literally, like the boys in the stories who go off on adventures to grow up, learn many secrets and find wealth so they can return to claim the imprisoned princess who waits and yearns. Counting on his strength and determination and, yes, his persuasive good looks, to get work wherever he went, he went everywhere: Chicago, Omaha, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle and all kinds of towns in between. He was gone for two years and kept in touch with his grandma in the belief that Rose would ask about him. He wanted her to write to him but didn’t stay long enough or predictably enough to even ask, so he was spared the disappointment of not hearing from her. He met some women along the way and enjoyed brief encounters, passing himself off as the wandering adventurer whom no woman could tie down, but of course that was his cover for being hopelessly in love with the one woman he couldn’t have. He had fallen in love not only with Rose of Sharon but with the image of himself as part of a tragic triangle.

  Sharon was relieved that he was gone and settled back into what was routine for herself and her family. She was good to Charles and Mary for a while, then fell into the kind of depression that drained the very life out of her and sat for days at a time not talking or walking, just breathing, maybe not even seeing the two of them as they came to her with offerings of food, tales, assistance. It got so bad that Rose of Sharon wouldn’t even make the trip to the outhouse and soiled herself, and Charles had to clean her up and that was when he took her back to the hospital near Roanoke, broken hearted that she would miss the blooming of the garden, for he knew that Rose dearly loved her garden. Mary was old enough to care for it, knew what were weeds and what would grow and bloom into colorful flowers, and she took care of the garden with all the love and attention she would like to have enjoyed. It was her gift to her mother who returned when the garden had bloomed and begun to wither in the summer heat. The tulips were already gone and the daffodils, but the marigolds were coming in, the day lilies continued strong, and Mary fed and watered the roses so they would hold their heads up for the return of their mistress. That’s what Mary called her mother when she came home, pale and weak, but at least smiling: The mistress of the roses. Everyday Mary went out and picked some of the flowers she had so carefully cultivated for a bouquet for her mother’s room. Of course the flowers, once picked, did not last long in their vases, and so they would be thrown out and new blooms sacrificed to the daily ritual of cheering up her mother. As a special favor, she sometimes let her father take the bouquet inside. Rose of Sharon stayed indoors most of the summer and then finally went out in August and was so struck by the beauty of the place that she lamented out loud having missed so much time. But it was okay. They spent hours hiking in the woods and finding all the exquisite wild things that grew hidden in the bushes, in the mosses underfoot, along the sides of the creek. Mary would run around, while her mother found a comfortable seat on a rock or within the curve of large tree roots, and find things to show her and delight her and they wouldn’t return to the house until the sun was so low in the sky that they began to feel the slightest tinge of cold and an exciting fear of the dark. Then they would run and arrive breathless and happy and even laughing, because they were safe.

  And once again, Charles would believe that the sad times were over and this contentment would last forever. Mary knew better, but she also knew not to tell him: it would serve no purpose.

  Charles had begun to sell furniture that he built and carved decoratively with flowers and vines. He had taken a few pieces to White Sulphur Springs, where wealthy folks came from all along the east coast to enjoy the springs at the hotel and resort t
here, and those pieces had sold well, and the shopkeeper who had taken them ordered more. Mary loved to watch her father carve the delicate designs in the grained and pliant oak. Sometimes he would ask her what flowers now? Roses? Lilies? Daisies? But Mary always asked for roses, and that was mostly what Charles carved. He named his line of furniture as the shopkeeper called it, the Rose Collection, and he signed each piece because the shopkeeper told him he could get more money if he signed them. It got so Charles spent more time carving furniture than farming and finally gave up trying to grow any cash crop. The furniture, mostly rocking chairs, became his cash crop. He would travel to White Sulphur with a wagonload of pieces every few weeks and when it was nice, he invited Rose and Mary to go with him. Mary had already been, so she was excited at the prospect of showing her mother the grand hotel and maybe have lunch there with some of the money the shopkeeper gave them. They would get all dressed up.

  And so they did, and Rose looked far more beautiful than any of the wealthy women, young or old, who walked purposively through the lobbies and hallways of the hotel, to their rooms, to the lobby for tea, to meet friends, on their way to eat some sumptuous meal in one of the restaurants. Everyone looked at Rose admiringly. Her dress, that she had made herself, was simple but elegant and made of good fabric. And yet, Rose felt out of place in the gracious colonial hotel. She got flustered and hurried about, looking for the way out, and getting lost because the back and the front entrances were both equally elegant and she forgot which side they had come in on.

  Mary and Charles had to hurry to catch up with her and take her hands on both sides and guide her back to the side from which they came, and they walked her around the grounds for a while, trying to calm her down and talk her into trying the buffet. “I thought you would like it,” said Charles. “I thought this was just the kind of place you always dream of being.” And of course that was just it. Rose did always dream of being in just such a place, not for an hour or a day but always, for her lifetime, and it hurt her too badly to be there, where she knew she belonged, and have to leave. But as she tried to explain to Charles in a way that wouldn’t hurt his feelings, she saw that nothing would not hurt his feelings unless she went inside and ate a hearty luncheon and complimented him on the treat, so she did that time pull herself together and do that very thing, even though she felt sicker and sicker with each bite, and when gentlemen came by to tell Charles that he was a lucky man to have two such lovely ladies with him, and Charles would smile and greet them and thank them, Rose looked down at her plate and stifled her anger. Her father had always said it was harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, but Rose of Sharon knew he didn’t really mean it, he was just bitter that the luck of the draw had not been good to his own, and she had to admit the distribution of wealth was an unfair puzzlement. As a child she had dreamed of a prince carrying her off like Cinderella to some castle (just exactly like this White Sulphur Springs Resort) and then she had to learn that such dreams were unattainable and scale her dreams down to what was at least within the realm of her reality. This place just brought up too much childhood pain.

  They sold quilts at the shop where Charles took his rockers and vanities, and Rose got the idea of making quilts for the shop to sell. She began to join the sewing bee group again, much to their surprise, and she was modest and gracious with them, and even Duane’s grandma forgave her for using them in the past. And Rose also began to go to church, apologetically at first, since she had not gone before. Rose sincerely wanted to become a better wife to Charles, for she had seen his heartbreak when he couldn’t please her and his joy when she pretended that he had, and it hurt to think she had never really loved or appreciated him enough. He didn’t care that much for church himself, but it pleased him when they went as a family and it was easier for Rose to please him in this way than by trying to talk to him about her feelings, which she herself didn’t quite understand. Rose thought perhaps she might be settling down inside and she was glad, for she’d never meant to hurt anyone.

  Then Duane came home. Charles saw him at the store and mentioned it to Rose, who was kneading dough for bread and didn’t look up. She knew her face got red and hot when he said the man’s name, and she hoped he didn’t see. She was careful then not to go into town with Charles, saying she preferred to stay and work in the garden. But then Duane came to church and tried to catch her eye. She refused to look at him, so he approached the entire family and talked to Charles a while, trying to figure out why Rose made no secretive effort to talk to him privately. He showed off for her, telling Charles about all the cities he’d been to and that he intended to go back to Seattle to live, and found a nice house and now all he needed was a wife. He talked so long that it was Rose who had to tell Charles that they should be getting home. Finally in desperation, Duane went to the farm to find Sharon alone when he knew Charles was making a delivery to White Sulphur Springs. She didn’t want Mary to see him with her and told him he must leave, but he made her promise to meet him in the shed that night after Mary went to bed, after Charles was asleep. He would wait. So Rose of Sharon made dinner for her family, knowing that her old lover was hiding in the shed, and she read Mary a bedtime story and even made love with Charles and then when her husband and her daughter were asleep, she got up quietly and dressed and went out to tell the young man that she never wanted to see him again.

  Charles heard a noise outside. No matter how softly she walked, Rose couldn’t help the porch creaking. Charles thought a prowler threatened his family and got up, put his pants on and grabbed his shotgun. He left the house and looked around and thought he may have heard someone in the shed.

  Duane reached out to Sharon and was reaching still when Charles shot him. His blood spattered Sharon’s face and chest, and Mary, running to the shed and seeing the blood on her mother’s dress, thought it was her mother who was shot, and Rose of Sharon, feeling herself bleeding inside, feeling her life ebb away into a chaos that couldn’t be heaven and must be hell, thought that Charles should have shot her, and Charles, seeing the grief on her face, did, aiming straight for the heart.

  Rose of Sharon sank to her knees and tried to say the words “I’m sorry,” but the shots were still ringing in Mary’s ears, and all she saw were her mother’s hands reaching heavenward.

  “A crime of passion,” they called it, and Charles was a war hero and born in their county, never mind he’d disappeared all those years and his mother was Indian. Charles was one of them and did what anyone of them would have done, finding a wife with a lover. So Charles was free to go, to mourn, to raise his daughter and try to get through his life.

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