Rose by Another Name

My wife had a stroke at forty, leaving her unable to express happiness. When poor Irene tried to smile, she exposed just her eye teeth, like little fangs. The doctor said it might be temporary. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t been a happy person before. She still did the same fun things she used to, watched the same funny shows, except with a straight face. She chased Cindy around with fierce, scary cries that never dissolved to laughter as they used to.

She was actually better in bed, more earnest now that she’d seen mortality, but it was disconcerting for me to see the lack of expression on her face, or the bared fangs, and to hear her monotone robot exclamations: “Oh, yes baby. Oh. Oh.”

~

She thought the wish game would be fun. We lived near a creek that flooded our lawn after storms. When the water subsided there was junk left on our flattened grass. Irene decided we should each make a wish during the storm, and then check to see if what we wished for had washed up. It was usually stuff from the upstream campgrounds — coolers and trash and oars. But one time a new pink bike was left, wrapped like a present in brown weeds. Cindy opened it and said, “YES!” Irene nodded her head and tried to jump with joy but tipped over into the mud. Then she cried. She could still do that. She could cry tears of joy, possibly.

During this one heavy downpour I went to the attic to check for leaks. I scanned the rafters with my flashlight and looked through boxes of old photos. I laughed at my clothes and hair. I had a perm in one. I stared at one of Rose, my first girl, her lovely brown hair and big hazel eyes, her dark eyebrows and perfect mouth, long neck and square jaw. I sighed. Her face then was the opposite of Irene’s now, always on the move, expressions flitting from joy to despair to anger and back in just seconds. She was something else. A handful. An actress. A flirt. Maddening. I loved her desperately. I killed her and saved her.

I carried the box downstairs, in case. Irene was sitting by the big window on the landing, fingers on the glass, waiting for lightning, her favorite thing. She said the thunder made her feel something inside. She tapped with her nails, counting down. She didn’t look at me.

I sat on my bed looking at a few more pictures, all the ones I could find of Rose, then slid the box under the bed.

Irene came down. The lightning gave glimpses of her undressing — erotic snapshots. She slid next to me. The thunder made her horny. We’d decided to do it in the dark now, so I wouldn’t see her face, which looked disappointed. This time she was really revved up, but did not talk, just kissed me desperately all over, using her little eye teeth, but it was good pain, maybe drawing some blood I’d see in the morning. Her hot tears dripped. I couldn’t help but think of Rose, who had kissed with the same urgency bordering on consumption, of someone expecting death around the corner. As if reading my mind, Irene stopped and asked, “Did you make your wish?” I told her yes. (I wanted the creek to rush the opposite way, with force enough to turn back time.)

That night I dreamed of Rose, about the day we broke up. I’d accused her of screwing my best friend and threw her from the dock. It was playful but violent. She stayed under, but that was just like her, hiding under the dock to see if I’d jump in to save her. I didn’t. I’d wait her out. Then one hand floated like a lily on the dark water. I waded out, saying, “Fine, you win,” and found her limp and blue. I carried her to the sand and pressed my mouth to hers. Her eyes were glazed and half open. She coughed a tiny fish into me, and I swallowed. “You let me die,” she said. She left me kneeling there, and before walking all the way home she turned and said, “Too bad you’ve lost me. I didn’t fuck Charlie.”

I still feel the flutter of that fish inside.

~

In the morning, Cindy was hissing in my ear, yanking my shoulder. “Dad, something came.” She led me outside to the mummy wrapped in brown weed and watercress. She bounced on her heels and wrung her hands. “Do you think it’s her?”

“Who do you mean?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you. I wished for Audrey.”

Cindy was obsessed with Audrey Hepburn. She had a roomful of posters from the vintage store in town, and a bunch of VHS tapes.

“Honey, I think we should call the police.” At the same time I poked the thing with the toe of my slipper. It was nearly weightless, certainly not a human body.

“Daaaad. Can’t we peek?”

“Fine.”

I held my breath and unwound the grass, the vines, the flowered tendrils. Cindy gasped as the eyes appeared. “It is her!”

They were Audrey eyes, alright. Hazel. But also Rose’s. Glazed and half open. I kept unwrapping, the face pale and bluish like skim milk. I fanned the dark hair on the ground.

“But she’s dead.” Cindy tucked her forehead into my shoulder.

“No, look.” I slid my hands under and lifted. “It…or she…isn’t real. It’s like a shell.”

“Or like a wish.”

“Or a memory.”

“What is going on?” This was Irene’s voice, coming down the hill. She walked with the determined gimp I found sexy lately.

Cindy leaped into the air. “I wished for Audrey and she came!”

Irene leaned over to look, digging her nails into my arm. “That is sick, Ray. Did you make it?”

“Not my doing.”

“We have to clean her up,” Cindy said, pulling my other arm.

I lifted Rose into my arms and stood. Her mouth opened with a fishy smell, her hair fell back. I started towards the house.

“I’m not having that in my house!” called Irene, trying to keep up.

“Mom, it’ll be fun. Fun! It’s your game, remember?”

~

I put her in the tub and unwrapped the rest. She wore the same swimsuit as on that day. For a second I wondered if I could breathe life back into her. Her flesh had the slightly crisp quality of cooked chicken skin. Maybe the consistency of memory. I used the hand held shower head on gentle to rinse the silt from her legs, the stubborn weed filaments from her neck and shoulders. Some of the long grasses tangled in her hair, I discovered, were actually growing from her scalp.

“Like a mermaid,” Cindy whispered. “Did Audrey make any mermaid movies?”

“I don’t know. You’re the expert.”

Irene stayed in the doorway. “This is not fun,” she said. “This is creepy. And that is not Audrey Hepburn. I know who that is, Ray. You must have wished for her.”

“Mom! Go away. You’re ruining it.”

“I know who it is, Ray.”

~

Cindy brushed the newly shampooed hair while I checked on Irene. She was face down in our bed, sleeping or pretending to. She wouldn’t answer me or acknowledge my hand on her back. I said, “I just saw her picture, is all.” There was the dried track of a tear on her cheek. She let me turn her over, made herself as light as the thing in the bathroom, left her eyes half open and her face dead. Maybe another game, only she couldn’t giggle to give it away. I parted her lips and sent a breath in. I felt her lungs rise beneath me. Back when she had the seizure I did this, thinking her breathing had stopped. Of course she doesn’t remember. Now I did it a few times, felt the flutter inside me, until her little fist connected with my eye, which likely was meant to be playful, but her arm spasms sometimes, and her sharp knuckle imparted a pent-up force. I held my eye as she rolled back over.

Cindy met me in the hall. “Dad, we should get her some clothes.”

“To your favorite place, then?”

“Yes! Wow, did Mom do that?”

“Accident. She was dreaming.”

I carried Rose out to the car, sat her in the back seat, and told Cindy to keep an eye on her for a minute. I hit the number in my phone, Rose’s upstate studio. It had been on there for a while. She answered, I knew she was alive, I hung up. I did this occasionally, but hadn’t actually talked to her for years. I wondered why she hadn’t blocked my number.

~

Before going into the vintage shop, we stretched Rose across the back seat and covered her with a blanket. I didn’t want anyone nosing around.

Cindy ran between the black dresses, the tiaras, the long black gloves. I pawed through a rack of stuff similar to what Rose used to wear, paying particular attention to one soft dress with sunflowers. I worked the zipper in the back, pressed my nose to the fabric until the teen salesgirl gave me an evil look. I carried the dress to the checkout, where Cindy admired a cigarette holder under glass. “No,” I said. She handed me the black Audrey dress and gloves and a necklace of white beads. She looked at the dress I was holding. “Is that for her, too?”

Cindy sat Rose up and slid next to her. I admired them in the mirror. Rose’s color had improved, her eyes open a bit more.

“Your eyes look sad,” Cindy said to me. She stroked Rose’s hair. “Who does Mom think this is?”

“My first girl, Rose. I’ll show you a picture.”

“Did you really wish for her?”

“I had a dream, that’s all. You can’t control that.”

“Did she die?”

“No, she’s alive and well.”

Cindy stared into my eyes in the mirror until she got it out of me, that this was the Rose I saved from the lake. She did in fact die, but came back. I left out the part where I threw her in, but at the end added, “I’m no hero.”

“Was she your one true love?”

“Of course not. I love your mother.”

She touched Rose’s lips, which grew pinker by the minute. “If you kissed her right now, and she woke up, that would be true love’s kiss.”

She sighed.

“Look, let’s just forget it. She can be Audrey. Let’s forget about Rose.”

Cindy took the sunflower dress and eased it over Rose’s head and shoulders. “She can wear this for the ride home.”

~

I cut the engine and coasted in. Irene was taking it out on the tether ball out back, using that same sharp knuckle. My eye was swelling shut. I carried Audrey Rose (this is what we agreed to call her) up the steps to my study over the garage and sat her on the love seat. Cindy went to swipe make-up. In the afternoon light I noticed fine cracks forming on Audrey Rose’s face. I sat next to her. I uncurled her hand and held it, heartbroken by the worn red nail polish. She’d put it on that day, sitting on her parent’s sofa. She blew on her fingers as mine were sweating, waiting for her father to enter and give me one of his silent warning looks. He’d have been happy to know we never had intercourse, just our incredible bouts of heavy petting and soul devouring. I had her totally inside me, but that wasn’t true for her – she had room for others, as I would find out later that day.

I heard a short cry from outside. I went to the window and saw my wife on her knees in the grass, the sun-bright ball orbiting her, a crashed planet. I ran to her, picked her up. She was okay.

“Honey,” I said. “Come up. We’re making her Audrey. Come help us.”

She squinted into the brightness, like she didn’t recognize me. “Can you carry me?”

~

Before her problem, Irene did make-up at Boscov’s. Her little fangs were out, so she was enjoying this, erasing Rose, creating Audrey. The poster was tacked to the wall. “What makes her are these distinctive eyebrows.” She tried working the tweezers, but her hand shook, so Cindy plucked the fine yellow grass until there were only the dark hairs. Cindy helped her with the base, filling the cracks, then some more coats of whatever women do, and the eyeliner and eyelash fluffing stuff. They piled her hair, clipped on some earrings, slipped the black dress over and the necklace. The gloves posed a problem. Her arms were stiff and made sounds like crackling glaze.

When they were done, the three of us sat on my futon and stared. The empty glove fingers hung sadly. Cindy said, “Cool,” but I felt something stirring inside me, the little fish, violated and angry.

I stood up and said, “It’s not right.” I stormed out of there and to the house, where it was my turn, face down in the bed.

As I slept, Audrey Rose rocked near my feet. “Something came for you,” she said, pointing to the floor.

I peeled the weeds from Irene’s body, lifted her weightless form to the bed. ” No.”

“Isn’t this what you wished for?”

~

Irene rolled me over with that one strong arm of hers. She had an ice pack for my eye. She kissed the lid and then pointed. “Look. Is that better?”

Audrey Rose sat in the corner chair, back to being Rose, wearing the sunflower dress. Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes open less than half mast.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

She put her head on my chest. “She was important to you.”

“She was a slut.”

“I doubt that. Look, I know she’s on your phone. I’ve called her.”

“You didn’t.”

“She forgives you for drowning her, saving her, all that. She says a part of her still loves you. I said I didn’t mind.”

We looked at her. The cracks were coming back, lips turning down and fading, eyes closing.

“She was beautiful,” Irene said, rubbing my chest. “I had someone like that. Looked like James Dean. I thought he was my soul-mate too.”

“Well, maybe when Cindy’s a teenager she’ll wish him here.”

“Very funny.”

“Look at your face in the mirror, Honey. It almost looks happy.”

“Do you think Rose would like to see us fuck?”

“That would just be weird. And her eyes are about closed.”

Now Irene’s grin was something more than the usual death grimace, exposing more teeth, muscles in her cheeks and around her eyes coming back to life. She locked the door. “My beauty,” I said, and we undressed, helping each other, working in ways we never had, but keeping it quiet, in case Cindy came looking for us. But even her soft whimpers grew music, left the flatness behind. We came at the same time, and I felt the secret fish leave me to enter her.

~

It grew dark early. Cindy tapped on the door. “Dad? Mom? You should see this sky.”

We dressed and stood with Cindy on the porch. A wall of purple with yellow underbelly rose over the hill, growling and flashing. The rain broke from it suddenly, swept across the valley and slammed horizontally into our faces.

“We have to return her,” I shouted.

“No!” Cindy was pressed against the chattering screen door.

“Someday you’ll understand,” I said, although I didn’t understand what exactly I was doing, or talking about, or what had happened at all.

I fetched Rose and carried her into the storm. I ordered Cindy to stay on the porch, but there was no stopping Irene. Her limp was leaving her, and soon she matched me step for step. ” Poor Rose,” she said, gathering the whipping, soaking hair in her hands. Lightning took its photos, strobed us across the lawn, spared our lives but burned everlasting images of these moments into our retinas. We were past, present, and future. Cindy would also recall this journey forever, telling her own children about the day her parents bore a first love and dead actress between bolts of lightning, the day her mother was healed, became happy again.

At water’s edge we slipped off the sunflower dress and eased her into the brown current. Then something caught my ankle, tugged me in after her. It felt like a hand, and I heard myself scream, but suddenly Irene was laughing. For the first time in months. Laughing!

She held out her arm and yanked with new strength, tossed me to the grass and fell on top of me, straddling with the rain falling from her hair, her laughing face aglow with one sustained flash. “It was a branch, you goose!”

The storm’s over. Nothing has washed up this time. The new sunlight is a shade I’ve never seen, diffused through our valley like some idyllic world. We’re lazing on the porch, Cindy in the hammock, perusing postcards of movie stars, me on the railing, swinging one leg. Irene’s there on the glider, tucked on her side, twisting her hair around a finger. She’s wearing the sunflower dress, a perfect fit. She looks at me, runs her tongue over her lips. “Hey you,” she says. “Get over here.”