Rose Madder Read online

  Two blocks farther down, she came to a mom-and-pop store with a bike rack in front and a sign reading OVEN-FRESH ROLLS in the window. She went in, bought a roll--it was still warm and made Rosie think of her mother--and asked the old man behind the counter if he could direct her to Durham Avenue.

  "You come a little out of your way," he said.

  "Oh? How much?"

  "Two mile or so. C'mere."

  He settled a bony hand on her shoulder, led her back to the door, and pointed to a busy intersection only a block away. "That there's Dearborn Avenue."

  "Oh God, is it?" Rosie wasn't sure if she needed to laugh or cry.

  "Yessum. Only trouble with findin things by way of Big D is that she run mostway across the city. You see that shutdown movie tee-ayter?"

  "Yes."

  "You want to turn right onto Dearborn there. You have to go sixteen-eighteen blocks. It's a bit of a heel n toe. You'd best take the bus."

  "I suppose," Rosie said, knowing she wouldn't. Her quarters were gone, and if a bus driver gave her a hard time about breaking a dollar bill, she would burst into tears. (The thought that the man she was talking to would have happily given her change for a buck never crossed her tired, confused mind.)

  "Eventually you'll come to--"

  "--Elk Street."

  He gave her a look of exasperation. "Lady! If you knew how to go, why'd you ask?"

  "I didn't know how to go," she said, and although there had been nothing particularly unkind in the old man's voice, she could feel the tears threatening. "I don't know anything! I've been wandering around for hours, I'm tired, and--"

  "Okay, okay," he said, "that's all right, don't get your water hot, you'll be just fine. Get off the bus at Elk. Durham is just two or three blocks up. Easy as pie. You got a street address?"

  She nodded her head.

  "All right, there you go," he said. "Should be no problem."

  "Thank you."

  He pulled a wrinkled but clean handkerchief from his back pocket. He held it out to her with one gnarled hand. "Wipe you face a li'l bit, dear," he said. "You leakin."

  5

  She walked slowly up Dearborn Avenue, barely noticing the buses that snored past her, resting every block or two on bus stop benches. Her headache, which had come mostly from the stress of being lost, was gone, but her feet and back hurt worse than ever. It took her an hour to get to Elk Street. She turned right on it and asked the first person she saw--a young pregnant woman--if she was headed toward Durham Avenue.

  "Buzz off," the young pregnant woman said, her face so instantly wrathful that Rosie took two quick steps backward.

  "I'm sorry," Rosie said.

  "Sorry, schmorry. Who ast you to speak to me in the first place, that's what I'd like to know! Get outta my way!" And she pushed by Rosie so violently she almost knocked her into the gutter. Rosie watched her go with a kind of stupefied amazement, then turned and went on her way.

  6

  She walked more slowly than ever up Elk, a street of small shops--dry-cleaning establishments, florists, delis with fruit displays out front on the sidewalk, stationers'. She was now so tired she didn't know how long she would be able to remain on her feet, let alone keep walking. She felt a lift when she came to Durham Avenue, but it was only temporary. Had Mr. Slowik told her to turn right or left on Durham? She couldn't remember. She tried right and found the numbers going up from the mid-four hundreds.

  "Par for the course," she muttered, and turned around again. Ten minutes later she was standing in front of a very large white frame house (which was indeed in serious need of paint), three stories high and set back behind a big, well-kept lawn. The shades were pulled. There were wicker chairs on the porch, almost a dozen of them, but none was currently occupied. There was no sign reading Daughters and Sisters, but the street-number on the column to the left of the steps leading to the porch was 251. She made her way slowly up the flagged walk and then the steps, her purse now hanging at her side.

  They're going to send you away, a voice whispered. They'll send you away, then you can head on back to the bus station. You'll want to get there early, so you can stake out a nice piece of floor.

  The doorbell had been covered over with layers of electrician's tape, and the keyhole had been plugged with metal. To the left of the door was a keycard slot that looked brand-new, and an intercom box above it. Below the box was a small sign which read VISITORS PRESS AND SPEAK.

  Rosie pressed. In the course of her long morning's tramp she had rehearsed several things she might say, several ways she might introduce herself, but now that she was actually here, even the least clever and most straightforward of her possible opening gambits had gone out of her head. Her mind was a total blank. She simply let go of the button and waited. The seconds passed, each one like a little chunk of lead. She was reaching for the button again when a woman's voice came out of the speaker. It sounded tinny and emotionless.

  "Can I help you?"

  Although the man with the moustache outside The Wee Nip had frightened her and the pregnant woman had amazed her, neither had made her cry. Now, at the sound of this voice, the tears came--there was nothing at all she could do to stop them.

  "I hope someone can," Rosie said, wiping at her cheeks with her free hand. "I'm sorry, but I'm in the city all by myself, I don't know anyone, and I need a place to stay. If you're all full I understand, but could I at least come in and sit for awhile and maybe have a glass of water?"

  There was more silence. Rosie was reaching for the button again when the tinny voice asked who had sent her.

  "The man in the Travelers Aid booth at the bus station. David Slowik." She thought that over, then shook her head. "No, that's wrong. Peter. His name was Peter, not David."

  "Did he give you a business card?" the tinny voice asked.

  "Yes."

  "Please find it."

  She opened her purse and rummaged for what felt like hours. Just as fresh tears began to prick at her eyes and double her vision, she happened on the card. It had been hiding beneath a wad of Kleenex.

  "I have it," she said. "Do you want me to put it through the letter-slot?"

  "No," the voice said. "There's a camera right over your head."

  She looked up, startled. There was indeed a camera mounted over the door and looking down at her with its round black eye.

  "Hold it up to the camera, please. Not the front but the back."

  As she did so, she remembered the way Slowik had signed the business card, making his signature as large as he possibly could. Now she understood why.

  "Okay," the voice said. "I'm going to buzz you inside."

  "Thanks," Rosie said. She used the Kleenex to wipe at her cheeks but it did no good; she was crying harder than ever, and she couldn't seem to stop.

  7

  That evening, as Norman Daniels lay on the sofa in his living room, looking up at the ceiling and already thinking of how he might begin the job of finding the bitch (a break, he thought, I need a break to start with, just a little one would probably be enough), his wife was being taken to meet Anna Stevenson. By then Rosie felt a strange but welcome calm--the sort of calm one might feel in a recognized dream. She half-believed she was dreaming.

  She had been given a late breakfast (or perhaps it had been an early lunch) and then taken to one of the downstairs bedrooms, where she had slept like a stone for six hours. Then, before being shown into Anna's study, she had been fed again--roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas. She had eaten guiltily but hugely, unable to shake the idea that it was non-caloric dreamfood she was stuffing herself with. She finished with a goblet of Jell-O in which bits of canned fruit floated like bugs in amber. She was aware that the other women at the table were looking at her, but their curiosity seemed friendly. They talked, but Rosie could not follow their conversations. Somebody mentioned the Indigo Girls, and she at least knew who they were--she had seen them once on Austin City Limits while waiting for Norman to come home from work.
r />   While they ate their Jell-O desserts, one of the women put on a Little Richard record and two other women danced the jitterbug, popping their hips and twirling. There was laughter and applause. Rosie looked at the dancers with a numb absence of interest, wondering if they were welfare lesbians. Later, when the table was cleared, Rosie tried to help but they wouldn't let her.

  "Come on," one of the women said. Rosie thought her name was Consuelo. She had a wide, disfiguring scar under her left eye and down her left cheek. "Anna wants to meet you."

  "Who's Anna?"

  "Anna Stevenson," Consuelo said as she led Rosie down a short hall which opened off the kitchen. "Boss-lady."

  "What's she like?"

  "You'll see." Consuelo opened the door of a room which had probably once been the pantry, but made no move to go in.

  The room was dominated by the most fabulously cluttered desk Rosie had ever seen. The woman who sat behind it was a bit stout but undeniably handsome. With her short but carefully dressed white hair, she reminded Rosie of Beatrice Arthur, who had played Maude on the old TV sitcom. The severe white blouse/black jumper combination accentuated the resemblance even further, and Rosie approached the desk timidly. She was more than half convinced that, now that she had been fed and allowed a few hours' sleep, she would be turned out onto the street again. She told herself not to argue or plead if that happened; it was their place, after all, and she was already two meals to the good. She wouldn't have to stake out a piece of bus station floor, either, at least not yet--she still had money enough for several nights in a cheap hotel or motel. Things could be worse. A lot worse.

  She knew that was true, but the woman's crisp demeanor and direct blue eyes--eyes that must have seen hundreds of Rosies come and go over the years--still intimidated her.

  "Sit down," Anna invited, and when Rosie was seated in the room's only other chair (she had to remove a stack of papers from the seat and put them on the floor beside her--the nearest shelf was full), Anna introduced herself and then asked Rosie for her name.

  "I guess it's actually Rose Daniels," she said, "but I've gone back to McClendon--my maiden name. I suppose that isn't legal, but I don't want to use my husband's name anymore. He beat me, and so I left him." She realized that sounded as if she'd left him the first time he'd done it and her hand went to her nose, which was still a little tender up where the bridge ended. "We were married a long time before I got up the courage, though."

  "How long a time are we talking about?"

  "Fourteen years." Rosie discovered she could no longer meet Anna Stevenson's direct blue gaze. She dropped her eyes to her hands, which were knotted so tightly together in her lap that the knuckles were white.

  Now she'll ask why it took me so long to wake up, she thought. She won't ask if maybe some sick part of me liked getting beaten up, but she'll think it.

  Instead of asking why about anything, the woman asked how long Rosie had been gone.

  It was a question she found she had to consider carefully, and not just because she was now on Central Standard Time. The hours of the bus combined with the unaccustomed stretch of sleep in the middle of the day had disoriented her time-sense. "About thirty-six hours," she said after a bit of mental calculation. "Give or take."

  "Uh-huh." Rosie kept expecting forms which Anna would either hand to Rosie or start filling in herself, but the woman only went on looking at her over the strenuous topography of her desk. It was unnerving. "Now tell me about it. Tell me everything."

  Rosie drew a deep breath and told Anna about the drop of blood on the sheet. She didn't want to give Anna the idea that she was so lazy--or so crazy--that she had left her husband of fourteen years because she didn't want to change the bed-linen, but she was terribly afraid that was how it must sound. She wasn't able to explain the complex feelings that spot had aroused in her, and she wasn't able to admit to the anger she had felt--anger which had seemed simultaneously new and like an old friend--but she did tell Anna that she had rocked so hard she had been afraid she might break Pooh's Chair.

  "That's what I call my rocker," she said, blushing so hard that her cheeks felt as if they might be on the verge of smoking. "I know it's stupid--"

  Anna Stevenson waved it off. "What did you do after you made your mind up to go? Tell me that."

  Rosie told her about the ATM card, and how she had been sure that Norman would have a hunch about what she was doing and either call or come home. She couldn't bring herself to tell this severely handsome woman that she had been so scared she'd gone into someone's back yard to pee, but she told about using the ATM card, and how much she'd drawn out, and how she'd come to this city because it seemed far enough away and the bus would be leaving soon. The words came out of her in bursts surrounded by periods of silence in which she tried to think of what to say next and contemplated with amazement and near-disbelief what she had done. She finished by telling Anna about how she'd gotten lost that morning, and showing her Peter Slowik's card. Anna handed it back after a single quick glance.

  "Do you know him very well?" Rosie asked. "Mr. Slowik?"

  Anna smiled--to Rosie it looked like it had a bitter edge. "Oh yes," she said. "He is a friend of mine. An old friend. Indeed he is. And a friend of women like you, as well."

  "Anyway, I finally got here," Rosie finished. "I don't know what comes next, but at least I got this far."

  A ghost of a smile touched the comers of Anna Stevenson's mouth. "Yes. And made a good job of it, too."

  Gathering all her remaining courage--the last thirty-six hours had taken a great deal of it--Rosie asked if she could spend the night at Daughters and Sisters.

  "Quite a bit longer than that, if you need to," Anna replied. "Technically speaking, this is a shelter--a privately endowed halfway house. You can stay up to eight weeks, and even that is an arbitrary number. We are quite flexible here at Daughters and Sisters." She preened slightly (and probably unconsciously) as she said this, and Rosie found herself remembering something she had learned about a thousand years ago, in French II: L'etat, c'est moi. Then the thought was swept away by amazement as she really realized what the woman was saying.

  "Eight ... eight ..."

  She thought of the pale young man who had been sitting outside the entrance to the Poitside terminal, the one with the sign in his lap reading HOMELESS & HAVE AIDS, and suddenly knew how he would feel if a passing stranger for some reason dropped a hundred-dollar bill into his cigar-box.

  "Pardon me, did you say up to eight weeks?"

  Dig out your ears, little lady, Anna Stevenson would say briskly. Days, I said--eight days. Do you think we'd let the likes of you stay here for eight weeks? Let's be sensible, shall we?

  Instead, Anna nodded. "Although very few of the women who come to us end up having to stay so long. That's a point of pride with us. And you'll eventually pay for your room and board, although we like to think the prices here are very reasonable." She smiled that brief, preening smile again. "You should be aware that the accommodations are a long way from fancy. Most of the second floor has been turned into a dormitory. There are thirty beds--well, cots--and one of them just happens to be vacant, which is why we are able to take you in. The room you slept in today belongs to one of the live-in counsellors. We have three."

  "Don't you have to ask someone?" Rosie whispered. "Put my name up before a committee, or something?"

  "I'm the committee," Anna replied, and Rosie later thought that it had probably been years since the woman had heard the faint arrogance in her own voice. "Daughters and Sisters was set up by my parents, who were well-to-do. There's a very helpful endowed trust. I choose who's invited to stay, and who isn't invited to stay ... although the reactions of the other women to potential D and S candidates are important. Crucial, maybe. Their reaction to you was favorable."

  "That's good, isn't it?" Rosie asked faintly.

  "Yes indeed." Anna rummaged on her desk, moved documents, and finally found what she wanted behind the PowerBook compute
r sitting to her left. She flapped a sheet of paper with a blue Daughters and Sisters letterhead at Rosie. "Here. Read this and sign it. Basically it says that you agree to pay sixteen dollars a night, room and board, payment to be deferred if necessary. It's not even really legal; just a promise. We like it if you can pay half as you go, at least for awhile."

  "I can," Rosie said. "I still have some money. I don't know how to thank you for this, Mrs. Stevenson."

  "It's Ms. to my business associates and Anna to you," she said, watching Rosie scribble her name on the bottom of the sheet. "And you don't need to thank me, or Peter Slowik, either. It was Providence that brought you here--Providence with a capital P, just like in a Charles Dickens novel. I really believe that. I've seen too many women crawl in here broken and walk out whole not to believe it. Peter is one of two dozen people in the city who refer women to me, but the force that brought you to him, Rose ... that was Providence."

  "With a capital P."

  "Correct." Anna glanced at Rosie's signature, then placed the paper on a shelf to her right, where, Rosie felt sure, it would disappear into the general clutter before another twenty-four hours had passed.

  "Now," Anna said, speaking with the air of someone who has finished with the boring formalities and may now get down to what she really likes. "What can you do?"

  "Do?" Rosie echoed. She suddenly felt faint again. She knew what was coming.

  "Yes, do, what can you do? Any shorthand skills, for instance?"

  "I ..." She swallowed. She had taken Shorthand I and II back at Aubreyville High, and she had gotten A's in both, but these days she wouldn't know a pothook from a boat-hook. She shook her head. "No. No shorthand. Once, but no more."

  "Any other secretarial skills?"

  She shook her head. Warm prickles stung at her eyes. She blinked them back savagely. The knuckles of her interlocked hands were gleaming white again.

  "Clerical skills? Typing, maybe?"

  "No."

  "Math? Accounting? Banking?"

  "No!"

  Anna Stevenson happened on a pencil amid the heaps of paper, extracted it, and tapped the eraser end against her clean white teeth. "Can you waitress?"