Short Story - Something About The Rosebush

 Something About The Rosebush - A Short Story

By: Maya Thomas

The tiny house wasn’t anything special until something happened in it. It looks just like any other house on this block with its pastel shutters, picket fence, and nearly nonexistent front yard. He wanted it because of the porch, and I liked it because of the dying rose bushes in the back. When we got married five years ago in the spring of 1952, we had envisioned a house in a neighborhood with happy homemakers and a park around the corner. We settled for this one after Jimmy was born and moved in a week after discovering I was pregnant with Baby Girl. The only happy housewife in the neighborhood is the newlywed Emma-Jean, who hasn’t noticed yet that her beloved husband has been spending too many late nights at the office. The closest park is nearly four blocks away, and the swing set makes an awful sound. We haven’t gone back since the week we moved in.

I remember us being happy once, innocent. It wasn’t all that long ago that he carried me over the threshold and into our new apartment and life. It was the life I had been groomed to desire ever since I had developed an understanding of what should be desired in life. My mother did an outstanding job of it. Michael would allow me to straighten his tie after breakfast and before he left for the office with this new life. There was a familiarity to it, as I grew up in a family much like the one we intended to create. We fell quickly into a pattern (although I couldn’t, in all honesty, tell you that we did so happily). He would go to work every day and be back for dinner; I would stay home with the kids and do what I could to clean up the place. It worked well like that. I never once thought to challenge him or change it. Our pattern changed when he began to change.

My husband began spending late nights at the office last year. His boss, Arnold Miller, called during one of those nights just as the kids and I sat down for dinner. I remember it because we were all out of the red, and I had to drink the white. I ignored the phone when it rang the first time, as I was coaching Jimmy to eat the peas before they got cold. He despised cold peas even though I never gave them to him cold. Baby Girl had no problem eating hers. She had no problem eating anything. My mother made sure to remind me of that fact every time she arrived at my doorstep uninvited bearing day-old fruit cake, gossip from Bible study, and the latest catalog tucked under her arm.

“Bless her little heart,” she would proclaim upon seeing her granddaughter. “The girl hasn’t got a chance! She doesn’t look anything like her mother. Must take after Michael.” My husband’s mother wasn’t much better. She would often comment on Baby Girl’s cheeks or nose.

“She does have his eyes. Maybe his lips too,” I would respond obediently and then change the subject to something of less interest.

I’ve always taken extra precautions to maintain my beauty. She used to tell me it was my most valuable attribute, next to my ability to cook a good casserole, because it would determine how I went through life. I fell during a game of hopscotch in third grade, and I received three stitches under my left eye. She cried the whole way back from the hospital, just about as loud as I first did on the way there. By her standards (and perhaps by those of the ladies in her book club), I’m pretty enough. My blue eyes have been passed down for generations; I gave them to Baby Girl. She hasn’t grown into them yet. I’m a box blonde. The scar underneath my eye has faded to something resembling a freckle. I’ve always been petite, though I was more skinny in college before marrying. I blame that on the casseroles. It was the only recipe I could make without my mother’s shrill voice guiding me along.

I picked up the phone the second time it rang. Jimmy had burst into tears by then because the peas were once again too cold. I stood up and untied the apron from my waist with one hand while I reached to take the phone off of the hook with the other. Jimmy began to stick the peas into his mouth one by one once he assumed I wasn’t looking. It was a juvenile act that I would usually ignore in favor of scooping more food onto his plate. Jimmy often let me know that his father wouldn’t make him eat the peas. I always told him that he could complain about it to his father whenever he would see him next. I could never tell him when that would be.

“Yes, hello?”

“Oh, yes! Mrs. Jenkins. Is he around?” Arnold Miller asked me.

“He’s still at the office,” I said. “Could I take a message?” The line went silent for too long. Then the gravelly voice returned.

“Sure, you can, hun. You see, we got a new account—a real nice one. I just got off the phone with…” he paused. “Well now, I don’t want to trouble you with affairs of the office. It’s a big account, Mrs. Jenkins. Big enough for you to get that mink coat or lipstick you probably asked your husband for this Christmas.”

“We’re Jewish, Arnold.” Jimmy had begun to throw the peas at his little sister. I left the phone on the counter next to the roast and let Arnold talk to himself for a while so I could end the war happening at the kitchen table. When I picked the phone up again, I caught the last of what he was saying.

“... and I think he’s the man for the job. Tell him that, won’t ya? It’s time-sensitive, honey—kind of like your cooking. Give my best to the kids. Mark and Mildred?”

“Jimmy and Suzie,” I corrected him. It wasn’t the first time.

“Right. Anyway, tell him to call me when he gets the chance. Big things are happening! Big things.” The man hung up before I had a chance to deliver my half-hearted goodnight. I sent the kids up early after that and then cleaned the kitchen. In my childhood, washing the dishes was a punishment to my brother and me for bad behavior. Once I reached 13, I realized that I was the only one who still received such treatment. My brother was sent to the front yard with a lawnmower and hedge clippers. My mother spent most of her time standing in front of the kitchen sink, scrubbing away at her priceless china. I never once saw my father clear the table or clean a dish.

Despite my best efforts, I had become much like my mother since marriage. I used to want to be a working girl. I even went to college and got myself a degree before getting married to him. But we moved too much, and I had one pregnancy after the next, and after a while, the possibility of holding any sort of job became less feasible. Finally, a year ago, we got help with the kids, Prissy. She doesn’t speak much to me, as she prefers to spend her time reading and tending to Baby Girl and Jimmy. They would talk to her often, asking her to watch them do something they weren’t supposed to be doing in the first place and expecting applause. She would give it to them.

He came walking through the door as I finished up the last of the dishes that night. He didn’t announce himself, and I probably wouldn’t have taken much notice of his arrival if it wasn’t for the jingle-jangle of the car keys being hung up or the soft thump of his briefcase being lowered right in front of the hall table. In the reflection against the kitchen window, I could see the light appear behind me coming from the hallway. The light disappeared as a dark shape moved in front. It removed its hat and shrugged off its coat before draping both of them over one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

“I didn’t think you would still be up,” said the voice. There were footsteps then, which I could recognize as his in my sleep. They paused behind me, hesitating to draw near. The sound of wood moving effortlessly across the tile floor told me he was now sitting down for his evening cigarette. That’s what he smelled of: cigarettes and perfume. The pack of cigarettes belonged to me. The perfume didn’t. The scent, unrecognizable, was reminiscent of rose water and something else… a spice. A warmth. It was coming from the coat that had been so carelessly slugged over the back of the chair.

“I didn’t think you would be back so late. You promised me, when we moved here, that you would be working significantly less than back in Pittsburgh,” was my response. There was an exhale, sending curls of cigarette smoke in my direction. It was a habit he had yet to break.

“Yeah, well, I promised you a lot. I’m doing my best to keep them, Betsy.”

“They say promises are made to be broken,” I said. He scoffed.

“You won’t let me forget it.” There was an undeniable shift in his voice. “The boss has the boys and me working double time, Bets. That’s just how they do things here. Late nights are part of the job and are left out of the job description. You should know that by now.”

“I know it. I’ve known it for a while.” I finished drying the plate with one of the monogrammed dishcloths we received for our wedding and placed them off to the side. They were faded now, no longer the robin eggs blue that I had fallen in love with. The dishcloths were the first items to make it onto our registry, and the last presents opened on our apartment floor.

“Your ring.” He was beside me now, studying the dishcloth with unwarranted intensity.

“What was that?”

“You’re not wearing your ring,” he told me. I glanced down at where my ring should be. My throat felt dry suddenly, something that I noticed immediately but tried to forget about just as quickly. I nodded, offering the smile I had prepared for occasions similar to this one in which some words were better left unsaid. For the same reason, telling him about my suspicions would prove disastrous. I had nothing nice to say and decided not to say anything. Instead, I would adjust his tie and send him out the door with a meaningless kiss on the cheek. The result of it all was little to no conversation. What was there left to talk about? He said I was aloof. I said I was distracted.

“Oh. No, I’m not.”

“Why not?” My husband asked me.

“Because I don’t normally wear my ring while I’m cleaning up the kitchen, Michael,” I responded with a shrug. My hands worked to ring out the dishcloth over the sink, letting the suds scatter themselves onto the collection of dirty pans below. He scoffed and moved to the opposite side of the kitchen towards the fridge to get his tin foiled dinner.

“Or at all lately. I noticed it on the vanity before I left for work.”

“I take it off to sleep. Force of habit, I guess.”

“So do I, but I pop it right back on in the morning,” he prompted.

“I forget sometimes.”

“The poor thing is collecting dust. Maybe we ought to take it somewhere, get it nice

and polished. Get our money’s worth, you know?” Michael muttered more to himself than to me.

“Maybe,” I responded quickly, praying that the questioning would stop. I stepped around him to put the newly dried dishes away on their rightful shelves. He removed two salad plates from the pile I carried, moving instinctively to my aid. I gave him a clipped thank you and guided a couple of measuring cups into a drawer.

“You know,” Michael said. I did know. I had known for nearly a year. I closed the drawer, rattling its contents. The room became too quiet then, and the clock on the wall suddenly sounded too loud. Each tick and each tock made it harder to think. I fought the urge to remove it from its nail and stick it in the drawer with the rest of the kitchenware. His eyes, an unsettling shade of grey, met mine. There was nothing remotely guilty-looking about them. I wondered if he could hear how annoyingly loud the clock was ticking.

“I know you’ve been busy lately. There’s been a lot of long nights at the office and a lot of missed calls from your boss. There’s a message for you on the fridge, by the way.”

“You’re smart enough, Betsy. A ditz sometimes but smart enough. You know about the affair. I bet you’ve known about it for a while. You haven’t said anything about it. Why?” His voice had reverted into something robotic in nature: cold, unfeeling, and uncaring. That’s how I felt about him most of the time.

My hands paused over the cutlery I was drying. I couldn’t give him an answer. He leaned against the kitchen counter, disappearing into himself just like he had done for the past five months whenever we were left alone in each other’s company. It was painful. With his head of messy curls, cold eyes, and arms crossed firmly at his chest; he was a shell of who he used to be. He had become a stranger to me, and I, a stranger to him. I became a stranger to myself, too, swallowing my pride for the success of his own. I hated him the most for that. Sometimes I allowed the hate I felt for him to rise to the surface of my being. It would burn: red and hot and unsatisfied as I went through my day. Sometimes I would let it boil over, resulting in my lighting a cigarette and turning the radio up louder than it needed to be. I knew it wasn’t normal.

Every day, by five past twelve, I found myself in the garden based on the unwarranted recommendation of my well-informed (and well experienced) mother. With Baby Girl well into her nap, Prissy out at the supermarket, and more time on my hands than I knew what to do with, I voluntarily slaved over the small collection of peonies, tulips, and roses. Of all the greenery in the garden, the roses had the most of my time. The rose bush, dead upon our arrival, slowly regained its hue, fragrance, and overall allure. Michael noticed it once during Jimmy’s fourth birthday party and asked if the rose bush had always been there. He looked at that rose bush as if it had just popped out of the soft soil at its base. I responded by telling him it hadn’t. It hadn’t looked like that until I needed a distraction from his transparent infidelity. The stupid rose bush was just a rose bush.

That’s when the thoughts began. They were subtle at first, popping in and out of my mind, along with jingles from commercials and the lyrics to Mr. Sandman. When they grew in frequency, I caught myself wondering how it would be done. By then, being a murderess seemed almost charming. The fears and worries of women who received the title were reduced to nothing more than a simple solution. I craved that simplicity just as I had in all other aspects of my life. I craved control. My hunger for it consumed me from the inside out, leaving nothing left of the sad, gardening housewife that once haunted the halls of the house. My imagination ran rampant with all the possibilities surrounding our failing marriage: a messy divorce, love lost, taxes filed separately. I never acted on any of my impulses, instead of dedicating all energy towards the upkeeping of the house and the rose bush.

“You didn’t say anything to me because you didn’t care enough to. You knew that I was sleeping with some slut, and you didn’t say shit about it, Betsy. Do you know what the funniest part of all of this is? I knew you wouldn’t do anything about it. You don’t have the guts to.” My skin began to feel hot. I prepared myself for what I knew would be coming next. It had happened too many times before.

“I don’t get it. I don’t get you! You’re lucky even to have kept me this long. You’re lucky she’s not as good in bed as you are. Look, I gave you the life you said you wanted. We have a home. We have kids. I got a good job, made good money, and let you spend it. Jimmy goes to a good school. We got someone to look after Suzie. And you don’t care enough about any of it because you don’t care about anything or anyone but yourself!” He yelled every word. I could hear only his voice and the heartbeat in my ears.

“God, everyone was right about you. They said you were cold. They said you were spoiled. Your own mother told me that she didn’t care what happened to you after you moved out of the damn house. She wanted you out of her life! You didn’t mean anything to anyone until you meant something to me. You were nothing.” He wouldn’t stop. My eyes were welling up with tears, blurring my vision.

“Do you hear me, Betsy?!” He pushed me hard against the sink. The force was enough to knock the breath out of me again. I felt my hand tighten around the handle of the kitchen knife I had been drying for the past five minutes. “Are you listening to me?”

“You don’t mean shit! You don’t mean-” The knife was plunged into his stomach: one time, two times, three times… I lost count. He withered in front of me, just like the rose bush outside our kitchen window in the December frost. Michael fell first to his knees. His eyes found mine for the last time, wide with surprise. His shirt, previously crisp and white (ironed for him that morning), displayed the blossoming plume of blood from the stab wound. With a shaky breath, he collapsed on the kitchen floor in front of me. The sound of the knife falling to his side was enough to cover up the loud ticking from the clock and my choked-up sobs.

Just like that, I had become one of the women who had found a simple solution to all of their problems. I carefully dragged the body out to the garden. It was my first time being out there at night. Without bothering to take off my apron, I began to dig a grave just as I had seen done in the movies. It was at the base of the rose bush. Once it was deep enough, the soil received my deceased husband's body. The grave was filled and covered in a method similar to how I filled the apple tarts I learned to bake for our first anniversary. The shovel was left right where it had been before, tilted slightly against a shed wall.

The night air smelled of earth and rain. I stood there for a long while and looked at the freshly churned ground at my feet before walking back into the kitchen. I sat down at the kitchen table and nursed a bottle of white between lazy draws from my cigarette. While watching the smoke curl and unfurl itself, dancing towards the ceiling, an unfamiliar feeling came over me. It had to be peace. I was at peace with what I had done. My greatest fears and worries would remain buried in the backyard until their anticipated discovery. One day, I would forget about what was out there, but I would never forget everything he did to me.

“I didn’t think you would still be up,” a voice said from behind me. There were footsteps then, footsteps that I could recognize as his in my sleep. They paused behind me, hesitating to draw near. The sound of wood moving effortlessly across the tile floor told me he was now sitting down for his evening cigarette. That’s what he smelled of: cigarettes and perfume. The pack of cigarettes belonged to me. The perfume didn’t.

“I didn’t think you would be coming back,” was my response. There was an exhale, sending curls of cigarette smoke in my direction. It was a habit he had yet to break.