Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

It was 1910, a time of medical mysteries, of family tragedies, of faith in a God who swiftly took away loved ones for reasons unknown, and who almost as quickly brought replacements. But for Rose Smith, who was ten years old and sitting in the church at her mother's funeral, it was impossible to imagine a replacement, ever, ever. In the pew, holding her breath so she wouldn't cry, she let her older sister, Maude, stroke her hand abstractedly and her little brother, Hugh, clutch at her other hand, and she knew that they were all alone. Grief and fear washed over her in waves that sent her skin tingling and made her feel sick. What would she do without her mother? Who would teach her how to grow up? Their father, William, was there of course, a solid presence on the other side of Hugh, a good and kind and strong father; but he was not a mother, he would never answer a little girl's questions, he would never be her best friend. William didn't even know why his wife had died.

    Rose had asked him, after the men came and took the body away to the funeral home, when the shrieking and bustle and craziness had stopped and there was, finally, a motionless moment. She had stolen up to him quietly and tugged at his coat.

    "Papa, how did Mama die?" What was that strange glance he gave her?

    "Peacefully," her father said.

    "No, I mean, from what?"

    "God took her. It was her time."

    "Did she have diabetes?"

    He looked at her in that way male adults often did when female childrentried to have a conversation of any importance with them, and Rose knew he would have liked her to go away. "Why would you think that?" her father said.

    "My friend at school ..."

    "No, your mother did not have diabetes."

    "Then what, Papa?" Children were not supposed to nag their parents, but she had to know, if only to make this horrible thing more real.

    Her father shook his head, gazing off into space. "Heart ... lung," he said finally, vaguely.

    What about heart lung? Heart lung what?

    And then Rose realized, irrevocably, that either he didn't want to tell her any more, or, more likely, he didn't really know either. No one would ever tell her. "Don't annoy your father, child," her Aunt Martha said, and led her away.

    Rose had wanted to ask him if her mother's death was her fault, but now she couldn't ask him anything.

    Today, in the church, she looked at the coffin with the pink roses on it, her mother's favorite, and felt guilty for all the times she had been angry because her mother was sick. Her mother had been sick so often. Why were those memories coming back now to hurt her? It seemed her earliest mind picture was of standing in her parents' bedroom next to the bed, knowing her mother was lying in it but unable to see her. The wooden frame of the bed was as high as Rose's head; it seemed enormous. The armoire in the dimmed room was enormous too. All the furniture seemed to loom at her, as if it could tilt and fall if it wanted to. She had been told her mother was not well, and that she could visit the room to reassure herself, but she must be quiet and could only stay for a moment. Her mother was there, under the hump of sheet.

    "Mama?" Rose said, quietly.

    "Yes, dear," her mother said, and coughed. Her voice sounded strangled, different. Rose knew this person was her mother because her father had told her it was, and because her mother had disappeared from the rest of the house, and from her daily life, so she had to be here.

    Come back, Rose wanted to say, but she was still so young that she didn't have so many words yet. She had tugged at the blankets, and was filled with infant rage. She remembered it, that rage, filling her mouth and eyes, pressing on her chest. After a while Maude or someone else came and got her.

    At the funeral the minister was saying what a good person their mother, Adelaide Smith, had been. Oh yes, Rose thought, and the tears overwhelmed her, even though she had been trying to act grown-up. She didn't care what her father said, it wasn't right that God would take away a good person whose children needed her. "We have the gift of happy memories," the minister was saying. "They will comfort us." Easy for him to say.

    Rose thought back to the happy times in between her mother's illnesses when her mother could take her for a walk, just the two of them, while Maude was at school or playing with her friends. Her mother was a pale princess, almost borrowed, Rose had always felt. Bristol, Rhode Island, the small, beautiful New England town where they lived, was surrounded by water. It glittered in the sunshine, the air smelled of its presence. You were never more than a block away from water of some kind. Rose had never complained when she got tired on these walks, because being alone with her mother felt like a privilege. The two of them would stroll down Hope Street under the huge, arching elm trees, avoiding the Rubber Company plant with its smokestacks pouring black smoke, and make their way to the harbor to breathe in the fresh breezes and look at the activity. The harbor was very busy with imported goods being unloaded from the boats: molasses, and coal, and other things that made life go on. Her mother's long skirts swirled around the tops of her dainty buttoned shoes. All summer long her mother dressed in white, and when they went out she always had a little parasol.

    Sometimes they went to William's butcher shop, to pick up something for dinner. Standing there inhaling the moist, sweetish smell of raw flesh always made Rose a little queasy. Her mother would get a thick, rich steak, marbled with fat and oozing juices, or a roast, or sometimes, for variety, Linguica, a spicy sausage the Portuguese people in town liked to eat, which her mother fried in their way with onions or peppers and then added a thin tomato sauce. When Adelaide was well she was a good cook. She made salted cod cakes with cream sauce, or mealy Johnny cakes with salt and pepper, which she served with a piece of fish. In summer she baked apple or berry pies, their buttery crust crumbling under the sweetened fruit.

    Everyone was standing; it was time now to go to the cemetery. I didn't kill her, Rose told herself. God killed her. In order to "take" her he had to kill her. I'm not so stupid as not to know that. Of course she could never tell anyone how she felt; you were supposed to love God, even when he killed your mother.

    At the cemetery the family stood beside the grave in their family's plot. Rose looked around, anywhere but at that open grave, and tried to think of other things. Mama won't mind if I don't watch, she told herself. Mama loves me and she doesn't want me to suffer any more than I do already. There were the two tiny headstones of her older brothers, who had died before Rose was born. One had died of diphtheria, the other of pneumonia, a year apart, when they were not even three. Those were things people knew about, that were not mysteries. How badly her father had wanted another son, Rose knew. He had probably been disappointed to have had her. When Hugh was born, when she was five and Maude was ten, he had been thrilled.

    She remembered that day. While her mother was in the bedroom with the midwife preparing to have Hugh, the door tightly shut, Rose and Maude were sent to help their father boil water. People always boiled water when a baby was being born, although Rose could not imagine why.

    "What's the water for?" Rose asked Maude.

    "To keep Papa's mind off what's happening in there," Maude said authoritatively.

    "They boil water for no reason?"

    "That's the reason. So he won't be nervous."

    "Why can't they just cook?" Rose said, thinking how stupid customs were.

    After this birth their father opened a bottle of champagne, to toast his new son.

    And why shouldn't he celebrate? Hugh was an attractive, charming child, beloved from the beginning and totally unspoiled by the attention and hugs and kisses he received from his sisters and mother, and the proud looks and smiles he got from his father. Most families weren't demonstrative with children, except to beat them when they misbehaved, but no one ever needed to spank Hugh. Even as a toddler he was considerate, in his babyish way. He not only shared toys, he offered them. Before he had started school, he could already read. Rose looked over at wispy little Hugh, hiding behind his sturdy father. I still have my family, Rose told herself. We'll stick together.

    Maude had not let go of her hand, not in the church, and not now. Rose had always adored Maude. Maude was big and pretty and blond, with healthy, luminous skin the color of lamplight, and, because she was five years older, she could do everything better than Rose ever could. Maude brushed her long, thick hair a hundred strokes every night, and in the daytime she put it up in a pompadour in front, the rest tumbling down her back; half girl, half woman. She and her girlfriends looked at boys and whispered about them. Will Maude be my new mother, Rose wondered, and she tried not to cry again, because Maude was only fifteen.

    Suddenly she wondered if anyone would ever love her as much as her mother had. She wasn't the oldest, nearly a woman, like Maude, and she wasn't the baby, like Hugh, whom everybody loved. She wasn't the only boy and she wasn't even the only girl. She was too skinny to be pretty—she'd heard that often enough—her hair was not golden like Maude's nor raven dark and shiny like Huey's, but simply an ordinary brown, and although her mother sometimes told her she had beautiful eyes, the color of cornflowers, she also knew that everyone in their family had eyes the same color. At least her mother had tried to make her feel special.

    After the burial everyone went back to the Smith family's house to eat covered casseroles the neighbors had brought over, and the adults drank whiskey. Their house was crowded with friends and relatives; even people they didn't know very well seemed to be there. Although it was a sad occasion, eventually some of the little boys began to play tag among the heavy, dark furniture and were sent outside. Rose lost Maude, but several of her own friends from school were there. The adults were patting her and clucking over her, trying to cheer her up, and some were asking her to bring them glasses of lemonade as if giving her a chore would make her feel better, or maybe, Rose thought, they really just wanted her to wait on them.

    "Here's Rose, our town's New Year's Baby!" some of the grown-ups greeted her. She had been the first baby born in Bristol with the new century, on January first, 1900, and had gained a kind of celebrity from it as if it had something to do with her own accomplishments. Rose didn't like it when people talked about when she had been a baby, but she smiled at them as if she did.

    There by the food table was Tom Sainsbury, the older brother of her school friend Elsie, the one who had died of diabetes. Rose had recently developed a little crush on him, but being three years older and already a teenager he never seemed to see her, and she didn't know what to say to him anyway. He was handsome and self-assured, with a winning grin that made people feel happy. Beautiful teeth, she thought, beautiful hair. You just had to notice him.

    Now he came over to her. "I'm sorry about your mother," he said. "It feels so terrible now, but it will be easier for you later. I know."

    How kind he was. Boys were hardly ever kind. "Thank you," Rose said.

    It was sad, she thought, that it took a tragedy like this for them to speak. She felt wicked even thinking about a boy at a time like this, and besides, she told herself sternly, she was much too young to think about a boy at all.

    She wandered into the kitchen. There, in the cupboard, forgotten, was Hugh's birthday cake from three days ago, from the day their mother had died. The sight of that box brought back more painful memories. Rose opened the box and touched her finger to the icing and tasted it, wondering if the cake was stale. It did taste old, a little, but not too badly.

    On Hugh's birthday their mother had been feeling ill again, upstairs in her darkened room, and could not bake the cake, so Rose and Maude had gone to Kisler's bakery to buy one. The yeasty, sugary smell of bread and cookies baking made Rose's mouth water. Mrs. Kisler was a widow whose husband had been the baker. He was a much older man and he had died suddenly a few years ago, leaving her the shop to run and a young son to raise. She had hired a baker to do the work her husband had done, and she ran the front of the shop and kept the books. She had no choice. People said she was lucky to have the bakery and still to be relatively young so she could work hard and not have to clean other people's houses or depend on relatives to take her in.

    Mrs. Kisler was a pleasant, fair-haired woman with bright pink spots of color on her narrow cheeks, and after the girls bought Hugh's cake—chocolate with white creamy icing—she gave them free lemon cookies to eat while the baker put Hugh's name on the cake with a pastry bag. "5," he wrote, after Hugh's name, and wreathed it with soft chocolate leaves.

    "Do you think we should have made the cake ourselves?" Maude asked on the way home. "It would have seemed more thoughtful."

    "Oh, he won't care," Rose said. "This one is gorgeous. We could never have made anything that looked this nice."

    They entered their house and put the cake in the kitchen, hiding it in the cupboard so it would be a surprise. Then they heard men's voices. One was their father's—what was he doing home in the middle of the day?—and the other, they realized when they saw him come down the stairs, was the doctor's.

    They were used to seeing the doctor, but they had never seen this grim look on his face before. He gave a little shrug and left.

    "What?" Maude screamed. Rose was frozen.

    "Your mother is dead," their father said.

    Rose burst into tears. She had never felt so lonely and afraid. "I want to see her," she gasped and ran up the stairs into her parents' bedroom. Her mother was lying in bed the way she always had, but this time she didn't look like their mother. Without life, she was a completely different person.

    "Mama," Rose cried, "come back."

    "Come away," her father said, taking her by the shoulders.

    The rest of the day was frantic; relatives coming, Hugh crying, Maude trying to comfort him. The cake was forgotten. They didn't have the heart to even mention Hugh's birthday, the words Happy Birthday too ironic now. The blown-up balloons floated above the banisters like a reproach, and the wrapped gifts looked trivial.

    Poor Huey, Rose thought now, and took the cake into the dining room and put it on the table with the rest of the food. She saw Mrs. Kisler and her son among the people who had come to console the family, and recognized the more elaborate cakes on the tables as ones from her bakery, which other people had obviously brought. But even now, the mourners wouldn't eat Hugh's birthday cake. It seemed just too morbid. Eventually, when everyone had left, the family ate it, so it wouldn't go to waste. Rose had been right; it was stale.

    After that the family went on as best they could. There was a hired girl to take care of Hugh during the day while William was at the shop. Maude took Hugh into her bed at night to comfort him when he cried out from nightmares, and Rose spent extra time with him too. Ever since he had been a baby, whenever their mother was sick she and Maude had given him his bath, and still did, even though by now he knew how to do it himself. They loved the look of his silky little limbs covered with soap bubbles, his damp hair, his happy giggle when they tickled him. He had become their charge, their child toy, and now he was all theirs. He clung to his two older sisters perhaps more than he should, but he was comforting them too. Their father didn't criticize this because he didn't even notice. He seemed in a haze somehow, distracted. Rose attributed this to grief, but she didn't know how to make him happy, any more than she had known how to make her mother well.

    That summer her sister, Maude, had bloomed overnight into a beautiful young woman. The boys who had been her childhood playmates were now uncomfortable with her, liking her too much—although some of them had the courage to ask her out for a walk. How tense and confused and romantic these silly little afternoon dates were! A glimpse of ankle under a long skirt, the light brief touch of a gloved hand on an arm, and a boy's neck could redden in a blush. Rose thought they were all idiots.

    But the other new development was that she herself had a boyfriend of her own, or sort of. In her fantasies Rose thought of him that way, even though she knew they were make-believe. Now that he had broken the ice, Tom Sainsbury smiled at Rose whenever he saw her in the neighborhood, and gave a little nod of recognition, and the thrill of that, of feeling chosen and grown-up, lasted for hours. She felt he was the best-looking boy in town. Tom Sainsbury was different from the boys who chased her sister, Maude; he was adult, casual, comfortable, a boy who had known sorrow, who understood girls.

    His father worked at the local boatyards, the Herreschoff Manufacturing Company, which made sailing yachts, steam launches, and U.S. Navy torpedo boats, and that summer Tom got a job there to learn the trade he intended to follow when he graduated from high school. He was helping to work on a yacht for the America's Cup race. Sometimes Rose walked to the waterfront hoping to catch sight of him. He was fourteen now, and Rose supposed that in a few years he would have girlfriends his own age, and then he would eventually fall in love with one of them and get married. But for now, she kept on dreaming; it didn't hurt anybody, no one knew. Sometimes she let herself dare to hope that he would wait for her.

    And now her father, Rose was beginning to notice, was no longer grieving. In fact, he was looking cheerful, and sometimes hummed a little tune under his breath. He had seemed to adjust to getting on with his life more quickly than Rose thought was proper.

    In the warm spring and summer evenings, after he had closed the butcher shop, and Mrs. Kisler had closed her bakery, their father would stroll down to her shop and walk her home. After a little while he began to take walks with her in the evenings after supper too, and then on Sundays after church. It was clear to everyone, even his children, that William Smith was courting Celia Kisler. And why not, people said. Celia was young enough to work hard, although of course she would prefer not to, and young enough to remarry and have more children, and certainly William's children needed a mother; a man couldn't do it all himself. Rose was horrified. She considered her father's behavior a betrayal of their mother, and even of them.

    Mrs. Kisler's son, Alfred, was the same age as Huey. The two boys knew each other from the neighborhood, but they had never been friends. Hugh played with the "good" boys, the docile and timid ones, and even, sometimes, with girls. Alfred played with the leaders. Even at their age, children were mean to each other. Rose knew that when the boys teased Hugh, Alfred sometimes did too. But now, because of their parents' courtship, it was inevitable that the two families began to do things together: sometimes a Sunday dinner at Mrs. Kisler's house, or a day at the beach having a picnic.

    "You mustn't tease Hugh anymore," Celia told Alfred. "Now you must defend him." Alfred made a face and shrugged.

    Rose moped along the water's edge, feeling gravelly sand in her stockings and pain in her heart, and wishing she could go home. Alfred and Huey couldn't have been more unlike, and she didn't know why the grown-ups forced them on each other. Alfred was self-righteous, his widowed mother's "little man," a cocky miniature adult; while Huey was still a cuddly, vulnerable child. Alfred was athletic and coordinated, his older cousins had taught him how to swim, and he was already diving off the "high wall" into the water with the other kids; Hugh just wanted to spend hours dreamily looking for shells. When the families were together Alfred was the leader and Hugh the follower. But at least they got along.

    "How nicely they play together," Celia Kisler said. "They will be good brothers."

    Papa looked smug, as if he had made an excellent choice. That's what you think, Rose thought, and glanced at Maude in despair. Hugh, however, gazing at Alfred with big eyes, looked ecstatic.

    And suddenly it was fall and their father married Celia Kisler. Everyone they knew came to the wedding, and seemed to think it was a happy ending for both the bride and the groom. Celia Kisler, now Celia Smith, sold her bakery to the baker, and her house to a Portuguese family, and moved in with her new family.

    "Now you'll call me Mother," she said to the children.

    How could Celia dare to say that, Rose wondered. How could she call this woman Mother? But at least she didn't have to call her stepmother "Mama." There would be only one Mama.

    People got married and then they had children; that was a fact of life whether you liked it or not. Quite quickly, Celia had a baby girl, whom they named Daisy. Alfred and Hugh now had to share a room. Hugh didn't mind, but Alfred wasn't happy about it, although he got used to it. Alfred had also gotten used to Hugh following him around, and finally even seemed to like it. Whenever Hugh got on his nerves Alfred could send him away with a simple command, and only Rose saw the hurt in Hugh's eyes.

    Rose still didn't like Alfred very much—there was a tough wildness in him—but she loved the little baby, Daisy, right away. How could you not love a baby? It wasn't the baby's fault that she had been born to this family. Daisy was soon followed by another girl, Harriette, and Rose loved her, too. Both her little half sisters were pretty and healthy. It was a boisterous household now with six children so close in age. If Papa regretted not having another boy he didn't say so. Celia, of course, was always pointing out to him how wonderful Alfred was, as if to make up for the lack of another son of his own.

    Celia was smart, Rose began to realize at fourteen; Celia knew how to handle a man. She could probably learn from Celia, who might show her how to grow up since her own mother wasn't here to do it. But Rose still couldn't feel close to Celia, and she didn't think she wanted to learn anything from her. Maude would be mother enough.

    When Rose had her first menstrual period she was terrified at the sight of the blood, but it was Maude she went to, not Celia. Maude explained to her what it was, said she was not to exercise or bathe while she was unwell, and then with a little embarrassment Maude told her that now that she would be menstruating every month she was grown up enough to have a baby of her own, and therefore to stay away from men.

    But of course she would stay away from men! She was a nice girl. Men made you pregnant, Rose knew, but she was not sure how the babies got in there in the first place. Maude was so evasive Rose was sure she didn't know either. Rose knew it had to do with the marriage bed, although from whispers and gossip she'd overheard she knew that sometimes it happened out of it. People always gave you warnings, they never gave you details. People did not discuss these things, and they had no mother. It was inconceivable to talk about it with their father. Rose would rather have cut out her tongue than ask her stepmother such a personal question, particularly since it had something to do with Celia and her father.

    Rose still missed her own mother, although her father seemed to have forgotten all about her. It was as if her mother's existence was drifting farther and farther away, just as her brownish photograph, which Rose hid in her dresser drawer under her ribbons, was slowly fading. Ever since his remarriage her father had unaccountably stopped mentioning her mother, not a word. Didn't he care anymore? It was as if Adelaide Smith, the departed, belonged in her own compartment, her own era, and that era was gone. Celia liked to say life went on.

    Rose never learned what her mother died of. Many years later, when she had children of her own and the world had changed a great deal, and everyone knew about things like tuberculosis, cancer, emphysema, coronary artery disease, she realized her daughters thought it very strange that she had lived docilely with such a mystery, but that was the way things were when it happened. Everyone had only wanted to protect her.

    What good did it do for a young child to know the name of something so terrible that there was no cure for it?