Rose woke up just before the alarm went off. The sound irritated her. She had fallen asleep at 1:30a.m. She was wearing lightweight grey sweatpants and a white pyjama top. Josh had surgery scheduled this morning at the hospital and his rummaging around as he dressed at 5 a.m. had woken her up. Rose had drifted in and out of a light sleep after that. Now she headed to the basement in her pyjamas to change the laundry while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her mind was blank while she folded the dark sports clothes and the socks she had pulled out of the dryer. Rose had put a load of towels from the washing machine into the dryer and a new load of sheets into the washer. She emerged from the uninhabited basement after half an hour, leaving the lights on. She would be back in forty-five minutes to do it all over again. Rose mentally reviewed what was in the fridge for breakfast for the boys, directing her steps towards the kitchen. The boys wanted sausage links for breakfast. When they only got cereal and milk, they were starving mid-morning, and, what the hell, she just had to put sausage links into the microwave. It was six a.m., she would have loved a cup of coffee. Instead, after she put the sausage links in the oven and trotted back up the stairs in a half jog to call Jack first. Jack was an arguer. She told him it was six and he responded groggily that he could sleep for ten more minutes because he had taken a shower last night. Rose sighed and went to call Jason in the top floor bedroom. The stairs creaked when she stepped on them. Halfway up she called Jason. Whereas Jack argued, Jason simply slept. Rose walked up two more steps and called again. No response. She reached the last step.
“Hey, get up, sleepy head.”
Her tone was chipper and had the command of a drill sergeant. Jason lay immobile. Rose took one more step toward the bed. The floors creaked in the old house. The sound was eerie and made her flinch everytime. Why hadn’t they buy a new home instead of a historical brick house on the parkway?
“Jason!”
Rose twisted open the blinds above the bed. That ought to do it. Jason was probably awake, but she shook him before declaring that she was leaving, and breakfast was ready. Rose walked into the bathroom. The towels were dry and hanging in place. Jack had not taken a shower last night or they would be on the floor wet. She retrieved the clothes under the window and returned to Jack’s room.
“Jack! Get up.”
“Is breakfast ready?”
“Of course it is.”
It would be ready by the time he got downstairs.
“Is there any juice?”
“Jesus,” Rose thought.
“Jack, just get up and come down to eat.”
“Bagels?”
Rose ignored his question. The boys needed to leave in the car together by seven to be to school on time. Rose put a bagel in the toaster and food for breakfast on the counter then returned upstairs to put on a green long-sleeve top. She grabbed her jacket and purse so she would not need to climb the stairs again. Jack ambled out of his bedroom in a pair of jeans.
“Hurry up. Jason!”
“Mom, he always makes me late,” Jack moaned.
“Go eat.”
“Jason!” Rose called.
Rose left her purse and jacket on the handrail at the bottom of the stairs. Jack complained there was not enough sausage and asked where the butter was. Rose huffed and went into the kitchen. She put more sausage in the microwave and dug the butter out of the back of the fridge.
“It’s where it always is. Here.”
Jack gulped his juice.
“Bye. I’m leaving.”
Rose went to the bottom of the stairs.
“Go brush your teeth first, Jack. Jason, come have breakfast!”
Jason came down the steps groggily.
“Where is my white Polo shirt?”
“I’ll put the whites in when I come back from grocery shopping this morning, get something else to wear.”
“Aw, Mom.”
“Jason, eat your breakfast Jack is waiting in the car.”
Rose shuffled the dishes into the dishwasher and flicked on the computer, an email flashed.
“What time do you have hockey practice today?”
“I don’t know. Four to five thirty. I think.”
“You think? Well, Jack needs the car to go to the SAT course. They have changed the last trial test to this afternoon. I will drive you to practice and pick you up.”
She took his plate.
“You’re done. Go get ready.”
The fork clattered on the countertop. Jason downed the glass of juice in one breath.
Rose looked at the coffee maker. Maybe, when she came back up from the laundry room, she could make a cup. Jason schlepped back upstairs to brush his teeth and get his backpack. Jack honked the horn in the driveway.
“Jason, get going.”
Another email pinged on the computer open on the counter by the door. The dentist’s office had sent a reminder for Jason’s appointment tomorrow. She clicked “confirm.” Rose went to shut the front door.
“Holy…”
It was freezing.
“Can’t they close the doors?”
She stumbled on a single Nike size 12 that had found its way to the door. She picked up four pairs of shoes in the entryway with an audible exhale. Jason whistled past her and her arm load of shoes. She saw him out of the corner of her eye while she put away the shoes in the hallway cupboard on her way to the laundry room again. The door slammed. His jacket was over his arm and backpack straps trailing on the ground behind him.
“Jason! Put on your jacket, it is winter.”
Jason turned at the door.
My last hour is a study hall today. I am coming home for lunch.”
“Damn,” she thought.
Rose would prioritize the groceries, she thought as she galloped down the steps to fold more laundry in the basement. She remembered to put the whites into the wash and shut off the light. Rose stopped in the kitchen and drank what juice the boys had left. She ate a banana and thought about making coffee once again. If she left now, she could stop at UPS to pick up a package on her way to the do get groceries. That would get her back in time to make the beds and get something for the boys for lunch. If everything went just right, she might squeeze in an hour at the gym before they came home at twelve. No time for coffee. She took her coat and car keys. Rose bent down to pick up the package the postman had just dropped off. She was still wearing the lightweight sweatpants she had slept in. She huddled in the car as it warmed up, squeezing her purse between her knees.
“Crap,” she thought.
She still had not brushed her teeth. Tomorrow it would all begin again.
When I was four, my parents took me to Mount Rushmore. There are pictures of me sitting bareback on a yak and by the hotel pool with my mother holding my hand. She has long black hair tied back in a ponytail. She is wearing a top with large white, orange and green stripes and large black sunglasses. That day my mother had brushed my hair into pigtails, wrapping the curls around her finger and leaving me with light brown ringlets behind my ears.
The car accident happened when I was six years old, on the wide street with stoplights that we took to go the elementary school. It was winter, the roads were shiny with exhaust and glinted in the sunlight at the intersection. A woman coming the opposite direction failed to see our gold Oldsmobile and turned into the intersection as my mother drove through the green light. I sat in the front seat on the short drive to the school, no one wore seatbelts then. I hit my nose on the dashboard of the car and was carried to the gas station there at the intersection. I was sobbing when the woman with white hair who had hit our car peered at my bloodied face inside the gas station. I could barely discern her face from the tears blurring my vision. My mother and I were taken to the hospital where my father met us. I watched my mother as attendants rolled her away on a metal gurney bed, down a long hospital corridor. She must have gone to do Xrays. I asked my father if she was going to die. I do not remember my father’s response but have always remembered the first time I wondered about my parents’ mortality.
My mother hands me my bridal bouquet in front of the small stone church. There is a well in front of the church, in the hills around the city where it is quiet. There are no cars there, it is like stepping back in time. My mother wears a grey and lavender dress with grey shoes that tied up on the ankle. Her feet are artfully placed so she is poised facing me and the camera at the same time. Coincidentally, we have nearly the same short haircut. I tower, she is small and her figure is perfect. She is pretty, smiling beautifully. The bouquet is of 7 large white roses, tied simply with a light green silk ribbon to match my light green dress, edged with minute green crystals that splays out gently on the ground behind me when I walk across the empty square. The photographer clicks, dancing a circle around us. I try to act naturally, remembering to smile, far stiffer than my mother who is at ease even in a foreign country where she cannot speak the language. No matter, she smiles.
On a snowy morning in January I stood looking down at my mother’s grave, a cold, deep tightening in my shoulders. Family members stood talking, hushed inside a chapel lit too brightly.
After my mother passed away, I saw her in dreams at night, standing across the room and smiling at me at an auction. Then I see her flying in with pale skin to kiss me on the cheek. Her hair had grown out and streamed behind her.
I look through the lens at the girl poised on a green velvet sofa. White lace dress, a blue silk scarf draped over her hair and under her chin, halo-like on top short black curls, exposing a heart shaped face, childish cheeks, red lipstick on young lips. Prim in the printed photograph. A lovely, bare arm arched across the sofa back, legs gracefully exposed. Not quite smiling, waiting. Waiting for him to come pick her up in his red car before the school dance. I look, thoughtfully tracing elements that tell the future. Before life was meted out. Before the reckless boy in the red car was an alcoholic. 4 years before her first child, before marriage ended in divorce, before cancer spread in her frail body.