"There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound." - Thomas Hardy

The Goodbye Rose

 

By

 

Melissa Ulrich

 

 



          In the corner, dirt clods skirt a faded green compost bin. Sometimes it smells like old banana peels, the sickly sweetness of rotting fruit flesh reminding her of the sweltering embrace of summers spent in the orchards on her grandparent’s farm.

In the narrow alley, half a rake leans against the gritty wall and an empty glass bottle of nutmeg, its label peeling at the edges, hides by the steps.

Spider silk laces the door frame like the intricate doily that covered the gleaming cherry wood chest in her grandmother’s room. She remembers tracing the design with her chubby little fingers as a child, fascinated that it held together. It looked so fragile. Her very breath might dissolve the careful knitting.

Here the sun slides between the cool brick buildings and dances on her skin. This is her refuge. The wind and sound cannot get at her. Here memories settle on her shoulders, like the soft pink and blue afghan her grandma knitted for her ninth birthday.

***

She remembers the loving murmur of her grandmother’s voice, her elegant hands light as a butterfly, caressing the lumpy butternut mass of her first attempt to braid her own hair. She remembers practicing on the thin snakes of dough her grandmother rolled for her when she made English shortbread cookies, always flaky and warm, hatched with a fork and all graced with a dollop of homemade strawberry jam.

She remembers her grandmother’s steel grey eyes, fixed on the horizon. Every summer sunset was spent on the front porch. She would sit out there and snap beans, always finishing the task as the dragonflies hummed in the dying light. With a small sigh, she would rise from the yellow rocking chair my grandfather made for her so long ago, a birthday present from their early days of marriage. She would open the screen door and slip inside without looking back, the soles of her shoes worn thin, delicate, like soft petals brushing, leaving no trace.

She remembers spending hours wandering throughout the house, discovering her grandma’s touches - the delicate fringe and silk braid on the embroidered pillows, exquisite with scenes of grazing sheep and blue breasted birds with luminous orange eyes perching on apple blossom branches and the empty glass perfume bottles, pearly green and shimmering on the ledge above the sink, filled with dried nuts and tied with satin ribbon. Her grandmother made everything beautiful.

She remembers the first time she had ever hugged her grandmother. She was four years old and weary from an afternoon spent searching through the sodden piles beneath the trees. When she handed the glistening ruby red leaf to her mother, her mother's eyes merely followed the muddy tracks across the kitchen tiles. Her mother grabbed the mop and dropped the wet leaf into the sink.

She remembers how she felt when her grandmother rescued the leaf from the sink and carefully dried it on her blue sprigged apron before fixing it to the refrigerator with the crocheted hen magnet. She remembers eagerly touching the knotted white yarn of the hen and the glossy black button eye, so often kept tacked high out of her reach so she wouldn’t fiddle with it.

            Her grandma had touched the leaf gently with one finger, tracing the delicate veins branching out. She remembers gathering the blue sprigged apron with one fist and leaning against her grandma.

She cannot lean against her grandmother now.

***

A herd of round shadows skip across the field, driven on by the wind. She rolls down the window, her arm riding the warm current, palm tilted up and soaring. The gravel glistens in the sun and pops under her tires as she pulls into the parking lot. A dark mass of bodies cluster near the cathedral’s cobblestone steps. White tissues kiss cheeks. One by one, faces emerge and stare at her just as sunflowers stretch to find the light. Words would come later. Touch was all she could offer. Her thin fingers grasp at a fencepost bordering the path to the church. Its blue, brittle paint chips off, littering the ground like seeds sown by a careless farmer. She holds on.

Many speak at the service. Quavering voices recall love. Echoing in the chamber, they stretch to fill the emptiness. She walks forward and looks down at her grandmother. Light falls smooth over her faded collar and downy white hair. Pink scalp peeps out, freckled with countless years of dalliance with the sun. She could be sleeping. There is youth in that softest smile.

The parade of black inches forward, a caterpillar on the wide yellow green lawn. Thin white chairs surround the plot. A few final words scatter across the hot rising wind and tree limbs strain to catch them.

The rose is translucent pink, the shadow of her flesh staining through the petal. Small oval scars dot the stem where the thorns had been. She slowly stands, her black skirt straight and smooth. Sweat trickles down the back of her knees. Soon it would be her turn. Only a few steps more. Just as others had before her, she holds out the rose above the deep hole and lets it fall.

The rose thuds heavily upon the smooth, oak coffin. Maybe her grandmother could feel this sound. She knocks on a door that will never open.

Finally, she cries.