The Road Taken (6 page)

Rose didn’t answer.

“You’ll get over Tom some day,” Celia said.

The way you got over Alfred? Rose thought. His room a shrine, his brother treated like a temporary guest? But of course she said nothing. She couldn’t be either a friend or a conscience to Celia even though now they had something in common; she had no energy, she didn’t know how to talk about such painful things; their lives were filled with secrets that everyone knew and everyone avoided mentioning.

“Ben could console you,” Celia said.

Nothing can console me, Rose thought, touching her engagement ring, thinking of Tom and the loving, peaceful, simple life they had dreamed of having together. But again she said nothing, and finally Celia left the room. The silent often scream inside, Rose thought. I hear you, Celia, why can’t you hear me?

Chapter Six

Celia was at her wits’ end. She had been looking forward to seeing Rose married, living in a home of her own, so she could put Hugh into Rose’s room and reclaim her sewing room for herself, so she could relax and take care of her own little girls, who were getting bigger and more interesting every day, and attend to her husband, who was getting older and more difficult; but instead Rose was moping around the house like a constant rebuke. Did Rose think she was the only one in the world who had suffered a loss? You went on, you kept busy, you kept up a brave front. Tom Sainsbury had been dead for three years now, and Rose was twenty-one, on her way to becoming a spinster.

Exciting things were happening all around them. Last year the women finally were given the vote, after the terrible ordeals of the brave suffragettes being force-fed in prison. It made Celia choke just to think about force-feeding, those tubes down their throats. As an adult, Rose would be able to vote for the first time this year, a historic occasion, but she didn’t even read the newspaper to see who and what she wanted to vote for. She needed either a husband or a job, but she was equipped for very little. Celia tried to keep her up to date, but their conversations at breakfast were more like a monologue.

“Rose,” Celia said today, rattling the newspaper like a gentle reproach. “Didn’t you have a playmate named Elsie, Tom’s younger sister, who died of diabetes? We used to call it the sugar disease, and we thought it came from having eaten too much sugar as a child. The doctors would make the parents starve their children, but it didn’t work. Well, it says here in the paper that a doctor named Banting has discovered the cause of diabetes, that it comes from not having enough of something called insulin, and he has found the cure too. It’s called Banting’s Extract, and it’s made from the ground-up pancreas of animals. They say it will be available in a few years. Isn’t that wonderful! So many people will be saved.”

“A miracle,” Rose said, but her look said that it was too late. Her look always said it was too late, whatever you told her. She was drowning in self-pity.

A few men had come to call on Rose, but she drove them all away. Even William was concerned, and Celia didn’t want him to get upset because he already had pains in his heart when he was agitated, and sometimes he couldn’t catch his breath. But today she was going to get Rose headed toward a life, whether Rose liked it or not.

“I’ve been thinking, Rose,” Celia went on firmly. “They’re looking for an intelligent woman to work in the office at the shipyard. You would just fit the bill. You were always good with sums. Why don’t you and I go down there today and talk to them?”

“That’s a good idea, Rose,” her father said. “You’ll certainly meet strong, healthy young men at the shipyard. I would like to see you go out. You’re alone too much.”

Rose looked at them blankly and went on serving the oatmeal, stirring big spoonfuls of butter and sugar into it the way her father liked it, and topping it with heavy cream. She handed it to him as he pushed aside his finished plate of bacon and fried eggs: bacon crisp, eggs over light, yolk slightly runny. “Don’t you need me here?” she said.

“We can manage,” Celia said brightly. She smiled at Daisy and Harriette. “These little hands are ready to help me now, aren’t they, girls?”

The girls nodded enthusiastically; they loved to help like big girls, playing house, playing their future lives.

“Rose, do you need a job?” Hugh asked.

“I didn’t know I did,” Rose said. She sipped her coffee. She hardly ate lately, and was too thin, Celia thought.

“I think you could be a teacher,” Hugh suggested. “You’re lovely with children.”

“She would need a teacher’s certificate,” Celia said. She looked at William. “You could send her to school for that.”

“Teaching is good,” William said. “A good career for a woman to fall back on when she’s older and everyone in her family is gone.”

Rose glared at him.

“I won’t be gone,” Hugh said cheerfully. “I’ll take care of you, Rose.”

“Oh, of course,” Celia said sarcastically. “Drawing sketches of ladies’ dresses and hats all day. What kind of living will you make?”

“He’ll be a designer,” Rose said, coming to Hugh’s defense, as she always did.

“A seamstress?” Celia asked, and laughed.

“No, a haberdasher,” William said, and laughed too. He always defended Hugh too, his only son, playing along with Celia because he wanted to keep peace in the house, but getting his own way in the end.

“Maybe I’ll be an artist and draw Gibson girls,” Hugh said.

“I don’t think you’ll replace Charles Dana Gibson,” Celia said. It was true, Hugh’s drawings were nothing special, and he really didn’t care.

“Of course I won’t. They’ll be called Smith girls,” Hugh said with a smile.

“Enough nonsense,” William said. “We all know Hugh is going to go to college in two years, to Brown University, and he won’t be in trade, or an artist; he’ll be a doctor or a lawyer or a banker. It’s important for a son to do better than his father.”

“You do perfectly well, Papa,” Hugh said.

“But I never went to college. Wouldn’t you like to learn how to be a secretary, Rose?”

“No.”

“Typing and shorthand?”

“No, thank you, Papa. If you want me out of the house I can get a job helping in a shop.”

“I think you’ll go to school and learn to be a teacher,” William said. “That’s settled. Celia will find out how to go about it.” He held out his cup. “More of your delicious coffee, please.” He lit a cigarette and leaned back, enjoying it, content that he had solved their problem.

So, despite her objections, Rose began to teach first grade. Actually, she liked it, and the children liked her. Celia felt Rose made an appealing picture there in the schoolroom, surrounded by nice little faces: an advertisement for a future wife and mother, should any young man care to look. Unfortunately, most female teachers didn’t marry, either unwanted or too independent, Celia didn’t know, but she still kept up hope for Rose. She was an attractive young woman—fresh-faced, well-groomed and neat despite her depression—and it was a shame, Celia thought, that Rose still believed she was living
Romeo and Juliet.

What if the boy had lived, for goodness’ sake? Did Rose think that life was so perfect they would never have fights, never lose their radiant good looks, not have money troubles, not get sick and old and fat, not lose children? Did she actually think they would still be holding hands and kissing when they were fifty? She could tell Rose a thing or two about the stupidity of love and the practicality of companionship, but what was the point? Celia had never thought Rose liked her very much. Oh, Rose was polite and did all the right things, never forgot a birthday, even gave her a card on Mother’s Day, but Celia felt that no matter how many of the right things she did to ensnare Rose’s affections, Rose’s dead mother was still there, keeping her ghostly hand on her possession, holding Rose back, even though Rose didn’t know it.

Well then, so be it. Celia had her own bank account.

A woman had to secure her independence in any way she could, even if she did it secretly. William was much older than she was, and not very well. When he was gone (of course she hoped that would not be for many years, but one had to be realistic), she would inherit some money; but he was not a rich man, and when she was a widow again she would have to take care of Daisy and Harriette until they found good husbands. Certainly none of William’s children would take care of
her.
Rose was useless, Hugh, unless college shaped him up, was on his way to becoming useless too, and the only one with money was Maude, but she had two children now, and the way things were going she and Walter would happily have a dozen. No, Maude couldn’t be depended upon either. Celia quietly took some of her household money each week and deposited it in her own account. No one asked, no one knew. Many shrewd women did that. It was not as if she were saving the money to run away, she simply wanted to be comfortable for the rest of her life.

Ben Carson had graduated from Yale and was now at Yale Law School. He came home for vacations, and whenever he did, he came to visit Rose. Celia couldn’t imagine why he continued to do that. Now that Rose was teaching, and surrounded by lively, living people, she seemed much less despondent, but she had no interest in being flirtatious or charming. Apparently they were friends. Celia knew it was only a matter of time before he met someone else, if he hadn’t already, and then Rose would have lost her best chance, if in fact Ben Carson was a chance at all anymore. I would have done it so much better than you, Celia thought, if it had been
my
life.

Now there was a psychic in town, and some of Celia’s friends had gone to see her and enjoyed it. Although Celia prided herself on being a rational modern woman, she was also superstitious and liked the occult. So one afternoon she went to see Madame Pauline, as the psychic was called, and took Rose with her, Rose of course protesting all the way about how silly it was.

Madame Pauline was dressed like a gypsy from a carnival—for all Celia knew, she was one—so Celia held tightly to the strap of her pocketbook while she sat down. The psychic had rented a storefront with two rooms, one of which was a small waiting room. The main room was draped in jewel-colored velvets and paisleys, and on the round table behind which she sat, there was a crystal ball, a deck of soft and rather filthy Tarot cards, and an equally unappealing deck of ordinary playing cards that had seen a great deal of use. Rose waited outside for her turn.

Madame Pauline asked Celia to shuffle the first deck and then laid out a hand. “Someone in your family is ill,” she said. “Your husband?”

“That’s true.”

“I wouldn’t worry though, he has many years yet.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Celia said.

“And someone dear to you has died, some years ago.”

Celia felt a lump in her throat. “Yes, my son.”

“He’s happy. You must let him go and attend to the present. You still have three daughters at home to guide to lives of their own.”

“Two,” Celia said.

“I see three. Two young ones and an older one. Is she a niece, perhaps?”

“My stepdaughter.”

“Ah . . .” Madame Pauline laid down some more cards. “What an extraordinary life she has before her!”

“Rose?” Celia said in surprise.

“Yes. Do you see this card?”

Celia nodded.

“Sometimes destiny has nothing to do with what we do or what we choose. It simply happens to us. Each event leads to something else. I don’t think you believe that.”

“I do, but I don’t really understand,” Celia said.

“There is nothing to understand. It is.”

Celia nodded. Madame Pauline asked her to shuffle and then laid out another hand. “There’s another boy in your house,” she said. “Still living. He needs you.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“No, I mean he needs your love and support. He’s very vulnerable. Very sensitive.”

“Oh, he is that,” Celia said.

“I don’t know why you don’t like him.”

Celia said nothing.

“And you yourself are in excellent health and will have a long life,” Madame Pauline said.

The session was over. Rose took Celia’s place. Celia sat in the waiting room, amazed. How could this woman know so many things? On the other hand, everyone had several children, and it would be a good guess that some were girls and others were boys, that one of them might have died, and that there was another one who didn’t fit in. Certainly she had given away enough clues about how she felt about all of them, if not actual information. And Madame Pauline had been wrong about Rose. Nothing would ever happen to Rose. I could be a fortune-teller myself, Celia thought, sorry she had spent the money. She tapped her foot, waiting impatiently for Rose to be finished.

“Oh, what fun!” Rose said cheerfully, stepping through the curtain. “Thank you for taking me.”

“You’re welcome. What did she tell you?”

“She did the cards and my horoscope!” Rose said. “Because she said I was interesting.” She read from a little piece of paper where she had taken notes. “I’m a Capricorn with the moon in Libra and Aquarius rising, and I’m well-balanced and thoughtful and extraordinarily adaptable. I have a dignified, humane, law-abiding nature, and a good disposition, and my combination of signs is favorable for marriage, partnership, and friendship.”

“That’s what I keep trying to tell you,” Celia said. She was a little jealous that Madame Pauline hadn’t found her interesting enough to do her horoscope too. “And what else?”

“That I would be rich and have a surprising life,” Rose said.

“Well then,” Celia said, “you’d better get on with it.”

Rose laughed. “Not that I believed it, but it’s nice to hear,” she said. “What did she tell you?”

“Don’t I get to keep some secrets?” Celia said coyly. She supposed their adventure had not been such a waste after all. She smiled at Rose. It was nice to see her cheerful again; it had been a long time.

Chapter Seven

It was 1925. People gossiped and speculated about Rose Smith and Ben Carson, although it was old news by now. He came around faithfully to see her on all his vacations back home. She was twenty-five, no longer considered young and dewy enough to be so picky as to turn him down, if in fact he had even asked. The town consensus was that her engagement to her poor dead soldier had counted for her as enough connection to love and romance for her lifetime, and that she would wear her memories instead of a wedding ring to her grave; and so for this she had become a kind of symbol, a casualty of the Great War, even though Tom had not died in battle, or even in Europe.

Rose seemed resigned to whatever life would bring her. In place of babies of her own she had the first-graders she taught so contentedly. She had her close and affectionate family, her lifelong friends (who were all married by now), and her friends’ children to play with. She went to the motion pictures every week, and she read novels voraciously. Hugh had given her the two books by the new young author F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose world, so foreign to her own, she found romantic and glamorous, and after that she had begun to go to the library and bring books home. She listened to music, and in the early evenings if you passed the Smith house and the windows were open you could hear her phonograph.

Her early grief had given way to a center of calm; she had a look about her that was surprisingly arresting. She seemed self-confident, self-sufficient, self-contained, and this in a woman who should have been pitiful was mysterious and admirable, if not actually provocative. People were a little jealous of her, and that was why their interest in her private life persisted. No one knew what the relationship was between her and Ben, the good catch. Were he and Rose just good friends, or was he a man obsessed by unrequited love? The truth is that Rose herself didn’t really know, since she chose not to think about it at all.

What she did think was that these days the center of her loving family had scattered. Maude and Walter had four children already, red-haired and blonde, and Walter had bought an automobile so large that their entire family could ride in it. She also missed Hugh, even more than she missed Maude, because he was really away, at college—gone off to become an adult, majoring in English Literature and Art History, coming home dressed in a dapper white jacket and a straw boater, praising his roommate to the skies.

“Well, you must ask him to come to visit us,” Celia said.

“We’ll see . . . ,” Hugh said vaguely.

“Perhaps we’re not good enough for this paragon,” Celia said, with a raised eyebrow.

Hugh just smiled.

Rose had begun to depend on Ben’s visits more than she used to. They would sit in her family’s parlor for hours talking about the world outside, where he spent his time, and sometimes she was just a little envious. She served him lemonade and sandwiches if it was summer, or cider and cookies by the fire it if was winter, and he brought her small gifts: a record of Caruso singing, postcards of Impressionist paintings he had seen in a museum, a beautiful platinum negative photograph of a New York street, and he even brought her a lavish gift for her birthday—a table radio of her own. It was almost too generous to accept. Many homes had radios today, but now the Smith household was the only one in town with two.

So far, he had not brought any young woman home to present as his fiancée, nor had he become serious about any of the younger women in Bristol, many of whom would have been glad to have him. He had graduated from Yale Law School, and served an apprenticeship in a New Haven law firm, and then, to no one’s surprise, because he was known as a go-getter, he had been offered a position in the prestigious New York City law firm of Delafield, Cross, and Ward, in their wills and estates department, and he had accepted it. He had sold some of his rapidly rising stocks, and, due to a propitious estate sale, he now owned a town house, on West 10th Street in New York, where he would live when he went to work there. It was natural and apparent that in only a matter of time he would fill up that large house with a wife and children, and if things didn’t clarify between him and Rose then she could bid her one and only suitor (if that was what he was) good-bye.

“New York!” Celia said. “Oh, I would like to see New York before I die! Rose, if I had your life I would know what to do with it.”

It was boom time in America. The stock market kept rising, and even Celia had bought some stocks, with money William gave her. Because of Prohibition, people who had never drunk at all wanted to drink, and the ones who had enjoyed a cocktail before now became voracious about it. Skirts were shorter, so was hair. Curvy women were out, and Rose’s slim figure was finally fashionable, thanks to the rage for flappers. Men wore debonair wristwatches instead of the heavy, old-fashioned pocket watches they used to carry. Time itself seemed to be going faster, in some strange way, as if people had suddenly come awake. The new music was jazz. From Rose’s open windows you could hear Duke Ellington’s rendition of “The New East St. Louis Toodle-oo.”

It was spring, the time of nostalgia and changes. Ben had come to call on her before he left to start his new job. She looked at him admiringly in his sober but fashionable suit, his carriage erect, his dark hair neatly parted in the center, his eyes always interested in what she had to say.

“I want to have a talk with you, Rose,” he said.

“Don’t we always talk?” she said, smiling.

“I mean, a serious talk.”

“All right.”

“I enjoy being with you. I know I’ll miss you very much when I go away to start a different life.”

“But you’ll visit me, won’t you?” Rose asked.

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“But why not?” she said, shocked and hurt, although it should have been apparent to her that this development had been inevitable. It was over; their relationship had run its course.

“Because I want you to come with me.”

She was more than startled. This had really not occurred to her, perhaps because she hadn’t let herself think about it.

“I want to marry you,” Ben said. “I don’t know if you have similar feelings for me.”

He wanted to marry her? She didn’t know what to answer. Did he love her? If “similar feelings” meant fondness, friendship, even generosity of spirit, always wishing him well, yes, she had those. She had always had those feelings for him, and obviously so did he for her. But she didn’t love him . . . at least, she wasn’t in love with him, if that was what he wanted, what everyone else wanted for her, to be in love with him—what they all, while trying to be tactful and stay out of it, had nevertheless made abundantly clear. She supposed she was dead inside, that she would never love anyone again. There had been too many losses. She had accepted that disappointing realization a long time ago. So she said nothing for what seemed like a very long moment, while she hoped she wasn’t being unkind.

“You don’t have to love me,” he said calmly. “You would be the right wife for me, and I would be a good husband to you. We would have intelligent and beautiful children. I would give you an interesting and comfortable life, better than you would have here, I think. We would discover New York together. It’s the most exciting place in the world right now. You would help me rise in my career, help me entertain, and I would give you anything you want. My mother will give you the ruby ring that belonged to her mother.”

He hadn’t even said he loved her. He didn’t care if she didn’t love him. She was being punished for having believed in everlasting love, in passion, having believed in it so much that she had used it all up; and this business deal was what he was offering her instead. She knew she should be practical—she was the suitable mate for this practical man—but she felt as if some little thing had torn in her heart.

“How can you marry a woman who doesn’t love you?” she asked.

“I don’t mind.”

Because you love me so much or because you don’t love me at all? Rose thought, dismayed. Even now, she had not been ready for his casual answer; she had been expecting—or at least hoping—that he would tell her at last that he was in love with her, that he had been hiding it, and that he would
make
her fall in love with him, that she would learn to love him because he would be so kind.

“You should mind!” she said. “You’re entitled to more.”

“I would be happy to be with you. Think it over.”

So this was her choice: Lose her friend or marry a stranger, the stranger she knew, but a stranger all the same. After all these years, the man doesn’t know me, she thought. I suppose I have been so cold that this coldness is what I get in return.

“Yes, thank you, I’ll think about it,” Rose said.

“I have many things to do before I go,” Ben said, rising. “I would like to come over the day after tomorrow. Then if you say yes we’ll make plans for the wedding, and if you say no we’ll say a proper good-bye.”

Marry me or lose me, Rose thought; it’s what people have been threatening their lovers with for years, and it often works. Or not. Doesn’t someone always lose? She had been selfish to think everything would go on unchanging forever.

“All right,” she said. “Until then,” and showed him to the door.

Her family was ecstatic when she told them about Ben’s proposal. She didn’t tell them the businesslike way in which he had described their future lives together. She did tell them that she had not decided if she should accept. “Why can’t you marry him?” Celia demanded. And her father, and Maude. “Why not? What’s wrong with him?” The question, of course, was rhetorical. There was nothing wrong with him.

Could she tell them he didn’t love her? No, because it humiliated her. Could she say she didn’t love him? No, because they obviously didn’t care. She had spent so much time with him that how could she claim she wasn’t attached to him? What was love anyway?

Only Hugh, when she telephoned him, was somewhat on her side.

“Ben would be a good husband for you,” Hugh said. “I like him. But it’s you who has to live with him, not any of us. You must decide what will make you happy.”

“I thought I
was
happy,” Rose said.

In their excitement about this offer of a wonderful new life, none of them even said they would miss her. “Oh, do you remember that psychic we went to a long time ago?” Celia said. “Madam Pauline . . . she said you would have an extraordinary and surprising life! And now you will.”

“You’ve waited so long,” Maude said. “You deserve this happiness. Take it.”

“What’s holding you back? It’s not still that Tom Sainsbury?” Celia asked suspiciously.

“No,” Rose said. And in fact it was not. Tom had been the love of her childhood. He had been gone for longer now than the two of them had been together. She didn’t expect to find that kind of love again.

When Ben came to ask her what she had decided, Rose told him she would marry him. He had his mother’s ruby ring in his pocket, and put it on her finger. It was only then that he kissed her for the first time.

Rose was neither attracted nor repelled when Ben kissed her. She felt a kind of pull to him, a nascent sexuality, partly from her fondness for him and partly because he had an attractive male presence. She thought perhaps in time she could lose herself in physical love. But first she had to find out what it was.

She went to visit Maude. The four children were pulling on her sister until the woman who worked for her took them away, and Rose was finally free to ask what she had on her mind.

“I know next to nothing about sex,” she said. “I don’t want to go on my honeymoon so ignorant.”

“Of course you don’t,” Maude said. “I have a book for you.” She went upstairs and came back with a thick volume called
Ideal Marriage
by Dr. Theodore Van de Velde. “This will tell you everything. I must admit, I couldn’t understand most of it until I was married.”

“Thank you. Will you want it back?”

Maude laughed. “Not any more.”

“You and Walter are so well suited to each other, aren’t you,” Rose said, rather wistfully.

“And you and Ben will be too.”

She had another question, although when she thought about all those children of Maude’s, Rose wondered if she knew the answer. “I need to know about birth control,” Rose said.

“You know it’s illegal, and most of it is dangerous,” Maude said.

“Yes, and that’s why I don’t know anything about it.”

“But that woman in New York, Margaret Sanger, the one who keeps getting arrested for running her clinic, she’s going to change that, I think,” Maude said. “You will be in New York soon. It’s the modern place where everything is happening.”

“Don’t you know how to do birth control?”

“Oh, I suppose every married woman with an education has her ways,” Maude said. “There are condoms; Ben will know about those because he was in the Army. There are things the woman can use: cervical caps, or pessaries, or suppositories made of Vaseline and cocoa butter that you put inside yourself . . .”

“Ugh!” Rose said.

“Well, you can’t do it right away anyway because you’re a virgin. And of course, there’s douching with Lysol.”

“What we use to clean the house?” Rose said, queasily.

“But I’m sure you’ve seen the ads in the woman’s magazines, with the fountain syringes, for ‘fastidiousness.’”

“I thought that was for hygiene.”

“Hygiene is a euphemism for birth control. Lysol will kill anything. You need to dilute it, though, or you’ll get burned.”

“I didn’t realize this was going to be so much trouble,” Rose said.

“If all else fails, there’s abortion, but it’s illegal, violent, dangerous, and very nasty, and I hear it hurts a great deal. You could easily die from it if you go to the wrong person. Better safe than sorry. And, of course, there’s always the old faithful, withdrawal.”

“Withdrawal?”

“Before he . . . don’t you know anything, Rose?”

“How could I?” Rose said. “Who was there to tell me?”

“Well, you’ll know all you need to about sex when you read the book,” Maude said.

Rose read her way through
Ideal Marriage
for the first few nights, locked in her bedroom, confused, embarrassed, and titillated. The marriage act seemed so acrobatic. She was fascinated by the description of an orgasm, although she didn’t really understand that either, although it was described in detail. Apparently the wife and the husband were supposed to have them simultaneously for the best marital sex. She found that concept somehow both erotic and romantic. Whenever she had finished reading for the night she hid the book under the cushion of her bedroom armchair. Of course she never said a word about this secret education to Ben.