Chapter 2, Rose Thorns

Chapter Two, first draft

She heard sirens at 2:58 PM. Charlotte didn’t pay attention at first, she was down on her knees in the front yard. She had four rose bushes to tend to. It was so warm for October she hated to cut them back yet, but she could mulch them for winter. A hard frost could come any night now.

            The two red American Beauties given to her by her mother fifteen years ago stood guard on each side of the front door. They had been a house warming present back when commercial fishing was still a profitable business, and John qualified for a mortgage. The house hadn’t been new, in fact it was an old  recycled house, moved to this lot from a street out near the beach. The yard the house had once occupied was now half submerged at high tide. Erosion and something called littoral drift had chomped away at the dune in front of the house until the owners called it quits and sold the house. A house moving company purchased it for a few hundred dollars, moved it to its new location, safely away from the receding shore, and sold the old house on a brand new foundation to Charlotte and John. It looked like it had been here all along.

The flowers were so deep a red that they vibrated out of photographs, all fuzzy from the intensity of their color. The thorns on those roses were legendary; they had caught the sweaters of friends and the fur of the dogs that Charlotte babysat to make extra money in the summer, when the tourists had no clue until they arrived on the sandy shores of Cape Cod that their furry friends were not allowed on the beach.  And now, the thorns threatened to snag Charlotte’s arms as she patted the mulch up around the root balls, mounding them against the winter that was coming. 

            Charlotte thought of her mother doing her knee rehab exercises over at Deacon’s Point. The knee replacement was going well so far, so the orthopedist said. But Mother was complaining a lot around the actual use of it. The bending, the step climbing. Charlotte was not so sure it was going to be any better than the arthritic one just replaced.  But why not call it what it was- an amputation. Bones had been sawed through, the knee had been removed. So, amputate, remove and then replace. The things people went through these days with high hopes of being as good as new when it was all said and done.

            Only Mother was not as good as new, no, Margaret Winslow was in a world of pain, she said, and she was not so sure anymore she wanted the second knee replacement, scheduled for next month.

            “Maybe in three months,” she had said the last time Charlotte went to visit her. “Maybe never.”

            “It’s up to you, Mother.”

            “Tell that to the doctor,” Margaret said stiffly.

            “I’ll be happy to if you want me to, you know that.”

            “No. I’ll take care of it. I’m just upset he never told me how much it was going to hurt! I never hurt so badly. Why do they keep it such a secret?”

            “Because then no one would have it done.”

            “Bingo.”

            Charlotte was grateful that before he died her father had the foresight to prepay for a unit in the new condo community that was going up over at Deacon Point- a one bedroom condo that included assisted living services when they became necessary, for a hefty fee of course.  Now Mother had formed a strong bond with one of the per diem nurses over there, and the confidences they kept not only irritated Charlotte, but also released her from a good deal of commiserating and entertaining she’d have to do otherwise. Margaret Winslow had never been one to commiserate or entertain her daughters, she had been too busy with her career. Margaret held the distinction of being the first police woman to be hired by the town of Plymouth and later Barnstable. Try complaining that it hurts to cut your molars when your mother is blue-lighting it all over town in a cruiser.

            And so, the two American Beauties were mulched. On either side of those rose bushes were her favorites, the yellow roses with stripes of pink. The box they had come in showed all yellow petals. Somehow, a pink strain was sneaking back into the petals, and it made for a beautiful flower. These yellow rose bushes had come from her sister Teresa on Charlotte’s fortieth birthday.

            “No more stuff, no more stuff, in fact- no presents,” Charlotte had said. “I’m up to my ears in stuff in this house. Not one more thing, please!”

            And so the yellow roses.

            “These are not things. These are plants. You will love them. They will make you happy if you make them happy.”

            The rose bushes were three years old now, and they did make Charlotte happy. Teresa was a high school math teacher. She was also a master gardener, a stained glass crafts person, and an excellent cook. Charlotte was in awe of her younger sister. Becoming a wife and a mom had short-circuited Charlotte’s plans to go to college, but she made good money cleaning rental houses in the summer and dog sitting, which had recently become a year round thing. People were pampering their dogs more and more, and wanted them to have play dates. The back yard had been fenced for the kids when they were young, but the Playskool furniture, Big Wheels and Tonka trucks were all gone now, and she usually had two or three dogs at a time playing out there. Today it was only two, Buzzy the Golden Retriever and a little mutt named Monkey. They were best friends. Charlotte had discovered there was more money to be made in dog sitting than in the other part time work in the area.  Besides, she loved their company.

Teresa had no children, but she said she saw more of the students she taught than their parents did. More face time, more info exchange time. Charlotte suspected Teresa was right. Her own two were changing so much every month now that Charlotte could barely keep up with who they were becoming. With the school projects, the teams, the homework groups and friends over on the weekends, it was hard to have any time alone with them anymore.  

            She patted down the mulch around the yellow rose bushes, and started paying attention to the annoying siren. It had been going off for too long now What the heck was going on? What kind of emergency caused that long of a warning to be sounded from the fire station?  She hoped it wasn’t at the school. A shooting? Too many of those had been happening around the country. She ran in the house to grab her car keys and her cell phone. Then she put them back down. The kids were both on the bus now, coming home. They would have gotten on their bus at 2:30. She would wait for them. The dogs in the back yard scratched on the door. She let them in. Of course they were upset by the siren. Maybe the television would shed some light on the situation. She found the remote under the couch and clicked it on.