The War of the Roses

2

Through the dormer window of her third-floor room, Ann saw him open the side door of the garage. Holding his toolbox, he moved over the flagstone walk toward the house. A reddish spear of light from the slipping September sun bounced off the metal tools laid neatly in the box. Starded by the sudden glinting beam, she moved back out of the dormer’s niche, her heart pounding.

Hoping that she was out of his field of vision, she watched him pause and reattach a string of English ivy that had fallen from the high cedar fence. The fence formed a backdrop for a line of still-maturing arborvitaes that separated the back garden from the neighbor’s.

Seldom could she study him so minutely, free of her self-consciousness and clumsy shyness. Besides, she was certain that Oliver Rose viewed her as a country bumpkin from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that is, if he ever took the time to assess her seriously.

In his beige corduroys and blue plaid shirt, he looked oddly miscast as a man who worked with his hands most of his spare time. Even in his basement workroom – surrounded by his neatly hung power tools; his nuts, bolts, nails, and screws in little glass containers; his circular saw, lathe, and myriad mechanical gewgaws -he could not shed the image of his regular calling, a Washington lawyer. Or, as he characterized himself: ‘Just a plodding barrister.’

The deepening orange light set off his wavy, prematurely salty gray hair, which he still wore long, despite the new convention. His lightly speckled thick mustache and jet-black eyebrows gave him the look of an anglicized Omar Sharif, a resemblance quickly dissipated when his wide smile flashed and his blue eyes caught the right light, giving away his Irish antecedents.

If Oliver could have surmised the extent of her interest, he would have been flattered, of course, but appalled. Ann herself was appalled. The sensation had crept up on her, like the muggers who, she had been warned, prowled the Washington streets. Not here in the Kalorama section, of course, where there were almost as many embassies and legations as private residences and, therefore, fully protected by a vast army of special police. Her newly acquired neighborhood snobbery amused her as she recalled her sense of logic. She was afflicted, she decided, tearing her eyes from the dormer window, with an adolescent crush, an emotional aberration hardly worthy of a twenty-two-year-old woman. She was, after all, despite the warmth of her acceptance in the Roses’ household, merely a glorified au pair girl. The label, she knew, was unfair to them. They tried so hard to make her part of the family, and the free room and board, traded for vaguely defined ‘services’, gave her the wherewithal to pursue her history master’s at Georgetown University.

Looking suddenly about her room, she could not repress a joyful giggle as she recalled the flat offer of ‘room and board’ that had tantalized her in the classified pages of The Washington Post.

Barbara had described each piece of furniture with the confident authority of a museum guide. Ann had no knowledge of antiques. Yet living among these pieces of tangible history piqued her interest and she would wonder how other past lives had fared among these objects.

In one corner of the room was a sleigh bed, circa 1840s; beside it an inlaid-mahogany Empire table on which stood an Art Nouveau Tiffany lamp guarded by a rustic Staffordshire porcelain milkmaid who had wandered in from the downstairs collection. On one wall was a chest-on-chest festooned with intricate ormolu and a French bibliotheque with glass doors. Near the dormer was an English folding desk on which rested a hurricane lamp.

‘We get a knee-jerk reaction every time we get near an antique auction,’ Barbara explained. ‘We’re like antique junkies. We even met at one. There’s no more room to put things.’

‘It’s fantastic,’ Ann had replied.

‘We’ve been at it for years,’ Barbara told her. ‘But they say that people who collect never really stop. Maybe we’re afraid to…’ Her voice trailed off as if she were wary of the sudden intimacy. ‘Anyway,’ she had chirped, recovering her lightness, ‘you can commune with all the ghosts of times past.’

‘With pleasure,’ Ann had said. ‘My major is history.’

But if the ‘room’ part was overwhelming, the ‘board’ part staggered her. Ann remained endlessly fascinated with the Roses’ kitchen.

It was a carpeted rectangle lined with French provincial walnut cabinetry and rough stucco walls, designed to resemble a French country kitchen. Built into the walls were two double sinks, two double ovens – one electric, one gas – a huge refrigerator with an outside , ice-water tap, a matching freezer, and a dishwasher. Also built in were tiers of open shelving filled with cookbooks, botdes, spices, canned goods, pots, pans, plates, jugs, trays, and bowls of various shapes and sizes. Huge drawers containing silver and flatware were fitted below the counter tops. Shiny copper pots and pans hung on hooks in various corners and cubbies. And on the counter tops were a microwave oven, two blenders, a coffee maker, a toaster oven, a warming oven; an inventory that never failed to expand in Ann’s eye with each inspection.

In the center of the kitchen was a large rectangular island over which hung a huge hood. Built into the island was another stainless-steel sink, two four-burner stoves – one electric, one gas – an army of utensils, collanders, ladles, spatulas, pans, and more pots hanging from the hood; a wooden box filled with upended knives in slots, a wide marble top built into the cutting-board counter, and an electric kitchen center designed to accommodate a variety of mixing bowls and whatnots.

Remembering her mother’s broken-down, noisy refrigerator, the gas stove with a pilot light that never seemed to work, and the chipped and stained porcelain fixtures, Ann felt she had wandered into a fantasy land.

‘I cook,’ Barbara had announced, the understatement obviously carefully honed from long use. Ann followed her into an alcove that served as a storage pantry and in which was a large, humming, temperature-controlled wine vault.

‘We planned and built it together,’ Barbara explained to the baffled Ann. ‘Oliver’s a whiz at fixing and making things. And I’ve got a degree in plumbing from the school of hard knocks.’

She was, Ann remembered, as eager to make a good impression as Barbara was to be ingratiating. Yes, there was a certain indelibility about their first meeting, despite the confusing, information-packed grand tour.

Barbara had given particularly detailed descriptions of every piece in the dining room.

‘Duncan Phyfe,’ she said, rapping her knuckles on the shiny table. ‘Queen Anne chairs. And that rococo monstrosity is my favorite.’ She had pointed to an elaborate candelabrum with room for more than a dozen candles. ‘Decadent, don’t you think?’

‘I guess they knew things would outlive human beings,’ Ann replied, patting a marble-top credenza for emphasis.

At that first meeting, Barbara’s curvaceous figure was encased in tight jeans and a T-shirt on which the word hausfrau was stretched tautly over ample bosom, intimidating the statement. She possessed, as a miner’s daughter like Ann would observe, Slavic good looks: deep-set hazel eyes, peering cautiously behind apple-contoured cheekbones, under a broad forehead. Her chestnut hair was cut to cascade, like a wild brook, down either side of her head, almost to her broad shoulders, which served as a sturdy crosspiece for her magnificent bosom.

‘I’m going pro,’ Barbara had announced, as if it were necessary to explain the kitchen. She had flashed a wide, ingenuous smile, growing momentarily wistful. ‘Hell, I’ve got the talent and the facilities. That’s for sure.’ Her attention had suddenly departed from Ann, as if there were someone else she had to convince. But when her attention came back to Ann again, she explained that she had just sold a batch of her special cassoulet to an embassy in the neighborhood and her pate was becoming a staple at the French Market.

‘It’s just a humble beginning,’ she had said. ‘But that’s why I need a little help with the kids. Just a watchful eye. A little tidying up. Perhaps some help for me. Nothing heavy. A maid comes in to do the hard stuff. Teenagers need a maternal surrogate when Mom’s busy in the kitchen.’ She laughed nervously, which, by inference, put Ann at ease, as if illustrating that she wasn’t the only one with anxieties about the new arrangement.

As she talked, Ann remembered, she had lifted Mercedes, the spayed Siamese, from one of the upper open shelves, wedged between a can of Crisco and a box of brown sugar. The cat snuggled against her hair and briefly shared an Eskimo kiss before jumping to the floor, scurrying off to a sunny adjoining room that appeared to be filled with plants.

‘There’s an overgrown standard schnauzer, whose bark is worse than his bite, that you’ll meet shortly. He spends the day servicing the local bitches. Mostly, he obeys only Oliver, who says that’s because they both share the same drives.’ She had flashed her smile again and giggled a throaty, girlish laugh. The reference to men’s drives seemed to offer a female bond, and from that moment, sisterly affection began to ferment. Ann’s confidence rose. The little exchange seemed to underline that first impression.

Barbara had mentioned in passing that the schnauzer’s name was Benny, but it was Eve, their sixteen-year-old daughter, who had explained to Ann the not-so-subtle connection.

‘Mercedes-Benz. Of course. I should have caught it immediately.’ Ann had actually felt embarrassed.

‘No reason to, Ann, really. It’s just one of those very inside family things. It was Dad’s idea.’

Reticence marked their first encounters. But Ann thought that was understandable, since the assignment of an au pair girl to watch over a sixteen-year-old seemed an insult by definition. Eve’s first move was to give Ann the shock treatment.

‘I keep my stash of pot behind Louisa May Alcott,’ the girl explained as she introduced Ann to her room, the style of which was an obviously deliberate attempt on Eve’s part to stem the tide of antiques that had engulfed the house. Every piece in it seemed ruffled with flowery prints except for the pink bookcase and Andy Gibb poster. The inside of the closet was a mess and schoolbooks were scattered under the bed.

‘And I’m on the pill,’ she said, watching Ann’s face for a reaction. Ann’s features were calculatingly immobile. She herself wasn’t on the pill for two reasons, health and infrequency. She wasn’t shocked, although she had made a mental note as to how much lower the starting age was now.

As if to buttress her rebel image, Eve offered Ann a cigarette, then lit up and inhaled deeply.

‘Screw cancer.’ She shrugged. To Ann, the bravado was a dead giveaway. Eve wasn’t a brat at all. Just unsure, like most teenagers… and adults.

‘I don’t smoke,’ Ann had replied. T chew.’

Eve’s giggle, like her mother’s, seemed to break the tension.

‘Really?’ Eve had exclaimed, showing her age.

She was, Ann observed, vulnerable and gawky, still unfleshed and willowy, but with all the promise of inheriting her mother’s Slavic sensuousness. With her father’s blue eyes and rich, thick hair, she would soon be quite a beauty.

To make it with Eve, Ann knew instinctively, was to find some important way to illustrate her trust in the girl. She detested being so calculating as she searched for opportunities. But it meant a great deal to win Eve’s favor, especially in practical terms. The job in the Roses’ household was a stroke of luck. Banishment, for whatever reason, would be a personal and financial disaster.

The opportunity arose when Eve flunked math at Sidwell Friends School, a posh private school of Quaker origin for the children of the Washington elite. Eve, too frightened to tell her parents, confided the horror to Ann.

‘I’ve disgraced them,’ she cried.

Calming her down, Ann agreed to act as go-between, a role not without its risks. Oliver had been disappointed, but resigned. Barbara had been angry.

‘Lack of preparation is a curse,’ she had snapped. ‘I know.’ Ann had learned by then that Barbara had married at nineteen and had dropped out of college.

‘I promised them you’d go to summer school if there were no recriminations or bad words,’ Ann had announced proudly to Eve, who collapsed in shivery tears. In its way, it was a kind of victory and certainly represented a turning point between them.

‘I’ll make them proud,’ Eve promised, her lips pursing in determination. There was, Ann had discovered, an invisible, fiercely competitive standard loose in the household. She wondered if it was a good thing.

This standard was at its most obvious in twelve-year-old Josh. What he wanted most of all was to be a member of the Sidwell Friends junior-varsity basketball team. She heard his basketball rattling, with irritating punctuality, against the backboard that his father had made in the alley over the double garage.

Like his sister, he, too, was a well-made mixture of his parents’ genes: hazel eyes, cheekbones like his mother’s, and a space between nose and lip that would surely in late adolescence sprout his father’s thick moustache. His hair, sadly, was his mother’s chestnut, which meant that he might not grow his father’s salty, waved hair. Like Eve, he wore braces and it was a family joke, one of many, that the Roses were an orthodontist’s dream.

Ann’s relationship with Josh started out vague and unpromising. She had barely any memories of prepubesceht boys, having gone to a Catholic girls’ school. To the stern sisters of that establishment, young boys, if they existed at all, were messengers of Satan. To her, Josh was, nevertheless, a challenge to be surmounted.

She found him one day hunched over his basketball on the third-floor landing outside her room. She had been studying and it was obvious when she saw him there, gloomy and distraught, that he had been waiting for her to come upon him ‘accidentally.’

‘You look like you just lost your best pal,’ she had said, standing over him. He was holding the basketball in a tight embrace. He looked up at her, dry-eyed, but with a visible trembling of his lower lip that threatened the total collapse of his pseudo-manly courage. She sat down beside him, noting that he had deliberately left room for her on the step.

‘Damned coach,’ he said, telescoping the message that he hadn’t made the team. It was enough of a signal to set her mind racing to find something reasonably reassuring to say. Providentially, the Johnstown house was on the edge of a school attended mostly by black children.

‘Any black kids on the team?’ she asked. He held up one finger. ‘Get a chance to play with any black kids?’ He shrugged, obviously having no idea where she was leading him.

‘Go to the schoolyards where the black kids play. Couple months of that and you’ll run rings around those lily-white honkies.’

He took the advice, still sulking as he brushed aside her attempted caress of his shoulders. It was weeks later, when he suddenly broke out in black street talk, that she knew he had taken her advice. Pure chance, she had decided, but a definite icebreaker.

The sun was barely visible through the arborvitaes and would soon be hidden behind the cedar fence, leaving a soft hush in the air. From the kitchen two floors below, exotic, mouth-watering odors wafted upward. In the oven, Ann knew, was a crusting cassoulet, layers of simmering goose, pork, lamb, and sausage on a bed of flageolets, bubbling in an essence of garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and other glorious herbs and spices. Cooling on the marble of the kitchen island was, a deep sniff confirmed, a loaf of fluffy banana bread. Barbara was at that moment probably mixing a light salad of greens and mushrooms in the big wooden bowl inundated with the tart oils of a thousand previous concoctions. There would be sliced pate de campagne as well and a chocolate mousse to sweeten the celebration.

God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world, Ann thought, prompted by the smells and the delicious knowledge of her treasure chest of family secrets. The festivities were Barbara’s original idea to celebrate Eve’s summer-school victory, a B-minus in advanced algebra. Ann had spent half the summer sweating over that one with Eve, certain that her effort had lifted the grade by one whole letter jump.

And Oliver had embroidered the victory with his own contribution. He had bought Eve a silver Honda, which, unbeknown to the victorious scholar, lay in wait in the garage next to his prized Ferrari, rarely used but fondled and caressed like a precious baby.

‘You mustn’t breathe a word,’ Oliver had warned. ‘Not a word.’

Barbara had come to her that morning with two secrets.

‘Josh made the team. But don’t tell Oliver. It’s a surprise. We’ll spring it at dinner.’

‘You said two secrets.’

‘I just got a hell of an order. Chicken galantine for twenty-four. For the Paks. They’re entertaining the French ambassador Tuesday night. Just don’t tell Oliver. Let it be my surprise.’ Barbara took Ann by the shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes as if they were a mirror. ‘You know, I’m going to make it big as a caterer someday. I mean big.’

Eve came into her room sometime later with a further announcement and Ann literally had to turn away to hide her amusement.

‘You might think this dinner is for my B-minus, but Dad’s got a topper to that. The firm picked up one of those big Fortune Five Hundred clients in New York. But don’t tell Mom. He’s going to break out the Chateau Lafite-Rothschild ’59. When he does that, we’re into heavy duty.’

Any more secrets and Ann was certain that she would burst wide open. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel left out. She had her little secret, too, reminded of it again as she passed Oliver on the back stairs. He had just come from the sauna that he had built in the basement, complete with adjoining shower. Sometimes the family gathered there. Nakedness was not a hang-up, although in deference to Ann they no longer went about the house without robes, another secret that Josh had confided.

Passing him on the stairs, she turned quickly away as her eyes caught a tantalizing picture. The damp had curled his hair and the terry-cloth V showed a profusion of jet-black body turf down to his navel. She could not bring herself to look below that but she could not ignore the piny scent that his skin exuded, embellishing the exciting aroma of his maleness. Passing him this close, with him in a state of semi-undress, was dizzying.

‘Soon,’ he said, winking as he passed her. ‘I’m going to give Eve the Honda keys at dinner.’

In the kitchen, Barbara was wearing a long mauve velvet at-home dress with a single strand of matched pearls and even Eve had parted for once from her jeans and was wearing a more fitting, preppyish outfit of pleated skirt, blouse, and saddle shoes. As always, when it came to clothes, Ann felt inadequate, despite the fact that she wore one of Barbara’s beige slack-suit hand-me-downs, a far cry from the J. C. Penney polyester she had worn that first day.

As if by silent consent, Ann picked up the cooling banana bread and joined the procession to the library, which doubled as a kind of family den. They moved through the marble-floored foyer, over which glistened a huge crystal chandelier, hanging three stories high in x brass-banistered stairwell. From the foyer’s corner, a tall clock in an inlaid-mahogany case offered seven chimes to underscore the Roman hour on its dial.

Oliver had built the walnut bookshelves in the library to hold their rows of leather-bound old books. Against a blank wall was a huge, carved nineteenth-century armoire, nine feet high, which he had fitted with shelves that now held an assortment of liquor. On the fireplace mantel was an array of Staffordshire figures. The Staffordshire collection was Oliver’s pride and there were more than fifty figures scattered around the house -milkmaids, sailors, Napoleons, Garibaldis, Little Red Riding Hoods, and crude, rosy-cheeked farm boys.

On a marble table in the foyer were displayed what had become the legendary Cribb and Molineaux, poised in their eternal pugilistic confrontation. The story of the Roses’ first meeting had been repeated in the household ad infinitum.

Over the library fireplace hung a large English oil, a hunting scene, appropriate to the leather Chesterfield couch and matching chairs in front of it.

It was, Barbara admitted, a mishmash room, but perfect for squatting around a heavy, low oak ‘rent table,’ on a Sarouk blue-and-red Persian rug, to have Sunday dinners.

‘It seems to be the only time we’re all together,’ Barbara had told her, offering a mysterious, wistful look, disturbingly out of character.

By the time Oliver arrived, with Josh trailing smugly behind, the platters of cassoulet and pate and the big wooden salad bowl had been laid out. An unsuspecting Eve picked at the banana bread and dropped little morsels in her mouth, unaware of the impending surprise.

The family squatted around the table while Oliver, with great ceremony, poured the Lafite-Rothschild ’59 into crystal wineglasses. He looked about, offering a cryptic smile, winking at Barbara and lifting his glass.

‘Before we dine on this magnificent repast,’ he said, savoring the arcane language, ‘we must toast this moment of triumph.’ He looked at Eve, who smiled broadly, two rougelike puffs of excitement on each apple cheekbone. ‘B-minus will not an A make, but it’s a hell of a long way from F.’ Josh snickered. He always brought home straight A’s and was not above teasing his sister on that score. ‘And a longer way from H.’

‘H?’ Eve asked, squinting in bemusement.

‘H for Honda,’ Oliver said.

‘Honda?’ Eve looked at the faces around the table in confusion. Oliver raised his glass higher and from his pocket drew out a set of keys and his electronic remote-control garage door opener.

‘Just don’t hit the Ferrari on your way out.’

‘Not if you value your life,’ Barbara joked.

Eve squealed with hysterical joy, grabbing her father around the neck, kissing him with passionate gratefulness. She repeated the ritual with Barbara, then with Josh and Ann, finally picking up the keys and garage door-opener and dashing out toward the rear of the house.

‘We’re spoiling her rotten,’ Oliver said when she had gone, bringing the rim of the wineglass to his lips. Everyone followed suit ‘But it feels so damned good.’

‘We didn’t get our first car until three years after we were married,’ Barbara said.

‘Different times,’ Oliver shrugged. ‘Why all the hard work if not for this?’ He moved his free arm through the air, the gesture taking in all the visible surroundings, including the people.

‘I made the team,’ Josh said suddenly, as if a bubble had suddenly burst inside him.

‘Damn,’ Oliver said, putting down his glass and slapping hands in black-jock fashion. ‘Bad. Man.’ He had picked up some of the jargon from Josh.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Josh said, lifting his glass and swilling down the expensive wine as if it were Coca-Cola.

They heard the horn blasts of Eve’s new Honda, which she had driven around to the front of the house. Gathering at the window, the family waved and Eve sped off in a cloud of carbon monoxide.

‘Lucky bitch,’ Josh said.

‘Well, now it makes it obligatory for you when you hit sixteen,’ Oliver said. ‘You now have a standard. That’s what fatherhood means. Setting standards.’ He laughed at his own little joke, then the family regathered around the table.

‘There are other family victories to announce,’ Barbara said quietly, her eyes smiling in their deep sockets, her full lips curling tremulously over her white teeth. She made her announcement in a flat, somewhat restrained tone, but with a determined flourish. There seemed a disturbing note of bravado in it as well, although Ann felt she was the only one who appeared to notice. Oliver moved closer to Barbara and kissed her on the lips.

‘Fantastic,’ he said as Ann quickly turned away, annoyed at her sudden burst of jealousy.

‘I guess what I have to say is anticlimactic,’ Oliver said just as Eve burst through the front door, flushed with joy.

‘It runs like a dream. Like a dream,’ she cried, squatting beside Ann and squeezing her hand. ‘I’m so happy.’

Ann lifted a finger to Eve, in mock rebuke, as Oliver continued.

‘Just a new client. More lucre for the family coffers. A huge retainer. My colleagues are quite pleased with my resourcefulness. I’m off to New York tomorrow to seal the deal.’

They exchanged more kisses and soon everybody was digging into the feast, mumbling ecstatically, with full mouths, over Barbara’s wonderful cookery, embellished, they all agreed, by the rich taste and bouquet of the ’59 Lafite-Rothschild.

Watching them in what she could only characterize as their splendor, Ann could not escape the comparison with her own shabby family, locked in the prison of their tiny wood-frame house in Johnstown. More like Dogpatch, she thought, where the big treat was snaring Polish sausages with a bent fork from a big jug and swilling down six-packs.

The rich cassoulet melted in her mouth as the movie in her mind froze into a single ghastly frame. In it, her mother’s swollen body squirmed like jelly in a torn, flowered housecoat as she reclined on a sprung, worn couch in front of the television set, gun-muzzle curlers poised to shoot out Laverne and Shirley, while her father, his beer belly hanging over his belt like jelly mold, added cigar-ash dust to the frayed carpet from which sprouted his Archie Bunker chair.

Suddenly, as if to start the reel moving again, she tapped her wineglass with a silver spoon, the tinkling crystal forcing the silence.

‘I can’t tell you how much…’ The words stuck in her throat and she had to clear it and begin again. ‘I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me to be here with you. You cannot imagine…’ She stumbled again, the images of her past life too vivid for the rush of words. Her gaze washed over each face, even Oliver’s, which, surprisingly, she viewed without the earlier shame. ‘It’s been the most wonderful time of my life. The way you’ve taken me in and become, for me, my family.’ She swallowed hard to hold down a ball of phlegm. ‘Such a happy family…’ She shook her head, too overcome to continue, then searched with her lips to find the rim of the glass, which she tipped, sipping the wine.

What a happy house, she thought, wondering how she had had the good luck to find them.