The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (6 page)

Miss Rogers clasped her hands together at her waist, frowned, and cleared her throat. “I wish to register a complaint, Miss Bloodworth. A very
strong
complaint.” She paused for emphasis. “It’s that cat, of course.”

“Lucky Lindy?” Bessie put the pitcher of tea on the table, feeling a great relief. Better the cat than the closing of the library. “What’s he done now?” she asked, taking four glasses out of the cupboard.

When Lucky Lindy had first arrived at Magnolia Manor, he had been crafty enough to mind his p’s and q’s. He had kept to Miss Sedalius’ room, sleeping on her bed and eating like a horse (he had graduated from boiled eggs to leftovers from the dining table). Then, having fully recovered his strength, Lindy showed his true colors. He perfected the trick of curling himself affectionately around a person’s ankles, then stretching a sneaky paw up his victim’s calf and opening his claws. In the space of a few days, Lucky Lindy had shredded the stockings and bloodied the legs of all of the Magnolia Ladies, including Bessie’s. (Roseanne was the only one who escaped unscathed, because she had given him a swift kick the first time he cozied up to her. “I knowed Mistah Cat gon’ try somethin’ mean,” she declared triumphantly. “But I done got the drop on him. He ain’t gonna bodder me no mo’.”)

Having claimed the run of the house and yard, Lindy made it his own. He was a wildly adventuresome cat who raced up and down the stairs at all hours of the night, dragged half-dead mice and tree roaches into the house, and climbed the curtains all the way to the top. From this vantage point he would launch himself gaily into the air, alighting on all fours on the back of the sofa or a chair or even someone’s head. Whoever was nearest this daredevil aviator would shriek—except for Mrs. Sedalius, who just smiled and said that Lucky Lindy was living up to his name and wasn’t he
cute
?

It was this last trick that had so upset Leticia, for Lindy had leapt off the top of the living room drapery valance and landed on the lampshade next to her chair, knocking the lamp into her lap, spilling her tea, and causing her to choke on a cookie. Leticia swore that if Lindy ever again came within an inch of her, she was going to brain him with the stove poker, at which Mrs. Sedalius went into hysterics and had to be comforted with a cup of hot chocolate. This was where matters stood when Miss Rogers voiced her complaint.

“The wretched animal has torn the knitted cover off my dear little pillow,” Miss Rogers said thinly. She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “My
grandmother’s
pillow.”

“Your . . . grandmother?” Bessie asked, surprised. She had been acquainted with Miss Rogers for some years but had never known that she had a grandmother—or more precisely, that Miss Rogers knew who her grandmother was. Bessie had understood that Miss Rogers’ parents died when she was quite young and that she’d had no contact with her family since.

“My little pillow is the only thing I have left of my family,” Miss Rogers said tearfully. “I was carrying it with me when I entered the orphanage at the age of five, and I’ve been told that I wouldn’t let it out of my sight. It belonged to my grandmother Rose, of whom I have no memory at all. I have cherished it all these years.” She gulped down a helpless sob.

Bessie stared at her. Miss Rogers was the model of stern self-control. She never allowed herself to appear irritated, never lost her temper, never cried. Verna often joked that
decorum
must be her middle name.

“I’m sorry,” she began. “I had no idea that—” But she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

“And now that terrible beast has destroyed it!” Miss Rogers cried raggedly. “He has torn it to shreds. This is the last straw, the very last. I’m telling you, Miss Bloodworth, you will have to make Mrs. Sedalius get rid of that cat.” She pulled herself up, glaring at Bessie. “Do you hear me? Either he goes or I do!”

If this had been one of the other ladies, Bessie would have put an arm around her shoulders and soothed her. But this was Miss Rogers, who shrank away when anyone ventured to touch her, as if any show of intimacy repulsed her.

“I’m very sorry this has happened,” Bessie said honestly. “The cat really is a terrible nuisance. But he means so much to Mrs. Sedalius that I’ve been reluctant to ask her to give him up. I’m sure we can repair whatever damage—”

“No!” Miss Rogers cried, and stamped her foot. “My dear little pillow is totally beyond repair.” She gestured imperiously. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Bessie knew there was no point in arguing. She followed Miss Rogers through the dining room, up the stairs, and down the second-floor hallway, past the open doors of the three other Magnolia Ladies’ rooms. While the upstairs bedrooms were the same size, Bessie always encouraged her boarders to furnish and decorate to suit themselves. All were happy to agree, so each reflected the personality of each resident.

Mrs. Sedalius had brought an antique walnut dresser and filled the top with photographs of her late husband, “her boy,” and her grandchildren, along with the doilies she knitted and crocheted. Maxine had put blue wallpaper on the walls, made a ruffled blue spread for her bed, and painted her rocking chair blue. A dedicated reader and member of the Darling Literary Society, she filled several shelves with books, and books were stacked on the floor. Leticia, who didn’t like to read but loved oil painting and watercolors, filled her cluttered shelves with art supplies and souvenirs from her extensive travels. Displayed on her walls were many of her artistic endeavors, as well as maps with pins stuck in to mark the places she had traveled.

Miss Rogers’ room, in contrast, might have belonged to a nun. Her narrow bed was covered with a plain white chenille spread. There was a white dresser scarf on the utilitarian chest of drawers, and a plain white net curtain at the window. Three books were stacked on the shelf beside her bed: a Bible, a thick volume of Shakespeare’s plays, and the library book—
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
—that she was currently reading aloud to the ladies. There were no pictures on her walls, only one photograph on her bureau, and just one spot of color in the room: the bright red knitted pillow, about sixteen inches square, that was lying on the floor beside the bed.

Or rather, it had
once
been a red pillow. Now, the knitted cover was a gnarled, knotted mass of tangled red yarn, with loose, frayed ends spilling across the floor like a puddle of red blood. Thankfully, Bessie saw that the pillow itself, which was made of a tan-colored fabric covered with embroidery, seemed to have survived without a great deal of damage. But she felt this was little comfort to Miss Rogers.

“You see?” Miss Rogers pointed, her high, thin voice shaking. “Two days ago, that wretched cat shredded my very last pair of stockings. Today, he’s destroyed my pillow. My poor pillow.” She turned away, trying to conceal her tears, and Bessie’s heart went out to her.

“I am really
so
sorry, Miss Rogers,” she said regretfully. “I’m to blame. I should have told Mrs. Sedalius she couldn’t have him, but—”

She broke off, her eye caught by the faded sepia photograph in a wood frame on the dresser. In it, a frightened-looking little girl in a starched white dress, long banana curls draped over her shoulders, clutched something large against her chest, holding it with both arms. Bessie had seen the photograph once before, when she had come into Miss Rogers’ room to repair the window, and had thought then that the child was clutching a large handbag. Now, she realized that the girl must be Miss Rogers, and that it was the pillow she was hugging to her, as if it were a life preserver or something incredibly precious that she feared might be taken away.

“Is that the pillow in the photo?” she asked, before she thought. “And that’s you, isn’t it?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she was sorry. Miss Rogers always made it plain that personal questions were highly offensive.

But at this moment, it didn’t seem to matter. Miss Rogers reached into her sleeve for the hanky she kept tucked there. “Yes,” she sniffled, and blew her nose. “The picture was taken the day I entered the orphanage in Richmond. I was five. The pillow was the only thing I had with me, the orphanage director said. No dolls, no toys, not even any clothes, except for what I had on. And my grandmother’s red pillow.”

Bessie took a breath and waded into new waters. “You said that your grandmother’s name was Rose?” she prompted gently, thinking that if Miss Rogers could talk about the pillow even a little, she might be less likely to cry about it. “What else do you know about her?”

“Nothing at all,” Miss Rogers said, and blew her nose again. “Just her first name, Rose.” She paused. “No, wait, there’s a little more. I recall . . . I recall my mother telling me that my grandmother drowned.”

“Drowned! How horrible! Do you know any of the details?”

“None,” Miss Rogers replied, shaking her head. “My mother—her name was Rose, too—said that my grandmother was a very brave woman and that she’d tell me all about it when I was old enough to understand. But then—” Her voice dropped.

Bessie took a breath and ventured a little further. “Then?” she asked softly.

Miss Rogers straightened her shoulders, as if she were facing a painful fact. “Then she and my father were divorced. They were both very young, you see, when they married. She couldn’t . . . She didn’t want to keep me, and he couldn’t. He was in the army. So she left me in the orphanage in Richmond. I never heard from her again.”

“Oh, dear,” Bessie breathed. How horrible, how unimaginably horrible, to be abandoned by both your parents! She wanted to know why this had happened, but Miss Rogers’ eyes were filling with tears again. So she steadied her voice and asked, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Your father’s name was Rogers?”

“No.” Miss Rogers went to the window and stood, looking out. Her fingers held her handkerchief, twisting it. “I’ve never known his name, or even who he was.” Her voice dropped as if that were something that she was ashamed of. “When I was eleven, the orphanage sent me to live with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, on a small farm in Maryland. They had no children of their own, but they had already adopted several boys to help out with the farm work. Mrs. Rogers needed a girl to help with the cooking and the housework. That’s why they took me.”

Bessie felt her heart turn over and she bit her lip. Her own mother had died when she was thirteen, and her father had expected her to take her mother’s place in the household. But at least she had friends and a family home to ease the brutal pain of her mother’s death.

“It must have been very hard for you,” she said quietly, thinking that this short conversation had already shed a great deal of light on why Miss Rogers had turned from a frightened little girl with banana curls into the stiff, unyielding woman she was now. Bessie hated to admit it, but maybe she ought to be grateful to Lucky Lindy, whose nasty claws had made this intimate exchange possible.

“It was difficult to leave my friends at the orphanage,” Miss Rogers said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “But I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. I had to be responsible for myself. I had to earn my way in the world.” She pulled in her breath. “And as it turned out, I was lucky. The Rogers were good to me, and kind. They allowed me to go to grammar school, and when I did well, they let me go to high school, too.” She turned away from the window, smiling a little. “That’s where I learned Latin, you know. And learned to love books. It was my dream to work in a library. My passion. And now I do.” Her smile faded and her eyes became bleak. “Although perhaps not for long.”

Bessie hardly knew what to say. For the first time since she had known Miss Rogers, she understood her—at least a little. If Miss Rogers could say that the people who took her were kind to her, and especially that they allowed her to get an education, she was indeed lucky. Bessie had read of instances where orphaned children were sent out to work as farmhands and mill hands and domestics and never got any sort of education.

“So you began to use their name,” Bessie said at last. “Rogers.”

Miss Rogers nodded. “I knew my first name—Dorothy—but there was some confusion about my surname. The documents I brought with me to the orphanage were unfortunately lost by the time Mr. and Mrs. Rogers took me. When I went to school, it was easier to use their name. And since I grew up with it, I’ve kept it, all these years.” Her eyes went to the spill of bloodred yarn on the floor. “Like Grandmother Rose’s pillow.”

“Yes,” Bessie said. “I see.”

She did, too. As an amateur historian, she knew how important it was to be able to trace your family tree, to know where you came from and where and to whom you belonged. Poor Miss Rogers knew none of that. She had a borrowed name, a lost mother, an unknown father. No wonder she was so distressed about the damage Lucky Lindy had done. The pillow wasn’t just a pillow, or even just her grandmother’s pillow. It was her only link to a faraway past in which she had been loved and cared for, a time when she had been somebody’s daughter, somebody’s granddaughter.

Miss Rogers replaced her hanky in her sleeve, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. Her voice became brisk.

“Well, then. That’s all there is to say, Miss Bloodworth. You have seen the damage. You must tell Mrs. Sedalius that she has to get rid of that cat. The creature simply can’t be trusted.”

“You’re certainly right about that,” Bessie said repentantly. If she had said no to that cat in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. She bent over and picked up the pillow with its trailing strings of ripped and frayed yarn. She turned it over in her hands.

“I wonder,” she said, “whether we could unravel the yarn and wash it. Then perhaps we could ask Mrs. Sedalius to knit a new cover for you, using your grandmother’s yarn.”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” Miss Rogers said, shaking her head. “That’s the cover my grandmother knitted, with her very own hands.”

“But it would be the same yarn,” Bessie persisted gently. “And don’t you think it might be better to have a repaired cover than no cover at all?”