Blush on the Rose by Bill Tope

Blush on the Rose by Bill Tope

Many years ago, when I met this sweet young girl, she was like a breath of fresh air in her buoyant, carefree way. She was that slender, raven-haired younger sister of the girl I dated and then lived with, for almost four years. She was just 14 years old when I was introduced to her. She used to accompany her sister on clandestine visits to the tavern where I worked occasionally. She would cadge cigarettes and Slim Jims from her sister and pretend that she belonged in a bar. When I looked at her, she’d inevitably blush. She’d then stare skeptically at me as if to say to her sister, “This is the guy you’re cheating on Harry with?” Her name, as I noted previously, was Rosie.

When Cindy and I began living together, many years ago, Rosie would visit us on weekends in order to escape the “wardens” and to do the things that teens everywhere longed to do: casually drink, smoke and dabble in drugs. She came to the right place. Our apartment was a haven for unseemly personalities, miscreants and other ne’er-do-wells. Rosie made herself right at home.

I was rather unhinged at the time, experimenting with sex, drugs and rock and roll. Rosie and I first bonded over music. I had huge, refrigerator-sized JBL stereo speakers which would blast out Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison — all Rosie’s and my favorites. We also drank copious amounts of alcohol — but only beer, so it didn’t count, right? This prolonged bacchanalia persisted until that night when I brought back to the apartment a quantity of LSD I’d gotten at a concert; Rosie and I tripped our asses off. At one point Rosie began having a bad reaction to the drug and I took quick action.

“Here, Rosie, take this,” I said as I handed her a yellow tablet.

“Wh…what is it?” she asked, her voice edgy. She stared at the tablet myopically. In the background, the stereo blasted out Brain Damage, from Pink’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album, a tune apropos to the occasion.

“It’s Valium,” I told her.

“My…my mom takes those,” she remarked with a feeble spark of recognition.

“Right,” I said. “It’s what they use to bring people down from bad acid trips. Take this and in fifteen minutes you’ll be cool. You’ll probably fall asleep.” I smiled reassuringly.

She choked down the pill with the inevitable slug of beer. Fifteen minutes later Rosie was snoring softly on the sofa. What I didn’t tell her until years later was that the purported sedative was in fact only a vitamin C tablet. The faux Valium ruse had worked — again.

Driving Rosie back to her parents’ house the next day, I had something of an awakening. Walking in on an all-adult mid-afternoon alcohol and prescription drug party at her home, I acknowledged to myself the inimical influence her addicted parents’ habits had on the girl, and I resolved to do better with respect to the way in which I dealt with Rosie. And I did.

Three years later Rosie, now 17, had an unfortunate experience with an older man which, I’m sorry to say, I also had a hand in. I introduced her to a man who had promised to be circumspect in bringing to pass Rosie’s first sexual experience. It did not go well.

I don’t know precisely what took place in the boudoir — home to Cindy’s and my king-sized waterbed — because Rosie and I never discussed it, but from the screaming we heard from the living room, it must have been brutal. While Cindy snickered with perverse mirth, I felt bad for the girl. I don’t know if she ever quite forgave us for that. I felt that I had really let Rosie down.

Over the years, I lost track of Rosie. Her sister and I broke up more than 40 years ago and, in spite of my best efforts to stay connected, I saw less and less of Rosie. I frequented restaurants where she worked as a waitress and retail stores where she labored as a cashier, but time put distance between us. The last time I saw Rosie was 30 years later, when I was employed temporarily as a caseworker with the state welfare office. Rosie, now 48, came by the office to apply for food stamps and we went outside so she could smoke, and to revisit old times. She was struggling with physical ailments, had been laid off her job and was in real need. But food stamp rules being what they were back then, she left without her needed benefits. I don’t believe she held her rejection against me, but our farewell was not made under the most auspicious circumstances.

I didn’t age well. With my contant appetites for illegals and booze and what have you, I paid the price for my hedonism. I retired early, on disability, and in a nostalgic mood, considered trying to reconnect with old friends I’d known back when. I availed myself of the web. Monica still held her teaching position in Egypt; but, all the others from that last party were deceased. I was stunned.

My last contact with that group of close friends was almost fifteen years before; since then, the house on Chapman had been razed and the property now boasted a 7-eleven. When I finally secured Rosie’s email address, I hoped for the best. What I got was a mixed bag. I sent Rosie four emails before she decided to respond.

“How are you?” she wrote. Three words: better than zero.

I wrote back at length, two long pages, and then hunkered down, waiting for her answer. It didn’t come. Until a week later.

“Hey, Sweeney,” she wrote succinctly.

I was making little progress, I felt. So, remembering how she so loved to read, I next spoke in the universal language of literature; I sent Rosie one of the short stories I’d recently had published. Essentially housebound, I resumed writing, which I’d dabbled in when I lived with Ellison. Rosie wrote back immediately.

“That was cool, Sweeney. I liked it!”

Yay!

Over the next four months we exchanged perhaps 125 emails — 100 of them from me, the rest from Rosie. Progress. What, one might ask, was I seeking from this slowly developing relationship? Did I want to reconnect with my former girlfriend, whose abrupt departure I’d taken so hard? No. In fact, Cindy was at this point but a remote — and not particularly pleasant — memory. I’d long gotten over the bitterness of the breakup. Decades after we split, I still dreamed of her occasionally, and every time, the dreamscape involved her cheating on me with my friends, belittling me, and laughing raucously at the futility of my life. I would always wake up in a sweat. As far as I was concerned, Cindy was a turd who could float untouched in the cesspool of life forever. Most of the bitterness was gone.

Rosie for me represented a happier, more care free time, when I was in my 30s and healthy and vigorous. Of course, I’d also been stupider and more ignorant then, but that’s half the fun of being younger. I knew that, at 70, there was certainly no going back. It was just that I had always genuinely liked Rosie. I’d loved her platonically, like the little sister I never had. I admired her ideals and her resilience–her moxie. I had suffered with her through her teenage angst and I thought that she was a really terrific human being. That, and not least, she shared my fondness for Pink Floyd.

And I felt that I needed some quality people in my life again. Burdened with Parkinson’s and other ailments, I lived vicariously through my PC. I was on the computer many hours per day. I lived for my emails. So, it was only natural that I reach out to others in the same fashion. As our virtual conversations progressed, I began dropping hints that it would be neat to meet up, have coffee, a beer, maybe lunch. Rosie seemed to purposely not pick up on those suggestions. What was she afraid of? I wondered. Had she gained weight, aged even faster than I had? Was she self-conscious about her appearance or her social or financial status? Was she married to a jealous man — or woman? No problem, I thought; she surely couldn’t be any worse off than I. But I was wrong.

& & &

In our emails we had exchanged telephone numbers and one day, at last, Rosie called me.

“Rosie!” I exclaimed, so glad to hear her voice. It sounded just the same as when I’d last heard it, 10 years before. “How are you, girl?” I asked.

“Hi, Sweeney,” she answered a little hesitantly. “What are you doing right now?” she inquired, getting to the point of her call.

I blinked and thought quickly. “Just sitting around talking with an old friend.”

“Oh!” she said. “Do you have visitors?”

“I meant you,” I told her with a laugh.

She laughed too. “Sorry. I guess I’m not used to being called a friend.”

I frowned into the receiver of my land line. “What is it, Rosie?” I asked. “Are you alright?”

I could hear her voice breaking and then a soft sobbing. My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. “I could really use a friend right now, Sweeney,” was all she would say. It was all she needed to say.

“Give me your address, Rosie,” I told her. She did. It was on the very street where I lived, about a mile distant. “Be there soon as I can,” I said, and I disconnected. I phoned up a taxi and in less than 30 minutes I was standing at Rosie’s door. She lived in a tiny house with missing squares of vinyl siding and sloughed off shingles. Blades of grass were peeping out of the seams in the pavement. When I knocked, she peeked shyly through the curtains and then let me in.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she murmured, stepping back from the door.

I didn’t say anything; I just looked at my teenaged friend from 40 years ago. She had gone gray, but was still slender.

“You want something to drink?” she asked politely.

I shook my head. “I’m good.” I glanced around the living room and recognized the design scheme: Early American Goodwill and Contemporary Flea Market. Same as my place.

“Let’s sit,” she suggested, and we drifted to the threadbare sofa and settled in at opposite ends. We sat mutely for several endless moments, until she spoke again. “I have ESKD,” she revealed without preamble.

My dear mother had suffered end-stage kidney disease in her last years, and my heart sank.

Before I could ask, she added, “I’m at Stage V.”

End-stage kidney failure was what had killed Mom. My heart went out to my friend. “Are you sleeping?” I asked.

“Not much,” she said shortly.

“You look tired, Rosie,” I said, not wanting to crowd her, but expressing my concern. She said nothing. “Are you in dialysis?” I asked.

“Four days a week,” she replied wearily. “But I discontinued treatment, starting yesterday.”

I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m not taking treatments anymore. I’m through with it,” she said with finality.

This meant a literal death sentence for Rosie. Without dialysis, a Stage V renal patient had a life expectancy that could be measured in weeks. Mom, at 90, had died after only eleven days. My mind was awhirl. Had Rosie called me here today merely to announce her impending death or was there something else? I peered into her blue eyes and reached a decision.

“Rosie,” I said quietly, “I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

She only smiled. And blushed.

Rosie, it turned out, was estranged from her family. She’d not spoken to her brothers or sisters in more than five years, and they knew nothing of her diagnosis or her life-ending decision. Her parents, with whom she had been close, were long deceased and did not factor into her decision. If anything, their absence had made it easier.

“I can’t wait to see Mom and Dad again,” she remarked dreamily, almost as if speaking to herself.

“Do you have enough money to…” I left the sentence unfinished.

“To live for another month?” she asked with a grin. “Yeah, I’ll make it, Sweeney, thanks,” she assured me with a twinkle.

Rosie had lived on disability for years. Like me, she no longer drove, which was the rub. She depended on the aged/disabled transit service to get about. But now, she was too sick and too weak to make the needed door-to-door trips to the grocery store or the pharmacy. I immediately offered to serve as the necessary conduit to all she needed. She blushed again, but accepted my offer with another grateful smile.

“So, what did you do for the past 40 years?” I asked her one night, several days into the ordeal. I was gently rubbing her feet.

“I was married, Sweeney,” she told me. “Twice. The first one was a sonofabitch and the second was worse.” She’d had no children, but that didn’t seem to trouble her. “They’d just be lurking, on Death Watch.” She chuckled, then coughed hoarsely. Forty years of smoking had taken its toll. She also had COPD and Type II Diabetes, for which she took insulin injections.

“Are you in any pain?” I asked.

“I feel tired, I can’t sleep, and I throw up a lot, but no, I don’t have any pain,” she replied sleepily. She was ashen.

“Make a list, Rosie,” I told her each day, “of everything you need.”

“How about a new kidney?” she’d quip every time.

“Chicken or beef?” I’d come back at her. Then one day I remembered: Rosie had donated a kidney to her brother, who had subsequently died many years ago, despite Rosie’s selfless and loving gesture.

& & &

Following our first in-person meeting, I took the bus to Rosie’s house every day, until the bitter end. I fetched her groceries and her medicines and I acted as her de facto hospice caretaker. Rosie was going to die and I resolved to stand with her to the last. No one deserved to die alone. After five days, her complexion was pasty and her ankles swollen. I could see that she was retaining fluids and trips to the bathroom became almost nonexistent. She stopped eating, and her once raven locks, now a silky silver, began to fall out. One night, as we watched the muted television, seated close to one another on the sofa, she suddenly raised her arms beseechingly. I glided into her embrace and held her tight. We enjoyed many hugs after that.

“Sweeney,” she murmured as I held a glass of water to her lips one clear September afternoon, “where am I going, do you think?” I pretended not to understand.

“Am I going to heaven?” She pointed at the chipping paint on the ceiling, “or am I going….south?” She chuckled weakly. Rosie had been raised strictly as a Catholic in her youth, but was a lapsed Christian. I struggled to answer her then, but when I looked at her, she was unconscious. I let her sleep.

Rosie never woke up.

I phoned the police and they arrived, followed by the coroner, who declared my friend officially deceased. I was asked by someone — a social worker? — if I wanted to talk to anyone. Mistaking her meaning, I said yes, I had to contact what remained of Rosie’s family. The social worker shrugged indifferently and drifted away. The cops wanted to know what my role in this scenario was and I explained Rosie’s medical condition, gave them the phone number of her renal specialist and all the information I had. I didn’t realize that I was crying until the tears had streamed down my cheeks and disappeared into the thin carpet at my feet.

I consulted Rosie’s cell phone and selected her sister — my girlfriend of decades before — and gently told Cindy what had happened.

“What the hell, Sweeney?” she barked into my ear. “Rosie went off her meds and off dialysis? I didn’t even know she had a problem with her kidneys. How could you let this happen?” she demanded hotly.

I recounted for her Rosie’s recent history and her life-changing decisions and told her wearily, “I think Rosie was just tired.” I was exhausted.

The funeral service was five days later. Aside from Rosie’s remaining siblings, no one attended: no friends, no former coworkers, no neighbors. In her last years, she had led an isolated existence. I received the evil eye from Rosie’s brother Paul, who had always seemed like a loser to me. On the day long ago that Cindy introduced us, Paul, three years older than Rosie, managed to find out where I lived and he showed up on my doorstep asking for a handout so he could by a bottle of wine for himself and his skanky girlfriend. I stared back at him for a moment, and then I shrugged it off. Other no-shows were Rosie’s two ex-husbands. They had both died years before. A shady character appeared near the end of the graveside service and spoke briefly with Cindy. Then he disappeared back into the shadows of the cemetery.

Limping up to the woman I’d once sworn to love forever, I asked, “Who was that freak?”

Not looking up from her funeral program, which was emblazoned with a likeness of the Rosie of thirty years ago, she replied, “Her dealer.” And without another word, the girl of my dreams faded back into her own shadows. As I stood leaning on my cane and watching the cemetery workers backfill Rosie’s grave, her brother Paul suddenly loomed like a wraith behind me and gave me a sharp punch to the ribs. I crumpled like a paper bag and lay in the wet grass, gasping for air. The others glanced over and, finding nothing of interest, turned away and returned to their cars.

Rosie’s funeral was one year ago, almost to the day. Though she had reappeared in my life only recently and existed there for a relatively short time, she moved me with her determination, her courage–her moxie. I felt like we’d come full circle. “I’ll never forget you girl,” I said aloud, sitting before my keyboard. “And no one else will forget you either!” I vowed. Now all I had to do was write, in words that people would understand, how, to the very end, the blush was on the rose.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Bill Tope 2024