FALLING STARS
Chapter Eight
February 19, 1913
Rose came slowly up the icy walk, deftly
avoiding slick spots. Two weeks after Gregory had been born, she had begun
working at Mrs. Allen’s restaurant as a part-time waitress, bringing the baby
with her. It had taken only a few days for her to see that bringing her son to
work with her was not a good idea. He cried often, wanting to fed, or changed,
or just held, and it made it difficult for Rose to work. At home, she had been
able to take things at her own pace, and if the house wasn’t quite as sparkling
as it had once been, it didn’t really matter. At the restaurant, she had to
serve people when they wanted, and couldn’t take as much time to care for the baby
as he demanded.
Rose had considered giving up her job, even
though she wanted to save the money so that they could leave Chippewa Falls in
the spring. Things had improved a little, but far too many people still shunned
her, and she worried about how this would affect her child. Leaving seemed to
be the only option.
Louise had finally offered a solution. She
had visited Rose frequently after Gregory was born, and adored the infant. She
had offered to care for the baby while Rose was away working, thus giving Rose
a break from the constant demands of the child, and satisfying her own maternal
instincts.
Although Louise seldom mentioned her own
baby, Rose sensed that she missed the child, and that she often wondered how
she was doing, what her life was like. Caring for Gregory seemed to help, and
Louise had waved off Rose’s attempts to pay her for her assistance.
Rose reached the front door and went inside,
taking off her coat and tossing it over a chair. Louise came out of the
bedroom, Gregory snoozing peacefully on her shoulder. She was humming softly,
rocking the infant.
Rose took Gregory from Louise. He whimpered
softly, then fell asleep again, one tiny hand clutching Rose’s collar.
"How did he do today?" Rose asked,
sinking into a chair. Gregory had suffered from colic a few times in the past
couple of weeks. She suspected that he didn’t like the milk that he was fed
when she wasn’t home.
"Very well, actually. He didn’t have any
colic, and he slept most of the day. When he was awake, he ate well and stared
at everything interesting, especially the buttons on my dress." She
gestured to the shiny green buttons on the bodice of her dress. Gregory, like
many babies, had a fascination with bright, shiny things.
Gregory wiggled in Rose’s arms, waking up. Rose
rocked him gently as his hands let go of her collar, waving around. She turned
him to look at her, and was rewarded by a bright, toothless smile. Louise
watched them.
"He was smiling a bit this morning,
too," she commented. Gregory caught sight of Louise and grinned for her,
too.
"He started smiling last night. I wonder
if babies usually smile this early, or if this one is different," Rose
wondered, jiggling Gregory up and down. His hand found a loose curl of his
mother’s hair, and he gripped it, tugging slightly. Rose disentangled his fist
from her hair and set him in her lap, supporting him with one arm.
"Who did he smile for?" Louise
asked, smiling at the infant.
"The sunset," Rose replied wryly,
moving one leg up and down in a jiggling motion. Gregory put his thumb in his
mouth and stared at Louise.
"Maybe he’ll be an artist, like his
daddy."
"Maybe," Rose agreed, putting
Gregory back on her shoulder. "Later, he gave me a big smile, and then
spit up on me."
Louise burst out laughing. Rose joined her, a
little ruefully.
"I always wear an apron when I burp
him," she told Louise.
Louise nodded. "Me, too. Babies seem to
spit up a lot. I’ve taken him down to my house a few times, and my mother can
never resist telling me stories about when I was a baby. Apparently I was much
the same way."
"Mother never talked to me much about my
infancy. I don’t know why." Possibly, she thought, it was because of the
baby her mother had lost; perhaps she didn’t want the reminder.
They broke off as they heard Jack’s footsteps
on the front porch. He was whistling jauntily as he opened the door.
Gregory saw him and broke into another smile,
turning his head to look at his father. Jack walked over and joined the group,
taking Gregory from Rose and bouncing him up and down. The baby waved his arms
in delight.
After a moment, Jack handed Gregory back to
Rose and pulled something from his pocket. "I stopped by the post office
on my way home," he told her. "You’ve got a letter."
"A letter?" Rose took it, wondering
who it could be from. She felt a slight twinge of nervousness as she saw the
name on the envelope--Ruth Hockley. Her mother, it seemed, had found another
way to solve her financial problems.
Louise noticed Rose’s expression and got up.
"I’d best be going. I’ll see you tomorrow," she told them, pulling on
her coat and heading for the door.
"Thanks, Louise," Rose mumbled
absently, holding the letter out of reach of Gregory’s hands. Jack took him
from her as Louise slipped out the door.
Rose stared at the envelope for a moment,
half-afraid to open it. Slowly, she unsealed it, and removed the sheet of
paper.
"What does it say?" Jack asked her,
cuddling the baby. Gregory wrapped his hands around one of Jack’s fingers and
attempted to put it in his mouth.
"Let me read it." Rose looked over
the letter. It was only one page, written in her mother’s elegant script, but
the news intrigued her.
Dear Rose,
I am writing to congratulate you on your
marriage to Mr. Dawson. I hope you are very happy. As you can see from the
address, I too have married. Nathan Hockley is a kind husband and a good
provider, and I am content.
I am sorry that I took so long to write,
but it took me some time to accept your marriage. You might be interested to
know that Cal was the one who decided against marrying you, and persuaded me to
marry his father.
Now that I have accepted your marriage, I
hope that you and Jack will accept my invitation to visit with us in March.
Nathan has invested in an art gallery, and we thought that perhaps Jack would
be interested in helping to run it.
Enclosed with this letter, in case you
haven’t noticed them yet, are two second class train tickets for March 13,
1913. In addition, the twenty dollar bill included with them is my birthday
gift to you. I don’t know what you need, living where you are, so I sent you
some money so that you can select your own gift. Happy birthday, Rose. You will
be eighteen on February 19.
I hope you will accept our invitation, and
join us in Philadelphia in March.
Love,
Mother
Rose read the letter over twice, to be sure
her eyes weren’t deceiving her, before turning to Jack.
"Mother congratulates us on our
marriage, and she has announced that she has married Nathan Hockley, Cal’s
father."
"I guess she found the wealth she
wanted, after all."
"And she didn’t have to marry off me to
get it." Rose paused. "She wants us to come and visit in March."
Rose looked inside the envelope again, pulling out the train tickets and the
twenty dollar bill. "She even sent train tickets. We are supposed to leave
March 13. They have even offered you a job."
"A job?"
"Mr. Hockley has invested in an art
gallery. They want you to help run it." She looked up at Jack. "This
could be the opportunity we need, to get out of this town. Most people in
Philadelphia don’t know us, and we could make a fresh start."
Jack pondered the idea. "What about
Cal?"
"According to Mother, he was the one who
rejected the idea of marrying me, and encouraged her to marry his father. I
couldn’t marry him now, anyway. I’m married to you."
Jack shook his head. "I don’t know.
After all the trouble he gave us, I’m not too eager to be in the same city as
him."
"Philadelphia is a big city, and we
probably wouldn’t even have to see him if we didn’t want to."
"You want to go, don’t you?"
Rose thought for a moment. "Yes. I do.
But we can go someplace else if you don’t want to go to Philadelphia."
Jack sighed. "All right. We’ll go. If we
don’t like it, we can always go elsewhere."
"That’s true. And who knows, Cal may
have given up on bothering us. After all, he no longer wants to marry me."
"I hope you’re right."
*****
Jack took Rose and baby Gregory out to dinner
that night, in honor of Rose’s birthday. Gregory was amazingly well-behaved,
sleeping quietly in the carrier Rose had devised from a large basket. He didn’t
raise a fuss until dessert, when he began to wail, reminding them that he, too,
wanted to be fed.
Rose disappeared into the powder room for a
short time, to feed him, and when she returned, a small cake had been placed on
the table, with a few candles on it.
Rose grinned and blew the candles out,
managing to get them all out with one breath. Jack teased her.
"Now I guess you’ll get what you wish
for."
Rose smiled. She hoped so, for what she had
wished for was a new, safe beginning in Philadelphia, away from the condemning
eyes of the people of Chippewa Falls. A new beginning in which Cal did not
interfere.
About forty-five minutes later, they began
the walk home. Rose was quiet, pensive. Finally, Jack asked her what was wrong.
"I was thinking...about
Philadelphia," she told him. "If you really don’t want to go
there..."
"I’m willing to try it, if you are. I
think you’re right; it’s time to leave this town. Philadelphia seems to be our
best option right now--that is, if you really want to go there."
Rose was quiet for a moment. "I do. If
only for a visit. In spite of everything, I’d like to see Mother again, and
perhaps my old friends, if they will even speak to me. And, whatever happens,
it would still be a new place, a new start."
"I think we do need a new place to live,
if only for Gregory’s sake."
"What changed your mind?"
He shrugged. "I’ve heard people
talking...about you, about Gregory. A lot of those comments weren’t nice."
"Have they been talking about you,
too?"
"A little. But it’s different for
me...they’d eventually forgive and forget. Many young men commit their share
of...indiscretions....and people eventually forget about it. It’s almost
expected. Women, on the other hand, are expected to be pure and exemplary, and
it’s quite scandalous that you’re...not. Even if we are married. I don’t want
Gregory to be exposed to that kind of thinking. Whatever sins we’ve committed,
he had nothing to do with it, but people still act like he did."
"I knew they would."
He nodded. "You were right. I guess I
just didn’t want to think about that. Not everyone is like that, and I was kind
of hoping that the others would come around, but I don’t think that’s going to
happen. And I did agree that we would try to find a new place to live in the
spring."
Rose moved closer to him. "Thank you,
Jack. This means a lot to me." Moving Gregory’s carrier to one arm, she
put her other arm around Jack, snuggling close as they walked through the
night.
*****
The next morning, Rose wrote a letter to her
mother.
Dear Mother,
Jack and I have decided to accept your
invitation to visit in March. Jack has also decided to accept your offer of a
job helping to run the art gallery. We look forward to seeing you. However,
there is one thing you should know.
We are bringing a third person with
us--our son, Gregory Peter Dawson. He was born late in January. You are a
grandmother now.
Gregory is a handsome baby, with straight
red hair, blue eyes, and your nose. I hope that you will love and accept him as
a member of your family--he is, after all, your first grandchild.
We should be arriving on March 17, so we
will see you then.
Love,
Rose