A LADY NAMED ROSE
Chapter Forty-Eight
April 14, 1917
The church was filled to capacity.
Rose nervously checked her upswept hair in
a vestibule mirror. She could hear the organist playing the processional; it
sounded horribly loud. She drew in a shaky breath, grasped her bouquet a little
tighter, and reminded herself to smile before beginning her solitary march down
the aisle.
The guests stood in unison. At a distant
altar, Meg, her matron of honor, and bridesmaids Angelica, Vera, and Charlotte
awaited in lavender gowns.
And of course, Sebastian.
She was almost there when she noticed that
one male guest on the aisle had his back turned to her. He was not wearing
formal dress.
Rose stopped short and let out a little
cry. Her bouquet dropped to the carpet.
Jack turned slowly to face her, in his
eyes a sad reproach.
*****
Rose awakened and draped Sebastian about his
bare torso. He stirred and moaned softly in his sleep.
The early morning chill crept through the
bedroom. Sebastian rarely spent time in his tiny New York flat and never
invested much energy in making sure the furnace was working properly; therefore
the bedroom often felt like the inside of an icebox in the cooler months. Rose
finally couldn’t stand it anymore and climbed out of bed, wrapping herself in
the quilt that had been about her only source of warmth. Sebastian didn’t wake
up. He didn’t mind the cold.
She padded barefoot into the kitchen and felt
around in the dark cupboards for the matches. Using the cook stove for warmth
and light, she re-read the New York Times that had been lying on the
table for the last eight days.
House at 3:12 AM, Votes for War, 373 to 50
$3,000,000 Asked for Army of 1,000,000
Nation’s Gigantic Resources Mobilized
Her fiancé would join the Army. He would go
fight the war in Europe and search for his mother. And Rose would lose him.
He chose the next day–the fifteenth, of all
days, Rose thought with a touch of paranoia–to tell her he’d enlisted. Just
taken himself down to the recruitment office and signed up while she was at
rehearsal one day. Everyone had been wondering where he’d disappeared to.
They talked over dinner at a small, intimate
café after the last performance of the weekend. Rose was exhausted from the strain
of anxiety and from the effort of having to join some of the other actors in
silly antics on the street to lure passersby to the theater--ticket sales were
at an all-time low following President Wilson’s declaration of war. As
Sebastian spoke haltingly of an upcoming physical and weeks of training in some
facility miles away, Rose stared at her plate. She said not a word, finally
realizing after awhile that he’d stopped talking and was awaiting a reaction.
"Darling, I’m sorry," he said,
taking her by the hand. "I wanted to tell you right away–"
"But you waited until now." Her
voice was clipped, impatient. "You waited until we were having dinner in a
nice restaurant, because you didn’t want me to make a scene."
"That’s not true," he insisted, a tone
of desperation seeping into his voice. "There’ll never be a good time for
something like this. But I couldn’t wait any longer. Rose, I don’t want to
leave you."
"Then don’t leave."
"You know why I need to go to Germany.
She’s alive, I can feel it, my father felt it. And I owe it to his
memory–"
"His memory of a woman who left him to
raise their four-year-old son alone. That’s all he had left of her, memories.
And now he’s dead, and for all you know, so is she."
She pushed away from the table and removed
the diamond ring that had never left her finger since Christmas Eve. "Go
chase your ghosts, Sebastian. And take this with you to remember me by."
She left the ring on the table and walked
calmly out of the restaurant. He didn’t follow her.
*****
They avoided each other for days to come.
Then he gave notice at the theater and Fritz took over directing duties. Rose
ignored the other actors’ prying questions and left it to Angelica to explain
his departure, which she was all too happy to do.
Rose had other concerns. Attendance steadily
declined at the shows, leaving the theater only one-quarter full on many
occasions. Fritz began letting some of the stagehands go, then some of the
dancers. Longtime members of the troupe saw the writing on the wall, and a few of
them defected, either to other groups or to other careers entirely. But most
remained, unwilling to give up their status or their rooms in the boarding
house.
Meanwhile, the threats and vandalism
continued. Anna and some of the others were nearly afraid to leave the house at
night, but Fritz urged everyone to carry on as if nothing were amiss. "We
close down, they win."
One evening in early May, just a few days
before Sebastian was due to leave for basic training, Rose answered a knock at
her door and was pleasantly surprised to see Vera on the threshold. Behind her
stood a scowling Angelica.
"I told her to wait for you in the
parlor," she snapped before continuing on to her own room.
"I see Angelica is her usual cheery
self," Vera commented, easing out of her shawl.
"Her father received a death threat
today," Rose said.
Vera stopped in the act of lowering her shawl
to a chair, spun around and gaped at her. "We’ve gotten dozens of them in
the last few weeks. Because of Fritz’s nationality," Rose continued in a
falsely matter-of-fact tone. "I mean, I haven’t personally, but–"
"That’s horrible!" Vera cried.
"The Geisels are Americans. They’re not responsible for the war."
"Try telling that to the people who
spilled blood on our stage last Saturday," Rose responded. "We don’t
know what poor animal it came from. We just know it couldn’t have been
human." Her voice broke. She covered her mouth and turned away. In an
instant, Vera’s arms encircled her, and her blond head rested on one shoulder.
"He’s leaving me," Rose whimpered.
"Sebastian’s enlisted in the Army."
Vera stared at her. "What are you doing
here, for heaven’s sake? You should be with him."
"I’m canceling the wedding. He can’t say
when, or if, he’ll return. His mother’s in Germany. She disappeared more than a
year ago, and he thinks he’ll track her down. How foolhardy is that?"
"You didn’t answer my question."
"What’s the purpose, Vera? He’s already
made it clear where he wants to be. I can’t stop him from risking his
life."
"Of course you can’t. But you do want
him to come back, don’t you?"
Rose shook her head. "He won’t come
back."
"How do you know that?"
"He won’t come back."
"So you call off the wedding on a hunch
that there won’t be a groom," Vera chided her. "And you expect him to
change his mind?"
Rose was silent. She reached for a
handkerchief on her vanity, and Vera pressed one into her hand.
"Make the most of the few days you
have," she offered. "Give him something to look forward to while he’s
overseas."
*****
She could tell Sebastian was amazed to see
her at his door at nine that night, but even more shocking were the lacy
undergarments she wore beneath a revealing dress.
"Where did you buy these things?"
he demanded, a lecherous grin creeping across his face.
"Never mind where I bought them,"
she teased. "Just come help me out of them, will you?"
She spent the next four days at his
apartment, leaving only for work and once for the grocer, to stock his pantry.
They prepared the most fabulous meals, danced to his records and made love
frantically for hours at a time.
At the crack of dawn on Saturday, they
carried hastily packed bags to Grand Central Station, where he handed her the
keys to the Daimler Benz. "Take good care of her. I don’t want to hear of
any more damaged garages."
Rose grabbed him around the neck. "Find
her, Sebastian. Find her and bring her home so we can both get to know
her."
*****
The size of the audience was abysmal. The
actors put on their best faces possible and hurried backstage after each curtain
to weak applause. In the dressing rooms they changed costumes quickly and
quietly.
Angelica’s brother Hans was the first to see
the smoke. Assisting the shorthanded crew, he was headed for a storage closet
to look for a light bulb. The choking smell stopped him; the fire was started
in that very closet, it was later determined.
Fortunately, everyone escaped the theater
alive before it burned to the ground. They stood in a cluster along with
neighborhood residents and watched the blaze in shock.
The arsonist was never apprehended.