The Roses

We walk past the old, slump block house, & I can’t help but glance at the blinds, drawn down like surrendering eyelids. The front yard has a small, white statue of Mary Magdalene with her palms turned up in what could either be a gesture of welcome or a sign of dismay. Once, as part of a home health care company, I was inside, speaking with a woman who thought I was her grandson. I corrected her the first time, but afterwards, I went along with the story. It was easier. My job was to get her up & walk with her around the home, where residents gazed with peach-pit eyes at the television & waited for a savior to come. We walked on a thin, cement path that lined the backyard, between geraniums arranging their lipstick toward the light. We came to know each other. I learned that she grew up in a small farming town not far from my real grandmother, which explained her familiar tenderness & prolonged drawl. After several days of this, she asked if I would go to her house & check on the roses, like her husband & son had done before they died, tragically, in the same 12 months. I don’t know why, but I did. It was summer, & roses are not a hardy plant. The raised bed held nothing but a crisp, brown carcass. Rather than lie, I bought a 3-gallon rose plant at the nursery & returned with a shovel. That way, I could say Don’t worry, as she breathed more heavily, as the day came she could not leave her bed, they are doing alright. It was true— I’d managed to fix her irrigation, & I shouldn’t have expected, I guess, more than one miracle. So when she died two weeks later, her room a blank slate, all I could think about— & all I can see for a block after passing that house— was that she’d never said goodbye to her grandson & the deep, deep red of those roses.