“That’s because you wouldn’t have any new family,” Lizzie said. “That can’t be good for the genetic pool. Were you and Thomas secretly second cousins or something?” she added teasingly.
“Ah, no; nothing even nominally salacious, I’m afraid. Thomas and I were nothing alike, in terms of our background, our families, our constitution. People always thought that because he was an engineer, he was the practical one, but he was a dreamer and a romantic, and a far far better person than I.” She said these last words plainly.
“Come on, I doubt that,” Lizzie said. “How many years were you married?”
“Fifty-one, nearly fifty-two.”
“A half a century of breakfasts with the same person, a half a century of dinners together,” Lizzie said. The monotony sounded appealing.
“Well, sometimes we let each other out for good behavior,” Rose said dryly. “But yes, mostly.”
“It’s amazing that you were together that long,” Lizzie said as they rounded a corner. She detected basil—even she could identify the clean, foresty smell.
“Well, you’re young yet; I’m sure you’ll meet someone. But it is luck. I turned Thomas down twice, you know.”
“You did?”
“I did,” she said slyly, with a gleam in her dark eyes.
“Why? Because you weren’t sure?” Lizzie wanted to know. “Because he wasn’t Jewish?”
“Not Jewish?” Now Rose looked annoyed. “I didn’t care about that. No. I was very young. I had just learned about my parents. And marrying, believing in the future—it didn’t feel right.”
Rose couldn’t have been much older than a child herself when she found out that her parents had been killed. Lizzie’s mother’s death had detonated her, twenty-five years ago, and Lizzie felt so unmoored now, as a fully formed adult nearly forty, with both parents gone. It was unimaginable to think of what it must have been like for Rose to have lost her parents, her home, her country, forced to take care of herself when she was not yet twenty.
Lizzie could hear the schoolchildren in the distance, shouts and giggles and teacherly admonishments. Rose was looking at a low bed of herbs. tussie-wussies, a sign explained, small handheld bouquets of scented flowers and herbs that have special meaning for the recipients; delicate purple borage meant bluntness, while the tiny white flowers of sweet alyssum signified worth beyond beauty.
“I remember hearing about tussie-wussies from Mrs. Cohen,” Rose said, and her voice had regained its cool tones. “They’re a romantic Victorian tradition.” She stretched out the first syllable of romantic with significant arch.
“Mrs. Cohen?” Lizzie ventured.
“The wife in the house I lived in.”
“Oh,” Lizzie said. Rose had never mentioned where she had lived in England. “Well, they do sound romantic. A bouquet that tells a story.”
“That’s what she used to say. It’s from the Victorians, and the Victorians had manners, they knew how to live. She was quite an old-fashioned lady, I suppose. But if you ask me, people should say what they mean.”
Then you’d lose out on a whole lot of intrigue, Lizzie was half tempted to say, but the man in the wheelchair was slumped over, chin at his chest, the attendant pushing his chair talking on her cell, Lizzie didn’t feel like joking. “What happened to Mrs. Cohen, the family you lived with?” she asked.
“The Cohens?” Rose looked at Lizzie with surprise, as if she had conjured them out of nowhere. “They’re both long gone. Mr. Cohen died of cancer in the fifties, not long after I moved here, and Mrs. Cohen passed away a few years later. They never had children. They were good to me, Mr. Cohen in particular.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Lizzie said, and she truly was. It wasn’t hard to imagine a horrible story, with many an ugly permutation. Lizzie had read about a pair of Kindertransport siblings who were forced to work as servants in England. They never wrote to their parents to tell them for fear of upsetting them. And what recourse would the parents have had, from so far away?
“He was kind to me, even after I left Leeds. I wish I had been more grateful,” Rose said. “When I lived in London, he used to come into town for work, and I—well, I rarely saw him.” She paused. “Can you smell that? Lavender, I think.”
Lizzie nodded, though she didn’t detect it herself. She wanted to hear more about Rose and London and Mr. Cohen, but she didn’t dare ask.
Rose straightened. “I wish I had been more generous toward him,” she said. “But it wasn’t a time in my life where gratitude or kindness came naturally.”
“I understand that,” Lizzie said. She was in her father’s house, a kid again, ignoring Joseph, staring at The Bellhop, thinking, How did I get here?
“I know you do,” Rose said. She stooped to examine a plant with prickly leaves. “Your father loved you very much,” she said.
Lizzie felt a chill out in the bright Southern California sun. “Thank you for saying that,” she finally said. “I loved him too.” She was afraid that if she looked at Rose, she would start crying.
“He knew. He really loved you. I didn’t know him all that well, but I know that.”
“Thank you,” Lizzie said, nodding fast.
“It’s the truth,” Rose said. “You need to remember.” She tucked the loose end beneath the rest of her scarf, and gestured down the brick path. “Shall we?” They picked up the pace in silence. Then Rose spoke: “I heard you were once engaged.” She said this as if passing along a small piece of useful news.
“You did?” Lizzie said as heat rose to her cheeks.
“Your father mentioned it. You’re surprised.”
“A little,” Lizzie said. It both gladdened and unnerved her, to think of Joseph talking about her and Ben. “What did he say?”
“Only that you had been engaged and that you had ended it.” Rose spoke the words so evenly that Lizzie became convinced she meant something else entirely. Did she think Lizzie was the type who couldn’t make a commitment? Did Joseph tell her that he thought his daughter was being unrealistic? That was the gist of what he’d said to Lizzie. Oh, he said, I knew things were hard, but I had no idea it was that bad. Are you sure? Because no matter who it is, you’ll always have to compromise.
It hadn’t been one of her finer moments; she’d turned it back on him. “Is that what you did with Mom, compromise?” And they were off to the races. You have no idea what happened with your mother, he said. You have no idea what I think about anything! Lizzie could remember shrieking, fourteen again.
“I do remember him saying that he was glad you had called it off beforehand, glad that you hadn’t decided six months after the fact that you’d made a mistake. But he was disappointed.”
“He liked Ben,” Lizzie said. It was such a simple, innocuous statement, and yet her throat tightened up. “Everyone liked Ben.”