Mrs. McMahon sighed, for a moment relenting. Rose kept knocking back the insults as though she were playing tennis.
“Oh, hush. You know those two monsters will go into hysterics if I send you away. You’ve cast a spell on the two of them. Tell me, have you ever known a woman cursed with two such contrary brats? They’re spoiled rotten. There’s no redemption for either of them. It’s not as though I don’t love them, but I just don’t have a lot of hope for them. It’s because their father has made me so miserable. That’s why they are the way they are.”
She reached over and grasped Rose’s wrist, her grip like a handcuff. It was as if she had no intention of letting go until Rose agreed with her.
“I should have married somebody else. I’m in the wrong marriage. I have the wrong children.”
Instinctively Rose stepped back from Mrs. McMahon, as if her employer were a deep hole she might fall into. She was alarmed and confused by the older woman’s grief. She could sense the enormity of what had been taken away from her but could barely comprehend it.
15
PIERROT’S SAD CAREER AS CASANOVA
After three years of sending unanswered letters, at eighteen years of age, Pierrot could only conclude that Rose was eternally annoyed with him. He wished she would just write one letter back that confirmed his suspicions. But it seemed absurd to continue to write to her, and so in that third year he stopped. The lack of closure bothered him a little bit more every day, until it somehow became a part of the fabric of his being.
He felt like something was missing from his life, almost as if something was supposed to happen by the end of each day but never came about. It was like reading a book and finding out at the end that the last two pages had been torn out. He often checked his pockets, not knowing what it was that he felt he had misplaced.
He could never really get to know anybody in the way he had known Rose. He wanted to visit her, but he was afraid of seeing Sister Elo?se. He thought that somehow he would be a little boy again and that she would be able to hurt him. Finally he decided he would take matters into his own hands and go visit Rose. He would simply tell Sister Elo?se to get out of his way. He was pretending to be a rich man now, and he wanted to tell Rose that he loved her and that he was not the degenerate she believed him to be.
He drove the car quickly down to the orphanage. He spun the steering wheel as though it were a lock whose combination he was solving. He honked his horn the whole way. He honked it in part so that everyone would stand back and he would get there faster. But he also honked it out of joy. He imagined Rose hearing the honking and looking up from scrubbing the floors, knowing it was him. He was like a flock of geese announcing their return from the south, and that all the false rulers should get right the fuck out of their thrones. The pigeons sitting on top of statues should move over.
Sister Elo?se, having heard the ruckus of his car, came to the orphanage gates to investigate. She was surprised to see Pierrot, and to see the outfit he was wearing. Perhaps if he had been wearing anything else, she wouldn’t have been so cruel to him. But although she had braced herself for his presence one day, she wasn’t quite ready for the figure he cut as he stepped out of the car. If anyone were to see him, they would never have known that he was an orphan. He wore a tailored suit and polished shoes. He had a wonderful haircut. He reached into the backseat and pulled out a bouquet of flowers wrapped in brown paper. The flowers looked all tousled, like children who had been awakened by a fire alarm in the middle of the night.
His manner too made him seem rich. He was light on his feet, the way rich young men without a care in the world are.
For a second Sister Elo?se thought the flowers were for her. Then she realized she had been an utter fool. As Pierrot leaned against the gate, the bouquet was tilted toward her; there were roses inside, and she knew who they were for. She felt so deeply humiliated by her assumption that her face went red. How many times would she be surprised that he had forgotten his promise to love her?
Pierrot hoped Sister Elo?se would just pretend that what had happened between them hadn’t occurred at all. It was criminal, after all. He began by playing that game, hoping she would go along with it.
“I’d like to see Rose, please.”
“She isn’t here anymore. She hasn’t been here for years.”
“Ahhhh! Of course she left years ago! Because I sent her a lot of letters and not one of them was answered, which led me to believe she was not receiving them. Because, as I’m sure you will concede, Rose always had a particular fondness for me. And an affection like that doesn’t dissipate every day.”