Part II
THE OPEN HIGHWAY
THROUGH THE
SAVAGE GARDEN
5
The Story of Rose
THE FIRST TIME Rose saw Uncle Lestan, he carried her up into the stars. That’s how she remembered it and nothing ever weakened the conviction that he’d scooped her up from the terrace by the seawall and carried her straight through the clouds and towards the Heavens. Rose remembered always the chill of the wind and those stars above her, millions of stars fixed in the black sky like myriad burning lights. She remembered Uncle Lestan’s arms around her, and the way he whispered to her not to be afraid, the way he brought his coat close to protect her.
They were on another island when Rose learned her mother had died in the earthquake. Everyone had died. The entire little island had gone down into the sea, but this island would not, Uncle Lestan said. She was safe with him here. He’d find her people in America. He gave her a beautiful doll with long blond hair and a pink dress and bare feet. It was made of vinyl and would never break.
This was in a beautiful house with rounded windows and big balconies over the sea, and two very gentle ladies took care of Rose though she couldn’t understand a word they said. Uncle Lestan explained they were Greek ladies, but he wanted Rose to remember: What was her last name? What was her mother’s name?
Rose said her mother’s name was Morningstar Fisher. She had no father. Her grandparents didn’t like her because they didn’t know who her father was and they wouldn’t give money anymore to Morningstar. Rose remembered seeing her grandmother and grandfather in Athens, Texas. “We don’t know who her father is,” the old man had said. Rose’s mom had given up, and carried Rose out of the little brick house and across a big field, and they’d hitched a ride to the airport in Dallas and flown away with Mom’s new friend, JRock, who had money from his band to live in Greece for at least a year.
“They don’t want me,” Rose said. “Can’t I stay with you?”
Uncle Lestan was so kind to Rose. He had darkly tanned skin and the most beautiful blue eyes Rose had ever seen. When he smiled, Rose loved him.
Uncle Lestan said, “I’ll be with you, Rose, as long as you need me.”
She woke in the night crying for her mother. He held her in his arms. He felt so strong, so powerful. They stood on the edge of the patio, looking up at the cloudy sky. He told her that she was sweet and good and beautiful, and he wanted her to be happy.
“When you grow up, Rose, you can be anything you want,” Uncle Lestan said. “Remember that. This is a magnificent world. And we are blessed with the gift of life in it.” He sang to her in a low voice. He told her this was “Serenade” from an operetta called The Student Prince. The song made her cry, it was so beautiful.
“Remember always,” he said, “that nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this—that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life.”
Rose felt she knew what magnificent was as she looked out over the shining waters below, and then up once more at those stars twinkling beyond the mist. Uncle Lestan’s left fingers touched the flowering vines that covered the railing, and he tore off a small handful of petals for Rose, and said that she was as soft and precious as these petals, a “precious living thing.”
When Rose thought back on it, she remembered seeing him several times before the night the island sank into the sea. He’d been roaming around on that island. He was a tall man with beautiful blond hair, just the most beautiful hair. It was long and full and he wore it back, tied at the back of his neck with a little black string. He always wore a velvet coat, just like Rose’s best velvet dress which had been in her suitcase. He had walked around the island looking at things. He wore shiny black boots, very smooth without buckles. Not cowboy boots. And whenever he happened to pass Rose, he smiled at her and he winked.
Rose hated Athens, Texas. But he took her there, though she could not clearly remember the trip. Just waking up in the Dallas airport with a nice lady to take care of her, and a porter collecting their bags. Uncle Lestan showed up the next night.
The old woman and the old man didn’t want her. They sat in a lawyer’s office on “the town square” at night, and the old man said that they didn’t have to make this appointment after dark, that he didn’t like to drive at night when he didn’t have to, that this was “disruptive” and he and his wife could have explained all this on the telephone. The old woman just shook her head as the old man explained: “We didn’t have anything to do with Morningstar, you see, what with the musicians and the drugs. We don’t know this child.”
The lawyers talked on and on, but Uncle Lestan became angry. “Look, I want to adopt her,” he said. “Make it happen!”
That was the first time Rose had ever heard someone say, “Make it happen.” And it was the first and last time she ever saw Uncle Lestan angry. He’d dropped his angry voice to a whisper but he’d made everybody in the room jump, especially Rose, and when he saw this, he took Rose in his arms and carried her outside the building, for a walk around the little town.
“I’ll always take care of you, Rose,” he said. “You’re my responsibility now and I’m glad of it. I want you to have everything, Rose, and I’ll see to it that you do. I don’t know what’s wrong with those people that they don’t love you. I love you.”
Rose went to live in Florida with Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge in a beautiful house blocks from the sea. The sand on the beach was as white and fine as sugar. Rose had her own room with flowered wallpaper and a canopy bed, and dolls and books that Uncle Lestan sent to her. Uncle Lestan wrote her letters in the most beautiful handwriting and black ink on pink paper.
Aunt Marge drove Rose to a private school called the Country Lane Academy. The school was a wonderland of games to play and projects to do, and computers on which to write words, and bright-faced eager teachers. There were only fifty students in the whole school and Rose was reading Dr. Seuss in no time. On Tuesdays, the whole school spoke Spanish and only Spanish. And they went on trips to museums and zoos and Rose loved all this.
At home Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie helped Rose with her homework, and they baked cakes and cookies, and when the weather was cool, they cooked barbecue outdoors and drank lemonade mixed with iced tea with lots of sugar. Rose loved swimming in the gulf. For her sixth birthday, Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie gave a party and invited the whole school to come, even the older kids, and it was the best picnic ever.
By the time Rose was ten, she understood that Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge were paid to take care of her. Uncle Lestan was her legal guardian. But she never doubted that her aunts loved her, and she loved them. They were retired schoolteachers, Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge, and they talked all the time about how good Uncle Lestan was to all of them. And they were all happy together when Uncle Lestan came to visit.
It was always late in the evening when he arrived, and he brought presents for everyone—books, clothes, laptop computers, and wonderful gadgets. Sometimes he came in a big black car. Other times he just appeared, and Rose laughed to herself when she saw how mussed his hair was, because she knew he’d been flying, flying like that first time, when the little island had sunk into the sea and he had carried her up into the Heavens.
But Rose never told anyone about that, and as she got older she came to think that it just couldn’t have happened.
She’d gone from the Country Lane Academy to the Willmont School some fifty miles farther away, and there she was really getting into the most fascinating subjects. She loved literature and history best of all, and after that music, and art appreciation and French. But she did all right in science and math because she felt she had to. Everybody would be so disappointed if she did not do well. But what she really wanted was to read all the time, and her happiest times at school were in the library.
When Uncle Lestan called, she told him all about it, and they talked of books he loved and that she loved, and he reminded her: “Rose, when you grow up, remember, you can be anything you want. You can be a writer, a poet, a singer, a dancer, a teacher, anything.”
When Rose turned thirteen, she and her aunts went on a tour of Europe. Uncle Lestan wasn’t with them but he had paid for everything. This was the greatest time of Rose’s life. They spent three whole months traveling together, and went to all the great cities of the world in what Uncle Lestan called “the Grand Tour.” And they visited Russia too, spending five days in Saint Petersburg and five days in Moscow.
For Rose it was all about the most beautiful old buildings, palaces, castles, cathedrals, ancient towns, and the museums filled with the paintings she’d read about and saw now with her own eyes. Above all else, Rose loved Rome, Florence, and Venice. But everywhere she turned, Rose was enchanted by new discoveries.
Uncle Lestan surprised her when they were in Amsterdam. He had a secret key to the Rijksmuseum because he was a patron and he took Rose through it in the evening hours so they could be alone and linger as long as they wanted before the great Rembrandt paintings.
He arranged after-hours showings like that for them in many cities. But Amsterdam had a place in Rose’s heart, because there, Uncle Lestan had been with her.
When Rose was fifteen, she got into trouble. She took the family car without permission. She didn’t have a driver’s license yet, and it was her plan to get the car back before either Aunt Julie or Aunt Marge woke up. She’d only wanted to drive for a few hours with her new friends, Betty and Charlotte, and none of them thought anything bad would happen. But they got into a fender bender on the highway, and Rose ended up in juvenile court.
Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge sent word to Uncle Lestan, but he was traveling and no one could find him. Rose was glad. She was so shamed, so miserable, so afraid that he would be disappointed in her.
The judge who heard the case shocked everyone. He let off Betty and Charlotte because they had not stolen the car, but he sentenced Rose to Amazing Grace Home for Girls for the period of one year due to her criminal behavior. He gave a dire warning to Rose that if she did not behave well at Amazing Grace, he would extend her stay till she was eighteen and possibly even longer. He said Rose had been in danger of becoming an addict with her antisocial behavior and possibly even a street person.
Aunt Marge and Aunt Julie were frantic, begging the judge not to do this. Again and again, they argued, as did the lawyers, that they were not pressing charges against Rose for stealing the car, that this had been a prank and nothing more, that the child’s uncle must be contacted.
It did no good. Rose was handcuffed and taken as a prisoner to the Amazing Grace Home for Girls somewhere in southern Florida.
All the way there, she sat quiet, numb with fear, while the men and women in the car talked of a “good Christian environment” where Rose would learn the Bible, and learn how to be “a good girl” and come back to her aunts “an obedient Christian child.”
The “home” exceeded Rose’s worst fears.
She was met by the minister Dr. Hays and his wife, Mrs. Hays, both of whom were well dressed and smiling and gracious.
But as soon as the police were gone and they were alone with Rose, they told her that she must admit all the bad things she’d done or Amazing Grace wasn’t going to be able to help her. “You know the things you’ve done with boys,” Mrs. Hays said. “You know what drugs you’ve used, the kind of music you’ve been listening to.”
Rose was frantic. She’d never done anything bad with boys, and her favorite music was classical. Sure she did listen to rock music but—. Mrs. Hays shook her head. Denying who and what she had done was bad, said Mrs. Hays. She did not want to see Rose again until Rose had had a change of attitude.
Rose was given ugly shapeless clothes to wear, and escorted everywhere around the grim sterile buildings by two older students who stood guard over her even when she had to use the bathroom. They would not give her a minute of privacy. They watched her when she performed the most delicate of bodily functions.
The food was unbearable, and lessons were reading and copying Bible verses. Rose was slapped for making eye contact with other girls, or with teachers, or for trying to “talk,” or for asking questions, and made to scrub the dining room on her hands and knees for failing to show a “good attitude.”
When Rose demanded to call home, to talk to her aunts about where she was, she was taken to “a time-out room,” a small closet with one high window, and there she was beaten with a leather belt by an older woman who told her that she had better show a change of attitude now, and that if she didn’t she’d never be allowed a phone call to her “family.”
“Do you want to be a bad girl?” asked the woman sorrowfully. “Don’t you understand what your parents are trying to do for you here? Your parents don’t want you now. You rebelled, you disappointed them.”
Rose lay on the floor of that room for two days, crying. There was a bucket and a pallet there and nothing else. The floor smelled of chemical cleaners and urine. Twice people came in with food for her. An older girl crouched down and whispered, “Just go along with it. You can’t win against these people. And please, eat. If you don’t eat, they’ll keep giving you the same plate over and over until you do eat the food, even if it’s rotting.”
Rose was furious. Where were Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge? Where was Uncle Lestan? What if Uncle Lestan knew what had happened and he was angry and disgusted with her? She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe he’d turn his back on her like that, not without talking to her. But she was consumed with shame for what she’d done. And she was ashamed of herself now in the shapeless clothes, her body unwashed, her hair unwashed, her skin itching and feverish.
She felt feverish all over and her system had locked up. In the bathroom, before the watchful eyes of her guardians, she could not move her bowels. Her body ached and her head ached. In fact, she was feeling the worst pain she’d ever known in her stomach and in her head.
Rose was surely running a temperature by the time she was taken to the first group session. Without a shower or bath, she felt filthy.
They put a paper sign on her that said I AM A SLUT and told her to admit that she had used drugs, that she’d listened to satanic music, that she’d slept with boys.
Over and over Rose said that she had not slept with anyone, that she had not done drugs.
Again and again, other girls stood before her screaming at her: “Admit, admit.”
“Say it: ‘I am a slut.’ ”
“Say it: ‘I am an addict.’ ”
Rose refused. She started screaming. She’d never done drugs in her life. No one at the Willmont School did drugs. She’d never been with a boy except to kiss at a dance.
She found herself down on the floor with other girls sitting on her legs and her arms. She couldn’t stop screaming until her mouth filled with vomit. She almost choked on it. With all her soul, she struggled, screaming louder and louder, spitting vomit everywhere.
When Rose awoke, she was alone in a room and she knew she was more than just a little sick. She was hot all over and the pain in her stomach was unbearable. Her head was on fire. Over and over when she heard another person passing she asked for water.
The answer came back, “Faker.”
How long did she lie there? It seemed like days, but soon she was half dreaming. Over and over she prayed to Uncle Lestan. “Come get me, please, come get me. I didn’t mean to do it, please, please forgive me.” She couldn’t imagine that he would want her to suffer like this. Surely Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge had told him what was happening. Aunt Marge had been hysterical by the time they took Rose away.
At some point, Rose realized something. She was dying. All she could think of now was water. And every time she drifted off, it was a dream that someone was giving her water; then she’d wake and there was no water; and there was no one there; no one passing; no one saying “faker,” and no one saying “admit.”
A strange calm came over Rose. So this is how her life would end, she thought. And maybe Uncle Lestan just didn’t know or didn’t understand how bad it was. What would it matter?
She slept and she dreamed but she kept shivering and waking with a jolt. Her lips were cracked. And there was so much pain in her stomach and chest and her head that she could feel nothing else.
Sliding in and out, dreaming of cold clear water in glasses from which she could drink, she heard sirens go off. They were loud screeching sirens far away but coming closer, and then alarms within this place itself went off, blasting with horrific volume. Rose could smell smoke. She could see the flicker of flames. She heard the girls screaming.
Right before her, the wall broke apart and so did the ceiling. The whole room blew apart with chunks of plaster and wood flying in all directions.
Wind swept through the room. The screams around her grew louder and louder.
A man came towards Rose. He looked like Uncle Lestan, but it wasn’t Uncle Lestan. It was a dark-haired man and a beautiful man with the same bright eyes that Uncle Lestan had, except this man’s eyes were green. He scooped Rose up from her pallet and wrapped her in something warm and close, and then they went upwards.
Rose saw flames all around as they rose. The entire compound was burning.
The man carried her up and up into the sky just as it had happened long years ago above the little island.
The air was marvelously cold and fresh. “Yes, the stars …,” she whispered.
When she saw the great sweep of diamond-bright stars, she was that little child again in Uncle Lestan’s arms.
A gentle voice spoke in her ear, “Sleep, Rose, you’re safe now. I’m taking you to your uncle Lestan.”
Rose woke in a hospital room. She was surrounded by people in white coats and masks. A kindly female voice said, “You’re going to be all right, darling. I’m giving you something to make you sleep.”
Behind the nurse stood that man, that dark-haired man with the green eyes, who’d brought Rose here. He had the same darkly tanned skin as Uncle Lestan had, and his fingers felt like silk as he stroked Rose’s cheek now.
“I’m your uncle’s friend, Rose,” he said. “My name is Louis.” He pronounced it the French way, Louie. “Believe me, Rose, your uncle will be here soon. He’s on his way. He’ll take care of you, and I’ll be here until he comes.”
Next time she opened her eyes, she felt completely different. All the pain and pressure were gone from her stomach and chest. They’d evacuated all the waste from her body, she realized that. And when she thought of how revolting that must have been, fingers prying into her unwashed flesh, removing all that filth, she felt ashamed again and sobbed against the pillow. She felt to blame and miserable. The tall dark-haired man stroked her hair and told her not to worry anymore. “Your aunt Julie is on the way. Your uncle is on the way. Go back to sleep, Rose.”
Though she was groggy and confused, she could see she was being given fluids and something white, some sort of IV nourishment. The doctor came. She said it would be about a week before Rose could leave, but the “danger” was past. It had been touch and go there for a while, all right. But Rose would be fine. The infection was under control; Rose was hydrated now. The man named Louis thanked the doctor and the nurse.
Rose blinked through her tears. The room was filled with flowers. “He’s sent you lilies,” said Louis. He had a soft deep voice. “He’s sent you roses, too, all colors of roses. Your flower, Rose.”
When Rose started to apologize for what she’d done, Louis wouldn’t hear of it. He told her the people who’d taken her were “evil.” The judge had gotten kickbacks from the Christian home to send perfectly decent teenagers there for incarceration. The school bilked the parents of the children and the state for exorbitant payments. He said that the judge would soon be in jail. As for the home, it was gone, burned down, shut up, and lawyers would see that it never opened again.
“It was wrong what they did to you,” he whispered.
In his soft unhurried voice, he said there would be many lawsuits against the home. And the remains of two bodies had been found buried on the grounds. He wanted Rose to know these people would be punished.
Rose was amazed. She wanted to explain about the car, that she had never meant to hurt anybody.
“I know,” he said. “It was a little thing. It was nothing. Your uncle is not angry with you. He would never be angry with you over such a thing. Sleep now.”
By the time Uncle Lestan came Rose was home with Aunt Marge in a Miami Beach apartment. She had lost weight and felt frail and jumped at the slightest noise. But she was much better. Uncle Lestan took her into his arms, and they went out to walk along the beach together.
“I want you to go to New York,” said Uncle Lestan. “New York is the capital of the world. And I want you to go to school there. Aunt Marge is going to take you. Aunt Julie will stay behind. Florida is her home and she can’t adjust to the big city. But Aunt Marge will take care of you, and you’re to have other companions now, good, decent security guards who’ll keep you both safe. I want you to have the finest education.” He went on, “Remember, Rose, whatever you’ve suffered, no matter how bad it’s been, you can use that, use that to be a stronger person.”
For hours they talked, not about the horrid Christian home but about other things, Rose’s love of books, her dreams of writing poetry and stories someday, and her enthusiasm about New York, and how she so wanted to go to a great university like Harvard or Stanford or who knows where?
Those were wonderful hours. They’d stopped at a café on South Beach, and Uncle Lestan sat there quietly, leaning on his elbows, beaming at her as she poured out all her thoughts and dreams and questions.
The new apartment in New York was on the Upper East Side, about two blocks from the park in a venerable old building with spacious rooms and high ceilings. Aunt Marge and Rose were both overjoyed to be there.
Rose went to a marvelous day school which had a curriculum far superior to that of the Willmont School. With the help of several tutors, mostly college students, Rose soon caught up and was deep into her school work preparing to go to college.
Though Rose missed the beautiful beach in Florida and the lovely warm sweet rural nights, she was ecstatic to be in New York, loved her schoolmates, and was secretly happy that Aunt Marge was with her and not Aunt Julie, as Aunt Marge had always been the adventurous one, the mischievous one, and they had more fun together.
Their household soon included a permanent housekeeper and cook, and the security-guard drivers who took them everywhere.
There were times when Rose wanted to strike out on her own, meet kids on her own, take the subway, be independent.
But Uncle Lestan was adamant. Rose’s drivers went where Rose went. Embarrassed as Rose was by the big stretch Lincoln limousine that dropped her off at school, she came to depend on this. And these drivers were all past masters of double parking anywhere in Midtown while Rose shopped, and thought nothing of carrying twenty and thirty bundles and even braving the checkout lines for Rose, or running errands for her. They were young mostly, cheerful guys, and kind of like guardian angels.
Aunt Marge was frank about enjoying all this completely.
It was a new way of life, and it had its charms, but the real lure of course was New York itself. She and Aunt Marge had subscription tickets to the symphony, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera. They attended the latest musicals on Broadway, and plenty of off-Broadway plays. They shopped at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks; they roamed the Metropolitan Museum for hours on Saturdays and often spent weekends visiting the galleries in the Village and SoHo. This was life!
Over the phone, Rose talked endlessly to Uncle Lestan about this or that play she’d seen, or concert, or what was happening with Shakespeare in the Park, and how they wanted to go to Boston this weekend, just to see it, and perhaps visit Harvard.
The summer before Rose’s senior year, she and Aunt Marge met Uncle Lestan in London for a marvelous week of visiting the most wonderful sites after hours and with private guides. Then Aunt Marge and Rose went on to Rome, and to Florence and to a whole string of other cities before returning to New York just in time for school to start.
It was sometime just before her eighteenth birthday that Rose turned to the internet to research the ghastly Amazing Grace Home for Girls where she’d been imprisoned. She had never told anyone she knew about what actually happened to her there.
The news reports confirmed everything Louis had told her long ago. The judge who’d sent Rose there had gone to prison. And two lawyers had gone with him.
On Rose’s last night there, apparently, a boiler had exploded, setting fire to the entire establishment. Two other explosions had destroyed outbuildings and stables. Rose had never known there were stables. Local firefighters and police had converged on the school to find girls wandering the grounds dazed and incoherent from the shock of the blast, and many had had visible welts and bruises from being beaten. One or two had shaved heads; and two had been taken to local emergency rooms due to malnutrition and dehydration. Some girls had the words SLUT and ADDICT written on them with felt-tip pen. Newspaper stories reflected contempt and outrage. They railed against the school as a racket, part of the unregulated religious Troubled Teen Industry in which parents were bilked out of thousands of dollars to pay for “reformation” of teen girls they feared were in danger of becoming druggies or dropouts or suicides.
Everybody connected with the place had been indicted for something, it seemed; but charges eventually were dropped. There was no law requiring regulation of religious schools in Florida, and the owners and “faculty” of the place dropped out of the record.
But it was easy to trace Dr. Hays and Mrs. Hays. They had both died within months in a fiery home invasion. One of the other more notorious teachers had drowned off Miami Beach. And yet another had been killed in a car wreck.
Rose hated to admit it but this gave her a great deal of satisfaction. At the same time, something about it bothered Rose. A terrible feeling crept over her. Had someone punished these people for what they’d done, done to Rose and to others? But that was absurd. Who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing? She put it out of her mind, and it was dreadful, she told herself, to be glad these people were dead. Rose did a little more reading on the Troubled Teen Industry and other scandals besetting these unregulated Christian schools and homes, but then she couldn’t endure another moment of thinking of it all. It made her too angry, and when she became angry, she became ashamed, ashamed that she’d ever—. There was no end to it. She closed the book on that brief and horrid chapter of her life. The present beckoned.
Uncle Lestan wanted Rose to follow her own star when it came to college. He assured her nothing was off-limits.
She and Marge flew to California to visit Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
Stanford, near beautiful Palo Alto, California, was Rose’s final choice, and Rose and Marge moved the July before school started.
Uncle Lestan met Rose in San Francisco for a brief holiday in August. Rose fell in love with the city, and had half a mind to live there and commute. Uncle Lestan had another suggestion. Why not live near campus as planned, and have an apartment in San Francisco? It was soon arranged, and Rose and Marge moved into a spacious modern condo walking distance from Davies Symphony Hall and the San Francisco Opera House.
Their small house on a tree-lined street in Palo Alto was charming. And though the change of coasts meant a new housekeeper, and two new drivers, Rose was soon settled in and loving the California sunshine.
After her first week of classes, Rose was in love with her literature professor, a tall, wiry, and introspective man who spoke with the affectation of an actor. Gardner Paleston was his name; he’d been a prodigy of sorts, publishing four volumes of poetry as well as two books on the work of William Carlos Williams before he was thirty. At thirty-five, he was brooding, intense, bombastic, and utterly seductive. He flirted openly with Rose, and told her over coffee after class that she was the most beautiful young woman he’d ever seen. He e-mailed her poems about her “raven hair” and “inquisitive eyes.” He took her to dinner at expensive restaurants and showed her his large, old Georgian-style home in old Palo Alto. His mother and father were dead, he said. His brother had died in Afghanistan. And so he haunted the house, now, what a waste, but he couldn’t bear to give it up, filled as it was with the “rag-and-bone shop of my childhood.”
When Uncle Lestan came to visit, he took Rose walking through the quiet leafy streets of Palo Alto. He remarked on the magnolia trees and their hard, rustling green leaves, and how he loved them from his time “in the South.”
He was mussed and dusty all over and Rose realized that she’d often seen Uncle Lestan this way, exquisitely dressed, but dusty.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tease him about flying about in the stars, but she didn’t. His skin was more darkly tanned than usual and looked almost burned, and his beautiful thick hair was almost white.
He wore a dark blue blazer and khaki pants and black shoes shined to look like glass, and he talked in a low, gentle voice telling her that she must always remember: she could do absolutely anything in this world that she wanted. She could be a writer, a poet, a musician, an architect, a doctor, a lawyer, whatever it was, that she wanted. And if she wanted to marry and make a home for her husband and her children that was fine, too. “If money can’t buy you the freedom to do anything you want, well, what is the good of it?” he asked. He sounded almost sad. “And money you have, Rose. Plenty of it. And time. And if time can’t give us freedom to do what we want, what good is time?”
Rose felt a terrible pain. She was in love with Uncle Lestan. Beside Uncle Lestan, all thoughts of her teacher, Gardner Paleston, simply faded into nothingness. But Rose didn’t say a word. On the verge of tears, she only smiled, and explained that yes, she knew this, that he’d told her this long ago when she’d been a little girl, that she could be and do anything she wanted. “The trouble is I want to do everything!” she said. “I want to live and study here, and live and study in Paris, and in Rome and in New York; I want to do everything.”
Uncle Lestan smiled and told her how proud of her he was. “You’ve grown into a beautiful woman, Rose,” he said. “I knew you’d be pretty. You were pretty when I first saw you. But you’re beautiful now. You’re strong and healthy and, well, you’re beautiful. There’s no point mincing words about it.” And then he turned suddenly into a tyrant, telling her that her driver had to go with her wherever she went, that he even wanted her driver sitting in the back of her college classrooms when there was room, or right outside of them. Rose argued. She wanted freedom. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He had become an overzealous and intensely European guardian, it seemed to Rose, but how could Rose really argue? When she thought of all Uncle Lestan had done for her, she fell silent. All right. Her driver would go everywhere with her. He could carry her books. That would be nice, though these days with iPads and Kindles, she didn’t have to carry many books.
Six months after that visit, Rose received a letter from Uncle Lestan saying that she would not be hearing from him so often anymore but that he loved her, and he needed this time to be alone. Be assured of his love, and be patient. He would eventually come round. And in the meantime she was entirely safe and must ask his attorneys for whatever her heart desired.
That had always been the way, really. And how could she ask for more?
A year passed without her hearing from Uncle Lestan.
But she had been so busy with other things. And then another year, but it was all right. It would have been wicked and ungrateful to complain, especially when his attorney in Paris called regularly every month.
Two weeks into her junior year, Rose was hopelessly in love again with Gardner Paleston. She was in three of his classes and certain that she could become a great poet someday if she listened to every single word he said. She’d gone to the campus clinic and gotten the information and pills she needed to prevent any accidental pregnancy, and she was just waiting for the time to be perfect for them to be together. Gardner Paleston called her every evening and talked to her for an hour. She had more potential than any other student he’d ever had, he said.
“I want to teach you all I know, Rose,” he said. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone before. I want to give you all that I can, do you understand what I’m saying, Rose? Whatever I know, what I’ve learned, whatever I have to pass on, I want to give it to you.” It sounded as if he was crying on the other end of the line. Rose was overcome.
She wanted desperately to talk with Uncle Lestan about Gardner but that was not to be. She wrote long letters and sent them to the attorney in Paris, and received the most touching little gifts in response. Surely they came from the attorney, she thought, but then each arrived with a gift card signed by Uncle Lestan, and these cards were more precious to her than the pearl necklaces or amethyst brooches they accompanied. Surely Uncle Lestan would one day see Gardner’s exceptional talent, his passion, his genius, for what it was.
As she sat dreaming in class, Gardner Paleston became the most sensitive and brilliant being Rose had ever imagined. He was not as beautiful as Uncle Lestan, no, and he looked older actually, perhaps because he didn’t have Uncle Lestan’s health, she couldn’t know. But she came to love everything about Gardner including his hawklike nose, his high forehead, and the long fingers with which he gestured dramatically as he strode back and forth before the classroom.
How disappointed he was, he declared, how crushed, he said bitterly, that “not a single student in this room understands a tenth of what I’m saying here!” He bowed his head, eyes closed, fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose, and trembled. Rose could have cried.
She sat on the grass under a tree reading over and over William Carlos Williams’s poem: “The Red Wheelbarrow.” What did it mean? Rose wasn’t sure she knew! How could she confess this to Gardner? She burst into tears.
Before Christmas, Gardner told Rose the time had come for them to be together. It was the weekend. He’d carefully prepared everything.
Rose had a big fight with her favorite driver, Murray. Murray was young and dedicated, and fun really, but just as obnoxious as all the other paid guardians. “You stay two blocks behind us,” said Rose. “Don’t let him see that you’re following! I’ll be spending the evening with him, you understand, and you can wait outside, quietly, unobtrusively. Now, Murray, don’t ruin this for me.”
Murray had his doubts. He was a small muscular man, of Russian Jewish descent, who’d been a San Francisco policeman for ten years before getting this job, which paid him three times what he’d made before. He was also a very honest, straightforward, and decent guy, like all the drivers, and he let it be known he didn’t approve of “this professor.” But he followed Rose’s orders.
Gardner picked up Rose about six o’clock that evening and drove her to the mysterious old Georgian mansion in old Palo Alto, following a curved drive through the manicured garden up to a porte cochere that couldn’t be seen from the street.
Rose was wearing a simple lilac cashmere dress for this blessed evening, with black stockings and black leather shoes, her hair free down her back, with a small diamond clasp over one ear. The soft leafy grounds of Gardner’s house were beautiful to her in the gathering darkness.
It had been a splendid place once, that was obvious, with old creaking hardwood floors, richly paneled walls, and a broad central stairway. But now it was littered with Gardner’s books and papers, the huge dining room table a glorified desk with his two computers and various notebooks strewn about.
Up the stairs they crept, over old worn red carpet, and down the long dark hall to the master bedroom. A fire blazed in a stone fireplace, and candles burned everywhere. Candles on the mantel, candles on the old high-mirrored dressing table, candles on the night tables. The bed itself was a delicate antique four-poster, with an old “rice design,” Gardner explained, which his mother had inherited from her mother.
“Just a full bed, a small bed,” he said. “They didn’t make queen and king beds in those days, but this is all we need.”
Rose nodded. On a long coffee table before an old red-velvet couch sat trays of French cheese, crackers, black caviar, and other choice tidbits. There was wine there, uncorked, waiting for them.
This was Rose’s dream, that this, her first experience, would be one of the highest love, and that everything would be perfect.
“I take Holy Communion,” whispered Gardner as he kissed her, “my innocent one, my sweet and gentle one, my flower.”
They had taken it slowly, kissing, tumbling under the white sheets, and then it had been rough, almost divinely rough, and then it was over.
How could anything have been so perfect? Surely Aunt Marge would understand—that is, if Rose ever told her. But perhaps it was best to tell no one ever. Rose had kept secrets all her life, kept them close, sensing that to divulge a secret could be a terrible thing. And perhaps she would keep this night secret all her life.
They lay together on the pillow, Gardner talking about all that Rose had to learn, all that he wanted to share with her, how much hope he had for her. Rose was just a child, a blank slate, he said, and he wanted to give Rose all he could.
It made Rose think of Uncle Lestan. She couldn’t help it. But what would Uncle Lestan have thought had he known where she was now?
“Can I tell you things?” Rose said. “Can I tell you things about my life, about the mysteries of my life that I’ve never told anyone?”
“Of course you can,” Gardner whispered. “Forgive me that I haven’t asked you more. Sometimes I think you’re so beautiful that I can’t really talk to you.” This actually wasn’t true. He talked all the time to her. But she sensed what he meant. He hadn’t said much about wanting to hear her talk.
She felt close to him as she’d never felt close to anyone. Lying beside him felt so perfect. She could not tell whether she was sad or supremely happy.
And so she told him what she’d never told her friends ever. She told him about Uncle Lestan.
She started talking in a low voice, describing the earthquake and that sudden ride up into the stars, and into the Heavens. And she went on to describe him, and the mystery that he was, and how her life had been guided by him. She said a little about the horrid Christian home, skipping quickly to the night she was rescued—again, the dramatic ascent, the wind, the clouds, and those stars again above her in the naked sky. She spoke of Louis and Uncle Lestan and her life since … and how she sometimes thought about her mother of long ago, and that island, and what an accident it was that Uncle Lestan had saved her, loved her, protected her.
Quite suddenly Gardner sat up. Reaching for a white terrycloth robe, he stood, wrapped it around him, and walked away towards the fireplace. He stood there with his head bowed for a long moment. He put his hands on the mantel and he let out a loud groan.
Cautiously, Rose sat back against the pillows, pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts. She could hear him continuing to groan. Suddenly he cried out, and as she watched, he rocked back and forth on his bare feet with his head thrown back. Then came his low, angry voice:
“This is so disappointing, oh, so disappointing! I had such hopes for you, such dreams!” he said. She saw him trembling. “And you give me this, this stupid, ridiculous cheap high school vampire babble!” He turned around and faced her, his eyes wet and glittering. “Do you know how you’ve disappointed me? Do you know how you’ve let me down?” His voice grew louder and louder. “I had dreams for you, Rose, dreams of what you might be. Rose, you have such potential.” He was roaring at her. His face had grown red. “And you feed me this foolish, pedestrian schoolgirl trash!”
He turned to the left, then to the right, and then went towards the bookcase on the wall, his hands moving like big white spiders over the books. “And for God’s sakes, get the damned names right!” he said. He drew a large hardcover book down from the shelf. “It’s Lestat, damn it,” he said, coming towards the bed, “and not Lestan! And Louie is Louis de Pointe du Lac. If you’re going to tell me ridiculous childish stories, get it straight, damn it.”
He hurled the book at her. Before she could duck, the spine caught her in the forehead. A fierce stabbing pain spread through her skin and gripped her head.
She was stunned. She was maddened by the pain. The book fell down on the comforter. The Vampire Lestat was the title. It was old, and the paper jacket was torn.
Gardner had gone back to the mantelpiece, and once again he moaned. Then he began again. “This is so disappointing, so disappointing, and on this night of all nights, Rose, this night. You can’t begin to know how you’ve failed me. You can’t begin to know how disappointed I am. I deserve better than this, Rose. I deserve so much more!”
She sat there shaking. She was in a rage. The pain went on and on in her head and she felt a silent fury that he had hurled this book at her, hurled it right at her face, and hurt her in this way.
She slipped out of the bed, her legs wobbling. And in spite of her trembling hands, she pulled on her clothes as quickly as she could.
On and on he spoke, down into the crackling fire, crying now. “And this was to be a beautiful night, such a special night. You cannot imagine how you have disappointed me! Vampires carrying you up into the stars! Good Lord in Heaven! Rose, you don’t know how you’ve hurt me, how you’ve betrayed me!”
She grabbed her shoulder bag and tiptoed out of the room, rushing down the stairs, and out of the house. She had her iPhone out before she hit the long dark driveway, calling for Murray.
The headlights soon appeared in the deserted street as the big limousine coasted up to her. She had never been so glad to see Murray in all her life.
“What’s the matter, Rose!” Murray demanded.
“Just drive,” she said. In the big black leather backseat of the car, she put her head down on her knees and cried. Her head was still aching from the blow, and when she rubbed her forehead she felt the soreness there.
She felt stupid suddenly for ever trusting this man, for ever thinking that she could confide in him, for ever allowing herself to be intimate with him. She felt like a fool. She felt ashamed and she never, never wanted anyone ever to know about it. For the moment, she couldn’t understand the things he’d said. But one thing was clear. She’d trusted him with the most precious secrets of her life, and he’d accused her of borrowing stories from a novel. He’d hurled that heavy book at her, not giving a damn whether he hurt her with it. When she thought of herself naked beside him in that bed, she shuddered.
The following Monday, Rose dropped Professor Gardner Paleston’s classes, giving family problems as a reason for having to cut her schedule. She never intended to see him again. Meanwhile, he was calling her constantly. He came by her house twice, but Aunt Marge agreeably explained that Rose wasn’t home.
“If he comes again,” Rose told Murray, “ask him please to stop bothering me.”
It was a week later, on a Friday night, in a bookstore downtown, that Rose saw a paperback book with the title: The Vampire Lestat.
As she stood in the aisle examining the book, she saw that it was number 2 in some sort of series of novels. Quickly, she found several others. These books were called the Vampire Chronicles.
Halfway home, she was so upset thinking about Gardner again that she was tempted to throw the books away, but she had to admit she was curious. What were these books about? Why did he think she was repeating stories from them?
Since that awful night, Rose had been in a kind of a daze. She’d lost all appetite for school, for friends, for everything. She’d been moving around the campus as if in a half sleep, scared to death of running into Gardner anywhere or everywhere, and her mind kept circling back over what had happened. Maybe it would do her good to read these books and see just how unfair to her Gardner had been.
Rose read the entire weekend. On Monday, she cut class and continued reading, complaining to Marge of an upset stomach. Sometime around Wednesday, she heard voices outside the little house and looked down to see Murray arguing with Gardner Paleston at the curb. Murray was clearly angry, but then so was Gardner. Finally the professor turned and walked off, shaking his head, his hand flung out before him, clawing at the air, and he appeared to be murmuring to himself.
By Friday of that week, Rose felt remarkably calm about the situation. Whatever she was thinking no longer had much to do with Gardner. She was thinking of the books she’d been reading and she was thinking of Uncle Lestan.
She knew now why Gardner had made his distasteful and hostile accusations. Yes, she could see it quite clearly. Gardner was a self-centered and inconsiderate man. But she knew now why he had said what he had said.
Uncle Lestan’s physical description perfectly matched that of “the Vampire Lestat,” and his friend and lover, “Louis de Pointe du Lac” was certainly a dead ringer for the Louis who’d rescued Rose from Amazing Grace Home for Girls. Dead ringer. Now that was a good pun.
But what did it mean that this was the case?
Not for one moment did Rose believe in vampires. Not for one second. She no more believed in vampires than she believed in werewolves, or Bigfoot, or the Yeti, or aliens from outer space, or little winged fairies living in gardens, or elves capturing people in dark woodlands and transporting them to Magonia. She didn’t believe in ghosts, or astral travel, or near-death experiences, or psychics or witches or sorcerers either. Well, maybe she believed in ghosts. And well, maybe she believed in “near-death experiences,” yes. She had known a number of people who had those.
But vampires?
No. She did not believe in them. Whatever the case, she was intrigued by this series of fictional stories about them. And there was not a single description in any of them of the Vampire Lestat, or a single line of dialogue spoken by him, that did not check completely with her vision of Uncle Lestan. But that was sheer coincidence, surely. As for Louis, well, the character with the similar name was indeed exactly like him, yes, but that was sheer coincidence, too, wasn’t it? Well, it had to be! There was no other explanation.
Unless they belonged to some organization, her uncle and this man, in which they engaged in role-playing games of some sophisticated sort modeled after the characters in these novels. But that was ridiculous. Playing roles was one thing. How in the world could anyone make himself look the way Uncle Lestan did?
She felt a strange embarrassment at the very thought of asking Uncle Lestan whether or not he’d read these books. It would be insulting and demeaning to do this, she thought, rather like Gardner insulting her when he threw the book at her face, and went on with his accusations.
But the entire problem began to obsess Rose. Meanwhile she read every last word of every book she could find with these characters.
And the stories in truth amazed her, not only by their complexity and depth, but by the peculiar dark turns they took, and the chronology they laid out for the main character’s moral development. She realized that she was now thinking of Uncle Lestan as that main character. He’d been wounded, shocked, the victim of a series of disasters and adventures. He’d become a wanderer in these books. And his skin was tanned because he kept letting himself suffer the effects of sunlight in a painful attempt to mask his preternatural identity.
No, this is impossible.
She barely noticed when Marge told her that Gardner had gotten hold of their home number and she had had to change it. Rose keyed the new number into her cell and forgot about it. She didn’t use the landline much, but of course it was the principal way to reach Marge. So she had to have that number.
“Do you want to tell me what’s the matter?” Marge asked. “I know something happened.”
Rose shook her head. “Just reading, thinking,” she said. “I’m better now. I’m going back Monday. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
In class, she could barely keep her mind on the lecture. She kept drifting off, thinking about that long-ago night when Uncle Lestan had caught her in his arms and carried her up and up from that island. She saw him in that dim, shadowy little lawyer’s office in Athens, Texas, saying, “Make it happen!”
Well, there had to be some explanation. And then it struck her. Of course. Her uncle knew the author of these books. Her uncle had perhaps inspired them. It was so simple she almost laughed out loud. That had to be it. He and his friend Louis had inspired this fiction. And when she’d tell him she’d found the books, of course, he would laugh and explain how they’d come to be written! He’d probably say he’d been honored to be the inspiration of such bizarre and romantic ramblings.
Sitting in the back of a history class, oblivious to the teacher’s words, she slipped Interview with the Vampire out of her purse and checked the copyright: 1976. No, that couldn’t be right. If her uncle had been a grown man by that time, well, now he’d be nearly sixty. No way was Uncle Lestan that old. That was positively ridiculous. But then … how old was he? How old had he been when he’d rescued her from that island earthquake? Hmmm … this wasn’t adding up. Maybe he’d been just a boy, then, when he’d rescued her and he’d looked like a grown man to her—a boy of what, sixteen or seventeen, and now he was what, forty? Well, that was possible. But hardly likely. No, this did not add up, and overshadowing it all was her vivid conviction of his demeanor, his charm.
Class was over. Time to shuffle on, and go through the motions someplace else, to drift until she saw Murray waiting for her on some curb somewhere.… But surely there was a logical explanation.
Murray drove her away from the campus to a restaurant she particularly liked where Marge was to meet her for an early dinner.
It was getting dark. They had a regular table and she was glad that she had a little while to sit there alone, enjoy a badly needed cup of black coffee, and just think to herself.
She was looking out the window, paying very little attention to much of anything, when she realized someone had sat down opposite her.
It was Gardner.
She was badly startled.
“Rose, do you realize what you’ve done to me?” he asked. His voice was deep and tremulous.
“Look, I want you to leave,” she started. He reached across the table and tried to take hold of her hand.
Drawing it back, she stood up and stumbled away from the table, running towards the back of the restaurant. She hoped and prayed the one small ladies’ room would be empty.
Gardner came pounding after her, and when she realized her mistake, it was too late. He’d grabbed hold of her wrist and was dragging her out of the back exit into an alleyway. Murray was all the way around front, parked at the curb.
“Let go of me!” she said. “I mean it, I’ll scream,” she said. She was as angry as she had been when the book had struck her.
Without a word, he dragged her right off her feet and down the alleyway towards his car, and threw her in the passenger side, slamming the door and locking it with his remote.
When he went to open the driver’s side, he unlocked only that door. She beat on the windows. She screamed. “Let me go!” she said. “How dare you do this to me?”
He started the car, backed out of the alley, and took off down the side street, away from the main boulevard where Murray was no doubt waiting to pay for Marge’s taxi.
Down a quiet street, he drove the car at reckless speed, oblivious to the squeal of the wheels or enjoying it.
Rose beat on the windshield, on the side window, and when she could see no one anywhere around, she reached for the key in the ignition.
With a resounding blow he sent her backwards against the passenger door. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, then it came back to her completely and horribly. She struggled to sit up, reaching into her purse and quickly finding the iPhone. She sent the SOS message to Murray. Then Gardner grabbed the purse from her and, buzzing down his window, hurled it out, phone and all.
By now the car was speeding through traffic, and she was being thrown from one side to the other as it swerved around one intersection after another. It was making for old Palo Alto, the neighborhood where Gardner lived. And soon the streets would once again be deserted.
Again, Rose banged on the windows, gesturing frantically to passing cars, to people on the sidewalk. But no one seemed to notice her. Her screams filled the car. Gardner grabbed her by her hair and pulled her head away from the window. The car slammed to a stop.
They were in some side street now with big trees, those big beautiful dark green magnolias. He turned her around and held her face in the vise of his thin fingers, his thumb biting painfully into her jaw.
“Who the Hell do you think you are!” he breathed at her, his face dark with rage. “Who the Hell do you think you are to do this to me!”
These were exactly the words she wanted to speak to him, but all she could do was glare at him, her entire body soaked in sweat. She grabbed at his hair with both her hands and yanked it as he’d yanked hers. He hurled her back against the window again and slapped her repeatedly, until she was gasping uncontrollably.
The car drove on, tires screaming, and as she struggled to sit up again, her face burning, she saw the driveway in front of her, and the old Georgian house looming over her.
“You let me go!” she screamed.
He dragged her from the car, pulling her out the driver’s side, and dragging her onto her knees on the concrete.
“You don’t begin to know what you’ve done to me!” he roared. “You miserable stupid girl! You don’t begin to grasp what your fun and games have done.”
He dragged her through the door and hurled her across the dining room so that she hit the table hard and sank to the floor. When he lifted her up, she’d lost one of her shoes, and blood was pouring from her face down onto her sweater. He hit her again, and she went out. Out.
Next thing Rose knew, she was in the bedroom. She was on the bed, and he was standing over her. He had a glass in his hand.
He was talking in a low voice, saying once more how she’d broken his heart, how she’d disappointed him. “Oh, this has all been the disappointment of my life, Rose,” he said. “And I wanted it to be so different, so very different, with you, Rose, of all the flowers of the field, you were the fairest, Rose, the fairest of all.”
He came towards her as she struggled to get up.
“Now we will drink this together.”
She tried to scurry backwards, away from him, off the bed, but his right hand caught her wrist while, with his left hand, he held the glass of liquid high out of her reach.
“Now, stop it, Rose.” He growled between his clenched teeth. “For the love of God, do this with dignity.”
Suddenly a pair of headlamps sent their beams over the master-bedroom windows.
Rose began to scream as loud as she could. It was nothing like those nightmares in which you try to scream and you can’t. She was shrieking. The screams just erupted uncontrollably.
He dragged her towards him as he went on and on, shouting over her screams: “You are the most dreadful disappointment of my life,” he cried, “and now as I seek to make all things new, to make all things whole, for you and for me, Rose, you do this to me, to me!”
With the back of his hand, he slammed her into the pillow. Out. When she opened her eyes, a foul burning fluid was in her mouth. He had her nose pinched between his fingers. She gagged, and bucked and struggled to scream. The taste was ghastly. Her throat was burning. So was her chest.
He thrust the half-full glass at her and the liquid inside it splashed on her face, burning her. The smell was acrid, chemical, caustic. It burned into her cheek and neck.
Twisting around as she struggled against his grip, she vomited on the bed. She kicked at him with both feet. But he wouldn’t let go. He threw the liquid at her and she turned with all her strength, feeling it splash against her face. It went into her eyes. It blinded her. Her eyes were on fire.
Murray’s voice sounded from the hallway door.
“Let her go.”
And then she was free, screaming, crying, grabbing for the covers to wipe the burning liquid off her face, and from out of her eyes.
The men were scuffling and the furniture was breaking. There was a loud crash as the mirror on the dresser broke.
“I’ve got you,” said Murray as he grabbed up Rose and carried her out of the room, running down the steps with her.
She could hear sirens approaching. “Murray, I’m blind!” she sobbed. “Murray, my throat is on fire.”
Rose woke up in the ICU. Her eyes were bandaged, her throat was aching unbelievably, and her hands were strapped so that she couldn’t move.
Aunt Marge and Murray were with her. Desperately, they were trying to reach Uncle Lestan. They would not give up trying. They would find him.
“I’m blind now, aren’t I?” Rose wanted to ask, but she couldn’t talk. Her throat wouldn’t open. The pain in her chest was grinding.
Gardner Paleston was dead, Murray assured her. He’d died from a blow to the head in the fight with Murray.
It was an open-and-shut case of attempted murder-suicide. The bastard, as Murray called him, had already posted his suicide note online fully describing his plan to give Rose “the burning hemlock,” along with an ode to their mingled decomposing remains. She heard Aunt Marge begging Murray to stop talking.
“We’re going to find Uncle Lestan,” Marge said.
Terror engulfed Rose. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t beg for reassurance; she couldn’t even tell them about the pain, the unrelenting pain. But Uncle Lestan was coming. He was coming. Oh, what a fool she’d been, such a fool, to have loved Gardner, to have trusted Gardner. She was so ashamed, ashamed as she’d been years ago lying on the floor of Amazing Grace Home, so ashamed.
And all the confusion about the books, those books which had affected her so deeply that for days she’d lived in them, imagining Uncle Lestan to be the hero, rising with him, in his arms, towards the stars. Give me the stars.
She lapsed back into sleep because there was no place else to go.
There was no day or night, only an alternating rhythm of activity and noise. More commotion in the room, and in the corridor beyond, more voices near at hand yet muffled, indistinct.
Then a doctor was talking to her.
He was close by her ear. His voice was soft, deep, resonant, sharpened by an accent she didn’t know.
“I am caring for you now,” he said. “I will make you well.”
They were in an ambulance moving through traffic, and she could feel every bump of the road. The siren was distant but steady. And when she woke next she knew she was on a plane. She could hear Marge talking softly to someone, but it wasn’t Murray. She couldn’t hear Murray.
Next time she woke she was in a new bed, a very soft bed, and there was music playing, a lovely song from Romberg’s The Student Prince. It was the “Serenade” that long ago Uncle Lestan had sung to her. If her eyes had not been wrapped tight, they would have filled with tears. Maybe they did fill with tears.
“Don’t cry, precious dear,” said the doctor, the doctor with the accent. She felt his silken hand on her forehead. “Our medicines are healing you. By tomorrow this time, your vision will be restored.”
Slowly it dawned on her that her chest no longer hurt. There was no pain in her throat. She swallowed freely for the first time in so long.
She was dreaming again, and a soft tenor voice, a rather deep voice, was singing Romberg’s “Serenade.”
Morning. Rose opened her eyes very slowly, and she saw the light of the sun coming in the windows, and gradually the deep sleep left her, falling away from her as if veils were being drawn back, one after another.
It was a beautiful room. A wall of glass looked out on the distant mountains, and between here and there was the desert, golden in the burning sun.
There was a man standing with his back to her. At first the image of him was indistinct against the bright distant mountains and the deep blue sky.
She sighed deeply and turned her head easily back and forth on the pillow.
Her hands were free and she brought them up to touch her face. She touched her lips, her moist lips.
The young man came into focus. Broad shoulders, tall, maybe six feet tall, with luxuriant blond hair. Could it be Uncle Lestan?
Just as his name rose to her lips, the figure turned to face her and came towards the bed. Oh, how completely he resembled Uncle Lestan, but he was younger, definitely younger; he was the image of Uncle Lestan in a young boy.
“Hello, Rose,” he said, smiling down at her. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”
Suddenly her vision dimmed, blurred, and a pain shot through her temples and her eyes. But it was gone, this pain, as quickly as it had come, and she could see again. Her eyes were only dry and itching. She could see perfectly.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Viktor,” said the boy. “I’m here to be with you now.”
“But Uncle Lestan, is he coming?”
“They’re trying to find him. It’s not always easy to find him. But when he finds out what happened to you, I promise you, he will come.”
The young boy’s face was cheerful, fresh, his smile generous and almost sweet. He had large blue eyes so like Uncle Lestan’s, but it was the hair and the shape of his face more than anything that locked in the resemblance.
“Precious Rose,” he said. In a soft even voice, an American voice that had nevertheless a kind of crisp enunciation to it, he explained that Aunt Marge could not be here now in this place. But Rose was safe, completely safe, from all harm, and he, Viktor, would see to that. And so would the nurses. The nurses would take care of her every need.
“You’ve had surgery after surgery,” Viktor said, “but you’re improving wonderfully and soon you’ll be fully yourself again.”
“Where is the doctor?” Rose asked. When he reached for her hand, she clasped his.
“He’ll come tonight, after sunset,” said Viktor. “He can’t be here now.”
“Like a vampire,” she said, musing, laughing softly under her breath.
He laughed with her, gently, softly. “Yes, very like that, Rose,” he said.
“But where is the Prince of the Vampires, my uncle Lestan?” Never mind that Viktor would never in a thousand years understand her mad humor. He would ascribe it to the sedatives that were making her loopy and almost content.
“The Prince of the Vampires will come, I assure you,” Viktor answered. “As I said, they are searching for him now.”
“You’re so like him,” she said dreamily. There came that pain again to her eyes and that blurring vision, and it seemed for one instant that the window was on fire. She turned her head away in a panic. But the pain stopped and she could see clearly all the objects of this room. What a pretty room, painted a cobalt blue and with bright white enameled moldings, and on the wall a brilliant painting of roses, wild, exploding roses against a backdrop of a darker blue.
“But I know that painting, that’s my painting,” she said. “That’s from my bedroom at home.”
“All your things are here now, Rose,” said Viktor. “Just tell me whatever you want. We have your books, your clothes, everything. You’ll be able to get up in a few days.”
A nurse came into the room, soundlessly, and appeared to be checking the equipment that surrounded the bed. For the first time, Rose saw the glistening plastic sacks of IV fluid, the slender gleaming silver cords that ran to the needles taped to her arms. She really was drugged. One moment she thought her mind was clear and the next she was astonished or confused. Clothes. Get up. Books.
“Any pain, darling?” asked the nurse. She had soft brown skin and large sympathetic brown eyes.
“No, but whatever it is, give me more of it.” She laughed. “I’m floating. I believe in vampires.”
“Don’t we all?” asked the nurse. She made some adjustment in the IV feed. “There now,” she said, “you’ll be sleeping again soon enough. When you sleep you heal, and that’s what you must do now. Heal.” Her shoes made a soft squeaking noise as she left the room.
Rose drifted and then she saw Viktor again smiling down at her. Well, Uncle Lestan never wore his hair that short, did he? And never did he wear that kind of sweater vest, even if it was cashmere, or a pink shirt like that open at the neck.
“You look so like him,” she said.
In the distance she heard the “Serenade” again, that plaintive, painful music, trying to describe beauty, pure beauty, and so heartbreakingly sad. “But he sang that to me when I was little.…”
“You told us this,” said Viktor, “and that’s why we’re playing it for you now.”
“I could swear, you look more like him than any human being I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Viktor smiled. Why, it was that same smile, that same infectious and loving smile.
“That’s because I’m his son,” said Viktor.
“Uncle Lestan’s son?” she said. She was so drowsy. “Did you say you were his son?” She sat up, staring at him. “My God in Heaven! You are his son. I had no idea that he had a son!”
“He doesn’t have any idea either, Rose,” said Viktor. He bent over her and kissed her forehead. She put her arms around him, the wires streaming from their needles. “I’ve been waiting such a long time,” he said, “to tell him myself.”