Read Online The Truth about Mary Rose by Marilyn Sachs - Free Book Online Page B

Mary Rose. Is Mom there?”
    “Nope. She took Grandma to the beach.”
    “I’m glad,” he said. “It’s a real scorcher today. It must be about a hundred degrees down here.”
    “It’s not bad up here in the Bronx,” I said.
    “Well, all right, Mary Rose, tell Mom I’ll be home for dinner tonight. It’s just too hot to go anywhere.”
    “Oh, Dad, Mom said to tell you she saw a great house for rent. It’s got a really neat studio, and I can tell she just flipped over it.”
    “Where is it?”
    “About ten blocks from here. She said to give you the address, and she wants you to look at it. She says it’s up to you, but, Daddy, I can tell she thinks it’s fantastic.”
    “Ten blocks away!” my father said. “I really wanted it closer to work.”
    “I love it up here, Daddy,” I told him, “and Ray and Manny have lots of friends. It would be great for them. And Mom wouldn’t have to worry about us up here.”
    “Mary Rose,” said my father, “you’re beginning to sound like your grandmother.”
    “Oh, Daddy, please!”
    “Well, I’ll go and look at it, but ...”
    “Mom says it’s up to you, but if you like it you can leave a deposit, because she says it’s super fantastic.”
    “She said that!”
    “No, but I know she thinks so.” I gave my father the address, and hung up.
    It was so hot! It was hard just holding your head up. My grandmother didn’t have air conditioning. She said it wasn’t healthy. But she had one of those big floor fans in the living room. I turned it on, and sat up close to it. I could feel the cool blast of air drying off the wet spots on my face, and under my hair. I thought what now? Where do I go. I’ve looked everywhere in the attic, and everywhere in the basement, and I can’t find it. I let the wind blow in my face, and I couldn’t think of what to do next.
    I closed my eyes, and I said to myself, I will ‘count to three, and when I say three, it’s going to come to me where Mary Rose’s box is. So I closed my eyes, and counted ... 1 ... 2...3 ... Iopened my eyes but the cold air from the fan was coming at me too fast, and my eyes hurt. I turned off the fan, closed my eyes, and counted again ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ...
    This time, I kept my eyes closed, and listened. That heavy stillness felt like it was wrapping itself around my head, but I didn’t open my eyes. Where is it? Where is Mary Rose’s box?
    There was a noise in the room, out of the heat and the quiet air. I was so frightened that I opened my eyes, but there wasn’t anything. I didn’t want to close my eyes again. I didn’t know what had made that noise, or maybe I did know or thought I knew, but I was afraid to close my eyes.
    I put the fan on again, and the noise of it whirring made me feel better. I walked upstairs to the attic. All of the boxes of photographs and letters and papers had been put into piles by my mother. One of them ‘said, “Check with Stanley.” Another one said, “Veronica,” and another one said, “Mama—throw these out?” I looked up in the storage closet but there weren’t any boxes there. The three large boxes containing the curtains stood in front of the closet waiting for my father to put them back on the shelf.
    My grandmother had said, “Behind the curtains,” and I’d already looked.
    Behind the curtains.
    You just couldn’t expect old ladies to remember everything.
    Behind the curtains.
    I opened the first box, and yanked out some heavy wine-colored drapes with a faded pink lining. There were several of them in the box, and nothing else. The second one had those frilly sheer curtains that old ladies hang up in their kitchens. There was a pair of white ones with blue-checked borders, and a pair of yellow ones with daisies, some bathroom curtains, green and shiny and wet smelling, and down at the very bottom—was Mary Rose’s box.
    Behind the curtains.
    The first thing I did, before I opened it, because I knew it was her box, the first thing I did, was