A Rose At Midnight

Rosane set the kitten down. It lapped contentedly at the milk. “She does. Look at her go!”

“Do you like the flavor of maple?” A conspiratorial smile animated Marguerite’s starched face.

It was as if they were trying to outdo each other to gain Rosane’s affection. A smile sneaked up on Christi. Family wanting to fit together, wanting to be liked. There’s no evil in that.

“I love it!” Rosane stroked the kitten as if it were made of glass. “Mom always buys the real thing even though it’s more expensive. It’s much better than that fake syrup stuff.”

“Try this.” Marguerite placed two pieces of toast before Rosane. They oozed with a spread the pale sand of maple sugar. “I think you not have Map-O-Spread at Texas.”

Rosane took a healthy bite and nodded her approval. “This is good. Mom never lets me have sugar stuff for breakfast. Except for pancakes on Sunday sometimes.”

Christi pressed her fingers tighter against her lip to silence her laughter. She’d gone from junk food queen to Mother Earth while she carried Rosane. The transformation had done wonders for her until her parents’ death. Then all the old feelings of rootless-ness returned with a punch, and with them, her stomach troubles. Had Rosane felt deprived? Guilt spiked an unwelcome wave of acid in her gut. Sometimes the creature she’d borne seemed so foreign to her.

Christi shook her head, pasted on her famous all’s-right smile and marched into the kitchen.

“Well, you’re cheerful this morning.” Christi kissed the top of Rosane’s head and ran her fingers through the soft strands of her daughter’s hair.

“Look, Mom! Look what Armand gave me!” Rosane lifted the kitten up for inspection. “Can I keep her? Can I?”

How could she refuse Rosane anything when she looked so happy? “She can be yours while we’re here.”

“Oh, goodie!” Rosane rubbed her nose against the kitten’s. “Did you hear that, Fumée? I get to keep you.” She squeezed the kitten to her chest before turning the creature over on her lap to scratch the soft belly. The kitten nipped at the wiggly fingers, and Rosane giggled at their game.

Christi glanced at Marguerite, then at Armand. The kitchen’s temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Was it her imagination or had the starched lines and stony expression reappeared on Marguerite’s face?

“You slept well last night?” Smiling at her, Armand pushed away his cup of coffee. His slow gracious charm put her at ease as it had since she’d arrived two days ago.

“Yes, thank you.”

“What can I make you for breakfast?” Marguerite asked in her halting English. Her gaze inspected Christi’s attire and her frown disapproved.

“That’s all right, you don’t have to serve me. I’ll help myself.”

“I do not permit anyone to disturb my kitchen.”

Then the coffee mess Daniel left last night must have tickled her pink this morning. “In that case, I’ll have some tea.” The odor of fresh-brewed coffee permeated the kitchen. Christi longed for a cup, but didn’t think her stomach could handle it this morning.

“Orange Pekoe or menthe?”

“Mint is fine.”

After she put the kettle on, Marguerite turned back to Christi. “What you like to eat?”

“Just toast, please.” Christi didn’t think she could manage anything else and the answer of “nothing” seemed unacceptable, judging from the disapproving scowl Marguerite leveled at her.

“That is all?”

Christi nodded. Acid lapped in her stomach. With a hand, she massaged her stormy stomach. “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me at the party last night.” She attempted a smile. “Thank you for keeping an eye on Rosane. I appreciate your kindness.”

Marguerite harrumphed and returned to the stove.

Rosane slunk out of her chair to play on the floor with the kitten. She teased Fumée with a lock of her hair and the kitten batted at it with its paws.

Armand pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lit it with a monogrammed gold lighter and puffed deeply. A moment later, a rheumy cough rattled in his chest. The stink of the smoke did nothing to improve Christi’s appetite.

“I have a present for you, too.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary—”

Armand reached behind him to the sideboard and picked up a thick album sheathed in burgundy leather. “I have found the photo album I told you about yesterday.”

“You did!” Christi had never seen a picture of her mother as a child. And her mother had categorically refused to speak of her past. All of Christi’s questions had remained unanswered, brushed aside like pesky fruit flies. As she scooted her chair closer to the table, anticipation warmed her.

A gold L was embossed on the cover. As he turned to the first page, the leather creaked. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of dust and history that rose into the air like fairy powder. He glided the album across the table until it rested between them. She wrapped her feet around the chair’s legs and leaned in for a closer look.

“This is your grandmother, Catherine, and her husband, Henri.” Armand seemed as eager to share the album’s contents as she was to view them. “Henri died young—only a few years after your mother was born. Marguerite and I came to live with Catherine and Caroline soon after when our own parents were killed in a train accident.”

“How awful!”

Although she could not mistake Catherine for Caroline, Christi noticed the strong resemblance between her grandmother and her mother, between her mother and herself. A quick glance at Rosane showed her the resemblance was passed on. Alike, yet so different.

Even the flicker of the imagined woman sitting at the vanity bore a certain likeness to the women in the album’s pages. Had her tired mind invented a distant relative? With a shake of her head, Christi scattered the question and concentrated on Armand’s stories.

“This one,” he said, laughing easily as he pointed to a picture of her mother in a gauzy summer dress and a floppy hat, both soaked and dripping, “was taken after Caro insisted she could row the boat all by herself. She was very bossy even as a ten-year-old. The canoe tipped over as she got in and she fell into the lake.”

Some things didn’t change. Her mother had disguised an iron will with a soft voice. “And you were waiting with a camera?”

“Of course. I showed this photo to all her potential boyfriends. Until she took one of me in a rather ungraceful position after I had fallen while sledding.”

As Armand told her stories of his youth, Marguerite placed a plate of scrambled eggs and ham next to her brother. He ignored it.

A vignette fell before Christi of places and people that were part of her, yet alien—a picnic with Catherine holding a young Caroline on her lap, Armand and Marguerite stood behind them, hamming it up for the camera. Birthday parties. Graduations. Vacations. Family together, sharing, feasting, laughing.

She drank in every detail. Each new glimpse into her mother’s world clicked a missing piece in the puzzle of her past into place. And with each space filled came a growing sense of a form wanting to finish itself.

Daniel was wrong. Armand didn’t want to take anything from her. He wanted to give her what should have been hers all along.

Rosane climbed on Christi’s knee for a while, commenting on the funny outfits in the pictures, but soon returned to the floor with her kitten.

As Armand closed the cover of the album, Christi sighed and sank contentedly against the back of her chair. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

Leaving the album before her, he shook out a newspaper and puffed on a fresh cigarette. A moment later, the newspaper convulsed in time to a coughing fit.

Christi fingered the album’s leather, loathe to sever her connection with her missing past.

Armand crumpled the newspaper beside his ignored plate of food. “Has your mother ever told you of the legend of Rose Latulippe?”