Her Name Is Rose Read online

  When he came out into the sunlight, he had the elation of completing the composition and the brief glory of thinking it was great. He was light-headed and his heart was jumping. If you saw him coming, then you’d say he almost shone.

  He crossed Mass Ave. and continued along and before he knew it, or before he’d admitted it to himself, he was heading for the massive doors of the Mary Baker Eddy Library and the Mapparium to see if, maybe, she, Mrs. Bowen, had taken Billy’s suggestion and gone there. It was unlikely, but so was the world. He’d dip in anyway. The Mapparium was one of the old haunts of all the students at Berklee.

  The fact was, she had helped with the piece. He wanted to find her to thank her for that. Maybe he could even thank her and apologize for his brusqueness that morning.

  That was what he told himself. That was the reason. It was nothing to do with the fact that she was beautiful and he just wanted to see her again. See that red hair, those cinnamon curls.

  He found the entrance to the Mapparium and walked in through the Indian Ocean. Two boys in green-and-white soccer jerseys with the numbers 6 and 8 were whispering.

  “Hey Colin, look! The North Po—” whispered the younger boy of the family. He stopped suddenly, startled by the sound of his own voice so loud, so bright, so booming around the world.

  “Yeah! Brilliant! Can ye hear me?” the older boy whispered. Their laughter bubbled, like a cascading waterfall, like the sound of Art Tatum’s fingers running the keyboard playing “Tea for Two.”

  “Shh … Robert!” said the father, trying to keep his voice quiet without success, then he, too, was laughing, and so, too, was their pink, sun-flushed mother.

  And at the end of the glass bridge, nearly thirty feet away, blue on blue, was Iris. Her back was turned and she was busy with her handbag. She didn’t see Hector. As she fussed, the contents of her handbag spilled out. The pink soccer mom stooped to help her and from the opposite side of the world Hector heard them whisper—a soft murmur that was a loud murmur in the whispering gallery.

  “Here, love. Let me help.”

  They gathered the contents and the soccer mom feather-touched Iris’s shoulder. But as she rose, her left foot moved a last piece of note paper or something that had lain on the bridge. The paper was moved to the edge, and as the woman stepped away it slipped though the gap off the glass walkway. Iris gasped, her hands outstretched to it. And then she, like Hector, watched the falling note drift like a tumbleweed, down Central America, past Costa Rica, past Peru, then Chile, riffing along the curve of the blue Pacific, until it stopped thirty feet below, somewhere west of the South Pole.

  When Hector looked up, Iris was hurrying out.

  * * *

  Outside in the blinding sunlight he stood scanning the crowds for her. The pavement scorched the rubber of his shoes. She was gone. After the blue cool, the heat was a shock and he went across the plaza straight to the splash fountain. The water was rising and falling in arcs from its flat concrete base, and into it Hector stepped, triggering an eruption of whoops and glees in the children as he crossed through the fountain in his own kind of cool, and coming out the far side.

  Something was happening, something was definitely happening, but he hadn’t the words for it yet. Shaking the water from his hair he suddenly remembered. “Jesus, Hector,” and from the back pocket of his shorts he pulled the envelope she had dropped. (He’d had the attendant retrieve it from the bottom of the glass world.) It hadn’t got wet in the fountain. He shook it in the air a moment just in case. Although it was just an empty envelope, yellowing, with a handwritten address on the front, he wanted to deliver it back to Iris intact. He took off, heading over Huntington and back to Grace’s, and without needing to pause he plucked a daisy that poked through the park railings. He had a sense of propulsion, of things moving forward without his wishing or planning, and he was just going to go with it. He hadn’t felt this way since … since … He wasn’t going to think about that.

  By the time he got to Grace’s, he was nearly steaming, so when his wet clothes hit the a/c he felt chilled. He took the stairs in leaps. He needed a shower and a nap, but he needed to calm down first. He rang Billy and asked for coffee and lemonade. Then he put the daisy in a glass and the envelope on the desk and looked carefully at it. It was addressed to the Adoption Board, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland. In the upper, left-hand corner was the sender’s address: Hilary Barrett, 99 St. Botolph Street, Boston, MA. Postmark: August 21, 1991.

  What was the story here? What was the connect? Had there been more than one thing lying in the bottom of the glass sea? Maybe this wasn’t Iris’s. Had the guy fished out the wrong thing?

  There was a knock. He opened the door to Billy, who was smiling. Hector was down to his boxers. The tattoo of an eagle on Hector’s right arm caught the sunlight. “Hey, Professor.” Billy put down the lemonade and coffee. “Mrs. Hale said she’d see you later. She hopes you got a ticket for—”

  “Of course I did. Two, in fact.” Hector winked.

  “Right. She’ll be pleased.”

  “Hey. Has the Mrs. Bowen lady returned? I mean, she staying here tonight?”

  “No, she hasn’t and yes, she is. I told her about the Mapparium. And I told her where the public library was. She wanted Internet. So maybe—”

  “Gotcha. She’s here but not here.” Hector didn’t exactly push Billy out, but he held the door for him and closed it quickly. He drank the lemonade first, then the coffee, then he lay out on the bed, but couldn’t nap. He sat up, lay down again, but still couldn’t nap. His head was buzzing between Sparrow in Summer and Mrs. Bowen. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep.

  He woke with a start when a door closed. It was 5:27. The students expected him to join them for special supper at Botolph’s at six.

  He shaved, calmed his hair, threw on his blue Hawaiian shirt, the one with the white hibiscus, and bolted downstairs. There was no sign of Grace in the front room. He checked the kitchen. No sign of her there. Nor Billy. Nor Mrs. Bowen. By the side table in the front hall, he found a brown envelope and stuck two tickets inside, scribbled For Your Grace and Mrs. Bowen, and left.

  He hurried along West Newton and when he reached the corner, he stopped dead, as if for the first time noticing the street number of Botolph’s restaurant. He’d been coming here for what? Fifteen years or so. Since it opened. But there etched in white fancy numbers was 99, in the glass above the door. What do you know? How many times had he been there? With Grace, with students, with colleagues?

  Now he noticed—99.

  What it meant he had no idea, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist, he thought, to know something here was of concern to Mrs. Bowen. It was the something troubling her which he’d sensed that morning. He had no words for his thoughts, only feelings, and those feelings in one intense flash of inspiration had already found their way into Sparrow in Summer. But there was more, he was certain.

  * * *

  After a light supper, rambling monologues, sudden silences, and nervous jokes from Casey and Belletti, Hector walked with his students to Titus Sparrow Park. A large audience had already gathered with picnic baskets and rugs and multicolored nylon beach chairs. The summer concerts always began just at twilight. Hector looked around him, at the light tumbling down, disappearing into the trees and across the flowerbeds. Layers of different hues of blue cloaked the sky. Soon, the other musicians would appear and the evening would become magical.

  But before the magic could begin, the musicians needed to warm up. Backstage, Hector’s mind was gliding and humming, running through riffs and runs, swings and syncopations. He was bounce-walking up and down, rolling his shoulders, loosening his neck muscles, looking up into the night sky, getting ready for the music, but all the time, playing like a thumb line, was something he wanted to say to the woman named Iris: that blue in all its splendid dynamism was the color of hope. He couldn’t articulate it any better than that. He peeped through the curtains. Grace wasn’t ther
e yet. He’d left reserved seats for her in the front row.

  Hector finished his warm-up, then he gathered Belletti and Casey, brought them over to meet the man sitting in the corner cradling his guitar. “And here’s Amos McGee, the one and only. Best bass guitarist there is. Close your eyes when you hear him play and it sounds like a horn has slipped in. Amos, meet Casey and Belletti. And guys … meet Amos.”

  “Hey, kids, welcome aboard,” Amos said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head one second and lowered it again. He stood up then and walked out on the stage. The clapping began right away because Amos McGee was a legend in Boston. His name stretched back into the days when Dizzy Gillespie played in the South End. In his Red Sox cap, he strode smooth and cool, paused a moment, and then did his customary pirouette.

  The rumble of applause rose up from the grass into the gloaming sky. Hector stepped to the microphone and introduced the band. “Mr. Amos McGee, you all know.” More applause. Amos bowed just slightly, his hands moving over his guitar. “And, here, now, are two of Berklee’s finest, Mossy Casey and Gino Belletti, who’ll back up Amos and maybe … let’s see how it flies … maybe they’ll have a riff or two of their own—to take us higher.”

  He paused for effect, let the evening gather its breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, on this bee … u … ti … full night, I give you, Sparrow in Summer.”

  Hector sat down, summoned that still place inside, and then broke it open, playing the black and white notes fast and free, sounding like a bird jam, like a sparrow sings. Sharp notes. A succession of warbles and trills. Chimp. Tsip. Tsip. Tsip. He nodded to Amos and his thumping and plucking sounded like the repeated chattering of a sparrow Hector had imagined. Then he and Amos held back while Casey and Belletti stepped forward, showcasing the slap bass improvisation they’d worked on earlier.

  Hector looked out at the crowd and breathed it all in. At the piano he was fully alive, and the thing that was happening inside him fused with the music and he knew he was playing better than he had in a long time, and he looked up into the dark blue sky and he thought, Man, this is a little like paradise, this is jazz as it is in heaven, sound upon sound with no boundary, mingling, colliding, harmonizing, blending, melding, balancing, clashing, fusing. An acoustic Arcadia, smooth and easy, head-buzzing, heart-stopping, and goddamn transformative.

  He looked out and there was Grace. And, sitting right beside her, some kind of illumination, was Iris Bowen. She looked up at him with the saddest-looking eyes he’d ever seen. And he knew. He knew right then with perfect clarity that this was the something that had changed, had changed utterly, and although he still didn’t have the words for it, he had the notes.

  And, for Iris Bowen, he played.

  Later, after the final encore, after the sparrow had flown, but still in the high of performance, still in that particular mindscape that jazz brings, out of the seeming chaos of chords and rhythms to a place of harmony where things fit together and the world seems to make better sense—or at least it did for Hector—he went back and found Grace sitting in the kitchen. It was after midnight.

  “Hello, Your Grace.” He bowed exuberantly and looked around expectantly.

  “Hector. Hector. Hector. That was wonderful.” She jumped up and hugged him. “So wonderful, right? I’m so proud. I’m sitting here thinking about how Bob would have loved it, too. Yes?”

  “Yeah, Grace. Thanks. I’m flying high.”

  “Something to drink?”

  “No. No. I’m buzzing.”

  They stood silently for a few moments; Hector judging whether he could mention Mrs. Bowen.

  “Mrs Bowen—” Grace started to say.

  “I was just about to ask if—”

  “Iris loved it, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yes.” She looked at him and knew. Something was different.

  “Great.” That’s all he had. Just the one word. He turned to go, but Grace wanted more.

  “I’m so glad you left me two tickets. You must meet her.”

  “I’d like to meet her.” He didn’t exactly blurt it. But he nearly did. Then it was confirmed for Grace, too: something was going on.

  “Maybe in the morning, then, although … she’s not … what can I say…? I think she’s been upset by something today. She didn’t say. When I told her there was a second ticket for the evening’s concert she wasn’t going to take it. But I knew she needed something. And Hector, I can be persuasive.”

  From the pocket of his shirt Hector took the envelope and handed it to Grace. He’d kept it all night like it was a talisman. “She dropped this in the Mapparium.” He looked down as if to shield his face from Grace’s. “I was there, but she didn’t see me. She ran off before I could help her get it back. But I got someone to fish it out.”

  “I see.” Grace took the envelope, turned it over. “Just an envelope.” Then she read the addressee, then the sender. “Adoption Board?” She paused. “Well, I wonder what that means.” She tapped the fingers of her left hand on the table. Her nails made a tat tat tat. “That’s odd,” she said then. “Hector, this is quite odd.” She looked to the right, absorbed in a memory, then said, “Hilary Barrett. I know this name. Don’t I?”

  “Really?”

  A memory began to play on Grace’s face. Lines of wrinkles bunched across her brow. Her mouth tightened. But then it faded.

  “And 99 St. Botolph?” Hector asked.

  “Well. I just can’t say. It wasn’t always a restaurant. That much I can tell you.” She fell silent again and after a moment she stamped her foot. “Oh, I can’t remember.”

  “Okay. No worries. I’m going to bed.”

  Grace Hale didn’t move. She stood there trying to think, then shook her head. “Sorry. Sometimes I think I remember everybody.”

  Eight

  In a blue Lucky Express Town Car, Rowan Blake was sped away from New York City into Westchester, into the landscape of his childhood. An hour north he looked out the window when the suburbs eased into a forest of maple and birch, oak and pine, and yielded to lakes and black reservoirs. Granite stone glinted. Now, in nearly mid-June, an occasional dogwood still illumined the wood. How stunning their white-leafed petals, how strong and vibrant against the gathering dusk. Westchester always did this to him, made him sentimental. He’d lived on Long Island Sound ever since he’d started a small landscape architecture firm in the city, twenty years ago, but whenever he returned to Westchester there was always the sense of a flowing return, of coming back into a newly awakened memory.

  Sometimes it hurt.

  As the car edged into northern Westchester closer to Heritage Hills, Rowan tried to shake off his disquiet. He’d been entertaining clients in the newly opened Standard Grill and their brunch extended to late afternoon. Mimosas gave way to martinis. He’d closed the deal on a large project in Sag Harbor, but by the time he’d finally looked at his phone there were five missed calls from his mother and one stinker of a text from his brother telling him to answer his goddamn phone. It was urgent.

  He didn’t feel sober enough to maneuver from the lower West Side up to Grand Central—just the thought of a taxi was making him nauseous. It was the second Thursday in June, the traffic would be hell. Plus, he’d miss the 4:57 and couldn’t wait another half hour longer. Considering the windfall of the Sag project, he’d sprung for a car and driver. The Standard hotel, where he had been brought in as a consultant when designs for the High Line were being finalized, had helped him arrange it. He remembers now how his grandfather Burdy had encouraged him to “go for it” and, although his own submission wasn’t accepted, he’d facilitated some important design changes and now remained a special guest. The park, built along the railway line above the streets of the West Side, thrilled him. It was one of the things he loved most about New York City. He and Burdy had joined the Friends of the High Line and volunteered for spring and autumn cleanup.

  Rowan Blake was forty-four years old. If you saw him being driven up I-
684 you might think power and privilege, and to an extent it was true. But behind the tinted glass of the town car the handsome man was sitting alone. He had no wife, no partner, and few friends. Not exactly one of the Masters of the Universe, he was a successful “producer” with his own firm and half a dozen employees. Because of his grandfather, he knew a lot about a lot of different things and could converse on many subjects, from good opening bids in bridge to why Jack Nicklaus was perhaps the greatest golfer of all time. He had read The Fountainhead and Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist and was a weekly recipient of The New Yorker. But in the last few months these last lay unopened on his coffee table and the one by his bedside, the one with Obama dressed as Washington, was four months old and had wrinkled waves from when a glass of Hennessy had toppled. He was a man on the edge.

  Winding up through the hills, past the golf course and clubhouse, Rowan’s heart sank. When the driver pulled into Greenview Drive he saw his mother pacing outside her two-bedroom condo holding the portable house phone. It was unlike her to be so visible. He wondered if all the neighbors knew before he had about Burdy. There she stood, loafered feet, bare, tanned legs showing beneath a flared print skirt. She was the kind of woman who wore a short string of pearls with everything, even when she played golf, always a badge of elegance about her.

  “Mother…” Rowan’s voice broke as he exited the car. Louise Blake ran and with a perfumed embrace slumped her petite frame against him, her face warm on his chest,

  “Mother…” It was all he could say, his voice thickened by the afternoon of alcohol. He held her while the driver pulled the car around the small cul-de-sac of condos burrowed against the hill and drove quietly away.

  “He was playing golf this morning. Just fell. That was it. Gone. Like that. On the seventeenth.”