Hardy Roses: And Other Stories

By Maeve Mullen Ellis

This collection contains both published and unpublished stories about family, mortality, tradition, and change. In Hardy Roses we meet a first generation American whose visiting father seeks to grow the roses of his Irish home in the harsh New England climate. His quest ends up bridging both continents and generations. In The Lamp we see a young girl struggle with adult responsibilities when she and her brother find themselves unexpectedly alone in a dark house. In the Witch in the Well a woman faces her own mortality when a frightening experience makes her reflect back on her life and her love for her husband. From Ireland to New England to Alaska these stories describe the importance of family bonds and shared history.

This collection contains both published and unpublished stories about family, mortality, tradition, and change. In Hardy Roses we meet a first generation American whose visiting father seeks to grow the roses of his Irish home in the harsh New England climate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483401713

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Copyright © 2013 Maeve Mullen Ellis.

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-0172-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-0173-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-0171-3 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 07/24/2013

Table of Contents

The Witch in the Well

Lizzie

Bright Nights, Dark Day

Company

Coyote Pee

Delete

Dump

First Heroes

Guardian Angels

Glow

Group Living

Hardy Roses

All Her Dreams

The Whole Truth

Image Writer

Getting Involved

The Little One

Staying

Ordinary Time

Papayas

Pierre

Pills

Saving Simba

Self-Addressed

Bomb Shelter

The Cane

The Gardener

The Lamp

Boobs

The Summit

This is Mine

Too Old for a New Dog

As Bad as Today

The Witch in the Well

First Published in Victory Park, 1999, vol. 2, no. 1, pp30-35

I KNOW I SHOULD STOP him. I could call the police and tell them Harry is trying to kill me. To throw me down the well. They wouldn’t believe me but they’d come. I’ve only ever called them once, no, twice, when the moose walked through our yard and headed for the main road, and when I found the naked woman cowering under the pine trees, crying. She wouldn’t come indoors so I wrapped her in my winter robe and stayed with her until they came. Poor thing, we heard no more. She was from Massachusetts.

I could call our son Dan, who lives in Nashua and already seems older than his dad. He lives in a condo and calls maintenance for everything. No help from Jane, our baby, either. She lives in Phoenix, and thinks her father is always right.

He is. But now I’m frightened.

In the village where I grew up there was little to be afraid of; no fierce bulls or mad dogs, no haunted house, no strangers. My mother, however, for my own good, instilled in me a lifelong terror, a deathly fear of wells.

The wooden covers are mostly rotted, she said, you could easily fall through. Even if it wasn’t deep enough to drown you, you’d be down there with all those dead critters and we’d never hear you no matter how loudly you called. She forbade playing near old cellar holes, and I never disobeyed her. Some of my friends played house inside those sunken stone walls in the woods. They found kitchen stuff, old buckets, broken china and glass bottles. I felt left out and envious but my fear was stronger than my envy. I still remember the horror with which I later watched Snow White lean over the wishing well and sing. I thought she deserved the witch, who didn’t frighten me half so much as the well. And that other princess, who dropped her golden ball in the well, deserved the frog.

Once in the village I heard of a man who was shoveling silt out of his well. The sides, built of heavy stones, caved in on him and crushed his chest. We could hear him struggling to breathe. they said. He was alive until just before the fire truck came.

There was a terrible whispered story too, of the young girl who drowned herself in her family’s well. She pried the top off and jumped in with her newborn baby in her arms. Of course, they whispered, Her mind was deranged.

My uncle, who lived near us, had a well in one of the farm buildings. Water was pumped through the wall to a trough outside for the farm animals. Sometimes I filled buckets of water from that pipe but I never ever went into the pump house.

Now I live in a house with an old dug well and today my husband, Harry, is planning to climb down into it. I’ve tried everything I can to change his mind. His back is bad and his new hip cost Medicare fourteen thousand. I know he can do anything he sets his mind to, and he has held this old place together for forty years, but this time I think we should get an expert. That’s a dirty word around here and it must have hurt his pride but I’ve said it over and over. Let’s get the well people, Harry. They can pump it out.

Make a terrible mess and charge a couple of thousand.

Harry’s getting his tools together and we’ve dragged the ladder in. I can’t help helping. His powerful flashlight’s ready in my hand. The morning talk show’s on.

Our dog fell down there once. Part lab, he loved the water, or maybe chased a squirrel, but somehow he burrowed into the crawl space from outside and found the well. Danny was ten, and heard the barking.

He’s in the basement, Mom. he said. Then later, Maybe the attic?

We searched inside and out for the muffled barking and then I remembered that the well, dug by some long gone farmer, was under the glassed in porch that opens off the kitchen. That day, with the dog barking in the well, I called Harry at work and he knew just what to do.

Turn the faucets on full in the bathroom and in the kitchen, he said. I’ll come home.

We moved the summer furniture and the toys. We pulled the rug up, and found the old linoleum flooring below with a trapdoor in it. The dog barked louder when he saw us, up on his hind legs in no danger of drowning now. We could see the watermark on the stones and it wouldn’t have drowned the big mutt anyway. Harry went down a ladder and I was too busy holding the kids back to think of stones falling on him. We sent down a laundry basket on a rope and hauled up the dog who rushed straight out and tried to burrow back into the crawl space. That was a long time ago. It’s different now.

Harry has always insisted there is no shortage of water, the dug well’s fine. That girl just spends too long in the shower. he remarked when our granddaughter stayed with us last week I’d wondered myself how she took so long. I find it hard to believe that my youngest baby’s youngest baby is shaving her legs. Not long since I changed her diapers, but last week she came storming out of the shower which was hissing viciously and told me she had run out of water. Again!

And Harry will do anything for her. She wouldn’t want him risking his life though, and he might even listen to her, but now she’s back at college.

Dammit he said when he came up from the basement then. Sorry, love. He always apologizes when he swears in front of me. I never swear out loud, but at times like this my head explodes with words I’ve never said

There must be a leak in the pipe. We’re sucking air. A lot of it. Got to have a look

We looked. Pulled up the rug and found the trapdoor. A few dark creeping creatures fell to their death; some spiders swung to safety. I didn’t remember it so deep. Old barking dog seemed closer.

This morning we are ready to start. While the low fall sunshine fills the room and the television talks of Halloween. Clammy, musty air comes from the crawl space. I hold on to a chair and look down. There is a witch down there with hair like mine. She shakes her head at me and I at her. Before he descends into the pit, Harry ties the heavy wrenches onto a long cord. I worry about dropping the flashlight. It shines on his thin gray hair and I feel sick with fear and love.

Try to keep the light on the junction here. He turns sideways on the ladder and fits the wrenches to the rusted pipe. The junction is corroded and the pipe that runs toward the basement pump looks awful. It must be 50 years old. The joints don’t move. He wants the propane torch to heat the solder, but a truck drives in and today’s dog barks.

Who the hell is that?

Jeff Morris. A nice guy. Jeff had an artesian drilled last year. You can’t fall down one of those.

Don’t let him in!

He’d be a help…you could use a hand…

You’re good enough.

I know. I greet my neighbor in the yard with a jar of jam. Rhubarb was good this year. Give this to Mary.

He wants to borrow the chain saw for an hour. A job half done, his saw just broke its chain. Ours is in the barn and as we pass our truck I say, Harry’s at the gym, with his exercise class. I wish Jeff would prove me a liar, come in and see and help and save the day, but he thanks me and leaves.

In the cold kitchen a silent smell of heat. The propane torch! I swear deep in my throat and kneel and peer. Down in the granite pit he concentrates on the flame and doesn’t see me. I see the old solder melt and Harry pulls the pipes apart easily, magically silver clean. That end is hot. he says and hands the pipe from the water gently up, then follows slowly. I breathe more deeply and put on the coffee pot. The foot valve, at the water end of the pipe, is badly rusted and I’m glad my granddaughter can’t see the roots that snake around it. Already she brings her bottled water.

Next plan. From down in the basement he’ll thread a plastic pipe through the old, old metal one below the floor. This part is almost fun. I watch the yellow metal measuring tape come snaking through. It turns, looks up and down. The witch is still down there. I smooth my hair and wish she was a water nymph.

His distant voice. I’m drawing it back. Say when. Then measures. And then the new black pipe emerges. This is too easy and Harry’s safe in the basement, but he comes up and climbs down the ladder again. The next piece of pipe writhes stubbornly in my hands as I try to pass it to him. It reaches the ceiling and is hard to bend. I bow it tightly and toe the lower end towards him.

Watch out he shouts, as the freed top lashes out and pushes me backward. I’m OK, but I sure hope he is frightened.

Pass me the pipe cutter and then that other thing, love. Are you sure you’re alright? He doesn’t expect an answer but reaches up blindly for the tool, keeping his eye on the mark he has made on the pipe. I find the electric paint stripper to warm the plastic under the new seal. If that falls in he’ll be electrocuted so I kneel carefully on the cord and breathe the warm new smell. I wonder can I go through this again, and then, he’s done. I take the stripper from his hand. He tightens the clamps on the new junction and pokes the fresh foot valve into position. The water’s muddy now. The witch is gone.

He climbs up stiffly and we move the ladder; replace the trapdoor, but not the carpet or the furniture just yet. Make sure it works. Later he restarts the pump and runs a full hot bath. Amazing man.

Beside the new lit stove I pour two mugs, from Alaska and Epcot, cream jug from Ireland. We wrap our hands around our memories. There’s mid-day news and no one’s gone to war.

Lizzie

WHEN I THINK OF DYING I often think of Lizzie. I was a child when I watched her die, and at the time I was more interested than sad. She promised that her ghost would come back to visit me and I wanted so much to ask that ghost how dying felt. When I think of Lizzie I remember the things that I once believed.

Lizzie almost always wore black or gray. Her clothes didn’t fit, and her dull dark hair fell across her face. Girls didn’t walk with their hands in their pockets then; it just wasn’t done. So even on cold days her hands hung blue and unmoving by her sides.

Bright colors and new clothes were difficult to find during the war, but still my own mother usually managed to dress me in one of her favorite shades of green. She saved every small ball of wool and collected leftover yarn from her friends, and I remember one glorious sweater she crocheted in concentric waves like a stone stirred pond.

Lizzie was nine years old like me. She passed by our house on her way to school. If I was dressed and ready my mother would say,

Why don’t you walk with that little girl?

Lizzie seldom spoke and I didn’t talk much either. The two of us walked silently along, looking at the rusty nails and bottle caps encrusting the dirt road. One day I found a medal of the Blessed Virgin with lines of grace radiating from her hands.

Lizzie smiled and fingered the identical medal which hung on a string around her neck. When I showed my find to the teacher she said I could keep it. My mother wasn’t a Catholic and never thought to buy me one. She did learn to lead the rosary with us children when my father wasn’t home.

I rarely missed school, but Lizzie was often absent and on those days I walked home with two sisters who lived in the village. Their father owned a grocery store and a pub. My own father was a policeman who bicycled into town every morning.

In fourth grade we had cooking classes. We learned how to let cold water run over our wrists in order to cool our hands before we made pastry. After Christmas we had laundry classes on Mondays. There we learned how to dampen and iron men’s button-on collars and put them in a round cookie tin so that they would hold their shape. Many of my classmates from that small Irish village would be maids when they left school.

Lizzie never came to laundry class, even when she was present that day. Once when I left the classroom to go to the outside privy, I passed her sitting on a bench in the hallway, bent over her reading book. I was bored with ironing, so when I came in I sat down beside her on the bench and read with her, right to the end. I was surprised that she read as well as I did, because I had never heard her read in class. We had something to talk about now, and I began to lend her books. Lizzie didn’t have any of her own, but she brought an old history book that was her father’s. At home I talked of something I read in it, and my father asked me where I’d heard it.

That’s only one side of the story. he said. They should be teaching you both.

I didn’t tell him it was Lizzie’s book.

My other friends didn’t talk to me so much now, but one day they came and whispered to me that Lizzie was going to die.

She’s got consumption. Our Da told us.

They made it sound as if it was Lizzie’s fault and I didn’t believe them then. But I asked Lizzie why she didn’t come in to laundry class and she told me the doctor said the steam would be bad for her chest.

My mam died of consumption, she said I don’t remember her at all.

Who looks after you then?

My Grandma. She’s fat. Fat people never get consumption.

Both my grandmothers were heavy women. No one that I knew well had ever died, and the funerals that passed our house on the way to the church were more dramatic than sad. The church bell tolled slowly for a long time before the hearse passed. We drew our lace curtains closed when we heard it, but we could see the men walk behind the flower-covered coffin. If he was home, my father always put on his Sunday suit and joined them.

On Mondays, during Laundry, Lizzie ate some of her lunch while she sat outside. Her grandmother made great lunches. I took to finishing my ironing quickly and raising my hand to leave the room. Then Lizzie shared her thick slices of soda bread with me. They were usually spread with bacon grease and sometimes sandwiched slices of hardboiled eggs and green onions.

I wanted to ask Lizzie about consumption but instead I read the Family Doctor book that my mother sometimes consulted. It came in two volumes but she removed the second one from the bookshelves after she found my brother and his friends looking at the anatomical diagrams. Just then, the facts of life were not as interesting to me as the facts of death. I learned that people did die of consumption, and that you could catch it from other people.

I tried to find ways to ask Lizzie whether she knew she was dying. Before I could ask she told me.

When we say the Rosary my Grandma always prays that I’ll have a happy death, and my Aunt Ellie always cries.

So I could ask.

When do they think it will happen? and Will you come to my birthday party if you’re still alive?

I told Lizzie I would miss her, and I asked if she would come and visit me as a ghost. I said that I wouldn’t be afraid of her. Lizzie’s faith was not as strong as mine.

My mam never came back to visit me nor Joe. she said, but I’ll try.

I know now that Lizzie had pulmonary tuberculosis, then known as consumption, and in its later stages as rapid consumption or even galloping consumption. In the 1930s, Lizzie was allowed to attend school as long as she avoided the steamy laundry lessons. The rest of us took our chances. A vaccine against tuberculosis was developed in the twenties, but I never heard of it until I started college. We were all tested then to see if we were suitable candidates for vaccination. I was told that I had already acquired and recovered from a primary tuberculosis infection and that this protected me as well as the vaccine could. Thanks to Lizzie, almost certainly.

The old doctor retired the winter I studied laundry. He was replaced by a younger man who was a bachelor, and a challenge to my matchmaking mother. She often invited some young woman to meet him and I remember listening from my bedroom to the talk over the card table. On one of these evenings my mother learned for the first time of Lizzie’s diagnosis. I had never been to Lizzie’s home nor she to mine. My mother chose my guests, and now she said I could not invite Lizzie to my birthday party. That was still a long way away and didn’t seem worth arguing about.

Not long after this, the new doctor confined Lizzie to her home. I remember hearing him tell my mother that he would like to confine everyone to their homes on Sundays.

That crowded, coughing church is as dangerous as a coal mine.

The teacher asked us to pray for Lizzie only a few days before she asked us to pray for the little children of Dresden. Lizzie and the children of Europe were prayed for at Mass too. She was as famous as Hitler and I was her friend. I wanted to go and visit her but my mother wouldn’t let me. I believed that my mother never lied, but this time she said that I could visit when Lizzie was better.

I went to see Lizzie anyway, but first I tried for a miracle. I believed in miracles then and I would have been very proud if Lizzie was cured because of me. Bleeding statues and two headed calves were sometimes reported on the radio, but my mother only listened to the BBC news which always ended with how many of their aircraft failed to return.

On the way back from school one day I walked slowly to let the others go ahead. Then I sneaked into the churchyard. I knew of no rule against this, but I felt a familiar guilt. The church was empty. It smelled of incense and beeswax candles. I blessed myself at the holy water font and then stopped to look at the Catholic Truth booklets on the rack inside the door. My father never let me get one when he took me to Mass. Mysterious titles like Keeping Company and Self Control were tempting, but I had more important things to do just then. I knelt about halfway down the aisle. Only old ladies ever went up to the front pews.

The stained glass light shone diagonally across the sanctuary, painting in purple and green and gold the dust motes that floated in front of the Virgin’s statue. I knelt and stared until my eyes were out of focus. I whispered over and over, Please make Lizzie better! I knew something should happen, and it did. Light moved across Our Lady’s face as my blurred vision brought tears to my eyes and to hers. I had succeeded. The statue was crying. Lizzie would get better.

Suddenly the sun slid behind some trees. Everything was darker and there was a shuffling at the