A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [30]
“Would you forgive me?” said Rosemary, standing. “I can’t go through with this.” She turned and walked out of the office as a fairly startled Mr. Carlysle stared after her. Jane didn’t know what she was supposed to do, it wasn’t her place to make the arrangements. She smiled apologetically and left the room leaving Mr. Carlysle alone with his white chrysanthemums.
The thought of it sitting empty with a headstone. Somber. Lonely. Not a place she could ever visit…
Jane caught up with her on Madison Avenue although as she watched her walk up the avenue, she considered it might be good for Rose to have some time alone.
“Rose, wait!” she called out. “We’ll find somewhere else.”
“I don’t want to find somewhere else,” said Rosemary as she stopped in front of a clothing shop. There was a female mannequin in the window dressed in a brown suit with a long skirt and well-tailored jacket.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Jane asked her.
“Not have a funeral,” she answered as if it were all as simple as that. “Not have a funeral until there’s a body. Until there’s a body, we can’t be certain.”
“But,” Jane said softly, “they said there was no doubt. That the firefight was so extensive there was—nothing left.”
“But I’m not certain,” said Rosemary. She looked at the suit in the window of the shop. “Do you like that suit?” she asked Jane.
“It’s all right,” said Jane, startled she was being asked to comment on a piece of clothing. “It looks like it might be difficult to walk in.”
“It’s not quite mourning,” said Rosemary. “But then again, I don’t want to be in mourning.”
Rosemary opened the door of the shop and walked in. She couldn’t imagine bringing flowers to an empty grave. Jane followed her into the shop having decided it was better to pretend it was an ordinary afternoon.
To the outside eye, Rosemary’s life remained much the same as always except she became more civic-minded, took on more charity work and volunteered at the V.A. Hospital which seemed out of character to Jane since Rose couldn’t stand the sight of blood. “I don’t actually do nursing,” she said to Jane when she queried her. “I read to them, talk to them. If Philip were—I wish I could do more.” She was halfway convinced that Philip was lying in a hospital somewhere, a victim of amnesia. Jane thought she’d read too many books.
Jane couldn’t actually say anything to Rosemary about any of this, not that it had been easy to offer varying opinions before. She was firm in the belief that if something had happened to Philip, she would know it and until such time, she would simply operate as if he were coming home.
She refused to allow the papers to run a death notice, trading on family connections, she convinced the editor at the Times to make no notice of it.
Her father was worried about her, in a way that went beyond parental concern. He realized he would have felt better if she’d screamed, yelled, taken to her bed, evidenced some of the frailer and more hysterical traits of her gender. He wondered how he’d raised a child who was so implacable and didn’t trust it. He suggested that they take a trip to Cape Cod to his sister’s, maybe by the seaside she would rest, maybe she would finally cry, but Rosemary refused. “No, Papa,” she said. “We can’t do it now. We have too many obligations here. Besides, if we were to get word of him…If you feel the need, Papa, to visit with your sister, go on ahead, by all means.”
“No,” said her father, “it’s your choice. And I’d rather stay with you here.”
He wondered if he should have forced the issue. The flowers that were sent as condolences, Rosemary refused to accept and had them all sent on to the Veterans’ Hospital. “It will surely cheer them up,” she said. And no one was allowed to visit unless they had two or three amusing stories to tell. Rosemary would not discuss the war. And life on 9th Street went on much the way it had, as though there had never been a telegram.
It occurred to Jane shortly after the telegram arrived that Eleanor Smith would have