Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold (6 page)

Fish gave her a wry smile. “You’re not quite the tragic type.”

“Thank God. Yes. Donna—the tall girl—certainly was. She was so serious, and very competitive. She wouldn’t even look at me after I auditioned.  It was a little surprising.”

“Don’t let it bother you. People like that are small-minded.”  Fish drained his cup—the tea had been at perfectly drinkable temperature. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to go soon. I’ve got work at eight tonight.”

“Where do you work?” Rose asked.

“I’m a teaching assistant. I work for Dr. Anschlung—she’s an Austrian, but she teaches English literature. She’s pretty incredible. I teach her undergrad students, I do her secretarial work, and stand in for her if she needs to miss a class. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s good experience.” He looked at his watch. “Thanks for the tea, Rose. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

She rose with him. “I’m glad you could bring the furniture down for me,” she said genuinely.

 “No problem,” he resisted the temptation to ask how she was doing. He didn’t even want to reference their conversation the night of Blanche’s wedding. The sooner she put that behind her, the better. “Let me know if you make the play. I’d like to see some decent Shakespeare.”

“All right,” she said, as they walked down the hall. “I will.”

He got into his car, waved goodbye to her, and drove away, feeling a bit relieved. So Rose was settling in to her new school and finding ways to occupy herself. That was good. It was high time she moved on.

Hers

“To play or not to play, that is the question,” Rose murmured to herself as she hurried from her dormitory one afternoon a few days later. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to act in the school production, or to take arms against a sea of papers, and by composing, write them?”

She waved gaily at a few of her new friends passing on the way to class, and reflected again how different it was to be at Mercy College. Attending community college at home in New York had been a lot like attending high school, the only difference being that the classes were harder and she could leave right after class to go home, if she wanted to. Living on the fringes of school social life, she hadn’t bothered to get to know the community college students.

But here at Mercy College, things were very different. She found herself thrust into a community situation unlike anything else she had experienced.

Mercy had a reputation for attracting Catholic students who were engaged in their faith, at least on some level, and this gave an unusual quality to the student body. People were friendly and eager to make friends, and Rose’s natural sociability reasserted itself. After a week, she found herself with over thirty friends in various groups, and never lacking for things to do. There were dances, hikes, hanging out in the student lounge, the chapel, the little café on the edge of campus—and oh yes, there were classes to go to.

And those classes were far more fascinating than anything at her community college. Theology, history, philosophy, bioethics…Kateri had recommended that Rose sign up for the bioethics class with Dr. Cooper to fulfill her science core class. But by the middle of the first class, Rose was having serious doubts. Sure, Dr. Cooper was really interesting, but he wanted each student to do a major research paper on the issue of their choice that was far longer and more involved than anything else Rose had ever written, and it would be one-half of their grade for the class. How could she juggle this class and the semester play?

As she worried over this, she couldn’t help noticing one student who sat in the first row, taking notes with unusual intensity. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with curly brown hair, brown eyes, and from his profile, Rose quickly decided she would like to get a better look at him sometime. She wondered what his name was, and if it was worth staying in this class just so she could find out...

Now facing the quandary of whether to drop bioethics or the play, she hurried to her room after class and called home. “What do you think I should do?” she asked her mom.

“Well, are you sure you have a part in the play?” her mom asked.

“No, but I was called back for a second audition—and I sort of have a good feeling about it,” Rose sighed. “But do you seriously think I can do that—write a major research paper and have a lead role in the play? I would love to do the play, but it seems so—extraneous.”

“But
King Lear
is a significant literary work, and your major is literature, isn’t it?” Mom pointed out. “If the play were something like
Arsenic and Old Lace
, I’d encourage you to drop it in favor of your schoolwork. But acting the part of Cordelia will give you an experience of Shakespeare that otherwise you would never have.”

“I guess you’re right,” Rose considered. “But this paper is a monster. Really long, and he wants at least three source interviews.”

Mom laughed. “Writing has always been your strong suit, Rose,” she said. “I know from homeschooling you. You can handle this paper. You have a gift for writing, just like your father had. He wrote for the Meyerstown News when we were up there.”

“Did he?” Rose asked, remembering her red-haired father, whom she had loved so much. “He didn’t happen to write on any bioethical issues, did he? Maybe I could use his writings as source material.”

“Well, he covered the Right to Life March every year—I know that,” her mom said. “That’s how he got labeled as an ultraconservative. The editor of the paper just wasn’t interested in the abortion issue. He used to say it was too passé.”

“I bet that got Dad mad.”

“It sure did. I was glad when he left the paper and went to work in the library.  It was so much less stress.”

“Well, I really don’t want to do abortion as my topic, though,” Rose said. “It’s almost too obvious. Besides, I’m sure some people are already doing it.”

“And you, being Rose, could never do something that other people were doing,” Mother laughed. “Well, let me think. Actually, there was another issue he was involved with, but he never got a chance to publish anything on it.”

“What was that?”

“It was a pretty strange and sad case. A nurse approached him and said that there was some kind of serious abuse going on at the hospital where she worked. She wanted your father to write an article on it using her as an anonymous source. Your dad interviewed her extensively and gathered a lot of information, but he couldn’t substantiate a lot of what she said. And his editor didn’t want to touch the story. I don’t know all the details, but I know your father was extremely upset over it. That’s one of the reasons why he quit, actually. I wish I knew some of the details. Anyway, abuse of hospital patients would probably fall under your topic—you know, cases where patients are neglected, denied proper treatment, and so on.”

“Yes, but it’s rather unpleasant,” Rose agreed, shivering involuntarily. “What happened to the nurse?”

“I’m not sure. She may still be in the area. If she is, she would probably talk to you about it. It’s been years since that happened, though.”

Rose found herself getting interested. “You know, I’d actually like to find out more about the story. Do you have any of Dad’s notes from the interviews or would he have left them in his newspaper’s office?”

Mom ruminated. “Daniel always kept everything he wrote. You know, the notes from the interviews are probably all still in storage in Grandma Brier’s old barn, near the house where we used to live. We weren’t able to bring most of that stuff with us when we moved to Warwick, and I suppose your father forgot about it over time. Someone in the family still uses the farmland, but I don’t think the house has been lived in since Grandma died and we left it. It was in pretty bad shape. You could probably go and poke around in the barn. Your dad kept everything in big file boxes in the hayloft.”

“How could I get there?”

“I’ll give you your cousin Jerry’s number and he could tell you. I’m sure they won’t mind if you go out there to look for the notes. They’d probably be glad to move some of that stuff out of there. Plus, it would be good for you to visit them. Let me get the number.” She found it, read it out to Rose, who scribbled it in her notebook.

“All right!” Rose said. “Thanks, Mom. This really helps me out.”

“I’m glad. Now, if you do get the part in the play, make sure you keep up your studies.”

“I think I’ll be able to,” Rose said. “Love you, Mom.”

H
IS

Fish woke up in a sweat, and started. Had he been screaming? He quickly glanced around the room, but the house was quiet. His apartment was fairly secluded. Most likely, no one had heard him.

Grateful, he put his head back down on the pillow and prayed to go back to sleep. But the re-living of the ordeal had been too real.

I’m just nervous about my classes
, he told himself.
Extra stress. The beginning of the semester. That’s what brought it all back.

He was teaching his first class for Dr. Anschlung tomorrow. Even though he had prepared thoroughly, he must still be on edge.

There was nothing to do but get out of bed. He pushed back the covers and got up. Rubbing his neck, which had been tense during the nightmare, he went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. It was common, he had heard, for people in his situation to have vivid flashbacks of the torture experience. He wondered if it would be like this all his life, waking up in the night, standing dully in the kitchen, drinking milk, emotionally exhausted.

Freet is still having his revenge on me,
he thought grimly, and smiled. The one consolation he had was that he guessed the flashbacks would be much worse if he had actually given in.

After taking another glass of milk, Fish picked up his backpack from the living room and hunted around in it for his rosary. That might put him back to sleep, and keep him from the usual after-effects of remembering.
I’ll go rock climbing this weekend
, he told himself. Maybe he could get one of his classmates to go with him.
I need to start exercising more often, to keep this kind of tension from building up. That’s what I’ll do. Can’t be a graduate assistant if I have to deal with this kind of trauma every night.

Fortified with these resolutions, he returned to his bedroom and tried once more to sleep.

The nightmare had its effect in a headache that surfaced when Fish woke up later that day. Or perhaps the headache had caused the nightmare. Annoyed, he took three aspirin and went to teach his first class.

It went surprisingly well, and he was pleased. After class, he studied in the library, then took his work with him to Dr. Anschlung’s office. She had a sheaf of handwritten notes that she wanted transcribed. A short blond woman with a Germanic accent, she was apologetic about her poor handwriting, but Fish didn’t find it difficult to decipher. The next few hours were spent in busy solitude with the computer, until he heard her coming in at the door.

“Ben?”

“Yes, Dr. Anschlung?”

“I heard from some students that your first lecture went off very well. I was just invited to go out to dinner with Jane—Dr. Storck. Why don’t you join us? A bit of a celebration. It would give you a chance to meet some more of our faculty.”

“Thank you. I would like to.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced down at his cotton shirt and dark pants. He hoped it was decent enough for dining out with faculty. But then again, he wasn’t sure where they were going.

Dr. Anschlung drove him to the restaurant, which turned out to be a fairly nice French establishment. There they met up with Dr. Jane Storck of the English faculty. She chatted with him pleasantly about NYU where he had done his undergraduate work.

“Now, Marie, I have to warn you that Dr. Prosser is supposed to join our party tonight.” Dr. Storck glanced at Fish. “I just hope she doesn’t give any offense to your assistant.”

“Oh!” Dr. Anschlung seemed surprised. “Was this a woman’s only night? I didn’t know.”

“Well, Dr. Prosser can get very adamant about not wanting to deal with men on her off time. Very strident feminist. As director of the hospital, you know, she oversees a lot of male doctors…”

Dr. Anschlung glanced at Fish, and raised her Austrian nose just slightly. “Well, I also consider myself a feminist, but I happen to enjoy the company of men. I would hope Dr. Prosser would be a bit more broad-minded.”

“One would hope,” Dr. Storck seemed dubious. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

Two other professors arrived, Drs. Lora Carpenter and Frances Bosworth, Biochemistry and Engineering, respectively. They greeted the other women affably and Fish pleasantly. Then two more women followed.

One was an imposing woman with a broad chest and curly brown hair cropped short, with a boisterous manner. The other was thin and wiry with rumpled blond hair, clearly subservient to her boss. They both wore lab coats under their overcoats.

“Hullo girls!” the big woman said loudly as she came in. “The sisterhood all here?”

“Seems like it,” said Dr. Carpenter cheerfully. “But you can’t be a purist tonight, Pross—we’ve got an enemy spy with us.” She indicated Fish.

“I invited him to come along with me,” said Dr. Anschlung loyally, putting a hand on his shoulder. “This is Benedict Denniston, my new graduate assistant.”

“Benedict?” Dr. Prosser towered over Fish. “At least he’s not named Benedict Arnold, hey?” She seemed gregarious enough, but Fish didn’t like her. “Let’s get some food—I’m starving.”

Fish followed the party to the table, feeling a bit of an outsider, but curious to see what this dinner party would be like.

Dr. Prosser seemed to be the dominant person at the party, and led the conversation inexorably. She didn’t exactly ignore Fish, but she didn’t seem to go out of her way to include him. Fish wondered if she were deliberately treating him the way she fancied some men treated women—talking over them and around them, never to them.

By contrast, Dr. Anschlung seemed determined to include him in the conversation—which he would just as soon listen to as join—and persistently asked for his input. Dr. Prosser sometimes interrupted his comments, but Fish put up with it.