The Rose Bush

Michael Morales

The boy was seven that spring when she brought it home.

A bare-root rosebush. He had never seen one before. The roots looked like damp brown ropes, and the canes were thorny and gray. She carried it from the car with both hands. A name was written on the tag in ink. Mister Lincoln.

“That’s a man’s name,” he said.

She smiled. “He was a great man. He knew about hard things.”

The boy was puzzled, but she didn’t explain.

The ground was soft from the rain. She dug the hole with a spade. It was slow work, and she stopped twice to rest and push the hair from her face. He watched her. He was small and his hands were clean. She told him to bring her the watering can and he did. She filled the hole with water and waited for it to drain.

“You must be patient with a rose,” she said.

He was not patient. He was seven. He wanted the rose to bloom now. She laughed. She had a low laugh that came from deep in her chest. She poured more water into the hole, then she dropped in the rose and filled the dirt around it and pressed it down with her foot.

“Now we wait,” she said.

They waited.

The first spring it bloomed in June. The roses were deep red. Almost black in some light. She cut one at its stem and put it in a glass of water on the kitchen table. He touched the petal. It was soft like skin.

“It smells like you,” he said.

She smelled the rose, then smelled her wrist. She laughed again.

“Maybe,” she said.

She kept the rose on the table until the petals became brown and fell. Then she put the petals in a bowl.

The years went by. The bush grew taller. The roses blossomed every June. She cut them and brought them into the house. Sometimes the boy cut them himself, too. He was taller now. His hands were not clean anymore. He had learned to whittle and to fish and to keep his mouth shut when there was nothing to say.

She taught him how to prune the rosebush in the fall. How to slice the dead wood. How to mulch it with leaves. How to cover the graft with soil so the chill wouldn’t kill it.

“The graft is the weak place,” she said. “It’s where the good roses join the strong roots. You must protect it.”

He nodded. He understood about weak places.

She grew older. It happened slowly. And then it happened fast.

Her hair was gray now. The same gray as the rose canes in winter. She moved slower and sat more. She watched the rosebush from the kitchen window. He did the pruning now. He did the mulching. He did the watering.

The roses still grew in June. But there were fewer of them.

“It’s getting old,” she said.

“So are you,” he said.

She laughed. It wasn’t the same laugh; it was thinner. It did not come from deep in her chest anymore.

The last spring, she went to the hospital.

She did not want to go, but he drove her. The roads were wet from rain. They didn’t talk much. They never talked much. That was the way between them. It wasn’t bad. It was just the way.

“Water the rosebush,” she said.

“I will,” he said.

“Don’t let it die.”

“I won’t.”

She looked out the window. The fields were green. The sky was gray.

He said nothing more.

The hospital was white and clean, and it smelled plain. She lay in the bed and machines beeped and nurses came and went. He sat by the window. He could see the parking lot and the road and trees. But no roses.

She slept most of the time. When she woke she asked about the rosebush.

“Did you water it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it blooming?”

“Not yet. It’s early.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes.

He went home on the third day. He tended the rosebush, but it wasn’t blooming. The buds were there, small and tight and green. But the leaves were yellow. Some of them had brown spots.

He watered it. He pruned the dead branches. He talked to it the way she had taught him.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

The rosebush didn’t answer. Roses do not answer.

The phone rang at four in the morning. He knew what it meant before he picked up. The voice on the other end was kind. It said she was gone. It said it was peaceful. It said he should come.

He set the phone down. The house was silent. He stood in the cold, dark kitchen, then put on his coat and boots.

He walked outside. The sky was starting to lighten in the east. When he reached the rosebush, he saw the roses had opened.

Their scarlet petals were wet with dew. They were the biggest roses he’d ever seen on that bush. There were more of them than there’d been in years.

He stood there a long time. He did not touch them. He just stood and stared.

Then he stepped inside and called the funeral home.

The next day he cut the roses. All of them. He put them in vases and jars and coffee cans. He lined them up on the kitchen table. The table was full. The whole house smelled like her.

He took one rose to the funeral home. He put it in her hands. Her hands were blue and the rose looked crimson against her skin.

“It bloomed,” he said.

She did not answer.

That fall the rosebush did not put out new leaves. The canes turned gray and brittle. He pruned it. He mulched it. He watered it. He covered the graft.

In the spring it did not come back.

He dug it up in April. The roots were rotted. He set the bush by the side of the road, and the garbage truck came on Tuesday and took it away.

He’d kept one cane. He whittled it down and made a walking stick but left the thorns.

He uses the stick when he walks in the woods. The woods are quiet. The ground is soft.