Rambling Rose by Calder Willingham

Author:Calder Willingham [Willingham, Calder]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York : Dell
Published: 1972-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

12. Rose is hired, mired and fired

Nous verrons ce que nous verrons, but already Daddy had observed enough to cause his eyes to resemble maps handed out free by that good Gulf gasoline. He certainly had and it’d petrified him. To see a person endure and courageously survive disastrous epizootics both creates and augments emotions of affection, involvement and even investment as far as that person is concerned. I watched Daddy struggle with it day by day. He’d intended to fire Rose, but her great epizootics had saved her. How could he fire her now after she’d bravely conquered death itself?

And yet, could a leopard change its spots or Rose her petals? What next? What kind of damnable commotion would she create tomorrow? And what could be done to forestall that coming commotion, frustrate it, defuse it? Perhaps… just perhaps… a very… very… solemn warning!… a rigid finger in her face inches from her nose and two reddened road-map eyes boring into her like augers?

“Whew-w-w!” said Daddy one morning at breakfast over a half-a-cup of coffee, as Rose sang happily in the kitchen doing the dishes, her old self. “Would you believe the bill that goddamn hospital has sent us? Would you believe it? Look at it, darlin’! Look at it! They’re trying to destroy Christian civilization, and they aren’t even Jews or Arabs!”

“Lord in heaven,” said Mother, slightly ill. “How can they charge so much?” In shocked consternation she adjusted her glasses and examined again the slip of awful paper in her hand. “This is absolutely horrible. How are we going to pay it? I’m not rich any more, do they think I’m still rich? Write them a letter and tell them Ben stole all my money and we can’t pay any such bill as this.”

“That won’t do any good, darlin’. A hospital is the crudest institution known to man. They have hearts of fire-hardened steel up there, darlin’, fire-hardened steel.”

“This is awful,” said Mother. “How are we going to pay it?”

“We can’t,” said Daddy. “We are ruined. And I’m the fool who went around saying you shouldn’t marry for money, but it’s just as easy to love a woman who has got it. Darlin’, we’re wiped out. Rose has wiped us out with her epizootics. That’s all she wrote. Ruination. Rose has ruined us, and I knew she would the minute I saw her perched there on the sofa in the living room with her frizzy blonde hair all poking out and her blue eyes so innocent. That insane creature has wiped us out. I thought that goddamn doctor’s bill was bad, but this is the end. There’s nothing left but the river.”

With a dismayed shake of the head Mother handed the hospital bill back to Daddy. “Well, we’ll just have to pay it,” she said in a wan voice. “We’ll manage, somehow. Pay them by the month or something, or maybe borrow it from the bank, except I hate to do that. The trouble with borrowing is you have to pay it back, that’s the catch.

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