Rose

The Bathroom

Rose never told anyone why she was always in the bathroom—her husband assumed that her “difficulties” originated in the distant past. She had been married for twelve years before she met the Doctor, and that was nearly a life-time ago when she lived in a cramped city apartment without any privacy. Not until she moved into the house in Barclay Park, with a spacious marble bathroom all her own, was Rose finally able to have a moment of peace.

And these moments came frequently. Something went off in her mind, like a trigger, that told her she had to go, she had to go. Rose hurried to the bathroom, remembering that she shouldn’t hurry, because just last week she fell and bruised her upper thigh on the hard marble tiles. Her fingers reached for the edge of the vanity top as she sidled her way to the toilet. Once she was safe inside the little chamber, behind the fogged glass door, Rose tried to shut everything out of her mind. She tried to relax. And sometimes she fell into a state of deep concentration, wherein the magazine rack on the wall, the toilet paper dispenser, and the little chamber itself disappeared. During these moments, she was absolutely alone, and the noises that had been eddying around in her mind all day long, became suddenly still. Then she would hear a quiet sound, like a stream, flowing directly beneath her.

But nothing ever seemed to come out. (Sighing.) Her focus continued—and she could almost feel something giving way—but no, there was nothing. Her imagination was deceiving her again. She always thought that she had to go to the bathroom. Maybe it was just another false alarm. She waited. Ten minutes longer. Twenty minutes. She picked up a magazine, Reform Judaism.

Rose’s bathroom looked like one of those grottos in the South of France where sunlight peeps in through a crack in the cave and reflects off the crystal ponds inside. Orchids and azaleas were set in brass at the foot of the oversized marble Jacuzzi. Bonsai plants sat on high nooks. The polished floors were grey and glistening, and mirrors gave the illusion of infinite space.

Despite the splendor and security of Rose’s bathroom, every so often her son, Lethe, tramped inside, busted open the fogged glass door, and saw his mother’s naked thighs wedged over the toilet seat. Startled by her son’s intrusion, Rose flexed the great wing-shapes of her arms. Don’t you dare come in here Lethe Bashar—she spat out at her son, shooing him away with her large, flapping arms. Don’t you dare, don’t you dare. Leave Mommy alone. I said I’m busy. Leave me alone.

Housecleaning

After his marriage to Rose, the Doctor bought a big white house for his wife and children to live in. Rose adored this two-story ranch house and it was her obsession to make sure it never fell into a state of disorder. Depending on whom you asked, some said that Rose’s need to keep her house spotlessly clean was a neurosis, while others upheld that Rose simply enjoyed having a clean house, or that she was a perfectionist with high standards. With the exception of the Doctor’s pinewood study, everything in Rose’s house conformed to white or marble. Rose was preoccupied with the appearance of her house. Hidden spots of dust and dirt threatened her household ideal, reminding her of her previous life-time when she lived in a cramped city apartment. Every morning she walked through the halls, searching for fingerprints her two children may have left during the night.

Housecleaning was an activity that had to be engaged on many levels. There was the weekly scouring of the house—and there was the regular, daily cleaning. A grey van packed with Polish and Slavic ladies arrived at Rose’s house every Thursday morning to accomplish the former of the two missions, which entailed bleaching the grout between the tiles, cleaning out the refrigerator, vacuuming all the rooms, cleaning mirrors, wiping windows, polishing cabinets, and various other jobs that are too numerous and picayune to list here. The battalion of cleaning ladies was distinct in purpose and duty from the two regular housekeepers who also acted as nannies. In accomplishing her vision for a clean house, Rose wanted two women who could act as her right hand men.

Dora broke stride down the tiled hallway nearly twenty times a day. Her tall, lanky build and vigorous arm movements resembled the idiosyncrasies of the ostrich. The brunt of the work fell on Dora, who was younger than Mabel, and who strove to meet Rose’s often unreasonable demands for a clean house. She also worked in Rose’s art studio, building frames, stretching canvases, and banging nails into wooden beams. Often Dora and Rose worked side-by-side, whether they were scrubbing floors or cleaning paint brushes.

In addition, Dora and Mabel made the beds, changed the sheets, tidied the bedrooms, did the laundry and dusted the blinds. They also emptied the garbage cans, watered the plants, did the grocery shopping and made school lunches. On most days, they also prepared dinner. After a day’s worth of cleaning, the house looked completely anonymous, and Lethe and his sister had the strange impression they were staying in a hotel. Their rooms were in perfect order—the only thing missing—a mint on their pillows.

The Obsessive Artist

Lethe and Mazzy saw that their mother escaped downstairs into the basement and sometimes did not return to the upper floor until the next morning. During Rose’s stints of oil-painting, the housekeepers took care of the children, preparing Macaroni and Cheese dinners, or helping Lethe and his sister with their homework.

Rose worked tirelessly in her art studio, making numerous sketches, arranging scenes for her models, and hovering anxiously over a large commercial easel. Night and day, the glare of extension lights reflected off the walls in a harsh, artificial brightness. An old wine box overflowed with tubes of oil paint, and horsehair brushes soaked in turpentine. Open cans of solvents and paint thinners gave off a burning, astringent odor that lingered in the air and made your eyes water.

In the corner of the room, a breakfast scene was erected with a small table, chairs, and a television. Mabel and her husband, Ernie, modeled for Rose. Mabel was a small woman with curly, white hair. Her husband, an ex-truck driver, had round shoulders and a large, sedate body. In the pictures, Mabel usually stood beside her husband nervously, tentatively, either fixing the breakfast or getting ready to leave the house. Ernie, in contrast, was always eating at the table or napping in a wingback chair. Rose used lots of props in her paintings, some of them incongruous with the scene itself. Scattered across the floor of her studio were the objects she had collected over the years, African tribal mask, ceramic owl, mannequin, gas mask, snake cage and sailor’s trunk. In the background of Rose’s paintings, we see two geese hissing at each other. Flocks of Canadian geese lurked around the perimeter of a nearby lake and wandered into the residents’ lawns. From her studio-window, Rose looked out at the ill-tempered birds, and they came to hold a symbolic meaning for her.

In the beginning, Rose’s desire to paint was completely alien to her husband. He had never met an artist before nor did he know what motivated a person to want to create art. He saw his wife’s painting as a diversion, a hobby at best. When she transformed one of the rooms in the basement into an art studio, he raised two concerns: (1) Rose was becoming obsessed with painting and (2) She was neglecting her duties as mother and housewife.

And then, Rose began the habit of “dressing up”. When the Doctor came home one night, he found his wife wearing purple tights, a white and black striped pullover and a red silk opera hat. She had painted her face white with black teardrops under her eyes.

The Doctor exclaimed, “Honey, you look silly with that outfit on. Why don’t you go take it off?”

“After dinner—” she replied.

“But we’re eating as a family and you look like you’re in Vaudeville.”

Rose’s silverware fell to the floor—

She stood up in front of her family. Lethe and his sister were watching intently. The Doctor looked alarmed.

Using hand gestures, Rose pretended to be trapped inside an invisible box. She struggled and struggled to get out of the box. Her eyebrows flew up into her forehead and her small pupils became frantic. The two siblings broke into a fit of giggles. The Doctor stared at his wife, blankly.

Rose decides to go to art school

Rose did not see her husband as a “spiritual person” by any means. In fact, she may have even considered him the antithesis of a spiritual person. She used words and phrases like “fanatical” and “totally insensitive” to describe her husband. The harsh language she used in their numerous fights concealed the fact that she felt ignored by him. Her first husband had never paid much attention to her. Thinking back Rose didn’t know which of her husbands were worse, her first husband who kept a half dozen girlfriends, or her second husband who seemed incapable of relating to her in a personal way.

When she first married Salem, she thought that maybe his emotional distance was because of a difference in their cultures. If that were the case, then maybe over time, living together and raising a family, the problem would be resolved. But year after year, Rose began to take another view of her husband. The man she had chosen to marry was incapable of loving her. His narcissism and self-importance formed a wall around him, a barrier, and no matter how hard she tried to get through to him, he seemed totally unaware of how to love her. Sure, he could love his children, and of course, he had no problem loving his mother, or his countless relatives from one continent to the next. But here, in this house, he walked in a cloud of complete ignorance. Either his emotions toward her were shallow, or he had no emotions at all.

She tried to talk to him about his feelings, but talking to a Middle Eastern man about his feelings is like talking to a bear about making a bird’s nest. He was consumed with his work and too distracted with friends and “family” (i.e. his mother and father) to be truly with her as a husband. He gave attention to the children but didn’t seem to put any effort into the marriage.

Having this conversation in her head almost every night before she went to sleep, Rose at last decided that if her husband was not going to satisfy her emotionally, then she would concentrate her energy on herself, developing herself as an individual and an artist. She could not wait for her husband to come around. She wanted to go back to school for a liberal arts degree. She wanted to continue to paint and immerse herself in making art. She could not rely on her husband anymore.

When the Doctor challenged Rose on her decision to go back to school, she said, “You know what your problem is, Salem? You’re living in the wrong century. In the United States, women have freedoms and liberties. They don’t have to stay home with the children. I’m going back to school whether you like it or not.”

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