Trading Rosemary Read online

  On certain items, most often another clock, her mother was plaintive. “Doesn’t it mean something to you that it belonged to your great-grandmother and to me? All that family history . . . one day it will be yours. Doesn’t it mean something?”

  To Rosemary it didn’t matter one little bit, didn’t mean anything. No matter how plaintive the appeal or how long it had been in the family, the clock was hideous. It didn’t even sound like a clock, more like a demented call to the lifeboats. Her mother might love it, but Rosemary had associations of nothing but nuisance. It was a thing and only a thing. Its presence intruded, and the endless frantic noise gave her headaches and stoked her temper. She could not shut it out. If she wanted to hear a clock, she could hear one in her own time, and better. She could not value it, and did not wish to pretend.

  “When you kick the bucket I’m selling it,” she said, to her mother’s dismay. Then, “You can leave it to my cousin, if you want,” but this was a sop that Rosemary’s mother did not want. The clock squealed in rhythmic dismay.

  “When you’re lying on display before the funeral, that bloody thing is going in your coffin,” said Rosemary, unsympathetically. “You can listen to it for eternity.”

  “I suppose you can always sell it,” said her mother. “And if you put my dead body on show I’m coming back to haunt you.”

  There wouldn’t have been space for that sort of display had either of them really wanted it. Clocks cluttered each room like disembodied souls, the beating hearts of a shadow family watching from corners, from table tops and bookshelves. The unfortunates were thrust under the stairs, their chimes silenced, smelling of dust and dead time, but they were kept.

  Unused, unloved, they were still part of a collection. Nothing was thrown away. Rosemary could see the sense in this regarding the library, but not the objects inspiring it. If it was going to intrude on her everyday life, if she was going to be forced to experience it, she might as well enjoy it.

  “You don’t even like that one,” she had pointed out, but “It was a gift,” said her mother, as if that was all that mattered.

  “From someone you don’t even like,” said Rosemary. “Someone who’s dead. They won’t know if you get rid of it,” but “I’ll know,” said her mother, with undiminished certainty of tone, and a jaundiced eye.

  There was a reason the house was so cluttered.

  When her mother died, it was more difficult than Rosemary had expected—the disposition of a life, of all the little reminders. Clothes that would fit no one else but still smelled familiar, the books left half read. It was easier with the furniture; Rosemary had long made up her mind what would happen there. She had sold some, kept only a few pieces where her taste had coincided with her mother’s and enjoyed the increased floor space, the quiet halls. The rest she had put by to take to the commune, and now she had the incentive, the opportunity, to do it.

  She ferried the clocks, antiques all, to the Waikato hills, bound in blankets and silent, their gongs and chimes muffled in more layers than was really necessary. (She would only recreate so much.) Some sat on sideboards, some balanced in the seat of faded chairs, rocking gently. These were the pieces Rosemary truly despised—familiarity had bred contempt, and she had been hard put not to take a chainsaw to one dark monstrosity—at least, they were the pieces without any significant intrinsic value

  She helped to unload them, helped wheelbarrow the smaller pieces into an unused shed, stifled her curiosity at dust-sheeted forms seen through studio windows. The artist was friendly, and known for creative destruction. They shared some lemonade, and Rosemary took the empty bottles back to the café for recycling. The day was hot, and she drank more as she waited.

  Performance art was coming back into fashion, and if Rosemary didn’t care for some of the more modern pieces, well, she didn’t have to experience the coins if she didn’t want to. Their value would appreciate, given the reputation of the artist, and contributing to his work now helped retrieve from him the coin containing the performance of one of his chief rivals.

  In the distance, she thought she could almost make out a flat, outraged ringing, as if someone was belting brass with a sledgehammer.

  It made her smile. She no longer remembered why she hated the clocks, only that she did. Her collection—the one that mattered—was growing. She wondered what her grandchildren would think of it.

  Taranaki

  “She wants what?” said Rosemary, disbelieving. After two relatively painless transactions, she had let down her guard. She had never imagined she would need to steel herself against a proposed trade of this magnitude.

  The request felt strangely counter-intuitive. Rosemary had spent her adult life collecting experience, learning to weigh and measure and discern between the fragmented moments of past lives. Like stepping into a stream, even coins derived from present memories assumed a solid form, became in their way a relic of history. Were Rosemary to pull the memory of this day from herself, to impress it into a suitable form—she would embed it into a disk of manuka wood, the sharp turpentine scent reminding her of quick shock and bargaining—then it too would represent a past event.

  Her life was one of histories.

  There were times she had traded histories with an eye to the future. Collecting the past, embalming the present, was one thing—but a cheap grab-bag of moments, without selection or oversight was the act of a hoarder rather than a caretaker, a competent librarian. If it improved her collection, Rosemary was prepared to deal in futures by trading the past—selling her grandmother’s requiem in order to obtain a moment rarer yet was an example of this.

  Some trades, however, were not so much a bargain. Rosemary was under no illusion. If she were to sell her memory of her daughter’s birth, Ruth would not suddenly become a stranger to her. She had many years with her daughter, and those memories would not be affected. But if the loss of Ruth’s birth affected Rosemary’s future rapport with her daughter, then the trade might cost far more than its surface price.

  “I have many faults,” said Rosemary, slowly. “I don’t deny that. But romantic self-delusion has never been one of them. If you’re expecting me to tell you that maternal instinct will see me through, then I’m not sure that I can oblige.”

  “You love your daughter,” said the factor.

  “Do I?” said Rosemary. “I’m not entirely sure.” She sipped her tea, eyeing him over the rim of the teacup. “You don’t look surprised.”

  The factor spread his hands. “It is not my place to comment. Besides, I have not the pleasure of children myself.”

  “They tell you that you’ll love them,” said Rosemary. “And I suppose that you do. I did, anyway. My daughter was a sweet little baby. Then she grew up. Our relationship is not an easy one. The usual friction between mothers and daughters, you understand. Sometimes I think it’s my fault, but I can’t escape the knowledge that . . . that Ruth is not a loveable person. Some people aren’t. Should the fact that I gave birth to her blind me to this?”

  “Does it?” said the factor.

  “I do wonder,” said Rosemary.

  There was a silence as they both finished their tea.

  “You are reluctant,” said the factor. “I can’t say that I blame you. I am used to this reaction. My client is . . . difficult to cater to. She has not had much luck in obtaining her desires.”

  “Infertility must be terrible burden for her,” said Rosemary, more out of politeness than true sympathy. That she had little of. No one could get everything they wanted, and wallowing in despair was something she considered to be a sign of weak character. She supposed it might be slightly unethical of her to consider exploiting such a weakness, but considering such was her only alternative.

  “If I may suggest a possible solution,” said the factor. “I feel you are hesitant because you believe any loss would affect your relationship with your daughter, correct?”

  “Because I believe it would affect my feelings about my daughter,” said Rosem
ary. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

  “And yet your relationship would also be affected if we do not come to an agreement,” said the factor.

  “That’s true,” admitted Rosemary, smiling coolly. She was stung but unwilling to show it. “Of course, I might be willing to weather her displeasure. Please understand that I have had plenty of experience doing so, and if keeping her happy becomes too . . . burdensome . . . she will just have to learn to live with the disappointment.”

  There was another pause, and more tea was poured. To cover the sense of stalemate, Rosemary assumed.

  “There is no need,” the factor began carefully, “for any agreement to be made before the memory is extracted. If, upon doing so, you find the results, shall we say, disagreeable, you can re-imprint and decline without prejudice.”

  “That would be acceptable,” said Rosemary.

  Her memory recorder was waiting for her, already set up in a private room. Rosemary ran her fingers over the blank coins available to her. She always carried a variety of materials, matching memory to material in a way that linked sensory inputs. In the remains of what she had brought with her, however, there was no coin that fitted the experience she intended to imprint upon it. All the metals seemed too harsh, save for the coppers, and Ruth had never liked copper. The jades and gemstones were too smooth, the woods not scented enough, and none of the textiles were very durable. Not that the coin would get a lot of wear, but it was too important a thing to trust to felted surfaces and velvet covered horn. She hesitated over the trays, wondered if she was simply stalling for time, trying to put off a job both necessary and unpleasant. She reminded herself again that she had the option to make this a temporary measure.

  “We have a wide variety of blanks,” offered the factor, sensing her distress.

  “Do you have any made of manuka wood?” said Rosemary, impulsively. If it was to be a temporary hold, the material did not matter so much, but professional pride excused any hesitation.

  “Several, I think,” said the factor. “I’d be pleased to put them at your disposal.”

  The blank that Rosemary chose was a polished round sliver, shaved so thin it was translucent. Rosemary was briefly surprised at her choice—she had intended to choose something chunky, with weight, but the thin blank coin reminded her of the caul around Ruth’s head when she had been born. It wasn’t a practical choice—the coin was not one that would take much wear, but then it would only have the one owner, and Rosemary knew that, if she traded the coin, the owner would be careful with it.

  When she had transferred the memory to the coin, Rosemary rested her cheek on the table, her face close enough to the coin to breathe in its scent, the turpentine depth of it. She let her fingers skip lightly over its surface, the memories of her childbirth interspersed, when she lifted her fingers away, with the time she had spent with her daughter since she had been born.

  (pain, surprising at first but an almost welcome pulsing as she began to contract, the relief in knowing that the discomfort of pregnancy was almost over combined with the heavy beat of excitement, the thought of meeting her child for the first time)

  (mashing carrots and kumara, feeding them to a child who liked everything yellow but refused to eat green because green was the color of the sea)

  (sweating so much that her feet—which she wanted to keep bare, her skin so sensitive that anything she wore during the constant tightening annoyed her—became so wet that they had to be stuffed into slippers so she could keep her feet under her as she walked around the birthing room)

  (this is a piano, can you press the keys like this? this is a horsie, can you draw the pretty horsie? this is the library, can you see all the coins? this will all be yours to look after one day, can you reach the top shelves yet?)

  (deep hard pants and tearing, the red heat between her legs and breaking her nails on the bedrails; how she’d made them turn off the lights because they were too bright, and her torn nails on the bed sheets in moonlight)

  (you have responsibilities, you can’t just run off whenever you please, well sometimes we have to do things we don’t like, it’s part of being an adult, and you will be an adult one day, my girl, so may as well resign yourself to it)

  (the final wrenching push, half loss and half relief, the wet angry cry and the small squashed face in her arms, glaring up at her and her laughing, the pure delight, the new worlds for both of them even if the baby was too grumpy at her eviction to care, until the beat of her heart against the small bloody body quieted the screams and comforted)

  (no, you can’t chew on that! no, you can’t climb on those! oh, why can’t you put it back where you found it?)

  (no, you cannot have another damn horse!)

  (no, I don’t think I like you either)

  “How do you feel?” said the factor, when it was over. “How do you feel?”

  The other woman was writhing on a couch, stifled squeals forcing their way through gritted teeth. Her hair was wet and stringy with sweat. Thin lines of blood ran from one clenched fist, and Rosemary could see the beveled edge of a coin between pale knuckles. Iron, she noted, a deep rough dullness that would be difficult to polish, that would rust and redden and would never bend, not matter how hard it was pressed into bone and palm and flesh.

  “As you can see, my client is indisposed,” said the factor. “I can see if I can remove the coin, if you would like to speak with her.”

  “Your client is a ham and a charlatan,” said Rosemary, appalled, “and I would not.”

  The factor led her out. “She wants to experience what she cannot herself,” he said. “Some women—not many, but some—have sold her their memories of labor, saving the actual final moments of the birth. If she wallows in it, I wonder if she is simply trying to make the experience more real for herself.”

  “It’s nothing but a disgraceful display of self-indulgence,” said Rosemary. “Are you sure she is sane enough to authorize the transaction?”

  “I believe so,” said the factor. There was a trace of bitterness in his tone, and then it was carefully hidden, the forehead smoothing. “We have had medical advice. My client copied her memories of her instructions to me, and of her reactions and experiences with the other labors she has bought. Several psychologists reviewed them, and when experiencing her memories they found no indication that she might not be capable. Fixated, yes, but mentally competent.”

  “It’s sad, really,” he continued. “All the desire, all the effort, and she has had nothing but a string of labors and no baby at the end of it.”

  “She’ll get no baby at the end of mine either,” said Rosemary. “I trust she understands this. My daughter does not belong to her. My daughter will never meet her—I want the lack of contact written into the contract, please. She will never have more of my daughter than she does now—the few minutes I spent with her before they took her away to get us both cleaned up.”

  “She will have the experience of the love you felt in those moments,” said the factor. “A memory that shows her the capacity that she too has for love.”

  “Are you hoping that will jog her back to a more normal life?” said Rosemary.

  “I would settle for being able to share her bed without weeping,” said the factor. He carefully did not look at Rosemary. “We are married, you see. Or were, before this all took hold of her.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rosemary, meaning it.

  “I told her I didn’t care,” said the factor. “That children were not everything, that what we had was enough. She doesn’t trust either of us enough to believe it.”

  “Do you believe it?” asked Rosemary, curious.

  “I want to believe,” said the factor.

  “Then believe,” said Rosemary. “Look at me. I had a child and look how that turned out.”

  “You’re sacrificing your past for her future,” said the factor. “You must love her.”

  “Do I?” said Rosemary. “I do the best I can for her. I always
will. She is my responsibility and I have a duty to her wellbeing and happiness. But that is not love.

  “My daughter,” she said, “is not a loveable person.”

  “How do you feel?” said the factor.

  (horses and carrots and green inedible vegetables, sleepless nights and teething and sneaking out, climbing the library shelves like a monkey and chewing on a coins of bowls and boats, the fights and the fish and the resentment, the ties and tensions and old tenderness)

  (and in the space between feeling her daughter kick—nothing, a great white peace)

  “I don’t believe,” said Rosemary, “that I feel any different.”

  She was almost disappointed.

  Takaka

  Rosemary wasn’t particularly fond of jam. She disliked the way the pips clung to her teeth like crows on carrion, and as she grew the sweet stickiness of it struck her as mawkish, artificial.

  It wasn’t a family trait. Her grandmother’s pantry had always had jam in it, and she had allowed the child Rosemary to spread it about without criticizing her table manners, though Rosemary had often felt secretly guilty at her mess-making, had always tried to brush the crumbs neatly whenever her grandmother had looked away, smoothing the tablecloth covered in musical notes and covering up the places where she had smeared jam into the patterns.

  Grandmother always ignored her own mess.

  Rosemary found a strange comfort in the memory of her toddler self, the golden amber of the jam and the swept piles of crumbs, the perfect ring they made when her plate was taken away. The crumbs were more important than the jam—she had, after all, eaten that more to please another than herself.