The Truth about Mary Rose Read Online Free PDF

and I said no, they were mine, and then he got embarrassed, and he took the coat, and gave me a slip, and said to come back on Tuesday.”
    “But didn’t you tell him you were divorced?”
    “No I didn’t—not then. But I thought about him, because I could see he was a decent, steady kind of a man, and he used to wear this blue and red sweater that his mother knit him. And was she ever a witch, Mary Rose! You have no idea what I had to put up with ...”
    “But, Grandma, what happened?”
    “Well ... one day, I guess after I’d gone in, maybe four or five times, and he knew my name. He’d always say, ‘How are you, Mrs. Ganz?’ And I’d say, 'Just fine, Mr. Petronski.' Well, one day he said did my husband work for the police department because there was a man named Ganz who was a sergeant in the fourteenth precinct, and he wondered ... So I said no, my husband was in Arizona, only he was my ex-husband, and we were divorced. 'Divorced!' he said. 'Divorced!' Listen to this, Mary Rose. 'I didn’t know you were divorced,' he said, 'and I’m so happy to hear it.' "
    “And then what happened?”
    “Well, what do you think happened? We got married.” My grandmother shook her head. “Such a wonderful man he was, may he rest in peace ... thirty-six years we were married ... and Mary Rose, I wish you could have seen the dress I wore when I was married. Not to Ralph ... the first time ... to Frank ... all lace and beads. I kept it for years and years. But it went in the fire—everything that was worth anything went in the fire.”
    I asked her if she ever went back to the old neighborhood, and she said no. Last time, she said, it was twenty years ago, and even then everything had changed for the worse. There was a low-income housing project there now, and she didn’t want me to think she was saying anything against my father, but with the class of people who lived there now—it just wasn’t safe even to ride around in a car.
    We talked about Mary Rose. Sometimes for hours. Especially when my mother was out. I told my grandmother about that picture of Joan of Arc in my father’s art book. They were still packed up, but my grandmother said from the way I described it she thought it sounded a lot like the way Mary Rose looked.
    There were lots of things she told me about Mary Rose that I guess I knew—that she was kind and gentle and beautiful but not proud. Other things I didn’t know. Like she said she had planned on naming her Frances, after Frank’s mother, but when she saw how beautiful the baby was, somehow the name Frances did not seem right. And the name Mary Rose just came to her when she was lying there in the hospital.
    And wasn’t it a funny coincidence that just a few months later, the Queen of England gave birth to a little princess, and what did they call her? Margaret Rose! And if that wasn’t a very strange coincidence, said my grandmother, then she didn’t know what was.
    “But, Grandma, the princess’ name was Margaret Rose, not Mary Rose.”
    “Yes, but it’s just too close for comfort,” said my grandmother. “I always knew she was marked for something special.”
    There was another thing my grandmother told me that I didn’t know. She said that when Stanley came out of the burning building, he was clutching something that he wouldn’t let go of until somebody actually had to open up his fingers to get it away from him.
    “What was it?”
    “A box.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of her things. Mary Rose’s collections. You know—she saved things. One of her boxes—of things—like a hobby. I guess he just grabbed at anything, and it just happened to be one of her boxes. When I think of all the things he might have taken—the pictures, especially the pictures, or maybe some of the jewelry. Not that there was anything that was really worth anything—an old gold watch of mine, a cameo pin that belonged to my mother. But naturally, he was only six, so what did he know ...”
    “But,