Keeping Secrets, Secret.

Rose Dobbs worked as an undertaker’s usher and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what she wanted.

We — I the curious son, and she the middle-aged woman with heavy make-up and blood red lipstick

— sat drinking coffee at Ricks Place on the High Street. She smelled of air freshener and carpet shampoo: funeral home smells.

“Your phone call wanting to meet surprised me. I had forgotten about my late father’s diary.” I said.

“He gave me the diary as a keepsake when I visited him the night before he died." Her voice sounded husky; a smoker’s voice.

She told me she had met my father three months after my mother’s funeral. She heard him sobbing in the adjacent chapel and offered to bring him home to her house nearby for a cup of tea and a chat. After that, they became friends. They went for walks along the canal and ate at different restaurants.

I remembered that diary on my father’s desk during my frequent visits home for some years before his death, and before I worked overseas. I felt ashamed back then for reading a private document.

Chatting with Rose

Visiting Rose

Dinner tonight with Rose

“So you are that Rose,” I said

I raised my eyebrows and waited.

“No, no, nothing like that,” she shook her head twice.

I remained silent and watched the opening and closing of her ruby lips.

“Oh, he was lucky to find me,” she cried, the white spittle gathering at the corners of her mouth.

“Did you know before we met, he visited establishments for female company?” she crowed.

My coffee cup stopped mid-way to my mouth.

I returned it to the table and stirred the contents with a spoon.

"My father was a respectable man,” I said, my voice louder than I intended.

A sly smile flashed across her face. She opened her bag and placed the diary on the table between us.

“How much is respectable worth to you?” she said.

I picked it up and put it in my jacket pocket.

I threw a crumpled fifty euro note on the table.

“For the coffee,” I said, walking away.

 

 

 

 

Mary Anne Mc Enery is an Irish and Dutch citizen, a senior—who does not act her age— living in The Hague, The Nederlands. She has fun writing micro, flash fiction, and longer short stories. Some of her words can be found on the Friday Flash Fiction and on Roi.Faineant websites