Garden of Roses

I always passed the house on the corner on my way to school. It stood out because no other house on our street had a fence around the entire property. The fence was made of brick and steel posts, giving everyone who passed by a glimpse of the owner’s immaculately kept front yard. For as long as I can remember, I never saw anyone in the yard tending to the flowers. Though there were different kinds of plants throughout the yard, whoever owned the house had more rose bushes than any other kind of flower, and the roses were all red. Not until I was a teenager did I know that roses came in other colors besides red, thanks to this one house.

Every time I passed that house with my parents, I would ask the name of the family who lived there. Did they have any children? Not that I needed more friends, I had so many that I always had a friend or two over almost every day of the week. But I always had questions, and I wanted to know whatever my parents could tell me about the family who lived in the garden of roses. 

My father would chuckle at me and say, “Sorry, Becky, I don’t know the name of the people who live there. We’ve never seen them before.”

His words only made me more curious about the house on the corner. Curiosity is contagious, and soon many of my friends started asking the same questions I was. Who lived there? And why had we never seen them? We didn’t have such things as the Internet back then, and we could get no information from anything at the library, though some of us tried. 

Then at a party at my house –I think it was my younger sister’s birthday—my best friend Danny came up with a great idea. He and several other of our friends had joined me in my treehouse to get away from our younger siblings as they played games for prizes and to talk privately this once. I remember we talked in hushed voices so none of the adults could hear our conversation. We thought we were being so sneaky.

“I was watching this show on TV with my dad last night,” Danny began. “One of the people on the show was a private detective.”

“What’s that?” asked my friend Alice.

“My dad says he’s like a policeman but you pay him to find things out for you,” Danny explained. “We can hire one to find out about the people who live at that house on the corner.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” our friends agreed. “We can save our allowances to pay him.”

It sounded like a great idea to me, but I had one little problem: I didn’t get an allowance. And my friends knew that. But it didn’t stop them from agreeing to it. After they agreed to start saving, we all started wondering what we might learn once we hired the private detective.

“A family of vampires live there,” Danny suggested. “I’ve seen their lights on, but only at night, and we all know vampires cannot come out in the daylight.”

“I don’t want to live near vampires!” Alice screamed. “I think a princess lives there. Why else would someone have that beautiful of a garden? Who do you think lives there, Becky?”

All eyes turned to me. Up until that moment, they had pretty much been ignoring me since I had no money to help hire the private detective. I blinked a few times. I had never thought about who I thought actually lived in that house down the street. I opened my mouth to speak, but shut it when I failed to think of anything. But they wouldn’t ask anyone else until I said something, anything.

“I think an ugly beast lives there,” I finally said.

It was the only thing I could think of at that moment. The previous evening my mother had recounted the story of Beauty and the Beast only the night before. It was my sister’s favorite fairy tale, and whenever she couldn’t fall asleep right away, one of my parents would tell her the story.

“Why does he have the roses?” another friend asked.

“He was cursed by a witch,” I replied. “There is one special one that he guards in the house. If he can find true love before the last peddle falls, he becomes a handsome prince again. But if not, he’ll stay an ugly beast forever.”

“That’s a fairy tale!” Alice argued.

I turned to my friend and stuck my tongue out at her. “It’s about as likely as a princess living there.”

Alice snorted, crossing her arms across her chest. “Since you won’t be able to help us with the private detective, I guess we won’t tell you when he tells us who lives there.”

I smiled at her and said, “Go right ahead and keep it a secret.” Little did Alice know then that Danny told me everything. Oh, he would try to keep his mouth shut, but in the end, he would tell me. Then I would promise to never tell Alice that he had told me. She stuck her tongue out at me and demanded to be let out. She wouldn’t talk to me for several days after that, I knew, claiming we weren’t friends anymore to whoever would listen. I also knew she would want to make up like she always did. 

Even then I could see it all play out in my mind, so I didn’t think about it again until a few days later when Danny snuck into my backyard and climbed up into the treehouse where I often hid to do my homework when I grew tired of my sister bothering me. He had a huge frown on his face. When he sat down beside me, he sighed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I looked up a private detective in the phonebook,” he told me. “I called to ask how much it would cost to find out who lives in that house.”

I know I asked Danny how much it would cost. I don’t remember the amount anymore, but I remember thinking at the time that no one had that kind of money. A few days after that, Alice came over to apologize and to ask if we could be friends again.

We never learned who lived in that house on the corner with the garden of roses. We moved away a few years later, as did most of my friends. But sometimes, when I think of the fun times I had with my friends on that street, I will think about that house. I find that I like to think I was right, and I often hope that true love broke the witch’s curse.