The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold Read online

  “You know, Rose, I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people who have forgotten who they are in the larger scheme of things,” Bear said thoughtfully.

  “Can you imagine anything more tragic?” Rose asked. “To be born a princess—native and to the manor born—and then to forget who you are and settle for being something horrible like an—an accountant!” Then a terrible thought struck Rose. Turning to Bear, she asked, “By the way, what do you do for a living? You’re not an accountant, are you?”

  Breaking into open laughter and subsequently choking on his cookie, Bear asked, “Why? Do I look like one?”

  “No. But I didn’t want to hurt your feelings in case you were an accountant in disguise,” Rose explained.

  “Well, I just pump gas part time, so you don’t have to worry about me,” Bear chuckled.

  “Oh, good. That makes sense,” Rose nodded. “You seem like that type.”

  “I’m grungy enough,” Bear agreed.

  “No—I mean the type who knows about hard work ennobling the soul,” Rose objected.

  “Rose, I don’t think you’re being fair,” Blanche said. “Would it really be so bad to be an accountant? People have to make a living somehow. I don’t see any contradiction for a princess to be a house-cleaner. Or a hairdresser, or a waitress.”

  “Yes, princesses are still princesses even if they’re poor,” Rose agreed. “Can you imagine a princess who works as a counter girl in a fast-food restaurant? Imagine if all the people who come in to place orders were to realize that their meal was served by a princess!”

  “I think it would be hard for a real princess to have to do menial work like that,” Blanche reflected. “She might think it was beneath her.”

  “Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,” Rose objected. “That would be one of the signs.”

  “I think that if a real princess was lost in this modern world, and she could be whatever she wanted, she would be a musician,” Blanche said slowly. “A violinist, or a harpist. That would be the only place where she could find solace for her lost kingdom.”

  “So your theory, Rose, as I understand it,” said Bear, “is that everyone in the world just might be something extraordinary, but very few of them know it?”

  “Oh, a few know it. Or at least, they have an inkling.” Rose took a generous sip of her hot chocolate and sighed.

  “Yes, you can tell Sister Geraldine knows,” Blanche reflected. “Everything means something to her. You just look into her eyes and know that she sees things as they really are, not as they seem. She sees the purpose and the implications of everything.”

  “Even improper grammar,” said Bear, smiling. “No doubt.”

  “Well, of course,” responded Blanche. “You can’t find truth so easily in disorder. Grammar—and biology—and chemistry—and math—they keep things in order. We wouldn’t know much without order. Good grammar does matter.”

  “It’s as though what we call reality is a huge chess game,” Rose said, still sketching her marvelous vision on the conversation, “but today, most people don’t realize what’s going on. They don’t know anything about chess. So they don’t understand most things that take place. Only a few people know what’s really happening any more. And even if you do know, it’s hard to keep that inner vision.”

  “True,” Mother said. “But when you catch a glimpse of the real meaning of life, it’s easier to find others who also have that insight.”

  “That’s why you found us, Bear. You’re one of those kinds of people. You know,” Rose told him solemnly. “You could be a handsome prince in disguise.”

  Bear said nothing for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. When he looked back down, he said teasingly, “And are you two girls princesses in disguise?”

  Blanche and Rose exchanged glances. “I don’t think so,” Blanche mused. “I feel too ordinary.”

  “But maybe real princesses feel ordinary,” Bear said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. How could a princess feel ordinary? I think we’re too plain. We’re probably just peasant maidens,” Blanche said.

  “Of course, either one of us could have a marvelous destiny in store for us,” Rose added, twisting a strand of hair around her finger.

  Bear accepted Mother’s offer of the last cookie and asked, “So what other extraordinary people have you found in the world, aside from nuns and grease monkeys?”

  “Well, there’s Mr. Freet with his silk waistcoats and walking sticks,” Blanche said. “Even though they’re out of place in our age, he doesn’t look funny in them. It’s as though he’s dropped out of another era into ours. He doesn’t fit, if you know what I mean.” Blanche glanced at Bear and caught a look of interest in his eyes.

  “Yeesss,” Rose meditated upon the empty cookie plate. “He doesn’t fit. And yet, in another way, he does.”

  “What do you know about this guy?” Bear asked casually, scratching his head.

  “Well, Dr. Robert Freet is our principal,” said Rose, scraping crumbs from the plate and eating them, unconcerned by her breach of etiquette. “Mr. Edward Freet is his brother. I think he owns an art gallery, and he comes by our school every once in a while to argue with the nuns and scowl at people. He’s quite an enigma.”

  “He says art is about form, not truth,” Blanche said, adding as an explanation, “I overheard him say that today to the office manager.”

  “Art’s about truth,” said Bear. “Truth and beauty go together.”

  “But it seemed to make sense when he said it,” Blanche argued, but feeling that Bear was right. “Art’s almost always beautiful—”

  “Because beauty is truth,” Bear said.

  “But not always,” Blanche thought she had at last found a point to contest. “What about beautiful witches and siren songs?” Blanche dug in. “And the beautiful girls in bad advertising and things like that? Evil things often look beautiful.”

  “But that’s because they’ve stolen the beauty from the good.” Bear was looking uncomfortable. “Evil isn’t beautiful on its own.”

  “Well, good people are sometimes ugly—” Blanche said at last.

  “I don’t know about that. Not really,” Bear shook his head. “If the good’s there, and you look for it, you’ll see it in some way.”

  “I think Bear is right,” Rose said decidedly. “Fairy tales teach you that. No one who’s really good ever stays ugly. It’s always a disguise or an enchantment.” She ruminated. “At least Mr. Freet is a lover of beauty, whatever he believes about it.”

  “I don’t like his eyes—” Blanche said, “They’re too cold. He’s got a very—small soul. I think.”

  Rose giggled at her, but Bear looked thoughtful. “You may be right, Blanche.”

  “But I think there’s something large about him too,” Rose said. “He seems like someone who would understand the deeper meaning. We should try to chat with him sometime.”

  Blanche didn’t agree, but she felt she had been talking too much and remained silent. If only Dad were here… She stood up and started clearing off the table.

  “Blanche! Don’t take my plate! There’s still crumbs on it!” Rose protested.

  “I should be going,” Bear got to his feet.

  “A double blow,” Rose said in dismay, but stood up as well. “I’m glad you came over, Bear. I really enjoyed talking with you.”

  “Thanks, I did, too.” He looked around at all of them. Blanche met his eyes briefly and went to the kitchen with the mugs.

  “You’re welcome to come by again,” Mother smiled at him. “Any time.”

  “And don’t just vanish on us,” Rose begged. “We’re starved for company. Come by tomorrow if you can.”

  Blanche came back into the room and saw that he was looking at her, a bit uncertainly. He knows that he makes me uncomfortable, she realized, and felt guilty for her ungracious attitude earlier.

  “Yes, please come again,” she said.

  To h
er surprise, he smiled back at her. “I will. Thank you.”

  “Oh, good!” Rose said. “Come by tomorrow if you can.” She went to get his coat.

  Bear chuckled at her. “All right. I’ll take you up on your offer.” He took his coat from Rose and said good night. Blanche followed after her mother who had walked him to the door. As before, he bounded down the steps and vanished into the shadows of the City.

  Once again, he seemed part of the wildness outside, and Blanche couldn’t help but be glad when her mother closed the door and locked it firmly.

  Chapter 4

  DESPITE BLANCHE’S misgivings, she began to look forward to what became Bear’s frequent evening visits to their home. She never saw him on the school grounds any more, and she began to wonder if he might have reformed. There was certainly an aura of trustworthiness—or just plain worthiness about him. And he appeared to enjoy all stripes of their talk—both their deep discussions and their girlish silliness. At least, he tolerated the latter.

  As for Rose, she had felt an implicit kinship with Bear from the first moment she saw him—or so she claimed. She didn’t discount her sister’s occasional doubts about his character, but she found them much less threatening than Blanche did.

  “Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” she would say when Blanche cautioned her. “You’ve got to admit that Bear is about the closest thing to the only friend we have in this city.”

  Which didn’t make Blanche feel much better, even though it was true.

  One Friday night a few weeks later when Bear came by, he looked a bit more mysterious than usual. “An odd thing happened on my way over here,” he said. “I was passing by the theater on the way to the subway, and this frustrated guy pointed to me and said, ‘Hey, do you want these tickets? I’m ready to give them away!’ He would have just thrown them at me, but I gave him some money for them.”

  “Tickets to what?” Blanche wondered.

  Bear flushed again. “Standing-room-only tickets at the Met. They’re doing The Marriage of Figaro tonight and I was wondering if you all wanted to go.”

  “Oh!” Rose had jumped to her feet, eyes shining. “Oh, Mom, may we?”

  “My, my,” Mother said with a smile. “That’s a pretty upscale show, Bear.”

  “There are three tickets, so you all can go.”

  “Why don’t you just take the girls, Bear? They’d love the show, and I’m a bit too tired tonight. It’ll be a rare treat for them,” Mother said. “They’ve never been to the Met.”

  “Would you want to?” Bear asked the girls.

  “Sure thing! Oh boy, should we wear gowns?” Rose danced around, all in a tizzy.

  “Not for standing-room seats. Just wear what you have on,” Mother advised.

  “Oh, but that would be too ordinary! Can’t I just go change, Bear?” Rose begged. “One doesn’t go to the opera every day!”

  “Yeah, but hurry! The show starts in a half hour, and it’ll take us twenty minutes to get there on the train,” Bear urged.

  Rose raced up the stairs and Blanche followed her.

  Blanche put on her favorite royal blue sweater and brushed her hair back into a loose ponytail while her sister wildly threw clothes out of the closet onto the bed. “Oh, if only I had a black dress!” Rose lamented. “That would be so appropriate! How does this look?” She whipped out a purple dress and hung it in front of herself. “Too fancy? Okay, how about this one?”

  “Rose, there’s no time for going through your whole closet,” Blanche insisted. “Here, just wear your black sweater.”

  “Yes! With a pink turtleneck and my grey silk skirt and black hose! Perfect! I knew I kept you around for some reason.” Rose started changing at a lightning pace, then stopped and moaned. “Oh! Rob Tirsch said he’d call me tonight!”

  “Well, too bad. Mom’ll tell him. Hurry up and get dressed!”

  It was amazing that they managed to get downstairs and into their coats within the next five minutes. They hurried out the door with Bear, Rose issuing a stream of orders all the time to Mother about what to tell Rob. Blanche was thankful when they at last got outside into the cold and dark. Heavy white flakes were sifting down from the sky, and even though Christmas was long over, there was holiday in the air.

  They had to run to keep up with Bear’s long stride. “There should be a train leaving in about a minute. It’ll be close—do you have tokens?” he said over his shoulder.

  Blanche held up two tokens in her mittened hand. “Yes. Do you?”

  “Yes! We’re set, then. Be ready to run when we get down the subway. Follow me!”

  He pounded down the steps, avoiding all the people coming up, and took off running for the train.

  “Augh! He didn’t tell us he would run so fast!” Rose wailed, dodging after him through the Friday night crowds in line for tokens. Bear whipped through the turnstile with such velocity that Blanche had to hold it still a moment before she could go through it.

  They flew after him down to the lower level where the train to Manhattan had paused, its lights flashing and the “close doors” signal sounding. Bear got onto the packed train and held the doors open for them with his hands as it started to pull away. Blanche and Rose dove beneath his arms and were safely on the train as it began to move in earnest. They stood beside him, gasping for breath and laughing as the train plunged into the tunnel.

  “Do you know, I always imagine that the subway trains are dragons,” Rose said to Bear as they clung to his coat for support in the swaying car. “Tearing back and forth across the city in their underground caves, devouring people and spitting them out at random destinations.”

  “Well, they certainly are as loud as dragons,” Bear said. He winced as another train passed them in a deafening roar.

  “Hey, weirdo,” someone said to Rose, poking her in the back. She went pale, her eyes flashing green. But when she turned, she gasped and the color came back into her cheeks. “Rob!”

  It was the man himself, his blue eyes and black brows snapping at her beneath a ski cap.

  “What are you doing out here tonight?” he grinned at her. He and his buddies were sitting in a row on the other side of the train, an army in sports jackets and hooded sweatshirts.

  “Going to the opera. What are you doing?” Rose wanted to know, turning to face them. She had forgotten all about Bear and Blanche.

  “The oh-per-ah!” Rob mimicked. “Getting some culture shock, are you?”

  “I thought you were going to call me tonight,” Rose said.

  “Well, I can’t. You’re not home, are you?” he said teasingly.

  “Yes, but—So where are you going?”

  “Ah, over to Lisa’s house for a party. Want to come?”

  “No, I’m going—”

  “To the oh-per-ah! Yeah, you said that.”

  Bear watched Rose talking animatedly with Rob and bent down his head to Blanche. He said in a very low voice, “So this is the famous ‘Rob’?” One couldn’t talk to Rose these days without hearing some allusion to Rob.

  “It is,” Blanche affirmed dryly.

  “Tell me something. Why does Rose like this guy?”

  Blanche shrugged, a bit irritated. “It beats me.”

  “He’s just nothing like the type of guy I’d expect your sister to like, with all her talk about princes and gypsies.”

  “Rob—is a nice guy. And he’s very popular,” Blanche hedged. Bear’s remark was odd in one respect. Rob definitely fit the image of Prince Charming, with his good looks and style. He looks more like a prince than Bear does, she thought. But of course, she couldn’t say that to Bear.

  “Well, we’ll catch you later,” Rob was saying to Rose. The train was stopping. His buddies shouldered him out.

  “Call me tomorrow night!” Rose called after him. “If you want!”

  To Blanche, she turned and whispered, “Oh, can you believe it? What a coincidence! I’m so glad I saw him—I would have felt so bad if he had called and I wasn’t the
re!”

  “He wasn’t going to call you anyhow. He was going to a party.”

  “Oh, he would have called from the party. That’s what he said he was going to do. Oh, gosh, I can’t believe I saw him. He’s just so good-looking. Doesn’t he look like the man who played Ivanhoe?”

  “Hush,” Blanche said sharply. Bear was taking them on an outing. It was rude not to include him in the conversation. Besides, she couldn’t help but feel put out with her younger sister who always seemed to be the center of attention.

  Standing in the back of the dark opera house and gazing at the huge stage before them, gay with gold-scrolled scenery and sumptuously costumed singers, the air vivid with bright music, was one of the most enthralling experiences of Blanche’s life. For a time, she forgot her doubts about reality in the sheer delight of illusion. But, as Rose reminded her during the intermission, perhaps it wasn’t illusion. Perhaps it was a glimpse of what reality was really like.

  It was a puzzle. Which was more true? Their own dark existence or the grace and brilliance of Susanna, Figaro, and the Countess? Most people would say that daily life is more real, Blanche supposed, and that the opera was merely a frivolous and expensive diversion. Then why was the loveliness of Mozart’s creation filling a hungry gap within her that no “reality” could fill?

  Many people left after the second act, so Bear suggested that they should snag some seats. Blanche didn’t want to, in case the people came back, but Rose thought it was a good idea. So they found three good seats much closer to the stage and huddled there to enjoy the rest of the show. Despite Blanche’s nervous glances at the ushers, no one ordered them back to their posts at the rear.

  “We should always get standing-room-only seats!” Rose gushed when they came out into the frosty night air. “It was wonderful!”

  Bear chuckled. “Well, I’ll only accept those kind of tickets from now on, if you say so,” he said.

  They all laughed, and Blanche felt the metaphysical heaviness she had been sensing lift. She felt lighthearted suddenly.