Camellia was a dancer. She rose through the corps de ballet and became a soloist with the Chicago Ballet. This is where Arthur Rose first saw her and felt a powerful sense of déjà vu. When she appeared at church the very next morning, he knew that she would be his wife. Sometimes Arthur thought that she had married him for his floral surname. It was only when she was dancing that he glimpsed the ecstasy of which she was capable. Camellia Rose continued to dance until the first pregnancy showed through her leotard. She still attended class every morning until her joints loosened and she could no longer keep from waddling. She hated being pregnant. She felt that the baby was a parasite that had robbed her of her passion, rather than a gift resulting from passion.
Camellia had negotiated with Arthur for four children. She decided to have them quickly and get it over with. Lily, being third, was born the same calendar year as Iris and before Violet, the eldest, had turned three. Keeping with her own doubly floral name she insisted that the children have flower names as well. She withheld middle names from the girls saying that Rose would become their middle names when they married. Any boy born to them would have been saddled with a name like Cosmo or Aster.
When the fourth pregnancy, which was postponed until Lily was in kindergarten, yielded twins named Daisy and Poppy, the joke went around that if they had another child, they would have to name her Rose Rose. There was another child. A complete surprise. When Lily was ten, Camellia and Arthur decided on a weekend skiing getaway to Upper Michigan. Three weeks later, Camellia slipped on the ice in high heels and broke her leg. When the X-ray technician asked if there was any possibility that she was pregnant, she realized that her period was a week late. She refused to cry. She also blamed Arthur for deliberately impregnating her and arranged for them to sleep in separate rooms. With the birth of Azalea, Camellia decided that their bouquet was more than complete and insisted that Arthur undergo a vasectomy if he ever wanted to share a room with his wife again.
By this time the older girls were catching on to the facts of life. They understood much more than their parents imagined they did. As in most things, they secretly sided with their father. Just as Camellia never got forgave the girls for preventing her from returning to the stage, the girls never forgave their mother for giving them such an awful set of names.
Arthur worked very hard at the law firm to provide everything Camellia could want. However he craved a quiet and a safer place to raise the girls. When a partnership in a branch office in Green Bay was offered, he accepted. Camellia was furious at being pulled away from Chicago society. Fifteen years of marriage had taught Arthur how to sell an idea to his wife.
“In Chicago, we are two up-and-comers among millions. In Green Bay we will be,” he paused as if searching for the right word even though he had rehearsed this speech into the rearview mirror all the way home, “Aristocracy.”
It worked. Camellia was sold. She was even known to attend Packer games—in a fur-trimmed anorak, of course.