The Stories that Bind
By: Rachel Smith
Tags: Saint John, Family, Storytelling, Love

The Stories that Bind

Sixty years, one love story, and the truth about the telling

Will and Rosalie Wood at their 55th wedding anniversary. Their grandson Jake snapped this photo before cutting into the cake.

Before I started recording, Will Wood leaned in. “There are some stories you believe and some stories you don’t believe,” he said.

He told me this with a grin, because Rosalie, his wife of almost six decades, was about to start telling stories. At that time, I figured he was teasing. In the days and weeks that followed, as I sorted through the competing narratives on my recorder, I began to question what I knew about telling stories.

That October afternoon I had driven from Fredericton to Saint John with my boyfriend Jake for a visit to his Grandparents. I had met Rosalie and Will before, our last trip celebrating her eighty-third birthday. On this trip I had plans to interview Rosalie, do a profile on her for a class assignment. When we crossed Harbour Bridge I could smell the city, a mix of sea salt and industry, as we approached the suburban neighbourhood and the blue Victorian house with red and white trim where they have lived for almost 50 years.

When we pulled up, Jake squeezed my hand before we stepped out into the sun.

“Will, they’re here! Jake’s here!”

A plump woman with cropped white hair sped down the steps. She almost broke into a run when she hit the cement walkway. Jake stopped her with a hug. I stood back, waving to Will as he made his way down the walkway. Will is tall, straight-backed and slim, and for this occasion wore a button-down and slacks. He walked down a little slower than Rose but with a wide smile. After everyone had exchanged hugs, we were ushered into the house. Rosalie and Will took turns firing questions about the drive down and how this semester was going.

We shed our coats and took off our shoes. Once I could get a word in, I thanked Rose for letting me interview her but she waved it off. She told me her daughter Suzanne interviewed her and her mother when she was in school — a story about powerful women. The pair led us to the living room where we sat on the leather couch. I count 16 cardinals, some displayed as figurines and ornaments, others as paintings and stained glass. On the living room table was a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, a gift from one of Rosalie’s admirers.

It was then that Will issued his disclaimer, and I began my long lesson about the stories that define our lives. You’d think that after almost 60 years together, the stories would have been settled, that memories would have been sorted and locked.

One thing that’s not in dispute is that they met in a bowling alley. When both were in their early twenties they bowled at the same alley in Saint John. But for a long time, they were ships passing in the night. Rose bowled from 7 to 9 P.M. and Will from 9 to 11. One Wednesday night, Will and his buddy Earl were there early to practice for their bowling league. On the way out they spotted a group of girls who were just starting a game. Earl, in a move of brazen boyhood, walked over and wrote their names on the girl’s score sheet. So they began to bowl.

“Here I was, an innocent young man that didn’t know anything,” Will said. “And this girl’s over dragging her arms over me and — ”

Rosalie interjected: “Oh right!”

“You know, making out. Here I am! An innocent guy.”

“Now I’ll tell the story the way it was!”

In Rosalie’s version, Earl approached them and asked what the group was doing there. Earl knew her and some of the girls from high school. They were a mix of eight 20-somethings from the upriver communities of Gagetown and Hatfield point.

“We always went to The Rib afterward and had chocolate cream pies,” Rosalie said. The girls left to go to The Rib and they found Will and Earl driving around the square looking for them.

“Well we were looking for other women, me and Earl,” Will said.

“No, they weren’t, they were looking for us,” Rosalie said.

What is clear is that by the end of the night, Will asked a friend for Rosalie’s phone number.

“And he would call me and call me and call me.”

But Rosalie was never there to answer. Her cousin was in the hospital at the time and she would visit every night.

“I’ll tell you the truth of the story, not the story you’re getting,” Will interrupts while Rosalie keeps talking. He confirms that the next time they saw each other at the bowling alley, Will took his chance. He asked if after bowling she would like dinner. He offered to loan his car to her. She could drive it while he was bowling, then pick him up to go to Hilda’s Grill.

By offering his car, he accidentally found his way to her heart. Driving cars is a weakness for Rosalie. She has what she calls a lead foot.

“That’s one thing I love, to drive fast,” Rose said, falling into a memory. “I had a white continental high top Viscount Dodge.”

It was the first car Rosalie bought with her own money. A car right out of a 1950’s cartoon. A two-door with silver piping that curved up at the back. She sold the car when they got married to pay for a fridge and stove.

Before then, Rosalie told me she liked to race the car on the ice of Belleisle Bay.

“Ten miles of open ice,” Will confirmed, laughing. “Ten miles of shiny race track.”

“You put your brakes on and you would just go.”

Rosalie assured me she knew where all the air holes were and how to avoid them. This skill came in handy off the ice too. On her way to her high school Baccalaureate, Rose was driving the Viscount on a series of roller-coaster hills. A sharp turn sent her off the road but she kept going. She continued her turn through a farm until she could see the road again.

“And I was going so fast I came right back up on the road!”

“Now most people would just try and slam on the brakes,” Will interjected.

“But I thought I could get back on the road,” Rosalie said. “And I did!” Without so much as a pit stop, she made it on time.

“She would have gone through the barn if she hadn’t turned the wheel,” he told me with wide eyes.

“But you know what we were all young,” Rose said with a wave of her hand.

They had three children: Suzanne, Keith and Rob. Suzanne came first, four years into their marriage. At this time Rosalie had opened her own beauty parlour in the basement of their first house. Rose was thrilled to have a daughter around the shop, counting her as the sister she never had.

“I had these two terrible brothers that I loved to death. Who I’d love to have now,” she said.

Will later assures me that two kids aren’t much more than one and at that point, you really should just have three. It seems like reasonable math to me, or that Will has forgotten what work went into raising kids.

“Will said I smuggled them in,” Rosalie says while laughing. “I don’t think I smuggled them in.”

“But anyway they all grew up.”

Suzanne is now 56 with two children of her own. Seger was born first and three years after came Jake. Last spring, Covid-19 kept Rosalie and Will from seeing their family. During this time, every few weeks Suzanne would jar a pot of Boston baked beans or pick up treats from the Happy Baker. She would drive from Fredericton to Saint John to drop them off at her parents’ doorstep. When restrictions loosened, family and friends would talk through the glass door or six feet away down the walkway.

Suzanne had her second son in a snowstorm. When her doctor heard the forecast, he made her come to the hospital right away. At the time she was with her mom shopping for shoes downtown.

“It doesn’t seem so long ago I was trying to buy shoes,” Rosalie says, lost in a memory. Suzanne had already called her up days before the baby was expected. Rosalie was sure that the salesman was wary of helping them, nervous that her water would break in his stop. After getting the doctor’s orders they went straight to the hospital while Will watched after his oldest grandson.

“We always had a great time together, didn’t we,” Will smiles as he speaks.

Now the boys are both in their twenties and visit their grandparents every few months. At every opportunity, Rosalie will brag about her grandkids, how Jake made the Dean’s List and how Seger’s got his first big job as a tattoo apprentice. She won’t forget to brag about their mother, Suzanne, who bought the Body Shop in Fredericton when she was 20. The shop was a family affair, and they were constantly recruiting new members.

“Neil said that all of us worked in the Body Shop,” Will chuckles.

Will and Rosalie’s St. John house was transformed into a packing station for the shop. Two girls worked in the basement with Rosalie. Rob and Keith had their friends join in the operation too. Half the hockey team was answering phone calls, writing down how many soap bars and lotions should be sent to Fredericton.

“You’d be surprised how many people were involved,” says Will. “People you would never expect.”

Around Christmas time, everyone had a key to the basement. Whoever could drive would take the van, stock it up then send it to the city. When she wasn’t helping packing, Rosalie would work in the shop itself.

“I felt like I was 18 again,” said Rosalie.

But let’s get back to the story of how they met.

“Here’s the truth of the story, see you always get the truth from me,” Will continued after Rosalie was done explaining her side.

“The first time I met her she had slacks with the knee torn out and she was, you know, just barely-”

Rosalie cuts him off. “We were all a bunch of country girls and we were all full of life and full of a lot of fun,” she explained. “We were playing leapfrog coming up and I ripped my whole knee out of my pants.”

“That’s the story she told but I just think she just didn’t have a good pair. Anyway the next time she showed up though, wow,” Will lost himself in a moment of thought. “She had the rule of one size smaller than you normally wear.”

“No!” Rosalie broke in. “Oh that’s not true”

“And the hair was done, you know.”

“Well, I was a hairdresser!” Shouted Rosalie.

“And the eyes were all done up. And I thought wow this is a transformation. It’s like getting a rusty old car and putting some bodywork on the thing and painting it up. Anyway, I thought she looked pretty good. That was what happened to me. The bait was out, the lure was out and I was hooked.”

Rose was telling the story of their first real date, the one where she drove Will’s car to dinner after bowling.

“So anyway he gives me the keys to his car, you know, he gives me the keys to his car,” Rose said wiggling her eyebrows. “Think about it.”

“Later on in life, everyone had the key to my car,” Will broke in.

The date was going well until they got to the parking lot of the restaurant. While backing up, Rosalie drove the car into a hole, tearing the muffler off.

“And he was really nice about it!”

Will had put it on in the first place so the next day he took it to the garage and put it back on. He demonstrated how loud the car was without a muffler through a series of screeching and blowing sounds.

“Any way you’ll know how I was hooked,” Will paused to mime a fish being caught on a hook. “She knew all the tricks. Well, women all do! They’re born with that knowledge. There wouldn’t be any more humans if they weren’t born with that knowledge.”

I’m not sure if I believe that. Not all women are born with this allusive knowledge and some men are well adept in the art of wooing. But for Will, it seemed he was simply swept off his feet.

“Are you fellows getting hungry?” Will asked.

I switched off my recording as Rosalie and Will insisted on taking us out to dinner. We settled on a recommendation of theirs ten minutes away, a pub where all four of us ordered the fish and chips. Rosalie told her grandsons before that if she could live her life again she would change absolutely nothing. This is a pretty big statement, impressive as it is at first unbelievable. I suspect her lack of regret comes from the family and friends she had, on top of a fair bit of adventure.

“I took care of her,” Will said of their younger years. “Stopped her from drinking and smoking and going around at night, looked after her.”

“Funny you are very funny you are,” Rose chuckles. “Funny, funny.”

We said our goodbyes with hugs and kisses in the parking lot, with many reminders of safety and promises to come back soon. Only later, as I began sorting through the various versions of their stories, did I come to understand on the drive home why I felt like part of the family.

Rachel Smith is a third-year student at St. Thomas University majoring in Journalism and Great Books. Born in Boston, Smith grew up in New Hampshire and now calls Fredericton home. She misses the mountains but loves exploring the city. In her free time, Smith likes to ski, hike and read. This story was written for The Power of Narrative.