Rosie Read online

  The pillow grew hot and scratchy and she kept turning it over; the sheets felt sandy, and she couldn’t keep her eyes closed. She put one leg on top of the covers to cool off, dozed fitfully, dreamed that when she got up to write on the blackboard she was naked, and the kids were laughing, and even beautiful Mrs. Gravinski was doubled over with laughter, and Rosie was trying to cover herself up with paper towels ... She awoke with a start and looked around the room, breathing rapidly. It seemed like hours until she fell asleep, and it seemed, when she woke up to sunlight and her mother shaking her shoulder, that she had been asleep for ten minutes.

  “Rosie,” her mother said, laughing. Rosie propped herself up, surveyed her leg in the new blue jeans and shoe on top of the cover, made a whining moan, and rubbed her eyes. Teary, sleepy, and mad, she got brusquely out of bed, stomped out to the hallway, clomped down the hall to the bathroom, and slammed the door.

  Elizabeth followed after her but stopped outside the closed door.

  “What’s with the angry clubfoot routine?”

  “Chh.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No. Derrr.”

  Elizabeth heard water running. “I’ll go make you some breakfast, okay? Come on down when you finish shaving.”

  “Tss.”

  “Don’t be nervous, Rosie. You’ll love first grade.”

  “I know I will. Just leave me alone.”

  Rosie threw a small, troubled fit at breakfast because the fried eggs were all snotty, another fit when she saw that her mother had cut the tuna sandwich in her Wonder Woman lunch box the wrong way, another when her mother tried to run a brush through her thick, soft, shoulder-length black curls, and yet another when the toothpaste squirted all over the sink. But when the yellow school bus pulled up across the street, she rushed downstairs ecstatic, blue eyes shining, cheeks flushed. She grabbed her lunch box, kissed her mother, and ran for the bus.

  Elizabeth read the paper and drank coffee in the kitchen, wishing the morning had already passed. After cleaning up the dishes, vacuuming the downstairs, and reading the paper again, she made herself some breakfast—Irish oatmeal, with raisins and brown sugar—and read the want ads. In three pages of Help Wanted listings, one job caught her eye: a cook, with baking experience, was needed at San Quentin. She smiled; she would probably meet more interesting men there than the ones she knew. She closed the paper, sat staring at the kitchen wall for a long time.

  Her life—or her days, at any rate—was a drought, too much time on her hands,. nothing that had to be done. She started to think about lunch. It was ten o’clock. Rosie kept flashing through her mind: Rosie in school, in class, on the blacktop, four-square, the rings, hopscotch; Rosie, the angry clubfoot, stomping down the stairs; Rosie sprawled in unlikely positions on furniture and floors throughout the house, reading, with a baby finger hooked absently over her bottom lip, completely absorbed. Elizabeth sighed deeply at the kitchen table, sighed again a moment later under the strain of boredom. She drummed her long fingers against the table, hit it lightly with a fist, got up and went to the study.

  She sat down in front of the typewriter. Maybe she had it in her to write. One way to find out. She inserted a piece of paper, drummed all eight fingers against the keys, scratched her tilted head, rubbed her eyes, sighed, stared at the paper, was distracted by the plastic Disneyland paperweight out of which Rosie had sucked the water and the apparently nontoxic snow particles so that Tinker Bell lay on the floor, face down on top of her wand ... concentrate. Okay. Here we go. Fingers on the keys, she rocked slightly with a look that said that once she got the first word down on paper she wouldn’t be able to keep pace with her thoughts. “Once” she wrote—no, wait. She xxed it out. “Many years ago”—no wait. “I rememb”—no, xxxxxxx. Poised again, hands on the keys, she stared at Tinker Bell for a long time, hardly blinking—leaped up, walked quickly to the mirror in the hall, and checked herself out. Great straight nose, the long full lips Rosie had inherited, hazel eyes flecked with gold, thick black lashes: handsome, interesting, not pretty, goddamn it, not pretty. But regal. She imagined Johnny Carson asking her what had gotten her going as a writer in her mid-thirties.

  Well, Johnny, when my daughter, Rosie, started first grade, I thought I’d give myself some time to see if I had the talent and drive to write; I’d always thought I’d be good at it, but of course the success of the book surprises me as much as...

  Back to the typewriter. She sat down, got up, walked to the rear of the house, put some laundry and detergent in the washing machine, turned it on, and went back to the study, but before sitting down, went to the kitchen for more coffee, then back to the study after stopping off again briefly at the mirror. “Lately it occurs”—no, wait. “Sometimes when”—no, wait, fuckin’ A, man, come on. Concentrate. Think of a story to tell. Okay. “After leaving Mr. Braithewaite”—the phone rang; goddammit! Just when she was starting to really cook. She got up, walked to the kitchen, picked up the receiver, expecting, as usual, bad or inconveniencing news—Gordon was canceling for tonight, or...

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” said her aged friend, Grace Adderly.

  “Hello, Grace.”

  “Isn’t it a bad wind?” she said, in a tone which made Elizabeth feel like she’d done something wrong.

  “Yes.”

  “Am I interrupting you?”

  “No, no. How are you? How is Charles? How do you like living in the city?”

  “We just love it. In fact, I’m calling to invite you to an apartment-warming party next week, you and Rosie both.”

  Oh, damn, I can’t make it, Elizabeth almost said, before realizing she didn’t know what day the party was to be.

  “Saturday night at six.”

  “Oh, damn, I can’t make it. Unless I can change some plans—can I call you back?”

  “Oh, try, will you?” Grace asked. “And of course, you’re welcome to bring your nice young man.”

  Elizabeth smiled to herself. Gordon, the man Grace was thinking of, was not nice, not young, and not hers, but he was the most presentable of her three current candidates: single and not too alcoholic.

  “Listen. I’ll have to call you back. I’ll see if I can get out of what I’m sort of lined up to do.”

  “Oh, dear. Hang on a moment, please. Kittykitty-kittykittykitty. Kittykittykitty. Oh, you’re hot, aren’t you—and you want to take off your little jacket! But I can’t find the zipper! Now, how about a nice glass of water and some little cookies....”

  “Grace!” Elizabeth hollered into the phone. After a moment, Grace hung up. Elizabeth laughed—she had an idea for a story-and called back.

  “Hello?” Grace asked.

  “Hi, Grace.”

  “Elizabeth!”

  “Hello?” said a drowsy male voice on an extension.

  “Charles, darling,” said Grace. “I thought you were taking a nap.”

  “I was, until the phone rang.”

  “Well, then, come into the kitchen and have a nice toddy with me.”

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” he said, and they both hung up.

  Elizabeth stood shaking her head, smiling. A story was forming. She went. back to the study, sat down, xxed out “After leaving Mr. Braithewaite,” and began again:

  At one of the first parties Sarah Braithewaite could remember, Emily Nickerson’s father had broken his wife’s front teeth during a home viewing of Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and it seemed retrospectively to her that every party since had boasted a couple who had ended a discussion of divorce moments before stepping into the gathering. Mrs. Braithewaite found it most intolerable when it was the host couple, for the house would reek of bad feeling as if the walls were moldy with it. She imagined them in the moments before the first guests arrived: “You pig. You whore.” “I want you out.” “I wish you would die.” “I want the house; you’ll never see the kids again.... Phil! Beverly! Marvelous to see you both, come in, come in, there’s a lovely clam dip by the fire.”


  But she had dutifully attended parties with Mr. Braithewaite, although the entire time, eating drinking talking, a voice within was saying, “I have to go home now, thanks for the lovely time but I have to go home now, wish I could stay for dessert but the sitter is so-on- and-so-forth and I have to go home.” She’d always had a drink or two before arriving, could no more attend a party sober than she could naked, and on several occasions embarrassed Mr. Braithewaite with loud vino demento scenes for which she would be punished by silence on the drive home.

  Better go put the clothes in the dryer.

  When she sat back at the typewriter, she reread what she’d written, pleased. Well, you see, Johnny, it’s a funny story: the first chapter, “Parties,” came about on the day my daughter Rosie started first grade.... The phone rang again. Jesus! The great artist rose, glaring, and went to the kitchen. It was probably Grace again, or else it was Gordon, canceling for tonight.

  “Norma?”

  “No.”

  “Is she there?”

  “No. Wrong number.”

  Elizabeth returned to the study, sat down, stared, with her hands on the keys, for a good fifteen minutes at what she’d written, then got up to take the clothes out of the dryer.

  Back at the typewriter, she mentally computed the calories she had consumed at breakfast: about 450, she figured, not bad. So if for lunch she had two pieces of bread—160, say—a few slices of chicken—100? 150?—and a tablespoon of mayonnaise—100—

  Concentrate!:

  So when her aged friend, Gladys, called to invite her to supper with a small group of “darling” people, Sarah’s first impulse was to lie.

  Oh, there was milk in the coffee: maybe another 50 calories. Elizabeth stared for the next half hour at a color photo tacked to the wall, Rosie on the porch at three, naked except for a red plastic fireman’s hat on her head. Then it was time to fold the laundry and put it away.

  Back to the study; but before sitting down she turned and went to the kitchen, stopping for only the quickest glimpse in the mirror, back to the study to get what she’d written to read over lunch. No wonder she was so hungry. She’d probably put in three miles since breakfast.

  It was twelve-thirty, a little too early for a beer. She got chicken, a tomato, mayonnaise, cilantro, and an English muffin out of the refrigerator, popped the muffin in the toaster, and went back to the refrigerator for red onion. Partially hidden behind the milk, an ale winked at her, wet and cold. She stroked her nose, sniffed, reached for it.

  Elizabeth lay reading Bleak House in the window seat that afternoon, no longer driven to write, waiting for Rosie to come home from school. When the doorbell rang, she started as if she had heard a pistol shot.

  Who on earth could it be? Even Gordon wouldn’t dare drop in unannounced. Was it a sad policeman? Had Rosie been killed by the man who had murdered those women at the lakes? Was it the man himself? Shit, it was probably the Jehovah’s Witnesses again; they had been stalking her lately. Yesterday there’d been a Watchtower on the doormat with the headline CAN YOU SMOKE AND LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR?

  She walked to the front door. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Are you a Witness?”

  “I swear to God I didn’t see a thing.”

  Elizabeth opened the door and found a fat, long-haired woman standing on the doormat, anxiously looking over her shoulder.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you E. Ferguson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Rae Meltzer. I just moved into the house at the end of the street.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Why don’t you come in for a moment?”

  “Thank you, E.”

  “Elizabeth.” Five minutes. Then you’ll have to be going because I’ve got any number of things to attend to. The fat woman was pretty, with huge almond-shaped brown eyes, wavy auburn hair, a smallish, distinctly English nose, pinched on both sides.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just in the neighborhood.” Rae, hands jammed into the pockets of her worn baggy Levi’s, shuffled off toward the living room, leaving Elizabeth standing, puzzled, at the door.

  “God. Look at all these books.”

  Elizabeth walked to the living room, leaned against the wall, and watched as Rae darted from bookcase to bookcase, reading titles, ricocheting from wall to wall, stopping for a few seconds at a framed print, then back to a bookcase, expressing admiration in her cheerful, woolly voice: Margaret Rutherford in Blithe Spirit.

  “We’ve got most of the same books.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But you’ve got more. I thought I’d just stop by, you know, say hello and introduce myself.”

  “Ah.” Now gooooooooo away.

  “I just moved in last week.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth nodded.

  “I’m renting Hanuman’s studio apartment. You know her?”

  “The Pride of Cucamonga?”

  Rae laughed.

  “That’s an old Grateful Dead song,” said Elizabeth.

  Rae nodded, shuffled off toward the pewter mugs and vases on the mantelpiece, now seemingly oblivious to Elizabeth, who watched, bemused.

  I’ve got to get rid of her. Listen, Rae, I’m glad you stopped by, but I was just leaving the house...

  “She made a fortune on that odic force book,” said Rae. “She’s still collecting royalties.”

  “So I heard.”

  “When I went to see her about renting the place, she stares deep into my eyes for a while—you may not have noticed, but my lower lids are big—and she goes, ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ I say—shuffle shuffle—’thanks,’ and she says, ‘Do you have a thyroid condition?’”

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “Did you like Henderson?”

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “Me too. Hanuman’s boyfriend just left her.”

  “Yeah?” I really care, I really care enormously.

  “So she’s holed up, getting into her mind-grief; I swear to God she says, ‘I’m getting into my mind-grief.”

  Elizabeth smiled again, leaned against the wall. Rae came shuffling over.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Yeah, no, I don’t know. You want to have a quick drink?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “I’ll get them. Have a seat.” You’re making me nervous.

  Rae was sitting on the blue velvet couch reading Auden when Elizabeth returned with two screwdrivers.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a weaver. I make these artsy-fartsy little potholders for a boutique in Sausalito to pay the bills, and I make big weavings—pictures, sort of—that I ... I don’t know. As soon as I screw up the courage, I’m going to take them ... I don’t know. What do you do?”

  Ah, the question on all of our lips. What do I do?

  “I—uh, do—uh, I don’t know.” Elizabeth grinned, shrugged. “I raise my daughter, Rosie, who’s six. I’m sort of in between jobs right now.” Oh, that’s a good one, Elizabeth, the last job was nine years ago.

  “But what line of work are you in?”

  What line of work. Elizabeth cleared her throat, nodding. “I love books, more than anything except for Rosie. I’ve been an editor”—well, sort of; I mean I typed for an editor—“and I’ve been a publicist’s assistant, and—I don’t know.” She shrugged again.

  “Are you divorced?”

  “Widowed. Two years ago.”

  “Oh, my God How did he die?”

  “Car accident.”

  “Oh, my God. How sad Jesus.”

  “Well. These things happen.”

  Rae looked at her with horror, closed her eyes, shook her head. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “You want one?”
<
br />   “No, thanks. I quit last year.”

  “Oh, my God I would give anything on earth to be able to quit. How’d you do it?”

  “It wasn’t that big a deal. I just stopped smoking. I didn’t smoke much to begin with. Rosie was all flipped about it, told me that if I kept smoking I wouldn’t grow old enough to be a grandmother because I’d be dead. You know, the first week’s a bitch; after that, the self-righteousness carried me through. I have one every few weeks.”

  “That’s amazing. See, I don’t have the merest shred of strength of character, I swear to God. Well, yeah, I do, but—like, for instance I can weave all day every day, but say I start eating, there’s no stopping me; it’s like there’s this savage pig animal in my heart that emerges roaring ‘more more more,’ and I feel if I stop eating I’ll die; the only way to stop me once I get going would be to shoot me with a tranquilizer gun like the ones they use on elephants at the zoo.”

  “Do you drink much?”

  “Not particularly. Do you?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Off and on.” Mostly on. She smiled. “Would you like another?”

  “Are you going to have one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s take them out to the porch.”

  It was warm and blue outside; the wind had died down.

  “I wouldn’t sit in that chair if I were you.” Rae stopped in mid-squat above the folding chair. “It’s a pain. It looks nice, doesn’t it, but it’ll turn on you, like a Venus’s flytrap. Here, we’ll sit on the swing.”

  “This is a great place you’ve got.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” They looked out to the yard, at the trees, rosebushes, flower beds, vegetable garden, Rosie’s two-wheeler lying on its side by the gate.

  “Do you have a man?” Rae asked, lighting another cigarette.

  “Well, no one special. I see this man named Gordon a couple of times a week, but I also see other guys. How ‘bout you?”

  “I’ve only been here a week. But—I sort of like that guy who bartends at Mickey’s—you know him? That guy Brian, tall, reddish beard? Kind of funky genteel?”