Rosie Read online

“Yeah.”

  “But I’m trying to take it slow, see, romance is not my strong suit. It brings out my most foolish, self-destructive tendencies. I always get in way over my head; I get strung out, totally obsessive. Like, for instance, one of the reasons I left New York was to get away from my last boyfriend, who was a shit of a shit of a shit, a liar, a two-timer, but funny, you see, and cute. And I kept thinking I’d change him, my great love for him would cause God to restore his glorious gift of sight and all that. He’d make progress, he’d start talking about getting married, and then—it was like Charlie Brown and the football, you know? How Lucy always cons him into kicking the football, promising that she won’t pull it away at the last second? Well, he was Lucy, and I was Charlie Brown, and no matter how many times I ended up lying on my back, humiliated, I still fuckin’ wanted the guy.” She shook her head.

  “I was like that all through high school, all through college.”

  “And you’re not any more?”

  “I haven’t been in love in so long. But I don’t think so. I have less tolerance now. And enormous pride.”

  “That’s how I want to be. But, see, I’m extremely ill, mentally; like, for instance, I didn’t leave that guy in New York my phone number, and he doesn’t know where I live, but every time I go into town and see a green Beetle, I think, ‘He’s found me, he’s come to claim me, he’s come to his senses’; and, see, if I had him, if I got him, I don’t think I’d really want him. He’s not good enough for me. But shit, man, I don’t know—like, for instance, right now, if the phone rang here, at your house, I’d have this rush of adrenaline, I’d start having palpitations, I’d think he’d tracked me down somehow....” Rae threw back her head and laughed.

  Elizabeth smiled. She liked Rae, a lot. God, what she would give to be jolly.

  “So where are your folks?”

  “Dead. I’m an orphan. What about you?”

  “My dad died in Korea. My mom’s in Los Angeles, same house I grew up in.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “I adore her. She’s a sweetheart. I just can’t stand to be in the same room with her for more than ten minutes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah, man, I start climbing the walls. Then I end up hating myself for being such a shit. But I swear to God, she’s afraid of everything: she’s afraid of men, mice, cars, food poisoning; she’s afraid of losing her hand in the washing machine; she’s afraid of escalators; she’s afraid when she buys toilet paper the clerk will think she’s going to use it to wipe herself; she’s afraid of drowning; she’s afraid of planes—when I flew up here to look for a place, she called the airlines and asked if the pilot’s biorhythm chart was available.”

  “No.”

  “I swear to God. What did your mother die of?”

  “Old age. At forty. Cirrhosis.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ready for another?”

  “Sure.” Rae gave Elizabeth her empty glass, smiling.

  Rae was smoking again when Elizabeth returned with the drinks. “Did your dad drink too?”

  “Yeah. They both drank like there was no tomorrow. He left my mother for another lady when I was ten.”

  “What a wipe-out. For your mother.”

  “Yeah. She went nuts. A week after he left she went out and started buying animals. A beagle, two cats, two white doves and two diamond doves, a guinea pig, a rabbit, and a tankful of tropical fish. It gave her something to do, something to take care of. It made her feel needed. But the house stank. I’d never liked animals all that much. My dad said he ought to buy me a boa constrictor.”

  Rae laughed.

  “And a parrot, that he’d train to say, ‘Daddy loves Elizabeth, he’ll explain it all someday!’”

  Rae looked suddenly mournful, like Stan Laurel. Elizabeth shrugged, took a sip, sighed.

  “Were you and he close?”

  “Oh, yeah, like that.” Elizabeth crossed her fingers. “I used to cut his hair, rub his feet.... I was the apple of his eye. And I thought my mother was pitiful for not being able to compete successfully.”

  “God—mothers. Where would we be without them?”

  “I don’t know. My mother only loved me when I was doing something she could brag about.”

  “My mother brags about stuff like—well, for instance, she says to this boyfriend of mine, ‘Rae had the talent to be a concert pianist’—which I didn’t—’only she was lazy. I pushed her and pushed her to practice, I’d beat the stuffing out of her trying to get her to practice,’ like, you know, it speaks of her devotion and wisdom, only to me and the boyfriend it’s like she’s bragging about having stolen money from orphans—no offense—to pay for my lessons.”

  They shook their heads, smiled at each other.

  “I wonder what Rosie will tell her psychiatrist about me when she’s twenty, all this lurid, compelling, rewritten stuff about my lovers and neuroses and clothes and mannerisms”

  “Nah. I bet you’re a great mother.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “A lot.”

  “I don’t know. I find myself doing all these things that my mother used to do, things I swore I’d never do.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Like drinking, for instance—as if there were no tomorrow. Which there very well might not be. Elizabeth stared wistfully at Rosie’s bicycle. In this morning’s paper, Jerry Brown had likened the arms race to a bunch of small boys standing in a basement, knee-deep in kerosene, bragging about how many matches each of them had.

  “Like what, Elizabeth?”

  Oh. You still here? “Like, I use lines on Rosie that used to drive me crazy when my mother used them on me. Like ‘matters of principle.’ Or ‘I’m so mad I can’t see straight,’ or ‘I’m so mad I’m seeing red.’ And little mannerisms: sometimes I’ll watch myself do something she used to do, rub my nose a certain way when I’m nervous, or rub my eyes with a thumb and forefinger when someone is getting on my nerves while making this little sniffly sound—as soon as I notice I’m doing it, my heart stops.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. When will Rosie be home?”

  “Any minute.” God willing, she’s still alive, every distant siren might ... “Shall we have one more drink?”

  “Oh, let’s, dammit,” Rae beamed. Rae beamed a lot. “Do you like to go to movies?”

  “It’s my only amusement. Well, besides books, and—”

  “Oh, me, too. I figure we’ll be inseparable.”

  They got to their feet and walked inside just as the phone rang.

  “It’s him, it’s him!” Rae shouted. Elizabeth laughed and cracked her hipbone on the corner of the hutch in the dining room.

  “Hello?” she asked, picking up the phone.

  “Hi, Mama. I’m playing at my new friend’s house.”

  “Good. What’s her name?”

  “Sharon Thackery.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because she’s standing right here.”

  Rosie’s first day back at school had been all her good dreams come true: she hadn’t farted green bubbles. One kid joyously told Mrs. Gravinski that Rosie was the smartest kid in the class, another volunteered that she was the class clown. The smell of chalk dust on blackboard erasers excited and reassured her. The morning passed in a flash.

  Recess was a whole new ball game; no more taunts of “Kindergarten baby, born in the gravy.” Now Rosie and her class-mates had the kindergarten babies to lord it over.

  Rosie won at two-square more often than anyone else; the boing of the red rubber ball jazzed her, and she exhibited a sadistic competence. But the new girl, Sharon Thackery, was almost as good.

  When the whistle blew ending recess and class resumed, it turned out that Sharon Thackery was almost as good at reading and writing. Rosie eyed her fretfully, eyed the long thick brown braids, tied with purple ribbons, wanted long brown braids more than she’d ever wa
nted anything before, and wanting them so badly made her stomach buckle, made it blush in misery, and in her mind’s eye she watched herself hack Sharon’s off with scissors, saw herself with long brown braids. “Rosie! Rosie!”

  “Pssst,” hissed Sharon Thackery, in the seat beside her.

  “Rosie,” Mrs. Gravinsky said again. Rosie jerked, looked at the blackboard—A a B b C c—as if it were The Revelation. Some of the kids giggled, and Rosie turned red.

  “I could read when I was four,” Sharon said to Rosie after the lunch bell rang.

  “Big deal. I could read when I was three.”

  “Liar.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can ask my mother.” They sat at their desks, taking Saran-wrapped food out of their lunch boxes. Rosie’s exuded a faint air of rust, banana, musty sweet decay, and a hint of grapes. Sharon’s was new. Her mother had cut her sandwich the right way, so that the halves were triangles. Sharon’s apple looked like Snow White’s. Rosie’s had been cut into fourths and the meat was brown. Sharon had—oh, God, Rosie could hardly stand it—Hostess cupcakes, while she had these totally gross perforated raisin bars, flat and dry.

  “You wanna trade?” Sharon asked her, holding up a cupcake, eyeing the raisin bars. Rosie couldn’t believe her ears. What’s the catch?

  Rosie looked at the chocolate cupcake, iced, with whipped cream inside, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I guess.”

  She gave Sharon two raisin bars. The cupcake was the best thing she had eaten in her life. She asked Sharon if she wanted to play outside when they finished their lunches. Sharon did.

  Boys were playing basketball, P-I-G, and Around the World; girls hung and spun on the rings and bars, played jacks, hopscotch, jump rope; mixed groups of children played Red Light Green Light, tag, Mother May I, four-square, two-square, dodge ball. Red rubber balls boinging on the blacktop. Scalloped and missing teeth, scabby elbows, new clothes, shrieking, laughter, tears, the shrill whistles of authority. Some kids too shy to talk or play with anyone tried to blend into walls or hid in the johns. Rosie and Sharon jumped rope.

  Cinderella, dressed in yella,

  Went upstairs to kiss her fella,

  Mayda mistake and kissed a snake,

  How many doctors did it take?

  One, two, three, four...

  Rosie got to thirty-one doctors. Holding her breath, she watched, growing subtly but visibly agitated when Sharon got as far as twenty—please God please don’t let her do better—up and down, up and down, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-sev—Sharon’s sneaker caught the rope, brought it down. Rosie didn’t crack a smile.

  “Too bad,” she said kindly.

  ***

  Sharon invited her home after school. Rosie couldn’t wait to have a shot at her kitchen. She lived a block away, in a two-story mansion with hedges, lawn, fruit trees, all carefully tended. The house, outside and in, was picture perfect. When they stepped inside, Rosie nearly swooned at the chandeliers, Persian rugs, Chinese vases, velvet chairs, and the perfect mother who greeted them at the door, Timmy’s mother on Lassie, a picture-perfect mother whose voice is so nice it sounds like she’s crying, and she’s so happy to meet Rosie, she says; come on into the kitchen.

  Oreos and milk. Rosie had to pinch herself.

  Rosie fell in love—with the house, the mother (nylons, perfume, lipstick)—wanted to play here with Sharon every day for the rest of her life.

  The girls played with troll dolls all afternoon in Sharon’s pink princess bedroom, dressing and undressing them, brushing and braiding the comical hair. The bedroom was so perfect, so enviable—pink gingham curtains and bedspreads, a vanity covered with bottles of toilet water and Barrettes and hair ribbons, plastic lipsticks, a jewelry box that played music when you opened it: inside, a ballerina spun on a pedestal surrounded by rubies, emeralds, pearls; porcelain geisha dolls under glass boxes, clean stuffed animals—it was almost more than Rosie could take. Giggling with Sharon, blissed out, excited, she imagined smashing the geisha dolls’ heads off with a hammer, stealing the jewels, a lipstick, the ribbons. Pangs of bad conscience skittered through her mind, but mostly she was very, very happy.

  At four they watched Creature Features in the den: a roaring dinosaur was advancing upon a pretty woman in a leopard-skin bathing suit.

  And now, along with everything else she is afraid of at six years old, Rosie will live in terror of dinosaurs. She is afraid of falling through outer space forever, of going blind, of being bitten on the bottom by a poisonous snake when she sits on the toilet, of a man coming into her room to kill her (her plan is to lie still without breathing and pretend she is already dead), of turning into a black person, of going bald, of falling out the window of her dentist’s fourteenth-story office, of the long, cold, bony white arm that will reach out from under the bed and grab her ankle if she gets up; and now, on top of all this: dinosaurs.

  At six, when Mrs. Thackery said kindly that Sharon’s daddy was on his way home and that Rosie must be going, she called her mother to ask for a ride.

  “Oh, honey, I don’t think I ought to drive. I’ve-uh, been having a drink with a new neighbor who dropped in today....”

  “God!” Rosie was stung with humiliation.

  “Is it far?”

  “No. Can’t you even drive to Hilton?”

  “You’re on Hilton? Baby, that’s only about ten blocks away. And it’s still light out.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Rosie hung up, fighting back tears unsuccessfully.

  “She can’t come get me, because she’s sick.”

  “She’ll be all right,” said Mrs. Thackery tenderly. “Don’t worry.”

  “Her dad’s dead!” Sharon announced in alarm.

  Now tears were streaming down Rosie’s face, and she was turning red.

  “I’d drive you home but my car’s in the shop. And Daddy will be too tired.” Mrs. Thackery’s weepy voice and sweetness made Rosie all the more miserable and ashamed and jealous.

  “It’s not very far,” Rosie said bravely, sniffling, needing to be alone. “It’s only over on Willow.” But Rosie did not believe that she would make it home alive. “I better go. Thank you for a very nice time.”

  “We loved having you, dear.”

  “See you tomorrow,” said Sharon anxiously.

  “Yeah. See you in school.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  She ran for her life, scanning the hillside beyond the row of houses, the hillside where she walked with her mother, where they collected wildflowers and looked for robins’ nests in the cypress trees, and the cypress trees were moving, were not really cypresses but camouflaged dinosaurs, and the stream which ran downhill through cypress and oaks, a stream full of guppies and frogs and water skeeters, was filled with blood, and behind the boulders were leering, slavering, huge reptiles, waiting for it to be dark enough to go hunting for little girls; please God please God, save me, save me. Finally she arrived on Willow and tore through the white lattice gate out of breath, eyes shining, up the porch steps two at a time, burst through the front door, slammed it, locked it, and stood panting against it, home.

  She took a deep breath, looked around. Where was her mother?

  “Mama? Mama? I’m home.”

  And Elizabeth walked unsteadily out from the warm aromatic kitchen to hug her child, to hear the details of her day.

  CHAPTER 3

  One starry night a year later, Elizabeth was reading Huckleberry Finn to her daughter on the blue velvet couch in the fire-warmed living room. Rosie held her mother’s feet in her lap, rubbing them lazily, laughing when her mother laughed, frowning when Elizabeth stopped to sip cognac from a Waterford snifter.

  Elizabeth closed the book. “Time for bed, sweetheart.”

  “Noooooooo.”

  Rosie rubbed the feet more determinedly and Elizabeth purred. Her mind traveled back in time to nights whe
n she had massaged her father’s bony white feet, after removing the wingtips, the garters, and the thin black socks; massaged them, honored, while her mother did the dishes or sat in the armchair reading. And now she lay, an aging young woman with a seven-year-old girl pressing tiny strong thumbs into her falling arches.

  “I’m going to close my eyes for a moment. Will you keep rubbing my feet? And then I’ll tuck you in.”

  Rosie nodded. Her mother’s breathing grew soft, and Rosie rubbed more gently.

  “Mama?”

  No answer but the faintest snore.

  “Psssst. Mama?”

  She resumed the foot-rub, looked around the room, out the window where a white crescent moon hung, then up at the ceiling, down and sideways to the empty crystal snifter, into her mother’s peaceful face, down into her lap, at the gypsy-red toenails. She began tapping rhythms with her forefingers on her mother’s toes, as if they were a keyboard, whispering “Deedle deedle deedle” to a melody she heard in her head. After a while, she said again, “Mama?”

  “Uh.”

  “Let’s go tuck me in.”

  Elizabeth opened one eye, closed it, nodded her head.

  “Why don’t you go put on your nightie. I’ll come up in a minute and listen to your prayers. Okay?”

  Rosie squinted her eyes and mouth at Elizabeth (whose eyes remained closed), stuck out her tongue, lifted her mother’s feet, and slid out from under them.

  Twenty minutes later Elizabeth went upstairs to Rosie’s room and found her child glowering out from under the covers, her face hard and sleepy.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Hi.”

  “Sorry I fell asleep.”

  “Tssss.”

  “Don’t be mad at me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Good.” Elizabeth walked to the bed and sat down.

  “I would be, if you were my real mother.”

  “Oh.”

  Elizabeth nodded her head; she stroked Rosie’s back and bottom.

  “Can I stretch out with you for a minute?”

  “Okay.” Rosie slid over, and Elizabeth lay down. “But my mother will be coming to get me tonight.”