Rosie Read online

  “I’m starving to death.”

  “You know how Hanuman eats? Ancient Hindu method. I think she got it from Ram Dass, where everything becomes an instrument of enlightenment if you focus your mind on it. So, eating, she’s going ‘Cutting cutting, lifting lifting, chewing chewing, tasting tasting....’”

  “Starving starving,” said Elizabeth.

  “Guess what, Elizabeth?”

  “What?”

  “You know how you kept saying I ought to be making more big weavings, try to con some gallery into showing them?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I’ve been doing them, at night. And today I called this guy in San Francisco who has a gallery, and I made an appointment to show my stuff to him next Saturday.”

  “You did? Well, goddammit! Good for you, Rae.”

  “I wouldn’t have had the courage if you hadn’t been kicking me in the ass.”

  “Sure, you would.” Elizabeth reached for her wine. She had swallowed a golf ball. It was unraveling in her stomach: jealous, wormy rubber bands.

  Rae was smiling down into her food, pleased and embarrassed.

  “Gee, Rae! That’s great.”

  “Thanks. They probably won’t take any of them—”

  “Oh, shut up. Everything I’ve seen of yours is gorgeous.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth. I think the guy was just patronizing me, because I’m fat.”

  “How would he know you were fat over the phone?” asked Rosie.

  “I think I told him.”

  “Oh, Rae, for God’s sake, what did you say? ‘Hello, my name is Rae and I’m extremely fat so will you please take a look at my weavings?’”

  “You think I’m extremely fat?”

  “No.” The golf ball had gone away. Elizabeth pulled at her nose. “I’d like to propose a toast.” The three of them lifted their glasses. “To your success.” They clinked their drinks together. “They’re very, very good, Rae.” Elizabeth wanted to want Rae to succeed, but part of her was miserable.

  “Are you just saying that?”

  “Now you’re fishing.”

  “No, I’m not. I just need reassurance.”

  “They’re so good—you’re so good at what you do—that I’m jealous.”

  “Really?”

  Elizabeth nodded, smiled.

  Rae beamed. “Oh, thanks.”

  And the weavings were beautiful: portraits in varying textures of wool, pictures of northern California’s land and ocean and mountains and sky, sun, moon, stars, birds; deep green trees, light blues, china blues, rich blues, indigos, suspiciously religious-looking white lights and sunshine, and train tracks, clouds, and boats.

  “You know what I’d like to do one of these days, Elizabeth?”

  “What’s that. Want some more wine?” Rae shook her head. Elizabeth poured herself half a glass.

  “I’d like to take you backpacking. I know this spectacular easy hike from Pretty Boy Trailhead.... Why not?”

  “I’d hate it. I’m positive.”

  “I’ll take my chances. I’m positive you’d love it.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Take me! Take me!” Rosie begged.

  “No, no. Next year, maybe, when you’re bigger.”

  “Can Sharon come?”

  “Sure.”

  “I should go call her and—”

  “Rosie, sit down. You can tell her tomorrow.”

  “But she’s going to start having to work on her dad.”

  “A year in advance? Sit down. Finish your dinner.”

  “Tsssssst.”

  “What’s he like?” Rae asked, eager to break the momentary tension.

  Rosie shrugged. “He’s all right, I guess.”

  “Is he funny?”

  “No.”

  Elizabeth was out of it, wrestling with her bad conscience, with one train of thought that was scared to death the gallery would take Rae’s work, show it, make her famous. If the tables were turned, Rae would be pulling for her. And if they were Rosie’s weavings, Rae and Elizabeth would be pulling so hard that...

  “Rae? Do you want us to go to the gallery with you Saturday? For moral support?”

  “Oh, yeah. But not into the gallery, I want to go there alone. In case they say no. But with me to the city that day, that would be great.”

  What an act of courage for Rae to have made the appointment. Elizabeth smiled, forced herself to breathe.

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t you learn to weave.”

  “I don’t particularly want to.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Rae.

  Elizabeth shrugged.

  “Don’t you get bored? Weren’t you thinking of trying to write?”

  “Yeah. For about three hours, one day. The day we met, in fact.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I wrote three great paragraphs. Then? It’s like that old joke about Billy Rose: This man comes up to him, says he can dive head first from a ladder three stories up into a small tub of water. Billy Rose doesn’t believe him, so the guy sets it all up, does it—dives head first into a tub of water from three stories up. Billy Rose offers him a hundred a week to join the show; the guy refuses. Billy Rose offers him two hundred, then three hundred; the man says he’s not interested. ‘How come?’ asks Billy Rose. ‘It was the first time I did it, and I didn’t like it at all.’”

  Rae smiled, but sadly. “So what would you most like to do?”

  Elizabeth held her palms upward and shrugged. “Something. With books or movies. Something hard and entertaining.”

  She stared off at the measuring wall, where Rosie’s height had been recorded in pencil and pens—red, green, blue—since she was three years old and thirty inches high. All those instants in between had passed as quickly as vertically lined-up dominoes falling in a ripple, passing like the earth revolved and rotated, where you couldn’t see it happen but knew via changes, night and day and seasons, that it had. Something hard and entertaining—that would fall into her lap.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll think of something soon. Maybe I could—no—I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders, let them drop, smiling at Rosie and Rae.

  “Do we have dessert, Mama?”

  “Yeah. I got a pineapple.”

  “Rae! We got a pineapple!”

  Rae raised her hands to her ears and opened her eyes and mouth wide, as if she had just won big on a game show. Rosie smiled. Rae took a pack of cigarettes out of her pants pocket, shook one out, and lit it. Rosie held her nose, glaring.

  “I’ve got to go home fairly soon. I’ll help with the dishes.”

  “How come?”

  “Well.” Rae got a look on her face that suggested shuffling and said, “I could lie and say I’m exhausted. I could start yawning like mad—”

  “We’re on a new truth kick around here,” said Rosie.

  “But if I tell the truth, Elizabeth will get all weird and hostile.”

  “Tell the truth,” said Rosie.

  “Brian’s coming over to talk.”

  Elizabeth got all weird and hostile: shook her head, refused to comment.

  “See? I told you so.”

  Elizabeth looked at her with disgust. “I thought you were going to ditch him.”

  “I am. But I’m going to talk to him first.”

  “Talk! Hah. Rae, in deference to your modesty and duplicity, I—”

  “It’s my life.”

  “Brian’s going to be one of the grisliest chapters in your biography.”

  “Stay with us, Rae,” said Rosie. “We love you.”

  “Rae?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What is it going to take for you to get free of this man?”

  The two women looked into each other’s eyes. “Death,” Rae said firmly, inhaling. “Or someone new.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Saturday, Elizabeth came to with an evil-tasting, mo
oing groan. Eyes opened a fraction of an inch, she lay feeling like the man in Johnny Got His Gun until her mind cleared enough to register pain. She covered her forehead with a shaking hand, with no idea and only a vague curiosity as to whom she might have been sleeping with. Taking a deep breath, she turned her head to the center of the mattress: she was alone.

  Oh, Elizabeth. Goddamn you. Don’t drive, at least. Drink yourself to death if you can’t help it, but don’t drive. Bile, hate, and fear ran through her bloodstream. Rosie was knocking on her door.

  “Come in.”

  “Hi, Mama.” Rosie had brought her a tall glass of orange juice. “You hung over?” Rosie walked to her, set the glass on the night table.

  “No.” I’m living on past lives.

  “Insomnia?”

  Elizabeth nodded, heard and felt several small bones snap in her neck, and knew that Rosie could smell the sour wine wafting up from her stomach.

  “What time are we going to the city?”

  “Rae’s going to pick us up around noon.”

  “Mrs. Thackery said it would be fine if Sharon came. So is it okay with you?”

  “It’s okay with me. Call Rae, though, and ask.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  “Thanks for the juice.”

  Rosie and Sharon walked into town to buy M&M’s with their allowances, then walked to their newest fort, the basement of the old Murphy house, which had gone unsold since the midnight a year ago when Mrs. Murphy passed out smoking in bed. No one had locked the door to the now empty basement, a low dark room that was dank and dusty at the same time; the floor was dirt and the rafters were filled with cobwebs and spiders.

  They ate their M&M’s one at a time, savoring them, sucking through the thin sugar crust into the melting chocolate, proclaiming the red ones the best, the green ones a close second, the orange ones almost inedible. When the candies were gone, they spent a few minutes turning their eyelids inside out. And then they took turns helping each other pass out.

  Long ago they had discovered the wonders of dizziness, the altered state that could be achieved by winding up a rope swing tightly and unspinning at a wild, exhilarating pace, the pleasure of giddy confusion, of staggering around drunkenly until their heads cleared. But passing out for the weirdness of the coming-to was much more scary and fun.

  As usual, Rosie went first. She hyperventilated until she was woozy, then nodded to Sharon and lifted her arms so that Sharon could give her one hard, quick squeeze in the stomach from behind. Rosie crumpled onto the soft dirt, out for seconds, then began spinning back to earth through a long tunnel of whirling colors—feather-headed, intoxicated, out of her mind, blissfully confused. As she opened her eyes, a vision of Sharon swam before her, but gradually the distortion slowed down, like the end of a carousel ride. Sharon’s image was clear as a bell, and Rosie was smiling drunkenly.

  Sharon set her broad jaw into a grimace and began the staccato breathing, scared to death; she nodded, was squeezed, and passed out, began the long swim through the tunnel back to earth, high as a kite. Rosie panicked each time Sharon crumpled to the ground—no sign of life, she was dead, she was dead—and hardly breathed until Sharon opened her unfocusing eyes with a faraway smile.

  The third-grader who had taught them how to do this had told them that each time you did it, billions of brain cells were killed, but they did it over and over again anyway.

  Three aspirin, a shower, more juice, coffee, vitamins, toast, and sunshine eased Elizabeth’s pain. It was a clear blue day and she listened, on the porch swing with the Chronicle, to the din of birdsong, towhees and swallows, the uproar of crickets, an occasional car, a faraway siren. White butterflies flew past, and a hummingbird, blue as the eyes on a peacock’s feathers, zipped onto the porch, hung suspended, vibrating, not far from her, and then dipped away to a scarlet bud of ginger root, from which it drank, iridescent blue against the red. When it flew away, she opened the newspaper.

  I swear I am pulling for Rae’s success, I swear I’ll be happy if her weavings get hung, really and truly I want her to win. But whenever she thought about Rae’s career soaring, she swallowed the golf ball and felt it unravel.

  She looked up from the news at her old white Chevy, parked outside the gate; she had apparently driven herself home: golf ball. Goddammit, don’t drive. Stay home and drink. It’s perfectly legal and logical to have a craving to pour a highly flammable liquid depressant onto the tender pink tissue of your mouth and stomach, no one can stop you from permanently dulling your blade, and it’s one way to get through the night. But please don’t drive, don’t risk killing someone with your car; think of Rosie. Okay?

  The Pentagon had plans for a missile system that circled the earth. Russia was definitely not working out well. A test-tube baby was thriving. Brave New World. Israel was another thing that was not working out well. The boys knee-deep in kerosene...

  Okay, here’s my plan.

  Elizabeth went inside, filled with paranoia and lethargy, and commanded herself to pull for Rae’s success. She straightened up the house with opera blaring from the stereo: Traviata. Disgusted with herself, she watched herself go through the motions, as if observing an actor playing Elizabeth Ferguson, saw herself as Anouk Aimee playing the lead in Days of Wine and Roses, although a kinder viewer might have seen Gena Rowlands’ dazed, simple performance in R Woman Under the Influence. She cleaned the black hairs from the brushes in the upstairs bathroom and took them down to the kitchen, where she set a pan of soapy water to boil on the stove. She was stirring the brushes with a wooden spoon when Rosie and Sharon burst through the door.

  “Hi, Mama!”

  “Hi, sweetheart. Hi, Sharon.”

  “Hi, Elizabeth. Thank you very much for letting me come.”

  “I’m glad you’re coming. Did you check with Rae, Rosie?”

  Rosie nodded. “Is it almost time to go?” She walked to the stove and peered into the pot her mother was stirring. “That looks good.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Get yourselves some bowls. Rae’ll be over in an hour.”

  They helped themselves to some bread, peanut butter, and raspberry jam instead. Smiling, Elizabeth watched them eat. Everything was going to be all right. The girls had energized the room, made it alive. Sharon looked up and found Elizabeth studying her.

  “What,” she said.

  Elizabeth winked, no longer tired of life.

  Rae pulled up outside the house at noon and honked. The girls tore out the door, while Elizabeth went through the house making sure that she had turned off the oven and iron. I swear I’m pulling for you, Rae, I swear I’m hoping for the best. When she stepped out and waved to Rae, behind the wheel of the greenest hatchback imaginable, she took a long deep breath.

  Rae and Elizabeth kissed in the car. Elizabeth gave her the thumbs up sign and Rae drove off, babbling cheerfully, while Elizabeth began to worry, no longer positive that she had turned off the iron, that ... that ... stop it!

  The paneling inside was the same traffic-light green as the exterior, and Elizabeth had the sense that she was wearing an enormous sun visor. She extricated the seatbelt handle, crossed it over her chest, plugged it into the lock. She moved her chest forward against the belt rapidly, testing to make sure it worked. It didn’t, and she settled back, with her long legs bent to fit into the passenger seat, feeling as though she were sitting in a baby’s swing.

  “This is a truly green car,” she told Rae.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s like we’re in a flying saucer. All this green paneling....”

  “I always feel that this car is attracting extraterrestrial attention.”

  “Thank you for letting me come,” said Sharon.

  “Letting you? I am honored by your presence.”

  “Did you remember the weavings?” asked Rosie.

  “You think I’m retarded, don’t you?” Rosie smiled at Rae’s face in the rearview mirror. “God, I’m climbing the walls
, Elizabeth. What if they don’t like them?”

  “They will.” I swear I am pulling that they will. “And if they don’t, we’ll just keep trying.”

  “I’m going to die if they don’t.”

  “Nooooooo,” Rosie wailed.

  “You guys want to hear Bing and Louis?”

  “Yeah.” Rae pushed a cassette into the tape deck, and they drove along listening to “Muskrat Ramble,” “Sugar.” Rosie did her woolly, growly Louis Armstrong imitation.

  “If they don’t take the weavings,” said Elizabeth, “which they will—”

  “Hey, hey, hey, I’ll be all right. I’m like a cat, you know, I always land on my feet.”

  Elizabeth smiled at her. It was one of the things Rae liked to say about herself, and to some extent it was true, but Rae stumbled and tripped more than anyone else Elizabeth had ever known. Once, as they walked to the beach, Rae had waved to a passing car and lost her balance and had actually fallen over.

  Another thing Rae liked to say about herself was that her mind was like a steel trap, but it was more like a damp paper bag in functional ways. She was so forgetful, so spaced out, that Elizabeth sometimes wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous for her to carry money in her purse—or to carry a purse at all, for that matter. Oh, Rae, thought Elizabeth fondly, turning to look at her best friend, whose knuckles were white on the wheel.

  “Lambs!” said Sharon, pointing to a meadow off to the left.

  “Oh, God They’re so cute,” said Rosie, craning for a better view.

  “We forgot the mint jelly,” said Elizabeth, smiting her forehead.

  Rae smiled.

  “Mama!”

  The girls found a wadded up section of the Chronicle, unfolded it, and began to read together, leaving the women to talk. “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” was playing, and Elizabeth, feeling like an old lizard basking in the sun, reached over and tweaked Rae’s cheek.

  “Don’t be nervous.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Your weavings are beautiful. I keep telling you they make me totally jealous.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What does well-appointed mean?”

  “Read me the sentence.”