Rosie Read online

  “His ex, who starred with him in a dozen movies, added, ‘Physically, he was not well-appointed.’”

  “It means he had a small penis.” The two women laughed.

  “It means he has a tiny little popo,” said Rae.

  “It does?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  The girls threw themselves against the back of the car seat as if recoiling from bullets. They blushed, giggled, whispered.

  “Remember that time Brian and I—”

  “I’ll give you a buck if we don’t have to talk about Brian.”

  “Okay. You can pay the bridge fare.”

  “That’s two bucks. So you can’t talk about him on the way home, either.”

  Rae didn’t say anything.

  There were sudden, loud gasps from the back seat as Rae drove through the Waldo Tunnel. The girls held their breaths all the way to the other end, exhaled, gasped, and turned to look back at the rainbow painted above the tunnel’s are.

  “Mama?”

  “What.”

  “Are we gonna go with Rae to the gallery?”

  “No!” shouted Rae. “I have to go alone, in case they turn me down.”

  The city glistened white under the blue sky, sitting with decorum on hills behind the bay, behind freighters and barges at the piers, and ketches, sloops, tugboats, ferries on the scintillant water, on the choppy blue waters of San Francisco Bay.

  “I love San Francisco,” said Rae in her mournful voice.

  “It’s like Oz,” said Rosie, “but white.”

  Crossing the terra-cotta bridge, the girls half hoping to see someone jump off, they stared at lonely Alcatraz, shuddering, then, to the right, at a schooner outside the Gate on the ocean, the Pacific Ocean.

  “I’ve got such bad butterflies,” said Rae.

  “Relax.” Elizabeth reached for her great old leather purse, extracted two dollars from her wallet, handed it to Rae. “So, you’re sure you don’t want us to go to the gallery with you?”

  “Noooooooo,” said Rae, and looked about to cry.

  “What’re we gonna do, Mama?”

  “We’ll walk around, look into store windows.”

  “We gonna eat?”

  “We’ll wait for Rae.”

  “Are we gonna buy anything?”

  “I can’t think of anything we need.”

  “Oh, my God, we need a million things.”

  “Such as?”

  “We need a television set.”

  “No.”

  “Please? You said you needed a swimsuit.”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “Chhhhhhh.”

  A minute later, Rae missed the Lombard exit.

  “Rae? You missed the exit.”

  “We’ll go on Bay. I know a shortcut.”

  “This should be good,” said Rosie.

  Elizabeth smiled. They passed the Palace of Fine Arts, its pond filled with ducks; drove along the beautiful green marina: kites, joggers, boats.

  “Trust me. I know this city like the back of my hand.”

  “Every single time you say that, we have to stop at a gas station at least once, usually twice, or we end up so far away from where we want to go that when we ask people directions, they don’t speak English or they’ve never heard of where we’re going.”

  Rae, with her big brown eyes fixed on the road, said grimly, “Trust me.”

  Her shortcut involved a detour through North Beach, fifteen minutes of neon sleaziness that the girls stared at in wondering disgust. Rae drove past Stockton.

  “That was Stockton!” said Elizabeth. “That’s the street we wanted.”

  In a few minutes Rae had driven them into the financial district. The girls ogled at the Transamerica Pyramid; Rae said, “Oops.” Elizabeth gritted her teeth but didn’t say a thing, just stared out the window on her right.

  “Don’t worry.” Rae turned on Washington, drove to Kearny, to Portsmouth Square, and then turned left into a one-way street (going the wrong way, of course) and hastily backed away from the oncoming cars. Elizabeth felt rage welling up inside her.

  “Shit. Okay.” Rae turned left onto Clay and drove down to Montgomery again.

  “We’re back in the goddamn financial district!” Elizabeth said.

  The girls were hushed. If Elizabeth’s mood went, the day would be shot.

  “Shut up, Elizabeth, don’t say another word.”

  Elizabeth glowered.

  Rae turned right on Montgomery, right again on Sacramento, past Kearny to Grant, where she had to turn right, because it was one-way.

  “Fucking goddamn A, Rae! We’re in Chinatown!” Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest, hardly blinking, clenching her teeth.

  Rae turned right on Grant, and Elizabeth knew that they were headed back to the wired congestion of North Beach, but by this time she was not speaking to Rae; the rage had rushed past her stomach, up her spine, and it took all her concentration not to start pounding the dashboard or the windows.

  Rae turned right on Columbus, Elizabeth now vibrating with anger, as Rae drove them back down to the financial district.

  It is No Exit. Elizabeth could not believe it when, after a right on Washington, they were back at Portsmouth Square.

  “This is like Pac-Man,” said Rosie, in awe.

  Sharon was hardly breathing.

  Rae’s eyes were filling with tears.

  “Rae,” Elizabeth said, as gently as possible. “You want to cross Kearny, then Grant, and then, when we get to Stockton, turn left. Okay?”

  Rae nodded, teary and miserable.

  “Shit,” said Elizabeth, looking away, then back to her friend, whose day it was to have been. “Tssss,” she said, sideways out of her mouth, smiling. “Some great shortcut.”

  Rae followed Elizabeth’s instructions, wiping at her eyes. Five minutes later they were at their destination, the Union Square garage.

  Please pull for Rae’s success, please in your heart wish her well. But as they cruised looking for a parking space on the third, fourth, and fifth levels of the garage, Elizabeth swallowed another golf ball. And then Rae found a space, which she pulled into, one of many available on Level Five, with a big Cadillac on her side and a column five inches away from Elizabeth.

  Rae heaved a sigh of relief, looked at Elizabeth, and got out of the car. Elizabeth stared dully at the column. The girls scrambled out on Rae’s side, then looked in at Elizabeth, as did Rae. Elizabeth turned to them and asked wearily, “Why did you park so close to the column? I’m stuck.”

  “Can’t you climb over the stick shift? Sorry about that. Oh, God, I’m such an idiot. It’s just that I’m so nervous!” She went to the back of the car.

  Elizabeth felt very, very tired. She continued to look at the column and then, forcing herself, for all their sakes, to be a good sport, she finally climbed, cramped and awkward, over the stick shift, into Rae’s seat, and then out the door.

  The girls, holding hands, looked about ready to jump up and down. Rae, clutching her portfolio, looked orphaned and hunted.

  After numerous pats and kisses, Rae headed toward the gallery on Post. The girls skipped alongside Elizabeth, pausing to find openings in the human traffic, gaping at the fattest women, the tiniest men, the drunks, hoods, punks, dudes, whores, and glamorous women. People turned to admire Elizabeth, tall, striking, regal, haughty—even famous, maybe.

  Rosie and Sharon each bought a pencil from the legless pencil man who sat on a dolly in front of Macy’s, the same man, or so it seemed, from whom Elizabeth had bought countless pencils twenty-five and more years ago, when her shiny black hair was in braids, a girl as skinny as Rosie but taller, in white gloves and camel’s hair coat, headed for patty melts at Blum’s, or the City of Paris Christmas tree, or the dentist at the 450 Sutter Building. It was coming back as they walked down Stockton, triggered by sounds and smells, voices, cable cars, sweat, perfume, sweets, cigars, sirens, gasoline, car horns, an accordion. When the girls were lost i
n the moving crowd for a moment, Elizabeth’s heart stopped. There they were, seemingly oblivious to her, tiny but growing so fast. She remembered the harsh and distressed way her mother rubbed at her face with a lipstick-streaked Kleenex smelling of Chanel, remembered how she hated being swabbed off with her mother’s spit; how delighted, sentimental, and scared of the cable cars her mother was, mushy even, and panicked that Elizabeth would be crushed by one of them. “Rosie! Stay closer.” And the way her mother approached the escalators, as if she were leading Elizabeth through fire on a tightrope, stepping past the crack and the first step onto the second step as carefully as stepping over dog do because if your foot touched the crack, the escalator would suck you down, take you around on its treadmill until it spat you out, flat as a pancake with long vertical grooves running the length of your body, flat as a character in a cartoon who’s been run over by a steamroller.

  “Mama, let’s go in a store. Okay?”

  Macy’s. The dreaded escalator. The girls, well-behaved, quiet, taking in the wealth, the blacks, the shimmers, hysterical on seeing girdles and bras. Elizabeth laughed at their silliness, and at a memory of her mother, tall and stout, grimly wrestling her way into a girdle, sucking in her breath as she pulled and tugged the formidable elastic encasement over each successive dune of fat on her thighs, hips, butt, and belly, until the girdle finally swallowed the highest roll at her waist and gave up with a whoomph of resignation, like a sea bass taking its last breath on a boat after one hell of a fight.

  “Can I help you find something?” The smell of the girdle, the smell of her mother’s lap when Elizabeth pressed her face against it.

  “Mama. Can she help you?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “Earth calling Elizabeth, come in, please.”

  Elizabeth smiled. Sharon was embarrassed, shy, her pencil jammed up behind her top lip.

  “I know what you wanted, Mama.”

  “What.”

  “A swim suit.”

  “I don’t want to buy it today.”

  “How come? They’re right over there.”

  “I don’t know, Rosie, I’m feeling fat these days; I need to exercise for a while before I wear a suit.”

  “How come?”

  “My legs—my thighs, anyway—look like shit.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to buy a suit today, is all,”

  The Look came across Rosie’s face, blue eyes flashing fire, hands on hips, revving her head in stiff circles of scornful, indignant sarcasm. Oh, no, thought Elizabeth, why is she doing this to me now, here?

  “Listen, listen,” she said.

  “Don’t you listen me,” said her daughter. People were turning to stare at this little girl, as tall as the rack of clothes she stood by, people were giving Elizabeth what she always thought of as the “Don’t you feed her?” look.

  “Rosie, I’m warning you....”

  Rosie was sneering at her. Sharon had gone into the trance where she looked like Gilda Radner doing a young Christina Crawford, wide eyes not focused, tremors of burnt-out anxiety....

  Oh, dear God, now Rosie has raised her eyebrows as far as they will go, while keeping her lids shut and her mouth puckered as if, a split second away from whistling, she has bitten down on a lemon; she learned the look from Mrs. Haas. What on earth is going on?

  “I’m going to kill you, Rosie,” Elizabeth whispered.

  Rosie felt the many eyes upon her. She wanted her mother to buy a suit, badly. She wanted her to buy something, she wanted Elizabeth to shell out some money. She shook her pencil at her angry mother and said, loud and clear, “Wull, why don’t you ask the pencil man how his legs look?”

  Elizabeth could not believe this was going on. Hot blood rushed to her face and she saw red.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Oh, no. Unh-unh. Why can’t you just be happy that you don’t have BLOODY STUMPS FOR LEGS?”

  “What the hell has gotten into you? Come on, Sharon.”

  Sharon was frozen. Elizabeth took her hand and began to steer her toward the Stockton Street exit.

  “You coming, Rosie?”

  Rosie shook her head. Elizabeth led Sharon away. Sharon looked back, wide-eyed, over her shoulder at her transformed friend, who had now begun to tap her foot with impatience, holding her ground....

  Five minutes later Rosie dashed past unfamiliar coats and legs, in a curving path between clothes racks and shoppers and cashier’s booths, surrounded by a sea of strangers and alien smells: synthetics, perfumes, waists she didn’t recognize, “Herman” characters everywhere she looked. Her heart was pounding in her throat, her mind raced faster than her legs; she’d never see her mother again, would be adopted by sinister freaks....

  And then, after what felt like forever in a bad dream, she saw her mother and Sharon standing with their backs against the wall by the exit, smiling at her. Sharon waved. Elizabeth shook her head.

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I just wanted you to buy a suit.”

  “Why? Why did it matter so much?”

  Rosie shrugged, embarrassed and defiant. Elizabeth did not understand.

  Outside in the fresh air, they heaved a collective sigh of relief. Stockton Street was crawling with tourists and natives. Rae had told them to meet her in forty-five minutes in Union Square.

  “You guys want an ice-cream cone?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Yeah.” So they headed down Stockton toward Market Street; all was right with the world again. The girls held hands, walked ahead of Elizabeth, whispering, and Elizabeth took in the busy sights and sounds and smells. Head held high, she observed the human traffic with some disdain; many people looked half destroyed by one thing or another. When elegant couples passed, arm in arm, pangs of isolation went through her stomach. As she and the girls stood waiting for the light to change at O’Farrell, behind a cowboy of perhaps thirty, crouched in the gutter waiting to push his Tonka fire truck across the street, pangs of identification went through her—the malignant prophecy. Matrons, businessmen, businesswomen, punks, tourists, hippies, bums, teenagers, blacks, whites, orientals, children, babies, hookers, gathered together at this intersection.... How was everyone hanging on so well?

  Elizabeth took one of Rosie’s hands, one of Sharon’s hands, and they walked to an ice-cream shop. Carrying cones on their way back to Macy’s, they stopped at a flower stand and Elizabeth bought win-or-lose tea roses for Rae.

  “Mama, I have a good idea,” Rosie whispered as they approached the pencil man. “Let’s take the pencil man home and let him live in Daddy’s old study! We could take care of him.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Pleeeze, Mama,” she wheedled. “We could push him on his cart to Rae’s car....”

  “Shhhhh!”

  “Please, can we take him home?”

  “Shhhhh. You make another scene and there’s going to be trouble.”

  Rosie stopped and handed her cone to Sharon as if she were removing her gloves for a duel.

  “Rosie?”

  Rosie ignored the edge in her mother’s voice, strode purposefully to the old brown man with the mashed-in eye who sat on the dolly. Oh, good Christ, thought Elizabeth, don’t let her...

  “Hello,” said Rosie.

  “Hello,” said the pencil man.

  “I just wanted to tell you how well I think your jacket fits.”

  He smiled, she smiled. That was all.

  Rae was sniffling and teary when they met her. The gallery had taken her weavings.

  CHAPTER 6

  The early June sun shone on Elizabeth’s red toenails as she sat on the porch swing reading My Antonia for the second time, a cup of tea beside her. She had cleaned the house, worked in the garden for an hour, washed some sweaters, paid some bills. It had been a dreamy day, a day when she felt glad to be alone, glad to be the elegant, easygoing lady of leisure. She put her book down and went inside to call Rae, b
ut no one answered and Elizabeth went back out to the porch, where she found Rae standing desolately on the doormat, staring into her chubby cupped hands as if they held something precious, and dying.

  They looked at each other for a moment. Elizabeth craned her long neck forward and peeked into Rae’s hands, which held nothing, and then straightened up to look at her.

  “Hi,” said Elizabeth. “I was just trying to reach you.”

  “Hi,” said Rae, and jammed her hands into the front pockets of her faded Levi’s. “I’m bummed.”

  “I gather.”

  “I’m not having a day of power.”

  “You gotta stop reading Castaneda.”

  “It’s my only amusement.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Ohhhhh.”

  “Is it late enough for a drink?”

  Rae shrugged.

  “Well, let’s. We’re the adults here. And Gordon brought some brandy over last night.”

  “I just want to be with you.”

  “Well. You’ve come to the right place. How about a hot toddy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Elizabeth led her into the kitchen and turned the flame on under the teakettle. “I’m going to have one,” she said.

  “Okay, then. Make me one too. I hate to see you drinking alone.”

  “What are you so depressed about?”

  “Everything! I thought, ‘If only a gallery would show my work, then I’d be happy.’ Well, they sold three of the weavings they took that day, and”—she threw up her hands—“I’m still all fucked up over Brian. Don’t be mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “And now that someone wants my work, I’m clutching. I’ve got weaver’s block. I’m sick of San Francisco Bay and the ocean, it’s too easy to make the Bay or the Pacific look beautiful; I’m sick of being hung up on Brian. I’m in a rut.”

  Elizabeth poured two generous shots of brandy into clear glass mugs, cut two thin lemon cartwheels, and drizzled a teaspoon of honey into each cup.

  “Ditch him.”

  She placed a mug in front of Rae, who stared at it listlessly, sighed, and pushed the lemon slice around the amber liquid.

  “Rae? His behavior is bad. He is not a good man.”

  Rae groaned.