Rosie Read online

  “I just don’t think you have to hurt so much,” Elizabeth said.

  “I would kill, practically, to have him out of my mind, you know, out of my heart.”

  “Cut him off.”

  “See, Elizabeth, everything is very black and white to you. Because you’re a purist. But I’m a funkie. Purists have all these principles and pride, they’re all very secretive and tidy about their garbage. Well, funkies are laxer, funkies are compost heaps.”

  “Funkies?” said Elizabeth. “Purists? Compost heaps? Do you really believe what you’re saying?”

  “Of course I do,” Rae replied. “Otherwise I would be saying something else. Hey, I thought you were sticking to beer and wine!”

  “Don’t change the subject. Back to the problems at hand.”

  “Okay. Problem one: obsession with Brian, inability to say no when he calls, inability to summon pride, consequent feelings of insanity, a growing white emptiness in my chest, and a black consuming depression. Problem two: weaver’s block, which right now feels like it’s going to be permanent.”

  They sat in the kitchen, nursing their drinks.

  “Okay,” said Elizabeth. “Solution: Tell Brian it’s over. Then get away, leave town. There is no problem so large it can’t be run away from. Pack up your loom, your yarns, your whatever; get on a train, and go stay with someone in a new environment. Go stay with that friend in New Mexico, one thousand miles away. No Brian; new colors, new skies. New landscapes.”

  Rae put her cup down and looked at Elizabeth. “God. Maybe you’re—I have some money from the weavings the gallery’s sold, enough to pay Hanuman for a couple of month’s rent. I can send potholders to the boutiques from ... it’s a brilliant idea. But wait ... wait. I can’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll have a breakdown if I can’t be near you and Rosie for two months.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “But what about you? How would you survive without me?”

  “Well, I did before.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Elizabeth toyed with a long strand of hair and took a sip of toddy.

  “I know it’s a good idea. Maybe I should just do it. No, wait—oh, shit, I don’t know. I wanted to go backpacking at the end of June, but I could go next weekend—no, wait—okay. Wait a minute. I think it’s the perfect solution. Would you really be okay without me?”

  “Sure. I’d miss you. But we’d write.”

  “You wouldn’t just sit around drinking, pining for my company?”

  “No.”

  “Really? I worry about you, Elizabeth. Sometimes you drink too much.”

  “I don’t think you should worry about it.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Try.”

  After a moment, Rae said, “New Mexico’s a great plan, now that I think of it. How come you’re so good at solving everyone else’s problems?”

  “Everyone else! Everyone else is a list of about two.”

  “I love you, Elizabeth.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d give you one of anything I have two of—you ask for it, you’ve got it: a kidney, an arm....” Elizabeth smiled. “Hey. Why don’t you and I go backpacking next weekend?”

  “Nooooo way.”

  “You’d love it....”

  “I’d hate it.”

  “But you’ve never done it, right?”

  Elizabeth looked bored.

  “Now, see? This is a classic example of the green-eggs-and-ham syndrome. Remember? You keep saying, ‘I do not like them, Sam I Am, I do not like green eggs and ham,’ but you’ve never tried them. And then, remember, at the end of the book, the little Dr. Seuss guy does like green eggs and ham, he says, ‘I do, I like them, Sam I Am.”‘

  “Take a break....”

  “‘I do, I like green eggs and ham.’” Rae looked smug, palms outstretched. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “How old did you say you were again?”

  “It’s so goddamn beautiful there in those mountains,” Rae went on. “It would make you believe in God, under the stars, with the river right beside us—owls, food, we’ll take rum and—”

  “No.”

  “See, Elizabeth? Your problem is that you never try anything new, you go around saying, ‘No, no, no.’”

  “Rae?”

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “No. I don’t want to go backpacking.”

  “God, you just say no to everything.”

  “I’m saying no to this.”

  Rae looked hurt. “Okay. Wait a minute then.” She got up to leave the kitchen.

  “You want another drink?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  Elizabeth filled the teakettle again, set it on the stove to boil.

  Rae returned with a paperback book from the living room, sat back down at the table, and reached into her pocket for her cigarettes. She took one out, lit the filter end, and extinguished the stinking flame of burning plastic and paper by dipping it into her drink, all very nonchalantly, as if it were a routine variation on smoking.

  Elizabeth looked at her in annoyance, sniffed disdainfully, went to the table to pick up Rae’s mug, and said, “They’re going to revoke your smoking privileges at the Home.”

  Rae lit another one. “Okay, listen to this. Cavafy. Okay? One of the people you’ve foisted on me?” Elizabeth nodded, bored.

  “For some people there’s a day

  when they have to come out with the great Yes

  or the great No. It’s clear at once

  who has the Yes ready in him; and saying it,

  he goes on to find honor, strong in his conviction.

  He who refuses never repents. Asked again,

  he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right answer—

  defeats him the whole of his life.”

  Rae looked up from the book. “Well?”

  “No.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t think Cavafy had backpacking in mind when he wrote it.”

  “But that’s not my point.”

  “Rae. I’d be miserable company. I’d bring you down. I’d whine.”

  “You’d love it. You think I would risk being stuck with the thing we call Elizabeth Ferguson if I thought you’d be in a bad mood? No way. It’s all of four lousy miles.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “Okay.”

  Rae got up and went to hover over the teakettle, drumming her fingers on the enamel.

  “Hey, Rae. You know what they say? ‘A watched pot never boils.’” Rae smiled, but continued staring at the teakettle. “Get away from there.”

  Rae sat back down.

  “I think you’ve hit upon the perfect solution. I can go in a couple of weeks. A veritable brainstorm, Elizabeth.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m sort of hungry.”

  “Well, help yourself to anything you can find.”

  Rae thought about this for a minute.

  “Is there any meat loaf?”

  Elizabeth looked at Rae as if she were out of her mind. “Of course there isn’t any meat loaf; why would there—”

  “I was just asking. Geez, you don’t have to jump all over me.”

  “There’s some salad from last night, undressed. And some green goddess dressing.”

  “Uggggg. Watership Down.”

  “Well, see what you can find.”

  “What do you think the odds are that you’ll go backpacking with me?”

  “About ten to one.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s not so bad.”

  Rae ambled over to the refrigerator, inspected its contents.

  “Do you want me to make you a sandwich too while I’m at it?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’re anorexic, Elizabeth. What are you, five-ten?” Elizabeth nodded. “And you weigh about one-thirty?” Elizabeth nodded a
gain. “Well, I’m five-nine and you know what I weigh?” Elizabeth shook her head, pouring brandy into mugs. “One seventy-five. See,” she said, spreading mayonnaise on rye bread, “I eat like you drink. I don’t drink as often or as much as you do, but you eat a lot less. We’re both ‘One is too many and a dozen isn’t enough.’ Like, for instance, you’d never have just one drink, and I’d never have just one egg, I’d have a minimum of two eggs, or none at all. Okay, wait, on occasion I’ll have three eggs, like in an omelette, say, but never just one....”

  “Will you fucking shut up about eggs? Here’s your drink.”

  “I just feel so happy now, now that I’m going away.”

  Elizabeth sat down at the table with her drink and watched Rae make a liverwurst sandwich, which she brought to the table, uncut, and held for a minute, tenderly.

  “I’m on the road to morbid obesity,” she announced cheerfully, taking a bite.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “I’ll tell you, Elizabeth. It’s like—my life is like Chutes and Ladders. I move along, mosey along working hard, trying to find romantic love, blah blah blah, small advances, small setbacks. Then I luck out, get to go up a ladder twenty steps—like today, for instance, when I was so down in the dumps and you gave me a pep talk, some sense of direction, hope, reassurance, and I’m totally happy now. I’ve got you, I’ve got my toddy and my liverwurst sandwich, I have a plan to end this self-destructive cycle of Brianville—right? I’m twenty steps up from where I was. But then there’ll be something, some new small setback, and”—a long whistle, descendant in pitch—“down the chute, fourteen steps backward. At which point it’s hard to get up again.”

  Elizabeth exhaled loudly. “But you keep trying. Rae. You take risks.”

  “And lose.”

  “Sometimes. But would you trade your life and mind for anybody else’s?”

  Rae shook her head. “Would you?”

  “Yes, if I could still have Rosie.”

  “You would? With your mind?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem to me that I—uh, make the most of this allegedly excellent mind. It’s all addled. My dad used to say ‘crab salad’ about someone’s addled mind.”

  “Crab salad?”

  “Yeah. He’d tap his head with his forefinger, or do a spiral with his finger, the ‘cuckoo’ gesture, and say, ‘Crab salad.’”

  “Hah!”

  “There are all these veils covering my mind, old scar tissue and whatnot. And drinking adds more veils, but it also makes me care less. And hurt less. And think less. About all the things I could be doing with this brain. I...” She held out her hands, palms up. “There’s something great and useful I could be doing, and that I don’t know what it is hangs over me like some major errand I know I’m meant to do.”

  “It’s a rut....”

  “No, it’s a trench, and all the enemy fire is of my own making. I shoot myself down even before I’ve gotten my head up to ground level for a good look.”

  Rae looked about to cry. Elizabeth glanced away, pulling at a strand of hair, black hair, in a daze.

  Rae got up from the table and came around to her, pressed her thumbs into the hard muscles of Elizabeth’s neck and back. Elizabeth let her head drop into her chest; it felt like a cannonball. She purred as Rae pressed hard, in a circular motion.

  “You don’t want to write.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to cook.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to teach.”

  Silence.

  “You’d be a great English teacher, loving books so much.”

  “I don’t know. Classrooms are so loud.”

  “We have got to think about what to do with you.”

  “Judo-chop my shoulders. Thank you. Ohhhhhhh!” Elizabeth moaned, a rich soft vibrating moan.

  ***

  Elizabeth agreed, for reasons she did not entirely grasp, to go backpacking with Rae the following weekend: maybe an urge to move, one step after another, maybe to try something new for the first time in years. And within minutes of telling an ecstatic Rae that she would go, paranoia and dread set in: she would never return alive. She would spend the entire weekend obsessing that the house had burned down, that Rosie was dead, that she would lose her mind up in the mountains not knowing for sure. Goddammit, why on earth had she agreed to go?

  Rosie wailed. “Noooooooo, please. Noooooooo.”

  “Mrs. Thackery said she’d love for you to spend Saturday night with them.”

  “Noooooooo,” Rosie cried, her palm against her forehead, tortured eyes piercingly blue against water and redness, lips stretched outward like a square-mouthed jack-o’-lantern.

  “Rosie, for God’s sake, stop being so dramatic. You’ve spent the night with the Thackerys a thousand times.”

  Rosie leaned against the refrigerator, possessed. “I’m begging you,” she whispered.

  Elizabeth smiled gently at her. “Come on, baby.”

  “Don’t you Come on baby me,” she said, trying another tack. “You could get killed! By wolves! And I’d be an orphan, didja ever stop to think about that?” She saw herself clearly, chained to the wall at an orphanage, eating mush from cracked dirty bowls in between beatings.

  “Come here.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.”

  “I could get killed crossing the street tomorrow,” Elizabeth said in a spirit of ironic reassurance, but Rosie took it for the bitter pill it was. She sank into a chair at the kitchen table.

  “I always have nightmares at the Thackerys.”

  “You’ve never told me that.”

  Rosie wouldn’t look at her.

  “Are you afraid I’m going to desert you?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “You’re usually desperate to stay overnight with Sharon.”

  Rosie scowled, tore a paper napkin into tiny pieces.

  “You and I have to learn to let go of each other from time to time. I’ll miss you, and think of you, and when I’m walking back down the mountain, I’ll be thinking how happy I’ll be to see you again.”

  “Tssssst.”

  Rosie breathed deeply, picturing the night when her mother would be off sleeping in the hills, surrounded by bears and rattlesnakes, one of which might crawl into her sleeping bag.... And Rosie with Sharon, lying in the twin beds, whispering their favorite jokes and stories: Johnny Fucker faster, and the mummy with the green diamond eyes, and the psycho killer with the hook hand. And Sharon would fall asleep, and she would lie awake in the pitch dark, in a strange house, in a separate bed, alone with the memory of the moment when the teenage girl looks into her rearview mirror at midnight on Lover’s Leap, and sees the mummy with the green diamond eyes....

  “Rosie?”

  Rosie awoke from her daydream and, defeated, got up from the table. Evading her mother’s arms, she walked forlornly to her room and flopped face down on the bed. She lay feeling sorrow for this poor little girl whose mother might get killed in the mountains, knew, knew that if her mother went off, she would never see her again. Maybe the Thackerys would adopt her. That wouldn’t be so bad. At least she’d have a father, and she loved Mrs. Thackery; there would be Hostess cupcakes in her lunch box.... She started crying. She did have nightmares at the Thackerys, dreams of quicksand, dreams of prison. Dreams where she couldn’t move her feet when something deadly was approaching; of being mistakenly put in the gas chamber, of being thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge by a madman, or her mother. Once she had dreamed that she was at her own funeral, and no one seemed to see her. Once she’d dreamed that a bandit had her and the Thackerys lined up naked against the living room wall; another where a bandit had a gun pointed at her, and she was sitting on the toilet, and he said he’d kill her if she didn’t pee—and she had, in the bed.

  She heard her mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Rosie?”

  “Go away.” Come in. Don’t go.

 
Her mother came in and lay down beside her and stroked her bottom.

  Still, her face was hard and imperious Saturday morning when Rae and Elizabeth took her to the Thackerys: little Mount Rushmore, I couldn’t care less.

  But she bid them goodbye with the sad, wet, apologetic look with which a puppy might look up at the person who has just put it into a burlap sack with some kibble and bricks.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 7

  The two women stood outside Rae’s car in the parking lot of the Pretty Boy Trailhead, staring at the expanse of fir, pines, oaks, magnolias, evergreen, and acacia through which a narrow dirt road ran north. Elizabeth scrutinized the woods as if about to clean up the morning after a dinner party, Rae with the beatific look of a child upon first seeing the Christmas tree. She helped Elizabeth into her backpack, adjusted the shoulder straps, complimented herself on choosing such a well-padded model, then slapped Elizabeth on the ass: “Giddyup.”

  Elizabeth shifted her weight, acknowledged that it was not nearly as heavy as she had anticipated, and waited for Rae to put on her own pack and lock up the car. The sun shone white in the blue sky, birds sang; infinite greens.

  They turned toward the trail and had walked in silence for a hundred feet when Rae remembered something. “Wait here a second.”

  Elizabeth turned and watched her friend tramp back to the car, where she removed the keys from the trunk lock and returned to where Elizabeth stood.

  “Give me those.”

  Surrounded by spring-colored growth, wildflowers, the moist clean smell of new leaf and wet earth, they started up again, walked the slight incline alongside a rushing, rain-swollen creek which would turn into a river near the meadow. Rae bounced along as if she were dribbling a basketball.

  Birdsong, crickets, frogs, movements in the brush, sunlight slanting through the treetops in sheets and broad beams, all mesmerized Elizabeth.

  “Not bad.”

  “I’m so happy you came with me.”

  “So am I.”

  “The best part is being away from the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder how many times Brian’s called.” Elizabeth said nothing. “I told him I was leaving soon, that it was all over between us.”