Rosie (12 page)

Birds, singing in the pepper tree, wake her. Who, where, when? A thin ray of consciousness struggles through the smog that envelops her, finds a headache tucked behind her eyes, and it all comes back. I, Elizabeth, am in bed with Gordon in mid June on Willow. I have a headache. Ergo sum.

Oh, God, you did it again—you drove, you drove home from the bar with one eye closed. It made her sick to her stomach. Please, for God's sake, don't
drive;
one of these days your luck will run out. Or get rid of the car.

Gordon, still asleep, stirred beside her, turned to hold her. She wished he would wake up and leave but knew he wouldn't. Soon he would press his long thin body against hers and want to make love, then he would want to make her breakfast, then he would want to talk, then he would want to do something useful around the house, tack mosquito netting to the windows or something, to justify not leaving, and all these acts of kindness would wear on her nerves, would take too long; he would say “marvelous” too often, would tell stories that dragged on like a child's retelling of a movie, would say “Bah” when he finally left. She felt
trapped, oppressed by his dull, handsome face. “Trapped like a trap in a trap,” as Dorothy Parker put it. Sometimes when he overstayed his welcome, she could get him to leave by directing beams at him from, as Rae put it, her bad-vibe ray gun. Other times, despite her best efforts, he stayed and stayed and stayed. Last time, Elizabeth patiently explained that in the mornings he always stayed a little too long. He became embarrassed, defensive, morose—and he had stayed, and stayed, and stayed.

Why did he tolerate her bitchiness? Because he was a kind and patient man, and she turned him on. And why did she tolerate such a relationship? Because the pickings in town were slim.

Bitch. Siren. User.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Boy, do I have a headache.”

“Yeah?”

He stroked her prominent hipbone, and she felt her body tighten.

“You want some breakfast?”

“No—I want
you.”

She feigned a yawn, couldn't bring herself to look into his dumb, trusting face. She shook her head groggily. “I need some food,” she said.

He made them an omelette with bacon and cheese, while she sat in her white kimono at the kitchen table reading the
Chronicle;
rococco on the radio, sunlight, bacon cooking, Elizabeth so unhappy about her unhappiness that she couldn't speak to him as they ate.

He finally left an hour later, wounded, mad, and disconcerted.

“I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just want to be alone.”

“Why don't you just
say
so, then?”

She shrugged, shook her head, pulled at her bangs. “I don't know. I'm sorry.”

“No, you're not.”

“What can I say, Gordon?”

It was no good, and they both knew it was all but over.

“Mama?”

Elizabeth had been in the bathroom rereading the front page ever since Gordon had left half an hour before. Her body was rejecting the omelette he had made her. And she was, in a big way, sick and tired of her life.

“Hi, sweetheart. Come on in.”

“No
way.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Don't get that babysitter again.”

“How come?”

“‘Cause she eats too much.”

“Okay.”

“I need my allowance.”

The phone in the hallway rang. “Will you get that?”

“Okay, but can I have two quarters today? One for Sharon?”

“Sure—get the
phone.”

Elizabeth followed the sound of her daughter's footsteps on the carpet.

“Hello? ... Yeah. May I help you? ... Yes, she's here, but she's in the bathroom reading the paper.” Oh, no, who was she telling this to? “She's been in there an
hour.
I'm afraid to go in.”

Oh, Christ, thought Elizabeth, smiling.

“Okay, I'll tell her you'll call back in a while.... You're welcome. Do you know what time it is? ... Okay. Well, ‘bye.”

“Who was that?”

“Some guy named James—says he'll call back.”

Side by side, Rosie and Sharon rode toward town on their bicycles, rehashing
Psycho,
until they turned downhill on the road which ran like a garden walkway past ice plant, ivy, echium, eucalyptus, wildflowers, and nasturtiums: red, yellow, orange, full of nectar. Their eyes shone and their cheeks turned pink as they sped along to the butterfly grove where for the last few days millions of Monarchs had been flying and nesting in the trees. But today they skidded to a stop when they found the road littered with butterfly corpses, in piles like leaves.

“Oh, my God.” They went to investigate. Thousands still l few, but the death toll was awesome. Sharon stood, with eyes
lowered, a skinny eight-year-old Renaissance Madonna, beatifically sad. Rosie surveyed the bodies with her arms crossed, sneering, toeing a pile of dead butterflies, Joe Friday.

“You know who did this, don't you?” She glared. “Carbavella.”

“Yes,” Sharon agreed. It was clear, carbavella, bees as big as guinea pigs.

“Deadly
mutants.”

Sharon whirled around as a butterfly flew past, looked into the sky as if it might start raining snakes, and covered her head. Rosie did the same. They ran to their bikes, frantic and full of adrenaline, out of breath when they reached the piers that marked the beginning of downtown Bayview.

As with most fears, the fact that carbavella existed only in their imaginations did not diminish the sense of danger, and the relief at having escaped: they were filled with a lively joy.

They returned to the harbor after buying all the candy they could for a dollar, and spent the better part of the morning deciphering the Morse code messages of the pelicans and gulls that flew over the water. Gulls were dots, pelicans dashes. The birds had been trained by two escaped convicts from San Quentin, one hiding on Alcatraz, the other on the loose, quite possibly in Bay-view. Dot dot dot dot dash dash: “Kill the blonde.” Dash dash dash dash dash dot dot: “Send bullets.”

“What's dot dot dash dot dot?”

“Heroin.”

Elizabeth cleared her throat when the phone rang. She let it ring. She languidly combed the bangs away from her forehead, picked up the phone finally, and said hello, in a faintly British accent.

“Hello, Elizabeth? This is James Atterbury. Remember me?”

“Yes, of course. How
are
you?”

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“How's Rae?”

“Oh, fine. She's leaving for New Mexico in a couple of days.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Hunh.”

Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the kitchen table. “How's Lank?”

“Madly in love, with an airhead. And she's madly in love with him. It's almost more than I can take.” Elizabeth made her smile audible by exhaling sharply. “How's Rosie?”

“Fine.”

“I remembered Rae saying, To-sie Ferguson,' so I looked up Ferguson in the phone book, and there you were: E. Ferguson.”

“Ah.”

“Do you have plans for tonight?”

“Well, yeah, I do, tentatively.” She was lying.

“If they don't pan out, would you like to get together for a drink?”

“Listen. Let me call you back in a few minutes. I'll see if I can get out of what I'm supposed to do.” She wrote down his number and called Rae.

“Marmee!
I'm so glad you called. I'm getting cold feet about leaving. I'm having terrible separation anxieties.”

“James called.”

“What? James called? I'm so happy!”

“Why?”

“Because he's perfect for you.”

“Yeah, except that he smokes, and he's a dwarf.”

“God, you're a turd, Elizabeth. Come
on,
Mama, think of what duds most of your handsome boys have been. I mean, your tall handsome boys. James has a great face, great sense of humor.”

Elizabeth stroked her long straight nose.

“See, it's another classic example of the Green Eggs and Ham syndrome—you never give anything a chance.”

“I know what'll happen if I give him a chance. I'll end up eating him alive. Of course, I like him a lot, but he'll start getting on my nerves. Now, see, the syndrome I'm thinking of is Short Man syndrome, gross egotism born of insecurity....”

“Yeah, unlike ourselves.”

“I don't know.”

“Why don't you have a drink with him, see if you have fun together and want to be friends. Don't forget. You're not going to have me to kick around for two months.”

“Good point. Maybe I will have him over, let him audition.”

“That's a loving attitude. What are you going to wear?”

“I don't know.”

“Wear that green silk blouse. It makes your eyes look wicked.”

“Okay”

“And those Levi's you had on the other night.”

“I've worn them every day this week. I've got them on now. They're giving me bedsores.”

“Well, everything you own looks good on you.”

“I don't know.”

“You're scared, Elizabeth. You should try to trust yourself like I trust you.”

“I can just be so awful to men.”

“Well, just don't be. That's easy. Be brave and kind. Give it your best shot.”

“Are you leading up to the part where Breaker Morant say—”

“‘Live every day as though it's your last, because one of these days you're bound to be right!'”

“Goodbye, Rae.”

“Call me with a full report in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Can I call if I have a monstrous anxiety attack?”

“Yes, of course.”

She hesitated while dialing James's number, hung up midway. If she invited him over to her house, it would be hard to get rid of him if it didn't go well; but she was much, much more secure on her own turf. She dialed the number all the way through.

“James? Elizabeth. I've rearranged things. Would you like to come over for a drink later?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good. Say about six?”

“Yeah, perfect. How do I get there?”

“After you take the Bayview exit, stay on the road that goes
through the downtown area. Bear left when the old railroad yard ends, which will put you on Cypress; go about a third of a mile; then left on Willow. We're at Thirty-six Willow, halfway down the road; it's a white Victorian, sort of dilapidated, with a white lattice gate and a lot of rosebushes.”

“Got it. Shall I bring champagne?”

“Yes, do. See you at six.”

She spent an hour in the garden, gathered peach and red and salmon tea-roses for vases in the house, and fantasized; imagined dialogue opening lines, thought about how sad it was that a man who was intellectually her match had finally come along—and he smoked. Maybe, if they fell in love, he would quit.

She spent the rest of the afternoon pretending not to care and getting the house just right. She put on the Beatles white album and cleaned the downstairs, straightened the pile of recent
New Yorkers,
rehashed the campfire scene over and over, dusted and polished the fine antique furniture, arranged the flowers in Chinese vases.

So, tell me more about your book. Oh, by the way, did you ever read
The Ginger Man? ...
One time, on acid, I thought ... When I was about six years old ... Rae and I were at the symphony last year ... Something or other is—oh, I don't know, as rare as an Englishman with good teeth ... It's funny how we become more and more like ourselves as we get older.... Yeah, like the old joke about kreplach.

She took a long hot bath, with classical music on the radio. After drying herself off, she stepped into a floral kimono, painted her toenails, nursed a beer, modeled clothes for an hour, and finally settled on the bedsore pants and the green silk blouse and the worn Frye boots. Then she put on mascara, dabbed Chanel behind her ears, and changed the sheets on her bed.

When the phone rang at five thirty, her heart sank and she walked angrily to the phone. James was going to cancel. Good.

“Hello,” she-said, rather coldly.

“Hi, Mama.”

“Oh, hi, doll!”

“Sharon and I are doing a play, so can I spend the night?” Then Rosie's voice changed to an urgent whisper. “Say no!”

“What?”

“Ohhh-kay. I'll come right home.”

Elizabeth laughed when she hung up. Rosie would take up whatever slack there might be. She sat down by the phone, daydreaming, waiting, thirty-eight going on fourteen. When the phone rang again, she glared at it, let it ring eight times so that James would know what an inconvenience it was for her to answer the phone, busy professional that she was.

“Yes?”

“Hi, Mama.
Please
change your mind.”

Elizabeth laughed again. “Well. All right, then.”

“Oh, great, thanks a lot. We get to go to McDonald's for dinner.”

“Wow!”

“See ya tomorrow.”

Elizabeth stopped off briefly at the mirror in the hallway before heading for the kitchen. She opened an ale and created a still life on the kitchen table—a glass jar of crushed red peppers, tea roses in a Mateus bottle, a tiny bright enameled box, and the dark wood, grandfatherly pepper mill.

In the living room, she put
Duets with the Spanish Guitar
on the stereo and looked admiringly at the coffee table, which her mother's mother had bought in Cairo and on which sat a bowl of fresh fruit—apples, oranges, bananas, kiwi—a blue bowl with gardenias floating on water,
Saul Steinberg,
beeswax candles. The room smelled great, of oranges and beeswax, and the early evening sunshine made the dark woods and rich cloths golden, elegant, alive. Everything was just perfect, and then the phone rang again.