Rosie (23 page)

“Oh, no.”

“Not that Mr. Thackery will go to jail—but ... Sharon needs our help. First we'll tell your mother—”

“No!”

“Yes. We have to.”

“No, not today!”

“Rosie, I'm afraid—”

“She's totally depressed. She's been crying.”

Rae thought this over. She hugged Rosie tightly.

“Well. Maybe we should call someone who knows about this sort of thing, a child protection agency. We'll find out what to do—we've
got
to help Sharon.”

“Can we tell my mother tomorrow?”

Rae exhaled deeply. “Yeah.”

“Will you be with me?”

“Yes, of course. Why don't you climb off my lap for a moment. I'm going to look in the phone book.”

“But don't tell them our real names.”

“Okay.”

Rosie milled around the room while Rae looked through the phone book and dialed the number of the Child Abuse Hotline.

“Hey, do you want to spend the night?” she asked Rosie, as the phone rang.

“Okay!”

“Hello? Yes. I need some advice. A little girl that I know has been molested, by her best friend's father.”

Rosie shuffled over to Rae, with her head down, and stood at her side, sad and confused: God, what a mess. It was the end of the world. Sharon's dad might go to jail, might want to kill her when he got out. Rosie saw him in prison stripes, gripping the bars of his cell. Sharon would hate her guts, and Mrs. Thackery would cry forever.

Oh, Mama; God, she thought. I don't know what to do.

The next morning, Elizabeth sat on the porch swing reading
Excellent Women.
It was a brand new day, white, warm, and blustery, and she had slept well the night before. James had been trying to work since eight. At eight fifteen he had appeared in the kitchen to harp briefly on mediocrity in the publishing world. At eight thirty he had returned to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee and said, “A vale of tears, Elizabeth. A vale of tears.”

Several minutes after she'd come out to the porch, he stepped outside and stood staring out into the garden, as if overseeing his fields and workers, and then abruptly went back inside to his study. After five minutes, she heard frantic typing, and then the sound of paper being ripped from a typewriter. In another minute, he came outside and sat down beside her. She put down her book.

“What's the matter?”

“My writing days are over.”

“Ah.”

“I'm pathetic. I sit there hunched over the typewriter, poised, as if I'm about to start conducting the
Eroica
at Carnegie Hall,
and then—nothing. I feel preoccupied, but I don't know what it is.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Nah.” He got up and went back inside. Elizabeth shook her head.

He re-emerged five minutes later with a platter of brittle, black french bread toast, dripping with butter, and sat beside her.

“Here. Have a piece.”

“Those are burnt beyond recognition.”

“Oh, no, they're perfect this way. Try one.”

She shook her head.

“Suit yourself.” He bit into a piece, with a thunderous crunch that became a sound suggesting automatic gunfire, or babies rolling on dry leaves. She was unpleasantly reminded of her mother eating bacon. “What are you going to do today?”

“I don't know.”

Crunnnnch.

“There's Rosie,” he said, pointing. “And Rae.”

“Rosie actually looks cheerful, doesn't she?”

“Hey, Mama, hey, Mama, hey, James,” Rosie called from across the street, in front of Mrs. Haas's house, waving wildly beside Rae, as if trying to flag them down. “Leon!” From out of nowhere, Leon tore past the porch carrying a small red rubber boot in his mouth which he dropped at the open gate. Rosie ran out into the street ahead of Rae, calling to Leon, who galloped toward her, “Here, buddy, here, buddy,” and just as Rae stepped off the curb, with Rosie and Leon twelve feet apart in the middle of the street, they heard the roar of a motorcycle: the adults on the porch leaped up off the swing, and for all of them time slowed all the way down, to a single played at 33, as a two-manned Harley plowed into Leon and sped on.

Leon shot into the air like an acrobat, as Rosie and Rae screamed, and James and Elizabeth raced down the stairs to the gate. The motorcycle had disappeared. Rosie closed her eyes and shouted, Leon lay four feet away, and Rae swept Rosie up into her arms.

“Rosie,” Elizabeth cried, rushing over to them. James stared at the two women holding Rosie and finally bent down to his
dog, who was smiling, with shining-still eyes and blood pouring out of his mouth.

“Leon?” he said, stroking his fur. “You okay?”

Rosie ran to James, who looked up at her in terror.

“You gotta be more careful,” he said slowly.

She squatted beside him and they both started crying, but bravely. She stroked Leon's head, with fingernails painted pink by Rae, then turned to James. “You think he's dead?”

James nodded, scratching behind Leon's ear.

Elizabeth's mouth was agape. Rae stood beside her.

“Rae? Am I dreaming?”

Rae shook her head.

“Are you positive?”

Rae nodded.

Elizabeth stared like a ravenous zombie at the man whose dog it was, at the girl whose life it might have been, at the dead dog. It was a dream, it had to be.

“Maybe we should take him to the vet,” said Rosie.

James shook his head.

“How come?”

“Because he's definitely dead.” He wiped at his eyes. Rosie wiped at hers. He watched her.

“God,” he said, and closed his eyes for a minute. “We got off easy.”

Rae and James carried Leon to the back yard to bury him. Elizabeth and Rosie trudged slowly behind, Elizabeth more badly shaken than ever before, too shaken even to scream at Rosie about running into traffic. Either this was a dream, or it had been a dream yesterday when she'd run over the dog.

They buried Leon in a corner of the garden, beside a bush of American beauties, each person taking a turn with the shovel. James and Elizabeth lowered Leon into the hole, while Rosie stood holding the shovel like the farmer in “American Gothic,” and Rae dabbed at her red nose with a Kleenex.

“Okay. Let's cover him up.”

“Wait,” said Rosie, handing him the shovel, and dashed off to
the front of the house. The grown-ups stood looking into the hole.

“I wonder what she's up to,” said Elizabeth.

James looked wistfully at his dog and exhaled in that rare way of his, the faraway tropical wind from deep inside.

James thought it was his fault. He'd left that gate open.

Elizabeth thought it was her fault. She had killed a dog the day before and kept on going.

Rae felt guilty too, out of habit; it was as much second nature by now as her generosity.

And Rosie
knew
that it was her fault.

“I wonder where your daughter is,” said James.

James made a bull horn of his hands. “I owe You one,” he called to the sky.

Rosie walked purposefully toward them, with what turned out to be a balsa-wood tombstone, on which she had written, in black magic marker,
Here Lies Leon. R.I.P.

“Good thinking,” said James. “Thanks.”

She jammed the bottom into the dirt at the end of the grave, where Leon's head was, and patted dirt firmly against it as if potting a sprig cutting. Dirt got underneath her pink nails and on her face when she stopped to push blue-black curls off her furrowed forehead. When she got it just right, she stood, put her hands in the pockets of the red bermuda shorts, and nodded. James threw a shovel of dirt on top of Leon. Rosie watched the body disappear, spellbound.

Elizabeth turned and walked several steps away, trying to collect her thoughts. She licked the corners of her mouth. Looking up she saw, in a windowpane, clear reflections of her family, graveside, framed in black, beside a bush of American beauties; and the image almost undid her.

Hang on, old girl. The worst must be over.

James left for the beach on foot after his dog was buried. Rosie and Rae and Elizabeth went into the kitchen. While Elizabeth made coffee and cocoa, Rosie and Rae sat at the table. Rosie whispered something to Rae, who nodded.

“Mama? We've got something to tell you.”

“Well, go ahead.”

“I think you better sit down,” said Rae.

“No, go ahead.”

“I'm serious. You really better sit down.”

Elizabeth came over from the stove and sat down. “Okay. Now tell me.”

Rosie and Rae looked at each other.

“Elizabeth, it's a horrible thing to have to hit you with, after what just happened, but it really can't wait.”

“Okay. I can take it.”

“There's no way to prepare you for this. But a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Thackery exposed himself to Rosie. In his study. He rubbed his prick on her arm.”

Elizabeth's face, arrested and expectant, slowly dilated. She straightened her head, and an invisible hand on her chest seemed to push her backward in her chair, and her face contracted and she gripped the table, digging her nails into the wood.

“What?”

Rae and Rosie nodded.

She looked at Rosie, tilted her head, half squinted.

Rosie nodded.

“That goddamn son of a bitch! That fucking scumbag! Rosie! Jesus! How come you didn't tell me? Goddamn.” Elizabeth scratched her head, gripped a mass of hair tightly, looked at the table, and then up at Rosie.

“I swore to God I wouldn't. To Sharon.”

“He apparently shows it to Sharon routinely. He told Rosie that all fathers do it.”

“He said Sharon likes to touch it, but I'm positive she doesn't.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

Rosie told her every detail she could remember.

“That bastard.”

“And he said I'd be in trouble if I told anyone. But then Sharon came home and she could tell what had happened.”

“Poor Sharon, goddammit. The sweetest person in the world. Poor you, baby, what a shitty thing for a man to do.” She
looked at Rae. “Well, I guess the thing to do is call the cops.”

“No, not yet. Rosie and I called the Child Protection Agency. They said the cops don't have to be notified yet.”

“Listen, any man that shows his cock to my
daughter—”

“Wait, wait. Think about it. Do you want Rosie on the witness stand?”

“No. Of course not.”

“The social worker said we should tell Mrs. Thackery—we didn't use names—and insist that she confront her husband and insist that he seek psychiatric help. There's a program available for child abusers: family counseling, rehabilatative treatment for him, therapy for Sharon and Sybil.”

“Am I dreaming this?”

“That's what I thought when it was happening,” said Rosie.

“I wonder if Sybil knows?”

“The social worker said it's likely; or it may be that she knew only subconsciously and turned a blind eye to it.”

“God! To stand by while your husband molests your child.”

“The man at the agency said that more than four out of every ten girls are sexually abused by a male member of the family by the time the girls are eighteen. And that's a conservative estimate.”

“It should be grounds for capital punishment.”

“Yeah, but. It's a deep sickness. The man said Mr. Thackery will be relieved that it's finally out, that it's over.”

“What if he doesn't agree to therapy?”

“Then we call the cops. And we tell the Thackerys that we're going to call the cops if they don't go get help.”

Elizabeth tapped a fingernail against her beer glass and gave Rosie a long sideways look.

“You okay, baby?” Rosie nodded. “Jesus. What a secret. When did you tell Rae?”

“Last night.”

“I'm glad you told her, sweetheart. You did the right thing. Come here.”

Rosie got up and went to her mother, who pulled Rosie into her lap.

“What do
you
think we ought to do, Rosie?”

“What Rae said.”

“Tell Mrs. Thackery?” Rosie nodded. “Okay.”

“Today?”

“Yeah.”

Rosie inhaled loudly. “Okay. He's gone on business, anyhow.”

“Good. I'm so sorry this happened to you.”

“Yeah. But think about Sharon.”

“Yeah. Your telling us was a huge favor to her. It's going to radically, for the better, change her life. But things might be weird between you in the beginning—because she's going to have a lot of guilt for and about her dad; she'll feel all this twisted-up loyalty, and also that she was doing a sick thing all these years. But she needs, A: protection from him, and B: counseling. And he desperately needs help. He's a sick, sick man.”

Elizabeth nuzzled the top of Rosie's head, and Rae watched them together. Their eyes were downcast, blue and hazel, dark lashes and brows, arched swanlike necks; they were one black-haired unit.

“It never rains, does it, Rae.”

“No.”

“You don't think he'll hurt Sharon or his wife, do you?”

“No,” said Rosie. “He's mostly really nice.”

“And we're all positive that this isn't a dream?”

“No, Mama.”

“Okay, then. I guess. I should get up. And call.”

“Are you going to tell her over the phone?”

“No. I'm just going to tell her I'm coming over to talk.”

“I'll go with you, Mama.”

“I think I should go alone.”

“No, Mama. I should go with you.”

“Okay. But I want to be alone with Sybil.” She dialed, and Rosie came to stand miserably at her side, like her pet hunch-backed midget, burrowed against Elizabeth, staring at the floor. Now she wasn't positive it had really happened at all. Maybe it had been a dream. She bit a dirty pink fingernail, as if testing the authenticity of a gold coin. It hurt.

“No one's home.”

Phew.

“Do you have any idea what their plans are today?”

“No.”

“Well, let's wait around here for a while and try again.”

“You're going to go crazy waiting around here. Why don't you two walk over and wait for them? You could tape a note to the door, for Sybil to call you.”

Elizabeth looked at Rosie. “You want to do that? Leave a note?” Rosie shrugged.

“Okay.”

Elizabeth left a note to James on his typewriter, took a sheet of paper, a pen, and some Scotch tape from his desk, put them in the pocket of her jacket.

“Ready?” she asked Rosie.

Rosie shrugged again. “Yeah.”

“Call me as soon as you get home,” said Rae.

“Yeah, I will. Wish us well.”

Mrs. Thackery's car was not parked in front of the house when the Fergusons arrived, but on the off chance that it was in the shop, they walked up to the front door.

Rosie pushed the doorbell and stood furiously wiping the soles of her sneakers on the sisal welcome mat. Elizabeth reached down and rubbed the warm downy base of her daughter's neck. They took simultaneous deep breaths and stood waiting, turned to look at each other and then back at the closed door. Rosie knocked, but no one came.

They sat down to wait in two wrought-iron cafe chairs at a wrought-iron table in the garden, underneath a beige umbrella. Elizabeth savored the smell of wet, bright-green grass, studied the fruit trees in the garden, heavy with lemons, pears, figs, and apples. Sunlight made everything golden.