The Bubble Reputation (13 page)

“I'll get Uncle Bishop to come get it in his pickup,” Rosemary said. She ran one hand over the cardboard box, imagining the round, tubular wonder within, suspecting what William would have said of this day, remembering how many times they had rocked well past midnight on the porch swing, with glasses of wine, and stared at the numberless pinpoints flickering like small, faraway campfires. And they had wondered aloud about the stellar secrets that had exploded and collapsed, the news of which had not yet reached the earth. They imagined the galaxies that had spiraled and swirled millions of years before William met Rosemary, before the planet earth and its one meager moon had taken its place in the universe of time.

“No, no,” Max was saying. Rosemary had almost forgotten him there beside her, so strong was the sensation of William. She could almost smell his body sweat after an afternoon of painting, sweat and acrylics and the faint bouquet of the wild apple trees, or the small creek breeze if he had opened the window to a spring day. All smell and color and all sound, this William, who had exploded one rainy night in London, a supernova of emotion. “When a star collapses, Rosie,” he had said to her one night on the swing as they sat staring at the heavens, “it's like a great balloon deflating. It crushes itself at the center.”

“No,” she heard Max say again. “My boy is going to deliver it for you. It's no problem. He likes to drive the new truck. And he's young, remember, with nothing better to do.” Could she spy upon the innocent stars without William there beside her, on the night lawn, all the windows of the house black as insect eyes? Could she, like some solo space pioneer, get closer to Andromeda galaxy, that vaginal spiral they had found so many times with the naked eye? A birthing place, this heavenly slit. Maybe the very birth canal of the gods. Did she dare see it more clearly? “Remember,” William would say, his arm aloft, silhouetted, as he pointed at some speck. “The stars are so far away that if you had Mount Palomar in your backyard, it wouldn't make them bigger.” Perhaps this was the major secret of the stars, that—telescope or not—they would remain sparkling secrets. Mere stardust.

“Are you sure you're okay?” she heard Max ask.

Rosemary and Max had already agreed upon a monthly payment, so she left him looking out at her, with concern, from his storefront window. She would cancel her picnic alone, that long-planned outing to find the childhood spring, to look for Father's mossy, fossilized footsteps. The stunning realization of having lost one man overwhelmed her. She would deal with Father's disappearance at another time, when the smell and touch of William faded slightly, like the dead images in the old Brownie. And now here was the telescope to throw things off-kilter.
Teleskopos.
Greek for
seeing
at
a
distance.
What was William's artistic word for such? Pointillism, those little luminescent dots of painty stars best observed at a distance. Someday, she knew, the meaning of William's ghosthood, of the relationship that was obviously foundering long before he left for London, would be revealed to her. At some time in the future.
Teleskopos.
At some distance from the pain, she would study the two of them the way historians study wars. In the meantime, the telescope gave her none of the excitement and comfort she imagined it would. This was new territory, this
telescopio
notion of Galileo's. She would be treading down highways alone. She would be going ahead without William.

On the jolting ride back up Old Airport Road to home, the picnic basket bounced and made clinking noises with its bottles, the diet Coke and the pickles talking. She would eat the lunch on the patio with Mother, later, when she felt like food again. Food was for the sustenance of the body. Now Rosemary needed a sustenance for the soul. She remembered a passage of
Romeo
and
Juliet
she had recited many times for William.

“‘And when he shall die,'” she whispered, “‘take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night.'” She felt the pressure of tears, watery balls, pushing up out of their ducts, as she pedaled her noiseless bike on home.

Unable to face Miriam right away, Rosemary biked on past the house, allowing herself a few more minutes to vent this sudden sadness. She had thought that the telescope would bring only peace and a sense of beginning anew. But she had been wrong.

At the old hay rake, where she turned her bicycle around, the groundhog was quite dead, a cold layer of blood crusting its exposed teeth. She surmised that Jan Ferguson's German shepherd, with its sharp canines, had stumbled upon the animal. She reached a finger down and touched the tip of one paw, already stiffening. It had come out of the safety of its hole only to bask in a pleasant June day, and now it was on its short trip back to Mother Earth. A panic overcame her, and she felt a warm sweat surfacing on her forehead and the palms of her hands. She stared down the road, to where the big mushroom of a house rose up from among the apple trees, her own safety.

“I must be careful,” she reminded herself, and wondered if she'd ever see the ultralight again.

At the urging of a full bladder, Rosemary pulled herself out of bed at six thirty. Miriam's birthday was opening with a red sky above the horizon.
Sailors
take
warning.
Rosemary had dozed fitfully throughout the night, unable to shake the notion of William's soft presence in the cherry bed, an ache brought on by yesterday's purchase of the telescope. So she stayed up to watch the first ground feeders darting about, their bills like fat needles poking the grass for seeds. It was a strange dream this time that had rippled through her sleep. A
stranger
dream than other times. The muscles in her stomach were drawn up into balls from the anxiety of it. She watched the sky, the same sky as forty years ago, when Mother had borne her first child and set about on the path of life with Father. It was crimson now, filtering to light pinks as it left the line of the treed horizon and moved out toward its middle. “It was raining, a terrible downpour,” Mother used to tell them, when they asked as children, about the weather conditions on the special day each was born. “It was all cats and dogs and thundering when Miriam was born, but you, Rosemary, came in on the sunniest, brightest January day.” And only as an adult did Rosemary wonder if these weather conditions had helped to shape their lives, to mark their personalities. “You're too gloomy, Miriam. Why don't you have more of Rosemary's sunny disposition?”

William had come home from London in this dream, so real Rosemary could still feel the beads of sweat that wet her pajama top, leaving it cold and limp. She had heard his footfalls in the kitchen first, then on all fifteen steps as they creaked beneath his trail boots. William on the stairs, come home from London, come back from death. “How many steps, William?” Yes, it was so like him to know. “Fifteen steps, Rosie.” And then he had come to the side of her bed, their bed, and sat on it. She was awake, or so she believed, and she was not afraid. She realized now that it had been at the back of her mind all along that some grisly mistake had been made. She had never seen the body. It was days before the coffin arrived from London. Now, in the heart of the night, in the midst of her subconscious reckonings, Rosemary knew she'd been waiting all along for an apologetic letter, a brief phone call that would set things in proper order. Young men should not kill themselves.

In the dream, she had tried to say his name, but couldn't. And she couldn't reach out a hand to touch again the smooth skin, almost girlish it was so soft. This was skin she hadn't touched since that January day, when she had stood by the kitchen door and watched him load his luggage and boxes of books into the back of Uncle Bishop's pickup for a lift to the airport. A January day, much like her own
birthday,
blue with cold, the icicles hanging from eaves like glassy fangs, prehistoric tusks. And she had wrapped the Christmas scarf tightly about his neck, had bit the bottom of his lip gently as they kissed good-bye. And then he was gone, with his pale January skin sinking beneath the plaid lining of his best jacket. A cold, deathly skin that Rosemary, awake, refused to remember, for remembering it would cause her to ponder William's condition three weeks into his death, a month, two months. Here were hideous images that her brain tried to block out. How many weeks before the eyes rolled like gum balls out of their sockets? Before the tight leg muscles turned jellyish, the stomach muscles forgot the countless sit-ups, and the facial skin peeled back to reveal that Halloween leer of the skull? In the dream, her arms were lying on each side of her body. They weren't a part of her and, without them, she had no means to reach out and touch the face, tousle the hair still in need of a trim, as it was the last time she'd seen it disappearing beneath his jacket collar. “William.” That's what she tried to say to the lover who'd returned triumphant from the ultimate battle and was now sitting on the side of her bed.
William
. Rosemary thought this. She could not say it. The two-syllable song remained unspoken. It was lodged like batting in her closed mouth. It pounded like a toothache. Instead, William spoke, as though he were Hamlet's father come home for a bit of explaining. “Hello, Rosie.” Precious William, still the vision of the artist in pursuit of the dream. Still full lipped, with his perfect nose and eyes the color of copper beneath the shank of brown hair that hung above them. “I've missed you. I've missed the human things.” Rosemary had looked at her arms with deep curiosity. Had they been amputated? Something had rendered them useless. She
was
awake. She was sure of it. And this was really the resurrected William. Then he said things she had never wanted to hear, awake or asleep. “It was over, Rosie. We were over.”

Rosemary let the sky go back to its bleaching process, to losing its magnificent pinks and reds to the approaching day, and went off to the kitchen to make coffee. Waiting for the percolator, she filled the cat's dish with the familiar rattle of brown stars, which bounced out of the box in a meteoric shower. Supernovas for Mugs. She leaned against the sink to watch him dine, and to wait for the first glorious cup.

“Thank you, Mr. Coffee,” she said, and then went into the den to view what was left of the morning sky. Mother was still asleep. At least she was still in her room, soundless. Rosemary imagined her lying like a baby on its back, her arms and legs flailing as her eyes glued themselves to the ceiling overhead. Maybe she should make Mother a mobile. She could glue pictures of important family events to it, instead of geometric shapes or cuddly animals. Maybe it would prompt Mother to take part in reality again: her fragile wedding picture, each of the children's baby photos, the first school pictures minus the front teeth, the high school graduation pictures.

Gazing out the patio window, Rosemary saw Winston, the outdoor cat, stretched lazily on the backyard pile of firewood, a line of sunlight ricocheting off his name tag. Rosemary thought wistfully of the baby robin. What if she had kept the bell on Winston's collar? The baby was too little to recognize the siren of the bell as a deathly knell, too small to fly even if it had. And what about death knells? What was the subconscious meaning of last night's dream? What had she blinded herself against for months? Maybe years? The pain of the dream that most remained was the terrible sensation of seeing him again, so lifelike, so near, and being unable to touch him. Or even speak to him. “It was over, Rosie. We were over.” He had been wearing his great-grandfather's Civil War sword on his side! She just that moment remembered this fashion item. She drank her coffee and tried to recall more of the dream. The sword going with him on this last trip had caused her discomfort, but she had never really looked at the heart of the action. And he had taken all those heavy art books, that photo album of their eight years together. Now she understood what it meant, what the dream was trying to tell her.

“My God,” Rosemary said, and put her coffee cup down. All the symbols, all the hints that had been given her over a period of months bumped into each other for the last time. She bounded up the cursed fifteen steps and into William's favorite painting room, a place she'd avoided since his death. The best easel, gone. The most-used paints, missing. All the precious things, vanished. Behind, he'd left only discards, really, things he'd accumulated but no longer needed. And in their bedroom closet, Rosemary fingered all the shirts on their hangers, old ones worn thin, buttonless ones, outdated ones, all Salvation Army goodies. It was the same all over the house. It was the god-awful truth. He'd taken all the items he could not do without. He'd done an excellent job of spring cleaning right under her nose and she had missed it. It was loud as a cat's bell but she hadn't heard it.

Now the pain hit, pain deep as a cat's claws. He had never meant to come back.
William was a gentleman
, she remembered thinking, those long shadowy nights on the swing, after his death, when the old moon with its same Mongoloid face had mocked her through the branches of the cherry tree. A round, full moon rising up out of January, February, March evenings as she sat bundled in sweaters and a jacket, wearing gloves in the spring months to hold her glass of wine but hardly feeling the cold. She had fooled herself because she wanted to be fooled. She wanted the security of his clothes still hanging in the closet, his useless socks with the Swiss-cheese holes that lay piled in the dresser drawer, all the dried-up tubes of paint, the ripped canvases, the mismated shoes on the closet floor, books he'd never read. He'd left behind his junk and had gone off like a thief with his treasures, out into the wide, open places of the world.

Rosemary went back into the painting room, with its tall church windows that enabled the best sunlight to come in and play a role on William's canvases, to become a part of his art. “Levels of consciousness depend upon the light, Rosemary,” he'd told her. Well, her consciousness was wide-awake now that she'd
seen
the goddamn light. Sitting down upon the shiny hardwood floor, she picked up a half-dried tube of red acrylic from amidst the leftovers of William's eight years with her. She squeezed the tube until a small tear appeared in its side and a slight ooze of paint leaked out into her palm. She looked down at the crushed aluminum and red stickiness, a heart smashed and bleeding. He never meant to come back. He would've told her, when the time was right. He would have used the same satellite that brought her his death news, mincing and biting off its hateful words, delayed, for the pain to settle in. Or perhaps he would've sent one of his dramatic postcards.

I
dreamed
of
Goya
last
night
and
how
he
lay
in
the
Sierra
Morena
to
fix
the
axle
on
the
duchess
of
Alba's carriage. Oh, by the way, it's over.

Funny
, Rosemary thought.
William dreamed of Goya and I dream of William
. Christ, but she had hated those postcards! All revolutionary and Romantic in notion. As foolish as Byron going off to die for the glory of Greece and, instead, having all those unwritten poems bled out of him by leeches. She had hated William's idealism for years, hadn't she? Yet she'd never been able to tell him. Or insist that he take some responsibility for the relationship. She had covered his idle tracks, offered weak excuses for his
independent
studies.

Rosemary cried then. But instead of anger at William, what she felt was anger at Father for
the
other
woman,
for dying when she was still so young and malleable. It was anger at Mother for going wickedly, softly crazy and leaving her orphaned. Anger at Miriam for not being a loving sister. Anger came into her body as quickly as some people claim to receive the Holy Ghost. Anger at Uncle Bishop, at Lizzie.
Rosemary
and
her
sunny
disposition.
She should have been born in the midst of Miriam's thunder and lightning and black swelling clouds and wet downpour. Those had been the weather conditions going on
inside
her all these years. Yet, there in the softness of the room of light he had so willingly left behind, Rosemary could not feel anger at William. She felt only the intense longing for someone she had dearly loved. When she heard Mother stirring about in the hallway, bewildered as a street person, she tossed the tube of paint into the trash and then closed the door to William's favorite room.

***

After a slow afternoon run, Rosemary deposited Mother in front of the television for her daily soap opera. Mother followed the story of
One Life to Live
with an intensity, according to Aunt Rachel. “Just as she knows when the cuckoo clock is going to sound, she knows when the show is on.” So Rosemary left her rocking happily and clutching Betsy Kathleen to her bosom. She decided that a cake mix was elegant enough for Miriam's birthday party, a chocolate with white frosting. She was in the midst of adding frosted pink roses and the
Happy
Birthday
letters when Lizzie, who'd been gone when Rosemary got back from her run, drove into the driveway with Charles. She came into the kitchen while Charles went up the fifteen steps and slammed his bedroom door.

“Did you send him to his room?” Rosemary asked, as she offered Lizzie the last lick of the frosting spoon.

“How old is Miriam, anyway?” Lizzie wondered.

“In which life?” asked Rosemary. Mugs insisted on viewing the cake, so Rosemary lifted him up within a foot of it. He stretched his neck and one paw out toward it before she put him back down on all four paws. “Forty,” she answered.

“That'll be us soon,” Lizzie said, and took a Diet 7-Up out of the refrigerator.

“I don't even care anymore,” said Rosemary. She pushed the cake far back against the wall and covered it with the glass cover of her cake dish in case Mugs decided to celebrate early and by himself.

“Is something bothering you?” Lizzie asked. “One would expect
me
to be uptight, what with Charles and Philip escorting me everywhere I go. But you're the one who seems upset.” She fidgeted in the refrigerator for a carrot stick.

“Don't spoil your dinner tonight,” Rosemary warned, and dreaded the thought of a family get-together for Miriam's birthday. And she was tired of all three of her downstate guests.

“By the way, have you seen Philip?” Lizzie's carrot was loud and crunchy. “He's been punishing himself in his room all day.”

“Well,” Rosemary said. “I guess that means you've made a decision.”