And then there was a voice. “Rosie?” Elizabeth was outside the bathroom. Her mother had finally come.
“What?”
“Are you okay in there?”
“Yes! God!”
She quietly closed the medicine chest, caught a glimpse of her reflection. Her face was still red and blotchy. Then slowly the bathroom door opened, and her mother stepped in, so tall and gentle, smiling sadly.
They sat on the toilet together for twenty minutes, Rosie on Elizabeth’s lap, crying quietly. Elizabeth held her, amazed by her new weight, nuzzled her daughter’s neck with her lips, blowing soft warm air on her skin through her nose, staring off into space.
JAMES had given Elizabeth his spot in the wheelchair and gone off to make them all tea and, Elizabeth surmised, to check his messages. Rosie had gone with him. Charles whispered to Elizabeth that he was distressed to see how unhappy Rosie was to be here, and Elizabeth nodded and tried to explain that of course it was painful for Rosie, and that it was important, and that it was right.
Charles had on his face the look of terrified age, of eyes that will never close. His lips, in the days since Elizabeth had seen him, had fallen into his mouth, and his mouth had all but disappeared into a thin pursed line, choking back expletives and sorrow. His face was exquisitely asymmetrical. Everything on the left side was bigger—the eye, the ear filled with hair—as if when age strikes, everything we’ve hidden with animation gets exposed. It’s all sanpakku, Elizabeth thought; when things were totally screwed up, out of alignment, hopeless, James always said they were sanpakku. And when the whites of your eyes show below the iris, and they hadn’t before, you were definitely all sanpakku—all fucked up.
They held hands and talked of nothing in particular, Elizabeth breathing slowly and calmly, filled with grief, with terror, with a sense of there being no comfort.
“Is someone coming in to touch up your hair these days?” she asked, and he smiled. Then they were silent for a while. There was an extraordinary and chaotic vigor to his eyebrows, but it was clear that he had lost a great deal of ground. You could tell that he had always worn glasses and that now he couldn’t see her very well. James and Rosie were gone a long time. Charles’s stark flat gaze seemed to stare at a wall that was coming at him. Elizabeth felt that his eyes were not looking out at the external world but rather at this wall of his life coming to an end. His thin hair was combed so touchingly, neatly framing his face. But Elizabeth had the sense that his mind had begun to fall to pieces, that his time now was full of trying to remember, that Charles’s amazingly agile mind was now a moth trapped in a jar, and every time it tried something vigorous, more powder fell off.
eight
ONE day at the beginning of June, when it was so hot that the only things moving outside were the crickets and the anorexics, Elizabeth drove Rosie and Simone and Rae out through the valley past a number of tiny rural towns, dairy farms, and hippie campgrounds, between low golden hills and pastures, under the redwoods beside the long winding creek, to Samuel P. Taylor Park. It was so beautiful here, under a canopy of trees so airy and rich that you felt almost inside a cave of green. The park was five miles inland, five miles away from the fog and tumultuous surf of the coast, and it was a momentous day: at the age of nearly thirty-six, Rae was wearing her first pair of shorts out in public.
She had always described her legs as if people would scream upon seeing them. On hot days she had always worn gauzy pants or skirts. Elizabeth had never actually seen Rae’s legs, and they had been best friends now for seven years. As it turned out, they were chubby but quite presentable—not too long or firm, but not, as Rae had suggested, stumpy and cadaverous.
Rosie and Simone walked around in the creek, studying water skeeters whose shadows on the water looked like mouseketeer ears or boxing gloves. The stream made everyone more monkeylike; you couldn’t stride through the streambed purposefully, like a human. You needed to grip with your toes, duck away from low branches. There must be thousands of such beautiful streams in the country, Elizabeth thought, with huge trees, dappled light, big rocks, but this was theirs. The sunlight shone down through the canopy of trees on them all, sparkly with pollens and seedpods, held as if in the glass ball of memory, a snow dome in summer. Rosie’s legs were like pipe cleaners, brown as walnuts, not so changed from last year when she played in the water by herself. She was not yet wearing the glasses of puberty that would allow her to see all the flaws; she was still able occasionally to get lost in what was right in front of her. Simone’s legs were pinker, fleshier, sexy, in tiny shorts out of which the cheeks of her rear end showed. But, Elizabeth thought, she did not look as sassy as usual.
Elizabeth looked over at Rae, who appeared to be sleeping. “With us, the sassiness is mostly gone, isn’t it? But in its place, in the place of a young girl still looking for a mate, your beauty, for instance, has to do with having gotten comfortable at being so skilled at something. And there’s a lot of grace in comfort.”
Elizabeth found Rae’s legs lovely, womanly, even though she was aware that her own were so long and tapered—what legs were supposed to look like according to all the current standards set by movies and magazines. “The world’s sense of beauty is so destructive to women, Rae. Your legs are great. All these years you should have been wearing shorts when it was hot.”
Elizabeth, watching the two girls in the stream, saw Simone suddenly grip Rosie’s arm in the frigid water, as if she were about to lose her balance, and joy filled Simone’s face, and relief. She looked down over her shoulder, down toward her butt, and then over at Elizabeth and Rae, on the riverbank. Something very secretive was going on. Elizabeth looked away, then surreptitiously back again. Now Rosie was examining Simone’s butt and shaking her head. Simone appeared crestfallen.
“Something’s going on with Simone,” said Elizabeth.
“Yeah?” said Rae, not opening her eyes. “What do you think it is?”
“No idea.”
“Maybe it’s hard to be that beautiful. I bet the boys are all over her at school. Do you think she’s had sex yet?”
“No. I’m sure not. She’s only fourteen.”
“Elizabeth. Fourteen is not what it used to be.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes to all the green light pouring off the trees. “You know, I was thirty before I knew that a person just being herself is beautiful, that contentment is beautiful.”
Rae rolled over on her side and stared at Elizabeth.
“What started all this—this thinky thinking?”
“I don’t know. Here we are, four females, no one else around. You in shorts for the first time, and Simone looking like Lolita, and Rosie … well, to me of course, Rosie is as beautiful as Simone.”
“Please. It goes without saying. Rosie is an orchid.”
“But to almost any man in this country, Simone is the beauty, right? Look at her over there by the tree stump, fixated on herself, unhappy. James gets around her for a few minutes, and it’s all he can do not to start talking baby talk. Now look at Rosie, walking around like a puppy looking at things in the water. Rosie is so much younger inside. She’s all caught up in the river, the guppies, the current. She looks like a little kid.”
“I’m falling asleep,” said Rae. “Will you tell me all these interesting things later? I really love hearing them.”
Rae was so beautiful to her, her smooth face in repose, the soft brown skin with pink in the cheeks, the full pink lips. But she knew this face, which she so loved, was not considered desirable by most men. Elizabeth sometimes wondered if Rae would have been as gifted and successful an artist if she had been. She looked again at the girls, their young bodies, so different and so exquisite. Simone would have an easier life than Rosie, she thought. Beauty is a form of radiance that sets up a shield so people can’t get in. Did Rosie know this yet? Rosie already knew how badly you can be hurt and betrayed. Simone didn’t seem to. Looking at the two girls in the river, Elizabeth realized that it was going
to be years before Rosie became aware of what she did have, instead of obsessing about what she didn’t. It was going to be years before she saw that she was not the universal disaster she’d been assuming she was these last two years.
“DO you feel sad that no one is talking to you?” Rae asked, opening her eyes and turning her head to look at Elizabeth.
“No. I brought everyone here for a spa day. Everyone gets to do what they feel like.”
“I’m going to wake up in a few more minutes.”
“Okay, honey.”
SHE propped herself up on her elbows to study the river. Downstream, in the folds and convolutions of the water, young people waded, some carrying each other, some alone, and the stream accepted them all, swept them along. There was room for everyone in the gentle force of the water, room for the teenagers, babies, children, room for Simone, so perfect, so fresh and voluptuous, who now sat on the far bank of the stream, sobbing, and Rosie, who watched in shock, as if Simone were melting before her very eyes.
AFTER dropping Simone off at Veronica’s salon, they drove along bucolic streets to Charles’s little Spanish-style house, white stucco with soft green trim, all arches, old roses, camellias. Rae turned off the engine, and they looked toward Charles’s front door, as if waiting for him to come out and join them.
“It’s so scary for Charles to be dying,” said Rosie. She was in the front seat with Rae. “It would be for me. It would be the worst thing in the world for me, because I really don’t like the dark. It would be like everything going dark on you and you’d be all alone in it. Like all alone in a black sack. And everyone would cry for about one day.”
“I would cry for the rest of my life if you died, Rosie,” said Elizabeth.
“There’s just nothing good about it. It’s not like your good news, bad news story, Rae.”
“But we don’t know that,” said Rae. “We’re just sad because we’ll miss him. But I notice one thing that is good. He’s gotten good at knowing what really counts, and asking for it—a ride out to the living room in his wheelchair, a glass of cool water with a thin slice of lemon.”
“It was different for my dad,” said Rosie. Elizabeth, in the back seat, stiffened. She leaned through the space between the two front seats and reached her left arm across Rosie’s chest. Rosie dug her chin down into her mother’s arm, rubbed it hard, like a deer rubbing its nubs against a tree. After a minute, she continued. “He just got smashed into and died. That’s what scares me, everything going dark on you all of a sudden. One moment, like 11:08, my dad was cruising along, thinking about me and Mommy and listening to the radio and thinking about what he was going to do the next morning, and then at 11:09, he was dead. Boom. At 11:08 I had a daddy, and then at 11:09, I never did again.”
“Well, you do have a daddy,” said Rae. “But not Andrew.”
“I have James,” said Rosie. “I have a James. Not a dad.”
Elizabeth, in the back seat, closed her eyes, trying to breathe back in all the parts that were suddenly spiking out of her.
THEY sat in Charles’s room beside his bed. Rae rubbed his feet. He wanted to know about Rosie’s tennis and James’s book.
“I heard him on the radio again,” he said, in his soft reedy voice. “He was talking about something important. I can’t remember what now. But he was very clear, very caring. You can’t hope for much more than that.”
Elizabeth watched Rae rub Charles’s feet. His nurse had manicured them perfectly, cutting away calluses and doctoring corns. The nails were trimmed and buffed. They looked like God’s feet, smooth and pale as alabaster, but at the end of spindly wasted legs; because they were so lovely, Charles didn’t wear socks anymore. It was one incongruous frivolity in a man who had seemed to care so little about his physical package. Elizabeth saw his newly realized feet as something he had grown briefly, a new way of being in the world, almost like little feathers that he couldn’t fly with yet because they were too new, but that he could preen.
ROSIE fell asleep in the back seat on the way home.
Elizabeth started to think of Charles’s feet again, as they drove along. She found it hard to breathe. “I keep thinking of the physical part of Charles that isn’t going to be here anymore,” she said. “Like his feet.” Neither of them said anything until Elizabeth pulled up in front of her house. She shut off the engine and hung her head.
“Can we just sit out here for a while?” Elizabeth asked.
Rae nodded, her eyes downcast, grave.
“Lank is inside with James. It’s their basketball night. Look. They’re peering out at us.” The men stood at the window in the living room, waving. The women waved.
Elizabeth turned back to Rae. “I’m thinking,” she said, “about the shoes that aren’t worn anymore, and the feet that don’t walk anymore, and yet how delectable they are. Feet in repose. Not transportation, not support. They’re like beautiful perfect clay feet. And oh, Rae. He loves your massages.”
They looked out through the car windows for a minute and then back at the men who still stood at the window, still waving.
“We don’t make any sense to them,” Elizabeth said. “Here we are, a couple of white women sitting in a stuffy car, talking about a dying man’s feet.”
For a minute, Rosie’s snores from the back seat were the only sounds in the car. Then Rae smiled at Elizabeth.
AFTER a while the men came out of the house, James in his basketball clothes and high-tops, with a basketball tucked fiercely under his arm as if it were someone’s severed head. Lank wore khakis and Birkenstocks.
Rae rolled down her window. “Lank. They’ll never let you play like that.”
“I left all my stuff at Linda’s. I forgot it was basketball night. I promised I’d go for a walk with her. I’m supposed to meet her in town.” He sighed. “Maybe she’ll take cyanide instead.”
“I thought you liked her,” said Elizabeth. He had been dating Linda for three weeks.
“Maybe she’ll hook up her garden hose to the exhaust.”
“Lank!” said Elizabeth, but she was laughing. James bent down and peered in at his wife.
“Hi,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, James.”
“How was Charles?”
“He’s okay, isn’t he, Rae?” Rae nodded. “You need to see him soon if you want to say good-bye.”
“Okay.”
James peered in at Rosie sleeping soundly in the back, looked inquiringly at Elizabeth, and pantomimed tossing back drinks. Elizabeth nodded, and they smiled at each other. Lank studied Rae.
“Is Jesus in there with you now?” he asked.
“He’s always with me, Lank.”
“Why don’t you guys come inside,” said Elizabeth, “and I’ll make you a quick cup of coffee?”
“No,” said Lank. “We’re going. Don’t even try to slow us up. We’re going now.” He started to walk away, and then turned back to peer in at Rae again.
“Is Jesus like your little shadow, Rae?”
“He’s like my own little sun.” Lank stared at Rae for a moment, and then he smiled, like a good sport, as if she had won and he understood this.
“You’re great, Rae,” he said.
“Hey, thanks.”
“But we’ve given up on girls, me and James. Right, James? Girls confuse us.” James nodded one nod of great finality, and they turned and walked away.
nine
ROSIE was playing Colleen Morgen in the round of sixteen, in a tournament in Stockton, on the last court in a row of eight. She was seeded eighth in the tournament, Colleen not seeded at all, and it was five games each in the second set. Rosie had won the first set, but Colleen was playing hard now, with confidence, and Rosie was afraid. Her stomach ached with anxious thoughts of losing. Colleen needed one point to win the game.
Rosie looked around.
No one was watching the boys in the match on the next court, and they were consumed by their own play, and at first she thought no one was watc
hing her and Colleen until she noticed Luther alone under a tree, reading a newspaper. She watched him for a moment. He did not look up. So when Colleen served a weak pouffy serve that landed on the intersection of alley and service line but just barely, Rosie, almost without meaning to, called it out.
She caught the ball on her racket, stopped it, and nonchalantly began walking to the backhand side of her court, to receive serve.
“What?” said Colleen, gawking.
“It was out,” Rosie explained, continuing toward the other side of the court. She cocked her head, smiled gently. “Really,” she said.
“It caught the line,” said Colleen.
“Sorry,” said Rosie.
Colleen continued staring and then laughed with derision, shaking her head, looking off over her shoulder as if for an unseen referee. After a moment, she served to Rosie’s backhand, and Rosie hit a crisp winner down the line, winning the game.
Rosie was all but whistling as she went to pour herself some ice water from her thermos. Colleen came up to where she stood drinking but did not seem to see her and poured herself water in stony silence. An airplane passed overhead, but it did not entirely drown out the grunts of the boys on the next court, in the midst of a long baseline rally. Rosie walked to the service line. She turned slightly, all of a sudden sure that someone—maybe someone from the sportsmanship committee, maybe Colleen’s parents or coach—was watching and had been watching all along. But there was no one. No one except for Luther. He was looking right at her, his brown eyes crinkled ever so slightly around the edges. She felt an incredible jolt of shame and amazement and fear. And felt also that without wanting to, she was sliding into him. She felt the way you do when you stick a plug into an electrical outlet, and turn on the machine—the blender or the vacuum—and are startled by the noise. She did not know what to do with her eyes, and so she glared at him, vibrant with distress.