Poor Elizabeth. She saw Rosie at the beach on a hot black Fourth of July, the year after Andrew died. When the fireworks above the bay had stopped, someone gave her a sparkler and lit it, and Rosie cut flashing red swirls in the black air, joyously absorbed, until it began to sputter and went out, and Rosie stood holding a piece of burnt wire, on which she then burned a finger. Elizabeth cried and, after a while, felt better.
But then, at midnight, she heard a knock at the door and lifted her head slowly off her chest. She looked like a child roused from sleep, grumpy and bleary, lips swollen into a pout.
Go away.
Knock knock. “Elizabeth?” James. Oh, God, oh, no. Go away. “Elizabeth?” She sat very still. “It’s me. Let me in.”
The knocking continued. She couldn’t let him see her like this, it would diminish his sense of loss. Slowly, with cold dignity, she rose and staggered, with her head held high, to the door.
“Go away.” She pushed in the button to lock it.
“What’s going on here? I knew you’d be mad, but—I’ve driven all the way from the city.”
“Yer an idiot, James.” She stared at the swirling wood grain of the closed door, and she swayed.
“I can explain everything.”
“I doubt it.” She stood hugging herself.
“I’ve been sick.”
She sneered. “My heart bleeds.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Are you drunk? Oh, wait, did you say your heart bleeds? Oh, never mind. Please let me in.”
Elizabeth studied the closed door between them, took several steps backward, and sat clumsily down on the bottom stair. She waited for his next move but heard nothing. Had he left? No, she was sure of it. Still she waited, and there was only silence. It was a trick. If she opened the door, he would leap out at her and push his way in. He would trick her into forgiving him, and she would end up back in love, and he would betray her again somewhere down the road. Was he still on the porch? Had he ever been there? She shook her head to clear it. Finally she stood, wobbling, turned the doorknob, pulled it open an inch, and peered around. It had not been a trick, he was not on the doormat. The stars were glittering dots of gold in the black sky, and James sprang at the door from out of the shadows. She cried out, and he pushed his way inside.
She slugged him in the shoulder, bruising a knuckle. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
He grabbed her wrists so she wouldn’t hit him anymore, and she took two steps back, glaring.
“What do you want?” she asked, pulsating with anger.
“What do you think? I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Tough shit, Elizabeth.” They were glowering at each other, like two dogs with a bone dropped equidistant on the ground, an electrical moment, poised on some brink of violence and desire.
“It’s me, do you remember?” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Bullshit.”
He clenched his fist, put it in his pants pocket. “I have not done anything wrong, and I have obviously been tried and convicted without a jury. Of my peers. So you had better just goddamn well explain why you’re in such a state. Was it because ‘You should have called’?” He changed his voice into a fishwife’s. “Is that it?” She looked at him as if he had shit on his clothes. “Let me tell you something—okay?—about what’s been happening, and then you can run your latest paranoid scenario by me. Yesterday, midmorning, there was a terrible burning when I peed, a terrible feeling in my bladder like it was sucking on a lemon, so I went to a doctor. It turned out to be a urinary tract infection, and he put me on antibiotics. And he also put me on this heavy-duty muscle relaxant called Perideum, which makes your pee look like it’s a tequila sunrise ... okay? And it makes you dopey. I slept all day, until about three in the morning. So I got up and wrote until noon or so—I called you but no one answered so I thought I would just show up at six or so, like I always do—but I took another pill and crapped out. I knew you’d be mad, but I came over as soon as I got dressed to see if your lights were on. And—hey!” He looked around, up the stairs, and then walked down the short hallway to peer into the living room. “Is anyone else really here? Are they up in your bed?”
“Yes.” They were.
“Good. Good for you. So now tell me your problem.”
She was holding herself tightly in, and across the chest, enunciating carefully like she did with Rosie when angry. “First of all, you could have called. You’re not an adolescent anymore. You’re supposed to have grown up. Which is to say, we have been intimately involved for some time, almost every night, to the exclusion of others, and you hide with embarrassment for two days at my expense because you’ve got an infection in your tee-tees! Christ!”
“No one’s perfect!”
“I’m not talking ‘perfect,’” she said, much too quickly, so that she sounded shrill. “I’m talking faithful, responsible ... I called your apartment all night, and no one answered—”
“I was sleeping—”
“James! Until midnight, when a woman answered—”
“Not at my place—”
“Oh, yes, at your place....” Wait, what?
“You’re crazy. You were loaded.”
“Get out of my house.”
“No,” he said. “A woman didn’t answer at my house.”
“Oh, you fucking liar, James. And you slammed the phone down—”
“Wrong!”
“Right!”
“I give you my word.”
“Oh. I dialed wrong and reached another man’s house who wasn’t supposed to be schtupping—”
“God. You’re so paranoid. You shouldn’t be on the streets.”
Glares, clenched jaws, something beginning to snap in Elizabeth. Had she misd ... no! But maybe—no! Maybe.
“I swear to God. In whom I believe. And give my word.”
The room spun for a moment; the thing snapping inside had cut off her wind. Her eyes softened. She was going mad.
James took a step toward her, with his arms out tentatively as if coaxing a half-tamed wild animal, but she held onto herself and slid with her back against the wall a few feet farther from him. Help me, someone. I don’t know which end is up.
“Let’s sit by the fire,” he said. After a minute she followed him to the living room, where he stood leaning against the mantel. “There’s no one else here, is there, besides Rosie?”
“Sharon.” She stopped at a bookcase and leaned against it, eyeing him.
“Is there brandy?” She nodded. “I’ll get us one. Okay?” After a pause, she nodded, and he left. The living room was warm and lit by one small light and golden-red flames. Her scotch was on the coffee table. Had she misdialed? She knew she hadn’t. But decided she might have. Was Rae still alive, was James telling the truth? Why couldn’t she know for sure, how could she live not knowing for sure? She couldn’t. She was shivering in the warm room, having what she took to be an alcoholic breakdown; tonight a lot of air had escaped from her tires, which had perhaps been patched too many times. She was in fact having a blowout. She daydreamed of hospitalization: a tearful Rae would fly home ... James would never leave her side ... but Rosie—oh, God. She was pinching the flesh on her upper arm when James arrived with the silver decanter and two Baccarat snifters.
She took a drink from him and slid away, tearful mewing noises escaping even as a stern voice in her head commanded her to pull herself together.
“What can I get you?” he asked. Dilaudid. Committed. “Can’t I hold you?” She shook her head, backing away. He poured an inch of brandy for himself and sat down on the couch, swirled it in his glass, poured down half of it and set it down. He watched her with great concern; finally he lit a cigarette and held the pack out to her, but she didn’t meet his eyes, and after a moment he put them back in his vest. Elizabeth, in a hundred-pound backpack, stood shivering, with tears pouring out of her eyes.
“God, I feel so helpless.?
??
She had never fallen to pieces before in front of another person. She had held out for almost forty years. In the darkest moments of her soul she had always been alone, or the only person awake (near dawn, the hours of the wolf), and so much despair and disarray and need were welling up and spilling into the open that she would never recover—would only be faking whatever sense of equilibrium she could muster.
“Come here,” he said gently.
No; she shook her head.
“Do you want me to leave?” She stared at her feet. “Not that I care, because I’m not leaving you.”
She walked unsteadily to the mantel with her drink and laid her head on her hand on the wood, feeling a bit stronger as the fire warmed her up. Tears ran lengthwise across her eyes, ran down her fingers and cheek, and she became aware of tears in her ear.
“Come here,” he said. No. “Do you just want to cry for a while?” Yes, she nodded, with her head sideways on the mantel. “You sure look beautiful in that kimono. I sure love you, Elizabeth. Do you believe that?” After a minute she nodded. “I want to get married someday. But you gotta trust me more. I trust you with everything I have. And there’s no reason—I give you my word—you can’t trust me.”
And so Elizabeth, at that moment, lifts her head off the mantel and decides to trust him, decides that he was telling the truth and that she was a faithless foolish old woman. When she looks at him, and he can see he has won, he decides that from that moment on he will be faithful to Elizabeth, will give up—and it was an easy decision—the other, occasional women.
“I really love you,” he said. “I want to hold you all night.”
She nodded. They took long sips of their brandies.
“Now, get over here,” he said, snapping his finger at the space beside him on the couch. “Come on. Here, boy.” He snapped his fingers again, patted the empty space. She got irritated and looked away. “Here we go, come on, sit down”—cocking his head, calling a puppy. She finished her drink, put it on the mantel, put her hands in the pockets of her kimono, crossed her feet at the ankles, and waited, reconsidering James. “Okay. Here’s my final offer. I promise to call you, come hell or high water, the next time—I promise to try as hard as I can.” She shook her head, smiling faintly for the first time in hours, able to breathe. “And I’ll throw in a twenty.” He looked up expectantly—she had forgotten his great face; now that she’d turned the projector back on he looked perfect—and reached for his wallet. When she looked over at him again, he waved a bill at her, raised and lowered his eyebrows several times.
Tears came into her eyes again for no particular reason. What if he had been making love last night, what if he was lying. He was everything she had wanted in a man, all her life. She was utterly terrified that she wanted him so badly. Taking a deep breath, she willed her feet to deliver her to the couch, where she took the money out of his hand and sat beside him.
He beamed at her. She scowled, looking down into her lap at the airy egret and cherry blossoms on the white kimono, pocketed the money. He put his arms around her tense shoulders, laid his head against her neck, turned to kiss it. Slowly, as if she had arthritis, she raised her arms and held him by the shoulders.
“You see,” he said, “we’ve finally met our match. I figure we don’t have a chance; we might as well go for it. We’re supposed to be together. As I see it,” he said, leaning forward to pour them more brandy, “we are difficult, weird people and we make each other laugh. We’re very kind to each other, mostly, and we drive each other wild in bed. I wait all day to see you again. You make me so happy, all warm and filled-up inside. It’s like other people feel about having Jesus on their side. Is this too mushy?”
She nodded, looking down, still feeling rocky, but also saved.
“Do you know you’ve never said I love you? When I say I love you, you say thank you, or that you’re glad. Well, do you, Elizabeth?” She nodded, glanced up at him, looked down.
Why couldn’t she say it? He seemed to be in love with this broken down old drunk, red-eyed and snotty. She shook her head in wonder at them both.
“You do?” he asked. “Madly?”
She pursed her lips, looking down, nodded, smiled, and then looked up at him.
“Oh,” he said, smiling back with a distant and mystical look on his face.
They slept in front of the fire. He held her all night. She was sick in the morning, but happy. Three days later, with boxes of books and clothes, he came to live, with his dog, at the Fergusons’ house.
CHAPTER 18
Rosie, lonely, crazy, and mad, sat in the window seat several days later, thinking of Midas, king in the land of the roses, and of his barber, sworn to keep the secret of the donkey ears. She saw herself on all fours in the garden, whispering into a hole in the earth, saw the grasses which would grow and, when the wind blew, whisper what Sharon’s dad had done.
Each time she remembered it, her stomach dropped, hollow and full of dread, full of worms.
She was alone. Her mother was at the library, James and Leon were watching a football game at a friend’s house, and Sharon was at her violin lesson. If only Rae were home. If only Rae were her mother. Rae would notice something wrong: Rae would make her confess.
A dog barked, the wind blew, birds sang. She opened her eyes and sat listening, then got up, full of gloom and nervous energy, and skulked into the study.
The desk was covered with papers, a typewriter, pencils, and books: it was her favorite room in the house, since James had moved in. She glanced at the closet: did he know that her mother kept a bottle in there? Rosie flushed.
She carried a stool to the closet door and opened it. The house was still. She climbed onto the stool and reached behind a stack of seed catalogs, where the bottle was hidden. Her heart pounded when her fingers touched the cool glass.
Crrreeakkk: someone at the front door! She whipped her head around—it’s Mr. Thackery, come to kill her, or her mother. She scuttled down off the stool, closed the closet door, and ran out of the study.
No one came in. Rosie peeked out the living room window: no one was in the yard.
Back in the study, Rosie eyed the closet but went to the desk and sat down. There were piles of paper everywhere, piles thumbtacked to the wall above it, piles of index cards, and a pile of balled-up typing paper on the floor beside her. She put her legs, crossed at the ankles, on the typewriter, took the nearest stack of index cards, leaned back in the seat, and began to read what James had written.
On the top card was the word “Communicate.” On the second card was written “the bleached, bluish-white sky.” On the third, “Pelicans, killdeer, wren tits.” The fourth read, “Lying on top of Elizabeth, dozing. Face pressed against her neck and into pillow—rooting around for pockets of breathable air instead of stale CO2.” Whaaaaat? The fifth one read, “Demons, p.354, most thoughts are smoke whose fire we are denied.” The sixth one said, “Rosie’s Lashes.” Rosie’s lashes? She put the index cards back on the desk and reached for the button on the imaginary phone.
“Yes, Miss Biddley,” she said out loud, “bring me some coffee and some Sugar Babies. Right now!”
She put her feet back on the floor, and picked up a pile of envelopes. She set them on the typewriter, except for the top one, from which she extracted the letter. It was on fine paper, with a magazine’s name at the top, and it said, “It’s a lovely story, but I’m afraid we can’t use it.” She cringed for James, felt hot in the cheeks for him, hung her head for a moment. Replacing the letter in the envelope, she tried to think of get-rich-quick schemes. Sometimes people found a chest of jewels in their back yard or in caves, treasures which pirates had buried—she stared off into space and stroked her chin. Oh, my God! Was that hair she felt? Adrenaline surged through her. She pinched at the downy hairs on her chin, eyes wide, as movie snippets sped in her mind: “Little girl grows beard, read all about it!” “Step right this way, ladies and ge
ntlemen, see Rosie, the amazing bearded child” ... She leaped from the chair and ran to the mirror in the hallway, peered at her chin from two inches away, and did not see any hairs. Then the reflection blurred as her eyes widened, and what she saw was the wiry black hair, the sickening dick ... red, rubbery, touching her.
Rosie gasped, shuddered: help, help! God! She shook her head and looked ready to cry, but didn’t. After a moment, she lumbered into the living room.
She walked around the living room, lost and lethargic, looking glumly at the bookshelves, fireplace, and furniture, and the terror began to pass. After a while she stopped at a bookcase, searched for and found Parade of the Animal Kingdom, and took it to the window seat.
Soon she is saved, soothed: tigers, owls, cocoons, peacocks, and polar bears fill her crazy mind.
Sometime later she let the book drop to the floor, got up, and plodded into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of milk, took a stack of graham crackers from the cupboard, returned to the living room, and sat in the middle of the carpet to eat.
In between milk-logged bites, she constructed a house of graham crackers, of golden-brown baked walls. She stared at it with dark stoned eyes, seeing a roof of cake, windows of transparent sugar: old Mrs. Haas popping Hansel into the crate; Rosie sweeping.
Stick out your finger so I can feel it.
Hansel sticks out the goose bone.
Got to fatten you up some more.
Rosie whirls around to push Mrs. Haas into the oven, then frees Hansel from the crate; the birds who ate their trail of bread crumbs show them the way out of the forest, and they run home into their father’s loving arms. The father is Andrew. It turns out that he didn’t get killed in the car crash, that was a he told by the nasty stepmother who is—this is terrible, I don’t really mean it—Elizabeth.
Rosie’s face grew cloudy: I really didn’t mean it. She blinked, back in the living room, shaken, and dismantled the house.
Absently, she picked up a book of matches from the coffee table and lit one, held the blue and orange flame close to her eyes so that they crossed, and blew it out. She lit another one and held it to the corner of the last graham cracker, which wouldn’t light. She let the third match burn too far, in trying to light the cracker, dropped it when the flame burned her finger, and stuck the finger in her mouth, while meanwhile, in a creamy patch of the oriental carpet, the match continued to burn....