Crooked Little Heart (48 page)

N
O
one wanted to go to the tide pools the day after the reading except Elizabeth. Rae and Lank were going to a matinee in the city. James was back at work on his novel. Simone and Veronica were at the flea market. Veronica’s lawyer had squeezed some money out of Jason’s family for clothes and furniture, and they had spent the last few weekends at the flea market, looking for a crib, a swing, baby clothes. “They’re eating it all away, though,” Rosie confided with enormous hostility. “They look through one batch of stuff and then they stop for Vietnamese noodles. Then they find one little pair of booties, and they celebrate with doughnuts.” Simone had already gained thirty pounds, and there were still two months to go. Two months! Rosie found herself missing Simone already even though she saw her every day. She could feel her friend traveling away from her like a slow train. It hurt too much to think about. School was hard, the rains had begun, and on this cool winter weekend morning, all she wanted to do was to flake—lie on her bed and read Kurt Vonnegut, watch television, maybe eat a TV dinner for breakfast. So Elizabeth almost had to go out to the Pacific tide pools by herself. But finally she convinced Rosie to come along for the ride.

“Why do you love those tide pools so much?” Rosie asked. “I wish we could go to the water slides instead.”

“I love them because of all the life that goes on in them without me. And I love the silence.”

They didn’t talk much on the way out. Elizabeth looked over at her from time to time.

“You okay?” she asked at one point.

“Uh-huh,” said Rosie, nodding.

“Good.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah?

“Can I drive?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re thirteen and a half.”

“But Veronica—”

“Rosie? Stop.”

Rosie stared down at the floorboards and smiled.

S
HE
took off down the beach by herself, walking on the soft wet sand. She wore baggy clothes, jeans big enough for two of her to fit into, a faded flannel shirt of James’s, recovered from the ragbag, over a tiny black T-shirt, and lots of liquid black eyeliner. Her hair looked particularly terrible today, still spiky tufts but flattened on one side from sleep. Elizabeth stopped to watch something in a tide pool but noticed out of the corner of her eye the S shape Rosie had gotten her body into, her chest sunk in and her head down and tucked, as if life were trying to propel her forward while her body held her back.

Elizabeth went over to the reef and stood for a while in the bracing spray. Then she slowly hunkered down to peer into a rocky pool the size of their kitchen sink. She was entranced by the color, movement, surprises, by all the same things that monkeys love. She watched a nudibranch crawl slowly out from behind some seaweed, this violently colored sea slug, bright orange with spikes. A tiny porcelain crab that could fit on a dime, frightened by the arrival of the nudibranch, held up its claw threateningly, and then scuttled off. The smell of the tide filled her—rich, salty, the smell of kelp and brine and a hint of decaying meat, the whole chemistry of the earth in solution. Elizabeth studied Rosie, way at the other end of the reef, watching her own tide pool. You couldn’t tell from here whether she was a boy or a girl. Elizabeth thought of the cute bouncy kid in tiny tennis dresses, bounding around the tennis court in the early spring, wide-eyed, taking in everything. A light breeze blew in off the water.

Elizabeth felt like God standing there, so huge and alone, staring down at this tiny world at once so mysterious and transparent, its creatures so helpless. Water, returning after low tide, wafted over the tide pool, and everything that was loose in it waved. All that hunting and hiding and frond waving, and all those millions of other things going on that you couldn’t even see.

Nearby anemones sat wedged against a corner of the reef, pulpy and skittish, pebbles stuck to their green flesh like gelatinous rubble, spiky white tentacles waving in the water. She had to crouch down to touch one, cause it to retract from a flower to a blob. After a while it turned back into a flower; when she touched it again, it retracted back into a blob. Looking up, she was surprised to find Rosie now looming over her.

They looked down together then at the anemones, the snails, and hermit crabs.

“They’re so ridiculous,” said Rosie. “Borrowing shells from each other and then wearing them around like huge hats. But I guess I kind of like how they lug them around,” she continued, using the toe of her shoe to point at a hermit crab. “Like they’re taking their nice new house for a walk.”

Elizabeth shifted her weight, and her shadow crossed over a crab the size of a fingernail; it rose up, shaking its claws at her like an old man waving his cane.

“I’m starving to death,” said Rosie.

“Are you really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What if we go get some lunch and then come back?”

“Can we buy magazines to read while we eat?” Elizabeth nodded. They headed back toward the car. The soft roar of the ocean, it seemed to Elizabeth, was the sound of the earth breathing; the wind seemed to go just any old way, but the waves definitely had a pulse. She walked along side by side with her quiet rangy daughter—who even half smiled at her once—in the tiny black T-shirt and voluminous jeans, the worn flannel shirt big enough for a lumberjack now tied at her waist, dragging along on the ground. Rosie sang softly. And Elizabeth suddenly saw that Rosie was no longer her mother’s golden child but was now her own odd person. For as long as she could, Elizabeth strained to hear the two together, the antiphony of tune and ocean, until she had to stop for a moment and close her eyes with the sudden feeling that something that had dropped was rising on its own.

 
It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that this novel, like all my work, is a collaboration.

To begin with, after God looked through His Rolodex and found the perfect little boy for me, He set about finding me a new editor. Robin Desser is
just
the most amazing woman.

Endless thanks to the legendary Elizabeth McKee, my first agent, who always wanted me to write about tennis, and to Chuck Verrill, my ardent advocate and wonderful friend.

Neshama Franklin is so articulate, so clear and lyrical and right, that I can not imagine having written this book without her.

John Kaye is awesome. I wish you could meet him. He’s one of the smartest, funniest people on earth.

Father Tom Weston is one of the others. He’s a great friend, brilliant, hilarious, greatly rich in spirit. Among other things, he was this book’s dogged gardening consultant. Dr. Paul O., who taught me about acceptance, was my medical advisor, and I just love him so much.

Hillary Bendich and Susan Hayes gave me invaluable weaving insights.

Maggie Fine, of Santa Fe, helped me understand the soulfulness, intelligence, and integrity of teenage girls, because she is a person with those qualities in rich abundance. Her mother, Lynn Atkison, was generous beyond words in teaching me about what it means to be the mother of a teenage girl. I owe this family a debt I will probably never be able to repay.

Mallory Geitheim, Judith Rubin, and Anne Huffington are three brilliant women and teachers.

Jim Bedillion was an invaluable source of tennis tournament information
and lore; ditto to beloved old tennis friends Darby Morris, Bee Kilgore, and Nancy Chance.

Maggie’s friends Alecka Barna, Jolene Butler, and Amanda Mather spent a whole day with me, telling me secret things.

Leroy Lounibos went to a thousand tennis matches with me; and there is no one on earth more fun to travel with. Doug Foster shared his great insight. Charley Carney gave me one of his best stories. Sheila Lopez—the gifted dancer and director—revealed for me the shimmering beauty of a teenage girl’s dark side. Claire Barcos and Lindsey Cimino were always there to answer my questions. The mothers of all of Sam’s friends took extra care of Sam so I could finish: Judy, Sara, Rachel, Joanne, Sue, Jill, and Mary. And so did the dads. And our life would not function at all without my brother Stevo’s help.

Once again, the world’s toughest and most insightful copy editor, Nancy Palmer Jones, saved me from myself.

And I cannot imagine life without the unspeakably precious people of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Marin City, California. Come join us: services at 11:00.

 
Anne Lamott is the author of the novels
Hard Laughter, Rosie, Joe Jones
, and
All New People
, as well as two works of nonfiction,
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
and
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she lives with her son, Sam, in northern California.