Crooked Little Heart (31 page)

And then Lank stepped forward. He seemed confused, like he hadn’t picked out what song he was going to sing yet, and her mother reached forward and scratched one of his shoulder blades lightly, the way she did to give you encouragement. Rosie looked into her mother’s face and saw how tired she was, too. Everyone here seemed so tired. Lank closed his thin lips to make an instrument out of them, and he hummed one note to himself, like his own little pitch pipe. He began to sing the same song they had sung when they buried Grace. It was a Christmas song, even though Grace had been buried in May and even though it was now well into summer. It was slow and mournful, like a spiritual, hanging in the night as if each quavering mournful note were being placed on a shelf right above him. He was singing with his eyes closed, and Rosie tried to hold her eyes wide open so the tears wouldn’t pool and fall. But she felt her meanness and her safety melting even though she did not feel like crying with these people, and her tears did fall as Lank sang.

Miserable, her back bent forward, she buried her face against her mother’s side without meaning to, and finally, past all of that resistance, a quiet mewling sound rose from somewhere inside her, like a small wounded wind.

I
N
the week that followed, Elizabeth cleaned out and relined every drawer in the house, throwing out little broken things that they were supposed to mend someday, announcements of events that had passed long ago, invitations they had meant to respond to. It was the dandruff of their lives. She hummed little songs as she worked, and listened to Joan Baez. Time passed, and the crazy broken feelings of loss subsided. Rosie was gone so much of the time, practicing, hanging out with Simone, who had all but disappeared from sight, and even with Hallie, who called from time to time. Rosie had some secrets, that was one thing Elizabeth now knew. Elizabeth tried to get her to tell, but her chance had come on the river, and Rosie apparently wouldn’t give her another.

Elizabeth had heard her getting up all night, from her little rabbit nest of a bed, up to pee every hour or so, down to the kitchen for milk at midnight. Elizabeth had found the unwashed glass on the counter this morning.

“Hello, love,” said Elizabeth. “What are your plans for the day?”

“I don’t have any.”

Rosie’s gaze passed over Elizabeth, slippery as oil. “Can we go up on the mountain?” she asked finally.

“You want to go for a hike? Or do you want to tell me something?”

“I want to talk to you, but not here.”

“Okay. Why don’t you go pack us a lunch while I finish up here?”

R
OSIE
packed salami sandwiches, Oreos, a thermos of Coke. She had not actually decided which of the two secrets she would tell her
mother today, about cheating or about Simone. But she couldn’t go on keeping both of them.

Surrounded by clouds and fog, they drove halfway to the top of the mountain, where they broke through into sunshine. Rosie stared through the window and listened to Elizabeth’s pathetic folk music on the car stereo. The foliage was fleecy, woolly, all looking from a distance like a thick green pelt you could stroke or even wrap yourself in. She thought about wrapping her mother in it, like a car blanket, to comfort her and make her feel safe. Then she felt a stab of annoyance; her mother was the one who should be taking care of
her
.

When they’d driven for twenty minutes, they came to a place to park in the dirt by the side of the road. They looked out through the windshield at the nappy hillsides, the wind-sculpted trees, yellow Scotch broom everywhere.

“You know,” said her mother dreamily, “I
think
the Muslim holy colors are green and gold.”

Rosie’s stomach buckled at her mother’s oddness. She looked at her skeptically. “Why did you say that just now?”

“I just remembered it, darling. Okay?” Rosie nodded, feeling old and worried. “I asked a woman from Tehran who goes to my meetings why those two colors. And you know what she said?” Rosie shook her head. “She said, ‘We like green so much because we live in the desert. And everyone loves gold.’ ”

Rosie thought this over for a moment; finally they got out of the car. Rosie carried their lunch in her mother’s old canvas knapsack, and as they began to walk she felt almost elated; they were away from everything, in the middle of nowhere. This filled her with a sense of lightness, as if she could breathe deeply again. And the smells enveloped her, the sense of life that is not yet fouled. She could smell the salty seaweed smells of the ocean. There were still a few poppies and lupine around, all that blue and yellow, the poppies so sweet and gold, like a Buddhist monk’s robe, like little cups you could drink from.

Rosie rehearsed her opening lines. Simone was really starting to show, but big clothes covered her stomach. They walked for a while beneath the cover of trees, Douglas fir and redwood, over moist crunching vegetation. Mama, Rosie practiced saying, I cheated a few times this year. I didn’t even really mean to, but that’s what Renee’s mother meant when she said someone should have gotten a line judge long ago.

Her mother suddenly reached out and put her arm around Rosie’s shoulders.

“Rosie? Is it too soon for you to tell me what you wanted to? Or should we just hike for a while?”

Tiny metallic explosions of fear went off in Rosie’s stomach. She decided not to tell, rather to make up a new pretend secret she’d been keeping—that Hallie smoked or something.

“Hike for a while,” she said.

She tried to think of something to fill the silence with. Under and beside the perfect, magnificent redwoods, she was the size of a ladybug.

“A redwood is a tree you have respect for,” she said. It made her feel grown-up to say this.

Now they were in fog again, or a heavy mist, and Rosie stopped. She smelled the wet, springy, primeval softness underfoot, the life, the rot.

“Mommy?” she asked, without meaning to.

“Yes?” Elizabeth looked into Rosie’s grim, tight face.

Rosie stared down at the earth and leaves at her feet. She didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m trying so hard to tell you a secret. A horrible, horrible secret.”

Elizabeth simply nodded, but Rosie felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. Her face began to crumple, and Elizabeth pulled them both over to a great rock at the foot of the slope beside the path, then waited for Rosie to sit down beside her.

Fingers of sunshine now streamed through the trees, the soft-edged shafts inside a cathedral.

Rosie listened to her mother’s voice, which sounded very far away.

“Darling, there’s nothing, nothing in the world, you could tell me that you’ve done that will be so bad—nothing, nothing.” After another minute, Rosie came back and sat on the rock beside her, and Elizabeth pulled her near, and Rosie folded over sideways with her head in her mother’s lap. It was very quiet, except for the sound of a nearby stream.

“There’s two things,” said Rosie, looking up into the branches above her. Then she said something into Elizabeth’s lap that, muffled though it was, sounded like “I cheat.”

“What?” said her mother. “What did you say, darling?”

“I said. Oh, Mommy. There’s something so bad. I’m just going to say it.” Elizabeth peered tenderly into her daughter’s brilliant blue, troubled eyes. Rosie wasn’t breathing. At this moment she still did not know which secret she was going to say. Then she looked down for a second and off into the distance, and when she looked back at Elizabeth, the terror was gone, replaced with a hushed intent look of surprise.

“Simone,” she whispered, “is pregnant.” She drew in a deep breath and held it; she felt like she did when they entered the rainbow tunnel on the way to the Golden Gate Bridge and she held her breath all the way to the other side—suspended, bursting, focused.

“God almighty,” Elizabeth said. Rosie watched her expectantly. “Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth whispered. She blinked as if her eyes hurt, and her mouth hung open and she tilted her head back slowly to stare at the canopy of green above their heads. “Is she going to … have an abortion?” Rosie shrugged and after a moment shook her head.

“I don’t think so. She’s canceled two appointments to do it so far.”

Elizabeth buried her face in her hands, shook it from side to side. Time passed. Rosie closed her eyes too, listened to her heart throb in her chest, hard and fast. After a while she opened her eyes. All the greens were almost too bright.

“God almighty, Rosie. Is there really a second one?”

Rosie didn’t say anything for a moment. “There was just that.”

“You said two, you—”

“Shhhh, Mommy,” said Rosie. She felt like when a shot of hers hit the top of the net and then, after a long moment, dropped onto the other side. “The first secret is she’s pregnant. The second secret is that she’s maybe going to keep the baby. She hasn’t decided.”

“When is the baby due?”

“Six months.”

“God. That’s why she’s gained so much weight. This is why the big shirts.” Rosie nodded. “What does Veronica say?”

“They’re not speaking.”

“Well, they better fucking well start speaking.” Elizabeth stared up through the branches. Rosie felt a stab of pain that her mother was angry at her.

“Actually,” she explained, “they only stopped speaking this morning. When Simone told her.”

“Simone told her for the first time—today? Jesus Christ, what did Veronica say?”

“I don’t know, but Simone is grounded.”

“Oh, Rosie! You! Simone! What a secret!” Rosie finally turned around so she could sit in her mother’s lap. “Who’s the daddy?” her mother wanted to know.

“This guy who’s eighteen and plays tennis.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He’s no one you know. His name’s Jason Drake. He’s really handsome and stuck up.”

“Is he sticking by Simone? Never mind. Don’t even bother answering.”

“He gave her two hundred dollars for the abortion.”

“The abortion she decided not to go through with.”

“Yeah.”

“I see. And how are you—how are you holding up?”

“Not so good.”

Her mother held her tighter then, held on too tight for a minute, but it felt good, like it might hold them all together.

E
LIZABETH
shook her head, in a daze. “Can we just sit here another minute while I—process all this?”

Images of Simone began to play in her head, scenes of Simone having sex, oral sex, screwing, hugely pregnant, screaming in delivery, Rosie as her birth coach, swabbing her with compresses the way Rosie wiped Elizabeth’s forehead when she was depressed. Simone with a baby. Elizabeth rubbed her eyes. Then Rosie nudged her and, when she looked up, handed her a cup of soda. Elizabeth took the cup and a sip, and then stared out at the redwoods until her vision blurred. Pregnant. Simone was pregnant. She was doomed; the light of her future had just gone out. For Simone to have already had sex was disastrous. To have gotten pregnant, to be facing an abortion, would be a catastrophic setback. This, though, was tragedy. This was almost evil. She looked at Rosie and shook her head. Rosie looked back at her with concern and fear, her lips pressed tight together like a worried little child. “Pregnant,” Elizabeth whispered, filled with a terrible emptiness. They gawked at each other. Each time she thought the word
pregnant
or
saw an image of Simone with a bulging tummy, something reverberated in the mountain air like a sonic boom inside her.

“Mommy,” Rosie pleaded softly, “don’t space out on me now.” Elizabeth looked at her daughter intently and tried to inhale a deep breath of fresh mountain air. The fog was moving into the redwoods, like there was a wordless relationship between them, old friends. Rosie was peering into her face as if trying to read a smudgy set of blueprints.