Hugo & Rose (30 page)

“I'm fine,” she heard herself say.
Everything will be fine. Or at least it will be the “not fine” it was before.

Then Josh kissed her.

He pressed his face into hers, his lips soft and open on her mouth, his tongue a gentle presence between his teeth. Rose could sense him inhaling her, taking her in. His fingers caught the greasy hair of her ponytail, frizzy and loose above her ears.

His eyes were closed, but he was
seeing her.
Seeing her with his mouth and his nose and his hands. Claiming her.

His mouth pulled away as he locked her into an embrace, his chin against her forehead. Rose felt one of their pulses at the contact. His or hers, she wasn't sure.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

Even as she said it, she was tugging on his clothes.

*   *   *

They made love, first against the countertop and then, when logistics made that difficult, on the floor of Rose's kitchen, stray crumbs and pieces of lint embedding themselves in the flesh of Josh's bottom.

From the vantage of the floor, Josh stared up at his wife, filling himself with the sight of her, the feel of her, the
her
of her. His Rose.

And for the first time in years, Rose did not mind.

In fact, Rose had the odd sensation that she wasn't even really all there for Josh to see. While part of her was aware of her body grinding and enfolding itself against Josh's, another part became convinced that she had somehow slipped out of her skin.

She wasn't Rose at all.

She was a glowing ball of golden light set loose in a field of dark time. Rose felt herself expanding from a central core, her consciousness floating, hovering in space, as she grew larger and larger.

Josh's hands on her body, the building feeling of potential between her legs … it all seemed somehow related, but distant from the radiating light of herself. She was both on her kitchen floor and at play in the universe.

She cried out, and the orb that was her pulsed. It suddenly pulled away from an unseen force, unfettered at last.

She exploded, her edges straining away from the gravity at her center until they were no longer edges … until she was just bits and pieces, molecules of matter, spinning in a forced trajectory away from what she had once been. She was everywhere. She was everything.

To Josh, pinned on the floor beneath Rose's orgasming body, she looked not just like herself, but like every self she had ever been or ever would be. She was as she was now in this moment. But she was also as she was when he met her. And as she was when she was pregnant with Isaac. When she was nursing Adam. When she told him to expect the arrival of Penny. She was young Rose from the pictures her parents had shown him when they had gotten engaged. And she was also Rose as he imagined her to be in their future together, her hair streaked with white, her face an etch of elegant wrinkles.

His wife in all forms, in all places and times.

He reached the precipice of fullness … and tipped over.

*   *   *

He did not stay awake with her, though he had wanted to.

But Josh's body was stretched even thinner from lack of sleep than Rose's at this point. He had not had an illicit nap on Hugo's bed. He had not even had the hour of sleep that had granted Rose the nightmare of Isaac's death.

Josh's wife led him to their bedroom and tucked him under the covers, as she did with all of her babies. She kissed his mouth.

Assured him, “I'll be okay.”

She even believed it for a moment.

The wash of oxytocin was still cresting through her body, those love hormones of orgasm and childbirth and breast-feeding.

She remembered a thousand sleepy nights with the children when they were new. Infants latched pink mouths to her nipple. Tug, tug, tug until she felt it. The let-down of milk accompanied by the “ah” of hormones, tingling outward, drifting from her shoulders to her toe tips and fingers. It made her sleepy and happy, drunk with hormonal love for the tiny people staring up at her, noses pressed to her breasts, filling themselves up with
her.
Tiny eyes in the dark, surfeiting themselves with the sight of their mother. Sustaining themselves. With her.

Isaac. Adam. Penny.

Each of them a part of Josh and Rose.

Two cells that had found each other in the dark tunnels of her body. One pushing its way past the fortress of the cellular wall, until it finally exploded itself inside. From the two there was suddenly one … that then divided again and again and again—half, half, half … somehow the division of itself making more instead of less.

Twisted strands, beads containing the instructions for growing humanity. Forming into miniature organs, pencil tips fluttering, dark buds of eyes and ears. Blobs of limbs. Each already with its own proclivities and propensities. A seed that could bloom into a tendency toward depression, or genius, or risk taking … All there in the fish-shaped sliver in the dark of the womb, burrowed down into its endometrial bed. Mother's first homemade meal.

Rose felt full of the miracle of what she had with Josh.

What they had built together.

People. Life.

The glow of the orgasm still felt warm inside her.

Josh fell asleep quickly in their bed, the length of his chest rising and falling under the blankets.

It will all be okay.

 

twenty-one

Rose held on to that feeling of okayness for most of the night. She stayed awake in the electric glow of the TV, keeping company with broadcast-ready doctors holding forth about vaginal odors and the benefits of green tea.

She didn't even feel tired … not really, not the way she should have after more than a day and a half without sleep. Her limbs felt jerky and sensitive—but not tired. Likely it was the caffeine. Or the ephedra. Or the ginseng … though Rose felt sure that particular ingredient in her energy pills was ancient Chinese bullshit.

But as dawn crept its fingers into the windows, Rose felt herself begin to fray again. There was now a constant ringing in her ears, a consistent pitch made louder by the quiet of her sleeping house. When her head pitched back from her neck one too many times, Rose decided she should no longer sit still.

There were things that could be done. If she needed to be awake, there might as well be some benefit to it. There was laundry to wash and fold, drawers to organize. Rose fixed her mind on a dried brown puddle of mysterious origin that had appeared on the top shelf of the fridge. It had bothered her for a week … but there had never been time to take care of it.

No time like the present.
Rose headed to the kitchen.

Hugo was behind the door of the refrigerator.

Warm washcloth in her hand, Rose lifted the pitcher of filtered water off the shelf and knocked the topmost package off of a stack of yogurts. The container tumbled onto the tempered glass.

Blood orange.

As Rose's wrist twisted to put the container back onto the stack, her brain took the picture on the lid and lit up a twisty pathway from
orange
to
Orange Tastee
to
Hugo
in a paper cap in the drive-through, then to
Hugo
as she had last seen him.

I hope he's okay.

That word again.
Okay
. And as she thought about Hugo's
okayness,
she felt the last remnants of her own slip away.

Selfish. So selfish. He lost his job, remember? No more paper cap for him now.

The sight of Josh's hands filled her brain. Their swollen red knuckles. The bruises across them. The scatter of small cuts.

You didn't even ask what happened. Because you
knew.
Your husband beat him and left him.

Rose tried to shake off the thoughts. She didn't deserve this. She had made a bad decision, but it was over. She couldn't be concerned with him. She couldn't worry about what her decisions did to the feelings of a stranger—

Not a stranger. Hugo.
Your
Hugo.

So very selfish.

He NEEDS YOU.

“My children need me,” Rose said aloud.

“What, Mom?”

Rose turned. Isaac stood in the kitchen in his pajamas. He yawned and scratched his thigh, oblivious to the storm in his mother's mind.

“Who were you talking to?”

Rose was suddenly aware of the washcloth in her hand. It had grown cold as she had stared into the recesses of the refrigerator. The dried spill was untouched.

How long had she been standing there?

“Mom?”

“I'm sorry, sweetie.… No one. I wasn't talking to anyone.”

*   *   *

Rose's perception of time was askew, her patterns off. She spent the morning just responding to the children's needs rather than anticipating them as she usually did. The stretched feeling now encompassed the world … everything was liminal. Between states.

Somewhere Isaac and Adam were playing. Rose remembered supervising their dressing … but maybe what she remembered was yesterday. Or the day before that. Or one of the thousands of times before that.

Penny's potty seat was on the kitchen floor, a small turd sitting dry in its center.
Had she brought that out?
Rose didn't know. Maybe. She wasn't sure. She must have.
Right?
If not her, then who else?

“Honey?” Josh was trying to get her attention.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you're okay?” Josh was crouching down to look her in the eye, his brows pressed together above his nose. Two commas of worry.

Rose felt her head tip forward in a nod. Her tongue felt bitter and wide. A fat flap of stale, coffee-flavored meat in her mouth. Rose forced the sluggish thing into service. “Yes. Of course.”

Rose waited until she heard Josh's car pull out before she pushed two more pills out of the blister pack. She swallowed them dry, feeling their hard forms scrape down the sides of her esophagus, foreign bodies leaving a trail against the smooth muscle of her throat. The pills dropped through the sphincter at her stomach's north pole, before falling into the slosh of bile at the organ's center. The pill's cheap coating began to slough off, and the chemical promise of sleeplessness released itself into Rose's body.

*   *   *

At the playground mommies flanked the edges of the sand pit, their eyes flitting from their children and their cell phones. A few were sitting together, chatting politely. If any of them noticed Rose and Penny's arrival beneath their wide sunglasses, their faces did not betray it. Rose found an empty bench and directed Pen to go play. Penny had taken a direct route to another girl child digging in the sand on the other side of their play park. She picked up one of the shovels lying next to the girl and immediately began digging. The other child did not seem to notice, but Rose lifted her hand to signal to the woman she supposed was her mother. Playground sign language.
Is that okay?

The woman lifted her hand back with a nod.

It's okay.

Rose ironed her eyes with the heels of her palms … pushing the sleepiness out of them. The tyranny of sleep pressed down upon her. How much longer could she go? Even with chemical help she didn't think she could continue to function much longer. Solution or no, sooner or later Rose would have to sleep.

And the nightmares and Hugo would be waiting.

The squeal of the swings was hypnotic. Rising and falling in a squeaky “ee-oo-ee-oo.” Rose's eyes found Penny. She was playing well with the other girl, having co-opted her bucket now.

Next time, I'll have to remember to bring sand toys. I always forget.

Rose watched the children on the swings pumping their legs.
Ee-oo-ee-oo.

ee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo

In the distant corner of the playground, a smatter of sand tumbled from its perch atop a tower. Rose sensed the movement in her periphery, the subtle shift in the landscape of the park.

ee-oo-ee-oo

Next to the mound, two blond boys of about three were fighting. Twins. Dressed identically. They were arguing, bickering over taking turns on one of the spring-mounted bouncies. A grinning elephant. Both toddlers wanted to be astride it (
that one!
), even though there was another bouncy creature (a tiger) right next to it. The boys pulled at each other's shirts and ripped each other's hands off of the elephant. Their voices carried over the playground, the high-pitched tone children get before tipping into tears.
Where is their mother?
Rose wondered.
She
would have stepped in by now. She remembered Zackie and Addy at about that age … she would never have let a spat between them like the one she was witnessing go on for so long without intervening.

A sudden spray of sand shot up behind the twins. Loosed from the ground.

Rose squinted.
Was someone throwing sand?
But then there was another spray, followed by another. A volley of grit landed in one of the twins' faces and he began to cry, his eyes squeezed shut, face red. His brother looked around, guilty, though he had not thrown the sand. Rose followed his gaze … the patch of playground containing the eroding mounds was vibrating. Shifting oddly. Rose stood to get a better look. Something was moving about under the sand, digging itself up from beneath. Rose could see its dark green body wending its way toward the sunlight, sand catching on its scales.

The twin who was not crying took a step toward the creature moving under the sand. Curious.

It was then that Blindhead exploded from the ground, sending a blast of dirt and grit into the air.

The beast pulled its muscled bulk out of the ground, rearing back and up until it could support the heft of its three sightless heads. They loomed over the children, the topmost parallel to the play structures. The heads waved out over the playground, independent of one another, their wire-thin tongues flickering out behind jagged fangs. Rose could see the reflection of the playground on the too-taut skin of their eyeless skulls—children standing frozen on redwood bridges and platforms. Shocked into silence by the sudden appearance of a monster in their midst.