Imperfect Birds (15 page)

“Mom, don’t be like that.”

“Don’t tell me not to be like that. Be home at one. Rae needs you at church tomorrow afternoon, for the ceremony.”

“I have a lesson with Robert at two.”

“That works—Rae and I don’t need you until four. I love you, baby.”

Long pause, then a sigh, and, “Love you, too, Mom.”

S
he did not actually know Jack Herman at all, nor was she with Jody and Alice, at Vivian’s house, eating grilled cheese. She was in the phone booth at the gas station. But she was definitely feeling terrible about the boy’s death. How could you not? The thing was, you knew your luck would give out if you kept driving too fast when you were drunk, let alone on Ecstasy, too, and the kids who’d known him said he always drove fast with the stereo blasting. So the other thing was, if you were tripping, like on E, but you
had
to drive for some reason, you should go extra slow, and totally focus.

She was with some girls from school whom she had come upon at the Parkade, three blonde girls you always saw together, who had a reputation for being stoners. Jody was with Claude at the Fillmore, Alice was trying to break up with Ryan because there was a new guy she liked. The blonde girls were fairly popular, not Homecoming level, but still bottom of the top tier.

They ended up hanging with some guys in the dark at the top of the trail that meandered through the countryside, the bay and laurel, live oak and manzanita, where people ran and walked their dogs during the day. One girl had brought her dog, Brownie, a beagle, and someone else had brought a pint of vodka, which they were mixing with cranberry juice and lime juice from a plastic lime. The girls had perfect bodies, like Alice, not so tall as Jody or her own horrible freakish self; two of them took AP classes, two had their own cars. They all had it going on, way on, way more than Rosie ever would, but the best thing was that it was fun to talk to them—she made them laugh and they seemed to like her. All the boys smoked, so the girls sat apart from them and talked about books and guys and life, while chewing on the ends of grass, or their hair. The girls listened to Rosie with respect as she spoke, maybe because she was going to be a senior. She felt beautiful in the moonlight. It illuminated the foothills below, which looked like a theater backdrop, each one higher than the one in front, until they stopped at the summit of Mount Tamalpais, bowing before the sleeping lady.

She had to walk the two miles home, tipsy, maybe drunk, and it sobered her up. Things would be fine as long as she didn’t get stopped by the cops. There was a town-wide midnight curfew for teenagers, which was a joke, since they never brought anyone in unless they thought the person was holding. Rosie wasn’t, except for a roach; actually, a pretty good-sized roach. They had smoked some killer dope, and the moon lit the town like a Christmas diorama. The cops were a joke. They wanted all the kids to like them, so when they busted up a party because the music was too loud and neighbors were complaining, they mostly shooed people out in a mellow and groovy way. Sometimes the parents were at home, sometimes the parents had even bought for their kids, so they wouldn’t be getting drunk somewhere else, but the parents always said innocently that they thought the kids were just listening to music, even though everything smelled like a concert at the Fillmore. If the cops did stop Rosie, she could probably talk her way out of it. She had used the arsenal of products she always kept near, Visine, breath mints, and moist towelettes.

A
siren roared in the night, waking Elizabeth, and her mind began to spin with scenes of Rosie being killed, by rapists, murderers, burnouts who milled around town all night, sleeping at dawn in the brush, but mostly with a vision of every parent’s nightmare: a bloody car crash, Rosie going up in flames when the engine exploded, or even dead but untouched after hitting her head in that one lethal spot, like the father in
A Death in the Family
, with only the small blue mark on his chin. The second siren was the last straw, and Elizabeth ran to the phone to call Rosie at Vivian’s house. She was actually gasping for breath as she dialed, digging the fingernails of her free hand into the back of her phone hand as hard as she could to contain herself, when the front door opened. It was almost two.

“Jesus!” Elizabeth shouted, slamming down the phone.

“Hi, Mommy,” Rosie said, stepping through the front door, and Elizabeth whipped around at the sound of her voice, so crazy with anxiety and adrenaline that she simultaneously wanted to sob with relief and tear out chunks of her child’s hair.

Rosie comforted her the best she could. She talked her mother into going into the bathroom with her, where she peed while Elizabeth leaned against the sink. Rosie believed this would create a sense of intimacy. “Let me brush my teeth, Mama,” she said, easing her mother over to the side. She brushed her teeth and tongue, and then washed her face with warm water, and looked up at their reflections in the mirror as she dried her face with the towel Elizabeth handed her. Her mother looked grim, but not majorly so—more like she was pretending to look grim and stern. Rosie studied the pterygium creeping over her iris. “Is this getting bigger?” she asked with false alarm, and Elizabeth’s face fell with worry.

J
ames was furious with Elizabeth in the morning for not grounding Rosie, although he had been asleep when she got home.

“She was an hour late,” James said. “She missed curfew. It’s black-and-white.”

“But it was a special case, what with the accident.”

“She doesn’t get to come home at all hours. Period. We’ve talked about this,” he reminded her. “Teenagers need to feel a corral around them. They’re not safe without one.”

Elizabeth knew this was true.

“But it was a crazy night for the kids,” she said without much conviction. “We need to choose our battles. I was glad she came home. You didn’t even wake up.”

“Because I wear earplugs. I choose not to let Rosie destroy my sleep.”

“Well, I don’t have that option—I’m her mom.”

“She says one thing and does another. She blows off curfew. She randomly announces she’s spending the night at the beach, instead of asking us if she can. And then what, she hitchhikes home? That’s your system. Did you ever think that maybe if Rosie keeps pulling the rug out from under you like this, it’s partly because you keep getting back on her rug?” Elizabeth nodded, so glad Rosie was safe in bed. But James went on. “Listen: Every time you draw the boundary way outside of what we’ve agreed on, she has to come back
that
much farther, to even meet us halfway.”

L
ank had arranged for a substitute so that he could take a mental health day, and he stopped by at nine to pick up James for an all-day hike at the water district lakes. Elizabeth made them cinnamon toast and ersatz mocha, with strong coffee, Rosie’s cocoa mix, and whipped cream. “These are all my favorite foods,” Lank said. He looked older. Elizabeth reached out to stroke his fair freckled cheek with the back of her hand.

“Is there a service?”

“Yes, on Sunday. At the Catholic church in Larkspur.”

“Oh, so the family is Catholic. Maybe that helps a little. Do you think?”

“Rae thinks so. And Rae is right about almost everything, eventually. Nothing can help these people today. But maybe in a year, they will have come through.”

They sat nursing their drinks. Lank took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. James called from the bedroom that he was almost ready. “I wish I had faith, Elizabeth,” Lank said. “I wish I were a Catholic or a Jew. Or Anabaptist. Or AA, or anything. I wish I believed Jack was still alive somewhere, being silly, cracking jokes. I wish I believed that he did not die in vain.” They sat in the comfortable silence of old friends. “I do believe in kitchens, though,” he said, looking up. “I believe they are holy ground.”

Elizabeth smiled. Lank burst out laughing.

“What?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by the shift in his demeanor. He laughed and laughed, and again had to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes. The soft red hair around his tonsure was sticking straight out on one side like a baby rooster. “You want to hear a joke Jack Herman told me once?” Elizabeth nodded, skeptical, and concerned for Lank’s mental state.

“There was a second-grader named Mike who could not do math for the life of him, no matter how many tutors or how much extra help his parents gave him. He was always just barely getting by or falling behind. So for third grade, his parents put him in the local Catholic school. Right away, he starts doing better—coming home right after school, doing his homework, and starting to pull ahead of his classmates. And when the first report card comes, he’s actually gotten an A. His mother says, ‘Mike, what was it? Was it the nuns? Was it all that structure?’ And he says, ’Nah. But on the first day of class, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew these people weren’t fooling around.’ ”

Lank and Elizabeth laughed so hard that he had to take off his glasses yet again to wipe his eyes and nose, and they sat that way, heads hung, until James came in, took a look at them, and not knowing what else to do, got a box of Kleenex, setting them both off again.

Rosie slept so late that at eleven Elizabeth poked her head into the room. Rascal was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Rosie sleep. Elizabeth sniffed the air, detecting the faintest whiff of alcohol. She came closer, bent in to smell Rosie’s breath, which she’d surreptitiously sniffed last night. It had smelled fresh. It smelled dry and musty this morning, and there was definitely the hint of alcohol in the air. Elizabeth realized with a start that it was coming out of Rosie’s skin. She reached to shake her awake, sickened by the memories of her parents’ own scent as they metabolized vodka from the night before, and in fact, by the memories of her and Andrew on mornings after, which for her had become pretty much all the time after Andrew’s death.

“Were you drinking last night?” she asked, shaking Rosie. “Wake up.”