Imperfect Birds (27 page)

She found herself thinking about Robert Tobias. Was it even possible that Rosie had something going on with him? Why else would she have been calling him like that and hanging up, then speaking in such a nervous baby-doll voice? Elizabeth remembered the wired, obsessed hell of being the girl who called the boy a dozen times and hung up. She saw Rosie in those tiny tight clothes she wore for tennis all summer, those breasts barely contained in sports bras and halter tops. It came back to her now, how Rosie showed off for Robert on the court, sitting so close in the grass afterward. Trying to pay attention to the meeting’s speaker, who was really funny, she imagined Rosie flirting with Robert, and him looking at her with hard eyes. Even the grumpy guy was laughing about how when the lady speaking had a few drinks she went from being dark and runty to feeling tall and Swedish. But Elizabeth’s mind kept jumping to Robert. Surely he would not risk losing it all—his wife, his children, his job, his benefits, his future—to take advantage of Rosie’s schoolgirl interest in him.

But then again, it was the oldest story told. A lovely girl had always been the prize.

The speaker said something that James would have liked, and Elizabeth wrote it on the back of her checkbook. Its acronym was LOVE: letting others
voluntarily
evolve. Very kicky. But what about when the person was your child, making bad choices? How could you trust life with your own kid, when you knew how unforgiving and capricious life could be? What was so wrong about wanting your gifted kid to ace her classes, get a good scholarship, go on to do great things in the world? Let alone survive adolescence, without brain damage, or paraplegia, or AIDS?

R
ae’s knees were bothering her, so she and Elizabeth walked only a couple of miles on the old fire road behind the baseball field by White’s Hill.

Scattered like confetti in the tall golden grass were tiny salmon-colored stars, almost like taffeta ruffs for circus dogs, surrounding magenta petals, with bright yellow centers—“So much crammed into one teeny flower,” Elizabeth said, laughing. The air was dotted with butterflies, white and yellow and cheap knockoff monarchs; butterflies were wind energy made visible. And sticky monkey flowers were everywhere this time of year, even growing out of the craggiest rocks near the road, where all the renegade flowers and succulents hung out.

The rally they were going to was to support Marin’s low-cost housing, minimal as it was, and even that threatened by developers who wanted to run out the poor and retired, and install nice malls and apartments. Not many people turned out, maybe a hundred or so, mostly from the low-cost housing at the retired Air Force base in Novato. But two county supervisors showed up and spoke, rousing the crowd, and Maria Muldaur led the crowd in a shimmying rendition of “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Most wonderful of all were four men from Darfur, who’d gotten the dates mixed up—their big rally here was next week, and many people who stood near them promised to attend, including Rae. The men looked tired and displaced, wearing ceremonial clothes—fur loincloths tied across their blue jeans, over their rumps; metal headdresses, adorned with hawk or eagle feathers, that looked like a cross between Julius Caesar and football helmets—but they stayed to lend their support, doing a Darfur dance to the old civil rights song.

T
he morning school began, Jody called to let Rosie know she was thinking of her and to say she wasn’t necessarily coming back right away. She could not bear to be away from Claude, she said. If her parents came after her, with no legal right to do so, she and Claude would go hide out in Mexico, one mile away.

“What about your life here?” Rosie wailed. “What about school? What about us?”

“I’ll see you whenever I can,” Jody cried. “Please try to understand.” She planned to get her GED at the local junior college. She might split her time in two places, San Diego and Landsdale. She might get married. They wanted children.

“Oh, Jo, you’re so young. This is going to take you down.”

“I was going down again anyway, not getting anywhere, just treading water up there. At least now I have company.”

“But what about me? Alice and I were your twoest—I mean, your two truest pals.”

“I love you forever, but you know what I mean. Claude is my beloved.”

Getting ready for school, which meant choosing just the right torn jeans, a light blue camisole over a lavender tank top, and a red bra whose straps showed, Rosie spiraled down into mad jealousy. Jody was someone in a movie, she was someone’s comfort. The man she loved might end up broken, but he’d always have a beautiful girl’s love to protect him. The thought of a child living on was a kind of immortality. It was like going from pimply, clueless, trivial, to being a Rilke poem:

“I know that there is room in me for a huge and timeless life.” Rilke must not have been in high school when he wrote this.

She told Jody she’d send money if she got stuck, and hung up. She put on makeup, a light coat of foundation, kohl under her eyes, sugar-pink gloss.

She couldn’t eat breakfast. Her parents were at the table with coffee, reading the paper. James was shaking Red Rooster hot sauce onto his scrambled eggs, and her mother asked if she had everything she needed, like she was a child. “Come give me a kiss,” she said, like Rosie was about to go off to kindergarten. Rosie bent in, and kissed her mother behind an ear.

“Pew,” Elizabeth said. “Your hair smells like smoke!”

“Thanks. I was with people last night who were smoking. Sometimes I’m in places where people are smoking dope, but I’m definitely trying to stay off it now. I’ll be able to give you clean urine soon.”

“Honey, look,” said Elizabeth, “if you can avoid smoking dope and cigarettes, and don’t start sneaking out all the time, we can do this on our own, as a family, without having to get out the big guns, like therapists, or outpatient rehab.”

James looked over the top of his paper, over those old-man reading glasses.

“I know! God, Mommy! How many times do you have to tell me?” Rosie frowned at James as if he had been eavesdropping, slammed out the door, and stormed off to school on foot.

S
enior year meant you were royalty in the muscly shuffle of the corridors, amid the voices; the clanging, banging, reverberating locker doors; the announcements to which no one, not even the teachers, listened; and the odor—Stephen King ghost smells of old meals from the lunchroom, ancient sour milk, and chalk, and over the B.O. the boys’ body wash that made them smell like clean wet dogs, and the girls’ delicious fruity shampoo, and the toxic locker odors of food death that the janitors could not eradicate over the summer.

She met up with Alice near the glass trophy cases. Alice wore a long, skinny knit skirt with a baby-sized camisole of saffron silk. Her hair was gathered in four braids secured with shells and bows. She was bohemian beautiful, but not like the popular girls who were all thin and gorgeous, like models in expensive almost identical clothes. Rosie told her about Jody’s call that morning, and Alice covered her face with her hands and said she was going to cry, although she didn’t. They had ten minutes till their first class, French 4, and Alice had to run to the bathroom. “Come with me, baby girl,” she begged, but Rosie said no, that she’d forgotten something.

“Meetcha back in five.” They hugged and kissed as if it could be months until they met again, clutching at each other and smoothing out each other’s perfect makeup. Rosie walked as fast as she could through the throng, herding herself through the multilegged beast of the student body to Robert’s science lab. She had meant to make herself wait until third period, when inorganic chemistry met. But it would be fun to poke her head into his classroom and see his reaction. She opened the door a few inches and peeked in partially like she’d seen women do in movies, as if they were behind a veil instead of a door. He was at his desk, talking to students: clean-shaven, hair trimmed, killer handsome in a white button-down dress shirt open at the neck. She smiled in at him, but he did not seem to see her at first. Only she knew how gorgeous his legs were, tan and soft with golden hair; only she knew what he smelled like close up, over the scent of the grass on which they sat so close, so often. Yet still he didn’t look up.

And when he did, he seemed puzzled, friendly but puzzled, like why was she there? He had almost no expression, then smiled distractedly and went back to talking to a pale pimply boy. She was stunned for a second, but then she got it, as the first bell rang, the five-minute prison yard warning. Oh, duh. She got it: He was trying to act natural, like she was any old student. She raced down the hall.

A
delle Marchaux’s French classroom was like an elegant garden compared with the smelly chaos of the hallways. Rosie took a seat beside Alice in the front row, to show honor and affection for her odd and petite teacher. Adelle had the same young-boy hairdo as always, poorly cut, the elf liquid eyeliner, poorly applied, pointy ears, tiny arms, loose and flowing clothes.
Bonjour bonjour bonjour
flew, all of the kids were seniors, all almost fluent. Adelle talked to each student, charming as could be, asking them about their summers, their health, their parents, in French. She spoke and clutched at herself and grabbed at the air, then pouted. It was such a part of being or speaking French, that pout. Alice had put it exactly right last year, explaining to Elizabeth why they loved this odd woman so—“She’s psycho, in a good way, like us. She’s a true person.”

Rosie gazed off; the beautiful French sounded faraway and romantic, like Robert on the beach that first night, on the court, the grass, shoulders skimming. “Rosie,” Alice hissed, and Rosie tried to snap back to reality.

God, let it be that Robert was playing it cool, only feigning the casual stance toward her. Let him love her. They wouldn’t even ever need to touch—simply love each other, that would be enough.
“Mademoiselle!”
Adelle was calling.
“Concentre!”
Rosie heard Alice hiss again.