Rosie (8 page)

In a few minutes Rae had driven them into the financial district. The girls ogled at the Transamerica Pyramid; Rae said, “Oops.” Elizabeth gritted her teeth but didn't say a thing, just stared out the window on her right.

“Don't worry.” Rae turned on Washington, drove to Kearny, to Portsmouth Square, and then turned left into a one-way street (going the wrong way, of course) and hastily backed away from the oncoming cars. Elizabeth felt rage welling up inside her.

“Shit. Okay.” Rae turned left onto Clay and drove down to Montgomery again.

“We're back in the goddamn financial district!” Elizabeth said.

The girls were hushed. If Elizabeth's mood went, the day would be shot.

“Shut up, Elizabeth, don't say another word.”

Elizabeth glowered.

Rae turned right on Montgomery, right again on Sacramento, past Kearny to Grant, where she had to turn right, because it was one-way.

“Fucking goddamn A, Rae! We're in Chinatown!” Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest, hardly blinking, clenching her teeth.

Rae turned right on Grant, and Elizabeth knew that they were headed back to the wired congestion of North Beach, but by this time she was not speaking to Rae; the rage had rushed past her stomach, up her spine, and it took all her concentration not to start pounding the dashboard or the windows.

Rae turned right on Columbus, Elizabeth now vibrating with anger, as Rae drove them back down to the financial district.

It is
No Exit.
Elizabeth could not believe it when, after a right on Washington, they were back at Portsmouth Square.

“This is like Pac-Man,” said Rosie, in awe.

Sharon was hardly breathing.

Rae's eyes were filling with tears.

“Rae,” Elizabeth said, as gently as possible. “You want to cross Kearny, then Grant, and then, when we get to Stockton, turn left. Okay?”

Rae nodded, teary and miserable.

“Shit,” said Elizabeth, looking away, then back to her friend, whose day it was to have been. “Tssss,” she said, sideways out of her mouth, smiling. “Some great shortcut.”

Rae followed Elizabeth's instructions, wiping at her eyes. Five minutes later they were at their destination, the Union Square garage.

Please pull for Rae's success, please in your heart wish her well. But as they cruised looking for a parking space on the third,
fourth, and fifth levels of the garage, Elizabeth swallowed another golf ball. And then Rae found a space, which she pulled into, one of many available on Level Five, with a big Cadillac on her side and a column five inches away from Elizabeth.

Rae heaved a sigh of relief, looked at Elizabeth, and got out of the car. Elizabeth stared dully at the column. The girls scrambled out on Rae's side, then looked in at Elizabeth, as did Rae. Elizabeth turned to them and asked wearily,
“Why
did you park so close to the column? I'm stuck.”

“Can't you climb over the stick shift? Sorry about that. Oh, God, I'm such an idiot. It's just that I'm so
nervous!”
She went to the back of the car.

Elizabeth felt very, very tired. She continued to look at the column and then, forcing herself, for all their sakes, to be a good sport, she finally climbed, cramped and awkward, over the stick shift, into Rae's seat, and then out the door.

The girls, holding hands, looked about ready to jump up and down. Rae, clutching her portfolio, looked orphaned and hunted.

After numerous pats and kisses, Rae headed toward the gallery on Post. The girls skipped alongside Elizabeth, pausing to find openings in the human traffic, gaping at the fattest women, the tiniest men, the drunks, hoods, punks, dudes, whores, and glamorous women. People turned to admire Elizabeth, tall, striking, regal, haughty—even famous, maybe.

Rosie and Sharon each bought a pencil from the legless pencil man who sat on a dolly in front of Macy's, the same man, or so it seemed, from whom Elizabeth had bought countless pencils twenty-five and more years ago, when her shiny black hair was in braids, a girl as skinny as Rosie but taller, in white gloves and camel's hair coat, headed for patty melts at Blum's, or the City of Paris Christmas tree, or the dentist at the 450 Sutter Building. It was coming back as they walked down Stockton, triggered by sounds and smells, voices, cable cars, sweat, perfume, sweets, cigars, sirens, gasoline, car horns, an accordion. When the girls were lost in the moving crowd for a moment, Elizabeth's heart stopped. There they were, seemingly oblivious to her, tiny but
growing so fast. She remembered the harsh and distressed way her mother rubbed at her face with a lipstick-streaked Kleenex smelling of Chanel, remembered how she hated being swabbed off with her mother's spit; how delighted, sentimental, and scared of the cable cars her mother was, mushy even, and panicked that Elizabeth would be crushed by one of them. “Rosie! Stay closer.” And the way her mother approached the escalators, as if she were leading Elizabeth through fire on a tightrope, stepping past the crack and the first step onto the second step as carefully as stepping over dog do because if your foot touched the crack, the escalator would suck you down, take you around on its treadmill until it spat you out, flat as a pancake with long vertical grooves running the length of your body, flat as a character in a cartoon who's been run over by a steamroller.

“Mama, let's go in a store. Okay?”

Macy's. The dreaded escalator. The girls, well-behaved, quiet, taking in the wealth, the blacks, the shimmers, hysterical on seeing girdles and bras. Elizabeth laughed at their silliness, and at a memory of her mother, tall and stout, grimly wrestling her way into a girdle, sucking in her breath as she pulled and tugged the formidable elastic encasement over each successive dune of fat on her thighs, hips, butt, and belly, until the girdle finally swallowed the highest roll at her waist and gave up with
a whoomph
of resignation, like a sea bass taking its last breath on a boat after one hell of a fight.

“Can I help you find something?” The smell of the girdle, the smell of her mother's lap when Elizabeth pressed her face against it.

“Mama.
Can she help you?”

“No. No, thank you.”

“Earth calling Elizabeth, come in, please.”

Elizabeth smiled. Sharon was embarrassed, shy, her pencil jammed up behind her top lip.

“I know what you wanted, Mama.”

“What.”

“A swim suit.”

“I don't want to buy it today.”

“How come? They're right over there.”

“I don't know, Rosie, I'm feeling fat these days; I need to exercise for a while before I wear a suit.”

“How come?”

“My legs—my thighs, anyway—look like shit.”

“What?”

“I don't want to buy a suit today, is all,”

The Look came across Rosie's face, blue eyes flashing fire, hands on hips, revving her head in stiff circles of scornful, indignant sarcasm. Oh, no, thought Elizabeth, why is she doing this to me now, here?

“Listen, listen,” she said.

“Don't you listen
me,”
said her daughter. People were turning to stare at this little girl, as tall as the rack of clothes she stood by, people were giving Elizabeth what she always thought of as the “Don't you feed her?” look.

“Rosie, I'm warning you....”

Rosie was sneering at her. Sharon had gone into the trance where she looked like Gilda Radner doing a young Christina Crawford, wide eyes not focused, tremors of burnt-out anxiety....

Oh, dear God, now Rosie has raised her eyebrows as far as they will go, while keeping her lids shut and her mouth puckered as if, a split second away from whistling, she has bitten down on a lemon; she learned the look from Mrs. Haas. What on earth is going on?

“I'm going to kill you, Rosie,” Elizabeth whispered.

Rosie felt the many eyes upon her. She wanted her mother to buy a suit, badly. She wanted her to
buy something,
she wanted Elizabeth to shell out some money. She shook her pencil at her angry mother and said, loud and clear, “Wull, why don't you ask the pencil man how
his
legs look?”

Elizabeth could not believe this was going on. Hot blood rushed to her face and she saw red.

“Let's go,” she said.

“Oh, no. Unh-unh. Why can't you just be happy that you don't have BLOODY STUMPS FOR LEGS?”

“What the
hell
has gotten into you? Come on, Sharon.”

Sharon was frozen. Elizabeth took her hand and began
to steer her toward the Stockton Street exit.

“You coming, Rosie?”

Rosie shook her head. Elizabeth led Sharon away. Sharon looked back, wide-eyed, over her shoulder at her transformed friend, who had now begun to tap her foot with impatience, holding her ground....

Five minutes later Rosie dashed past unfamiliar coats and legs, in a curving path between clothes racks and shoppers and cashier's booths, surrounded by a sea of strangers and alien smells: synthetics, perfumes, waists she didn't recognize, “Herman” characters everywhere she looked. Her heart was pounding in her throat, her mind raced faster than her legs; she'd never see her mother again, would be adopted by sinister freaks....

And then, after what felt like forever in a bad dream, she saw her mother and Sharon standing with their backs against the wall by the exit, smiling at her. Sharon waved. Elizabeth shook her head.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“I just wanted you to buy a suit.”

“Why? Why did it matter so much?”

Rosie shrugged, embarrassed and defiant. Elizabeth did not understand.

Outside in the fresh air, they heaved a collective sigh of relief. Stockton Street was crawling with tourists and natives. Rae had told them to meet her in forty-five minutes in Union Square.

“You guys want an ice-cream cone?”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah.” So they headed down Stockton toward Market Street; all was right with the world again. The girls held hands, walked ahead of Elizabeth, whispering, and Elizabeth took in the busy sights and sounds and smells. Head held high, she observed the human traffic with some disdain; many people looked half destroyed by one thing or another. When elegant couples passed, arm in arm, pangs of isolation went through her stomach. As she and the girls stood waiting for the light to change at O'Farrell, behind a cowboy of perhaps thirty, crouched in the gutter waiting to push his Tonka fire truck across the street, pangs of identification went through her—the malignant prophecy. Matrons,
businessmen, businesswomen, punks, tourists, hippies, bums, teenagers, blacks, whites, orientals, children, babies, hookers, gathered together at this intersection.... How was everyone hanging on so well?

Elizabeth took one of Rosie's hands, one of Sharon's hands, and they walked to an ice-cream shop. Carrying cones on their way back to Macy's, they stopped at a flower stand and Elizabeth bought win-or-lose tea roses for Rae.

“Mama, I have a good idea,” Rosie whispered as they approached the pencil man. “Let's take the pencil man home and let him live in Daddy's old study! We could take
care
of him.”

“Don't be silly.”

“Pleeeze, Mama,” she wheedled. “We could push him on his cart to Rae's car....”

“Shhhhh!”

“Please, can we take him home?”

“Shhhhh. You make another scene and there's going to be trouble.”

Rosie stopped and handed her cone to Sharon as if she were removing her gloves for a duel.

“Rosie?”

Rosie ignored the edge in her mother's voice, strode purposefully to the old brown man with the mashed-in eye who sat on the dolly. Oh, good Christ, thought Elizabeth, don't let her...

“Hello,” said Rosie.

“Hello,” said the pencil man.

“I just wanted to tell you how well I think your jacket fits.”

He smiled, she smiled. That was all.

Rae was sniffling and teary when they met her. The gallery had taken her weavings.

The early June sun shone on Elizabeth's red toenails as she sat on the porch swing reading
My Antonia
for the second time, a cup of tea beside her. She had cleaned the house, worked in the garden for an hour, washed some sweaters, paid some bills. It had been a dreamy day, a day when she felt glad to be alone, glad to be the elegant, easygoing lady of leisure. She put her book down and went inside to call Rae, but no one answered and Elizabeth went back out to the porch, where she found Rae standing desolately on the doormat, staring into her chubby cupped hands as if they held something precious, and dying.

They looked at each other for a moment. Elizabeth craned her long neck forward and peeked into Rae's hands, which held nothing, and then straightened up to look at her.

“Hi,” said Elizabeth. “I was just trying to reach you.”

“Hi,” said Rae, and jammed her hands into the front pockets of her faded Levi's. “I'm bummed.”

“I gather.”

“I'm not having a day of power.”

“You gotta stop reading Castaneda.”

“It's my only amusement.”

“What's the matter?”

“Ohhhhh.”

“Is it late enough for a drink?”

Rae shrugged.

“Well, let's. We're the adults here. And Gordon brought some brandy over last night.”

“I just want to be with you.”

“Well. You've come to the right place. How about a hot toddy?”

“I don't know.”

Elizabeth led her into the kitchen and turned the flame on under the teakettle. “I'm going to have one,” she said.

“Okay, then. Make me one too. I hate to see you drinking alone.”

“What are you so depressed about?”

“Everything! I thought, ‘If only a gallery would show my work, then I'd be happy.' Well, they sold three of the weavings they took that day, and”—she threw up her hands—“I'm still all fucked up over Brian. Don't be mad at me.”

“I'm not mad at you.”

“And now that someone wants my work, I'm clutching. I've got weaver's block. I'm sick of San Francisco Bay and the ocean, it's too easy to make the Bay or the Pacific look beautiful; I'm sick of being hung up on Brian. I'm in a rut.”

Elizabeth poured two generous shots of brandy into clear glass mugs, cut two thin lemon cartwheels, and drizzled a teaspoon of honey into each cup.

“Ditch him.”

She placed a mug in front of Rae, who stared at it listlessly, sighed, and pushed the lemon slice around the amber liquid.

“Rae? His behavior is bad. He is not a good man.”

Rae groaned.

“I just don't think you have to hurt so much,” Elizabeth said.

“I would kill, practically, to have him out of my mind, you know, out of my heart.”

“Cut him off.”

“See, Elizabeth, everything is very black and white to you.
Because you're a purist. But I'm a funkie. Purists have all these principles and pride, they're all very secretive and tidy about their garbage. Well, funkies are laxer, funkies are compost heaps.”

“Funkies?” said Elizabeth. “Purists? Compost heaps? Do you really believe what you're saying?”

“Of course I do,” Rae replied. “Otherwise I would be saying something else. Hey, I thought you were sticking to beer and wine!”

“Don't change the subject. Back to the problems at hand.”

“Okay. Problem one: obsession with Brian, inability to say no when he calls, inability to summon pride, consequent feelings of insanity, a growing white emptiness in my chest, and a black consuming depression. Problem two: weaver's block, which right now feels like it's going to be permanent.”

They sat in the kitchen, nursing their drinks.

“Okay,” said Elizabeth. “Solution: Tell Brian it's over. Then get away, leave town. There is no problem so large it can't be run away from. Pack up your loom, your yarns, your whatever; get on a train, and go stay with someone in a new environment. Go stay with that friend in New Mexico, one thousand miles away. No Brian; new colors, new skies. New landscapes.”

Rae put her cup down and looked at Elizabeth. “God. Maybe you're—I have some money from the weavings the gallery's sold, enough to pay Hanuman for a couple of month's rent. I can send potholders to the boutiques from ... it's a brilliant idea. But wait ... wait. I can't go.”

“Why not?”

“I'll have
a breakdown
if I can't be near you and Rosie for two months.”

“No, you won't.”

“But what about
you?
How would you survive without
me?”

“Well, I did before.”

“I don't know.”

Elizabeth toyed with a long strand of hair and took a sip of toddy.

“I know it's a good idea. Maybe I should just
do
it. No, wait—oh, shit, I don't know. I wanted to go backpacking at the
end of June, but I could go next weekend—no, wait—okay. Wait a minute. I think it's the perfect solution. Would you really be okay without me?”

“Sure. I'd miss you. But we'd write.”

“You wouldn't just sit around drinking, pining for my company?”

“No.”

“Really? I worry about you, Elizabeth. Sometimes you drink too much.”

“I don't think you should worry about it.”

“I can't help it.”

“Try.”

After a moment, Rae said, “New Mexico's a great plan, now that I think of it. How come you're so good at solving everyone else's problems?”

“Everyone else! Everyone else is a list of about two.”

“I
love
you, Elizabeth.”

“I know.”

“I'd give you one of anything I have two of—you ask for it, you've got it: a kidney, an arm....” Elizabeth smiled. “Hey. Why don't you and I go backpacking next weekend?”

“Nooooo way.”

“You'd love it....”

“I'd hate it.”

“But you've never done it, right?”

Elizabeth looked bored.

“Now, see? This is a classic example of the green-eggs-and-ham syndrome. Remember? You keep saying, ‘I do not like them, Sam I Am, I do not like green eggs and ham,' but you've never tried them. And then, remember, at the end of the book, the little Dr. Seuss guy
does
like green eggs and ham, he says, ‘I do,
I like
them, Sam I Am.”‘

“Take a break....”

“‘I do,
I like green eggs and ham.'” Rae looked smug, palms outstretched. “Don't look at me like that.”

“How old did you say you were again?”

“It's so goddamn beautiful there in those mountains,” Rae went on. “It would make you believe in God, under the stars,
with the river right beside us—owls, food, we'll take rum and—”

“No.”

“See, Elizabeth? Your problem is that you never try anything new, you go around saying, ‘No, no, no.'”

“Rae?”

“Will you at least think about it?”

“No. I don't want to go backpacking.”

“God, you just say no to everything.”

“I'm saying no to this.”

Rae looked hurt. “Okay. Wait a minute then.” She got up to leave the kitchen.

“You want another drink?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Elizabeth filled the teakettle again, set it on the stove to boil.

Rae returned with a paperback book from the living room, sat back down at the table, and reached into her pocket for her cigarettes. She took one out, lit the filter end, and extinguished the stinking flame of burning plastic and paper by dipping it into her drink, all very nonchalantly, as if it were a routine variation on smoking.

Elizabeth looked at her in annoyance, sniffed disdainfully, went to the table to pick up Rae's mug, and said, “They're going to revoke your smoking privileges at the Home.”

Rae lit another one. “Okay, listen to this. Cavafy. Okay? One of the people you've foisted on me?” Elizabeth nodded, bored.

Rae looked up from the book. “Well?”

“No.”

“You're kidding.”

“I don't think Cavafy had backpacking in mind when he wrote it.”

“But that's not my point.”

“Rae. I'd be miserable company. I'd bring you down. I'd whine.”

“You'd love it. You think I would risk being stuck with the thing we call Elizabeth Ferguson if I thought you'd be in a bad mood? No way. It's all of four lousy miles.”

“I don't know.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

“Okay.”

Rae got up and went to hover over the teakettle, drumming her fingers on the enamel.

“Hey, Rae. You know what they say? ‘A watched pot never boils.'” Rae smiled, but continued staring at the teakettle.
“Get away from there.”

Rae sat back down.

“I think you've hit upon the perfect solution. I can go in a couple of weeks. A veritable brainstorm, Elizabeth.”

“Good.”

“I'm sort of hungry.”

“Well, help yourself to anything you can find.”

Rae thought about this for a minute.

“Is there any meat loaf?”

Elizabeth looked at Rae as if she were out of her mind. “Of course there isn't any meat loaf; why would there—”

“I was just
asking.
Geez, you don't have to jump all over me.”

“There's some salad from last night, undressed. And some green goddess dressing.”

“Uggggg.
Watership Down.”

“Well, see what you can find.”

“What do you think the odds are that you'll go backpacking with me?”

“About ten to one.”

“Oh, yeah? That's not so bad.”

Rae ambled over to the refrigerator, inspected its contents.

“Do you want me to make you a sandwich too while I'm at it?”

“No, thanks.”

“You're anorexic, Elizabeth. What are you, five-ten?” Elizabeth nodded. “And you weigh about one-thirty?” Elizabeth nodded again. “Well, I'm five-nine and you know what I weigh?” Elizabeth shook her head, pouring brandy into mugs. “One seventy-five. See,” she said, spreading mayonnaise on rye bread, “I eat like you drink. I don't drink as often or as much as you do, but you eat a lot less. We're both ‘One is too many and a dozen isn't enough.' Like, for instance, you'd never have just one drink, and I'd never have just one egg, I'd have a minimum of two eggs, or none at all. Okay, wait, on occasion I'll have three eggs, like in an omelette, say, but never just one....”

“Will you fucking shut up about eggs? Here's your drink.”

“I just feel so
happy
now, now that I'm going away.”

Elizabeth sat down at the table with her drink and watched Rae make a liverwurst sandwich, which she brought to the table, uncut, and held for a minute, tenderly.

“I'm on the road to morbid obesity,” she announced cheerfully, taking a bite.

“Don't talk with your mouth full.”

“I'll tell you, Elizabeth. It's like—my life is like Chutes and Ladders. I move along, mosey along working hard, trying to find romantic love, blah blah blah, small advances, small setbacks. Then I luck out, get to go up a ladder twenty steps—like today, for instance, when I was so down in the dumps and you gave me a pep talk, some sense of direction, hope, reassurance, and I'm totally happy now. I've got you, I've got my toddy and my liverwurst sandwich, I have a plan to end this self-destructive cycle of Brianville—right? I'm twenty steps up from where I was. But then there'll be something, some new small setback, and”—a long whistle, descendant in pitch—“down the chute, fourteen steps backward. At which point it's hard to get up again.”

Elizabeth exhaled loudly. “But you keep trying. Rae. You take risks.”

“And lose.”

“Sometimes. But would you trade your life and mind for anybody else's?”

Rae shook her head. “Would you?”

“Yes, if I could still have Rosie.”

“You would? With your mind?”

“I don't know. Doesn't seem to me that I—uh, make the most of this allegedly excellent mind. It's all addled. My dad used to say ‘crab salad' about someone's addled mind.”

“Crab salad?”

“Yeah. He'd tap his head with his forefinger, or do a spiral with his finger, the ‘cuckoo' gesture, and say, ‘Crab salad.'”

“Hah!”

“There are all these veils covering my mind, old scar tissue and whatnot. And drinking adds more veils, but it also makes me care less. And hurt less. And think less. About all the things I could be doing with this brain. I...” She held out her hands, palms up. “There's something great and useful I could be doing, and that I don't know what it is hangs over me like some major errand I know I'm meant to do.”

“It's a rut....”

“No, it's a trench, and all the enemy fire is of my own making. I shoot myself down even before I've gotten my head up to ground level for a good look.”

Rae looked about to cry. Elizabeth glanced away, pulling at a strand of hair, black hair, in a daze.

Rae got up from the table and came around to her, pressed her thumbs into the hard muscles of Elizabeth's neck and back. Elizabeth let her head drop into her chest; it felt like a cannonball. She purred as Rae pressed hard, in a circular motion.

“You don't want to write.”

“No.”

“You don't want to cook.”