Asher eked out three words between vibrating breaths so full of laughter.
“No.”
“Mowe.”
“Tickles.”
Rex pulled his hand away and scooped it under his son’s back as he turned to exit Willow’s room.
“Well, that’s for making all that racket in the middle of the night, ya little sneak.”
Rex gave his son one last tickle on his belly and then carried Asher out the door.
The last thing Willow saw before closing her eyes again was the shadow of her father kissing her brother as they dissolved into the darkness of the hallway. And the jealousy of it made her bones ache, right down to the core of them.
27
Four Years Ago
For over a year now, Rosie had been in a nearly catatonic state. There was the depression, and the Vicodin, and then some poisonous cocktail mix of the two. Rex couldn’t even tell the difference anymore.
For the first few months, Rex felt his call to duty. He prepared bottles of formula for Asher. He got Willow dressed in the mornings. He made sure Willow and Asher had toys to play with and movies to watch. He kissed his immobile wife goodbye every time he left the house, even though most days he didn’t even receive a smile in return. He rubbed Rosie’s back in bed until she fell asleep. But then the seesaw tipped. Rex grew weary. He was tired and exhausted and teeming with it. First at his wife. But then at himself. He knew this day would come all those years ago. He knew he and Rosie were mismatched. How they were always tugging at things within the other. Tugging at things the other didn’t want yanked at.
Where to live. Where to eat. When to speed up or slow down.
And as quickly as Rex inhaled Rosie all those years ago, he exhaled her back out. He could continue being a father, but could not continue being a husband. Especially not in these circumstances with those drugs involved. Especially after Rosie had refused help. He was certain of this. And once Rex Thorpe was certain of something, his mind could not be changed.
* * *
Rosie felt Rex slipping away, but she could not move to do anything about it. The depression, and then the Vicodin, and then some vicious mix of the two, had sunk its nails too deep into her. And the grip was tight in every second, every interaction and every cranny of her world.
And when the family went to Lanza Pizza one typical Tuesday evening for dinner, this fact had become so apparent, so blaring, so bright, so harsh, that neither Rex nor Rosie could ignore it anymore.
As soon as she walked through the door of her favorite pizza place, Rosie headed straight to the orange booth in the back and let her head fall into her arm. No request for crayons for doodling. No big cup for cream soda. No hug for John behind the counter. No quarters jingling in her pocket for the pinball machine.
And while Rosie twirled the pepper shaker with her middle finger and ignored her pizza, Willow scribbled away quietly and Asher pounded a meatball into the table. And her husband just sat there. Watching it all quietly unravel.
She remembered how in the early months of her depression, Rex would stare at her boldly. Urging her to move. Urging her to eat, to dance, to inhale, to do something. But tonight he just stared down at his pasta, defeated.
In that moment, Rosie knew her marriage was over.
And still, when Rosie got into the front passenger seat of the car on the way home from dinner, she wanted to turn to Rex and kiss him so deeply. But the thought of moving her neck was too overwhelming. So Rosie continued staring vacantly out the window. She listened to the tune of “Leather and Lace” fill the car and silently thought of the afternoon that Rex interrupted her dancing to this same song at Blooms Flower Shop. And then her memory silently shifted to the evening she and Rex first danced to “Leather and Lace” in their first apartment in New York City. To the moment she hung her tarnished golden locket on the wall as a tribute to just how much love was in that room. And then her thoughts silently shifted to how much love had to have been lost to get to where they were today.
Rosie was on the verge of full heartbreak when she heard Willow mumbling every other word to her and Rex’s song from the back seat. It warmed her breaking heart.
Rosie was simultaneously so full of love and so full of Vicodin as she listened to her daughter fumbling through the chorus. She was full of wanting to hug and kiss her daughter, but so unable to act. So full of wanting to kiss her husband, but so unable to move herself to do it.
A tear danced on the tightrope of her lower eyelid and dripped down her cheek. But neither Rex nor her children could see it. It was just Rosie up there on that island of her front seat. Rosie and her high and her one tear.
It was so simple and so true. Their marriage was over.
Rex reached over and put his hand in Rosie’s lap and continued to stare straight ahead at the snow-dusted road. He reached over and squeezed her leg, like he knew it too.
28
When Willow opened her eyes the next morning at her father’s house, she couldn’t help but think that she might never see her mother again. It had already been nearly a week. She ghosted through another day at Robert Kansas Elementary School. Through another afternoon at her father’s with word searches and her CD player and completing her checklists. Until, that evening, the doorbell rang and it was her mother. Rosie looked as lively and cool as ever in her slightly tattered knee-length floral-printed dress and red lipstick.
Asher burst past Willow and hugged his mother’s slender leg without even a pause.
“Hi, Mommy!” he cheered through a toothless smile.
Rosie stretched her arms out for her daughter with Asher still wrapped around her calf.
But Willow still had sadness, confusion, anger, hopelessness, frustration and longing in her heart and in her blood. And she was not ready to relinquish that sadness. That anger. That confusion. That hopelessness. That frustration. That longing. All of these terrible, terrible feelings that had been swirling around inside of Willow for the past week.
Willow stood there in the doorway of her father’s house trying to digest what it meant that her mother was standing right in front of her like nothing happened. Trying to decide how to feel. What to say. She wanted to untether the questions that were stuck in the back of her throat and just blurt them out. She wanted to ask so many things. So many big, important things.
Where were you?
Why did you leave us here?
Why didn’t you tell us?
Why did you fall asleep on the couch?
What were you trying to say to me up in the willow tree?
Where were my Pixy Stix when I needed them at school?
What are those things in your drawer you didn’t want me to find?
But the questions were stuck. And Willow was all quiet.
So Rosie stole the silence.
“Oh, get over here, you noodle,” Rosie said casually to her frozen daughter. And Rosie tilted her head to the side and looked straight at Willow’s eyes while she said it.
And so Willow did. She hugged her mother like she was asked but she did it with open eyes. And as Willow got into the back of her mother’s car, her fears stuck with her. Fears that she’d had somewhere deep down for some time but were now illuminated. Fears of a life without her mother in it. Fears of an existence where no one understood her. Fears of a life without her mother and her mother’s love. Fears that allowed her to rebound right back into Rosie’s love as the sounds of Prince flowed through the car.
But when her mother made a left turn instead of a right out of Rex’s street and Willow felt adventure coming, she couldn’t help but fill up with excitement. An excitement that allowed love to take over all those icky things inside of her. And as love took back over, as Rosie took back over, all the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the hopelessness, the frustration, the longing disappeared. It was so easy.
/> Willow looked over at Asher to see if he had similarly sensed adventure, but he was just clicking his feet together and watching his shoes light up.
Willow looked up at Rosie but could only see her mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked big and full. Now she knew for certain that an adventure was coming.
“Mom, where are we going?” Willow asked, trying to shout over the music.
And Rosie tilted the rearview mirror down to meet Willow’s eyes and get a clearer view of her children, prioritizing the view of her children’s faces over the view of the cars traveling on the road behind her.
“Yeah, Mom. Whewe awe we going?” Asher chimed in though he wasn’t sure why.
When Rosie rolled down the windows and sped up without an answer, both Asher and Willow lit up, certain they were in for an adventure. They bounced up and down in the back seat of Lili Von and let their mother bring them back into her life.
“Where are we going? Where are we going?” they chanted in staccato and in unison as the car sped up faster.
“Where are we going? Where are we going?” they continued, now pounding their palms on the leather seats to the beat of their own chant.
Rosie joined in on the same choppy cadence. “I know where we’re going. I know where we’re going.” She honked the horn to that same beat.
And then, through a deep belly giggle, Asher forced out a “TELLLLLLL USSSSSSS!” with a screeching volume and enduring breath that surprised everyone in the car.
Rosie stopped the car on the side of the road, turned around and opened her big brown eyes as wide as they could go.
“Hang on to your hats and jackets. We’re going to the beach.”
“HOORAY!” Willow and Asher rejoiced in unison out the open windows while they swallowed the wind and swayed their hands above their heads to “1999,” as the taste of salt took over the cold air.
And when they got to the edge of the sand, Rosie pulled her noisy blue car with its googly eyes to a stop. Willow and Asher were already out of the car and sprinting around the shoreline. They looked like two windup toys with their legs zipping around beneath their hips. Rex had wound them so tight with homework checks and chore requests while she was gone, and they were finally releasing it all right there on the sand of Sandbridge Beach.
Willow and Asher chased each other to the top of the dunes and fell into the sand with their arms extended. And when they saw their mother walking toward the water, they rolled down the dunes without caring about the sand in their hair and their shoes and their pants. They ran across the beach and caught up with Rosie. And Willow got right up next to her mother and watched her red toenails sink under the cold sand and reveal themselves again as they walked closer and closer to the water. Farther and farther from everything else.
Rosie handed Willow and Asher each a kite and made eye contact and smiled with each one of her children as she did. She instructed Willow and Asher to hold the spool in their right hands, the string in their left hand, and then to run, run, run as fast as they could. To go, go, go and feel free. Rosie jumped up and down and cheered after them as they ran down the empty beach.
And as Asher took off, the wind scooped effortlessly underneath his kite and lifted it right into the early twilight. But Willow’s little stumble caused her purple kite to dip straight into the sand. She threw her body down in frustration as she watched Asher’s kite wiggle around high in the sky. And then Willow looked up at her mother. Up at her mother, who was looking right back at her lovingly.
And soon Asher’s legs got tired, and after Willow buried her kite entirely underneath the sand, Rosie taught her children how to find the perfect skipping stones. “Flat and long,” she said as she rubbed her fingers across the smooth stone she took out of her bag.
Willow noticed that the way she caressed that stone was the same way she tickled Willow’s arms. Kindly. Gently. Deliberately. She noticed how her mother touched that stone, a thing without any feelings, a thing she just met, a thing that should mean nothing to her, in the same way that she touched her daughter.
But, even still, Willow walked down the beach as the cold water washed over her toes and back into the sea. She bent down, felt a stone, tossed it aside, took two steps, bent down, felt a stone, added it to her pile, took two more steps, bent down, felt a stone. She felt happy and calm in the monotony of it. Happy and calm in the presence of her mother again. But when she picked her head up to return to her mother and Asher, it was just sky and sand and ocean and her pile of rocks. No Asher. No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
She dropped all the smooth stones from her arm and ran back in the direction she had come from. She stumbled and splashed with every other step. And when she arrived at the parking lot, there was still no Mom. No Asher. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. Just more sky and sand and ocean.
Willow froze in her place. Toes buried in the cool sand. Hair twisting in the ocean breeze. Heart in a knot. A warm puddle formed below her and she stared at the empty beach.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
But after only a few long seconds, Asher and her mother emerged from behind the dune where they were gathering their own handfuls of stones. Willow and Rosie made eye contact. And for a second they were both frozen in their places in the sand. Frozen until Rosie saw Willow’s wet purple leggings and winked and skipped back toward the car.
When Rosie reemerged from the trunk, she was carrying an extra pair of purple leggings, a few logs and a brown paper bag full of s’mores fixings. And then, like magic, Willow was sitting in dry purple leggings in front of a roaring fire with a golden marshmallow drooping from a stick perfect for roasting. Rosie pulled out her secret s’more ingredient, bacon bits, and the three of them licked their sticky fingers as the sun dropped behind the horizon.
And then, when the purple twilight succumbed to near darkness, Willow looked up at her mother and her eyes said so plainly, Let’s go home.
And so they did. They drove straight home. To Rosie’s home that Willow had missed so much.
* * *
And as soon as Willow walked through the front door, she inhaled the smell of the walls. The patterns of the wallpaper. The glow of the lights strung around the windows. She felt safe and taken care of when she was back at Mom’s. And as soon as her mother kissed her on the mouth before they all walked upstairs, Willow felt all of the love that she had been missing wash over her again. She felt all of that unadulterated, concentrated, rejuvenating, specific, manic love. That kind of love that her mother, and only her mother, could give her.
And even though Willow washed the sand off her toes all alone in her bathtub, and Mom didn’t invite her into her bed, she still fell asleep almost happy. Happy because she was back at Mom’s. But not entirely happy because it was so eerily quiet all around. Not entirely happy because she was all alone in her bed with no idea what kind of pajamas Mom was wearing.
29
Four Years Ago
It was Rex’s idea to tell Willow and Asher about the divorce on a sunny Saturday morning. Rosie would have preferred to enjoy the day first—take a walk, have a picnic, skip stones. But Rex had already decided that he wouldn’t be sacrificing any more for Rosie. So, with Rosie already in tears, he invited Willow and Asher into their bedroom to talk.
And while his children sat quietly and attentively on the edge of his bed, Rex told Willow and Asher that he and Rosie were getting divorced. He took out his notepad and moved through the list of things the parenting books had told him to say. The list of things that would ensure his children properly understood and digested the news. He told them how they would still get to spend lots of time with their mom and with their dad. That they were still a family, just a different kind. That they s
till loved their children very much. How nothing would change that. How Mom had already found a new house to live in. How they would take turns visiting each house. How everything would be okay.
And when Rex finally turned his attention away from his yellow lined notebook paper, both of his children were completely still. Except for the meandering streams of tears flowing from their wet eyes. They were completely still until they got up from the edge of the bed and pressed themselves into Rosie’s arms. It was Rosie and Willow and Asher in one pile of tears and love and sadness. And it was Rex alone tearless with his notepad.
Willow was only six and Asher was only two, but Willow understood that things were changing. That everything was broken. That it was going to hurt. That it already did. As Rosie rubbed her children’s shaking backs, Rex caught Willow looking at him from over his soon-to-be ex-wife’s shoulder. There was something undaughterly in her eyes. Something beyond sadness or confusion. Something loveless. Something hateful as she stared, stacking an invisible wall of bricks around her father. Stacking and stacking until a big solid wall was formed. A big solid wall that kept her mother inside, and her father outside.
Rex knew intimately what it was like to be in a brick-protected world where only Rosie’s love existed. He knew it felt so good in there. But he also knew how awful it was when that love stopped. How hard it was to get out once those tall brick walls were created. He knew how inevitable it was for that love to end. But still, he watched his daughter stack, stack, stack those bricks. And it broke his heart.
Rosie eventually peeled her children off her, and Willow and Asher returned to the edge of the bed. Rex flipped to the next page of his notepad, scanned it and then began explaining the logistics of the arrangement. Mondays, Wednesdays and every other weekend with Dad. Tuesdays, Thursdays and the other weekends with Mom. And as Rex went down his list for Willow and Asher, Rosie, tears dripping from her eyes, continuously repeated, “We love you guys so much,” in the background. Willow nodded slowly while Asher looked down and twisted his toes around anxiously.
Rosie Coloured Glasses Page 14
