When Rex finished his list and his children left his bedroom, he noticed a warm wet puddle where Willow had been sitting. Rex recalled that parenting books said something about this too. How loss of bladder control was common for children who were feeling like they had lost control in other arenas of their lives. It was something Rex could understand. Understand and solve with more books, more structure. Rex understood how Willow had lost control of lots of things sitting on that bed. Her bladder and her heart. Her heart that was splitting in two.
But the parenting books didn’t say anything about a six-year-old with a heart torn in half like Willow’s. With a heart already taken by her mother. The parenting books didn’t tell Rex how to snatch up pieces of her heart before it was lost. And Rosie didn’t have to read any books to know to grab all the pieces of her daughter’s heart that she could right there in that bedroom. Because in every moment, happy, sad and in-between, it was Rosie’s nature to do just that. To take Willow’s heart and keep it next to her heart all the time.
30
Willow’s mother winked when she told them she would pick them up from school even though it was Dad’s night. “I want to make up for some lost time with my noodles,” she said as she waved goodbye through the window.
The image of another night at Mom’s was the only thing getting Willow through the day at Robert Kansas Elementary School. She counted down the hours until she would be at Mom’s again. And she couldn’t help but smile a full red-lipped smile when she met Asher at the pickup circle and took position on the curb with her word search to wait for Mom. Willow watched Amy and then Sarah and then Greg and then Erin and then Annelise hop into the back seat of their parents’ cars while she and her brother waited and waited. Asher was occupied with an overflowing anthill while Willow was half-attuned to her word searches and half kept an eye on the entrance to the pickup circle. But when Asher reached boredom and sat down next to his sister with his chin in his palms and his elbows on his lap, Willow started to worry. And her tummy started to turn. And her bladder started to tickle. It was cold and it was getting still and dark.
“Please. Not again,” Willow said so quietly into the air. She could see a cloud of her breath on the tips of her lips as she said it.
But then Willow heard the familiar roar of her mother’s car approaching just as the tingle of anxiety in her belly was reaching her chest. She saw the big googly eyes on the front of Lili Von coming around the bend of the pickup circle. There she was! She knew Mom would be there. Willow couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from turning up as she stood up excitedly with her word search book in her mitten and waited for the car to gently stop right in front of her on the curb. But Rosie’s car continued speeding toward Willow and Asher, swerving wildly between opposite curbs. And without slowing down, the two front wheels leaped over the curb, and then came to a screeching, jerking stop. For a moment, everything was so still. The twilight, the school, the car, the street. Willow, Asher. Their eyes wide. Everything was still except for the pink-haired troll swinging back and forth from the rearview mirror.
Rosie lifted her heavy arm and waved slowly at her children with just her fingers through the windshield until they were ready to move. And Willow and Asher made their way into the back seat without any help with their backpacks, or kisses on their cheeks, or questions about their day. As her children got in the car, Rosie massaged her temples. And the eerie quiet around her endured until the grumble of the engine picked up again. Rosie silently put the car into motion and resumed the pinballing from curb to curb. And as Rosie turned out of the pickup circle, the sharp torque of the car thrust both Willow and Asher toward the right window. Their seat belts had barely enough time to tighten around their chests.
As Willow regained her position in her seat, she reached over and squeezed Asher’s hand. She squeezed it tightly as she looked straight out the windshield at the road ahead. Willow watched trees and cars and the yellow lines of the street pass as fear clawed its way up one rib and then the next and then the next, creeping its way toward her heart.
And when Asher, Willow and Rosie pulled into the driveway, Rosie dragged her shoes and walked into her house without a kiss or a hug or a story or a song or a plan for dinner. She pulled her feet up the front steps and let the door creak closed behind her.
Willow helped Asher with his backpack and walked into a quiet house. She poured a bowl of Lucky Charms for her brother and then herself, but neither of them said a word even though they were both thinking about crayon colors as they watched their tinted milk turn colors.
The same fear that was climbing up her ribs in the car, the same fear Mom had nearly vanquished at the beach with her kites and her stones, had its nails all the way inside Willow’s heart again. Could it all go away, Willow thought, if she were to just go upstairs and ask her mom to come down and cook dinner, or do the Time Warp, or paint the walls, or squish tomatoes, or put food coloring on her vanilla ice cream? It would all be so easy, Willow hoped, willed.
So, with her heart in the talons of fear, Willow walked up the stairs, concentrating on each foot on each step, and slowly made her way to her mother’s closed bedroom door. She pressed her ear against it before walking in. There were no sounds, but she could feel her mother breathing in there. Feel her mother slowly inhaling and exhaling. But when Willow entered, she walked into an empty quiet room with an unmade bed and a burning candle. She moved slowly through her mother’s room to the door of her closet. And when Willow peeked her head around that door, she found her mom.
She found her mom lying on the floor with one arm twisted unnaturally at the shoulder and her legs bent out. She found her mom with her underwear exposed and her bangs splayed messily across her forehead. She found her mother with her eyes shut and her chest rising and falling slowly but fully. Willow tried hard to swallow as fear tightened around her throat. She shook her body into motion and went to get two pillows from her mother’s bed. And then she placed one under her mother’s ear and one in the space on the floor next to her heavy head. And then Willow dragged the heavy comforter from the bed into the closet and tucked the edges underneath her mother’s sides.
She returned for Asher and the two of them watched TV together until Willow ushered him into his bed and tucked the sheets around him in a similar fashion. And then she returned to the floor of her mother’s closet and pressed he body into her mother’s until she could feel her mother’s heart beating against her. Willow let herself drift into sleep, but could not ignore for one more second the fear that was swaying back and forth.
31
Four Years Ago
Although it was Rex who first vocalized the desire, the need, for the divorce, Rex was crushed when Rosie moved out of their home. His heart broke when he watched her toss her dresses into a cardboard box labeled “clothes.” Even though she did it without folding them. And Rex’s heart broke when Rosie sprinkled her paintbrushes into that same box. It broke when he watched her butt swaying as she pushed that cardboard box into the back seat of her bizarre blue car. It broke when he watched that car drive away, and Rosie waved out the window with her left knee peeking out.
And it broke all over again when he turned around to his home that had now become just a house. It broke when he realized that without Rosie’s paintings, he was left with bare walls. And that without Rosie’s record collection, he was left with a quiet home. And that without Rosie, he was less.
It was almost as if Rosie took all of Rex’s good with her when she moved out of their house. Because all this time, without Rex knowing it, Rosie had been on one end of a seesaw holding down a boulder. She was sitting there, thus enabling Rex to soar. But when Rosie got up off that seesaw, Rex hit the ground so hard. He hit the ground so hard he didn’t know if he would be able to get back up.
Rex called his old friend Roy as he sat at the foot of his now-empty bed. “Remember how I told you Rosie would be trouble?
” he said. “I think I’m the one in trouble now.”
And Rex was right because without Rosie, Rex hardened. His shoulders pushed up toward his ears. His eyebrows furrowed and his upper lip crinkled. His bottom teeth twisted and his jaw jutted out. He chewed his Bubblicious gum so hard that his temples flared.
All this heartbreak, all this loss, all this sadness, all this anger began oozing out of him as he writhed around on the ground. On the ground and in pain without Rosie. It oozed out of him and enveloped him in a dark and stormy cloud.
Anyone, everyone, could see it from a mile away. Especially Willow.
But Rex knew of nothing better than to sink into the parenting books and proven coping mechanisms. “Be big and strong,” the books told him. Big and strong he could do. Always. “Your children will be feeling a loss of control and structure,” he read. “You need to restore structure for them, even if artificially,” the book said. And Rex complied.
The next morning when he woke up, Rex taped a to-do list of morning activities on his daughter’s and then his son’s doors. It included teeth brushing and face washing. Made beds and folded pajamas. Brushed hair and tidy outfits. Things all children could do. Rex stared at the space on the page at the bottom of the list. “Family Breakfast,” he added. He stared for another moment before reversing his pencil and erasing the word family. But the grooves in the page were still there. Staring right back at him.
Rex promptly retraced the indents with the tip of his pencil. They were still a family. Rex, Willow and Asher. A family. One part of one family. And a family of their own.
* * *
While Rex struggled after the separation, Rosie flourished. Because without having to sit on that seesaw, holding that boulder for her husband, Rosie felt free again. And the instant Rosie drove down the driveway and past the boring white fence Rex loved, and out of the quiet neighborhood he chose, Rosie felt empowered to take control of her life. To re-create a world she loved. Re-create a love where she could love. To re-create a world wherein she could love herself. And Willow. And Asher. Even if it were here in the quiet suburbs of Virginia.
She tossed all of the pill bottles she had sneakily acquired through the years into a drawer in the depths of her closet and wiggled her way out of Vicodin’s grip immediately.
The simultaneous release from her husband, that house and those white pills enabled Rosie to breathe again. So fully. So deeply. So happily.
Rex had inadvertently deprived Rosie of oxygen for so long. Rex wanted to live a life with rules. And a lot of them. He wanted bedtimes and classic books and the television off. He had read every parenting book in the library while Rosie was pregnant, and this was what they told him his children needed. Structure, regimen, consistency. And Rosie let Rex do all of these things while she silently disagreed.
She kept quiet in her belief that there wasn’t any one thing all children needed. She had trusted Rex and his parenting books enough to keep quiet about her belief that each child, each person, was different and, accordingly, needed different love. So Rosie just silently prepared to be a mother who would listen to and act upon individual quirks and preferences. She had done this so naturally with all people. But she would do it with particular kindness and attention for her children. She wanted them to have fun and feel free. To be themselves and be happy. And she wanted to be fun and free with them. She wanted to be herself and be happy with them. She wanted to be coloring and singing and making a mess. She wanted to be watching movies and listening to records. She wanted to be playing dress-up and putting on makeup. Yes, she wanted to be herself. With her children next to her. She wanted all of them soaking each other up all the time. She wanted all of them filling each other with love. So much real, specific, nuanced love. And she was manic with life and energy when she walked her children into her new cottage with ivy growing up the side and peeling wallpaper on every wall. She was so happy, and so reenergized.
She gushed with it. And she was so excited to swaddle her children with it.
So when her children came to see her new home for the first time, she filled the house with sugary snacks and Prince albums. And she allowed all those things to flow and flow indefinitely in her home. She allowed her children to see and do everything in that home. She showed them all of the things she loved. Elton John and Fleetwood Mac. Blazing Saddles and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Allowed them to sing and dance and feel free. She gave them glitter and face paint and makeup and clothes to dress up in. To feel silly in.
She hugged them and kissed them at every chance she got. She gave them so much love. So much of the most Rosie kind of love.
When Rosie noticed that her children’s bodies had become exhausted with fun, she invited them into her bed to love and hug and kiss them some more as they fell asleep. That night, there in Rosie’s bed, all twisted up and happy with her children, it occurred to Rosie that her divorce from Rex was the best thing that ever happened to her. She was herself again. Dancing, singing, laughing, making art and, most importantly, loving her children again. Loving them wholly. In her heart and in her head. In her bones. She could feel it moving through her. And after many years without any of that, she was so happy to have it back.
But as Rosie’s eyelids fell heavy and she drifted off to sleep, she wondered if these feelings could endure. Because even Rosie knew that she was still just a ballerina pirouetting across the stage. Everyone loved to see her dance. But when she got offstage, her feet were covered in blisters. And no matter how much Rosie loved to dance, those blisters hurt. They hurt so much she might eventually have to stop dancing.
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When Rosie picked Willow and Asher up from their father’s house, she didn’t even get out of the car to greet them with hugs and kisses. There was no music playing and the windows were locked shut. Willow had to tug on the car door twice to get it to close without Mom’s help.
When Willow felt the car roll over the asphalt, the claws of fear dug deeper into Willow’s heart. Again. And as Willow looked out the window and out toward the dusting of snow on the road, she put her hand over her brother’s in the quiet back seat of Lili Von. Again.
When Willow and Asher got to their mom’s house, they asked if they could play outside even though it was cold out. And they were ushered out to the driveway by a listless and lipstickless woman who barely resembled their mother. Willow wiped her red lipstick off with the bottom of her T-shirt as soon as she noticed her mother’s bare lips. And then Rosie dragged a bucket of chalk out of the front closet and dumped the contents at her children’s feet on the cold asphalt.
“Why don’t you draw something for Mom?” Rosie mumbled as she turned around to shuffle back into the house. The sounds of her mother’s shoes scraping against the ground grated against Willow’s ears and broke her heart. Her mother used to float. But this woman, dragging her feet like that, didn’t look anything like her mother. Willow watched a stranger in a bathrobe make her way into her home one slow and labored step at a time.
By the time Willow had turned her attention toward the blacktop, Asher already had blue chalk all over his face and hands. Willow crouched down, picked up a purple piece of chalk and started writing out her name in big rounded letters. As she pulled the chalk across the asphalt a purple powder swirled around her hand and landed delicately on the ground. Even though the cold was nibbling at her nose, Willow felt at peace outside with the chalk in her hand. The repetitive motions of drawing the lines of her name over and over again. The smooth vibration on her hand. The brisk air filling her lungs. The calmness around her.
But the distant sound of a car rumbling quickly toward her interrupted the quiet stillness. Willow snapped her head up and noticed that Asher had done the same. It was their father’s car roaring around the bend.
As Rex’s sleek black car came to a quick stop on top of Willow’s and Asher’s doodles, all of Willow’s organs started to rumble. This was
n’t right.
“Hi, Dad!” Asher said while Willow stood there frozen.
Go away! Get out! Get out of here! Willow willed with her mind as she stood rigidly in her place.
Rex got out of the car with determination between his eyebrows.
And then he said, “Get in.” And he said it firmly. With a shakiness in his words.
Asher tilted his head to the side in gentle perplexity. But Willow was already boiling. “No,” she yelled. She yelled it as she stomped her right foot down on the asphalt.
“Willow, get in the car. Asher, you too,” Rex insisted curtly.
Asher took a hesitant step toward the car but Willow refused.
“NO!” Willow screeched as she thrust her arms down by her sides and tightened her eyes. Everything bad was coursing through her voice and her body. Fear. Confusion. Anger. Sadness. Vulnerability. Protectiveness.
Smallness. So much smallness.
Without another pause, Rex scooped Asher up in his arms and yanked on Willow’s rigid shoulder. But Willow refused to move her feet.
“NO! NO!” she yelled as Rex dragged her rigid body by the arm. It was so visceral, holding her arm out stiff like that. But her scrawny body was no match for Rex’s strength. For Rex’s bigness. So much bigness.
“Mom! Mom!” Willow yelled and yelled. The words scratched against her throat and they thrust themselves into the cold air.
“Get off me!” Willow howled as she tried thrashing her way out of her father’s grip. “Get off me!” she howled again.
Rex had already forced his daughter into the back seat of the car and wrapped her in a seat belt. But Willow continued thrashing and yelling and yelling and thrashing. She tried ripping the seat belt her father had buckled around her straight from her chest. “Get off me!” she screeched again and again and again. She thrashed some more, and then yanked and yanked on the door handle that had been child-locked from the front seat.
Rosie Coloured Glasses Page 15
