As soon as Willow took her spot behind the bus driver, she peeled the duct tape back on her seat and dug into the hole, willing a gift from her mother to be waiting in the depths of the green vinyl cave. And there it was. Two more Pixy Stix. Two tiny purple cylinders of relief. Two skinny purple tubes of love. Willow clutched the Pixy Stix close to her chest, and then placed them delicately into her backpack. She wanted them for recess. Yes, Pixy Stix and Prince and a word search and thoughts of Mom.
It would be okay.
And when Willow got to recess, she did what she always did. She ignored the rest of the kids in Robert Kansas Elementary School, running and swinging and playing and laughing. She ignored the rest of her classmates with the jungle gym and the slide and the soccer ball and the basketball hoop. She ignored the rest of her classmates with their friends. So many friends. Because the only things Willow ever had at recess were her CD player and her word search book. And it was usually enough to fill her head and heart. She had the sounds she loved. The sounds that reminded her of Mom’s house. The sounds that reminded her of dancing around and dressing up and feeling happy. The sounds of feeling loved. And with those headphones, she could drown out all the other sounds of the playground. She could drown out all the other sounds as she scanned the page of her word search book. She would stare at the mess of letters until a word emerged.
But today when Willow leaned her back against the brick exterior of Robert Kansas Elementary School with her legs stretched across the blacktop, she realized she didn’t have her word search book. It was left in the entranceway at Mom’s because she didn’t have any time to pack when Dad came to steal her like that. And when she put her big purple headphones on and pressed Play on her CD player, no sounds came out. She twisted the cord of her headphone. She pressed the play button over and over and over again. She jammed her finger into it and shook it around. She turned the silver contraption over and saw the red “low battery” light blinking menacingly. There weren’t going to be any sounds at all. Willow slammed the CD player onto the pavement. She slammed it again until it was in pieces. Until it was as shattered as she was.
Willow tore open her Pixy Stix and inhaled the purple crystals as her racing heart slammed against her chest. But she was still as sad and lonely and frustrated and confused as ever. There was a limit to what those Pixy Stix could do for a breaking and raging heart.
Willow closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. She loosened her jaw and tried to slow her mind. But she couldn’t drown out the sounds of laughter whooshing by. The swishing of feet through the grass. The screeching of a bouncy ball on the pavement. And then, so clearly and loudly above all the other sounds, there was the soft scraping of chalk against the blacktop. The click of the chalk hitting the hardened asphalt, and then grating against it.
And as soon as she heard that familiar sound, Willow was so viscerally taken back to the moment she was drawing big purple letters on Mom’s driveway yesterday. She could feel the granules on her fingertips. She could taste the powder on her tongue. And all of a sudden she was right back there on Mom’s driveway with Dad’s car roaring around the corner. With Dad pulling on her arm. With her seat belt pressing across her chest. With the car door refusing to open as she tried to get out. With Asher’s big wobbling tears. With her words scratching against her throat. With Mom running down the street. With Mom’s legs giving out on the street.
But before Willow could get her bearings, before she could come back to the reality that she was just sitting on the blacktop at school, Willow’s fear had clawed its way back up her throat and made its way out of her mouth.
“GET OFF ME!” Willow screamed at no one.
“GET OFF ME!” Willow screamed as she sat there with her eyes closed, tossing her body back and forth.
“MOMMMMYYYY,” she shrieked.
“MOMMMMYYYY,” she shrieked and shrieked and shrieked on the blacktop of Robert Kansas Elementary School.
Willow flinched aggressively when she felt a hand on her shoulder. But when she opened her eyes, it was Mrs. McAllister. And a group of fifth graders were standing in front of her with their hands over their mouths in shock. And there was a pool of urine in Willow’s purple leggings. As Mrs. McAllister walked Willow inside, the urine dripped down her legs and pooled around her socks. But all Willow could think about was getting to have pizza with Mom later that night. She ignored the warm urine and focused on her pizza. Yes, pizza would be good. It would be perfect. It would be like it always was. With soda and cheese teeth and cheese earrings and quarters for pinball.
And with thoughts of her evening with Mom, and when her legs had slipped into the fresh pair of purple leggings from her cubby, Willow’s heart slowed to the same steady tick, tick, tick of the second hand of the clock in Mrs. McAllister’s room. She watched as the second, and then minute, and then hour hand of the clocked moved to three forty. And when it did, Willow did the same thing she always did. Smiled a big full smile, went to get Asher from his classroom and waited for her mother at the pickup circle.
* * *
And for the first time Willow could remember, her mother and Lili Von were waiting right there as soon as she and Asher got outside. No waiting. No fear. Just Mom. Everything was already so, so much better.
And without an explanation of what happened outside the day prior, Rosie drove her children straight to Lanza Pizza after school. She even stayed on the proper side of the yellow lines in the road.
As they pushed through the glass door under the neon Pizza sign, Willow waved at John and Rosie shuffled to the counter to accept her crayons and three paper cups. But when Rosie walked over to the soda fountain and pressed her empty cup into the cream soda dispenser, nothing. Rosie aggressively whipped her head around to John behind the counter and sharply asked, “Where is it?”
“Oh, Rosie, we had to get rid of the cream soda. You were the only one who ever drank any!” John chuckled a bit with one hand over his overhanging belly, expecting an undoubtedly charming response from his most loyal patron.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Rosie came back combatively.
As Rosie’s words left her lips, Asher tugged on his mother’s long skirt, and then held his cupped hands out for a roll of quarters.
Rosie looked down at her son with an unfamiliar crinkle in her upper lip. “Asher, I don’t have any quarters. Go sit down.”
“Oh, man!” Asher said as he dropped his shoulders and walked away.
Rosie immediately turned her attention back to John. “Seriously though. You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
John just looked at her. Perplexed at the response. Perplexed at the anger behind it. At the grumbling in her voice. Perplexed that Rosie Collins, whom he had known for so many years as a beautiful orb of pleasure, was so unpleasant.
Rosie whipped her head around a second time, now toward her two children, who were perched on their knees and sliding the salt and pepper shakers across the orange tables.
She grabbed her son and then her daughter by the hand and pulled them out the door by their arms, leaving their paper cups empty and the pepper shaker on its side.
“Mommy needs her cream soda,” Rosie said as she walked her children hastily through the parking lot. Asher turned around and waved to John through the restaurant even though he was stumbling over his feet as Rosie dragged him across the asphalt.
That night, Willow and Asher got their pizza and Rosie got her cream soda. But it was a frozen cheese pizza with no toppings and they ate it while sitting on the couch in silence. And the cream soda was in cans, and they each sipped it quietly through a straw until Rosie announced that it was time for bed. And then Rosie dragged her feet up the stairs as her children followed behind her.
When they nearly reached the top of the staircase, Rosie lifted her knee lazily to complete the final step, but crumpled onto the carpet instead. Her small body hit the floor and h
er head followed quickly behind. And then Rosie’s narrow limbs were in a twisted pile on the floor. Willow and Asher stopped and stared down at their mother. Afraid to move. Afraid not to move. Afraid to talk. Afraid to stay quiet.
But then Rosie untied every morsel of tension in the air when she picked her head up and laughed. She laughed and laughed so hard that she snorted. And that snort caused Asher to laugh, which caused Willow to laugh. And, just like old times, Willow and Asher and Rosie were in one big jumble of laughing on the floor. And in between clutching her elated tummy filled with giggles, Willow noticed that Mom had tears running down her cheeks. And there wasn’t any way to tell whether these were happy tears or sad tears.
Willow fell asleep quickly that night to the resonant echoes of her mother’s laughter in her mind.
But when she woke up the next morning, Willow saw blue walls instead of pink ones. And a wicker dresser instead of the wooden one she and her mother had doodled all over with Sharpie markers. And it didn’t smell like Mom’s or sound like Mom’s either. Because it was her father’s. Her father’s sheets and blue walls and cold carpet. Willow turned out of bed and stumbled downstairs in a sleepy blur to find her father sitting sturdily by the kitchen table.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Rex said to his daughter without blinking.
Yeah, right! Willow thought but didn’t say as she poured herself a bowl of cereal.
Yeah, right that he was glad. He didn’t even like her. How could he be glad she was home? And what did he mean by home, anyway? This wasn’t home. Home was, would always be, at her mother’s.
As Willow listened to the sound of her own crunching cereal, she wondered whether anyone would mention the kidnappings. Whether anyone would explain to her why they were happening. How many times she would expect to be at Mom’s and end up at Dad’s.
She wondered whether she was safe anywhere.
Safe for sleeping or for living.
Willow decided not to wash out her cereal bowl and put it in the dishwasher before leaving the house for school.
She was sick of her father’s rules.
33
Six Months Ago
Rosie sat cross-legged on the floor of her closet with her head in her hands. She couldn’t believe this was happening again. That she was finding her thin fingers wrapped around the handle of that drawer more times than she could count in the last few months.
It had been so good for so long. Until the last few months, Rosie had been certain that she was categorically out of her depression. And she had celebrated. She swept her children right up in her tornado of love in lockstep. She swept them right up in her tornado of love and paint and toys. Of candy and soda. Of crayons and dancing and singing. Of silly noises and costumes. Of sneaking her children out of school to go to the candy store. Of spontaneous trips to the beach to watch the sun take over the sky. Or to sink out of it. Her tornado of waking up in the middle of the night to gaze into the stars and make up stories about them. Her tornado of snuggling up in matching pajamas before bed. Of hugging and kissing and kissing and hugging. Of everything. So, so much of everything. She loved it. Loved everything.
But as it always did with Rosie, everything quickly became too much. And even though Rosie so thoroughly, deeply, maddeningly enjoyed seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and feeling, and loving as deeply as she could, here she was, fingers around the handle of that drawer, exhausted of everything.
Her life had too much candy, and soda, and paint, and toys. Too much dancing and singing. Too much Willow and too much Asher. Too many trips to the beach and waking up in the middle of the night. Too much snuggling and hugging and hugging and snuggling.
She had done all she could to hold those feelings off in the last few months. And at first it was really just a moment or two. A pill here. A pill there. An extra minute in the bathroom with the water running as she sat on the lid of the toilet and wept. A couple more pills. An extra five minutes in the shower rinsing her tired skin while her children watched a movie downstairs. A couple more pills. An extra hour in bed after she heard the first sounds of her daughter rustling in the kitchen downstairs. But as of late, it was bigger. So much bigger.
She found herself so relieved when she would drop her children off at Rex’s on Sunday nights. She would return to her home, head still spinning, and do her best to let her bones sink into her couch. She needed to exhale after breathing all that life into her lungs. She needed to exhale so badly. But her body couldn’t rest. And neither could her mind. Another handful of pills for that too.
Rosie was panicked there on the floor of her closet. Panicked at the thought of sliding too far down into another valley. It caused more energy, more feelings, more things to swirl around in her tired body and mind.
Rosie unlocked her grip and rocked herself back and forth. But the small white pills in the top drawer of her closet began to chirp. Rosie plugged her ears and breathed in and out and in and out. But she could still hear those pills so readily offering up their embrace. And she could still feel the sadness in her belly or her throat or her mind creeping in. And it only made those pills shout louder. Louder and louder and louder and louder and louder. And louder.
Until she yanked that drawer open and slipped one, and then another, and then another white tablet into her mouth. She cried full tears as she did it again. She cried full tears because Rosie knew what this meant for her children.
She had become unfit to parent. Unable to craft little notes to leave in Willow’s lunch. Unable to swing Asher around by his arms. Unable to dance to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Unable to meet Willow in the tree house. Unable to stay awake during word searches or Blazing Saddles. She hated it every time she fell asleep too early. Every time she didn’t hug her children hello. Every time she didn’t cook them dinner. Every time she couldn’t allow the forces of her love to flow effortlessly out of her and wrap themselves around her children in the most beautiful perfect loving embrace.
But it all fell away as the tingling of the Vicodin slithered around in her blood.
34
All day long at Robert Kansas Elementary School, Willow dreaded returning to her father’s house. Because no matter how sad or detached her mother had been for the last couple months, Dad had been all of those things but worse for years. He had been cold and mean when she wanted to watch her TV show and he said she could only watch for fifteen minutes. He was cold and mean when he slammed that vase on the fireplace. He was cold and mean when he dangled her favorite purple socks over his head on Sundays for The Box. And he had been cold and mean when he turned her lights off without giving her a kiss good-night. And he had been cold and mean when he didn’t notice Willow standing in his bedroom while he slammed his naked body into that naked woman. He had been cold and mean when he took her from Mom’s without asking. He was cold and mean when she woke up this morning in her bed, and he hadn’t told her how she got there. He was cold and mean when she left for school this morning without a word about Mom.
And Willow dreaded how cold and mean he would be when she got back home from school today.
But when Willow and Asher walked into the kitchen late that afternoon after school, Dad was wearing an apron and had bowls, and spices, and vegetables, and all sorts of pots and pans waiting on the counter. They were scattered awkwardly across the marble counter.
Asher stopped abruptly at the newness of the scene at his father’s.
“Awe we gunna do SCIENCE?” he asked as his blue eyes darted around the countertop and his fingers swirled around the edges of the assorted bowls.
Rex stood in place in his unstained apron as his chef’s hat sank over his forehead. Rex raised one of his thick eyebrows at his son.
“What?” Asher said, giggling a little bit. “It looks like an expewiment!”
“I thought we’d try cooking tonight, kiddos,” Rex said as he forced a smile. �
��You know, have some fun. The farmer’s market just opened for spring and I got us some veggies to cook with. What do you think? Should we give it a whirl?”
Now he was looking at Willow. Straight at her. His look begging her to say okay. Begging her to try. To try cooking with her father. To try forgiving him for what was happening. To try loving him. Willow had given those same begging eyes to her father before. While riding on her bicycle. While attempting to kick a soccer ball. While swirling her blue-ish purple-ish milk around in her cereal bowl. She knew what it was like to want love so badly that your eyes asked for it. She looked up at her father and let her eyes reply, Okay, Dad.
So Willow slid into the apron draped over the counter and let her father tie the strings around her back. Because Willow saw the same thing her brother did. This was an experiment. An experiment in bringing Rosie’s kind of love into his home. An experiment in bringing the creative, exciting, free-flowing love Rosie brought to them all the time. An experiment designed to see if he could provide this kind of love for his children too. The kind of love he knew they liked. An experiment designed to see if Willow and Asher could absorb this kind of love from their father.
But out there on the table was Rex’s kind of experiment. With all of the ingredients so meticulously measured and placed into separate vessels. The cookbook open to the recipe page that had been recently highlighted. Everything so sterile and organized. But, when Willow noticed that Rex had taken the Don’t Touch sign down from the side of the table, she decided to press a smile though her teeth and read the first step from the splayed-open cookbook on the other side of the counter.
And Rex guided Asher’s hand as he placed already-chopped onions, and mushrooms, and peppers into a pan. And Willow mixed exactly two cups of ricotta cheese, and exactly two cups of mozzarella cheese and two large grade A eggs in a bowl. And they watched Rex meticulously layer pasta, and then cheese, and then vegetables, and then pasta, and then cheese on top of one another. He didn’t want Willow and Asher messing up the ratios, he said. And then Rex placed the tray of lasagna into the oven and set the timer for exactly forty minutes.
Rosie Colored Glasses Page 16
