Meeting Rozzy Halfway

by Caroline Leavitt

  Rozzy and I both left before Bea and Ben returned, and it was March before we saw each other. Rozzy had supposedly gone to school, to Texas, with traveler’s checks from Bea, but she wrote no one, she didn’t phone. “She’ll be in touch when she runs out of money,” said Ben. “We’ll hear from her soon enough.”

  Bea called me one day claiming Rozzy had sent her a postcard from New Orleans announcing she had married. “What’s she doing there?” Bea cried. “Ben’s washed his hands of her. He said if she wants to get married, fine, let someone else wear that albatross of a girl around his neck for a while, see how he likes it. Can you imagine?”

  Ben was in a state, and Bea couldn’t possibly leave him, but I had a break coming up; would I go and see Rozzy?

  “I’ll go.”

  “I knew you would. Wait. I have an address.”

  “She didn’t send me anything.”

  “Well, I’m her mother, honey,” said Bea.

  “Someone’s at my door. I have to go, I’ll get the address later,” I said, clicking down the receiver. I lay down across my bed and stroked away the headache that was steadily taking root.

  I wrote Rozzy, but all she sent back was a sheet of directions and the word COME in big red letters.

  David drove me to the bus station. We had planned on spending the break together somewhere, maybe up in the mountains, and his understanding nature was making me tense and irritable. “It’s better for you to go alone,” he said. “You’ll talk with her.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come with me,” I said, ignoring the bitten look on his face.

  The bus ride was forever. I slept, I read a few cheap paperback novels, I made small talk with the elderly woman sitting next to me who was on her way to visit her daughter. I had hoped to save money by taking the bus, but the tedium and the ceaseless hum of the wheels made me resolve to fly back to Boston when I was ready to leave.

  Rozzy didn’t live far from the bus station. I had the directions jammed into my jeans pockets along with fifty dollars for Rozzy and a candy bar for myself.

  Rozzy’s apartment was in the middle of a student slum. James Taylor was crooning from a window, and a few cars sunned themselves in the dirty street. Her place was brick and it had a porch, and Rozzy herself answered the door when I rang. She was thin and sleepy and she wore a large red glass necklace that caught at the light and held pinpoints of it. Behind her, a sheepish-looking man with brown hair in his eyes grinned at me. “Well, well, aren’t you something to look at,” he said, “wild red hair, all in a tangle. I like that.”

  Rozzy yawned, motioning me in. “I can’t believe it. You really did come. Tony, this is Bess—the Bess.” She gave me a sleepy smile.

  Her apartment was small and cramped, painted bright white, clean of posters and pictures. “Sit,” she ordered, waving lazily at a mattress on the floor. “No, wait, let me kiss you first, make sure you’re really here. Damn, I wish we had some wine to give you.”

  “We drank the last of it yesterday,” said Tony, sprawling on the floor against the wall.

  “Oh God, I’m so terrible,” said Rozzy. “Bess, this is Tony Mandrello.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” said Tony, winking at me.

  “We’re not really married,” said Rozzy apologetically. “We still have a few bugs to work out.”

  “Bed bugs,” grinned Tony. “I’m what you call a sexual innocent.”

  “You bullshitter,” said Rozzy fondly.

  “I want Rozzy to teach me, but she claims she’s just too nervous.” He squinted at me. “You any good at teaching?”

  When I flinched, he laughed. “You sure do take things seriously,” he said.

  “You never wrote me,” I said to Rozzy.

  She lifted up her hands. “I know, I know. I can’t explain it. It was so easy to send Bea that postcard. It didn’t even matter, but I couldn’t write you, I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You think I do?” she said. She got up, disappearing into the kitchen, coming back with a clean blue bowl filled with sticky buns. She plunked it down on the floor by Tony. “Tony’s a writer,” she said proudly. “I met him on the bus to Texas. We sat up all night talking, and the next day I called the university out there and set the wheels in motion for a year’s leave, and we came here.”

  “I love New Orleans,” said Tony, “lots of good jazz, lots of things to do, a good hot sun that just about burns you alive.”

  There wasn’t much work though. They subsisted on welfare and the few odd jobs Tony could get, usually as a cook in some greasy spoon, lying to welfare about it. They had almost immediately spent Rozzy’s traveler’s checks.

  “Tony never lets me see anything that he writes,” said Rozzy. “I bet he just writes the same sentence over and over again just to make me think he’s being productive.”

  “Yeah, sure I do,” said Tony, annoyed. He pulled apart a sticky bun and popped the pieces into his mouth. Rozzy rubbed his hair and said, “Oh, Tony,” with an amused smile.

  Tony spent a lot of time with Rozzy, so I didn’t really have a chance to be alone with her much. I walked down to the corner store and called Bea collect to tell her Rozzy wasn’t married, that she was fine and happy, and that she had a year’s leave from school. “Thank God,” said Bea. “You need any money?”

  Tony and Rozzy didn’t seem aware of anyone else. I began to get the feeling that I didn’t exist for them. The third day I was there, they fought. I was glad about that; I didn’t want Rozzy liking him so much. Anyway, Rozzy found out that Tony had fished fifty dollars from her purse to buy a guitar that was missing half its strings.

  “That was rent money,” she screamed at him, throwing a book. He looked sheepish, but then he retorted, “Forty more and I could have it fixed up, get the bridge redone. Maybe I could play in clubs and make some money.”

  “You’re something else,” I said.

  Tony looked at me curiously. “Beg pardon?” he said politely.

  “I don’t appreciate you living off my sister.”

  “Who said I was doing that?”

  “Oh, Bess, hush up, please,” said Rozzy.

  “He’s using you,” I said, waves of anger washing through me.

  Tony grinned and dug his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He had a big rip in one of the pockets, and the tips of his fingers stuck out. “Hold on now,” he said cheerfully.

  “What do you need this for,” I said to Rozzy.

  Tears were squeezing from her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said. Tony was still smiling, ignoring Rozzy.

  “Maybe it’s you who should go,” she said to me. “In fact, I think I’ll call you a cab. You can afford a cab to the bus station, can’t you?”

  “How could you even think of marrying him?” I said. “You don’t need him.”

  “But I do,” said Rozzy, “he’s exactly what I do need.”

  “Why don’t you just simmer down and behave yourself and we might even let you stay with us for a few more days,” said Tony.

  “You were the first hippie,” I said to Rozzy, “and now look at you. You have on plaid pants.”

  Rozzy looked surprised, and then she laughed and said, “Let’s all go down to Juke’s and get some dinner cheap.” She wound her arm about Tony, sluicing off her tears with her free hand. “You walk with us, Bess,” she said, and Tony hooked his other arm about me. But I felt alone again, my existence sliding between the two of them and not affecting anything at all.

  I left the next morning. “But why do you have to go?” said Rozzy. Her eyes started to tear. “You haven’t even painted me, yet,” she said. “You could stay. Do some sketches to work from in Boston.”

  She reluctantly went to the station with me, dragging Tony with her, the two of them sharing a Milky Way. While we waited for the bus, Rozzy sang a few old folksongs and Tony beat out rhythms with the flat of his hand on her knees. “See, I could make it in clubs,” he said.
<
br />   When the bus finally came, I found a seat in the back and looked out the window. They were still sitting on the bench, smiling at each other, holding hands. I shut my eyes, waiting for the bus to start up, to take me to the airport so I could fly home.

  Rozzy didn’t marry Tony. I never could fathom what it was she needed from him, what kinds of gifts he could give her. I didn’t hear from Rozzy much, and it irritated me, but Bea seemed content, even relieved, and that irritated me, too.

  In April, Rozzy sent me a card saying she was finally leaving for Texas, to get settled before she even thought about starting school. Tony could get a job there. I resented Rozzy’s being happy without me, and I took it out on David, but he never argued back. He went off and came back with brilliant red poppies, with a bottle of red wine.

  But Rozzy’s life was circular. She could be well and functioning for periods of time, but her illness, her psychosis, always came spiraling back to the surface. She called me one morning at two A.M. She was hearing voices. “I need someone to be with me!” she cried. “I’m all alone!”

  “What about Tony?”

  “He’s gone. He wasn’t any help. Every time I told him I heard voices, he went to the movies.” She sucked in her breath. “Oh God. We were going to Texas in two more weeks, and then he left. He said he only liked me when I acted right. I don’t know where he is.”

  I tried to clear a path for myself through her nervous crying. “I love you,” I said. I felt light, buoyant.

  “Come, please come,” said Rozzy. “You have to. I need you to come. I feel up for grabs. I haven’t slept for days,” she insisted. “I’m afraid to be in this house with Tony gone. It’s a different house now, it isn’t friendly to me. I keep thinking that once I fall asleep, I’ll never be able to wake myself up again, that anything could happen, could take control of me. I think about robbers, about the gas jetting on. I keep seeing the blue flame, smelling it, being smothered. Every time I manage to drift asleep, I sense someone standing over me, clutching something—a fork, the silver prongs pointing at me, accusing. I try to jerk awake, but I can’t. Sometimes I jolt up, shivering, sweating. It’s so awful.” She heaved a tight dry sob. “I found some pills Tony left. Uppers. He took them a lot. I took some. They gave me energy so I’d get to dancing to the pop tunes jingling out of my little radio. I’d have too much energy, too much, so I’d start trying to wear myself down, scrubbing floors, getting a Brillo pad and scouring the tub, the corners where all the soap and grit congeal into stone. I was never tired until the pill wore off, and then I was overtired, too tired to sleep.”

  “Rozzy, you must be sleeping sometime, even a little,” I said, curling the heavy phone cord around my hand, tightening it against my skin.

  “I’ve been going to public places,” she said. “I leave my keys and money at home so I won’t worry about being robbed. I stick the key in the dirt and put a plant over it. I don’t know anyone else here. I was always with Tony; even the people who live in the other apartment in this house are strangers. I couldn’t trust anyone with my key. I slept for a while in the bus station, but then I started having these dreams, nightmares. I woke up screaming once. Everyone was looking at me. Once I even had my hands on someone. He plucked my hands away from him as if he hated me.”

  “What about a doctor, Rozzy, a doctor might help.”

  There was a cramped silence. “I saw a doctor,” said Rozzy. “Some man. Dr. Berger. He yelled at me for not coming sooner. He gave me pills for the things moving in my head, pills to sleep, and he insisted that I come back to see him. I got the pills, Bess, and I’m going to take them, too, but once I got back into my place, it all came back, it all crowded me. I get so afraid. I’ll take the pills. I will, but not alone like this. With you, Bess, with you.”

  So there it was. I said I’d go out there, but Rozzy was strangling in that town and insisted on meeting me somewhere else, some halfway point. I made reservations at a Holiday Inn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, so that no matter who got in first, there would be a clean silent bed to sprawl across, a door to shut. I checked back with Rozzy to make sure she had money, to make certain she had transportation and would be able to make the trip.

  She said she had called the ride board at one of the radio stations and they had given her four different phone numbers. She was nervous about calling, about having to speak with people. It was difficult clearing a path through the sounds in her head. Most of the people she called expected her to share the driving as well as the expenses, and Rozzy couldn’t drive. One woman heard the panic wavering in Rozzy’s stutter, and told her to be ready, she would give Rozzy a ride.

  I borrowed Bea’s car and started driving. David wanted to drive me. We could take a real vacation, he said, go and see Rozzy and then the two of us could skip school and see the country. He was always trying to uncrease every wrinkle in my life, and that made me uneasy. How could I possibly tell him that I didn’t want him coming with me because I couldn’t stand another person crowding Rozzy and me?

  Rozzy had said that she had cut off her hair when Tony left her, had taken the gardening shears and systematically whacked it off to her scalp. She still probably looked marvelous. I always thought it was too bad that someone couldn’t make a composite out of the two of us, a woman with Rozzy’s flame, with her black hair skidding down her shoulders, her pale skin and large black eyes, all this meshed in with my long fine hands and perfect teeth that didn’t stain yellow from cigarettes the way Rozzy’s did. Her energy and zest and creativity—and my sanity. Together, neither of us would ever have to be the Beast. We could be two halves making up a complete healthy whole.

  The sun glared through the windshield of the car. If I had been in Boston, I would be having some sort of dinner with David, carrying on and giggling. He always cooked and he always did the dishes, resisting his Mormon training that these were women’s jobs. What more could I want? Why wasn’t it enough for me? I had a math exam in three days and I had left my text and my notes at David’s. It didn’t matter. I was on my way to see Rozzy with a check from Bea and fifty dollars of my own stuffed in the back pocket of my jeans.

  We were all getting older, I thought. Ben and Bea, me—even Rozzy. And I knew Ben had no intention of leaving what little money he had to Rozzy or to me. So it was really up to me, after all. I would always take Rozzy love and money and support, and guilt, too.

  The scenery kept changing as I drove, the radio stations merged into one another, even though the accents of the announcers sounded different. I sang along with the hit tunes; I harmonized.

  I got into the Holiday Inn around noon. I didn’t see Rozzy at first. I stood by the check-in desk, squinting in the afternoon light; then she stumbled toward me, her mouth wobbling in a smile, waiting. Her hair was clipped close to her head like a little boy’s, spiking over her forehead, exposing her ears. She kept feathering the ends with her fingers, brushing them up, trying to create an illusion of length. Her eyes were glassy mirrors and she was very thin.

  Ann Arbor was full of students, full of cheap films to see, places to eat, but Rozzy cocooned us inside, sleepwalking from the restaurant to our room. She didn’t want to talk at first. She just wanted sleep. I sat on the bed with her, stroking her head. Her skull felt exposed. She sprawled gratefully on the spread, picking at the green tufts of chenille. “Don’t leave,” she said. “Stay close so I can always have my hand on some part of you while I sleep.”

  The first day, Rozzy slept for eighteen hours straight. I read some magazines or watched the TV, the sound turned down to a murmur. She tapered off her sleep gradually, until she was sleeping a normal seven hours. Her pale skin began to get a little brighter, and she began taking the medication. She had no nightmares.

  She still wouldn’t leave the hotel. She wouldn’t eat in the restaurant unless it was during an off-hour, when the only other people besides us would be the waiter. There was an indoor pool which I ached to use; the shimmer of the water mesmerized me, but Rozzy balked
until I told her I was going to swim by myself for just a half-hour.

  I was content in the water, at home, and every once in a while, I stole guilty glances at Rozzy, who was sitting on the edge of the pool, dipping her legs into the water. I never swam longer than a half-hour, and Rozzy never complained.

  At the end of the week, she began getting restless. She started talking about getting to Texas, about starting fresh. She wanted to talk to the people at Rice, to see if they would let her in for the fall term, if she could get a scholarship. She contacted the same woman who had driven her out, stuttering a little on the phone. The medication seemed to be working. She said her head was clear and that she wasn’t so afraid of things anymore.

  I would leave as soon as I saw Rozzy off. That morning, I made a few rough sketches of her, and then we stood outside the Holiday Inn until a green car pulled up and a woman popped her head out calling “Rozzy,” and Rozzy pushed herself into my arms. “I’m fine now. Things will be terrific,” she promised. She jumped into the car, and as it pulled away, she leaned her head outside the window, calling out that when next we saw each other, her hair would be long again.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was June and we were both coming home for the summer. I hadn’t really heard from Rozzy outside of a few postcards from Texas. Rice had said she could start in the fall, and they had even given her a scholarship. She had taken a temporary job as a file clerk, which paid for a tiny room in a boardinghouse near the school, and on her lunch hour, she sat in on classes. She was happy; she said she loved Texas, that she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She always sent the same postcard, a photo of a longhorn steer staring balefully into the camera. She must have bought a bunch of those cards at the same time and rationed them out, one for each week. She loved the stale muggy heat, the shapes of the horns on the bulls, the twangy way everyone spoke, as if they had dust in their throats. She tried to imitate that twang, sometimes practicing for hours in her room in front of an old cracked mirror she had found outside in a trash bin. Texas even had its own smell, she said. She had a few friends, they went out, but there was no one really special, no one close enough to touch.