Meeting Rozzy Halfway

by Caroline Leavitt

  Rozzy never mentioned Stewey, and I kept that pain to myself; I carried it much the same way Rozzy did her fetus.

  One evening I heard Ben and Bea arguing in the kitchen. I had come home for dinner, but Rozzy was still at the doctor’s. Bea was clanging dishes around, threatening to break them. Ben was whirring something in the blender, shouting over the noise. “She needs to know she has a choice,” Bea shouted. When I walked into the kitchen, she clamped her jaws shut.

  Bea later told me she had tried to convince Ben that abortion was an alternative. Rozzy might not be a stable mother; what would happen to a baby that needed feeding and washing when its mother was hearing voices? It was the first time Bea had experienced one of Ben’s sulks firsthand. He acted as if she weren’t really there at all. At dinner he ignored her, and he slept on the far side of the bed or in my old bed in the other room. If she touched him, he would contract his body away from her. She tried to be friendly, she told him about a new French farce that was playing at the Orson Welles Theater in Cambridge, but in the middle of her speech he yawned and picked up yesterday’s newspaper and read it avidly.

  Bea was stubborn. She asked Rozzy to talk to a doctor. Rozzy’s face clouded. “I’ll go see Leffler,” she said, “just to prove you wrong.”

  She went to the doctor by herself, not mentioning it to Ben, and when she came back, she was triumphant. “Leffler thinks it’s a great idea,” she said. “He said not to take any medication right now, but if I need to, he can give me stuff that won’t harm the baby.”

  “Leffler said that? You didn’t misunderstand?”

  “He said to make an appointment for next Thursday, and he found me a doctor—a baby doctor.”

  When Bea saw that Rozzy was determined to have the baby, she tried to talk with her about adoption. She left magazines around open to articles about how families were crying for healthy babies. Rozzie skittered from Bea. “You think I couldn’t handle a kid?” Rozzy said. She’d start to weep and then Ben would emerge from his sulk long enough to yell at Bea, to ask her why on earth she did that, why couldn’t she be supportive?

  “Oh, please,” said Bea bitterly. She saw what was happening, saw how Rozzy was avoiding her, how the girl kept watching her mouth as if Bea’s next words were going to condemn the child to an unknown family. Bea couldn’t stand it. Her husband, her daughter, the two of them were lined up against her. She went over to Rozzy and sat gingerly beside her. “OK,” she said, “whatever you want, I’m behind you.”

  “No,” said Rozzy calmly, “I’m in this alone.”

  Something flickered in Bea’s face.

  “It’s OK,” said Rozzy.

  Sometimes Rozzy would come swimming with me. She was starting to swell and she really liked looking at herself. “I look like a beached whale,” she grinned. She dawdled in the showers, letting the spray run over her stomach. She wouldn’t use the special hot-air dryers on her hair, fearing the ends would split, but she liked to stand naked under the dryers, letting the hot air push down on her. “It feels Texan,” she said.

  She began talking more and more about Texas. When Ben insisted that she talk to the fetus (he even rested his head on her belly, much the same way he had with Bea, while Bea stood, leaning against the door, watching, a queer set smile on her face), Rozzy would call it the little Texan, she would tell it how life was going to be in the humid sticky heat.

  “What do you want to go out there for?” Ben said. “Stay here. I’ll put you through school, whatever you want. What does Texas have to offer a child?”

  “Everything,” said Rozzy.

  “Here, read a baby book,” said Ben. He was bringing her home two new books a day. Rozzy spent days listing different names, looking up their meanings, and she was even considering going to a medium.

  “My baby and I will go everywhere, just the two of us.”

  “No man?” said Ben, amused.

  “Babies do things to relationships,” said Rozzy, and Bea, hearing that old ghost phrase of Walt’s, dropped a glass, cutting herself. She drew a thin red thread of blood on her thumb.

  Ben decided that Rozzy should be exercising, so he enrolled her in classes at the museum. She wanted to try ballet. “You can’t dance with a child,” Ben said. “You’ll hurt it. Don’t be silly, Rozzy. Try something else.” But Rozzy was stubborn. She went into town to the museum and spoke with the ballet teacher, a tall thin woman in her forties, who suggested that Rozzy wait until the child was born. When Rozzy persisted, the teacher shrugged. “You won’t be able to do much,” she said, “and I won’t pay you much attention.”

  “I don’t care,” said Rozzy.

  “You say that now,” said the teacher, “but what about later, in class? How will you learn? How will you accomplish anything at all?”

  “I just will,” said Rozzy.

  “It’s your money,” said the teacher.

  Rozzy couldn’t wait for class to start. She had a week’s wait, and she used the time to check out books on the ballet from the library, to comb the stores for dance posters that she could hang in her room. She was more interested in the look of dance than dance itself. She went out and bought herself different colored leg warmers—black, brown, pink, red, and tweeds. She had warmers which pulled up waist-high that she rolled down to her hips, she had short leg warmers that came to her knees. She bought dance slippers in both leather and canvas, and sweaters that wrapped around her waist. She had cashmere tights and silver combs to knot her hair up high on her head. She didn’t care that her body pushed out from her, that there was a subtle swelling to her, denying her the hard flat stomach of the other dancers. She took out the toe shoes she had worn to the wedding when she met Stewey and brought them to class with her, stringing them over one shoulder. She worried about the correct way to wear her leg warmers. Should she pull them down over her shoes or keep them at the ankle? Should she wear two pairs at the same time, letting a ribbon of color show at the top? She went to the dance department at one of the colleges and studied the dancers, prowling the studios. She saw the sweat flickering off their faces and hitting the floor as they whipped around in a turn, she saw them cutting away the tops of their T-shirts and leotards, the way some of them wore their tights over their leotards, or wore baggy shiny pants. She saw the girls daubing on perfume, and when she asked, they said it cooled them, so Rozzy swiped Bea’s best perfume and walked into her class smelling of lemons, making the girls behind and in front of her at the barre wrinkle their noses.

  Rozzy lasted for three lessons. It hurt. She’d see the other girls comparing their aches and pains, collecting torn muscles like medals. She felt like weeping, as if she were trapped in her own body. “Your posture is terrible, the worst I’ve seen,” her teacher told her, standing in front of Rozzy, critically watching her. “I think you should crawl.”

  “What?” said Rozzy, fidgeting with the tie on her sweater.

  “Crawl. One hand, one leg, right, left,” she said.

  Rozzy dipped to the ground and tried to crawl, but something was wrong with her coordination. She looked up at the teacher. “Don’t look like that,” the teacher said. “You want to dance, you have to suffer.”

  Other girls did. In Rozzy’s last class, a girl ripped a muscle. She pinwheeled over into a ball, weeping, while two other girls rushed to her and rubbed her back. Someone peeled off a heavy brown leg warmer and wrapped it around the hurt back. Rozzy’s head reeled. The teacher didn’t seem alarmed. Rozzy got up and walked out of class.

  “Ballet’s not for me,” she told me. She never danced again, but she wore her leg warmers over everything. She pulled them up over her arms as a makeshift sweater, she layered her leotards and tights, complaining only when she had to strip down out of all those layers to go to the bathroom.

  Rozzy tried yoga and even photography. “All that walking around to get the perfect shot is exercise,” she explained to Ben. But after two classes, she gave up. I picked up the camera Ben had bought her, a Nikon. �
��Take it,” she said, “there’s still a roll in it.”

  I took the camera and the little booklet that explained how to use it. I wasn’t very good at first. I simply squinted, held my breath, and clicked. David was a great help, and he liked coming out with me, explaining about angles, being listened to and appreciated. He kept telling me that I would be his photographer in Africa when he went to do his field work on monkeys.

  “It’s too hot there,” I said, crouching to get a shot.

  “We’ll have air conditioning.”

  “Outside?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “What are you going to do with your life, then? You told me you were getting disgusted with the art department, that you didn’t want to be a painter. What are you going to do, wind up swimming for a living?”

  “Fuck you,” I said, standing up, angry.

  “OK, I’m sorry. What do you want? Want me to study snow monkeys in Alaska? I’ll go and study snow monkeys.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You never want to talk about anything important.”

  “Could we drop the subject, please?”

  We spent the rest of that day combing the streets, snapping people. Sometimes the expressions on their faces when they knew they were being photographed were far more interesting than when the shot was a candid. Later, at times when I couldn’t afford film, I would go out with an empty camera and snap anyway, just to see all those faces.

  I never took pictures of anything other than faces. David surprised me by setting up a tiny darkroom for me in his apartment, and gradually I began to get better.

  I fell in love with photography. I could do more with it than I ever could do with a paintbrush, and I began to mount some of my best shots. One day David borrowed a little shopping cart from a friend and we loaded it with my photographs and wheeled it around Harvard Square, peddling each shot for only two dollars. Within a few hours, we had sold every picture, and I was feverish with delight. “You’re famous now,” said David, ruffling my hair. “Do you realize how many people now own a Nelson? A Bess Nelson?”

  I reached up and kissed him. “How many people?” I said. “Tell me how many over and over.”

  “Maybe you’ll be a photographer instead of a painter,” he said. “It’s still art.”

  “I’m not taking classes in it, though. That seems to spoil everything.”

  I began photographing Rozzy. She was never satisfied. She would take the contact sheets and study the pictures, shaking her head. “I look disgusting,” she said.

  I took only one picture of the whole family, including myself. I set the whole thing up with a timer, placing the Nikon on a tripod, and I had to rush to be included in the picture, settling down into a hasty crouch in front of Bea and Ben. Rozzy was squeezed in the center, her hands tucked into her lap, the fingers curled under so you couldn’t see how raw and bitten the nails were. Her head was dipping down, half hidden by a sheet of dark hair. Ben had his arm thrown around her, his fingers resting on the edge of Bea’s shoulder. Bea was laughing, her head thrown back.

  I still hate that picture. It’s undefined. Faces seem to be melting into other faces. Something about that photo always disturbed me and I never made copies of it. When Bea asked me about it, saying we had never had a family portrait and she wanted one, I told her the negative had been ruined.

  I did take one perfect picture. Of David. He was sleeping. He was the only person I had ever met who could sleep with his mouth closed. He liked the picture, but he kept urging me to take pictures of his monkeys at the zoo. I was never interested.

  Rozzy got a little larger, and I kept track with the Nikon. She was getting restless, itchy to leave, and when Ben saw her leafing through the yellow pages for airlines, he went out and found her an apartment, making her a special present of a one-year lease, tying it up with an olive ribbon that Rozzy would later wear in her hair. Rozzy accepted the lease silently.

  “I guess I can’t keep you here forever,” Ben said, “but I’ll still check up on you every day, see how you’re doing, if you need anything. And if you like, I can even pick you up on my way home from work and you can spend your evenings here.” Ben grinned. “You’ll forget all about Texas when you see the place I found for you. It’s wonderful, clean, bright. Close to the house, too. And it’s only a one-year lease,” he said hopefully.

  We all went to see the apartment. Bea brought along a notebook so she could jot down things Rozzy might need to make the place her home. Two days later, Rozzy moved in.

  No one could forget anything in that apartment. It had no sense of life, no living wood or high ceilings. It was flat and square and had red tiles in the hallway. It was only a three-room apartment, ten minutes away by car, and Rozzy was almost never there. “It’s hideous,” she said. “I’d rather just stay in my old room, or be in Texas. I can’t believe Ben thinks I like it.”

  “Tell him, then,” I said, staring moodily out the window, tracing the dust with my finger.

  “Come on,” said Rozzy.

  She never decorated any of the rooms, but she went out and bought a baby crib secondhand, and painted it white. “But it’s bad luck to have the crib before the baby,” Bea protested, but Rozzy just laughed at her. Ben made out lists of things for Rozzy that he thought the baby would need—all of Beethoven’s symphonies, some Mozart, Bach, some Italian opera, all of them to be played the moment the baby came home. He went into the Harvard Coop and bought a few large-sized prints of various masterpieces to be hung at the baby’s eye level, and he bought books with print so small Rozzy had to squint to see it. “You think a baby can read?” she asked sarcastically.

  “This one will,” said Ben happily. “You did when you were small.”

  Ben and Rozzy didn’t argue much. He was delighted that she refused to wear maternity clothing and lived in a pair of Indian wrap pants and T-shirts. The only sore point between them was Rozzy’s refusal to allow Ben to meet her obstetrician. He couldn’t see why she got so flustered, and when his sudden sulking didn’t prod her into acquiescence, he dropped the subject.

  “The baby is Rozzy’s, not yours,” Bea reminded him, but he tuned her out, he refused to listen. His family was Rozzy now, and her baby. When I came home with a bright red silk baseball jacket as a gift for the infant, Rozzy whooped and held it up against her swelling stomach, but Ben took it into town and returned it for a white Harvard University sweatshirt; “Class of the Future,” it said.

  Rozzy spent most of her time at the house, and when the weather was bad, Ben encouraged her to stay over. I saw Rozzy when I could.

  One morning I noticed her glancing at the clock in Bea’s kitchen and then carefully writing down the time on a piece of paper. When she saw me watching her, she shielded the paper with her fingers, and gave me a dark, secretive look.

  “You feeling OK?” I said.

  “Why, aren’t you?” she said, standing, tucking that paper into the pocket of her T-shirt.

  All that day, she kept checking that paper, slipping it out of her pocket and then sliding it back in again. I kept looking at Bea or Ben, but they didn’t seem to have noticed anything, so I let it drop. We ate a silent dinner, and when Bea set out dessert, bowls of fruit, Rozzy said there was this program on TV that she had to see, and escaped. “I think I’ll go watch, too,” I said.

  “Clear the dishes first,” said Bea.

  When I got to Rozzy, she was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, which was a blank green stare. She was animatedly talking to herself, twisting shapes out of the air. I turned around and went into the kitchen and got a piece of ice and held it to my head.

  “Head hurt?” said Bea, coming into the kitchen.

  “It’s Rozzy,” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s Rozzy”?”

  Bea followed me into the room, but when we got there, Rozzy was sprawled on the floor, asleep. “She’s perfectly fine,” said Bea adamantly.

  “Don’t you notic
e anything?”

  “Only that you’re very paranoid about your sister. Now stop before you make me that way, too.”

  It took a lot for me to ask Ben, but I did it. I went into the living room, where he was avidly reading a baby book, and asked him if he had noticed that Rozzy was hearing voices, that she was talking to herself. He put the book face down in his lap, marking his place with his finger, and frowned at me. “It’s just tension,” he decided. “Carrying a life can make anyone extremely nervous.”

  “Is Rozzy seeing Leffler? She won’t tell me.”

  “She doesn’t need to see him.”

  “Do you know?”

  Ben shrugged.

  “You’d see her bills, wouldn’t you?” I persisted.

  “Look, I give her a large sum of money to do with as she pleases. And she’s not sick, she’s fine.”

  He might have thought she was fine, but two nights later he went for a long walk with her up around the school, and when they came back, Ben was grinning. “We had a good long talk,” he said pointedly.

  He kept close to her the next few weeks. I couldn’t manage to speak with Rozzy alone, and since she seemed happy, I edged away from my fears. In fact, I wasn’t the one who discovered Rozzy sitting on the bathtub talking to herself, running the water and holding one hand under the flow. It was Bea.

  When Bea came into the living room, where Ben and I were sitting, her face was white with anger. “She’s talking to someone,” Bea said. “That girl is hearing voices.”

  “It’s nerves,” said Ben.

  “Nerves?” said Bea coldly.

  “I told her that.”

  “You told her all right. You told her to talk to the fetus, listen to it. You helped her along, you did it. You helped her to hear those voices.” Bea was panting with anger. “I should have listened to you, Bess, you told me something was wrong.”