Meeting Rozzy Halfway

by Caroline Leavitt

She shrugged. “Jeez, I don’t remember. Blond, I think.”

  I didn’t give it much thought. I sat and talked for a while longer, then started home. It was probably someone in one of my classes looking for notes from a class he had missed, or it was a friend of David’s who wanted me for something. As soon as I got inside the apartment, I headed for the shower, but the water pressure was down, and I felt irritable. I washed my hair and thought about dinner.

  I didn’t get a phone call until the next day, just as I was dashing out the door to class. I yanked up the receiver. “Yeah—”

  “I’m here,” said a voice. “I need to see you.”

  “Stewey?” I shut the door and sat on the floor, leaning my back against the wall. “Oh God, you’re here.”

  I couldn’t talk on the phone, not when he was in the same city. We made immediate plans to meet at the Blue Parrot in Cambridge. We would talk then.

  Stewey was already seated by the time I got there. He stood up, smiling, and I wrapped my arms around him, buried my face against his shoulder, wanting to weep, to shout, to never let go of him. “God, I missed you,” I said.

  Stewey pulled back, tilting my chin up. “You know, you’re still the second most beautiful girl around.”

  “The second?” I said, and we both sat down.

  “Well,” he said, grabbing my hand between the two of his.

  “Well,” I said. “Where’s Rozzy? She must be delirious.”

  Stewey’s face clouded. “I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “What?”

  “I was afraid to call her, afraid she might hang up when she heard my voice. I knew you’d see me, though, that you’d tell me how she was.” He ran his hands through his twisted black curls. “I slept in the union last night on a couch in the back. No one bothered me.” He looked at me. “I’m scared, Bess. Maybe Rozzy thinks I died along with the baby. I know about that, about how it happened. She wrote me letters. I got them all. She never said she wanted me back in any of them though. I tried to read between the lines, to find any trace of loneliness or need. That’s all it would have taken, but all she ever wrote about were the general things—there was never any emotion. I don’t know if she wants anyone anymore, if she wants to see me or not. Not now.”

  “She wants to see you.”

  “I still love her,” he said helplessly.

  “I wasn’t sure whether she was writing you regularly,” I said, “but Stewey, I know she wants to see you. I know it.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “You know I will.”

  “Wait, don’t get up. Not yet. I have to—you know—feel ready. Can’t we just sit here and talk for a bit? I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  “Sure.”

  “It was funny how I got the letters from her. Madison has a terribly thorough post office. Although I left no forwarding address, a guy who works sorting the mail remembered me. Actually, he always had this crush on Rozzy. He used to save the prettiest stamps for her, he’d even tell people who specifically asked for special stamps that he was out, just so he would have more to give Rozzy. He wanted to see her face when he planted them in her hand. She got so excited, just like a little kid. Anyway, he knew I was an architecture student because he used to kid Rozzy about marrying me when she could have married someone with a never-ending supply of stamps. When he saw her name, her jangled handwriting, he put the letters aside, he wouldn’t brand them with that ‘address unknown’ sticker—not Rozzy’s letters. He reasoned that if Rozzy were writing me there, I must be somewhere in Madison, and sooner or later I’d have to come in and buy stamps. I wasn’t in school. I was living in a tiny place, working on my thesis, and when I did come into the post office it was to mail a package to my mother. This guy handed me the letters, glaring at me as if I were some criminal or something. When I saw Rozzy’s name, I wanted to throw those letters out, but that guy was watching me. I could just see him swooping down on those letters and reading them himself, and I didn’t want that. As it was, he was asking me all kinds of questions—where was Rozzy? why had she left so suddenly? were we still married? I fielded them and left.

  “I took those letters home and ripped them up, still tucked in those awful strawberry-scented envelopes Rozzy seemed to like. Then I stood there and looked at the pieces scattered on the floor, a paper storm. I went and got the scotch tape and sat on the floor and taped those letters together again. God, you have no idea how long that took, how much it hurt. I strained my eyes. I had headaches the size of North America. It took me days to do it.”

  “You never called,” I said. I fiddled with my chocolate drink, staring into it.

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t respond to anyone. But I had to see what she had written. I thought she was lying when she wrote about the baby, that it had died.” He sipped his chocolate, his hands quaked. “You know, my friends were delighted when she left, isn’t that funny?” She’d always been so sullen with them, but really, she was just shy. And there was something else, too. After she left, my friends came to me with all these stories about her. They’d tell me about when they had seen her nuzzling some strange man, when they spotted her accepting roses from a boy who kissed her.” He sank deeper into his chair, so I reached out and hooked my little finger around his. He gave me a watery quick grin. “No one came right out and said they had seen her go into a hotel or anything, but they hinted. I kept getting these dinner invitations, too, and sometimes I would go just because I couldn’t bear being alone in my place. Without Rozzy, my oxygen was missing. So I’d go to these things and there would always be some girl there, someone really pretty, very bright and stable and interesting, and just not Rozzy at all.” He unhooked his finger and downed the last of the chocolate. “Who the hell needs this?” he said.

  “I went back to the post office once more, but there were no more letters. The guy wanted to know how Rozzy was, he assumed I had fixed things up, so I lied. I made him happy and told him Rozzy was fine. I couldn’t stand it. Without her letters, I didn’t know how she was, if she was even alive or not. Who was listening to her voices the way I had, coaxing her, prodding her, loving her?” He sighed. “That’s the bottom line. I love her. Do you think I’m a fool? That I’m ridiculous? My friends do.”

  “No, I think you’re wonderful.”

  “OK, I’m ready to go see her.”

  Stewey had parked his familiar green Chevy on a side street. “It took forever driving here,” he said, “and you know, I was glad. I needed the time. I think it relaxed me.” The whole ride over, Stewey slumped over the steering wheel. “What’s wrong?” I said, but he only shook his head at me.

  When we got to Rozzy’s, he stood outside her door, rocking on his heels. “Well, knock” I said, “go ahead.”

  “Fuck,” he said, “fuck,” and then he knocked, jittering on his feet.

  Rozzy pulled the door open, tousled and sleepy, in nothing but a blue T-shirt that said that Danskins were made for dancing. She was holding a red hot water bottle over her belly, and she rubbed one lazy foot over the other, extending her toes into a fan.

  “Is the missus in?” said Stewey, his face pained and white.

  Rozzy blinked and then she began crying. He immediately pulled her toward him, outside on her porch, and the two of them wrapped themselves up into one tangle of arms and legs.

  “You’re here!” cried Rozzy. “Oh God, everyone has to come inside and help me wake up. I’ll make coffee. Come on, Bess, you’re part of everyone, aren’t you?”

  We all sat on Rozzy’s dusty wood floor, sipping instant coffee from cracked blue mugs, grabbing cookies from the box. “When do we leave?” said Rozzy, breathlessly looking from Stewey to me. “I can be ready in two minutes.” She put her coffee down and hooked her arms around Stewey, twisting her body around him like a cat. She kept sniffing at his shirt, burying her nose into the crook of his elbow, into his damp warm neck, into his hair, inhaling him, letting her breath out only when she could hold it—and him�
��no longer. He grinned at her, pleased, and stroked her hair. “Whatever you want, I’ll do, anything, anything,” she said.

  He crouched over her and kissed the top of her head. “Was it very rough?” he said.

  Something flickered in her face. “We can talk about that later,” she said, “but not now. Please. I just want to feel that you’re really here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Stewey, and Rozzy relaxed.

  “Uh, I think I should, though,” I said, standing clumsily, separating myself.

  “No, not yet,” said Rozzy.

  “We should all celebrate tonight,” said Stewey emphatically, “the three of us, like old times. Sit down, Bess, come on.”

  “I even have some special things we can wear,” said Rozzy, leaping up, returning with two red velvet dresses she had plundered from Cambridge thrift shops, and a top hat which she popped on Stewey’s shiny curls.

  We paraded in Boston that night, hooking arms, prancing on the sidewalks, winding in and out of bookshops and cafés, taking the eating tour of all the old familiar streets. Rozzy was exuberant with energy, she shimmied as she walked, and she couldn’t stop beaming. She lit up the faces we passed; strangers would stop to watch her slip past them, a flash of quicksilvery warmth.

  “I want it to always be like this,” said Rozzy, “you and me and Bess.”

  She wouldn’t let me go back to David’s that night, but insisted that I camp out on her living room floor. “But you and Stewey should be alone,” I stammered. “You should talk.”

  “We’ll be alone,” said Rozzy. “We’ll be in another room altogether. Stewey doesn’t mind, do you?”

  “Do you, Stewey?” I said, my eyes probing his face.

  “Now what kind of a question is that?” he said. “I thought you knew me, Bess.”

  When I phoned David to tell him I wouldn’t be coming home to his place that evening, he became morose and sulky.

  “Rozzy needs me to be here,” I said.

  “I guess it’s unavoidable,” he said gloomily. “What’s the problem this time?”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Well, you call me if you feel blue.”

  “OK,” I said, already turning from the phone.

  We all became hermits in that apartment. I skipped classes and even Rozzy forgot her papers and her books that were lying open around the apartment, their pages inked up. We sealed up our existences in that place, emerging only at night. The old familiar triad was rebuilt, and if there was a question of privacy being intruded upon, then it was our privacy that might be invaded, and not just that of Rozzy and Stewey. I felt no guilt about David. He was used to my absences.

  “We’ve got to start clean this time,” Rozzy decided. “Everything we ever blamed one another for, we’ll write down on strips of paper and then we’ll burn them in the gas flame, a ritual cleansing.” We sat on the kitchen floor and tore up strips of cheery yellow paper and then scribbled “blames” on the strips with colored Flair pens. We balled the strips up and then ceremoniously dumped them, one by one, into the licking blue and red flames of the stove. “This will probably screw up the stove, but who cares?” said Rozzy. “We’re leaving anyway.”

  “What did you write?” Stewey teased her, wrapping his arms around her waist, swaying her like a blade of tall grass.

  “It’s in ashes,” said Rozzy, smiling.

  I got out by myself a little, to bury myself in a darkroom at school, to swim, to give them some time alone. They had never been quiet lovemakers. At night I lay on a narrow green blanket in the living room, listening to the sounds shivering the night, moving the darkness. I always missed David then, but it was a false anguish.

  In the morning, Rozzy called for me to come in, and I went and crawled into her bed beside them, falling asleep again. I fitted in between the two of them like sandwich filling and the whole bed began smelling of warmth and sleep and family. Sometimes Rozzy woke up and disengaged, padding into the hall in her T-shirt and underpants, twisting on the shower. I’d wake up with my head on Stewey’s shoulder, his arm thrown over me. Rozzy would come in later with a plate of jellied and buttered toast, and the three of us would sit up in bed and eat, littering the sheets with crumbs. Rozzy’s wet hair would make pinpoints on my T-shirt, on Stewey’s, as she swooped toward each of us.

  “I want you to come to Madison with us,” Rozzy said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You could transfer,” she said, picking at her nails, pulling at the ridges of skin around the base. “Is it because of David, is that why you won’t think about coming? I wish you liked someone other than him.”

  “I liked him,” said Stewey.

  “You didn’t know him,” said Rozzy. “If you liked someone that I liked, too, then it might work, the four of us. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” She brightened.

  “It would be something,” I said.

  I called David that evening, but he was short and irritable. Bea had called him wanting to know what was going on, why she hadn’t heard from either Rozzy or me. “I felt like a fool,” he said, “I couldn’t tell her anything, and it was obvious she didn’t believe me. Would you call her, please?”

  “Stewey’s here,” I said.

  There was a gaping silence, and for a moment I thought he might have hung up.

  “I want to see you,” he said, his voice hard.

  “Time’s so funny for me right now.”

  “Set up a time, then, make a date.”

  “David, come on,” I said. “Rozzy’s leaving soon.”

  “Maybe I will be, too,” he said, slamming the phone down.

  I wandered into the living room and slumped down beside Stewey, who put his hand lightly on top of my head, flickering his fingers through my hair.

  “Look, Bea wants you to call her, Rozzy,” I said. “She wants to know what’s going on.”

  “You call her,” said Rozzy, “and don’t tell her you’re calling from here, please. I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “I do,” said Stewey.

  “Kiss me first,” said Rozzy, lifting her head.

  I wasn’t sure how Bea would react, but she was delighted, “f knew he loved her, I knew it,” she cried. “I knew he wouldn’t just let her disappear from his life. You tell those two to come for dinner. You come, too, and bring David.”

  “Matchmaker,” I said, hanging up.

  “What did she say?” called Rozzy.

  “Nothing. But I could tell the news really made her day.”

  “Oh, please,” snorted Rozzy.

  “You won’t come to dinner?”

  “Why should I? So she can pry and ask questions? So I can be ignored by Ben?”

  “She worries. She wants to be sure you’re really happy.”

  Rozzy flung back her head sharply. “I changed my mind. Dinner’s on. But not because I want to see them. Because I want to get some of the stuff I left at the house, I want to pack it and take it to Madison.”

  I slouched against the wall. Everyone was leaving. Stewey. Rozzy. The old Ben had already left. “Do you think I should transfer?” I said wistfully. Rozzy’s face slowly bloomed into smile.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When I tried phoning Bea to set up dinner, there was never any answer. I called for days. I would idly dial the number when there was a lull in the conversation with Stewey and Rozzy; I would sprint into the pay phones in the subway stations, holding my breath against the sharp tang of urine; and I fed dimes and even quarters into the phones at the movies. It took me one full week, and then, finally, Ben answered, his voice cramped, and he told me Bea wasn’t in.

  “Where is she?”

  There was a handclap’s pause and then Ben said, “She’ll be here tomorrow. You can call her then,” and he hung up, severing our connection. I immediately fidgeted a dime out of my jeans pocket and called back, but the line clicked in a busy signal.

  The next few days I kept calling, but the phone rang and rang,
never catching. “That takes care of dinner, then,” said Rozzy. But I was disturbed. Bea usually managed to call me every few days, and although those calls usually irritated me, their absence was unnatural. It only underlined the falseness of everything around me, the unstoppable way things were sliding apart. I rummaged around in Rozzy’s cluttered medicine chest, ravaging the hotly colored pill bottles for her blue ten-milligram Valiums, and teased one out into my palm. I swallowed it surreptitiously, without water, something I had taught myself to do when I was in high school and so hyperaware of Rozzy’s pill diet that I had to disguise the few times I took aspirin. Rozzy wouldn’t miss one Valium. Stewey was the drug keeping her sane now.

  The Valium diffused things. I slid down along the wall to the floor and watched Rozzy and Stewey organizing, gathering the things Rozzy would take with her to Madison, discarding the rest.

  “No one knows where Bea is,” I said, interrupting Rozzy as she hooked her fingers through the handles of some of the plastic mugs that were lying around. They were sticky with juice residue. She’d dump them into the tub and run the shower on them to clean them.

  “Dinner will be postponed then,” said Rozzy, absently stooping to curl her pinky about one last mug. “The later the better, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. Stewey was stuffing the dirty laundry that had avalanched on the baby crib into a pillow case. Neither of them would ever acknowledge the crib as crib.

  “Where could Bea have gone?” I asked Stewey.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You know how she runs around.” He called over to Rozzy to ask her if she thought she might like her old job at the student pharmacy back, if she’d like to move closer to campus.

  I started going to class again, steadily moving toward Christmas break. “Why don’t you and Stewey wait until next fall to go back to Madison?”

  “How? On what?” said Rozzy, exasperated. “In Madison, Stewey has money to live on, has a place to live. The university will take care of us. Why can’t you come there?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? Why can’t you?”