TEN The Fall Rosie faced her mother, eyes narrowed with disdain even as she felt the ground beneath her turn to sand. Her heart pounded the way it did after the cheapest cocaine, going so fast that she felt like she might be having a stroke, and yet still she sneered with disbelief at such bald-faced foolishness, at her stupid, stupid mother who stood there in the bathroom holding out the cup of pee like it was plutonium. Rosie’s mind churned and she desperately tried to figure out the angles. If she went ballistic, she could beat her mother down, deflate the story into something more manageable, and continue her life as it had been. And then there was a second person inside her, composing excuses and words of contrition. She wondered if she should try to calm this crazy idiot by throwing her mother the bone about having smoked one hit with Alice. That would get her to do what Rosie wanted: dial back the drama, love Rosie again, be grateful for her honesty, and relieved—it could be so much worse than Elizabeth imagined. But a third person inside Rosie calmly pointed out that it really was so much worse than Elizabeth imagined, way worse, all the raves and Ecstasy, all the unsafe sex she’d had before Fenn, the times she’d gone down on some guy, all that fucking oral, because he was holding cocaine. It was so disgusting, so shattering to recall, that it stopped her in her mental tracks—maybe she had been out of control for a while—and right when she looked up, her mother got this crazy look on her face where frozen disbelief met rage and weirdness the way it had that day on the trampoline three years ago, and that pierced Rosie, knowing what her mother looked like when she went crazy. All in a swirl like when drugs were coming on too hard, she needed to calm her mother down, needed to sneak out of this mess with her freedom intact; she needed her mother to be strong, she needed a mommy. Then her mother started to shake, Rosie could see this from six feet away in the carpeted hall, and the first voice inside her came back and she saw that she could win now by going cold, and derisive, although lying might do real damage to her mother, who was tilting her head and looking at Rosie as if she were a speck on the horizon, way far away, and she heard herself saying out loud that she had lied, she had had a hit with Alice at school on Friday—one hit after all these weeks—but then she felt like you do when you see an outlying breaker on the ocean coming right at you and you’re thrilled because you think you can catch it and ride it all the way into the shore. It’s getting bigger too quickly as it approaches, but you’ll still be able to ride it, even though it rises above you, now such a gigantic wave, with so much more water than you could have possibly seen, that it’s going to wipe you out, it’s going to hurt. And she glanced at her mother, who was looking into the small cup of pee as if now she were about to raise it to her lips, and the wave came crashing down. Truth poured forth as Rosie wept from a makeshift mourner’s bench on the rim of the bathtub, where she cried over her sins, or at least the sins of the last month. All the grisly details spilled out, the secrets, the lies, the truth, that she had smoked dope a number of times during the last few weeks; that every time she had had a pee test during the last few weeks, she had added some drops of bleach to mask the THC. She’d taken acid, too, once, and ’shrooms, too, with Fenn. Also, she and Alice had sniffed her boyfriend Evan’s plastic cement, on his dare. She buried her face in her hands and wondered out loud what was wrong with her. James, running from the living room, confronted a locked bathroom door. Muffled sounds of Rosie choking for breath followed, interrupted by a tinkle of water. When Elizabeth unlocked the door, he stepped in, taking in the scene as if at a car accident: Elizabeth slumped against the wall, her face pure white, her neck flushed red, her chest heaving. A cup of pee with a stick in it sat by the sink. Rosie clawed her fingers through her hair, trying to pull it out. She insisted that she loved the meetings, the kids there, the whole scene, and was finally done, really fucking done with getting high. She hated herself for what she had put them through, but it took what it took, right? She repeated this until James robotically told her to shut her up. “Why are you letting her talk, darling?” he asked Elizabeth. She looked at him as if she hadn’t noticed that he was there, then bobbed her head around like a wooden toy bird, pecking. Rosie got to her feet, sizing up the situation: James sniffing at the bottle of eardrops that Elizabeth held to his nose, as if it were wine; the cup of pee with two Advent windows turning blue. “You can test me every day, and I’ll go to outpatient rehab—I’ll even help pay,” Rosie cried at the door. “Believe me, I’m done.” “Honey, that’s wonderful,” said Elizabeth, and Rosie seemed to think she meant it. Her face was watchful yet safe, like a gopher that has nearly made it to his hole. She slunk away. The unbleached urine was positive for THC and methamphetamines. “Jesus,” said James. “The hits just keep on coming.” He stroked the stubble on his chin. “What bothers me is that she admitted to mushrooms and acid, yet those didn’t show up.” “This panel doesn’t test for those,” Elizabeth explained. “How can I be so stunned and numb at the same time?” He shrugged. She dug her nails into her brow, making indentations in the skin, then into the back of one hand, making red half-moons. “Stop that,” he said. “What do you want to do?” “Maybe outpatient treatment. We can afford it, it’s not very expensive. But it didn’t work for Jody, they eventually needed to send her away. There’s Allison Reid’s Adolescent Recovery, which costs a fortune. But one of Allison’s big success stories OD’ed her first semester in college. We cash in your SEP-IRA, pray for our own early deaths. I’ll call Jody’s mother later, see what she knows—she won’t know about low-cost programs, because they have money. Alexander’s family went through the county program and thought it was great—he graduated early, and got a scholarship to Santa Cruz, but of course, now he’s smoking heroin.” “So there’s that.” He reached out and touched each fingernail of her right hand. She limped toward their bedroom but stopped at Rosie’s door to listen to the silence. When she opened the door and saw Rosie sitting on her bed incuriously glancing at a textbook as if it were any other school morning, Elizabeth felt a twig snap inside. She slammed Rosie’s door so hard she thought it might come off its hinges. She bellowed, opened the door, and slammed it full-force again and then again and again. But still it did not break or splinter. She felt sick and dizzy from the seesaw of trusting Rosie and then being betrayed; from caving, saying yes, when she was more afraid of defying Rosie than of Rosie’s safety; felt exhausted from trying to find enough resolve within to say no and then being pilloried by Rosie, from the overwhelming fear of saying either yes or no. She opened the door and slammed it closed again, sick of being afraid, of holding her breath, sick of feeling numb, and then feeling the rage. She opened the door and slammed it. James came into the hall but did not stop her. When she was done, she collapsed on the carpet in the hallway. She heaved for breath. Still James did not come to comfort her, because there was no comfort, and Rosie had been right—it took what it took. The next day’s sky was lower and rich, silver gilt like vermeil. Fall’s first snap called for sweaters, and Elizabeth usually loved this, when the sky was washed-out blue and cool until you noticed the low sun on your skin, the fresh briskness of the air. This time, as in the autumn when Andrew died, she wished it behind her, wished to be already months past these miserable heartache days. She called Anthony, who insisted she call Allison Reid. She did, and was stunned by the cost. She asked if there was a sliding scale for payment. There wasn’t. She called the county’s biggest outpatient rehab next. Though it was much more affordable, there were no spaces. “But they come up all the time. I’ll call you the minute we have an opening. Just hang tight,” the receptionist told her, sounding tired. James wanted to issue a fatwa against Fenn and Alice, or at least a no-contact clause. Elizabeth fought for strictly monitored visits, largely because she felt that this would help maintain whatever peace they could manage and would give Rosie less to rebel against—and something they could take away from her if she fucked up—but also because it would please her. Elizabeth was so hungry for this, and so defenseless against Rosie’s verbal freeze, the t
hin, stilted monosyllabic tone. Elizabeth felt James’s impatience with this plan, but to her surprise, he said it was her call. So it was nighttime young people’s meetings for Rosie. Elizabeth and James drove her there together. They planned to stay at each meeting with her the whole time, but she adamantly refused: they would be the only parents. So they agreed to meet her on the porch outside when she was done. Fenn was usually waiting with Rosie when they came to pick her up. Where there had been seven-o’clock curfews for dinner on school nights, now one of them picked Rosie up right after school three days a week, and Alice dropped her off the other two. She had to walk through the door by three-thirty, or she would lose her computer, too. Weekends had been canceled entirely until further notice. If she could put together two weeks of meetings and sobriety, she could meet Fenn for a movie. They would drop her off ten minutes early, pick her up at the theater ten minutes after the movie ended. Rosie was okay with this at first, relieved if slightly impatient with the new structure. The first few days, she swept through the kitchen like a bear in a campsite, grabbing food. She talked on the phone with Fenn and Alice and did homework. She looked better right away: her skin grew clear, and she began to put on weight. It could have been so much worse. She wasn’t allowed to smoke at all, anywhere, and that was sort of a drag. But she bore down on the long-term homework assignments, and took the Valium that Alice had brought her from her mother’s stash. Some mornings at school she mixed Adderall and Valium. Nothing else, as she was pretty much on the wagon. She’d thought James and her mother would totally prohibit her from seeing Alice and Fenn, so any time at all with either of them was a victory. There was even a part of her that liked these quiet days, a chance to settle down and regroup, prove to herself she was fine. Being a senior was actually kind of cool, because you ruled the roost, and people looked up to you. She made sure to get her homework done after school and still had time to check in with Alice on the phone. She had boring but mostly friendly dinners with her parents, and frequent AA meetings with Fenn and the chill kids from town. Sometimes the speakers were so hip and hilarious and wise that it almost made you want to be an AA person. Other times meetings gave you funny stuff to talk about later, like this blonde babe named Cassidy who shared that the pain of betraying her parents had been crippilizing—a word that Rosie, Fenn, and Alice now used all the time. Or at the very least, the hour passed quickly and got the parents off her back. She made it a point to share in a pleasant voice with her parents what was going on: Alice had applied for early admission to the Fashion Institute and RISD; Jody’s boyfriend had shipped out to Dubai, and Jody might be coming back from San Diego; Fenn was on a new construction site, in Point Reyes, and he wanted them all to drive out to the coast to see it some weekend. Sometimes, though, it hurt so much to have lost Fenn and her freedom that she felt cold and dead. She tried to stay up about it—this was only temporary. Some days she came home and crashed until dinner. You were exhausted all the time when you were a teenager, stooped with the weight of early mornings, pressure, and backpacks. “Maybe the worst is over,” Elizabeth said to James one day. “Oh God, don’t ever say that again. It’s the worst possible bad ju-ju. Go get a chicken bone, wave it over the both of us.” They continued to wait for the outpatient rehab people to call. On the second Saturday of Rosie’s confinement, her mother dropped her off at the theater to see a movie with Fenn, who stood there like a young Amish man in a white dress shirt. They waved good-bye and turned toward the door. Elizabeth drove away. One of Fenn’s roommates had seen the movie, and he told Rosie the high points while they sipped cold canned piña coladas in Fenn’s living room on the way to bed. The movie the following Friday was two and a half hours long, plus trailers, so they took a light dose of mushrooms and sat in his backyard. House finches, goldfinches, song sparrows, wrens; the weather was bright and warm and sweet and cold all at once. He brought out a sleeping bag and they lay on it and looked at the stars, and then they climbed inside to hold each other. He wanted to make love but she felt shy and cold, and the mushrooms had kicked in hard. It was like the K-hole you hit with ketamine, when you peaked and felt yourself a few feet away from your body, and your body got paralyzed, in a good way. They talked about how he wanted to live in Humboldt County, grow great weed to get ahead, and then convert the soil to organic farming and maybe grow apricots or something. She could go to Humboldt State, infinitely mellower than the colleges her mother was trying to coerce her into applying to. Rural, coastal, close enough to visit her parents. They tripped without speaking for an hour or so, listening to the birds in the redwood. Fortunately, they began to come down; she had only an hour until she would be picked up at the theater. He made them fresh-squeezed orange juice, with a bit of vodka to soften the edges. It was funny that her parents hadn’t figured that they needed a Breathalyzer. Over drinks, Fenn looked deep into her eyes, and said, “I want us both to live by different codes than our parents did. This is my only dream. I’m reading a book called Songlines, about Aborigines, and I think it may be what I’m looking for. They had a system to communicate throughout the vast lands, which was so alive to them. Like birds do, right? There were invisible paths the Aborigines traveled by, that crisscrossed Australia because the Ancestors taught them that geography had a song—it’s alive and singing, and you are never lost or alone, because you can hear it telling you where you are.” “Hey, we’re having Ancestors’ Day soon at Sixth Day Prez if you want to go,” she said. God, how stupid that sounded after what a brilliant thing he had just described. He did not respond for a while, but stroked her shoulders. “Don’t you totally love Aborigines?” he asked finally. She guessed she did. They came down gently as clouds. James,” Elizabeth whispered in the dark one night, “Rosie really is doing better.” They held each other tightly in bed, and she was about to drop off. She had begun to recognize her life again but still lived for bedtime. The dark was warmer than the light of day had been, skin to skin: it was nice not to see each other’s worn faces and flaws. He yawned loud as a dog. She knew every single personal noise James made—grunts when he got up, light snores when he went to sleep, medium snores throughout the night, groans from repositioning, occasional farts, all part of the marital soup. They hadn’t made love in so long. She had the sex drive of a haggis, but when he slid his leg between her legs that night, she smiled and climbed on top of him. It was a temporary but very sweet fix. He knew the moves, the combinations, and it was lovely once they started. Then she was able to fall asleep, all thoughts chased from her head. Elizabeth spent the next few days killing time as pleasantly as possible while waiting for the county rehab to call. One Thursday, she went to an early AA meeting after dropping Rosie at school, and took the ferry to San Francisco afterward with Rae to see a new exhibit at the Asian. Rae looked like a buttercup in the drizzle, wearing a soft yellow parka and a knit cap. Elizabeth enjoyed the boat ride, although the whole time they were on the water she thought about jumping overboard. Her psychiatric meds dulled this desire but did not take it away—she had always wanted to jump out of any window, fall overboard and be done. Rae’s cheeks grew red on the windy deck, and after a while they went inside. Elizabeth bought two cocoas with whipped cream from the bar, and as they sat nursing them below deck something leapt onto Elizabeth’s pant leg. It scared her out of her mind. But it was just a grasshopper. She pointed it out to Rae. It looked like a husk, desiccated and vigorous at the same time, a seedpod that could spring way high. The grasshopper quivered a moment on her knee. “Wow,” said Rae, bending down low to peer at it. “It’s so pretty, isn’t it, like dry grass or foxtails.” It leapt off Elizabeth’s leg to the floor and then into the shadows. Elizabeth clutched her heart as if she felt faint. “Oh my God,” Rae exclaimed. “Do you even understand what a great omen that is? It’s almost as auspicious as encountering a cow.” Wary but game, Elizabeth said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What does it mean? Money, I hope.” “Someone helpful and distinguished is about to enter your house. True!” Nothing happened the fi
rst night, or the second. But on the third, while heating up soup, Elizabeth heard someone at the door. It was probably Witnesses, or maybe Rae was right and the grasshopper person was here. Maybe it was Ed McMahon. She smoothed her hair behind her ears, and went to open the door. She found a tall person of nonspecific gender standing or rather jouncing on the stoop, beaming, chubby and beautiful, and it took Elizabeth a moment to recognize Jody in the punk shirt and pegged black jeans, long straggly blond Kurt Cobain tresses and kohl. Jody cried and threw herself into Elizabeth’s arms. Elizabeth half lifted her in a hug. “My grasshopper girl.” Jody stepped back and peeked, puzzled, through unkempt bangs. Elizabeth yelled for Rosie: “Rosie, Jody’s home!” Rosie came barreling down the hallway toward them, shouting, “Jody!” “Ro-Ro.” They hugged as if someone had told each of them that the other was dead, and Elizabeth joined them in a group hug, so there were six long arms, women’s arms, everywhere, cries and chirps of disbelief. Jody said not to look at her, because she was obese; she looked healthy and soft and sturdy. “I quit smoking,” she announced. “Oh my God, and look!” She pulled up the T-shirt, and Elizabeth thought she was displaying the baby fat on her stomach, but something dangled from her belt, a chain of colored plastic key tags, strung together like soda-can pop tops, whites hooked onto white, then orange, then green. “I have sixty days clean in NA.” Elizabeth gaped. Each key chain was stamped “NA” in black; the white ones said “Just for Today,” the orange one “30 Days,” the green one “60 Days.” Rosie claimed her. “Come into my room! Mommy, can she stay for dinner?” “Of course. And call Alice. Rosie’s clean, too, Jo!” Elizabeth hugged Jody again and let her go. “Can I ask you something? Are you still with your soldier?” Jody shook her head. “He shipped out. A month ago, but it’s okay.” “Can you believe you fell in love with a soldier?” Rosie asked. “You love who you love, Rosie. Like you should even talk.” “I know, but I mean, Claude wasn’t even a Democrat.” “One more question,” Elizabeth said. “Why so many white key chains?” “I kept slipping. I’d get a week, then Claude would get paid, and we’d buy blow. But we got a month clean together, and now I have sixty days.” “Sixty days!” James shouted when he arrived. “You don’t get shit at my Al-Anon meetings. You get wrinkles, tear tracks, and a knuckle sandwich.” Elizabeth was serving up black bean soup with dollops of sour cream, a garnish of cilantro. “Are you going to finish up high school?” Elizabeth asked. “I told you, Mom. She’s getting her GED. Which is exactly what I want.” “Do you go to AA, or just NA?” Elizabeth asked. “NA. Alcohol counts as a drug, so I’m sober, too.” Elizabeth reached forward to stroke her cheeks. “Oh, Jody. Will you go to College of Marin in the spring—or get a job?” “Both.” Rosie gave Elizabeth the evil eye. “Mom, what do you think this is, Special Ops?” Elizabeth ignored her. “Well, want me to ask Rae if they can use help at church? Maybe they need to fill Rosie’s old job.” Rae called while Elizabeth and James did the dishes—it was that sort of grasshopping day. Elizabeth caught her up on Jody’s surprise arrival, and asked if there might be part-time work. Rae said Jody should call her. Elizabeth headed to Rosie’s room, where Alice had joined the other two girls. They were in bear-cub mode, sprawled all over one another on the bed, that thick glossy hair a blur of dirty blond, reddish, and black. Alice was saying, “Are you like a lesbian now?” and Jody said she didn’t even know at this point. Maybe, maybe bi. Or celibate. But single. “I mean, who cares, what ev,” said Alice. “I love that you cut bangs. It’s so hot.” Elizabeth brought them sundaes to eat in Rosie’s room, then threw Alice and Jody out at nine so Rosie could finish her homework. Within a week, Rosie’s coloring and Elizabeth’s confidence were restored. Rosie put on five more pounds in Jody’s company. They ate cookies at the young people’s meetings, doughnuts at NA. Elizabeth went along some nights, and watched with pride and profound relief as Rosie inhaled cheap cookies. Elizabeth lived by the adage that expectations were disappointments under construction, and savored the family’s progress from frequent angry chaos all the time, to mostly peace and quiet. But then, in November, everything came crashing down. Elizabeth fell hard in the middle of the night. She had gone to the bathroom to pee, so tired that she didn’t bother with the lights, stepped into the bathroom, and tripped, falling against the rim of the bathtub. She smashed her shoulder on the faucet, her head against the tiled wall, and dropped through pitch-black outer space until she finally landed on the floor. She heard James cry out in the distance, and some old woman mewing like a hungry cat. James turned on the lights and helped her sit up. Her head, shoulder, and arm were radiant with pain, but after ten minutes, she felt normal again. Her head and shoulder hurt, though not enough to go to the hospital. James wanted her to go, but she refused. They compromised and stayed awake for an hour, icing the worst of her injuries, waiting up in case she got a headache. In the morning, she looked like the Elephant Man, and her shoulder was badly bruised. Rosie fawned over her at breakfast, calling her hon as she held an ice pack to her shoulder. James had to leave at ten to record his latest piece at the studio in the city, but first he called Rae and asked her to stop by. Rae finally arrived, with a homeopathic ointment for deep bruising, lemon mousse, and the National Enquirer. She stayed until noon, then had to leave, as the yearly ancestors’ ceremony was scheduled for this Sunday. Jody was gathering sticks for the service as they spoke. Rae helped Elizabeth get dressed in her prettiest blouse, like someone’s auntie in an old folks’ home. And the next few days Elizabeth felt more scared than ever. She could not shake her conviction that something was up with Rosie, or going on below, in a subterranean realm, although it was nothing she could put her finger on. Yet she could tell, just as she would know if James ever had an affair: it was as if Rosie were impersonating herself, but with only a crescent of her showing, a whole side of her in the dark. Elizabeth wrote on a card in her tiniest script, “Now I am afraid all the time,” and tucked it into a book by her bed. The lump on her head receded and the bruises turned to gold, but her shoulder still ached and she felt old and in the way. Worries felt like fishhooks sticking out of her solar plexus, connected by almost invisible lines to Rosie, and she couldn’t jiggle them loose. James said you had to let people sink or swim, but he hadn’t let Elizabeth sink. And how could you ask a mother to let her child sink? Even if things were looking better, all the months of cumulative failure were pulling Elizabeth under. Release might mean that you didn’t drown, but what if your child did? She knew that fishhooks connected people only to one another’s disease. But that was better than nothing. Rae said, “Let’s see her rising up, okay?” Elizabeth tried; some days went better than others. James said, “We need a united front. Next time she blows it, we put her in rehab—no negotiations, no enabling, and no matter her excuses, promises, hysteria.” On Sunday, James and Elizabeth hiked up the hill to Sixth Day Prez. Below them, fog was burning off, rising in a thick mist through the trees of orange and yellow and red. But the wild field behind the cottage of worship was almost warm with a low autumn sun; two dozen people in sweaters and jackets milled around a circle of branches in the center of the meadow, while children played at the periphery. Rae waved from a table covered with ribbons and strips of cloth, where the church grandmothers sat. Not knowing anyone there except Rae, James and Elizabeth walked over to where children were playing Frisbee basketball with yogurt lids and the bucket-kid buckets. Jody was to be in charge of them today, with Rosie as backup, but Rosie was not there. She had borrowed Jody’s car to pick up Fenn, Jody explained, and had said she’d be right back. Elizabeth’s heart opened and closed like gills. She fiddled with Jody’s hair as they talked, and Jody fiddled with the ends of Elizabeth’s. Still, no Rosie. Jody’s small face pulled closed, like a purse. She stared off at the children, sad, thoughtful, but then her face softened, opened with relief. “Look, there’s Rosie,” Jody said, pointing. Rosie had stepped into the field alone, and was standing by a hollowed log in all her towering glory, looking around through the crow
d for them. She might have been arriving at a beach party, in dark glasses and a dress with spaghetti straps over a tank top. Most of the grown-ups turned to watch her approach. She had this effect on people. There was just so much of her. She moved so big. Elizabeth smiled and waved, happy and relieved. Her daughter had an earthy gloss you might find in a garden; everyone else seemed tidy and dry by comparison. Elizabeth had seen dignified men start talking like crickets when they spoke to her, too fast and high. Rosie waved to her parents and Jody, and came over to embrace them. She handed Jody the keys and said that Fenn had to work all day. Jody headed back to the kids. Elizabeth reached forward to take off Rosie’s sunglasses, but she flicked her head to the side. “Hands off,” she said. “Don’t be touching the princess.” “Aren’t you freezing?” Elizabeth asked. Rosie shook her head no. “I brought one of Rae’s shawls if I get cold,” she said, and as proof, she tugged at the top of her satchel, and a loosely woven band of lavender rose like tissue. “Please, baby girl, put it on, I’m so cold!” “Mommy! Leave me alone. Work your program. Call your sponsor.” Anthony, in a gold and black cap, stepped out from a door in the back of the cottage, and the ceremony began. People made a half-circle around him. He looked at Elizabeth right then, and winked. “We are here to celebrate the ancestors, to thank them for their company and guidance, and to give of ourselves, to be not of the world we see, but of the whole world before us and behind us and around us and above.” Elizabeth looked at her daughter beside her, who watched, enrapt, amused. Elizabeth turned back to Anthony. “ ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there,’ ” he quoted Rumi. Then he showed everyone how to carve sticks, scraping off bark with penknives. When his stick was smooth, he wrapped it with threads, ribbons, and strips of cloth. The only sounds were from the children, and from meadow grasses blowing in the breeze. He took bits of paper and announced the names of his ancestors: “Jonathan, loving father, I forgive you. Eva, my mother, singer of songs, rocker of chairs. Louis, beloved grandfather, who taught me to whittle at the lake.” His deep, beautiful voice soothed Elizabeth. He stuck his stick into the ground amid weeds and grasses, some golden, some green. “To rot,” he said, like a toast. “To the rot that lets the earth take our loved ones back home.” This sort of situation was so Rae and her women at the sweat lodge, like soul arts and crafts, but it was a real stretch for Elizabeth. Side by side with her daughter and husband, she tried to do as Anthony had instructed, as well as she could. Rae was the teacher’s aide, going from person to person, standing with each awhile, hearing the names and memories. Over in the children’s corner, Jody helped the kids sand sticks until they were smooth and pale. Anthony said to concentrate on something important—who you are, what you so desperately need—going way back, going forward, in paths, in mist, in darkness, in light. Human, alive, you couldn’t understand much of this mysterious world, but maybe our ancestors hungered for us like we hungered for them today. Elizabeth said Andrew’s name out loud. James said his parents’ names, Mitch and Dottie, and then couldn’t go on. Rosie said, “To Andrew, my daddy.” Tears sprang in her eyes, and she wiped them with her hand, trying not to smear the kohl. She left her parents’ side. She needed to be with Jody. Also, she suddenly felt funny, woozy, nauseated. She walked toward the children’s corner of the field. Ten of the dozen children broke away from Jody and threw themselves at Rosie, like sticky little groupies. She got down in the grass with them and wrestled, tickled and flung, hugged, luxuriating in that precious warm skin. She remembered all of their names—how bad off could she be? Ava, Lew, Tiana, Sophia, D’ron . . . She swung some of them for a few minutes, but this made her feel more nauseated, so she plopped down in the earth and made a lap for them. Jody called the other children over and they all sorted themselves out, some on top of Rosie’s neck or legs or head, some on Jody’s, some rassling with one another. The cough syrup she and Fenn had drunk was hitting her hard. It was over-the-counter, not even something anyone could test for, except that sometimes the DXM made your urine test positive for PCP. What a stupid fucking idea that had been. She couldn’t believe she had drunk it with him; she’d done it only because he couldn’t come today and it made them feel close. She was seriously mad at herself. She hadn’t meant to have any, she’d meant to say no. Her hands were trembling. She wanted to lie against Jody, but there was no space to do it with all those kids, like Jody was the old woman who lived in the shoe. She and Jody held hands, and she knew Jody could see the tremor, but she didn’t say anything judgmental. Rosie had to keep swallowing back vomit. We are here for all generations.” Anthony’s voice broke through Elizabeth’s memories. “Our babies, children, youth, adult, and aged, all the way through to the wise ancestors who are always around for us. We feed them by saying, ‘I remember you, love you, need you.’ ” Elizabeth went to find Rosie, needing to hold her, ecstatic that her girl was here, on sacred ground. She could not find her in the crowd. Finally she saw her, sitting on a bench in the children’s area, Jody squatting in the dirt beside her. Elizabeth headed over. Rosie’s black hair spilled down over her back, halfway down the lavender shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders. Jody must have said something to her, because she looked up slowly. Jody wiped something from the side of Rosie’s mouth, pushed away strands of hair, put her dark glasses back into place. Elizabeth knelt on one knee and peered into Rosie’s face, as if she had complained about having something in her eye. Leaning in, Elizabeth gently removed the dark glasses. Rosie closed her eyes as tightly as she could, and Elizabeth waited. Rosie didn’t breathe. At last she sighed, and her lids fluttered open, and she looked calmly back at her mother. Her pupils were full: the pterygium crept from the bloodshot whites to a fine rim of Siamese blue surrounding a total black eclipse of the sun. How quickly the urge not to make a commotion took over. Instant composure kicked in, masking Elizabeth’s dread, even as word went out that something was terribly wrong with Rosie. Rae came rushing over. “We need the keys to your car,” Elizabeth whispered. Rae fished them out of her pocket and handed them to Elizabeth. Rae, James, and Elizabeth led Rosie away in slow motion through the crowd, as if showing her to a seat for afternoon tea. Elizabeth decided on the spot that she would not take her home. People looked toward them and spoke softly with concern. Rosie started protesting, but Elizabeth whispered, “Shh,” and they went around to the side of the church toward the parking lot. As they approached the parked cars, Rosie tried to break free, and James gripped her arm. Then he all but shoved her toward Rae’s car. “She’s stoned,” Elizabeth told Rae. “Her pupils are dilated. What should I do?” “Take her to the emergency room. Check her into an inpatient rehab.” Rae took hold of Elizabeth’s shoulders. “Just don’t do nothing today. Today, do something big.” It was perfectly quiet in the car. Rosie thought about jumping out at every traffic light, and again when they were on the freeway. She saw herself standing on a mountain, screaming for Fenn. She looked down at her nails, bitten to the quick. So much adrenaline was pumping through her that she had to persuade James to pull over so she could throw up. When he did, she was too weak to bolt into the woods. The fresh paper under Rosie’s body on the examination table crackled as she turned away from the wall. She stared at the ceiling. There was a water stain. That was a little tacky. The attending psychiatrist did not show up for at least two hours. James and Elizabeth stayed in the waiting room while Dr. Reynolds examined Rosie. James paced. Elizabeth studied her nails and tried to hold back tears. She did not feel like talking. Talking led to thinking, and thinking led back to talking, and for the time being she was done. She watched movies in her head, of Rosie’s peers in failed rehabs. Jody had gone off for three months at a cost of $30,000, and found it very easy to score while in treatment. Then she had used again almost the whole time she’d been back, until fairly recently. A senior named Jane had successfully completed county outpatient, before needing a shot of Narcan during fifth-period art class. Alexander the sweet heroin boy was high his thir
d night home from a sixty-day program. Several of the girls in Rosie’s class had been sent from the ER at Marin General, after overdosing on alcohol, to recovery places out of state—one to Montana, two to Utah—and you saw them all the time at the Parkade, buzzed out of their minds. It seemed that most addicts, especially the young ones, needed to try and fail a couple of times. After a full year at Allison Reid, one girl had gone on to Stanford, a total success story, but she overdosed on OxyContin her first semester there and died. Elizabeth and James did not have the $10,000 to send Rosie off for a month of rehab, let alone three, unless they dipped into her college fund. Also, the odds were good that as soon as Rosie got back to town she would keep trying to figure out how to get high without being busted. There seemed to be no way to stop her. Elizabeth stared fretfully off into space, seeing Rosie on the blacktop of the Parkade, surrounded by burnouts and friends, getting a shot of Narcan in her shoulder or heart. “It’s like she keeps climbing into a dryer,” Elizabeth said to James. “And her head keeps hitting the sides, hard. So I get in there with her, to try and protect her, to keep her brain from getting too banged up. But isn’t that just crazy?” Rosie lay on top of the crackly paper with her eyes closed. Her parents had come back in, but she did not look over at them. She kept repeating a line from her French test, a mock cooking class on crêpes, using invisible ingredients and bowls: Utilisez votre main droite pour tourner ce groupe de deux bulles sur elle même! “Did you say something, darling?” her mother asked. Rosie shook her head. In the French test, you had to describe cooking something: Use your right hand to fold this grouping of two bubbles over onto itself. What did that even mean, this grouping of two bubbles, ce groupe de deux bulles? And she’d gotten an A on it. Rosie sat up on the exam table, looking like her old self, slightly embarrassed, wary. “Have a seat,” Dr. Reynolds said to Elizabeth and James, indicating two folding chairs against the wall. Elizabeth swiveled around to study her daughter for another minute. Rosie had her best face on; you might momentarily believe that she understood her place in the order of things: a minor, in a psych emergency room, with the head of the department and her parents watching. “Things are in some ways worse than you may have thought,” Dr. Reynolds began. “We’ve sent off a urine specimen, and Rosie has prepared us to find a medley of illegal substances—mushrooms, cough syrup, alcohol, inhalants, plus prescription Adderall that she buys from a boy at school.” “Inhalants?” James sounded aghast. “Inhalants?” “As a result, she is close to a diagnosis of borderline psychosis, along with deep exhaustion from the use of OTC stimulants and cough syrup.” Elizabeth gritted her teeth to hold back the bile. “Obviously, this isn’t good, although it is almost surely temporary.” James took his wife’s hand. “But we’ve reached an understanding, Rosie and I. Right?” the doctor continued. Rosie nodded. “Why don’t we check her in on a fifty-one fifty, a seventy-two-hour hold, while she detoxes. We can help her build her health back up, help her get some sleep. In a couple of days, we’ll sit down together and figure out our next move.” “Yes,” said James. “We agree. Seventy-two hours. And only the two of us can visit, plus Rae.” Later, Rosie didn’t really remember their good-byes, although she didn’t think anyone had cried. Her mother had hugged her and said they’d see her in the morning, but the video in her mind of everything else had been erased. They’d been here and then they were gone. She had to share a room with a fat woman with acne who had a clear plastic tube up her nose, and a dust mask on her face. Rosie used the pay phone to call Fenn and tell him where she was, left a message on his machine that everyone was watching her like the Gestapo, so she couldn’t call often and he couldn’t visit. But she would be out in a day or two, and if he called Alice, Alice could call Jody. What a joke, she added, that all this had come down because of over-the-counter cough syrup. She ate the crappy food, and read a copy of A Passage to India that her mother had found in the lending library. It was amazing. She stayed in bed. The room was too white and smelled like cleanser. They gave her some syrup to help her sleep. She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. The rain turned to slashing storm around the time that James and Elizabeth crawled into bed. She’d been crying off and on since they had said good-bye to Rosie at the hospital. The whole world was in a deluge. James had phoned a local twenty-eight-day rehab called Serenity Knolls, to see if it would take Rosie for a month—it was close, built on a low hill by a creek, surrounded by redwoods—but he learned you had to be eighteen years old to get in. “Can you tell us the name of another place?” James pleaded. “If this were your child, where might you consider?” “I’m not supposed to make recommendations,” the employee at Serenity Knolls told him. James took a deep breath. “So I’ll just mention that there’s a wilderness program in Utah called Second Chance, that’s different from the rest.” “We’re not looking for a wilderness program—I read that a kid died in one back East last week. But tell me this,” James said. “How do you know about Second Chance?” “I got sent there by my parents when I was seventeen. It’s probably why I’m still alive.” Elizabeth stood behind James at his desk and watched him try to log on to his computer, but the phone line was acting up in the storm, and he gave up. He got the phone number from Salt Lake City information, then called and left a message. “How can we have gotten to this place?” he asked Elizabeth. “She could probably get into almost any college she applies to. But we may need to send her away instead.” She nodded. “We’d have to use her college fund. And cash in the IRA that Andrew left for her.” Outside, the rain crashed against the house and the wind howled. Elizabeth read until three, listening to the downpour; it sounded like the surf. Rosie in wilderness? Elizabeth went and stretched out on the couch, then pulled into the fetal position and tried not to throw up. Help us, she cried, feeling insane and numb, a silent roar inside. Help us help us fucking HELP US. The wind shrieked like oil pouring up out of the ground. When she was little and it rained, she and her father would walk the dogs down to Harrington Park. He would take a matchbook from his pocket, tear two matches out of it, bend the end of one, and leave the other straight, to distinguish whose was whose. Then they would lay them in the gutter on Appleby Street, which would be rushing with water, and race their matches. She woke to discover that they had not in fact blown away in the storm, but the cost was spiky fatigue. She had been holding the house down all night with bungee cords. Green redwood branches whipped in the mist like sails, where the day before the juncos had played. Rascal snored beside her. “The storm has been waiting, patiently, grimly,” James said, handing her his mug of coffee. “The storm? Waiting for what?” “Release. Muttering, creaking around behind something in the closet, till now.” The phone was working again, and he logged on to his computer. She stood behind him and read over his shoulder about Second Chance, and The Camp in Santa Cruz. “These are places kids run away from. And I bet they hate their parents forever,” Elizabeth said. “I know,” said James. “Now leave. Go visit your spawn. I’ll find out everything I can.” Rosie slept until seven, and woke up feeling better than she had in weeks—sort of stoned in a mild way. It was storming outside, crazy, maritime, and she loved it. She daydreamed about Fenn, and how she would be out that night, after a shower. Her mother would be here by nine, and if Rosie was clean, smelling like shampoo, totally contrite and like her old self, her mother would help get her out of here. It was ridiculous she was here in the hospital at all, but she could see that it was time to pull her act together. She was freaking her mother out. She got up, put on her robe. There were ten people sitting around, mostly looking completely ordinary, except that they were in pajamas. She was the youngest person. She had breakfast with a group of four, and they talked about the storm. They all had interesting, poetic ways of talking. One guy about thirty said he’d stayed up all night listening to the fitful wind nag and fret. One aging lady said she thought she’d heard the howl of wolves. The most intense man said Rosie had the best vibe, like she
must be great with children. Rosie said yes, she was, that was such an intuitive thing to say, and she told them all about her bucket kids. Then an older psych nurse came along and broke the peaceful spell by horning her way into the conversation, like she was one of them. Her name tag said “Angie,” and had a happy-face sticker next to her name, but she was not happy. She looked like a mixture of Gertrude Stein and Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca or like the bad fairy who, at the end of the lovely christening, after all the good fairies had said lovely things and given various talents and blessings, came along and cursed Beauty. “I seriously need my mother,” Rosie told Angie, confidentially, worried. “You’re okay. Visiting hours start at ten. Let’s getcha going.” She felt sort of normal again on her feet. All she had to do was kill a couple of hours reading until her mother could come and get her out. Whatever bad spell it was had passed. She glanced at Angie, at those eyes staring right at her, and did not look away, just tried to look composed and bemused as Angie lumbered off. But she had to look down at her bare feet in slippers just to check that there was still a Rosie body there and not a pile of smoldering ashes. Rosie was in the lounge, lost in her book, when Elizabeth arrived at ten. She got up and raced toward her with outstretched arms. They both held on for dear life. “God, Mommy. I’m so sorry.” She shook her head. “Did you bring clean clothes?” Elizabeth nodded. “Did you smuggle Rascal in?” Elizabeth smiled. “I’m so much better. I feel like I’ve come back from a thousand miles away. And I feel okay today—rested, like me again. Did you bring me a brush? Will you brush my hair?” She turned her head so that her black hair cascaded down her back. Elizabeth fished out Rosie’s toothbrush, toothpaste, and lotion, and put them on the table. Then she took the hairbrush, and gently drew it through Rosie’s hair, pausing for extra attention to the ends. Rosie reached back for her mother’s hand, to stop her for a moment. “I can’t believe what I’ve put you through. I am so starting over—I just got off the phone with Fenn. He understands completely, that we have to start over. Hey,” she called to a middle-aged woman, “this is my mom!” The woman, a pretty housewife of forty or so, started pointing with burlesque enthusiasm at Elizabeth like she was the bomb, and Elizabeth smiled and waved, the shy celebrity. “So Mama, will you ask Reynolds if I can go home now?” Elizabeth continued brushing. “Say something. I’ll go to a meeting with you tonight.” “Rosie,” Elizabeth managed to say, her throat closing up, “I offered to look away from it all, if you would stay on campus at lunch. But you wouldn’t even give me that much. Another night here won’t kill you.” “I changed my mind, I will totally obey you. I swear to God.” She whirled around to face her mother. “You need to stop smoking weed, and taking anything else, till you’re eighteen. Period.” “God, this is such an overreaction. It’s crazy. I don’t want to be like the one Mormon in my senior class.” Elizabeth turned her palms upward. “It’s very simple, Rosie. You’ve been doing weed, Ecstasy, cocaine, getting drunk, taking cough syrup, acid, mushrooms, sniffing glue.” “Glue once. Jeez, I can’t believe this. You’ve gone crazy.” Rosie stopped reacting then and nodded, as if the second person inside were whispering in her ear, telling her to fake understanding and agreement. She heard her mother say her name. Rosie did not speak during the short morning group meeting, although she found that her face was wet. She would say later, when Elizabeth came back with James, that she was okay with not drinking, that she would quit everything. Study, be with Fenn and her friends, get through senior year. She would say what her parents wanted to hear. There were good prescription drugs at school now, plus Alice still had Adderall. She could make it work. She would stage a moment of clarity later today. Some people from a local AA or NA group were bringing a meeting to the inmates, like little temperance union missionaries. She could win her parents’ trust back, do a great job on her college apps, score a scholarship somewhere, maybe San Diego, eventually get to spend weekends with Fenn again. Angie, standing in front of the meeting group in her satanic fashion, delivered a passionate speech on recovery, and how they might make the most of this opportunity. It was just ludicrous, a howler, as Alice would say. The storm had begun to subside. Elizabeth and James sat huddled at the kitchen table with papers strewn around them, computer printouts of rehabs and wilderness programs, price lists, photographs of natural beauty and healthy teenage hikers. “She’ll go berserk when we tell her,” James said. “She’s just going to lose her mind.” Elizabeth nodded. “How will we get her to Utah? No way we can afford a transport service. Those cost a fortune, thousands of dollars. This is going to break us as it is.” “I think you and Lank need to fly her there. You’ll have to lie, and say it’s some kind of weekend program for at-risk adolescents, strong-arm her if she resists.” “You and Rae make more sense, because you’re women. But she’d have an easier time escaping from the car than she would if she flew with me and Lank, wouldn’t she? So yeah, I’m in.” Elizabeth covered her ears with her hands as if she had sudden ear-aches. “Are we serious about this? About wilderness? A month in the snow? It’s freezing in Utah this time of year.” James looked at her, faking deep concern, tugging at his chin. “Wow,” he said. “Bummer.” Elizabeth almost shouted at him with shock and hurt—how could he be so glib, so callous? But she surprised them both when she laughed quietly, and the thin shell that surrounded her heart creaked like fault lines breaking open; her laughable armor of resistance, denial, delusion tremulously cracked like a coat of ice on a muddy puddle, and in the silence that followed, she gazed into her husband’s wide green eyes for the answer she already knew.
Anne Lamott Page 10
