He turned back, head down. Avoiding her eyes.
“Will that be cash or charge?”
Maybe she had imagined it. Rose started to doubt what she had seen just seconds ago. Her brain felt as if it were falling, reaching for a thought to hold on to, something to make sense of the “thisness” of this moment. But the thoughts were coming too quickly to form; there were no words for this sensation, no precedent for this moment.
She handed him her credit card.
He took it without looking up. Again he shook his head. Pinched at the spot where his eyes met his nose.
“I’m sorry, did you say you wanted a drink?”
He waited for her to answer. Rose could barely make sense of the syllables he had said. Finally, reluctant, he looked up at her.
And she knew.
“I thought I was … but … you know me.”
The Man Who Was Not Hugo … Who Could Not Be Hugo … shook his head, a violent jerk. He was trembling. Sweating suddenly and profusely, a small, clear smatter of dew appearing under the lip of his paper cap. He was breathing in sharp sips, gasping, a panic attack setting in.
And in the center of this storm his eyes anchored on her. Locked. Hooked on her. He was lost in seeing her. He was lost in looking at Rose. In the impossibility of her.
The stone in Rose’s stomach lurched upward into her lungs. Recognition.
He turned suddenly, almost a spasm, knocking her tray to the floor. The fries and the dog hit the tile, rolling toward the kitchen.
“Hugo, are you all right?”
It came out of her mouth naturally. His name. Surely his name. Indisputably his name. She said it as she had said it a thousand thousand times on the island, making sure he was safe, making sure he was there.
Hugo.
His eyes went wide at those two small syllables. He stepped back, distancing himself from her, tripping over his feet. Suddenly he was falling backward into the prep station, tumbling to the floor, and everyone was staring at him. The employees, the Germans … and Rose.
He gasped, “Air. I need air!”
He stumbled to his feet, his arms forward, flailing. He pushed past the counter, his hands slapping the glass of the door. Pushing. And then he was outside.
And then, as she had done a thousand thousand times before, Rose followed him.
* * *
She followed him onto the cold, clear shimmer of the pavement. The stark Colorado light reflected off the parked cars, sharpening the shadows on his back as he ran from her.
“Hugo! Hugo, please stop!”
He stopped and turned to her. His face was angry. Furious.
“Nobody calls me Hugo anymore.”
Rose stopped. Ten feet from him … trying to make sense of what he’d just said. Anymore. Which meant …
He shifted, his palms curling into themselves. Gone was the gasping man at the counter, and here was a rattlesnake. A coiled threat.
“Look, this isn’t funny. I’m sure whoever got you to do this thought maybe you could pass … and you’re very close, but…”
“But what?” Rose heard herself speak. Words lost in the wind. She sounded like a child. Tiny.
“No offense, you sort of look like her, but not really. You’re like her older, fatter sister.”
Rose felt his words real as a slap. Full-handed sting.
And finally all the feelings and thoughts that had been flying past her as she had stood in that line, too fast to be fixed on, finally settled on a firm desire.
Violence.
Rose wanted to hurt him. To make him feel the way she felt. To fly across the space between them and bury her thumbs into his eye sockets. To pound his face into nothingness until he looked nothing like the man she dreamed of every night, until he was just some fat, ugly stranger with a bad job who lived in a shit town.
But instead she started screaming, “Do you think you look exactly like you do in my dreams? In child molester glasses? Or a polyester shirt? Working in an Orange Julius rip-off?” Rose felt the tears coming, racing toward her eyes, the hot flush on her neck, the ache at the back of her tongue.
She would not let him see that. She would not give him that.
“Goddamn it!” And then she was moving toward her van. Reeling toward it.
Escape.
“Wait!” she heard in the distance.
She wrapped her hand around the door, pulling. It jammed, the lock stuck between positions. Rose cursed, begged, pleaded, yanking on it. Please get me away. Let me out of this. The insurgent tears reached her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
He was walking toward her, his eyes softer now. “What do you mean, ‘in my dreams’?”
The lock gave, the door releasing. Blessed escape. Rose threw herself inside, jamming the keys into the ignition. He was almost next to her.
The stone inside her had reversed course and was pulling her under … down … down.
Rose crumpled behind the wheel, burying her face in her hands. Idiot. You pathetic idiot. You thought this would make things better, you thought this would make it so life could go back to normal. But this is so much worse.
He knocked on the glass, his face concerned. He said something, but his voice was muffled.
Rose couldn’t look at him. She shook her head as she started the car. “I was wrong. This is wrong. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” She didn’t know who she was saying it for, for him or herself.
The wheels squealed as she pulled away.
* * *
Adam and Isaac were waiting on the front porch when she finally got home. They had shed their backpacks, dumping them onto the stairs. They sat on the threshold of the locked door, pressing closer together than usual for warmth. It was colder here, closer to the mountains, than it had been out on the plains.
Isaac had stood up as he saw Rose’s minivan turn onto the street. His arms were crossed.
“Mom, where were you?” he said as soon as Rose opened the door.
Adam was right behind him, his words falling just behind. “It was so cold. And we were waiting and waiting.”
Little Boy and Littler Boy. Angry and sad.
So like their mommy.
“I’m so sorry, guys. I’m so, so sorry.”
Rose wondered if any of the neighborhood moms had seen them out there, cold and neglected on the front stoop. Evidence of their mother’s unfitness. Her delinquency.
Her relief that they were okay was short-lived, replaced by an uglier relief that no one had caught her; that only her children knew what a bad mother she was and not the world. Rose felt the hot flush of shame roll over the hangover of the tears she had cried on her commute.
A fender bender had backed up traffic for miles on the highway. She had marinated in the jam of cars, beating at the steering wheel, cursing herself. Because she could not explain why she was where she was, she could not call anyone to make sure her boys were okay. Instead she had sobbed and prayed for the cars to start moving.
Once she passed the site of the accident (broken glass, crumpled engine, a parked ambulance), she had floored it, leaning forward behind the wheel as if that would bring her home faster.
She opened the door for the boys to put their backpacks inside. “Who wants to walk with me over to Mrs. D’s to get Penny?”
The boys looked at her, wary. She knew it was going to take something big to get them to forgive this transgression, this trespass.
“And after we pick her up I think we should bake cookies. But I’m just not sure what kind.”
“Chocolate chip.” They had a consensus.
* * *
Rose set about her penance.
She would be a better mother. She would be an attentive wife. Neither children nor husband would ever know about the craziness of the past few weeks. They would simply gather the benefit of Rose’s atoning for her sins of negligence.
Rose scheduled playdates for Penny, willingly suffering the mother’s chatter about vaccin
e scares and the latest craze in “mommy shaming” so that Pen could play with some other toddler’s toys. Rose took her to the children’s museum for a special treat, read extra books at nap time, let her eat a few more cookies.
The boys she took bowling after school as a surprise, watching them hoot and holler as each other’s balls pinged off the bumpers. She took them out for pizza after soccer practice, to the pool for open swim.
She initiated sex with Josh, something she had not done since she had been willfully trying to get pregnant with Penny. Josh sensed that Rose’s heart was not in these couplings, her smile a little forced, her moans a little too enthusiastic. But the change was good, the sex was nice, and he did not want to question its source too deeply.
During these sessions, whenever his hands brushed the stubbly whiskers of her unshaved armpits, or when they gripped the dimpling cushion of her thighs, Rose felt the same repulsion for herself she had felt before. But she felt now that she must suffer that ugly feeling, that she deserved it, because she was in truth a horrible, ugly person inside and out.
But her family must never know.
* * *
Rose’s dreams of Hugo did not change from their usual course at all during this time.
The appearance of the Orange Tastee under the sand had been the only deviation from the norm, even during the weeks of Rose’s stalking of the Man Who Was Not Hugo. Otherwise they had gone about their typical adventures: battling the island’s monsters, riding around in the Orb, trying to find new ways to get closer to the city.
Same old, same old.
* * *
Regarding the events that had taken place inside the Orange Tastee in Hemsford: the way the man had reacted to seeing her, her chasing him into the parking lot, the horrible sneer on his face … To Rose, these things felt more like dreams than her dreams did. Like a nightmare, in which someone you love turns into a monster who hates and hunts you.
Looking back, she was mystified that she had ever thought this man looked like Hugo. Hugo’s face couldn’t twist in such ugly ways. Hugo could never have barked such unkind things.
What had he said?
Rose couldn’t remember. Quite. When she tried to think about the Man Who Was Not Hugo shouting at her in the parking lot, it came to her only as muffled rage. Shouts in another language.
What had really happened there? It was so confusing, the sequence of events, the emotions, his sneering, ugly face. Thinking about it made her unsettled, as if she had witnessed some horrible accident but could not later assemble the facts of it.
By the time she lied to Naomi about what transpired, Rose had almost convinced herself that her lie had to be a version of the truth.
“So after you ordered from him…”
“Nothing happened. He just … gave me my fries. I ate them and then I drove home.”
“And your fixation? The obsessive thoughts?”
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem anymore.”
* * *
The teachers at Penny’s pre-preschool program had looked at Rose quizzically when she dropped her off for the first time in weeks. Rose could tell by the way they paused when they greeted her that they expected her to fill them in on where her daughter had been. They felt they deserved an explanation.
Nosy bitches, thought Rose.
But she had smiled back. Lied to them, saying Penny had had a persistent cough and she was just playing it safe—didn’t want to expose the other kiddies.
Penny had settled right back in, running to the cornmeal table to play parallel to the Emmas and Coopers of her class.
Rose had driven home resenting how little freedom this “best of the best” preschool actually bought her. Barely two hours, less if she included drive time. Enough time to go grocery shopping, unload everything at home, and head back. Enough time to do a load of laundry, but not enough to dry it. Enough time to maybe consider going to the gym (ha!), but not enough to shower.
But all Rose wanted was to be alone.
She just wanted to sit in her quiet house and listen to the sound of the refrigerator humming … which was as near to the sound of nothing as she could imagine.
Her penance was exhausting her.
It felt as though she were building a defense for a trial, a list of evidence as to her fitness as a mother. You see, Your Honor, the defendant could not possibly be a bad mom, as she took her children to Chuck E. Cheese’s, and as you know, that is something only a very good parent would do.
But she was witness, defense, prosecution, and judge to herself—and no matter what character evidence she gave, she always knew the truth.
She knew that she resented every second at that Chuck E. Cheese’s. That she hated the flashing lights and the plinging ringing of those Plexiglas games with their crummy toys. She knew that she thought the man in the threadbare rat suit was creepy, a likely child molester, and she didn’t want him near their table. She knew she thought the pizza was shitty, the soda was watered down, and the ice likely to bear listeria. She knew she hated how greedy being there had made Adam and Isaac, running through their tokens in minutes and coming back to the table, their germy hands open, asking for more.
She knew she was a shitty mom.
She was even shitty for wanting to be alone for just an hour.
Shouldn’t she miss her boys when they were at school? Shouldn’t she mourn not being with her baby Penny, even as she recognized that her daughter was doing the important work of learning how to socialize with others? Shouldn’t she cherish every moment with them instead of wondering how she was going to make it through the hours between when they got home from school and she turned off their lights at bedtime?
She might be good at faking it, but even if everyone else didn’t see it, she knew she was a fraud.
What had he called her?
Ugly. Old. Fat.
Rose shook off the image of that sneer. Trying to dismiss the flush of shame that accompanied it. Never happened. Couldn’t have happened.
The mail truck was pulling away as she rolled into the garage. Rose checked to make sure none of her neighbors were walking to their boxes before heading to hers. She didn’t want to get caught in a “friendly” conversation and lose any of her precious minutes of solitude.
She closed the garage behind her and carried the pile of mail to the kitchen. The house was a sacred tomb of silence. No one pulling toys from their rightful places. No one unmaking made beds. No one screaming, screeching, hitting, whining, tattling, asking for attention, asking for food, or love or sex or anything—for one blessed hour, the house was hers.
She might even be able to poop in peace, an act her children so far seemed determined to prevent.
Rose decided she was going to take a catalog to the powder room with her. And she was going to leave the door open as she did her business, the ultimate declaration of solitude, the open-air bowel movement.
At the bottom of the stack of mail, under the pile of bills and catalogs, there was a manila envelope.
Rose had assumed it was for Josh. They usually were: medical journals, conference invitations, or glossy studies done by pharmaceutical companies touting why there was a real need for their particular brand of drug.
But this was addressed to Rose, with her name written in neat block letters.
Rose took a knife from the drawer and sliced it open.
A small hard flat something slid out and plinked against the floor, resting against the toe kick of the cabinet.
Her credit card.
Rose looked at it. Confused.
She had noticed the card was missing. But she had assumed that she had tucked it into some obscure fold of her pocketbook while she was in a rush. And since every time she had opened her purse subsequent to that time she had also been in a rush (paying for mini-golf, and ice cream, and pizza), she had given her purse a cursory look and then simply grabbed another card. Each time this happened she told herself that when she got home she would empty her
purse and find the errant piece of plastic, but until this moment she had forgotten.
She had not once thought she had lost it.
Rose knew she was very good about such things. She didn’t lose credit cards.
But then she realized when she last had held it.
Holding it out. Watching a trembling hand take hold of it, battered edges circumscribing the edges of familiar nail beds.
Rose felt her breath grow shallow.
She pulled the contents from the sleeve of the envelope.
It was a comic book of sorts. Clearly homemade. Pen and ink, no color. Bound with a spiral. But the image on the cover was sophisticated, professional—
And of Rose.
She gasped.
There she was on the page, inky lines tracing the curves of her knees, the ripples of her skirt, the firm edges of her breasts as she knelt in the sand. In her hand was a grass sword, her neck extended, her defiant chin turned toward the hulk of the enormous Spider as it reared up over her.
Above the image, the Spider’s palpae jutting just in front of it, hung the title:
The Adventures of Hugo & Rose.
Her heart was thumping. Pounding.
She felt the paper bloom with damp, sudden sweat, under her thumbs.
She opened it. Flipped through the pages rapidly, each page revealing more and more: her dreams on paper.
It was all there. A thin black line drawing of the corona of Castle City, its spiky towers and shining windows pricked out in ink. The whorls of the wood of the Orb, the shutters of the porthole, the knots in the boards that kept them separated from the marine world outside. The singing trees tattooed against the dark water of the Green Lagoon. Small diamond shapes hovering over the beach where it was lit by the sun, attempting to capture the effervescence of the phenomenon.
But she was the real revelation.
On the pages, Rose saw herself for the first time in the way she felt when she was on the island. She was a superhero. Her arms strong and thin. Her waist small, her bottom round, the muscles underneath it powerful: made for leaping and fighting and climbing. Her hair whipped around the boxes of the strip, almost in constant movement.
Hugo & Rose Page 9
