“Can you imagine the scare it gave the old bat?” Uncle Bishop wanted to know, and Rosemary was reminded of another of Mrs. Abernathy’s columns that spring. For the more discerning birder, it had cautioned, bats are the only mammal capable of true flight. But the bat is not a bird, I repeat, it is not! Bats carry all kinds of diseases.
“She’s not an old bat,” Rosemary said.
“The lynx wouldn’t have worked anyway,” Uncle Bishop went on. “It looked too much like Ralphie.”
“She’s a fragile old woman.”
“She’ll think twice before she puts another bell on my cat.” He thumped the owl’s rump. Its yellow eyes stared, unblinking, maybe remembering the forests around Hudson Bay where it made its nest in January and laid eggs while the ground was still blanketed with snow. Or perhaps the slap of summer waters around Tierra del Fuego, before it sat on a shelf in someone’s den, next to the gun rack, next to a copy of TV Guide.
“You disappoint me,” Rosemary said softly. “Miriam is one thing, but Mrs. Abernathy is another.” She put the dead owl back in his hands. Was she imagining it, or could she smell the thick, noxious odor of rotting flesh?
“Oh, Rosie, come on.” Uncle Bishop was chagrined. “This’ll keep the blood pumping in her veins, keep them from clogging up.”
“If you go near her again, Uncle Bishop, so help me,” Rosemary threatened, “I’ll turn you in myself.”
“She’s not why I’ve come,” he said. “I’m not afraid of her threats. I have Exhibit A right here.” He bobbed the owl at her and then knelt to rebury it beneath the clothing in his suitcase.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m going crazy alone,” he said unhappily, and so Rosemary reluctantly stepped back to let him drag the brown suitcase past her.
***
She spent the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom next to her own, the one that Mother had been occupying for the week. Now Mother’s visit was almost over. Aunt Rachel would arrive later in the day to retrieve her, and the room would go to Uncle Bishop. “For a couple of days,” or so he said. The brown suitcase sat happily in the corner, waiting to be unpacked. Rosemary had come up to the room to spend Mother’s last afternoon with her. She found her seated in a chair by the window, with a coloring book. Years earlier, Mother had enjoyed coloring with her children, patiently encouraging Rosemary and Robbie to stay within the dark lines. Now here Mother was, outside the lines society had laid down, outside all the proper rules. But she had taken to her hobby with gusto and was already on her third picture, one of children in galoshes stomping about in mud puddles, beneath April showers, beneath mushroomlike umbrellas, which Mother chose to color green and orange. It was a relief to watch this activity in lieu of reading about the vicissitudes of Hester Prynne and the increasingly unlikable Arthur Dimmesdale. Rosemary had long ago decided that the Puritans were all a miserable lot. “Keep in mind,” she had told her students, “that the Puritans were not hanging witches. They were hanging other Puritans.” Did any of her past students, she wondered now, ever keep that in mind? Did they keep anything in mind that she had taught them?
As Mother began a new picture, Rosemary heard car doors slam and engines come to life. She peered out the window over Mother’s head to see Lizzie roar off, with Charles and Philip following behind in Philip’s little blue Mercedes.
Charles and Philip in union against Lizzie. Charles riding in a non–General Motors car. What would this bizarre threesome do next? Better yet, when would they do it in their own homes? Philip had been in residence for over a week. Charles had been in Bixley for four days. Lizzie had been in Rosemary’s spare bedroom for almost three weeks.
“If something isn’t done soon,” Rosemary promised herself, “I’m taking action.”
At three o’clock Mother abandoned her coloring book and crayons, rubbed her eyes, and fell asleep on the bed. Rosemary carefully inched an arm in under the yellow head, pulled her in close, cradled her, as though she were a child. She’d been aching to hold Mother for years, but only asleep would Mother allow such a display of emotions with this stranger. The next two hours, which passed slowly, were the best between mother and daughter that Rosemary could remember since childhood. Those were the days, long summery afternoons, when she fell asleep to the melodic lilt of Mother’s voice as she read some storybook story. In those days, days yellow from the sun, she would drift off in the heart of the story and Mother would leave her alone for her nap. When she woke, there would be questions: What happened to the prince? Did they ever find the glass slipper? Did the Wicked Witch get Dorothy? And with the questions there would be a homemade buttermilk doughnut sitting next to a tall glass of milk and the reddest, most delicious apple, all waiting on her headboard like the participants in a still life. And there would be a perfumy smell where Mother had been, where she had come and gone, Mother, whose breasts back then were still firm and accommodating to a little girl’s head. Whose silk blouse rustled like autumn leaves, and who wore fake pearl hair combs in her lustrous hair. She was all smell and touch, this Mother of the happy answer: the prince is no longer a frog, Cinderella is dancing in her glass slippers, and Dorothy is safe and sound back in Kansas.
“Where are your perfect answers for me now?” Rosemary wondered, as she held Mother’s body in her arms. “When I come full awake in the heart of the night, where are the answers?” But she knew there would be no one there to offer her endings. No one to say, “William is alive and well. He’s painting in Kansas these days.” Rosemary held her mother, who was tired from coloring, tired as a child from the long day, and watched as the small mouth opened and closed, bringing Mother air as she slept, bringing her the dream of life. “Oh, Mom,” Rosemary wished she could say, as she had struggled to say William’s name in the last dream. She shooed a mosquito away, a buzzing little ultralight. The truth was that their relationship had turned rotten when Father died. He was their focal point. He was what they had in common. They had dearly loved the same man and, in dying, he had jilted them, as though they were foolish girlfriends. Now Mother was waiting for chocolates, for the candy of apology, for some long-overdue sweetness in her life. And Rosemary was watching the sky like a religious zealot, hoping for a crack, a fissure, so that the men who had disappeared would have a crawl space back into her life.
***
She stayed with Mother until five o’clock, until she heard Aunt Rachel’s little Volvo rattle up into the yard. Aunt Rachel had the eyes of the dead, round and listless, uninterested in life’s schemes. She seemed to gather new strength in seeing Mother again and caught her up in a swift hug. Mother was ecstatic. She had finally been rescued from the House of Crazies by her trusted guardian and protector. She held on to Aunt Rachel’s hand as Rosemary packed the xylophone, the books, and Betsy Kathleen into the tired Volvo. Uncle Bishop would drive the rocking chair home.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to keep her another week so that you can rest a bit more?” Rosemary asked.
“No,” Aunt Rachel said, and patted Rosemary’s arm. “It’s better to take her home with me now. She gives me energy from her in some strange way.”
Rosemary watched them swoop off in the rattling Volvo down the swell of Old Airport Road, Mother’s ringlets bouncing happily, as though she were a child on the way to a drive-in movie. Good-bye, Mother.
She went back upstairs to find Uncle Bishop happily arranging knickknacks and framed photographs on the mahogany table by the bed. The owl sat stiffly in Mother’s rocker.
“What’s this?” Rosemary asked, her teacher’s voice again. She was still very unhappy with him.
“It’s a photograph,” he said, taking the picture of a dark, petite man out of her hand and placing it back on the bedside table.
“Do you always take your photographs with you when you visit for a couple of days?”
“Sometimes,” Uncle Bishop said. “And sometimes I e
ven take them on short trips to Thomasville to run a quick errand.”
“Why?” Rosemary took the photograph up again. The face in the picture was a man haunted, a sadness in his eyes.
“So that I can be close to the people who are important to me,” Uncle Bishop mumbled.
“Is this who I think it is?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Jason?” A second nod.
“Is he still with his wife?” A third nod.
“Still with her, I guess,” Uncle Bishop said. “I gave him three or four days. Seven at the most. It’s been three weeks, Rosie, and still nothing.”
“Could this be why you’ve been so hard on Mrs. Abernathy?” she asked.
“I suppose it could have added to my stress when dealing with the old bat.” He took Jason’s photo out of Rosemary’s hands and stared down at it. Rosemary thought of Horace Abernathy’s last picture, back on Mrs. Abernathy’s mantel, the one she must have snapped before the cancer jumped poor Horace in the canyon of his life. Ambushed him. Cut him off at the pass.
“Can’t you also, then, try to imagine what that old lady is going through right next door to you?” Rosemary asked. “Mr. Abernathy’s dead. She has no children. She certainly doesn’t have the luxury of packing a suitcase and visiting loved ones for a couple of days, as you’re doing.”
“Do you think we should get her a cat?” Uncle Bishop asked, and nervously rubbed his bald spot. It shone like a small planet amidst a universe of thinning hair. Rosemary took a spare blanket out of the closet and tossed it onto the bed.
“I’d appreciate it if you would be kind enough to act as my emissary,” she told him. “Please let these people know, including yourself, that I want my privacy back very soon.” With that, she went out and closed the door roughly.
“Tell them yourself,” she heard him say loudly. “I personally don’t associate with the hoi polloi.”
***
When Rosemary found her in the den, Miriam was enduring a headache She had even, she informed Rosemary, given up her cigarettes for an hour or so in a valiant attempt to dissuade the headache.
“I should never mix wine and hard stuff,” Miriam said.
“Miriam, what’s your problem?” Rosemary asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you in my house instead of your own?”
“Well,” Miriam said, fidgeting on the sofa. Rosemary could see her sister’s mind working, the thoughts forming. What’s come over passive little Rosemary? she was no doubt wondering. What’s got little Shirley Temple up in arms?
“Do you plan to straighten things out with Raymond soon?” Rosemary picked up an orange crayon that must have fallen from Mother’s box of colors. She placed it on the coffee table. She would drop it off at Aunt Rachel’s later in the week. Mother might want to color Sally’s hair with it. Or perhaps Spot, a small orange dog peeing up against a purple tree.
“What do you mean by soon, Rosie?” Miriam squinted her eyes as though she were, indeed, still smoking.
“There you go again,” Rosemary said. “It was always Rosie, can I borrow your bicycle? Rosie, can I wear your new sweater? Will you do my homework, Rosie? Well, let me tell you something, Miriam. Shit happens. It just goddamn happens. I have my own problems.”
“Some sister you’ve turned out to be,” Miriam said.
“I want my privacy back, especially after Lizzie leaves.”
“No one cares about me,” Miriam said, her voice trembling. “Raymond even treats people he doesn’t like better than he treats me.”
“I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” said Rosemary. Hester Prynne was waiting, and the Puritans suddenly seemed so much more sensible, forgiving even, than her own family.
“You don’t have to put up with an ex-wife and alimony payments either,” Miriam persisted.
“‘Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,’” Rosemary read aloud, “‘with a pair of gloves.’”
“Oh, fuck Hester Prynne,” Miriam cried. “Just fuck her. She doesn’t know the half of it.”
“‘Which she had fringed and embroidered to his order.’”
***
At seven o’clock Lizzie knocked on Rosemary’s door and came inside the room to sit on the bed.
“I think every woman should have a husband and a lover,” Lizzie said, when Rosemary inquired as to the state of affairs. “It’s cleared up my face.”
“Where are Philip and Charles?”
“I finally gave them the slip in that sharp turn just as you come into Bixley. Then I drove to Thomasville and went to a movie alone.”
“Sounds like your life is more entertaining than a movie.”
“It’s funny, Rosemary, but I’m curious as to whether I’m getting this sudden attention from Charles just because there’s a Philip.”
“Could be.”
“And I’m wondering if there is a Philip just because I want some attention from Charles.”
“It’s certainly possible.”
“At least I’m trying to be levelheaded,” Lizzie said, and bit at a nail. “I sometimes also think that what’s going on between Philip and Charles is a male kind of competition and that it’s more important than me. It’s the fight and not the prize.” She appeared even more tired than the previous day, when she had looked exhausted. “And by the way, we’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Tell me,” said Rosemary. “Are Charles and Philip forming a lasting relationship these days?”
“Oh no,” said Lizzie. “They hate each other.”
“I saw them driving away together.”
“Well, I left in my car,” Lizzie explained. “So Philip decided to follow me. I guess he had a final legal point to make. Charles was obliged to go, too, if Philip was going, because he wouldn’t want us to sneak away to some motel.”
“I think I have that so far,” said Rosemary.
“When Charles discovered that Uncle Bishop’s Datsun had him blocked in, he ran over and jumped in with Philip rather than miss a ride. And Philip was afraid that if he stopped to insist Charles get out, I’d have time to make my getaway.” Lizzie was finished.
“It’s a good thing you’ve had all that experience raising your kids. It seems to be paying off for you now.”
“When was this taken?” Lizzie asked. She was holding a picture that Rosemary kept on the headboard of her bed. It was of her and William and Mugs. They were in a canoe on Madawaska Lake, on a magnificent autumn day of blue sky and the first signs of color coming to the leaves. “Scientists understand the life and death process of a leaf, Rosie,” William had told her that day. “But no one knows what causes them to burst into such incredible colors.” Rosemary’s hair was much longer in the picture, waist length, and a strong wind had caught it up in a swirl about her head. William sat on the bottom of the canoe, leaning back between Rosemary’s legs. She was tilting forward, her arms folded on his head. He wore a T-shirt that said BOSTON RED SOX, their favorites since it was the major league team nearest Maine. William’s camera had been set up at the bow of the canoe with its time release mechanism ready to go, just like the pressure valve that would soon blow in William himself. Mugs sat on William’s lap. There they all were, the little family, frozen onto a frame of time.
“Three or four years ago,” Rosemary answered Lizzie, and she was struck with how amusing it would have been on that autumn afternoon if someone from shore had rowed out toward them, slow motion, deathly, to tell them William had just over three years left. Would they have killed the messenger? “He slit his wrists,” Michael had said. “A razor blade. Jesus, Rosemary, he had to go out to a store to buy the goddamn thing.” Rosemary could even see William, moving up and down the aisles of some British store, reading the fine print. Would they have even believed the messenger? Rosemary took t
he photo from Lizzie and looked down at a segment of her own existence, an eternity away now, this three or four years.
As she gazed down at the picture, she didn’t see the leafy fire coming to Black Fly Hill, or the corduroy of waves wafting in to rock the canoe as though it were a large cradle. And Rosemary didn’t see Mugs craning his neck away from the camera. She didn’t see herself smiling, her head canted to one side, her left cheekbone lit up with a spray of October sun. What she saw instead was a young man with three years, three months, and twelve days of life left ahead of him. She saw a bone-white skeleton reclining jauntily between her legs as though she had given it birth.
THE INLAND MURMUR
But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone…
—William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”
For two days the tenants of the house on Old Airport Road came and went without causing any commotion, like the intermixing parts of a tightly wound clock. The house itself had become a kind of Lourdes, attracting the emotionally handicapped. Uncle Bishop seemed content just to be around people, especially Rosemary. Miriam appeared to be in no great hurry to reconcile with Raymond. She spent much time instead on the back swing, smoking an endless trail of cigarettes and even taking an interest in the birds, occasionally asking Rosemary to identify a sparrow or designate the sexes of the goldfinches. “She’s just doing that to get on your good side,” Uncle Bishop said. “She probably had hummingbird tongues for breakfast.” Lizzie’s children would finish their camping in a week and she would need to leave. In the meantime, if Lizzie walked to the mailbox, Philip and Charles went with her. “Don’t those two men work?” Uncle Bishop asked, the same question Miriam loved to ask of him. “Where does Bishop get his money, will someone please tell me?” Rosemary avoided them as much as she could, spending a few hours each day at the library. She could at least read in peace there, except for Mrs. Waddell’s watchful eyes. She kept up the running, reminding herself each time a foot hit the pavement that her burgeoning household would soon be gone. Like a litter of noisy puppies, they would all be in their own homes one day. “Soon,” she told herself, as she stretched before each distance, increasing her run to four miles.
The Bubble Reputation Page 15
