The Bubble Reputation

by Cathie Pelletier

  Rosemary threw the BB gun on the floor of the tent. Mugs lay back again, curled like a caterpillar, and soon went to sleep. Rosemary, too, dozed until five thirty, when Uncle Bishop appeared near the edge of the grass with a tray of food and left it there.

  “Soup’s on, Joan of Arc!” he shouted. “I trust your voices will tell you to eat.” But Rosemary ignored him. Instead, she tore a sheet of paper from her pad and drew a huge house on it, the chimney laced up as though it were a shoe, with a firm knot on top and plenty of stick figures in the windows. Beneath it she scribbled, She had so many houseguests, she didn’t know what to do. Then she shaped the artwork into an airplane and sent it off over the tops of the hay and mustard. Uncle Bishop scooped it up. Rosemary heard him laugh as he retreated down the hill.

  ***

  At eight o’clock she had finished her run. She went in through the kitchen and up the stairs to the bathroom, avoiding the curious faces that stared at her from the den. They were all gathered, Lizzie, Philip, Charles, Miriam, and Uncle Bishop, looking like the confused members of a family that has lost one of its own to the Moonies. Rosemary went on upstairs where she showered and brushed her teeth. She took an extra blanket from her bedroom closet. Now she would not have to come back inside until her morning shower. During the night she could pee into the tall grass beyond the tent. After all, where did all those first pioneers pee? That original prairie grass wasn’t green by accident.

  In the kitchen she got a carrot from the fridge and put Mugs’s box of Cat Chow under her arm.

  “This shows she still has a sense of humor,” Lizzie could be heard saying of the cartoon.

  “You know, when you think of it, she was always a bit of a loner,” Miriam offered. “I don’t think many people realize that about Rosemary.”

  “Thank you, Joyce Brothers,” said Uncle Bishop. Laughter floated up from the den. So they thought it was humorous, did they? Well, it might get even funnier. Rosemary wondered if she should have the Bixley police issue a warrant declaring that they vacate at the owner’s request. Or a bomb scare. Yes! That might do it. She could write them a letter back in her tent and put it in the mailbox: This is to inform you that a bomb is concealed in one of the many rooms with the tall windows to let in all the light. It is bigger than a bread box. Beware the ides of June. Shit happens.

  Out in the garage, she saw the big orange extension cord lying where Uncle Bishop had unplugged it. Since he would probably continue to do so, Rosemary came up with plan B. She found William’s Coleman lantern hanging on a nail behind a straw gardening hat and took it down. She could hear fuel sloshing about inside, so she wiped the dust away and hiked back up to the tent. She liked the idea of the lantern hissing and flickering when darkness came.

  Back in her new home, Rosemary lay with her head outside the tent, taking in the celestial sights. From off in the woods came the night cry of the whip-poor-will. Again and again the whip-poor-weel drifted over to her, and occasionally a purple-rib, purple-rib. Rosemary listened, delighted.

  How does that bird do it? she wondered. How does it never grow tired? But she was thankful that it didn’t. As her ears became receptive to other night sounds, she sensed excitement in the air, a commotion most house dwellers missed out on. Crickets. The occasional owl. The soft buzz of traffic wending its way over on New Airport Road. And the ceaseless purple-rib, purple-rib, whip-poor-weel. She watched Cassiopeia and Cepheus and Cygnus begin their slow, timeless trek across the heavens. She found the Great Square of Pegasus and counted five stars from Andromeda’s head, out to where the Andromeda galaxy lay, the most distant object seen with the naked eye. Here was a world 2.7 million light-years away, small and hazy at Andromeda’s bent knee. A universe. Rosemary focused her binoculars and found it, spiral and cloudy, vaginal. She wondered if someone was staring back, all the way across those light-years to earth. William maybe. Father. Men she had loved, sharing binoculars. She smiled at the thought, and then slid back inside the tent, pulled the warm and purring cat in closer to her stomach.

  “Night, Muggser,” she said, and then fell asleep to the whip-poor-will, to the old starlight that began its journey millions of years ago, to the faint and ghostly hum of inland murmurs. For the first time in her life, she felt acutely alive.

  THE ULTRALIGHT MAN

  And then the lover,

  Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

  Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

  —William Shakespeare

  The first sounds Rosemary heard were of the birds of dawn, a rhapsody of chirps, cleers, peets, smacks, chiks, and chups. She was rarely awake in time to catch the show, but now here she was sacked out in the midst of it, the best seat in the house. Mugs was still asleep, at her feet now. Rosemary snuggled beneath the blankets, enthralled to be the sole guest at such a grand performance. She was about to drift off when a small filtering sound from over in the trees rose gently above the feeding sounds. A staccato outpouring of chips and swee-ditcheties. She listened vaguely until recognition settled in: the Canada warbler, the little ghost bird that had led her and Father to the spring in caverns measureless to man. She smiled, her eyes still closed, her ears alive with sounds beating out of nature’s heart. Chip. Chupety. Swee-ditchety. She imagined its bold yellow blouse, bright as sun among the shady undergrowth and thickets, its black stripes arranged neat as a necklace on the throat. She drifted back to sleep, listening to the shy, delicate warbling, the trills and quavers of an old tune she’d heard before, light-years ago, on a whispery spring day. Listen, Father, they’re playing our song.

  When Uncle Bishop shouted from the safety of the short grass at ten o’clock that he was leaving a cup of coffee there for her, Rosemary had been sleeping soundly. Mugs had already slipped through the flap, probably right on the nose of eight thirty, and was off somewhere. When she heard Uncle Bishop slam the kitchen door, she crawled out of the tent, stretched her arms, and then found the coffee he had left at the edge of the grass, a delightful and aromatic brew.

  The morning was cool. A breeze came in, most likely from the direction of the creek since it carried with it a vigorous scent of fresh water and pine. There was something more vibrant in this morning than had existed on those times she and William had camped out at Madawaska Lake. Perhaps it was an overlay from yesterday’s experience of her pending mortality. But there remained a strength in that revelation, that out of the mortality would spring a poetic immortality, something transient as perfume, but lasting nevertheless. There was an excitement now in the mystery of the grave.

  I will crumble like wood, Rosemary thought, as she sat on her hill and sipped her coffee. I will drop like a leaf one day and rot. But now this knowledge didn’t frighten or repulse her. She could even consider the muscles of her legs, as once she couldn’t consider William’s, the muscles of all those long, strenuous miles run, leaving their bones and withering back, the fingernails falling off like little turtle shells, the eyeballs exploding softly and quietly, scattering cells like seed. She could now accept this decomposition, this soundless work of bacteria and fungi, consummate work, as that which went into Uncle Bishop’s dollhouse. Work too small for human hands. Work too small, even, for spiders, this unraveling, unbraiding, unlacing of sinews and tendons and tissues. It no longer even saddened her, because out of the rot would come wild cherries, and the grasses and twigs to build nests. Christmas trees would sprout out of her heart, and her fingers would become roots for the blossoming lilac. From her eye sockets wild mustard would careen sunward, and the wildest of hay. Over her bones, houses would spurt to life, their foundations chalky white with her sacrificial marrow. This was her own intimation of immortality and it seemed to her now, with Uncle Bishop’s earthly coffee thickening on her tongue, that it was a statement she’d been struggling to make all her life. So why, then, was she lingering on earth in such a mortal body?

  Rosemary took her mortal body down the hill, i
nto the house, and up the stairs to her bedroom. She selected fresh jeans and a clean sweatshirt and then sneaked into the bathroom without any human confrontation. After a cool shower, she dressed and then slipped quietly back into the hallway, where she ran into Lizzie.

  “What are you up to?” Lizzie asked. Rosemary considered telling her the truth. I’m making a clean getaway from you humanoids so that I can go back to the insect and animal world beneath the sun and other stars.

  “Taking a shower,” she answered.

  “I told them all that they should just let you be,” Lizzie whispered. It was what Rosemary had suspected all along, that each of her guests assumed it was one of the others who had put her over the edge. Uncle Bishop was sure it was Miriam. Lizzie was sure it was Uncle Bishop and Miriam. Miriam was sure of God knows what.

  “Thanks.” Rosemary smiled faintly.

  “Philip is leaving tomorrow,” Lizzie went on, “and so is Charles. Do you mind if I wait it out until the weekend? That way I can stop and pick up the kids on my way back to Portland.”

  “Of course not.” Rosemary tucked her T-shirt inside her jeans and gave Lizzie a hug. “I’m just not used to being confined for more than a few hours with Uncle Bishop and Miriam.” Let Lizzie think she was right about the situation.

  “I figured as much,” Lizzie said, nodding sympathetically.

  ***

  Out in the garage the bike’s seat needed no dusting. It was getting its share of usage lately. Rosemary pointed its face toward the airport and pushed off. Despite the shadowy threat of rain on the horizon, it was a mild day full of insect sounds and small breezes. A car roared past, one that she didn’t recognize as being indigenous to Old Airport Road.

  “Slow down!” Rosemary shouted, shaking a fist in front of her, hoping its implications were noted by the driver via the rearview mirror. No wonder she was forever finding the rabbit spilling its guts, the grosbeak motionless except for the wind riffling its feathers. “Asshole!” she added.

  At the airport, there was no sign of the ultralight. Had she just missed him again, or would he come swooping in over the tops of the trees, bouncing to a halt on the warm concrete like some giant dragonfly? Rosemary walked over to the woman behind the ticket desk and asked about the man in the ultralight.

  “He’s gone,” the woman said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Home, I guess.”

  Out on the bumpiness of the road again, she cursed herself for not asking his address. She could have dropped him a short note, couldn’t she? Dear Ultralight Man: You don’t know me but we sat across a bar from each other and, once, we waved, sky and earth meeting with a flick of the wrist. Shit happened. Maybe the woman at the airport wouldn’t have given her his address, but instead would have reported to Jake, the Top Dog, that a ponytailed spy was lurking about the airport, asking ultralight questions.

  “The sporting camp!” Rosemary said, and pedaled faster. Maybe he was still there. The woman hadn’t said when he left. Surely not all of the men worth knowing could slip from her life, leaving her stranded.

  A mile south of the airport, she cut a sharp turn onto a well-used dirt road that led westward toward Bixley’s sprawling woods, thousands of acres of forested land that enclasped the lakes that lay like blue beads among the shadowy green. At least they would be blue beads from up on high, an aerial view. She was seeing things at a distance these days. “Pointillism,” she could hear William whispering.

  “Number seven,” Fraser Paul said, as he flipped through the numerous silver keys on his key ring. They flapped like fish until he came to the right one and slipped it into the knob’s slot. “He was from Boston, but he left here for a few days in Quebec City.” Rosemary had known Fraser for years. She knew his children. She had graduated from high school with Loreen, his oldest daughter.

  “I want to write about ultralights for the Bixley newspaper,” Rosemary had reluctantly lied to Fraser. “That’s why I need to see if he left a copy of The Modern Ultralight. Jake, back at the airport, said he was always reading it. The Bixley library hasn’t even heard of it.” It made sense to her that ultralight folks would have their own magazine. Fraser wasn’t surprised at any of this, or even doubtful.

  “How is Mrs. Waddell these days?” he asked. “She’s getting up there, you know.”

  “As well as can be expected,” Rosemary told him, remembering Mrs. Abernathy’s fateful response.

  “Well, you look to your heart’s content. It’s just as he left it until Loreen’s girls come to clean up. They make their summer money out here doing the cabins.”

  “Thanks, Fraser.” Rosemary took the key. How was it possible that Loreen had children old enough to clean cabins?

  “He was the quiet type,” Fraser added to the mystery. “You look to your heart’s content. No harm in looking.”

  “Tell Loreen I said hello,” Rosemary said, and watched Fraser slump off in the direction of the one cabin that said OFFICE above the door. She noticed a slight limp, a stiffness in Fraser’s gait, more of that consummate work, that work too small to be done by spiders. Age had already grabbed poor Fraser by the ankle and was slowly pulling him down.

  The opened door let in some fresh air, but the room smelled too piney for comfortable breathing, a thick odor of varnish against wood. The bunk was neatly made. Pans were stacked near the sink, waiting to be used by the next visitor. The small bathroom crouched to one side and was only big enough to hold the commode and a slender shower stall. Rosemary sat on the bed and breathed the smell of varnish and veneer more deeply into her lungs. Now the aroma was almost as pleasant as a cake baking. The scent brought back pictures to her mind of the childhood home with its varnished floors, floors she loved to stretch out upon, to press her nose against their boards and breathe as though the wood were still alive, as though it still had roots.

  Three magazines did indeed lie on the table, as if Rosemary had created them with her fibbing, had caused them to drop out of some crazy black hole and flop themselves down on the table like living things.

  “If one of these is called The Modern Ultralight, I’m checking myself into the nearest mental health clinic,” she promised, and picked up the magazines. Soldier of Fortune, The Outdoor Sportsman, and a special issue of Hustler’s Beaver Hunt, which sported amateur vulvae from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Great Falls, Montana. Rosemary flipped through a few pages. The participants seemed to be secretaries, grocery clerks, and bored housewives setting themselves free in one wild, crazy moment of abandon. The Beaver Hunt. It was all in the usual day of a sportsman. She imagined the flashbulbs on Kodak Instamatics from around the country snapping and popping, flashing like gunpowder. Rosemary might have forgiven the ultralight man for taking part in the Beaver Hunt. A dangerously anorexic girl from Hoboken, with a pinched face and widely spread legs had won the distinctive honor, photographed by her boyfriend, Tony. But how could Rosemary forgive a future lover for buying Soldier of Fortune and The Outdoor Sportsman? Heaven help the real-life beaver that wandered into one of those scenarios.

  The trash can proved to be even more upsetting. It held an empty can of chewing tobacco. The empty bottles of four white-wine coolers lay intertwined in the trash can, little glass logs.

  “A connoisseur,” Rosemary said, tossing one of the bottles back into the rubble. How could he have seemed so debonair from across the bar, from up above the tree line? “Pointillism,” she could hear William’s taunt rise up from the varnished heat of the cabin. “When you get close enough, Rosie, the dots are really wine coolers and snuff cans and pale-haired beavers.”

  She had nearly followed him out into BJ’s parking lot! She felt instant relief. What would he have done? Wiped the tobacco trickle from the corner of his mouth before he kissed her? But with relief came sadness, that sense of having counted on something, having filmed it a certain way in one’s mind, only to have the movie unfo
ld much differently. The romance of speculation was gone.

  Three crumpled-up messages on Fraser Paul’s scratch paper added the final blow. Call Davie O’Hara about the October deer hunt. Re: supplies. The second: Vickie has arrived in Quebec City. Call Chateau Frontenac. The last note, which was not even crumpled, as if not one ounce of emotion or thought was given it, said simply, Call your wife. Important. Bless her heart, maybe she wanted a divorce. So there, then, was the ultralight man unveiled. Rosemary took the soft leaf of the wife’s message, important, and crushed it, like things left behind are meant to be crushed. Good-bye, Ultralight Man.

  Outside the cabin again, she waved to Fraser Paul.

  “Tell Loreen I can’t believe her girls are already in high school,” Rosemary said to Fraser’s nod. Then she biked away from the little log camp.

  Rosemary slid the bike inside the garage doors and left it leaning on its kickstand. Uncle Bishop’s truck was gone. He and Miriam must have left with it since there seemed to be no territorial disputes going on inside the house. Charles was asleep on the sofa in the den, and through the glass doors leading to the patio, Rosemary could see Philip swinging back and forth. Here were two men both dissatisfied with their emotional lives. And there was a woman upstairs—she could hear Lizzie running water in the tub—distraught with her life. Uncle Bishop and Miriam were both off somewhere, taking distraught to new heights of meaning. Mother was crazily distraught. Aunt Rachel was distraught with cancer. William had been so distraught that he chose to go feet first into the Big Mystery. Mrs. Abernathy was distraught with Ralph the cat and Ralph the cat was born distraught. The birds were distraught: 80 percent mortality rates, after all. Mrs. Waddell was most distraught, especially when people came into her library with their mouths full of loud words waiting to pop like pistols. The whole world was distraught and Rosemary had had enough of it.

  ***