by Melanie Finn
Now she back-tracked to the toilet, sat down again. The tone of his voice was becoming angry, he was battering the door with the flat of his hands, “Rosie! Goddamn it, Rosie, open the fucking door.”
Briefly, she regarded the window, but it was too small and dropped 20 feet. So she sat and watched the door as it thumped, rattled.
Minutes like ants, marching on tiny tiny feet.
The clock downstairs was ticking and Rosie was half-remembering the white gloves, the feeling came upon her now like a pressing weight on her ribs, the half-remembering wasn’t forgetting but more like the lurking, squatting of some dark, living toady thing, and the long hallway in Gran’s house and the man at the end of it.
The framing around the door began to tear from the wall and then the door itself flew open. Bennett hurtled in, screaming, “What is wrong with you, what the fuck is wrong with you?” And she waited for him to seize her, she shut her eyes, and it was silent and blank, his hands would fall on her, he wore the gloves because she was dirty, she had no fear at all, only the pause the —
Sunday light — Sparrow song outside, the clock downstairs, Do you like it when I do this.
Gran always went out, her handbag over her forearm.
And he grabbed her and lifted her and she was lightest bones, and the white gloves and he was saying Rosie-Rosie-Rosie and then at last, at last, she understood Bennett.
Bennett was sobbing. “I thought you were dead I thought you were killing yourself.”
His body covered hers, arced over her, her face buried in the meaty part of his shoulder so she returned to the smell of his skin, his deodorant, the sea salt. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” His face was tears, wet with snot-slime, he now held her face in his big hands. “My mother, my mother,” he wept, “killed herself, cut her wrists in the bathroom and I thought I thought —”
“Oh,” Rosie whispered, she stroked his big head, her fingers in his thick hair. “Oh.”
On his knees, his head falling to her lap, his arms around her thighs: “I found her, I found her, Rosie, Rosie, don’t ever do that don’t ever do that again —”
“No, no,” she murmured, soothing. “Never, never, I love you, I love you.” Rosie pictured the small boy and his mother’s lily hands out-stretched on the bathroom floor, her life unfurling, unspooling, and he’d tried to gather up the satin red ribbons of her blood.
Rosie wanted to tell him that she understood, she understood about the bewilderment that followed and the loneliness. But instead she held her man, her lover, kissed him and soothed him, and in this moment she loved him with a red, swelling heart, the feeling was almost violent in its force, and the love was woven through with the desire to protect him and the idea that she knew him, maybe not in every way, but deep down in the shadowy well of the man. He had chosen to share with her this secret — to open his hands to her like a child showing a small injured animal that must be placed carefully in a box with water and food and bedding. Rosie loved him, and the love and the desire to protect him made her feel like a grown-up woman.
“You must never leave me, my girl,” Bennett was whispering. “I need you to promise that you will never leave me.”
“I promise, oh, yes, I promise, I promise.”
He pulled her onto his lap, his sobs transforming to kisses, and she moved her hips to take him inside her as he’d taught her, as she wanted.
“We are going to lunch,” Bennett announced. “At the club.”
“But we aren’t members.” Rosie worried about Chip.
“My club has an agreement.”
What club? Where? An elegant building with white rocking chairs aligned on a broad porch that overlooked a lake. A lake with trout. A private lake. Or the sea, the harbor, where his family kept their boat. Bennett pulled on his seersucker jacket, then carefully selected a tie — a garish yellow with little embroidered ducks. Rosie felt she should understand the tie, it was a message but she lacked the cypher. He handed her a brown paper bag. “Here, wear this.”
Inside was a Perry Ellis chambray cotton dress, expensive and not something she’d wear in a million years. She wondered why he had this dress and where he’d gotten it, new but without the tags. It flattered her.
“Shoes.” Another bag: white Ralph Lauren espadrilles with low wedge heels. The left one fit perfectly, the right squeezed her toes.
Finally, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a gold locket on a narrow chain. The locket was decorated with delicate filigree. “I’ll need this back, though,” he said as he fastened the clasp.
The BMW squealed as they turned off the road onto the club’s drive, and kept squealing until Bennett parked. He opened her door, attentively took her elbow. They entered the cool gloom of the clubhouse. It was surprisingly shabby, the brown carpet scuffed and the woodwork over-layered with gobby paint. There was a smell of cooking grease — French fries and hamburgers, like a seaside food shack. Through the dingy entry hall, Rosie could see the dining room: tables with white cloths clustered under a low ceiling. The walls at first appeared to be covered in mold, but this turned out to be wallpaper decorated with a seaweed design. Lights with tiny red shades — the size and shape of the hats that pet monkeys often wore in old-fashioned children’s books — jutted out from the weedy walls.
Chip stepped forward, menus under his arm. He smiled like a ventriloquist’s dummy, glanced at Rosie. He recognized the trash he’d swept off the beach. “Mr. Kinney, how are you?”
Bennett patted him on the shoulder, “Great, Chip, great. And you?”
“Which guest are you meeting here today, Mr. Kinney?”
“Just me and my girl. We suddenly got a hankering for substandard food.”
The smile ironed itself out so that it became just lips and teeth: “You’re not a member, Mr. Kinney. You’re aware of our policy.”
Rosie felt herself wince. But Bennett held onto her with one hand and with the other deftly pulled the menus from Chip, stepped forward, “The table over here, you said? By the window? Number 10? Doesn’t Barky Decatur usually sit here? Oh, that’s right, he’s got cancer of the balls. He won’t mind then. Super, thanks, Chip.”
A few of the docile guests glanced up from their soup. Spooning it, Rosie noticed, away and not toward. With soup spoons. They smiled vaguely at Bennett, an old hand rose in a wave. The men wore bright ties sporting black Labradors or tiny anchors. Bennett cut a swathe through the tables, Chip followed, “Mr. Kinney, Mis-ter Kinney.”
Bennett was so tall he was merely inches below the ceiling. He pulled a chair out and Rosie sat down in it. Then he sat himself. “What are the specials, Chip, old boy? That runny canned pea soup with lumps of old pig gristle in it, hmmm?”
“You can’t do this,” Chip whispered. Was he going to get the police?
“I’ll have a Heineken, please, very cold, and my girl will have a greyhound. Use the Stoli, not the moonshine Willie gets on discount from the Ukrainian in Bridgeport.” With a flourish, Bennett put the starched red napkin on his lap, and waited.
“Mr. Kinney, as you know there is no cash payment here. Only chit. You are not a member, you do not have a chit.”
“Put it on your chit, then, Chip. Chip’s chit. Now go away and bring us back the drinks.”
“Nice necklace,” Chip noted to Rosie as he swept past. “Looks just like my mother’s.”
“Everything is disgusting here,” Bennett said. “Stick with the club sandwich.”
Resigned, bearing the drinks, Chip returned. Bennett ordered two of the clubs.
“This time.” Chip snatched the menus.
“Whenever I fucking want, Chip. And whenever my girl here wants.” Briefly Bennett watched Chip attempt a nonchalant strut away. “Mincy little douchebag. Brought me his mother’s jewelry and her collection of vintage Hermès scarves to sell. She’s not even dead yet but he’s got a bad drug habit.” Bennett put one finger to a nostril and sniffed hard.
Paper boxes, paper bags, suitcases came and we
nt from the boathouse, items shrouded in tissue paper, in velvet draw-string bags, in leather boxes embossed with faded initials. Bennett was storing them, safe-keeping them, appraising, he was away for a night or two, an auction in Chesapeake, old family friends in Ardsley. “These people really only trust one of their own,” he’d explain. He showed her Chip’s mother’s stash of Hermès scarves. Rosie didn’t like the designs that were mainly horse bridles in bright colors. But the silk was glossy, slippery, thick. Bennett took a scarf in each hand and began waving them about. “Semaphores,” he grinned. “How Buffy and Winky communicate across a crowded room.” One scarf in his left hand moved up and down, he assumed a high, posh voice, “Just been to Paris, Buffy, old girl, got a new one!” His other hand moved in frantic circles, accompanying a different voice, “And while you were there, Winky dear, I fucked your hubby and he gave me this one!”
Rosie laughed, and he kissed her. “My girl,” he said. “My Rosie Monroe.”
She had drawn a pair of white gloves.
She stared at the sketches, the only thing she’d drawn in two entire months.
The gloves were beautifully rendered, the soft texture of the white fabric. The prominent ridge of knuckles beneath, the width and bulk of the hands were distinctly masculine.
She had really tried not to think of him.
She remembered-forgot. There wasn’t a word.
Sometimes, an image of him, or just a feeling of him might shout or flash, in the way of loud music in a passing car. In the next moment, she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t forgetting, like someone’s birthday, but slipperier.
The lawnmower stopped. Had been stopped for some time, she realized. For the sun had shifted around the boathouse so that its shadow cast outward upon the green shallow afternoon sea. More accurately, it was 6:25. Standing, Rosie realized how her hips and lower back had tightened from the long sojourn in her chair. The table was covered with dozens of sketches of gloves. She had no recollection of drawing so many or the way they articulated his fingers curling and extending. They moved, like a Boccioni, with a relentless momentum. She felt a little insane, or as she imagined insanity to be: a confusion between the selves, as a child resolutely denying knowledge of a broken cup while holding the pieces. Looking at the drawings, she wondered if this is the way memory works, not as film that replays in perfect replication — but in shards or swatches and these are embedded in a dark, frantic scribble of somatic feeling. As if the purpose of memory is to inhibit the act of remembering. Her brain seemed to refuse to disinter the event in its entirety. It wasn’t doubt; she didn’t disbelieve herself. She knew he had been a lodger in the room at the end of the hall and she had called him The Giggle Man. And when Gran had gone out, her bag upon her arm, Rosie walked down the hall and into his room. He pulled on his white gloves. The clock, the light through the trees, and the way, when he was done, she felt sad and —
Helpful.
Ida Shultz studied the drawings. She looked like Gertrude Stein, or how Rosie imagined Gertrude Stein. Cubist, dressed in brown.
“Zay are good,” Ida growled in her smoker’s voice, her heavy European accent. Rosie had heard she’d survived the Holocaust. “Togezzer, a strange und powerful ani-mation.”
Rosie did not smile, though she was happy; she kept her expression serious. Ida had agreed to meet with her in the city, having given all her students her number in case they needed her advice over the summer.
“You are accessing zee interior.” Ida was regarding her with the dark, unblinking eyes of a curious bird. “Vat are zay?”
“Gloves,” Rosie said.
Ida smiled, because that much was obvious. “Vat I feel ven I see zis work, it iz not casual. It iz not a bagatelle.”
If there was anyone to tell, it must be Ida. Her corporeal solidity suggested unlimited absorbency; Rosie’s secret would enter into the brown pleats of her smock, Ida would keep it safe.
“The Giggle Man,” Rosie mumbled and the mere sound of his name summoned him and he opened the door and pulled on his white gloves.
“Zee gig—?” Ida leaned forward. “Forgiff me, I haf terrible hearing.”
She had gone willingly up the stairs, along the hall, she hadn’t run away, she hadn’t screamed or cried, she had sat on the bed.
Ida was looking at the drawings again. “Drrread. Zat is vat I feel. Vill you tell me zee story?”
“There’s no story,” Rosie said.
“Just gloffs?”
“Just gloves.”
Ida shifted on her chair, making it creak. She shrugged and made a “Hmmmph.” She was drinking black coffee with four spoons of sugar. They were in a dingy coffee shop on Varick, just around the corner from Ida’s studio. The studio was really where Rosie had hoped to meet, but the coffee shop was its own reward. Men slopped in smelling of blood from their meatpacking jobs. Ida smelled of paint and turpentine. The coffee shop smelled of coffee and onions. It was fantastic. What if you could draw a smell? Rosie wondered. She knew she was destined to live here one day, to become a regular in this very spot. “Hey Joe, Hi Mack.” Just like Ida. “How’s it goin’, Ida?” She painted their lives in the warehouses, vast, dripping canvases, the ribs and backs and skulls of butchered animals.
Sliding the sketches back into Rosie’s portfolio, Ida ordered the bill, refusing Rosie’s offer of payment — the grubby dollar bills she’d fossicked from Bennett’s laundry — and then folded her huge hands. They were slabs of flesh. Suddenly, the left sleeve of her shirt inched up and Rosie glimpsed a set of tattooed numbers on her wrist. Ida Shultz quickly pulled her sleeve down. There was a moment of church-like silence when Rosie could hear the sounds of the kitchen, clacking plates and voices. Then Ida said: “Rozee, zese are personal. Zis is vere you must start und leaf quickly. How can you transform zis — zis fear, zis mal-ignunce — into art? Rozee, art is not about vat you feel but vat you share. Wizzout connection to a greater experi-unce, art iz pusillanimous. It’s a diarree for leetle girls.” She patted Rosie’s hand. “I look forward very much to vorking wiz you in zee autumn, yes, yes.”
Back at the boathouse, Rosie had to look up the word pusillanimous. Cowardly.
They were walking up the garden to the main house. Hobie and Mitzi were back from their trip to Lake Como (not Comma, as she’d thought, a huge blue lake appealingly shaped like a comma), they were having drinks and at last Rosie would meet them. The house was alight in the evening, the doors open so the sound of laughter and conversation fluttered merrily upon the air. The gardens around them exploded with fat peonies and roses, the tidy beds were dense with frothy flowers, daringly color coordinated, and winnowy plants Rosie thought might be foxgloves. Wisteria draped itself along the veranda — not patio — and drooped over the arbor. So much effort had been put into the garden to make it appear casually robust.
“How did they make their money?” Rosie wanted to know.
“Make it? Oh, no, no, no. Nothing so gauche. Money is inherited, carefully channeled through the DNA, like a sixth finger. Though, it’s true, Mitzi owns half of Phoenix. She bought land when she first went to rehab in the ’70s and now it’s worth a fortune.”
Even though the house had been in her view every day for the past month, Rosie hadn’t seen it up close. It had seemed unreal, a movie set looming at the top of the garden, four stories up and at least 1,000 feet wide, layered out and up. As they closed in, she noticed the fine brickwork and the meticulously painted shutters. Nothing was cracked or peeling or chipped. She thought of Gran’s moldy house. The mold still clung to her, the rust, the rot, the damp.
“Do I look OK?”
“You’re lovely.”
But the right espadrille was still too small and the heat made her hair frizzy. Her Perry Ellis dress bunched under the armpits.
“Then what do they do then?”
“Do?” Bennett laughed his secret-joke laugh, only he knew where he’d put the whoopee cushion. “They dabble. They travel to their properties. They lu
nch, they dine. The Algonquin. The New York Yacht Club. They sit on boards. They found foundations, they are on the committees of charities. They have other people take care of their money — bankers, accountants. They have other people cook their food, buy their art, and eventually, wipe their assholes. The very wealthy are, essentially, decorative.” He seemed pleased with this assessment, for he chuckled lightly and then squeezed her hand, giving her confidence. “They may dress well and have nice hair, but they are dull and they are cheap and some are even stupid. Don’t be intimidated, my girl.”
A dozen guests mingled on the veranda, sparkling and murmuring. Rosie could see they were perfectly coiffed.
Bennett steered her up the steps, leaned in, “Just remember, polo never refers to water.”
“Hello!!” A male voice came through the crowd. Rosie looked to see a trim, silver-haired man in his mid-fifties, hailing them. He had a glass in one hand.
“He’s wearing a scarf,” Rosie whispered.
“That is a cravat,” Bennett corrected.
Hobie shook Bennett’s hand, eye-to-eye, bass-toned greetings mumbled, then he took her hand and when she made an odd bobbing curtsey, he smiled as if he knew exactly how foolish she felt and forgave her. He looped his arm through hers. “Come, Rosie, and let me get you a drink.”
He led her inside, where everything was beautiful, exquisite, there was even a bar with a barman in a white tuxedo and maids in black uniforms with silver trays serving drinks. Rosie took the glass of champagne as Hobie and Bennett drifted away from her, talking about boats and racing, the time Bennett crewed with the America’s Cup, and Rosie recalled that boats meant yachts, though you never used the word yacht, but ketch or boat or skiff or yawl, just as polo was for ponies, and the ponies decamped to Boca in the winter. Rosie kept moving with her glass of champagne, slipping like a silvery, silent eel between conversations so that no one noticed her.
In New York, she had often wondered what the apartments along Fifth Avenue and Central Park West looked like inside, and if Bennett’s family lived in one with their Picasso above the dining table. Because he had not, of course, stayed with her in the dorm at Parsons. He had moved, even then, mysteriously beyond her purview, in an adult world she had not yet entered. Sometimes, she felt that Bennett was in an elaborate play, there was the stage, and there was off-stage, but she didn’t know which one she inhabited.