Rosie Colored Glasses

by Brianna Wolfson

  But things had changed. Now she knew it for sure.

  And the thought of a change in her mother terrified Willow. All the way down to her bones.

  She didn’t know this mother who had become too tired. Too tired to dance on the couches? Too tired to watch a movie? Too tired to get in pajamas? Too tired to mother? Too tired to love?

  Questions burned inside Willow.

  Was her mother really tired? And what was rattling around in that drawer that her mother didn’t want her to open?

  23

  Six Years Ago

  When Rosie walked into the backyard, she was overwhelmed at the sight of Rex pushing Willow on the tire swing. Overwhelmed at the perfection of the scene. Overwhelmed with love. Overwhelmed with the idea that she didn’t want to be anywhere else in that moment.

  Rosie had spent her life in perpetual motion before Rex. She moved from city to city without any thought. She bounced from job to job. She had many boyfriends but never considered a future with any of them. She buzzed around bookstores and cafés and boutiques. She explored every cranny of her world with full interest and full openness. She absorbed it wholly and let it fill her up. And then she would let it go—most of the time—as quickly as it came. But this moment, watching her husband pushing her daughter on the swing had almost made her want to stay still, here, for the rest of time. Stay here, in the backyard with her husband and daughter, for the rest of time.

  Of all the good things Rosie was able to uncover behind Rex’s harsh exterior in their relationship so far, gentleness was not one of them. Over time he had been thoughtful and attentive, instead. But never gentle. Not until Willow. He was so, so gentle. Watching Rex pushing Willow delicately on the swing showed Rosie just how gentle he could be. Just the perfect amount of gentle push to make little Willow feel like she was flying. It made Willow smile a big toothless smile as her wild hair covered her little face. His broad hands against her tiny back, pressing her through the air.

  Rosie wanted to cry at the beauty of Rex’s bigness next to Willow’s littleness. At how the happenings of this instant defied the very laws of the universe in which big overpowers little. But not in Rosie’s new world.

  In her world, big could be gentle to little. And little could be so happy in the hands of big. And with this new knowledge, this new truth, Rosie’s heart was warmed. And even though when she turned around, her house was still filled with white walls and her paintbrushes were still tucked away in a white drawer, Rosie felt fulfilled.

  When Rosie saw Rex hand Willow a purple Pixy Stix when she got off the swings, Rosie was certain about the choices, the compromises, the sacrifices she had made coming to Virginia. Because everything was perfect here.

  And it would only get better.

  Rosie placed her hand on her big swollen belly as she felt the new baby twirl around inside her. She could do this again with Rex. She could live like this with Rex.

  She was thrilled about it.

  * * *

  But the birth of her son two months later brought Rosie a depression that was equal and opposite to the elation she felt with the birth of Willow. It was chemical, and it consumed her immediately.

  As the nurses held her cooing infant, Rosie’s mind zoomed right into the future with that baby. There was the intimate terror about the sleepless nights and the raw nipples. There was the impending frustration with the manacles of her diaper bag full of bullshit things required to satiate a baby’s needs—pacifiers and bottles and formula and toys and wipes and diapers and powder and lotion. Things that didn’t bother her with Willow, but daunted her now. Rosie enjoyed things, but hated to be encumbered by them.

  And then there was the baby, itself. Asher, himself. With his big blue eyes and a full head of blond hair that couldn’t possibly have been created by her genes or formed in her body. When she had looked into Willow’s eyes for the first time, she could see an extension of herself. It was so clear in the way Willow looked and the way she felt when Rosie looked at her. It was nothing like the way she felt when she looked at Asher. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Asher. Rosie felt every inch of her body tense up when the nurse tried to place him in her arms for the first time. She crossed her arms and turned her head away until Asher was gone from the room. Rosie shouted after the nurse to double-check the name tag before she brought him back into her hospital room again.

  Dr. Winthrop told Rosie that it wasn’t unusual for women to experience these feelings after childbirth. “Up to fifteen percent of women experience postpartum depression,” she said in a tone that could have been used to describe a sunny January afternoon. Nothing to get too upset about.

  But Rosie was very upset about it. About wanting out, out, out of this life. Out, out, out now. Out and away from Asher and Willow and Rex. Her need to escape boiled up inside her so fiercely. And everyone could see the waves of raging heat seeping from her every pore. Especially Rex.

  But, even still, Rex was kind to Rosie after Asher’s birth.

  When Rosie insisted on sleep, her husband lay awake with his cooing infant through the night. Asher didn’t cry much, but he was noisy. Rosie could tell through the bedroom door that Rex found his son’s gargling and spitting and squeaky noises so endearing as he rocked him to sleep in the hallway. And Rosie could tell that her husband could see through the ajar bedroom door that these same sounds grated against his wife’s ears. Because when his son excitedly kicked his feet and looked at his mother, Rosie just quietly turned away. When Rosie refused to breast-feed, her husband prepared Asher’s formula and fed him in the rocking chair that he had built from scratch as a present to his unborn son five happy months prior. And when Rosie didn’t want to leave the house, her husband took Asher for long walks around their quiet neighborhood with the white fences, crisp lawns and dark windows.

  Rosie said thank you to Rex many times. She said it warmly. She would even place her hand on his back, and say thank you right to his face. Because nothing would change the fact that she still wanted out, out, out. All the time.

  Often her daughter would crawl into bed with her listless mother and snuggle right up next to her. Willow would bend her little body to fit her mother’s, then just rest there. All wrapped around her mother. And Rosie would force herself to kiss her daughter on the head, then go back to her tense stillness. But still, Willow stayed there tangled in her mother.

  * * *

  Rosie was in her usual position on a Sunday morning, lying in her bed listening to the sounds of her home. Listening to all the annoying sounds of motherhood. Asher spitting formula. Willow accidentally stumbling on her way down the stairs. Cheerios scattering across the floor. Rex rummaging through the pantry. These sounds. They were making her insides crawl.

  But just as Rosie was going to press her pillow against her ears to muffle those grinding sounds, the sound of her daughter on the piano wafted up. One careful note at a time. And another. And another. Willow was fumbling her way through the notes of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” She thought of Rex in that piano bar all those years ago. So handsome. So talented. So full of soul.

  Rosie was preparing her body to get out of bed to see Willow when another, more capable set of notes flowed through the house.

  And then suddenly, her house was filled with the beautiful, heartening, delightful sounds. Her husband’s talent and her daughter’s fumbling in perfect concert. Rosie watched from the top of the stairs as these sounds were created. Her mouth formed a smile for the first time in many months. Rosie wondered if there was a light at the end of this tunnel, after all. If once she reached the light, she could stay in it.

  But Rosie would never be able to stay in a moment indefinitely. She knew it now more than anyone.

  24

  After school that Thursday afternoon, Willow and Asher waited for their mother to pick them up for pizza at Lanza’s. Rosie, with a sparkle in her eye and warmt
h in her voice, promised an adventure.

  When she stepped outside to the pickup circle, Willow tied her knit hat around her chin as the cold began to bite. And then she helped Asher slip his eager hands into a pair of mittens. Willow sat down on the curb with her backpack still on and her bony knees tucked toward her chest for warmth. Willow pulled a Pixy Stix that she had found in the seat of the bus earlier that morning out of her backpack, tilted her head back and poured the purple crystals onto her tongue. She stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes to get a glimpse of the purple sugar dissolving. And then she opened her word search book and pressed Play on her CD player to welcome the safe tunes of Elton John into her head.

  As dusk started to fall and a chill began to make its way into Willow’s bones, her tummy turned again. She looked at Asher, who had a smile and a pink nose as he timed himself running from the edge of the curb to the doors of the school.

  Then suddenly the sky was entirely purple and fuzzy and everything was cold and quiet outside of Robert Kansas Elementary School.

  As the cold bit down harder, Willow couldn’t help but wonder what was taking her mom so long. Where she was. The question swirled all around her as she sat on that curb.

  And then the bright headlights of her father’s car speared through the hazy air and his shiny black car curled around the contour of the pickup circle.

  “Hop in, guys,” Rex directed from behind the half-rolled-down window.

  Everything stayed quiet for another half moment outside of the empty school in the empty twilight.

  “But it’s Mom’s night,” Willow blurted out from the sidewalk. She stamped her black Converse sneaker into the concrete in reaction to the unexpected change of plans.

  Willow didn’t know it, but she was invoking her father here. The desire, the visceral need, to adhere to the rules. It was just that Willow only liked the rules that got her to her mother’s house. To her mother’s bedroom with matching pajamas and The Twilight Zone on the television as she fell asleep. Not the rules of the morning checklist. Not the rules that forced her to practice piano when she would rather be sitting in her beanbag chair with Prince playing over her headphones. Not whatever rules Rex was invoking now to bring his children to his house when it was supposed to be her mother’s turn. When they were supposed to be at Lanza Pizza. When they were supposed to be drinking soda and playing pinball. But no matter how unjust, no matter how upset it made Willow, Rex’s rules always got to supersede his daughter’s. They always did. It maddened her. Now more than ever.

  Asher ran toward the car with his backpack bouncing up and down behind him. He was indifferent to whose back seat he was getting into. Indifferent to whose house he would play with his action figures in later. Indifferent to what he ate for dinner. Indifferent and happy.

  But Willow refused to move from the curb. Knees still tucked into her chest. Now shivering.

  “We’re switching nights, Willow. Hop in.”

  “But Mom didn’t say.”

  Willow wasn’t ready to leave that curb. She wasn’t ready to relinquish the idea that Rosie and Lili Von would be roaring around the corner soon to pick them up. Because Willow wanted her mom. And she wanted her dad to know that she wanted her mom. She wanted him to know that he was breaking her rules. And that it was breaking her heart. That it always broke her heart.

  “Willow, it’s getting late. Would you just get in the car?”

  Her father’s exasperation was apparent, but Willow sat firmly and tensely on the curb.

  “Willow, please.”

  As Willow rocked herself back and forth on that curb, staring at her father, debating whether or not to get in his car, she got scared. Scared that she had lost her mother. It was a feeling she had experienced up in the branches of that willow tree. And on the couch watching Blazing Saddles. And after the rainstorm. But now, on the cold curb of Robert Kansas Elementary School, it felt so real. And it tugged and pulled on every muscle and organ and fiber in her body.

  Willow had no choice but to give in to this new reality as she dragged her feet into the back of her father’s car.

  When they parked the car at her father’s house and went inside, Willow left a warm puddle of urine on the seat.

  * * *

  As each second, minute, hour, day and nighttime checklist passed, Willow’s panic and worry and confusion intensified. And she wanted all of those awful creeping feelings to just go away.

  Willow pulled out her word search book to distract herself. But when she looked at the page, she only saw a mirror into her own loneliness. She pulled out a box of crayons and doodled around on some construction paper. But there was no one there to see a sheep when she had really just drawn one big scribble. No one to tell her to add some orange here or some green there.

  She lay down in her bed, put on her headphones and closed her eyes while she let the sounds of Prince and then Elton John and then Fleetwood Mac flow through her ears. She pretended she was at her mother’s house dancing around and letting love flow through her heart. But it wasn’t enough to imagine it. She wanted it to be real. She needed it to be real. But no matter how much Willow willed for her mother to come home that night and that weekend, Rosie never came.

  So every night, after Rex turned out the lights and told his daughter to go to sleep, Willow got up and sat by her bedroom window and stared off into the woods behind her backyard. She tried not to blink as she waited to see a flicker of her mother’s flashlight. But the sky was just dark and thick and stale.

  Willow grabbed the telescope that Dad had set up and twisted it toward the window. She pressed her eye into the back of the tube and scanned the blurry woods. And then she tilted her telescope toward the sky. Mom was somewhere. Somewhere out there. On this earth or in the stars. But out there.

  And when Willow began losing the battle against the weight of her own eyelids, she shuffled back into her bed and wrapped herself tightly in her covers. She tickled her own arm, trying to slow her heartbeat. She held her pillow over her mouth to muffle the sound of her crying. She tried to think of her mother dancing around in a fringe vest, hair swaying wildly. But as soon as the vision would come to Willow, it dissolved back into darkness.

  That darkness in her mind, that void in her body, left Willow with sadness in her blood as she went to sleep. Which left Willow with a puddle of urine under her waking body every morning.

  On the following Sunday morning, after the third puddle appeared on her sheets, Willow went into the bathroom to get a towel. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her usually clear brown eyes were red from crying. Her eyelashes were covered with a white dusting of salt from her dried tears. And her wild brown hair was even more frayed than usual after three nights of tossing and turning on her pillow.

  Willow wondered if she would look like this for the rest of her life. If her face, her hair, her eyes would be stuck like this. If her whole body, her whole being, would be stuck at Dad’s house. In Dad’s world.

  She wondered if Dad would start to love her now. She wondered if he could love her at all.

  She wondered if she would grow to love Dad now. She wondered if she could grow to love him at all.

  She didn’t know the answers, but she knew she needed love from somewhere.

  * * *

  Willow’s new reality was starting to set in. Mom was gone and Willow was starting to unravel. But Asher was the same Asher. The same bright eyes and toothless smile. The same silky blond bowl cut and skip in his step.

  If there were ways in which he carried the damage around, Willow didn’t see them. And watching him smashing two action figures together under the kitchen table made her realize how lucky Asher was in his simplicity. How Asher could find love and happiness in any place and anything. Bugs on the sidewalk. A cartoon character. A room full of toys. An empty box. Mom. Mom’s house. Dad. Dad’s house. Mom’s butterfly kisses. D
ad’s slight nod of approval.

  Part of Willow wanted to live finding happiness everywhere too. She wanted to live open to all sorts of love. She wanted her heart to fill with all sorts of love. But it didn’t work. She didn’t like Dad’s kind of love. She didn’t like the chore charts and nighttime checklists. She didn’t like his broad shoulders and the intensity between his eyebrows. She liked Mom’s kind of love. She liked the kisses and singing and candy and little surprises on the bus. She couldn’t help it.

  But, even still, when her father ducked under the table, took her brother by the hand and guided him into the backyard for a game of catch, Willow wanted to cry. Or maybe grab a baseball glove herself.

  Everything looked so nice out there on the manicured grass of her father’s backyard. Father and son in baseball caps and jackets throwing a frayed old ball back and forth. Asher’s big leather baseball glove was way too large for his tiny hand. It dwarfed his entire body. And every time the ball would fly out of her father’s hand and into Asher’s glove, Asher’s entire body would teeter back and forth under the sheer force of Rex’s pitch. But as soon as the ball was under control, Asher would fill with pride. He would arch his back and roll up onto his toes as if he had been catching baseballs for years. The forced casualness was endearing even to Willow, who was quietly shaking with jealousy.

  Asher reached into his mitt, pulled the baseball out of its clutches, cocked his arm back and looked up at his father. And Rex repeated the throwing motion again and again and again for Asher. He demonstrated a full-shouldered follow-through and the precise turn of the wrist required for an optimal pitch. He’d flick his wrist up and down to ensure that the end of the throwing motion was reinforced in Asher’s mind. And then Asher mimicked his father’s motion, launching the baseball straight into his father’s hand.