Meeting Rozzy Halfway

by Caroline Leavitt

  “OK, Rozzy, come down now,” said Miss Yin quietly. “We’re all very impressed by your showing off.” Rozzy didn’t move. “That’s an F in gym then.” Rozzy climbed a little higher, making herself more secure on the ropes.

  “Fine,” said Miss Yin. “I’m coming up to get you. You’ll be very sorry, young lady.” Miss Yin rubbed her hands together. She jumped up and began climbing the ropes, her mouth set. The other girls in the class craned their necks, watching in silence. Miss Yin was halfway up when Rozzy lost her balance for a second. She kicked out her leg to resettle herself. It was just a kick, but it startled Miss Yin enough to make her lose her grip, and she made a soft smacking sound when she landed.

  She didn’t get up.

  Rozzy looked down, released her hold, and fell, crumbling. “Holy shit,” said a girl next to me. I was suddenly up, clamoring toward my sister, feeling something snaking inside of me.

  Later, when it was all over, I was glad and grateful that it happened on a Friday. It gave everyone a wide weekend of things to blur the memory, to wedge the whole incident away from the present. No one was really hurt. Miss Yin was simply bruised and furious, her pride banged up a bit. But Rozzy had fallen at a funny angle and had broken her ankle. The doctor said it was lucky; the principal said it was a disgrace and he suspended Rozzy for three weeks. Even then he said he wouldn’t allow her back into school until he had had a conference with Bea and Ben and with Rozzy’s psychiatrist. “Something has to be done about that girl,” said Ben, “and soon.”

  Rozzy had a tutor, a college kid who came on Tuesdays for an hour, and who seemed bored and made restless by the whole business. He never said anything to any of us, but went right into Rozzy’s room and shut the door, emerging an hour later. When Bea prodded him for information, he simply shrugged and said that Rozzy was doing fine. I had to go around to each of Rozzy’s teachers and get her schoolwork. I always put it off until Friday, when everyone was hustling to leave, racing off the school scent. Rozzy’s teachers were always very polite to me, very curious. They hoped Rozzy would be back, they said; she was a senior and couldn’t afford to miss much school if she wanted to graduate. They all asked what grade I was in, if I liked being a sophomore, if I was as bright and quick as Rozzy. I wanted to ask them if Rozzy had ever sung in class, if she had ever answered questions aloud that they hadn’t even asked, but the words dammed up within me.

  I felt eyes following me. I was afraid to go to gym class, afraid to face those twin brown ropes. But when the time came, the same polite curiosity had taken hold of everyone. No one snapped a towel at me, no one punched me on the arm, and the gym flexicurtain was firmly shut. I climbed the rope easily and when I came down, Miss Yin hugged me, renouncing my blame. I felt as if I were ruining Rozzy right then.

  Ben was furious with Rozzy, and she was sullen. She stayed in bed, averting her face when I brought her dinner. She had a small cast and she had scribbled things all over it, names and dates, drawings of spaniels with the words “oh, those eyes” inked in underneath, and “Best wishes and love, Mark” when she didn’t even know a Mark. She spent days decorating her cast, experimenting with different kinds of handwriting, with words written in clumsy Spanish or French. She wouldn’t let me sign her cast, and when I saw her probing into it with one of my knitting needles, I grabbed it from her hand.

  I began having dreams about her. I’d watch her drowning, or falling off some huge ragged cliff. I couldn’t help her because there were silken ties holding me against a silver pole, but I didn’t want to. I was content to stand very still. The moment Rozzy disappeared under the water, the second she hit the bottom of the cliff, my bonds loosened; I was free, buoyant.

  It took a while, but the meetings at school about Rozzy were finally set up. Everyone spoke with everyone—the doctor, the principal, Bea and Ben. Only I was left out. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Rozzy’s cast was coming off any day now, and she was getting restless.

  Ben didn’t say anything to Rozzy until after her cast was removed. He waited until Bea and Rozzy came home from the doctor, Rozzy carrying the cast in her arms, touching all of those names—none of them ours.

  We were at dinner when Ben said, “Rozzy, you know, your doctor thinks you might do better at another school.”

  “Anything’s better than that rat hole,” said Rozzy.

  “Good,” said Ben, turning to Bea. “No problem.”

  Bea toyed with her salad. “We’re supposed to discuss. This is hardly a discussion.” Nobody discussed anything, nobody said anything except for Ben, and he was perfectly rational. The doctor had suggested a special, experimental school, kind of a halfway house for people who didn’t really need to be “committed” (I flinched when I heard the quotation marks Ben put around the word committed), but who did need some sort of controlled environment, with doctors. “You’ll go to school, but at your own pace. You can finish your senior year in two years if you like, or three. The important thing is you’ll see a doctor, every day,” said Ben.

  “I saw a brochure,” said Bea, trying to smile. “It’s way on the tip of the Cape, in Truro. You aren’t a prisoner; you can go to the ocean.”

  “You’re sending me away,” said Rozzy flatly.

  “You can’t go back to high school here. You can see that, can’t you? Not after all the trouble you caused,” said Ben.

  “May I be excused,” said Rozzy, pushing violently up from the table. “I think I’d like to throw up.”

  “Oh, Ben,” said Bea, “couldn’t you have been a bit more tactful? How can we put her away like that? She’s our daughter, our baby.”

  “She’s psychotic,” said Ben, “and don’t you listen? She’s hardly being put away.”

  “What do you think, baby?” said Bea, turning toward me.

  You never think about betrayal while you’re doing it. Your mind is always filled up with your own pain and with the incessant hammering need to rid yourself of it so you can just stop a moment and breathe. Anyway, I betrayed Rozzy at the dinner table that night. I should have stood up for her, should have argued that she belonged at home, that she was fine a lot of the time and didn’t need a school like that. I felt something folding up inside of me, and I was suddenly crying, sobbing, making each sound a rip from the soul. “She should go,” I spat out.

  Bea scooted over and tried to cradle me in her arms, but I wrenched back. I was nobody’s baby.

  “There, you see,” said Ben. “It’s really for the best. For everyone, including Rozzy. You’ll see.” He wolfed down a small white potato. “Eat your dinner, Bess,” he said, and I fled the table, hating him, hating Rozzy, hating myself.

  Only Rozzy didn’t see the logic. She ranted and threw things and destroyed her Museum of Self with one sweep of her hand.

  “You’re making your sister ill,” Ben shouted at her, and she stopped, paralyzed.

  “You’re in on this, too?” she said. “You were never anything to me, do you hear that? Never.”

  All that week Bea took Rozzy on shopping trips, to the movies, to restaurants. Rozzy pretended that I didn’t exist, and I was miserable. I stayed home on the day Ben and Bea drove Rozzy to school. The school was called Parkburst and it was five hours away. Rozzy’s doctor had promised to meet Rozzy there to get her settled, as a special favor. Rozzy had dressed in white and had tied a blue silk scarf about her head, pulling it down low over her eyes, which were focusless and glassy. I wasn’t going. I didn’t need to see Parkburst. I watched the car from the front window, my nose pressed against the glass, and when the car was out of view, I went to Rozzy’s old room and wheeled out the TV and watched it until my eyes were unfocused and useless in my head. I wouldn’t go near Rozzy’s room again. Ever. I wanted to board it all up, to seal it up hermetically, along with all the feelings storming inside of me. I heard Bea and Ben coming back, their voices pressing against the door. I rushed to my room, shutting the door. I had nothing to say.

  Bea felt guilty and she tried
to be a good mother, a friend. She cooked me hamburgers glistening with grease, making me promise not to tell Ben, she took me shopping for bellbottom blue jeans, which she swore were going out of style within the next month, and she even tried to engage me in earnest little conversations about my life. But I was uneasy around Bea’s friendliness. I wasn’t used to it. Finally Bea heaved a sigh and said, “I give up. You never did cooperate.”

  I had never been close to Ben, but now I pulled away even more. I would bolt down my dinner before he got home, timing it so that when he entered the dining room, I could stalk silently past him, pressing my body against the wall, making sure he saw that I was letting no part of it touch him. I blamed him more than I blamed Bea, or myself. When he didn’t react, when even Bea said nothing, I went into my room and closed the door, bracing a chair against the knob, hoping they would try the door and find themselves shut out.

  Kids at school were impressed by the news. I kept trying to explain that my sister Rozzy had had to go to a special school or I might go mad, too. No one wanted to hear any of it; even Hilly changed the subject. They all had their own noises to listen to, to try and drown out. In fact, the only person who seemed to understand was Jay. He grabbed me one day as I was trailing to class. I tried to jerk free. I couldn’t breathe when he was around me anymore. Even the gossip about him that slid around school made my stomach twist. “Bess, please, look at me,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but I just want you to know that if you ever need to just scream, well then, you call me.” He touched my chin, making me flinch. “Look, I know, I know, but I’m around for you. I wanted you to know that.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I said, stumbling blindly away from him. I wondered if he was following me, but I was afraid to turn around. I didn’t stop walking until I reached the ladies room, and then I went into one of the gray stalls and leaned against it and angrily cried.

  The teachers were sympathetic. When I skipped class, when I began hanging around the art room, no one said anything. I began spending my lunches, my study halls, in that room, painting, getting lost in color and form, in lines that had no beginning, no end. It was kind of funny, I guess, but I was good. Two of my watercolors were put into the art show, and I won first prize—fifty dollars and free Saturday art classes at Massachusetts College of Art downtown. Those classes turned out to be the one thing in my life that gave it shape, and Bea now complained that I smelled not only of chlorine but of turpentine as well.

  Rozzy was in Parkburst for two and a half years. She wouldn’t see Ben or Bea or me, and at first I was glad. The doctors there said she was better, that they were controlling the psychosis with drugs and that Rozzy seemed completely in touch with reality. She was finishing her senior year very slowly, credit by credit, and was talking about college.

  I got through my junior year and began my senior. I was no longer a celebrity at school. I knew I’d be leaving home for college soon, severing the ties, and I began missing Rozzy. In the winter, I began sending her letters, apologies, snapshots. I waited for the mail every day. There was no letter from Rozzy, but there was an acceptance from Boston University.

  Two weeks before I was due to leave for school, Rozzy phoned. She was going to a small college in Baltimore and she wanted to see me. “Just you,” she said, “I’m not quite up to the folks, yet.”

  I didn’t tell Bea or Ben that I was meeting Rozzy. She had a ride into Cambridge, and we met at a small café, the Blue Parrot. Rozzy wouldn’t touch me at first, but sat apart, very formal. Her hair was wound into a huge knot at the back of her head and she was dressed in navy velvet and high brown boots. I felt stubborn. I was angry with her for not writing. I didn’t want to talk about guilt and forgiveness and the past. I guess that sometimes there are just no reasons for anything, no explanations, especially for things that have to do with love. It was a funny kind of a reunion. We made small talk—all in the present tense. We ordered minted chocolates and Rozzy licked the whipped cream from her spoon, making small darting motions with the tip of her tongue.

  “Bea wants to see you,” I said.

  “I’ll just bet.” Rozzy lighted a cigarette. “I smoke too much.”

  She was going off to school on a special scholarship. “Would you ever come out to Baltimore to see me? Or meet me someplace? Halfway?”

  “You know I would.”

  Rozzy never did see Bea or Ben before she left, but she sent them a card with her address on it. “She’s an adult, let her be on her own,” said Ben, but Bea fretted.

  I moved into a single room at BU while Hilly flew off to Stanford, reminding me to write. I liked my classes; I dated a little. I called home every Sunday and I swam. For some part of every day, I was wet. I’d rush to an art class, my dripping hair making dark pinpoints on my shirt, my skin scented with chlorine. My dorm room smelled of the wet leotards I swam in. People sometimes told me to try out for the swim team, but that had nothing to do with why I swam, with why I loved the lapping rhythm of the water.

  Rozzy and I were linked by the phone, feeding it dimes so we could talk on into the night. She didn’t much like Baltimore, and the old problems were edging their way into her life again. The depressions, the erratic behavior, were driving her from school. She saw a doctor through the student health service, but she couldn’t read or concentrate with the medications he was making her take, and soon she dropped out of school. It wasn’t really official. She didn’t inform anyone. She continued to live in the dorm, to eat in the snack bar, poised for flight as soon as she had someplace to flee to.

  She was often hysterical on the phone. “Everyone here knows,” she said.

  “Rozzy, forty thousand people can’t all know.”

  “Why can’t they?” she said, suddenly bitter. “How come you’re always around when I get the boot from society?”

  She called me every day that week. She was tying up the loose ends, packing, unsure where to go. “There are other schools, you know,” I told her. “Go to the library and look at the catalogs. You got one scholarship, you can get another.” So Rozzy dragged herself to the library every morning when most of the other students were in class. She plowed through the catalogs, going through every state.

  A month before Christmas, she called. She was fixated on a school in Texas, on Rice. “You should see the picture of the place. Everything looks tropical. Steamy. I can’t wait. I sent in my grades and everything.” She paused. “Bess, I need to see you. When can I?”

  I thought. The holidays were coming up, and Bea and Ben were planning to go skiing. The whole house would be empty. “Come home,” I said. “No one will be in the house except for us.”

  She wasn’t quite sure about it. She was afraid of stepping into that house and having her past tangle about her knees, ready to trip her, to pull her down and smother her. “You’re sure no one else will be there?” she demanded.

  “Positive.”

  It was easy enough to clear with Bea. “This is her home,” she said when I called, a bit huffy. “But do you think I should stay home for her? She can’t really expect us to be at her beck and call, though, can she? I wrote her all those weeks, and she won’t even answer, not even a ten-cent postcard. What can I do?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Don’t you be so snippy, miss,” Bea said. “You tell that sister of yours that we’ll call her, we’ll try to get in early to see her.” Bea stopped. I could hear her breathing over the phone, the hiss of air traveling through the wires that joined us. “Will she see us?”

  “Call.”

  “There’s time,” said Bea, easily thrown off the subject. “Want to have lunch in town with me next week? My treat?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I thought the month would solidify, would pass uneventfully until I saw Rozzy, but it was in that month that I met David. I had never thought much about dating. My mind always flickered to Rozzy, like a moth drawn to the flame, and if I ever thought about love, it was always with a wistful,
dreamy sort of quality, it was always about Jay. That was a love I didn’t think I could ever repeat, and I was not quite sure I wanted to anyway. Jay, in any case, was gone. Someone told me he took off for California the day of graduation with his flute and his stash of dope, trying to make his fortune among the blonds and the beaches.

  A few times the dorm phone jangled for the, but it was always a setup of Bea’s, sons of friends, all of them earnest students in the Boston area, well on their way to becoming doctors or lawyers or whatever it was that Bea found to be a financially promising profession. I was polite at first. I lied. I said I was already involved, but they never gave up. Enraged, I called Bea and told her to stop trying to fix me up, but she was undisturbed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, “that’s the last time I try to do you a favor.”

  I think I was first attracted to David because he loved monkeys. He was obsessed with them; they always came first. Even when he first approached me, it was because of a chimp. I was leaning against a tree waiting for a friend when he came and stood by me. He was wearing those cheap rainbow suspenders, and blue jeans, and he had clean brown hair that shagged down into his face. “Would you move for ten seconds, do you think?” he said. I shielded my eyes. “What?”

  “I need to take a photograph with a tree with low branches and this one’s perfect. Please. It will just take a minute. I’m a rotten photographer, I don’t take my time.” He smiled a little.

  “Hell,” I said, but I got up, dusting off my jeans, sulkily standing away from the tree, waiting to reclaim it. He remained cheerful. He bent over a green knapsack and dug out a child’s toy, one of those huge cloth chimpanzees with red stitching all over it. He perched it up in one of the branches.

  “You have to be kidding, don’t you?”

  He looked sheepish. “It’s a kind of joke,” he said, crouching down, fiddling with his camera. “Christmas cards. I make my own. I’m a primatologist, or I will be when I get out of here and into grad school someplace. The West Coast has the best grad schools.” He looked at me over his camera to see if I understood. “Apes,” he said.