Meeting Rozzy Halfway

by Caroline Leavitt

  “God,” she said, pushing her hair back from her shoulders. “That was Stewey. From last night. Remember, at our table? He’s working here for the summer and he wants to see me. I can’t believe that. No one like him ever wanted to see me before.” She reached for a glass of juice and dropped it, splashing the floor, tinting the tiles orange.

  She looked helplessly at her hands.

  “Hank did,” I said. “Hank wanted to keep seeing you.”

  “No, he only thought that he did,” she said.

  Stewey quickly became a fixture in Rozzy’s life. He had no car, living on the bus line, and since our house wasn’t on a convenient route, he bought himself a three-speed bicycle. He figured no one would bother stealing a three-speed when there were so many ten-speeds about town, and besides, he didn’t like having to crouch down over the handlebars and being unable to see what was whizzing past. Every day he took the subway from his job back to his apartment in Cambridge. It was a ten-minute ride during rush hour, and he was always packed in among the other sweating suits. He rushed into his apartment, shucking suit and tie for a black T-shirt and jeans, wing-tips for sneakers. He biked the half-hour to our house. He didn’t even stop to grab a mouthful of juice or a few crackers. In the rain, he put on a yellow slicker with a hood and rubber boots, and when the heat was killing, he wore a visor or tied a cheap straw hat to his head with ribbon.

  Rozzy adored him. She sprawled on our front steps and waited for him every evening, chewing her nails, worrying that he might not come. She was always fairly calm until dinner. She withdrew. She didn’t like anyone else waiting for Stewey. He would pull up, panting, grinning at me when I peeked at him from the window, but Rozzy would be tugging at him, saying, “Come on, come on.”

  “Let me just catch my breath,” he would say, and he would lie flat on the cooling grass, burying his nose in the yellow dandelions that spotted our yard, panting until his breath evened. When Bea was home, she’d sniff out his hunger and make him stay for dinner, ignoring Rozzy’s frantic anger. “I’ll let you take my car into town,” she said. “You can’t walk to the bus.”

  Rozzy hated those dinners. Ben was always funny around other men. He would run his hand over his hair and when Stewey spilled something, Ben would smile. He’d be especially gracious. He got up from the table once and planted a narrow kiss on Bea’s cheek. “Heavens,” said Bea, “what was that for?” Ben watched but he never asked Stewey any questions. Instead, Ben put his questions to Bea. Who was this boy? And what could he want with Rozzy?

  When Rozzy and Stewey finally left, piling into Bea’s car, I could see Rozzy starting to unwind. They never returned until very late at night. Sometimes I could see the flicker of the bicycle light as Stewey started home.

  I never really had a chance to talk to Stewey. On David days, I was gone before Stewey even arrived, and on my free days, Rozzy was always there, pushing Stewey away from me and outside. A few times, though, when Rozzy had to dash back into the house for something, I would sit outside on the cool cement steps and keep Stewey company. Sometimes he showed me buildings he was working on, sketching them out in the dirt by the walk, and then smoothing them out with the flat of his hand. I never saw anyone get so excited about stone and brick, but everything held charm for Stewey—the Y, the supermarket, anything with walls. He reminded me a little of David and his monkeys. As soon as Rozzy came out of the house, though, Stewey would stand, dusting his hands off on his jeans, taking Rozzy’s arm. They climbed into Bea’s car. “Bye,” called Stewey, but Rozzy sat very straight and silent.

  In the daylight, Rozzy wanted to discuss Stewey. “You like him, don’t you? You think he’s nice? You didn’t like Tony.”

  “I like Stewey.”

  “He likes me,” said Rozzy. “I really think he does.”

  We had unfinished conversations about Stewey, fragments where I was not allowed to ask too many questions. Any prying made Rozzy tighten and become mute. Still, she offered paragraphs of information about him, innocuous details of living. He came from a huge family, he loved Madison and buildings, and he was the only person (besides herself) who would sit through a movie twice in a row. He had had girl friends before, but never anyone like Rozzy. “He even said ‘different’—that I was different,” she said, smiling. “It’s the first time I’ve liked that word.”

  If David was coming by that day, Rozzy would abruptly disappear, shutting herself behind her door until she heard us leave. But if only Stewey was expected, she would talk with me about him until it got dusky. We never talked about David.

  I saw Rozzy’s boundary lines, and I kept my distance, but Bea saw nothing. Her eyes had always been selective. One evening she was sitting out front watching the stars when Rozzy and Stewey pulled up. I was on the grass mentally planning a series of paintings. David kept pushing me to get together a small show, to start being famous if that was what I intended. He even said he knew someone who owned a gallery downtown.

  When Rozzy spotted Bea, she panicked. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, star-gazing, wishing,” said Bea, standing up, thrusting her hands deep into her pockets. Her hair was undone, out of its perpetual knot, and it hung to her waist, as black and rippling as Rozzy’s own. She made no move to leave, but watched Stewey fumbling with his bike. “Oh, come on,” said Bea, “you can’t bike home. We can fit that thing right in the trunk and I’ll drive you.”

  “He likes to bike,” blurted Rozzy, but Bea was already hoisting the tail end of the bike, waving me to come and help them maneuver it into the trunk. Rozzy hung back, playing with her fingers.

  “You’re not coming for the ride, too, are you?” Rozzy said, watching me, loosening up a bit when I shook my head.

  Stewey glanced at her and then grabbed her hand. “We can all fit in front,” he said. “I want to drive anyway, give Bea a break.”

  “I’d love to see your apartment,” said Bea.

  “You can’t see anything in the dark,” said Rozzy. She sat as close to Stewey and as far away from Bea as she could. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

  I watched them drive off. Rozzy had told me about Stewey’s apartment, about how much she loved it. Some evenings, when there were no films they wanted to see, they would end up there. He didn’t have any furniture at all, except for a bed, a beautiful old antique four-poster handed down from his grandmother in Wisconsin, covered with a quilt she had made herself as a girl. He was an indifferent housekeeper, and there was always some mysterious vegetable in the refrigerator clotting with mold. Rozzy didn’t care.

  Stewey had a decent stereo and they would lie on his bed and listen to Bach while Stewey hummed the melody and pretended he was a conductor, waving his arms, hitting her lightly on the nose. They rolled into lovemaking, she said. They took bubble baths and padded around the apartment naked. Stewey had no curtains, but they were on the fifth floor, a grueling walkup with ill-lighted corners. Stewey’s windows faced another apartment building—the back of it, a zigzag of fire escapes and curtained windows.

  Stewey was always amused by Rozzy’s delight. He was ashamed of his place, of the toilet that was forever backing up. (On the first night Rozzy was there, the toilet had backed up on her, and she was so humiliated that at first she didn’t tell him. She stayed behind the locked bathroom door, fretting over a small throw rug that was ruined now, over the floor that was washed with dirty brown liquid. He had had to jimmy the door open and make her take a shower to clean off the stuff that had splashed onto her, while he cleaned off the floor as best he could and threw out the rug. He called a plumber, a friend, who came right over. For a while after that, Rozzy wouldn’t use his bathroom, and even after she got over that, she would always flush the toilet a few times before she used it, making sure it was working. She flushed it before she was finished, too, and several times after. He never teased her about it.) The plaster was peeling, there were even a few holes punched out from the wall, and the carpeting was scabrous, dirty, and gr
een, and clinging with odors.

  Rozzy and Bea pulled back up shortly afterward. Rozzy strode from the car, ignoring me, slamming into the house, but Bea sat down on the grass beside me.

  “That girl,” she said. “She didn’t say word number one in the car, and when we got to his place, she jumped out and was all over him, kissing him, touching him. He tried to pull her into the foyer, into the shadows, but she just insisted. She went right into the light. She wanted her kisses illuminated.” Bea sighed. “She pretended she was asleep the whole way home, so she wouldn’t have to talk. I could tell. I could see her lids flickering, squeezing open a bit.” Bea stood up, brushing off the back of her pants. “Look at this night. Studded with stars. Maybe it’s time for your father and me to get off somewhere by ourselves, to be somewhere a little closer to the stars than just Boston.” She looked down at me. “Come on,” she said, “it’s time to go in.”

  Stewey was at dinner, finishing up the mousse Bea had made, while Rozzy impatiently tapped on the table. “The show starts at eight, you know,” she said.

  “All you do is see films,” said Ben.

  “We like them.”

  “Where’s David? He never stops in for supper anymore,” said Bea.

  “Class, he has class,” I said.

  “You girls should double-date. I bet Stewey and David would get along famously.”

  “Let’s go,” said Rozzy.

  They left, Stewey apologizing, Rozzy sulking.

  “Why don’t you double?”

  “Rozzy hates David.”

  “Don’t be silly. Who could hate that sweet boy?”

  The two of them did meet once again, though. I came home from a dentist’s appointment, not expecting David since it was a class day for him. I walked into the house to find him and Stewey crouched over a Scrabble board, their faces bright. Rozzy was coolly sitting in a chair above them, combing out one long hank of hair and studying it.

  “Surprise,” said David, “class was canceled.”

  “Can I horn in on this game?” I said. “Are you going to play, Rozzy?” She made a small face at me.

  “You three can fool with that game all you like,” said Rozzy, “but I’m going to the seven o’clock movie.”

  Stewey checked his watch. “Can’t I even finish this game? It’s not even five yet. We have tons of time.” He looked at Rozzy, reading her face, and then, resigned, stood up. “Another time, David,” he said, wrapping an arm about Rozzy, trying to soften the cramped look on her.

  “I’ll play with you, David,” I said, sitting Indian-style beside him.

  We could hear the car scraping pavement as it peeled away. Stewey was a reckless driver; his mind was always on Rozzy.

  “They really like each other,” I said, a little wistfully.

  David shook his head. “You should have seen her,” he said. “How she carried on. All three of us sat down to play at first, in fact, Rozzy had to goad Stewey into playing because he wanted to read one of Ben’s old health magazines that was lying around somewhere. I hadn’t seen her in a long time and I was surprised that she was being so nice to me, then I just assumed it was because of Stewey, that since she was so happy she could afford to spread a little bit of it around. We were all playing, having a good time, and then I got into this fantastic conversation with Stewey about my suspenders. He said he wanted a pair, he wanted to try them on, so I held up my jeans with my hands while he fit them onto his pants. Bess, it was so much fun that I was going to give them to him, when Rozzy suddenly starting shouting about the game, saying the suspenders looked terrible on Stewey. So we all sat back down again, but she got up. She wasn’t going to play anymore, but we could if we wanted. But she said it in such a sulky kind of tone, and she sat there, above us, not watching really, more like judging.”

  “Shut up, David,” I said, suddenly hot and cross.

  “She’ll never not hate me, will she?”

  “Double negative,” I said. “You want to roll the dice?”

  Rozzy withdrew even further from David. When he was expected, she would phone Stewey at his office downtown and arrange to meet him around three. It cut short our time together. I kept telling Rozzy that she didn’t have to come out and speak to David, that she could avoid being rude to him and upsetting herself by simply whisking into the shower the moment the bell rang, or closing herself off in her room and feigning sleep. She said no, that now even his very presence in the house, the proximity of him, disturbed her. Occasionally I would go out to meet David, leaving ten minutes or so before Stewey was due to arrive, but it made Rozzy no less nervous. She couldn’t trust David not to show up, and when the paper boy rang our bell, she sprinted from her chair into the bathroom, slapping the door shut behind her.

  More and more, with Stewey, Rozzy seemed stable, content. I liked the way she was with him, the way he treated her. I felt like some vicarious participant in the stories she told me; I lived on the edge of their magic. Rozzy said they drove out to the beach and lit fires, that Stewey wrote her name in the sand with perfect pink shells, that he built he sand castles. In the middle of the subway, he would reach for her and kiss her, ignoring the haughty stares of the well-dressed women, the snickers of the kids. Once, Rozzy told me, they kissed continuously, all the way from Harvard to Park, breaking only when the doors wheezed open.

  They rode the roller coaster at Paragon Park, which left Rozzy white; and Stewey held her head while she quietly vomited all the popcorn she had eaten, spattering the ground behind a hot dog stand. They went bowling, giggling at their low scores and kissing when they should have watched the pins; they went out to Regina’s in the North End, where you could get your pizza with a side of oil to dip it in. He brought her roses and he sent her love letters, enveloped in watercolors that he did himself, paintings of knights and ladies and dragons and castles. Rozzy hugged the contents of those letters to herself, sharing only the watercolors for a few minutes before she tucked them away in her room. When Rozzy was out one evening, I went into her room and found the letters. I sat on the edge of her bed, making it slope a little with my weight, but I read only one letter. The passion in it embarrassed me; my fingers caught fire from handling the words. I put all of the letters back in Rozzy’s drawer and went into the living room to dream.

  One evening I came home early. The house was empty, silent of people. I went into the kitchen and got a piece of ice and stroked it over my skin. It melted as soon as it touched flesh. I was rubbing it over my calves when I glanced out the window.

  There, under the dwarf peach tree, lying on her side, tangled with Stewey, was Rozzy. I stood closer to the window. They weren’t moving, weren’t changing position. Rozzy suddenly lifted herself up on one elbow, pulling Stewey up with her. I could hear some neighborhood kids playing on a jungle gym a few houses down, I could see the bright red paint on the slide; and behind Rozzy and Stewey was the school, filtering out voices and life.

  I looked at Rozzy. Stewey had cupped Rozzy’s face in his palms, and he was talking to her, saying something very serious, and she was touching his face. She threw her head back and then looked in my direction. I pulled away from the window. They both lay back down, holding each other, kissing, feeling. I stayed by the window until it began to get dark outside and then I couldn’t see them anymore, their sound was shadow. I went into my room and sprawled on my bed, and then I reached up with my hands and cupped my face in my palms.

  Things about David began to irritate me. I blamed it on the heat at first, a swelter so oppressive that even Rozzy noticed it enough to put on summer clothing. I couldn’t bear the trickling sweat that skidded over my breasts and back, making my skin feel like rubber. I was tired of always going to the zoo, tired of monkeys in my speech, in my thoughts, even on our bed linens. David’s clothing all began to smell of the lab.

  One evening David was excitedly telling me about Koko, the gorilla they had taught to speak using sign language. “Think of that,” he said. “We couldn’t dis
sect them anymore if they could all speak, could all warn one another.”

  “Make love to me,” I said. I was sitting on the floor of his apartment, my feet bare, my hair damp on my neck. We had spent the sweltering afternoon watching a documentary on apes on public TV. I had wanted to go to Paragon Park, but David said it was all honky-tonk.

  When I spoke, David looked up. “What?”

  “Do it,” I said, standing, starting to unbutton his shirt. David very gently began stroking my face, pausing, waiting to see what I wanted. “Be passionate with me,” I said, twisting my body against his. He kissed me lightly on the nose, the neck, he was patient where I wanted flame; I was aware, but I wanted my thoughts blotted from my mind. David nuzzled my shoulder. I pushed his face roughly away from me, and he looked up, surprised. “What? Don’t you feel good? Is something wrong?”

  I started buttoning up my shirt again.

  “Don’t do that. Please,” said David, trying to stay my hand, until I jerked it free, slapping his arm with the force of it.

  He was silent for a moment, and then he asked if I would like to go home. “Please,” I said.

  We drove in silence. His hands were white on the wheel. David never discussed his emotions much, but they always came through his body. I opened my window and let the hot summer air blow on my face, closing my eyes for me. I started to snap on the radio, but David snapped it off again. When he pulled up to my house, Stewey’s bike was propped up against the house, planted in the grass. David pulled the car over, the motor still rumbling. “You want to talk about what’s bothering you?” he said.

  “Nothing’s bothering me.”

  “Oh, no, you just normally snap at me for no reason at all. You’ve been like this for two weeks now.”

  “I have not.”

  “Don’t you want to talk?”

  I got out of the car, plucking my shirt away from my back, unsticking some of the heat and the sweat. “Just go, would you?”