Anne Lamott

by Imperfect Birds (v5)

  SIX The Big Fish Elizabeth lunged for the phone in the dark, but James got to it first. When she tried and failed to grab it from his hands, she clenched her fists at her chest like a child praying. “Yes?” he said. She turned on her lamp and watched his face. He was digging his fingers into his scalp, and she was relieved to see anger, not grief. “She’s fine,” he told her. “What is it, for God’s sake?” James listened on the phone a moment, before turning to her. “The police busted her and a few kids at a party in the hills behind Manor, where there was alcohol. They’ve got her at the station.” Elizabeth climbed out of bed, clutching her chest. “We can go get her, or they will take her up to juvenile detention for the night.” “I can be there in ten minutes.” But James shook his head. She grabbed for the phone. He ducked, dodging her. “Has she been drinking? . . . Just beer, are you sure?” He nodded to Elizabeth. “And what about drugs? . . . Okay. . . . Yeah, I bet she’s mad. She’ll get over it.” He threw his free hand up with general frustration. Elizabeth looked around frantically for her shoes. “Can we leave her there for the night? . . . Why not? . . . I see, I see. Of course.” Elizabeth pulled on a shirt. “What’s the very longest we could leave her with you at the station before you had to take her to juvie? I seriously do not want to make this easy for her.” James listened. “I mean, what if it took us five or six hours to get there?” After a minute, he said, “I cannot begin to thank you. You must be a parent.” He looked at his watch. “Fantastic. Six it is.” Elizabeth turned on James the instant he put the phone down. “She’d just been drinking beer, so what—she’s seventeen! It was the last of the big summer parties! For Chrissakes!” This is what Elizabeth’s mother used to say whenever she was drunk or annoyed. Hearing her own voice repeating these words silenced Elizabeth briefly. Shaken with anxiety, she did not know what to think or feel besides doubt and worry and questioning of her every move as a mother. Then she plunged on. “She’s such a good kid—and you’re going to leave her in jail?” “She’s not in jail. And we’ve found rolling papers. Pipes from our friendly neighborhood smoke shop. And you found pills in her pocket after Jody’s party.” Elizabeth pinched her arm as hard as she could, and it hurt like hell. But she had to be dreaming. How had they gone from Rosie hoisting tennis trophies above her head at the net to Rosie under arrest, or whatever she was under? “This is a lucky break for us, Elizabeth. It’s so important that we really see what’s going on,” James said. Elizabeth ground her teeth to keep from slapping him; even though she knew he was right, she hated him for it. He went on, seemingly impressed by his own calm and insights. “A, that when you’re dealing with an alcoholic or addict, you’re already outnumbered. And B, it’s revealing what we’re about to dig up in her room. Because the cops aren’t supposed to keep her there just so we can teach her a lesson—but they’re going to. Come on, baby—we can go through her stuff while they watch her for us. We can find out what’s true.” The room was relatively tidy, compared with, say, Jody’s, which looked like an explosion at the flea-market jeans hut: twisted jean corpses, incense, used plates and bowls, plastic smoothie bottles. But because Rosie’s was not so bad, it took a while to break the code; to discover the resiny smell of dope at the bottom of a box; to find among all her books the two hollowed-out volumes holding papers and a plastic cigar tube of bud; to locate the Cuban cigar box with a false bottom beneath which were flecks of weed, razor blades, three lavender-pink tablets that Elizabeth recognized as Percocet from James’s first gum surgery, and eight hundred dollars in cash. “It’s the money that she’s made this summer,” Elizabeth said defensively. James nodded nicely and said, “Okay.” “For Chrissakes, James, she’s worked nearly every day at Sixth Day Prez, or teaching tennis.” “Hm,” said James, “good point.” Elizabeth blew up for the second time. “Don’t you dare use that Al-Anon crap against me. ‘Uh-huh. Okay. Good point.’ I hate it when you do that.” “What do you want me to say, baby? We just found a razor blade in Rosie’s shit. Do you remember what you and I used razor blades for?” “Not very often. That’s my point! She’s experimenting.” James looked exasperated, furious at her for not seeing things his way. “Experimenting means you try something two or three times. More than that is ‘using.’ ” James found a pint of rum in Rosie’s tennis racket carrying case, where the can of balls was supposed to be, and a festive four-pack of vodka lemonade at the bottom of her laundry hamper. “Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said in despair, as the pile of booty mounted on Rosie’s neatly made bed: Zig-Zag rolling papers, a roach clip, lighters. “What next? Glue?” She began to cry. “This is going to be good in the long run,” James said. She sat on the floor with her back to the wall by Rosie’s door. “There are all sorts of people locally who help kids and families in trouble with drugs. Anthony, for instance.” “Jesus, you make it sound like Panic in Needle Park. It’s weed.” James rolled his eyes. “Okay, weed and pills. And one razor blade.” Elizabeth almost managed a smile. “This does not make her a drug addict.” James nodded sagely. She screamed into the air between them, then buried her face in the bedspread and kept bellowing until she felt better. James got to his feet. “I’m going to go make us some mint tea.” She sat breathing deeply with her eyes closed when he left. The stuff on the bed was like the display at the museum at San Quentin, of shivs and syringes made out of pens and toothbrushes. Elizabeth laid her head in her hands and rocked. They managed to sleep for a few hours, then lay in the dark, resting their eyes. The dawn was light gold above the tree line. By the time they went to pick Rosie up at the station, the golden border was gone. Rosie sat hunched over a table in a small room behind the front desk, and Elizabeth watched her for a moment through the window in the door. Her long arms were crossed, eyes opaque with disbelief. “Look at her,” James whispered. Rosie looked up at them, and then slowly down at her watch with a hint of a smirk—she was not going to show anyone much of anything in this public place. “As if we all work for an airline, and her flight has been delayed,” he said. A police officer led them in. “Rosie,” Elizabeth called, but Rosie didn’t seem to hear. “Rosie!” James said sharply, and she looked up slowly. “I hear you,” she said. “The whole town can hear you. Can we just go, please?” “Listen, you don’t get it, do you, baby?” he asked. “You’re in a fuck of a lot of trouble.” Rosie looked away with contemptuous amusement, as if he were delusional. He seethed. Elizabeth stepped between the two of them. “We are not bringing charges this time,” the officer told James and Elizabeth. He turned to Rosie: “But next time we catch you with dope or alcohol, I will throw you in juvie so fast you won’t know what hit you. We’ll be watching for you.” He shot James a knowing glance. Rosie considered his words, as if he were a waiter at her table reciting the specials of the day. “Okay,” she said slowly, as if he had talked her into the lasagna. The officer advanced upon her. “Listen, miss,” he said quietly. “I will be goddamned if some snotty-nosed stoner high school kids are going to burn down our beautiful hills. I see you so much as smoking a cigarette in an open space again . . .” Elizabeth wanted simultaneously to fling herself at his legs and pull him off her daughter, and to choke Rosie with her bare hands. In her corner Rosie seemed to have decided that the service at this joint sucked. She got to her feet and walked out the door, head held high. In the car, she let herself fall apart, crying, spewing out rage and accusation: How on earth could they betray her like this, leave her there for hours in that piss hole; what the hell good did they think that would do? Did Elizabeth ever think about anyone but herself? Did James even have a clue what it was like to be a real parent? Did it matter to them at all that they had turned her into someone who had to lie, just to have the semblance of a life, and not be treated like a baby? It was stupid bad luck, for God’s sake, that the cop had grabbed her and not the other kids. She hadn’t even done anything wrong. Horrible James didn’t say anything, and he looked like he might start humming. He had learned this at his meetings—Rosie realized that she was now the gorilla in the cage he
had to stay away from. Her mother cried daintily, like a little old lady. They made her sick. In her core she felt a deep fury and a rage for freedom. A cold calm descended, all at once, like there was hard glass inside her. She knew she was scary, and that this immobilized them. Rosie smiled. By the time they got home, the rift was so big that it scared even her. Where could they go from here? No way would they let her out today. “Go to your room,” said James, reading her mind. “You’re grounded forever.” She lay in the dark on her bed, listening to music. Nothing could capture the feelings inside except Axl Rose and Bob Dylan. She played them as loud as she could without risking a warning—her parents were turning into old neighbors who hassled the young—or a visit. Worst of all would have been a real conversation. She began to open drawers, her hamper, and handbags, and raged as she discovered they’d taken almost everything; they’d raped and pillaged the room. She sat on the floor and fumed, breathing hard like she’d been running. Everywhere she looked, her stuff had been taken. She whipped open her tennis racket case to find the rum missing. Then she looked in the well of a marble-based pen-and-pencil set, a trophy for winning the state doubles tournament in San Jose, and found a plastic bag that earrings had come in—thank God they had not found her stash of Ecstasy. She and Alice had gotten it at a rave in Oakland, a while ago, before summer began. The memory lifted her spirits. An older woman—maybe in her thirties—had brought her little boy, in his one-piece sleeper, although he must have been at least seven already; it was decorated with rave glow spots, white plastic cut-outs that the black light would catch, the M&M’s logo on each one. Maybe the mother thought he would blend in, like a prop or the gigantic peanut M&M’s decorations. Rosie had played with the boy for a while in a corner, even though she was stoned out of her mind, had taken two tabs at once because she had been taking it too much and had a little tolerance going. That was why she had quit E. She dozed. When she woke up, she found that her mother had left a tray of kindergarten food on her bedside table—peanut butter and jelly on wheatberry bread, cranberry juice and carrot sticks, Oreos and an apple. She didn’t want to be in this abyss. The first time she saw her mother come in, as the sun sank beneath her windowsill, she turned to the wall, and said, “I have nothing to say to you.” The second time her mother came by, Rosie was blubbering like a baby, partly out of exhaustion and fear, but also so her mother would comfort her, hold her quietly, promise it would all be okay. She wanted her mother to save them both, so she could get on with what she had been doing, with her wonderful grown-up life—Jody and Alice and the guys they hung with, lying on the sand at the beach, lying on the golden grass in the hills. What, was there a law now, you couldn’t smoke outside? They were all so careful, the kids she knew. They would never start a fire. She missed Robert and Rae and the kids at the church, the little ones, her bucket kids, whom she pulled around on the lawn in the big plastic tub, singing their funny songs and screaming every time they hit a bump. She was starving to death by dinnertime, but when Elizabeth came in to get her, she claimed not to be hungry. This usually freaked her mother out, but tonight she did not try to change Rosie’s mind. Rosie heard her footsteps recede down the hall. “Wait a sec, what’s for dinner?” she called after her, but James answered. “Bread and water.” Robert and she had a lesson tomorrow—they had to let her out by then, or she would lose all respect for them both. Jailers! But the next day at one, Elizabeth drove her to the courts, waved in the friendliest way to Robert, as if from a float, and said she’d pick Rosie up an hour and fifteen minutes later. The fifteen minutes was to prove how serene Elizabeth was. Elizabeth got a cup of coffee at the KerryDas Café while waiting, and took it to the steps of the Parkade. Townspeople went about their business in every direction you looked, walking in and out of stores before her, getting gas at the station to her left, lining up with little kids for the last big matinee of the summer, heading to their cars in the parking lagoon behind her. Some of the town’s delinquents and no-hopers and high school kids milled around the Parkade, Rosie’s peers, younger or a few years older. Among them were two who had had nervous breakdowns, one out of nowhere her first month in college, one after massive amphetamine use at Santa Cruz. They milled in groups at the bottom of the stairs, in the bus kiosk, in the steps in front of the theater, making themselves villages of commerce and knowledge and sulk. Otherwise, they would feel small and ridiculous. Please God, even though I don’t believe, please, if you are there, don’t let Rosie end up here next year, Elizabeth prayed. She studied the amulets hanging from their necks, the earrings, the wife-beaters, the strange caps that kept them warm and signified how different they were. How did the younger kids get such extensive tattoos, snakes slithering up their necks, dragons fanning out across their chests? It was illegal in California, even with parental authority; they must be the prison tattoos you could make with pens and heated wire guitar strings. Don’t let my scrawny muscles confuse you—see how dangerous I am, with my piercings and jail tats. The coffee was warm and milky, and woke her up. The mountain behind the town shone with woolly green expansiveness like Oz. A man walked up alongside her on the steps and said hello, and it took her a moment to recognize Fenn. He greeted her as if they were friends. God, he was sweet. The young blonde woman he was with had African-pierced ears, with plugs that stretched her lobes to the size of dimes, and as the three of them made small talk, Elizabeth tried not to stare. Elizabeth tugged at her own earlobe. “Did that hurt?” she asked. The girl shook her head. “Not at all.” The earrings brought to mind watch batteries, or hearing aids. “Are you interested?” Fenn asked, smiling. Elizabeth shook her head hurriedly, no no no. “ ’Cause we can plug you into our connection.” Elizabeth looked shyly into her lap. “I don’t really understand the concept of most piercings, I’m afraid, or tattoos.” When she raised her head to meet his eyes, he said, “It’s about finding openings.” After Fenn left, she said to an imagined listener: I don’t believe in you, but please don’t let Rosie get those earrings; or any neck tattoos; or AIDS. Also, help her not fry her mind. Oh, one more tiny thing: Could you please help keep her alive, and not have a spinal cord injury, like Amelia the Goth girl? Thank you: that would be great. By dinnertime, James had arranged on the table everything they’d found in Rosie’s room, like a holiday centerpiece, including a bottle Jody and Claude had asked her to hold for them, that she had maybe had a few hits from, and the Percocet she said she’d stolen from James. Why, why, her mother kept asking, and Rosie wanted to shout at her what Rae always said. That “Why?” was not a useful question. Rosie did not answer, nor did a hint of her thinking show on her face. She shrugged. “Because it was there. Because it just made me feel like I had a secret. Like I have some parts of me you don’t own or get to have an opinion on. Because everyone puts so much pressure on me. And I’m a teenager, and sometimes I want to swipe things. Didn’t you ever steal?” “Bikini underpants from little boutiques,” Elizabeth said. “Is that all?” Rosie demanded. “My parents let me drink in front of them, and looked away if I lifted a six-pack, so I had no excuse to steal from them. It sucked.” “Mommy! Can’t you pay less attention to me? I’m a good kid. But I’m seventeen. Couldn’t you let things slide every so often?” “We have, and now we’re worried that we’re letting too much slide,” said James. “We don’t know how much you’re using. Maybe you don’t even know that anymore. And a razor blade?” “I just told you like the total truth!” There was the faintest and most terrible smile on James’s face, like when they played poker and he’d just been dealt an ace. “Whatever,” he said, and looked over at Elizabeth. She looked back, puzzled. “So you did steal those Percocet from me in the spring?” “Yeah,” Rosie said, and right before their very eyes, she seemed to give up. “I did.” She looked back and forth between them. “And I just need a chance to start over, and prove myself to you.” “Okay. You’re grounded for four days,” he said. “Except for tennis and church.” He seemed to relax. “You can catch up on your AP English reading.” Rosie
started to smirk, but something inside her shifted, and she sighed wearily instead. “What ev,” she said. James looked about to react, but she threw her hands up. “You win,” she said. “I hear you, I get it. I’m sorry. Okay?” James nodded. Elizabeth poured the rum and pills into the sink, ran water, and tossed everything else into the garbage pail. She said, “Great! Now can we eat? Start to get this behind us?” James took a bite of food. “This is so good. What did you stir-fry this with? Cilantro?” She pointed her finger at him: Yes, exactly. And Rosie couldn’t believe her ears—they had already switched the topic to food and she was busted for only four days. Boy, this works for me, she thought to herself, and poked at her food winsomely. “We’ve gotta stop with the whole meat thing,” Rosie announced. “Why?” asked James. “Because it’s immoral? And disgusting?” “Rosie darling, we eat almost no meat these days.” “So what do you call this, Mommy?” She held up an incriminating cube of meat, as if she’d fished a cat turd out of the stir-fry. “Oh,” said James, smacking his forehead. “You mean lamb doesn’t count as a vegetable?” We trapped her in a lie,” he whispered to Elizabeth behind the closed door of their bedroom. “Fong only prescribed a total of four Percocet. They’re synthetic opiates, the same as OxyContin. I took at least two, maybe three. So no way there were three of mine left. She had to have stolen them somewhere else.” Elizabeth, sitting on the bed, let her head fall heavily to her chest. He went to sit by her and started to put his arm around her shoulders, but she pulled back, raised her hands, let them fall into her lap. “Can’t we drop it and start over?” He looked at her for a long time, hard, surprised. “Our daughter got opiates from someone, Elizabeth. It’s for acute pain, Elizabeth, and highly addictive. It’s called Appalachian heroin.” “I know! I’m not stupid. Maybe I don’t write for NPR—you know, most of us don’t. But I’m asking you to dial it back for now, while we figure out what to do—both of us, move back to Defcon Two, slightly increased force readiness.” James closed his eyes, the Buddha with a migraine, nodded. “We need to start testing her, now.” Elizabeth sighed. “Do you agree?” After a minute, she nodded. He got up, and went into the bathroom to floss. Lying in bed that night, he whispered that he loved her, and she whispered back that she loved him, too. There was a moment’s silence in the dark, and then he asked, “Is there any chance that we could ever get a dog?” “What?” she asked too loudly, sitting up. “I really want a dog, Elizabeth, I’ve wanted one for so long. I thought maybe when Rosie goes off to college, but why not now? It might actually be a good thing for our family.” “We already have a perfectly good cat.” Rascal was kneading her stomach. “And when Rascal’s gone, I think I’ll be done with animals forever.” “Why?” “Because they are fur-covered heartbreak waiting to happen. Plus, if we got anything, it would be another cat—cats are so much smarter.” James squawked in agreement. “They are. You throw a tennis ball to a cat, they say, ‘Fuck you, I’m not your maid.’ ” “See, James, I like that in an animal. Dogs are obsequious.” When James laughed, she smiled and smoothed Rascal’s cheeks. In the sweet, close quiet, he asked, “Can we get a drug-sniffing dog?” She managed a laugh, too. Later, he wanted to make love, and she was glad to because her gratitude trumped the new feelings of mild revulsion she had begun to feel toward sex. Besides, it gave her a sex credit. She could look forward to a week off now. Rae called first thing in the morning to see if Elizabeth wanted to drive to Sacramento with her for a rally in support of teachers and nurses, but Elizabeth begged off. “I haven’t felt at all like myself since Rosie got busted—I totally need a meeting.” “Please, Elizabeth? I’m exhausted, I have bad breath, and my vagina smells.” “That’s why I don’t want to go.” James was in his office, moaning and groaning about his deadline when Elizabeth stepped in. “I’m going to drop Rosie off at the courts, and then I am running away from home. I need you to pick her up at one, when she’s done.” “What do you mean, you’re running away from home? Where would you go?” “I’m going to the noon meeting. Then I’m going to hang out at a bookstore, and maybe the home consignment center. I absolutely will go crazy if I have to stay here all morning.” “Don’t buy anything—we honestly cannot afford anything now.” “I may need to. I’m thinking of remodeling.” “Don’t be crazy, Elizabeth. Of course we’re not going to remodel. Maybe if I get a contract for the new book.” “You don’t work on anything anymore except your radio pieces.” “So maybe I can put together a collection of those. Jesus, Elizabeth. I’m working my ass off. Today is really no good. Besides, can’t Rosie walk home?” “No, she’s grounded.” “I don’t think we’re supposed to be giving her consequences that make life more of a pain in the neck for us.” “James. Please. Pick her up.” “I am so under the gun!” “Don’t do this to me!” Elizabeth said, much too loudly, and instantly regretted that she’d resorted to one of Rosie’s battle cries. She stalked out of James’s office and went to shower. She needed a break today. James’s life definitely improved when he first got the NPR job—he brought in eight hundred dollars more a month, and people stopped him on the street to say how much they loved his stories of the world, of global warming and suffering, not to mention a teenage daughter, a bad back, a gut, bad teeth, and a difficult cat. But there was so much more pressure now, for both of them. When his producers weren’t quite as wild about one week’s radio essay, he moped, obsessed. Were he and all those other NPR essayists okay only when their producers jumped up and down? Were they sweating blood the rest of the time, waiting for the next hit, ignoring their families as they tried to get a piece just right, because airtime was Cinderella’s ball? Sometimes she felt as if he were having an affair, with someone so exquisite that she couldn’t fight back. Rosie rolled out of bed at eleven. She had pimples all over her forehead, baby-sized but disgusting. Her shoulders sagged. She knew what her mother would say—you could hardly see them; she had her father’s beautiful skin. The sun and fresh air would help them heal! And blah blah blah. She washed her face, patted it dry, and then carefully, like an expert at Macy’s, covered her skin with foundation. She stepped back to check herself in the mirror. She swirled a brush daubed in rose-colored blusher onto her cheeks, outlined her eyes in kohl. She applied a coat of mascara to her thick black lashes, and then another. She imagined Jody studying her, jealous and exposed: she had no real knack for makeup, but wore it anyway—powder, eyeliner, gloss. Alice, on the other hand, had taken an Intro to Cosmetology class at nights, and had taught Rosie everything she knew. “Cosmetology is a feel-good profession,” she had insisted more than once. Rosie and Jody had laughed hysterically. She put on a clean thong, black lace, stolen from Nordstrom accidentally. She had tried it on in the dressing room, tried on jeans over it, paid for the jeans, and not remembered until she was at the cashier’s. James had found it stuck to his own laundry by static electricity. He had thought it was a broken shoelace at first. She pulled on short cut-offs, her favorite pair, not too tight, with the strap of her thong showing in the back by at least an inch. She pulled a sports bra over her head, which flattened her and kept her tits from bouncing so much, but then she took it off and replaced it with a white lacy bra of her mother’s, the only one from Victoria’s Secret that her mother owned—mostly she got her bras at Macy’s, along with the huge underpants. They wore the same size everything, except jeans. She found a clean, cute, tight T-shirt, and her shoes, which were totally worn out. It so sucked living in this family, no one ever had any extra money. If she asked her mom to take her shopping for tennis shoes, she would sigh, like they were going to end up on government cheese. Elizabeth looked at her clothing strangely but didn’t say anything except, “Do you have your racket? James will pick you up at one. Does that give you enough time?” Rosie had managed an SOS call to Jody while her mother was in James’s study, to meet her at the courts early. Jody would try to get hold of Alice, who was shopping for school clothes with her mother. Both of them had money; also dads, although Alice rarely saw hers. Rosie had been a little girl with a
dead dad, and there was no getting around that or over that. Even a drunk dad, even an asshole, was better than a dead dad, which shouldn’t reflect on you but did, and left a cannon hole in your heart. The meeting hit the spot. Nothing was more important than Elizabeth’s staying sober. Everything good that could happen for Rosie depended on Elizabeth’s not drinking. Leo, the speaker, had done some time at Napa State Hospital after having taken too many trips on LSD. He’d been released too early the last time, and spent most of his second day studying a large fish in an aquarium at a pet store, convinced that it was trying to speak to him. The fish had opened and closed its lips, mouthing, “Leo is God.” When he started talking back to it, sincerely—“No, no, it’s just that I’m so big— all of us out here are”—the authorities had come for him. He was adorable. Some women invited her to coffee afterward, and she almost went. But instead she went to her favorite bookstore. She got an espresso, chocolate-dipped biscotti, and a copy of The New Yorker, sat at one of the window tables alone, and read away the day—about as close to heaven as she was going to get, what with this mortal coil. Every so often she imagined the big fish swimming out to center stage in her mind. The first time he mouthed to her, imploring, “Elizabeth is God,” the second time, beseeching, “Elizabeth is loved.” Then “Elizabeth must be crazy to listen to a big fish.” Both courts were busy when Rosie arrived, and there was no sign of Robert, so she sat and read the book she’d brought in her racket cover. She had to write a paper on it as summer homework for AP English when school started. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, by Kazantzakis. James had owned a copy. It was one of the greatest books she had ever read, although she was only a few pages in. O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind’s golden cap, I love to wear you cocked askew. She struck a pose, legs outstretched like a 1950s bathing beauty, baby finger hooked over her bottom lip, like a girl in a window seat, and immersed herself in the poetry: Freedom, my lads, is neither wine nor a sweet maid, not goods stacked in vast cellars, no, nor sons in cradles; it’s but a scornful, lonely song the wind has taken. . . . Robert sneaked up behind her. She wasn’t aware of him until he was ten feet away. Even so, she pretended to be immersed in her book until he reached over her shoulders and grabbed it out of her hands. “Hey!” he exclaimed, like she was his very best friend. “Can I borrow this?” “Hey, yourself.” She looked down into her lap, mock disgruntled, and then up at him. He was only a few feet away. He’d shaved, and the skin there was paler, and God, his lashes were so long and black that his eyes were like caterpillars. He got to his feet and bent down to pull her up. Her heart raced. “How are you?” he asked. “Getting ready for school?” She groaned. “Oh, senior year’s a breeze—junior year is the killer. And I’ll help you with your college apps.” He took a ball out of the pocket of his khaki shorts, bounced it menacingly on the court. “You ready? I’ve been practicing my toss at home.” She found herself dipping and ducking with such shyness, wondering whether or not he had heard about the bust. Probably not. “We need to warm up for a while, first,” she said, turning around. “Otherwise, an old guy like you might get injured.” She was so glad to see him. She felt genuinely happy for the first time since the party—more like herself, but older. “Ow,” he cried. “That’s hitting below the belt.” But he was smiling. It made her think of what was below his belt. She walked back to the baseline. When she turned to face him, he was squinting at her like now she was in real trouble, and he whacked a ball that nearly hit her. She hit it back, and they rallied, low, hard shots, until he missed. He had gotten better so fast, and she told him this when they met at the net to gather the balls. She took her sunglasses off and used them to sweep back her hair. “Look at you,” she said in the voice of encouragement she used with her kids at church. “You’re doing great.” “Thank you,” he drawled. He looked into her face for a moment, her eyes, as if searching for something. “Hey—I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what is that thing on your eye—that thickening?” Her heart sank. She’d thought he was going to ask her out, she really had, no matter how crazy that was. “Oh, you never noticed it before?” she said. “It’s called a pterygium. It’s a sun injury to my eye, from all those years I played on the junior circuit. I can get surgery on it if I ever care enough.” He was studying her, like an eye doctor. She was terribly embarrassed. “Can I ask you something?” she countered. He nodded. Her heart knocked in her chest like a woodpecker—what was she doing? She didn’t even have a question to ask him. She pulled a ball against her shoe with her racket, and expertly jerked it so it dropped and bounced; with one hit, she caught it on the strings of her racket and froze it, in rapid succession like a top. She panned the court behind him until she knew he was looking at her, and she looked at him, and then smiled like the world’s biggest jerk. Quick, think of something! “Okay—you know that line of Walt Whitman’s, ‘You are so much sunshine to the square inch’?” He nodded. “Well, in terms of physics, is it true?” He laughed, and looked off, thinking. “Well. Sunshine is energy, and life is energy, so you are energy, and energy is all linked by what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Other physicists have called it ‘nonlocal connections’—you remember Bell’s theorem, of course. So we are all energy, and connected, and will remain so. There’s a man named Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona who calls that energy ‘love,’ as Tolstoy does, and since there’s plenty of sunshine in Tucson, Schwartz ought to know.” God, it was so great, he talked to her like a grown-up, like a colleague. She listened to her heart, to the thwok thwok of people playing on the other court, to the squeak of rubber-soled footsteps on the grass beside their court. He dropped his voice, and spoke like a gangster, surreptitiously, out of one side of his mouth. “Your friends just arrived,” he said, holding her gaze. “Okay,” she said, looking back at him. She popped the ball up and down on her strings, then made it freeze, and stuffed it in her pocket. She looked over at Jody and Alice, who were sitting in the grass, watching. She waved, then looked at her watch, and flashed her hand at them twice—ten minutes. She and Robert rallied until one, the best they’d ever played, smiling secret smiles. But she never once looked into his face. Instead, she looked at her two best friends, who were leaning against each other, Jody’s arm tucked into Alice’s, lolling together like her mother and she did sometimes, or like lesbians. When she and Robert were done for the day, they thanked each other formally. She felt like when you were listening to great music and the bass got inside your body. Alice and Jody both looked as if they were close to tears when she walked over to join them. Four arms reached out to her, desperate as widows for her touch. Jody with her great posture and neat, sharp features looked like a secretary in an old movie, like she might whip out her pad and take shorthand, except for her chipped black nail polish and jaggedly sprouting hair. Alice shone as fair as the moon, all curves and curls, cheeks that looked like some auntie had just pinched them lightly, rose-pink blurs. There was a dusting of powder over the freckles on her nose, but in general she was wearing less makeup now, since she’d fallen in love again. Rosie plopped down in the small space between them, and they folded themselves around her in a sprawl. “I missed you guys!” What was it like being at the police department, they wanted to know. Was she in a cell, were there other kids with her, did she get arrested? She shook her head and smiled, trying to reassure them that she was really all right. How long was she grounded for, and when would she get her phone back? This had been such a nightmare! They acted like she’d been in isolation in a Turkish jail. It made her almost cry with self-pity. “Did your moms find out?” she asked them, and they shook their heads. She told them how cold it was in the police office, how she wasn’t in a cell, how two drunk men were brought in separately. She told them about how tweaked Elizabeth had been, as if Rosie had been busted with a pound of heroin and some syringes instead of just having two puffs of weed and some beer at a party. And what an asshole James was, how mean he was being to Elizabeth the last few days, but how her mother was totall
y on her side now, and that they were all made up. She was grounded a few more days, which was okay because she had so much work to do for English before school started. She felt Alice stretch out over her back, and dig that small cleft chin against her shoulder blade. “It will all be back to how it was,” Rosie assured them. “No biggie.” Then as one, they all shifted to the left, rearranged themselves as if they were trying to get comfortable sharing a berth, instead of lying on a huge green lawn. Rosie immersed herself in their smells and familiar bodies. Her love for Jody was the reason Rosie was able to keep it together at all these days, it was like a crush where you didn’t want to have sex—just kiss maybe—but then Jody asked, “And what on earth was that all about on the court?” in her bad clipped voice. Rosie drew back to look at her, askance. “What?” she asked, playing dumb, but secretly thrilled. “Like, hello?” said Jody. “He’s totally into you.” “That is all in your head,” Rosie insisted. Alice made her Kewpie-doll face of concern. “I know, I’m going to ask my guy friends if they know anybody good for you.” “Don’t you dare. I’ll never forgive you. Anyway, all the guys we know from around here are biohazard.” This made them all laugh. “I mean, except Claude.” The three of them shifted again, and wriggled together in a shimmy, like a bird composing itself on a piling. Rosie had her face burrowed into Alice’s warm neck, smelling of Nivea and weed, and Jody, on the far side, smelled salty clean like a girl just out of the sea. Jody stretched her arm all the way across Rosie to hold on to Alice’s arm. Out of her squished left eye Rosie could see the court where not long ago she and Robert had stood. Something had happened, like they’d exchanged a kind of rain check. She let herself be enveloped in the softness and heat of her girls. That night, she had a pleasant vegetarian dinner with her parents. Rosie read in her room all night with the door closed, James worked on his new story, Elizabeth puttered. Things were better. Rae called Elizabeth again the next day to see if she wanted to drive to Oakland for a concert at Lake Merritt, with Anthony and young people from church, but again Elizabeth said no. Now she was remodeling the living room. “You’re what?” Rae asked. “It’s like soul feng shui—I’m shoving things around, trying out new arrangements, trying out other rugs that we had in storage.” “And you’re doing that because?” Elizabeth plopped down into her father’s old leather easy chair. “I don’t know. I’m stuck in manic doldrums. Do you want to come help me?” “No, I want to hear the concert—people from the Oakland Philharmonic, Bach and Schubert. Please come. You never go anywhere anymore.” “Next time, I promise, okay? Next time, no matter where or for what.” “I already know what the next field trip is. And it will be very bad for you. Yet you have sworn to come along. You’re going to kick yourself.” Elizabeth smiled. “Very bad.” “I’ll take my chances.” It was wonderful to be pushing the couches and tables from place to place. It gave Elizabeth hope, shifting everything around and cleaning out drawers to get better function, new perspective. Look at me, she thought, pleased: she was not stuck in her old ways, where the shoes went here and her afternoons were spent there. This was a way of starting over. The big fish would be pleased. When she stopped to pee, she noticed that the medicine chest was jammed to bursting, too—so how could you possibly notice things missing? She filled a Hefty bag with outdated medicines and bottles of glop, and threw it in the trash. Then she sank down in a chair. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was noon. Rosie was still asleep. This made her afraid, panicky even. James was in the city. She should have gone with Rae, but she needed to stay home to keep an eye on Rosie, make sure she didn’t sneak out. The spatial contours and sounds of her living room were once removed, as if she hadn’t come quite all the way back after space travel, or as if a thin invisible film separated her from where she was. She felt funny, like she was on an island, floating away. It was too quiet. Bad thoughts flowed through her mind like a stream, and she tried to clear her head of the mental flotsam—James in a car crash, Rosie in a coma. Rae with breast cancer, Lank teaching at Columbine, Elizabeth in the bin, in a silent scream. But right here and now, weren’t things just fine? Watery fear filled her. She had to distract herself, get herself to look away, like when you shook your keys at an otter at the zoo to get it to look up. Columbine was also a flower, growing in her garden, blue blossoms in the flower beds outside Rosie’s window. She should go look at them, or drive with Rosie out to the creek beside the redwood where lavender and golden columbine grew. What was going on? She was having some sort of episode. She couldn’t call her shrink, he didn’t go into the office today. She tried to anchor herself, focus on the island instead of the flat gray water, the limitless depth of the ocean. What did we have on the island? Our bodies, our fear, coconuts and mango, our books, modest entertainments, goats if you were lucky. There was always Rascal, asleep on the kitchen counter, and Rosie, come to think of it, still in bed. Lots of connections you could make, if you just got up off your butt. She could see both Rosie and the columbine in one trip. She stood and walked across the invisible bridge to Rosie’s room, but when she threw open the door to let in the day, the bed was empty, the window open wide.