The Bubble Reputation

by Cathie Pelletier

  In the den, they sprawled on each end of the sofa, as though it were the flowered eyesore in the University of Maine lounge. Lizzie hadn’t mentioned a day she’d be leaving, and Rosemary didn’t ask for one. It was such a pleasure to have company again in the big house, to have a spare room cluttered with suitcases, tennis shoes, and paperback novels, just as Lizzie’s room had looked back in college.

  At ten thirty the phone rang and a man asked to speak, please, to Elizabeth Vanier.

  “It isn’t Charles,” Rosemary told her.

  “In that case,” Lizzie said, and winked, “I’ll take it upstairs.”

  While Lizzie was on the phone, Rosemary refilled her champagne glass and flopped down on the sofa. She opened Harrowsmith magazine to an article she’d begun earlier, advice on how to turn a small acreage into a habitat for wildlife. She liked the idea of animals roaming freely about the fields and woods behind her house. But after reading the same paragraph over and over again, she closed the magazine. The dream was still haunting her with its muted noises and fuzzy images. William, it seemed, had become even more elusive in death than he had been while he lived and loved and painted in the house, a house with an abundance of light beating in through all the windows.

  “Can you still be trusted with secrets?” Lizzie asked, peeking around the den’s door. Rosemary tossed the magazine aside and sat up.

  “Try me,” she said, as Lizzie danced into the den and executed a shaky pirouette.

  “Philip is coming to Bixley!” she shouted, and then did a quick cheerleader’s jump into the air. “Can he stay here, Rosemary?”

  “So, he’s a Philip, is he?” Rosemary asked. The idea of more company than Lizzie was not appealing to her. She wasn’t ready for strangers. “He doesn’t throw shoes, does he?” Lizzie widened her eyes at this, but Rosemary waved the comment away.

  “Listen,” Lizzie said, and kissed the top of Rosemary’s head. “I’ll tell you all about this tomorrow. Right now I’m going upstairs to curl up in bed and think about Philip and practice kissing the back of my hand.” Rosemary smiled. Maybe Philip would decide not to come after all. “Actually,” Lizzie added. She was picking at a red lump just above her knee that looked like a mosquito bite. “I need to go up to bed, turn out the light, and think about how I’m going to handle this mess.”

  “Sweet dreams,” Rosemary told her, and hoped that when she herself fell asleep, her own dreams would be a bit sweeter.

  THE JUNE CHRISTMAS

  A week and a half into her visit, Lizzie still said nothing about when she planned to leave. She kept in touch with her children at camp and, occasionally, her mother in Portland. But Rosemary noticed that there were no outgoing or incoming calls to or from Charles. Lizzie did announce, much to Rosemary’s displeasure, that Philip Sheppard would be arriving in two days, on Friday.

  “Then maybe we should visit my family before Philip gets here,” Rosemary suggested. “He already has enough problems. There’s no need to complicate things for him.” Lizzie, on the other hand, had met the family many times when she and Rosemary piled their things into the orange Rabbit and left the university campus behind them as they headed home to Bixley, forty miles away, for a weekend of Uncle Bishop’s home-cooked meals and warped philosophies.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this,” Lizzie said, “but when I first met your family, I used to think of you as that girl on The Munsters. Remember the one who was out of place because she looked and acted normal?”

  When Lizzie and Rosemary arrived at Uncle Bishop’s, the rest of the family was already there and in the midst of a loud argument. But they quickly abandoned their squabbling at the sight of Lizzie. Uncle Bishop hugged her hardest and longest. He had bowls of pretzels everywhere, pretzels of every shape. Some were circles, some long sticks, some medium-length sticks, some short sticks, some shaped like a baby’s teething ring. There were assorted cheeses, candies, chips, and a dip that looked a bit too violet to be taken seriously. All this extra hostessing was because of Lizzie. Uncle Bishop was very fond of Lizzie, and had even called her several times during Rosemary’s sojourn from society to keep her apprised of the goings-on.

  “Now, look here,” Mother said to Lizzie, pulling her down by the arm to get a closer look. “I don’t think you should put geese in that pond.”

  “Those curls are as yellow as ever, Mrs. O’Neal,” Lizzie said. Mother forgot all about the perils of her geese and smiled up at this visitor.

  “You tell Aunt Sophie to write,” Mother whispered.

  “I can’t believe how you’ve grown!” Lizzie said to Robbie, who had stopped by to say hello before he rushed off on a date. “You were only seventeen the last time I saw you.”

  “He’s got a degree in biology now,” Rosemary said proudly.

  Miriam had never been happy with any attractive woman, and she was less than pleased with Lizzie’s precise features and thick auburn hair. And it didn’t serve Raymond well to stare openly at Lizzie, but he did just that, and with such obvious admiration that Miriam finally said, “This is my husband, Raymond.” Raymond eagerly offered Lizzie his hand.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve met your husband before,” Lizzie said.

  “No you haven’t,” said Uncle Bishop. “This is a new one strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage.”

  Mother rocked in her rocker, bouncing back and forth in quick jerks. Uncle Bishop had driven the chair over from Aunt Rachel’s in the back of his Datsun. According to Miriam, it had nearly bounced out on the sharp turn by the Bixley IGA.

  “He was going at least ninety,” Miriam said. She opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. “We looked just like the Clampetts.” Raymond had come directly from a proposed site of future condos and would have had to go miles out of his way to pick up Miriam.

  “And why am I stuck being your chauffeur?” asked Uncle Bishop.

  “You know I haven’t been able to drive since the accident,” Miriam said. “My psychologist says it’s a classic trauma.”

  “Well, I got news for your psychologist,” Uncle Bishop said. “The man you hit, that poor man driving the ice-cream truck, has more reason to be traumatized than you do. He’s the one I should be driving around.”

  “He was very childish about it all,” Miriam told Lizzie. “Just because he had to pick up all those Popsicles.”

  “Listen,” Uncle Bishop told her. “You either drive yourself next time or take one of your so-called business cab rides. The IRS and I are going to sit down one of these days for a cup of coffee and a long talk.”

  “Do you honestly think the IRS would believe a man who has a subscription to Dolls House World?” asked Miriam, filing the rough edge of a nail with an emery board while her cigarette smoked in the ashtray.

  Uncle Bishop appeared ready to choke her. At least, his hands rose up together and formed a circle perfect for a small neck. It reminded Rosemary of what Anne Boleyn had said of her executioner. I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck. But Uncle Bishop saw that Lizzie had turned away from her good-bye to Robbie and was listening. He dropped his hands and was soon smiling again. Miriam had been luckier than the small-necked Anne.

  “Well, well. My two little college girls,” he said, looking from Rosemary to Lizzie.

  “When is Father getting here?” Mother asked.

  “Still?” Lizzie looked at Rosemary.

  “Still,” said Rosemary. “I guess there are some men you can’t forget.” She smiled. The childhood ache was back, that old longing for her father. William wasn’t the only disappearing act.

  “Father’s dead,” said Miriam. She’d been staring at Lizzie’s long, tanned legs with open envy. Raymond had been staring, too.

  “Oh my Lord!” Mother cried, and clutched her chest with one hand. “Dead?” Now Mother was in tears, and only Rosemary’s constant reassurance that Father was merely late, a
flat tire, could loosen the obituary lodged in Mother’s mind.

  “He’d better not forget my chocolates, then,” Mother said, and wiped her eyes.

  “You never fail to amaze me,” Rosemary said angrily to her sister. Several times a year, Miriam told Mother the truth about the fragile people who had come and gone through her life, leaving Mother to clutch at her heart and whisper, “Dead? Uncle Perry?” This time it was Raymond’s ogling of Lizzie’s legs that had prompted Miriam to cross her own plump ones and deliver the news of Father’s demise.

  “What has the face that’s launched a thousand real estate deals done now?” asked Uncle Bishop, returning from the kitchen with even more pretzels.

  “You really are something, do you know that?” Rosemary asked Miriam, who appeared unfazed at the muddle she’d caused in Mother’s emotions.

  “Well, look at her,” said Miriam. “She’s rocking away and waiting for her chocolates. He never brought her any goddamn chocolates when he was alive.” Miriam pulled with her teeth at a piece of fingernail. “Besides, it was only in fun.”

  “You’ve got a warped sense of humor,” Rosemary said.

  “Don’t let Miriam spoil our fun,” Uncle Bishop pleaded. “Miriam gets a sugar high when she spoils someone’s fun.” To complement his sandwiches, he had brewed one of his special pots of coffee. He poured those persons interested a steaming cup.

  “It’s delicious, Uncle Bishop,” Lizzie said. “Is this your own recipe?” Uncle Bishop loved for Lizzie to call him uncle. He hovered by her side with the pot, keeping her cup up to the brim at all times, sometimes above it, which had Lizzie mopping the saucer dry with her napkin.

  “It’s a secret recipe,” Uncle Bishop whispered loudly to Lizzie. “The major part of the secret is in how you mix your beans. I like South American beans.” Both Uncle Bishop and Miriam liked to whisper loudly, a trait William had pointed out. “I think the responsibility of secrets frightens them.”

  Miriam was now glaring at Raymond, who was still manhandling Lizzie with his eyes. She was obviously taking notes for the fight they would most assuredly have later. And poor Raymond seemed to have no idea that, as the evening wore on, the evidence against him was piling up like garbage.

  Uncle Bishop wanted to see pictures of Lizzie’s children, so she passed the latest school photo of each around the room to the approval of the audience.

  “Looks just like you, Lizzie,” they all said of little Diana, now seven years old, and, “Just like his father,” they agreed about nine-year-old Charlie, the baby Lizzie had been pregnant with for her college graduation. “My graduation present from Charles,” she had said of the occasion.

  “We’d better go,” Rosemary suggested.

  “Why don’t you two little college girls just kick off your shoes and relax?” Uncle Bishop suggested. “Put your feet up.”

  “Don’t kick off any shoes in this house,” Miriam warned. “Not if you care to see them again. Where is the woman of the house, by the way?” She looked around dramatically. Rosemary frowned. Apparently, Miriam hadn’t heard the news that Jason was gone. Uncle Bishop regarded Miriam thoughtfully.

  “Do you know what would be lovely, Miriam?” Uncle Bishop asked. He was still held in check by Lizzie’s presence. “A postal card informing me to take note of your change of address, and a zip code in that new address that I couldn’t possibly recognize because it’s so far away. Maybe even one with letters in it, such as England has.” Jason was still a sore spot, and Uncle Bishop’s voice had a tremble in it.

  “I see that lots of things haven’t changed,” Lizzie whispered to Rosemary, who only nodded and thought about the letters in English zip codes, of London, the last place to see William alive.

  “Ready?” Rosemary asked. An hour was time enough to visit, especially when Miriam and Uncle Bishop were verbally circling each other, like talkative sumo wrestlers. She picked up her purse from where it leaned against Uncle Bishop’s armchair, home, no doubt, of many “Children’s Hours” of the past. A good chair in which to drink and think and panic. She kissed Mother’s powdered face. “Who puts that makeup on her?” she once asked Aunt Rachel. “She does it herself,” Aunt Rachel had answered, “with the same wickedness little girls have when they discover their mommy’s lipstick.”

  “I’ll see you next week,” Rosemary said to Mother. Mother was coming to stay with her while Aunt Rachel went on her summer vacation. Last year it had been Uncle Bishop, and this year it would be Rosemary who babysat. Miriam refused to take turns, insisting that Mother frightened her pet chihuahua, Oddkins Bodkins.

  “I’d take her home with me,” Miriam was now telling no one in particular, “but even my plants die when she visits.”

  “I wouldn’t feel safe leaving her with Miriam and that animated rat anyway,” Uncle Bishop whispered to Rosemary. “It looks just like one of those monkeys sitting in a teacup in comic books.”

  “Good night, love,” Rosemary said to Mother, who stopped rocking long enough to gently button the top button of Rosemary’s shirt.

  “That was sweet,” said Lizzie, who saw.

  “Sometimes,” Rosemary said, “when she does something like this, it’s as if she almost remembers.”

  “Don’t forget to unplug the Christmas tree,” Mother said suddenly, then sank back down in her rocker, drifted back into some old memory of a Christmas tree ablaze with color.

  “Even in the heat of June,” Rosemary said, as they opened the front door and quietly closed it behind them.

  “What?” asked Lizzie.

  “A Christmas tree,” said Rosemary. “Mother has a Christmas tree even in June. I miss her, but it must be wonderful to live in the mind, where unhappy facts can be changed into pleasant ones. I wish someone would tell me that William has had a flat tire, that he’s on his way home with chocolates.”

  They stood on the front steps of Uncle Bishop’s beige house where just a short time ago he had thrown a black pump at his mailbox. Ralph the cat came slinking out from under Lizzie’s New Yorker and peed, doglike, on one of the back tires.

  “Was that a cat?” Lizzie asked, and squinted her eyes.

  “That’s Ralph,” said Rosemary. “He has an identity problem. Miriam says it’s because he lives with Uncle Bishop.”

  Rosemary looked next door, over the thick expanse of Mrs. Abernathy’s startlingly green grass, and saw a light coming from the old woman’s living room. A tiny light, almost too weak in wattage to be seen. Mrs. Abernathy’s little head and shoulders formed a shadowy silhouette through the window, sitting motionless. The outline of a woman alone, without a mate, with night coming on again, with summer passing and fall descending and then the threat of winter with its high mortality rates. It was the outline of an old woman growing older, growing dependent on the birds for company, on Ralph the cat for some naughty excitement. Rosemary looked through this sad window at the vignette of Mrs. Abernathy’s evening at home. She remembered Mr. Abernathy, a jovial man who liked to tease little girls about their freckles and knobby knees. A nice man. And Mrs. Abernathy was nice then, too. Or nicer, when she still had Mr. Abernathy. What must it be like for her now, with nothing but her column in the Bixley Times, the long evenings, and her worn memories? Rosemary hated to ponder those consequences. The mortality rates were high for humans, too, and summers were sometimes cruel as winters.

  “Let’s stop at BJ’s Tavern for a couple beers,” she suggested to Lizzie.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lizzie said. “You’d better go alone. If we start drinking beer, we might end up getting an apartment together and signing up for English one-oh-one.”

  ***

  BJ’s Tavern was bustling for a Wednesday night in Bixley, Maine. All the blinking signs hanging over the bar were happily announcing their beer companies. The crowd was a mixture of lumberjacks still in their work clothes and boots, college students li
ngering around the fireplace that would be blazing again come October, and the local business types who filled the tables in the center of the room. The college students were keeping the jukebox busy with quarters from the bar owner, who was apologetic that his singer-guitarist had quit just that morning in a squabble over money.

  Rosemary sat at the bar. It had been late in January, two weeks before William’s death, when she had last been to BJ’s. The bartender was still Robert, whose wife worked as one of the waitresses. When he saw Rosemary, he popped open a Miller Lite and brought it over to her.

  “You haven’t changed your drinking habits, have you?” he asked, as he put the beer down.

  “Just my drinking habitats,” Rosemary said. “I do it at home these days.”

  She sat for two hours, sipping her beer and listening to the jukebox crank out the latest song and, once in a while, some older song that reminded her of William. The bar was beginning to empty itself. Most of the people who had come in alone were now leaving with a partner. Going out in pairs. Rosemary imagined a large ark bobbing in the parking lot at BJ’s Tavern and a steady stream of drunks heading out the door and up the creaking plank in shaky, staggering twos.

  It was then that she noticed an attractive man, early thirties, dark eyes, dark hair, sitting across the bar and almost hidden behind a hanging Boston fern. She hadn’t seen him because of the plant and the coagulation of lumberjacks obstructing her view. She was surprised to find herself staring, but there was something about this man, some clue about his demeanor, that brought her to believe she’d met him before. But where? He was the type that Rosemary had always found attractive, the Heathcliff sort, dark, brooding. But she couldn’t quite remember when or where she might have made his acquaintance. Could she have taught a younger brother who looked like him? She caught his quick glance, and he smiled. Maybe he was someone she knew but had forgotten, some substitute teacher who had come and gone at the high school. Wondering just what constituted a tasteful move these days, Rosemary was imagining herself sending him a drink when someone tapped her on the shoulder. It was Marvin Casey, who worked at the Bixley post office, a friend to Rosemary the summer she’d filled in part-time for a woman employee who needed a few weeks off to have a baby. They exchanged the usual conversation between acquaintances in bars, the “how are you, how are things going?” kind of chat.