The Bubble Reputation

by Cathie Pelletier

  Rosemary had brought the champagne bottle out to the patio in a brass ice bucket, and she poured from it until the two glasses were full again. Mother drank the second glass of champagne down so easily it might have been a thimble full of water. Rosemary left her there amid the cheese and fruit to go back inside the house. She’d heard a noise and assumed Lizzie and Philip must be finished with their showers and dressing to go off for their usual lunch in Thomasville. Rosemary intended to ask Lizzie to stop by Laker’s for the suet they saved for her, from around the kidneys, for her gourmet woodpeckers. The noise again. But it was not coming from inside the house. Someone was gently rapping on the front door. A salesman, thought Rosemary, tapping at my chamber door. Fuller Brush and nothing more. She had learned over the years to recognize the approaches her infrequent visitors used at her door. Uncle Bishop pounded loudly as a carpenter. Robbie gave a shave and a haircut, two bits knock, seven medium-sized raps. Miriam never knocked unless the door was locked. She liked to creep in. “The door was unlocked so I let myself in,” she’d say, hoping she might find Rosemary and William fastened like dogs in some embarrassing position. But before Rosemary could open the door, Lizzie and Philip came down the stairs.

  “Who’s that?” Lizzie asked, as she tucked an army-green T-shirt inside khaki shorts. Lizzie would perpetually remind Rosemary of a Girl Scout off to sell cookies.

  “I don’t know,” Rosemary said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” She was anxious to get back out on the patio to keep watch on the bottle of champagne. If left alone, Mother would surely empty it. With a curious Lizzie behind her, Rosemary opened the door and looked into a face she hadn’t seen in some time, a face that was still handsome but now had tiny lines edging the eyes, and a tired worldliness in the eyes themselves that had not been there in college, where he’d been her fiercest competition in the debate club. Lizzie’s husband, and now Philip’s competition. Charles Vanier Sr.

  All Rosemary could do, really, was hug him and then step back to let him in. He kept his hands in his pockets as he looked from Lizzie’s shocked face to Philip’s. No one said anything for what seemed too long a time, and then the accusals began, with Charles and Lizzie pointing angry fingers at each other. Philip stepped back as if to survey the case at a distance. Flagrante delicto, Rosemary thought, remembering the Christmas party she’d imagined in Uncle Bishop’s dollhouse. Caught with his hands full of red satin.

  “I knew this person must have been up here when you never called once,” Charles said. He was not shouting, but he was furious in a clenched-teeth sort of way. “You were supposed to give yourself some time away from us both, to think things out, or so you said, and look at the little nest I’ve stumbled upon.”

  “What little nest have you stumbled out of to come and visit my little nest?” Lizzie, on the other hand, was shouting, very unbefitting a Girl Scout. “I’m surprised you found the time to drive—no, sneak—up here.”

  “Don’t you go casting aspersions,” Charles said, and Lizzie gave her signature laugh. It was her I’m so incredibly above this laugh. She’d perfected it in college, during the passage of a cross-country skiing course, which, to everyone’s amazement, she flunked. Rosemary could still hear her, fifty feet behind the other skiers, cold, snowy, and laughing.

  “Aspersions?” Lizzie asked. Philip was inching away. Rosemary had moved back against the foyer wall and stood there helplessly watching, the way a referee might in a boxing match. Lizzie raised her arms to put her hands on her hips. Rosemary recognized the meaning. She’d seen birds raise their contour feathers during territorial encounters.

  “Excuse me,” said Philip, “but I believe this is personal.” Lizzie stared at his back as he disappeared up the stairs. His footfalls padded down the long hallway to the room where she had put his suitcases, for respectability. A door shut softly and then all was quiet.

  “Abandonment?” asked Charles. “And he hasn’t even met our dog, not to mention the children.” Lizzie glared at him.

  “Listen, I need to get back to Mother,” said Rosemary. “Charles, for what it’s worth, it’s good to see you again.” She gave him another hug.

  “You too, Rosie,” he said. He was still pleased at Philip’s exit, at Lizzie’s blushed face. Rosemary felt a twinge of sadness. Had it been so many years ago that this was all before them, waiting to happen, these twisted mistakes they’d make? She remembered Lizzie and Charles on their wedding day, so soon after graduating, Lizzie beginning to swell just slightly with Charles Vanier Jr. And Rosemary in her chafing maid of honor gown, so sure Lizzie was making a mistake.

  “The least you could have done was crawl out of bed long enough to visit your children each weekend,” Charles said.

  “You will not instill that sort of guilt in me,” said Lizzie. She’d calmed down a bit now that Philip had quit the scene. His presence had probably caused her to overreact, and surprise was a vicious weapon. “I take excellent care of my children all year long. They’re at camp enjoying themselves. A phone call every few days is sufficient. Besides, what do you do for your children besides tuck them into bed each night?”

  Rosemary remembered a day she’d come into the old college library, stomping snow from her boots and looking for Lizzie. She had found her in among the rows of quiet shelves, locked in a wet kiss with Charles, two innocent college students with their assumed knowledge of life. And they were in the child psychology section. “The last place I thought to look for you two,” she’d told them that sunny day of the snow-filled campus, and the exhilarating promise of thaw after a long winter. When life was still all titillation. When futures were dangling ahead of everyone, shiny as icicles. Rosemary left Lizzie and Charles, as emotionally charged as that feverish day in the library among the shelves of books, and went back out to the patio to find Mother.

  ***

  After lunch, Rosemary took Mother upstairs and helped her get comfortable for the afternoon nap she was fond of taking. The idea appealed to Rosemary, too, so she went to her own room, kicked her Nikes off, and stretched out on the bed. It was a surprise to her when she awoke and saw by the clock that she’d been asleep for almost two hours. Rarely did her mind quit racing long enough to let her sleep soundly in the afternoon. Even at night, desperately tired, thoughts about William, questions about those last minutes, did acrobatic maneuvers in her head. And when she did fall asleep, those thoughts got all dressed up in symbolic costumes and paraded themselves before her as dreams.

  Mother was still sleeping, her small shoulders heaving up and down, as though she were a doll being inflated, the mouth painted much too red by some overzealous factory worker, the yellow hair glued haphazardly onto the scalp. Rosemary went back to her bedroom and looked out to see what birds would be arriving for the late feeding. Lizzie and Charles were walking slowly about the backyard, their hands gesticulating and circling, two hearing people engaged in sign language.

  On an impulse, she tried Uncle Bishop’s number but there was no answer, just loud, long rings that must be echoing around the empty rooms of the beige-and-chocolate house, bouncing off the walls. She hoped he was okay. He’d been riding a high emotional crest lately, what with Jason’s leaving. Putting Uncle Bishop aside, she opened up her college paperback copy of The Scarlet Letter, which she’d just begun to reread. A half hour passed with Hester and Arthur before she looked out to see if the goldfinches had yet discovered the new niger feeder she had hung from the cherry tree. It was then that a movement caught her eyes, figures walking from left to right across the range of her vision, as if in a film, Lizzie and Philip. Lizzie was looking terribly diplomatic. It was obvious that a great summit meeting was taking place in Bixley.

  Rosemary tried Uncle Bishop’s number again, and again, no answer. With the peace talks still going on in the backyard, she walked her bicycle quietly out to the road and headed for Uncle Bishop’s little house. She saw the Datsun first, a snarl on its lip, backe
d ass end into the garage. A small commotion of some sort was going on in the backyard. Rosemary could hear Uncle Bishop’s large voice, on the shrill edge of excitement. She parked the bike in the front yard, by Mrs. Abernathy’s spreading lilac bush, and headed around the house. Uncle Bishop was kneeling by the porch steps, his huge white buttocks peeping, like rising loaves of bread, out of his gray sweatpants.

  “Hey,” Rosemary called out. “What’ve you been up to?” But Uncle Bishop had no time for cordials.

  “Look,” he said, pointing, “at what that old crone has done now.” He was aiming a finger at Ralph the cat, who was flopped out flat on his side, his two ears flattened in displeasure. But other than this feline signal of disapproval, Rosemary could see no evidence of anything wrong. Ralph had always been a dramatic cat.

  “What’s the matter with him?” she asked. She moved closer, bending over for a better look. Ralph lifted his lip, the way Elvis used to, showing off a couple of formidable-looking canines.

  “This!” said Uncle Bishop, and held up a bell for Rosemary to see. It was dangling from a brown leather cat collar. “She belled Ralph, against my permission. This is now a full-scale war.” Rosemary sighed. Poor Mrs. Abernathy, to be a bird columnist and the next-door neighbor of Uncle Bishop and Ralph. Uncle Bishop had hated birds ever since a college zoology professor told him they would eventually inherit the earth.

  “So, what’s the big deal?” Rosemary asked, reaching out to stroke the enormous cat. Ralph did his Elvis impression again, and Rosemary decided to withhold the affection.

  “A cow would collapse under the weight of this thing!” Uncle Bishop said, holding the bell and collar above his head. He turned to face Mrs. Abernathy’s yard, so the words would drift in the right direction. “My cat has whiplash, you old biddy!” Ralph yawned dramatically and then rolled over on his other side. He looked fine. Better shape than Elvis had been.

  “Other than the birds making fun of him,” said Rosemary, “there’s no harm done.”

  “This bell is the size of a Ping-Pong ball, Rosie,” Uncle Bishop persisted. Ralph was now calmly licking his paws, tossing a spitty one behind his ear now and then for a little cleaning back there.

  “You keep that cat home,” a tiny voice said from beyond the picket fence, and Rosemary saw Mrs. Abernathy’s white head bobbing about between the narrow cracks.

  “You’ll spend the rest of your days in the Bixley clink for this!” Uncle Bishop shouted. “His neck is so swollen he can’t eat,” he told Rosemary. She was glad she had left The Scarlet Letter behind on her nightstand. Mrs. Abernathy going to prison for belling Ralph was far more interesting than Hester Prynne balling Arthur Dimmesdale. Mrs. Abernathy’s backyard, full of delicate birds, was far more exotic than the grim streets of Puritan Boston.

  “He can’t eat because he just came into my yard and ate a cardinal,” Mrs. Abernathy added. Ralph made a noise that sounded like a burp.

  “I don’t care if he ate an archbishop!” Uncle Bishop screamed.

  “He looks okay to me,” said Rosemary. She suspected Uncle Bishop’s lashing out was in part meant for Jason. And it was a pity that Ralph seemed to be, indeed, his old self. He really was a mean-spirited cat, bullying even the neighborhood dogs, not to mention his chronic assault upon the birds.

  “It was so pathetic,” Uncle Bishop was now saying. His eyes had watered sufficiently for the moment. “I could hear this ringing but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I thought the goddamned Avon lady was on my porch.” He paused theatrically, his eyes searching out some distant, Hollywood horizon.

  “You’re ranting again,” Rosemary said. Usually, Uncle Bishop preferred Bixley’s small veterinary clinic to partake in his Greek tragedies, insisting that Ralph was suffering from any assortment of diseases. Only after he and the massive cat had been laughed out of several clinics in northern Maine did Uncle Bishop finally admit that perhaps only dogs contracted heartworms. “But I hear something crawling around in there, chewing up muscle,” he would tell the startled veterinarians, his ear pressed against Ralph’s well-padded rib cage.

  “If that cat comes back in this yard,” the small voice announced through the cracks, “I’m going to give him a nice plate of strychnine.” A threat of death was all Uncle Bishop needed to hear. The collar in hand, its bell tinkling happily, he lunged at the five-foot-high fence.

  “No, Uncle Bishop!” Rosemary said. She heard Mrs. Abernathy scream from her yard. Uncle Bishop was trying to pull himself up, his heavy arms flailing over the top of the fence.

  “I’m gonna bell you, you old bat!” he yelled. “And I’m gonna get a handful of that blue hair while I’m at it!” Rosemary grabbed his ankles and held on. A red broom handle appeared over the fence and thwacked Uncle Bishop’s arm.

  “Ouch!” he moaned. “Stop that, goddamn it!” He pulled himself farther up. Rosemary yanked on his ankles. She heard something tear and hoped it wasn’t cartilage. The broom handle attacked again, thwack thwack. It caught Uncle Bishop on one of his hands.

  “Stop that!” he shouted. Then, “Let go of me, Rosie!”

  “You let go of the fence first,” Rosemary said. How could she be this winded? She was a runner, wasn’t she? Where was Uncle Bishop getting his strength? She got a better grip on his ankles and pulled again.

  “My arm!” Uncle Bishop cried. “I think I’m stuck on a nail!” Ralph had come to the edge of the yard and was watching the commotion with green eyes. The broom was back again, this time the yellow straw part. Mrs. Abernathy decided to go for the head, a vulnerable area, what with the eyes and nose being there. Thwomp. Thwomp. Thwomp. Material ripped loudly, a long, dramatic tear.

  “Let go of the fence!” Rosemary insisted.

  “Even if Ralph could eat,” Uncle Bishop whimpered, “I’ll be too crippled to open a can of cat food.” Bored with the commotion, Ralph disappeared into a hole beneath Mrs. Abernathy’s fence, most likely in time for the evening feeding. Uncle Bishop finally got an arm extended over the fence. He waved his sausage fingers about.

  “I’m gonna pull you right through the cracks, Mrs. Abernathy,” he threatened. “Just let me get my hands on that pug.”

  “Rape!” Mrs. Abernathy’s voice rose up, most unlike the mourning dove as it calls for a mate. “Raaaaaaape!” Uncle Bishop stopped struggling. Skewered on the pointy top of Mrs. Abernathy’s fence, he took the time to think about this.

  “Mrs. Abernathy,” he said. He was cautiously eyeing the white bun, just below his reach on the other side of the fence. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re sixteen years old and a virgin. I’m still gay.” Mrs. Abernathy had apparently changed her mind as to which part of the broom packed a greater wallop. The wooden handle appeared once more. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. All on Uncle Bishop’s knuckles. Then she went inside her house and slammed the door.

  THE TEMPORARY ART

  It was after her run around Bixley that Rosemary found the baby robin beneath one of the wild apple trees across the road, near Mugs’s cat crossing. Winston, the outdoor cat, disappeared guiltily into the hay as she approached. Flagrante delicto. Caught with his mouth full of feathers. Rosemary lifted the baby bird, gently. It seemed to be okay, but when her hand came away from its breast, there was blood smeared lightly about it. The baby robin was in trouble. Rosemary knew that a cat’s wounds may not be large and noticeable, but the claws go deep and are sharper than needles. She could see no tree with a nest that might have held the fledgling. And she couldn’t leave the tiny bird on the ground, where Winston would surely find it later, a little dessert, light as meringue. To hell with natural selection. That was a fine notion on paper, but when one is staring the weak straight in the eye, it’s difficult to toss them back to the fittest. She carried the baby robin across the road and into the garage. The thing now was to put it in a dark, quiet box and hope that the shock wouldn’t kill i
t.

  At seven thirty, Mother rubbed her eyes, yawned, and was in bed asleep by nine. Rosemary still hadn’t made face-to-face contact with Lizzie, Charles, or Philip. All three cars were jammed into the front yard, side by side, but the drivers were in their respective corners, apparently waiting for the next round. Wondering what was up with the houseguests, she stretched her leg muscles, something she had not been able to do right after her run, and went out to check on the baby robin. It was surprisingly alert and hungry. She had mashed up a few tablespoons of Cat Chow into a paste to feed the bird. If it lived a day or two, she would see about getting some mealworms from the feed store where she bought her birdseed. She hated this idea, but it was the robin or the mealworms, and natural selection came easier with worms. The robin opened its beak quickly and ate a good bit of the paste from the dropper she dangled over its head. She also fed it several drops of water before it crouched down among the leaves and twigs and shut the one staring eye that looked out at her. She covered the box with an old tablecloth. All she could do now was hope for the best.