by Dawn French
Rosie sighs, gathers herself and takes her leave before any of her thinking overwhelms her too much. She slips back out of the front door after dropping a five-dollar note into the collection box. Right opposite the huge door is the open expanse of Central Park and she knows that in the distance, across the park, lies the notorious Dakota building. She gets a sickening lurch as she thinks of Lennon. In those moments just before he was shot, trusting his wild world, hoping he could be part of a change for the better for everyone. He was vital and creative. And alive.
Then.
He wasn’t.
Rosie was only three years old at the time. She knew nothing of it til years later, but Lennon’s music is the link between Rosie and her dad. Lennon and Marvin Gaye were what Rosie listened to when she was growing up. They were his passions, and then hers. And now, here she is today, a park away from where some of that vital music died. Rosie isn’t ordinarily a squeamish person, but her whole body shivers momentarily at the proximity and the reality. Yes, she really is in New York, and it is just as frightening as it is wonderful …
She turns away from the park and walks back along 90th Street, past the Wilder-Binghams’ building, and on to Madison Avenue. She tries to make sense of the area. What do the people who live here want to shop for? Well, there’s a bookshop, a keycutter, a pharmacy and a pizza parlour, but there are also many shops that Rosie has no reference for. Nothing like this in Cornwall. Shops that offer nail/wax/mani/pedi services with big hefty leather barbers’ chairs all in a row, people with their heads down, hard at work, all visible through the window, all alarmingly unprivate. The women doing the pedicures have face-masks on. Are the feet of the Upper East Side so very toxic?! Then there are a plethora of expensive-looking maternity shops, and fur coat shops, and even a pet shop which seems to specialize in crystal-encrusted dog collars and strange humiliating dog jumpers.
The most intriguing shops are the ones selling hugely expensive crumpled yoga gear. The windows are full of what appears to be grey and black unironed laundry. For a brief moment, Rosie stands and stares at the price tags, working out if this is some kind of elaborate joke. But no, she can see that the skeletal women who work in the shop are indeed proudly sporting the gear. Presumably the idea is to appear effortlessly casual, at the same time ensuring that other people know exactly how exorbitantly dear the crumpled shabby chic is. These clothes say, ‘Yes, I’m off to the gym just as soon as I’ve dropped the kids at this top notch school and grabbed a skinny latte en route. Yes, these are my yoga sweats, coz I’m just about to really sweat. I’m young, I’m fit, I’m a Noo Yawk kinda busy woman …’
As Rosie looks into the shop, she catches a glimpse of her own reflection, and guffaws out loud at what a polar opposite she is, in her retro charity shop coat which was so clearly previously enjoyed. It is bright green with a wide collar and a belt and oversized tortoiseshell buttons. She found it in a hospice shop in Plymouth and she loves it. Quite a lot of change has fallen through the hole in the pocket lining. She had considered cutting it open to retrieve the change until she noticed that the weight of the coins helps the coat to hang really well, so she has regarded this as a happy accident and left it.
Rosie notes how red and drippy her nose is in the reflection and she decides to treat herself to a cappuccino. On the opposite corner is a café called Yura, so she crosses over and goes in. It’s quite big, more than a café, there’s a counter for take away cakes and salads, and what appears to be a mini-deli, but mostly it’s a meeting place for the thin busy-mom women. Many of them sit at tables, in groups or alone, but all are wearing furs over their yoga sweats. They are huddled over the steaming fat-free hot liquids with their chiselled over-dieted hot red faces looking for all the world like Japanese Snow Monkeys enjoying the hot springs. The devil in Rosie persuades her to order a big frothy full fat cappuccino with a jumbo meringue on the side. She sits proudly at a table in the window, and unashamedly scoffs the lot, with extra slurping. Plenty of eyes are upon her, but Rosie Kitto is Teflon when it comes to the judgement of others. Besides which, this meringue is just delish!
Sandwiches
It is part of Rosie’s job to give the twins a snack when she has collected them from school, and it’s only now, the first time she is doing this, that she realizes just how much the kitchen is Iva’s territory and how very sensitive to this she needs to be. As she prepares their sandwiches and milk (almond, of course, Natalie’s rule) she is aware of the under-breath Polish grumbling that is a constant accompaniment. Each plate and glass that Rosie chooses is replaced with a different one by Iva, who holds the key to the secret code of which crockery and cutlery is kid-friendly.
‘Not that, this,’ she repeats, ‘for dining table, not kitchen table,’ and ‘for wash carefully, not in machine.’
Rosie gets the distinct impression that much of what she is hearing was once told to Iva by ‘Mrs W. B.’ as Iva calls her, but nevertheless, the kitchen is a tight ship, captained by Iva and Rosie doesn’t want to be keel-hauled or have to walk the plank, so she is happy to take orders and concedes with no complaints.
As with everything Rosie tackles though, snack-time is anything but dull.
‘OK guys,’ she says as the boys clamber up onto the high stools by the breakfast counter, ‘first of all, I need to make sure everything in this healthy café is hygienic please, so if you could just …’ she squirts them both with hand sanitizer to rub in, which they do, without fuss. ‘Yep, great, and socks off please.’ Both of them start to obey, until it quickly dawns on them that this is an odd request.
Three is first to question it, ‘Why do we have to take our socks off?’
Red backs him up, ‘Yeh … why?’
Rosie clearly annunciates every word as though it is massively good sense that she’s simply endorsing.
‘To be sure to keep our feet sparkly, clean and fragrant, gentlemen, at all times if you please.’
They look quizzically at each other, but they do, in the end, gradually reach down and remove their socks. Rosie hums and busies herself in the kitchen, getting the bread ready and softening the butter.
When the socks are off, Rosie squirts their feet with the same sanitizer. She does it with vigour so some of the foam splashes on the floor. She rubs it in like an over-efficient nurse, and neither of the boys can resist laughing because it tickles so deliciously much. Even Three, who is still a bit suspicious of Rosie, understands that there’s fun to be had here.
‘Right. Now I know you usually have peanut butter and jelly, which I like to refer to as “jam” by the way, in the original Queen’s English, for your after-school sandwiches, but today we are going for a different, unique option. We are going to partake of a Kitto special, known to the initiated as the Sandwich of the Gods. It consists of bread, butter and this secret ingredient.’
With that, Rosie produces a small jar of hundreds and thousands which she sprinkles onto the butter and closes up the sandwich. She cuts them into quarters, garnishes with a milk chocolate Hershey Kiss, and places them in front of her wards, who gleefully reach out for them.
‘Ah ah ah. No. Wait,’ she admonishes them. ‘We always say Grace first.’
The twins sit back on their chairs and watch her.
‘Hands together please.’ She makes a praying motion. They copy.
‘Grace,’ she says.
‘Grace!’ they repeat, delighted.
They reach out for the food.
‘Ah ah ah. Not yet. The Sandwich of the Gods is eaten in the way the Gods intended. Via the feet. The fragrant feet. And the Gods always fed each other. So, please, go ahead …’
Rosie is aware of muttered profanities in Polish as the boys attempt to pick up the sandwiches with their toes and aim for the other’s mouth. Of course, they miss. A lot. And bread drops on the floor, and hundreds and thousands spill out and crumbs are everywhere.
Even Iva manages a few giggles through clenched teeth as she sees the twins lose themselves i
n the mischief of the moment. Heaven knows, she has seen them sit so quietly and well-behaved in this kitchen so often before. This kind of noisy kitchen reminds Iva of her own one at home in Olsztyn that she hasn’t cooked in for nearly a year now …
Tidy Room
In the evening, Kemble takes advantage of the boys watching a movie with Rosie to scuttle off to his bedroom. He has noticed his mother’s eye on him throughout dinner and he purposefully doesn’t meet her gaze once. Glenn exists for him mostly in his peripheral vision. Not since he was a little boy has Kemble looked directly, unflinchingly, at her. It might be that, like many people who meet her, he doesn’t want to see himself reflected in her disappointed eyes, or it might be that he would risk her seeing right through him and knowing that in his deep heart of hearts, he is raging. He resents all the control she has wrought over him, his marriage, his kids, his father, over their whole family, and of course he is too afraid of her to confront it. Too afraid of how he might feel and how he might fail if he had to function without it. Would he simply crumple to the floor if the strings were cut now? It’s been fifty years of dominance, does he even have any usable legs left to stand on?
Certainly at the moment, he needs the support of his parents, not least because he would be genuinely homeless if it weren’t for them. He has let Natalie remain at their marital home, but he begrudges it badly. He knows it’s the right thing to do, it’s where the boys live, the divorce is basically his fault, this is the price he pays. But how high the price? It feels wretched to be living back with your parents when you’re fifty years old. Nothing reeks more of failure than the smell of your childhood bedroom when you’re an adult living in it. But here he is, in jogging pants, sitting up in his old teenage bed, with his laptop propped up on a pillow in front of him.
Glenn taps lightly on the door, and immediately enters with all the entitled deftness of a rude chambermaid. He doesn’t even get to finish his sentence, ‘Come …’ before she is in the room and firmly plonked on the end of his bed. Kemble is instantly uncomfortable, he feels like a little boy caught reading rude mags under his covers. Glenn looks right at him. Kemble fidgets and avoids her gaze as usual. He puts his computer aside, and pulls his legs up towards his chest. The big man who throws his weight around in the boardroom and wears a Rolex watch is ten years old again.
Glenn kicks off with, ‘This light can’t be good for your eyes.’ He has only heard that twenty thousand times before, and it catapults him back to eight years old.
‘It’s custody business, Ma … got to do it.’
‘Hmm. How’s that going?’
This is combustible stuff. He doesn’t want to go there, it will ignite a big angry discussion. He wants to hide. Like a six-year-old.
She persists, ‘Are you having problems?’
‘Problems?’
‘At work, Kemble. Problems.’
He shakes his head, avoiding anything difficult. Feeling four years old.
‘Good,’ Glenn says, ‘my good little man.’
Two years old now.
‘Don’t let your father down, Kemble. Don’t let anyone down.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘I know you will, darling.’
With that, Glenn pats the bed. Not her son. The bed.
She gets up, smiles pitifully at him, and leaves, closing the door softly behind her. Just in time to narrowly avoid her baby son creeping back up into her uterus.
Straight
The twins are hypnotized by giant robots that change into … other kinds of robots in the Transformers movie they’re watching, so Rosie slips out of the TV room and walks along the corridor until she comes to the door she thinks is Thomas’s office. She can hear mumbling from inside. Thomas is sitting at his desk, drinking a whisky, and reading aloud from a book of John Donne poems.
‘Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.’
He tries again, with a cough and a deeper voice
‘Death be not proud …’
There is a gentle knock at the door which startles him.
‘Yep? Come in!’
The door opens, and it’s Rosie, who looks a bit apologetic. ‘Sorry, hello, can I … sorry, is this a good time?’
‘Uh, sure, come on in. Have a seat.’
Rosie sits in one of the big leather chairs opposite his big leather desk. She is suddenly aware of just what a big leather man he is.
‘OK.’ She summons her resolve, ‘This is probably doing myself out of an amazing – let’s face it, bloody fantastic – job, but I don’t really think you need me here.’
‘Excuse me?’ Thomas says, putting his drink down. ‘I think perhaps you should speak with Glenn …?’
‘Mmm, yes I know, but I just thought that I would mention it to you, because the boys seem to … well, I think they would rather spend time with their father, they genuinely believe that’s what they’re here for … to be with him?’
Thomas is uneasy, ‘Well yes, but really … it’s Glenn who organizes …’
‘I’m wondering, would you, perhaps, be able to spend a little bit of time with them? It’s just that if their parents are getting divorced, this is a strange time to be leaving them with me, someone they don’t really know? Do you see what I mean …? I’m very happy to support, but I can’t seem to get a strong steer on it from their father …?’
‘Shall I get my wife …?’
‘Just wondering if I’m the best person for them right now …’
‘I should get my wife …’
Rosie is determined. ‘Well, yes, but what do you think? You’re their granddad, and a free-thinking adult …’
Thomas looks towards the door, which Rosie has left open. There in the doorway is Glenn. Thomas is embarrassed and relieved in equal measure.
‘Ah, honey, perfect timing. Miss Kitto here, um, Rosie, was just saying it might be good, if, uh, we had some time with the boys? Maybe a day trip or something … would be good?’
He peters out as he notices the black cloud hovering over Glenn’s head. She is looking at Rosie as if she is the anti-Christ, but she employs full-tilt politeness when she opens her mouth:
‘Thank you for your suggestion and your concern, Miss Kitto. We will certainly inform you of our decision. As and when. Now, if you would allow Mr Wilder-Bingham some privacy to prepare for a difficult occasion …?’
‘Of course,’ Rosie replies, getting up to leave, ‘I shall look forward to being informed. Might it be by carrier pigeon?’
Glenn stiffens at this insolence and looks to Thomas for support. Maddeningly for Glenn, Thomas appears to be showing distinct signs of amusement, there is the smallest smile on his face. Rosie also clocks this.
Glenn takes control, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us?’
There is a panicked knock at the door and an out-of-breath Iva appears. ‘Excuse me Mrs W.B., but Miss Natalie she is here … the porter, he let her up.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Glenn says ‘very well, show her in …’
At which moment Natalie thunders unheeded into the room. The speed of her whips Rosie’s head around, as she witnesses for the first time the flash of French that is the diminutive, gutsy mother of Red, Three and Teddy. She smells fabulous. Of figs.
‘Is he here?’ she demands.
‘Hello, Natty’ Thomas attempts the-oil-on-water approach.
‘Is he even here, Thomas?!’ she persists.
‘If you mean Kemble, Natalie, yes of course he’s here. He’s with the boys …’ says Glenn, and she flicks a glance at Rosie, who is finding this situation awkward and outright lying even harder.
Natalie’s fury overrides her long held fear of the matriarch, ‘OK, Glenn, but please would you explain what’s going on, please? Why did he make this big fuss about having the boys live here, if he’s only going to dump them with some strange nanny?’
Rosie mutters under her breath, ‘Less of the strange.’
Glenn powers on, ‘We made an arrangement, Natalie. Kemble is their father, and it’s his turn to have them. You know that. I know that, and the lawyers certainly know that.’
Natalie replies, ‘Yes, it’s his turn to have them. For him to have them, that’s the whole point, not some English weirdo.’
Rosie responds quietly, ‘Less of the weirdo.’
‘I’d be interested in exactly how you know about the nanny,’ says Glenn.
‘That doesn’t matter, Glenn! My boys are supposed to be spending time with their father. They aren’t just pawns in your little game.’ She turns to Rosie, ‘Are you the nanny?’
Glenn ignores the question to Rosie, and squares up to Natalie, ‘They are here with us for a time, and what we do with them is our business.’