On her first day back at work, she missed her stop getting off the bus. She hadn’t seen it coming, and before she knew it, they were past it. But when had it become the last stop on the route? She ran frantically up and down the aisle as unfamiliar landmarks whizzed by, but she could not bring herself to ask to be let off. The bus driver ignored her. She sat back down, immobilized by frustration all the way to the terminal, where she waited for what seemed like an eternity until the driver began his return route.
“Too late,” they said when she arrived at the nursing home.
“But I’m here,” she insisted, going for a wheelchair to take Mrs. Dunphy for her morning stroll.
“Too late, too late,” they chanted — staff and residents alike. “You’ve been gone too long. You are too late.”
She became Mrs. Roy Ostrander. She lost 50 pounds in six months, 120 in a year. She went from a size 26 to a 10, just the way they had said she would. The sight of her in any reflective surface never failed to take her by surprise. She felt so much lighter. She went back to the nursing home to beg for her old job. When they didn’t recognize her, she pretended to be a new applicant and was hired on the spot. She was amazed at being able to slide in between nightstands and beds, with room to spare. She floated through the closing doors of the crowded elevator in the lobby. No opening seemed too small for her to pass through; she was like a mouse, a phantom.
“Why so glum?” the director asked one morning. She smiled less now than before; there was no need to be jolly anymore; people noticed and liked her despite her mood. They all saw her now, especially Roy, who studied every blemish, every mosquito bite, every black-and-blue.
“Shouldn’t you wear something over that?” he asked as they left for dinner one evening.
“Why?”
“You’ll be cold.”
And she was cold. She was always cold, so cold a thin layer of ice formed on her skin, like frost on a windowpane.
“Don’t worry. Expect the abnormal,” Dr. Barter said. “Your body is no longer normal. Nothing about you is ordinary now.”
“But ice, Dr. Barter?”
“Not to worry.”
Angie dropped pounds without trying. She didn’t bother to weigh herself anymore. Ashamed to take her clothes to the tailor after they’d been altered several times, she bought new outfits instead. This weight-loss thing was costing her a fortune.
“Ange, I’m afraid you might be taking this too far. You’re downright skinny,” Nancy said on Christmas Eve, as they set the table at Nancy’s house. Angie now was, in fact, the same size as Nancy.
“You’re not jealous, are you?”
“Look, Angie, I’ve been like this my entire life. But you haven’t.”
That night Nancy caught Angie and Jean-Georges in the sandbox behind her house. Angie hadn’t been able to help herself; she’d always been attracted to Jean-Georges. She had come on to him because he was so handsome in the blue polo shirt that accentuated those turquoise eyes of his. His was trim where Roy was pudgy, and he was French, which went a long way. Her groin ached when she looked at him across the dining room table. She hadn’t known if he would follow her out, but then he was there beside her. They sat down in the sandbox and kissed, with the full moon highlighting their entwined bodies. She could have kissed him forever. She took his hand and pressed it hard between her legs and convulsed with painful satisfaction. What she had done — all of it — was fine, just the normal abnormal behavior Dr. Barter had warned her about. Danny Haynes had pulled her pants down in the sandbox in his yard when they were eight, only it had been summer then, and she had been mortified. Angie’s sole concern about her encounter with Jean-Georges had been the awful cold she felt out there on the hard frozen sand with her skin exposed to snow that fell and stung her belly.
By the time Easter rolled around, Angie was thinner than Nancy. She had started wearing baggy clothes again to hide the skeletal frame that drew stares as if she were a freak in a sideshow. Her parents didn’t need to worry about her nourishing a fetus; lovemaking with Roy was all but nonexistent because Roy claimed that he was afraid to touch Angie, afraid he would hurt her, she’d become so fragile. When Nancy told Roy about Angie and Jean-Georges, Roy packed his bags.
“I’m so sorry, Roy.” She sobbed, her gut wrenching.
What had she done? What had she been thinking? If only she could take it back. On her knees, she reached out to him and begged him not to go, to forgive her. He turned and took her hand.
“Please get up,” he said. “You look pathetic. This is embarrassing.”
He pulled; her brittle twig of a wrist snapped.
“Pretty face,” the doctors and nurses murmured above her as she lay on the cold slab of an ER table that night, the moon full again, beaming through the glass ceiling of the room, instruments clinging and clanging, dropping onto metal trays while the doctors put Angie back together again.
Although Angie tried to eat more, her stomach had become the size of a pea, and a pea was about all she could digest at a time. Her stomach continued to diminish, until the morning she woke up and couldn’t find herself. She cried out for Roy to help look for her, but he was nowhere.
“Don’t hate me!” she cried out louder. “I can’t bear it.” She jumped up and down on the mattress. She sobbed. She wailed. His face appeared over her; his blond beard nearly suffocated her, he was so close. Thank God he was still there. But his brown eyes were slits because he was squinting in an effort to see her, she was so tiny. She was nearly invisible.
“Can you see me, Roy?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Not too well. You’re a little hoarse.”
Of course she was hoarse. She’d been screaming so much her throat was dry and scratchy.
“What is it, Ange?”
“Cold.” She was whispering now, relieved to have garnered his attention. “So cold.”
“Big day today, Ange. Big day.”
Happy. He was happy again. He’d forgiven her. Relieved, she waited for him to kiss her, but he scooped her up as he would some loose change and dropped her into his crisply pressed shirt pocket with the company logo. He stepped into his pants.
“Roy!” She let out a muffled cry. She had fallen into a corner of the pocket and was struggling to get on her feet.
“Are you in pain?”
She was, and it must have been because she was growing now — she was getting larger, in what was not his pocket after all but between the stiff sheets. She could see her hand on top of the blanket, inside Roy’s; they were almost the same size.
“Roy — ” Her jaws moved slowly in their paralytic waking stage. “I don’t want to have the surgery.”
His look was somewhat bewildered, but she was the one who was perplexed. He had said she could change her mind. Now maybe he had changed his.
“What are you talking about, Ange?” His words were clearer now, louder.
“Will you call Dr. Barter for me, Roy? I didn’t sleep well; bad dreams — terrible dreams. I’m so tired, and my voice. Call him and tell him I changed my mind.”
“Honey.” His voice rose to that insistent, high pitch. He patted her forehead. He held out a plastic cup of water; the bent straw met her lips. “It was a really long surgery. There were complications. But the worst is over.”
She tried hard to focus on him. He was smiling, standing tall. So tall and unsuspecting. So far away.
When Rosemary’s marriage collapsed after 26 years, so did Rosemary. Where was the gutsy woman who doled out advice like antacids to the lovelorn and the confused? She had become one of her most pathetic readers: puffy eyed, long wavy hair flowing, she roamed her condo in the newly renovated jailhouse, wearing a nightgown like some unkempt mad figure in a gothic novel or a nomad who couldn’t decide which room provided the best feng shui. When she did
manage to sleep, she dreamt bad dreams about the beautiful home in which she’d raised her babies and had been forced to give up; about Nate moving in with his paramour and the new babies he would have with her.
Her mother blamed Rosemary for having worked too much and not having paid enough attention to Nate; Nate’s mother blamed the other woman; nobody blamed Nate. Still, Rosemary had held it together long enough to move out of her home and into the former jail with the 15-inch-thick concrete walls that she seemed to have run up against. Since she seemed incapable of asking for a leave of absence from the Dear Lydia column she wrote, Rosemary’s cousins banded together to take control of her life before life itself overcame their dear older cousin.
The e-mails flew out first thing every morning — cyberspace ablaze with emotion. Who had spoken with Rosemary last? Who was privy to her latest thoughts of suicide — or murder? Who had brought her food, sent her music to listen to, tranquilizers to down? What was her emotional temperature, which would set the tone for intervention over the next 24 hours? For six months Rosemary had monopolized their thoughts and conversations to the point of threatening their relationships with their husbands, who complained about having to play second fiddle or who feared for the mental health of their wives who had taken on Rosemary’s suffering. (In the end this was really still their complaining about having to play second fiddle.)
Nancy usually started the morning e-mail chain:
I told her she’s been an abused woman. After all,
Nate was a bully from day one. Love, Nancy
Okay, I’ll tell her that too when I call. We need to
be on the same page. Love, Joanna
I think I’ve had it. Love, Barbara
We need to be patient with her. Love, Angie
They soon closed with initials only:
She’s hapless. N (They all knew Nancy meant
hopeless.)
How long can we go on pretending we’re Lydia? I
was up until two am answering letters. B
I was up until three. A
This is crazy. N
This is necessary. If she loses her job, what’ll become
of her when she turns the corner? We can do it. J
E-mailing gave way to live conversations, as they switched to Skype conference calls:
Joanna: Forget most of the letters. It’s the ones that get printed in the paper that are important, the letters that have to include a recipe. That’s Rosemary’s, or should I say Lydia’s, trademark.
Barbara: Joanna’s right. What should I suggest for the man who slept with his mother-in-law?
Nancy: Arsenic.
Barbara: Seriously.
Nancy: I’m serious.
Angie: Something to cleanse his system of the toxins propelling him.
Nancy: How about a steady diet of lye?
Angie: I know. Hot lemonade. That’s what my doctor used to give me for acne.
Barbara: I opt for the Drano. And tell him to soak his dick in it while he’s at it.
Joanna: We’re trying to save Rosemary’s job, remember?
Angie: Joanna’s right. Rosemary would never treat a reader like that.
Nancy: That was Rosemary’s problem. She never treated Nate like that either.
Barbara: Amen.
Joanna: Nate called Elliott. He wants to play tennis. They’re doubles partners, you know.
Barbara: Tell him to forget it! I told Lenny that under no uncertain circumstances is he to associate with him.
Angie: Don’t you think that’s a bit unrealistic? Nate’s been in our family for a quarter century. These things happen.
Barbara: I don’t give a shit. There are ways to do these “things” and Nate did it wrong.
To which they all agreed.
Joanna: Do you think the newspaper is onto us?
A resounding no was typed by each one.
Angie: One woman did complain about the recipe I sent her. I thought Aunt Katie’s polenta and sausage was a perfect dish for a young bride to serve her mother-in-law when the girl asked her mother-in-law to move out of the couple’s new home. Only it backfired. Now the mother-in-law thinks the daughter-in-law is too good a cook and she doesn’t want to ever leave.
Barbara: I told a man whose wife wants to divorce him because he doesn’t do his share around the house to impress his wife with ropa vieja, and he got pissed and wrote back saying he wasn’t going to cook anything he couldn’t pronounce.
Nancy: Maybe Rosemary’s really known what she’s been talking about all these years.
Joanna: I told a young man to offer his girlfriend a trip to Italy and propose to her there, and she would surely say yes.
Barbara: Italy. Italy. Always Italy with you.
Nancy: Did he?
Joanna: He did. How was I supposed to know he was knee-deep in debt and his financial situation was the reason the girl wouldn’t marry him?
Nancy: How does Rosemary know when people are hiding the truth?
Joanna: She just has a feel for these things. Besides, she’s been doing this for years. We’ll get better at it.
Angie: If we don’t go crazy first.
Barbara: What do I tell the kid whose father has cancer and refuses to stop smoking?
Nancy: Your father’s an asshole.
***
The brunt of the burden lay on Angie, who lived closest to Rosemary. Newly married, pregnant with her first child and still holding down a full-time job, she bore witness to Rosemary’s condition.
“At least get dressed, Ro,” she begged her cousin. “It’s nearly five.”
“Why bother? Only six more hours until I go to bed again. Besides, it makes for fewer laundry days.” Her voice was flat and thick and dark.
“Have you tried melatonin?”
“I’ve tried every sleeping pill under the sun. Forget the crunchy granola stuff.”
“How about meditation? I could walk you through it.”
“Shouldn’t you be home making dinner?”
“Roy’s cooking tonight.”
“Lovely.”
“You just sounded like Lauren Bacall.”
“Did Lauren Bacall sound like shit? Because I feel like shit.”
“I brought you some macaroni and cheese.”
“Put it in the fridge, next to the chicken cacciatore.”
“You still have some of that?”
“I have all of that.”
“Well, I’m sorry if you didn’t like it. I’m not as good a cook as you are.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Rosemary, what are you surviving on?”
“Pop Tarts.”
“You aren’t serious?”
“The kid next door brings them to me. He sneaks them from his mother’s pantry. I’ve been cooking for over 25 years. I’m done.”
“Are you done eating too?”
Rosemary gestured to the refrigerator. The untouched meals spoke for themselves.
***
Angie was long gone when the doorbell rang. Rosemary ignored it, but whoever was in the long narrow hallway wasn’t giving up. She put her pillow over her disheveled gray hair (she hadn’t colored it since Nate’s departure) and started repeating the Lord’s Prayer. She wasn’t begging for a miracle; it was just something she was in the habit of doing when she wanted to blot out anything disturbing. Still the doorbell rang. “Go away!” she cried. The caller persisted. She longed for a forklift to trundle her dead weight to the door so she could give the obsessed bell ringer hell. She rose with an effort worthy of a three-hundred-pound Lazarus. Through the peephole she saw a young man holding a chocolate cake on a platter. She was taken with the attractiveness of the cake; Angie had never brought anything so rich looking, delicately topped as it was with shavings and chopped walnuts — just lik
e one of her own recipes. Such pains someone had taken for a fundraiser.
“I’m not buying it,” she said. “I don’t care what the cause.”
The man rang the bell again.
Rosemary raised her volume. “I’m on a diet. I’m indigent. I’m sick. Go away.”
“Please open the door, Lydia.”
“Lydia?” She was taken aback. “Lydia croaked 16 years ago.”
“But you are the woman who writes the column now, aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
“Then who’s writing the column?”
“Who are you?”
“Avery Sloan. I live on the third floor. I’m the building engineer — you know, the super. ”
“Didn’t know we had one, and why are you standing at my door with a chocolate cake?”
“It’s kind of a thank-you gift. It’s your recipe. You gave it to me — told me to make it for my parents the night I came out to them.”
“And it helped?”
“No. They haven’t spoken to me since.”
“Sorry.” One more life ruined, along with her own, by her unprofessional counseling.
She returned to the couch. The doorbell rang again. Determined to silence this pest, Rosemary got up and opened the door this time, but before she could speak, the young man in paint-splattered jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt practically shoved the cake in her face, making it impossible to close the door.
“You didn’t use bittersweet chocolate,” Rosemary said. “I can smell it. Maybe that’s where you went wrong.”
“I only had semisweet. Does it really matter?”
“Are you gay or bisexual?”
“I get the point,” he said.
“Good. Now go home.”
Rosemary felt something like regret about what she had just said. It was the first time since her separation she had actually felt anything at all about someone other than herself. Besides, she was intrigued by his ethereal nature. He was like a figure in a life-size El Greco painting she remembered from a visit to the Prado in Madrid. The dead man’s eyes were cast downward while his elongated, dark-haired body floated on a cloud toward heaven. The eeriness of the deep eye sockets had struck Rosemary as strongly as the artist’s depiction of humility, guilt, and shame in his expression.
Thieves Never Steal in the Rain Page 11