by Anne Lamott
Rosie came home at six and went to the kitchen. It was a mess; something was wrong. She dropped her wet towel on the floor, went upstairs to investigate, and found her mother lying on the bed, glowering, with red-rimmed eyes and a glass of amber liquid balanced on her stomach, a bottle of booze beside her, on the night table.
They just looked at each other, defensive and mad.
“Hi,” said Elizabeth.
“Chhh.”
“Do you want to know what sort of day it’s been?”
“No.”
“It was a pile-of-shit sort of day.”
“You want to know what I want to be when I grow up?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“An orphan.”
After Rosie had left, slamming the door, Elizabeth rubbed her eyes with one hand, holding the glass of whiskey with the other.
At seven, true to his word, James returned. He whistled on his way upstairs. Elizabeth closed her eyes until she heard his hand on the knob.
“Hey,” he said.
She took a deep, loud breath, and he walked over to the bed. They didn’t take their eyes off each other. He sat down and looked at the glass of whiskey on her stomach, then back at her. She closed her eyes and tears rolled down her face. He took the glass away from her and put it on the table, wiped the tears into her cheeks, tilted his head, looked at her, and shrugged, with a look on his face of pure, empathetic love.
“I love you,” he said, “but I can’t get you to stop, drinking.” He looked away for a minute. “But I don’t think you have to hurt so bad. Unless: you want to. And if you don’t want to, there’s a way ... but it’s going to have to be an inside job.”
Ten days later, Rosie, Elizabeth, James, and Rae sat on the porch waiting for Sharon’s farewell appearance. Rosie, in a Stewart plaid jumper and white Mexican blouse, sat stiffly in the wooden armchair, looking hard and noble one moment, bored and aloof the next, and then her face would scroonch up with the effort of fighting back tears. James and Rae sat on the porch swing, chain smoking: Rae looked like a mother cinnamon bear with a missing cub. Elizabeth, sober nine days running, sat on the banister, looking fatherly, lean, and kind.
Rosie was all alone with this one and, to keep from crying, studiously avoided looking at the melancholy faces of the grownups.
“Gee, you look pretty, Rosie,” said her mother.
“Thank you, Mom.”
Mom?
Mrs. Thackery pulled up in their station wagon, with parcels tied to the top of the car, and Sharon got out. Mrs. Thackery did not turn off the engine or watch her sturdy girl walk through the garden to the house: she had, in her purse, a carbon of the letter Elizabeth had mailed to the Palo Alto Child Protection Agency.
The people on the porch watched Sharon approach: she looked beautiful. Rosie stood and waved, Sharon waved back. Rosie looked down at her feet, at the tiny violets embroidered on her socks, and then began to whistle, softly.
“So,” said Elizabeth, standing. “You’re off.”
Sharon stood at the bottom of the stairs, shuffling, and Elizabeth felt great fondness for the small girl with the scalloped white teeth, the broad brown face flushed between her cheeks and jawbone. She would miss her.
“Hi, Rosie.”
“Hi, Sharon.” ‘Bye, Sharon. Rosie traced letters on the porch with the toe of her patent-leather party shoes: B-Y-E.
“Hi, James, hi, Rae.”
James said hello, Rae didn’t. Elizabeth turned toward the porch swing and saw that Rae’s head was bowed, and her hand was over her nose, and tears were streaming into her lap. James jabbed her in the side with his elbow, and Rae, still not looking up, waved with the hand that wasn’t holding her nose.
Oh, Christ, Rae, Elizabeth thought, and almost burst out laughing.
Rosie and Sharon looked mortified.
Mrs. Thackery honked the horn, and Sharon jumped.
“I’ll walk you down,” said Elizabeth.
“Give me a kiss,” said James, standing up. He walked down the stairs and kissed Sharon on the lips. Rae wept bitterly. Rosie shuffled and walked down the stairs. She and Sharon looked at each other shyly, like lovers.
“Well!” said Rosie, as Elizabeth came to join them. “So!”
Mrs. Thackery honked again, and Rosie turned to give the car a look of annoyance.
“We better walk you down now,” Elizabeth said.
“’Bye, James.”
“‘Bye, Sharon. See you soon.”
“Okay. ‘Bye, Rae.”
Rae, with her chin buried in her heaving chest, waved. Rosie looked at Sharon and rolled her eyes. James smiled and shook his head at Elizabeth. Rosie drew herself up to her full four-foot-three and appeared on the verge of saluting. Elizabeth languidly stroked Sharon’s bangs away from her eyebrows, and Rosie took the opportunity to work over a scab on her elbow. James looked over and up at Rae, who was hugging herself and sniffling loudly.
Elizabeth took Rosie’s right hand, Sharon’s left, and led the two small girls down the path through the garden, to the car on the street.
EPILOGUE
In March of the following year, when the plum trees on Willow were bushy with pink and purple blossoms and the wet green fields were filled with heathery browns and mustards, with orange-magentas and birds, when creeks and streams rushed, full of rain, and cracked sprouting sidewalks held heaps of dump-bound clutter, when redwing blackbirds and wildflowers, sour-grass and white butterflies were everywhere and you couldn’t help but think that spring had truly arrived, Elizabeth and James were married.
They drove to Municipal Court with their family in the back seat of James’s car. Rosie, in her best white party dress, sat between Rae and Lank. Chubby, red-haired, Lank wore a rented tuxedo. Rae wore Belgian linen and lace and complained off and on about her pantyhose, which were a size too small and made her feel (she claimed) as if she had webbed thighs. The bride wore a plum knit suit that her mother had bought thirty years ago at I. Magnin’s, with gardenias in her black hair, and Rae’s pearls. She felt as if she were about to face major surgery, or as she had in fourth grade, about to perform in the school play, worried sick that onstage, in front of her family and friends, she would giggle hysterically or pee. She clutched at her pearls, readjusted the ivory combs in her hair, and worried that James would die shortly after the wedding, or that she would find it impossible to put up with his less endearing neuroses and would destroy the relationship. She sighed distantly and reapplied lipstick: steady, steady, old girl.
And James wore a new three-piece English suit, pencil gray with blue pinstripes—purchased with option money from Harper & Row—a green wool necktie to match his eyes, one of the half-dozen new cotton dress shirts he had bought to please Elizabeth, black wingtips and—red argyle socks, to show that he couldn’t be socialized.
In the hallway of the venerable courthouse, James and Rosie sat side by side on a bench, while the other three stood. Every so often he let go, to jot something down in his notepad or to light another cigarette. Lank paced the hallway, whistling, while Elizabeth and Rae stood together against a wall. Rae, who wanted to burst with joy and jealousy, laid her head sideways on Elizabeth’s shoulder, and after a moment, Elizabeth scratched her behind the ears.
The clerk appeared and asked, “Atterbury?”
“Yeah?” said James, as if, What’s it to you?
“You can come in now.”
James and Rosie stood, Rae pinched the bride on the bottom, and the party of five followed the clerk inside to the courtroom.
Elizabeth had left her body, was watching it all from above, was watching the thing they called Elizabeth Ferguson walk with great feigned dignity up to the magistrate.
“Elizabeth Ferguson?”
Inside her, Danny Torrance crooks his finger: Elizabeth isn’t here right now. But if you’d care to leave a message....
“Yes.” Get a grip.
And so the service began. James held her gloved hand, lordly and bemu
sed. Rosie, Rae, and Lank stood in an arc behind them, and it was soon clear to these witnesses that James and Elizabeth had stopped breathing.
“Breathe,” Rae hissed, and they gasped for air.
Rosie, embarrassed by the service, blushed and squirmed. Rae watched the bride and groom with the rosy, rubbery look of a person in love, and puddles formed in her eyes. Lank was smiling proudly.
Elizabeth and James stared deep into each other’s eyes, but in her mind, over the drone of the magistrate’s voice, she suddenly heard the theme song to “Crusader Rabbit.” She tried to block it out, but the music played and Rags the Tiger appeared clear as a bell on her mind’s projector, and she heard the notes of the song move up and down like a procession of carousel animals or camels. James squeezed her hand and brought her back. But she couldn’t shake the theme song, and hysterics rose inside and she had to bear down to contain them. She looked at the floor, saw her husband’s atrocious socks—and a flattened honking sound escaped from behind her nose. She pinched her nostrils shut and pretended to have stifled a sneeze, but it only amplified the proboscular jack-hammering noises. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rosie shoot her a look that would turn her to stone, and it saved the day.
The magistrate went on monotonously. Elizabeth now seemed to hang on every word.
Husband and wife, James and Elizabeth kissed.
They all went home to the house on Willow, where they were joined by Grace and Charles Adderly, and Rosie’s new best friend, Tina Greene.
The dining table had been moved to the living room and covered with a dark, creamy Irish lace tablecloth. The women and girls had made the feast the day before: dolmas with yogurt on top, prawns to dip in Dijon mayonnaise, small buns stuffed with roast beef and horseradish and mayonnaise, mushrooms in butter and garlic, and a double creme brie. There was Moet Chandon and pitchers of lemonade.
“Oh, Come Ye Sons of Art” was put on the stereo, and Charles made the toast, “To your great love, today and forever,” and they all raised chalices to Elizabeth and James. Elizabeth, smiling to beat the devils, raised her glass of lemonade.
Later, Grace would say, “Oh but you weren’t a real alcoholic,” and Elizabeth would simply shrug. She and James had been going to Alcoholics Anonymous now for six months, to meetings almost every night, one hard day at a time. When, at the end of the first meeting, everyone had joined hands to say the Lord’s Prayer, Elizabeth could not remember all the words. She was still resisting; the meetings were hokey and moving, and although the room reeked of miracles, she couldn’t bring herself to fall for “God.”
“God is just a word,” said James. “It means truth, and you know, the truth shall set you free.”
“Yeah?”
“To face and tell and love the truth is what they mean by ‘God.’”
“What they mean,” said Rae, “is love. Don’t let the word get in your way. It’s just a convenience. All that God means is love, God is love and love is God.”
“Don’t beam at me like that.”
“Wull, see,” said Rosie. It’s like when you’re totally happy, and everything seems so beautiful that you just go “God.”
But although Elizabeth couldn’t quite surrender, she kept on going to the meetings.
Long after the sun went down in an explosion of reds and tangerines, long after Rae served up bowls of raspberries, Rosie and her new best friend left their seats by the fire and went outside with a quilt. They sat under a Mars-black sky dotted with stars. While Tina chattered about the wedding gifts, Rosie stared at an unoccupied spider web that hung from the banister, gummy beads glistening on spokes which radiated out in bridges of silk. At school they were making webs of cotton threads, delicate orbs with supports and rungs; the third grade was studying spiders. Rosie had reported to James that spiders had glands called spinnerets, with which they spun silk for their webs, and for parachutes, so that the wind could take them from place to place. James had written it all down, would use it in his book....
Where was the spider who’d built this web: airborne, or hiding, or taking a walk?
Tina stopped talking and looked at Rosie, saw the distant daydreaming gaze, and sat humming beside her until Rosie returned to earth.
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COMING IN APRIL 2010
Anne Lamott’s new novel explores our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.
A powerful and redemptive novel of love and family, from the beloved bestselling author.