Authors: Francine Prose
“We can’t,” says Vera. “Rosie will be up any minute.” She’s thinking of the fat, jolly, aging hippie couple who run the corner deli with their six fat, jolly children nibbling knishes underfoot. Once the wife told Vera that all eight of them sleep in the same king-sized bed and then, intuiting Vera’s question, said, “Oh, they’re used to it. They say, ‘Mommy and Daddy are making the springs bounce again.’” That’s Never-Never Land, thinks Vera. Mommy and Daddy’s bed forever. Rosie used to sleep with them. Why did they ever stop? If only they’d gotten a bigger mattress, maybe
they’d
have six kids and a deli, too.
As it turns out, they could have gone back to bed. By the time Lowell goes off to get dressed, Rosie’s still asleep. Vera lingers in the kitchen. This morning his coffee cup and toast crumbs seem like less of an imposition—really, no trouble at all. In the bedroom Vera finds him stuffing clothes into his suitcase. She averts her eyes so as not to be reminded of how, when he’d come back after those first separations, she’d made him keep all his possessions in one place. “Don’t get too comfortable,” she’d said.
Now she says, “Wait. I’ll clear out a drawer.”
“I can’t,” Lowell says. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?”
“Back to L.A.,” he says.
Vera’s sure she’s misheard. Practically eight? Pack or be late? Bactrian hay? There’s nothing else it could be. She focuses on the tie he’s folding away. He wore it for
her
, brought it three thousand miles to show
her
. Which means he loves her, or at least cares what she thinks. She can’t believe he’s leaving and that she’s seeking evidence of love in a naked-lady tie. Would this be happening if they’d gone back to bed? She almost hopes that her putting him off was what did it. It’s worse to consider the alternative: that his mind was made up and still he kept trying to seduce her, even as the taxi ran its meter and honked mariachi tunes from the street.
“Why?” she says. “You can stay.”
“I can’t,” he says. “Frankie wants to get this book done in a hurry, and I promised. You don’t go breaking promises to guys like that unless you want Teflon kneecaps.”
“Fine,” says Vera. “An offer you couldn’t refuse.”
“Sweetheart,” Lowell says, putting his arms around her. “Please don’t get upset. Don’t think I just came out here because I thought you’d discovered the fountain of youth. And then when it turned out different…” Don’t think it? Vera wouldn’t if Lowell hadn’t suggested it. It’s not the first time he’s planted wild suspicions in her mind. It used to be that the only way she knew what he’d done was by listening to what he denied.
“It’s not like that,” he’s saying. “I needed to see you and Rosie, I love you…” Vera’s not listening; she’s too busy wondering if he was serious about that snake-oil scheme. A long shot, certainly, but after digging for lost Mayan treasure, hawking Flatbush wonder water is practically a sure thing. Vera shuts her eyes, counts silently to ten. When she opens them, she’ll ask him to stay one more time. Once and no more.
“Call Frankie up and explain,” she says. “He’s Italian, he’ll understand. We’re
family
.”
“It’s not Frankie,” says Lowell. “It’s me. Remember how every time I used to come back, I’d still be picking the thruway gravel from between my splayed, bleeding toes and you’d already be telling me not to get comfortable.”
“Did I say that?” mumbles Vera.
“Now I don’t
want
to get comfortable. I’m afraid I’ll relax, we’ll have a couple weeks of hillbilly ecstasy, then one night it’s, ‘Lowell, honey, could you run down to the market for a minute?’” Lowell detonates a three-stage explosion in his mouth. “Our red-hot love affair goes down the dumper all over again, and I’m out in the cold howling lonely Arky love songs at the moon.”
“
I’ll
go to the grocery,” says Vera. “I’ll send Rosie. We’re used to it.”
“Then you’ll find something else,” Lowell says.
“Like what?” Vera says.
“Like you’ve never cut me one goddamn inch of slack. Remember in Mexico? You were all ready to go and leave me to die in the jungle. We had thirty pesos left, and I bought you that sack of cashews—?”
“Twenty,” says Vera. “We had twenty pesos left.”
“Thirty. All right, twenty. That’s not the point. That
is
the point. Twenty pesos is nothing, we had nothing. Why hang on to nothing? I don’t even like cashews. I just thought they’d make you feel better. And you carried on like I’d traded you to some three-hundred-pound Federale for the worm in his mescal…”
“If you were dying of thirst…” Vera wishes she didn’t sound like the start of some high-school ethics problem, “…and the last Coca Cola on earth cost twenty pesos, twenty pesos would be better than nothing.”
“If there was just one can of soda between me and biting the big one, I’d pass on it,” says Lowell. “Get it over with. Put this poor boy out of his misery.”
“What are we fighting about?” says Vera. “Whether twenty pesos is better than or the same as nothing?”
Lowell laughs, but it’s not the kind of laugh that changes anything. “Sweet pea,” he says. “I meant what I said. I’m too old to keep going up to the Manson family farm to see if anyone needs a rider to share the driving cross-country.”
“What happened to Peter Pan?” says Vera.
“Peter Pan’s got crow’s feet and a bald spot,” he says. “And you don’t even notice. You don’t see me. All you see is some story you’ve been telling yourself about me since before we even met. It won’t change if I leave. You won’t hardly know I’m gone.”
This last is unfair. She’ll notice he’s gone, yes indeed. She’s less sure about the rest. But if she’s not seeing Lowell, who is she seeing? What story is she telling herself? It’s not the world-traveler-can’t-find-the-grocery story; she’s already given that up. The hillbilly-watching-the-river-flow story? If that were true, Lowell would stay with her, or at least in one place, would never have traveled this far to see her. Meanwhile she’s checking his eyes for crow’s feet. Wait, they’ll get crow’s feet together! But that’s not possible, and here’s one version of the story she can’t deny: sometimes two people who love each other can’t live together and get along.
Lowell hefts his bag, then sees the look on Vera’s face and drops it. “I’ll be back in no time,” he says. “Aren’t I always? I’m not saying it won’t happen for us. But there’s still a few things we need to work out. Everything’ll be different when I sell that screenplay, or even Frankie’s book, I won’t have to turn in receipts for every soggy cashew. We’ll get back together, Rosie’ll be a little older, we’ll spend all
day
in bed…”
Rosie! How can he claim to love her and speak so cavalierly about her getting older? If Vera missed a week of Rosie’s growing up, she’d regret those seven days all her life. “Right,” she says. “Two little gray heads on the pillow.”
“Two sets of false teeth in the glass,” says Lowell. Then he pulls her gently into the kitchen, where Rosie is drinking her two-thousand-calorie Baby-Ruth health drink and patting the overstuffed backpack beside her like one of those nervous passengers in bus stations and airport lounges who fear losing contact with their luggage.
Keep calm, Vera thinks. “What’s going on?” she says.
“We thought Rosie could come to L.A. with me for the rest of her vacation and be back in time for school,” says Lowell.
“We?” Vera says.
“Me and Dad,” Rosie says.
“That’s three weeks!” Vera screams.
“Two,” says Rosie. “Two and a half.”
“I suppose your Mafioso’s paying for this, too.”
“No,” says Lowell. “Sergio the Mystic.”
“She’s not going,” says Vera.
“Mom, why?”
“Because I said so!” says Vera.
“Mom, be reasonable,” Rosie’s saying. But how reasonable can you be with your hands over your ears? Vera’s chained to the mast as they sing their California siren song. She knows better than to listen. She can’t believe or trust them. Why should Rosie come back? It’s warm out there, and Rosie hates the cold. It’s a state full of vegetarians. Lowell won’t make her go to school. They’ll camp out on C.D.’s floor, making retro-hippie Smalltalk with Mafiosi and mystics and all his Big Youth friends…
Vera’s stomach hasn’t lurched this way since her last trip down with Hazel. If only she’d apologized to Hazel, kept her vow, maybe none of this would be happening. Once again the unlikeliest explanation is the most comforting. The harsher truth is that this is what Vera’s been fearing all along, because this—unlike those nightmare visions of Rosie pitched before speeding trains—is waking reality and inevitable.
This
is the natural order. She’d always known Rosie would grow up and leave her someday; she’d thought she was resigned. But not now, not so soon.
“I’m warning you,” says Rosie. “I’ll run away and go anyway.”
“Try it,” says Vera.
“Two weeks,” says Lowell. “It’ll give you a break.”
“Thanks,” says Vera.
“I won’t stay forever, if that’s what you’re scared of,” says Rosie. “I’d miss my room and my Dungeons and Dragons and ballet and Kirsty…”
“Terrific,” says Vera. “What about me?”
“Of course you, Mom.”
“Girls,” says Lowell. “Girls. Please. Rosie, hon, leave us alone a second. I need to talk to your Mom.” When Rosie leaves, he says, “Look, Rosie and I were talking. I know you two’ve been having difficulties, bashing horns or whatever the does do when the buck’s not around to get pissed at. One day away, she’ll start missing you like crazy. That’s why she loves me so—I’m not here. You think I don’t know that? Two weeks apart will set you guys up for a year.”
Vera’s already given in. The thought of Rosie and Lowell discussing their difficulties wounds her like the notion of Shaefer cueing Esposito to intervene if she spent too long in his office. She remembers how, when Rosie was little, women in line at the supermarket would say, Oh, if they could only stay that age. She thinks of all the ordinary moments she’d be cuddling Rosie or just watching TV with her and would be overcome with longing to stay in that moment forever. Now she understands that keeping Rosie from going with Lowell is as impossible as that.
“All right,” she says. “If you swear—I mean
swear
—you’ll send Rosie back before school.”
“Cross my heart,” says Lowell, then reaches for Vera and presses her against the place he’s just crossed. Lowell and Vera stand in the doorway, rocking like dancing bears. It’s easy to hug like that when your suitcase is packed: no danger of getting too comfortable. Then it’s Rosie’s turn, and as she rains tiny kisses on Vera’s face, Vera sees that her eyes are wide open. Is she scared that Vera may yet change her mind, or is she—as Vera suspects—just scared? Perhaps she was hoping that Vera would continue to say no. For once Vera controls herself. “Call me when you get there,” she says. “Collect.” Then they’re gone.
Vera picks up the blender jar with what’s left of Rosie’s breakfast glop in it. How good it would feel to throw it against the wall. But how would it console her to spend the next half hour sponging molasses and granola crumbs off the plaster? It’s what would come
after
the crash: a silence so profound it might for one moment seem to stop time, might edge out the silence that’s come with Rosie and Lowell’s leaving. Vera’s footsteps echo as if in an empty apartment. You’d think they’d taken everything, furniture and all.
First things first. Vera concentrates on not running after them. There’s still time to catch them, persuade them they’re picking the worst time to leave. Now that Vera doesn’t have work they can play, take trips like when Rosie was small. Or better yet: she’ll go with them! She’s getting those three weeks of severance pay, she’s got money saved up…She can’t even convince herself. If they’d wanted her, they’d have asked. She imagines overtaking them by the community garden, pleading her case while Lowell and Rosie read the nametags on the chewed-looking Cut-and-Come-Again zinnias, the stunted Silver Queen corn. She sits down and grips the arms of her chair till she’s sure she can’t possibly catch them and then wishes with all her heart that she had.
Or does she? Vera no longer trusts herself to know what will help. Dinner with Solomon, Rosie’s recital, even seeing Karen Karl—she’d thought those things would make her feel better; they’d only made her feel worse. If she’d run after Rosie and Lowell, she’d probably have been struck by a falling blender jar some other distraught person aimed at the wall and missed.
She knows Rosie’s coming back and, eventually, Lowell. So that’s not it, not really. It’s what they seem to have taken with them: the comfortable myth that their return would ever be anything but temporary, that they’d ever be hers to keep. Their leaving today is just practice. Vera thinks of those women in the supermarkets, wishing their babies had stayed babies—oh, they meant more than that sweet, milky smell, more even than unconditional love. She’s imagining a
This Week
story about some scientists—Russian, of course—who’ve found a way to stop time. That’s the story
she
wants to hear! She’s no different from and no better than the folks who read
This Week
. She needs those stories, too! She envies them their hopes: centenarian moms, eternal Elvis. All hers seems to be disappearing. The myth of a harmonious, unconventional, and never-boring family life with Rosie and Lowell. The myth of her true career revealing itself the minute she stopped working at
This Week
. Soon she’ll have no stories left to get her through days like today.
If she goes on this way, she’ll panic. First things first. She pours herself a cup of coffee and tries to remember all the things she used to wish she could do if not for Rosie and her job. Simple things, she seems to recall, places it would be nice to go midweek instead of on weekends when everyone else is going there, too. Today she can’t think of one. She opens the paper and reads the listings. She’d have her pick of the new movies without waiting in line, but can’t in her present state see spending hours in the dark watching giant faces talk about
their
problems. Uncrowded museums? The Met has a new exhibit of eighteenth-century French landscape painting—a period she hates. Who’s showing at the Whitney? That guy who paints and erases.