“You’re sure all hot and bothered,” Rose said, taking a green skirt, smoothing it carefully with both hands, finally folding it neatly into her suitcase.
“Well, it’s just such a great city.” Branch paced nervously behind his mother. “You’ve got to admit that.”
“It’s big,” Rose replied. “And you’d die without air-conditioning.”
“It’s not just big, Rosie. Come on. Where else can you find so many things to do? Name me any other place that compares.”
“You all packed?”
“And the people. How about them?”
“Plane’s got a schedule, you know. You better be ready.” She picked up her new shoes, blew on them, then inserted them into a plastic bag and wedged them into a corner of her suitcase.
“Oh, this city,” Branch said. “This goddam city.”
“Chicago’s just as nice. So’s Cleveland.”
“Cleveland? Cleveland! That’s the funniest thing you’ve said all week.”
“Where did I leave my bathrobe? Oh yes,” and she moved to the closet, took her robe off the hook and started folding it.
“You’ve had a good time here; admit it.”
“I’m not sorry I’m leaving; I’ll admit that.”
“But you’ve had a good time.”
“Good company, good time. You didn’t forget your hairbrush, did you? Double-check everything.”
“I can’t tell you what this town does to me.”
“I hope Mother likes her surprise. Do you think she will? I got her two beautiful decks of playing cards. You can wash them when they get dirty.”
“Oh, this town. This crazy town.”
“You make me dizzy with all that walking.”
Branch went to the window and looked out. “This beautiful goddam town.”
“What’s so beautiful about an air shaft? That’s all you’re looking at and you’re swearing too much. Now double-check your packing.”
Branch stooped, ducking his head toward the air-conditioner. “Ahhh.”
“If you wouldn’t walk around so much, you wouldn’t get sweaty.”
Branch spun away from the wall and toured the room, his fingertips touching the walls. “I love this hotel. I just love it.”
“Branch, are you packed?”
“Can you love concrete? I love New York.”
“I’ve asked you a thousand times, Branch. Now answer me. Are you packed?”
“Rosie ...”
“Answer me.”
“Rosie ...”
“I mean it, Branch.”
“No.”
Rose turned on her son. “You’re not packed, is that right?”
“I don’t want to go back,” Branch said. “I want to stay here.”
Rose nodded, picked up a green flowered dress, tucked the neck under her chin, and folded the flowered sleeves across her body.
“I belong here, Mother.”
Rose bent over the edge of the bed and folded the dress at the waist, smoothing out the wrinkles.
“I know this probably comes as a surprise to you, but believe me, I’ve thought about it. It’s not a whim. I’ve really thought. A lot. The theater. I want to get in the theater. That’s my place, don’t you see?”
Rose lifted the flowered dress and placed it in her suitcase.
“I’ve known that for a long time now. Back in college. You remember back in college?”
Rose glanced at her watch, nodded, then walked to the closet, taking out her green traveling suit. Laying it on the bed, she started to unbutton her dress.
“That crazy little show we had in college? That nutty little show we put on, you remember? I put it on, Mother. Me. You didn’t see me on the stage, but I put it on. If it hadn’t been for me, there wouldn’t have been a thing. Not one lousy thing. I got the money, I got the ads for the programs, I took care of everything. Me, myself, alone.”
Rose stepped out of her dress and folded it into the suitcase. She ran her hands down along her slip, making sure it was straight. There was no extra flesh on her squat body. Her stomach was firm and flat and there was no fat puffing the tops of her arms and her breasts didn’t sag. Again she straightened her slip, running her small hands down her body.
“I was happy then. That’s the thing. That’s the only thing, Mother. It’s what counts. I was happy. Some people, they can be happy anywhere. Put ’em on a desert island, they’ll be happy. But I’m not like that. You just can’t say, ‘Branch you go be happy’ I’m not set up that way. I was happy back then. Well, I can be happy again. Here. Here in New York. I can be happy, Mother. Don’t you understand? That’s important, don’t you see?”
Nothing from Rose.
“Oh God, I wish you could see how important this is to me. I wish you could come right into my brain, right here, and read every single thought I have so you’d know how important it was. Believe me. Believe me.”
Nothing from Rose.
“I’d still come home. I’d come home a lot. And you could come here. What’s a two-hour plane ride? You could be here whenever you wanted. And we’d do things together, go all over. You’d like that. And it wouldn’t cost all that much. I’m no drunken sailor. I’d borrow the money from you. I’ll write you a note, nice and proper, and when I get successful I’ll pay back every penny. You know I will.”
Nothing from Rose.
“Rosie! You’ve got to do this for me. It is important. My happiness is important. And that’s what I’m asking you for. I want my happiness Rosie. You can give it. I want my happiness, you hear me?”
“You’re not saying anything.”
“What?”
“I don’t hear anything and do you know what that means? It means you’re not saying anything. Not a word. ’Cause I got good ears and if you were talking I’d hear you. I don’t hear you. That means you must not be talking.”
Branch moved to the window, staring.
“There hasn’t been a sound in this room. I’ve been packing and you’ve been walking around but we didn’t speak. No sound. Just the air-conditioner, that’s all I heard. Understand me, Branch. Get me now. No one has said nothing.”
Branch spun from the window.
Rose waited.
“You don’t love me,” Branch said.
“I don’t, huh? I don’t, huh?”
“I belong here.”
“Where? At the Plaza Hotel? With hot-and-cold-running room service and maids to fluff your pillow? Terrific. Wonderful. In a few months if you have to pinch pennies you can go rough it at the Waldorf.”
“You don’t love me.”
“You said that for the last time.”
“It’s the truth. Let’s just admit it. If you loved me you wouldn’t make me go back to goddam West Ridge. I hate that pit.”
“Watch it, baby.”
“I’m dying back there.”
“Please watch it, baby.”
“I’m not going back. I’m staying here.”
“Stay!” Rose advanced on him. Branch’s back was to the wall.
“The old woman, she knows her baby. The old woman knows what’s best for her baby.” Rose was on top of him now and Branch stared at her fist as it beat steadily against her chest. “You say you’re dying back there? You know what the old woman thinks? She thinks if you come here, then you’re really dead. She had a baby but he died. The old woman’s baby died dead. And after a while she’ll think she never had a baby. No son. She never had none.”
“Mother ...”
“Who are you?”
“Rosie ...”
“Do I know you?”
“Please, Mother ...”
“You look like somebody I think died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you dead?”
“Please, I’m sorry.”
“Are you dead? Huh?”
“Mother ... ?”
“Huh?”
“I’m alive.”
“Again.”
“I’m
alive.”
“Louder.”
“I’m alive.”
“That’s my baby.”
Branch was quiet on the flight home, but Rose let him sulk, knowing it would pass. And it did pass, for by the time they reached the house on Waverly Lane he was laughing at the frivolity of the request he had made back in the hotel room. Mother Scudder was awaiting them, and while Rose paid the nurse, Branch began telling the old lady stories of the city and the old lady almost wept because, after all, they were her family come back to her and, besides, the nurse frowned on casino. When Branch gave her the decks of playing cards she did weep, saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t have, not for me,” but the tears stopped at the wonder of washable kings and queens, and she could only shake her head, repeating “Just imagine—washable; just imagine” until it was bedtime. Rose watched as her son kissed his grandmother, happily waiting her own good-night kiss, and after his lips touched her cheeks he whispered, “It really is good to be home,” so Rose had no trouble besting sleep that night. In the week that followed Branch worked harder than ever at the office, and in spite of the fact that she did not much believe in compliments, she found herself praising him to his face, his efforts were that rewarding. He shrugged at her words, barely smiling, but she knew he was pleased. On Friday of that week he sold a sixty-five-thousand-dollar house not far from where they lived on Waverly Lane. It was by far his biggest sale, and she was worried that he might somehow botch it through inexperience, almost taking over the transaction herself, but she didn’t, and he pulled the sale off like a veteran, so that night in celebration she took him to dinner at Etienne’s and from there to the Hotel Cleveland, where they danced, finally returning home well after midnight with the taste of champagne still strong on their lips. The weather turned hot the following week, but the office was air-conditioned and since they spent most of their time there they didn’t mind the heat. Branch was happy and Rose herself could never remember a sweeter time, and it was probably that unusual buoyancy of spirit that accounted for the sudden cry that escaped her when, after sleeping late Sunday morning, she found, on looking out her bedroom window, her son clad in a navy-blue bathing suit, tanning his trim body on the back lawn, lying flat on the grass, one hand outstretched.
And lying beside him, holding that hand, was Annie Withers.
Rose deserted the window, but too late, for Branch’s head jerked up at the cry, and though she was gone before his eyes could make positive identification, still, she knew an appearance was called for. So she dressed hurriedly, exchanging her room for the kitchen, heating some coffee, downing two cups before Branch entered, smiling.
“We’ve got a visitor,” Rose said, smiling back.
“That we have.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“I knew you’d be pleased.”
“Did you know she was coming?”
“I thought I’d surprise you.”
“What happened to her job? I thought you told me she was working at a theater.”
“She is.”
“Oh?”
“The theater’s near Cleveland.”
“Oh.”
“Isn’t that marvelous, Rosie?”
“That’s just wonderful.”
Branch beamed.
“We’ll be seeing lots of her, I hope.” Rosie waited.
“Lots of her.”
“Wonderful,” Rose said with a smile, and still smiling, arms stretched wide, she rushed to the lawn, hugging the slender visitor, accompanying the embrace with sounds of joy.
In the weeks that followed she really did not see “lots” of Annie; it just seemed that way. Once each week she and Branch would drive to the summer tent and watch Annie prancing as a nurse in South Pacific, then Annie as a townswoman in High Button Shoes. Sundays, Branch would bring her to West Ridge for the day. That was all. Twice a week. But the musicals came to be almost as dreaded as an opera in Italian, and in order to lessen the ordeal of the Sabbath Rose took to going to church. (The minister was long-winded, good for at least an hour each Sunday, and she blessed him for his dreary harangues.) Annie twice a week. But it wasn’t the amount of time that deprived Rose of sleep; it was the way Annie and Branch acted when they were together.
Always touching each other.
Hand-holding Rose could ignore, but it seemed that whenever she entered a room in her house they would be starting a kiss, or ending one or, worse, in the very act. They kissed in the living room, they kissed on the porch. They wrestled on the lawn, in plain view of neighbors, laughing and kicking, skin touching skin. Right in front of the neighbors! Their attraction was understandable enough. Branch was certainly handsome and some might consider Annie pretty. But it wasn’t decent. It simply was not decent. Not decent at all.
In bed, alone, Rose tossed.
One day—it was the second week of a blazing July—Branch walked over and sat on her desk and said, “Mother?” There was nothing unusual in the action, but the tone he used made her instantly wary.
“Yes, baby?”
“Could I talk to you?”
“Could you talk to me?”
Branch nodded.
Rose sat very still.
“It’s about the business.”
“Go on.”
“Well ... How good is it?”
“Good? What do you mean, good?”
“I mean, well ... from a long-range point of view, what do you think? I mean, is the town going to grow the way it has been or do you think maybe the peak is over or what do you think?”
“What are you talking about, Branch?”
“Can I make a living? A good living?”
“I don’t see you starving.”
“Well, yeah, of course, that’s true, but ... uh ... I mean, I don’t have many expenses ... now ... I mean, I’m living at home, of course, and ... uh ... there’s just me for me to support and ... well ... I was just wondering.” Rose watched as he got off her desk and moved quickly to his own, sitting down, staring out the window.
“Branch?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Everything all right?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Have we ever kept secrets from each other?”
“Then why did you ask about the business?”
Embarrassed, her son looked away. “No reason.”
That night, Rose took a Seconal.
The following Sunday morning, on her return from church, Rose strolled onto the porch to find the young couple lying embraced on the couch. The kiss she was almost used to, but the way her son’s hands roamed the girl’s body shocked her. They broke when her presence dawned, both of them blushing, and Rose ignored the whole thing as well as she could. But she could not ignore, during the following strained conversation, the fact that though they were talking to her, they were looking directly at each other, always at each other. Lunch was salmon salad, ordinarily one of Rose’s favorites.
But not today.
Late that evening Rose was playing casino with Mother Scudder when Branch returned from having taken Annie home. There were traces of red on his mouth and she tried not to look while he removed them, turning his back as he did it so she wouldn’t suspect. He watched them play a hand or two, then quietly went upstairs. Rose endured the cards and Mother’s prattling for a decent amount of time, then called a halt to the game. “You’re tired, Mother.”
“I am?”
“You were yawning.”
“I was?”
“Yes.”
This time the old woman did yawn. “We’d better stop, if you don’t mind.”
“If you like.”
“I’m very tired,” Mother Scudder said. “I better go to sleep.” Rose escorted her to her room, saw her to bed, then went to her own room and put on a nightgown and a robe before journeying down the hall to her son.