“Tell her I love her too!”
“And James loves you too. Call me back. ‘Bye.”
Elizabeth stood in the doorway of the study, smiling.
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“Yes, of course. You were terrific.”
“Brian—”
“I gathered. You were great. There’s got to be a job out there for you, for when people are having episodes and you tell them what to do.” Elizabeth shrugged. “Seriously; you have no idea what a difference it makes to have you, Elizabeth Ferguson, on your side—on my side, or Rae’s side.” The phone rang again.
“I’ll be right back.”
When she left, James picked up his clipboard and scribbled furiously on the top piece of paper.
“Good work, Rae. How do you feel? Do you want to come over and weed? ... Yeah, that’s a better idea—put on a stack of records and finish up that weaving. We’ll come get you at six. But don’t play all those mushy torch songs; stay away from Linda Ronstadt.... Okay. Call me if you have a relapse. Take it easy. ‘Bye.”
“So. You’re going to garden? Good. I’ll make lunch in a while. How are you holding up? Don’t you like not drinking?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. It feels ... phony now, though. I mean, I know I can go for several days, or a week, or whatever—but I know I can’t face the rest of my life without ... I mean...”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah?”
James nodded. “We’ll work it out.”
“I feel I—well, when Rosie was little, and everything would be going all right—she’d be playing happily or something—and then she’d fall, land on her butt or her face. And we’d watch her rev up for a great explosive cry; there’d be a few moments of silence while she was taking this huge, revving up sort of breath and she’d look all wild in the eyes. And Andrew would say, ‘You’re okay, you’re okay.’ And she’d think about it for a second, and realize that she didn’t hurt, and the fit would never happen. She’d get on with playing. And that’s how I’m feeling today. I have to keep saying, ‘You’re okay, you’re okay.’”
“One day at a time, and all that.”
“Yeah, but it’s like one hour at a time.”
An hour later, James poked his head into Rosie’s bedroom door, thumbs in his ears, waggling his fingers. She was lying on the bed, reading Pippi Longstocking for the umpteenth time, and gave James the polite smile of a visitor at an insane asylum.
“Hey, Rosie. Do you want to play catch for a while?”
“No, thank you.”
“How come? It’s a perfectly splendid day.”
“Because I’m reading.”
“It’s too nice to stay inside. Let’s go outside and bother your mother.”
“Nah.”
“Come on.”
“I just don’t feel like playing, James.”
“I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”
“I really just don’t want to.”
“Will you come play with me if I give you my car?”
She scowled and smiled at the same time. “No.”
“How come?”
“I’m not even old enough to drive.”
“You’re not?”
“Duh, James.”
“Rae’s going to come with us to the city.”
“Good.”
“Okay. I’ll be in my study if you need me.”
James heard her stomp down the stairs some time later and looked up from his typewriter. The front door opened and slammed shut. From where he sat, he could see Elizabeth sitting Indian-style by the lattice of sugar snap pea vines, dropping green pods into the lap of her red sundress. Then Rosie came into view and walked slowly toward her mother, head down. Black curls, white T-shirt, red bermudas, and red bobby socks with dime-sized black polkadots. He reached for his clipboard, extracted a pencil from behind his ear, and scribbled something. Then he lifted a feathery lock of hair with the pencil lead and twirled a strand around the pencil as if winding spaghetti onto a fork, daydreaming.
Elizabeth looked up from the snow peas and watched her brown and rangy child approach, trudging, really, looking almost rickety. Rosie spat through the gap in her teeth at the marigolds, wiped spittle off her chin, and trudged over to Elizabeth.
Poor old Rosie: I seen sunrise, I seen moonrise, lay dis old darkie down. Elizabeth smiled.
“Gudd-eetings in de name of his royal majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie,” she called.
“Tsss.”
“Ever feeeerful, ever shoor. Jah! Rastafar-eye—”
“Mama, can’t you just please take me seriously for once in your life?” Rosie’s face quivered from the strain of her indignation. “God!”
“Come here, sweetheart.”
“No.”
Rosie whispered something toward the ground and then, in a grimly casual daze, ground out the pad and berries of a strawberry plant with the toe of her sneaker.
Elizabeth looked up into the unhappy face. “Thanks, doll. I hadn’t gotten around yet to stamping out the berries.”
Rosie scowled.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Rosie exhaled noisily, still looking down.
“Do you want to sit in my lap?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth placed the snow peas on the ground.
“You have a crummy lap.”
“What?”
“You’re too skeeeeny.”
“Darling, coming from you—”
“It’s like sitting on books.”
Elizabeth grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down into her lap. “I want to hold you.”
“How come?”
“Because I love you more than anything. And you’re depressed.”
“What about James?”
“I love James more than anything too.”
“What about Rae?”
“I love Rae more than anything too. But Rosie, I love you with all my heart, and all my soul.”
Rosie sat stiffly while her mother blew warm air into the curls on the back of her head. Elizabeth enclosed Rosie in her arms, rubbed her knobby shoulders, felt her daughter’s shoulder blades dig into her big soft breasts. They listened to the birds.
“Are those the socks Rae gave you?”
“Yeah.”
“They look terrific. Every ladybug in the garden is going to fall in love with you—”
“I don’t want to talk about my goddamn socks!”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I feel like being dead.”
“Yeah?” Elizabeth exhaled loudly, nuzzled Rosie’s soft downy neck.
“And I just wish that Sharon would die.”
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Totally.”
“You won’t feel so bad for much longer.”
“Oh, yeah? Wull. James still misses his mother. And she’s been dead for years.”
“But he doesn’t ache very often. You’re aching now. It’s a fresh wound, losing Sharon. James still has pangs of—homesickness for her. Like you miss your daddy sometimes.”
“Oh, no, sometimes I ache.”
“Because he was a great father. You were lucky. Look at who Sharon got for a father. But ... my point is: that the jagged hurting part ends. Honest. Right now, your best friend in the world is leaving, and you’re left holding a bag of knotholes. But after she’s gone, you’ll miss her less, every day.”
“God.”
“You’ll make a new best friend, I promise. And besides, Palo Alto isn’t so far away. We’ll work it out so you two get to be together every so often.”
“But I like to see her every day.”
“I know you do.”
“Do you still miss Daddy?”
Elizabeth didn’t respond immediately. “It’s funny. I don’t miss him anymore, but I think about him all the time, every day, every time I watch you read, or run. And I’ll always love h
im, for giving me you. But—I don’t miss him, exactly.”
“Wull, I do.”
“Of course you do.”
“I just feel like screaming, about Sharon.”
“I know that feeling so well. All I can say is, it passes.”
“When?”
“What can I say? A week from Tuesday? I don’t know. Probably when school starts up.”
“What if I start crying at school?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I bet you won’t. I bet on the first day of school, you find someone neat to play with.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Right now, you’re feeling like there’s a vacuum in your life—I swear to you, I know the feeling perfectly. But remember what James said?”
“Nature hates a vacuum.”
“Yeah. And so all sorts of stuff rushes in to fill it.”
Elizabeth leaned them both forward and picked a small fat strawberry from beneath a green pad, held it with her long fingers up to Rosie’s right eye, as if to let her view a ruby, and then popped it into her child’s mouth. She picked another for herself, picked another for Rosie, listened to the soft wet sucking, felt Rosie’s jaw move up and down: nursed her with berries.
Rosie crossed her outstretched legs at the ankles, stared with an angry expression at her red and black socks. Elizabeth gave her another strawberry.
“I don’t even feel like seeing her right now. I feel like wrecking all her stupid toys.”
“Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It’s all right for you to be mad, but ... try to be as good a sport as you can. I’ll tell you. It’s a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it always feels better to be kind.”
Rosie sighed.
“Let’s go eat,” said Elizabeth. “There’s left over mu shu pork.”
“There’s no more pancakes.”
“There’s flour tortillas. And black bean sauce.”
They gathered up the snow peas Elizabeth had picked earlier, and cut some flowers for the table: zinnias, roses, and bluebells.
The third day of Elizabeth’s sobriety started off well enough, hot and blue, with patches of wispy tortoise-shell clouds high in the sky. James had been typing since eight, and Rosie had left at noon to spend the day swimming with Sharon and her mother. Elizabeth read the Chronicle twice, washed a cashmere sweater, went around the house picking up after James and Rosie, read a chapter of Anthony Powell, watered the ivy, made an appointment to have her teeth cleaned, defrosted the refrigerator, and sat down in the window seat with the Help Wanteds.
None of the advertised jobs caught her fancy. What did she like to do? Read, talk, walk, garden, sleep, make love, ruminate, eat, laugh, loaf, hardly marketable interests: the muted clacking of James’s typewriter reminded her that her days lacked structure and invention. But staying off the bottle took all her time and energies. Would alcohol one day cease to be her automatic and primary response? Would it cease to be a craving and an obsession? What if those jungle drums—I want a drink I want a drink—never stopped?
She went to the phone and dialed Rae’s number. She needed to be babysat today, needed advice and encouragement, because she needed a drink, needed some moments of peace of mind. Needed Rae. She had been there when Rae needed her, two days before when Brian had called, when Rae had been weak and depressed. Rae owed her one; but Rae wasn’t home.
She went to the door of the study, listened to the furious typing, hung her head, and rubbed her eyes. She turned around and walked to the kitchen, licking at the corners of her mouth, blinking back tears.
She stood staring out the kitchen window at the garden and the trees and the birds and the sky, feeling concurrently crazy and numb. Finally, she walked back to the study and opened the door. James continued typing for several seconds, and then looked up at her.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” she said.
“Okay. Is everything all right?”
“I guess so.” Except that I cannot handle my feelings: boredom, resentment, guilt, panic, and oh-yes- everything’s-all- right-I-guess. She gave him a weak smile and shook her head. “I’m not having a day of power,” she said, quoting Rae, quoting Castaneda. “A good brisk walk on the beach—”
“Do you want to talk about it? I’ll be done with this section in—I don’t know, half an hour.”
“No. I’m okay.”
“I love you.”
“I know. Thanks.”
If you love me so goddamn much, why do I have to wait half an hour? Don’t let me go. Can’t you see that I need you now?
“See you in a while.”
“Okay. ‘Bye.”
She headed toward the beach in a foul, shaky mood, full of resentment and undelivered accusations. She wiped sweat off her brow, licked at the corners of her mouth. The sun, hot and bright, beat down on her. Oh, to lie on the sand with a beer; God, all she wanted was one lousy beer.
No. Don’t do it. There is no such thing in your world as one lousy beer. Don’t do it, don’t do it, stay on the path. Boom boom boom boom, beer beer beer—the drums were beating loud and clear, like “money, money, money” in The Rocking-Horse Winner, and, as if propelled by a force bigger than herself, she detoured into town and bought a six-pack of ale at Safeway.
Paranoid that James or Rosie or Rae would know, riddled with bad conscience and excuses (I didn’t mean to buy a six-pack, and if any of you had been there when I needed you, and...), she carried the beer in a brown paper bag to the beach.
Two beers later, she felt peace of mind. She lay with her back on a sand dune and looked out to sea, at sailboats, sea gulls, and pelicans. She languidly rubbed her sun-warmed belly, ran her fingers through her hot black hair, watched a small boy at the water’s edge, hand in hand with his father.
You’re okay, you’re okay. Today, you needed these ales. Tomorrow maybe you won’t. It takes time to break an addiction. She studied the empty green bottles lying beside her on the blond sand. Might as well have another. She had already gone off the wagon; might as well have another. She untwisted a bottle cap, dropped it in the brown paper bag, and took a sip. Might as well enjoy it, might as well forgive yourself. She heard Rae saying that if she ate some cookies on a diet, she would have a full-fledged bender, to make up for all the days of deprivation, past and to come: “It’s not even eating,” said Rae. “It’s stoking.”
After drinking the third ale, Elizabeth dozed in the sun. When she awoke, she considered the three bottles left in the bag and, after a few minutes, lifted one out. One more, and then she would go home. And, she realized while opening it, she would be drunk. And Rosie would give her a rack of shit, and James would act wounded and better than she. Well, James, she imagined herself saying, you knew I was feeling weak; do you remember what you said? You said, I’ll be done in half an hour. Well, I was cracking up, James, but your work came first.
See what you made me do?
She opened the last two bottles and poured the golden-red ale into the sand, put the bottles in their carton in the bag, and rose unsteadily. She was loaded.
Yeah, I had a beer, she would say. It seemed barbaric, on a hot summer’s day, not to. Want to make a big deal of it? But despite the best lies and rationalizations she could muster, remorse washed through her. Goddamn you, Elizabeth, you’ve fucked up again. Where is your strength of character? What does it take for you to save yourself?
She walked home with a lump in her throat, weaving ever so slightly. If only James had left for a while, she could sober up, brush her teeth, and sleep it off. He wouldn’t need to know, and she wouldn’t drink again for the longest time.
But when she got home and his car was gone, she panicked. He knew! He had left her, without a word, like her father had left her mother. No, his things were still there, and he had left her a note in the kitchen: Back around seven. With Lank. XO, J. Phew.
She went upstairs to wash her face, brush her teeth, use Vi-sine
, and reapply mascara.
Back to the kitchen, she made a sandwich to sop up the alcohol, and a cup of coffee. It was quarter to five. Rosie would be home soon, and James was off with Lank. She would make enchiladas, for something to do; she turned on the classical station to keep her company. She yawned, and suddenly out of nowhere had a vision, of James with another woman, of the two times she had called his house when a woman had answered, of the second time, when someone had slammed the phone down.... Stop it! He loves you, wants to marry you. She dropped an open can of whole green chiles, had to rinse them off under the faucet, thought of slugs; cut her finger badly with a knife while mincing toes of garlic for the sauce; burnt herself while lifting a corn tortilla out of the hot fat with her fingers, and burst into tears.
“Goddammit, goddammit!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. The pain had chilled her blood for a second, but now her fingers were burning and red, and the top of her head was coming off. She kicked the cabinet under the sink, whipped around and surveyed the mess she had made, took in the grated cheese on the floor, the red sauce on the white stove, the bloody paper towel on the table, clenched her jaw, shut her eyes, and bellowed.