Rose Madder (31 page)

She thought it was probably her eyes that Rhoda was studying the most carefully: the red lids, the bloodshot whites, the dark circles underneath. After she'd turned out the light she had cried helplessly for over an hour, but she hadn't cried herself to sleep—that would actually have been a blessing. The tears had dried up and she had simply lain there in the darkness, trying not to think and thinking anyway. As midnight passed and slowly receded, a really terrible idea had come to her: that she had been wrong to call Bill, that she had been wrong to deny herself his comfort—and possibly his protection—when she most desperately needed it.

Protection?
she thought.
Oh boy, that's a laugh. I know you like him, sweetie, and there's nothing wrong with that, but let's face it: Norman would eat him for lunch.

Except she had no way of knowing that Norman was in town—that was what Anna had kept emphasizing over and
over again. Peter Slowik had espoused a number of causes, not all of them popular. Something else might have gotten him in trouble . . . gotten him killed.

Except Rosie knew. Her
heart
knew. It was Norman.

Still that voice had continued to whisper as the long hours passed.
Did
her heart know? Or was the part of her that was not Practical and Sensible but only Shaky and Terrified just hiding behind that idea? Had it perhaps seized on Anna's call as an excuse to choke off her friendship with Bill before it could develop any further?

She didn't know, but she
did
know the thought she might not see him anymore made her feel miserable . . . and frightened, as well, as if she had lost some vital piece of operating equipment. It was impossible for one person to become dependent on another so quickly, of course, but as one o'clock came and went, and two (and three), the idea began to seem less and less ridiculous. If such instant dependency was impossible, why did she feel so panicky and oddly drained at the thought of never seeing him again?

When she finally
had
fallen asleep, she'd dreamed of riding on his motorcycle again; of wearing the rose madder gown and squeezing him with her bare thighs. When the alarm had wakened her—much too soon after she finally fell asleep—she had been breathing hard and was hot all over, as if with a fever.

“Rosie,
are
you all right?” Rhoda asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Just . . .” She glanced at Curtis, then back at Rhoda. She shrugged and hoisted the corners of her mouth in a lame little smile. “It's just, you know, a bad time of the month for me.”

“Uh-huh,” Rhoda said. She didn't look convinced. “Well, come on down to the caff with us. We'll drown our sorrows in tuna salad and strawberry milkshakes.”

“You bet,” Curt said. “My treat.”

Rosie's smile was a trifle more genuine this time, but she shook her head. “I'm going to pass. What I want is a good walk, with my face right into the wind. Blow some of the dust out.”

“If you don't eat, you'll probably faint dead away around three o'clock,” Rhoda said.

“I'll grab a salad. Promise.” Rosie was already heading for the creaky old elevator. “Anything more than that and I ruin half a dozen perfectly good takes by burping, anyway.”

“It wouldn't make much difference today,” Rhoda said. “Twelve-fifteen, okay?”

“You bet,” she said, but as the elevator lumbered down the four floors to the lobby, Rhoda's last comment kept clanging in her head:
It wouldn't make much difference today.
What if she
wasn't
any better this afternoon? What if they went from take seventy-three to take eighty to take a-hundred-and-who-knew-how-many? What if, when she met with Mr. Lefferts tomorrow, he decided to give her her notice instead of a contract? What then?

She felt a sudden surge of hatred for Norman. It hit her between the eyes like some dull, heavy object—a doorstop, perhaps, or the blunt end of an old, rusty hatchet. Even if Norman
hadn't
killed Mr. Slowik, even if Norman was still back in that other timezone, he was still following her, just like Peterson was following poor scared Alma St. George. He was following her inside her head.

The elevator settled and the doors opened. Rosie stepped out into the lobby, and the man standing by the building directory turned toward her, his face looking both hopeful and tentative. It was an expression that made him look younger than ever . . . a teenager, almost.

“Hi, Rosie,” Bill said.

S
he felt a sudden and amazingly strong urge to run, to do it before he could see the way he had staggered her, and then his eyes fixed on hers, caught them, and running away was no longer an option. She had forgotten about the fascinating green undertints in those eyes, like sunrays caught in shallow water. Instead of running for the lobby doors, she walked slowly toward him, feeling simultaneously afraid and happy. Yet what she felt most of all was an overwhelming sense of relief.

“I told you to stay away from me.” She could hear the tremble in her voice.

He reached for her hand. She felt sure she should not let him have it, but she couldn't stop it from happening . . . nor her captured hand from turning in his grip so it could close on his long fingers.

“I know you did,” he said simply, “but Rosie, I can't.”

That frightened her, and she dropped his hand. She studied his face uncertainly. Nothing like this had ever happened to her,
nothing,
and she had no idea of how to react or behave.

He opened his arms, and perhaps it was simply a gesture meant to underline and emphasize his helplessness, but it was all the gesture her tired, hopeful heart needed; it brushed aside the prissy ditherings of her mind and took charge. Rosie found herself stepping like a sleepwalker into the opening his arms made, and when they closed around her, she pressed her face against his shoulder and closed her eyes. And as his hands touched her hair, which she had left unplaited and loose upon her shoulders this morning, she had a strange and marvellous feeling: it was as if she had just woken up. As if she
had
been asleep, not just now, as she entered the circle of his arms, not just this morning since the alarm had blared her out of her motorcycle dream, but for years and years, like Snow White after the apple. But now she was awake again, wide awake, and looking around with eyes that were just beginning to see.

“I'm glad you came,” she said.

T
hey walked slowly east along Lake Drive, facing into a strong, warm wind. When he put his arm around her, she gave him a small smile. They were three miles west of the lake at this point, but Rosie felt she could walk all the way there if he would just keep his arm around her like that. All the way to the lake, and maybe all the way across it as well, stepping calmly from one wave-top to the next.

“What are you smiling at?” he asked her.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just feel like smiling, I guess.”

“You're really glad I came?”

“Yes. I didn't sleep much last night. I kept thinking I'd made a mistake. I guess I
did
make a mistake, but . . . Bill?”

“I'm here.”

“I did it because I feel more for you than I thought I'd ever feel for any man again in my whole life, and it's all happened so
fast . . .
I must be crazy to be telling you this.”

He squeezed her briefly closer. “You're not crazy.”

“I called you and told you to stay away because something's happening—
may
be happening—and I didn't want you to be hurt. Not for anything. And I still don't.”

“It's Norman, isn't it? As in Bates. He's come looking for you after all.”

“My
heart
says he has,” Rosie said, speaking very carefully, “and my
nerves
say he has, but I'm not sure I trust my heart—it's been scared for so long—and my nerves . . . my nerves are just shot.”

She glanced at her watch, then at the hotdog stand on the corner just ahead. There were benches on a small grassy strip nearby, and secretaries eating their lunches.

“Would you buy a lady a foot-long with sauerkraut?” she asked. Suddenly a case of afternoon burps seemed like the least important thing in the world. “I haven't had one of those since I was a kid.”

“I think it could be arranged.”

“We can sit on one of those benches and I'll tell you about Norman, as in Bates. Then you can decide if you want to be around me or not. If you decide you don't want to be, I'll understand—”

“Rosie, I won't—”

“Don't say that. Not until I've told you about him. And you'd better eat before I start, or you're apt to lose your appetite.”

F
ive minutes later he came over to the bench where she was sitting. He was carefully balancing a tray on which there were two foot-long dogs and two paper cups of lemonade. She took a dog and a cup, set her drink on the bench beside her, then looked at him gravely. “You probably ought to stop buying me meals. I'm starting to feel like the waif on the UNICEF posters.”

“I
like
buying you meals,” he said. “You're too thin, Rosie.”

That's not what Norman says,
she thought, but it was hardly the right remark, under the circumstances. She wasn't sure what was, and found herself thinking of the half-witty
repartee the characters spouted on TV shows like
Melrose Place.
She could certainly use a little of that bright chatter now.
Silly me, I forgot to bring my screenwriter with me,
she thought. Instead of talking, she looked down at her krautdog and began poking the bun, her forehead creased and her mouth intent, as if this were some arcane pre-ingestion ritual which had been handed down in her family, mother to daughter, over the generations.

“So tell me about Norman, Rosie.”

“All right. Just let me think how to start.”

She took a bite of her dog, relishing the sting of the sauerkraut against her tongue, then sipped her lemonade. It occurred to her that Bill mightn't want to know her anymore when she had finished, that he would feel nothing but horror and disgust for a woman who could live with a creature like Norman for all those years, but it was too late to start worrying about things like that. She opened her mouth and began to speak. Her voice sounded steady enough, and that had a calming effect on her.

She began by telling him about a fifteen-year-old girl who'd felt extraordinarily pretty with a pink ribbon tied in her hair, and how this girl had gone to a varsity basketball game one night only because her Future Homemakers meeting had been cancelled at the last minute and she had two hours to kill before her father came and picked her up. Or maybe, she said, she'd just wanted people to see how pretty she looked, wearing that ribbon, and the school library was empty. A boy in a letter-jacket had sat down beside her in the bleachers, a big boy with broad shoulders, a senior who would have been out there, running up and down the court with the rest of them, if he hadn't been kicked off the team in December for fighting. She went on, listening to her mouth spill out things she had been positive she would take untold with her to her grave. Not about the tennis racket, that one she
would
take untold to her grave, but about how Norman had bitten her on their honeymoon and how she had tried to persuade herself it was a lovebite, and about the Norman-assisted miscarriage, and about the crucial differences between face-hitting and back-hitting. “So I have to pee a lot,” she said, smiling nervously down at her own hands, “but that's getting better.” She told him about the times, early in their marriage, when he had burned her toes or the tips of her fingers with his cigarette lighter, hilariously
enough, that particular torment had ceased when Norman quit smoking. She told him about the night Norman had come home from work, sat silently in front of the TV during the news, holding his dinner on his lap but not eating it; how he had put his plate aside when Dan Rather had finished and how he had begun poking her with the tip of a pencil that had been lying on the table at one end of the couch. He poked hard enough to hurt and leave little black dots like moles on her skin, but not quite hard enough to draw blood. She told Bill there were other times when Norman had hurt her worse, but that he had never scared her more. Mostly it was his silence. When she talked to him, tried to find out what was wrong, he wouldn't reply. He only kept walking after her as she retreated (she hadn't wanted to run; that would very likely have been like dropping a sulphur match into a barrel of gunpowder), not answering her questions and ignoring her outstretched, splay-fingered hands. He kept poking her arms and her shoulders and her upper chest—she had been wearing one of those shell tops with a mildly scooped neck—with the pencil and making a little plosive noise under his breath every time the pencil's blunt point dug into her skin:
Poo! Poo! Poo!
At last she had been huddled in the corner with her knees up against her breasts and her hands laced over the back of her head and he had been kneeling in front of her, his face serious, almost studious, and he kept poking her with the pencil and making that noise. She told Bill that by then she was sure he was going to kill her, that she was going to be the only woman in the history of the world to be stabbed to death with a Mongol No. 2 pencil . . . and what she remembered telling herself over and over again was that she mustn't scream because the neighbors would hear and she didn't want to be found this way. Not still alive, at least. It was too shameful. Then, just as she was nearing the point where she knew she was going to begin screaming in spite of herself, Norman had gone into the bathroom and shut the door. He was in there a long time and she had thought about running then—just running out the door and into the anywhere—but it had been night, and he had been in the house. If he had come out and found her gone, she said, he would have chased her and caught her and killed her, she knew it. “He would have snapped my neck like the wishbone in a chicken,” she told Bill without looking up. She had promised herself that she
would
leave, though;
she would do it the very next time he hurt her. But after that night he hadn't laid a hand on her for a long time. Five months, maybe. And when he
did
go after her again, at first it hadn't been so bad and she had told herself that if she could stand up to being poked over and over again with a pencil, she could put up with a few punches. She had gone on thinking that until 1985, when things had suddenly escalated. She told him how scary Norman had been that year, because of the trouble with Wendy Yarrow.