Rose Madder (33 page)

Her voice was rising, picking up speed again. He took her hand and stroked it. “I know, Rosie,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “I know it's not.”

“She thinks she knows what she's doing—Anna, I mean—that she's been through this before just because she's called the cops on some drunk man who threw a brick through one of the windows or hung around and spit on his wife when she came out to pick up the morning paper. But she's never been through
anything
like Norman, and she doesn't know it, and that's what scares
me.”
She paused, working to get control of herself, then smiled up at him. “Anyway, she says I don't have to be involved at all, at least not at this point.”

“I'm glad.”

The Corn Building was just ahead now. “You didn't say anything about my hair.” She looked up again, a quick, shy glance this time. “Does that mean you didn't notice it or you don't like it?”

He glanced at it and grinned. “I
did
notice and I
do
like it, but I had this other thing on my mind—being afraid I might never see you again, I mean.”

“I'm sorry you were so upset.” She was, but she was also
glad
he had been upset. Had she ever felt even remotely like this when she and Norman had been courting? She couldn't remember. She had a clear memory of him feeling her up under a blanket at a stock-car race one night, but for the moment, at least, everything else was lost in a haze.

“You got the idea from the woman in the painting, didn't you? The one you bought the day I met you.”

“Maybe,” she said cautiously. Did he think that was strange, and was that maybe the real reason he hadn't said anything about her hair?

But he surprised her again, perhaps this time even more than when he had asked about Wendy Yarrow.

“When most women change their hair color, what they look like is women who've changed their hair color,” he said. “Most times men pretend they don't know that, but they do. But you . . . it's like the way your hair looked when you came into the shop was a dye-job and this is the way it really is. Probably that sounds like the most outrageous con you've ever heard, but it's the truth . . . and blondes usually look the least realistic. You ought to braid it like the woman in the picture, too, though. It'd make you look like a Viking princess. Sexy as hell.”

That word hit a big red button inside her, kicking off sensations that were both powerfully attractive and terribly alarming. I
don't like sex,
she thought. I
have never liked sex, but—

Rhoda and Curt were walking toward them from the other direction. The four of them met in front of the Corn Building's elderly revolving doors. Rhoda's eyes scanned Bill up and down with bright curiosity.

“Bill, these are the people I work with,” Rosie said. Instead of subsiding, the heat continued to rise in her cheeks. “Rhoda Simons and Curtis Hamilton. Rhoda, Curt, this is—” For one brief, abysmally black second she found herself completely unable to remember the name of this man who already meant so much to her. Then, thankfully, it came. “Bill Steiner,” she finished.

“Goodtameetcha,” Curt said, and shook Bill's hand. He glanced toward the building, clearly ready to slide his head back between the earphones.

“Any friend of Rosie's, as the saying goes,” Rhoda said, and held out her own hand. The slim bracelets on her wrist jangled mutedly.

“My pleasure,” Bill said, and turned back to Rosie. “Are we still on for Saturday?”

She thought furiously, then nodded.

“I'll pick you up at eight-thirty. Remember to dress warm.”

“I will.” She could feel the blush spreading all the way down her body now, turning her nipples hard and even making her
fingers tingle. The way he was looking at her hit that hot-button again, but this time it was more attractive than scary. She was suddenly struck by an urge—comical but amazingly strong, nevertheless—to put her arms around him . . . and her legs . . . and then simply climb him like a tree.

“Well, I'll see you, then,” Bill said. He bent forward and pecked the corner of her mouth. “Rhoda, Curtis, it was nice to meet you.”

He turned and walked off, whistling.

“I'll say this for you, Rosie, your taste is excellent,” Rhoda said. “Those
eyes!”

“We're just friends,” Rosie said awkwardly. “I met him . . .” She trailed off. Suddenly explaining how she had met him seemed complicated, not to mention embarrassing. She shrugged, laughed nervously. “Well, you know.”

“Yes, I do,” Rhoda said, watching Bill's progress up the street. Then she turned back to Rosie and laughed delightedly. “I
do
know. Within this old wreck of femininity there beats the heart of a true romantic. One who hopes you and Mr. Steiner will be very good friends. Meantime, are you ready to go back at it?”

“Yes,” Rosie said.

“Are we going to see an improvement over this morning, now that you've got your . . . other business more or less in order?”

“I'm sure there will be a big improvement,” Rosie said, and there was.

B
efore going to bed that Thursday night, Rosie plugged in her new phone again and used it to call Anna. She asked if Anna had heard anything new, or if anyone had seen Norman in the city. Anna gave a firm no to both questions, told her all was quiet, and then offered the old one about no news being good news. Rosie had her doubts about that, but kept them to herself. Instead, she offered Anna hesitant condolences on the loss of her ex-husband, wondering if Miss Manners had rules for handling such situations.

“Thanks, Rosie,” Anna said. “Peter was a strange and difficult man. He loved people, but he wasn't very loveable himself.”

“He seemed very nice to me.”

“I'm sure. To strangers he was the Good Samaritan. To his family and the people who tried to be his friends—I've belonged to both groups, so I know—he was more like the Levite who passed by on the other side. Once, during Thanksgiving dinner, he picked up the turkey and threw it at his brother Hal. I can't remember for sure what the argument was about, but it was probably either the PLO or César Chávez. It was usually one or the other.”

Anna sighed.

“There's going to be a remembrance circle for him Saturday afternoon—we all sit around in folding chairs, like drunks at an AA meeting, and take turns talking about him. At least I
think
that's what we do.”

“It sounds nice.”

“Do you think so?” Anna asked. Rosie could imagine her arching her eyebrows in that unconsciously arrogant way of hers, and looking more like Maude than ever. “I think it sounds rather silly, but perhaps you're right. Anyway, I'll leave the picnic long enough to do that, but I'll come back with only a few regrets. The battered women of this city have lost a friend, there's no doubt about that much.”

“If it was Norman who did it—”

“I knew
that
was coming,” Anna said. “I've been working with women who've been bent, folded, stapled, and mutilated for a lot of years, and I know the masochistic grandiosity
they develop. It's as much a part of the battered-woman syndrome as the disassociation and the depression. Do you remember when the space shuttle
Challenger
exploded?”

“Yes . . .” Rosie was mystified, but she remembered, all right.

“Later that day, I had a woman come to me in tears. There were red marks all over her cheeks and arms; she'd been slapping and pinching herself. She said it was her fault those men and that nice woman teacher had died. When I asked why, she explained she'd written not one but
two
letters supporting the manned space program, one to the Chicago
Tribune
and one to the U.S. Representative from her district.

“After awhile, battered women start accepting the blame, that's all. And not just for some things, either—for
everything.”

Rosie thought of Bill, walking her back to the Corn Building with his arm around her waist.
Don't say fault,
he'd told her.
You didn't make Norman.

“I didn't understand that part of the syndrome for a long time,” Anna said, “but now I think I do.
Someone
has to be to blame, or all the pain and depression and isolation make no sense. You'd go crazy. Better to be guilty than crazy. But it's time for you to get past that choice, Rosie.”

“I don't understand.”

“Yes, you do,” Anna said calmly, and from there they had passed on to other subjects.

T
wenty minutes after saying goodbye to Anna, Rosie lay in bed with her eyes open and her fingers laced together under her pillow, looking up into the darkness as faces floated through her mind like untethered balloons. Rob Lefferts, looking like Mr. Pennybags on the yellow Community Chest cards; she saw him offering her the one that said Get Out of Jail Free. Rhoda Simons with a pencil stuck in her hair, telling Rosie it was nylon stockings, not nylon strokings. Gert Kinshaw, a human version of the planet Jupiter, wearing sweatpants and a man's V-necked undershirt, both size XXXL. Cynthia Someone (Rosie still couldn't quite remember
her last name), the cheerful punk-rocker with the tu-tone hair, saying she had once sat for hours in front of a picture where the river had actually seemed to be moving.

And Bill, of course. She saw his hazel eyes with the green undertints, saw the way his dark hair grew back from his temples, saw even the tiny circle of scar on his right earlobe, which he'd once had pierced (perhaps back in college, as the result of a drunken dare) and then allowed to grow back over. She felt the touch of his hand on her waist, warm palm, strong fingers; felt the occasional brush of her hip against his, and wondered if he had been excited, touching her. She was now willing to admit that the touch had certainly excited
her.
He was so different from Norman that it was like meeting a visitor from another star-system.

She closed her eyes. Drifted deeper.

Another face came floating out of the darkness. Norman's face. Norman was smiling, but his gray eyes were as cold as chips of ice.
I'm trolling for you, sweetie,
Norman said.
Lying in my own bed, not all that far away, and trolling for you. Pretty soon I'll be talking to you. Right up close, I'll be talking to you. It should be a fairly short conversation. And when it's over—

He raised his hand. There was a pencil in it, a Mongol No. 2. It had been sharpened to a razor point.

This time I won't bother with your arms or shoulders. This time I'm going straight for your eyes. Or maybe your tongue. How do you think that would be, sweetie? Having a pencil driven straight through your quacking, lying t—

Her eyes flew open and Norman's face disappeared. She closed them again and summoned Bill's face. For a moment she was sure it wouldn't come, that Norman's face would return instead, but it didn't.

We're going out on Saturday,
she thought.
We're going to spend the day together. If he wants to kiss me, I'll let him. If he wants to hold me and touch me, I'll let him. It's nuts, how much I want to be with him.

She began to drift again, and now she supposed she must be dreaming about the picnic she and Bill were going on the day after tomorrow. Someone else was picnicking nearby, someone with a baby. She could hear it crying, very faintly. Then, louder, came a rumble of thunder.

Like in my picture,
she thought.
I'll tell him about my picture while we eat. I forgot to tell him today, because there were so many other things to talk about, but . . .

The thunder rolled again, closer and sharper. This time the sound filled her with dismay. Rain would spoil their picnic, rain would wash out the Daughters and Sisters picnic at Ettinger's Pier, rain might even cause the concert to be cancelled.

Don't worry, Rosie, the thunder's only in the picture, and this is all a dream.

But if it was a dream, how come she could still feel the pillow lying on her wrists and forearms? How come she could still feel her fingers laced together and the light blanket lying on top of her? How come she could still hear city traffic outside her window?

Crickets sang and hummed:
reep-reep-reep-reep-reep.

The baby cried.

The insides of her eyelids suddenly flashed purple, as if with lightning, and the thunder rolled again, closer than ever.

Rosie gasped and sat up straight in bed, her heart thumping hard in her chest. There was no lightning. No thunder. She thought she could still hear crickets, yes, but that might just have been her ears playing tricks on her. She looked across the room toward the window and made out the shadowy rectangle leaning against the wall below it. The picture of Rose Madder. Tomorrow she would slip it into a grocery sack and take it to work with her. Rhoda or Curt would probably know a place nearby where she could get it re-framed.

Still, faintly, she could hear crickets.

From the park,
she thought, lying back down.

Even with the window closed?
Practical-Sensible asked. She sounded dubious, but not really anxious.
Are you sure, Rosie?

Sure she was. It was almost summer, after all, lots more crickets for your buck, shoppers, and what difference did it make, anyhow? All right, maybe there
was
something odd about the picture. More likely the oddities were in her own mind, where the final kinks were still being worked out, but say it really
was
the picture. So what? She sensed no actual
badness
about it.