Meeting Rozzy Halfway Page 4

  They brought the baby home, to a new house in the suburbs of Belmont. Bea looked at that little foreign thing in her arms and ached with sudden possessiveness. She was surprised and delighted with her child. Her stomach was down again, but it had lost its tone, and Bea felt as if she, too, had lost something, had lost her past and Walt completely. She nuzzled the baby.

  They named her Rosalind, no middle name, and right from the start she was Rozzy. She had soft black hair and large black eyes and everything interested her. She rarely slept, and she almost never cried. She would spend hours looking at her colored bird mobiles, touching her toes and gurgling. Bea completely forgot her obsession with cripples and her house money was now eaten away by things for Rozzy, by toys and frilly dresses.

  Ben centered his life around his daughter. He called Bea from work at least six times a day. Was Rozzy eating? Was she doing anything new? He sprinted home from work to see her. He could spend hours just watching her sleep, marveling at her toes, her fingers, her hair. He diapered her and sang opera to her and carried her about the house. “I love you. I love the baby. I feel complete,” Ben told Bea.

  Bea began to get out. She found a reliable high school girl to sit for a few hours (Ben had insisted on interviewing the parade of giggling young girls himself; he looked so stern that he made one little blond cry) and she began taking afternoon exercise classes. It felt good to be off by herself, but there was something curiously touching about coming back home to her baby, too.

  They made all of Rozzy’s food in the blender, whirring down the same meats and fruits and vegetables that they ate. They played Mozart and Bach all day and Bea hung different bright pictures from the magazines on Rozzy’s ceiling for her to look up at. She’d lift Rozzy up so the child could slap her small hand against the glossy images.

  “Do you have your old baby pictures?” Ben asked Bea.

  “Oh, somewhere, I suppose.”

  “Here, give me Rozzy. Go get them, would you?” He hoisted Rozzy up, swooping her into his lap.

  Bea went and fished around in the back of her closet until she found the gray album, the pages tearing. She plunked it beside Ben and riffled the pages. The pictures weren’t really in focus, and a few had yellowed, but there was Bea, sitting on a blanket, staring into the camera.

  “I knew it,” said Ben.

  “Knew what?”

  “Rozzy is your image. It’s like getting you all over again.”

  “She’s part you, too, you know.”

  Bea was always surprised at the flood of feelings Rozzy inspired in her. Just seeing that downy black head lifting up, the tiny hands sifting through the air for her, made Bea’s heart weak inside. Sometimes she felt the urge to find Walt, to show Rozzy off to him. He’d change his mind about kids when he saw that one. Every reason she ever had for not having children diminished with Rozzy; Rozzy became every reason to bear kids. Even Ben became more attractive to her because of Rozzy. She’d stand in the other room and watch the two of them at play. He got down on all fours to pat a ball back and forth to her, his face shining. When she cried, his face contorted, taking on the pain.

  She got a card and stuck a birth announcement and a small photo inside of it, and thought about finding Walt’s address somehow, about mailing the card to him. Somehow though, she never got around to it.

  The three of them went everywhere. There was no place Ben wouldn’t take Rozzy, restaurants, the zoo, an outdoor art fair. She never cried. Sometimes Ben took her by himself, staying out the whole day. He never told Bea what they did, and she never asked, but when they came bouncing back into the house, both of them would be grinning, pleased with themselves and with each other.

  They never discussed having a second child. “I wouldn’t want the next one to look like me,” Ben said. But as Rozzy started growing, she would allow people to touch her less and less, and it made Bea yearn to hold a newborn baby again. Rozzy was independent. She weaned herself, bracing her feet against Bea’s breast and pushing herself away. She wiped kisses from her face, and she wouldn’t hold anyone’s hand when she crossed the street. Affection was on her terms. She taught herself to dial Ben’s office, and she would call him, clamoring for him to bring her home a book. Bea, watching these phone calls, decided to begin going to bed without birth control, to leave it all up for grabs.

  Three months later, she was pregnant again. “Great,” said Ben. “Rozzy’s old enough to learn the facts of life.” He showed Rozzy Bea’s stomach and told her something was growing in there, but Rozzy was uninterested.

  It was nobody’s fault. The first birth had been a miracle, but the second—my own—was routine. Ben was so wrapped up in Rozzy that he really didn’t have room for anyone else. He still did the same things, had Bea drink the sticky drinks, but the fever wasn’t there, and he couldn’t supervise Bea as closely as before because of Rozzy.

  When Bea was really big, he had Rozzy feel the belly. He wouldn’t mince words. He wanted her always to know the truth, so he told her about the penis and the vagina and birth, and she sat quietly, playing with her thumbs.

  The day of my birth, he and Rozzy were working on some simple Chopin études at the piano. She was two. I was a breech birth, and at last Bea got the gas she wanted. I was born as drugged as Bea, and for the first two weeks of my life I closed my eyes and slept. I didn’t cry; I almost didn’t exist. Ben looked into the crib and dandled a finger at me. When I didn’t respond, he said that I was certainly bald and went to find Rozzy.

  Rozzy and I were linked even then. She would rip herself free of Ben’s arms and toddle over to where Bea was nursing me. She’d stroke my face, or finger the material of my dress. If she thought I was sleeping too long, she would wake me up. She seemed to like me best when I was in my playpen, contained. She showed none of the sibling rivalry kids are supposed to have. Not then, anyway. She didn’t need to. She was the focus and the center of Ben’s world and she could afford to be generous.

  That would all change.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We were always a pretty isolated family. Ben had purposely set up his law practice in Boston to put as much distance as possible between him and his family; and he never would have stayed in the area even had he married someone with family there. It wasn’t that he hated his parents or disliked his relations so much. It was simply that he found something unnatural and smothering about all these people laying claim to him just because of a biological quirk. He resented the advice they gave him, the way his parents told the stories about his sickly youth, the patient way they kept pushing him back toward the church. But even so, once a year, until they died, he and Bea would fly out and visit both sets of parents in Detroit and St. Louis. He was on his best behavior, polite and distant, but as soon as they reboarded the plane, he fussed.

  It was worse when Rozzy and I were born. Everyone wanted to see “the children,” wanted to buy us stuffed toys and take us for the weekend. It was hard for Ben, especially with Rozzy. He was so proud of her, but his wanting to show her off would have been a rotten trade. He would have to deal with his relations, with Bea’s. “You can’t hide kids from their grandparents,” Bea scolded. “It just isn’t right. And I want to see my parents, even if you don’t.”

  So Ben put up with it. He’d walk into the house and find it cramped with relations. He’d see people sitting on his couch where he sat, dandling Rozzy on their knees, stroking my flaming hair. There wasn’t room for his topcoat because of the suitcases; he kept suggesting hotels but Bea wouldn’t hear of it, she brought up the army cot from the basement, she pulled out the sofa bed. Ben sat down and said nothing, lifting his head when a question was asked him. Bea smoothed over his sullenness with the cakes and pastries she had spent hours baking, with her smile and with her beauty.

  Everyone thought they had the right to give advice. Our aunt Judith said we didn’t look healthy; she thought we should be sent to summer camp. An uncle said Rozzy was ruining her fingers playing the piano at such a youn
g age. Religion was always a sticky issue. Although Ben and Bea never went to church, they both believed in knowledge, in options. We were told about God, and told that when we were older we could decide for ourselves whether we wanted to go to church—or to temple—or whether we wanted to believe in anything at all. We never cared. It was more fun to stay in bed Sundays, to color in our coloring books, and to eat cookies, littering the bed with crumbs. We had gifts at Christmas, we had eggs covered with chocolate at Easter, and we had Ben’s parents’ angry disapproval. Ben’s mother was always asking us to come to church with her, and shaking her head at our supposed ruin. “Leave them alone,” Ben said. “They’re not yours.” Bea would smile and offer more cakes, more tea, anything to change the mood.

  We were always fussed over, especially Rozzy. My aunt Judith would stand our cousin Trina up against Rozzy, back to back. “Look at the little gypsies,” she said, “little angels.” Rozzy would sit and play a few rough tunes on the piano, looking over her shoulder at Ben, enchanting him as she enchanted everyone else. When she was finished playing, she got up and made a delicate bow and everyone clapped. I stood against the wall, dreaming.

  They all said the same things. They could see where Rozzy got her beauty, her black hair already halfway down her back was clearly Bea’s, her grace, her style. And they all squinted over at me, wondering aloud where on earth I got that hair, hair that looked as if my head were on fire. Aunts and uncles gave us toys and warned us to share, our grandparents gave us candy and told us not to spoil our dinner.

  When both sets of grandparents died, Ben put an abrupt end to the socializing. “No more interference,” he said. “No one’s going to raise these kids but us.” The relatives didn’t understand, of course. They kept phoning long distance, sending invitations, urging Bea to come and visit. She didn’t know how to explain about Ben, so instead she lied, making up business meetings and illnesses until the invitations gradually faded from our lives.

  Even in our own family, we were never really like family. It was never “Mummy” or “Daddy,” but always Bea or Ben. I never thought to call them anything else, and for a while I didn’t understand about parental pet names. I thought that Mummy and Daddy were names the same as Dick and Harry and Shelly, names people were labeled with at birth, the same way I was Bess.

  Things jumbled. I had one friend besides Rozzy, a girl named Hilly Winston, who lived up the block. Hilly and I had roller skates, and we spent hours practicing at the playground, pretending we were skating stars, until, exhausted, our knees sore and dirty, we would head for her house for cookies and milk. I once called her mother Mum, the way Hilly did. Her mother gave me a peculiar smile. “Call me Mrs. Winston, dear,” she said, filling up my glass with more milk.

  “Yeah,” said Hilly, “I don’t go around calling your mother Mum.”

  “Of course you don’t. Her name is Bea.”

  “You call your mother Bea?” Hilly was fascinated. She stopped eating her cookie and left it suspended in her hand.

  “And my father is Ben. That’s their names.”

  “Can anyone call them that?”

  I told her she was welcome to call them Bea and Ben the same way I did. Instantly, she clamored to visit, and we decided on the next day. When she came over, she trailed rapturously after Bea, asking, “Bea, could I have a drink of water?” or “Bea, I like that dress you have on.” Bea found it all very amusing and encouraged Hilly to visit.

  As Rozzy and I got older, we began to have little unhealed jealousies that scarred us both. I began to notice how it was, how Ben would bundle Rozzy up and take her places, leaving me alone to play with my plastic zoo or tag after Bea. “Take both kids,” Bea would insist. “We’re a family.” Ben would reluctantly take both of us, trying to talk Bea into coming along. But Bea knew better, she knew who would be paired off with whom, so she made excuses about books she had to finish, pies she had to bake. Ben never enjoyed these jaunts. Rozzy and I would race ahead of him, lost in our own secret world, but then Ben would take her hand and I would be straggling behind, a lonely caboose.

  There were physical exchanges, too. Rozzy wanted curls like mine in her sheet of inky hair, and she whined until Bea gave her a supermarket home perm. Rozzy’s hair frizzled and broke for six weeks until it grew out. Later on, it would be my turn to try to iron out my curls, to bend my head over the ironing board and let Rozzy iron and smooth the hair as carelessly as she would a blouse. Even when we were both adults, I would sometimes feel stings of jealousy; I would have to stop and remind myself: it’s Rozzy and jealousy is out of place.

  Rozzy’s accomplishments were always held out to me like a carrot I had to nip at, hungry or not. At seven, she was playing Bach, and so I had to have piano lessons, too, immediately after Rozzy’s. Bea set up a special time for us to practice, in the evenings when Ben could listen. Neither of us really practiced. Rozzy had an ear for music and could instantly play any piece she chose, and as far as she was concerned, playing the same thing over and over again was a waste of time when there were so many other pieces to master. I always hated practicing. I would feel a dime-sized headache curling up inside my head, waiting to spring. I could never manage to match the sounds I heard in my head and I would punish the piano for my failure, banging on the keys until I was sure they would break.

  When it came time for our lessons, I straggled home from school. Rozzy was always first, but I had to sit in the living room and listen, my legs skittering under me, wanting to run and jump, to do anything save sit, anything more active than pressing down a piano pedal. But our teacher, Mrs. Pearson, insisted that you could learn a great deal from another person, and every once in a while she would savagely twist around on the piano bench to make sure I was being attentive. She would ask me questions: had I noticed how Rozzy phrased the last bars, had I noticed how she corrected her errors without being told? I got very good at pretending, at keeping an alert look drifting across my face while I dreamed about fields and beaches and teeming cities full of light and life.

  Mrs. Pearson was a small woman with a mouth full of teeth. I don’t know why Ben even bothered to pay her to teach us. She didn’t do any teaching that I could see. Oh, she praised Rozzy’s technique, her control, but these were all things that Rozzy had excelled in long before Mrs. Pearson came. Rozzy’s pieces were penciled off as quickly as she could learn them. But Ben had checked the teacher’s credentials. She was supposed to be the best music teacher in Boston and had turned out concert pianists like pretzels. Ben even kept a list of these famous students in his desk.

  When it was my turn for my lesson, Mrs. Pearson attempted more strenuous kinds of teaching, more discipline. She jabbed at my knuckles with her pencil point. “Curve those fingers,” she shouted. The only time she ever checked off one of my pieces was when she was simply too exasperated to hear me butcher the music once again. I couldn’t concentrate with her sitting so close to me on the piano bench, crowding me to the edges, poising that needle-headed pencil over my thin fingers. I was aware, too, of Rozzy, sitting quietly on the couch, her eyes shut.

  When lessons were over, Bea would come out and pay the teacher and chat with her about us. I sat and played with my hands, listening to Mrs. Pearson urging Bea to buy a better piano because Rozzy was “beyond” our small spinet. Rozzy sat beside me and whispered a rude commentary about Mrs. Pearson’s horse teeth. “Look,” Rozzy hissed, baring her own teeth, showing as much gum as she could. She didn’t stop until I was giggling, until Bea glared, shaming us into innocent expressions.

  Rozzy was always moving from one thing to another, and it took her a short time to be bored with the piano. “I hate it,” she told Ben, her mouth setting stubbornly. He tried to get her to continue. He even went out and bought a baby grand, so large that it dominated the whole room, but Rozzy wouldn’t go near it, she acted as if she didn’t even see it. Ben would fumble out some Bach, hoping to shame or inspire her, but Rozzy simply shut him out. Her lessons stopped, and because sh
e was no longer playing, I was allowed to quit as well. Neither of us ever touched a musical instrument again.

  Rozzy’s inventiveness was always noticeable. I was in the first grade and she in the third when she began her famous Museum of Self. She took up four of the six shelves of our bookcase for her museum, making me double-pile my books under my bed. She borrowed some pretty glass pastry dishes from Bea and positioned them carefully on the shelves. She filled them up with what she called “artifacts of her existence,” with nail clippings and red scabs she purposefully picked from her knees with a pocketknife, and even with her baby teeth (she ignored the tooth fairy, although I never ceased to be amazed and delighted with the shiny new quarters I always found tucked under my pillow in exchange for my tooth). Rozzy was always picking at herself. She bit her nails and chewed the chapped pale skin from her lips. She pulled out her eyelashes and peeled the hard skin from the soles of her feet. She even started to chew her hair, collecting some of the ends she bit off, ingesting the rest. Bea looked askance. “Rozzy,” she said, “don’t you know about the poor little girl down the block?”

  “What little girl?” said Rozzy suspiciously.

  “The little girl who had to be rushed to the hospital because she was always eating her hair. They had to cut her right open, and do you know what they found?”

  Rozzy looked at Bea. “Disease?” she said.

  “Unhunh.” Bea looked triumphant. “A hair ball,” she said. “A hair ball that stayed inside her stomach because she couldn’t digest it, and it tangled up her insides but good.”

  Rozzy continued to be doubtful though. Whenever we saw cats outside, Bea would watch for one that was coughing, and then she would prod Rozzy. “That poor kitty has hair balls in its tummy. It ingests its own fur when it cleans itself. Do you want to go through life hacking like a cat? Someone might just keep you as a pet, make you eat smelly tuna and liver mixtures, put you out at night.” But Rozzy took to the idea of being a cat. She experimentally tried licking herself clean, ignoring her bath full of bubbles and hot water and waiting to see if Bea would notice the difference. She even tried to lick a large gray tomcat that wandered into our backyard, before Bea caught her and whisked her away into the house, where Rozzy was made to gargle with Listerine. When Bea told Ben, he laughed and said Rozzy was developing a fine sense of logic.