Hugo & Rose (4 page)

Maybe it was the third beer. Or the fourth. Not putting on the training wheels. Pushing her to get on the bike. Letting go. Which decision had caused her little body to leap over those handlebars and meet the pavement at that particularly horrible angle? Which decision had he made that had caused his daughter to lose her tether to the conscious world?

All of them. None of them. What did it matter, when there was nothing he could do that would make Rosie wake up?

He sat there for five days, thinking the same thoughts, arriving at the same nonconclusions.

And so he was there when Rose awoke and almost immediately began to wail.

The moment Rose's father saw her eyes, he knew it would all be okay. Thanks be to God, they were open and lucid and clear. She was upset, but in her eyes he could tell she was undamaged and blessedly awake.

He climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arms around her. Consoling. Crying warm tears himself.

“It's okay, sweetie. You're okay, sweetie. It's okay.”

He thought, of course, that she was frightened by waking in a tangle of tubes and IVs. The bright sterility of the hospital room. The sticky leads that monitored her half existence for the past week.

But little Rose wasn't frightened, she was mourning.

She cried because it wasn't real. She cried because Hugo didn't exist. She cried because now that she was awake, she thought he was lost to her.

Little Rose did not know while she slept in that hospital bed that she was dreaming. This was in part because she did not remember losing consciousness in her father's panicked arms, but it was mostly because nothing about the island felt like a dream.

She knew that usually a dream slips around one's consciousness, like the sand shifting away under your feet as the tide pulls itself into the ocean.

But the island to which Rose had been brought had felt as solid as clay beneath boots.

And so she cried. She grieved that whole day in that hospital. She quivered and sobbed as the doctors put her through a battery of tests, drawing blood and taking X-rays. The smiling nurses and happy doctors annoyed her. Her laughing mother and exuberant father were so antithetical to the deep sadness that sat inside her little body. They did not seem like they could possibly understand.

Her mother cooed and tried to settle her the way she did with all Rose's nightmares.
There, there, baby. It will be all right.
Rose cringed and clutched at her mother's chest, waiting for Hugo to disappear from her mind. Waiting for him and his wonderful island to fade like the dream that he was.

*   *   *

That night, tired out from the tests and the visitors, the doctors finally felt sure they could let Rosie sleep. They no longer worried that if she slept she would not wake again. Rose's mother let her sip water from a plastic straw and turned out the lights in her hospital room. Rose closed her eyes and rolled into a fetal curl.

She fell asleep.

And there he was again.

Hugo. Waiting for her that night on the shores of his island. Ready to try again to get to Castle City. To fight the island's monsters. To bound down the rainbow trail.

And so he would be every night for the next thirty years.

As Rose grew, so did Hugo. He matured from a beautiful boy into a beautiful man. They kept to their purpose. Reach Castle City. Rescue the people there.

And for thirty years, the city eluded them.

 

four

Rose was flying through the air when Adam woke her up.

She and Hugo had climbed out of the Orb just as the clouds had started to shift and break, the light bleeding through their seams.

“Rosie, look!”

Hugo pointed upward as the first shaft broke through. The stream of light cut through the air, striking the sand of the beach.

Hugo laughed and hauled himself over the lip of the door. He tumbled into the shallows, salt water splashing his face.

More shafts of light burst through the cover, setting an illuminated path down the stretch of shore. Under each pool of light the sand began to iridesce, set alight with a special kind of magic.

Hugo pulled himself upright, his pants and shirt clinging wet. Rose slid down the side of the Orb, more careful than Hugo but still quickly, her skirt lifting with the water as her feet reached the silt.

Hugo was already running.

“Race you!”

Rose laughed and gave chase.

These “rainbow” paths, stepping-stones of light down the beach, didn't last long.

“Stay with me, Rosie!”

Hugo drew closer to the nearest pool of illuminated sand, his bare feet shod in slippers of wet grit. Rose was just behind him, the wind pressing the wet warmth of her skirt to her thighs, her breath heavy with effort and anticipation.

Hugo leaped from the darker surrounds into the pool of sparkling sand—

*   *   *

“Momma!”

A voice from the other world beckoned.

Rose rubbed her face, eyes adjusting to the dark. On the nightstand the monitor light jumped with Adam's cries.

“Momma! Mommy!”

Rose sighed, prying her body from the bed. Hands lightly touching the wall. Finding her way in the dark.

Adam was sitting up in the night-light glow of his room. A nightmare.

“Hey, little boy. Momma's here.”

Rose knelt by his bed. Pushed the fringe of bangs from his face. Wiped the hot tear from his cheek.

“See? Everything's okay. Just a bad dream.”

Adam's little body shuddered, but he calmed, alert to the safety of his room, the comfort of his mother.

“Water?” he whispered, and Rose handed him the cup from his bedside. She watched his small hands wrap around its plastic sides. Watched him take a sip. Silently he handed it back, wiggling down into the covers.

Rose gave him a sleepy smile. “Do you want me to give you ideas for some good dreams?”

“You always tell me the same things: puppies, kitties, ice cream.”

“And baseball.” This deeper voice came from the other half of the room. Isaac, in his bed, awake now to his mother and brother. Soon to be eight to Adam's six.

Rose sighed. “I need some new material, huh?”

They nodded. Rose buried her head in Addy's covers. Tired.

“Give me a break, guys. It's the middle of the night.”

Rose made it a habit never to ask the boys about their nightmares. On the rare occasions that Josh would go to them in the night, she would cringe when she heard him ask them what they had been dreaming about. What was the point? Why give the dark dreams any more hold on their consciousness? Instead she would give them new things to dream about. Happy thoughts.

But at the moment, she was having a tough time thinking of anything other than the rote list she always supplied them with. A minute ago she had been with Hugo … she searched her half-dormant brain for ideas.

“Can you tell us what you were dreaming when you woke up? Was Hugo there?”

“Shut up, stupid! Hugo's always there!”

True,
thought Rose, but still, “Isaac, that's a bad word. You owe me fifty cents.”

Adam was excited now, curling his knees under his blankets. “Did you guys get to Castle City?”

“They can't get to Castle City, 'cause it's got an invisible shield around it.”

“Hugo can figure out how to get past an invisible shield.”

“No, he can't.”

“Yes, he can.”

“No, he can't.”

“Stop.”

The boys looked at her. Alert as a spring afternoon. Expectant.

She sighed.

“We were on the beach.”

“The pink beach?”

“Were the Spiders there?”

The boys talked over each other, their questions a tumble of syllables. Rose smiled. “Yes. No.”

“Adam's afraid of the Spiders.”

Rose crept a playful hand toward Isaac's bed. “So am I. They could gobble you up! Yum! Yum!” Isaac giggled as she found his belly, burying tickles in his soft flesh.

Adam was not going to let her get off topic, though. “But you said—”

“No Spiders this time.”

“Did the sun come out?”

Rose nodded. Her mind filled with the memory. “And it lit a path all the way down the beach.

“And Hugo was so excited. And he ran.

“And I ran after him. And then when he reached where the sun was shining he jumped…”

For a moment Rose was in two places. The dark close of the boys' room and the open reaches of the shore. She remembered Hugo's feet meeting the illuminated sand, then his body rising, back arched, joyous, open to the sky.

“And he flew high, high, high into the sky.” Adam knew this dream by heart.

“And then so did I.”

Rose felt her own feet impact the sand. Felt her breath escape her as her body was thrown into the air. Above, Hugo reached his hand back toward her, his face in shadow. She reached up to take it.

“And then what?”

Suddenly, Rose was only on the floor of the boys' room. The smell of salt replaced by the yeasty sweetness of her children.

“And then I heard a little boy who needed me.”

She kissed them each on her way out. “Good night, little boy. Good night, littler boy.”

*   *   *

Josh was sitting on the bed pulling on his clothes when she got back to their room. Rose groaned and fell onto the rumpled covers.

“Is it four already?”

“Quarter till.”

The sound of the boys' whispers crackled over the monitor. Talking about Hugo.

“You know, they really are too old for that thing.”

“I like knowing I'll hear them if they need me.”

The boys giggled in their room. Conspiratorial.

“I have to admit, I'm a little jealous of Hugo.”

Rose pulled at the duvet pinned under her husband's rump. “You should be. He doesn't work twenty-four-hour shifts. No mortgage. No student loans.”

She managed to free the blanket, pulling it up over her shoulder. Josh leaned over her, a wolfish smile curling his mouth. “You know, I've got fifteen minutes.”

Rose turned her face to the pillow. “Seriously? I don't remember when I showered last.”

“I think you smell amazing.”

She felt his hands brush the dough of her hips. He shifted the blanket, letting in a rush of cold air. Pulling at her shirt, planting kisses on her shoulder, her neck. Hungry.

“Josh, please. I just want to go to sleep.”

He paused, chin resting on her arm. Looked up at his wife. Her face was quiet, eyes shut. Already on her way out.

“Right.”

He sat up. If he left now, he could look over that new study before rounds.

“Love you, Rose.”

*   *   *

Penny had taken to pooping behind the couch. Every morning after breakfast, Penny would climb down from her booster seat and pretend to play with some toys, all the while checking out her favored corner of the family room: a little blind spot of privacy behind the arm of the sectional and the wall.

“Do you need to poop, Penny?” Rose would ask.

Penny would shake her head.

“You look like you need to poop.”

“No poop,” she insisted.

“Are you sure you wouldn't like to try?”

Penny shook her head again.

They had this conversation every morning for weeks. And every morning for weeks, Penny would wait until Rose was distracted, attending to some need of Adam's or Isaac's, before ducking behind the couch.

Rose was getting tired of rinsing out “big girl” panties.

But since the books all insisted that backsliding into diapers would prolong the problem, Rose persisted. She told the boys to warn her if they saw Penny heading over there (they never did) and blocked Penny's access with a large empty box (Penny just pooped next to it).

Finally Rose began moving the potty seat to the kitchen in the morning and making Penny sit on it for ten minutes after breakfast.

This was something the books also advised against, but once again, Rose had had it with washing shit off of the smug, smiling faces of Rapunzel and Belle.

And so Penny and the family became accustomed to her chubby body hunched on a little toilet in the middle of their routine morning chaos. From this vantage, Pen would watch her big brothers searching for lost shoes and swinging on their backpacks. Adam and Isaac would play “Hugo” in the five minutes before the bus came, wielding their foam swords over her head. Penny could see her mother assembling their lunches, asking about permission slips, and scraping uneaten breakfasts into the trash.

It was so much nicer than being banished to the cold loneliness of the powder room, left alone to “make a b.m.,” as Mommy would say. Not wanting to miss anything was why she had started pooping in the family room in the first place.

Rose, for her part, worried what people would think if they knew she was sanctioning defecation not five feet from her breakfast table. A stronger mother, she thought, would be able to
make
her two-and-a-half-year-old use the bathroom. A better woman wouldn't have to drive her boys to school twice a week because they missed the bus so regularly. She wouldn't have to cobble together lunch because they were out of bread (again), knowing the boys would come home (again) complaining about their almond-butter-and-jelly
burritos
.

*   *   *

But these were the scenes of her life. Playing over and over again. The same morning, the same night. The same conversations.

“Puppies, kitties, ice cream.”

“You
do
need to poop.”

“Please, not tonight, dear.”

The dialogue changing a little each time, slight variations in the timing, but so small as to be indistinguishable from the last time it played. If last night she put Josh off sex by saying that she hadn't showered, next time it would be that she was tired. If today she had to push Adam to clear the table, tomorrow it would be Isaac.