The Bubble Reputation (16 page)

“Are you sure you don't want me to keep her another week so that you can rest a bit more?” Rosemary asked.

“No,” Aunt Rachel said, and patted Rosemary's arm. “It's better to take her home with me now. She gives me energy from her in some strange way.”

Rosemary watched them swoop off in the rattling Volvo down the swell of Old Airport Road, Mother's ringlets bouncing happily, as though she were a child on the way to a drive-in movie.
Good-bye, Mother.

She went back upstairs to find Uncle Bishop happily arranging knickknacks and framed photographs on the mahogany table by the bed. The owl sat stiffly in Mother's rocker.

“What's this?” Rosemary asked, her teacher's voice again. She was still very unhappy with him.

“It's a photograph,” he said, taking the picture of a dark, petite man out of her hand and placing it back on the bedside table.

“Do you always take your photographs with you when you visit for a couple of days?”

“Sometimes,” Uncle Bishop said. “And sometimes I even take them on short trips to Thomasville to run a quick errand.”

“Why?” Rosemary took the photograph up again. The face in the picture was a man haunted, a sadness in his eyes.

“So that I can be close to the people who are important to me,” Uncle Bishop mumbled.

“Is this who I think it is?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Jason?” A second nod.

“Is he still with his wife?” A third nod.

“Still with her, I guess,” Uncle Bishop said. “I gave him three or four days. Seven at the most. It's been three weeks, Rosie, and still nothing.”

“Could this be why you've been so hard on Mrs. Abernathy?” she asked.

“I suppose it could have added to my stress when dealing with the old bat.” He took Jason's photo out of Rosemary's hands and stared down at it. Rosemary thought of Horace Abernathy's last picture, back on Mrs. Abernathy's mantel, the one she must have snapped before the cancer jumped poor Horace in the canyon of his life. Ambushed him. Cut him off at the pass.

“Can't you also, then, try to imagine what that old lady is going through right next door to you?” Rosemary asked. “Mr. Abernathy's dead. She has no children. She certainly doesn't have the luxury of packing a suitcase and visiting loved ones for a couple of days, as you're doing.”

“Do you think we should get her a cat?” Uncle Bishop asked, and nervously rubbed his bald spot. It shone like a small planet amidst a universe of thinning hair. Rosemary took a spare blanket out of the closet and tossed it onto the bed.

“I'd appreciate it if you would be kind enough to act as my emissary,” she told him. “Please let these people know, including yourself, that I want my privacy back very soon.” With that, she went out and closed the door roughly.

“Tell them yourself,” she heard him say loudly. “I personally don't associate with the hoi polloi.”

***

When Rosemary found her in the den, Miriam was enduring a headache She had even, she informed Rosemary, given up her cigarettes for an hour or so in a valiant attempt to dissuade the headache.

“I should never mix wine and hard stuff,” Miriam said.

“Miriam, what's your problem?” Rosemary asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are you in my house instead of your own?”

“Well,” Miriam said, fidgeting on the sofa. Rosemary could see her sister's mind working, the thoughts forming.
What's come over passive little Rosemary?
she was no doubt wondering.
What's got little Shirley Temple up in arms?

“Do you plan to straighten things out with Raymond soon?” Rosemary picked up an orange crayon that must have fallen from Mother's box of colors. She placed it on the coffee table. She would drop it off at Aunt Rachel's later in the week. Mother might want to color Sally's hair with it. Or perhaps Spot, a small orange dog peeing up against a purple tree.

“What do you mean by
soon
, Rosie?” Miriam squinted her eyes as though she were, indeed, still smoking.

“There you go again,” Rosemary said. “It was always
Rosie
, can I borrow your bicycle?
Rosie
, can I wear your new sweater? Will you do my homework,
Rosie
? Well, let me tell you something, Miriam. Shit happens. It just goddamn happens. I have my own problems.”

“Some sister you've turned out to be,” Miriam said.

“I want my privacy back, especially after Lizzie leaves.”

“No one cares about me,” Miriam said, her voice trembling. “Raymond even treats people he doesn't like better than he treats me.”

“I can't hear a word you're saying,” said Rosemary. Hester Prynne was waiting, and the Puritans suddenly seemed so much more sensible, forgiving even, than her own family.

“You don't have to put up with an ex-wife and alimony payments either,” Miriam persisted.

“‘Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,'” Rosemary read aloud, “‘with a pair of gloves.'”

“Oh, fuck Hester Prynne,” Miriam cried. “Just fuck her. She doesn't know the half of it.”

“‘Which she had fringed and embroidered to his order.'”

***

At seven o'clock Lizzie knocked on Rosemary's door and came inside the room to sit on the bed.

“I think every woman should have a husband
and
a lover,” Lizzie said, when Rosemary inquired as to the state of affairs. “It's cleared up my face.”

“Where are Philip and Charles?”

“I finally gave them the slip in that sharp turn just as you come into Bixley. Then I drove to Thomasville and went to a movie alone.”

“Sounds like your life is more entertaining than a movie.”

“It's funny, Rosemary, but I'm curious as to whether I'm getting this sudden attention from Charles just because there's a Philip.”

“Could be.”

“And I'm wondering if there is a Philip just because I want some attention from Charles.”

“It's certainly possible.”

“At least I'm trying to be levelheaded,” Lizzie said, and bit at a nail. “I sometimes also think that what's going on between Philip and Charles is a male kind of competition and that it's more important than me. It's the fight and not the prize.” She appeared even more tired than the previous day, when she had looked exhausted. “And by the way, we'll be out of your hair soon.”

“Tell me,” said Rosemary. “Are Charles and Philip forming a lasting relationship these days?”

“Oh no,” said Lizzie. “They hate each other.”

“I saw them driving away together.”

“Well, I left in my car,” Lizzie explained. “So Philip decided to follow me. I guess he had a final legal point to make. Charles was obliged to go, too, if Philip was going, because he wouldn't want us to sneak away to some motel.”

“I think I have that so far,” said Rosemary.

“When Charles discovered that Uncle Bishop's Datsun had him blocked in, he ran over and jumped in with Philip rather than miss a ride. And Philip was afraid that if he stopped to insist Charles get out, I'd have time to make my getaway.” Lizzie was finished.

“It's a good thing you've had all that experience raising your kids. It seems to be paying off for you now.”

“When was this taken?” Lizzie asked. She was holding a picture that Rosemary kept on the headboard of her bed. It was of her and William and Mugs. They were in a canoe on Madawaska Lake, on a magnificent autumn day of blue sky and the first signs of color coming to the leaves. “Scientists understand the life and death process of a leaf, Rosie,” William had told her that day. “But no one knows what causes them to burst into such incredible colors.” Rosemary's hair was much longer in the picture, waist length, and a strong wind had caught it up in a swirl about her head. William sat on the bottom of the canoe, leaning back between Rosemary's legs. She was tilting forward, her arms folded on his head. He wore a T-shirt that said BOSTON RED SOX, their favorites since it was the major league team nearest Maine. William's camera had been set up at the bow of the canoe with its time release mechanism ready to go, just like the pressure valve that would soon blow in William himself. Mugs sat on William's lap. There they all were, the little family, frozen onto a frame of time.

“Three or four years ago,” Rosemary answered Lizzie, and she was struck with how amusing it would have been on that autumn afternoon if someone from shore had rowed out toward them, slow motion, deathly, to tell them William had just over three years left. Would they have killed the messenger? “He slit his wrists,” Michael had said. “A razor blade. Jesus, Rosemary, he had to go out to a store to buy the goddamn thing.” Rosemary could even
see
William, moving up and down the aisles of some British store, reading the fine print. Would they have even
believed
the messenger? Rosemary took the photo from Lizzie and looked down at a segment of her own existence, an eternity away now, this
three
or
four
years.

As she gazed down at the picture, she didn't see the leafy fire coming to Black Fly Hill, or the corduroy of waves wafting in to rock the canoe as though it were a large cradle. And Rosemary didn't see Mugs craning his neck away from the camera. She didn't see herself smiling, her head canted to one side, her left cheekbone lit up with a spray of October sun. What she saw instead was a young man with three years, three months, and twelve days of life left ahead of him. She saw a bone-white skeleton reclining jauntily between her legs as though she had given it birth.

But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have look'd upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone…

—William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”

For two days the tenants of the house on Old Airport Road came and went without causing any commotion, like the intermixing parts of a tightly wound clock. The house itself had become a kind of Lourdes, attracting the emotionally handicapped. Uncle Bishop seemed content just to be around people, especially Rosemary. Miriam appeared to be in no great hurry to reconcile with Raymond. She spent much time instead on the back swing, smoking an endless trail of cigarettes and even taking an interest in the birds, occasionally asking Rosemary to identify a sparrow or designate the sexes of the goldfinches. “She's just doing that to get on your good side,” Uncle Bishop said. “She probably had hummingbird tongues for breakfast.” Lizzie's children would finish their camping in a week and she would need to leave. In the meantime, if Lizzie walked to the mailbox, Philip and Charles went with her. “Don't those two men work?” Uncle Bishop asked, the same question Miriam loved to ask of
him
. “Where does Bishop get his money, will someone please tell me?” Rosemary avoided them as much as she could, spending a few hours each day at the library. She could at least read in peace there, except for Mrs. Waddell's watchful eyes. She kept up the running, reminding herself each time a foot hit the pavement that her burgeoning household would soon be gone. Like a litter of noisy puppies, they would all be in their own homes one day. “Soon,” she told herself, as she stretched before each distance, increasing her run to four miles.

In between avoiding her guests, Rosemary spent some time thinking about Father's spring. Her spring. The childhood fountain. Was it still there? Could she find it? She had not been east of Bixley since the house burning. Not even with William could she make the descent down that cobwebby tunnel leading to her past. “Let's go together and find it,” William had urged. “Someday,” Rosemary would tell him. “When the magic is right, we'll go.” Now William himself had disappeared into that Bermuda Triangle of wishes and plans, a place smelling like the entrails of good intentions. “Someday, William, when the magic is right, I'll untangle the old webs.”

***

The morning had begun cloudy, but by two o'clock the sky was clear, as though someone had dusted away those clouds. The birds sang in their different notes from the grasses, and trees, and telephone wires. Bluebells bent their necks, turning their mouths downward. If the magic wasn't
right
, it was certainly
workable.
Rosemary, wearing her tight-legged jeans that wouldn't catch in the chain, and tying her denim shirttails up into a hard knot, backed the bicycle out of its resting place and then glided down the driveway and out onto the bumpy surface of Old Airport Road.

A pickup truck came toward her, pulling behind it a parachute of dust. The driver tooted his horn. It was Jan Ferguson, who lived beyond Rosemary's own house. Rosemary waved back, then lowered her head, eyes squinting until the wave of dust passed her. Old Airport Road's only pollution was this occasional flare-up from the tires of passersby.

Sharon Masefield, Rosemary's old school chum, now Sharon Masefield Greene, flew by in a shiny Ford Escort that would no longer be shiny when it reached its destination near the end of the road, the home Sharon had bought and renovated with her husband. Two small children floated like balloons on the backseat, suspended inside the moving car as though they were helium filled. Sharon honked her horn and waved. Rosemary wondered if Sharon looked into her rearview mirror, back into the wake of dust, and wished that all she had to do on such a glorious day was to go for a bicycle ride. She remembered Sharon's high school hurry, sporting her newly styled shag hairdo, Sharon rushing in the halls, in the corridors, late for class, late for ball practice, or just missing the Bixley bus. The Escort went on inside its ball of dust, Sharon still in a hurry.

Rosemary braked for the incline into Bixley, which had its share of shoppers bustling in and out of the two dozen or so stores and businesses. It also had the
little
town
architecture: two small banks, an insurance agency, two drugstores, Max's Camera and Supply Shop, an IGA grocery, Bixley's Grocery, Jim's Chevrolet, Bolton's Hardware, Handy's Lumber Company, Sam's Sporting Goods, JC Penney, Nora's Clothing, two restaurants, a cafe, the post office, the library, Joy's Magazines & Books, Larry's Sunoco, the town office, the police station, the firehouse, Radio Shack, and the newly arrived McDonald's. Human ideas, structured and architectural, arranged in a scheme, caught up in a design, nailed, sawed, plastered, and framed into a single thought: the small New England town.

Betty Gleason, another old high school classmate, smiled at Rosemary and waved from behind the naked mannequin she was dressing in the window of Betty's Boutique. Marvin Casey leaned out of the United States post office and shouted hello. Rosemary waved back over her shoulder and left him smiling in her wake. As she rolled past the IGA, Bixley fell behind her, growing and groaning and swelling at its seams as much and as fast as a small town possibly can. Already on her right she saw the staked signs declaring the future site of Bixley's new shopping mall.

Rosemary had not been to the Bixley Drive-In, on the outskirts of town, for years. She was surprised to see that it was closed, no longer functioning, a dinosaur looming over the modern trappings of electronic sundries. It saddened her to think of the big screen dying a slow death out among the elements and uninterested passersby. She was also shocked at the numerous upcroppings of subdivisions, what Uncle Bishop called
baby
factories
, covering the hillsides on each side of the road. Miriam's colleagues were probably responsible. The Manifest Destiny crowd of Bixley, Maine. But how had Bixley grown so without her noticing it?

The truth was that she had driven for years like a rat in a maze to her teaching job in Thomasville by means of New Airport Road and the new interstate that had finally inched its way up the state of Maine, to Bixley. She had come home from a long day of teaching, kicked off her shoes, and stayed within or near her comfortable house. Daily, she had seen the subdivisions mushroom to life along New Airport Road, all the way out northward to the new highway. It made sense that the same development was occurring along the peaceful edges of Norris Road, which also ran northeasterly to meet the new highway. But that was the childhood road. The bicycle's path. The trail of magic that led, once, to a house now turned to ashes, to a man now gone to dust. It was inconceivable for Rosemary to admit that progress had come to the delicate elms, the teetering pines, the soft layer of duff that stretched like shag carpet beneath a child's bare feet. But here progress was, towering above what used to be open fields of hay, now houses full of people planting different flowers in their front yards, struggling for individuality. Here and there a convenience store broke the monotony. But aside from the color of paint, aside from the pansies and zinnias, they were crackerjack boxes all in a row.
Baby
factories.

Where are these people coming from?
Rosemary wondered.
Are they extraterrestrials?

A half mile past the drive-in, Rosemary braked and stared ahead to the spot where the family homestead had once stood, the house where she had been given birth on a cold winter's day. The road leading off Norris, which was once gravel, was now tarred and became, after five hundred yards or so, a cul-de-sac. Houses clung to it, the modern, paranoid kind, low to the ground, none of those rambling two- and three-story giants that spoke of the many children families used to have. New life and new blood had crept into the population of Bixley. But Rosemary was not ready for the disappearance of the only magic she had ever known in her life: childhood.

She pedaled to the end of the cul-de-sac and left the bike leaning on its kickstand. Making her way past the marigolds in someone's front yard, she walked past the marigolds in their backyard with that boldness and familiarity that comes from having once owned a house and its land, as though it's still yours through some kind of divine right. But when you own the memories, you own the land they were made on. What about that January birthday so bright and sunny? Or Father smelling of Old Spice and Rosemary sailing the clipper ship on the bottle as she lay near his sleeping body? Then there was the tiny Canada warbler and the Ponce de Leon spring out in the woods off Norris Road, where people rarely visited, let alone moved en masse. She strolled across this stranger's backyard, where Mother had once stood on the porch in her summer dress, holding a pitcher of lemonade for the children. The yard had been leveled and now it sprouted bright green grass, the store-bought kind that one seeds and waters and clips. The original backyard had welcomed the dandelion, the occasional stray mustard, the sneaking crabgrass. And poles had risen out of the earth there to hold the clothesline where Mother hung wet things for the sun to dry, pushing the basket along with her foot. Mother humming her summer tunes. Rosemary's eyes watered with memory.
He
would
fly
through
the
air
with
the
greatest
of
ease.

A few feet past the backyard, she stopped in amazement. The entire hill and field of trees that had once housed a forest of animals, that had once been the old battleground for make-believe cowboys and Indians, was not as it used to be. Instead of scraggly pines, silvery willows, instead of clover clumps in the open meadow, there grew even rows of fir trees and spruce trees, all four feet to six feet in height. Everywhere, a well-trained army of trees swelling with appropriate fullness for their destiny. A large sign was posted at the entrance to the dirt road that led around this field. COLBY BROTHERS CHRISTMAS TREE FARM, it announced. In one of the rows, three men were squatting at the base of a tree, probably discussing some aspect of its trunk. Maybe the Colby brothers themselves.

The trees, like the subdivision houses, stood without expression, without individuality. True, the tree farm might save other trees from city dwellers who sometimes drove to the country in order to trespass on private property in search of the ideal fir or spruce. But why did her piece of land and the tiny spring have to go the way of progress? She guessed that the spring was probably being pumped now to water these trees during the dry months, the dog days. And these trees would go to apartments and homes in New York City, in Boston, in Hartford, all grown out of the magic of the countryside, bottled magic now, pumped, packaged, and shipped. Rosemary felt a lightness wash over her, as though something ephemeral were passing through her, Father's ghost maybe, lost and confused among the even, well-trained spruce. She turned away before the Colby brothers spotted her and inquired as to her business on their land. It was not the most appropriate setting. It was not the best magic, but Rosemary said good-bye to Father, walking again past the backyard where the old house sat, where the mailbox was now shiny and said THE NAYLORS. If she let Father go, maybe William would be next in line.

She bicycled sadly out of the cul-de-sac and paused up on Norris Road to look back for a minute. With the sun beginning its ascent into the west, the subdivision found itself beneath a golden sheath of light. All the Christmas trees were sheeny with it, as if they had been sprayed a magnificent yellow. Artificial sunlight, instead of artificial snow.
It's all canned nowadays, Lizzie.
The cramped house, the Naylors' statement of their lives, lurched up out of the earth to meet the filtering tint of the sun, and for a second, Rosemary saw the old house again, now new, with BOX 81 printed boldly on the mailbox, boldly enough to last a lifetime. And in the window were the same lace curtains with the diamond pattern, and lights in all the rooms warming the house, stating that everyone was home, not gone off into the world or away from the world, but safe, here and now.

Rosemary saw this, and behind the house she heard the ripple of the elm leaves, silver as dimes, and the rattling of the cones on all the lofty pines. She heard this. “Levels of consciousness,” William always said, “depend upon the light.” And the light shifted quickly. It shifted and grew dimmer. It could not hold its instant forever, Rosemary knew. It could not hold this instant on a June afternoon forever.

“You can't depend on the light, William,” Rosemary whispered, and the light shimmered, as if a wind had flown through it, that ephemeral thing that had gone through Rosemary minutes earlier. It shifted and dimmed, and now the houses returned with their bleak statements about modern living, and the Christmas trees went back to simple green, without the eerie spray of sunlight. They went back to snowy dreams of the big city. Rosemary pedaled away, gliding down what was left of Norris Road, toward Bixley. Not as foolish as Lot's nosy little wife, she did not turn around. Her pride was too great to acknowledge once more the strip mining that had been done to her fondest memories. She pedaled away.
Good-bye, Father.

Putting the bicycle into its corner of the garage, she could hear the upraised voices in the kitchen, which meant Miriam and Uncle Bishop were at it again. Having finally buried Father, Rosemary was in no mood for the mortal goings-on in the kitchen. But before she could escape, the kitchen door was flung open. Mugs rushed out into the garage and disappeared into the backyard. It was too much for him, too. Uncle Bishop saw Rosemary hovering over her bicycle and threw both his hands up into the air.

“Miriam is thinking of opening a whorehouse in Bixley!” he said.