Imperfect Birds (20 page)

Rosie did not answer, nor did a hint of her thinking show on her face. She shrugged. “Because it was there. Because it just made me feel like I had a secret. Like I have some parts of me you don’t own or get to have an opinion on. Because everyone puts so much pressure on me. And I’m a teenager, and sometimes I want to swipe things. Didn’t you ever steal?”

“Bikini underpants from little boutiques,” Elizabeth said.

“Is that all?” Rosie demanded.

“My parents let me drink in front of them, and looked away if I lifted a six-pack, so I had no excuse to steal from them. It sucked.”

“Mommy! Can’t you pay less attention to me? I’m a good kid. But I’m seventeen. Couldn’t you let things slide every so often?”

“We have, and now we’re worried that we’re letting too much slide,” said James. “We don’t know how much you’re using. Maybe you don’t even know that anymore. And a razor blade?”

“I just told you like the total truth!” There was the faintest and most terrible smile on James’s face, like when they played poker and he’d just been dealt an ace.

“Whatever,” he said, and looked over at Elizabeth. She looked back, puzzled. “So you did steal those Percocet from me in the spring?”

“Yeah,” Rosie said, and right before their very eyes, she seemed to give up. “I did.” She looked back and forth between them. “And I just need a chance to start over, and prove myself to you.”

“Okay. You’re grounded for four days,” he said. “Except for tennis and church.” He seemed to relax. “You can catch up on your AP English reading.” Rosie started to smirk, but something inside her shifted, and she sighed wearily instead.

“What ev,” she said. James looked about to react, but she threw her hands up.

“You win,” she said. “I hear you, I get it. I’m sorry. Okay?” James nodded.

Elizabeth poured the rum and pills into the sink, ran water, and tossed everything else into the garbage pail.

She said, “Great! Now can we eat? Start to get this behind us?”

James took a bite of food. “This is so good. What did you stir-fry this with? Cilantro?” She pointed her finger at him: Yes, exactly. And Rosie couldn’t believe her ears—they had already switched the topic to food and she was busted for only four days. Boy, this works for me, she thought to herself, and poked at her food winsomely.

“We’ve gotta stop with the whole meat thing,” Rosie announced.

“Why?” asked James.

“Because it’s immoral? And disgusting?”

“Rosie darling, we eat almost no meat these days.”

“So what do you call this, Mommy?” She held up an incriminating cube of meat, as if she’d fished a cat turd out of the stir-fry.

“Oh,” said James, smacking his forehead. “You mean lamb doesn’t count as a vegetable?”

W
e trapped her in a lie,” he whispered to Elizabeth behind the closed door of their bedroom. “Fong only prescribed a total of four Percocet. They’re synthetic opiates, the same as OxyContin. I took at least two, maybe three. So no way there were three of mine left. She had to have stolen them somewhere else.”

Elizabeth, sitting on the bed, let her head fall heavily to her chest. He went to sit by her and started to put his arm around her shoulders, but she pulled back, raised her hands, let them fall into her lap. “Can’t we drop it and start over?”

He looked at her for a long time, hard, surprised. “Our daughter got opiates from someone, Elizabeth. It’s for acute pain, Elizabeth, and highly addictive. It’s called Appalachian heroin.”

“I know! I’m not stupid. Maybe I don’t write for NPR—you know, most of us don’t. But I’m asking you to dial it back for now, while we figure out what to do—both of us, move back to Defcon Two, slightly increased force readiness.”

James closed his eyes, the Buddha with a migraine, nodded. “We need to start testing her, now.” Elizabeth sighed. “Do you agree?” After a minute, she nodded. He got up, and went into the bathroom to floss.

Lying in bed that night, he whispered that he loved her, and she whispered back that she loved him, too. There was a moment’s silence in the dark, and then he asked, “Is there any chance that we could ever get a dog?”

“What?” she asked too loudly, sitting up.

“I really want a dog, Elizabeth, I’ve wanted one for so long. I thought maybe when Rosie goes off to college, but why not now? It might actually be a good thing for our family.”

“We already have a perfectly good cat.” Rascal was kneading her stomach. “And when Rascal’s gone, I think I’ll be done with animals forever.”

“Why?”

“Because they are fur-covered heartbreak waiting to happen. Plus, if we got anything, it would be another cat—cats are so much smarter.”

James squawked in agreement. “They are. You throw a tennis ball to a cat, they say, ‘Fuck you, I’m not your maid.’ ”

“See, James, I like that in an animal. Dogs are obsequious.” When James laughed, she smiled and smoothed Rascal’s cheeks.

In the sweet, close quiet, he asked, “Can we get a drug-sniffing dog?” She managed a laugh, too.

Later, he wanted to make love, and she was glad to because her gratitude trumped the new feelings of mild revulsion she had begun to feel toward sex. Besides, it gave her a sex credit. She could look forward to a week off now.

R
ae called first thing in the morning to see if Elizabeth wanted to drive to Sacramento with her for a rally in support of teachers and nurses, but Elizabeth begged off.

“I haven’t felt at all like myself since Rosie got busted—I totally need a meeting.”

“Please, Elizabeth? I’m exhausted, I have bad breath, and my vagina smells.”

“That’s why I don’t want to go.”

J
ames was in his office, moaning and groaning about his deadline when Elizabeth stepped in. “I’m going to drop Rosie off at the courts, and then I am running away from home. I need you to pick her up at one, when she’s done.”

“What do you mean, you’re running away from home? Where would you go?”

“I’m going to the noon meeting. Then I’m going to hang out at a bookstore, and maybe the home consignment center. I absolutely will go crazy if I have to stay here all morning.”

“Don’t buy anything—we honestly cannot afford anything now.”

“I may need to. I’m thinking of remodeling.”

“Don’t be crazy, Elizabeth. Of course we’re not going to remodel. Maybe if I get a contract for the new book.”

“You don’t work on anything anymore except your radio pieces.”

“So maybe I can put together a collection of those. Jesus, Elizabeth. I’m working my ass off. Today is really no good. Besides, can’t Rosie walk home?”

“No, she’s grounded.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be giving her consequences that make life more of a pain in the neck for
us
.”

“James. Please. Pick her up.”

“I am so under the gun!”

“Don’t do this to me!” Elizabeth said, much too loudly, and instantly regretted that she’d resorted to one of Rosie’s battle cries. She stalked out of James’s office and went to shower. She needed a break today. James’s life definitely improved when he first got the NPR job—he brought in eight hundred dollars more a month, and people stopped him on the street to say how much they loved his stories of the world, of global warming and suffering, not to mention a teenage daughter, a bad back, a gut, bad teeth, and a difficult cat. But there was so much more pressure now, for both of them. When his producers weren’t quite as wild about one week’s radio essay, he moped, obsessed. Were he and all those other NPR essayists okay only when their producers jumped up and down? Were they sweating blood the rest of the time, waiting for the next hit, ignoring their families as they tried to get a piece just right, because airtime was Cinderella’s ball? Sometimes she felt as if he were having an affair, with someone so exquisite that she couldn’t fight back.

R
osie rolled out of bed at eleven. She had pimples all over her forehead, baby-sized but disgusting. Her shoulders sagged. She knew what her mother would say—you could hardly see them; she had her father’s beautiful skin. The sun and fresh air would help them heal! And blah blah blah.

She washed her face, patted it dry, and then carefully, like an expert at Macy’s, covered her skin with foundation. She stepped back to check herself in the mirror. She swirled a brush daubed in rose-colored blusher onto her cheeks, outlined her eyes in kohl. She applied a coat of mascara to her thick black lashes, and then another. She imagined Jody studying her, jealous and exposed: she had no real knack for makeup, but wore it anyway—powder, eyeliner, gloss. Alice, on the other hand, had taken an Intro to Cosmetology class at nights, and had taught Rosie everything she knew. “Cosmetology is a feel-good profession,” she had insisted more than once. Rosie and Jody had laughed hysterically.

She put on a clean thong, black lace, stolen from Nordstrom accidentally. She had tried it on in the dressing room, tried on jeans over it, paid for the jeans, and not remembered until she was at the cashier’s. James had found it stuck to his own laundry by static electricity. He had thought it was a broken shoelace at first.

She pulled on short cut-offs, her favorite pair, not too tight, with the strap of her thong showing in the back by at least an inch. She pulled a sports bra over her head, which flattened her and kept her tits from bouncing so much, but then she took it off and replaced it with a white lacy bra of her mother’s, the only one from Victoria’s Secret that her mother owned—mostly she got her bras at Macy’s, along with the huge underpants. They wore the same size everything, except jeans. She found a clean, cute, tight T-shirt, and her shoes, which were totally worn out. It so sucked living in this family, no one ever had any extra money. If she asked her mom to take her shopping for tennis shoes, she would sigh, like they were going to end up on government cheese.

Elizabeth looked at her clothing strangely but didn’t say anything except, “Do you have your racket? James will pick you up at one. Does that give you enough time?” Rosie had managed an SOS call to Jody while her mother was in James’s study, to meet her at the courts early. Jody would try to get hold of Alice, who was shopping for school clothes with her mother. Both of them had money; also dads, although Alice rarely saw hers. Rosie had been a little girl with a dead dad, and there was no getting around that or over that. Even a drunk dad, even an asshole, was better than a dead dad, which shouldn’t reflect on you but did, and left a cannon hole in your heart.