The Bubble Reputation (15 page)

“Come on,” Rosemary told Miriam. “I'll find you a bed.”

***

When Rosemary settled into bed herself, an hour after Miriam had finally passed out, after Raymond's taillights had disappeared down Old Airport Road, just behind his good friend who was driving the Datsun, an hour after Mother finally fell asleep, Rosemary was no longer weary of the onslaught of nightmares. Let them come and take her off, a ride through terror, the manes of all the demon mares stinging her face. It would be a welcomed relief from the
daymares
of Miriam turning forty, of Mother crazy, of Uncle Bishop and the shoe fairy. She drifted off, almost wishing to meet up with William again out there in the subconscious darkness, when the ringing sounded. At first Rosemary thought it was a fire alarm until she realized it was the telephone. One thirty. Uncle Bishop. “The Children's Hour.”

“Rosie, do you have any idea how Hollywood treated all those little Munchkins in
The
Wizard
of
Oz
?”

Come on, nightmares
, Rosemary thought.
Come unbridled and frothing at the mouth. Come with your evil nostrils flaring. Anything is better than this.

She placed the phone beside the clock on the bedside table. Let Uncle Bishop, like a puppy on its first night away from home, hear the continual ticking, the reassurance of a mother's heartbeat. Let him talk on and on into the night while the luminous numbers on the clock's face listened, happily as a friend to what he had to say. Rosemary's own face turned itself away from the clock, away from the tinny voice seeping out of the receiver, and went off to sleep.

When Rosemary awoke the next morning, she thought at first she had dreamed the gothic birthday party of the previous evening. It had all the macabre dimensions of dream. But she knew she hadn't. Lately, there was more reality filtering into her in the dreams of night than there was in the waking moments she shared with her family. “I used to think of you as that normal girl on
The Munsters
,” Lizzie had said.

She twisted in her bed to catch a glimpse of the numbers on the clock. Nine thirty. She had slept in an old T-shirt, instead of pajamas, and now she slipped it off and reached for her bathrobe. She peered out of her doorway to see if the bathroom was occupied. Mugs followed her into the hallway, grabbing at the hem of the terry cloth robe and wondering why his eight thirty outing had been postponed. Time was going crazy.

Downstairs, coffee had been made by one of the household denizens and Rosemary tasted a cup quickly to test its freshness. It had begun to turn stale but it was not so stale as to prompt her to make a fresh pot. Mother and Miriam were out on the swing, swinging together in harmony. Mother seemed rested, peaceful. Miriam, on the other hand, had eyes that were swollen as old fruit, the lids bluish as grapes. Her countenance told Rosemary much, after years of dealing with Miriam: hung over and overly apologetic. Hoping they hadn't noticed her movement, Rosemary inched her way back from the window, stepping on the tip of Mugs's tail. He caterwauled, causing her to slosh hot coffee on her wrist.

“Sorry,” she whispered, and leaned down to pat the furry head. Then she opened the front door and Mugs slipped around her legs—as well as the sturdy legs standing on the front steps—and was gone beneath the lilac bushes. Rosemary looked up to see Uncle Bishop, a suitcase clutched in one hand. She recognized it immediately. It was Miriam green.

“Raymond dropped this off at my house,” Uncle Bishop said. “Miriam will have something green to wear until he gets the rest of her shit packed. He's not as naive as the others. The house is in his name.” He thumped Miriam's suitcase onto the floor of the foyer before Rosemary could protest.

“But I can't take in any more boarders, especially Miriam,” she insisted.

“Well, you'll have to tell Raymond that.”

“Where the hell
is
Raymond?” Rosemary pushed the suitcase to one side with her foot.

“He must be home. I suppose he didn't come himself because he doesn't want to be subjected to another one of Miriam's Gregorian chants.” Uncle Bishop was fidgeting with something outside on the steps. He fetched it into the foyer and Rosemary saw that it was another suitcase, this one brown and masculine, certainly not of the same set as Miriam's olive green.

“What's that?” Rosemary asked.

“What?”

“That brown suitcase that has a decal of the Arc de Triomphe pasted to its side.”

“That's my suitcase,” said Uncle Bishop.

“Why is it sitting on my steps rather than at some French airport?” She wrapped her robe tighter.

“I'd like to join all of you for a couple of days,” Uncle Bishop said airily.

“Join us?” Rosemary was incredulous. “What do you think this is? A club? At first Lizzie acts like it's a sorority house where she's sneaked in two guys. Then it became a mental institution when Mother arrived. Now Miriam is convalescing on my swing right this minute as if it's some kind of halfway house. I know my front yard resembles a used-car lot, but to me this is my home. Now, what would
you
like this place to be, Uncle Bishop?”

“A home away from home, I guess,” he said, and looked over his shoulder at the mailbox to avoid her stare.

“And why do you need a home?”

“Well, let me rephrase that,” Uncle Bishop said, and adjusted the crotch of a pair of baby-blue shorts that were covered with small pink teddy bears. “Let's just say I need a home away from Mrs. Abernathy's home.”

“Uncle Bishop, I told you to leave that old woman alone.” Rosemary was not pleased with him, and he knew it.

“She's having me arrested,” he said. “Or so she claims.”

“What for?” Rosemary had been wrong when she thought nothing Uncle Bishop said anymore could surprise her.

“For trespassing and mental cruelty,” he said. He peered at her thoughtfully. “Doesn't one have to be married before one can be sued for mental cruelty? I need to talk to Philip about that.”

“What did you do to her, Uncle Bishop?” Rosemary could not remember being so angry at him.

“I put something in her yard,” he said boyishly, his eyes staring at his brown sandals with the red toes painted on their tips.

“What was it?” She pronounced each word evenly so that he would not miss her displeasure. It was her schoolteacher's voice.

“Well, I put it on the top of her hedge, to be exact,” he said. “Overlooking her tray feeders.”

Rosemary waited. Uncle Bishop sighed a large sigh befitting the body that bore it, and then he knelt on one knee to turn the brown suitcase over on its side. He zippered it open.

“This,” he said, holding up a large stuffed bird, which she immediately recognized as a great horned owl, its ear tufts reaching heavenward, its blank eyes peering out of its flattened face.

“Where did you get that thing?” Rosemary asked. It would frighten the daylights out of Mrs. Abernathy. What was it she had said in her column, just that Sunday, about such birds?
Even
God
makes
mistakes, Dear Birders, and the bird of prey is a fine example of this.

“At the flea market,” Uncle Bishop said. “It was a toss-up between this and a stuffed lynx. But the lynx cost too much.” He put the huge bird in Rosemary's outstretched arms.
Pterodactyl.
Imagining it perched on Mrs. Abernathy's hedge, she tried not to think of what commotion it caused inside the old woman's heart. What was it Mr. Abernathy himself had said? “The old ticker has only so many beats in it and then kaput.”

“It was only twenty-five dollars,” Uncle Bishop continued. “That's because it's got just one leg. See?” Rosemary tipped the magnificent bird on its side. It was true. The poor creature was, indeed, one-legged. A gaping hole remained where there had once been a leg, a hooked claw, a feathered foot. Some human being had paid a taxidermist good money, one fine day, to have this animal mounted. Someone who couldn't exist without a
stuffed
owl.

“I ran over and took it down after she phoned to say that the cops had been alerted,” Uncle Bishop said. “Most cops don't have a sense of humor.” He was having a good time remembering. Rosemary stared at the bird's splendidly hooked bill and thought about the flight of those glorious creatures, noiseless, swooping down upon their dinner with just a slight swoosh of wind.

“Can you imagine the scare it gave the old bat?” Uncle Bishop wanted to know, and Rosemary was reminded of another of Mrs. Abernathy's columns that spring.
For
the
more
discerning
birder,
it had cautioned,
bats
are
the
only
mammal
capable
of
true
flight. But the bat is not a bird, I repeat, it is not! Bats carry all kinds of diseases.

“She's not an old bat,” Rosemary said.

“The lynx wouldn't have worked anyway,” Uncle Bishop went on. “It looked too much like Ralphie.”

“She's a fragile old woman.”

“She'll think twice before she puts another bell on
my
cat.” He thumped the owl's rump. Its yellow eyes stared, unblinking, maybe remembering the forests around Hudson Bay where it made its nest in January and laid eggs while the ground was still blanketed with snow. Or perhaps the slap of summer waters around Tierra del Fuego, before it sat on a shelf in someone's den, next to the gun rack, next to a copy of
TV
Guide.

“You disappoint me,” Rosemary said softly. “Miriam is one thing, but Mrs. Abernathy is another.” She put the dead owl back in his hands. Was she imagining it, or could she smell the thick, noxious odor of rotting flesh?

“Oh, Rosie, come on.” Uncle Bishop was chagrined. “This'll keep the blood pumping in her veins, keep them from clogging up.”

“If you go near her again, Uncle Bishop, so help me,” Rosemary threatened, “I'll turn you in myself.”

“She's not why I've come,” he said. “I'm not afraid of her threats. I have Exhibit A right here.” He bobbed the owl at her and then knelt to rebury it beneath the clothing in his suitcase.

“Why
are
you here?”

“I'm going crazy alone,” he said unhappily, and so Rosemary reluctantly stepped back to let him drag the brown suitcase past her.

***

She spent the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom next to her own, the one that Mother had been occupying for the week. Now Mother's visit was almost over. Aunt Rachel would arrive later in the day to retrieve her, and the room would go to Uncle Bishop. “For a couple of days,” or so he said. The brown suitcase sat happily in the corner, waiting to be unpacked. Rosemary had come up to the room to spend Mother's last afternoon with her. She found her seated in a chair by the window, with a coloring book. Years earlier, Mother had enjoyed coloring with her children, patiently encouraging Rosemary and Robbie to stay within the dark lines. Now here Mother was, outside the lines society had laid down, outside all the proper rules. But she had taken to her hobby with gusto and was already on her third picture, one of children in galoshes stomping about in mud puddles, beneath April showers, beneath mushroomlike umbrellas, which Mother chose to color green and orange. It was a relief to watch this activity in lieu of reading about the vicissitudes of Hester Prynne and the increasingly unlikable Arthur Dimmesdale. Rosemary had long ago decided that the Puritans were all a miserable lot. “Keep in mind,” she had told her students, “that the Puritans were not hanging witches. They were hanging other Puritans.” Did any of her past students, she wondered now, ever keep that in mind? Did they keep
anything
in mind that she had taught them?

As Mother began a new picture, Rosemary heard car doors slam and engines come to life. She peered out the window over Mother's head to see Lizzie roar off, with Charles and Philip following behind in Philip's little blue Mercedes.

Charles and Philip in union against Lizzie. Charles riding in a non–General Motors car. What would this bizarre threesome do next? Better yet, when would they do it in their own homes? Philip had been in residence for over a week. Charles had been in Bixley for four days. Lizzie had been in Rosemary's spare bedroom for almost three weeks.

“If something isn't done soon,” Rosemary promised herself, “I'm taking action.”

At three o'clock Mother abandoned her coloring book and crayons, rubbed her eyes, and fell asleep on the bed. Rosemary carefully inched an arm in under the yellow head, pulled her in close, cradled her, as though she were a child. She'd been aching to hold Mother for years, but only asleep would Mother allow such a display of emotions with this stranger. The next two hours, which passed slowly, were the best between mother and daughter that Rosemary could remember since childhood. Those were the days, long summery afternoons, when she fell asleep to the melodic lilt of Mother's voice as she read some storybook story. In those days, days yellow from the sun, she would drift off in the heart of the story and Mother would leave her alone for her nap. When she woke, there would be questions: What happened to the prince? Did they ever find the glass slipper? Did the Wicked Witch get Dorothy? And with the questions there would be a homemade buttermilk doughnut sitting next to a tall glass of milk and the reddest, most delicious apple, all waiting on her headboard like the participants in a still life. And there would be a perfumy smell where Mother had been, where she had come and gone, Mother, whose breasts back then were still firm and accommodating to a little girl's head. Whose silk blouse rustled like autumn leaves, and who wore fake pearl hair combs in her lustrous hair. She was all smell and touch, this Mother of the happy answer: the prince is no longer a frog, Cinderella is dancing in her glass slippers, and Dorothy is safe and sound back in Kansas.

“Where are your perfect answers for me now?” Rosemary wondered, as she held Mother's body in her arms. “When I come full awake in the heart of the night, where are the answers?” But she knew there would be no one there to offer her endings. No one to say, “William is alive and well. He's painting in Kansas these days.” Rosemary held her mother, who was tired from coloring, tired as a child from the long day, and watched as the small mouth opened and closed, bringing Mother air as she slept, bringing her the dream of life. “Oh, Mom,” Rosemary wished she could say, as she had struggled to say William's name in the last dream. She shooed a mosquito away, a buzzing little ultralight. The truth was that their relationship had turned rotten when Father died. He was their focal point. He was what they had in common. They had dearly loved the same man and, in dying, he had jilted them, as though they were foolish girlfriends. Now Mother was waiting for chocolates, for the candy of apology, for some long-overdue sweetness in her life. And Rosemary was watching the sky like a religious zealot, hoping for a crack, a fissure, so that the men who had disappeared would have a crawl space back into her life.

***

She stayed with Mother until five o'clock, until she heard Aunt Rachel's little Volvo rattle up into the yard. Aunt Rachel had the eyes of the dead, round and listless, uninterested in life's schemes. She seemed to gather new strength in seeing Mother again and caught her up in a swift hug. Mother was ecstatic. She had finally been rescued from the House of Crazies by her trusted guardian and protector. She held on to Aunt Rachel's hand as Rosemary packed the xylophone, the books, and Betsy Kathleen into the tired Volvo. Uncle Bishop would drive the rocking chair home.