“And Bobby?”
“Bobby’s against it. But he’ll come around.”
“Maybe not.”
I shrugged. “Maybe not. And Pierce and I will always be there. At least for now.”
She looked down at her hands, passing the kleenex back and forth like a juggler. “It’s hard for me to be with Pierce. I have bad memories of…that time.”
“He’s a good person,” I said. “He’s the best of us.”
She snorted. “He’s not one of us.”
“He is,” I said. “He’s got different problems is all.”
Her eyes met mine. They were as deep and alien as bullet holes. I got the impression she wanted to say something, but she never opened her mouth, just stared at me until I had to turn away.
“Get over it, Rose,” I said, suddenly angry.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her shaking her head. “You never trusted him, Tim. And then had your trust betrayed. By the time you came along, he’d already ruined everything.”
“Pierce?” I said, stupidly.
“Daddy,” she said. “Pierce was a drop in the bucket.”
I was beginning to tire of this. “I can’t understand why you dislike Pierce so much,” I said. “It isn’t his fault he’s the way he is. Frankly, Rose, there’s a lot more of Dad in you than in Pierce.”
“You can say that again.” She laughed, a sound like a dish breaking.
Rose had always prided herself on being cryptic and secretive, claiming obscure insight into the family dramas that we could never possibly understand. As a teenager she kept a journal in code, and was so confident it couldn’t be cracked that she left the spiral notebook it was recorded in lying haphazardly around the house. She was right too: the hodgepodge of numbers and letters and mysterious symbols eluded Bobby and me, the only people who cared, and a thorough ransacking of her bedroom turned up no Rosetta stone. But there was a part of me that didn’t want the code cracked. I wanted to buy her schtick, to take comfort in the thought that someone, at least, knew what was going on.
Now, of course, it was obvious she’d been every bit as addled as I was. I wondered if there really was a key to those journals, if perhaps they’d been as mysterious to her as to us: maybe writing in the journals was an elaborate kind of playacting, and at night in bed she scrutinized the meaningless signs with a flashlight, as if they held the solution to her misery. In that case, her game was meant to protect us, to take the pain of living in that house onto herself, and I had misjudged her.
I stared at her and she, with her long face turned into the sun, must have felt me staring. How many layers of pretense and subterfuge was she made of? Was there a pure, unadulterated Rose underneath, or had she become the things she pretended to be? She was older than me by more than just the years between us.
As if she had read my thoughts, she said, “You’re still just a kid.” And that seemed about right, until she turned to me and revealed the face she’d assembled to go along with the statement: a contemptuous smirk, her eyebrows arched in naked moral superiority, and the tiniest ghost of doubt concealed underneath, like a thief silhouetted behind a billowing curtain. She was trying to chase me out.
It was hard to resist. I got up, setting my juice glass on the floor at my feet. “Funny how I’m the one taking the adult responsibilities around here,” I said, and started to leave.
“Wait,” she said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. I was nearly to the door by then. The room grew tense, as if polarized by our talk, and in the silence the air seemed to glow with its energy. “I’ll help. I’ll help take care of her.”
I looked back: her body was shut tight, knees and hands together, turned toward the windows. I saw the bagel bag lying neglected on the table and I wanted another.
“You mean it?” I asked.
She nodded. “We can work out the details later.”
I considered going to her, but I knew she didn’t want me to, and to be honest, I didn’t want to either. I said, more quietly than I had intended, “Thank you, Rose,” and walked out.
* * *
I didn’t feel like sorting out the mess the conversation was already becoming in my head, and so I tried to put my plan back on track: I walked with the intention of stopping myself every twenty blocks for one thing or another, an art gallery, a cup of coffee, lunch. The idea was to clear my head to make room for the work I’d have to start doing when I got home. Instead, every step seemed to shake loose another anxiety: the cartoon, Mom, money, my future. The coffee I bought tasted stale, and the art I looked at in the usual galleries seemed too aggressive, too eager to please, or offend, or prove something. I avoided inventing a destination, but all the same I wasn’t surprised when I found myself in SoHo, nosing around the galleries near Delicious Duck, hurrying past work that deserved perhaps a second look, to get myself back on the street. I studied passersby, letting them take on her shape for the smallest fraction of a second, letting my blood run thick and sludgy with longing. I made no mistake about the longing: it was for a sympathetic ear, for a sounding board. But of course there was more to it than that, and for that undefined more I kept myself from rushing to her building and ringing her from the desk.
As it turned out I didn’t have to. I watched her walk into the restaurant from a block away. Once she was inside, I made a run for it, hoping to make it before she ordered, in the event that we might do it together. I found her huddled in the cavernous dim of the place, her sunglasses absently left on, buried in an ornate, finger-softened cardboard menu. She seemed to have trouble reading it.
I thought I could sneak up on her, reach over the menu and pluck the glasses off. I pictured her astonished, laughing face as she looked up and saw that it was me. Instead, she turned her head and my hand brushed her ear, and she jumped back as if I had zapped her with an electric prod.
“You!”
“Hi.”
She sighed, shaking her head at the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to surprise you. By taking off your glasses.”
“Glasses?” She brought her hand to her face and removed them. “Ah. Yes.” She let me have a thin smile, and said, “Dare I ask what brings you here?”
“Scrumptious Chinese takeout.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
We ordered food and it was brought to us. “No napkins, no fork, no chopsticks,” she told the clerk. We carried out our bags, and since she hadn’t told me to go elsewhere, I walked alongside her. We didn’t talk. She squinted, having forgotten to put the sunglasses back on. I followed her into her building, a scabby brownstone with a cat on the stoop, and up the steps. She held the door for me.
Her place was what I’d expected. Largely tidy, the furniture covered with pieces of damp clean laundry. Some movie posters and an old formica dinner table, where we sat and opened our bags.
“You got my letter?” I said.
She held up a hand. “Tim. Lunch first.”
We took chopsticks from the china mug at the center of the table. I watched her eat. She watched her plate, occasionally fixing me with a wary, slightly hostile glance. But I could tell she pitied me a little — her face, exerting itself in the act of eating, betrayed a crude, practical sort of mercy — and I let myself hope.
I finished first. When she was done, she reached out, took my hand, and pulled me to the couch, where she placed us at opposite ends (I was reminded of my talk with Rose). She said, “I do not want to be the girl you’re hanging around with while you’re sorting out your various issues.”
This took a moment to sink in. “Which is to say forget it?” It sounded true as I said it, and my heart listed.