Rosie’s house is on Meade Mountain Road. Actually it’s a carriage house, part of a much bigger property. The landlord lives in the big house and rents out what was once the place where servants lived.
It’s not big, just cozy and right for two people, a cat, and a dog. Mindy and Rosie furnished most of the house with things from yard, house, garage, and estate sales. In New York City the stuff would probably be called antiques. Here it’s called stuff.
I walk into the house, through the front porch. Mindy’s got her typewriter and paper on the table. It’s a mess, what she calls “creative disorder.”
Rosie’s at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. “Be with you in a minute.”
I stoop down to pet Salamander, the dog.
He licks my face.
If only my father weren’t allergic to animals.
Salamander’s rolling over, wanting to be scratched.
As I scratch his stomach I feel something patting at my face.
It’s Fig Newton, the cat. He’s after my feather barrette.
I don’t know what to do. If I move fast, he may decide to pounce. If I don’t move, he may decide to pounce. What if he claws my hair or face?
“Rosie,” I say, softly.
Rosie turns to me, sizes up the situation, and puts down the plate she is drying.
As she approaches, Fig Newton continues to bat the feather around.
His paw is getting closer and closer to my face.
Rosie comes up behind him, scoops him up, and puts him outside.
“Thanks.” I take a deep breath. “For a minute I thought I was a dead duck.”
“That’ll teach you to wear feathers with Fig Newton around. He probably thought you were a bird.”
“That would have been fowl,” I say.
“That pun is definitely a down.” Rosie throws a dish towel at me. “DUCK.”
Mindy walks in. “Rosie, I’ve got to get to work . . . . Oh, hi, Phoebe. Listen, would you kids be careful and not touch my stuff on the table? I’m in the middle of a chapter and don’t have time to clean up.”
“We can eat lunch on the porch,” Rosie says.
“Or go on a picnic,” I suggest.
“A great idea.” Mindy grabs her coat. “I’d rather do that than have to wait on people . . . but duty calls. See you tonight.”
As she rushes out of the house Rosie says, “Sometimes I think I’m the grown-up in this house. Look at the mess she left.”
My mother would have a fit if I did something like that, left everything lying around. It’s a good thing she’s not Mindy’s mother, although I don’t think she could be, since they’re about the same age.
Rosie says, “The picnic sounds like fun. The meeting’s not until two o’clock. Why don’t we pack up some food and go walking by the stream?”
We make up some sandwiches and start the walk into town.
It’s a beautiful Indian summer day. The trees are still colorful. The air is so clean, not at all like city air.
We walk down Meade Mountain Road, onto Rock City Road.
There are no sidewalks, so we’ve got to be careful of the passing cars.
Neither of us says much as we walk. Friends can be quiet together.
At Andy Lee Field there’s a baseball game going on.
Past the cemetery. Someday I want to go in there and look at all the old tombstones, but it makes me a little nervous to think about dying.
Finally we end up right in the center of town.
Stopping to get a drink of water from the fountain at the Village Green, I look at all of the people who are shopping, hanging out, eating ice-cream cones.
“Let’s go into Tinker Street Toys,” I say, “and play.”
We walk over to the store and go inside.
There’s a table set up in the middle of the store with all sorts of windup toys.
Rosie and I have a race with two pairs of walking feet.
Her feet win.
My feet get all tangled up with a walking coffepot that some little kid was playing with.
I decide to buy a bottle of bubble liquid.
As we leave the store I start to blow bubbles.
It looks great, all of the bubbles streaming down Tinker Street as if they are in a parade.
People are smiling at them.
Rosie and I walk over to Millstream Road and start walking on the edge of the stream.
Finally we stop and sit down on a dry rock. It’s so still that I can hear the wind and the water moving.
After a few minutes Rosie breaks the silence. “My father called this morning and told my mother that the child support check was going to be late again this month. Mindy was really angry.”
“What did she say?” I pick up a pebble and throw it in the stream.
“Most of what she said was profanity. She was really steamed up. He’s such a creep sometimes. He just bought a whole bunch of electronic equipment. I don’t see why he couldn’t send the money. Sometimes I think he does it just to get her mad. You’re so lucky that your parents don’t do stuff like that.”
I remember that when everything got split up, there was fighting. Maybe it’s good there is no child support money to worry about. I’d feel responsible, even though I’d know it wasn’t my fault.
Rosie opens her lunch. “It makes me feel cruddy, like he doesn’t care about me. He spends all the money on his wife’s two kids . . . . Sometimes he doesn’t send the money, but he’ll buy me a big present. Then it makes me feel disloyal to Mindy because I don’t want to tell her about it.”
“Do you need some money? My father’s going to give me my allowance tomorrow. It’s not much, but I’ll share it.”
“Thanks, pal.” She reaches over and pats me on the head and then pulls at my feather barrette. “No. We’re doing okay. Mindy’s getting lots of tourist tips and I’m baby-sitting, so it’s okay. It’s not the money as much as it is the hurt. I don’t know why my own father should act that way.”
I tell her about how I feel, knowing that my mother’s spending the weekend with Duane the Drip. How he always talks down to me as if I’m three years old and how he always acts as if he’s so wonderful because he’s so rich. I also let her know how uncomfortable I feel about their sleeping together.
“I know,” Rosie says. “A couple of years ago this guy Ben moved in with us. That took a lot of getting used to.”
“What happened?” I start eating my lunch.
“It just didn’t work out. I was sorry when he left. I got used to the three of us being a family, and then he was gone. While he lived in Woodstock, I still saw him but then he moved away. He’s in Florida now. I just got a letter from him. He’s married and they just had a kid.”
“Did he and Mindy fight a lot?” I think of my parents during their bad time.
“No. He wanted to marry Mindy. She wanted to leave things the way they were. So he left.”
“Why didn’t Mindy marry him? Doesn’t she want to get married again?” I put a grape in my mouth.
“She’s not sure . . . said it would have to be someone really special, that the first marriage was such a disaster that she was afraid of her own judgment. My father felt that way too. He waited a long time to get remarried.” Rosie shakes her head.
“Do you ever want to get married?” I bite into my sandwich.
Rosie shrugs. “Who knows? I’m having enough trouble finding a boyfriend.”
I look at two people who are walking in the middle of the stream with their pants legs rolled up. They are carrying their shoes and holding hands.
“You shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone. Look at all the guys who are your friends.”
She says, “Yeah, but none of them want to start dating yet. Why do girls have to grow up faster than boys? The guys who date want to go further than I do. Oh, well . . . I guess I’ll just have to wait. Until someone comes along, I’ll just baby-sit a lot so that it isn’t a total loss.”
We look at the water. There are lots of leaves in it, going downstream.
Rosie says, “So what about you?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like Dave, a lot. I like him much more than I liked Andy.” I blush. It’s not easy to talk about something that I’m not sure is going to work out.
“He’s nice, isn’t he.” Rosie pulls out an apple and bites down on it. “I think he likes you too.”
I think for a minute. “I guess I want him to like me and be my boyfriend. But that’s just for now. I don’t know about later. If I’ll ever get married or anything . . . Marriage just doesn’t seem to work out for anybody.”
“I know some that work,” Rosie says. “Dave’s parents are still together, and I think they’re happy.”
“But a lot don’t. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Why don’t we go to the same college and be roommates and then when we graduate, we can get an apartment in New York and have careers?” Rosie says. “And if we ever do get married and have kids, we can be bridesmaids for each other and aunts to the kids.”
“If I could choose a sister, it would be you.” I close my lunch bag. “Somehow I never thought you’d be so traditional about weddings and stuff.”
She picks up my bubble stuff and starts to play with it. “Maybe because Mindy is so untraditional. Don’t kids have to do stuff to rebel against their parents? Maybe the only way I can go against her is to be real straight.”
I laugh. “You can get all dressed up each day in three-piece suits and be real conservative.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I’ve never really been part of a whole happy family or even an unhappy family. My parents split up when I was a baby. I’d like to have a good family.”
“I promise to be your bridesmaid and baby-sit for your kids if that does happen.”
“Okay, now let’s figure out what our apartment’s going to look like,” she says.
We sit by the stream and make plans for what our lives are going to be like when we’re on our own. Rosie’s much more sure of what it’s going to be like. She’s obviously thought about it a lot. I haven’t. I think much more about the present. She thinks more about the future.
The only future I’m really thinking about right now is whether or not I’m going to see Dave at the meeting.