They were having a wonderful time, a time out of time, she and Meggy, her sprite, her mystery girl. Rose had to continue meeting classes, and so persuaded Max’s daycare to take Meggy on a temporary basis. Rose was delighted to pay for that and for other things. She took pleasure in fulfilling Meggy’s obvious need for a change or two of clothes and a nightgown.
And there was also the jacket. When she’d gone to get Meggy’s clothes from the dryer that first night, she’d had a bad moment. Looking at the jacket closely, she saw just what was familiar about it: the patches were squares of fabric from her own clothes, good blouses and dresses she’d mailed to Natalie, care of Guy Robbin, General Delivery, at the Texas town on the Mexican border from which Guy’s postcards had come. Apparently, the clothes had got through to Natalie, but why she’d cut them up and patched the pieces together so shoddily, Rose couldn’t imagine. When she lifted the thing—jacket or wrap or whatever it was— from the dryer, the zigzag stitches came apart and the batting shredded. In a single washing, it was ruined.
Not ruined, Alan told her—never say ruined. His pal in the theater costume shop mended the patchwork, then added ripstop nylon beneath and gussets to expand the size, a fleece collar, a hood, big pockets, and a zipper whose bright brass tongue zipped to Meggy’s chin. Walking along the street with her niece, Rose saw her own history skipping ahead: plaid gabardine, freshman year of college; scarlet corduroy, antiwar marches; black crepe, that first little black dress Frances had chosen for her. The sight made Rose absurdly happy, as if bits of the past had come to life again and started off on their own toward new conclusions.
Rose had taken up running the previous spring, three miles each morning, an exhilarating if lonely endeavor. The route she took was down the big avenue to the cathedral and back, and, as she ran, she studied mansions and gardens. She’d come far in her career—how far might she go? Ridiculous thought. What would she want with a house with fifteen rooms?
She sometimes wished Alan was running with her, but he’d given it up in favor of weight training at the YMCA, which was one of the settings for his other life, so she didn’t attempt to follow him there. When the weather turned chill, she kept on running. A cold January morning might sting; but after ten minutes at an even pace, she would warm up, and the repeat motion gave rise to a steady thrill, a sense of herself as unstoppable.
Sometimes she’d wake in the middle of the night to her own heartbeat, which seemed overly loud in the dark. Running after such a night made her feel that she was catching up with herself, calming her heart with a burst of legs and arms, like persuading a car engine to a lower idle by pumping the accelerator. She’d never been so healthy. Periodically, she took herself to her doctor to hear once again that she was fine. He made her listen to a recording of the heartbeat of a healthy, adult woman and then, through his stethoscope, to her own heart. Then he’d ask if she was having enough fun.
She thought so. She was thriving—a steady income, commissions, future seasons taking shape. She’d struck a vein, and grant was followed by fellowship as the powers that were—foundations, orchestras, arts boards, endowments—hurried to endorse one another’s judgment. Not that merit had no bearing. She was good, but she was also in fashion, a woman composer. And while she was hot, she was making the most of it. She was now recognized on the street in St. Paul, if that was a sign of thriving, and invited inside the mansions to sit on the down-filled furniture and partake of food prepared by private chefs under multi-prismed light, herself an ornament, our composer. Neighbors, former students, and even vague acquaintances looked for an excuse to chat with her, asking in hushed tones about the latest concert, the upcoming premiere. She’d been interviewed and photographed often enough that complete strangers sometimes greeted her by name, and if that unnerved her, she recognized it as success. She’d wanted the world, and she guessed she had it.
Lila had recorded three of her pieces and, in lieu of a royalty, had built Rose a studio, a quiet place of her own at the Goat Pasture. A white hut with a steeply pitched roof on a knoll overlooking the river, it had a futon that rolled up into a cabinet, and its own tiny kitchen with a wood stove. Rose had country and city and music and people, even children—Max and now Meggy, who was hers so all-of-a-sudden, not just for an after-noon, but hour after hour.
Putting Meggy to bed beside her, Rose found her own heartbeat hardly worth notice. She’d smooth a lock of the little girl’s hair or adjust the comforter to cover a small foot. From time to time she tried to get Guy by phone, but was pleased enough to find him never at home.
The front door was once again secure. She’d leaned on Alan to dis-tribute new keys and gotten him to make an extra set for Meggy, a key for the front and a key for her apartment, so Meggy would always have them, strung on a ribbon with a cardboard tag labeled “Aunt Rose.”
Meggy didn’t care much about keys, but she reveled in her new clothes. She arranged and rearranged the dresser drawer that Rose cleared for her. In her new nightgown, blue with white stars, she danced dizzying spins.
She was not a sprite from fairyland, however, but a little girl who’d been dropped among people she didn’t know, a child unused to such attentions. Sometimes she became overexcited. Sometimes she seemed to hold it against Max that he had a rocking horse, an electric train, and a set of a hundred building blocks, all colors, with a canvas tote to carry them wherever he might wish to build. Left alone with Max, Meggy clocked him on the head with the largest block in the set and then pronounced him spoiled when he let out a roar and Rose and Frances came running.
It was agreed that all Meggy needed was a little more spoiling herself. But then, several days into the visit, Meggy woke, sat straight up, and asked Rose to buy her a mini-bike. For a blind half-second, Rose could see it: Meggy on a miniature Harley—did they make such things?—with a helmet, of course, and a flying scarf. Still, actually buy a motorbike? They couldn’t do something so dangerous without asking Natalie.
“What if we can’t find her?” said Meggy.
Rose wasn’t ready to consider that. “Oh, she’ll find us. We’ll just wait until she does.”
“My mama would say yes,” suggested Meggy with Natalie’s side-long grin.
With reluctance, Rose brought herself to say no, that six was too little for a motorbike. Meggy’s face fell. She pulled the covers over her head and would not come to breakfast.
Rose was struck with wonder at the depth of Meggy’s wanting, the powerful certainty that a motorbike was the essential thing, the only thing that would satisfy her. She recalled herself at Meggy’s age and her ever-changing visions of things to have. She remembered, too, how she’d strived to be good. It was a revelation that Meggy could tell fibs, could be greedy or messy or too rough, and none of it seemed very wrong. Why being good had been so important, Rose couldn’t say. And it pained her not to get Meggy what she wanted, whatever it was, just because she wanted it.
Still, Rose was finding it somewhat tiring to attend day after day to the wants of another creature, however small and darling. Her life was, to an extent, on hold. A fatigue was building in her that early morning runs did not dispel. It occurred to her that she might not merely be running, but running from something. She always came back, though, to Meggy safe in bed behind locked doors, ready with her shy good-morning.
As the visit lengthened to five, then six days, Rose noticed, in addition to fatigue, trouble coping with Meggy in the afternoons and evenings, once she’d picked Max and Meggy up from daycare. She wanted to do better than dumping the two little combatants in front of the TV. A Parcheesi tournament led to flung dice and upturned boards. They went to the zoo, which, in March, was smelly, stuffy, and mud-tracked.
There was always shopping. Meggy was avid for shopping, and Rose kept meaning to curtail it, but a pink corduroy Easter dress with a ruffle at the neck and bird-shaped buttons seemed, once glimpsed, a necessity. Easter loomed at the end of the week. Meggy should have a basket and candy eggs and a chocolate rabbit. Rose was thrilled and exhausted and growing seri-ously uneasy about this extended game of theirs, hers and Meggy’s. Was she the loving aunt, or some outlaw harboring a tiny fugitive? Had the little girl run away? Should Rose be calling the police?
Saturday, the day before Easter, seven days into the visit, Rose drooped in her big chair while Meggy and Max sat hypnotized in front of cartoons. Out in the street, a motor sputtered and died. A crow cawed in the mulberries, and then a commotion began out on the stairs, and there came a pounding on her door. The children continued to sit perfectly still and looked up only with reluctance when Rose opened the door to Guy, in a fury, who ran to Meggy and clutched her to his chest. Directly after him came Natalie, who rushed to Meggy and grabbed her hand.
“Give her to me,” said Natalie. “Give me my baby.”
“Until five, she’s mine,” he growled.
“That’s only twenty more minutes,” said Natalie.
“Would somebody like to explain this, Rose?” Guy said between clenched teeth.
Alan and Frances craned in from the hall. Frances beckoned to Max to run to her. “I hope it’s okay that we let them in,” said Alan.
Guy turned to Rose. “Am I welcome here?”
“Of course,” she said, and waved Alan and Frances off.
She told Guy to sit down and pulled out a chair for Natalie. Meggy sat in Guy’s lap, winding her arms through his. Natalie looked older: her face was puffy and lines had appeared, etched deep into layers of Mexican tan. Guy looked simply like himself.
During the week Meggy had spent with Rose, he’d been the one who’d called the police to report his former girlfriend and her daughter missing, the daughter with whom he had visitation rights that week.
“He took me to court,” said Natalie. “Can you imagine?”
“After you threw me out and told me I’d never see Meggy again.” He turned to Rose. “What—haven’t you heard?”
“Not a thing. Nobody’s told me anything.”
“I thought you were on her side,” he said. “She told me you were on her side.”
“I haven’t spoken to Natalie in, let’s see, six years. Nobody’s called me,” said Rose. “I thought you all were in Mexico.”
Not at all. Once Meggy was old enough for school, Guy had insisted they move back up to the States, to Minnesota; but there, things had fallen apart. He and Natalie had never married, though he’d certainly call this a divorce. He had an apartment and Natalie a room in a boarding house. Keeping the lights off, she’d faked a disappearance for most of the week; but when, that day, she’d gone out for groceries, he’d stepped out of his truck to meet her.
“You want to know where I was?” said Natalie. “With a friend you know nothing about.”
“Oh, I doubt it. You were hunkered down in that room all week with the lights out.”
“He is disrespectful,” said Natalie, ticking off her complaints on her fingers, “he is controlling, he is disloyal.” She looked, Rose thought, extremely frightened.
“Yeah, and four more pages of that on her legal pad. I also have rights.”
The judge had not cared to read Natalie’s legal pad. A court-ordered psychologist had offered the opinion that Meggy had bonded to Guy as her father, and, as certain hair-raising items had come to light about Natalie’s mothering, the result had been visitation rights for Guy.
“Not that rights mean anything,” he said.
“That’s the system for you,” said Natalie. “Men handing out rights to each other.”
“We were together six years.”
“Five and three quarters.”
“As man and wife.”
“Man and wife. That’s the system for you.”
“Sharing the same bed.”
“Guy,” said Rose and cocked her head toward Meggy.
“It’s okay,” said Natalie, stretching an arm across the table toward her daughter. “We don’t keep secrets, do we, Marguerite?”
“Meggy,” said the girl and stared blankly, her eyes like bright, receding stars. She began chewing her fingertips, like working her way along an ear of corn.
“She knows all about it. She knows how he is. Don’t you, baby girl?”
“Jesus,” said Guy.
“Watch your language,” said Natalie.
Meggy plugged her mouth with her thumb.
“My language?” said Guy.
The friend Natalie had been “visiting” that week, the one about whom Guy knew nothing, was Jesus Christ. Natalie caressed the syllables— Jesus Christ.
“What happened to Quetzalcoatl, God of all the Aztecs?” Guy demanded.
Natalie had never before been religious, and it struck Rose that her sister’s tone smacked of their father, who would certainly accept collect calls if the subject was Jesus.
“We’ve eaten the Aztec diet,” said Guy. “And we’ve gone through a round of peeing and crapping from a squat on the toilet seat, in imitation of the ancient peoples.”
Rose laughed in spite of herself and then swallowed, catching Meggy’s gaze. Meggy regarded her as across a great distance and sighed.
“Five minutes more,” said Natalie.
Guy staggered up, and Meggy slid off his lap. Quickly, he gathered the girl back to him, sat again, and tugged her thumb from her mouth, which released with a wet, popping sound.
“I’ve been in church,” said Natalie and folded her hands. “I’ve been in the church, day and night, praying I would see my daughter again.”
“What are you talking about?” said Guy. “You never left your apartment till now.”
“The church of my own heart.”
“That’s strange,” said Rose, who was in sudden danger of slapping Natalie. It had dawned on her what had transpired the past week and why. “Isn’t that strange,” said Rose, thinly, “when you knew where your daughter was all the time; when you could have come to see her at any moment?” Then she could have kicked herself, glancing at Meggy, who gazed at the ceiling, rapidly sucking her thumb again.
Rose calmed herself and lowered her voice. “Meggy, why don’t you run upstairs to Frances and Maxie?”
The girl shook her head.
“All right,” said Rose. What could she do but forge on? “Let me see if I’ve got this. You brought her here, didn’t you, Natalie? Dropped her off without a word. A very nice surprise for me, Meggy,” she told the little girl, “though I had to wonder: what was the plan? ‘Guy’s sposed to get me’ is all you can tell me, Meggy. But,” Rose gently concluded, “it turns out Guy can’t come and get you, Meggy, because he has no idea where you are.”
“Know what, Guy?” Natalie got lightly to her feet. “Meggy had your phone number. She could have called you if she wanted. Think about that. And now, time’s up.”
Natalie beckoned to Meggy.
“Wait a minute,” said Rose and reached for the girl as Meggy headed toward her mother. For a fraction of a second, Meggy hesitated.
“We’ll follow the law,” barked Natalie, “since he brought the law into it.” She hoisted her daughter and plunged out, Guy following, into the raw spring night.
Rapidly, Rose emptied the dresser drawer into Meggy’s knapsack and stuffed in the patchwork jacket and the Easter dress, tucked around the Easter basket which held the candy and Meggy’s set of keys. On the street, she shoved the things at Natalie, gave Meggy a hard hug, and then made herself go back inside. From her porch, she looked down to where Natalie and Guy stood shouting and Meggy hung against her mother, her thumb still planted in her mouth. She gazed at the little girl and closed her eyes, memorizing her. There was no predicting when she would see her again. Rose kept her eyes shut until the shouting faded and motors started up. Then they were gone and quiet enveloped her. She felt her heart start to clang.
A half hour later, Guy was back at her door. Uncertainly she let him in. He set down a six-pack of Dos Equis. “This is not my proudest hour.” He pulled his hat off and swiped at his eyes. “Fuck. Why didn’t I think to call you?”
“It’s okay,” she said, but it wasn’t. She was so tired she could barely move, and part of her was jerking down a street somewhere, flung into a rattletrap car with Natalie driving. He took off his coat, and she let him rummage around and cook them something, half-listening to his rueful tales of their life in Mexico, the crazy jobs he’d taken: oil rigger, shrimper, pottery salesman. Rose was not much of a drinker, but before she knew it, she’d killed two beers.
They’d lived on the edge of the jungle in a thatched house. Natalie had tried to turn them into, first, Aztecs and then, when she found out about the blood sacrifices, Mayans. She’d had them sleeping in hammocks, grinding corn, chewing chicle sap. The locals found it comical, and Guy had seen their point. That’s how he’d been disloyal.
Rose started to laugh, not because this was funny or funnier than any other remark of the evening, but because a wave of involuntary laughter was overtaking her, rising from her noisy heart. Guy stopped trying to talk to her and, as he cooked, sang a Mexican song, all vibrato, as she laughed herself silly.
“This is good,” she said, taking a bite of his huevos rancheros and laughing. “So, Guy, whatever happened to the ol’ stone house?”
“It’s still sitting there, half-built, in the wind and rain.”
“In the wind and rain,” she cackled.
“Well, but that can’t hurt it. The stones won’t crumble, at least not in our lifetime.”
“No,” she said, and smacked her bottle down on the tabletop.
It was her third—she’d be sorry in the morning. That, too, was funny.
“So. I’ll be starting on building it again.”
“Okay. Do that. You do that. Put in windows and give it the roof with the grass growing in it and everything. I mean it. I’m not laughing at you.”
She switched on the lamp above the table and his hair shone, now more silver than dark, his only sign of aging. He stretched a long leg and rested it on the table. She recognized the jut of his hipbone beneath the thin, threadbare denim. So he and Natalie were done. Rose had stopped laughing, but that didn’t mean she had to behave. Coolly, she considered him. Her nights alone stretched back for months uninterrupted—except for the nights with Meggy.
“Rose.” His eyes were deep and lively and then sad. “Really, I’ve been sorry about what happened for a long, long time.”
“Want to hear something insane?” she broke in. “I wish Meggy was mine. I really do.” How contented she’d been, sleeping beside Meggy, and how soundly she’d slept.
Unexpectedly, her eyes filled. He reached to touch her cheek, which came alive in the warmth of his hand. He knelt and wrapped his arms around her as she’d imagined he would and had probably invited him to do in a dozen wordless gestures.
But were those the same gestures Natalie used? It wasn’t so easy to dis-miss Natalie. Six years he’d had with her, hundreds and hundreds of nights sharing the same bed. He must know Natalie by now far better than he ever knew Rose. He’d gone from Rose to Natalie maybe at first out of some resemblance, some novelty in such a different version of the same flesh and blood. But now it was Rose who might be the substitute. For a moment Rose was more Natalie than herself and hated him with her sister’s smug fury for thinking he could without difficulty move from one to the other. So, when he put his mouth on hers tenderly, knowingly, and the tip of his tongue slipped between her lips and nudged her teeth, she jerked her head back and leaned out of reach.