Rosie Coloured Glasses
Rosie Coloured Glasses
Brianna Wolfson
Little Miss Sunshine meets About a Boy in this piercingly bittersweet novel which shows how the most meaningful love can last a lifetime.Willow’s mother Rosie isn’t like the other mums. She’s wears every colour of the rainbow, has midnight feasts, and sends Willow to school covered in paint.Meanwhile, Rex is the sort of father who checks Willow’s homework, has a rule for everything, and would never dream of playing in the dirt.Now Rosie and Rex live in different places, Willow knows her mum needs her even more. But Rosie’s multi-coloured way of looking at the world can be overwhelming. These days, it feels like Rosie is spinning off her axis – and taking Willow with her. As if, one day, Rosie might disappear for good.And what would happen to Willow then?
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH ROSIE COLORED GLASSES
Just as opposites attract, they can also cause friction, and no one feels that friction more than Rex and Rosie’s daughter, Willow. Rex is serious and unsentimental and tapes checklists of chores on Willow’s bedroom door. Rosie is sparkling and enchanting and meets Willow in their treehouse in the middle of the night to feast on candy.
After Rex and Rosie’s divorce, Willow finds herself navigating their two different worlds. She is clearly under the spell of her exciting, fun-loving mother. But as Rosie’s behavior becomes more turbulent, the darker underpinnings of her manic love are revealed.
Rex had removed his Rosie colored glasses long ago, but will Willow do the same?
Whimsical, heartbreaking and uplifting, this is a novel about the many ways love can find you. Rosie Colored Glasses triumphs with the most endearing examples of how mothers and fathers and sons and daughters bend for one another.
Dear Reader (#u262b1672-9bea-55b1-9e5b-f69c672a8aa4),
There was a time in my life when writing this book, telling this story, would not have been possible. It wasn’t that I was waiting on my writing technique to mature or the time to put fingers to keyboard. I was waiting for the combination of curiosity and recklessness and confidence and energy required to explore a little voice inside of me that said, “What really happened back then with Mom?”
The start of that journey into my past was the start of this novel.
The mother I remember growing up with was fabulous. She is nearly identical to the main character, Rosie, that you will read about. She wore bright colours and wacky earrings. She let me skip school and drink coffee. I casually told a close friend about the coffee thing once and she winced. “Really?” she asked, earnestly concerned. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea for a kid.”
It stuck with me. There were other things like the coffee. Cake for dinner. Skipping out on homework to play. Watching South Park together until the sun rose. They seemed fun and refreshing at the time, but looking back on it now, they were also almost certainly irresponsible. Especially because there were also other less fun or refreshing things that came to mind when I thought about my mother. The smell of cigarettes in the bathroom. The stretches of time during which my father told me Mom was “away.” Once, my mother picked me up from school with an eyepatch on. She had injured her eye in a car accident, but it was no big deal because now we could play pirates. Even at six years old, those excuses didn’t sit right with me. Young Willow, the other protagonist of the novel, wrestles with these same feelings.
My mother died in a car accident when I was nine years old. Her death was, of course, a tragedy. I later learned that it was also the outcome of yet another opiate binge.
I have spent a lot of time in my life coping with the loss of my mother. But until I sat down to write this novel, I had not spent a lot of time thinking about what my mother’s death must have been like for my father. What my mother’s life must have been like for my father. What it must have been like for my mother to live the life she lived.
Rosie Coloured Glasses is my imagined look at what happened, from all sides. It is a work of fiction, but still, to me, this novel is told from my perspective, which will forever be that of a little girl trying to understand the thoughts, feelings and choices of her parents.
Thanks for reading it, and I hope you enjoy it.
BRIANNA WOLFSON is part of the writing community in San Francisco and has published some stories online. Rosie Coloured Glasses is her first novel.
Copyright (#ulink_1d3f4f4e-7751-5e7a-b9b9-1ccc26e35e27)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Brianna Wolfson 2018
Brianna Wolfson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9781474058445
To my mad and moonly mama,whom I still think about each day.
Contents
Cover (#ubefe4a70-7f2a-544f-bfeb-0bdd941e67c9)
Back Cover Text (#u0dd0fb9a-ab07-5402-9d09-e174f057534b)
Dear Reader (#uaa492d44-480e-58d3-9b67-325a6c2082d3)
About the Author (#u576c1309-dcb3-520c-bf09-25b0dacd6773)
Title Page (#u6369c888-ae18-5ddf-b3e7-389dfcfd0204)
Copyright (#ulink_4bfdc87e-9759-514f-8708-5039e67f597c)
Dedication (#ua2138f71-f997-5f53-b00b-d20cef7e7ac5)
PROLOGUE (#u43eb0205-d1da-5ba7-8760-e5d85ade3486)
CHAPTER 1 (#u812f8e64-d10c-57a7-8490-4caa412ee2cf)
CHAPTER 2 (#u1a0b34bd-8628-56bd-9e3f-ba3b427b2674)
CHAPTER 3 (#u49e9fc01-9d33-5e34-a0c5-8f0b39e34c6c)
CHAPTER 4 (#udea607de-b8f8-59fd-9d28-f7c0e18639d4)
CHAPTER 5 (#u3fb4d73e-2e01-5709-aae8-ec2d91e88582)
CHAPTER 6 (#ue1b36071-2f4c-5779-b077-540c761b153c)
CHAPTER 7 (#u86e0a323-bf8d-55f2-b40f-82a2df0f4257)
CHAPTER 8 (#uc304a63d-866e-5cc1-ab0d-28dca2a9ddbe)
CHAPTER 9 (#u59920567-6ecc-57e5-abdf-6965fdfefafb)
CHAPTER 10 (#uee1ba993-252f-58fb-bc44-89b86b60bce7)
CHAPTER 11 (#u8db3ba87-561d-5d0f-b26f-271de512ff13)
CHAPTER 12 (#u9ff71b43-e2ed-56b7-8ff6-ea8038164e9f)
CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_0cb965c1-4040-5499-8742-615351016202)
Willow Thorpe knew friction. The heat it created when one thing rubbed against another. When one world rubbed against another.
Willow felt it every time she got into the back seat of her mother’s car, buckled her seat belt, grabbed her brother’s hand and prepared to return to her father’s house. Every time she stared out the window of her mother’s car, and traced the familiar turns of the street on her way to her father’s. Every time her father opened the big heavy front door and grumbled, “Late again, Rosie.” Every time her mother casually responded with a smirk and a “Catch you later, Rex.”
Every time she looked up at her father and became self-conscious of the way her knees knocked together. Every time she went from art-covered walls to plain white ones. Every time she went from Mango Tango crayons to yellow #2 pencils.
Willow had a sense that the children of other divorced parents fantasized about what it might be like for their mother and father to be in love again. For their mother to tighten their father’s tie in the morning before work. For their father to zip up their mother’s dress in the evening before dinner. For their mother and father to share a casual kiss on the lips when they thought their children weren’t looking. For every picture frame around the house to display an image of a whole family: mother, father, and brother and sister tangled around one another.
But Willow didn’t think about any of that.
She thought about her tough and serious father in one world, and her warm and glimmering mother in the other. And the three times a week when one world grated up against the other.
But that grating of worlds, all that friction and heat, was worth it for Willow whenever she could return to her mother’s world.
Because in that world, her mother’s love was magical and it was fierce. Willow felt this kind of love could crystallize inside of her and fortify her. That it could fulfill her in the truest, realest sense. That it could keep her safe and happy forever.
But Willow was wrong.
In her life there would soon be confusion and sadness and pain and loss. And her mother’s manic love for her daughter could not protect Willow from any of these things. In fact, it might have even caused them.
1 (#ulink_f4568c8b-13fb-5b87-ad08-7ec9d3d3f137)
Twelve Years Ago
At twenty-four, Rosie Collins believed that love was both specific and all-consuming. She believed that true love accessed the back of the earlobe as much as it accessed the heart. She believed that there was one, special, nuanced way one human being could love another human being. And she thought of those nuanced, invisible, loving forces whenever she saw lovers together in the park or the subway or on a bench. She imagined the names they called each other before bed. His favorite place to put his hand. Her favorite shirt of his to wear to bed. The silly thing she said that made him laugh and laugh. The ugly painting he bought for their apartment that she loved seeing on the living room wall.
Rosie took the job at Blooms Flower Shop on 22nd Street and 8th Avenue as soon as she moved to Manhattan in part for the money, in part because she liked the idea of someone named Rosie working in a flower shop. But mostly she took the job so she could gain access to those loving forces. Like all of her other petty jobs, she would have to perform certain mundane tasks—this time, arranging flowers, manning the register and transcribing messages onto cards. But Rosie thought she might be able to keep this job for longer than the usual six weeks because at Blooms Flower Shop, she saw the greater meaning in her work.
She saw herself facilitating love. She fantasized about the thousands of love stories of which she would witness the tiniest glimpse, as patron after patron would call her up and share a little piece of themselves. They would tell her about their girlfriend’s favorite flower. Their fiancée’s favorite poem. How they wanted the perfect bouquet to show up at their wife’s desk for her birthday. How they wanted the perfect arrangement to say Happy Anniversary. Or to send something just because.
She was so excited that she spent the entire Sunday before her first day of work practicing her calligraphy. Rosie wanted to ensure that each letter was original and ornate enough to reflect the beauty and originality of the love behind the note. She barely slept that first night with the anticipation of her access to the authentic, naked, unabashed voice of love. It was a voice she loved so much, even though it wasn’t a part of her own life yet.
But Rosie’s heart broke the first week at Blooms when, day after day, men called in requesting a dozen red roses be sent to their girlfriend or wife or lover with a card that simply read “Love, Jim” or “From Tom,” or just “Harry.”
Didn’t some women prefer hydrangeas or chrysanthemums or lilies? Wouldn’t some of these flowers go to women who preferred pink or white or a mix of colors? Didn’t men in love know these sorts of things about their lovers? Hadn’t they wanted to fill that tiny card accompanying the arrangement with the kindest, truest, most perfect words?
When you sent flowers to your wife, didn’t you want it to mean “This is the way I still feel when I look into your eyes”? When you loved someone, didn’t you want to tell them in the most perfect, specific, unconcealed way? How did all of these men love women in the same twelve-red-roses-and-a–“Love, John” or “From Rob,” or just plain “Colin” way?
It broke Rosie’s heart to think that love could ever, ever, ever be that banal.
But Rosie was also not the type to sit around with a broken heart for long. Especially when it threatened her worldview. If the men of Manhattan could not express love properly, she would help them along. She would infuse their gestures with nuance and specificity whether it was authentic or not.
So Rosie took it upon herself to ensure that no card left Blooms Flower Shop with a generically and heartbreakingly boring signature. She replaced all requests for dull notes with ones she deemed more appropriate for a gesture of love. “You looked beautiful last night. Love, Alex.” “I was just thinking about how charming you looked when you had that piece of food stuck in your teeth. Love, Ryan.” “I’m better with you around. Love, Charlie.” “I hope we hang out so many more times. Love, Ian.” And she would smile wholly as she tied each card around a stem and sent it out the door.
These were the love stories Rosie wanted to be a part of. Even if they weren’t real, Rosie still believed them in some way to be true.
For weeks and weeks no one ever mentioned her love nudges. No one until Rex Thorpe called and requested that a dozen red roses be sent to his girlfriend at 934 Columbus Avenue.
“And what would you like the card to say?” Rosie asked dully.
Rosie had talked on the phone to this type with the Upper West Side girlfriend before. Brash. Probably had a high-paying job. Probably handsome but also deeply jerky. Probably had a pretty girlfriend to whom he seldom said, “I love you.”
“The card? What card?” Rex responded curtly.
“The card that will accompany the dozen red roses.”
A momentary pause.
“Sir?” she added as she rolled her eyes and pressed her condescension through the phone.
“I don’t fucking know.”
Silence. And then the repulsive chomping sound of gum-chewing came through the phone.
“To Anabel. Love, Rex. I guess.”
Click.
Rosie found Rex and the whole interaction to be entirely and maddeningly insulting to her and to the verb love. Again.
And so Rosie filled out the card in the manner that she felt appropriate, with her favorite e. e. cummings poem:
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
And then she signed it on his behalf: “I love you, Rex.”
This was the first time Rosie had ever used anyone’s words besides her own on these notes. She had never invoked any of her favorite poets. But this time, with Rex Thorpe’s supreme jerkiness to counterbalance, it felt just right.
Even to Rosie, it was unclear whether she was trying to rescue Rex’s girlfriend in some small way, or whether she was tacitly trying to tell Rex something about how love ought to be. Either way, now her effort was written in ink and it would be showing up on Anabel’s doorstep in thirty-six hours.
And Rosie was happy.
* * *
When Rex arrived at his girlfriend’s doorstep to receive credit for the flowers he had sent, Anabel immediately and energetically threw her arms around him. Unbeknownst to Rosie, Anabel was a literature student and a great fan of e. e. cummings.
“Your note is perfect,” Anabel told her boyfriend.
“I will treasure it always. I love you too,” she said.
Rex knew Anabel felt sure they would get married and Rex hadn’t yet thought of any reasons why she wouldn’t be correct.
Rex received his undeserved hug without a word in response. But when he saw the card on that bouquet, he was furious. Because he was not interested in flowery language and he was definitely not interested in anybody doing anything without his explicit permission.
At thirty-one years old, Rex Thorpe was both serious and particular about the things in his life. About his Brooks Brothers pants and steamed, button-down shirts. About the Eames furniture in his apartment. About the Upper West Side restaurants he frequented and the academic degrees of the people he interacted with. About the whiskey he drank and the shape of the glass it came in. About the brand of black ink in his ballpoint pen. About his vision of himself as a respected and successful man. About being a man of authenticity.
Rex focused his attention so meticulously and intensely on all of these things that he never felt it logical or worthwhile to spare any energy on Anabel DeGette. He never cared enough about her to go out of his way even though she was both pleasant and beautiful enough. Rex, himself, was acutely aware that if a pleasant and beautiful woman were not part of his idea of what a “successful” life looked like, he probably would not concern himself with women at all. But since it was, Rex knew he needed occasionally to express some sentiment of affection while simultaneously ignoring his girlfriend and spending all of his time at work. And a bouquet of a dozen roses with a note that said “Love, Rex” was what he had decided on.
“What the fuck did you do?” Rex shouted rhetorically at Rosie that next day even before he had both feet in the door of Blooms. “I gave you very clear instructions for my note. And nowhere did those instructions include a poem from fucking e. e. cummings. Who the fuck are you to interfere and manipulate my words?”
He was prepared to continue his rant, but stopped abruptly at the sight of Rosie in her knee-length paisley dress. Her messy brown hair slipping out of a loosely tied braid. Her bangs that nearly hid the curvature of her thick eyebrows. The flower-stained gloves that were comically too large for her undoubtedly tiny hands at the end of her tiny wrists. Her petite bones. The slight scoop of her nose. Her freckles. The way the corners of her eyes turned down. The way she jaggedly swayed her hips and hummed the tune of Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s “Leather and Lace.” The way she radiated.
And most importantly, the way she casually ignored his fury.
Rex was struck breathless by it all.
He stood in his place, mouth agape, disappointed that Rosie had yet to look up at him. He thought he could catch her eye. Just for a moment. He wanted to catch her eye. He wanted to gaze right into it and see something new.
* * *
Without even looking up from her daily thorn trimming, Rosie knew it was Rex stomping through the door. She peeked out quickly from underneath her bangs. Handsome and jerky, indeed.
She tried keeping her eyes cast downward at the roses in her hands as Rex spoke at her but lost the battle when his words stopped. She met Rex Thorpe’s eyes for just an instant and there everything was. His unruly eyebrows. His strong shoulders. His smooth skin. The creases in his cheeks. His black hair.
His presence.
Rosie couldn’t bear being in the shop with that overwhelming toughness. That simultaneous repulsion and attraction. So she shook her hands until the canvas gloves fell to the counter. And then Rosie picked up her tote bag full of scribbled-in notebooks and sweet-tooth fixings and scurried past Rex without saying a word. She put such focus on getting out the door and such little attention on what was happening in that shop, that she didn’t even stop to acknowledge the blue crayon and couple of pennies dribbling out of her bag as she dragged it behind her.
As Rosie walked toward the door, she felt another twinge. Although she did not share Rex’s principle, she quite admired his authenticity. Not all people, all men, spoke their mind like this. Not all were willing to let others know what hurt them. Vexed them. Pleased them. Excited them. There was a sexiness in Rex’s assuredness. His masculinity. His convictions. But even with all of those thoughts about the man standing so firmly in the middle of Blooms, Rosie waltzed right out and decided to take the afternoon off.
She hopped on her bike and, without a care in the world, headed straight for her favorite branch on the willow tree in Central Park. Just the tune of “Leather and Lace” playing in her mind. And Rex’s sylvan scent lingering in her nose.
2 (#ulink_cf6bf31d-890b-563b-9721-88d9d609fe36)
As it were, Willow Thorpe hated Wednesdays. Per the rules of the divorce, Wednesdays were always Dad’s days. And Dad’s days were full of homework and piano practice and chore charts and manners.
But it wasn’t long before her mother found a way to make Wednesday nights Willow’s favorite night of the week. Another adventure, another opportunity for so much love.
Willow tugged her favorite Keith Haring T-shirt over her thick hair until it fell onto her shoulders. She smiled when she looked in the mirror to brush her teeth and saw herself wearing it. She loved that oversize T-shirt with the thick squiggly lines and bright colors. She loved how it exuded excitement all around. How the figures were so simple and so happy dancing around together.
She washed the toothpaste from the edges of her mouth, then wiggled herself under her sheets. And then she waited. She squeezed her eyes shut like she was sleeping. But she wasn’t even close. And then she waited some more. And when Willow’s midnight alarm went off, it simultaneously felt like all the time in the universe—and no time at all—had passed.
With a tingle just under the surface of her skin, Willow tucked her feet into her slippers, picked up her flashlight from her bedside table, slid her pillow under her sheets in case Dad might check on her and walked delicately on her tippy toes all the way down the back stairs. She gripped the railing for balance, but made her way down the steps so naturally. It was a shame that Willow was her most graceful on that dark staircase in the middle of the night when no one would ever see her.
Willow pressed her toes slowly, purposefully into the lush carpeting that covered each step. She crossed the kitchen, slipped out the back door and made her way to the far end of the backyard. This moment, standing on the edge of the manicured grass with nothing but towering trees in front of her, made Willow’s heart tremble. It was just Willow alone in the dark. Nothing but the syncopated buzz of cicadas and faint crackling of the woods. Nothing but the crisp acidity of October nighttime air filling her lungs.
Willow could feel the excitement pulsing through her nerves. She was on the edge of her father’s world and on the precipice of her mother’s. Here was the entryway to happiness.
Willow launched off the thick lawn into the depths of the trees. Only thirty-seven and a half steps, she told herself as she hurried over fallen leaves and flimsy sticks to the tree house. She and her mother had counted the number once. Rosie had even made sure to account for the length of Willow’s stride instead of her own.
And when Willow reached the base of the ladder that led up, she made the signal—three clicks of her flashlight. Then she waited, her eyes big and her heart rumbling. And without another moment of quiet, Rosie returned the signal and popped her head out the base of the tree house floor.
Willow always wanted to zip up that ladder so badly at the sight of her mother, but she knew her loose knees were no match for the rickety wooden rungs. She was barely able to keep herself upright on the smooth ground of the fifth-grade hallway, let alone an old ladder. So she took her time wrapping her fingers around each wooden rung and then gripping her tightest grip as she carefully let her feet climb up slowly, one step at a time.
And when Willow finally got to the top, her mother would lift her by her arms and kiss her so hard, so decidedly, on the cheek. And together Willow and her mother would sing and dance and talk and draw by flashlight. They would paint and have thumb wars and play Twister and spin quarters. They would take turns performing tongue twisters. They would love each other so much.
And when the tree house walls were coated with new drawings, and when their mouths were coated with Pixy Stix sugar crystals and their bellies were filled with cream soda, and when the tree house air was saturated with the sounds of Elton John through her mother’s tiny speakers, Willow would lay her small head in Rosie’s lap and exhale.
Willow’s soft and raspy voice moved through the stillness. “Mom, why did you and Dad get a divorce?”
“Well, do you like waking up to the sun or an alarm?” Rosie replied.
“The sun,” Willow answered. And she was quick to it.
“Me too, baby,” Rosie said calmly as she kissed Willow on the middle of her smooth forehead. And then Willow exhaled again in her mother’s lap.
When Rosie’s watch beeped at 1:00 a.m., Willow and Rosie packed up their wrappers and toys, clicked off the flashlight and shimmied back down the ladder. Rosie with ease and Willow with full concentration.
And when Willow got to the back door of her father’s house, she waited and watched as her mother walked down the driveway away from her. She watched Rosie’s hair bounce weightlessly as her thin arms scrambled to maintain the pile of soda and candy and colored pencils stacked precariously against her chest. Willow watched her mother in all of her coolness, all of her effervescence, until she was gradually absorbed by the darkness.
Inevitably, before she disappeared, Rosie would drop a pencil or crayon or marker from her grip and let it roll along the ground without the slightest motion to pick it up. Her mother didn’t even pause to make sense of the faint clicking sound of the thing as it slipped from her arms and hit the blacktop. Rosie just got into the front seat of the car, where the dim car lights revealed her silhouette once again. And then she rolled her windows down, pressed both hands into her lips and extended her arms out toward Willow. She was sending a kiss all the way through the velvet darkness into Willow’s soul.
Then her mother drove away.
Willow returned to the driveway with her flashlight on dim to retrieve the lost crayon and bring it upstairs with her. She rolled the dark pinkish waxy cylinder in her hands and scanned the crayon label—Jazzberry Jam—then tucked it into her pajama pocket.
On Wednesday nights, as Willow drifted into sleep for the second time, she would replay the image of her mother’s red lips turning into a smile and the feeling of her mother’s long manicured fingers playing with her curls. And just like that, she could fall asleep happy.
It never mattered how tired Willow’s time in the tree house made her feel for school on Thursdays. Wednesday nights with her mom were definitely Willow’s favorite night of all the nights of the week.
* * *
Willow woke up the next morning in her room at her father’s house to the sound of her alarm. She slowly opened her eyes to the blue walls and the white wicker dresser. To the lacy throw pillows on the floor. To the taste of quiet. And then back to the beeping alarm.
Rex had told Willow that the trick to not snoozing through your alarm was to place the clock across the room. “Then, the only way you can stop the buzzing is to get up!” he told Willow one morning when she overslept. He told her this as he moved her alarm clock from her bedside table to the edge of the dresser by the far wall.
Willow slapped down on the clock and started the tasks of the morning checklist her dad had made for her. She also made sure that her little brother was on top of his morning checklist too. But as usual, he wasn’t.
At six years old, Asher Thorpe was always forgetting things. Spilling things. Breaking things. Knocking into things. But he was almost always forgiven for all of it. Because of his full cheeks and round chin, his clear blue eyes and his silky blond bowl cut. And, most importantly, his missing front two teeth and his trouble with the letter R.
It surprised everyone that two brunettes like Rosie and Rex could produce a blond-haired, blue-eyed little boy. But it made sense to Rex, Rosie and even Willow that Asher would have the kindest, most gentle, most nonthreatening features. There was a lightness to Asher that none of the other Thorpes possessed. A lightness that Willow was reminded of every time she reached Asher’s room across the house and found him pleasantly asleep beneath a pile of stuffed animals. Every time she nudged her brother awake and he smiled at the sight of his big sister.
“Morning checklist, Ash,” Willow said, and kissed her brother on the forehead.
“Alwight, alwight!” Asher said through a sleepy smile and sloppy cheeks.
Willow left her brother’s room and completed her checklist.
Brush Teeth—30 seconds top, 30 seconds bottom
Wash Face—Face soap only
Make Bed
Brush Hair
Fold Pajamas
Get Dressed—Clean clothes!
Pack for School—Do you have all your homework with you?
Take Vitamins
Family Breakfast
Willow had her morning checklist memorized, but Dad insisted that it remained taped to her door next to her afternoon checklist, which was taped next to the nighttime checklist. And Willow was very diligent about completing all but two items on this list up to her father’s standards.
The first thing Willow had trouble with was “Brush hair.” Because Willow’s hair was too curly and wild, and brushing it only made it worse. Mom told Willow that this was the kind of thing that boys didn’t understand and to just ignore that item on the list. But Willow didn’t like disobeying so instead of skipping the step, she guided the smooth back of the brush over the top of her tight curls every morning.
And then there was “Get dressed.” And while Willow didn’t have a problem doing so, her father never liked the clothes she chose to get dressed in. And the things she got dressed in were the same every day—shiny purple leggings, a black T-shirt with a silver horseshoe on it and black high-top Converse sneakers. The same thing every day for the last five years. She had several pairs of purple leggings and several of the same T-shirt. And today, a few weeks into fifth grade, she was still wearing that same outfit.
Her father never said a word about the outfit to Willow. At least not with his mouth. But he didn’t have to because Willow could always tell how he hated seeing her in that outfit. Every morning when Willow said good-morning to her father, she could tell she had disappointed him all over again. He said it with his eyes and a subtle drop of his chin and a faint shake of his head. Maybe it was her outfit or maybe it was her collapsing knees. Maybe it was something else entirely. But no matter what, her father never looked at his daughter in the same way her mother did.
Rex was posed in the big wooden chair at the head of the breakfast table exactly as he always was. Right leg crossed over left. Reading glasses perched at the tip of his nose. A steaming cup of coffee in his right hand. A pile of furiously scribbled notes scattered across the table. Dressed in a suit that looked like it was brand-new.
Looking serious. Looking powerful. Looking the same way he always looked.
Rex Thorpe was tall and broad and his shoulders pressed forward. If you were up close enough, you could see that his black eyes were always tick, tick, ticking back and forth. He was always scanning the room and the people in it. And his lips were always pursed like he was ready to say something. But the way his eyebrows pressed in toward one another and the way he held his jaw tense, you knew you didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But whether he was talking or quiet, looking at you or ignoring you entirely, Rex Thorpe commanded your attention when you shared space with him.
Willow sat down at the table and poured a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal for her brother and then one for herself as Rex tilted his right arm up and down like a steel machine taking sporadic sips of coffee. Willow and Asher used their heavy silver spoons to scoop the nonmarshmallow bits into their mouths first. They liked seeing the color that the specific mix of horseshoe, pot-of-gold and heart-shaped marshmallows might tint the milk. It was a game they played at their mother’s house too. After the Lucky Charms milk settled into a certain color, they would each scramble through the box of crayons at the center of the table and search furiously for the one that best matched the color in their bowl. Whoever announced the closest color first earned a big red kiss from Rosie.
When they played this game at their father’s house, Willow and Asher just stirred and observed the milk quietly. But at least they were both having fun.
Asher broke the silence when he loudly asked, “Can we go bowling this weekend?”
“Maybe once all your chores are finished,” Rex said without lifting his eyes from the notepad next to the coaster he put his coffee on.
Willow already knew her dad would say something like this. Because the set of things that Dad said yes to was specific and almost always conditional. You could watch TV for fifteen minutes, if your laundry was already folded. You could have ice cream, two toppings maximum, if you finished every last pea on your plate. You could go outside, jackets zipped all the way up, only after you practiced piano for thirty minutes. You could open a new cereal box when the old one was finished, and then you could fold up the old box so it was efficiently flattened and put it in the recycling bin. It didn’t matter to her father if none of your favorite horseshoe-shaped marshmallows were left in the old box.
Asher returned to his cereal bowl with an “Oh, man!” and then dipped under the kitchen table to play with his action figures. Which meant that everything went back to quiet at the breakfast table. Back to a quiet that disappointed Willow. She liked noise and chatter and music and games.
She liked her mother’s house.
Willow looked up from her bowl and considered whether to ask her father what color he thought the milk looked like. But his temples flared with each chomp on the wad of pink Bubblicious gum in his mouth. He looked so serious sitting there like that. So intense. So engrossed in his notes.
So Willow took her creased word search book out of her backpack and scanned the page for the next word on the list—ZIPPER. Willow searched the grid for a letter Z. She tapped the Jazzberry Jam–colored crayon on the paper as she stared at the page. Willow smirked at her secret. The secret of how she came upon that crayon. And even though no one even noticed that Willow was smirking or holding a crayon, she was still proud of that dark pinkish cylinder of color in her hand. Proud that she had a mom who loved her so much she met her in the tree house in the middle of the night. Proud that she had a mom who played with her hair every Wednesday night. Proud that she had a mom who always let her win in thumb war.
Right before the “bus alert” that Rex had set up sounded, Willow found her word. There it was, lettered straight across the middle. Z-I-P-P-E-R. She circled all the letters, closed her word search book and tucked it into her backpack. She needed it to keep her company on the bus. And at her lunch table. And under the slide at recess. And in her mind’s eye.
Willow brought her and Asher’s empty bowls to the kitchen sink, zipped up her jacket, then her brother’s, then said, “Bye, Dad,” loudly enough for him to hear as they left for school.
“Bye, guys!” Rex shouted back from his seat at the kitchen table.
If Willow created a morning checklist for her father and taped it to his wall, it wouldn’t say check your notes or tighten your tie. It would only say one thing:
Kiss Willow and Asher goodbye.
3 (#ulink_10b3e50e-e50d-5216-a906-d528f2c44201)
Twelve Years Ago
When Rosie got to her favorite willow tree by the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir for the fourteenth time in fourteen days, she took off her helmet and leaned her bike against the rugged bark of the trunk. Then she started climbing. The fourth branch up on the left side was Rosie’s favorite to sit in. She could hear the ripples of the water and the murmurs of conversation below, but no one ever saw her up there. She sat up in the tree and made drawings, scribbled doodles and wrote notes to friends in faraway cities.
Two weeks ago, she walked out of Blooms Flower Shop after Rex came in yelling, and she decided she wasn’t going back. And if she had ever bothered to check her messages, she probably would have learned that she had been fired anyway.
Rosie pulled a few straggling Pixy Stix out of her tote bag and tore them open. She poured some of the sugar into her mouth and the remainder onto her notebook. The purple crystals scattered so beautifully on the page. She added some orange and then some red and swirled them around with her fingertips.
Art, she thought. Ha. She stuck her tongue in the pile for a taste, and then blew the rest of the sugar off the notebook. Rosie watched the colorful crystals scatter into the air and trickle down toward the ground.
“What the fuck?” boomed a familiar voice from below. She couldn’t forget that voice. The incisive way with which Rex Thorpe said “fuck.”
Normally, Rosie might have apologized, but there was no way she would say she was sorry to that handsome jerk of a man. Not after the way he treated her. Not after the way he treated love.
She shimmied down the tree prepared to walk away from him for the second time in two weeks. And as she did, her dress flipped up above her head revealing her polka-dot underwear. As soon as the paisley fabric fell back into position, Rosie and Rex locked eyes.
There was a pause.
“Hey, I know you. You work in the flower shop. You wrote that card to my girlfriend. The one with the crazy e. e. cummings love poem.”
Another pause.
“That was fucked-up.”
Rosie adjusted her dress, squinted her eyes and decided to do battle. But only for a second.
“Your note was fucked-up.”
“Yeah? What about it?” Rex came back quickly, ready to spar.
Rosie almost walked away with her grimace, but then something just slipped out.
“Even Maleficent had something original to say to Sleeping Beauty.”
Instead of firing back, Rex just stood there staring at her. And then he laughed. He found Rosie’s retort bizarre, immature and adorable.
Rosie tried to make her escape from Rex for the second time, tote bag in hand. Rosie’s body jerked just as awkwardly and charmingly as it had two weeks ago at Blooms Flower Shop. But this time there were strange comebacks and endearing polka-dot underwear.
Rex thought about Anabel. She never moved like this. Or dressed like this. Or talked like this. She always had a tall spine and a straight neck and a freshly dry-cleaned shirt.
Rex was surprised to find that everything about Rosie right here under this willow tree was warming his heart. Especially the awkward manner in which she tried to wiggle out of their encounter. Rosie marched determinedly in one direction. Then abruptly she turned around and marched equally determinedly in the opposite way.
But Rex had positioned his body right in front of Rosie’s and stared down at her.
And Rosie slowly lifted her head and stared right back into his eyes.
Rex saw right through her big brown eyes and into her soul. Her bones that had finally stilled. And into her heart. Her heart that was racing.
Rex felt his heart do the same, and right then and there started to believe in the nuanced, invisible, loving force of the world.
And it made Rex want Rosie. So wholly. So viscerally. And when Rex Thorpe wanted something, he made it happen.
So right there next to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, Rex Thorpe pressed Rosie Collins up against the bark of a willow tree, and then pressed his lips against hers so gently.
It was the best kiss Rex ever had.
Even though there were Pixy Stix in her mouth and in his hair.
Rosie still had her eyes closed when she asked Rex slowly and calmly, “Think I’ll ever see you again?”
Then Rex stared into Rosie’s still-closed lids and said simply and honestly, “Sure do.”
Rex Thorpe went home, made a reservation at the most impressive restaurant he could think of and told Anabel simply and honestly that he was sorry, but he didn’t love her.
Because Rex Thorpe finally knew what love was. And she tasted like Pixy Stix and wore polka-dot underwear.
4 (#ulink_500bc215-05e7-5390-8551-0eb04c313d20)
Willow dragged her feet getting onto Bus #50. How it was one of the most difficult parts about going to Robert Kansas Elementary School. Because #50 was cruel to a fifth grader with tightly coiled hair that sprung out in all directions. It was cruel to a fifth grader who preferred a CD player to hopscotch with friends. And to a fifth grader who sat in her seat engrossed in word searches. It was cruel to a fifth grader who wore the same outfit every day or had once, just once, even peed in her pants at recess in front of everyone.
Bus #50 was a nightmare for Willow Thorpe.
Willow couldn’t go back on that bus. Not one more time. So she told her father about Bus #50. She told her strong, sturdy father. About the hair-pulling while having the word boing yelled in her ear. About the pointing at her favorite black T-shirt with the horseshoe while everyone laughed and laughed and said “she’s wearing it again.” About the tearing of her word search pages right when she was going to circle S-L-I-T-H-E-R on a backward diagonal. Willow’s voice crept over the lump in her throat as she told him.
But Willow was devastated when her father’s only suggestion was to fix it herself.
“Stop sitting near those kids, Willow,” he said nonchalantly. “Sit in the seat right behind the bus driver. He can help.”
Willow did her best to clear the lump in her throat once more to protest, but as usual her father was insistent and unwavering. Rex walked Willow all the way up into the bus, pointed at that green vinyl seat with the duct tape covering up a hole in the back and said, “Sit here, Willow.”
He said it in front of everybody. He was already making things worse.
“Sit, Willow,” the fifth graders, and even some fourth graders, mocked as they patted on their legs like they were talking to a dog.
Willow might have been even more upset if she didn’t think those fifth, and even some fourth, graders had it right in some ways. Her father did talk to her like she was a dog. A dog being trained. And not just this one time on the bus. All the time.
“Eat your broccoli.”
“Take your plate to the sink.”
“Finish your homework.”
“Make your bed.”
“Tie your shoes.”
“Help your brother.”
Her father said those things without a smile or a please or a morsel of warmth. Her father was firm and direct, and Willow didn’t like it. Not now on Bus #50. And not any day at his house.
In an effort to avoid eye contact with everybody else on that whole entire school bus, Willow turned her attention to the duct tape on the seat. She wished Asher didn’t have to take the designated kindergarten bus. She wished he was sitting right next to her. And as she wished, Willow picked at the sticky edges compulsively until she revealed the entire hole in the back of the seat. But when she looked into the hole, she saw something unusual in there. Willow reached her hand into that hole to see what it was.
Tucked inside the hole she discovered two grape-flavored Pixy Stix with a string tied around them and a typed note that said, “For Willow.”
For the first time all year, Willow smiled on Bus #50. She smiled to herself and sneakily stuck her secret candies into her backpack.
But then she took one right back out, ripped it open and poured the sugar into her mouth. She couldn’t hold out for even a second. She loved Pixy Stix. She loved the loving force that put them there. And Willow thought she knew exactly what, who, that loving force was. There was only one person in this town, on this earth, in this universe who loved Willow enough to surprise her with her favorite flavor Pixy Stix.
* * *
As Willow walked down the hallway with her remaining Pixy Stix in her bag, she almost forgot that the kids at Robert Kansas Elementary School were going to be so mean. She almost forgot they might put diapers in her cubby. She had almost forgotten about the first time she saw diapers in her first-grade cubby after she peed in her pants a few days after her parents told her about the divorce. The day of that big thunderstorm. That big, booming, terrifying thunderstorm. She had almost forgotten that she would have no one to sit with at lunch, and that everyone would avoid being her partner in gym class. That her teachers wouldn’t call on her even though she knew all the answers. That at some point during the day, she was inevitably going to trip and fall in front of everyone.
Gravity worked differently on Willow than it did on everybody else. It yanked her down randomly. It pulled her toward the earth whenever it wanted to. It gave a quick but firm tug on her knee, her elbow, her hip—and her body would buckle, leaving Willow in a contorted pile of bent skinny limbs on the ground. And while this often caused minor scrapes or bruises, Willow actually didn’t mind falling down like this. She thought that it made her special. She thought it made her distinct. The very idea that somewhere, sometimes, the world around her had singled her out. It singled her out and pulled her close to itself. Willow liked the idea that gravity was thinking of her from time to time. And she liked the idea that it would always let her know, with a tug on the knee, exactly when that time was.
When the lunch bell rang, Willow took her time retrieving her bagged lunch from her cubby and then took her time walking down the hallway to the cafeteria. It helped minimize the time in which she was sitting alone at her lunch table in the back. She put one foot slowly in front of the other and traced her finger along the green elementary school walls.
But before she even rounded the corner for the lunchroom, Willow could hear Amanda Rooney and Patricia Bleeker giggling even though she couldn’t see them. This was a trick Willow recognized from last year. Amanda and Patricia had waited for Willow to turn the corner, then they stuck out their clean white platform shoes, causing Willow to fall over right in the middle of the floor. They laughed, and then walked away with their arms linked at the elbows.
Today, Willow knew better than to fall into their trap a second time. So, she made a very wide turn and exposed Amanda and Patricia huddled together on the other side. They were both wearing big blue bows in their blond hair and had on pink-striped T-shirts. Willow could barely tell which one was which, given the way they were tangled up in each other’s matching outfits like that. Willow looked right at them, smiled only slightly and let her eyes tell them, You’re not going to trip me twice!
But just when Willow thought she had escaped the taunts, gravity yanked down on her so hard she fell all the way to the ground. First her right knee, then her right hip, then her right shoulder.
Amanda and Patricia squealed equally high-pitched squeals. And with the sound of their laughter ricocheting in her skull, Willow just stayed on the floor and closed her eyes tightly and hoped that she would hear Patricia’s and Amanda’s shrieks soften.
But their sounds only got louder.
And when Willow opened her eyes, the two blond-haired, blue-eyed girls were standing over her and dumping handfuls of pencil shavings all over her body, making sure to get them into her curly hair.
Willow just lay there watching as the apple from her lunch bag broke loose and rolled halfway down the hallway.
And then finally Patricia’s and Amanda’s voices trailed away as they left Willow to her bruised elbow and her bruised apple. To her messed-up lunch and her messed-up hair.
Willow got up and shook her head back and forth, expecting flakes of soft yellow wood to flutter out of her hair, but nothing did. The shavings hooked themselves so assiduously into her jagged curls that not a single one fell to the ground. Willow walked into the bathroom to find a mirror, thinking perhaps there would be enough time to pick out the pieces before lunch was over. But on the wall next to the mirror, in thick black Sharpie, it said, “Willow, Willow, hair like Brillo.” She wondered if someone had just added it here or whether it was left over from last year.
Either way, after the quick glance she got of herself in the mirror before turning around, Willow thought the yellow flecks looked sort of cool in there. They had that same jagged in-motion effect as the design on her Keith Haring T-shirt. Mom would like that. Plus, tonight was pizza night so she could show her then.
5 (#ulink_e536d416-6eca-5d46-92b4-4347f24d01a8)
Twelve Years Ago
Although Rex was not Rosie’s usual type, her soul had already succumbed to Rex in so many ways. Rosie was equal parts nervous and excited for their first date.
She mixed and matched printed dresses with vintage jewelry until she was pleased. She twirled around in the mirror and blew herself a kiss after applying her favorite red lipstick and scanning her final choice of outfit.
Rosie shouldn’t have been surprised when their first date included a highly coveted reservation at a fancy Manhattan restaurant with high ceilings and a bathroom attendant, but she was. She was surprised and uncomfortable in her twenty-dollar dress on a six-hundred-dollar gold-adorned chair. And she was annoyed and uncomfortable as Rex ordered an appetizer of oysters for the two of them to share without consulting her.
Rosie hated oysters. And Rex didn’t even pause for one moment to consider that he wasn’t going to impress Rosie with them. He was going to scare her with them. He was going to gross her out with them. Because Rosie thought they looked like boogers. And tasted like them too.
Rosie considered putting one of them up her nostril when the oysters arrived to ease the tension between them, but Rex was too enraptured by the wine menu to have noticed.
When their second course was set down by a waiter with a napkin folded over his forearm and the one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar wine was poured by a sommelier, Rex finally looked up at Rosie.
“Cheers,” he said innocently.
But Rosie was indignant and it bubbled out of her immediately.
She positioned her tiny arms to push her stupid, gold-adorned chair back and leave Rex alone at his expensive fucking table with its boring white tablecloth and its overly formal waiters who bent from the hips with straight legs and backs when you walked by.
“I hate oysters,” she stated a little too firmly and a little too loudly. “And this wine is, like, stupid expensive.”
A pause.
“And so is this stupid tablecloth and this stupid napkin, I bet!”
“Ugh, I think you’re right,” Rex said, finally dropping his shoulders. “Let’s finish this stupid bottle of stupid expensive wine and get out of here. I know a good pizza spot around the corner.”
And just like that, Rosie nuzzled her knees back under the table, finished her wine and found herself ready to be smitten all over again.
As they munched on cheap pizza while expensive wine coursed through their blood, conversation flowed easily between them. Neither Rex nor Rosie had any idea what the other was saying because Rosie was focused on Rex’s deep, dark eyes. And Rex had his eyes locked on Rosie’s expressive, red lips. And just as Rex was about to take the last bite of his crust, Rosie grabbed his hand and whisked him out the door.
“Music time,” she whispered in his ear as she pulled him in toward her on the sidewalk, and then twirled her body around.
They walked a few brisk blocks, and then ducked under the red awning of Ray’s, Rosie’s favorite piano bar. Rosie loved everything about Ray’s. The dark corners and the red lamps at the tables. The smoky scent of cigars and the bottle-lined bar. The sexiness of it all.
She loved that she could never guess who from the audience might stand up and play a tune for the rest of the room. She loved that one minute, a man with quiet eyes and deep wrinkles would be slowly sipping a whiskey neat, and the next minute he was slamming his fingers against the keyboard and filling a room with music. She liked the idea that anyone, everyone, in a given space might have a gift to share.
Rex and Rosie sat in the back with another bottle of wine as, one by one, different members from the audience took a seat onstage and used their entire body to make sexy, full, stunning music. Rex and Rosie searched around the room and tried to guess which patron they thought would perform next. They tried to guess what song might be played. Billy Joel for the man about their age in the rugged baseball hat. Frank Sinatra for the gray-headed man with strong and wrinkled hands tapping his foot in the back. And while they were never right, not even once, Rex and Rosie both opened themselves fully to the game and to each other.
When Rex slid away from the table, Rosie assumed it was to order another round of drinks. But then he was onstage under the foggy red lights. In a thousand-dollar jacket on a five-dollar piano bench. And he looked great.
The crowd sang along to Rex playing “Bennie and the Jets” as he pressed his fingers deliberately but naturally into the keys. And right there, Rosie saw the most important thing she could see in a man. Rex Thorpe had soul—and she could work with that.
So Rosie joined the rest of the room and sang along as her soon-to-be boyfriend moved the crowd and Rosie’s heart into motion.
Rex left the stage after a standing ovation and a familiar handshake from the bar owner. And then Rosie kissed Rex deeply and proudly linked her arm in his as they walked out of the red-lit piano bar.
She didn’t mean to stumble into Rex’s arms when he walked her back to her apartment, but she was drunk with wine and whiskey and new love.
6 (#ulink_5c977e06-5b61-56ac-b147-2ca4461e4c04)
Willow fixated on the second hand of the clock in Mrs. McAllister’s classroom as she waited for school to be over. As she waited for pizza night. Waited for her mother to come around the bend of the parent pickup circle in her rattling blue car with its googly eyes stenciled on the front of it. Waited to spend the night swaddled in fun.
When the three-thirty bell rang, Willow shoved her spelling list into the bottom of her backpack, confirmed that her laces were tied on both shoes and fast-walked all the way to Asher’s classroom. She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him toward the parent pickup circle. Then Willow exhaled for the first time all day and locked her eyes on the entranceway.
Rosie was typically late to pick up Willow and Asher from school. She never wore a watch and often found herself in a daze somewhere, completely oblivious to the time. But Willow didn’t want to miss one second with her mother, so she rushed to the pickup circle anyway every Tuesday and Thursday after school. Willow noticed that all of the other moms wore jeans, a T-shirt and dark sunglasses. They drove black or white cars that sparkled permanently. They kept their hair in neat ponytails and never got out of the car to say “hi” to their children.
But that wasn’t her mother. Her mother’s car was bright blue and made loud clanking noises. Rosie had named her car Lili Von after her favorite character in Blazing Saddles. The googly eyes that were stenciled just above the headlights always caused side-eye glances from the other mothers too. But that didn’t faze Willow or Asher. They loved that car and they loved those googly eyes.
After only three games of tic-tac-toe, Lili Von appeared around the bend with Prince blasting out the window. Willow saw her mother’s left knee poking out the driver’s seat window. Her wavy brown hair was blowing around excitedly. Her big brown eyes and arched eyebrows were sticking out above her neon pink, thick-framed sunglasses that were resting on the tip of her nose. Lili Von screeched as her mother pulled up to the curb in front of where Willow and Asher were standing. And almost before the car had fully stopped, Rosie jumped out of the front seat to give each of her children separate, tight hugs.
Rosie looked as cool as she always looked in her cutoff jean shorts and long fur coat even though it was a perfectly temperate fall afternoon. She looked as cool as she always looked with her shoes with the holes in them and her polished red nails. She looked as cool as she always looked with her bright red lips.
“I missed you little noodles!” she said with a full-teeth and full-heart smile as she got back behind the wheel. “Hop in, already. It’s pizza night!”
But just before Rosie got back behind the wheel, she snapped her head around and looked back at her daughter. She tilted her head to the side, pulled her sunglasses down farther on her nose and said, “Cool hair, baby.” She said it quickly and honestly, and then drove off, leaving Willow smiling so big in the back seat.
They hadn’t even reached the edge of the school parking lot when Rosie reached for the volume knob and said to her children the thing she always said on the way to pizza night at Lanza Pizza.
“Let’s rock ’n’ roll.”
And when Rosie said that, she meant it in the literal sense. She turned the volume knob so many revolutions to the right that the speakers started throbbing and the floor started vibrating.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
Willow recognized the song right away. It was Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” and it was one of Mom and Willow’s favorites.
Rosie, Willow and Asher all sang the lyrics in tandem and whipped their hair around as the music played.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
They sang as loudly as they could until they reached their parking spot at Lanza Pizza. Even Willow and Asher could see how Rosie filled with even more life when they arrived there. It was Rosie’s favorite pizza place in town, tucked on a side street with a neon sign that was rare for the suburbs of Virginia. It had orange and yellow plastic booths, an old pinball machine and a deep bucket of half-used crayons.
The moment Willow, Rosie and Asher walked through the door of Lanza Pizza, they simultaneously tilted their noses toward the ceiling and pressed their chests forward as they inhaled the smells of bubbling cheese and hot tomatoes. As Willow and Asher grabbed handfuls of crayons, Rosie bounced straight to the counter and asked for three large cups for fountain soda. And just like every Thursday, John had them waiting already right next to the register. As Willow sat down to put her crayons to use, she saw her mother wink familiarly at John in his sauce-stained apron. And then she saw John wink familiarly back at Rosie as he swirled a freshly floured heap of pizza dough around his thick sausage fingers. Willow couldn’t help but smile at the warmth between near strangers. The ease between opposites. The electricity created when her mother entered a room.
Asher and Willow snatched their large paper cups from Rosie’s hand and dashed to the soda fountain, where they filled their cups with a fizzing mixture of orange, root beer, Sprite and Hawaiian Punch. Rosie met them at the fountain, but filled her cup with nothing but cream soda. It was her favorite drink. And every time she got her big, icy cream soda from the fountain—not the bottle—she poked her straw through the plastic top, took her first gulp and said, “Nothing like a cold fountain cream soda.” She did it so often that it had become tradition for Willow and Asher to say the words right alongside Rosie and then for all to take a big slurp of soda.
While the pizza warmed in the oven, Rosie took a roll of quarters out of her tote bag and handed it to Willow. And then Willow and Asher took turns on the pinball machine, clicking the flippers and encouraging each other on. They cheered when they hit a bonus and booed when their final ball slid between the flippers.
And when they got back to the table, a big slice of hot pizza was waiting on each of their plates. Willow bit into her slice, and then looked back up at Rosie, who had a big gooey piece of cheese hanging from her nostril.
“Mom!” Willow said half laughing, half embarrassed, but not at all surprised. Asher looked up too. He clutched his tummy and laughed so hard at his mother with that cheese in her nose.
“What?” Rosie said in thinly veiled awareness, now barely able to hide her smirk. Asher pointed right at her nose, unable to get a word out between giggles.
“Is my nose running? I did feel a cold coming on,” Rosie said, restoring her poker face.
Now Willow was laughing too.
“It’s a cheese booger! A huge one!” Asher screeched between breathy giggles as he pointed at his mother’s nose.
Asher peeled a piece of cheese from his pizza, still vibrating with laughter, and stuck it in the gap where his front teeth should have been. He shook his head back and forth, the cheese swaying too. “Look! It’s cheese teeth!”
Now Rosie was giggling uncontrollably too.
Rosie looked at Willow with urging eyes. And then Willow peeled a piece of cheese from the gooey pizza and draped it over her right ear. “Cheese earrings!”
Right there, in the middle of Lanza Pizza, Rosie, Asher and Willow were just one big pile of cheese and giggles and love.
For Willow, every time she was with Mom was like having all the pizza and soda and candy and ice cream in the world and never getting a tummy ache.
7 (#ulink_de63007f-19e4-57af-972f-36987a88158c)
Twelve Years Ago
Rex and Rosie planned to walk around Central Park for their next date. Rosie thought about it every night as she fell asleep in her downtown apartment with the creaky stairs and tattered comforter. She wondered if she and Rex were going to hold hands. Or kiss. Or continue falling in love.
* * *
When 2:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon finally arrived, Rosie was scanning the crowd for Rex on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She spotted him right away when she looked up as he leaned against the base of one of the Corinthian columns next to the entrance with his left leg crossed over his right and his hands in his pockets. He was so tall and handsome with his broad shoulders and thick black hair. And Rosie was giddy at the sight of her strong, sturdy man leaning on that strong, sturdy column. She skipped up the steps, two at a time, and surprised both herself and Rex when she did a little hop right in front of him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. She didn’t plan to kiss him right away like that so early in their relationship, even if it was on the cheek, but it felt so natural.
* * *
Rex raised one eyebrow at Rosie, and then hooked his arm around her shoulder and said, “Hey, you.” Then they walked down the steps slowly in lockstep toward the park so that they could soak in every moment of each other as they listened to each other with full attention. They each told stories about living in Manhattan and the sets of events that got them there. They talked about art and philosophy. Music and stories of past travels. They paused every few moments to digest each other’s words. They nodded in agreement and sometimes blissful disagreement. And, in no time at all, on that fall afternoon, Rex was drunk with Rosie and Rosie had Rex sloshing around in her tummy. The air was crisp and clear in the height of a Manhattan autumn, but neither of them noticed the weather. There was only each other. In the whole park, the whole city. Among all the buildings and people and planets and stars.
When they reached the boathouse lake, Rex sat down on the grass and Rosie joined him. Rosie was pleased and surprised that he hadn’t brought a blanket. Pleased that he wasn’t worried about getting little pieces of crunchy leaves stuck to the back of his pants. And Rex and Rosie simultaneously opened the bags they had each been carrying. Rex’s had turkey sandwiches, two bags of chips and two apples. Rosie’s had old scraps of scribbled-on paper, a dozen flat stones and a few grape Pixy Stix.
* * *
Rex unwrapped the sandwiches and offered one up to Rosie, who was already standing up with a fist full of stones. She inadvertently ignored Rex’s extended arm and pranced a few feet away to the edge of the lake and counted out loud as her stone skipped across the surface of the water. “1-2-3-4-5-6!” she shouted and made three little hops. And then held her stone-filled hand out and offered a stone to Rex. “No thanks,” he said, his mouth half-full of turkey sandwich.
Rosie rolled her eyes dramatically, ensuring that Rex could see. “What do you mean, no thanks? Come on.”
“I mean, no thanks,” Rex said now a bit more firmly.
Rosie pranced back toward him. “Oh, come on. Take a stone. Skip it on the water. Live a little!” Rosie was now yanking Rex by his arm from his position on the grass. But Rosie’s slim five-foot-one-inch body could barely shake Rex’s single muscular arm.
“I don’t like skipping stones,” Rex said with his body stiff on the grass and the agitation in his tone escalating.
“Everyone likes skipping stones.”
Rosie was still tugging.
“Not me. I don’t like skipping stones. And I’m not good at it so can you just give it a rest, please?”
And, just like that, Rex accidentally revealed his vulnerability to Rosie. It was the first time it had been done. And it just slipped right out.
And Rosie wasn’t gentle about it. She responded like Rosie. “Oh, I see! You don’t like it because you’re not good at it. Well that, babe, we can fix.”
It may have been the way she called him babe, and it may have been that he was weary of her little body tugging on his arm, and it may have been the cuteness of her candor, and it may have been that he actually believed her, but no matter what the reason was, Rex stood up and allowed Rosie to be his teacher just this once. In skipping stones and in letting go.
Rosie reached around Rex and guided his arm in proper stone-skipping motion. She demonstrated how and when to flick your wrist. How to position the stone in your hand. She showed him how to choose the flat side of the stone so that it would slide most efficiently across the top of the water. And she was warm and enthusiastic through all of it.
She stood full of excitement as Rex tossed stone after stone, waiting for each to skip just once. And even when each stone sank into the water with a plop and a few fat ripples, Rosie pushed Rex to try again. Never once did she crumble under the weight of his frustration.
And when Rex finally got one little stone to skip twice, they both jumped and cheered and smiled. And then Rex picked Rosie up and spun her round and round. She was as delicate and airy as Rex thought she would be as he whipped her around in her loose floral-printed dress and draped scarf.
Rex liked holding Rosie. And Rosie liked being held by Rex. He liked feeling her lightness. And she liked feeling his strength.
Rex put Rosie back down onto the grass and they packed up the remaining traces of their lunch and shared a grape Pixy Stix. And then Rex picked Rosie up again, this time for a piggyback ride all the way back to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They stopped for a brief kiss and then parted ways.
As soon as Rosie got back to her apartment, Rex called and asked to see her again. And Rosie immediately invited him over to her six-story walk-up on the Lower East Side.
8 (#ulink_48f01199-e5ed-55d2-a9c9-ffbd0441984e)
Willow and Asher got in the car to go to school the next morning with a little bit of the previous night’s ice cream still dried on their cheeks. And Willow’s bones relaxed with relief. Sitting in the front seat next to her mother, she observed her in all of her coolness. Her long fingers with the red painted nails curved around the gear stick. Her left foot casually perched up on the seat. Her head bopping from side to side as she drove. Her wavy brown hair swaying back and forth as the wind moved through it.
Willow was in awe of the way Rosie’s hair moved so pleasantly. The mellow manner in which her locks draped over her shoulders. The way it looked like her hair belonged piled on top of her head. She wondered if her own tight curls would ever fall into smooth waves like that.
Willow was distracted from her thoughts by the jolt of Lili Von coming to a red light. And Willow watched Rosie as she pulled down the sun visor and fumbled around in her purse. She watched her mother pucker her lips in the mirror, and then locate a tube of red lipstick in the depths of her tote bag. Then she watched her mother twist her lipstick stick and spread the bright red color slowly and deliberately around her lips.
Rosie smacked her lips together and winked at herself in the mirror. Then she caught her daughter’s eyes fixated on her lips as if she were aching for something. And Rosie was happy to give her that thing.
So when Rosie reached the elementary school drop-off area, she asked Willow to stay in the car for a moment while she said goodbye to Asher. Willow felt a tickle in her tummy waiting for her mother to return as she watched Asher express his typical embarrassment over the dramatic hug that Rosie gave him when they were dropped off. And like all the other mornings, Asher rolled his big blue eyes as his mother pressed her whole body into him.
Willow watched with a smile until her mother got back into the car. And then, with minimal digging in her bag, Rosie pulled out that same stick of red lipstick and presented it with a flick of her wrist to her daughter.
“You want some?”
Willow didn’t have to say anything for her mother to know that, yes, she wanted to put some lipstick on. She wanted some of her mother’s lipstick on more than anything in the world. She wanted pieces of her mother with her all the time.
Rosie leaned over to Willow and delicately painted her daughter’s lips red with full attention and precision. Then Rosie snapped up, looked at her daughter and smiled warmly.
Willow could see how much her mother loved her. How funky Rosie found Willow’s purple leggings. How cool she found her wild hair.
“Check it out, noodle,” Rosie said as she unfolded the mirror from the sun visor in front of Willow.
Willow looked at herself in that tiny mirror. She knew she looked so much like her mother with those bright red lips. Willow smiled a big, big smile as she hopped out of the car with only the tiniest stumble and walked toward the building door.
“Wait!” Rosie hollered after Willow as she marched away. “You forgot something.”
Rosie tossed the stick of lipstick through the passenger side window and right into her daughter’s hands.
“It’s all yours.”
And just like that, red lipstick was added to Willow’s permanent outfit.
“Oh! Willow. One more thing!”
Willow stumbled again when she turned back around toward her mother. You would have never guessed that Willow was feeling more confident than ever in her new red lips, the way she turned around with her knees and ankles wobbling.
Rosie held up her pointer finger and curled it back toward herself three times as she raised her left eyebrow. Willow smiled, ran up to the car and stuck her little head and big hair through the window.
“Yeah?” Willow asked.
And then Rosie leaned over and pressed a big kiss into Willow’s cheek. And she shook her head all around as she did it. It left a big blob of red on Willow’s cheek that Willow didn’t even consider wiping away.
There was a moment of quiet love as Willow and Rosie looked straight at each other. But then Willow snatched it up.
“Hey, Mom. Can I ask you something?” She was looking right into Rosie’s brown eyes. Right down into her full heart.
“Did you leave those Pixy Stix for me on the school bus from Dad’s?”
Rosie tilted her head to the side and scrunched her eyebrows.
“Hmm. I’m not sure about that, noodle. What do you mean?”
Willow smirked. It was so like her mom to pretend like it wasn’t her.
Willow turned around and walked into the building feeling a second wave of her mother’s love. But ignoring the sincerity of her mother’s confusion about those Pixy Stix.
* * *
Willow Thorpe had gotten a lot of things privately wrong about her mother. Her father too. As parents and as people. And Willow got a lot of things wrong about the ways in which her parents showed their love. But of all the things that Willow got wrong about her parents and about love, Willow’s assumption that those two Pixy Stix were another one of her mother’s displays of the right kind of love would turn out to be the most detrimental.
* * *
That next night at her mother’s house, Willow and Asher helped Rosie prepare for Spaghetti Sunday. Asher shoved his hands into a bowl and squeezed and smashed plump red tomatoes until he couldn’t squeeze or smash anymore. And then he thrust the bowl at Rosie and said, “Hewe’s youw tomato guts!” through his toothless smile. As Willow stirred the bubbling pot of tomato sauce, the house filled with the aroma of garlic. And as soon as Mom got her hands on the record player, the house filled with sounds of Elton John too.
Rosie danced around as she set the table, and then served big piles of pasta and tomato sauce on her children’s plates. Rosie hadn’t yet finished chewing her first bite of dinner when Asher announced to the table that he had something to say. Rosie put her fork and knife down and urged Willow to do the same so that they could listen properly to Asher.
Asher stood up, pushed his chair in and swallowed.
“I don’t weally like the colow of my woom,” he said nervously, wobbling over each mispronounced word.
“What?” Rosie yelled quickly as she slammed her fists down onto the dinner table. She slammed them so hard that their glasses shook and the soda in them fizzled. Willow thought for a moment that her mother might be mad. She had never seen her mad before.
“That is a terrible thing!” Rosie continued, fists still clenched in tight balls next to her bowl of pasta. Rosie paused for a moment as if she was contemplating the best and quickest way to indulge her son.
“We have to fix this right away.”
Another pause.
“Willow, Asher. Shoes on. We’re going to the store.”
And both Willow and Asher quickly, and excitedly, obeyed. Willow twisted her feet into her high-top Converse sneakers and then helped Asher tie his light-up shoes, bunny-ear style. And then Rosie whisked her children into the car and drove, windows down, Prince blasting, straight to the paint store.
She guided Asher quickly down the aisles by his hand as Willow jogged and stumbled behind them. And then Rosie stopped in front of a giant wall of every color paint in every size bucket.
“All right, sweetie. Up to you. What color do you like?” Rosie said to her son so earnestly.
Asher’s eyes stretched all the way up to his hairline and his jaw fell all the way down to his belly button. And then his lips tightened as his nose crinkled.
“I have an idea,” he said firmly.
It was rare that Asher found a sentence without an R to fumble over. It gave his words a certain un-Asher-like seriousness.
“What if we get a lot of diffewent kinds of colows and put ouw hands in thum, and then put that on the walls?”
And just like that, Asher was back to Asher. And Rosie was ecstatic at the idea.
“Yes!” she cheered. “Let’s do it! Pick out all of your favorite colors. This is going to look fabulous!”
It was only natural that Rosie said yes so passionately. So openly. Because the list of things that Rosie said yes to was infinite. It was infinite on top of infinite. And whenever Willow or Asher wanted to have something or wanted to do something, their mother said yes and piled another thing right on top of it. Yes, you can play. And I want to play too. Yes, you can have candy. Have you ever put a Rolo inside of a marshmallow? Yes, you can have ice cream. Do you think it would taste as good with Swedish Fish and cookie dough on top? And, tonight, yes, you can paint your room. And you can do it all different crazy colors.
She kissed Asher on the cheek. Hard. Hard enough to make his lips look like a fish. And then Asher ran up to the paint chips and started pointing.
After only a few minutes of Asher running and pointing and comparing colors, Rosie, Willow and Asher were walking out of the store with five new buckets of paint.
When they got back to the house, Rosie tossed Willow and Asher some old T-shirts she had in her closet so they wouldn’t ruin their clothes. The T-shirts smelled like Dad. And everyone noticed, but no one said a thing about it. They just walked over to Asher’s room and pushed his solar-system themed rug into the closet and spread newspapers across the floor. And then, the paint cans were opened and Prince’s “1999” came on full blast.
All three of them stood on opposite sides of the room, shirts rolled up to their elbows, and prepared for their fun.
Rosie dived in first, but it wasn’t even a full second before Willow and Asher had their arms elbows deep in paint too. At first, Willow and Asher were deliberate with each stroke of the paintbrush. Each handprint on the wall. Each little detail by the doorway. But they changed their style as soon as they noticed the way their mother had slipped right into creativity. The way she twirled around the room. The way she fanned her brushes causing the spray of paint to add a gentle dusting to the wall. The way she threw handfuls of paint at the wall, creating bursts of color. She did it so effortlessly. And the walls looked so good. And soon Willow and Asher were following Rosie’s lead in ignoring boundaries. In accessing an internal kind of freedom. In living fully and blindly immersed in the things you love. In doing the crazy things that made you happy even if they were temporary. And in this moment, dancing and singing with paint on their hands and faces, it could not have been more apparent just how wonderful all of those feelings were.
And once the walls were covered, everyone signed their name in their favorite color paint and lay down in the middle of the paint-colored floor. It was the kind of tired that only happened after an hour of laughing and dancing. It was the kind of tired that hit your bones all at once. It was the kind of tired that allowed you to keep smiling even though your eyelids were getting heavy.
As the three of them lay there quietly on their backs, the track changed to “Purple Rain.”
Willow wasn’t used to hearing slow songs from Prince. She was used to the kind of Prince song that begged you to dance all around or sing at the top of your lungs in the car with the windows down. But she welcomed the restrained drumming and intermittent cymbal chime. She imagined what purple rain might actually look like. The sky dripping with little beads of her favorite color. Nothing in the world scared Willow more than a thunderstorm with its whipping wind and relentless rain and sharp cracks of lightning, but a purple one might be okay.
And then, just when Willow and Asher thought the night was winding down, Rosie broke the silence with an offer of ice cream and a wink on the way downstairs to get some.
In no time at all, Willow, Asher and their mother were huddled together in Rosie’s bed, scooping Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food with every topping in the pantry straight from the container. And then Rosie put on The Twilight Zone episode she had recorded and her children sank into her.
9 (#ulink_e0d96f09-a351-574c-93b3-e723f350ad18)
Twelve Years Ago
Rex impressed Rosie that fall in Manhattan. He did it with his firmness. Because in every interaction, big or small, meaningful or trite, Rex was firm. And Rosie admired his commitment to it.
Rex was stubborn and he grumbled and stomped his feet even when he just meant to walk. And he was easily agitated. By a taxi driver taking a questionably efficient route or someone blocking the entrance of the subway. By the checkout lady at the grocery store taking more than one try to slide a quarter out of the register. By long lines and oversalted soup. And whenever Rex was agitated, he made it known. He would huff and tap his foot and tense his shoulders. He would chomp down on his Bubblicious gum so hard his temples flared. He would jut his lower jaw out to expose his crooked bottom teeth. And although all of these things were unpleasant, Rosie loved how people responded to Rex. She loved that baristas made his coffee with exactly the right amount of milk. That barbers never left a piece of hair out of line. That waiters never made him wait too long for his dinner. That Rex got everything he wanted from his world by the force of his will. Rosie admired his high expectations for his world and those around him. She liked how he pressed firmly through the day. She liked that if you were on Rex’s side, mountains would be moved for you.
Rex emitted strength and Rosie liked nuzzling up next to it. She was flattered at the idea that someone like Rex might want to take care of someone like her. But most of all, she liked being taken care of.
She felt a change within herself. She had never found stability interesting before. She used to pick up books and put them down. Eat a few bites of a sandwich, and then forget about it. Talk briefly and intimately with a stranger she knew she would never see again. She took up odd jobs, and then quit them without warning.
But with Rex, she craved his steady presence. She felt a visceral urge to pull him in so close and never let go. She loved the feeling of safety when Rex was around. She loved his strong back and arms. His tough eyes that turned so loving when they got into bed. Not all women, not all people, could put up with Rex, but Rosie liked that she was strong enough, perhaps even aloof enough, to handle this caliber of man.
By Rosie’s definition of love, she loved Rex very much. And while she desperately hoped she could stay still enough to find a great, enduring love with this man, she knew in her bones that it could never be. She knew in her bones that one day she would want to twirl her way into a whole new orbit. That this love was most likely the transient kind.
She wondered, but doubted, if Rex would be willing to come on her life’s adventures with her. She wondered what she might say or do to try to convince him.
For now, however, Rosie would sink into her love with a man who was the opposite of everything she was.
* * *
Rosie entranced Rex that fall in Manhattan. She did it with her funkiness. Because in every interaction, big or small, meaningful or trite, Rosie was funky. And Rex admired the magic in that.
Rosie never matched her socks or cleaned the windows in her apartment. She ate pizza for breakfast and fell asleep in the middle of movies. She would casually put on a white T-shirt but cut off the sleeves or bedazzle the cuff before leaving the apartment. She refused to set an alarm, or the microwave timer, or the volume on the television to an even number. She was distracted by graffiti and never exited a subway car without saying goodbye to the person standing next to her. She waved and smiled as she did so even if they hadn’t exchanged a single word or glance.
Rosie had a simple laugh and she was quick to it. She never wanted to make anyone work too hard for it. She always had a dozen things in her bag she would have trouble keeping track of. And she would dig through her tote for her wallet to no avail to find her sunglasses already on her head, a pen already in her mouth, or the book tucked precariously under her arm.
And although all of these things might seem bizarre to Rex, he loved how everything dazzled when Rosie was around. He loved the way that sullen man in the subway car would smile as the doors closed on Rosie’s waving hand. How she’d share a park bench with a homeless man without hesitation. How an old piece of chocolate dug up from the bottom of her purse still tasted delicious.
Rex enjoyed getting into the crannies of the world with Rosie. He liked the sensation that the air was clearer and the sun was warmer when Rosie was near him. He felt a change within himself. He spent so much time glossing things up—his shoes, his résumé, his apartment—that he didn’t know until he met Rosie that things could be so beautiful, so raw. He felt overwhelmed with desire to see things through Rosie’s eyes. To explore all the tiny, forgotten corners of the universe with her next to him. Guiding him.
He loved the feeling of ease when Rosie was close by. The feeling that the next adventure, the next thing of beauty, was right around the corner.
Not all men, not all people, could put up with Rosie, but Rex liked that he was curious enough, perhaps even aloof enough, to handle this peculiar type of woman.
By Rex’s definition of love, he loved Rosie very much. And while he desperately hoped he could remain engaged enough to find an all-encompassing, enduring love with this woman, he knew in his heart that it could never be. He knew in his heart that, one day, he would want to be still again. That this love was mortal.
He wondered, but doubted, if Rosie would ever sit calmly next to him in bed on a Sunday morning. He wondered what he might have to say or do to stay true to himself.
For now, however, Rex would sink into this love with a woman who was the opposite of everything he was.
10 (#ulink_797393f1-d3ee-56a8-8c9d-a8cea11ada98)
Willow found it peculiar when she came home from school and found her father in jeans and a T-shirt waiting on the front steps. He was usually locked away in his office with all of his buttons still buttoned and his tie still tied at his neck.
There were two brand-new bikes leaning next to Rex on the front steps. Asher hopped on the silver-and-blue bike immediately and zoomed away on his new toy, training wheels included. Willow assumed that the purple one was intended for her, but was unnerved to see that it didn’t have any training wheels.
“Hop on, Willow,” Rex said. “Want me to teach you how to ride this thing?”
Dad always asked questions that had an answer he wanted and an answer he didn’t want. Are your teeth brushed? Are the dishes clean? Did you finish your homework? But Willow found herself delighted that Dad wanted her to say yes to this. She was happy to spend some time together. She was happy her father wanted to spend some time together too. She was happy that she would be a girl who learned how to ride a bike from her father. She was happy that she would be a girl with a father who taught her how to ride a bike.
She was happy at the vision of her future self, zipping down the street on that purple bike.
She wondered how long it would take to bike to Mom’s.
“Sure,” Willow responded shakily to her dad.
Rex held up a helmet and some knee pads and wrist guards. And Willow put them on and pulled the Velcro extra tight on each piece of protective gear. She saved the helmet for last, but her hands were too encumbered by the plastic protrusions of the wrist guards to properly pull the chin strap. She tried a few times, wrist guard clicking against the base of the helmet until Rex noticed what was happening and gave a hearty chuckle.
A chuckle.
Willow smiled sweetly at the sound of that rare noise escaping her father’s mouth. And then she felt her heart speed up and her cheeks tingle as her father bent down in front of her and pulled on her chin strap until her helmet was just the right amount of tight. It was the closest her father’s face had ever been to hers as Willow could remember it.
Willow loved how her father looked when she was up close. His skin was tan and smooth and his eyebrows were unruly and excited. Willow had noticed the creases between his eyebrows before, but the creases in his cheeks were new to her. Because while the eyebrow creases were undoubtedly a sign of how hard he was always thinking, the cheek creases must have been a sign that he used to smile. Perhaps even a lot. When Willow gazed down, she loved seeing how her father’s big hands tugged at her helmet strap, ensuring her safety. Caring about her.
Then, right before Rex pulled away, Willow and her father made eye contact. It lasted for only half a second, but it happened. And it made her heart speed up and her cheeks tingle even more.
Willow floated on top of her bicycle seat and felt ready to learn. And ready to be taught.
Her dad told her how to swing her left leg over just as the bike started moving. And then Rex did what dads are supposed to do. He told her to pedal, pedal, pedal. He told her to try again. And again. And again. He told her not to give up. Not to worry about falling. He told her he wouldn’t let go of the handlebars until she said she was ready. He was energized and encouraging. Willow’s heart was in her throat over the thought of crashing down onto the concrete, but she was having a version of fun. Because right there on the road outside of Dad’s house, something was happening. Something unlikely. Something unusual. Something meaningful. Something important. Something between Rex and Willow. Between father and daughter.
“Go over there and try pushing off the curb,” Rex suggested to Willow when she was so close to balancing herself.
And so she did. Willow gripped her handlebars, pushed off the curb and was suddenly in full motion. She felt the wind passing through her helmet. She felt the uneven surface of the street beneath her wheels. She felt fast and competent. And although she looked neither fast nor competent as she wobbled around on her seat with her arms rigid with fear, Willow also felt graceful and in control. And graceful and in control were brand-new feelings for Willow Thorpe. And she felt happy, so grateful that her father had drawn these feelings out of her.
“Dad! Dad! I’m doing it!” she shouted as loudly as she could with the air whipping by her. Willow picked her head up, looking forward to seeing her dad as excited as she was. Looking forward to him jumping up and down on the grass. She imagined him running over to give her a high five. Picking her up and swinging her around in circles. Kissing her on the face and telling her how proud he was.
But when her eyes found her father, he was staring down distractedly at his notepad and chomping down on a new piece of Bubblicious gum. Rex looked up to give his daughter a brief closed-mouth smile and a silent thumbs-up, and then he scribbled something on his notepad as he stormed back inside.
Willow rode her bike all around until she was alone in the dark and the trees were starting to creak in the wind. Then, when she was ready to go inside, she made sure to remove her wrist guards before attempting to take off her helmet by herself.
11 (#ulink_a11c3b46-c893-5777-bae0-fbc9db0906b3)
Eleven Years Ago
Rex was accustomed to elevators and doormen, and so he tensed up the first few times the stairs creaked as he climbed the flights to Rosie’s apartment. But it wasn’t long before he found the smell of musk by Rosie’s doorway profoundly alluring. The palpable dampness. The dusty crannies. The hum of the flickering light. The sticky crackle of the floor. Rex enjoyed his ability to access this kind of rawness when he was with Rosie. He was saving clean modern lines and well-dusted corners for another life.
After a year of dating, Rex already knew that the heart of all things beat more deeply when Rosie was around. Even her apartment vibrated. The walls were covered with annotated Polaroids and handwritten notes from friends. The refrigerator door was collaged with old ads featuring Cheryl Tiegs and Faye Dunaway. The walls were covered with posters of Elton John and Prince and Blondie. The corners of the couches had stuffing coming out the seams ineffectively covered by discolored pillows. There were markers and paintbrushes sprawled across the table. It was so clear to Rex that this was a place where art was made and drinks were spilled. It was a place where friends put their feet on the table, and no one bothered to replace old light bulbs. It was a place where people breathed and moved and talked and created. It was a place where people lived. And were happy. And he could see it in Rosie’s face that this was where she lived and was happy.
Rex took off his scarf, kissed Rosie gently, and then the two of them sank into her worn-in couch. They oriented themselves on the cushions as if they had been doing it just this way for years; Rex seated upright, shoes on, while Rosie placed her head in his lap and stretched her ankles over the arm of the sofa to let her clogs fall to the ground. This had already become Rex’s favorite part of the day, inhaling all of the scents of Rosie’s life—the flowery scent of the beautiful world around her lingering on the surface of her skin. It was no surprise to Rex that beautiful things clung onto Rosie and didn’t let go. It felt good being close to her. So good and so warm and so comfortable.
Rex wondered how he would eventually let go of all of the beautiful sweet things Rosie Collins was, but the thought quickly burrowed itself in the back of his mind when Rosie reached back and, without looking, wrapped her fingers one by one around Rex’s bicep and squeezed it enticingly.
Rex swept Rosie’s bangs away and traced his pointer around her temple, across her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. Rosie tried to follow his finger and giggled when she found herself cross-eyed as a result. Rex was a serious man and always assumed his girlfriend would be equally so, but Rosie’s quirky style of intimacy fulfilled him in a way he’d never thought possible.
* * *
And just as Rex was about to bend over and kiss Rosie, Rosie’s roommate Chloe burst out of her room, spewing on and on about the attractive man she’d locked eyes with at the café down the block, and ignoring Rex’s presence entirely. Rex did everything he could to keep from staring at Chloe’s nipples plainly visible through her sheer white shirt as she spoke. Rosie just half chuckled and shook her head as Chloe’s small breasts bounced up and down while she gesticulated her way through another mundane story.
And when Chloe finally exhaled, she lifted Rosie’s legs, wedged herself under her knees and pulled out a marijuana joint. Rex’s belly tensed at the sight of it.
Rex was uncomfortable with drugs, even the mere sight of them. He wanted to get up, rip the joint away from Chloe and throw it out the window. But Rosie lifted her eyes to meet Rex’s eyes and stroked his thigh gently. It was an indication that, yes, this was something she found to be acceptable in her home. And although Rex had never heard Rosie mention drugs before, the effortlessness with which she handled the joint between her fingers indicated that this was an activity she partook in regularly. Rex’s muscles tensed and his jaw clenched as he watched Rosie exhale a cloud of smoke, but in the newness of the scene, he didn’t protest.
And then Rosie brought the joint to her lips a second time.
Rex watched suspiciously as Rosie inhaled and the tip of the joint flared orange. He watched as Rosie gave in to the feeling of smoke in her lungs right away.
Rosie let her arm hang off the side of the sofa and slowly allowed her eyelids to close. As her breath deepened and her high began, Chloe’s voice, the clamor of the city streets, her lingering uncertainty about Rex and anything else grating about the world, drifted quietly away.
Rex could see the release in her face as he watched the smoke roll around in Rosie’s mouth, and then overtake her red lips, like fog rolling over a hill. She looked so calm, so beautiful. He felt Rosie’s body loosen, allowing herself to fully sink into his lap. This stillness, this quiet, was something Rex had never seen in Rosie before. He was used to her intense energy. Rex knew that Rosie was someone in tune with all of the tiny ripples of the world. All of the individual, human-to-human forces in it. And that those forces moved in waves through her. And that Rosie absorbed those waves deep within her body. It was the thing that made Rosie, Rosie. The thing that made her so special. But it also seemed to be the thing that exhausted her. Caused her to crave the calm of that high. And Rex could see that happening right there on Rosie’s old couch.
Rex was surprised to find an overwhelming sensuality in the feeling of Rosie melting into him. Rosie opened her eyes and looked deeply into Rex’s. She slowly reached her hand back and squeezed his inner thigh and walked her thin fingers delicately toward his crotch. Rex looked back at Rosie and kissed her forehead as his heart and his groin pulsed.
Then Rex, leaving Chloe to the rest of the joint in the living room, took Rosie’s nearly drooping body to her bedroom where, at her beckoning, he entered her slowly and entirely. As he moved inside her, Rex could feel Rosie’s body surge with pleasure, and then dissolve again back into her high. Rex found Rosie sexier than ever beneath him.
It was a version of Rosie he would enjoy only this one time, he told himself, in her bedroom with the old chipping paint. And then never permit this again. He didn’t want drugs to be a force in their relationship. He didn’t want drugs to be a force inside of Rosie. No matter how beautifully calm they enabled her to be.
Rex returned home from Rosie’s apartment late the next morning, heart and mind still spinning. He couldn’t keep all of these feelings, these ripples ricocheting around his brain. So he picked up the phone and called Roy Andrews, his oldest and closest, most dependable and most trustworthy friend.
“Roy,” Rex said solemnly. “This girl is going to be trouble.”
Rex knew he would need someone he could call on if Rosie was going to stick around in his life. And he had a feeling Rosie was going to become a part of him. For the first time, Rex was facing the difficulty of trying to hold on to something that vibrated. First, the sensation tickled a bit. Pleasingly. But then the energy started to move through him. Shaking his hand and then his arm and then his whole body. And even though those ripples in his body were briefly pleasant, they quickly started to become uncomfortable. Because his body was not meant to ripple like that. Vibrate like that. He wanted to release his grip, but his body couldn’t catch up with his brain. Finally he managed to let go, knowing he should keep his distance in the future. But still, he wanted to feel that first little tickle again. Even for just a moment. So he came back to Rosie again and again.
12 (#ulink_a5b92877-9aa9-5b02-bd52-6492cb2a442c)
After dinner at their father’s, Willow and Asher met in the den to play their favorite game: Lava Floor. It was the only game in Willow and Asher’s repertoire that was more fun at Dad’s. Because the den at Dad’s was full of so many surfaces to jump onto once the floor turned to lava. It was full of big leather couches and thick wooden tables and velvety ottomans. All were perfectly sized for far leaps and smooth landings. Willow moved the ivory-and-ebony chessboard that her father left out on the coffee table as a not-so-subtle attempt to get his children to play something more worthwhile than Lava Floor. And then she hopped up on the couch and poised herself for a leap. And even though Willow’s unreliable legs made her pretty bad at Lava Floor, Willow liked watching her brother jump from surface to surface while his silky blond hair flopped all around.
And also, it couldn’t be discounted that she thoroughly enjoyed hopping all around the same couch she was asked to sit on earlier that day with folded hands as her father introduced another one of his girlfriends who ended up staying for dinner. This one had boring blond hair and ate teeny tiny bites at a time. Her shirt was too stiff and her hair was too straight and her pocketbook looked too perfect on her shoulder. Willow liked the idea of jumping wildly up and down on the same surface that lady sat on with a straight back and forced smile.
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Brianna Wolfson
Little Miss Sunshine meets About a Boy in this piercingly bittersweet novel which shows how the most meaningful love can last a lifetime.Willow’s mother Rosie isn’t like the other mums. She’s wears every colour of the rainbow, has midnight feasts, and sends Willow to school covered in paint.Meanwhile, Rex is the sort of father who checks Willow’s homework, has a rule for everything, and would never dream of playing in the dirt.Now Rosie and Rex live in different places, Willow knows her mum needs her even more. But Rosie’s multi-coloured way of looking at the world can be overwhelming. These days, it feels like Rosie is spinning off her axis – and taking Willow with her. As if, one day, Rosie might disappear for good.And what would happen to Willow then?
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH ROSIE COLORED GLASSES
Just as opposites attract, they can also cause friction, and no one feels that friction more than Rex and Rosie’s daughter, Willow. Rex is serious and unsentimental and tapes checklists of chores on Willow’s bedroom door. Rosie is sparkling and enchanting and meets Willow in their treehouse in the middle of the night to feast on candy.
After Rex and Rosie’s divorce, Willow finds herself navigating their two different worlds. She is clearly under the spell of her exciting, fun-loving mother. But as Rosie’s behavior becomes more turbulent, the darker underpinnings of her manic love are revealed.
Rex had removed his Rosie colored glasses long ago, but will Willow do the same?
Whimsical, heartbreaking and uplifting, this is a novel about the many ways love can find you. Rosie Colored Glasses triumphs with the most endearing examples of how mothers and fathers and sons and daughters bend for one another.
Dear Reader (#u262b1672-9bea-55b1-9e5b-f69c672a8aa4),
There was a time in my life when writing this book, telling this story, would not have been possible. It wasn’t that I was waiting on my writing technique to mature or the time to put fingers to keyboard. I was waiting for the combination of curiosity and recklessness and confidence and energy required to explore a little voice inside of me that said, “What really happened back then with Mom?”
The start of that journey into my past was the start of this novel.
The mother I remember growing up with was fabulous. She is nearly identical to the main character, Rosie, that you will read about. She wore bright colours and wacky earrings. She let me skip school and drink coffee. I casually told a close friend about the coffee thing once and she winced. “Really?” she asked, earnestly concerned. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea for a kid.”
It stuck with me. There were other things like the coffee. Cake for dinner. Skipping out on homework to play. Watching South Park together until the sun rose. They seemed fun and refreshing at the time, but looking back on it now, they were also almost certainly irresponsible. Especially because there were also other less fun or refreshing things that came to mind when I thought about my mother. The smell of cigarettes in the bathroom. The stretches of time during which my father told me Mom was “away.” Once, my mother picked me up from school with an eyepatch on. She had injured her eye in a car accident, but it was no big deal because now we could play pirates. Even at six years old, those excuses didn’t sit right with me. Young Willow, the other protagonist of the novel, wrestles with these same feelings.
My mother died in a car accident when I was nine years old. Her death was, of course, a tragedy. I later learned that it was also the outcome of yet another opiate binge.
I have spent a lot of time in my life coping with the loss of my mother. But until I sat down to write this novel, I had not spent a lot of time thinking about what my mother’s death must have been like for my father. What my mother’s life must have been like for my father. What it must have been like for my mother to live the life she lived.
Rosie Coloured Glasses is my imagined look at what happened, from all sides. It is a work of fiction, but still, to me, this novel is told from my perspective, which will forever be that of a little girl trying to understand the thoughts, feelings and choices of her parents.
Thanks for reading it, and I hope you enjoy it.
BRIANNA WOLFSON is part of the writing community in San Francisco and has published some stories online. Rosie Coloured Glasses is her first novel.
Copyright (#ulink_1d3f4f4e-7751-5e7a-b9b9-1ccc26e35e27)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Brianna Wolfson 2018
Brianna Wolfson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9781474058445
To my mad and moonly mama,whom I still think about each day.
Contents
Cover (#ubefe4a70-7f2a-544f-bfeb-0bdd941e67c9)
Back Cover Text (#u0dd0fb9a-ab07-5402-9d09-e174f057534b)
Dear Reader (#uaa492d44-480e-58d3-9b67-325a6c2082d3)
About the Author (#u576c1309-dcb3-520c-bf09-25b0dacd6773)
Title Page (#u6369c888-ae18-5ddf-b3e7-389dfcfd0204)
Copyright (#ulink_4bfdc87e-9759-514f-8708-5039e67f597c)
Dedication (#ua2138f71-f997-5f53-b00b-d20cef7e7ac5)
PROLOGUE (#u43eb0205-d1da-5ba7-8760-e5d85ade3486)
CHAPTER 1 (#u812f8e64-d10c-57a7-8490-4caa412ee2cf)
CHAPTER 2 (#u1a0b34bd-8628-56bd-9e3f-ba3b427b2674)
CHAPTER 3 (#u49e9fc01-9d33-5e34-a0c5-8f0b39e34c6c)
CHAPTER 4 (#udea607de-b8f8-59fd-9d28-f7c0e18639d4)
CHAPTER 5 (#u3fb4d73e-2e01-5709-aae8-ec2d91e88582)
CHAPTER 6 (#ue1b36071-2f4c-5779-b077-540c761b153c)
CHAPTER 7 (#u86e0a323-bf8d-55f2-b40f-82a2df0f4257)
CHAPTER 8 (#uc304a63d-866e-5cc1-ab0d-28dca2a9ddbe)
CHAPTER 9 (#u59920567-6ecc-57e5-abdf-6965fdfefafb)
CHAPTER 10 (#uee1ba993-252f-58fb-bc44-89b86b60bce7)
CHAPTER 11 (#u8db3ba87-561d-5d0f-b26f-271de512ff13)
CHAPTER 12 (#u9ff71b43-e2ed-56b7-8ff6-ea8038164e9f)
CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_0cb965c1-4040-5499-8742-615351016202)
Willow Thorpe knew friction. The heat it created when one thing rubbed against another. When one world rubbed against another.
Willow felt it every time she got into the back seat of her mother’s car, buckled her seat belt, grabbed her brother’s hand and prepared to return to her father’s house. Every time she stared out the window of her mother’s car, and traced the familiar turns of the street on her way to her father’s. Every time her father opened the big heavy front door and grumbled, “Late again, Rosie.” Every time her mother casually responded with a smirk and a “Catch you later, Rex.”
Every time she looked up at her father and became self-conscious of the way her knees knocked together. Every time she went from art-covered walls to plain white ones. Every time she went from Mango Tango crayons to yellow #2 pencils.
Willow had a sense that the children of other divorced parents fantasized about what it might be like for their mother and father to be in love again. For their mother to tighten their father’s tie in the morning before work. For their father to zip up their mother’s dress in the evening before dinner. For their mother and father to share a casual kiss on the lips when they thought their children weren’t looking. For every picture frame around the house to display an image of a whole family: mother, father, and brother and sister tangled around one another.
But Willow didn’t think about any of that.
She thought about her tough and serious father in one world, and her warm and glimmering mother in the other. And the three times a week when one world grated up against the other.
But that grating of worlds, all that friction and heat, was worth it for Willow whenever she could return to her mother’s world.
Because in that world, her mother’s love was magical and it was fierce. Willow felt this kind of love could crystallize inside of her and fortify her. That it could fulfill her in the truest, realest sense. That it could keep her safe and happy forever.
But Willow was wrong.
In her life there would soon be confusion and sadness and pain and loss. And her mother’s manic love for her daughter could not protect Willow from any of these things. In fact, it might have even caused them.
1 (#ulink_f4568c8b-13fb-5b87-ad08-7ec9d3d3f137)
Twelve Years Ago
At twenty-four, Rosie Collins believed that love was both specific and all-consuming. She believed that true love accessed the back of the earlobe as much as it accessed the heart. She believed that there was one, special, nuanced way one human being could love another human being. And she thought of those nuanced, invisible, loving forces whenever she saw lovers together in the park or the subway or on a bench. She imagined the names they called each other before bed. His favorite place to put his hand. Her favorite shirt of his to wear to bed. The silly thing she said that made him laugh and laugh. The ugly painting he bought for their apartment that she loved seeing on the living room wall.
Rosie took the job at Blooms Flower Shop on 22nd Street and 8th Avenue as soon as she moved to Manhattan in part for the money, in part because she liked the idea of someone named Rosie working in a flower shop. But mostly she took the job so she could gain access to those loving forces. Like all of her other petty jobs, she would have to perform certain mundane tasks—this time, arranging flowers, manning the register and transcribing messages onto cards. But Rosie thought she might be able to keep this job for longer than the usual six weeks because at Blooms Flower Shop, she saw the greater meaning in her work.
She saw herself facilitating love. She fantasized about the thousands of love stories of which she would witness the tiniest glimpse, as patron after patron would call her up and share a little piece of themselves. They would tell her about their girlfriend’s favorite flower. Their fiancée’s favorite poem. How they wanted the perfect bouquet to show up at their wife’s desk for her birthday. How they wanted the perfect arrangement to say Happy Anniversary. Or to send something just because.
She was so excited that she spent the entire Sunday before her first day of work practicing her calligraphy. Rosie wanted to ensure that each letter was original and ornate enough to reflect the beauty and originality of the love behind the note. She barely slept that first night with the anticipation of her access to the authentic, naked, unabashed voice of love. It was a voice she loved so much, even though it wasn’t a part of her own life yet.
But Rosie’s heart broke the first week at Blooms when, day after day, men called in requesting a dozen red roses be sent to their girlfriend or wife or lover with a card that simply read “Love, Jim” or “From Tom,” or just “Harry.”
Didn’t some women prefer hydrangeas or chrysanthemums or lilies? Wouldn’t some of these flowers go to women who preferred pink or white or a mix of colors? Didn’t men in love know these sorts of things about their lovers? Hadn’t they wanted to fill that tiny card accompanying the arrangement with the kindest, truest, most perfect words?
When you sent flowers to your wife, didn’t you want it to mean “This is the way I still feel when I look into your eyes”? When you loved someone, didn’t you want to tell them in the most perfect, specific, unconcealed way? How did all of these men love women in the same twelve-red-roses-and-a–“Love, John” or “From Rob,” or just plain “Colin” way?
It broke Rosie’s heart to think that love could ever, ever, ever be that banal.
But Rosie was also not the type to sit around with a broken heart for long. Especially when it threatened her worldview. If the men of Manhattan could not express love properly, she would help them along. She would infuse their gestures with nuance and specificity whether it was authentic or not.
So Rosie took it upon herself to ensure that no card left Blooms Flower Shop with a generically and heartbreakingly boring signature. She replaced all requests for dull notes with ones she deemed more appropriate for a gesture of love. “You looked beautiful last night. Love, Alex.” “I was just thinking about how charming you looked when you had that piece of food stuck in your teeth. Love, Ryan.” “I’m better with you around. Love, Charlie.” “I hope we hang out so many more times. Love, Ian.” And she would smile wholly as she tied each card around a stem and sent it out the door.
These were the love stories Rosie wanted to be a part of. Even if they weren’t real, Rosie still believed them in some way to be true.
For weeks and weeks no one ever mentioned her love nudges. No one until Rex Thorpe called and requested that a dozen red roses be sent to his girlfriend at 934 Columbus Avenue.
“And what would you like the card to say?” Rosie asked dully.
Rosie had talked on the phone to this type with the Upper West Side girlfriend before. Brash. Probably had a high-paying job. Probably handsome but also deeply jerky. Probably had a pretty girlfriend to whom he seldom said, “I love you.”
“The card? What card?” Rex responded curtly.
“The card that will accompany the dozen red roses.”
A momentary pause.
“Sir?” she added as she rolled her eyes and pressed her condescension through the phone.
“I don’t fucking know.”
Silence. And then the repulsive chomping sound of gum-chewing came through the phone.
“To Anabel. Love, Rex. I guess.”
Click.
Rosie found Rex and the whole interaction to be entirely and maddeningly insulting to her and to the verb love. Again.
And so Rosie filled out the card in the manner that she felt appropriate, with her favorite e. e. cummings poem:
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
And then she signed it on his behalf: “I love you, Rex.”
This was the first time Rosie had ever used anyone’s words besides her own on these notes. She had never invoked any of her favorite poets. But this time, with Rex Thorpe’s supreme jerkiness to counterbalance, it felt just right.
Even to Rosie, it was unclear whether she was trying to rescue Rex’s girlfriend in some small way, or whether she was tacitly trying to tell Rex something about how love ought to be. Either way, now her effort was written in ink and it would be showing up on Anabel’s doorstep in thirty-six hours.
And Rosie was happy.
* * *
When Rex arrived at his girlfriend’s doorstep to receive credit for the flowers he had sent, Anabel immediately and energetically threw her arms around him. Unbeknownst to Rosie, Anabel was a literature student and a great fan of e. e. cummings.
“Your note is perfect,” Anabel told her boyfriend.
“I will treasure it always. I love you too,” she said.
Rex knew Anabel felt sure they would get married and Rex hadn’t yet thought of any reasons why she wouldn’t be correct.
Rex received his undeserved hug without a word in response. But when he saw the card on that bouquet, he was furious. Because he was not interested in flowery language and he was definitely not interested in anybody doing anything without his explicit permission.
At thirty-one years old, Rex Thorpe was both serious and particular about the things in his life. About his Brooks Brothers pants and steamed, button-down shirts. About the Eames furniture in his apartment. About the Upper West Side restaurants he frequented and the academic degrees of the people he interacted with. About the whiskey he drank and the shape of the glass it came in. About the brand of black ink in his ballpoint pen. About his vision of himself as a respected and successful man. About being a man of authenticity.
Rex focused his attention so meticulously and intensely on all of these things that he never felt it logical or worthwhile to spare any energy on Anabel DeGette. He never cared enough about her to go out of his way even though she was both pleasant and beautiful enough. Rex, himself, was acutely aware that if a pleasant and beautiful woman were not part of his idea of what a “successful” life looked like, he probably would not concern himself with women at all. But since it was, Rex knew he needed occasionally to express some sentiment of affection while simultaneously ignoring his girlfriend and spending all of his time at work. And a bouquet of a dozen roses with a note that said “Love, Rex” was what he had decided on.
“What the fuck did you do?” Rex shouted rhetorically at Rosie that next day even before he had both feet in the door of Blooms. “I gave you very clear instructions for my note. And nowhere did those instructions include a poem from fucking e. e. cummings. Who the fuck are you to interfere and manipulate my words?”
He was prepared to continue his rant, but stopped abruptly at the sight of Rosie in her knee-length paisley dress. Her messy brown hair slipping out of a loosely tied braid. Her bangs that nearly hid the curvature of her thick eyebrows. The flower-stained gloves that were comically too large for her undoubtedly tiny hands at the end of her tiny wrists. Her petite bones. The slight scoop of her nose. Her freckles. The way the corners of her eyes turned down. The way she jaggedly swayed her hips and hummed the tune of Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s “Leather and Lace.” The way she radiated.
And most importantly, the way she casually ignored his fury.
Rex was struck breathless by it all.
He stood in his place, mouth agape, disappointed that Rosie had yet to look up at him. He thought he could catch her eye. Just for a moment. He wanted to catch her eye. He wanted to gaze right into it and see something new.
* * *
Without even looking up from her daily thorn trimming, Rosie knew it was Rex stomping through the door. She peeked out quickly from underneath her bangs. Handsome and jerky, indeed.
She tried keeping her eyes cast downward at the roses in her hands as Rex spoke at her but lost the battle when his words stopped. She met Rex Thorpe’s eyes for just an instant and there everything was. His unruly eyebrows. His strong shoulders. His smooth skin. The creases in his cheeks. His black hair.
His presence.
Rosie couldn’t bear being in the shop with that overwhelming toughness. That simultaneous repulsion and attraction. So she shook her hands until the canvas gloves fell to the counter. And then Rosie picked up her tote bag full of scribbled-in notebooks and sweet-tooth fixings and scurried past Rex without saying a word. She put such focus on getting out the door and such little attention on what was happening in that shop, that she didn’t even stop to acknowledge the blue crayon and couple of pennies dribbling out of her bag as she dragged it behind her.
As Rosie walked toward the door, she felt another twinge. Although she did not share Rex’s principle, she quite admired his authenticity. Not all people, all men, spoke their mind like this. Not all were willing to let others know what hurt them. Vexed them. Pleased them. Excited them. There was a sexiness in Rex’s assuredness. His masculinity. His convictions. But even with all of those thoughts about the man standing so firmly in the middle of Blooms, Rosie waltzed right out and decided to take the afternoon off.
She hopped on her bike and, without a care in the world, headed straight for her favorite branch on the willow tree in Central Park. Just the tune of “Leather and Lace” playing in her mind. And Rex’s sylvan scent lingering in her nose.
2 (#ulink_cf6bf31d-890b-563b-9721-88d9d609fe36)
As it were, Willow Thorpe hated Wednesdays. Per the rules of the divorce, Wednesdays were always Dad’s days. And Dad’s days were full of homework and piano practice and chore charts and manners.
But it wasn’t long before her mother found a way to make Wednesday nights Willow’s favorite night of the week. Another adventure, another opportunity for so much love.
Willow tugged her favorite Keith Haring T-shirt over her thick hair until it fell onto her shoulders. She smiled when she looked in the mirror to brush her teeth and saw herself wearing it. She loved that oversize T-shirt with the thick squiggly lines and bright colors. She loved how it exuded excitement all around. How the figures were so simple and so happy dancing around together.
She washed the toothpaste from the edges of her mouth, then wiggled herself under her sheets. And then she waited. She squeezed her eyes shut like she was sleeping. But she wasn’t even close. And then she waited some more. And when Willow’s midnight alarm went off, it simultaneously felt like all the time in the universe—and no time at all—had passed.
With a tingle just under the surface of her skin, Willow tucked her feet into her slippers, picked up her flashlight from her bedside table, slid her pillow under her sheets in case Dad might check on her and walked delicately on her tippy toes all the way down the back stairs. She gripped the railing for balance, but made her way down the steps so naturally. It was a shame that Willow was her most graceful on that dark staircase in the middle of the night when no one would ever see her.
Willow pressed her toes slowly, purposefully into the lush carpeting that covered each step. She crossed the kitchen, slipped out the back door and made her way to the far end of the backyard. This moment, standing on the edge of the manicured grass with nothing but towering trees in front of her, made Willow’s heart tremble. It was just Willow alone in the dark. Nothing but the syncopated buzz of cicadas and faint crackling of the woods. Nothing but the crisp acidity of October nighttime air filling her lungs.
Willow could feel the excitement pulsing through her nerves. She was on the edge of her father’s world and on the precipice of her mother’s. Here was the entryway to happiness.
Willow launched off the thick lawn into the depths of the trees. Only thirty-seven and a half steps, she told herself as she hurried over fallen leaves and flimsy sticks to the tree house. She and her mother had counted the number once. Rosie had even made sure to account for the length of Willow’s stride instead of her own.
And when Willow reached the base of the ladder that led up, she made the signal—three clicks of her flashlight. Then she waited, her eyes big and her heart rumbling. And without another moment of quiet, Rosie returned the signal and popped her head out the base of the tree house floor.
Willow always wanted to zip up that ladder so badly at the sight of her mother, but she knew her loose knees were no match for the rickety wooden rungs. She was barely able to keep herself upright on the smooth ground of the fifth-grade hallway, let alone an old ladder. So she took her time wrapping her fingers around each wooden rung and then gripping her tightest grip as she carefully let her feet climb up slowly, one step at a time.
And when Willow finally got to the top, her mother would lift her by her arms and kiss her so hard, so decidedly, on the cheek. And together Willow and her mother would sing and dance and talk and draw by flashlight. They would paint and have thumb wars and play Twister and spin quarters. They would take turns performing tongue twisters. They would love each other so much.
And when the tree house walls were coated with new drawings, and when their mouths were coated with Pixy Stix sugar crystals and their bellies were filled with cream soda, and when the tree house air was saturated with the sounds of Elton John through her mother’s tiny speakers, Willow would lay her small head in Rosie’s lap and exhale.
Willow’s soft and raspy voice moved through the stillness. “Mom, why did you and Dad get a divorce?”
“Well, do you like waking up to the sun or an alarm?” Rosie replied.
“The sun,” Willow answered. And she was quick to it.
“Me too, baby,” Rosie said calmly as she kissed Willow on the middle of her smooth forehead. And then Willow exhaled again in her mother’s lap.
When Rosie’s watch beeped at 1:00 a.m., Willow and Rosie packed up their wrappers and toys, clicked off the flashlight and shimmied back down the ladder. Rosie with ease and Willow with full concentration.
And when Willow got to the back door of her father’s house, she waited and watched as her mother walked down the driveway away from her. She watched Rosie’s hair bounce weightlessly as her thin arms scrambled to maintain the pile of soda and candy and colored pencils stacked precariously against her chest. Willow watched her mother in all of her coolness, all of her effervescence, until she was gradually absorbed by the darkness.
Inevitably, before she disappeared, Rosie would drop a pencil or crayon or marker from her grip and let it roll along the ground without the slightest motion to pick it up. Her mother didn’t even pause to make sense of the faint clicking sound of the thing as it slipped from her arms and hit the blacktop. Rosie just got into the front seat of the car, where the dim car lights revealed her silhouette once again. And then she rolled her windows down, pressed both hands into her lips and extended her arms out toward Willow. She was sending a kiss all the way through the velvet darkness into Willow’s soul.
Then her mother drove away.
Willow returned to the driveway with her flashlight on dim to retrieve the lost crayon and bring it upstairs with her. She rolled the dark pinkish waxy cylinder in her hands and scanned the crayon label—Jazzberry Jam—then tucked it into her pajama pocket.
On Wednesday nights, as Willow drifted into sleep for the second time, she would replay the image of her mother’s red lips turning into a smile and the feeling of her mother’s long manicured fingers playing with her curls. And just like that, she could fall asleep happy.
It never mattered how tired Willow’s time in the tree house made her feel for school on Thursdays. Wednesday nights with her mom were definitely Willow’s favorite night of all the nights of the week.
* * *
Willow woke up the next morning in her room at her father’s house to the sound of her alarm. She slowly opened her eyes to the blue walls and the white wicker dresser. To the lacy throw pillows on the floor. To the taste of quiet. And then back to the beeping alarm.
Rex had told Willow that the trick to not snoozing through your alarm was to place the clock across the room. “Then, the only way you can stop the buzzing is to get up!” he told Willow one morning when she overslept. He told her this as he moved her alarm clock from her bedside table to the edge of the dresser by the far wall.
Willow slapped down on the clock and started the tasks of the morning checklist her dad had made for her. She also made sure that her little brother was on top of his morning checklist too. But as usual, he wasn’t.
At six years old, Asher Thorpe was always forgetting things. Spilling things. Breaking things. Knocking into things. But he was almost always forgiven for all of it. Because of his full cheeks and round chin, his clear blue eyes and his silky blond bowl cut. And, most importantly, his missing front two teeth and his trouble with the letter R.
It surprised everyone that two brunettes like Rosie and Rex could produce a blond-haired, blue-eyed little boy. But it made sense to Rex, Rosie and even Willow that Asher would have the kindest, most gentle, most nonthreatening features. There was a lightness to Asher that none of the other Thorpes possessed. A lightness that Willow was reminded of every time she reached Asher’s room across the house and found him pleasantly asleep beneath a pile of stuffed animals. Every time she nudged her brother awake and he smiled at the sight of his big sister.
“Morning checklist, Ash,” Willow said, and kissed her brother on the forehead.
“Alwight, alwight!” Asher said through a sleepy smile and sloppy cheeks.
Willow left her brother’s room and completed her checklist.
Brush Teeth—30 seconds top, 30 seconds bottom
Wash Face—Face soap only
Make Bed
Brush Hair
Fold Pajamas
Get Dressed—Clean clothes!
Pack for School—Do you have all your homework with you?
Take Vitamins
Family Breakfast
Willow had her morning checklist memorized, but Dad insisted that it remained taped to her door next to her afternoon checklist, which was taped next to the nighttime checklist. And Willow was very diligent about completing all but two items on this list up to her father’s standards.
The first thing Willow had trouble with was “Brush hair.” Because Willow’s hair was too curly and wild, and brushing it only made it worse. Mom told Willow that this was the kind of thing that boys didn’t understand and to just ignore that item on the list. But Willow didn’t like disobeying so instead of skipping the step, she guided the smooth back of the brush over the top of her tight curls every morning.
And then there was “Get dressed.” And while Willow didn’t have a problem doing so, her father never liked the clothes she chose to get dressed in. And the things she got dressed in were the same every day—shiny purple leggings, a black T-shirt with a silver horseshoe on it and black high-top Converse sneakers. The same thing every day for the last five years. She had several pairs of purple leggings and several of the same T-shirt. And today, a few weeks into fifth grade, she was still wearing that same outfit.
Her father never said a word about the outfit to Willow. At least not with his mouth. But he didn’t have to because Willow could always tell how he hated seeing her in that outfit. Every morning when Willow said good-morning to her father, she could tell she had disappointed him all over again. He said it with his eyes and a subtle drop of his chin and a faint shake of his head. Maybe it was her outfit or maybe it was her collapsing knees. Maybe it was something else entirely. But no matter what, her father never looked at his daughter in the same way her mother did.
Rex was posed in the big wooden chair at the head of the breakfast table exactly as he always was. Right leg crossed over left. Reading glasses perched at the tip of his nose. A steaming cup of coffee in his right hand. A pile of furiously scribbled notes scattered across the table. Dressed in a suit that looked like it was brand-new.
Looking serious. Looking powerful. Looking the same way he always looked.
Rex Thorpe was tall and broad and his shoulders pressed forward. If you were up close enough, you could see that his black eyes were always tick, tick, ticking back and forth. He was always scanning the room and the people in it. And his lips were always pursed like he was ready to say something. But the way his eyebrows pressed in toward one another and the way he held his jaw tense, you knew you didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But whether he was talking or quiet, looking at you or ignoring you entirely, Rex Thorpe commanded your attention when you shared space with him.
Willow sat down at the table and poured a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal for her brother and then one for herself as Rex tilted his right arm up and down like a steel machine taking sporadic sips of coffee. Willow and Asher used their heavy silver spoons to scoop the nonmarshmallow bits into their mouths first. They liked seeing the color that the specific mix of horseshoe, pot-of-gold and heart-shaped marshmallows might tint the milk. It was a game they played at their mother’s house too. After the Lucky Charms milk settled into a certain color, they would each scramble through the box of crayons at the center of the table and search furiously for the one that best matched the color in their bowl. Whoever announced the closest color first earned a big red kiss from Rosie.
When they played this game at their father’s house, Willow and Asher just stirred and observed the milk quietly. But at least they were both having fun.
Asher broke the silence when he loudly asked, “Can we go bowling this weekend?”
“Maybe once all your chores are finished,” Rex said without lifting his eyes from the notepad next to the coaster he put his coffee on.
Willow already knew her dad would say something like this. Because the set of things that Dad said yes to was specific and almost always conditional. You could watch TV for fifteen minutes, if your laundry was already folded. You could have ice cream, two toppings maximum, if you finished every last pea on your plate. You could go outside, jackets zipped all the way up, only after you practiced piano for thirty minutes. You could open a new cereal box when the old one was finished, and then you could fold up the old box so it was efficiently flattened and put it in the recycling bin. It didn’t matter to her father if none of your favorite horseshoe-shaped marshmallows were left in the old box.
Asher returned to his cereal bowl with an “Oh, man!” and then dipped under the kitchen table to play with his action figures. Which meant that everything went back to quiet at the breakfast table. Back to a quiet that disappointed Willow. She liked noise and chatter and music and games.
She liked her mother’s house.
Willow looked up from her bowl and considered whether to ask her father what color he thought the milk looked like. But his temples flared with each chomp on the wad of pink Bubblicious gum in his mouth. He looked so serious sitting there like that. So intense. So engrossed in his notes.
So Willow took her creased word search book out of her backpack and scanned the page for the next word on the list—ZIPPER. Willow searched the grid for a letter Z. She tapped the Jazzberry Jam–colored crayon on the paper as she stared at the page. Willow smirked at her secret. The secret of how she came upon that crayon. And even though no one even noticed that Willow was smirking or holding a crayon, she was still proud of that dark pinkish cylinder of color in her hand. Proud that she had a mom who loved her so much she met her in the tree house in the middle of the night. Proud that she had a mom who played with her hair every Wednesday night. Proud that she had a mom who always let her win in thumb war.
Right before the “bus alert” that Rex had set up sounded, Willow found her word. There it was, lettered straight across the middle. Z-I-P-P-E-R. She circled all the letters, closed her word search book and tucked it into her backpack. She needed it to keep her company on the bus. And at her lunch table. And under the slide at recess. And in her mind’s eye.
Willow brought her and Asher’s empty bowls to the kitchen sink, zipped up her jacket, then her brother’s, then said, “Bye, Dad,” loudly enough for him to hear as they left for school.
“Bye, guys!” Rex shouted back from his seat at the kitchen table.
If Willow created a morning checklist for her father and taped it to his wall, it wouldn’t say check your notes or tighten your tie. It would only say one thing:
Kiss Willow and Asher goodbye.
3 (#ulink_10b3e50e-e50d-5216-a906-d528f2c44201)
Twelve Years Ago
When Rosie got to her favorite willow tree by the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir for the fourteenth time in fourteen days, she took off her helmet and leaned her bike against the rugged bark of the trunk. Then she started climbing. The fourth branch up on the left side was Rosie’s favorite to sit in. She could hear the ripples of the water and the murmurs of conversation below, but no one ever saw her up there. She sat up in the tree and made drawings, scribbled doodles and wrote notes to friends in faraway cities.
Two weeks ago, she walked out of Blooms Flower Shop after Rex came in yelling, and she decided she wasn’t going back. And if she had ever bothered to check her messages, she probably would have learned that she had been fired anyway.
Rosie pulled a few straggling Pixy Stix out of her tote bag and tore them open. She poured some of the sugar into her mouth and the remainder onto her notebook. The purple crystals scattered so beautifully on the page. She added some orange and then some red and swirled them around with her fingertips.
Art, she thought. Ha. She stuck her tongue in the pile for a taste, and then blew the rest of the sugar off the notebook. Rosie watched the colorful crystals scatter into the air and trickle down toward the ground.
“What the fuck?” boomed a familiar voice from below. She couldn’t forget that voice. The incisive way with which Rex Thorpe said “fuck.”
Normally, Rosie might have apologized, but there was no way she would say she was sorry to that handsome jerk of a man. Not after the way he treated her. Not after the way he treated love.
She shimmied down the tree prepared to walk away from him for the second time in two weeks. And as she did, her dress flipped up above her head revealing her polka-dot underwear. As soon as the paisley fabric fell back into position, Rosie and Rex locked eyes.
There was a pause.
“Hey, I know you. You work in the flower shop. You wrote that card to my girlfriend. The one with the crazy e. e. cummings love poem.”
Another pause.
“That was fucked-up.”
Rosie adjusted her dress, squinted her eyes and decided to do battle. But only for a second.
“Your note was fucked-up.”
“Yeah? What about it?” Rex came back quickly, ready to spar.
Rosie almost walked away with her grimace, but then something just slipped out.
“Even Maleficent had something original to say to Sleeping Beauty.”
Instead of firing back, Rex just stood there staring at her. And then he laughed. He found Rosie’s retort bizarre, immature and adorable.
Rosie tried to make her escape from Rex for the second time, tote bag in hand. Rosie’s body jerked just as awkwardly and charmingly as it had two weeks ago at Blooms Flower Shop. But this time there were strange comebacks and endearing polka-dot underwear.
Rex thought about Anabel. She never moved like this. Or dressed like this. Or talked like this. She always had a tall spine and a straight neck and a freshly dry-cleaned shirt.
Rex was surprised to find that everything about Rosie right here under this willow tree was warming his heart. Especially the awkward manner in which she tried to wiggle out of their encounter. Rosie marched determinedly in one direction. Then abruptly she turned around and marched equally determinedly in the opposite way.
But Rex had positioned his body right in front of Rosie’s and stared down at her.
And Rosie slowly lifted her head and stared right back into his eyes.
Rex saw right through her big brown eyes and into her soul. Her bones that had finally stilled. And into her heart. Her heart that was racing.
Rex felt his heart do the same, and right then and there started to believe in the nuanced, invisible, loving force of the world.
And it made Rex want Rosie. So wholly. So viscerally. And when Rex Thorpe wanted something, he made it happen.
So right there next to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, Rex Thorpe pressed Rosie Collins up against the bark of a willow tree, and then pressed his lips against hers so gently.
It was the best kiss Rex ever had.
Even though there were Pixy Stix in her mouth and in his hair.
Rosie still had her eyes closed when she asked Rex slowly and calmly, “Think I’ll ever see you again?”
Then Rex stared into Rosie’s still-closed lids and said simply and honestly, “Sure do.”
Rex Thorpe went home, made a reservation at the most impressive restaurant he could think of and told Anabel simply and honestly that he was sorry, but he didn’t love her.
Because Rex Thorpe finally knew what love was. And she tasted like Pixy Stix and wore polka-dot underwear.
4 (#ulink_500bc215-05e7-5390-8551-0eb04c313d20)
Willow dragged her feet getting onto Bus #50. How it was one of the most difficult parts about going to Robert Kansas Elementary School. Because #50 was cruel to a fifth grader with tightly coiled hair that sprung out in all directions. It was cruel to a fifth grader who preferred a CD player to hopscotch with friends. And to a fifth grader who sat in her seat engrossed in word searches. It was cruel to a fifth grader who wore the same outfit every day or had once, just once, even peed in her pants at recess in front of everyone.
Bus #50 was a nightmare for Willow Thorpe.
Willow couldn’t go back on that bus. Not one more time. So she told her father about Bus #50. She told her strong, sturdy father. About the hair-pulling while having the word boing yelled in her ear. About the pointing at her favorite black T-shirt with the horseshoe while everyone laughed and laughed and said “she’s wearing it again.” About the tearing of her word search pages right when she was going to circle S-L-I-T-H-E-R on a backward diagonal. Willow’s voice crept over the lump in her throat as she told him.
But Willow was devastated when her father’s only suggestion was to fix it herself.
“Stop sitting near those kids, Willow,” he said nonchalantly. “Sit in the seat right behind the bus driver. He can help.”
Willow did her best to clear the lump in her throat once more to protest, but as usual her father was insistent and unwavering. Rex walked Willow all the way up into the bus, pointed at that green vinyl seat with the duct tape covering up a hole in the back and said, “Sit here, Willow.”
He said it in front of everybody. He was already making things worse.
“Sit, Willow,” the fifth graders, and even some fourth graders, mocked as they patted on their legs like they were talking to a dog.
Willow might have been even more upset if she didn’t think those fifth, and even some fourth, graders had it right in some ways. Her father did talk to her like she was a dog. A dog being trained. And not just this one time on the bus. All the time.
“Eat your broccoli.”
“Take your plate to the sink.”
“Finish your homework.”
“Make your bed.”
“Tie your shoes.”
“Help your brother.”
Her father said those things without a smile or a please or a morsel of warmth. Her father was firm and direct, and Willow didn’t like it. Not now on Bus #50. And not any day at his house.
In an effort to avoid eye contact with everybody else on that whole entire school bus, Willow turned her attention to the duct tape on the seat. She wished Asher didn’t have to take the designated kindergarten bus. She wished he was sitting right next to her. And as she wished, Willow picked at the sticky edges compulsively until she revealed the entire hole in the back of the seat. But when she looked into the hole, she saw something unusual in there. Willow reached her hand into that hole to see what it was.
Tucked inside the hole she discovered two grape-flavored Pixy Stix with a string tied around them and a typed note that said, “For Willow.”
For the first time all year, Willow smiled on Bus #50. She smiled to herself and sneakily stuck her secret candies into her backpack.
But then she took one right back out, ripped it open and poured the sugar into her mouth. She couldn’t hold out for even a second. She loved Pixy Stix. She loved the loving force that put them there. And Willow thought she knew exactly what, who, that loving force was. There was only one person in this town, on this earth, in this universe who loved Willow enough to surprise her with her favorite flavor Pixy Stix.
* * *
As Willow walked down the hallway with her remaining Pixy Stix in her bag, she almost forgot that the kids at Robert Kansas Elementary School were going to be so mean. She almost forgot they might put diapers in her cubby. She had almost forgotten about the first time she saw diapers in her first-grade cubby after she peed in her pants a few days after her parents told her about the divorce. The day of that big thunderstorm. That big, booming, terrifying thunderstorm. She had almost forgotten that she would have no one to sit with at lunch, and that everyone would avoid being her partner in gym class. That her teachers wouldn’t call on her even though she knew all the answers. That at some point during the day, she was inevitably going to trip and fall in front of everyone.
Gravity worked differently on Willow than it did on everybody else. It yanked her down randomly. It pulled her toward the earth whenever it wanted to. It gave a quick but firm tug on her knee, her elbow, her hip—and her body would buckle, leaving Willow in a contorted pile of bent skinny limbs on the ground. And while this often caused minor scrapes or bruises, Willow actually didn’t mind falling down like this. She thought that it made her special. She thought it made her distinct. The very idea that somewhere, sometimes, the world around her had singled her out. It singled her out and pulled her close to itself. Willow liked the idea that gravity was thinking of her from time to time. And she liked the idea that it would always let her know, with a tug on the knee, exactly when that time was.
When the lunch bell rang, Willow took her time retrieving her bagged lunch from her cubby and then took her time walking down the hallway to the cafeteria. It helped minimize the time in which she was sitting alone at her lunch table in the back. She put one foot slowly in front of the other and traced her finger along the green elementary school walls.
But before she even rounded the corner for the lunchroom, Willow could hear Amanda Rooney and Patricia Bleeker giggling even though she couldn’t see them. This was a trick Willow recognized from last year. Amanda and Patricia had waited for Willow to turn the corner, then they stuck out their clean white platform shoes, causing Willow to fall over right in the middle of the floor. They laughed, and then walked away with their arms linked at the elbows.
Today, Willow knew better than to fall into their trap a second time. So, she made a very wide turn and exposed Amanda and Patricia huddled together on the other side. They were both wearing big blue bows in their blond hair and had on pink-striped T-shirts. Willow could barely tell which one was which, given the way they were tangled up in each other’s matching outfits like that. Willow looked right at them, smiled only slightly and let her eyes tell them, You’re not going to trip me twice!
But just when Willow thought she had escaped the taunts, gravity yanked down on her so hard she fell all the way to the ground. First her right knee, then her right hip, then her right shoulder.
Amanda and Patricia squealed equally high-pitched squeals. And with the sound of their laughter ricocheting in her skull, Willow just stayed on the floor and closed her eyes tightly and hoped that she would hear Patricia’s and Amanda’s shrieks soften.
But their sounds only got louder.
And when Willow opened her eyes, the two blond-haired, blue-eyed girls were standing over her and dumping handfuls of pencil shavings all over her body, making sure to get them into her curly hair.
Willow just lay there watching as the apple from her lunch bag broke loose and rolled halfway down the hallway.
And then finally Patricia’s and Amanda’s voices trailed away as they left Willow to her bruised elbow and her bruised apple. To her messed-up lunch and her messed-up hair.
Willow got up and shook her head back and forth, expecting flakes of soft yellow wood to flutter out of her hair, but nothing did. The shavings hooked themselves so assiduously into her jagged curls that not a single one fell to the ground. Willow walked into the bathroom to find a mirror, thinking perhaps there would be enough time to pick out the pieces before lunch was over. But on the wall next to the mirror, in thick black Sharpie, it said, “Willow, Willow, hair like Brillo.” She wondered if someone had just added it here or whether it was left over from last year.
Either way, after the quick glance she got of herself in the mirror before turning around, Willow thought the yellow flecks looked sort of cool in there. They had that same jagged in-motion effect as the design on her Keith Haring T-shirt. Mom would like that. Plus, tonight was pizza night so she could show her then.
5 (#ulink_e536d416-6eca-5d46-92b4-4347f24d01a8)
Twelve Years Ago
Although Rex was not Rosie’s usual type, her soul had already succumbed to Rex in so many ways. Rosie was equal parts nervous and excited for their first date.
She mixed and matched printed dresses with vintage jewelry until she was pleased. She twirled around in the mirror and blew herself a kiss after applying her favorite red lipstick and scanning her final choice of outfit.
Rosie shouldn’t have been surprised when their first date included a highly coveted reservation at a fancy Manhattan restaurant with high ceilings and a bathroom attendant, but she was. She was surprised and uncomfortable in her twenty-dollar dress on a six-hundred-dollar gold-adorned chair. And she was annoyed and uncomfortable as Rex ordered an appetizer of oysters for the two of them to share without consulting her.
Rosie hated oysters. And Rex didn’t even pause for one moment to consider that he wasn’t going to impress Rosie with them. He was going to scare her with them. He was going to gross her out with them. Because Rosie thought they looked like boogers. And tasted like them too.
Rosie considered putting one of them up her nostril when the oysters arrived to ease the tension between them, but Rex was too enraptured by the wine menu to have noticed.
When their second course was set down by a waiter with a napkin folded over his forearm and the one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar wine was poured by a sommelier, Rex finally looked up at Rosie.
“Cheers,” he said innocently.
But Rosie was indignant and it bubbled out of her immediately.
She positioned her tiny arms to push her stupid, gold-adorned chair back and leave Rex alone at his expensive fucking table with its boring white tablecloth and its overly formal waiters who bent from the hips with straight legs and backs when you walked by.
“I hate oysters,” she stated a little too firmly and a little too loudly. “And this wine is, like, stupid expensive.”
A pause.
“And so is this stupid tablecloth and this stupid napkin, I bet!”
“Ugh, I think you’re right,” Rex said, finally dropping his shoulders. “Let’s finish this stupid bottle of stupid expensive wine and get out of here. I know a good pizza spot around the corner.”
And just like that, Rosie nuzzled her knees back under the table, finished her wine and found herself ready to be smitten all over again.
As they munched on cheap pizza while expensive wine coursed through their blood, conversation flowed easily between them. Neither Rex nor Rosie had any idea what the other was saying because Rosie was focused on Rex’s deep, dark eyes. And Rex had his eyes locked on Rosie’s expressive, red lips. And just as Rex was about to take the last bite of his crust, Rosie grabbed his hand and whisked him out the door.
“Music time,” she whispered in his ear as she pulled him in toward her on the sidewalk, and then twirled her body around.
They walked a few brisk blocks, and then ducked under the red awning of Ray’s, Rosie’s favorite piano bar. Rosie loved everything about Ray’s. The dark corners and the red lamps at the tables. The smoky scent of cigars and the bottle-lined bar. The sexiness of it all.
She loved that she could never guess who from the audience might stand up and play a tune for the rest of the room. She loved that one minute, a man with quiet eyes and deep wrinkles would be slowly sipping a whiskey neat, and the next minute he was slamming his fingers against the keyboard and filling a room with music. She liked the idea that anyone, everyone, in a given space might have a gift to share.
Rex and Rosie sat in the back with another bottle of wine as, one by one, different members from the audience took a seat onstage and used their entire body to make sexy, full, stunning music. Rex and Rosie searched around the room and tried to guess which patron they thought would perform next. They tried to guess what song might be played. Billy Joel for the man about their age in the rugged baseball hat. Frank Sinatra for the gray-headed man with strong and wrinkled hands tapping his foot in the back. And while they were never right, not even once, Rex and Rosie both opened themselves fully to the game and to each other.
When Rex slid away from the table, Rosie assumed it was to order another round of drinks. But then he was onstage under the foggy red lights. In a thousand-dollar jacket on a five-dollar piano bench. And he looked great.
The crowd sang along to Rex playing “Bennie and the Jets” as he pressed his fingers deliberately but naturally into the keys. And right there, Rosie saw the most important thing she could see in a man. Rex Thorpe had soul—and she could work with that.
So Rosie joined the rest of the room and sang along as her soon-to-be boyfriend moved the crowd and Rosie’s heart into motion.
Rex left the stage after a standing ovation and a familiar handshake from the bar owner. And then Rosie kissed Rex deeply and proudly linked her arm in his as they walked out of the red-lit piano bar.
She didn’t mean to stumble into Rex’s arms when he walked her back to her apartment, but she was drunk with wine and whiskey and new love.
6 (#ulink_5c977e06-5b61-56ac-b147-2ca4461e4c04)
Willow fixated on the second hand of the clock in Mrs. McAllister’s classroom as she waited for school to be over. As she waited for pizza night. Waited for her mother to come around the bend of the parent pickup circle in her rattling blue car with its googly eyes stenciled on the front of it. Waited to spend the night swaddled in fun.
When the three-thirty bell rang, Willow shoved her spelling list into the bottom of her backpack, confirmed that her laces were tied on both shoes and fast-walked all the way to Asher’s classroom. She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him toward the parent pickup circle. Then Willow exhaled for the first time all day and locked her eyes on the entranceway.
Rosie was typically late to pick up Willow and Asher from school. She never wore a watch and often found herself in a daze somewhere, completely oblivious to the time. But Willow didn’t want to miss one second with her mother, so she rushed to the pickup circle anyway every Tuesday and Thursday after school. Willow noticed that all of the other moms wore jeans, a T-shirt and dark sunglasses. They drove black or white cars that sparkled permanently. They kept their hair in neat ponytails and never got out of the car to say “hi” to their children.
But that wasn’t her mother. Her mother’s car was bright blue and made loud clanking noises. Rosie had named her car Lili Von after her favorite character in Blazing Saddles. The googly eyes that were stenciled just above the headlights always caused side-eye glances from the other mothers too. But that didn’t faze Willow or Asher. They loved that car and they loved those googly eyes.
After only three games of tic-tac-toe, Lili Von appeared around the bend with Prince blasting out the window. Willow saw her mother’s left knee poking out the driver’s seat window. Her wavy brown hair was blowing around excitedly. Her big brown eyes and arched eyebrows were sticking out above her neon pink, thick-framed sunglasses that were resting on the tip of her nose. Lili Von screeched as her mother pulled up to the curb in front of where Willow and Asher were standing. And almost before the car had fully stopped, Rosie jumped out of the front seat to give each of her children separate, tight hugs.
Rosie looked as cool as she always looked in her cutoff jean shorts and long fur coat even though it was a perfectly temperate fall afternoon. She looked as cool as she always looked with her shoes with the holes in them and her polished red nails. She looked as cool as she always looked with her bright red lips.
“I missed you little noodles!” she said with a full-teeth and full-heart smile as she got back behind the wheel. “Hop in, already. It’s pizza night!”
But just before Rosie got back behind the wheel, she snapped her head around and looked back at her daughter. She tilted her head to the side, pulled her sunglasses down farther on her nose and said, “Cool hair, baby.” She said it quickly and honestly, and then drove off, leaving Willow smiling so big in the back seat.
They hadn’t even reached the edge of the school parking lot when Rosie reached for the volume knob and said to her children the thing she always said on the way to pizza night at Lanza Pizza.
“Let’s rock ’n’ roll.”
And when Rosie said that, she meant it in the literal sense. She turned the volume knob so many revolutions to the right that the speakers started throbbing and the floor started vibrating.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
Willow recognized the song right away. It was Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” and it was one of Mom and Willow’s favorites.
Rosie, Willow and Asher all sang the lyrics in tandem and whipped their hair around as the music played.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
They sang as loudly as they could until they reached their parking spot at Lanza Pizza. Even Willow and Asher could see how Rosie filled with even more life when they arrived there. It was Rosie’s favorite pizza place in town, tucked on a side street with a neon sign that was rare for the suburbs of Virginia. It had orange and yellow plastic booths, an old pinball machine and a deep bucket of half-used crayons.
The moment Willow, Rosie and Asher walked through the door of Lanza Pizza, they simultaneously tilted their noses toward the ceiling and pressed their chests forward as they inhaled the smells of bubbling cheese and hot tomatoes. As Willow and Asher grabbed handfuls of crayons, Rosie bounced straight to the counter and asked for three large cups for fountain soda. And just like every Thursday, John had them waiting already right next to the register. As Willow sat down to put her crayons to use, she saw her mother wink familiarly at John in his sauce-stained apron. And then she saw John wink familiarly back at Rosie as he swirled a freshly floured heap of pizza dough around his thick sausage fingers. Willow couldn’t help but smile at the warmth between near strangers. The ease between opposites. The electricity created when her mother entered a room.
Asher and Willow snatched their large paper cups from Rosie’s hand and dashed to the soda fountain, where they filled their cups with a fizzing mixture of orange, root beer, Sprite and Hawaiian Punch. Rosie met them at the fountain, but filled her cup with nothing but cream soda. It was her favorite drink. And every time she got her big, icy cream soda from the fountain—not the bottle—she poked her straw through the plastic top, took her first gulp and said, “Nothing like a cold fountain cream soda.” She did it so often that it had become tradition for Willow and Asher to say the words right alongside Rosie and then for all to take a big slurp of soda.
While the pizza warmed in the oven, Rosie took a roll of quarters out of her tote bag and handed it to Willow. And then Willow and Asher took turns on the pinball machine, clicking the flippers and encouraging each other on. They cheered when they hit a bonus and booed when their final ball slid between the flippers.
And when they got back to the table, a big slice of hot pizza was waiting on each of their plates. Willow bit into her slice, and then looked back up at Rosie, who had a big gooey piece of cheese hanging from her nostril.
“Mom!” Willow said half laughing, half embarrassed, but not at all surprised. Asher looked up too. He clutched his tummy and laughed so hard at his mother with that cheese in her nose.
“What?” Rosie said in thinly veiled awareness, now barely able to hide her smirk. Asher pointed right at her nose, unable to get a word out between giggles.
“Is my nose running? I did feel a cold coming on,” Rosie said, restoring her poker face.
Now Willow was laughing too.
“It’s a cheese booger! A huge one!” Asher screeched between breathy giggles as he pointed at his mother’s nose.
Asher peeled a piece of cheese from his pizza, still vibrating with laughter, and stuck it in the gap where his front teeth should have been. He shook his head back and forth, the cheese swaying too. “Look! It’s cheese teeth!”
Now Rosie was giggling uncontrollably too.
Rosie looked at Willow with urging eyes. And then Willow peeled a piece of cheese from the gooey pizza and draped it over her right ear. “Cheese earrings!”
Right there, in the middle of Lanza Pizza, Rosie, Asher and Willow were just one big pile of cheese and giggles and love.
For Willow, every time she was with Mom was like having all the pizza and soda and candy and ice cream in the world and never getting a tummy ache.
7 (#ulink_de63007f-19e4-57af-972f-36987a88158c)
Twelve Years Ago
Rex and Rosie planned to walk around Central Park for their next date. Rosie thought about it every night as she fell asleep in her downtown apartment with the creaky stairs and tattered comforter. She wondered if she and Rex were going to hold hands. Or kiss. Or continue falling in love.
* * *
When 2:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon finally arrived, Rosie was scanning the crowd for Rex on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She spotted him right away when she looked up as he leaned against the base of one of the Corinthian columns next to the entrance with his left leg crossed over his right and his hands in his pockets. He was so tall and handsome with his broad shoulders and thick black hair. And Rosie was giddy at the sight of her strong, sturdy man leaning on that strong, sturdy column. She skipped up the steps, two at a time, and surprised both herself and Rex when she did a little hop right in front of him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. She didn’t plan to kiss him right away like that so early in their relationship, even if it was on the cheek, but it felt so natural.
* * *
Rex raised one eyebrow at Rosie, and then hooked his arm around her shoulder and said, “Hey, you.” Then they walked down the steps slowly in lockstep toward the park so that they could soak in every moment of each other as they listened to each other with full attention. They each told stories about living in Manhattan and the sets of events that got them there. They talked about art and philosophy. Music and stories of past travels. They paused every few moments to digest each other’s words. They nodded in agreement and sometimes blissful disagreement. And, in no time at all, on that fall afternoon, Rex was drunk with Rosie and Rosie had Rex sloshing around in her tummy. The air was crisp and clear in the height of a Manhattan autumn, but neither of them noticed the weather. There was only each other. In the whole park, the whole city. Among all the buildings and people and planets and stars.
When they reached the boathouse lake, Rex sat down on the grass and Rosie joined him. Rosie was pleased and surprised that he hadn’t brought a blanket. Pleased that he wasn’t worried about getting little pieces of crunchy leaves stuck to the back of his pants. And Rex and Rosie simultaneously opened the bags they had each been carrying. Rex’s had turkey sandwiches, two bags of chips and two apples. Rosie’s had old scraps of scribbled-on paper, a dozen flat stones and a few grape Pixy Stix.
* * *
Rex unwrapped the sandwiches and offered one up to Rosie, who was already standing up with a fist full of stones. She inadvertently ignored Rex’s extended arm and pranced a few feet away to the edge of the lake and counted out loud as her stone skipped across the surface of the water. “1-2-3-4-5-6!” she shouted and made three little hops. And then held her stone-filled hand out and offered a stone to Rex. “No thanks,” he said, his mouth half-full of turkey sandwich.
Rosie rolled her eyes dramatically, ensuring that Rex could see. “What do you mean, no thanks? Come on.”
“I mean, no thanks,” Rex said now a bit more firmly.
Rosie pranced back toward him. “Oh, come on. Take a stone. Skip it on the water. Live a little!” Rosie was now yanking Rex by his arm from his position on the grass. But Rosie’s slim five-foot-one-inch body could barely shake Rex’s single muscular arm.
“I don’t like skipping stones,” Rex said with his body stiff on the grass and the agitation in his tone escalating.
“Everyone likes skipping stones.”
Rosie was still tugging.
“Not me. I don’t like skipping stones. And I’m not good at it so can you just give it a rest, please?”
And, just like that, Rex accidentally revealed his vulnerability to Rosie. It was the first time it had been done. And it just slipped right out.
And Rosie wasn’t gentle about it. She responded like Rosie. “Oh, I see! You don’t like it because you’re not good at it. Well that, babe, we can fix.”
It may have been the way she called him babe, and it may have been that he was weary of her little body tugging on his arm, and it may have been the cuteness of her candor, and it may have been that he actually believed her, but no matter what the reason was, Rex stood up and allowed Rosie to be his teacher just this once. In skipping stones and in letting go.
Rosie reached around Rex and guided his arm in proper stone-skipping motion. She demonstrated how and when to flick your wrist. How to position the stone in your hand. She showed him how to choose the flat side of the stone so that it would slide most efficiently across the top of the water. And she was warm and enthusiastic through all of it.
She stood full of excitement as Rex tossed stone after stone, waiting for each to skip just once. And even when each stone sank into the water with a plop and a few fat ripples, Rosie pushed Rex to try again. Never once did she crumble under the weight of his frustration.
And when Rex finally got one little stone to skip twice, they both jumped and cheered and smiled. And then Rex picked Rosie up and spun her round and round. She was as delicate and airy as Rex thought she would be as he whipped her around in her loose floral-printed dress and draped scarf.
Rex liked holding Rosie. And Rosie liked being held by Rex. He liked feeling her lightness. And she liked feeling his strength.
Rex put Rosie back down onto the grass and they packed up the remaining traces of their lunch and shared a grape Pixy Stix. And then Rex picked Rosie up again, this time for a piggyback ride all the way back to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They stopped for a brief kiss and then parted ways.
As soon as Rosie got back to her apartment, Rex called and asked to see her again. And Rosie immediately invited him over to her six-story walk-up on the Lower East Side.
8 (#ulink_48f01199-e5ed-55d2-a9c9-ffbd0441984e)
Willow and Asher got in the car to go to school the next morning with a little bit of the previous night’s ice cream still dried on their cheeks. And Willow’s bones relaxed with relief. Sitting in the front seat next to her mother, she observed her in all of her coolness. Her long fingers with the red painted nails curved around the gear stick. Her left foot casually perched up on the seat. Her head bopping from side to side as she drove. Her wavy brown hair swaying back and forth as the wind moved through it.
Willow was in awe of the way Rosie’s hair moved so pleasantly. The mellow manner in which her locks draped over her shoulders. The way it looked like her hair belonged piled on top of her head. She wondered if her own tight curls would ever fall into smooth waves like that.
Willow was distracted from her thoughts by the jolt of Lili Von coming to a red light. And Willow watched Rosie as she pulled down the sun visor and fumbled around in her purse. She watched her mother pucker her lips in the mirror, and then locate a tube of red lipstick in the depths of her tote bag. Then she watched her mother twist her lipstick stick and spread the bright red color slowly and deliberately around her lips.
Rosie smacked her lips together and winked at herself in the mirror. Then she caught her daughter’s eyes fixated on her lips as if she were aching for something. And Rosie was happy to give her that thing.
So when Rosie reached the elementary school drop-off area, she asked Willow to stay in the car for a moment while she said goodbye to Asher. Willow felt a tickle in her tummy waiting for her mother to return as she watched Asher express his typical embarrassment over the dramatic hug that Rosie gave him when they were dropped off. And like all the other mornings, Asher rolled his big blue eyes as his mother pressed her whole body into him.
Willow watched with a smile until her mother got back into the car. And then, with minimal digging in her bag, Rosie pulled out that same stick of red lipstick and presented it with a flick of her wrist to her daughter.
“You want some?”
Willow didn’t have to say anything for her mother to know that, yes, she wanted to put some lipstick on. She wanted some of her mother’s lipstick on more than anything in the world. She wanted pieces of her mother with her all the time.
Rosie leaned over to Willow and delicately painted her daughter’s lips red with full attention and precision. Then Rosie snapped up, looked at her daughter and smiled warmly.
Willow could see how much her mother loved her. How funky Rosie found Willow’s purple leggings. How cool she found her wild hair.
“Check it out, noodle,” Rosie said as she unfolded the mirror from the sun visor in front of Willow.
Willow looked at herself in that tiny mirror. She knew she looked so much like her mother with those bright red lips. Willow smiled a big, big smile as she hopped out of the car with only the tiniest stumble and walked toward the building door.
“Wait!” Rosie hollered after Willow as she marched away. “You forgot something.”
Rosie tossed the stick of lipstick through the passenger side window and right into her daughter’s hands.
“It’s all yours.”
And just like that, red lipstick was added to Willow’s permanent outfit.
“Oh! Willow. One more thing!”
Willow stumbled again when she turned back around toward her mother. You would have never guessed that Willow was feeling more confident than ever in her new red lips, the way she turned around with her knees and ankles wobbling.
Rosie held up her pointer finger and curled it back toward herself three times as she raised her left eyebrow. Willow smiled, ran up to the car and stuck her little head and big hair through the window.
“Yeah?” Willow asked.
And then Rosie leaned over and pressed a big kiss into Willow’s cheek. And she shook her head all around as she did it. It left a big blob of red on Willow’s cheek that Willow didn’t even consider wiping away.
There was a moment of quiet love as Willow and Rosie looked straight at each other. But then Willow snatched it up.
“Hey, Mom. Can I ask you something?” She was looking right into Rosie’s brown eyes. Right down into her full heart.
“Did you leave those Pixy Stix for me on the school bus from Dad’s?”
Rosie tilted her head to the side and scrunched her eyebrows.
“Hmm. I’m not sure about that, noodle. What do you mean?”
Willow smirked. It was so like her mom to pretend like it wasn’t her.
Willow turned around and walked into the building feeling a second wave of her mother’s love. But ignoring the sincerity of her mother’s confusion about those Pixy Stix.
* * *
Willow Thorpe had gotten a lot of things privately wrong about her mother. Her father too. As parents and as people. And Willow got a lot of things wrong about the ways in which her parents showed their love. But of all the things that Willow got wrong about her parents and about love, Willow’s assumption that those two Pixy Stix were another one of her mother’s displays of the right kind of love would turn out to be the most detrimental.
* * *
That next night at her mother’s house, Willow and Asher helped Rosie prepare for Spaghetti Sunday. Asher shoved his hands into a bowl and squeezed and smashed plump red tomatoes until he couldn’t squeeze or smash anymore. And then he thrust the bowl at Rosie and said, “Hewe’s youw tomato guts!” through his toothless smile. As Willow stirred the bubbling pot of tomato sauce, the house filled with the aroma of garlic. And as soon as Mom got her hands on the record player, the house filled with sounds of Elton John too.
Rosie danced around as she set the table, and then served big piles of pasta and tomato sauce on her children’s plates. Rosie hadn’t yet finished chewing her first bite of dinner when Asher announced to the table that he had something to say. Rosie put her fork and knife down and urged Willow to do the same so that they could listen properly to Asher.
Asher stood up, pushed his chair in and swallowed.
“I don’t weally like the colow of my woom,” he said nervously, wobbling over each mispronounced word.
“What?” Rosie yelled quickly as she slammed her fists down onto the dinner table. She slammed them so hard that their glasses shook and the soda in them fizzled. Willow thought for a moment that her mother might be mad. She had never seen her mad before.
“That is a terrible thing!” Rosie continued, fists still clenched in tight balls next to her bowl of pasta. Rosie paused for a moment as if she was contemplating the best and quickest way to indulge her son.
“We have to fix this right away.”
Another pause.
“Willow, Asher. Shoes on. We’re going to the store.”
And both Willow and Asher quickly, and excitedly, obeyed. Willow twisted her feet into her high-top Converse sneakers and then helped Asher tie his light-up shoes, bunny-ear style. And then Rosie whisked her children into the car and drove, windows down, Prince blasting, straight to the paint store.
She guided Asher quickly down the aisles by his hand as Willow jogged and stumbled behind them. And then Rosie stopped in front of a giant wall of every color paint in every size bucket.
“All right, sweetie. Up to you. What color do you like?” Rosie said to her son so earnestly.
Asher’s eyes stretched all the way up to his hairline and his jaw fell all the way down to his belly button. And then his lips tightened as his nose crinkled.
“I have an idea,” he said firmly.
It was rare that Asher found a sentence without an R to fumble over. It gave his words a certain un-Asher-like seriousness.
“What if we get a lot of diffewent kinds of colows and put ouw hands in thum, and then put that on the walls?”
And just like that, Asher was back to Asher. And Rosie was ecstatic at the idea.
“Yes!” she cheered. “Let’s do it! Pick out all of your favorite colors. This is going to look fabulous!”
It was only natural that Rosie said yes so passionately. So openly. Because the list of things that Rosie said yes to was infinite. It was infinite on top of infinite. And whenever Willow or Asher wanted to have something or wanted to do something, their mother said yes and piled another thing right on top of it. Yes, you can play. And I want to play too. Yes, you can have candy. Have you ever put a Rolo inside of a marshmallow? Yes, you can have ice cream. Do you think it would taste as good with Swedish Fish and cookie dough on top? And, tonight, yes, you can paint your room. And you can do it all different crazy colors.
She kissed Asher on the cheek. Hard. Hard enough to make his lips look like a fish. And then Asher ran up to the paint chips and started pointing.
After only a few minutes of Asher running and pointing and comparing colors, Rosie, Willow and Asher were walking out of the store with five new buckets of paint.
When they got back to the house, Rosie tossed Willow and Asher some old T-shirts she had in her closet so they wouldn’t ruin their clothes. The T-shirts smelled like Dad. And everyone noticed, but no one said a thing about it. They just walked over to Asher’s room and pushed his solar-system themed rug into the closet and spread newspapers across the floor. And then, the paint cans were opened and Prince’s “1999” came on full blast.
All three of them stood on opposite sides of the room, shirts rolled up to their elbows, and prepared for their fun.
Rosie dived in first, but it wasn’t even a full second before Willow and Asher had their arms elbows deep in paint too. At first, Willow and Asher were deliberate with each stroke of the paintbrush. Each handprint on the wall. Each little detail by the doorway. But they changed their style as soon as they noticed the way their mother had slipped right into creativity. The way she twirled around the room. The way she fanned her brushes causing the spray of paint to add a gentle dusting to the wall. The way she threw handfuls of paint at the wall, creating bursts of color. She did it so effortlessly. And the walls looked so good. And soon Willow and Asher were following Rosie’s lead in ignoring boundaries. In accessing an internal kind of freedom. In living fully and blindly immersed in the things you love. In doing the crazy things that made you happy even if they were temporary. And in this moment, dancing and singing with paint on their hands and faces, it could not have been more apparent just how wonderful all of those feelings were.
And once the walls were covered, everyone signed their name in their favorite color paint and lay down in the middle of the paint-colored floor. It was the kind of tired that only happened after an hour of laughing and dancing. It was the kind of tired that hit your bones all at once. It was the kind of tired that allowed you to keep smiling even though your eyelids were getting heavy.
As the three of them lay there quietly on their backs, the track changed to “Purple Rain.”
Willow wasn’t used to hearing slow songs from Prince. She was used to the kind of Prince song that begged you to dance all around or sing at the top of your lungs in the car with the windows down. But she welcomed the restrained drumming and intermittent cymbal chime. She imagined what purple rain might actually look like. The sky dripping with little beads of her favorite color. Nothing in the world scared Willow more than a thunderstorm with its whipping wind and relentless rain and sharp cracks of lightning, but a purple one might be okay.
And then, just when Willow and Asher thought the night was winding down, Rosie broke the silence with an offer of ice cream and a wink on the way downstairs to get some.
In no time at all, Willow, Asher and their mother were huddled together in Rosie’s bed, scooping Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food with every topping in the pantry straight from the container. And then Rosie put on The Twilight Zone episode she had recorded and her children sank into her.
9 (#ulink_e0d96f09-a351-574c-93b3-e723f350ad18)
Twelve Years Ago
Rex impressed Rosie that fall in Manhattan. He did it with his firmness. Because in every interaction, big or small, meaningful or trite, Rex was firm. And Rosie admired his commitment to it.
Rex was stubborn and he grumbled and stomped his feet even when he just meant to walk. And he was easily agitated. By a taxi driver taking a questionably efficient route or someone blocking the entrance of the subway. By the checkout lady at the grocery store taking more than one try to slide a quarter out of the register. By long lines and oversalted soup. And whenever Rex was agitated, he made it known. He would huff and tap his foot and tense his shoulders. He would chomp down on his Bubblicious gum so hard his temples flared. He would jut his lower jaw out to expose his crooked bottom teeth. And although all of these things were unpleasant, Rosie loved how people responded to Rex. She loved that baristas made his coffee with exactly the right amount of milk. That barbers never left a piece of hair out of line. That waiters never made him wait too long for his dinner. That Rex got everything he wanted from his world by the force of his will. Rosie admired his high expectations for his world and those around him. She liked how he pressed firmly through the day. She liked that if you were on Rex’s side, mountains would be moved for you.
Rex emitted strength and Rosie liked nuzzling up next to it. She was flattered at the idea that someone like Rex might want to take care of someone like her. But most of all, she liked being taken care of.
She felt a change within herself. She had never found stability interesting before. She used to pick up books and put them down. Eat a few bites of a sandwich, and then forget about it. Talk briefly and intimately with a stranger she knew she would never see again. She took up odd jobs, and then quit them without warning.
But with Rex, she craved his steady presence. She felt a visceral urge to pull him in so close and never let go. She loved the feeling of safety when Rex was around. She loved his strong back and arms. His tough eyes that turned so loving when they got into bed. Not all women, not all people, could put up with Rex, but Rosie liked that she was strong enough, perhaps even aloof enough, to handle this caliber of man.
By Rosie’s definition of love, she loved Rex very much. And while she desperately hoped she could stay still enough to find a great, enduring love with this man, she knew in her bones that it could never be. She knew in her bones that one day she would want to twirl her way into a whole new orbit. That this love was most likely the transient kind.
She wondered, but doubted, if Rex would be willing to come on her life’s adventures with her. She wondered what she might say or do to try to convince him.
For now, however, Rosie would sink into her love with a man who was the opposite of everything she was.
* * *
Rosie entranced Rex that fall in Manhattan. She did it with her funkiness. Because in every interaction, big or small, meaningful or trite, Rosie was funky. And Rex admired the magic in that.
Rosie never matched her socks or cleaned the windows in her apartment. She ate pizza for breakfast and fell asleep in the middle of movies. She would casually put on a white T-shirt but cut off the sleeves or bedazzle the cuff before leaving the apartment. She refused to set an alarm, or the microwave timer, or the volume on the television to an even number. She was distracted by graffiti and never exited a subway car without saying goodbye to the person standing next to her. She waved and smiled as she did so even if they hadn’t exchanged a single word or glance.
Rosie had a simple laugh and she was quick to it. She never wanted to make anyone work too hard for it. She always had a dozen things in her bag she would have trouble keeping track of. And she would dig through her tote for her wallet to no avail to find her sunglasses already on her head, a pen already in her mouth, or the book tucked precariously under her arm.
And although all of these things might seem bizarre to Rex, he loved how everything dazzled when Rosie was around. He loved the way that sullen man in the subway car would smile as the doors closed on Rosie’s waving hand. How she’d share a park bench with a homeless man without hesitation. How an old piece of chocolate dug up from the bottom of her purse still tasted delicious.
Rex enjoyed getting into the crannies of the world with Rosie. He liked the sensation that the air was clearer and the sun was warmer when Rosie was near him. He felt a change within himself. He spent so much time glossing things up—his shoes, his résumé, his apartment—that he didn’t know until he met Rosie that things could be so beautiful, so raw. He felt overwhelmed with desire to see things through Rosie’s eyes. To explore all the tiny, forgotten corners of the universe with her next to him. Guiding him.
He loved the feeling of ease when Rosie was close by. The feeling that the next adventure, the next thing of beauty, was right around the corner.
Not all men, not all people, could put up with Rosie, but Rex liked that he was curious enough, perhaps even aloof enough, to handle this peculiar type of woman.
By Rex’s definition of love, he loved Rosie very much. And while he desperately hoped he could remain engaged enough to find an all-encompassing, enduring love with this woman, he knew in his heart that it could never be. He knew in his heart that, one day, he would want to be still again. That this love was mortal.
He wondered, but doubted, if Rosie would ever sit calmly next to him in bed on a Sunday morning. He wondered what he might have to say or do to stay true to himself.
For now, however, Rex would sink into this love with a woman who was the opposite of everything he was.
10 (#ulink_797393f1-d3ee-56a8-8c9d-a8cea11ada98)
Willow found it peculiar when she came home from school and found her father in jeans and a T-shirt waiting on the front steps. He was usually locked away in his office with all of his buttons still buttoned and his tie still tied at his neck.
There were two brand-new bikes leaning next to Rex on the front steps. Asher hopped on the silver-and-blue bike immediately and zoomed away on his new toy, training wheels included. Willow assumed that the purple one was intended for her, but was unnerved to see that it didn’t have any training wheels.
“Hop on, Willow,” Rex said. “Want me to teach you how to ride this thing?”
Dad always asked questions that had an answer he wanted and an answer he didn’t want. Are your teeth brushed? Are the dishes clean? Did you finish your homework? But Willow found herself delighted that Dad wanted her to say yes to this. She was happy to spend some time together. She was happy her father wanted to spend some time together too. She was happy that she would be a girl who learned how to ride a bike from her father. She was happy that she would be a girl with a father who taught her how to ride a bike.
She was happy at the vision of her future self, zipping down the street on that purple bike.
She wondered how long it would take to bike to Mom’s.
“Sure,” Willow responded shakily to her dad.
Rex held up a helmet and some knee pads and wrist guards. And Willow put them on and pulled the Velcro extra tight on each piece of protective gear. She saved the helmet for last, but her hands were too encumbered by the plastic protrusions of the wrist guards to properly pull the chin strap. She tried a few times, wrist guard clicking against the base of the helmet until Rex noticed what was happening and gave a hearty chuckle.
A chuckle.
Willow smiled sweetly at the sound of that rare noise escaping her father’s mouth. And then she felt her heart speed up and her cheeks tingle as her father bent down in front of her and pulled on her chin strap until her helmet was just the right amount of tight. It was the closest her father’s face had ever been to hers as Willow could remember it.
Willow loved how her father looked when she was up close. His skin was tan and smooth and his eyebrows were unruly and excited. Willow had noticed the creases between his eyebrows before, but the creases in his cheeks were new to her. Because while the eyebrow creases were undoubtedly a sign of how hard he was always thinking, the cheek creases must have been a sign that he used to smile. Perhaps even a lot. When Willow gazed down, she loved seeing how her father’s big hands tugged at her helmet strap, ensuring her safety. Caring about her.
Then, right before Rex pulled away, Willow and her father made eye contact. It lasted for only half a second, but it happened. And it made her heart speed up and her cheeks tingle even more.
Willow floated on top of her bicycle seat and felt ready to learn. And ready to be taught.
Her dad told her how to swing her left leg over just as the bike started moving. And then Rex did what dads are supposed to do. He told her to pedal, pedal, pedal. He told her to try again. And again. And again. He told her not to give up. Not to worry about falling. He told her he wouldn’t let go of the handlebars until she said she was ready. He was energized and encouraging. Willow’s heart was in her throat over the thought of crashing down onto the concrete, but she was having a version of fun. Because right there on the road outside of Dad’s house, something was happening. Something unlikely. Something unusual. Something meaningful. Something important. Something between Rex and Willow. Between father and daughter.
“Go over there and try pushing off the curb,” Rex suggested to Willow when she was so close to balancing herself.
And so she did. Willow gripped her handlebars, pushed off the curb and was suddenly in full motion. She felt the wind passing through her helmet. She felt the uneven surface of the street beneath her wheels. She felt fast and competent. And although she looked neither fast nor competent as she wobbled around on her seat with her arms rigid with fear, Willow also felt graceful and in control. And graceful and in control were brand-new feelings for Willow Thorpe. And she felt happy, so grateful that her father had drawn these feelings out of her.
“Dad! Dad! I’m doing it!” she shouted as loudly as she could with the air whipping by her. Willow picked her head up, looking forward to seeing her dad as excited as she was. Looking forward to him jumping up and down on the grass. She imagined him running over to give her a high five. Picking her up and swinging her around in circles. Kissing her on the face and telling her how proud he was.
But when her eyes found her father, he was staring down distractedly at his notepad and chomping down on a new piece of Bubblicious gum. Rex looked up to give his daughter a brief closed-mouth smile and a silent thumbs-up, and then he scribbled something on his notepad as he stormed back inside.
Willow rode her bike all around until she was alone in the dark and the trees were starting to creak in the wind. Then, when she was ready to go inside, she made sure to remove her wrist guards before attempting to take off her helmet by herself.
11 (#ulink_a11c3b46-c893-5777-bae0-fbc9db0906b3)
Eleven Years Ago
Rex was accustomed to elevators and doormen, and so he tensed up the first few times the stairs creaked as he climbed the flights to Rosie’s apartment. But it wasn’t long before he found the smell of musk by Rosie’s doorway profoundly alluring. The palpable dampness. The dusty crannies. The hum of the flickering light. The sticky crackle of the floor. Rex enjoyed his ability to access this kind of rawness when he was with Rosie. He was saving clean modern lines and well-dusted corners for another life.
After a year of dating, Rex already knew that the heart of all things beat more deeply when Rosie was around. Even her apartment vibrated. The walls were covered with annotated Polaroids and handwritten notes from friends. The refrigerator door was collaged with old ads featuring Cheryl Tiegs and Faye Dunaway. The walls were covered with posters of Elton John and Prince and Blondie. The corners of the couches had stuffing coming out the seams ineffectively covered by discolored pillows. There were markers and paintbrushes sprawled across the table. It was so clear to Rex that this was a place where art was made and drinks were spilled. It was a place where friends put their feet on the table, and no one bothered to replace old light bulbs. It was a place where people breathed and moved and talked and created. It was a place where people lived. And were happy. And he could see it in Rosie’s face that this was where she lived and was happy.
Rex took off his scarf, kissed Rosie gently, and then the two of them sank into her worn-in couch. They oriented themselves on the cushions as if they had been doing it just this way for years; Rex seated upright, shoes on, while Rosie placed her head in his lap and stretched her ankles over the arm of the sofa to let her clogs fall to the ground. This had already become Rex’s favorite part of the day, inhaling all of the scents of Rosie’s life—the flowery scent of the beautiful world around her lingering on the surface of her skin. It was no surprise to Rex that beautiful things clung onto Rosie and didn’t let go. It felt good being close to her. So good and so warm and so comfortable.
Rex wondered how he would eventually let go of all of the beautiful sweet things Rosie Collins was, but the thought quickly burrowed itself in the back of his mind when Rosie reached back and, without looking, wrapped her fingers one by one around Rex’s bicep and squeezed it enticingly.
Rex swept Rosie’s bangs away and traced his pointer around her temple, across her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. Rosie tried to follow his finger and giggled when she found herself cross-eyed as a result. Rex was a serious man and always assumed his girlfriend would be equally so, but Rosie’s quirky style of intimacy fulfilled him in a way he’d never thought possible.
* * *
And just as Rex was about to bend over and kiss Rosie, Rosie’s roommate Chloe burst out of her room, spewing on and on about the attractive man she’d locked eyes with at the café down the block, and ignoring Rex’s presence entirely. Rex did everything he could to keep from staring at Chloe’s nipples plainly visible through her sheer white shirt as she spoke. Rosie just half chuckled and shook her head as Chloe’s small breasts bounced up and down while she gesticulated her way through another mundane story.
And when Chloe finally exhaled, she lifted Rosie’s legs, wedged herself under her knees and pulled out a marijuana joint. Rex’s belly tensed at the sight of it.
Rex was uncomfortable with drugs, even the mere sight of them. He wanted to get up, rip the joint away from Chloe and throw it out the window. But Rosie lifted her eyes to meet Rex’s eyes and stroked his thigh gently. It was an indication that, yes, this was something she found to be acceptable in her home. And although Rex had never heard Rosie mention drugs before, the effortlessness with which she handled the joint between her fingers indicated that this was an activity she partook in regularly. Rex’s muscles tensed and his jaw clenched as he watched Rosie exhale a cloud of smoke, but in the newness of the scene, he didn’t protest.
And then Rosie brought the joint to her lips a second time.
Rex watched suspiciously as Rosie inhaled and the tip of the joint flared orange. He watched as Rosie gave in to the feeling of smoke in her lungs right away.
Rosie let her arm hang off the side of the sofa and slowly allowed her eyelids to close. As her breath deepened and her high began, Chloe’s voice, the clamor of the city streets, her lingering uncertainty about Rex and anything else grating about the world, drifted quietly away.
Rex could see the release in her face as he watched the smoke roll around in Rosie’s mouth, and then overtake her red lips, like fog rolling over a hill. She looked so calm, so beautiful. He felt Rosie’s body loosen, allowing herself to fully sink into his lap. This stillness, this quiet, was something Rex had never seen in Rosie before. He was used to her intense energy. Rex knew that Rosie was someone in tune with all of the tiny ripples of the world. All of the individual, human-to-human forces in it. And that those forces moved in waves through her. And that Rosie absorbed those waves deep within her body. It was the thing that made Rosie, Rosie. The thing that made her so special. But it also seemed to be the thing that exhausted her. Caused her to crave the calm of that high. And Rex could see that happening right there on Rosie’s old couch.
Rex was surprised to find an overwhelming sensuality in the feeling of Rosie melting into him. Rosie opened her eyes and looked deeply into Rex’s. She slowly reached her hand back and squeezed his inner thigh and walked her thin fingers delicately toward his crotch. Rex looked back at Rosie and kissed her forehead as his heart and his groin pulsed.
Then Rex, leaving Chloe to the rest of the joint in the living room, took Rosie’s nearly drooping body to her bedroom where, at her beckoning, he entered her slowly and entirely. As he moved inside her, Rex could feel Rosie’s body surge with pleasure, and then dissolve again back into her high. Rex found Rosie sexier than ever beneath him.
It was a version of Rosie he would enjoy only this one time, he told himself, in her bedroom with the old chipping paint. And then never permit this again. He didn’t want drugs to be a force in their relationship. He didn’t want drugs to be a force inside of Rosie. No matter how beautifully calm they enabled her to be.
Rex returned home from Rosie’s apartment late the next morning, heart and mind still spinning. He couldn’t keep all of these feelings, these ripples ricocheting around his brain. So he picked up the phone and called Roy Andrews, his oldest and closest, most dependable and most trustworthy friend.
“Roy,” Rex said solemnly. “This girl is going to be trouble.”
Rex knew he would need someone he could call on if Rosie was going to stick around in his life. And he had a feeling Rosie was going to become a part of him. For the first time, Rex was facing the difficulty of trying to hold on to something that vibrated. First, the sensation tickled a bit. Pleasingly. But then the energy started to move through him. Shaking his hand and then his arm and then his whole body. And even though those ripples in his body were briefly pleasant, they quickly started to become uncomfortable. Because his body was not meant to ripple like that. Vibrate like that. He wanted to release his grip, but his body couldn’t catch up with his brain. Finally he managed to let go, knowing he should keep his distance in the future. But still, he wanted to feel that first little tickle again. Even for just a moment. So he came back to Rosie again and again.
12 (#ulink_a5b92877-9aa9-5b02-bd52-6492cb2a442c)
After dinner at their father’s, Willow and Asher met in the den to play their favorite game: Lava Floor. It was the only game in Willow and Asher’s repertoire that was more fun at Dad’s. Because the den at Dad’s was full of so many surfaces to jump onto once the floor turned to lava. It was full of big leather couches and thick wooden tables and velvety ottomans. All were perfectly sized for far leaps and smooth landings. Willow moved the ivory-and-ebony chessboard that her father left out on the coffee table as a not-so-subtle attempt to get his children to play something more worthwhile than Lava Floor. And then she hopped up on the couch and poised herself for a leap. And even though Willow’s unreliable legs made her pretty bad at Lava Floor, Willow liked watching her brother jump from surface to surface while his silky blond hair flopped all around.
And also, it couldn’t be discounted that she thoroughly enjoyed hopping all around the same couch she was asked to sit on earlier that day with folded hands as her father introduced another one of his girlfriends who ended up staying for dinner. This one had boring blond hair and ate teeny tiny bites at a time. Her shirt was too stiff and her hair was too straight and her pocketbook looked too perfect on her shoulder. Willow liked the idea of jumping wildly up and down on the same surface that lady sat on with a straight back and forced smile.
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Brianna Wolfson
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Little Miss Sunshine meets About a Boy in this piercingly bittersweet novel which shows how the most meaningful love can last a lifetime.Willow’s mother Rosie isn’t like the other mums. She’s wears every colour of the rainbow, has midnight feasts, and sends Willow to school covered in paint.Meanwhile, Rex is the sort of father who checks Willow’s homework, has a rule for everything, and would never dream of playing in the dirt.Now Rosie and Rex live in different places, Willow knows her mum needs her even more. But Rosie’s multi-coloured way of looking at the world can be overwhelming. These days, it feels like Rosie is spinning off her axis – and taking Willow with her. As if, one day, Rosie might disappear for good.And what would happen to Willow then?