Rose Madder

She paused-a calculating pause-and then added, “… And I met someone interesting.” Pam looked at her with round eyes.

“You’re making it up!”

“Nope. Swear to God. Don’t get your water hot, though, he’s sixty-five if he’s a day.” She was speaking of Robbie Lefferts, but the image her mind briefly presented to her was Bill Steiner, he of the blue silk vest and interesting eyes. But that was ridiculous. At this point in her life she needed love-interest like she needed lip-cancer. And besides, hadn’t she decided that Steiner had to be at least seven years younger than she? Just a baby, really.

“He’s the one who offered me the job. His name is Robbie Lefferts. But never mind him right now-want to see my new picture?”

“Aw, come on an do it!” Gert said from the middle of the room. She sounded both amiable and irritated.

“This ain’t the school dance, sugar.” The last word came out sugah. Cynthia rushed her, the tail of her oversized tank-top flapping. Gert turned sideways, took the slender girl with the tu-tone hair by the forearms, and flipped her. Cynthia went over with her heels in the air and landed on her back.

“Wheeee!” she said, and bounced back to her feet like a rubber ball.

“No, I don’t want to see your picture,” Pam said.

“Not unless it’s of the guy. Is he really sixty-five? I doubt it!”

“Maybe older,” Rosie said.

“There was another one, though. He was the one who told me that the diamond in my engagement ring was only a zirconia. Then he traded me for the picture.” She paused.

“He wasn’t sixty-five.”

“What did he look like?”

“Hazel eyes,” Rosie said, and bent over her picture.

“No more until you tell me what you think of this.”

“Rosie, don’t be a booger!” Rosie gri

“Okay,” Gert told Cynthia, who was once more circling her. Gert bounced slowly up and down on her large brown feet. Her breasts rose and subsided like ocean waves beneath the white tee-shirt she was wearing.

“You see how it’s done, now do it. Remember, you can’t flip me-a pipsqueak like you’d wind up in traction, trying to flip a truck like me-but you can help me to flip myself. You ready?” “ready-ready-Teddy,” Cynthia said. Her grin widened, revealing tiny wicked white teeth. To Rosie they looked like the teeth of some small but dangerous animal: a mongoose, perhaps.

“Gertrude Kinshaw, come on down!” Gert rushed. Cynthia seized her meaty forearms, turned a flat, boyish hip into the swell of Gert’s flank with a confidence Rosie knew she herself would never be able to match… and suddenly Gert was airborne, flipping over in midair, a hallucination in a white shirt and gray sweatpants. The shirt slid up to reveal the largest bra Rosie had ever seen; the beige Lycra cups looked like World War I artillery shells. When Gert hit the mats, the room shuddered.

“Yesss!” Cynthia screamed, dancing nimbly around and shaking her clasped hands over her head.

“Big mama goes down! Yessss! YESSSS! Down for the count! Down for the fucking cou-”

Smiling-a rare expression that turned her face into something rather gruesome-Gert picked Cynthia up, held her over her head for a moment with her treelike legs spread, and then began to spin her like an airplane propeller.

“Ouggghhh, I’m go

“Ouggghhh, I’m go

“Gert, that’s enough,” a voice said quietly. It was A

“I’m okay, A

“I see you are,” A

“I flipped Gert,” she said.

“You should have seen it. I think it was the thrill of my life. Honestly.”

“I’m sure it was, but Gert would tell you she flipped herself,” A

“You just helped her do what her body wanted to do already.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Cynthia said. She got cautiously to her feet, then promptly plumped back down on her fa

“God, it’s like someone put the whole room on a record-player.” A

“What have you got there?” she asked Rosie.

“A picture. I bought it this afternoon. It’s for my new place, when I get it. My room.” And then, a little fearfully, she added:

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know-let’s get it into the light.” A

“Well?” she asked at last.

“What do you think? Somebody say something.”

“It’s an odd picture,” A

“Yeah,” Cynthia agreed.

“Weird. I think I seen one like it before, though.” A

“Why did you buy it, Rosie?” Rosie shrugged, feeling more nervous than ever.

“I don’t know that I can explain, really. It was like it called to me.” A

“Yes. That’s really all art is about, I think, and not just pictures-it’s the same with books and stories and sculpture and even castles in the sand. Some things call to us, that’s all. It’s as if the people who made them were speaking inside our heads. But this particular painting… is it beautiful to you, Rosie?” Rosie looked at it, trying to see it as she had in the Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn, when its silent tongue had spoken to her with such force that she had been stopped cold, all other thoughts driven from her mind. She looked at the blonde woman in the rose madder toga (or chiton-that was what Mr Lefferts had called it) standing in the high grass at the top of the hill, again noting the plait which hung straight down the middle of her back and the gold armlet above her right elbow. Then she let her gaze move to the ruined temple and the tumbled (god) statue at the foot of the hill. The things the woman in the toga was looking at.

How do you know that’s what she’s looking at? How can you know? You can’t see her face! That was true, of course… but what else was there to look at?

“No,” Rosie said.

“I didn’t buy it because it was beautiful to me. I bought it because it seemed powerful to me. The way it stopped me in my tracks was powerful. Does a picture have to be beautiful to be good, do you think?”

“Nope,” Consuelo said.

“Think about Jackson Pollock. His stuff wasn’t about beauty, it was about energy. Or Diane Arbus, how about her?”

“Who’s she?” Cynthia asked.

“A photographer who got famous taking pictures of women with beards and dwarves smoking cigarettes.”

“Oh.” Cynthia thought this over, and her face suddenly brightened with recollection.

“I saw this picture once, at a catered party back when I was cocktailing. In an art gallery, this was. It was by some guy named Applethorpe, Robert Applethorpe, and you want to know what it was? One guy gobbling another guy’s crank! Seriously! And it wasn’t any fake job like in a skin magazine, either. I mean that guy was making an effort, he was taking care of business and working overtime. You wouldn’t think a guy could get that much of the old broomhandle down his-”