Rose Madder

“Mommy? Why’s that man doing that to his hand?”

“Never mind, come on.” That brought him around. He looked sluggishly over his shoulder, like a man waking from a nap which has been short but deep, and saw a young woman and a little boy of perhaps three walking away from him-she was moving the kid along so fast he was almost ru

COME OUT AND PLAY WITH US AT BEAUTIFUL ETTINGER’s PIER AS WE CELEBRATE CLEAR SKIES AND WARM DAYS WITH THE 9TH ANNUAL DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS “SWING INTO SUMMER” PICNIC AND CONCERT SATURDAY, JUNE 4th BOOTHS*CRAFTS*GAMES OF CHANCE* GAMES OF SKILL*RAP DJ FOR THE KIDDIES!!!PLUS!!!

THE INDIGO GIRLS, LIVE AND IN CONCERT, 8 P.M.

SINGLE PARENTS, THERE WILL BE CHILD-MINDING!

“COME ONE, COME ALL!”

ALL PROCEEDS BENEFIT DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS, WHO REMIND YOU THAT VIOLENCE AGAINST ONE WOMAN IS A CRIME AGAINST ALL WOMEN

Saturday the fourth. This Saturday. And would she be there, his rambling Rose? Of course she would be, she and all her new lesbo friends. Cunts of a feather flocked together. Norman traced the fifth line up from the bottom of the poster with the finger he had bitten. Bright poppies of blood were already soaking through the handkerchief wrapped around it. Come one, come all. That was what it said, and Norman thought he just might take them up on it.

Thursday morning, almost eleven-thirty. Rosie took a sip of Evian, rolled it around in her mouth, swallowed, and picked up the sides again. “she was coming, all right; this time his ears weren’t just playing tricks on him. Peterson could hear the staccato rap of her high heels moving up the hallway. He could imagine her with her bag already open, rummaging in there for her key, worrying about the devil who might be coming along behind when she should have been worried about the one lying in wait. He checked quickly to make sure he still had his knife, then pulled the nylon stroking down over his head. As her key rattled in the lock, Peterson pulled the knife out and-”

“Cut-cut-cut!” Rhoda cried impatiently through the speakers. Rosie looked up and through the glass wall. She didn’t like the way Curt Hamilton was just sitting there by his DAT deck and looking at her with his earphones resting on his collarbones, but what alarmed her was the fact that Rhoda was smoking one of her slim cigarettes right in the control room, ignoring the NO PUFFIN sign on the wall. Rhoda looked like she was having a terrible morning, but she wasn’t the only one.

“Rhoda? Did I do something wrong?”

“Not if you wear nylon strokings, I guess,” Rhoda said, and tapped ash into a styrofoam cup sitting on the control panel in front of her.

“I’ve had a few guys stroke mine over the years, now that I think about it, but mostly I call them nylon stockings.” For a moment Rosie didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, then she mentally replayed the last few sentences she’d read and groaned.

“Jeepers, Rhoda, I’m sorry.” Curt slipped his cans back over his ears and pushed a button.

“Kill All My Tomorrows, take seventy-thr-” Rhoda put a hand on his arm and said something which filled Rosie’s stomach with icewater: “don’t bother.” Then she glanced through the window, saw Rosie’s stricken face, and offered her a smile which was wan but game.

“All’s cool, Rosie, I’m just calling lunch half an hour early, that’s all. Come on out.” Rosie got up too fast, bumping her left thigh a good one on the bottom of the table and almost overturning the plastic bottle of Evian water. She hurried out of the booth. Rhoda and Curt were standing just outside, and for a moment Rosie was sure-no, she knew-that they had been talking about her. If you really believe that, Rosie, you probably ought to go see a doctor, Practical-Sensible spoke up sharply. The kind that shows you inkblots and asks about your potty training. Rosie usually had very little use for that voice, but this time she welcomed it.

“I can do better,” she told Rhoda.

“And I will, this afternoon. Honest to God.” Was that true? The hell of it was, she just didn’t know. She had tried all morning to submerge herself in Kill All My Tomorrows as she had in The Manta Ray, but with small success. She would begin to slip into that world where Alma St George was being pursued by her psychotic admirer, Peterson, and then be hauled out of it by one of the voices from last night: A

“You’re having a bad voice day,” he said.

“It’s like a bad hair day, only worse. We see a lot of it here in the Audio Chamber of Horrors, don’t we, Rho?”

“You bet,” Rhoda said, but her eyes never paused in their inspection of Rosie’s face, and Rosie had a pretty good idea of what Rhoda was seeing. She’d gotten only two or three hours” worth of sleep last night, and she didn’t have the sort of high-powered cosmetics that would hide that kind of damage. And wouldn’t know how to use them if I did, she thought. She’d had a few of the basic makeup items in high school (the time of life, ironically, when she had needed such helps the least), but since marrying Norman she’d gotten along with nothing but a little powder and two or three lipsticks in the most natural shades. If I’d wanted to look at a hooker I would have married one, Norman had told her once. She thought it was probably her eyes that Rhoda was studying the most carefully: the red lids, the bloodshot whites, the dark circles underneath. After she’d turned out the light she had cried helplessly for over an hour, but she hadn’t cried herself to sleep-that would actually have been a blessing. The tears had dried up and she had simply lain there in the darkness, trying not to think and thinking anyway. As midnight passed and slowly receded, a really terrible idea had come to her: that she had been wrong to call Bill, that she had been wrong to deny herself his comfort-and possibly his protection-when she most desperately needed it. Protection? she thought. Oh boy, that’s a laugh. I know you like him, sweetie, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s face it: Norman would eat him for lunch. Except she had no way of knowing that Norman was in town-that was what A