Later that night in bed, Jen dreams of a tidal wave. The wall of slug-grey churned-up water is almost upon her; she can feel the damp spit against her burning, frozen face. Just when the wave is about to crash, she hears a far off ring and feels herself swim up against the heavy black of her eyelids. She opens her eyes and realizes the phone is ringing somewhere in the darkness. She reaches out to her bed stand to feel for it.
“Hello?”
“Jen? Sorry to wake you. It’s Alby.”
“Oh …. um, hi,” she says, mouth like cotton and mind still adrift.
“You need a minute to wake up?
“No, this dream, yeah, just give me a sec. Okay, I’m awake now.” As soon as she says it, Jace raise himself up on his elbow and reaches over to turn on a bedside lamp.
“It’s about Rosemary,” Alby begins.
“Oh no, what now,” Jen mutters, sitting upright against the headboard.
“She’s having a hard time. I didn’t want to call you, but I think youbetter come. They suspended her.”
“What? Who did?” Jen is having trouble making sense of the information.
“The school.”
“Why? She didn’t do anything wrong. God, that was just last night, how’d they even know about it?”
“It’s all over the news. His parents got back andfound this letter … Ican’t explain right now, she’s coming downstairs, just come over if youcan,” Alby says.
“Okay, right away.”
“Gotta go. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Jace is sitting up, listening intently.
“That was Alby. The school suspended Rosemary,” Jen says. “She wants me to go over to Rosemary’s right away. She said it was all over the news. Why the hell would they report on a suicide?”
“If the parents will talk, they’ll do it,” Jace says.
“Even so, Rosemary didn’t do anything,” Jen says as she rises, slides her jeans up over her hips and grabs a t-shirt from the sloppy pile on the dresser.
“Jen, just tell me the truth. Was she having an affair with the kid?” Jace asks.
“Yeah, right Jace. An 18-year-old kid. Come off it.”
“Maybe the parents think she did. Maybe they talked to the school, and the school’s covering its ass until there’s an investigation.”
“An investigation? Who said anything about an investigation?” Jen notices Jace is flushing, and begins to wonder what he knows that she doesn’t.
“I called into work when you went out to pick up the pizza. Rob mentioned it,” he admits
“Why didn’t you tell me?’
“Because I knew you’d think 1 was checking up on you about last night.”
“Were you?”
‘I guess.”
“Fuck Jace, I don’t believe you.”
“What would you do if you were me? I mean, it’s a nutty story. I knew Rob’d have something on it even if they weren’t going to run it because the fool listens to the scanner all night.”
“How convenient for you. So next you’re going to tell me they’re planning to put you on the story, so you can get a nice little interview with the naughty teacher.”
“Come on, Jen. It’s better if I’m on it so I can protect her a little.”
Protect her a little? Jen thinks. She feels whatever temporary peace they’d brokered earlier pull away from the shore like high tide, leaving crud in its absence. She sees this artifice of his–this rationalizing mediaphile cra–as vanity, and like a mother bear protecting her cub, wants to slash at him.
“Are you on the story or not,” she says, voice flat but blood rising.
“I don’t know yet. Rich knows I know her, and he’s on my shift tomorrow. I think he wants me to at least cover the funeral.” Jace avoids meeting her eyes.
“Great. Well Jace, it doesn’t matter how you write it. You’re about to destroy my best friend, and you know it. If your fucking job is that important to you…”
“Christ, Jen, don’t start! You forget that my job you’re so quick to bitch about puts food in your mouth … and Chris’s. Maybe if you’d sell a few sculptures we could go live in a loft somewhere and do that bread wine and thou thing, eh?”
“That’s not the point. It’s just that you don’t even care about the real story, you’ll just box it all up and leave stuff out and get it all screwed up, and then you’ll go and say it’s the public’s fault for having the attention span of a flea. And normally that’s okay, but it’s Rosemary you’ll be doing it to this time because the board will be on a witch-hunt and all her little visits with him will look bad.”
“Little visits? What do you mean, little visits?” Jace perks up.
“Never mind,” Jen says, raking a brush through her hair. She grabs the keys from the dresser. In the mirror, she sees Jace rise from the bed and stumble toward her. She tightens her grip on the keys, lacing them between her fingers. He reaches forward and grabs her elbow, pressing his fingers into the joint.
“What little visits,” he spits, as if it were her, not Rosemary, accused of some life-altering impropriety.
“Jace, please. Let’s not,” she breathes. She could jam him with her elbow, scrape his face with the keys. She realizes she can be that kind animal, but she struggles to rise above it. She is stock still, so still she can feel the throbbing in his fingertips from the pressure on her elbow.
“Let’s not? Yeah, let’s not,” he releases her elbow after a quick shove, just enough for her to tip forward. With her free hand she grabs the edge of the dresser. Pain shoots through her wrist. She turns and faces him.
“I’m going to Rosemary’s. I’ll be home in the morning. If you agree to do the story, don’t come home tomorrow.”
She rushes out of the bedroom, down the stairs. She feels the blood throbbing in her head and her eyes feel blurry. Waves of nausea make her want to stop, lie down. She hears him shouting, swearing. It’s a good thing Chris is at her mom’s. She slides on her boots, flies into the garage and jams the garage door opener. She mounts the scooter and it roars to life, spraying gravel down the lane. The tiny wheels try to grab the ground but slip sideways. She has to calm down and straighten the scooter up or it’ll slide out from under her. She stops at the river road and collects herself before turning left and heading to town.
The headlight dapples the trees along the parkway, a tiny pinprick against the dark mass as she swoops around the curves. The warm wind pushes her tears back to her ears. So many nights crying on this road. Now for Rosemary. For herself. For Jace and Chris. For the ideas she once held about herself. The big story.
She doesn’t know who she’s become, or how to reinvent herself as someone capable of a life worth living. She doesn’t know how to help Rosemary weather this storm she feels collecting on the horizon, the choking, claustrophobic wave she feels suspended just above them all.
The lights are burning in the bungalow when she pulls up. Alby’s car parked in front of the house, her headlight catches the “Save the Earth” bumper sticker.
Never mind the earth, she thinks. Save us all. She takes her time getting off the scooter, slowly releases her helmet strap. She is in no hurry to enter the house; her awkwardness and dread cause her to tremble. She stands by the curb for a moment, lights a cigarette…Just one, she thinks, to fortify herself. She had quit when she had Chris, but seems to be a furtive, backslider smoker again. As the smoke drifts up into the night she sees Alby walk into the living room from the kitchen entrance, carrying a tray of tea. She sets it down on the coffee table and bends over. Rosemary must be on the couch, obscured from Jen’s view. What’s wrong with Jen, standing out here, safe from Rosemary’s sorrow, smoking like an idiot. She feels small, selfish. She grinds out her cigarette, walks up the stone path to the door, and taps lightly, as if she hopes no one will hear. Alby straightens and walks toward the door, opening it gingerly.
“Thank God you’re here,” she whispers, casting a glance over to the couch. “Rosemary wants to go to the hospital.”
Jen squints, puzzled. Alby shrugs and shakes her head.
Jen peels off her boots and enters the living room, padding across the gleaming pine. Rosemary is balled up on the couch, fists clenched tight, eyes swollen when she tilts her head up to look at Jen. She’s rocking gently. Jen slides down beside her and puts her arm around her. Rosemary begins to lean into her, Jen can feel her relaxing slightly.
“Hey,” Jen says.
Rosemary starts to cry again. Jen just sits and let her. It’s hard for her to shut up; she wants to say soothing things, but there’s really nothing to say. Not a word that could console. Alby sits down on the other side of her and joins the embrace. They sit like that for quite a while, rocking, crying.
At some point, Rosemary pulls away and sits up straight.
“Okay,” she says. “Jen, I need you to take me to 3East.”
Jen chews on her lip, trying to formulate an argument that can cut through all this grief. “I don’t think going there will help you. I think you’re better here, in your home, with us.”
“I wasn’t asking, Jen.”
“Do you feel like harming yourself?” Jen asks, hiding behind the clinical.
“No. That’s not why. You know. I need to be away. Protected. From everything that’s coming.”
“What’s coming, Rosemary. What are they going to do? Arrest you for accepting chewy carob treats from a student? If you do this, it will affect your career forever. You’ll have a psych history. It won’t look right to the school board either. As if you’re guilty of something,” Jen says.
“Maybe I am,” she says.
Holy shit, Jen thinks, but says nothing, wondering if it’s just Rosemary’s ample but comparatively innocent sense of guilt or some kind of actual admission. She is choked with silence.
Rosemary swallows, and says, “They’ve found his journal. That’s why I was suspended; so they could investigate. There’s pages and pages about me, about our every exchange. However you read it, it can’t look good. His family is going public with it. They’ve already sent copies of entries to the police and the press.”
“How do you know this,” Jen asks?
“Because Joe told me when he explained the suspension. They’re suspending me with pay for the moment, pending a review of the journal and interviews with me. If I check into 3East, they may wait to do the interviews. It could buy me some time. Medical leave would take over. They won’t let reporters into the psych ward. I can’t expect you guys to guard me every minute of the day. It’s the best way to give me the space I need,” she said.
Clearly, Rosemary had given this plan some thought. If she’s fired without pay, she’ll lose her house. The union can’t protect her. But if she’s on medical leave, it leaves her more options. And maybe treatment would help. It sounds as though there are secrets to untangle, Jen thinks. But she twinges at the thought of 3East, its fluorescent glare; its hopeless roamers and cruel helpers. Rosemary really doesn’t belong there, and Jen is in a position to know this given her own stay seven years ago. Jen doesn’t know if she can bring herself to go there. Too much history for one night.
“Please, Jen. You’ve been there before. You know the ropes. Please take me.”
“If you commit yourself, you may not get a bed. You’re better off getting the doctor to commit you. Even so, it might only give you 72 hours under the Mental Health Act. Sometimes to stay, you have to convince them you may harm yourself,” Jen says.
“I may harm myself, Jen.”
“Really?” Jen looks deeply into her eyes, then wishes she hadn’t. She’s not lying. Crazy like a fox, but also truthful.
“Okay,” Jen says. “Let’s pack. There are things you will want to make sure you take. It’s very spare up there,” she sighs, queasy with the flood of memory washing over her like glue.
Later, they pull into the parking lot of the blond brick box that is the hospital. This is a far better arrival, Jen thinks, than her last trip.
“Are you sure you want to do this,” Jen asks, afraid Rosemary is just too sane for what she will encounter. Fearing there is something to lose here.
“I’m sure,” Rosemary says, sighs. “I’m sure I’m sure.”
With that, they lock the car and make the slow walk to recovery.