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The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
THE NINE LIVES OF ROSE NAPOLITANO
Donna Freitas
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in the USA by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2021
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copyright © Donna Freitas 2021
Cover design by Caroline Young © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com
Donna Freitas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008370671
Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008370664
Version: 2021-03-15
Dedication
To my mother,
who gave me this life
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
March 2, 2008: Rose, Life 3
Part One: Rose, Life 1
Chapter 1: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Life 1
Chapter 2: March 14, 1998 – Rose, Lives 1–9
Chapter 3: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Life 1
Chapter 4: September 22, 2004 – Rose, Lives 1–9
Chapter 5: February 2, 2007 – Rose, Life 1
Part Two: Enter More Roses, Lives 2 & 3
Chapter 6: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Life 2
Chapter 7: December 20, 2012 – Rose, Life 3
Chapter 8: September 19, 2008 – Rose, Life 2
Chapter 9: November 10, 2007 – Rose, Life 1
Chapter 10: October 10, 2008 – Rose, Life 2
Chapter 11: January 19, 2009 – Rose, Life 2
Chapter 12: May 3, 2009 – Rose, Life 1
Part Three: Enter More Roses, Lives 4 & 5
Chapter 13: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Lives 4 & 5
Chapter 14: September 25, 2007 – Rose, Life 4
Chapter 15: September 25, 2007 – Rose, Life 5
Chapter 16: July 16, 2010 – Rose, Life 2
Chapter 17: October 19, 2007 – Rose, Life 5
Chapter 18: October 19, 2007 – Rose, Life 4
Chapter 19: March 15, 2013 – Rose, Life 3
Chapter 20: August 5, 2008 – Rose, Life 5
Chapter 21: March 2, 2008 – Rose, Life 4
Part Four: Exit Rose, Life 4; Enter Rose, Lives 6 & 8
Chapter 22: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Lives 6 & 8
Chapter 23: July 3, 2007 – Rose, Lives 6 & 8
Chapter 24: April 22, 2009 – Rose, Life 5
Chapter 25: July 14, 2007 – Rose, Life 6
Chapter 26: May 2, 2013 – Rose, Lives 1 & 2
Chapter 27: December 18, 2009 – Rose, Life 8
Chapter 28: February 16, 2014 – Rose, Lives 1 & 2
Chapter 29: March 2, 2008 – Rose, Life 6
Chapter 30: February 12, 2010 – Rose, Life 8
Chapter 31: May 2, 2010 – Rose, Life 5
Chapter 32: June 4, 2014 – Rose, Life 3
Chapter 33: April 8, 2015 – Rose, Life 6
Chapter 34: April 8, 2015 – Rose, Lives 1 & 2
Part Five: Enter More Roses, Lives 7 & 9
Chapter 35: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Life 7
Chapter 36: May 22, 2020 – Rose, Lives 3 & 6
Chapter 37: May 8, 2023 – Rose, Lives 1, 2, 7 & 8
Chapter 38: June 18, 2022 – Rose, Lives 3, 5 & 6
Chapter 39: August 15, 2006 – Rose, Life 9
Chapter 40: August 23, 2024 – Rose, Lives 1–3, 5–9
Chapter 41: May 23, 2000 – Rose, Lives 1–9
Chapter 42: December 12, 2025 – Rose
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Donna Freitas
About the Publisher
March 2, 2008
Rose, Life 3
SHE IS BEAUTIFUL.
I am awed by her perfection. The heady scent of her skin.
‘Addie,’ I sigh. ‘Adelaide,’ I try again, a faint whisper in the sterile air. ‘Adelaide Luz.’
I raise her little head to my nose and inhale, long and needy, ignoring the sharp pain in my abdomen. I smile as I admire the soft fuzz of her hair.
How I resisted having this little being in my arms! Before the pregnancy and the birth, I would rage about the pressure to have a child – to Luke, to Mom, to Jill, to whomever would listen. The stranger next to me on the subway, the unsuspecting man on the sidewalk. I was just. So. Angry.
But now?
The snow falls in wet clumps against the windowpanes of the hospital room, everything around me shades of gray in dim light. I inch to the left, shift into a better position. The temperature drops and the snow turns papery, thick and dry like paste. She sleeps.
My eyes are hers.
‘How could I not have wanted you?’ I whisper into her tiny, curling ear, a pearly shell. ‘How could there be a life where you and I never met? If there is such a life, I wouldn’t want to live it.’
Her eyelids twitch, pale, veined, transparent, her nose and mouth and forehead scrunching.
‘Did you hear what I said, sweet girl? You should only listen to the second part, about how your mother wouldn’t want a life without you. That’s all you need to know.’
1
August 15, 2006
Rose, Life 1
LUKE IS STANDING on my side of the bed. He never goes to my side of the bed. In his hand is a bottle of prenatal vitamins. He holds it up.
He shakes it, a plastic rattle.
The sound is heavy and dull because it is full.
This is the problem.
‘You promised,’ he says, even and slow.
Uh-oh. I am in trouble.
‘Sometimes I forget to take them,’ I admit.
He shakes the bottle again, a maraca in a minor key. ‘Sometimes?’ The light through the curtains forms a halo around Luke’s upper body, the hand held high with the offending object outlined by the sun and glowing.
I am in the doorway of our room, on my way to pull clothes from the drawers and the closet. Mundane things. Underwear. Socks. A top and a pair of jeans. Like any other morning. I would have folded the clothing across one arm and carried it to the bathroom so I could shower and change. Instead I stop, cross my arms over my chest, the heart inside it mangled with hurt and anger. ‘Did you count them, Luke?’ My question is a cold snap in the humid August air.
‘So what if I did, Rose? What if I did count them? Can you blame me?’
I turn my back on him, go to open the long drawer that contains underwear, bras, slips, camisoles, riffle through my things, disrupting the order of my clothing, everything growing more and more out of control. My heart starts pounding.
‘You promised me,’ Luke says.
I grab a pair of my granniest underwear. I want to scream. ‘Like promises mean anything in this marriage.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘It’s perfectly fair.’
‘Rose—’
‘So I didn’t take the pills! I don’t want a baby. I never wanted a baby and I don’t want one now and I won’t want one ever and you knew that before we got engaged! I told you a thousand times! I’ve told you a million times since!’
‘You said you’d take the vitamins.’
‘I said it to stop you from tormenting me.’ Tears sting my eyes even as the blood inside me pulses with fury. ‘I said it so we could have a little peace in this apartment.’
‘So you lied.’
I turn. The underwear falls from my hand as I march my way to the other side of the bed to confront my husband. ‘You swore you didn’t want a baby.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Right. Sure. No big deal.’ I am tumbling down a hill, we are tumbling, and I don’t know how to stop us from crashing. ‘You “changed your mind”, but I’m the liar.’
‘You said you’d try.’
‘I said I’d take the vitamins. That’s all I said.’
‘You didn’t take them.’
‘I took some.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know. Unlike you, I didn’t count.’
Luke lowers the bottle, grips it between both hands, palm pressing down on the top, twisting, removing. He peers into the opening. ‘This bottle is full, Rose.’ He looks up at me again, head shaking left, right, his disapproval pouring over me.
Who is this man before me, this man I love, this man I married?
I can barely see a resemblance between this person and the one who used to look at me like I was the only woman in the universe, like I was the meaning of his entire existence. I loved being that for Luke. I loved being his everything. He has always been my everything, this man with the soft, thoughtful gaze, with the friendliest, most open of smiles, this man I was certain I would love for the rest of my days on this earth.
The words But I love you, Luke are trapped moths banging around inside me, unable to find their way out.
Instead of disarming the bomb between us, in one swift motion I explode, swiping the bottle from Luke’s hand, my arm like a club, knocking it hard and high, the huge, oval pills becoming an arc of ugly green Skittles flung across the wood floor, scattering across the white sheets on the bed.
This action freezes both of us.
Luke’s lips are slightly parted, the sharp, clean edges of his front teeth visible. His eyes follow the trail of pills that have come to represent the success or failure of this marriage, tiny buoys I was meant to ingest to keep our marriage afloat. I’ve spilled them, so now we are sinking. The only sound in the room is our breathing. Luke’s eyes are wide. Betrayed.
He thinks I am the one to betray him, that the proof lies in that stupid bottle of vitamins.
Why doesn’t he see that he is the one who betrayed me? That by changing his mind about children he’s only shown me that I am not worthy enough on my own?
Luke returns to life, walks to the corner of the room where the rolling bottle came to a stop. He bends down and picks it up. He plucks one vitamin from the floor, then another, pinching them between his fingers before dropping them back inside. The pills clatter to the bottom of the bottle.
I stand there, watching as Luke bends and straightens, bends and straightens until every last prenatal vitamin is back in its rightful home, even those that went skittering under the bed. Luke has to lift the edge of the comforter to see them, has to lie down on the floor to retrieve them, arm straining.
When he’s finished, he looks at me, eyes full of accusation. ‘Why did I have to marry the one woman in the world who doesn’t want a baby?’
I inhale sharply.
There.
There it is. The thing that Luke’s been thinking forever, finally out in the open. Not the part about me not wanting a baby – that he’s known since the very beginning. It’s the clear ring of regret in his voice that makes me wince, the way he singles me out as unique and only in the worst of ways.
We stare at each other. I wait for an apology that doesn’t come. My heart is pounding, my mind is racing from Luke’s question, piling my own on top of his. Why can’t I be just like every other woman who wants a baby? Why am I not? Why was I made this way?
Will this be the summary of my life at its end?
Rose Napolitano: Never a mother.
Rose Napolitano: She didn’t want a baby.
Luke looks down at his feet. He picks up the bottle cap, closes it with a hard snap of the lid.
I reach for it – I reach for him.
2
March 14, 1998
Rose, Lives 1–9
I DON’T LIKE having my picture taken.
‘Can you look up from your lap?’
My eyes, my head, my chin all refuse this request.
I’m the kind of person who runs from a camera, who hides behind whomever is next to me. Who puts up my hand to a lens if one shows up in my face. All the more reason I should not be here right now, having a portrait done in my cap and gown. What was I thinking?
‘Um, Rose?’
I hear footsteps. A pair of navy-blue sneakers, worn at the toe, laces ragged, appear on the floor in front of me. I take a big breath, let it out, and look up. The photographer is youngish, maybe my age, maybe a year or two older. His eyes blink, he bites his lip, his brow gathers.
‘Sorry,’ I say, hands fidgeting in my lap, fingers clasping and unclasping. ‘I must be your worst subject ever.’ I look away, off to the side, into the dim space beyond this bright, portrait setup where I sit, a gray background scrolled behind me. A row of boxes, the kind you buy if you are moving apartments, is stacked against the wall. A blue jacket is draped over the top, and a hockey stick lies on the floor along the baseboard. ‘This was a dumb idea,’ I go on. ‘I just thought … I mean, I wanted … but then …’
‘You wanted?’ the photographer asks.
I don’t answer, I guess because I don’t really want to talk to this stranger about the inner workings of my heart. Besides, I’m still taking in the junk piled everywhere. This must be the photographer’s house. He called it his ‘studio’, but it looks like he lives here. Or maybe just moved in.
‘You wanted what?’ he presses.
There’s something about the sound of his voice – gentle, patient – that makes me want to cry. This whole situation makes me want to cry. ‘I shouldn’t be here, I’m not good at this.’ Now I do start to cry. ‘This is so embarrassing, I don’t like getting my picture taken. I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry.’ I cry harder, even as my inner feminist scolds me for so much apologizing.
The photographer – I can’t remember his name (Larry? No. Lou? Maybe.) – squats down next to my chair so we are almost at eye level. ‘Don’t worry. Lots of people hate having their picture taken. But are you crying because of the portrait, or because of something else?’
I study this man, the way his right knee presses through the rip in his jeans, the way his body sways ever so slightly in his crouch. How does he know that my reason for crying isn’t because of the picture? Has he also sensed that this is really about my parents, who sometimes have a hard time understanding my choices? The woman I’ve become as an adult?
I cross my arms, press them into my body. This black gown with the velvet trim is thick and stiff. I bet it would stand on its own if I propped it just right. I pull the puffy beanie from my head and shake my hair out. It probably looks awful after sitting under the weight of this thing. The beanie is also velvet, the same blue as the gown. I was so excited when it came in the mail, the symbol of so many years of hard work, of the doctorate I am about to receive officially on graduation day in May. My PhD in sociology, the one that will turn me from just Rose into Professor Napolitano. Doctor Napolitano.
‘Who’s that picture of, over there?’ I ask the photographer instead of answering his question. I point at it, extending my arm to the right.
Hanging on the wall above the stack of boxes is a large, framed photo. It seems out of place, given the transitional state of everything else – fixed and permanent. Two people, a man and a woman, are sitting side by side on a porch, each one with a book open in front of them. The expressions on their faces are so alive, so engaged, like the words before them are the most exciting words ever written.
The photographer turns in the direction I point and chuckles. ‘Those are my parents. I took that when I was ten. I’d gotten my first real camera for my birthday that year. I was taking pictures of everything around me, flowers, blades of grass, the grain of the floorboards in the living room – very artsy.’
He turns back, looks at me and shrugs. Rolls his eyes at himself.
They are green, with flecks of brown.
‘I took a lot of excellent shots of the dog, too.’
I laugh a little. Some of the tension in me releases. ‘And so …?’
‘Yeah, right.’ This time he doesn’t turn away. He keeps his gaze on me. ‘Well, that photo, I was just arriving home. There was this monarch flying above the tall grass and I went running after it, trying to get the perfect shot.’ He covers his eyes with his hands.
I find myself wanting to reach for them, to pull them away from his face, touch his smooth, olive skin. I don’t want him to be embarrassed.
His hands fall back to his knees. He bobbles a little. ‘I was such a nerd. So there I was, grass plastered all over my jeans, tired, sweaty, and suddenly I looked up and saw my parents reading on the porch. And I could see something on their faces – something I had to capture. I stopped, lifted my camera, and snapped a single photograph.’ He smiles.
‘That photograph?’
He stands again. He’s so tall. ‘Yup. It was the picture that made me want to become a photographer. When I saw it, I just knew. My mother had it framed, so I could always remember who I am and what I want to do, even when times get hard. It’s not easy starting out in this business.’ He pats the camera that’s next to him on the floor with affection, and he shrugs again.
My head tilts, studying him. ‘Thank you for telling me that story.’
He nods. ‘Thank you for asking about that photograph.’ He taps his foot. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘My turn?’
‘Tell me what the deal is. I told you a story, so now you have to tell me one, about why you’re really here.’
‘Um.’
‘Um, yes, well?’
‘Um, okay. Fine.’
He crosses the room and retrieves a chair, parks it next to mine, and sits. Leans forward. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. You’re my only appointment.’
I breathe deeply. ‘Before I tell you, I have one more question.’
‘Sure, go ahead.’
My cheeks grow hot. I stand up, unzip my graduation robe before sitting back down. This thing is melting me. ‘It’s embarrassing.’
His eyebrows arch.
‘I forgot your name, and since we are telling each other life stories, I figure we should probably be on a first-name basis. I know it’s not Larry. But is it – Lou, maybe?’
He smiles again, laughs again – he has such a nice laugh, low, but rich, like he enjoys laughing, like he is easy to laugh. ‘Well, Rose Napolitano, my only appointment of the day, I agree that we should know each other’s names, and since I already know yours, you should also know mine.’ He sticks out his hand and I take it.
I feel it across my skin, everywhere, a rush.
‘My name is Luke.’
3
August 15, 2006
Rose, Life 1
MY HAND HANGS in the air, reaching, empty.
Instead of giving the bottle to me, instead of taking my hand, Luke returns the vitamins to the bedside stand where I usually keep them, hidden behind the stack of novels that makes its home next to my pillow. He is quiet.
I speak in my defense. ‘I have been trying, Luke. Really.’ I let my arm drop, let my husband’s question go unanswered. I want to bury it from view, erase it by piling other words on top of it until we can no longer see it. ‘But sometimes those pills make my stomach hurt, and you know I can’t work while I’m sick. I can’t present at conferences, I can’t do my research interviews …’ I wait for my husband to join in, help me paddle away from the dangerous place where this fight has taken us.
We can fix this. My eyes are pleading.
Luke hesitates, only for a second, and I hang my hope on this single breath.
But then his eyes narrow. ‘I don’t want to hear about your work anymore, Rose. I’m tired of hearing about your work and how, because of it, we can’t have a baby.’
There it is again. Exposed. The problem we cannot solve.
My impulse to try to fix this turns to ash. I glare back. ‘It’s not just because of my work that I don’t want a baby and you know it. I don’t want a baby because I’ve never wanted a baby and it’s my right not to want a baby! But Jesus, Luke, what’s so wrong about loving my work? What’s so wrong with making it my priority? What’s so wrong with me?’
‘What’s wrong is that you love your academic career more than you’d love a baby even if we did have one! What matters is that the baby would always come second. I don’t know why I ever thought it might be otherwise.’
‘Oh, and like you don’t love being a photographer. But you get to be as happy and obsessed with your work as you want because you’re a man.’
Luke presses his hands into the sides of his head, elbows all sharp angles. ‘Stop spouting the feminist crap. I’m sick of hearing it.’
‘Well, you stop spouting your parents’ words!’
His hands fall back to his side, ball into fists. ‘Fine. I’m tired of defending you to them anyway.’
I grit my teeth.
Luke’s parents wish he’d married someone else, someone traditional, someone who would give up everything to become a mother. Someone who would put a baby over her career. It’s a fight Luke and his parents keep having about me – which means it’s a fight he and I keep having about us.
Last year when I found out I got tenure, I called Luke from my office and he said all the right things, like how we would go out for drinks and dinner to celebrate. But when I got home, Luke was on the phone with his father. He didn’t hear me come in.
‘Yeah, Dad, I know, I know,’ Luke was saying. ‘But Rose …’
I stopped moving, the front door not quite shut. I held it open so it wouldn’t make a noise and Luke would continue to think he was alone.
‘Yes, I know, but Rose is coming around. She’ll be fine once she has a baby.’
There was a long pause.
My chest hurt, my rib cage hurt, the heart behind it hurt. If there was a glass nearby, a plate, anything breakable, I would have picked it up and smashed it to the ground. I wanted to scream.
Finally, Luke spoke again. ‘I know you think work will always come first, but I think a baby will change that.’ Pause. ‘I know you disagree, but I wish you’d give her more of a chance.’ Pause. ‘Dad, she gets tired of talking about it.’ Another pause, then a heavy, frustrated sigh from Luke, followed by an angry outburst of, ‘Dad, stop, please!’
A book fell from the lip of my overstuffed bag, hitting the floor with a heavy clunk.
