Rosie Coloured Glasses

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

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

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

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

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.