The Lonely Hearts Hotel(6)

She hopped from one bed to the other as though trying to escape a wicked pirate who had breached the deck and was out to kill her—out to stab her in the heart for refusing to love him. Such was the quality of her performance that the little girls could see the evil man pursuing her. They would hold their small hands to their mouths to stifle their terrified cries.

One of the girls got so worked up one night at the performance that she fainted. The other girls gathered around her, blowing in her face and waving pillows back and forth above her. They were trying to revive her. If the Sisters came in, they would put an end to all of these marvelous games forever.

Their favorite of Rose’s performances by far were those when her imaginary friend, a bear, came to visit. And he would always be demanding Rose’s hand in marriage. All the girls scooted down one chair at the dining table because they wanted to leave a space for her imaginary friend to sit. In the dormitory at night, Rose would sit on the edge of her bed, looking straight ahead, spurning the affections of the beast.

“You must be completely out of your mind. Why would I marry a bear?” She paused to listen to what the bear was saying. “Well, for one thing, how in the world could I trust you around any of my friends? I’m quite sure that I would turn my head for just a minute and when I turned it back I’d find that you had swallowed them whole.”

The little girls exploded with mirth. Their laughter was like a pheasant that burst startled from a thicket.

“And you are always eating all the honey. That just isn’t right! You know that I like to have a spoonful of it in my tea, and every time I go to pick up the jar, I see that it is completely empty.”

They laughed again at this big bear that didn’t have the sense to know when enough was enough.

“Also, you are a bum. You sleep for the whole winter. I know it’s cold out, but that doesn’t mean you can just sleep right through it. How will the bills get paid? Do you think I want to spend the whole winter listening to you snore?

“No, I will not kiss you. No, no, no. Get your huge paws off me.”

The little girls clapped their hands and screamed in delight. They forgot themselves, pulling their dresses up to their chins and shoving their fists in their mouths. One girl laughed so hard that she peed in her underpants a little.

While Pierrot was in the boys’ dormitory entertaining the boys, Rose was putting on a show for all the girls. Because of the separation of the boys’ and girls’ wings, they were never really a part of each other’s imaginative worlds.

Not yet.

? ? ?

THE NUNS WERE AWARE that Rose stuck out, and perhaps it was for this reason that she was punished more than all the other children. In fact, the frequency with which her name appears in The Book of Minor Infractions at the time is rather alarming. Sister Elo?se didn’t like how other girls paid attention to her. She was adored for being creative and witty, which was not right, in the nun’s estimation—she strongly believed that girls should be admired only for being good.

She hated that Rose was trying to better herself intellectually, something that a girl had no business doing. She caught Rose taking the newspaper pages that the fish had been wrapped up in out of the garbage can and reading them. She saw an old janitor pass something to Rose, which she tucked under her sweater. Upon investigation, the Sister found it to be a history of France, with the first chapter missing. Sister Elo?se knew that this couldn’t be the first time this clandestine exchange had taken place. In one of the bathroom stalls, she noticed that a panel on the floor seemed loose. She pulled it up and spotted a stashed pile of books there: Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Jules Verne!

As Rose’s punishment, nobody was allowed to talk to her that day. Rose wore a sign around her neck that read Ignore me. If any girl was caught talking to her, she would find herself wearing a sign just like it around her neck too.

Another time, Rose was made to stand on a chair for fraternizing indecently with her imaginary bear. She had to hold a great atlas on her head. The atlas was filled with maps of all the countries in the world.

Rose carried a white mouse around in her pocket, a gift from the gardener. At night when she slept, she kept the mouse in a jar at the bottom of her trunk. Upon discovery of the glass residence one morning, the Mother Superior filled the bottle with water in front of everybody and screwed the lid back on. The mouse floated about with its arms spread, as if it were truly amazed by life.

The cook always gave Rose cigarettes. The cook liked to have company when he smoked. She would smoke while perched on the counter with her legs crossed, listening to the cook rattle on about his brother-in-law.

When Sister Elo?se caught her, she made Rose stand in front of everyone and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. All the children watched her smoking. She did it so elegantly. Rose blew a smoke ring and the children applauded. They had no idea how she was able to playact at being an adult so well.

“It’s very hard being a dragon,” Rose said, “no matter what they tell you. Every time I turn around, it just so happens that there is a knight standing there, poking me in the behind. Excuse me, but do I show up at your house and poke you in the behind? No, I do not.”

As always, laughter erupted around her, the way water leaps up around a statue in a fountain. Pierrot laughed the hardest. He thought Rose was marvelous. He thought she was a rebel. He was intimidated by her.

Rose felt as if she could smoke every cigarette in the whole damn city. Later that day, Rose found herself over a bucket, puking.