The Book of V.: A Novel(35)

When she isn’t walking, Vee reads. She forgets herself. She is fine.

So it’s not as if she needs Rosemary with her constantly. It’s only when Rosemary is due to return from somewhere—school drop-off, or the hair salon—that Vee’s lungs stop working properly. Her palms sweat, her mind rakes, a frantic speculation as to what is happening and when it will end. She feels wild with helplessness, and this helplessness and the helplessness she felt that night a week ago, after Hump came upstairs and told her a car was coming, get some rest, pack your things—can it possibly be that only one week has passed?—are so similar, as sensations, that each time she waits for Rosemary, she is pulled into the spiraling. She shouldn’t have made him angry. She should have buttoned her collar. She should have let him undress her. She shouldn’t have resisted. She should have known what to expect. She should have made a speech. She should have spit in his face, should have danced naked, shouldn’t have drunk so much, should have but toned her collar. She keeps thinking back to the Jefferson Airplane concert where she was dancing with her friends when three boys moved on them, threading arms between their legs and up their skirts and trying to push fingers inside them. No one paid attention to the girls’ shouts; they had to flee, run back to their motel, lock the door. They kept laughing, until one of them cried. They should have worn jeans, not skirts. They should have kept their arms down and their legs closed as they danced. She should have buttoned her collar; she should have slapped him. In the upstairs hallway now, she hears the crunch of her zipper breaking. Should have obeyed. Should have known. Should have done better with the Suitcase Wife, to placate and persuade, save Alex’s career before he had to resort to—

“Vivian Kent! What did I ever do without you?”

Rosemary, opening the door, is drenched from the waist down, a waist she insists is already thickening by the day. Her doctor has confirmed that she is pregnant, and though it’s early still, seven weeks, according to Rosemary the swelling happens earlier with each baby. She plops down next to Vee, dries her hands on Vee’s skirt, picks up a glass from the tray, and holds it out.

“No ice tonight?” she asks.

“I forgot the ice.” Vee pours. “Sorry.”

Rosemary shrugs and sips. Her face is flushed from work and steam. The first night, Vee asked if she worried about the kids alone in the bath—there are two boys and a girl, ranging from eight to nearly four—and Rosemary shrugged then, too, and said they were good at looking out for each other. She has always been like this, Vee thinks—steady, calm, difficult to fluster. Her face is broad, her eyebrows notably darker than her sandy hair, her legs and arms strong for a woman, maybe a little thicker than ideal, but in a way that fits the rest of her, so that she never appears large, only grounded, impossible to tip over. Not that she’s masculine or hard. She’s just Rosemary, unfailingly matter-of-fact. Even her nails she now wears unpolished, not unmanicured like the women’s-group women’s but neither lacquered like Vee’s, whose own scarlet preparty polish is starting to chip. Buffed, Rosemary calls what she’s done. She is self-assured enough to go with buffed.

Vee lights two cigarettes and hands one to Rosemary, who doesn’t smoke on her own but is game with Vee. She smoked two last night, a personal record, but still nothing close to Vee’s five. Vee has been smoking while she walks, while she reads, while she panics.

“That’s getting infected,” Rosemary says, taking Vee’s left hand in her own and laying it palm up in her lap. They look: the tip of Vee’s ring finger is hot pink and inflamed. A few nights ago Rosemary removed a splinter from this spot, but Vee has not been keeping it covered as Rosemary instructed. When she returns half a minute later with antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid, Vee feels a pang of embarrassment. She is not a child. And the splinter itself was a humiliation—she got it from the bottom of her dresser drawer as she was pawing for her sew-on-the-go box. She hasn’t told Rosemary this. What would she say? I got this splinter while desperately trying to snip off some buttons my husband told me to button? Who fought that fight? Even worse, who lost it as dramatically and pathetically as Vee has?

Rosemary dresses the wound and returns the Band-Aids and ointment to the hallway medicine closet. Vee finishes her friend’s cigarette for her, then lights two more and holds one out for Rosemary as she plops back down. Vee pulls hard on her own, fighting off the homesickness that hit her when she glimpsed the inside of the medicine closet. Rosemary’s boxes and bins and canisters and sewing baskets, her belongings, where they belong. Vee has so little of what is hers now: a few outfits; her essential toiletries, including the Pill; four pairs of shoes; and—as ever—her sew-on-the-go box. She packed only what she could carry by herself so that she could refuse Hump’s offer to haul her bags out to the car. She knew he would offer, just as she knew he would open the car door for her, and wait until she was situated, and ask if she was comfortable. It was a Town Car. Of course she was comfortable. This car is officially taking you to a place called Fainwright, he said. But you have it take you where you want, so long as it’s out of the way. No one sees you. He winked. This’ll blow over soon enough, Mrs. Kent. We’ll get you back. He slammed the door.

He missed the point, of course. How could she possibly go back? She had been debased in her own home, put to a test she would have to be whorish to willfully pass, then treated like a whore for failing. A psychotic, possibly lesbian, drug-doing whore, no less. It was a level of abuse she had not been raised to endure, no more than she was raised to travel for more than a few days without a trunk.