Hugo & Rose (2 page)

It was through the boys that Hugo came to occupy Rose's household and not just her dreams. They argued over who would get to be him, never implicitly stating that whoever was
not
him was by default their mother and therefore a
girl.
Hugo was Han Solo and Anakin Skywalker and Batman all rolled into one—a personal superhero they didn't have to share with anyone but each other.

They plotted maps of the island, drew pictures of the places in Rose's dreams. They quizzed her and appealed to her authority to settle debates.

“Is the Plank Orb like a submarine?”

“Yes, but it's much smaller and made of wood.”

“Why is it so small?”

“Well, it only ever has to hold the two of us.”

“Why is it called the Plank Orb?”

“I don't know … that's just what we call it.”

Even the loneliness of Hugo's island, which, but for the mystery of Castle City, was populated only by Hugo and their mother, played into their innate desires for self-reliance.

*   *   *

The boys also sensed, in their young way, the distance between their mother and Hugo's companion. Though ostensibly they were the same person, they couldn't quite reconcile the sharp taskmaster who cut their hot dogs lengthwise before placing them in the bun with the heroine in their mother's tales.

As she had grown older, and rounder, Rose, too, had recognized the divergence between her waking and sleeping selves. The mirror would daily force her to recognize that her current state—the stripes of stretch marks, pulled sad nipples, creases of crow's-feet and brows—was as good as it was going to get. Yet on the island, she was still as beautiful as she had ever been, probably more so.

On the island she was Rose the Spider Slayer. Rose the Fearless, who danced from treetop to treetop and rode the backs of charging Bucks. She was the trickster who led Blindhead into knots around the trunks of trees. The mouse-quiet thief of the Natters nest.

But in her home or in her car, she was simply Rose.

Saggy Rose in the pajamas with the fraying cuffs. Rose at the stoplight, breathing the stale, dust-speckled air of her minivan. Rose in the butcher section of the grocery store, comparing the price of pork chops and London broil. Rose at the bus stop, among the other mothers, acrid coffee cooling in her mug, watching her boys push their way to their seats.

Rose knew she was no one special.

That is, unless she was to recognize in herself that certain specialness, of which it has become the fashion to recognize about everyone. The modern impulse to hand out trophies to every player in the game, regardless of their score. In that way, Rose supposed she was special, which is to say that all people are special and therefore none of them are.

The truth is that Rose knew she was special to only a few people: the small ones she cared for, the old ones who had raised her, and the tall one who slept next to her in her bed.

To everyone else she was just another someone.

And if in her dreams she was a
somebody
 … well, that was just the way of things.

*   *   *

Of what consequence are the dreams of housewives?
she would think whenever she caught herself daydreaming of Hugo and the island. The odd phrase would interject itself, with its strange archaic cadence.
Of what consequence …
Like a canker sore in the mouth of her mind, her brain would tongue at it, sending a shock of pain into her fantasy life.
Of what consequence …
A mental tic. A strange old song stuck in her head.

What did any of it matter?

In traffic, Rose would find herself studying the slack faces of other drivers at stoplights: trios of landscapers in the cabs of trucks; blown-out blondes in face-swallowing sunglasses, with their sullen teenagers texting shotgun; aging men in expensive cars; pretty girls without the armor of their smiles; bumper-riding boys, fists full of energy drinks.

To Rose, they were dreamers all.

She imagined them following their paths through their own days, leading them to their own beds. Each of them surrendering consciousness.

A nation of unconscious protagonists.

Rose supposed that there was spread among these ordinary people the ordinary proportion of cowardice and bravery. They all had their own share of the small victories and defeats of ordinary lives.

But when they dreamed? Rose wondered. Were they masters of the universe or garden slugs? Victims, heroes, or villains in the absentminded movies of their own minds?

Rose would shrug off the thought. What did it matter? The victories and disappointments of ordinary people's dreams would have slipped into the haze before they poured their first cup of coffee.

Of what consequence …

But since Rose's dreams did not disappear upon waking, since her adventures with Hugo had something of the substance of genuine memories, she did struggle with the question as to which Rose was the “true” Rose.

Oh, she knew reality from fantasy.

But when she found herself bullied by a persistent PTA mommy, or frustrated with the boys' constant need for a referee, or fed up with Penny's nighttime wakings … it was easier to believe that the brave, strong, calm Rose of the island was her true self.

And that this woman leading this drab, disappointing life was … something else. Not
not
her, exactly. But not
really
her.

*   *   *

And what exactly do I have to be disappointed with?
Rose would ask herself as she loaded dishes or folded laundry. She had three beautiful, healthy, intelligent children. She had the love and devotion of a man who was not only well employed and attractive, but looked as though he were going to go to his grave with a full head of hair. She got to be home with her children while they were still young enough to want her. She had a nice home filled with nice things. She was healthy, still young.

Well, if not young, then youngish.

This was the life she had said she wanted.

So what if Josh wasn't home enough? Or if Penny was taking forever to potty train? Or if Isaac's teacher said he wasn't paying attention in school? She knew these things wouldn't last forever. Penny would be able to wipe herself by the time she went to college. Isaac would (
God willing
) get a teacher next year who didn't bore him to tears. And Josh would someday be able to make someone lower on the totem pole take the worst shifts at the hospital.

Rose tried to imagine different lives, ones in which she didn't marry Josh or have the children. Career paths. Lifestyle choices. These alternative lives seemed wrong. Empty. Sad.

She knew she had made the right choice. Chosen the best life possible.

And yet her disappointment did not abate.

 

two

For her sixth birthday, Rose received a bicycle. A late-spring snowstorm had forced her party inside, and so the bicycle, which was meant to be presented to her under the mild May sun, was instead placed with a bow on the cement-floored confines of the family garage.

It was a beautiful thing. A light brown frame with a dance of pale pink daisies across its crossbar and pale cream banana seat. Pink and white streamers trailed from its plastic grips. An aftermarket basket had been attached to its handlebars, daisies on this as well, naturally.

“For your Barbies,” said Rose's mother.

It was she who had spent the early morning crouched in the garage in her robe, weaving streamers through the bicycle's spokes.

Rose's father had picked up the bicycle with a box of training wheels the evening before. These extra wheels had not yet been affixed to the bike, as had been the plan. This was due to the fact that Rose's mother had spent the prior evening spinning her own wheels about the changes to little Rosie's party required by the next day's forecast—which led to Rose's father spending the evening reassuring her that it would all be fine.

Rose stood shivering in her cotton party dress in the garage.

“Thanks, Mommy. Thanks, Daddy.”

*   *   *

The weather remained chill that year all the way through the middle of June. At Field Day, in the last week of school, Rose's classmates all clutched at their sweatshirts and pulled their ankle socks against the cold wind before running races against one another. School might have been ending, but it didn't feel like summer yet.

The bicycle was moved to the side to make way for Rose's father's car. The training wheels remained in their box, set out of the way on a high shelf in the pantry by Rose's mother.

The bicycle wasn't forgotten, but just as one doesn't think about sleds and snow shovels at the beach, nothing about the season sparked feelings of “bicycle-ness.”

And six-year-old Rose … though very pleased with the bicycle when she had seen it, had not thought about it again since she had returned from the cold garage to the warm, squealing girls of her party. She had gotten plenty of lovely, indoor toys that day: toys she already
knew
how to play with.

In fact, the only person who thought of Rosie's bicycle at all was her father, for whom its location in the garage was creating an obstacle to exiting his vehicle. As he would contort his body around it, squeezing past the driver's-side door, he would think about how much the bike had cost him and how his wife had insisted that Rosie must have it.

But, kids,
he'd say to himself with a sigh.
What are you going to do?
And head inside.

*   *   *

Summer arrived overnight two weeks after school had ended. The coldish spring was burned away by a hot July sun, arrived early, too impatient to wait for the end of June. All around the neighborhood, mothers dragged sprinklers onto their front lawns, told the kids to entertain themselves, and returned to the cooler dim of their homes.

Rosie spent her days shuttling between her neighbors' houses. Jennifer had the best dollhouse. Brittney's mom bought name-brand Popsicles. Kara's parents let her watch MTV.

For these trips Rose used her own two feet, shod in a pair of aqua jelly sandals. And though the shoes left her with delicate, oddly placed blisters, she still never thought about the bicycle she had been given for her birthday or that she could travel much more comfortably upon it. She didn't know how to use it, and no one had yet undertaken to teach her.

Besides, the jellies made her feel like a princess.

*   *   *

It wasn't until a hot Saturday after the Fourth of July that Rose's father finally hauled the bicycle out of the garage. He had spent the morning weeding and drinking beer. Rose, who had at first insisted upon her fitness to help him with the task (the weeding, not the drinking), had quickly given up and instead lolled on the grass, complaining of boredom.

“Go find your mother,” suggested her father, who thought that if he was to be made to work on his day off, at the very least he could be spared the whining.

“She's not here,” whined Rose.

“Where is she?”

“I don't know.”

Rose's mother was in fact out doing chores, something she'd informed both Rose and her father of before leaving. But both had not thought the information worth remembering, and so it was to both of them as if Rose's mother had disappeared from their living room without so much as a by-your-leave.

“Well,” he said, turning from the flower bed, “whatcha want to do?”

“I dunno.”

“TV?”

“Nothing's on.”

“Go see Jenny?”

“On vacation.”

Rose's father studied his daughter. Suddenly, his mind was full of the bicycle he'd had to move out of the way to get to the gardening tools that morning. He took a swig of beer.

“Come on, let's go.”

*   *   *

Rose was not so sure about this.

She straddled the crossbar and looked up at her dad. Unable to find the box of training wheels after ten minutes of searching, he had decided that Rose didn't really need them anyway.

“Why bother putting them on when you're just going to ask me to take them off in a week?”

He had tried to cajole Rose into mounting the bike without them. And when that didn't work he had bullied her. Insisted he thought she was a “big girl.” Maybe he was wrong.

Rose knew when she was being accused of being a baby. She had socked Pete Koernig last week when he had suggested that she still wet the bed.

Rose had gotten onto the bike. But now, perched on the edge of the seat, her toes skimming the ground, she thought maybe she
was
a bit of a baby. Maybe it was
better
to be a baby. Safer.

“We'll take it slow, okay, honey? You just keep your feet moving.”

Rose's father gripped the back of her seat and her handlebar. With a sharp inhale, Rosie pulled her feet up, located the pedals, and pushed.

Pushed.

Pushed.

They were moving. Rose laughed. So did her father.

“See! You don't need those silly wheels!”

He led her in a steady, straight line past the neighbors' houses.

“We're going to turn now.”

Gently, he pulled an angle into the handlebars. Rose's breath caught—sure gravity would kick in now—but instead they just executed a wide loop, before straightening out.

Rose's confidence grew as they looped around and around in front of their house.

Her father, sensing this, began to loosen his hold on the bike. First they did a circuit with his hand barely gripping the seat. Then they executed another, this time his fingertips only lightly guiding the bars. Pretty soon, she was doing it all by herself, though he kept pace with the bicycle.

“Don't let go, Daddy.”

But he already had. Rose's hair was streaming in her self-made wind, her tongue between her lips in concentration.