Rose Madder Read online

  She leaned against the high-backed bus seat and watched the last of the fast-food restaurants and muffler shops fall away. Now it was just the countryside--newly opened fields and belts of trees that were turning that fabulous cloudy green that belongs only to April. She watched them roll past with her hands clasped loosely in her lap and let the big silver bus take her on toward whatever lay ahead.

  II

  THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

  1

  She had a great many bad moments during the first weeks of her new life, but even at what was very nearly the worst of them all--getting off the bus at three in the morning and entering a terminal four times the size of Portside--she did not regret her decision.

  She was, however, terrified.

  Rosie stood just inside the doorway of Gate 62, clutching her purse tightly in both hands and looking around with wide eyes as people rushed past in riptides, some dragging suitcases, some balancing string-tied cardboard boxes on their shoulders, some with their arms around the shoulders of their girlfriends or the waists of their boyfriends. As she watched, a man sprinted toward a woman who had just gotten off Rosie's bus, seized her, and spun her around so violently that her feet left the ground. The woman crowed with delight and terror, her cry as bright as a flashgun in the crowded, confused terminal.

  There was a bank of video games to Rosie's right, and although it was the darkest hour of the morning, kids--most with their baseball caps turned around backward and at least eighty per cent of their hair buzzed off--were bellied up to all of them. "Try again, Space Cadet!" the one nearest to Rosie invited in a grinding, inhuman voice. "Try again, Space Cadet! Try again, Space Cadet!"

  She walked slowly past the video games and into the terminal, sure of only one thing: she didn't dare go out at this hour of the morning. She felt the chances were excellent that she would be raped, killed, and stuffed into the nearest garbage can if she did. She glanced left and saw a pair of uniformed policemen coming down the escalator from the upper level. One was twirling his nightstick in a complex pattern. The other was grinning in a hard, humorless way that made her think of a man eight hundred miles behind her. He grinned, but there was no grin in his constantly moving eyes.

  What if their job is to tour the place every hour or so and kick out everyone who doesn't have a ticket? What will you do then?

  She'd handle that if it came up, that was what she'd do. For the time being she moved away from the escalator and toward an alcove where a dozen or so travelers were parked in hard plastic contour chairs. Small coin-op TVs were bolted to the arms of these chairs. Rosie kept an eye on the cops as she went and was relieved to see them move across the floor of the terminal and away from her. In two and a half hours, three at the most, it would be daylight. After that they could catch her and kick her out. Until then she wanted to stay right here, where there were lights and lots of people.

  She sat down in one of the TV chairs. Two seats away on her left, a girl wearing a faded denim jacket and holding a backpack on her lap was dozing. Her eyes rolled beneath her purple-tinged eyelids, and a long, silvery strand of saliva depended from her lower lip. Four words had been tattooed on the back of her right hand, straggling blue capitals that announced I LOVE MY HUNNEY. Where's your honey now, sweetheart? Rosie thought. She looked at the blank screen of the TV, then at the tiled wall on her right. Here someone had scrawled the words SUCK MY AIDS-INFECTED COCK in red Magic Marker. She looked away hastily, as if the words would burn her retinas if she looked at them too long, and gazed across the terminal. On the far wall was a huge lighted clock. It was 3:16 a.m.

  Two and a half more hours and I can leave, she thought, and began to wait them through.

  2

  She'd had a cheeseburger and a lemonade when the bus made a rest-stop around six o'clock the previous evening, nothing since then, and she was hungry. She sat in the TV alcove until the hands of the big clock made it around to four a.m., then decided she'd better get a bite. She crossed to the small cafeteria near the ticket windows, stepping over several sleeping people on her way. Many of them had their arms curled protectively around bulging, tape-mended plastic garbage bags, and by the time Rosie got coffee and juice and a bowl of Special K, she understood that she had been needlessly worried about being kicked out by the cops. These sleepers weren't through-travelers; they were homeless people camping out in the bus terminal. Rosie felt sorry for them, but she also felt perversely comforted--it was good to know there would be a place for her tomorrow night, if she really needed one.

  And if he comes here, to this city, where do you think he'll check first? What do you think will be his very first stop?

  That was silly--he wasn't going to find her, there was absolutely no way he could find her--but the thought still sent a cold finger up her back, tracing the curve of her spine.

  The food made her feel better, stronger and more awake. When she had finished (lingering over her coffee until she saw the Chicano busboy looking at her with unconcealed impatience), she started slowly back to the TV alcove. On the way, she caught sight of a blue-and-white circle over a booth near the rental-car kiosks. The words bending their way around the circle's blue outer stripe were TRAVELERS AID, and Rosie thought, not without a twinkle of humor, that if there had ever been a traveler in the history of the world who needed aid, it was her.

  She took a step toward the lighted circle. There was a man sitting inside the booth under it, she saw--a middle-aged guy with thinning hair and hornrimmed glasses. He was reading a newspaper. She took another step in his direction, then stopped again. She wasn't really going over there, was she? What in God's name would she tell him? That she had left her husband? That she had gone with nothing but her purse, his ATM card, and the clothes she stood up in?

  Why not? Practical-Sensible asked, and the total lack of sympathy in her voice struck Rosie like a slap. If you had the guts to leave him in the first place, don't you have the guts to own up to it?

  She didn't know if she did or not, but she knew that telling a stranger the central fact of her life at four o'clock in the morning would be very difficult. And probably he'd just tell me to get lost, anyway. Probably his job is helping people to replace their lost tickets, or making lost-children announcements over the loudspeakers.

  But her feet started moving in the direction of the Travelers Aid booth just the same, and she understood that she did mean to speak to the stranger with the thinning hair and the hornrimmed glasses, and that she was going to do it for the simplest reason in the universe: she had no other choice. In the days ahead she would probably have to tell a lot of peopie that she had left her husband, that she had lived in a daze behind a closed door for fourteen years, that she had damned few life-skills and no work-skills at all, that she needed help, that she needed to depend on the kindness of strangers.

  But none of that is really my fault, is it? she thought, and her own calmness surprised her, almost stunned her.

  She came to the booth and put the hand not currently clutching the strap of her purse on the counter. She looked hopefully and fearfully down at the bent head of the man in the homrimmed glasses, looking at his brown, freckled skull through the strands of hair laid across it in neat thin rows. She waited for him to look up, but he was absorbed in his paper, which was written in a foreign language that looked like either Greek or Russian. He carefully turned a page and frowned at a picture of two soccer players tussling over a ball.

  "Excuse me?" she asked in a small voice, and the man in the booth raised his head.

  Please let his eyes be kind, she thought suddenly. Even if he can't do anything, please let his eyes be kind... and let them see me, me, the real person who is standing here with nothing but the strap of this Kmart purse to hold onto.

  And, she saw, his eyes were kind. Weak and swimmy behind the thick lenses of his glasses ... but kind.

  "I'm sorry, but can you help me?" she asked.

  3

  The Travelers Aid volunteer introduced him
self as Peter Slowik, and he listened to Rosie's story in attentive silence. She told as much as she could, having already come to the conclusion that she could not depend on the kindness of strangers if she held what was true about her in reserve, out of either pride or shame. The only important thing she didn't tell him--because she couldn't think of a way to express it--was how unarmed she felt, how totally unprepared for the world. Until the last eighteen hours or so, she'd had no conception of how much of the world she knew only from TV, or from the daily paper her husband brought home.

  "I understand that you left on the spur of the moment," Mr. Slowik said, "but while you were riding the bus did you have any idea about what you should do or where you should go when you got here? Any ideas at all?"

  "I thought I might be able to find a women's hotel, to start with," she said. "Are there still such places?"

  "Yes, at least three that I know of, but the cheapest has rates that would probably leave you broke in a week. They're hotels for well-to-do ladies, for the most part--ladies who've come to spend a week in the city touring the shops, or visiting relatives who don't have room to put them up."

  "Oh," she said. "Well, then, what about the YWCA?"

  Mr. Slowik shook his head. "They closed down the last of their boarding facilities in 1990. They were being overrun by crazy people and drug addicts."

  She felt a touch of panic, then made herself think of the people who slept here on the floor, with their arms around their taped garbage bags of possessions. There's always that, she thought.

  "Do you have any ideas?" she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, tapping his lower lip with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, a plain-faced little man with watery eyes who had nevertheless seen her and spoken to her--who hadn't just told her to get lost. And, of course, he didn't tell me to lean forward so he could talk to me up close, she thought.

  Slowik seemed to come to a decision. He opened his coat (an off-the-rack polyester that had seen better days), felt around in his inside pocket, and brought out a business card. On the side where his name and the Travelers Aid logo were displayed, he carefully printed an address. Then he turned the card over and signed the blank side, writing in letters that struck her as comically large. His oversized signature made her think of something her American History teacher had told her class back in high school, about why John Hancock had written his name in especially large letters on the Declaration of Independence. "So King George can read it without his spectacles," Hancock was supposed to have said.

  "Can you make out the address?" he asked, handing her the card.

  "Yes," she said. "251 Durham Avenue."

  "Good. Put the card in your purse and don't lose it. Someone will probably want a look at it when you get there. I'm sending you to a place called Daughters and Sisters. It's a shelter for battered women. Rather unique. Based on your story, I'd say you qualify."

  "How long will they let me stay?"

  He shrugged. "I believe that varies from case to case."

  So that's what I am now, she thought. A case.

  He seemed to read her thought, because he smiled. There was nothing very lovely about the teeth the smile revealed, but it looked honest enough. He patted her hand. It was a quick touch, awkward and a bit timid. "If your husband beat you as badly as you say, Ms. McClendon, you've bettered your situation wherever you end up."

  "Yes," she said. "I think so, too. And if all else fails, there's always the floor here, isn't there?"

  He looked taken aback. "Oh, I don't think it will come to that."

  "It might. It could." She nodded at two of the homeless people, sleeping side by side on their spread coats at the end of a bench. One of them had a dirty orange cap pulled down over his face to block out the relentless light.

  Slowik looked at them for a moment, then back at her. "It won't come to that," he repeated, this time sounding more sure of himself. "The city buses stop right outside the main doors; turn to your left and you'll see where. Various parts of the curb are painted to correspond with the various bus routes. You want an Orange Line bus, so you'll stand on the orange part of the curb. Understand?"

  "Yes."

  "It costs a buck, and the driver will want exact change. He's apt to be impatient with you if you don't have it."

  "I've got plenty of change."

  "Good. Get off at the comer of Dearborn and Elk, then walk up Elk two blocks ... or maybe it's three, I can't remember for sure. Anyway, you'll come to Durham Avenue. You'll want to make a left. It's about four blocks up, but they're short blocks. A big white frame house. I'd tell you it looks like it needs to be painted, but they might have gotten around to that by now. Can you remember all that?"

  "Yes."

  "One more thing. Stay in the bus terminal until it's daylight. Don't go out anywhere--not even to the city bus stop--until then."

  "I wasn't planning to," she said.

  4

  She had gotten only two or three hours' worth of broken sleep on the Continental Express which had brought her here, and so what happened after she stepped off the Orange Line bus really wasn't surprising: she got lost. Rosie decided later that she must have started by going the wrong way on Elk Street, but the result--almost three hours of wandering in a strange neighborhood--was much more important than the reason. She trudged around block after block, looking for Durham Avenue and not finding it. Her feet hurt. Her lower back throbbed. She began to get a headache. And there were certainly no Peter Slowiks in this neighborhood; the faces which did not ignore her completely regarded her with mistrust, suspicion, or outright disdain.

  Not long after getting off the bus she passed a dirty, secretive-looking bar called The Wee Nip. The shades were down, the beer signs were dark, and a grate had been pulled across the door. When she came back to the same bar some twenty minutes later (not realizing she was re-covering ground she'd already walked until she saw it; the houses all looked the same), the shades were still down but the beer signs were on and the grate had been rolled back. A man in chino workclothes leaned in the doorway with a half-empty beer-stein in his hand. She looked at her watch and saw it was not quite six-thirty in the morning.

  Rosie lowered her head until she could see the man only from the comer of one eye, held the strap of her purse a little tighter, and walked a little faster. She guessed the man in the doorway would know where Durham Avenue was, but she had no intention of asking him for directions. He had the look of a guy who liked to talk to people--women, especially--up close.

  "Hey baby hey baby," he said as she passed The Wee Nip. His voice was absolutely uninflected, almost the voice of a robot. And although she didn't want to look at him, she couldn't help shooting a single terrified glance back at him over her shoulder. He had a receding hairline, pale skin on which a number of blemishes stood out like partially healed bums, and a dark red walrus moustache that made her think of David Crosby. There were little dots of beer-foam in it. "Hey baby wanna get it on you don't look too bad priddy good in fact nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on do some low ridin wanna get it on wanna do the dog whaddaya say?"

  She turned away from him and forced herself to walk at a steady pace, her head now bent, like a Muslim woman on her way to market; forced herself not to acknowledge him further in any way. If she did that, he might come after her.

  "Hey baby let's put all four on the floor whaddaya say? Let's get down let's do the dog let's get it on get it on get it on."

  She turned the comer and let out a long breath that pulsed like a living thing with the frantic, frightened beat of her heart. Until that moment she hadn't missed her old town or neighborhood in the slightest, but now her fear of the man in the bar doorway and her disorientation--why did all the houses have to look so much the same, why?--combined in a feeling that was close to homesickness. She had never felt so horribly alone, or so convinced that things were going to turn out badly. It occurred to her that perhaps she would never escape this nightmare, that perhaps this was just
a preview of what the rest of her life was going to be like. She even began to speculate that there was no Durham Avenue; that Mr. Slowik in Travelers Aid, who had seemed so nice, was actually a sadistic sicko who delighted in turning people who were already lost even further around.

  At quarter past eight by her watch--long after the sun had come up on what promised to be an unseasonably hot day--she approached a fat woman in a housedress who was at the foot of her driveway, loading empty garbage cans onto a dolly with slow, stylized movements.

  Rosie took off her sunglasses. "Beg pardon?"

  The woman wheeled around at once. Her head was lowered and she wore the truculent expression of a lady who has frequently been called fatty-fatty-two-by-four from across the street or perhaps from passing cars. "Whatchoo want?"

  "I'm looking for 251 Durham Avenue," Rosie said. "It's a place called Daughters and Sisters. I had directions, but I guess--"

  "What, the welfare lesbians? You ast the wrong chicken, baby girl. I got no use for crack-snackers. Get lost. The fuck outta here." With that she turned back to her dolly and began to push the rattling cans up the driveway in the same slow, ceremonial manner, holding them on with one plump white hand. Her buttocks jiggled freely beneath her faded housedress. When she reached the steps she turned and looked back at the sidewalk. "Didn't you hear me? Get the fuck outta here. 'Fore I call the cops."

  That last word felt like a sharp pinch in a sensitive place. Rosie put her sunglasses back on and walked quickly away. Cops? No thank you. She wanted nothing to do with the cops. Any cops. But after she had put a little distance between herself and the fat lady, Rosie realized she actually felt a little better. She had at least made sure that Daughters and Sisters (known in some quarters as the welfare lesbians) actually existed, and that was a step in the right direction.