In Search of the Rose Notes (16 page)

We were all quiet for a minute or two.

“You two all right?” Porter asked.

“Of course we are,” Charlotte said, studying her own menu.

“You, Nora?” Porter turned to me.

“Yep,” I said, then looked up and met his stare for several seconds. I either convinced him or made him uncomfortable, as his gaze darted quickly back to Charlotte.

After we’d ordered, Charlotte excused herself and disappeared into the ladies’ room. Porter seemed to relax once she’d gone.

“She left us alone on purpose,” he said, grinning at me.

“What makes you say that?”

“In case I wanted to probe you for information, maybe a quote.”

“About Rose, you mean?”

“Yeah. Since you’re the prime witness and all.”

“Nice,” I said.
“Prime witness.”

“Charlotte’s wording, not mine.”

“I figured. So did you want a quote? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I dunno. You want to give me one?”

“Not particularly,” I admitted. “No offense. I just don’t have anything to say. Aside from how sorry I am for Rose’s family, and that’s not something that anyone needs to hear special from me.”

“So…” Porter shook his gin and tonic and sucked a bit of it through his tiny straw. “This business of your being the last to see her alive…”

“Yes?” I was startled to hear him refer to it as “this business.” “What about it?”

“I’m sorry. Are you uncomfortable talking about that day?”

“No,” I said, deciding not to mention my embarrassing trip to the police station—I didn’t want to wind up reading about it in the paper tomorrow. “I just don’t have anything to add from when I was a kid. I’ve never remembered anything unusual about that day, about her walking me home. I wish I did, if it would help. But I don’t.”

Porter hesitated. “It might be an interesting story, your coming back here.”

“An interesting story? You mean for the newspaper?”

“Yeah. Well, something tasteful. The girl who last saw Rose, coming back. How you remember her and—”

“No thanks.”

Porter stirred his ice cubes with his straw, apparently trying to decide whether to let the topic drop. Then he looked around, checking to see if Charlotte was coming. She was taking a while to return.

He took a delicate sip out of his gin and tonic, then cocked his head. “You got any good ‘little Charlotte’ stories?”

Relieved, I told him about the notes I’d just found in which she’d referred to me as “the subject” and theorized about my capacity for astral projection.

“She mentioned that to me, the investigation,” Porter said.

I thought again of the
Looking Glass
poems attached to Rose’s dream notes. Annoyingly, this dinner arrangement had delayed my hammering it into Charlotte’s head that the writings hadn’t been authored by me. She was just so goddamned sure it was me that the matter apparently didn’t need any further discussion.

“She liked to figure things out, get results,” I said. “She was always taking a lot of notes, making charts and graphs.”

“Charts and graphs. Hmph.” Porter chuckled.

“And she was bossy. I never saw her as a teacher, though,” I admitted. “You really think she’s okay teaching?”

“Okay?” Porter said. “Meaning, do I think she likes it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Well… it’s a job that’s nearly impossible to master quickly. She likes to master things quickly.”

“I can’t say I really understood why she made the switch from journalism. Why she didn’t try to go work for another paper.”

“Not like she really had that kind of option. There aren’t many newspaper jobs to go around anymore, and, at least locally, people knew how she’d been shitcanned. ”

The word “shitcanned” gave me pause. That wasn’t exactly how Charlotte had told it. I sipped my Coke to prevent my expression from giving away my surprise.

“But that was a dumb thing for them to fire her for, that stuff about the coffee cups,” I said.

“It wasn’t about the cups. It was a few weeks later, when the town treasurer said Charlotte was messing around in his office.”

My straw slipped out of my mouth.

“Oh, shit,” Porter said, staring at me. “She didn’t tell you about that.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. She was doing an interview with him, he went to the can, she says she saw something on his desk that looked interesting—the police chief’s expense report, I guess it was. Just couldn’t help herself. Then he came back in. Caught her. Freaked out. Made a big deal out of it with our editor.”

“And he fired her?”

“She was already sort of on thin ice. It was harsh, but… well, there’s maybe more of a future in teaching anyway. I don’t know how much longer the
Voice
is gonna be around. And it’s kind of a shoddy paper anyhow.”

“But that’s not really the point, is it?”

“Well, look. I think teaching is actually good for Charlotte. It might not always show, but I think she really cares about the kids. Sometimes the right thing happens the wrong way. Know what I mean?”

Charlotte finally came back to the table, plopping down on her chair with a little smile on her face.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What, did you fall in?” Porter asked.

“No,” she said. “I was just chatting with someone at the bar.”

“Oh?” Porter said, looking down at his drink for a moment, as if the statement reminded him he’d like another.

“You recognize him, Nora?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Look at the bar. Behind the bar, I mean.”

We were pretty far from the bar. All I could make out about the bartender was that he was blond, slightly overweight, and wearing a black T-shirt.

“No,” I said.

“Maybe you ought to go up and order a drink so you can get a closer look. I’m curious if you’d recognize—”

“Jesus, Charlotte,” Porter hissed. “Is that why you had us come to this hole? You figured out where he—”

“Oh, quit your whining.” Charlotte swatted her hand in his direction. “Like we’re too classy for this place?”

I looked from Porter to Charlotte and back to Porter again, feeling dumb.

“That’s Aaron,” he said in a low voice. “Aaron Dwyer. Rose’s old boyfriend. Charlotte, what did you say to him?”

“Nothing, really. Just went up and ordered a drink to start. Told him he looked familiar. Wanted to see what he’d say, if he’d recognize me from when I was a kid. Didn’t seem to. And he’s filled out a bit himself. Was pretty friendly, though.”

Our waiter arrived with our orders—their burgers and my Caesar salad.

“Well, dig in,” Charlotte said cheerfully.

“I’m not going to go bother that guy, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Porter told her.

“Who says this has anything to do with you?” Charlotte said, slicing her burger in half with a butter knife. “
You’re
the one who wanted to meet
us
tonight. So we wanted to get a good look at the guy. So what?”

“So you got a good look,” Porter said through his teeth. “What’ve you learned?”

Charlotte ignored his question. I could feel her eyes on me as I picked up my fork.

“You gonna go up there and check him out, too?” she asked. “Or do you want to wait and just try to chat with him casually when we leave?”

I put a giant piece of lettuce in my mouth and tried not to look at her, the bar, or Porter. Something shut down inside me—the way it always had when Charlotte would push me too far, when my stubborn eleven-year-old self would refuse to reward her, even at the cost of seeming mute and stupid.

“Neither,” I managed after I’d swallowed the lettuce.

We all ate in silence for a few minutes.

“What’ve you learned?” Porter said again.

I packed my duffel bag hurriedly when we arrived back at the Hemsworths’. It was still early—just after eight—when I announced that I’d placed a quick call to my mother and she’d insisted upon an evening visit. When Charlotte eyed my duffel bag, I reasoned that my mother would probably be hurt if I didn’t stay the night. Charlotte didn’t quite buy it, I could tell, but she seemed worn out and didn’t protest. She knew she’d offended me somehow but clearly didn’t have the energy to work out why.

After I’d tossed the duffel into my backseat, I drove out of Fox Hill hastily, headed downtown, and parked at the 7-Eleven. I went into the store, bought a large box of Gobstoppers, and then sat in my car for a little while longer, sucking on one after another. I was grateful for my car, for the bright fluorescent light of this convenience store, for the option to escape Waverly. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d been in Waverly with the benefit of my own mobility. I’d never had a car in high school, and I didn’t learn to drive till I was a senior—after sufficient time had passed since my “incident” for me to be trusted behind a wheel. My mother let me borrow hers very occasionally to pick up eggs or milk, but that was it. Waverly, in retrospect, might not have been so bad if I’d wrangled a little more freedom for myself. Waverly was even kind of pleasant tonight, as I sat sucking down artificial cherry and grape, enjoying a little evening breeze coming through my cracked window. But I still wasn’t ready to call my mother.

Toby had asked me to the prom in this very parking lot. He’d been giving me a ride home when he stopped for some milk and a few cans of SpaghettiOs, which I assumed would be dinner for himself, his brother, and his dad. This menu made me pretty sad—sadder still to see him struggle to balance all the cans in one arm as he enthusiastically held the 7-Eleven door for the pregnant lady coming in as he came out. I stared at him as he got into the car, tossed the cans into the backseat, and fished his keys out of his jeans pocket.

“Are you going to the prom?” I asked him as he started the car.

He sort of chuckled and said he didn’t think so.

“You?” he asked.

I liked how he always drove one-handed, with his left arm draped casually across his open window. I couldn’t remember the last time I thought he’d smelled like a monkey. And while the SpaghettiOs made me sad for him, that sadness made me feel closer to him somehow.

“No one’s asked,” I said with a shrug.

He edged the car up to the road, looked both ways, then looked at me. “That something you’re interested in going to?”

“Might be stupid, might be fun,” I said.

“You wanna go? With me?” he asked, quite simply, and I agreed.

Now I turned on my car’s CD player and listened to a little Neutral Milk Hotel while deciding what to do next. I had a passing impulse to just head back home. I missed Neil, and I was uneasy here in Waverly, despite the comfort of this breeze and these Gobstoppers. It was a little late to head back down 95, but I could stop at a cheap motel on the way home. I was no stranger to cheap hotels—in fact, I liked them. Whenever Neil and I took a road trip, we liked to call the Motel 6s and the Super 8s from their parking lots to negotiate a cheap rate.
Sixty-five?
Neil would say.
I think I’ve got only about fifty on me. How would that be?
Super 8 was usually willing to bargain. Motel 6 tended to be a little tougher. When we’d get into our fifty-five-dollar room, we’d usually high-five, jump on the bed, shower together, and steal all the little soaps.

But then, those little soaps always make me think of my mother. And I owed my mother a visit at the very least. If she ever heard I’d been up here without going to see her, I’d never hear the end of it, and I’d probably deserve it. I found my cell phone in my purse and dialed her number.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, pulling the Gobstopper out of my mouth when she picked up. “Guess what?”

Cosmic Duality:

November 1990

The day after Rose disappeared, we didn’t know yet she was gone. We just knew she hadn’t shown up at Charlotte’s that afternoon.

“Maybe she missed the bus at school,” Charlotte said, shrugging as she hit the “power” button of her Nintendo.

The Super Mario jingle filled that endless afternoon.
Ba-DING, ba-DING, ba-DING,
droned the game as Charlotte’s mustached little man collected coins.

After about an hour, the ringing of the coins began to numb my ears. I slipped from the room, pulled on my coat, and crept outside. I sat at the Hemsworths’ picnic table, pulling my coat tight. Charlotte and I had sat here just this past summer, when Rose had served us sandwiches and lemonade outside. It had felt like a very special occasion, eating outside. But it felt so long ago now in the hard wind of early winter. The table looked gray and splintery, the grass dead.

A few stray leaves rattled in the vegetable garden, stuck to the abandoned tomato stakes and the brown twigs that had once been herbs. Although I couldn’t figure why, the sound of those leaves reminded me of Rose’s hair blowing sideways into her face—yesterday, in a similar but gentler wind. I remembered how sad I’d been to think of Rose leaving us someday, and suddenly, before I had a chance to hold it back, that feeling was present again. Not just the memory of the sadness but the actual sadness. I wanted to kick myself for remembering it, for letting it in, because once you remember sadness, you can’t control feeling it, too.

I got up off the picnic table, walked to the sidewalk, and headed up the street. I passed a house, then another. Mrs. Shepherd was standing in her yard, yelling,
Lucille! Lucille!
Typical old-lady name for an old-lady cat. Too bad for the cat somehow, that she’d been labeled like that, that she’d be Mrs. Shepherd’s prissy pet for her whole life and no one would know what kind of cat she really was or really could be.

I stared at Mrs. Shepherd, who continued calling cheerfully through her cupped hands. She didn’t feel how sad this cold air was. I wished I couldn’t feel it either. It was the same sort of air that had gently lifted Rose’s hair yesterday. It was back, and it was stronger now. I shivered just as Mrs. Shepherd turned and saw me. She began to lift her hand in a wave. I cast my eyes downward and turned, pretending not to see her. I’d probably looked so weird, standing there staring—I didn’t want to have to explain myself. I walked back to Charlotte’s house.