Rosie Read Online Free

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    Neither Rosie nor her mother cried much immediately after Andrew died; there was too much taking care of the other to do. Rosie, on the one hand, clung to her imperious religious faith: Daddy was in Heaven now with God and the Angels and smiling down on her; on the other, she kept expecting him to show up, as if his death had been a game of hide-and-seek.
    Elizabeth remembered the earth-shattering fear of having seen her own mother cry when she had been a small girl, and so held back most of her tears. At first she thought of him constantly, every other second, but then only several times a minute, and eventually only several dozens an hour, like when, not long after, she quit smoking. Each new stage, each decreased level of obsession, felt like the best she could hope for-the new me, and a relief at that—but then a week later the preoccupation would have grown even dimmer.
    They missed his kindness and teasing and hugs and smell and his reading out loud to them, but of course life went on.
    James James said to his mother, “Mother,” he said, said he: “You must never go down to the end of the town without consulting me.”
    Rosie took care of her mother by teasing her and hugging her. She insisted on being read to, insisted that they walk together on the beach, learned how to make Elizabeth laugh when she was in the doldrums, chastised her when she drank too much whiskey. Andrew lived on in Rosie.
    Rosie’s first comedy routines were impersonations. She could do old Mrs. Haas, she could do actors in television commercials she had seen at a friend’s house—Mr. Big Fig, the Raisin Bran raisins, an uncanny Ricardo Montalban—she could do the Munchkins, Louis Armstrong, and the freakishly buxom woman who lived next door, who eased her breasts onto her dining room table as if she’d been holding two big bags of groceries. And she learned to love to make her mother laugh.
    By the time she started kindergarten, she’d been published in the Chronicle, in a letter to the pet doctor.
    â€œDear Mr. Miller,” she dictated to Elizabeth. “These friends of ours, names Grace and Charles, had two cats. This one named Bert who is orange ran away. Mama says it found a new home. Do you think its new owner is nice?” (signed, in her own hand) “Rosie Ferguson.”
    â€œDear Rosie,” he answered in his column. “Yes.”
    Rosie was the star of kindergarten, loved every minute of it, was the only child who could read, had attention lavished upon her by the teacher and the children. She was the only child with a dead father and seemed rather proud of it. There was only one bad day in those nine months of finger painting, stories, naps, snacks, and playing with her friends. When she was proudly reading Little Black Sambo to the class, bile came up into her throat. She fought it back, kept reading, but soon she was on the verge of throwing up and began to cry-with her mouth closed. While being held and comforted by her adored teacher, Rosie threw up all over her, an event she would never forget.
    Elizabeth reasoned that she couldn’t very well find a job, sinceshe had to be—wanted to be—home at noon, when an ecstatic Rosie returned. She was worried that Rosie was so sensitive, cried at the drop of a hat, cried upon hearing “The Streets of Laredo,” cried upon hearing “The Titanic” (although she was momentarily cheered upon learning that it was little kiddies, not kitties, who had wept and cried as the water poured over the side), cried when her mother was noticeably drunk. She cried when she thought about orphans, and blind people, and dead puppies, and old dogs at the pound. She cried when she thought of poor little lambs who had lost their way, she cried about the Little Match Girl, she cried on those rare occasions when Elizabeth cried, and she cried about war. She cried because Abraham Lincoln had been shot, mostly cried for