Part 42 (2/2)
After she had slid the casserole into the oven, she returned to the bedroos and blue pulossy fabric as the waistband of the dress
They would be here in two hours She went back to her table and sat down to work It was the only sensible thing she could think of to do Sorrow, irritation, doubt, anxiety, or any other turbulent e, or, in extre out of bed, would disappear al a story Though she had not told as , as she did, exclusively in the roreater intensity For Rosa (who, fro in the business, had not only drawn but, thanks to the indulgence of her editor husband, also written nearly all of her own texts), telling the story of pretty Nancy Lairl from a small island in Maine who put all her foolish trust in the unstable hands of handsome and brilliant Lowell Burns, socialite and nuclear physicist-was an act that absorbed not merely the whole of her attention and craft but of her senses and hts Her own fingers turned white at the knuckles when Nancy learned that Lowell had lied to her again And little by little, as she peopled and developed the world she was building out of rows and columns of blocks on sheets of eleven-by-fifteen Bristol board, Nancy's past was transforues of tame Maine deer had once licked her childish pal piles of autuht sky, the sweet jets of salt stea of winter ice on tree limbs, all of these sensations racked Rosa's heart with an al the horrific red bloom of the bomb that had become her Other Wo she had ever known, froht of her father's old dory a with the day's catch At such n her characters; she relected by all but a few collectors, retain an imprint of the creator's faith in her creation, the beautiful h in any art form, but in the comics business, with its enforced collaborations and tireless seeking-out of the lowest common denominator, all but unheard of
All this is by way of explaining why Rosa, who had been stricken with panic and confusion at the telephone call froht to Josef Kavalier once she had sat down to work Alone in her e, she smoked, listened to Mahler and Faure on WQXR, and dissolved herself in the travails and shapely contours of poor Nancy Lambert, as she would have on a day that included no reports of her son's wild truancy or revenants from the deepest-buried history of her heart It was not until she heard the scrape of the Studebaker against the driveway that she even looked up from her work
The esture; Toled into the house with the boy in his arhnut”
”That isn't dinner”
”He had a coke”
He was deeply asleep, cheeks flushed, breath whistling through his teeth, ue sweatshi+rt
”You broke your ribs,” Rosa told Joe
”No,” Joe said ”Just a bad bruise” There was a fiery welt on his cheek, partially covered by a taped square of gauze His nose looked lu
”Out of h his teeth ”I don't want to drop him”
”Let me,” Joe said
”Your ribs-”
”Let ht Rosa In fact, there had been nothing in her life that she had ever wanted to see more
”Why don't you let hi his breath, wincing in sy boy into Joe's arhtened in pain, but he bore it and stood holding To tenderness down at his face Rosa and Sa Joe Kavalier look at his son Then, at the same instant, they each see, and they blushed and smiled, awash in the currents of doubt and shas of their jury-rigged fa in pain
They looked at him
”Where is his room?” Joe said
”Oh, sorry,” said Rosa ”God Are you all right?”
”I'm fine”
”It's this way”
She led him down the hall and into Tommy's bedroom Joe laid the boy on top of the bedspread, which was patterned with colonial tavern signs and with curl-cornered proclamations printed in a bumpy Revolutionary War typeface It had been quite so her son had fallen to Rosa For several years, she had been wishi+ng hieneral proficiency beyond his years, as if hoping to skip him like a stone across the treacherous pond of childhood, and now she was touched by a faint trace of the baby in hi lips and the febrile sheen of his eyelids She leaned over and untied his shoes, then pulled the to his pale, perspired feet Joe took the shoes and socks froed thes, then pulled up his shi+rt and the sweatshi+rt until his head and arave a kind of slow practiced tug, and the top portion of her boy popped free
”Nicely done,” Joe said
Tommy had apparently been plied with ice creaue His face was going to have to be washed Rosa went for a cloth Joe followed her into the bathroo the shoes in one hand and the pair of socks, rolled into a neat ball, in the other
”I have dinner in the oven”
”I'?”
”Luckily, no”
It was crazy; they were just talking His voice sounded like his voice, orotund but with a slight bassoon reediness; the droll Hapsburg accent was still there, sounding doctoral and not quite genuine Out in the living room, Samnized it now: Stan Kenton's New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm Joe followed her back into the bedroom, and Rosa scrubbed the sweet epoxy froers An unwrapped Chared, half-sucked, into his pants pocket had mapped out a sticky continent on the smooth hairless hollow of his hip Rosa wiped it away Tohout her attentions; once, his eyes shot open, filled with alarrimaced at each other: they had woken hi and Rosa pulling, they got hiain, as Rosa peeled back the covers of the bed Then they tucked him in Joe smoothed the hair back from Tommy's forehead Joe followed her back into the bedroom, and Rosa scrubbed the sweet epoxy froers An unwrapped Chared, half-sucked, into his pants pocket had mapped out a sticky continent on the smooth hairless hollow of his hip Rosa wiped it away Tohout her attentions; once, his eyes shot open, filled with alarrimaced at each other: they had woken hi and Rosa pulling, they got hiain, as Rosa peeled back the covers of the bed Then they tucked him in Joe s boy,” he said
”He's almost twelve,” Rosa said
”Yes, I know”
She looked down at his hands, by his sides He was still holding on to the pair of shoes
”Are you hungry?” she said, keeping her voice low
”I'ry”
As they went out of the rooo back, to get into his bed with hi, that sense ofhim desperately, that ca in her arms She closed the door behind them
”Let's eat,” she said
It wasn't until the three of theot her first good look at Joe There was soed less than Sammy's or than, God knew, her own, and his expression, as he puzzled out the unfahts and s of the old bemused Joe that she remembered Rosa had read about the Einsteinian traveler at the speed of light who returned after a trip that had taken a few years of his life to find everyone he knew and loved bent or round It seemed to her as if Joe had returned like that, froinably bleak
As they ate, Sammy told Rosa the story of his day, from the time he had run into the boys at the Excelsior Cafeteria until the moment of Joe's leap into the void
”You could have died,” Rosa said in disgust, slapping gently at Joe's shoulder ”Very easily Rubber bands” Rubber bands”