Rosie Coloured Glasses. Brianna Wolfson
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them noticed the weather. There was only each other. In the whole park, the whole city. Among all the buildings and people and planets and stars.
When they reached the boathouse lake, Rex sat down on the grass and Rosie joined him. Rosie was pleased and surprised that he hadn’t brought a blanket. Pleased that he wasn’t worried about getting little pieces of crunchy leaves stuck to the back of his pants. And Rex and Rosie simultaneously opened the bags they had each been carrying. Rex’s had turkey sandwiches, two bags of chips and two apples. Rosie’s had old scraps of scribbled-on paper, a dozen flat stones and a few grape Pixy Stix.
* * *
Rex unwrapped the sandwiches and offered one up to Rosie, who was already standing up with a fist full of stones. She inadvertently ignored Rex’s extended arm and pranced a few feet away to the edge of the lake and counted out loud as her stone skipped across the surface of the water. “1-2-3-4-5-6!” she shouted and made three little hops. And then held her stone-filled hand out and offered a stone to Rex. “No thanks,” he said, his mouth half-full of turkey sandwich.
Rosie rolled her eyes dramatically, ensuring that Rex could see. “What do you mean, no thanks? Come on.”
“I mean, no thanks,” Rex said now a bit more firmly.
Rosie pranced back toward him. “Oh, come on. Take a stone. Skip it on the water. Live a little!” Rosie was now yanking Rex by his arm from his position on the grass. But Rosie’s slim five-foot-one-inch body could barely shake Rex’s single muscular arm.
“I don’t like skipping stones,” Rex said with his body stiff on the grass and the agitation in his tone escalating.
“Everyone likes skipping stones.”
Rosie was still tugging.
“Not me. I don’t like skipping stones. And I’m not good at it so can you just give it a rest, please?”
And, just like that, Rex accidentally revealed his vulnerability to Rosie. It was the first time it had been done. And it just slipped right out.
And Rosie wasn’t gentle about it. She responded like Rosie. “Oh, I see! You don’t like it because you’re not good at it. Well that, babe, we can fix.”
It may have been the way she called him babe, and it may have been that he was weary of her little body tugging on his arm, and it may have been the cuteness of her candor, and it may have been that he actually believed her, but no matter what the reason was, Rex stood up and allowed Rosie to be his teacher just this once. In skipping stones and in letting go.
Rosie reached around Rex and guided his arm in proper stone-skipping motion. She demonstrated how and when to flick your wrist. How to position the stone in your hand. She showed him how to choose the flat side of the stone so that it would slide most efficiently across the top of the water. And she was warm and enthusiastic through all of it.
She stood full of excitement as Rex tossed stone after stone, waiting for each to skip just once. And even when each stone sank into the water with a plop and a few fat ripples, Rosie pushed Rex to try again. Never once did she crumble under the weight of his frustration.
And when Rex finally got one little stone to skip twice, they both jumped and cheered and smiled. And then Rex picked Rosie up and spun her round and round. She was as delicate and airy as Rex thought she would be as he whipped her around in her loose floral-printed dress and draped scarf.
Rex liked holding Rosie. And Rosie liked being held by Rex. He liked feeling her lightness. And she liked feeling his strength.
Rex put Rosie back down onto the grass and they packed up the remaining traces of their lunch and shared a grape Pixy Stix. And then Rex picked Rosie up again, this time for a piggyback ride all the way back to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They stopped for a brief kiss and then parted ways.
As soon as Rosie got back to her apartment, Rex called and asked to see her again. And Rosie immediately invited him over to her six-story walk-up on the Lower East Side.
Willow and Asher got in the car to go to school the next morning with a little bit of the previous night’s ice cream still dried on their cheeks. And Willow’s bones relaxed with relief. Sitting in the front seat next to her mother, she observed her in all of her coolness. Her long fingers with the red painted nails curved around the gear stick. Her left foot casually perched up on the seat. Her head bopping from side to side as she drove. Her wavy brown hair swaying back and forth as the wind moved through it.
Willow was in awe of the way Rosie’s hair moved so pleasantly. The mellow manner in which her locks draped over her shoulders. The way it looked like her hair belonged piled on top of her head. She wondered if her own tight curls would ever fall into smooth waves like that.
Willow was distracted from her thoughts by the jolt of Lili Von coming to a red light. And Willow watched Rosie as she pulled down the sun visor and fumbled around in her purse. She watched her mother pucker her lips in the mirror, and then locate a tube of red lipstick in the depths of her tote bag. Then she watched her mother twist her lipstick stick and spread the bright red color slowly and deliberately around her lips.
Rosie smacked her lips together and winked at herself in the mirror. Then she caught her daughter’s eyes fixated on her lips as if she were aching for something. And Rosie was happy to give her that thing.
So when Rosie reached the elementary school drop-off area, she asked Willow to stay in the car for a moment while she said goodbye to Asher. Willow felt a tickle in her tummy waiting for her mother to return as she watched Asher express his typical embarrassment over the dramatic hug that Rosie gave him when they were dropped off. And like all the other mornings, Asher rolled his big blue eyes as his mother pressed her whole body into him.
Willow watched with a smile until her mother got back into the car. And then, with minimal digging in her bag, Rosie pulled out that same stick of red lipstick and presented it with a flick of her wrist to her daughter.
“You want some?”
Willow didn’t have to say anything for her mother to know that, yes, she wanted to put some lipstick on. She wanted some of her mother’s lipstick on more than anything in the world. She wanted pieces of her mother with her all the time.
Rosie leaned over to Willow and delicately painted her daughter’s lips red with full attention and precision. Then Rosie snapped up, looked at her daughter and smiled warmly.
Willow could see how much her mother loved her. How funky Rosie found Willow’s purple leggings. How cool she found her wild hair.
“Check it out, noodle,” Rosie said as she unfolded the mirror from the sun visor in front of Willow.
Willow looked at herself in that tiny mirror. She knew she looked so much like her mother with those bright red lips. Willow smiled a big, big smile as she hopped out of the car with only the tiniest stumble and walked toward the building door.
“Wait!” Rosie hollered after Willow as she marched away. “You forgot something.”
Rosie tossed the stick of lipstick through the passenger side window and right into her daughter’s hands.
“It’s all yours.”
And just like that, red lipstick was added to Willow’s permanent outfit.
“Oh! Willow. One more thing!”
Willow stumbled again when she turned back around toward her mother. You would have never guessed that Willow was feeling more confident than ever in her new red lips, the way she turned around with her knees and ankles wobbling.
Rosie held up her pointer finger and curled it back toward herself three times as she raised her left eyebrow. Willow smiled, ran up to the car and stuck her little head and big hair through the window.
“Yeah?” Willow asked.