Rose's Future
Friday, October 26, 2007
At Puck’s 6-month check-up, Dr. Box stood him up on the table where Puck started moving his feet and giggling.
“Oh, now you’re dancing,” Dr. Box laughed. “Got some moves there. Hmmm mmm.”
After good healthy results and a leap up to the 90th percentile on height, and a decrease in the chubbiness factor, Puck was ready to return to the house where Collette had Frances pull out the old math books.
Rose was at the counter studying abnormal psychology.
“Eh, I don’t care what causes stress,” she told the book. “I hit people on the head with books to get rid of my stress. It works.”
Rose left her books and went into the living room to relieve some stress by pounding the chimney of the wood stove with her fists. (This was sometimes done by Dad or the kids to detach stubborn ash build-up in the chimney.)
“Rose, stop that,” Mom said loudly over the rattle of the chimney. “And put away those peaches.”
“Peaches?” Collette asked.
“Yeah, canned peaches. She’s mad that I ate all of them. You want to see my masterpiece?”
Rose had seen her Christmas present in Mom’s and Dad’s closet: an Italian easel and art set. So Mom had given her permission to open it early. Rose soon had it up and working with a set of maybe fifty tubes of paint in the drawer beneath. She brought out her first canvas.
“Guess what it is, Linnea.”
“Sky and grass?”
“You obviously do not understand art, Linnea,” Rose said smugly. “It’s mold growing on water. Actually, you’re right.” She turned the painting right-side up. “It is sky and grass.”
Meanwhile, Collette was working through Frances’ math lesson with him. Joe was in the kitchen scrounging for food.
“Do you know the definition of a coefficient, Frances?” Collette was saying.
“Your mom’s a coefficient.”
“And a term?”
“Your mom’s a term.”
“The distributive property…”
“You’re mom’s a distributive property.”
“Now, the term outside of the parentheses…”
“Your mom’s the term outside of the parentheses.”
But Joe had more important things to do, and soon left the scene.
Rose, who had decided that she had enough abnormal psychology for one day, was on the computer rummaging for things and listening, over and over and over again, to: “Dancing Queen”. Rose sometimes enjoyed loud sing-alongs, loud out-of-tune sing-alongs. And that was exactly what she was doing that afternoon.
Collette gave Frances a brief break while Rose replanted herself in the kitchen, lounging on top of the stove.
“Gotta toast these buns,” she said.
And, for the old-times sake of it, Collette and Rose played a game that Diana had taught Collette back in the 7th grade: MASH. Somehow Rose’s destiny seemed to be that she would marry a lawyer who lived in a box.
“That’s fine with me,” said Rose. “Anyway, I’ve never felt sorry for homeless people who live in big boxes.”
Rose had stuck her feet in the oven by this time. It was a cold day.
Soon, Mrs. English, Eleda, Lonnie, Leia, and Jules Verne dropped in for another good old Friday get-together. Mom brought out the peanut butter dip with apples and pretzels and hot cocoa while the girls and Lonnie put together costumes and various things to go up to the tree house under the tarp. Jules Verne latched on an army helmet from the basement and lugged around one of France’s old air soft guns. Friday get-togethers never really changed over the years.
Rose was soon out the door for work, after heading over to the community college to register for six classes. Her spring semester was looking busy.
Soon they were accompanied by Denae and Izzy shortly before Joe returned Collette and Puck home in the gray mist of the early evening.
Puck sat down for his dinner. Between bites, he chewed on his sock. Collette suspected that he thought it was garnish.