Photo by Todd Diemer on Unsplash
At twenty-three, Rosemary is ready to come into herself. She nods her head of shaggy blonde hair, affirming what she sees in the long mirror screwed to the back of her childhood bedroom door. She feels foxy in the black, batwing-sleeved top with the deep plunge daring to contrast her ruffled skirt. Her lucky velvet choker and matching beret give her an edge that says, Stop dipping in my Kool-Aid. She completes the outfit with war-torn boots she found at the army surplus store. She likes to think someone died heroically in them.
Though it might be a bit much for Friday night disco bowl and fifty-cent pitchers at Gator Alley, Rosemary, thanks to her late mother’s wisdom, is always prepared for the day fate shakes the Magic 8 Ball in her favor. She looks at a postcard pinned to the corkboard above her desk. Once a Cypress Gardens Aqua Maid, her mother is pictured smiling and high kicking in a row of water-skiing bombshells. A rainbow of bikini tops and tutus, the other maids flank her mother, dead center in candy-apple red. The graceful young showgirl looks nothing like the mouse who collapsed in a housecoat picking up empty beer cans while her parrot, Elton John, sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Rosemary likes to think less about the woman who spent endless hours teaching a stupid bird to sing and more about the version of her mother who once believed in the power of transcending her lesser self.
“It was very difficult, Rosie,” her mother said about her glory days in Winter Haven, “for arm-locked women to balance and dance like Rockettes while being yanked around by a motorboat driver with a Pall Mall hanging out of his mouth. If I wanted a promotion to the top of the pyramid, which was every Aqua Maid’s dream, I couldn’t just be Blanche Stickney from Kissimmee. I had to tap into my inner Grace Kelly.”
Rosemary adds an extra swipe of black cherry lipstick, takes one last look in the mirror, and checks the time on her alarm clock radio as the numbers flip to six o’clock. The deejay interrupts her background music for a news update on the Chi Omega sorority girls killed at Florida State University. It’s all anyone can talk about these days, but Rosemary isn’t one to freak out. Tallahassee is ninety miles east of their unremarkable Panhandle town, where the sheriff busies himself filling green stamps books for a new color TV.
When Fleetwood Mac starts singing Dreams through speaker dust and static, Rosemary dives across her white eyelet quilt to turn up the volume. She bounds back up to shimmy and sway, channeling whatever force of nature might come to her rescue. She closes her eyes, throws her head back, and lifts her heart to the ceiling as she lets Stevie Nick’s spirit in. Spreading her arms out wide, Rosemary twirls herself into a heap on the shag-carpeted floor.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Her father’s growling slur sucks the witchy woman out of her soul as she realizes she has to heat his frozen dinner before she can go out.
***
When Rosemary emerges from her room, her father is sitting in his La-Z-Boy. On the folding tray table by his side, he has a full ashtray, a dwindling pack of Pall Malls, and a can of Coors covering Meredith Baxter Birney’s shiny face on the TV Guide. He’s watching the evening news, and pictures of the slain sorority girls are on the screen. The local news anchor’s serious tone momentarily distracts from his ridiculous combover as he reports, “FSU students are warned to be vigilant while police search for the unidentified killer still at large.” Rosemary looks at the two dead girls, clean-cut pretty in photos meant for yearbook accolades and boyfriends’ billfolds. She bites at her gooey red lips and momentarily second-guesses her outfit. Elton John whistles at Rosemary and starts singing, “the bitch is back, the bitch is back, the bitch is back.” Her father drains his beer, crushes the can, and throws it at the birdcage.
“One of these days,” he swears, “I’m going to set that little bastard free.”
Rosemary can’t count the number of times both she and her father curse Elton John daily, but neither can seem to let him go.
“Pop, you want the meatloaf and mashed potatoes or the fried chicken one?” Rosemary picks up the can under Elton John’s cage and heads to the kitchen to preheat the oven.
“Meatloaf and another beer,” he says, softening his tone to the best of his ability. “Where you headed all dolled up?”
“Chancey’s picking me up for disco bowl.” Rosemary snaps open his beer and brings it to him.
“That girl’s a wild one. Has been since high school. Remember when she socked that jock in the kisser for calling you square? What was that jerk’s name? You had such a crush on him.” He damn well knows his name. Everyone in town does.
“It was Dez, Pop. Leave it be. He’s all messed up now anyway.”
“I bet he regrets not being nicer to you in high school. Just look at you. Spittin’ image of your mother when I met her.”
Rosemary suspiciously eyes her father, taking in his spotted skin and slouched posture from years of cleaning pools. How can he think that? She looks nothing like the voluptuous Aqua Maid he saved from a potentially ruinous affair with Elvis Presley. When the King came to swivel his hips at Cyprus Gardens, her naïve mother almost fell for his moves.
“Though your father had never even asked me out on a date, he marched up to Elvis and removed his arm from around my shoulders,” her mother would say. “He looked him right in the eye and said, ‘Mr. Presley, sir, I’d sure appreciate it if you took your hound-dog paws off my future wife.’” In front of my father, she’d always clutch her heart and bat her eyelashes as she spoke of his heroics, but Rosemary knew Blanche kept a photo of a water-skiing Elvis hidden in the bible on her nightstand. She wonders what her mother’s life would have been like if she had run off with the King or stayed in Winter Haven and made it to the top of the pyramid. Instead, Blanche Stickney married a theme-park boat captain and wound up landlocked in the Panhandle. She turned in her skis for a more stable position as wife, mother, and manager of her husband’s pool cleaning business, which he proudly named Suck It Up.
Just months before the world mourned Elvis without her, Blanche died and left all she had to her daughter. Now Rosemary takes care of the books, which always seem to be in the red. Between grief, hangovers, and bouts of gout, her father works less and less.
Rosemary knows he expects her to offer him another beer before she goes out for the night. As Chancey turns into their driveway, her headlights sweep across the living room window. For the briefest moment, Rosemary confuses a couple of metal cans for the wide eyes of a trapped animal under her father’s chair. She leaves without asking him if he needs anything else.
***
“What I need,” Rosemary says, lighting a cigarette in the passenger seat of Chancey’s sky-blue VW bug, “is my own Elvis.”
“How about Jack Nicholson? He’s sexy in a ‘cuckoo’ sort of way.” Chancey twirls a finger near the side of her head.
“I’m serious. I need a guy with motivation enough to make something of himself, you know? I’ll be damned if I die in this armpit.”
“You’ve always got, Dez. He’s a real keeper,” Chancey suggests, laughing as her car rolls into Gator Alley. For safety, she always parks under the flashing neon alligator that points his arrow-tipped tail at the cement block of a building.
“Try to be nice, Chance,” Rosemary tells her best friend.
“Says the girl who always tells him no,” Chancey teases, knowing how uncomfortable Dez’s advances make Rosemary feel and how much she would have welcomed them years ago.
In high school, Dez was “a real keeper,” the kind of guy that never gave the then-shy, C-average, and very flat-chested Rosemary a second look. Valedictorian and football team captain, he was going places that permanent townies, or “condemned lifers” as he liked to call them, would never see. It all fell apart when he went to Vanderbilt and rode the bench for the first time in his life. He traded SEC football for honky-tonks, whiskey, and a souped-up Harley that landed him in a hospital with a brain injury. Now, Dez lives back home with his parents and works the counter at the alley, where he waits every Friday night for Rosemary to come in.
“I saved you the cleanest pair I could find in ladies’ nine and a half,” Dez shouts as though Rosemary is across the room and not right in front of him. He slaps the scuffed red and green bowling shoes on the countertop. With an exaggerated wink, he adds, “I even gave them an extra shot of Lysol.”
“Be still, my heart,” Chancey mutters to Rosemary as they take off their shoes and hand them over to Dez.
“Thanks, Dez.” Despite herself, Rosemary smiles and blushes. Somewhere beneath his scars and lost potential is the dreamboat who still lives locked up in the pages of her old diary.
Dez holds up her combat boots to admire them. “You got some real shitkickers here, girl. I’d hate to be on the other end of them in a fight.”
***
Rosemary stops bowling after the first round. The Bee Gees are shrill, the beer is puke-warm, and the tiny mirrors on the disco ball spin and multiply a lifetime of same-old faces. She rises from the discomfort of an orange plastic chair and escapes for a real drink and moment alone in the little dark bar in the back of the alley. None of her friends ever go into The Swamp. Its regulars are the hard-core town drunks and cheaters who sit shrouded in the sticky black vinyl of booths. Tonight, though, Rosemary walks in to find an unfamiliar, attractive man sitting at the bar.
“Hiya, Joe,” she says to the bartender as she deliberately sits two stools down from the stranger. Joe brings her a gin and tonic before she can light a cigarette.
“Too much fun for you out there tonight, Rosemary?” Joe asks, nodding toward the muffled smack and scatter of bowling pins beyond the barroom door.
“You know it.”
As soon as Joe turns his back, the man who has been watching her since she walked in scoots onto the stool next to her.
Up close, Rosemary finds him movie-star handsome with wavy brown hair, polished teeth, and blue eyes that just slay her. He makes even the best version of Dez look like a little boy from nowhere USA. In a tweed sports coat, the stranger seems smart and smells like the kind of cologne you can’t get at the drugstore. She takes a deep sip of her drink as he boldly takes her in head to toe before leaning close to whisper, “I like your shoes.” Rosemary looks down at her bowling shoes and laughs, spitting out a mouthful of gin and tonic.
***
His name is Ted, and they talk for almost an hour. Ted tells her he’s a law school student from Gainesville who’s just in town to see a friend for a few days. Rosemary rambles on about her mother and Cypress Gardens, of all things.
“You know, Ted,” she says, enjoying the way his name brushes her tongue against her teeth, “that whole place used to be an ugly marsh before some rich guy came up with a plan to turn it into something gorgeous. People called him the ‘Swami of the Swamp’ and the ‘Maharaja of the Muck.’”
“I think you’re making that up.” Ted swipes the tip of her nose with his finger and gives her an amused grin.
“I’m not, really. I have a whole book about it.”
“I’d like to take a look at that book.” He wraps his hand around the nape of her neck, and they lock unblinking eyes like children in a staring contest. When she is the first to look away, Ted says, “Why don’t I give you a ride home.”
Before she can answer, Dez is behind her, tapping her shoulder like a woodpecker.
“Chancey’s throwing up in the bathroom and needs you,” he blurts loudly, glaring at Ted.
“I’m sorry. I have to go,” Rosemary says, and Ted reluctantly releases his grip. Dez waits, holding the barroom door open as the alley’s racket invades their privacy. “I can meet you back here tomorrow night if you’d like.”
As Ted stands to say goodbye, Rosemary notices one of his pupils has widened, nearly engulfing all the bright blue. Still, he smiles warmly and promises, “It’s a date.”
Rosemary leaves him and heads to the alley bathroom to find Chancey standing in front of the mirror, dousing her hair with Aqua Net.
“What the fuck, Chance? Dez said you were throwing up in here.”
“Not me. I’m fab. Where’ve you been?”
“That son of a bitch.” Rosemary tears out of the bathroom and runs back to the bar. Ted’s stool is empty, and their glasses have been swept away.
***
Rosemary waits at the bar for two hours the next night, but Ted doesn’t show. On either side of her, the regular drunks get down to business as she wonders what she said or did wrong. Did she talk too much about her mother? Maybe she said his name too much. Or was her outfit too Stevie Nicks? Tonight, she went for something sassy but a little more wholesome, a little more Meredith Baxter Birney. If only she had thought of this look last night. If only she had more time.
“Damn that Dez,” she thinks when she finally gives up and decides to go home. She turns to see him standing at the door.
“Leave me alone, Dez. You ruined everything.” Rosemary pushes past him.
“I just want to walk you to your car. It’s not safe for a girl to walk alone these days.” She ignores him, but he follows her outside and waits in the parking lot until her taillights disappear.
***
His electric blue eyes look straight into the television camera, charming captive viewers. The screen changes to pictures of the murdered sorority girls, and Rosemary sees in their eternally beautiful faces that she isn’t his type at all. Unwanted, she expels a deep-rooted sigh, then breathes in, greedy for air. She thinks of Dez and loves him. She thinks again and hates him.
The camera keeps zooming in on him. Rosemary turns off the TV and watches him shrink to a white dot, then nothing. On the darkened screen, her reflection comes into view, and she stares intently at the eyes before her.
Stevie Nicks is the first to look away.
Then that shiny Meredith Baxter Birney.
Then the slain sorority girls, one by one, kindly smiling as they go.
Then the waving, voluptuous Aqua Maid in candy-apple red.
Finally, she’s alone with the woman in the housecoat, who makes a last request before bowing out. Complying, Elton John sings the “la, la, las” of Crocodile Rock until Blanche blinks and Rosemary covers his cage.
Michele Alouf lives in Richmond, Virginia and is a master's degree candidate in creative writing at Harvard Extension School. She is a founder of the new writers' collective, Story Street Writers. Her stories appeared in the Wordrunner e-Chapbook Fiction Anthology--Salvaged, Grim & Gilded, and Sad Girl Diaries.