Heat always makes me irritable. Perhaps it’s because I don’t enjoy being wet. Something about damp clothing makes me feel less than human and I act accordingly. George always told me that irritable wasn’t a “good color” on me. Oh, my dear George—he could say something like that and appear urbane. From me, such a statement simply seems senile.
“Driver,” I addressed the burly black man in front of me so softly that I wasn’t certain that he had heard me. How silly to be intimidated by a cab driver. But, that was before. Or was it after? I’m never sure how to describe time.
There was no time. For seven decades, time ceased. And, when it started again, the whole of the Earth jerked from the shock of it all. Do my metaphors make sense? They were never my milieu. George was the wordsmith.
I was the bookstand.
“Did you say somethin’, ma’am?” The driver asked me.
“Oh, yes.” I wiped my brow and tried not to breathe in. “I was wondering if there was…” I let my voice trail off. Did I need to bother that poor man?
What would George have done?
“Somethin’ on yo min’, ma’am?” The driver asked.
“I’m thinking about my husband.” I fanned myself with my hand. My rings sparkled.
“Where he at?” I could see the driver’s grin in the rear view mirror. “He should be here with a nice lady like you.”
“Oh, thank you,” I nodded timidly. You see, I was timid. That was before. Or was it after? “You’re right. He should be with me. But…”
“But? Ma’am.”
“He’s…I…he’s passed on. The son of a bitch.” I laughed. One tear snuck out from the corner of my eye. I hated that tear. And, yet, I loved it, too. George would have said I was foolish to cry for him. But, George never had the challenge or the joy of being married to himself. George never had to deal with George. That’s why he had me. That’s what I was for. I did the crying. George did the talking.
George, of course, did a lot of talking. He once joked that for every word I ever spoke in my entire life, he must have said about one million. You see, my husband spoke to everyone in the world. But, my whole world was George. He built an empire with his words. I built a home for him with mine.
George—the sun rose and set on George. I never knew a life before I knew him. And, I wondered if I’d ever know one after.
I let my body shake for just a moment. Old bodies shake whether you let them or not, but I figured I’d give mine permission just that once—as if my consent would make the process a little easier. If anything, a spasm of grief might have served to cool me down.
“I’m sorry ta hear dat, ma’am.” The driver said somberly. I think he meant it, too. How odd. I didn’t distrust him. Why not?
“You sure you okay?” He asked me.
“I’m fine.” I answered. “Thank you.” Oh, why, for the love of Pete didn’t I just tell him I was roasting like a brisket in that horrendous tin can of his? Why didn’t I ask if he had a fan or if he could crack a window? Why didn’t I want to bother him?
I remember one time that George and I were dancing at Ciro’s. He wanted to spin me and dip me as if I were Ginger Rogers complete with feathers. I just stiffened up. I didn’t like to be the center of attention. I didn’t want to put anyone out. George laughed. He took my face in both of his hands and said something that I thought very strange at the time. “A jewel that doesn’t know it’s a treasure is just a hunk of rock.”
My response was an ever so eloquent and refined, “Huh?”
He laughed. He spent a great deal of our life together laughing near and, yes, at me. I laughed too. He never did answer my “huh.” That’s all right. I answered it myself seventy or so years later.
Now, I think, the girls would say something like, “What had happened to devalue you, Rosa?” Well, Shelby would ask me that. She reads all those magazines. Dove wouldn’t ask me that. Dove…she’d just hold my hand. But, I didn’t know the girls then. I only knew George. I was small then. I was precious.
What had kept me so small for so long?
I couldn’t have answered that question then. George, I think, could have. But, if he knew, he never told me. He never said to me, “Rosa, when this happened to you…this is when you lost your sense of self-worth.” He wouldn’t have said something like that even if he had been willing to do so. We didn’t say such things, then. But, we do now. We most certainly do now.
But, then…then we had metaphors. Ah, George…why’d you have to leave me all alone?
Oh, but if he hadn’t…well, I’d always have been a hunk of rock.
As it was, I was an overheated old woman. Yes, that’s when it started. My renaissance began as most births do—hot, wet, smelly and with some shouting.
So, there I sat in that un-air-conditioned taxi somewhere near Marionneaux, sweating, with the first two fingers of my left hand delicately placed under my nose so as not to smell the driver’s pungent, heat-activated cloud of cologne, sweat and stale beer. Directly under my eyes, my wedding and engagement rings sparkled in the filtered Louisiana sunlight sending flecks of color onto my flushed cheeks.
I had worn those rings for over six decades. Those diamonds had since taken on a more urgent purpose—having to take the place of George’s hand in mine. Empty hands have a habit of grasping, you know.
I couldn’t help but wonder how George would have regarded me at that moment—damp, frizzed and clearly cranky. Would he have been disappointed or proud? What would he have said?
I supposed it didn’t matter. George was dead.
I felt a giggle tickle my lungs from the inside. I knew what George would have thought. Yes, I did. He would have shouted at me, “Goddamn it, Rosa. I’m dead. Let me rest!”
He was a moody bastard. But, thank God…he was my moody bastard.
I was no longer his or anyone else’s muse. I was no longer a companion. So, what was I? That’s all I knew how to be: Mrs. George Frobischer.
What was I? On that sticky day—sitting there in the stench of that cab—what was I?
I was simply an ancient crone in search of a new life by way of an uncertain past. A past that was so far removed from what I had become that I could only recall faint flickers of it—like forgotten footage cut long ago from one of George’s films.
All right, so I was a crone in diamonds and silk.
“The costumes aren’t as important as the motivation!” I heard George shout that once on some film set. I think it was 1942. Oh, yes, it was ’42. I remember because Joan walked off the set and wouldn’t come back. They had to recast. Yes, I was to have had lunch with her that afternoon. But, Crawford wouldn’t dine with me after George bellowed at her. How small the world was then. How smoothly it spun.
The cab stopped—lurching before it shuddered to an abrupt halt. I gasped and inadvertently inhaled two lungs full of stench. Slapping the back of the driver’s seat, I admonished him to be careful before I demanded to know how much longer we had before we arrived in town.
I heard George’s voice, “’Atta girl, Rosie.”
I could see the reflection of the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He rolled them toward heaven before answering me. “A few more minutes ma’am. Then we be in Marionneaux.” He punctuated it with a sheepish grin that quickly told me that I was
being formidable.
I giggled.
The driver giggled, too.
At least I had gotten a quick response.
“You somethin’ else, lady.” The driver chortled.
“You think so?” I asked him with a grin. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve never been quite sure what I was.”
He laughed. “I could tell ya.”
“How about you just drive?”
“Yes’m.” He couldn’t help but snicker a little bit more. I brushed away another tear and did the same. Damn tears.
“And hurry up,” I sighed…simultaneously embarrassed and proud to be speaking so forcefully to someone. I was shocked that he didn’t turn around and smack me.
“Like I say, ma’am. Just a few more minutes.”
I grinned.
Perhaps irritable was a better color on me than George had thought. I sat back in the seat and my hand returned to its perch beneath my nostrils. What were “a few more minutes” in the context of a lifetime?
Nearly seventy years earlier, George had taken me from rural Louisiana and sculpted me into an angel—wings feathered in prose, punctuated by a halo of post-deco grace. For a while it positively oozed Pygmalion, but soon, I was the perfect mate to a man of his stature. I draped myself in gowns and jewels, smiled and posed…an animated mannequin with the disposition of a saint and the manner of an oil painting. I smiled my way through opening nights and movie premiers, through cocktail and wrap parties. I laughed and nodded on film sets and in restaurants. And, I liked it. I was the perfect accessory—a flower in his buttonhole. With a chuckle, he had always called me, “Rosa, my thornless rose.”
I thought of that as I placed a red rose on his casket before the remaining mourners filed from the cemetery. That rose had thorns. I had nothing.
The day of his funeral, I had not only buried him, but also in large part, interred myself. Even George’s obituary in the Los Angeles Tribune concluded with the words, “he is survived by his wife of sixty eight years.” No name. Just a simple, “his wife.” I read it aloud and laughed. He was survived by no one.
Damn tears.
In the weeks following, I had a strange sense of detachment as I made phone calls for various necessities. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had said my own name. What was it again? I spoke it as if I were referring to someone else—some Rosa Frobischer that I had never met—a stranger. Some mysterious…
…Veils…women don’t wear enough veils any more. I think I should very much have liked wearing a veil over a large, wide-brimmed hat. I’d have worn it always. Yes, perhaps with Groucho glasses underneath. No one would know. I’d be “Rosa the Hat Lady.” That would be something. Wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t it?
Oh well. I had never had to refer to myself. George had handled everything. George had always introduced me. George had created me.
I vowed I would meet this “Rosa Frobischer” one day. And so, I set about making plans for her. I sold the house in Beverly Hills and almost everything in it. When all that was left were a few boxes and my two suitcases, I boarded a plane to Louisiana.
As the cab chugged forward, I was jolted back into the moment and my attention was grabbed by the Spanish moss flowing from the trees like torn and tattered shrouds—an image that seemed somehow appropriate. How George would have gone on and on about it…imagery. He loved his imagery.
I loved him.
He was my home when I knew no other.
I just realized…tears are wet.
It was to be a wet year.
In the following days, I settled well enough into my new cottage and my new role. I planted bougainvillea. I walked up La Colline Cramoisie. I wept on D’Arbonne Street.
I found a bookstore.
Maybe I did wear a veil after all. Who can remember? That was before. Yes. Yes, it was before. I know that now. I wonder if anyone else noticed. People were certainly watching me.
The residents of Marionneaux quickly flocked to the widow of screenwriter George Frobischer—formerly one of their own. I was quite the nonesuch, in fact—a living museum of film history. But, I felt lost in their expectant stares, trapped within their hollow looks of sympathy which were laced with a distinct tabloid curiosity.
Being a slave to another’s expectations had never been a goal of mine. With George, I was a willing accomplice, but I felt no affection for these people and instead of a desire to mollify them, I felt a need to which I was unaccustomed—a need to master them.
At 86 years of age, I wasn’t about to become an exhibition. So, as much as I missed George and as much as my heart was broken, I knew that the only way I could mend my soul was to live for myself.
George would probably agree with that and might even secretly applaud my newfound assertiveness. “’Atta Girl, Rosie!”
I will have to pave my own way this time. And, no, not only for me…thank God.
For, of course, there are the girls. Always Dove and Shelby…
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