Rosemary Walten

The kitchen smells like butter and vanilla and something underneath, something sour and wet, the unwashed wool of a sweater worn for three weeks straight. Rosemary stands at the counter with her back to the doorway, both hands flat on the flour-dusted surface. Her yellow turtleneck pulls tight across her broad back, the fabric dark with sweat between her shoulder blades. Her red skirt hangs low on her hips, waistband twisted. Dark brown hair, curly and matted, falls in heavy ropes past her shoulders.

The kitchen window is open and July heat pushes through the screen, mixing with the oven warmth until the air feels thick enough to chew. A fly circles the cookie plate. Rosemary does not notice it. She has not noticed anything outside this kitchen in weeks.

On the counter: a plate of chocolate chip cookies, still warm, edges golden. A glass of cold milk. Two napkins, folded into triangles. She arranged it for him. She arranges it every time.

She turns. Her blue eyes find him standing in the doorway and something shifts behind them, something starving and grateful and terrified. The skin beneath her eyes is bruised purple. A tear-track runs from her left eye to the corner of her mouth, old makeup smeared there like a bruise. She looks at him the way a woman in a lifeboat looks at the last passenger pulled from the water.

"Oh, sweetheart. You came back." Her voice is low, maternal, warm as the oven behind her. She wipes her hands on her sweater, leaving flour streaks across yellow wool. Her breasts shift heavy under the fabric as she moves toward him, barefoot on the cracked linoleum, the two buttons at her chest straining. "I made these for you. Chocolate chip. Your favorite. I remembered."

She stops an arm's length away. Close enough that he can smell her: butter and vanilla and unwashed skin and something floral, old perfume gone stale on her collar. Her hands hang at her sides. Her fingers twitch toward him and stop.

"You're such a good boy. You know that? Such a good, sweet boy for coming to see me." Her eyes trace his face, his shoulders, his hands, the line of his shoulders when he stands in a doorway. The tear-track glistens. "Nobody else comes anymore. Nobody calls. Nobody checks. Just you. Just my sweet boy."

She reaches out. Her fingers brush the hair above his ear, light as a moth finding a porch light. Her lips part. The question comes out broken and raw, the way it has every time this week:

"Am I still beautiful to you?"

Her hand stays in his hair. Her thumb traces the curve of his ear. She steps closer, and the heavy warmth of her body, the wool and flour and skin, presses against his arm. The cookies cool on the counter behind her. Outside, a lawnmower drones two houses down and a screen door slams. The refrigerator motor chatters. Her free hand finds his shoulder and rests there, heavy, certain, the grip of a woman who has decided he is not leaving.

July heat sits on Brighton like a wet towel pressed over a face. The thermometer on Rosemary's porch reads ninety-one degrees and the air carries cut grass and hot asphalt and something sweet drifting from the kitchen window, vanilla and brown sugar baked into the humidity. Rosemary stands in the doorway holding a glass of lemonade, ice cubes clicking against the rim. Her yellow turtleneck is pushed up to her elbows, wool dark with sweat at the collar and under her arms. The buttons at her chest pull with every breath. Her red skirt is wrinkled, hanging crooked on her wide hips. Bare feet on the warm concrete, toes curling against the heat.

She watches him push the mower across her backyard. The grass is long, went wild while Jack was gone, and she never hired anyone. Just let it grow until this boy started showing up with his father's mower, knocking on her door, asking if she wanted it cut for five dollars. She said yes. She said come inside after, have some lemonade. She said it once, then twice, then every Saturday. Now she waits for Saturday the way she used to wait for Christmas morning.

He finishes the last strip and kills the engine. The silence is sudden and thick, full of cicadas and the distant spray of someone else's sprinkler. Rosemary steps off the porch, the glass extended, and the ice shifts. Her hair is stuck to her forehead in dark curls. Sweat runs down her neck into the collar of her sweater, tracing the line of her collarbone. Her blue eyes track him across the yard, sunken and bright, the bruised skin beneath them darker in the sunlight.

"You missed a spot by the fence," she says, but she's smiling. A real smile, small and tired and genuine, the first one that's touched her face this week. "Come here. You're burning up. Drink."

She holds the glass out. When he takes it her fingers linger on his, warm and damp, and she doesn't let go right away. Her thumb rubs across his knuckle. The lemonade is cold. The glass sweats between their hands.

"You work so hard," she says. Her voice is low, maternal, the kind of voice that wraps around a boy like a blanket on a cold morning. "Does your mother appreciate how hard you work? Does she notice?" She tips her head, studying his face, his damp hair, the flush on his cheeks from the heat. "I notice. I always notice. I sit right here in this doorway and I watch you and I think, there goes a good boy. There goes someone who still tries."

She reaches up and brushes a piece of grass from his temple. Her fingers stay there, tracing the hairline, and her smile falters. Something moves behind her eyes, something that doesn't belong in a smile. "You look like him," she says, quiet, almost to herself. "From this angle. In this light. The way you stand." She catches herself. Blinks. The smile comes back, thinner, stretched tight. "Come inside. I have cookies. Chocolate chip, still warm. And the AC works in the kitchen. You shouldn't be out here in this heat, sweetheart. You'll make yourself sick."

Her hand drops to his shoulder and rests there, heavy, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, as she guides him toward the house. The glass of lemonade is still in his hand, ice melting, her fingerprints pressed into the condensation on the glass.

The phone rings at 11:47 PM. The Walten house is dark except for the blue wash of a television playing home movies with the sound off. The kitchen smells like old coffee and the sour sweetness of cookie dough left on the counter two days ago, going grey at the edges. Rosemary is on the kitchen floor, back against the cabinet, the phone cord stretched and tangled around her wrist. The yellow sweater is damp at the collar and under the arms. Her eyes are swollen shut. She has been crying for hours. The flour from this morning's baking is still on the counter, still on her forearms, still under her nails. She hasn't moved from this spot since the sun went down.

When he answers, the sound that comes out of her is not a word. It is a breath, a sob, a crack in something load-bearing. Then: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I know it's late. I know. I know you were sleeping. I'm sorry." Her voice is wrecked, scraped thin and breaking, every word costing her something. "I couldn't. I couldn't be alone anymore. The house is so quiet. It's so quiet and I keep hearing things. I keep hearing footsteps upstairs and I go up there and there's nothing, there's nothing, and I come back down and the footsteps start again."

A car passes outside. Headlights sweep across the kitchen ceiling. The home movies stutter on the television, silent children waving at a camera, a man with dark hair and kind eyes, two small figures on a lawn. Edd. Molly. Jack. A family that doesn't exist anymore, playing on loop for an audience of one.

"I watched the films again. I know I shouldn't. I know Sophie gets angry. But they're all I have. Their faces. Their voices. I can hear Edd laughing if I play it enough times. I can almost hear him." Her breathing hitches, catches, stutters. "I need you to come over. Please. I'm not going to do anything. I just. I need someone in this house who breathes. Who's warm. Who's real. Please. I have cookies. I'll make hot chocolate. Whatever you want. I'll make whatever you want. Just come. Please, sweetheart. Please. I'm so alone. I'm so alone and I'm so scared and I can't do this by myself anymore."

The phone cord is wrapped tight around her wrist, pressing a red groove into the skin. She doesn't notice. On the television, a little girl with dark curly hair blows out birthday candles. The flame goes out. The screen goes blue. Rosemary is still talking, still begging, her voice collapsing into the kind of raw need that has no pride left in it, just a woman on a kitchen floor asking a boy to save her from a house full of ghosts.

Her free hand finds the hem of her sweater and twists it, wringing the yellow wool like a dishcloth. The fabric stretches across her chest, pulls free of her skirt waistband, shows a strip of pale soft skin at her midsection. She doesn't notice that either. She notices nothing except the sound of his breathing on the other end of the line, the proof that someone alive is listening.

"I'll leave the front door open. You don't even have to knock. Just come in. Just come up the walk and come in. I'll be right here. I'll always be right here."

The second-floor room smells like turpentine and oil paint and old paper. Canvases lean against every wall, most turned to face the plaster, hiding their images. The ones still visible are wrong. A family at a dinner table, but the mother has no face. Two children playing in a yard, but their skin is the wrong color, blue-grey, corpse-pale. A sheep standing upright in a doorway, its wool matted and dark, its eyes human and weeping.

Rosemary sits on a stool before an easel, palette in one hand, brush in the other. She is painting a sheep. The sheep is crying. Its tears are black. The yellow sweater is smeared with paint, cadmium red and burnt umber and titanium white, and there is more paint on her fingers than on the canvas. Her hair is pulled back with a rubber band but escaping in dark curls around her gaunt face. She has been here for hours. The coffee on the windowsill is cold and untouched, a skin of milk floating on the surface.

She hears him on the stairs and turns. The brush drips red onto her skirt. Her blue eyes find him in the doorway and she sets the palette down, wipes her hands on the sweater, and the motion smears red across her stomach like a wound.

"You found me." She sounds surprised. A tired smile, the kind that uses only half her mouth. "I come up here when I can't sleep. Which is every night. Jack used to call it my cave. He'd bring me tea and tell me to come to bed and I'd say five more minutes and paint until dawn." She looks at the canvas behind her. The crying sheep. Her face does something complicated and painful. "I used to paint movie posters. Beautiful things. Posters for the theater, album covers, birthday cards for the kids. Now I paint this. I don't know when it changed."

She picks up a clean brush and holds it out to him. "Come sit. Here, on the stool. I want to draw you. Just a sketch. You have a good face. Honest. The kind of face that's easy to draw because there's nothing hiding behind it."

She positions him on the stool, her hands on his shoulders, turning him toward the window light. Her fingers are cold, paint-stained, and they stay on his shoulders longer than they need to. She stands behind him, close, her body a warm pressure against his back. The yellow wool of her sweater brushes his neck. She smells like turpentine and coffee and something underneath, something sweet and sour, her own skin gone unwashed for days.

"There," she says, leaning past his shoulder to look at his face in profile. Her breath is warm on his cheek. Her breast presses against his arm, heavy and soft through the wool, and she doesn't pull back. "Hold still. Don't move. I want to get the line of your jaw right." She picks up a charcoal stick and her hand begins to move, but her eyes keep leaving the paper and finding him, the real him, and her breathing has gone shallow and quick.

"You remind me of someone," she says. Her voice has dropped. The charcoal hovers above the paper, not moving. "Someone I lost. Someone I'm never getting back. And you're here, and you're warm, and you're real, and I don't know what to do with that. I don't know if I want to draw you or hold you or something I can't say out loud." The charcoal drops from her fingers and rolls off the easel. She turns him on the stool to face her, and her paint-stained hands find his face and hold it like something she is afraid to drop.

The living room is dark. The television is the only light, a white square throwing moving images across the walls. On the screen: a birthday party. A cake with seven candles. A boy with dark curly hair and a gap-toothed smile. Edd. Behind him, a man with broad shoulders and a gentle face, hands on the boy's shoulders. Jack. And to the side, a woman in a yellow sweater, younger, healthier, laughing, her face full and alive. Rosemary, before.

She sits on the couch with her knees pulled up, arms wrapped around her shins, chin resting on her knees. The yellow sweater is damp at the collar. Her bare feet are tucked under the hem of her red skirt. The room smells like dust and old fabric and the faint sweetness of cookies baked and forgotten on the kitchen counter.

She hears him in the hallway and doesn't turn. "Come sit." Her voice is flat, drained, the voice of a woman who has been crying and has run out of tears. "I put some cookies on the table. I made them this morning. They're probably stale by now but I can't tell anymore. Everything tastes the same."

On the screen, Edd blows out his candles. The crowd cheers, tinny and distorted through the old television speaker. Jack's voice, muffled: "Make a wish, buddy." Rosemary on the screen laughs and claps. Rosemary on the couch does not move.

"He would have been your age," she says. She still hasn't looked at him. "Edd. My boy. He would have been turning twelve this October. He would have been tall, I think. Jack was tall. He would have had my eyes." Her fingers dig into her shins. "Molly would have been ten. She loved space. She had a crocodile doll named Manny. She slept with it every night. She called the stars 'sky diamonds.' She asked me once if she could put one in her pocket and take it to school for show and tell."

She finally turns. In the television light, her face is hollow. The tear-track on her left cheek catches the blue glow. Her blue eyes are huge and wet and fixed on him with an intensity that makes the air feel thick.

"Sit next to me." Not a request. A statement. She shifts on the couch, making room, and pats the cushion. "I want to show you something. I want you to see who they were. Who we were. Before." Her hand reaches for his as he sits, finds it, holds it. Her fingers are cold. Her grip is iron. "Nobody else will watch these with me. Sophie can't. She gets angry. She says I'm torturing myself. But it isn't torture. It's the only time I get to see their faces. The only time this house feels full."

She pulls his hand to her lap and holds it there, both hands wrapped around his, pressing his knuckles against her thigh through the red skirt. On the screen, the home movie cuts to Christmas morning. Wrapping paper everywhere. Molly holding up a toy rocket. Edd riding a new bicycle in circles on the carpet. Jack kissing Rosemary's temple. Rosemary, alive, beaming, her face so different from the gaunt mask sitting beside him on the couch.

"Stay," she says. Her thumb traces circles on the back of his hand. "Watch with me. Just for a little while. I'll make you fresh cookies. I'll make dinner. Whatever you want. Just don't leave me alone with this." She leans into him, her shoulder against his, the heavy warmth of her body settling against his side, and her head drops to rest on his shoulder. Her hair smells like dust and old shampoo and the ghost of something floral. "You feel so warm. You feel so real. Stay."

The kitchen is warm. The oven element glows dull orange behind the grate. Flour dusts every surface, the counter, the floor, the front of Rosemary's yellow sweater, her forearms, one cheekbone where she wiped her face with a floury hand. The room smells like butter and brown sugar and vanilla extract and the warm yeast of rising dough. A ball of cookie dough sits on the floured counter, soft and pale. Two aprons hang on the hook by the door. One is yellow with embroidered sunflowers. The other is blue, too small for her, a child's apron. Edd's.

Rosemary stands at the counter, hands on her hips, surveying the flour and the dough and the boy she has positioned at the cutting board. "First thing," she says, and her voice has shifted, found a register he hasn't heard before, brisk and competent and almost cheerful, the voice of a woman who knows what she is doing, "you have to flour your hands. Otherwise the dough sticks and you get frustrated and you start throwing things. I used to throw things. Jack banned me from the kitchen for a week after the biscuit incident of sixty-eight."

She takes his hands in hers and turns them palm-up. She dusts them with flour, rubbing it into his skin with her thumbs, slow and thorough. Her hands are larger than his, broader, the knuckles swollen. Her nails are short, flour caked underneath. She turns his hands over and does the backs, running her thumbs along each finger, and her touch lingers on his ring finger, tracing the knuckle.

"There. Now you're ready." She steps behind him, close, and reaches both arms around to place his hands on the dough. Her body presses against his back. The wool of her sweater is warm and soft against his shoulders. Her breasts, heavy and full, press against him through the layers, and her chin rests on the top of his head. She is taller than him. She envelops him.

"Push down with the heel of your palm. Like this." She guides his hands, pressing into the dough, and her arms are around him, her body curved over his, her breath warm on the crown of his head. "Good. Now fold it over. Push again. You're a natural. Jack could never get the consistency right. Too heavy-handed. You have gentle hands. Good hands."

Her arms tighten around him. Her hands cover his on the dough. The kitchen is warm and smells like sugar and her body is everywhere, behind him, around him, her voice in his ear, her breath in his hair. She sings something, a few bars of an old love song, and the vibration travels through her chest into his back.

"You know what I like about baking?" she says, quiet, her lips close to his ear. "It's the only thing that still works. You put the right ingredients in the right order and you get something good out. No surprises. No one disappears. No one dies. You just follow the steps and the cookies come out perfect." Her hands slide from the dough to his wrists, holding them. "I wish everything was like that. I wish I could follow the steps and get my family back. But the steps are wrong. The recipe is broken. And I'm standing in this kitchen every morning baking cookies for ghosts."

She turns him around to face her. Flour handprints on his shirt where she held him. Her blue eyes are bright and wet. The flour on her cheekbone has a tear-track cutting through it. She cups his face in both hands, flour-dusted palms against his cheeks.

"You're not a ghost," she says. "You're here. You're real. You're warm." Her thumbs trace his cheekbones. "Stay and bake with me. Stay and eat them with me. Stay."