“I’m sorry. I just—”
“You can’t just erase her like that. And be so happy. What kind of person are you?”
“I didn’t mean it,” whispers Bess. “I was just talking.”
“Let her look forward to the goddamned summer,” says Penny, affecting disengagement and putting on lip gloss in the bathroom mirror. “Let her have a little happiness. Good Lord, Carrie.”
“Yeah,” says Bess, switching moods now that Penny is defending her. “Let me look forward.”
“You’re always so dramatic,” says Penny. “It’s really okay for her just to be happy. Happy is better than being, what, a grieving puddle or whatever. Am I right?” This to Bess.
Bess nods. “You shouldn’t tell me how to feel, Carrie,” she says. “You always tell me how I should feel.”
“Fine.” I cave immediately. These are the sisters I have left. “I get your point.”
As we step onto the Goose Cottage porch, I listen for the sound, the “hey hey hey hey.” I can’t help it.
But it is gone.
We head to the Clairmont kitchen, where we raid the freezer. We find a quart of chocolate and a quart of mint chocolate chip.
We sit around the kitchen table together, dipping our spoons straight into the cartons.
12.
I TAKE A codeine to help me sleep. The sea lapping at the shore seems loud and unfamiliar as I lie in my bed.
When I finally drift off, I dream that Rosemary is crawling on her hands and knees up the long steps that lead from the Tiny Beach. Her hair is wet and she wears her green bathing suit, the one with the pockets. The one she drowned in.
I fear her at first, in the dream. She is a ghost climbing out of the sea, returning to the spot where no one loved her quite enough to keep her safe.
Though we did love her.
We always loved her.
I will always love her.
“I love you, Rosemary,” I tell her.
And in my dream, when Rosemary reaches the top of the stairway, she is smiling. Glad to see me. “Hey hey hey hey,” she sings.
She lies down on the walkway, her wet suit making marks on the dry wood. She stretches her arms over her head. “La, la la la la. La la la la.”
When I wake, the sun is streaming through the cracks in my curtains. I am up early again, despite the pills.
And Rosemary is kneeling on my carpet, wearing a floral summer nightgown and Penny’s lamb slippers.
13.
SHE HAS THE Scrabble board in front of her—the one Penny and I left on the porch yesterday morning. She hums to herself as she makes words with the letter tiles. Pancake, crisscrossing with kangaroo, crisscrossing with shampoo, crisscrossing with pumpkin.
I stare.
She looks exactly like her old Rosemary self. She has a summer tan and freckles on her nose. Her dirty-blond hair is streaked with lighter threads. She has a large bag of potato chips next to her and is eating them absently.
I know she is dead.
I do not believe in ghosts.
But I do not think I am hallucinating, either.
“Good morning,” says Rosemary without looking up.
“Morning, buttercup.” I gaze at her in wonder. “How did you get here?”
“I missed you,” says Rosemary. “So I came back for a bit.” She smiles at me and picks up the bag of potato chips. “I’m having chips for breakfast.”
Chips for breakfast—that’s something she and I did once. It’s nearly impossible to get junk food in this house first thing in the morning, because our mother and Luda are always up so early, frying bacon and squeezing orange juice. They play NPR on the kitchen radio and bustle about, almost like friends. Well, it is only Luda who takes the trash to the bins by the staff building; only Luda who wipes the grease off the stove. And it is only Tipper who decides the menus. But they do seem to enjoy the kitchen together.
Anyway, one morning when she was seven, Rosemary woke at five a.m. and for some reason came to get me. We tiptoed downstairs together and made ourselves tea with lots of milk and sugar. We got two kinds of potato chips from the pantry: ridged ones with ranch flavor and regular ones with just salt. We took our chips and our mugs of tea down to the family dock. We watched the sun finish its rise. Rosemary wanted us to sing the song she called “Billie Jean Is Not My Lover,” so we did. She liked that song. She had no idea what it was about.
After that, she often asked me if we could have potato chips for breakfast. Sometimes I said “Wake me early and we’ll do it”—but she never came in early enough. Tipper and Luda were always in the kitchen. Other times I said “Ugh, no, buttercup. I want to sleep in. Have an egg and be a credit to the family. ’Kay?”