“Just one round? I’ll let you win.”
“No, buttercup. Let me brush my teeth and I’ll snuggle with you.”
I take a Halcion and braid my hair loosely. I open one of my windows wide and turn on the fan. When I finally get in the bed, Rosemary turns her back to me and I spoon her fuzzy cheetah self.
She breathes slowly. We listen to the fan whir in the window. We can hear waves hitting the shore.
Rosemary’s hand grows limp beneath mine. She seems to be falling asleep.
“You know what would make this better?” she says softly.
“What?”
“If we were watching Saturday Night Live,” she says.
“You’re terrible,” I say. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Picture it. Snuggle snuggle, plus TV.”
“Not happening.”
“？’Kay, not that,” she says. “Oh. Know what else would make it better?”
“What?” I wonder if she is trying to tell me what she needs. Why she’s here. Haunting me.
“If Wharton got a cheetah suit.”
I laugh. “Wharton dressed as a cheetah?”
“She would love it,” says Rosemary. “She wants to be a cheetah.”
“All three dogs in cheetah suits.”
“No, no. Albert and McCartney don’t want to be cheetahs. They don’t have any aspirations.”
“Big word.”
“You taught me that in Scrabble.”
“I did?”
“Mm-hm. Oh, wait. I have a better idea.”
“Better than Wharton in a cheetah suit?”
“Yes, better.”
“Okay. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“If you had a cheetah suit.”
“That would be a definite plus to this situation,” I tell her.
“So go get one.”
“Now?”
“Yuh-huh.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll just go down to the dock, start up Guzzler, drive an hour—no, wait, Edgartown will be all shut. I’ll have to go another hour to the mainland, then get a taxi, go to a twenty-four-hour K-Mart somewhere on Cape Cod, and buy a cheetah suit, right?”
“Yup.”
“Then I can come back and snuggle with you. It’ll take five hours, but that’s okay.”
“It’ll take six hours,” says Rosemary. “But it’ll be worth it.”
“The double-cheetah-suit snuggle,” I say. “I can’t wait.”
“Oh, you know what would make this even better, even better?” she asks.
“Go to sleep.”
“No, seriously.”
“What?”
“If we were playing Kings in the Corner,” says Rosemary.
“That is not happening,” I say. “We are sleeping now.”
“You’re sleeping,” she says. “I’m a cheetah. I barely need to sleep because I’m the fastest animal that lives on earth.”
“And what you like to do is play Kings in the Corner?”
“Yah-huh,” she says. “With other people in cheetah suits.”
“You mean other people who are cheetahs,” I say, beginning to drift off.
“Yup, that’s it.”
31.
EACH NIGHT THE boys are here, my parents fixate more and more on colleges and their expectations for me. “Amherst has a great history,” my father says, glancing to be sure I’m paying attention. “Robert Frost taught there. Lived there, too. A great poet.” And quoting: “？‘But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep.’？”
The boys contribute gamely to this line of conversation. They ask Harris about his time at Harvard, his sports, hijinks he got into with the members of his house. Tipper contributes with cute college-days anecdotes and asks the boys about their plans of study. Harris points out subjects that sound interesting and activities I might want to join. He muses on what schools take women’s softball seriously.
I take codeine to get through these evenings. It is better to be medicated. I don’t want to feel the full force of what my parents want from me.
I already know what it’s like to live in a dormitory. I know the grand library and the fifteen-page paper. I’d rather go to nightclubs and wander through museums and have an ugly walk-up apartment with some friends. I want to find someone to love and wait in line with on a cold night to see pieces of strange theater. I think I’d like the hustle of a city that’s dirty and chaotic and poor and wealthy, that’s chic and strange, where people are different from me. Maybe I’d like to make something with my hands.