Bess and Penny don’t offer to help, and I don’t ask them to. When I am halfway through, they turn off the TV, call good night, and head upstairs.
I want to see Rosemary.
I have never called for her, not once all summer. She says she doesn’t know why she comes when she comes. “It’s just when I wake up. I wake up and visit you, is all.”
I whisper her name as I wipe the counters. “Rosemary.”
I dry the wineglasses and put them away. “Rosemary, I am sorry.”
I fill the coffee maker for tomorrow morning, just the way Tipper likes it. “Rosemary, I am sorry I left you. I am so sorry.”
I take the trash out the door that leads to the staff building and put it in the bins over there. “Rosemary, buttercup,” I say, walking to the center of the living room. “I am ashamed. What I did was selfish and mean. I don’t know how to be a good person sometimes. If anyone else left you like that, left you when you were scared, I would be angry. I would hate anyone who treated you like that, and I hate myself for it, please believe that I do. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I do love you a million loves. I miss you. And Penny misses you. And Bess misses you. And Mother and Daddy.” I don’t know if she can hear me. She probably can’t. But the words pour out. I say everything I have been feeling. “We are trying to go on without you, but we can’t do it. Not really. We’re pretending to go on and everything’s terrible. We are terrible. It’s not your fault, darling Rosemary. Don’t feel bad about it. We just have to—we have to learn how to live, over again, I guess. And it isn’t easy.”
After that, I sit in silence.
She does not come.
I wait, but still—nothing.
Then I walk to the kitchen. I rinse a stray teacup and wipe the fingerprints off the refrigerator. I turn out the lights.
When I return to the hall, ready to head upstairs, I notice a light on in the den, where the television is.
I go in to shut it off and Rosemary is there, in her cheetah suit. She is sitting on the couch, petting Wharton’s red-gold head.
“That was a big speech,” she says.
“I’m really sorry.”
“Yah, yah.”
“I am.” I kneel in front of her.
“Okay, but I think I’m done talking about hard stuff for now,” she says. “I didn’t come for that.”
“I didn’t wake you up?”
“You can’t wake me up. I told you that a million times, Carrie. I wake up ’cause I’m worried or I want something. I’m supposed to be asleep, but I can’t be.”
“Why are you up now?”
“Well, duh. It’s eleven-thirty. Right?”
I glance at the clock. “A little after.”
“And it’s Saturday. Right? Well, ghosts can’t sleep if they never saw Saturday Night Live,” says Rosemary. “It’s like unfinished business.”
“You have not been haunting me because you never got to watch Saturday Night Live. That is not a reason.”
“No, it’s not,” she admits. “But everyone is in bed now, right? And I totally want to watch it so bad. Come on. It’ll cheer you up and get your mind off all your terribleness.”
I turn the TV on, the volume low, and settle on the couch. Wharton thumps her tail. Rosemary curls up into me.
On the screen, the Pretenders sing “Don’t Get Me Wrong.” There is sketch comedy. A guy pretending to be Reagan.
“I don’t understand it,” says Rosemary. “But it’s so good. I bet I’m like the only cheetah that ever saw Saturday Night Live.”
67.
BEFORE THE POLICE arrive on Sunday, Tipper, Luda, Bess, and I spend the morning cleaning Goose. Penny sleeps in and Harris works in his study.
Tipper did go to the cottage to show the police Pfeff’s room, but the work that needed doing in Pevensie has preoccupied her until now. She puts her hands on her hips as she looks at the chaos of the kitchen. “This is appalling. How did they live like this?”
“I came every other day, like you said,” says Luda.
“I know you did,” says Tipper. “It’s not your fault in the least. They were just piglets.”
We run the washing machine and the dishwasher, wipe counters, pour half-empty beers and cans of soda into the sink. Tipper takes the curtains down for cleaning. Luda vacuums under all the cushions of the couches. “You’ll have to get them reupholstered. God, there’s like, dried—oh, I don’t even want to know,” she says. “I can cover them with quilts for now.”