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?”
Now I’m sorry for every time I ever said no to her. But isn’t that how people always feel when someone dies? It’s a cliché. You wish. You’re sorry.
“You were a good sister,” says Rosemary, as if she knows my thoughts. “I wouldn’t come back for Penny or Bess. Not even for Mother and Daddy.”
I sit up and rub my eyes. “You love Mother and Daddy.”
“Okay, I came back for Mother, too,” she says. “?’Cause she’s the mom. I went up there last night and saw her.”
“You did? How was it?”
“Hm.”
“What ‘hm’?”
She fiddles with a piece of her hair. “She turned away.”
“What?”
“She— I thought she’d want to see me. But she didn’t.”
Rosemary crawls across the Scrabble board, messing up all the words she just constructed. “You coming on the lap?” I ask.
“Yep.”
She is too big, but she gets on my lap anyway. I put my arms around her. Her tangly Rosemary hair smells of conditioner and seawater. She feels solid, not ghostly at all. She’s breathing.
We cuddle for a bit. “Mother saw me and just left,” says Rosemary eventually. “She turned right around with like, a shocked look on her face, and went out of her bedroom and down the hall. So I followed her because I thought she’d hug me or maybe cry or maybe be happy, but when she got to the top of the stairs, before she went downstairs, she turned back around. She said, ‘Please don’t follow me. Don’t visit me and don’t follow me. I have to keep it together now. For the rest of the family.’?”
“Oh, buttercup.”
“She was scared of me.”
“She loves you. She just— She does love you,” I say.
“I guess.” Rosemary climbs off my lap, picks up her bag of potato chips, and goes to sit on the foot of the bed. “Will you read me a story?”
“Seriously?” I say. “You come back from the dead and after a quick reunion cuddle, you want a story?”
“Yup.”
It feels so much like none of the past year ever happened that I touch my jaw to be sure about the surgery.
“You look different—you look great—it’s kinda weird—but I’ll get used to it,” says Rosemary, running the sentences together and rolling her eyes.
“Thanks.”
“Did it hurt?” she asks. “?’Cause dying hurt a lot, but only for a second, and then it was fine. Mostly it was being scared of dying that was awful. And I was thinking, when I saw your face before you woke up, your different face, that you probably had a lot more hurt than I did, right?”
“Yeah, it hurt.” I am so glad she didn’t suffer.
“Like, what they did to your face hurts way more than death.”
I laugh.
“Okay, now read.” Rosemary grabs a fairy book and hands it to me. “You know the one I want.”
14.
THE STORY SHE wants is “Cinderella.” It was always her favorite, though Tipper and I often tried to get her to pick something else. You know, because it’s a marriage plot—the kind of story where the best reward for a good girl is a handsome prince. Even Tipper thought it was antiquated. But Rosemary loved it.
“Why ‘Cinderella’?” I asked her once.
“Pretty clothes and parties, and I also like the pumpkin part,” she answered. “The pumpkin is the best.”
So I read aloud “Cinderella,” marveling that I get to do this, trying to stretch out this strange, cozy moment.
When the story is over, Rosemary stands up. “Bye for now, Carrie. I’m tired.”
She skips out the door of my room like it’s an ordinary day.
I sit there with the book in my hand.
The Scrabble tiles are strewn across the rug. The potato chip bag is empty.
* * *
—
OUR FAMILY HAS always loved fairy tales. There is something ugly and true in them. They hurt, they are strange, but we cannot stop reading them, over and over.
I want to tell you Rosemary’s favorite now. My own version of it.
I want to tell it because the story feels to me like a way to tell the story of my family and that summer when I was seventeen. I can’t yet figure out how to explain what happened, any other way.
Cinderella
THERE ARE THREE sisters, living in a house together.
Two of them have pretty faces, but their hearts are twisted.
The third sister, their stepsister—Cinderella—is not only pretty but pious and good.
She has it tough, though. She scrubs their floors on hands and knees. Her hands and face are covered in ashes. Her nails are black with soot.
One day, the prince announces a festival, with balls and parties going on for days. There will be music and delectable things to eat.
Of course, everyone wants to go.
Cinderella wants to go, as well, but more important, she wants her sisters to accept her. Could she go to the festival with them? Please?