Free Rosie by Anne Lamott Page B

noodles—there you go—and stir in the cheese and cream, till it’s all nestly and nice, and we’ll pop it into the oven.”
    Elizabeth watched them work and watched herself make salad,tall, thin, and regal. She was vaguely jealous of Rosie and Rae, who had been in love since the day they’d met. They were so alike in many ways. Hypersensitive and somewhat waifish: 99th percentile in the Walter Harrington Factor—he had been the four-eyed genius in Elizabeth’s elementary school classes who wore mismatched shoes (sometimes on the wrong feet) and returned from the boys’ bathroom with toilet-paper streamers hanging from his pants: a comical, earnest space puppy.
    Rosie and Rae were both prone to long verbal bouts of free-floating anxiety looking for a place to roost, while Elizabeth kept the bulk of her anxieties to herself. When Rosie and Rae were anxious, they were wired and teary, whereas Elizabeth did her Mount Rushmore pose. Rosie and Rae expressed their bouts with the clammy blind-dreads, which, coupled with their day-dreaming and accident proneness, made them worry about things like being somehow drawn to walk into oncoming traffic, or into climbing out the window of a skyscraper. Rae worried that a stranger might rush up to her on the street and poke a fork into her eyes; Rosie that, holding a fork, she might absentmindedly poke it through her hand. And they both believed in God.
    â€œHow’s Hanuman?”
    â€œThe pride of Cucamonga? Back to being a cork on the river.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYep. This morning, before I talked to you, I was sitting in the sun, all bummed and woozy, and she comes home from a walk and asks what’s wrong, and I said, ‘I’m obsessively and morbidly in love with an asshole,’ and she says, and I quote, ‘The description is never the described.’”
    â€œâ€˜The description is never the described’?”
    â€œYes. And then she walked away muttering, ‘Sri ram jai ram.’”
    â€œLet’s eat.”
    â€œWhy don’t you move?” asked Rosie.
    â€œBecause I’m poor. And I’m sort of fond of her. Every so often she makes sense. She turned me on to Ram Dass, who’s good. And she’ll make good copy in my biography.”
    Elizabeth lit the candles on the living room table.
    â€œMama? Can we say grace?”
    â€œI can’t say grace. Maybe Rae can.”
    Rae did.
    â€œBrahman is the ritual,
    Brahman is the offering,
    Brahman is she who offers
    To the fire that is Brahman.
    If a person sees Brahman
    In every action
    She will find Brahman. Amen.”
    â€œAmen,” said Rosie. “What’s Brahman?”
    â€œGod.”
    â€œRed or white, Rae?”
    â€œRed. No, wait: white. No, wait: red.”
    Elizabeth poured her a glass of red wine and one for herself. Rosie blew bubbles into her milk.
    â€œKnock it off, honey.”
    â€œYes, Miss Mother.”
    â€œOh, my God, this is wonderful; Rosie, we’ve done it again.”
    They ate in silence for a minute, perfectly happy.
    â€œRae? How come you have such crinkly-crunkly hair?”
    â€œBecause my mother did.”
    â€œDid your mother have proton nobulators?”
    â€œDid she have what?”
    â€œThose pinches at the end of your nose?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat did your father have?”
    â€œHe was fat.”
    â€œDid he have—?”
    â€œRosie, chew. You’re wolfing down your food.”
    â€œI’m starving to death.”
    â€œYou know how Hanuman eats? Ancient Hindu method. I think she got it from Ram Dass, where everything becomes an instrument of enlightenment if you focus your mind on it. So, eating, she’s going ‘Cutting cutting, lifting lifting, chewing chewing, tasting tasting....’”
    â€œStarving starving,” said Elizabeth.
    â€œGuess what, Elizabeth?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou know how you kept