The Rosie Effect

17

Rosie’s exercise habits were random in the extreme, in violation of The Book. Medical classes were due to resume in two weeks, and now seemed like the ideal time to address the problem. My plan was to insert a workout an hour before she would otherwise have departed for university. She could then travel directly from the exercise venue. As a result of our recently improved proximity to Columbia, the net impact on waking time would be only forty-six minutes.

It all seemed straightforward, but new initiatives require piloting.

I woke Rosie forty-six minutes before her usual time. Her reaction was predictable.

‘What time is it? It’s dark. What’s wrong?’

‘6.44 a.m. It’s only dark because the curtains are closed. The sun rose approximately forty minutes ago and there would have been pre-dawn light prior to that. Nothing is wrong. We’re going to the pool.’

‘What pool?’

‘The indoor swimming pool at the Chelsea Recreation Center on West 25th. You’ll require your bathing costume.’

‘I don’t have a bathing costume. I hate swimming.’

‘You’re Australian. All Australians swim. Almost all.’

‘I’m one of the exceptions. Go by yourself and bring me back a muffin. Or the legal equivalent. I’m feeling a bit better. For this time of the morning.’

I pointed out that Rosie had limited experience of this time of the morning, that she was the person requiring the exercise and that swimming was a recommended form of exercise for pregnant women.

‘Swimming is the recommended form of exercise for everything.’

‘Correct.’

‘So why don’t you do it?’ she said.

‘I don’t like the crowds in the pool. I strongly dislike getting water in my eyes. And putting my head under.’

‘So there you go,’ said Rosie. ‘You can empathise. I won’t make you swim if you don’t make me. In fact, maybe there’s a general rule there.’

I began the Phil Empathy Exercise as I jogged to Columbia, imagining myself in his shoes, a practice also recommended by Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a terrible scenario, but I could not achieve what Gene wanted. I was reaching the conclusion that the exercise would require months, and possibly the intervention of a hypnotist or bartender, when my subconscious took over.

I woke that night from the World’s Worst Nightmare. I was in command of a spaceship, typing instructions at the console. Rosie was in the scout capsule, drifting away from the mother ship, and I couldn’t bring her back. The keyboard was touch-sensitive and my fingers kept making mistakes. My frustration turned to anger and I was unable to function.

I woke up breathing rapidly and reached out. Rosie was still there. I wondered if Phil had similar nightmares and woke to find that the world was exactly as he had dreamed it.

Our first wedding anniversary was on 11 August. This year it was a Sunday. Gene’s instructions were to make a booking at a high-quality restaurant, purchase flowers and acquire a gift made from a material determined by the ordinal year of the anniversary.

‘You’re suggesting I purchase some object every year? For the duration of the marriage?’

‘The two may be related,’ said Gene.

‘Did you do this for Claudia?’

‘You have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.’

‘Rosie agrees that we don’t require vast quantities of junk.’

‘Claudia said the same thing. I suggest you ignore it and buy something made from paper.’

‘Can it be a consumable? Disposable?’

‘As long as it’s paper. And demonstrates thoughtfulness. You may want to run it past me first. You will run it past me first.’

I began to make plans in accordance with Gene’s instructions, but they were derailed by an envelope that I found on my bathroom-office floor on the Saturday morning, the day before the anniversary. I had the door closed as I was working on the Bud sketch for Week 12; Gene or Rosie must have slipped it under the door rather than risk interrupting some bodily function. There were advantages in combining bathroom and office.

It was an invitation—identifiable by the word Invitation on the front. Inside was a small, thin notebook with a red cover. On the first page, Rosie had written:

Don: I want to give you the maximum surprise without exceeding your tolerance. Turn the pages until you’re happy. The fewer the better. Love, Rosie.

It seemed that the Jarman family had decided to communicate with me via handwritten letters. I turned the page.

Our wedding anniversary is tomorrow. I’m in charge.

I had booked a restaurant, which I would now need to cancel. Already I was being surprised and disrupted by an initiative that was intended to buffer me from these effects.

I was about to turn to the next page when Gene knocked on the door.

‘Are you okay, Don?’

I opened the door and explained the situation.

‘As a man of integrity, you can’t read the whole thing then pretend you haven’t,’ said Gene.

‘My intention is to minimise stress, and then to tell Rosie.’

‘Wrong. Accept the challenge. She’s not going to do anything to hurt you. She just wants to surprise you. Which she will enjoy doing. You’ll enjoy it too if you loosen up a bit.’ Gene snatched the book from me. ‘No choice now.’

I cancelled the restaurant and began to prepare my mind for the unexpected.

The unexpected began at 3.32 p.m. on Sunday. The doorbell rang. It was Isaac and Judy Esler, neither of whom I had seen since the Bluefin Tuna Incident. They were on their way to view the Search for the Unicorn exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wondered if I would like to join them.

‘Go,’ said Rosie. ‘I see Judy every week. I can use the time to work on my thesis.’

We took the subway to the exhibition, which was moderately interesting, but it became clear that the primary purpose of the excursion was to verify that our friendship was still operational following the Bluefin Tuna Incident. Judy did almost all of the talking.

‘I couldn’t believe Lydia. She hasn’t shown up at book club since, and we’ve had three meetings. I’m so sorry, Don.’

‘No apologies required,’ I said. ‘You did nothing wrong and I was guilty of insensitivity regarding food preferences. Rosie would also object if I ordered bluefin tuna.’

It seemed sensible not to reveal that I had been seeing Lydia for professional assessment. In any case, another matter was more critical.

‘Did you inform Rosie of Lydia’s assessment of me?’ I asked.

‘I told her what Lydia said. And that Isaac put her in her place.’

‘It was Seymour,’ said Isaac.

‘I’m sure it was you. It doesn’t matter. Lydia has her own issues. I thought she and Seymour would be a good pair. He’s not happy unless he’s got someone who needs him and she’d have her own private therapist. I’m not telling you both anything when I say she could use one.’

Judy had not answered my question, or at least not provided the information I wanted.

‘Did you mention anything to Rosie about what Lydia said concerning my capabilities as a parent?’ I said.

‘I don’t remember Lydia saying anything about that. What did she say?’

I stopped myself just in time. ‘These paintings are so interesting.’

Judy obviously did not notice the change in topic. I was getting better at it.

I returned home at 6.43 p.m. having purchased a single high-quality red rose (indicating one year of marriage) on the way. As I opened the door, it occurred to me that Rosie might have organised the Eslers to remove me from the house while she prepared some sort of surprise. I was right, and my worst fears were realised. Rosie was in the kitchen.

She was cooking, or at least preparing food. Or attempting to prepare food. On our first date, Rosie had confessed that she ‘could not cook to save her life’ and I had seen no evidence to contradict this. The scallops on the night of the Orange Juice Incident, when I was unavailable due to meltdown and then sex, were the most recent culinary disaster.

As I headed to the kitchen to deliver advice and render assistance, Gene emerged from his room and pushed me back out the door, which he closed behind us.

‘You were about to help Rosie out in the kitchen, am I right?’

‘Correct.’

‘And you would have started by saying, “Do you need any help, darling?”’

I reflected for a few moments. In reality I would have assessed the situation, and determined what needed to be done. As would be appropriate for a qualified person arriving at the scene of an accident.

Gene spoke before I had formulated a response. ‘Before you do anything, think about which is more important: the quality of one meal or the quality of your relationship. If the answer is the second, you are about to have one of the great meals of your life, prepared without any assistance from you.’

Naturally my focus had been on the meal. But I could see the logic of Gene’s argument.

‘Nice work with the rose,’ said Gene.

We walked back inside.

‘Are you guys okay?’ said Rosie.

‘Of course,’ I said and gave her the rose without comment.

‘Don had dog crap on his shoe. I saved the carpet,’ said Gene.

Rosie instructed me to dress formally, which meant wearing my collared shirt and my non-bushwalking jacket. The leather shoes would also be required.

‘I assumed we were eating at home,’ I said from the bedroom.

Gene came in again.

‘I’m going out now. Dress as if you were going somewhere with a dress code. Do whatever you’re told. Express unalloyed joy at everything. Reap the rewards for decades.’

I located my formal clothes.

‘Go out on the balcony,’ called Rosie. I had retreated to my office, where the opportunities to cause relationship damage were minimised. Rationally, the worst that could happen was poisoning, resulting in a slow and agonising death for both of us. I started again. Statistically, the most likely outcome was an unpalatable meal. I had eaten plenty of those—some, admittedly, as the result of errors on my part. I had even served such failures to Rosie. But I was still irrationally tense.

It was 7.50 p.m. Rosie had put out a small table—one of the surplus items of furniture that lived in her study—and set it in restaurant style for two people. I estimated the temperature as twenty-two degrees Celsius. There was plenty of light. I sat.

Then Rosie appeared. I was stunned. She was wearing the amazing white dress that she had used only once before: on the occasion of our marriage. Unlike the stereotypical wedding dress, it was—to use a technical term—elegant, like a computer algorithm that achieved an impressive outcome with just a few lines of code. The impression of simplicity was enhanced by the deletion of the veil that she had worn twelve months earlier.

‘You said you could never wear that dress again,’ I said.

‘I can wear what I like at home,’ she said, in direct contradiction to the instructions she had given regarding my own costume. ‘It’s a bit tight.’

She was correct about the tightness, which was primarily in the upper region. The effect was spectacular. It took me a while to realise that she was holding two glasses. In fact I did not notice until she handed one to me.

‘Yes, mine’s got champagne in it too,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to have a little, but I could have a whole glass with virtually zero risk to the baby. Henderson, Gray and Brocklehurst, 2007.’ She smiled widely and raised her glass. ‘Happy Anniversary, Don. This is how it started, remember?’

I had to think hard. Our relationship had developed significantly on our earlier visit to New York, but we had not had dinner on a balcony… Of course! She was referring to the Balcony Dinner at my Melbourne apartment on our first date. It was a brilliant idea to reproduce it. I hoped she had not attempted the lobster salad. It was critical not to over-fry the leeks or they would become bitter… I stopped myself. Instead I raised my own glass and said the first words that came into my mind.

‘To the world’s most perfect woman.’ It was lucky my father was not present. Perfect is an absolute that cannot be modified, like unique or pregnant. My love for Rosie was so powerful that it had caused my brain to make a grammatical error.

We drank champagne and watched the sun go down over the Hudson River. Rosie brought out tomato slices with buffalo mozzarella, olive oil and basil leaves. They tasted exactly as they should. Possibly better. I was conscious of smiling.

‘Pretty hard to screw up stacking cheese slices and tomato,’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t tried anything too tricky. I want to sit out here with you and watch the lights and talk.’

‘Are there any particular subjects you plan to discuss?’ I asked.

‘There’s one, but I’ll get to it. It’ll be nice to just talk. But let me get the next course. Prepare not to freak out.’

Rosie returned with a plate covered in thin slices of something with a sprinkling of herbs. I looked more closely. Tuna! Sashimi tuna. Raw tuna. Raw fish was of course on the banned substances list. I did not ‘freak out’. A few seconds of reflection revealed that Rosie, in an act of selflessness, had prepared my favourite food even though she could not share it with me.

I was about to express my thanks when I saw that she had brought two pairs of chopsticks. I could feel a freak-out building.

‘I told you not to freak,’ she said. ‘You know what’s wrong with raw fish? It might make me sick, like you said. Like it can any time, pregnant or not, and never has. But it won’t directly harm the foetus in the way that toxoplasmosis or listeria would. Mercury is a risk, but not in this quantity. Tuna is a good source of Omega-3 fatty acids which are correlated with higher IQ. Hibbeln et al, “Maternal Seafood Consumption in Pregnancy and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Childhood”, The Lancet, 2007. And it’s bluefin. A few grams once in a lifetime can’t hurt the planet too much.’

She smiled, lifted a slice of tuna with her chopsticks and dipped it in the soy sauce. I was right. I had married the world’s most perfect woman.

Rosie’s prediction that it would be nice just to talk was correct. We talked about Gene and Claudia and Carl and Eugenie and Inge, about Dave and Sonia and what we would do when our pseudo-lease expired. George had promised me three months’ notice. No conclusions were reached, but I was conscious that Rosie and I had not scheduled sufficient time for talking since we had arrived in New York and become busy with work. Neither of us raised the topic of pregnancy, in my case since it had been the source of recent conflict. Rosie’s reason may have been the same.

At intervals, Rosie went to the kitchen and returned with food, in every instance competently executed. We had fried crab cakes and then the main course, which Rosie retrieved from the oven.

‘Striped bass en papillote,’ she said. ‘Which is to say in paper, since this is our paper anniversary.’

‘Incredible. You solved the problem and the result is disposable.’

‘I know you hate clutter. So we’ll just have the memory.’ Rosie waited while I tasted it.

‘Okay?’ she said.

‘Delicious.’ It was true.

‘So,’ she said, ‘that brings me to the one thing I wanted to say. It’s nothing dramatic. I can cook. I’m not going to cook every night, and you’re a better cook than I am, but I can follow a recipe if I need to. If I screw up occasionally, no big deal. I love everything you do for me, but I also want you to know that I’m not helpless and incompetent. That’s really important to me.’

Rosie took a sip from my wineglass and continued her speech. ‘I know I do it to you too. Remember the night I left you at the cocktail bar and was worried you wouldn’t cope without me? And you were fine, right?’

I must have been too slow to hide my expression.

‘What happened?’ she said.

There was no reason now, seven weeks later, to hide the story of Loud Woman and the consequent loss of our jobs. I related the story, and we both laughed. It was a huge relief.

‘I knew something had happened,’ said Rosie. ‘I knew you’d been hiding something. You shouldn’t ever worry about telling me stuff.’

It was a critical moment. Should I tell Rosie about the Playground Incident and Lydia? Tonight she was relaxed and accepting. But perhaps tomorrow morning she would begin worrying and stress would replace her happy mood. The threat of prosecution was still present.

Instead I took the opportunity to explore a lie by a third party. ‘When Gene said I had dog faeces on my shoe, did you believe him?’

‘Of course not. He dragged you outside to tell you not to get in my face in the kitchen. Or to give you the flower to give to me. Right?’

‘The first one. I purchased the flower independently.’ I would of course have been fooled had I been in Rosie’s position, but I was not surprised that she had detected Gene’s lie.

‘Do you think Gene knew that he had failed to deceive you?’ I asked.

‘I’d think so. It’s not like I don’t know the two of you.’

‘So why did he bother inventing a lie that no one would believe and that made no difference to anyone’s feelings?’

‘Just trying to be nice,’ she said. ‘I guess I appreciated the effort.’

Social protocols. Unfathomable.

It was my turn to deliver a surprise. I walked inside. Gene was back and he had helped himself to some of the surplus champagne in the refrigerator.

I returned to the balcony and pulled Rosie’s mother’s ring from my pocket. I took Rosie’s hand and put it on her finger, as I had done with another ring on this date a year earlier. In keeping with tradition, I put it on the same finger: the theory is that the eternity ring symbolically prevents the removal of the wedding ring. This seemed to be consistent with Phil’s intent.

It took Rosie a few seconds to recognise the ring and begin crying, and in that time Gene had thrown the full box of confetti over us with one hand and taken multiple photographs with the other.