Rosemary Danced: Ivy Book One Page 19

  “No, Oma. I came to watch Mike, my boyfriend.”

  Rosemary’s grandmother frowned, ignoring Mike. “What do you mean, your boyfriend?” Oma looked Mike up and down. “I’ve never seen this boy before.”

  “He lives in Ivy. His family goes to our church. I don’t think there’s any reason you would know him.”

  “You haven’t introduced us. You should have brought him to church with us so we could meet him. You shouldn’t be alone with him and I don’t approve of you spending time with a boy I don’t know. Your mother may not understand how good families act, but you’re my granddaughter and you have a responsibility not to embarrass me.”

  “Oma, I don’t care whether you approve and I don’t care if you’re embarrassed. I’m almost eighteen. I make my own decisions. My parents know Mike. John has known him for five years.”

  “John Masters is not your parent,” Oma hissed.

  “John’s the only father I have. John likes Mike and so does Mom.”

  “Your mother has no sense. Obviously, her husband doesn’t have any, either. I know nothing about this boy. He could be trailer-park trash as far as I know.”

  “Oma! I don’t care if someone lives in a trailer or a mansion or their car. I care about the person. Mike’s mom is a teacher, his dad was a teacher, his grandparents are teachers. He grew up in our church.” She looked over at Mike. “I’ll walk you to the bus.”

  “I will speak to your mother,” Oma called out. You can’t have known this…this boy very long. Not long enough to know anything about him.”

  “Oma, you’ll just have to deal with it. Like I told you last summer when you were so rude about Cruz, I’ll date who I want to date. It’s none of your business.”

  Mike grinned as they walked away. “I guess it’s not just my family.”

  “No, it’s not. But, I’ve had it with her controlling behavior.”

  Chapter 34

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, beautiful. How were classes today?” Mike was waiting when she came out of the church on Saturday night. He kissed her on the cheek and reached for her tote bag.

  “Really good. You must’ve gone home and showered after working with your uncle. You smell good.” Rosemary handed him her dance bag.

  “I did. I was hoping to take you out for something to eat.”

  Rosemary smiled tiredly. “I’m beat tonight. Instead of going out, can we pick up a pizza? You can follow me to the house; I’ll take a quick shower, then we can watch a movie in the studio.”

  “I get to go to the studio?”

  “Sure. If we took a pizza into the house, we’d have to use some of Connor’s karate moves to defend our supper.”

  “Okay.” Mike chuckled. “Since we’re going to your studio, does that mean you’ll show me your etchings?”

  “Nope.” Rosemary grinned.

  “Darn.” Mike pretended to be disappointed before he grinned. “Why don’t you head home? I’ll get the pizza and meet you there. That will give you some privacy to take your shower.”

  “Sounds good. Here, just a sec.” She rummaged in her bag, found a pen and a small card. She wrote two numbers on the card and handed the card to him. “The first number is the keypad lock on the side door of the garage. The second one is the keypad at the top of the stairs.”

  “Okay.” Mike frowned slightly at the card, but he didn’t ask any questions.

  Forty-five minutes later, Mike let himself into the garage. Climbing the stairs, he entered the second code by the door at the top of the stairs. That door opened to a foyer with built-in cabinets, closets, and another door. When Rosemary answered his knock, he whistled. “Babe, you’ve got a lot of security for Ivy, Iowa.” He looked around the large room. “Are you hiding state secrets in here?”

  Rosemary grinned. “No, but I feel safer behind locked doors. I’ll tell you why after we eat.”

  Mike nodded and looked around. “Wow. This is a really cool set-up.” It was a large open room, with a ballet barre at the far end. Along the back wall there were four doors with a seating area, a fitness area and even a small kitchen clustered in front of the doors. The ceilings were high, open to the beams and skylights dotted the ceiling.

  “Do you want a tour?”

  “Sure.”

  Rosemary set the pizza on a coffee table in front of the couch. The small seating area had a couch, two chairs and tables with a large flat-screen TV on the wall across from the couch. A sewing area fitted into a wall next to the exercise area. Rosemary showed Mike a bedroom, a three-quarter bath and a huge walk-in closet, filled with clothes. Mike stared into the closet. “Wow. This is the closet of the girl who wore overalls for the first few weeks of school?”

  “Yeah, well…yeah.” Rosemary shrugged. “You already know I do plus-sized modeling.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve been doing it for five years.” She grinned. “I often come home from shoots with new clothes. So, yeah, I’ve got more than I can ever wear.”

  “What is this?” Mike had walked a few steps and was looking at something hanging on the long wall beyond the fitness area.

  “I’ll show you.” Rosemary reached up and pulled on a handle. The large piece of wood slowly lowered and table legs popped out. Rosemary straightened them and stood back. “A cutting table.” The table was about five feet wide and seven feet long.

  “Very cool. For your sewing stuff?”

  “Yeah. The guy who did the build for us designed it, based on one he’d done for his mom. It’s a big help, not having to crawl around on the floor to cut stuff out.” Rosemary pushed on the end of the table and it slowly rose. She pushed in the legs and fastened them with a hook. “Now it’s out of the way.” She pointed at the wall on the other side of the table where folded stools were hanging on hooks. “Eight folding stools to use—if I want to use the table to serve a meal or have people over to play games.”

  Rosemary pointed to the end of the room. “My own dance area with a barre.”

  “Very nice. All that and some space from your brothers and sisters.”

  Rosemary laughed. “True, but Caleb and the twins run in and out of here all day long when I’m here. The table gets used for homework, art projects and games more than cutting out fabric. I’m starved. Are you hungry?”

  “Babe, I’m almost always hungry.” Mike grinned.

  “Let’s eat.”

  Mike took three pieces of pizza and ate the first piece in four bites. Rosemary watched him in awe.

  “How did you start modeling?” Mike asked before he started his second piece.

  “Completely by accident.” She chewed thoughtfully. “I was six feet tall by the time I was thirteen. My friends and I were trying on clothes at the mall and pretending to model for each other. The store manager asked me if I’d actually modeled. I admitted I hadn’t. When she helped me check out, she asked if she could submit my name and number to their corporate office because they were always looking for tall models. I felt cool, of course, so I said yes, although my mom wasn’t too thrilled when I told her about it.”

  “Money was really tight for us. Mom was going to school, working on her master’s degree in social work. She had divorced the boys’ dad a few years before that. He didn’t pay anything; he gave up his rights to the boys so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. We were living in a tiny house that had belonged to Papa’s grandparents that was next door to Nonnie and Papa’s.”

  Rosemary smiled, remembering. “Connor and I slept on bunk beds. Caleb slept on a tiny little toddler bed. Still, there wasn’t even room for a dresser in the room. We each had a box under the bed for our stuff. The closet might have been two by two. Mom’s room was even smaller, her twin bed practically took up the whole room. But, it was so much better than living with the stepdad. Besides, Nonnie and Papa were just through the back gate! It felt like heaven.”

  “Anyway, back to the modeling. A couple of weeks after the trip to the mall, someone from the store called
me. I submitted a portfolio—pictures that my mom’s cousin took—and a few weeks later, I had a contract to model for their catalogs and magazine ads. The money was insanely good—it more than paid for my dance lessons, which took some pressure off my mom.” Rosemary took another piece of pizza and chewed thoughtfully for a few minutes.

  “Oma had always paid for my dance lessons. I know you heard that the night I was talking to Marty. That was nice for me, but when she paid for something, she used that as an opportunity to criticize more. Mom swallowed a lot so I could have dance lessons and costumes and all the stuff needed for dance. By the time I was thirteen, I was seeing Oma’s behavior more realistically and I didn’t like the way she treated my mom. I was considering quitting dance so Mom wouldn’t have to put up with it, but as it turns out, I didn’t have to quit, because the modeling paid for dance, plus more. I have enough money put away for college and graduate school. Now I’m saving to open my own dance studio.”

  “You were really smart about the money. A lot of kids would have frittered it away.”

  “My Aunt Rosemary advised Mom about it. Most of my money is in a trust that has very specific rules for how I can use it. I can access a small amount quarterly for certain things, but only from the interest. The structure changes a little when I go to college, I’ll have to dig into the principal for school. Once a year, I can pull out a larger lump sum with the permission of the trustees, but I’ve only done that once. To build this garage and studio.”

  Mike looked around again. “This is like your own apartment. You sleep out here, right?”

  “Yeah, I do. The house has four bedrooms, but once Jared was on the way, it was quickly too small.” Rosemary grinned. “I don’t know if you realize this, but babies need a lot of stuff. Putting a new baby in a bedroom with two other kids would have been tight. Or if he had gone in with me…that would have been a mess, too. John and Mom have a small shared office on the first floor that they thought about using for Jared, but they need some office space—they both teach online college classes.”

  “There was no garage when we moved here, and in the country, Iowa winters aren’t always fun without having a garage, at least when the weather is bad. One night, Mom and I were watching a remodeling show about some people who put an apartment above a garage for their parents.” Mom looked at me and said: “Maybe we should build a garage and put a bedroom on the second floor for you. The idea grew from there.”

  Rosemary took a sip of water. “I decided I wanted more than a room so I asked if I could pay for it and have this space designed the way I wanted it. John initially didn’t want to let me pay for it, but I was persuasive. My costume design business had started to take off, and I needed sewing space. I definitely needed more closet space.” Rosemary grinned. “They talked about putting the boys or me in the basement, but Connor is claustrophobic and I don’t like basements much, either.”

  “The garage seemed like the best idea. John suggested a single garage with a room above it for me. I made a case for a triple garage and he finally agreed. There was a guy at church who loved to make unique spaces out of ordinary buildings. He designed this for me, even agreeing to keep the plans secret from John.” Rosemary grinned. “I was pretty sure that if John had been completely aware of how much I was spending, he would have insisted I cut it back. He was uncomfortable with the fact that the garage was being built with money I’d made.”

  Rosemary watched Mike take three more pieces of pizza and then went on. “John’s mom had mentioned that John loves to do woodworking projects, so we added extra space in the garage for a big workbench and workspace. There’s also a bathroom downstairs, underneath mine. The kids and John use it when they’ve been outside, so they don’t track into the house. With a family this size, there can never be too many bathrooms, anyway. I surprised John with the workshop and the bathroom because I didn’t want him to worry about the added cost.”

  “Anyway, I’m getting off track. I was telling you about modeling. I signed with a modeling agency in Chicago when I was fifteen. That’s when I met Armand.”

  “Armand?” Mike echoed.

  “Yeah. Armand is a photographer. I think he’s thirty-two now. He did a lot of work for the modeling agency I’d signed with. Armand likes the younger models. He starts out by being very kind and patient and becoming very friendly. Over time, he makes demands on their time. Now, I can see that he usually concentrates on the models who don’t live locally.”

  Mike shifted uneasily, but Rosemary patted his arm. “He didn’t hurt me physically. He demanded all my free time when I was in Chicago, especially when Aunt Rosemary was out of town.”

  “You stayed with your aunt when you were in Chicago?”

  Rosemary nodded. “I always stayed with my Aunt Rosemary—my mom’s best friend. I’d stay in her very secure high-rise apartment and if she was traveling for work I’d water the plants and feed the cat. Other than Armand, I didn’t know anybody else in Chicago.”

  Rosemary thought for a minute before she continued. “So, after about a year of working in Chicago, Armand started demanding all of my time when Aunt Rosemary was gone. She was gone a lot for about six months. She was consulting at her firm’s Los Angeles office during that time. If she was gone, I was at his place. I thought I was safe there. Honestly, he gave me the impression…well, I kind of thought he was gay, just by the way he acted. That made me feel safer to be at his place and alone with him. I didn’t realize, as the months went on, how much he was abusing me emotionally. He isolated me, making sure I didn’t make friends with other models or the agency staff. Eventually, I started believing that if Aunt Rosemary wasn’t home, I needed him to help me survive in Chicago.”

  “A little over a year ago, several things had changed. Mom and John had gotten married, and so had Aunt Rosemary. She kept her apartment for a while, but she moved into her husband’s apartment on a different floor. I stayed in her apartment, but Aunt Rosemary and her husband Arch were just steps away. I think Armand used that as an excuse to change his tactics. He went from building me up at first, to reeling me in, and then to criticizing everything about me. In the process, he destroyed my self-confidence; I became even more shy and anxious around strangers. He told me constantly that I was ugly, that I had only been asked to model because I had the height. He said my face was plain and they could trowel makeup on me and make me look presentable. I could spend an hour telling you all the nasty things he said to me.”

  “When I was at home in Iowa, he would text constantly and call several times a day. He constantly asked about who I was spending my time with—telling me I shouldn’t trust my friends, that only he had my best interests at heart. He talked very negatively about guys—they only wanted one thing, and all that. I had a friend, Pete—a church friend. He was the only one of my friends I still saw—the only one I trusted. Armand talked about him every day, trying to poison my mind about him. Armand was obsessed with Pete. He got very frustrated because I wouldn’t knuckle under about Pete. Pete and I had been friends since day care; we went to Sunday School together and then youth fellowship. Armand was relentless about Pete—he criticized Pete every time he talked to me.”

  Rosemary got up from the couch. Absently, she began doing stretches. “Do you mind? It gets a bit more nerve-wracking from here. It helps to move around.”

  “Whatever you have to do, babe.” Mike watched her, aware of her increasing anxiety.

  “Armand made a huge deal about me being his ‘muse.’ He took about six million pictures of me. Finally, on some level, I realized I was being tortured. I stopped eating, I stopped dancing, and I stopped sleeping. About nine months ago it got really bad. I was so anxious that I jumped at every little noise. I burst into tears if I dropped something. One day I had a meltdown because I broke a nail. I wasn’t acting like myself at all. John was the first one to bring it up—my mom…my mom can be clueless, but John isn’t. He wanted me to quit modeling and cut ties with Armand. I had a contract to f
ulfill; I was leaning toward doing what John was suggesting, but I wanted to finish my contract. So, I went back to Chicago for one last job.”

  Rosemary sat down and took a deep breath. “The rest is more difficult to tell.”

  Mike pulled her close to him. “Rosemary, there is nothing you can say to me that will change how I feel about you.”

  “I hope so; you need to hear it. You need to know about it. Because…it isn’t good.”

  She took another deep breath. “We’d had a long day of shooting—a car picked me up before four in the morning. I’d flown in on an evening flight. By the time I’d gotten to Aunt Rosemary’s from O’Hare, I’d only slept a few hours. We shot until the light was gone—about six-thirty in the evening. I just wanted to go back to Aunt Rosemary’s apartment and sleep. But Armand knew that Rosemary and her husband were out of town. He insisted that he cook dinner for me. I tried to refuse, but he insisted I go home with him. I was exhausted, so I just went.”

  “He suggested I drink a little wine with dinner. I refused but he told me it would relax me so I could sleep. When I still refused, he got nasty and all but forced me. I finally accepted a tiny glass of wine. I had never tasted wine, and I didn’t like it, but Armand insisted I drink it down. It wasn’t very long before I felt strange. I thought it was because I’d never had alcohol. I became very clumsy, I felt hot and I felt…giggly, silly and like I was someone else--uninhibited. I didn’t recognize that was what I was feeling until later, but that’s what it was.”

  Mike made a growling sound in the back of his throat. “You’re right, I’m not liking this.”

  Rosemary took his hand. “It’s taking a lot for me to tell this, so please…”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Keep going.” Mike took his own deep breath.

  “Anyway, he didn’t do anything to hurt me, physically. But he apparently convinced me to…take off my clothes. He took pictures of me in all sorts…of poses. I don’t remember how it happened or anything about it. I woke up the next morning, nude, on a couch he used as a prop. He had covered me with a quilt and gone to bed like…like it was nothing.” Tears fell down Rosemary’s face. Mike jumped up and hugged her for a long minute, but she broke away and started pacing.