A Life of Bright Ideas (16 page)

I paged through magazines while I waited, but I only looked at the pictures. I was too worried about Marls—and how Winnalee was doing with Boohoo—to actually read.

Another half an hour passed before the lady at the desk told me I could go up. She gave me Marls’s room number and told me where I could find the elevator. There was a nurse inside her room, the door partially shut, so I waited.

Marls looked as pale as the sheets, but she looked more peaceful, too. “They said I’m not dilated at least, and they gave me something to help me not go into labor.”

I stood by her bed, looking down, and my chest swelled with pity for her. I was practically a stranger, yet at the moment, I was all she had.

“They think everything’s going to be okay,” she said, as she gently massaged her belly.

“Good,” I said.

“I’m so tired now.”

“I could sit with you while you sleep,” I offered.

“No, you go. I’ve taken enough of your time. But could you please hand me the phone first?”

I was in the hall, contemplating if I should really leave, when Marls placed a collect call. Her voice floated out a childish, scared whisper as she said, “Mom?”

Dad was in the yard shoving the lawn mower over grass so long that it had to be bending under the machine, when I slowed to turn down Peters Road. He glanced up when he
heard my Rambler and his arm came up to give me a slow, half-mast wave. Still, that was better than what greeted me when I pulled into my drive.

Winnalee’s screams reached me before she did, rushing into my window as if they were looking for a place to hide. She came flying around the side of the house, arms bouncing, hair wild. I rammed the car into park and yanked the key. “Winnalee?” I shouted.

Boohoo appeared from the backyard then, wearing the devil’s grin and holding an upside-down broom poised in the air.

Winnalee raced to the driveway and wedged herself between me and the car, her scream so shrill that it pinched my eardrums.

“Boohoo!” I shouted, as he reached us, dancing side to side like a boxer as he sought a better aim at Winnalee.

I reached out and grabbed the broom as it was coming down, and yanked it from his arm. “What are you doing?” I shouted, my palm stinging. Boohoo took off like the Tasmanian Devil, laughing as he ran. I stared at Winnalee in disbelief. “Why were you letting him chase you with a broom?”

“Because it seemed like a hell of a lot better idea than letting him
hit
me with it!” She held up her arm to show me two strips of red welts. One of them was already tinged with blue.

“Boohoo, get back here right now!” I shouted.

He didn’t stop, so I dropped the broom and chased after him. I snagged his wrist and held him as I delivered every threat I could think of. He wouldn’t watch cartoons for three Saturdays! He couldn’t wear his Spider-Man cape for a month! He wouldn’t get candy for the whole rest of the summer!

I expected Boohoo to plead his case, beg for forgiveness, or cry when I plunked him on the steps. Instead he just smiled up at me and said, “Can Winnalee watch me next time you guys are gone, Evy? She’s fun!”

Winnalee looked down at his sweaty head as she thumped up the porch steps on bare feet. “I’m never watching you again, you little shit.”

I told Boohoo if he got off the steps he’d get a spanking—I’d never spanked him in his life—then followed Winnalee inside. “Please don’t talk to him like that,” I said. “We don’t swear at him.”

“Well I don’t know how in the hell you can help it,” she huffed.

I wanted to swear at him, and her, when I saw the mess inside, though. Drawing paper ripped to confetti was scattered over the floor and furniture, and even the swag lamp was tangled with yarn. “You think
this
is bad, you should see the kitchen,” Winnalee said.

I snapped a loose crayon under my sandal as I headed there, then stood in the doorway, my hand over my mouth. Cocoa Puffs dotted the floor, and the table was covered by at least two-thirds of a loaf of peanut-butter-smeared broken bread. A fly was busy drinking Kool-Aid from a capsized cup, and his cousin was perched on the still-opened jelly jar. “Man, Winnalee.”

“I know, I know. I tried to make him clean up the mess before you got home, but when I handed him the broom, he started swinging it at me!”

Winnalee threw her hands into the air and slapped them down on her thighs. “Bright Idea number ninety-nine point five,” she said. “Never ask Winnalee Malone to watch a kid, because she’ll only mess things up.” She turned and headed out of the room, her thumps soon sounding above my head.

I screwed the lids back on the jars and headed to the sink for a washcloth. “Hi, Tommy. Evy? Can I get up now?” Boohoo yelled from the steps.

“No!” I shouted, cereal crunching under my feet as I sidestepped to sop up the Kool-Aid still dripping off the table. I
stared down at the floor, then slapped the washcloth in the sink even if the table was still a mess, and headed outside for the broom. I almost ran into Tommy, who was coming up the steps, carrying it. “You looking for this?” I yanked the broom from him.

“Hey, Evy. Can I go by Aunt Verdella now? She’s coming.” Boohoo pointed down the road.

“No. You were very naughty when Winnalee watched you. You chased her with this,” I said holding up the broom, “and turned the house into a pigsty. You are going to stay right there until I say you can move. And I mean it, Boohoo.”

Boohoo started to get up. “Yeah, but—”

Tommy cut in, giving him a glare. “Didn’t your sister just tell you to stay put?” Boohoo sat back down.

“I don’t need your help, Tommy Smithy,” I snapped.

“Seems to me you do.”

“Did you want something, because I’ve kind of got my hands full here right now. And it hasn’t exactly been a good morning. I just got back from the hospital. I drove Marls there.”

“Marls?”

Granted, Tommy delivered cows all the time, so he probably knew more about bleeding vaginas and birth than most women, but those were cows, and I couldn’t get myself to say that Marls was hemorrhaging. “She was having some problems,” is all I could say.

“Jesus,” Tommy said.

“Brody was nowhere to be found, of course.”

“He never showed up this morning. He’s probably fishing. Is she gonna be okay?”

“I think so, but they’re keeping her overnight. Anyway, what did you want?”

“I came to see if you were home. I had something to show you.”

As Tommy headed for his truck, he glanced to the field, where a couple of cows were slopping water at the stock tank. “I’m not even gonna ask why Boohoo’s cow is wearing yarn around his neck,” he said, shaking his head.

I expected Tommy to grab whatever he wanted to show me from his truck, but he didn’t. He just jumped in and drove off, leaving me wearing a thin film of guilt for being so short with him. I headed for the house, giving Boohoo yet another warning to stay put,
and
to stop throwing rocks at ants.

Winnalee was in the kitchen, smearing peanut butter on the table with the dishcloth. “Is Marls okay?” she asked.

I repeated what little I knew, and Winnalee didn’t say anything. She just kept cleaning.

“Winnalee?” Boohoo shouted. “I can’t get up, so could you come out here so I can say some sorrys?”

“Man,” Winnalee mumbled. “Now he’s gonna be all sweet and I’m gonna have to forgive him.” She dumped a dustpan full of confetti into the trash can, then headed outside. A few minutes later, I heard the two of them, their shouts nothing but excited gibberish.

Boohoo was in the middle of the yard, bopping up and down and screaming as he jabbed toward the sky. Winnalee was beside him, her hands cupped above her eyes to shield them from the sun.

“Holy shit!” Winnalee cried. “It
is
Tommy’s plane!”

“I told you!” Boohoo shouted. “It’s Tommy’s Piper! I could tell!

“Tommyyyyyyyy!” Boohoo screamed, as I spotted the moving dot that had to be Tommy’s red-winged, white bellied plane. I squinted, my insides jumping every bit as frantically as Boohoo’s and Winnalee’s outsides were, but out of fear, not excitement.

Boohoo and Winnalee kept clutching each other as they
laughed and shouted, Winnalee completely forgetting that minutes ago, Boohoo was her mortal enemy.

The Piper made a wide arc then headed toward us.

“What’s that lunatic doing?” I screamed, as Tommy’s plane skimmed above the treetops, so close Tommy could have probably reached out and grabbed a pinecone. When the plane got close, the nose dipped as if it was sniffing us out. “Here he comes!” Boohoo shouted.

Winnalee’s head fell back, her hair wavering, as the Piper’s shadow spilled into the yard. “What does his plane say? What does it say? Lady Godiva? Coooooooool! Hi, Tommy!”

I clamped my eyes shut, and crouched down, my arms instinctively wrapping around my head as Tommy’s plane buzzed over the house, whirring like a table saw.

When the pitch of the plane’s engine rose, I peeked up with only my eyes to see if the plane was lifting. It was. But it was also circling. I pressed my knuckles against my mouth, silently pleading with Tommy not to dive at the house again.

But he did. Twice more. I cursed him under my breath and promised myself I’d punch him when I saw him again.

“I want a ride, Tommy!” Boohoo shouted as the Lady Godiva headed toward home, “Take me! Take
me
!” When the Piper was nothing but a faint buzz and a speck, Winnalee, breathless from shouting the same, turned to me and said, “Oh my God, Button, were you
ducking
?”

The whole ordeal of Winnalee’s marijuana plants might have been over for me and Winnalee, but it wasn’t over for Aunt Verdella. “I’m worried about that girl,” she told me a couple of nights later, when, restless while Winnalee was at work, and still obsessing because Jesse’s last letter ended with
Okay, gotta go. I got a letter from Amy—sort of an apology—and I suppose I should answer it before it’s lights out
, I hiked over with a basket of dirty laundry.

I startled Aunt Verdella when I came through the door. She dropped the paper she had in her hand into the opened kitchen drawer and shoved it shut, leaving a fringe of envelopes peeking out. “Sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t want to wake Uncle Rudy or Boohoo by knocking.”

“Button, since when does family need to knock?” she said. “Come on in. I dozed off late this afternoon and now I’m wide awake, so I was just catching up on your dad’s laundry.”

I looked down at the basket I’d just brought in and cringed. “I wasn’t going to bring ours over, but …”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “Running downstairs is good exercise for me.” She grabbed the basket and made an exaggerated
phew
face. “With as much beer as our little Winnalee spills on her clothes, the customers must go home stone sober. I’ll just presoak these in the washer tonight and get them whirling in the morning.

“Oh,” she told me, stopping halfway across the dining room. “I called over to the Bishops this evening and talked to Marls herself. She’s got placenta previa and that’s why she was spotting.” I must have looked confused, because she explained how that means the placenta was down by the cervix, instead of above it, and the pressure of the baby caused some tearing. If the truth be known, pregnancy scared me, and I was creeped out by all those parts inside, which seemed as foreign to me as Japan, so I just nodded like I was listening and understood.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

“Well, the doctors think her placenta will move, but she’s got to take it easy for a while.”

“I’m glad the baby’s okay,” I said.

Aunt Verdella’s eyes, like her bladder, weren’t what they used to be, so when she worked in the evenings she kept the room well lit. I examined her freshly cut and colored hair in the stark light as she prattled more about Marls’s pregnancy. The old growth was a medium auburn, but the inches of roots were more of a Pepto Bismol pink. Aunt Verdella noticed me staring. “Does it look all right?” she asked, patting the side of her head. “Fanny said it’s two-toned.”

I told her it looked real pretty and she said, “Maybe it was
just the lighting at The Corner Store. I told Fanny; Claire knows what she’s doing.”

Aunt Verdella headed my basket downstairs—still talking, though I couldn’t hear what she was saying—while I stared at Dad’s clothes—pants as worn and limp as him, shirts with arms too lifeless to pick up a six-year-old boy. Brody would be a dad just like him, and it made me sad for the baby Marls was carrying.

Aunt Verdella’s voice stopped, the house going dead silent, but for the soft hum of a fan upstairs. I cocked my head and listened harder, then went to the basement door, fear gripping me. “Aunt Verdella?” I called. “You okay?”

“Oh my goodness, my goodness,” she uttered.

“You okay?” I asked again.

Aunt Verdella started up the stairs. Her arm was stretched in front of her, something dangling from her hand. I couldn’t see what in the dim light, but I was prepared to wince, sure it was a dead mouse.

I moved back to let her step into the kitchen, and glanced even if I didn’t want to. Then I all-out stared with disbelief and horror when I saw that it was something
worse
than a dead mouse. It was a used rubber, pinched and half crumpled.

“It, it was wrapped up in the sheets,” she told me, heading to the trash can, where she stopped to grab a paper towel to wrap it in first.

“It wasn’t mine,” I said quickly.

Aunt Verdella waved off my declaration. “Oh, I know that, honey.”

She turned to me, her face sagging with disappointment. “You know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about Winnalee, as it is. This whole dope thing … and now this.” She took a gulp of air, held it a second, then blurted out, “Button,
you’re
not on dope now, too, are you?”

Her worry was so absurd that I couldn’t help laughing. “Aunt Verdella, you know that if I was even tempted—which I’m not—Ma would reach down and whack me in the head. Besides, life itself should be enough of a high, shouldn’t it?” And for me, it
was
. At least on days when I heard from Jesse (and he didn’t talk about old girlfriends). He was writing once or twice a week now, and I was writing him every day—except for the day neither Winnalee or I could scrounge up a lousy six cents to leave in the mailbox for a stamp. Jesse noticed I hadn’t written that day, too. “It just didn’t seem right when roll call came and your letter wasn’t there.” He signed that letter,
Love, Jesse
.