All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (20 page)

In the morning, as Casey was arriving, the girl came downstairs already dressed. Casey said, “So, this must be Wavy. Did you two meet last night?”

“After a fashion we did,” Patty said.

From outside came the sound of a car horn. Again, Wavy slipped around the table, maneuvering her escape, and Casey and Patty followed her to the kitchen door. An old truck sat in the drive. Mr. Kellen rolled down the window and called, “I'm sorry! The bike's gonna take a while, okay?”

Wavy stomped down the stairs and got into the truck.

“Odd little girl,” Casey said.

“You have no idea.” Patty told her everything, even though it put her an hour over her shift.

She needed to compare notes with someone, and talking with Casey every day at least convinced her that she wasn't the only one who thought the family was strange.

According to Casey, there wasn't much to know about the day shift. Mrs. Quinn slept most of the first two weeks, and never said anything, except to complain about the pain she was in. And to ask where her husband and her children were.

“What am I supposed to tell her? I haven't seen her husband since he hired me, I've never seen her son, and her daughter comes home late every night with some big biker.”

“And she doesn't spend the whole night here, either,” Patty offered.

“Are you serious?”

“I'm sure she sneaks out at night.”

“What is she? Thirteen? And she sneaks out at night?” Casey said.

“A few times she hasn't come home at all.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Well, I told Mrs. Quinn. She said, ‘She's probably with Kellen.' I suppose that's good enough for her.”

“Good grief. Have you thought about talking to Marjory?”

Marjory was their supervisor, and the suggestion irked Patty. Casey was eager for Patty to go to Marjory with it, but Casey wouldn't. That way if the Quinns said, “How dare you accuse our dear family friend,” Patty would be the one who had made the accusation. If Patty didn't report it, and something improper
was
going on, Casey could always say, “Why didn't you tell someone?”

“So, what else have you noticed?” Casey said.

“Wavy sneaks into the kitchen at night and eats, but honestly, I've been known to do that.”

Casey laughed, and Patty was glad she hadn't said the other thing she couldn't stop thinking about. The night Kellen had gone up to Wavy's room and argued with her, there was one phrase she'd overheard. “I
do
love you,” he'd said, his voice rumbling through the floor. “I love you all the way.” Not the sort of thing a family friend says to a thirteen-year-old girl. Now it was too late to tell Casey, who would want to know why Patty hadn't mentioned it right away.

 

2

WAVY

The motorcycle was beautiful, the stars sprawling over the fenders and spinning out around the gas cap on a field of deep shimmery blue, like August when the moon was dark. No matter how much he teased me, Kellen put the stars on the way they were supposed to be. Cassiopeia and Cepheus in the center and the rest of them tumbling away on the sides. Squeezed under Kellen's thigh while he rode was Orion, the three stars of his belt glinting. Every star was a tiny scrap of silver foil sealed to the gas tank under clear enamel.

Looking at it, my heart hurt so much I almost couldn't breathe. Not because the motorcycle was beautiful, but hoping it was for me and knowing it might not be. Nothing belonged to me, but the rule didn't keep me from wanting Kellen to be for me only. I put my hand on the tank and tried to smile, but there were too many hot things trapped in my mouth.

Kellen smelled like the shop, so I knew he had just finished the bike. He had come straight to school to show it to me as soon as it was ready, and waited in the parking lot until I came out.

“Do you like it?” he said.

I nodded once, to say, “Yes, it's beautiful.”

From the way he shifted on his feet, wanting to touch my hair but not doing it, I knew he thought my answer was small.

“I used that book you gave me to make sure I put them on right. Are they right?”

I nodded again.

“So, you like it, but you're still mad at me?”

Resting his hand on the seat, he leaned over and breathed on me. I loved that. His breath was warm and wintergreen-smelling. He needed me to speak, because his heart hurt, too. I didn't want to be mean, but sometimes, it was dangerous to open my mouth and let words out. Other times, my throat closed up so tight the words couldn't come out. Looking at the Panhead, at all the work he did, the words trapped in my throat weren't nice ones. They were words to say,
I don't like it, if you're going to let girls with snake tattoos ride on it
.

I knew I was breaking the rule, but I laid my hand on the seat next to his. It was a new seat, tall in back for a passenger.

“Me,” I said.

“Yeah, that's your spot, Wavy. I love it when you ride with me. I'm sorry it took so long to paint, but that's … I don't even know how many coats of clear enamel. And I wanted it to be a surprise, but getting all those little stars right was a bitch without you to tell me where they go.”

“Only me.” I didn't care if it was against the rules.

“Only you?” He straightened up and sunlight fell on my hair where he had shaded me. “Oh. Oh. Come on, put your helmet on and let's ride this thing.”

That was another thing I loved, the way he swung his leg over the bike, started it with one solid kick, and settled his weight on it. But the bike wasn't for me. There would be other girls. Snake tattoo girls. Perfume-wearing girls he loaned his jacket to. I wished the bike weren't so beautiful. I wished it were still primer gray, or green-and-yellow flames like the day he wrecked it. I wished it didn't feel so good to ride behind him with my arms around him. I didn't want to enjoy the way the wind spun around me and pulled at my dress. It soothed me and I didn't want to be soothed.

 

3

MISS HUMPHRIES

It had happened often enough in the last forty years that Miss Humphries had a well-rehearsed response. Because of the store's proximity to the County Courthouse, once or twice a month, a scruffy-looking man stepped in off the street and said, “I need to buy a wedding ring.”

This one followed pattern: a big man in grease-stained jeans and engineer's boots, ham-sized forearms covered in tattoos. He looked nervous, not quite making eye contact. Sometimes, as in this instance, the man had a child with him. Perhaps a soon-to-be stepdaughter. She was too old and too blond to be his natural child.

Before they could get more than a few steps into the store, Miss Humphries offered her warmest smile, one intended to reassure. Then she said, “You know, there's a nice little drug store on Fourteenth and Mohawk. They sell plain gold bands at a very reasonable price.” She was never rude, but she considered it a kindness to dissuade people from embarrassing themselves.

“Not a band,” the man said. “A real ring. A diamond ring.”

“Well, we have a variety of engagement rings. In this case, I have some simple and elegant rings, starting at a quarter-carat weight.”

“Come and look, sweetheart. I want you to pick it out.”

The girl stepped up to the display and in the bright lights meant to make the stones sparkle, she was not what Miss Humphries had expected. Not a grubby girl, of the type who usually accompanied the scruffy-looking men. Her cheeks were scrubbed pink and her hair clung to her scalp not because it needed washing, but because it was so fine. She wore a pale blue dress with pin tucks down the front. Velazquez' Infanta Margarita in motorcycle boots.

Miss Humphries hated cleaning fingerprints off the glass cases, but the girl didn't touch the display cabinet. She stood with her hands at her sides and peered in.

“Or if you're looking for something unusual, my brother occasionally purchases estate jewelry. We have some lovely antique rings in this case.”

Stepping down the counter, the girl looked into that display. Her stepfather followed, watching her, but not interfering. The scruffy men usually got uncomfortable by then, having glimpsed the occasional price tag, but he seemed more at ease now.

Miss Humphries took her cue from him and didn't say anything, but she recognized the moment the girl found something she liked. Her gaze sharpened and she leaned forward. Perhaps all women were born with that attraction to diamond rings. A magpie instinct.

“Which one do you like?” Miss Humphries said. There were a few lower priced rings in the estate case. Diamond chips in delicately scrolled ten karat Victorian settings. More than a twenty-dollar gold band from the drug store, but under two hundred dollars. The girl's father leaned over her head to look in the case.

“I see which one. What are those called, those ones that look like stars?” he said.

“Star sapphires.” She knew the ring and it broke her heart that the girl had picked such a lovely ring for her mother. Something her future father wouldn't be able to afford. Normally at that point, Miss Humphries indicated the price before opening the case. That got rid of the persistent ones, who said, “That's a little more than I was looking to spend.” The girl had been respectful and the afternoon was quiet, so Miss Humphries took the keys off her wrist and unlocked the display.

“It's Victorian, late nineteenth century. The diamond is natural, slightly more than one carat, E in color with no inclusions visible to the naked eye, surrounded by five natural star sapphires, each a tenth of a carat.” She said it all for the pleasure of saying it, aware that neither of them understood what it meant. When she placed the ring on the velvet mat, she was careful to flip the price tag with her pinky, so that it lay exposed. The girl rose on her toes to look down at the ring. After a moment, she glanced up at the man.

“That one?” he said.

She nodded.

“That's the one we want then. You can make it fit, right?”

“Yes, of course it can be sized. Do you know what size you'll need?”

“Whatever size she wears. I don't know how you measure that.”

Only when the girl held out her hand did Miss Humphries understand the ring was for her. To hide her shock, Miss Humphries turned away and retrieved the sizing rings. She fumbled with them, not sure where to begin. Usually she started with the size six. The average woman was somewhere near that, but for a child? She held out the size four, but it swallowed the girl's finger. The size three was still loose. The two, the one, and the three-quarter remained, but they were problematic.

“The dilemma here,” said Miss Humphries, “is the width of the setting. I'll check with my brother, but I worry anything smaller than a three would require the setting to be curved to fit on the band. Of course, she'll grow and the setting would have to be redone to permit the band to be resized. I suppose, if we went with the four, and put in a plastic sizer, that might work. Then the plastic sizer could come out when she's a bit bigger. After that the ring would need to be resized again.”

She was chattering and she couldn't stop.
The dilemma
, she wanted to say,
is that people don't buy engagement rings for children
.

“Whatever'll work,” the man said. “How long will it take?”

“Oh, I should think it could be ready by Friday afternoon.”

He and the girl both looked disappointed, but he nodded.

Miss Humphries wrote out the ticket in an unusually crooked hand for her, glancing up at them as she did it. They didn't touch, even by accident. The girl stood with her hands clasped behind her. He kept a thumb hooked in a belt loop and the other hand in his pocket. When Miss Humphries laid the ticket on the counter, he pulled his hand out of his pocket, removing a roll of bills held with a rubber band. He snapped the rubber band off and began counting out hundred-dollar bills. She felt corrected for having assumed he couldn't afford the ring.

“The resizing fee will be adjusted, because so much excess gold will be removed. After that's weighed, we'll refund that amount to account for it.” She watched the bills pile up and when he finished, she counted them into the cash drawer. “You've given me one too many.”

“That's for you, for being so nice,” he said.

“I, well, that's not—”

“It'll be ready Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

A moment later, they were out the door, leaving her to stare at the hundred-dollar bill. In more than forty years behind the jewelry counter, she had never before been “tipped.”

*   *   *

When the man and the girl returned on Friday, Clifford was at the counter. He was about to make his own less diplomatic discouragement speech, but Miss Humphries intervened.

“Ah, here you are,” she said in the same bright voice she had used before to try to send them away. “Clifford, they're here for the resized ring with the star sapphires.”

Her brother raised his eyebrow, but rose stiffly and went to the back room. He had said more than a few choice words about resizing an adult's engagement ring to fit a child.

When he returned with the ticket and the velvet presentation box, he still had his eyebrow up. Worse, he stood at Miss Humphries' elbow while she counted out the refund for the gold removed from the ring. It made her glad she hadn't mentioned the extra hundred dollars which had gone discreetly into her purse instead of the till.

“Well, shall we make sure it fits?” she said after she closed the cash drawer.

Now that the moment came to open the box, Miss Humphries didn't know how to proceed. Normally, when it was a regular ring, she laid it out on the velvet mat for the customer to try on. When it was an engagement ring, the man usually opened the box, and sometimes they had a little impromptu pre-wedding right there in the store. Miss Humphries loved those moments, when the woman got starry-eyed and the man looked thrilled and mildly terrified. It was the closest she ever got to romance outside a movie theater.