I don’t know if some of the grief from Nathan’s rejection leaked into my words, but Little’s eyes narrowed into slits as I spoke. “What happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” came my dejected answer. That word sounded hideous to me. Desolate. Plaintive.
Nothing
. My heart had pulled out of my chest on its first solo flight and … nothing. A stain on the sidewalk.
“That Becker boy?” she asked.
“No! I swear. Nothing.” I felt the wet film in my eyes and blinked hard. How had she guessed so fast? Had everyone guessed? My legs shook and I wanted to melt to the ground and hide my face in the dirt. Instead, I contained myself to a small groan and turned back to Little’s house, my feet impossibly heavy. “May God strike me down, nothing happened!”
I heard her shuffling behind me, her steps less labored than mine. “Sometimes nothing is the worst thing,” she said, her voice as soft and gentle as I imagine her voice could go. Still gruff, but comforting – like Chester’s gravelly purr. I raked my hands through my hair, trying to disguise how I covered my ears. To my relief she didn’t say anything else until I got to her driveway. I stopped, but she bypassed me and walked behind her house without a word, heading straight to the beach. After a long hesitation, I trudged after her and drew up beside her as she neared the sand.
“So I guess I’ll tell you about Newell,” she said in a matter-of-face voice that could have said
I guess I’ll wear green socks today
.
“Who?” I asked as I gave her my arm to steady her as we made our way down the steepest slope of sand.
“The only man on Earth I ever knew worth loving,” She answered.
I turned my shocked face to her. She met my questioning eyes and her grip hardened at my elbow, pinning me to the slippery spot of earth.
“You said it’s a trade,” I stammered.
“It is,” she said, holding tight as she lowered herself to the ground with a series of uncomfortable grunts.
Her body looked even more fragile in front of the ageless immensity of the sea. I took a place beside her, curling my legs tight into my chest. “Well, don’t tell me then, because I don’t have a love story. No trade. Nothing.” I turned my head, the bleak, vacant truth burning as it made its way up my throat.
I felt her watching me even though I hid my face from her. After a short moment she said, “Even so,” in a smooth, small voice. The only time I ever heard her sound small. That finally made me turn, just in time to see a mysterious smile fading from her lips. “Even so.” She said more loudly. “I’m in a talking mood.” She jerked her thumb at her house like a hitchhiker and continued, “I was born in that house. Two months early. Not even four pounds. Nineteen twenty two. My mother gave birth to me all alone while my father was fishing. He came home and found me, wrapped in blankets in the oven. I was three hours old and my mother was nearly unconscious. He ran for the neighbors and they ran for the doctor and everyone prayed over my mother and me that night. Doctor said I wouldn’t live long.” She gave me a conspiratorial grin and the deep wrinkles around her eyes pushed together.
I couldn’t resist a laugh. “Guess you proved him wrong,” I said.
“Not half! And I ain’t done yet. Got twenty two years to go!”
“Twenty two?” I tried to imagine twenty more years of wrinkles on her face. Where would they go?
“My daddy grabbed me from the doctor and said I’d live to be a hundred and ten if he had anything to do with it. I loved my father. Can’t make a liar of ‘im.” Little’s eyes traveled over the water. The same water that lapped these shores the day her father defied the doctor. The same water that would lap these shores on the day of her funeral. I bit my lip and waited.
“So Newell Carson was my father’s fishing partner. Couldn’t neither of them afford a boat so they bought one together. Worked together ever since I was a baby girl. Newell was a few years younger than my father, but he could have passed as his son. He had one of those boyish faces. He was married, but I don’t remember his wife. I just remember going to her funeral when I was eleven. Don’t even know what she died of.” Little recounted the tale briskly. No emotion. No pity.
“That’s sad,” I said, more because I felt pressured to say something.
“It’s not,” she snapped. “I’ve visited her grave. Elizabeth Carson. She has his name on her tombstone. He loved her.” I thought her voice actually broke, but she cleared her throat with some terrible, old person sounds and continued.
“I didn’t know I loved him then. But I remember wanting to hug him at the funeral. He was standing by the casket and I wanted him to feel better.
I
wanted to be the one to make it better.”
A gull let out a brazen cry and swooped toward the water. I watched the sun reflect off of its white breast as it twisted in the air. “You fell in love with someone as old as your father?”
“Nearly. I was fifteen before I knew I loved him. Got my first proposal that year. Those little boys followed me around, sent flowers, showed up on the front porch, packed themselves in like sardines on my family’s pew at church. A handsome one, well-to-do to boot, asked me to marry him when I was sixteen. We’d never talked for more than ten minutes at a time.”
“But you loved Newell?”
“I loved Newell,” she said. Her calm voice shook me with its honesty. “And that stupid …” she looked at me and held her tongue. “That man didn’t pay a moment’s attention. He patted my head like I was still a child. I was sixteen. He was thirty three. A young thirty three. It wouldn’t have made much difference.” She shrugged like the years were nothing to her. Now that she was almost ninety, they probably were.
“He ate dinner with us every night after Elizabeth died. And after I found out I loved him I thought my heart would up and fall out of my chest just from looking at him. I was sure one day the ache would overwhelm me and I’d die right there at the table, my head in my chowder.” She grinned at the thought, but even her smile couldn’t mask the pain. I knew exactly what she meant.
“Did you ever tell him?” I asked.
“Well, who’s tellin’ this story?” She croaked. “You kids can’t wait for water outta a facet!”
“Sorry!” I held up my hands in surrender. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Good!” she said, “But where the sam hill was I?”
“Dinner with . . .”
“So we ate dinner with him every night and one night he brings a girl. No, not a girl. A woman older than him. With two children! An old, widowed, wrinkled maid! And he’s pulling out her chair and talking to her brats, and I know the woman from church and I thought I’d leap across the table and scratch her face off. Never felt so violent. So I decided that if he was out looking for love, and resorting to widowed mothers to get it, I’d let him know how I felt.”
“Did you?” I asked breathlessly. She turned a livid face to me and I squeaked “sorry!” before leaning back.
“I tried. It was a bad job from the go. I was a child to him. His best friend’s child. I’m sure the thought never crossed his mind. I was turning seventeen and decided that I would find a way to get him alone. If I could just explain that I was a woman - that I loved him far more than that widow ever could - I thought I could make him listen. But I waited too long. He came back one weekend good and married. She’d wanted a quiet affair and they didn’t have much family or money. The preacher married them Sunday afternoon at her mother’s house. We didn’t even know they were that serious.”
“Oh, Little …”
“Never had a chance to fight for him. I loved him like … I’ve never really found a comparison for that.” She patted my arm and I looked down at her soft, withered fingers.
“So he never knew?”
“Never. I saw him kiss her one day. Kiss her like a brother, all prim and polite and something exploded in me. I knew if I got to kiss him … well, you’ll know someday.”
I squeezed my legs tighter against my chest and wished I didn’t know.
“I left that night. Packed one bag and what money I had and I left. Just hoped I could use my pretty face to get a few rides, a few meals, until I figured out what to do. I didn’t care what happened to me. I was dying by inches watching him. Anything’d be better than that.”
“Hitchhiked to Coney Island. First thing that came to my mind. I walked into the first restaurant I found and asked if I could get a job. Still in the Depression, mind you. Wasn’t no one just giving out work. But the owner liked how I looked and I got lucky. Hired on the spot. I told him I didn’t have a place to stay and he told me about a boarding house for the showgirls. I got a room that night. It was like Providence was just waitin’ for me to ask. Need a job? Take one. Need a room? Take one.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I tried to imagine plunging alone into the world like that. Like my mother.
“I was so mad at him. So mad that he never even considered me. I held onto the anger because it kept the sad away. That’s how I know what your mama’s feeling. When someone stays that mad for that long, they’re just sad. Sad lasts so much longer than mad. Hurts more, too.” She looked down at her hands and started rubbing a bulging blue vein. She pushed it down with her finger and then let it go as if surprised that purple tracks and age spots belonged to her skin. “Well, I can’t tell most of the next decade. Not decent for little girls.”
I bristled and tried to protest but she gave me a shrewd stare. “It’s no good, anyhow. I ran into every pair of arms I could find, just to pretend for a minute that they were Newell’s. Used men. Got used. Didn’t care. It got me from Coney Island to Los Angeles and I landed some little parts in shows there. Then bigger. Got work in Hollywood. Paramount Pictures. Then I got my first contract and I was in the business. I worked in film for ten years. I visited Smithport, but I never stayed long. It was too hard to see Newell. I would have traded everything for him – the parties, the dresses, the money. There wasn’t much money in it no how. ”
“I was twenty seven and talking to my mother one day on the phone when she told me that Newell was in a car accident. Went off the road on some ice and straight into a tree. No airbags back then. No seatbelts. His head went through the windshield.”
I cringed, wishing she wouldn’t be so graphic.
“He died?”
“No. Don’t jump ahead,” she snapped. “My mama said that he lived through the night in the hospital. I packed a bag smaller than the one I took to Coney Island and left on the next train. Got to the hospital two days later. I was sure he’d be gone by then. I could barely walk into the hospital. My daddy was there. He nearly fainted, too – no one knew I was coming. No one had any reason to think I’d care much. Newell’s wife was taking the kids to her mama’s so I sent my daddy to get some breakfast. Told him that I loved Newell like a father and I’d sit with him. It was a sick lie, but if an actress can’t lie, who can? I closed the door and sat down by his bed, finally all alone with him.” Little looked up at me, her eyes sharp and alert. “This is where I tell you the greatest moment of my life, so don’t interrupt this one.”
I swallowed and gave her one wide-eyed nod.
“I sat there for two hours until his wife got back. Sent everyone away and they went, too, because they thought I was a movie star. I wasn’t, but that’s neither here nor there. After a good long time just looking at him (He was handsome. Not like the boys in the movies, but better. Not so pretty. Stronger.) I started telling him everything. Told him he was a stupid fool. Told him what a stupid fool I’d been. Told him I’d loved him from the time my body knew what love was. Told him all I ever wanted was a life with him.
“And then, after an hour of telling him that I loved him and hated him for not loving me back, his eyelids moved. Not opened, but moved. Like his eyes were moving behind them. Like he was looking for me, but couldn’t open his eyes. I grabbed his hand. The only time I ever touched him and I begged him to wake up. I told him I’d live to be an old lady and wait until he was an old man and someday we could love each other. And then I lifted his hand. The one that didn’t have all the tubes in it. I’ve never seen such a hand. I’ll never forget his hand. And I kissed it. I kissed it like I’ve never kissed anything. All my life on my lips. One touch and it meant more than all the other touches of all the other people put together.” She looked back at me. I should say came back to me. I knew she had been far away, in that hospital room, his motionless fingers under her burning lips. “Made you cry, huh?” She said with satisfaction. “That’s fitting. It should make a body cry.”
“What happened?” I asked, not bothering to mop my face.
“Well do you see him?” she asked. “He died. He died that day. His plain, little wife came back and sat by him while he died. And I stood outside the room and wished to die myself.”
I remembered the night of the storm, Little’s feet in the water. “Little you wouldn’t ever … do anything drastic?” I raised my eyebrows, hinting delicately.
“What, do myself in? Don’t be stupid.”
“But that night of the storm when I met you. You were out here …”
“Out here yelling, is what! I wait till God starts throwin’ a tantrum and then I go and scream back. We’ve had some good fights. He tried to knock my house down a few times.” She smiled a wicked grin. “But it’s still standin’, ain’t it?”
“How does a person fight God?” I asked her, looking at the endless blue of the water reflected in the endless blue of the heavens. Too big to conquer.
“Oh, you just let it out. He don’t mind much. I think he likes a good row now and then. All these pious fools saying
it’s all for the best
. Well, it ain’t! It ain’t all for the best. We make the best of it, is all. And I still got a couple decades penance before I get my way.”
“Penance?”
“I got some making up to do. Lotta other men I … well, I never a kissed a man after the day Newell died. Didn’t wannna taint it. And after I’m done with this long, lonely life, I’m calling it sentence served and flying up on these black wings of mine. And when I’m resurrected and young and beautiful I am marching straight up to that man and kissing him proper. My first item of business. Hope heaven don’t mind kissin’ too much, cause I’ve got a kiss comin’.” Her voice slowly faded and she retracted back into her thoughts. That’s why I jumped when she suddenly barked, “Now are you gonna help me up or just watch my arthritis kick in while you pine?” She grabbed my hands and after an awkward moment we managed to get her back on her feet. “So there,” her head bobbed in finality. “You gonna tell me your story yet?” She asked with defiant eyes.