Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (16 page)

“Yes,” he said. “I've owned this shop for years, and the thrillers haven't moved. Are you thinking of buying those magazines?” he said to Bud and Glen.

Bud moved away from Glen and walked to the register with his car magazine. He pulled out his wallet. The clerk watched Glen put his magazine back, underneath the latest edition of
Good Housekeeping
.

“Doesn't go there,” he growled at Glen. Glen slunk outside.

I stood in front of the thrillers with my eyes closed, willing my mother to walk in and take control of me, give me some information, even let me know which books she'd bought to read by the pool. I stood there until Bud whispered, “Let's go,” into my ear.

I followed him out the door. We joined Dottie and Glen on the bench seats inside the bandstand in the little park.

“Clerk was an asshole,” Glen said.

“Cop,” Bud said. We followed his eyes to a blue-clad figure walking along the sidewalk opposite us. He went down a side street and soon was out of sight.

“We're not doing anything wrong,” Glen said.

“We skipped school,” Bud pointed out. “You got the shortest memory there is.”

“Where is Grundy's Dress Shop?” I asked. I stood on the floor in the middle of the bandstand and turned a quarter to my left. Didn't see it. Turned another quarter, and another, until I began to spin around. The absence of my mother and the surprise that was my father blended and blurred as I whirled around and tried to make some sense of it. Dottie stopped me mid-spin and hissed, “Stop that. The cop is walking this way.”

“Ah shit,” Bud muttered.

The cop walked up to the bandstand and put one shiny-shoed foot on the lowest step. He was thin and handsome in a Bing Crosby kind of way, with clear, far-seeing eyes that told us he spent a lot of time on the water.

“Afternoon,” he said. “You kids supposed to be in school?”

Dottie said, “Yes,” just as Glen said, “No.”

Bud said, “Yes, we are.”

The cop nodded. “Why aren't you in school?”

Bud started to say something, but I said, “My mother disappeared from here about four years ago. I wanted to come up and see the place for myself. Her name is Carlie Gilham, and I'm her daughter, Florine. I got my friends to drive me here. It isn't their fault. I wanted to see.”

The cop studied me. “I remember her,” he said. I reached into my dress pocket and pulled out her photograph. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

He said, “That was four years ago this summer.”

“I was twelve. I'm turning sixteen tomorrow.”

“Happy birthday,” he said, and he gave me a sad smile. “Florine, I'm sorry we weren't able to find your mother. We followed every clue we could. Your father still calls, once a year or so around the time it happened.”

Daddy, again, still following up.

“We talk with the State Police; talk with Parker Clemmons, down your way. Talk with Detective Pratt in Blueberry Harbor. We never quit, Florine. Believe that.”

“Everyone says that,” I said, low.

The cop nodded. “You'd best be getting on home,” he said. “You have a long ride.”

“That Jorie woman was nice to tell you all that stuff,” Dottie said. I was huddled into the backseat with her. Glen was in front with Bud.

“I know,” I said.

Dottie said, “Well, at least you went up there. Now you know what it's like.”

“I thought if I showed up, something would come to me,” I said. “Something would change. I might know what had happened. It was a stupid idea.”

“No it wasn't,” Dottie said. “You did something about it, anyways.”

We rode some more, for a long time. Sadness circled my side of the backseat, but I didn't cry. I just watched the scenery fly by, thinking more about Daddy's quiet, lonely search than I did about Carlie.

About two hours into the drive, I said, “Thank you,” to Bud.

“No need to thank me,” he said, looking at me in the mirror. He looked back at the road and I studied the back of his head. Thick hair, a little too long for me, small ears tucked in tight. His neck looked sweet where the hair dipped into it. I wanted to stroke that spot, but I left it to my imagination.

We reached home at about five o'clock. As we drove down the hill, I noticed the
Carlie Flo
sitting beside the
Maddie Dee
out on their buoys.

“Daddy finally got the boat out,” I said.

Bud dropped me off. “I hope it helped a little bit,” he said. He gave my hand a warm squeeze, then drove down the hill toward his house.

I woke up on my sixteenth birthday to the smell of angel food cake baking. Grand had the radio in the kitchen set on the oldies station. Big band music drifted up the stairs. I turned and looked at my Mickey alarm clock. His hands told me it was eleven.

I heard Daddy come into the house, go into the kitchen, and talk in low tones to Grand. My daddy, who I didn't know. His secret trips up north. His choice of Stella to keep his bed warm. For a set-in-his-ways man, he was filled with surprises.

Turned out he had one for me.

“Happy birthday,” he called up to me. “Come down a minute.”

I tugged on bell-bottom jeans and threw on the last of Carlie's sweaters that fit me. The short sleeves were frayed, and the waistband rode my belly button, but I didn't care.

I met Daddy in the kitchen, sipping coffee at the table. “Come with me,” he said.

“Where we going?” I said.

“It's a surprise,” he said. I followed him down to the wharf.

My soul leapt as I watched the
Carlie Flo
bob in the harbor.

“She looks good,” I said.

“Give a look aft,” Daddy said. Just as if she knew that he'd asked, the wind moved her so that I could check out her rump board, and I saw that Daddy had changed her name to the
Florine.
No
Carlie
and, surprising to me, no
Stella
. The letters of my name were bright white against the dark green.

“Now, I know you probably wonder why I took your mother's name off,” Daddy said. “I got to tell you the truth. I don't think any less of your mother. I never could. But you take a boat out to sea with her name and, well, it makes me nervous. I need a steady name for her. We've been through it all, thick and thin. We don't see eye to eye sometimes, but I know we see things clear heart to heart. I know I can count on you.”

I reached around him to give him a big hug. The last time I'd done that, my nose had pressed against that place where the center of his rib cage met muscle. Now, my nose pressed into the lower part of his shoulder. “Happy birthday, Florine,” he said.

29

I
went to my clearing often during the fall of 1967. I loved the colors: the reds and browns that some of the bushes took on, the paling of the moss and lichens, the occasional yellow, orange, or pink leaf from an oak or maple that twirled its way down through the pines and spruce that surrounded the little clearing. Crows cawed in their scraggly rooks, warning each other about owls and hawks. Geese, fretful about a possible early winter, honked to one another as they passed overhead. My sorrow for Carlie had seasoned, and she appeared in my mind wrapped in October's colors and moods, set for a long winter before spring.

Except for my three best friends, I kept this place secret. I made a game out of getting there. Turning off the State Park trail and making sure no one was following me, I looked both ways before I ducked down the side path near Barrington's house. Once I reached the clearing, I opened an old knapsack of Daddy's I'd found in Grand's crawl space, took out and spread onto the rocks a small, crocheted blanket I'd made that reminded me of Carlie—spring green for her eyes, red for her hair, and white for her skin—on the three flat rocks. I sat on the blanket, knees up by my chin, arms wrapped around my legs, and I talked to my mother. I no longer pleaded for her to come home. That was out of my hands. Instead, I told her about what was going on in my life. “Grand's been better lately. Not so tired. She's still taking afternoon naps. I'm baking most of the bread, but I don't mind. It's selling good. I'm knitting more, too,” I'd tell the clearing.

If anyone heard me talking out loud to the rocks and the trees and any animals that might be listening, they probably thought I was nuts, but I didn't care. They also might have thought it crazy that I buried small things Carlie had owned in the clearing. Scraps of cloth, used lipstick, a pack of gum I'd found in a pair of her shorts.

One late October day, when the air nipped my nose with the scent of the sweet-sour juice of a cold apple, I came back from Carlie's Clearing and went over The Cheeks through Daddy's backyard to find him loading up the truck. Stella was going through another binge of redecorating. The house needed a new roof, and she'd managed to get Daddy to agree to insulate it so that the upstairs rooms could be opened up and heated. While he was doing that, she planned to clear them of the junk.

Grand had told me all this beforehand so there wouldn't be any surprises. “Now, she's not touching your room at all, Florine, and the things she's throwing out are no good. She wants to make a sewing room out of one of the rooms. The other one will be storage. You can check to see if there is anything you want, she told me.”

I didn't bother. I'd been up there a few times in my life before. Two broken bureaus stuffed with old, mouse-turded-and-pissed-on clothes. A hanging rack filled with Hattie Butts's old lady dresses. Boxes of old records, some magazines, more mouse turds. Stella could have it.

Daddy said good morning to me as I came out of the woods. The truck bed was heaped with the upstairs trash. “You got it all,” I said.

“Most of it,” he said.

“Going to plant some bulbs,” I said. A little while later I was in the side yard, sticking in tulip and daffodil bulbs. I did this every year, in different places. Grand liked to be surprised at where they came up in the spring. That morning, as I finished poking about two dozen bulbs into six-inch holes, I heard the storm door at Daddy's house slam and I glanced up to see Stella sit down hard on the front steps. She stared out over the harbor for a minute, then got up and wove her way up the driveway like a drunk on a three-day bender. Her face was white as sifted flour except for the scar. When she saw me watching her, she covered her face and stood, her shoulders shaking. I hollered, “Grand. Something's wrong with Stella.”

Grand came out to the side yard. “For heaven's sake, what's happened now?” she said, and walked toward her. When she reached her, she put an arm around her shoulders and Stella caved into her chest. Grand turned her around and walked her back to Daddy's house and they went inside. I waited to see what would happen next, but she didn't come out, so I made myself some lunch. Grand came back an hour later while I was rocking on the porch and looking out over the harbor.

She sat down hard in her own rocker. “Floor gets lower every year,” she said.

“Stella okay?” I asked.

“Well, no,” Grand said.

“What's wrong? Daddy give her the heave-ho?”

“Now, I'm going to tell you and you're going to feel bad for saying something so mean,” Grand said. “She had a miscarriage.”

We rocked back and forth a few times. Then I said, “How far along?”

“Not more than a month.”

“I didn't know women could get pregnant at forty-five.”

“Ain't common, but it happens,” Grand said. “I was thirty-five when I had Leeman. That was ancient in those days.”

“I'm sorry I was mean.”

“Don't forget to tell it to Jesus, too,” Grand said. “I invited Stella and Leeman to supper. I might as well invite the rest of 'em over, too. We'll throw together something simple. Winter's almost here and we haven't had time to get together. Pretty soon, all you kids will be flung to the four winds and we'll have missed the chance.”

Grand and I made up a Saturday night supper of beans and biscuits and hot dogs. Madeline brought brown bread and Ida supplied an apple crisp. Everyone on The Point joined us, except for Bud, who was out with Susan.

I hadn't really seen Bud since our trip to Crow's Nest Harbor, after he and Susan had gotten into a fight about it. She came at me in the school hall on the Monday after our trip.

“Who the hell do you think you are, getting Bud to drive you up north?” she yelled.

“He chose to do it,” I said, as people slowed to take us in. “He wanted to.”

“Well, it was stupid and selfish. It better not happen again.” And she stomped off.

Bud was in a foul mood for days. He picked me up, but we barely spoke.

“You going to talk to me, or do you want me to take the bus?” I finally asked him.

“Maybe you should take the bus for the rest of the year,” he said. But lucky for me, Dottie got her license about then, and she drove me to school for a while, until he simmered down and began to give me rides again, now and then.

At the supper at Grand's house, Dottie, Glen, Evie, Maureen, and I sat in the living room eating off TV trays.

Stella clung to Daddy. Every once and a while, when we were in the same room, I'd catch her looking at me and when I did, she'd look away quick. I wondered if she was thinking that the child she'd lost might have looked sort of like me, only with a scar on its face, had it been born.

30

W
inter brought the flu and a couple of bad colds to Grand. She fought being sick like the trouper she was, with cold medicine, both store-bought and one she concocted herself made out of honey, ginger ale, and melted Canada Mints. She drank strong tea until it steamed out of her ears, and even dipped into the whiskey for medicinal purposes.

I made soups and stews and made sure she was comfortable before I went to school. Most of the time she was up and around when I left, but it was obvious that something nasty was dogging her every step. By the time I got home, she was usually lying on the couch, watching television or napping.

Susan decided to talk to me again, although she wasn't nearly as friendly as she had been. “I'm sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “I guess I was jealous for not getting to go. You're like a sister to Bud, he told me. He made that pretty clear.”

I didn't tell her that I didn't think of Bud as a brother. In fact, these days, I had a hard time thinking in a sisterly fashion about any male that caught my eye or brushed my arm, or breathed in my general direction. My body was hot to trot.

Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968 and Robert Kennedy was killed in June. Even our tiny place in the world mourned the losses. I turned seventeen in May. Grand called me Mooney Mulrooney, because my attention sputtered and my moods wavered, dipped, and then straightened like a guttering candle. Days, I worked in the gardens, or baked bread, or sat on the porch and waved in the boats. Nights, I rode twisted wads of blankets jammed up between my legs. I was turned inside out with touching and wanting, wishing someone would touch me back. That wishing felt more real than the rest of my life did.

Spring bumped into summer, excused itself, and moved on. Dottie got a job at the State Park for the summer, leading nature walks during the days. It was interesting, she said, when it wasn't driving her crazy. She had great stories. “So the other day,” she said, “I says to some numb nuts guy, I says, ‘That's poison ivy, sir, best not touch,' but didn't he do it anyway. He says, ‘That's not poison ivy,' and I says, ‘Yes, it is,' and kept walking down the trail. Well, don't you know he comes back a week later and he walks up to me and a group of kids from the YMCA camp and he turns around back-to, hauls down his shorts, pulls up his shirt and he says, ‘See what you caused to happen?' Jesus, he was scabbed to the gills. I says, ‘I warned you not to touch it, sir. See why?' I says to the campers—they was standing with their mouths open like they was catching midges—‘This is why we don't touch poison ivy.' That man asked for the manager, I pointed to him, and off he went.”

“Sounds like an asshole,” I said.

“Probably itched there, too,” Dottie said.

We sat at the end of the wharf, swinging our legs. I looked up into the sky and saw the moon shining through the bright blue daytime sky. “Huh,” I said. I pointed it out to Dottie.

“That's pretty clever, I think,” she said. “You don't see the sun in the middle of the night, but here the moon is hogging part of the sky.”

“I wonder if Carlie is up there,” I said.

“Good a place as any,” Dottie said. We studied the moon for a little while, and then Dottie said, “I add her to my prayers every night, still.”

“You do?” I said, touched to think that she would. “I didn't even know you prayed.”

“How do you think I get all of them strikes?” she said.

One Saturday night about nine o'clock in the middle of August, Grand and I were watching television. I was just thinking about going upstairs when someone knocked at the door.

“You expecting company?” I asked Grand.

“Jimmy Stewart said he'd drop by,” Grand said. “Might be him.”

Jimmy Stewart was Grand's favorite movie star. “He seems like he'd be good company,” she'd say. “Just a nice fella.”

“I'll get it,” I said. I opened the door to find Susan standing there.

“Can you come outside for a minute?” she whispered as if she held a secret that only I should know.

“Who's out there?” Grand shouted.

“It's Susan,” I yelled back.

“Hello Susan,” Grand shouted. “Come on in. Bring Bud, too. Tell him I got some of those molasses cookies he likes.”

I rolled my eyes. “I'll be right back,” I said. I caught Grand halfway up off the sofa, ready to go fix us snacks.

“Don't do that,” I said, sharper than I meant to say it. I took a deep breath and said, softer, “Susan wants to talk to me outside. You okay with that?”

“Well, I guess,” she said. “She's welcome to come in, though.”

“She knows,” I said, and almost ran from the room.

Susan was looking down toward the wharf.

“What's going on?” I asked her.

She stuck her little hands into her patched pockets and sighed. “Well, I hope you're cool with this. I got you a date.”

“What do you mean, you got me a date?”

“Oh man, don't get all weird, okay?”

“Who said I needed a date?” I said.

“No one, but if you want a date, you can have one. I hope you do because he's here.”

“Who's here?”

“Kevin Jewell.”

“Who is that?” I asked, although I knew. He was part hippie, part football player. He was part good-looking, too, and he had a nice smile.

“We met up with him in Long Reach when Bud was getting beer and he rode down just to see you,” Susan said. “Kevin thinks you're groovy, but he told me he was too shy to talk to you in school.”

I snorted. “Sure he is,” I said.

Susan's eyebrows knit a cross-stitch and she said, “He's a good guy. You should give him a chance. If you don't want to do it, I'll make something up. It's up to you.”

She turned and started to walk toward the wharf, while I pondered on it. Inside was Grand and some bad TV, upstairs was a pile of abused blankets and another night French-kissing my pillow. My feet moved to follow Susan to the wharf. I squinted to see if I could see Bud and Kevin, but all the shapes threw shadows.

The tip of a cigarette burned a hole in the dark. I hated that Bud smoked now, but who was I to tell him not to if his girlfriend didn't mind. When we got closer, he said, “Hey.” He took a drag off his cigarette and his eyes glowed orange above it. The glow also revealed a tall boy with hair to his shoulders. Another drag from Bud and the boy smiled and bobbed his head.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” Kevin said.

“Well, now that's out of the way, let's have a beer,” Susan said. Bud reached in back of him and a paper bag rustled. He pulled out a pint can of 'Gansett and handed it to me. I stood against the railing and popped the top. I'd never had a whole can of beer before. But I'd seen them guzzled down, sucked down, belched loud, and pissed out into the snow. I had all of those things in me to do, so I figured that what might happen to me wouldn't be much different.

Kevin came and stood beside me. He smelled of smoke and cloves. The hairs on his arm touched mine and I rubbed my arm. We all took a swallow of beer.

Kevin said to me, “Want to show me around?”

“Take him down by the rocks and the little beach,” Susan said.

“Be careful. Tricky getting down there,” Bud said. “Might fall and get hurt.”

“I know that way just as good as you,” I said to him.

“I know,” Bud said. “And I'd worry about getting stoved up on the rocks.”

“She's a big girl, Buddy,” Susan said. “She can take care of herself.”

“Take my lighter,” Bud said, and handed it to Kevin.

In the small light cast by Bud's lighter, the path looked like a white snake winding its way down toward the beach. Then the path disappeared behind a wall of boulders.

“You got to go round this boulder,” I said. Kevin put his hand on my shoulder and held the lighter up higher. “And then you go this way. Step down,” I said, and I did, and fell, and I twisted my ankle, and then I was on the beach on my butt, hissing pain in and blowing it out through my teeth. The beer in my can blooped as it spilled out onto the sand. Kevin righted it as he knelt beside me.

“You okay?” he said. He held the lighter between us and I saw the beginnings of a mustache above his upper lip. His eyes were light green.

“'S fine,” I hissed. “Just fine.”

“No it's not,” Kevin said. “Hold on to me.” He helped me hobble to a boulder and lowered me against the back of it. He pointed the flickering lighter toward my sneaker.

“Great,” I said. These were my faded blue house sneakers and they were too small. My growing feet had whittled holes over the big toes and the smallest toes. They looked so awful that I put my hands over my eyes and groaned.

But Kevin didn't say anything about the holes, and his hands were gentle. He cupped one palm under the heel of my sneaker and undid the laces. “Double knots, huh?” he said, and smiled. “Me, too.” He worked the sneaker off, then cradled my bare foot in his hand. He held the lighter close to my ankle, warming it up as he peered at it.

“See if you can move your foot,” he said.

I winced, but I did it.

“Wiggle your toes,” he said. I did.

“I think it's okay,” he said. He handed me my beer. “Take a swig,” he said. It tasted like cold metal, but a couple of good swallows took the bite out of the pain.

Kevin sat down beside me.

“You okay?” he asked. I nodded and he moved my hair back behind my ears. “You got the grooviest hair,” he said. “All wild, like some kind of river in the spring.” He nudged me, put his mouth against my ear, and whispered, “I think you're beautiful.”

I giggled, and when I did, I moved my ankle. A bullet of pain shot through it.

“You sure you're okay?” Kevin asked when I jumped.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” Kevin said. He took one of my hands and kissed it. “Because all we have is now. What if the world was going to end in thirty minutes, and this was all the time you had? Wouldn't you rather be with someone than be alone?”

Before I could laugh my ass off at this bunk, his tongue was in my mouth, and my tongue touched his tongue back and then we were on the sand and he was half on top of me and we were kissing to beat the band. Kevin reached between my legs and squeezed. This was much better than my bedding. I moaned and he did it again.

“Like that?” he asked.

He moved my legs apart, dragging my ankle, which he'd been so careful with only a minute before, through the pebbles and sand. As I cried out from the hurt, he said, “Sorry,” and unzipped his pants.

And then, a frail warble hailed my ears, from where, I couldn't tell, but it sounded weak and frantic to find me.

“Florine,” it whined. “Florine.” I pushed against Kevin and he tumbled backward. I struggled up, hopped around on one foot, and looked out at the water, heart thumping hard against my chest. Kevin followed me.

“Who's calling you?” he asked. He put a hand on my back to steady me.

Then, the voice again. “Floorrriinnneeee.”

At the sound of footsteps, Kevin walked away from me, trying to zip up his jeans. I wobbled, trying not to put too much weight on my ankle. Bud said from somewhere above the rocks, “Grand's calling you, Florine.”

“Florine,” the voice came again, and then I recognized it, and could even tell where she was standing—in the road outside the house.

“It's my grandmother,” I said to Kevin.

“Oh man,” he said. “Can't she wait?”

“Florine?” Grand called.

“You want me to tell her you're down here?” Bud asked.

“No, I'll go up,” I said.

“Well,” Kevin whispered into my ear. “Later then. We have a date with destiny.”

With Susan following us, Kevin and Bud helped me up the path to where Grand stood in front of her house.

“I was just about to go get your father,” she said. “You hurt?”

“Just twisted my ankle,” I said.

“Well, thank you boys for bringing her home,” Grand said. She looked at Kevin. “Hello,” she said and stuck out her hand. “I'm Florine's grandmother, Mrs. Gilham.”

“Kevin Jewell, ma'am,” Kevin said, and took her hand. Grand invited them all in, but Kevin said no, he'd best get uptown, and Bud and he and Susan drove past the house as I was limping upstairs to bed. Bud beeped the horn as he drove by, and Grand said, “He seemed like a nice boy.”

I choked down my aggravation as Grand wrapped my ankle in an old Ace bandage. She stood behind me as I made my painful way up each riser. I used one of my pillows to cradle my ankle, and I finally settled down long after Bud drove back home. I wondered if and when Kevin would be back. Something told me never. It turned out that Something was right.