Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (18 page)

33

A
fter the funeral, Dottie stayed once and awhile, but she was busy with school and bowling and I didn't want to make her feel like she had to take care of me, so I didn't push it. She'd been through so much with me, being there for me when Carlie disappeared. Enough was enough. As Grand had said, “Well, she's a restless soul.”

I didn't return to school. It made me tired just thinking of trying to get through every day at home, let alone trying to fake it in a place that had never set right with me in the first place. I didn't have the energy to face any of them. Mostly, I just wanted to sleep.

I was abed one morning when a horn beeped outside and someone knocked at the door. “No,” I said into my pillows, both to getting up and to answering the door. The horn beeped again, and I knew it was Bud, and I knew they were waiting for me.

Dottie hollered up the stairs. “You ever coming back to school?”

“I don't know,” I said. I heard Dottie stomp upstairs and then she stood in the doorway.

“Been three weeks,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

The horn beeped again. “You'd better go. You'll be late,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, and clomped downstairs and out the door. The Fairlane chugged up the hill as I stared at the thin morning light on the ceiling. “Get up,” I said. Grand wouldn't have brooked my slacking.

So I got up, I cleaned downstairs, then went upstairs and made up Grand's bed. I hadn't the heart to change her sheets. Her musty lavender smell was fading, but if I breathed deep, I could catch a whiff. Days, I wore her dresses, though they hung off me like popped balloons. It was a comfort to me.

After I picked up the house, I turned on the television, cranked up the volume, and settled back. I sat through soaps, talk, crafts, and cooking shows. During commercials I made tea and grabbed snacks. Naptime was three thirty. After my nap, I rocked on the porch. I hummed “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” much as Grand might have done, and when the winter sun set, I washed my face and hands and maybe took a bath.

If Dottie came over, I'd make some kind of dinner, mostly from the frozen stores in Grand's freezer, along with the canned goods we'd put up. The stash was beginning to go down and I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to buy more food. But I didn't want to leave the cocoon of the house just yet.

After a month, the school called. I only answered the phone because I thought it might be Dottie or Daddy.

“This is Vice Principal Brown calling from Montgomery High School. May I speak to Florine Gilham, please?”

“She's not here.”

“Do you know when she'll return?”

“No, I don't.”

“Would you take a message down?”

“Sure.” I clunked the phone down and mumbled, “Now where's that pen?” loud enough for Mrs. Brown to hear. Finally, I picked up the receiver and said, “All right.”

“Tell Florine that she needs to come back to school, or she's in danger of flunking out. She hasn't been in class for over a month, and the school is concerned about her. We know that she lost her grandmother, and we're sympathetic to that. But she has her future to think about, and she's a good student and we would hate for her to not finish high school. It would be a shame.”

“Okay, I'll tell her. Thanks for calling.”

“Did you get all that? It was quite a lot.”

“Oh yes.”

“Be sure she gets the message.”

“I will.”

“Goodbye, Florine. Come back soon.”

I slammed down the phone. I thought about calling her and asking her to describe me. If she could do that, maybe I'd consider coming back. But chances are she wouldn't recognize me. Hell, I didn't recognize myself.

December's dark mornings tamped down my efforts to get up in the morning. Why bother? I wondered. I felt tied down with invisible ropes, like the story I'd read once about a man named Gulliver, who had been staked to the ground by the tiny Lilliputians. I didn't want to jar my heart awake. That would bring tears and upset, and it just seemed easier to shut it all out.

I began sleeping until 9:00, then 10:00
A.M
. Then past noon. Clocks danced away the minutes as I drowsed. Cars and trucks went up the hill and growled as they came back down to the harbor. Seagulls yonked and Ray Clemmons's beagle, Hoppy, barked the day away while I burrowed under the covers, safe. I thought about shutting the bedroom door and leaving a sign on the outside that read D
O
N
OT
D
ISTURB
T
ILL
S
PRING
. I'd all but decided to do that when a couple of things happened that got me cranked up.

34

I
always made sure I was up when Daddy stopped by on afternoons on his way home from carpentry jobs. He'd bring me milk, sugar, and tea to keep me stocked up.

“You okay?” he asked me every day. “You need anything?”

“I'm fine,” I'd answer. We'd talk a little in the kitchen, then he'd say, “Well, I got to go across the road. You're welcome to supper. Stella would love to have you over.”

I doubted that, but I let it lie. “I have leftovers, Daddy, but thanks,” I said.

The school had called him, too. “Might help you take your mind off Grand. Keeping busy helps. She'd be the first one to tell you that,” he said.

“I'll go back soon,” I lied.

One Wednesday night in December, I was watching the news when someone kicked at the door with what sounded like a big boot. I jumped before a voice yelled, “It's Bud.”

I opened the door and he walked through it, carrying a large cooking pot.

“Ma steamed up some mussels at home,” he said. “Too many. She doesn't want them going to waste, so she told me to bring them over, see if you wanted some. Lots of butter and garlic and some wine she threw in on a notion. Ain't half bad.”

I was so far from hungry that I almost didn't know what it felt like anymore. “That's nice of her,” I said. He thrust the pan at me and I took it.

“Want to stay a minute?” I asked.

“Okay. But I got to pick up Susan. She wants to see some movie.”

“How's she doing?”

“Good.”

I put the pot on the kitchen counter.

“Sit down,” I said.

He started to do it, and then stood up. “I forgot,” he said. He reached into the back pocket of his flannel pants.

“You like lemon?” he asked, holding it out to me. In the callused darkness of his palm, the lemon shone like a piece of summer sun.

I took it from him, my fingers brushing his smooth skin. The lemon was warm from being in his pocket, and I cupped it between my hands.

“You better eat them mussels up,” Bud said.

“I will. Tell Ida thanks.”

He headed for the door, but then he turned around and said, “I forgot to tell you about that old guy. Remember his wife died and he didn't know what to do? Bert saw to it that he got some help. So he got taken care of.”

“That's good.”

“Ma said not to worry about washing the pot.” And he was gone.

I tossed the brightness that was the lemon from one hand to the other for a while, remembering how Carlie had loved yellow. I bit into the skin and the zest tingled in my nostrils. I cut it in half and squeezed it over the mussels. I ate every one. I dreamed of gold that night, of lemons. Of people walking away into the sun. Of Bud's hands.

I got a rude awakening the next morning at about eleven o'clock, in the middle of a good drowse.

“Florine?”

Stella's voice grated through the four layers of blankets over me and I raised them up to see her standing in the bedroom doorway. The white apron she wore at the store had grease spots on the front. She looked mad.

“How'd you get in?” I asked. She didn't answer.

“I'm going downstairs, and I want you to join me,” she said.

I tucked myself under the covers again and hoped she would just go away.

“Florine,” she called from the bottom of the stairs. “I'm not leaving until you come down here. I mean it. The sooner you get down here, the sooner you get rid of me.”

That gave me a reason to get up. I hauled my butt out of bed and pulled on Carlie's old Popham Beach sweatshirt and a pair of dirty jeans, went to the bathroom and peed. I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, then caught it up in a rubber band. I considered brushing my teeth, but figured that tea would just undo that chore so I went downstairs to the shrill of the kettle on full boil.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Set down,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Is Daddy okay?” I asked as I stayed on my feet.

“What do you think?”

“He looked fine last night when he stopped by.”

“Of course he did,” Stella said. She set the mugs on the table and sat down. I needed milk, so I went to the refrigerator and brought a quart back to the table.

“Want some?” I asked.

“No. Set down, Florine,” Stella said, and her voice shook. I took my time lowering my ass into the chair seat. The tea bag dangling in my mug had a tear in it, and some of the leaves floated on the top of the water. I poked at them to make them go down, and then I bobbed the tea bag up and down, releasing even more leaves.

“I took your father to the hospital this morning,” Stella said. “He had chest pains.”

I stopped the tea bag in mid-bob.

“He's okay,” she went on, “but the doctor said he needs to slow down, stop drinking, and not get so worked up.”

“Don't get him so worked up, then,” I said.

“Jesus, you make me tired. You're the reason your father is in the shape he's in.”

“Well, that's bullshit.”

“He's worried himself sick about you. He's on the verge of a heart attack, because you're sleeping all hours and you've quit school. How the hell can he not be worried?”

“Tell him not to worry. I'm fine. It's a waste of his time.”

Stella got up and pushed in her chair. “No. You do that. You say that to his face. And by the way, hating me only hurts your father more. I don't give a damn if you think I'm scum, but I won't have your father sick over it. He thinks he's lost you, too.”

“He can come and see me anytime. I'm right here,” I said.

“Oh, you're here, all right. Even when you're not in front of him, you're here. I'm sick of you playing on the fact that you've lost your mother. He thinks you think he's to blame. He's taken it all on, you stupid girl. And, by the way, you're not the only one who has lost someone. I know a little about that, too.” Her hand moved toward the scar on her face.

“Talk about playing on the fact,” I said.

She took her tea mug to the sink, ran water inside of it, put it down with a clunk, turned back to me, and said, “I love your father. I wouldn't have had him go through what he's gone through, but he did, and I was blessed to have a chance with him. I hope you get to be with the love of your life someday. And I hope you don't have to put up with some brat who hates your guts just because you're not who she wishes you were.”

“I wish you'd died,” I said. “That's what I wish.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “I came by to tell you about your father. Grand would be ashamed of the way you've talked to me. If you keep up with this nonsense, and Leeman gets to feeling worse, I will be on you every day until one of us kills the other one. Do you want me in your face every day?”

I clenched my hands into fists deep within my pockets.

Then her gray eyes filled with tears and she said, “It wasn't my fault, Florine.”

She went back to work and I tossed what was left of my tea into the sink. The tea leaves scattered over the bottom. I knew there was a fortune there but I didn't know how to read it so I turned on the faucet and flushed it all down the drain.

Daddy came by at about five o'clock. “What's cooking?” he asked.

“Mac and cheese,” I said. “Grand's recipe.”

“Good,” he said. “Is Dottie coming by?”

“Isn't for Dottie.”

“Oh,” he said.

“You going to tell me you went to the doctor?” I asked.

“I told Stella not to tell you,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.” I looked into his face. Really gave it a look. The shadows around his eyes broke my heart. He shuffled his feet and said, “I'd better get home.”

I picked up the casserole and said, “I'm coming with you.”

He paused. Then he said, “Let's go, then.”

We found Stella at the stove. She turned to greet Daddy with a look that made her look about seventeen. But when she saw me, she stopped and stared.

“I thought you could use a lesson on how to make good mac and cheese,” I said. “Yours is terrible.”

35

T
he next morning I went to the loose brick behind the stove where Grand kept her pin money. I fished a twenty out of the wad and put the brick back. Then I stepped outside for the first time in a month and took a walk up to Ray's.

The cold air pinched my nostrils together and I wrapped my jacket around me as I bustled up the road. Ray was reading the morning paper by the register. He looked up over his reading glasses and said, like I'd been there yesterday, “Cold enough for you?”

“Few more degrees and we can call it winter,” I said.

“What you need?” Ray asked.

“Bunch of stuff,” I said.

“You know where it is,” he said and went back to the paper.

I moved down the little aisle trying to think about what I needed. I hadn't made a list but it didn't matter. I was thinking about buying chocolate squares for brownies when Ray said, “You selling wreaths this year?”

“Oh my God,” I said. I had completely forgotten about the annual wreath making. I must have looked like a fish gasping for air, because Ray said, “We can skip a year.”

“No. We can't,” I said. Grand wouldn't stand for it.

“We got five orders from Connecticut,” Ray said. “And two come from Mass.”

“Okay,” I said. My mind slid like slippers on a waxed floor as I tried to gather my thoughts. How could I make this happen? I didn't know if I was up to it.

“Might talk to Madeline,” Ray said, reading my mind. “She can probably help.”

I bought the milk and a Heath bar and walked back to Grand's house, thinking how she'd left me everything except instructions on how to understand what she'd really meant to everyone. I sat in my rocker on the porch and ate the Heath bar for breakfast. I was working the butter toffee off my teeth with my finger when the phone rang.

I tripped over Grand's knitting basket, scattering balls of yarn.

“We just got another two orders,” Ray said, when I answered. “Wreaths for Mrs. Caldwell. And she wanted to know if Grand had her sweater made. Grand told her she'd make one for her granddaughter.”

“Damned if I know, Ray. She didn't leave me a list.”

“Well, you find a sweater looks like it would fit a kid, bring it up and I'll ship it out.”

I hung up and rubbed away a fingerprint that was smudged on the phone box. “What else have you got me into?” I said to Grand.

I gathered the yarn up and put it back into the knitting basket. Beside the basket was a little bag. I peeked inside and saw a half-made child's sweater. I held its tough little stitches to my nose and inhaled the lanolin in the wool and I almost keeled over from memories of Grand knitting and humming while I read a book, her bulky form beside me, her hair mussed up, and her silver-framed glasses catching light. I hugged the little half-made sweater to me until I could stand without crumbling. Then I went to find Madeline to have a talk about Christmas wreaths.

She said, “I've got it covered. Has to be soon—how about this Sunday? I can get Bert out there and I know Stella will boss your father out. I've talked to Ida and Stella about it and they'd be happy to come to our house this year. You don't mind, do you?”

“No,” I said, relieved beyond belief. “I don't mind at all.” Madeline would make it her own event, but it probably would have happened, anyway. The wreath making had passed on.

Or passed out. At the wreath making, Madeline filled a punch bowl with wine and god knows what else and she, Stella, and Ida got lit and made their version of a holiday wreath with toilet paper rolls and unused tampons. They took off their bras and hooked them onto the wreath and laughed so hard it's a wonder they didn't wet themselves.

“Let's swipe some wine and get out of here,” Dottie said. We took a half fifth of Gallo Rosé into her bedroom and took a couple of swigs from it.

I said, “Carlie liked little wreaths. ‘Not everyone has a big door,' she'd say.”

“I remember 'em,” Dottie said. “They was sweet. Remember that one she made out of lobster claws she saved up from the Shack?” I did. I had it hanging in my room.

In the living room, Ida and Madeline laughed at something Stella said. It was hard for me to imagine Stella being funny. I took a gulp of wine. “Grand would have a cow if she saw them now,” I said.

“They're being assholes,” Dottie said.

The rosé warmed my face. “I think I'm getting drunk,” I said.

“Kinda lightweight, aren't you?”

“Don't you feel anything?”

“I been drinking for a while now,” Dottie said. “I down a six-pack no problem.”

“Where you drinking?”

“Bud's car. Glen's truck. Parties. You should come out with us.”

But I couldn't imagine chugging beer and going to a party. I could never go back.

The women in the living room exploded into laughter. “That's it,” Madeline screamed, “that's all he does. That means I'm supposed to roll over and open up wide and say, ‘Come on in honey, the water's fine.'”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dottie said. “I don't friggin' need to know this crap. Let's get them back to business and finish up.”

It took us till ten or so that night, but in spite of our wooziness, or because of it, we ended up with thirty beautiful wreaths that would have made Grand proud. Madeline handed the most beautiful one to me as I went out the door.

“Don't mind us,” she said, swaying a little as her brown eyes filled up. “We miss Grand, too, honey. I would have given up all this silliness just to hear her laugh. You need anything, you holler. You're one of our own.” She gave me a sloppy kiss and a hug that squeezed the breath out of me. “Night,” she said. “Careful out there, it's slippery.”

I walked toward Grand's house, still floating in a pink glow from the wine. When I slipped and fell on my ass on the road, I picked myself up and turned to see if anyone had seen me, but all seemed clear, except for the two ghosts who now followed me; one small and slender, carrying a red claw wreath that clinked as she walked, and one big-boned and older, holding a fragrant, soft-needled wreath with brilliant scarlet berries and prayers woven throughout it.

The day after the wreath party, I picked up the child's sweater and studied it. It was a fairly simple pattern, one that Grand had taught me years before, and I decided to try and finish it up. I hadn't clicked two needles together since she'd died, but after a few starts and stops it started to make sense again. I hustled the ivory-colored stitches back and forth along the rows, and the creamy ball of yarn shrank as the sweater grew. I pictured Someone's mother pulling it over a small head, popping it past a little nubbin of a nose and down over a stubborn chin, then smoothing electrified hair while Someone stood, impatient to travel on to bigger things. This sweater would become part of Someone's life. If I knit it well, it would be passed down to Someone Else.

By two o'clock, it was done. I held it up and looked it over. Although I could see where Grand's work stopped and mine began, I was pretty sure that no one else would be able to tell. I had a few sad seconds thinking that, from now on, all the sweaters I made would be my own work. But I shook it off because I needed to wash and block the sweater and get it up to Ray so he could ship it out.

I was rolling it in a towel to squeeze the water out of it when Bud drove by on his way home. I looked out the kitchen window and he caught my eye and we smiled at each other. To my surprise, my nipples went hard, and I realized I was so horny that I would have welcomed the hands of a clock on me.

When someone rapped on the door that night at about ten, I was watching television and casting stitches on for another sweater. Dottie stood there. “Just got back from bowling. We played a team in Brunswick. We won,” she said. “Saw the TV light and decided to come over and say hi.” I let her in and she pulled off her boots. She was wearing nylons and her toes looked mashed. She pulled them off.

“Want some socks?” I asked.

“Good idea,” she said.

I put on the kettle. “You get out the cocoa and I'll go get socks. You staying here?”

“Not tonight, I guess. Just a visit.”

When I came downstairs with the socks, she was sitting in front of the television with a sleeve of saltines in front of her. The kettle shrieked as I handed her the socks. I went into the kitchen and found the box of cocoa by the sink. I spooned it into two mugs, mixed in sugar and milk, and stirred until it all melted. I took the mugs and some milk into the living room and set them on coasters on the coffee table.

“You got any peanut butter?” she asked, and I fetched it and a knife to spread it.

“See the sweater I made?” I asked her. I held it up to her.

“Ain't that cunnin',” she said. She touched a little sleeve and ran her hand over the front of the sweater. “Soft,” she said.

She layered peanut butter on a cracker. “Want one?” she asked.

“No.”

She munched, I knit, we sipped, and we watched
Hawaii Five-O
for about ten minutes. Then Dottie set down her cocoa cup, walked over to the TV and turned the volume down. She looked at me as serious as I'd ever seen her.

“I come to a decision,” she said. “I'm going to be a pro bowler.”

“Can you make money doing that?” I asked.

“Sure can. They got pro leagues. Barb Raymond does it, why can't I? The guy manages Bowla Rolla, Gus—he said I should go pro, and he would know. He sees hundreds of people bowl every day. Says my style is a lot like Barb Raymond's.”

“What makes her so special?” I asked.

Dottie crouched and looked through the living room wallpaper to a V of pins at the end of an imaginary bowling lane. “Moves like a cat down to the line. Lets her ball go and WHAM! Strike. WHAM! Strike.” Dottie straightened up. “Know how it hits you that you were meant to do a thing? Well, God spoke unto me and said, ‘Dottie, thou shalt bowl.'”

“Madeline know?”

“Not yet.”

We went back to looking at Jack Lord. A lock of black hair fell over his forehead. It killed me when that happened, and it also reminded me of Bud. I smiled.

“Book 'em, Danno,” Dottie said.

A commercial came on and Dottie went on about the plan she had to get a job at Bowla Rolla, so she could get in some free practice when the lanes were shut down.

Then she said, “What you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Don't know. Maybe get married. Have kids.”

“You got a guy in mind?”

“Maybe Bud,” I said.

“How's that going to happen?” Dottie said. “I thought we talked about him and Glen being like our brothers. Besides, he's hot and heavy with Susan.”

“Look,” I said, “you got your dreams, I got mine.” My face got hot. “I tell you something I got in my heart, and you make fun of it.”

“Don't get so riled up.”

“Might seem stupid to you, but it isn't to me.”

“Don't take it so hard,” Dottie said. “I didn't mean nothing by it. Calm down.” She got up and stretched, and then she knelt down and pretended to throw a ball down a lane. Then she shouted, “Strike!”

“No,” I said. “You missed a pin to the right. Definitely a spare.”

She shrugged and started for the door. I followed her. She pulled off the socks, pulled on her boots, and put her coat on. She stuffed the nylons into her coat pocket. The wind tagged us both when she opened the door.

“I'll be seeing you,” Dottie said, and she shut the door. She hadn't gotten two steps when I opened it again and hollered, “I was wrong! The pin just fell over. Strike!”

She smiled. “I knew that. Dottie Butts don't spare nothing.”

I closed the door. “You got your dreams,” I said again to her back. “And I got mine.” But a part of me knew she might be right. I needed to get out more. Maybe I could take a chance and walk over the mountain, so to speak, without worrying about someone keeling over or driving off to God knows where.