The Sound of Glass (24 page)

Merritt squirmed in her seat. “Cal was away a lot at the firehouse, and it gets pretty cold in Maine. I needed to be warm, and this worked.”

“It’s not cold here.” Loralee looked pointedly at her.

Merritt shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to sleep in—well, except for a football jersey. Besides, I roll the sleeves up so I’m not too warm.”

“Well, we can certainly fix that,” Loralee said, her mind racing in all sorts of directions, and she was happy to follow it down any one because then she didn’t have to think about how bad she felt.

She stood and went to the freezer and yanked it open. Ice coated the surface like the fur on a winter hat. “Make sure your next freezer is self-defrosting. I’ve already taken an ice pick to this, but it doesn’t seem to help.”

Reaching in, she pulled out a gallon of ice cream and then retrieved the fudge sauce from the refrigerator. “And you need a microwave.” She pulled out a small saucepan from one of the lower cabinets and placed it on top of the stove.

“What are you doing?” Merritt asked.

“I’m making you a chocolate sundae. Isn’t that why you came down here?”

Merritt’s face was exactly like Owen’s when she caught him sneaking cookies from the cookie jar. She turned to tell Robert to look, forgetting once more that her husband wasn’t there anymore to share parts of their day, to call attention to the funny things Owen did and said. He was gone, and she’d accepted it and had even learned to live with it. But that didn’t mean she’d ever stop looking for him.

Merritt opened her mouth to deny it, but Loralee cut her off with a wave of the ice-cream scoop. “Owen has a sweet tooth the size of Texas, and it had to come from somewhere, because it didn’t come from me.” She placed three large scoops of ice cream in a bowl. As she poured a good amount of chocolate syrup into the saucepan, she said, “I’m a salty kind of person—I love chips and French fries and pretty much anything fried. Robert loved his desserts, that’s for sure. He couldn’t get enough of my red velvet cake—and Owen, too. I should make one for you. And if half of it is missing when I come down in the morning, I’ll know I was right about you.”

She adjusted the burner under the pan. “Only one burner works on this stove.”

“Loralee?”

“Not that I’m trying to rush you into anything, but a kitchen is the heart of any home. I think once you get the kitchen exactly as you want it, you’ll feel more at home here.”

“Loralee?” Merritt’s voice was insistent enough to make Loralee stop talking and turn to her stepdaughter.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you’re all right? It looks like you’re crying.”

Loralee touched her face and her fingers came away damp. “It’s the allergies,” she said, but didn’t sound convincing even to her own ears.

“Come sit down, all right? I can make my own sundae.”

Too tired to argue, Loralee switched places with Merritt,
watching as she turned off the burner and poured the chocolate over the ice cream. “Do we have any candied cherries or caramel pecans?”

Loralee dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “No, but I’ll add them to the grocery list. Maybe some peanut-butter chips, too?”

“Oh, yes,” Merritt said as she brought her sundae to the table and placed two spoons between them.

“No, thank you,” Loralee said, her stomach already protesting at the sickly sweet smell of it. “And what’s a ‘pee-can’?”

Merritt paused with a brimming spoonful of ice cream and fudge sauce suspended in front of her mouth. “It’s a nut. You know, like in pee-can pie. You’re from the South—I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

“I know what a ‘puh-cahn’ is.
That’s
a nut that you eat. A pee-can is something a soldier takes on maneuvers. If you’re going to be living in the South, you need to know the difference.”

Merritt smiled as she swallowed her first bite. “Well, no matter what you call them, they taste great with caramel sauce and poured on ice cream.”

They sat in a comfortable silence while Merritt ate and Loralee studied her face for future makeup lessons. When Merritt was finished, she washed and dried her bowl and spoon, then put them away before pouring herself a tall glass of water to take upstairs.

“Aren’t you coming up?” she asked as she stood by the doorway.

Loralee shook her head. “In a little while. Since your daddy died, I find that I can’t sleep through the night anymore. I think I’ll watch a little TV for a bit. Hopefully there will be something good on one of the three channels that have any reception.”

“Good luck with that.” Merritt paused in the doorway, almost swaying with indecision. “Thanks for the sundae.”

“You’re welcome.” She stared into her stepdaughter’s blue eyes, and saw her son’s. “Thank you for letting Owen and me stay here.”

Merritt gave a perfunctory nod. “Good night, Loralee.”

“Good night, Merritt.”

She waited until Merritt’s slow footsteps reached the top of the stairs, followed by the quiet click of her bedroom door closing. Then Loralee turned off the kitchen light and let herself out into the back garden.

The smell of rain hung heavy in the air, the cloud-covered sky above a moonless and starless dome of black. A storm-born breeze trickled into the garden, the sea-glass wind chimes waltzing in slow circles.

Loralee looked up at the sky, realizing that what Merritt had told Owen wasn’t completely true—that sometimes the dark simply absorbed all the light you couldn’t see, and you just had to have enough love and faith in your heart to trust that it was there.

She sat on the bench for a long time, her eyes dry as she studied the darkened sky even after the rain began to fall.

MERRITT

I
fed the red and white checked material through the sewing machine, the pulsing needle like the mouth of a baby bird. My first two attempts had been disastrous, ending up with knotted thread and clumped fabric. Despite popular opinion, operating a sewing machine wasn’t like riding a bicycle. The needle jammed again, pulling on the fabric, my foot lifting from the pedal a fraction of a minute too late to prevent another train wreck.

I knew part of the problem was my lack of concentration. Each inch of fabric, each tiny stitch, every whir of the motor reminded me of my grandmother. Not just of us sewing together, but of the joy we’d felt in creating something. Which brought to mind the letter she’d received, and the handkerchiefs, and how I’d never seen the sewing machine again after that day. I stared down at the knot of
fabric bunched beneath the needle, but saw only bright red monograms on a white linen handkerchief.

“What are you making?”

I looked up at Owen and Maris, who’d approached without my being aware, and felt a little offended that they couldn’t tell what it was. “A tablecloth.”

“Or maybe a drop cloth?” Gibbes moved to stand behind the children, looking over their heads at the red and white disaster.

“Why are you here?” I asked, too annoyed to check my manners.

“It’s good to see you, too. I rang the doorbell and Rocky let me in. I just saw my last patient of the day and figured now would be a good time to pick up all the recycling boxes.” He indicated the sewing machine. “You need to hold the fabric with a really light touch—don’t try to feed it into the needle. Slowly press the pedal to gently pull it forward and you just let the fabric move so it doesn’t bunch. Makes it a lot easier.”

I remembered my mother and grandmother both telling me the same thing: that I needed to slow down and focus. I sometimes wondered whether they would even recognize me now. Except for the decision to move to Beaufort, my life for the last decade had been a plodding and deliberate existence, every day planned to go unnoticed and unremarked.

Frustrated, I turned off the machine and slid back the chair. “And how would you know so much about sewing?”

Gibbes stepped back as I stood. “Everybody had to take home ec in high school. And shop. So I know how to use a needle and thread as well as a hammer and nail.”

“I’m guessing the needle-and-thread thing works out great for you in your chosen profession.”

“Yes, ma’am. And I’ve been told that I’m pretty handy with my tools, too.”

Our eyes met as we both realized what he’d actually said.

He laughed, not looking embarrassed at all. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it that way. Although I refuse to retract my statement.”

I put a hand over my mouth, trying to hide my own laugh, and for a brief moment I thought he might actually be
flirting
with me. My laugh died quickly as I remembered that I wasn’t the kind of woman men flirted with. At least, not according to Cal.

Flustered, I tried to gather the fabric to tuck it out of the way. I managed to do nothing more than bunch it up so that it would require ironing if and when I ever finished it, but at least I had time to allow my face to return to normal.

“Mrs. Heyward?”

“Yes, Maris?”

“Can you take us to the marina? Rocky says he hasn’t been there yet.”

“I, um . . . Will we need life jackets?”

“Not unless you’re planning on getting on a boat or going swimming,” Gibbes said, not exactly hiding his smile. “I think Maris and Owen just wanted to go look at the boats.”

I looked at the wide and hopeful eyes of the children, trying desperately to think of an excuse to say no. I wanted to tell them that I’d already paid my dues by riding across the bridge and getting in a boat, but that sounded inadequate even to me. Turning to Owen, I asked, “Is it okay with your mother?”

“She’s resting and I didn’t want to bother her.”

My usual annoyance that I felt when Loralee retreated to her room for a nap was nudged aside by worry. I remembered how tired she’d looked the previous night, and how she’d blamed her insomnia on her stuffy nose and itchy eyes due to allergies. Her explanations made sense, but when I thought of her streaming eyes, I couldn’t completely shake off a sliver of doubt.

“Yes, let’s let her sleep.” I thought desperately for another excuse. “Did you clean up your LEGOs?”

“Sort of,” Owen said. “Maris made a castle that looks like a
horse stable with, like, one hundred horses that all have names and are owned by a princess. And I made a special cannon that can blow down the doors of the castle but not hurt any of the horses or people. It just blows doors off things.”

“So we left them out so we could play with them again later,” Maris completed, as if they were already an old married couple.

“There’s water at the marina there, right?”

Owen and Maris both tried to hide their giggles behind their hands. “Yes,” Owen explained. “The marina is where they keep the boats. In the water.”

“I know that,” I said. “What I meant is that I can’t swim, and I don’t think it’s a good idea if I’m the only adult with the two of you—”

Gibbes interrupted. “If you wait until I get all those boxes of newspapers loaded into my truck, I’ll go with you. I’m an excellent swimmer.” He grinned like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“Yes, yes!” The children hopped up and down like jumping beans.

I looked at Gibbes, who just shrugged. “Looks like we’re going to the marina, then.”

We weren’t going
in
the water or
on
it—just
near
it. Surely I could do that. “All right. Let me go grab a hat and some sunscreen for me and the children. I’ll be right back.”

When I reached my room, I caught my reflection in the mirror over the dressing table and for the first time in a while I actually looked at myself long enough to admit that I didn’t like what I saw. The ill-fitting blouse and skirt were more than unflattering. They were the kinds of things invisible women wore. I’d worn these clothes and others just like them for years, throwing them on in the morning without thought. Even my own mother, who was as no-frills as mothers got, loved wearing the color blue and the way it made her eyes shine.

I leaned into the mirror, staring harder, remembering a favorite
blue blouse I’d worn when I’d first met Cal, and again several times while we’d been dating. And how I didn’t remember when I’d stopped wearing it and had moved into the uniform of a woman who didn’t want to be noticed.

The flesh rose on the back of my neck as the air conditioner whirred on, making me shiver as I imagined Cal watching me stare at myself in the mirror.
Never turn your back on a fire.
It was almost as if the words had been whispered in my ear. But instead of Cal’s voice, it had been my own.

Quickly I unbuttoned my blouse and slipped out of the skirt, then pulled out the shorts and top I’d borrowed from Loralee that she’d apparently mistakenly returned to my room with my clean and folded laundry. I put them on, my only regret being that I had only my loafers for my feet.

I slathered on sunscreen, then grabbed my hat and the bottle of sunblock before heading downstairs. The recycling boxes had already been taken from the upstairs hallway, and I stopped to pick up a newspaper on the bottom step that must have fallen out.

I placed it on the hall table, planning on giving it to Gibbes, then followed the sound of Owen’s voice to the kitchen. Gibbes and the two children sat at the table, the Battleship game box open, and Gibbes was reading the directions.

He stopped reading, then watched as I put sunscreen on Maris’s face and arms and then Owen’s. “All right,” I said. “You guys ready?”

“You guys?” Maris’s freckled nose scrunched up.

Gibbes returned the directions to the box and stood. “That’s how our neighbors to the north say ‘y’all.’ Not as easy on the ears, but it gets the job done.”

“Really?” I said. “I’ll make many concessions to fit in, but I promise you that saying ‘y’all’ won’t be one of them.”

Gibbes pretended to look offended. “If I weren’t a gentleman, I’d place a wager on that.”

“And if I weren’t a lady, I’d tell you how little I care about what you think.”

“Spoken like a Southern lady already,” Gibbes said as he ushered us out of the kitchen. “Before the end of the year you’ll probably be claiming that crabbing is a sport and that the season between summer and winter is football.”

I almost said that he wouldn’t know, since I doubted we’d still be seeing each other by then, but I didn’t. Not because I didn’t think it was true, but because he was looking at me in a different way than he’d done when we’d first met. Seeing me not as Cal’s unlikely wife, but somebody else. Anybody else.

We headed down Bay Street, crossing toward the water at the first light. The blue sky offered no respite from the relentless sun, and I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the heat. The long Maine winters seemed very far away, like a fading dream upon waking. Lying in bed at night, I sometimes imagined the icy taste of snow on my tongue. But then I’d hear the wind chimes and it would be gone, replaced with the tang of salt air.

“Did you know that if humans had the same metabolism as a hummingbird, we’d have to eat a hundred and fifty thousand calories a day?” Owen directed this at nobody in particular, but I thought it was probably meant for Maris.

She wore her blue sparkly sunglasses again, and with her pixie face she looked like an adorable bug when she turned to look at Owen. “We have hummingbird feeders off of our back porch and the little birds swarm all over them. You should come see it.”

He looked at me as if Maris had suddenly gone off script.

“Sounds like fun,” I interceded.

It was a weekday, so only a few boats were out on the water, the rest docked, bobbing up and down like babies rocked by the waves. I felt none of my fear there, the sun and heat making it easy to forget an icy storm and the freezing water beneath a bridge far away.

It was only when I felt my scar, or saw it when looking in a
mirror, or when I found myself missing my mother, that I remembered. But each time the pain lessened, the scar tissue thickening. I’d overheard Loralee telling Owen that every time we remembered something, we weren’t remembering the event itself but the last time we’d remembered it. It was our way of creating filters between our past and present, creating what we chose to recall and what we’d rather forget. I hoped she was right. After knowing her for even such a short time, I’d begun to suspect that she was probably right about a lot of things.

It was ebb tide, the pluff mud exposed beyond the small seawall at the side of the marina’s parking lot. We walked along the edge, examining the mud and grass for signs of life.

At first glance it seemed still, the grass wilting in the direct onslaught of the sun, the puckered mud thirsting for water. Maris got down on her haunches, her tanned arms around her knees, and the rest of us followed. A flash of movement caught our attention as a tiny crab scrambled sideways from his hiding place by a rock to the thick forest of grass. One of his claws was more than twice the size of the other one, giving him a comic appearance. His lopsided appendages didn’t seem to hinder his movement, and he’d disappeared into the marsh within seconds.

“That’s a fiddler crab,” Maris announced. “Because his big claw makes him look like he’s playing a fiddle.”

Not to be outdone, Owen said, “Only the male fiddler crabs have the big claw, and if they lose the big one in a fight with another male, the smaller one swells up, and a little one grows where the big one used to be. They wave them around during mating season to attract females to their burrows so they can make baby fiddler crabs. That makes no sense to me, but that’s what it says in the science book I found in my room.” Owen pushed his glasses up on his nose.

Gibbes nudged me, but I didn’t dare look at him, because I was pretty sure I’d laugh hard enough to fall over into the mud. Instead we stayed where we were, looking for signs of life. “It’s amazing,” I
said, watching the tiny crabs scuttle across the mud, their oddly shaped eyes watching us warily.

“What is?” asked Gibbes. “The fact that female fiddler crabs find oversize claws attractive?”

I pierced him with my “museum curator” look, which I’d once used on busloads of schoolchildren. Looking back at the mud, I said, “No. That something that seems so lifeless is actually teeming with life. If Owen hadn’t been telling me all that he’s learned about the marsh mud, I would have walked by without really looking.”

Gibbes stood, his eyes traveling across the water to the sound. “I didn’t figure that out until I got to med school.”

“What? That fiddler crabs have odd mating rituals?” I said it before I could think twice.

I was rewarded with a smile that made me look away. “No. That we miss a lot when we’re not paying attention. That things aren’t always as they appear to be.”

I stood to face him, the salt air breathing to life something I hadn’t felt in years. Something that felt a lot like courage, but couldn’t be. I wasn’t brave. Or strong. I just seemed to have a knack for landing on my feet.

“Like what?” I asked, meeting his eyes although I wanted to turn away.

“Gibbes Heyward? Is that you?”

We both turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. A boat filled with people and loud music was approaching the dock closest to the parking lot. The man behind the steering wheel lifted a beer can in our direction as a curvy redhead wearing what could only be described as Daisy Dukes and a bikini top easily hopped out of the boat, landing barefoot on the dock, then jogged her way toward us. I turned to watch the kids, reminding them to stay on the wall and out of the mud, unwilling to be a witness to a wardrobe malfunction that seemed a foregone conclusion.

“It is you,” she said, whipping her long hair from her shoulders in case we’d missed a view of her cleavage as she’d run. “You haven’t changed a bit, Gibbes.” She blinked heavily mascaraed lashes at him. Close up, I could tell that she was much older than I’d originally thought, more likely in her early forties than the twenty-something I’d thought her to be from her clothing. “Don’t you remember me?” She smelled like a mixture of cigarettes, coconut oil, and sweat, and I stepped back out of range.