True Colors (35 page)

Out on the highway, she drove past Bill Gates’s gated compound and the gorgeous lodge and spa called Alderbrook, where yuppies congregated for wine tastings, weddings, and hot stone massages.

As she drove, the Canal bent and curved beside her; sometimes the road was inches from the water and sometimes there were acres in between them. Finally, as she neared Sunset Beach, she slowed and turned onto the sloped gravel driveway that led to the house she’d purchased only last week.

Her newest project was a sprawling 1970s rambler, originally built as a summer home for a large Seattle family. There were six bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen the size of a toolbox, and a dining room that could comfortably fit a motorboat. A huge covered deck jutted out over the Canal, and to its right, stairs led down to the two-hundred-foot-long dock that was white with bird droppings. Every square inch of this place was dilapidated or rotting or just plain ugly, but the property made it all worth it. Along the road, huge cedars shielded the property and ringed the flat grass patch like a protective circle of friends. In front of the trees, in full bloom now, were giant rhododendron bushes and mounds of white Shasta daisies. The two-acre parcel sloped gently down to a sand beach. White pieces of opalescent oyster shells decorated the shoreline, interspersed with beautiful bits of gem-colored glass. A hundred years ago this stretch of sand had been a dumping ground for broken bottles. Time had taken that trash and turned it into treasure. Every time Winona looked at that impossibly colored beach, she thought of her mother and smiled.

She parked in the grass, grabbed a Diet Coke out of the cooler in the backseat, and considered how best to redesign the house. Obviously she was going to use the building’s footprint and remodel extensively. It was the only way she’d be able to have a house so close to the water these days. She could, however, go up a floor. That meant opening up the downstairs, making sure every room had a view, and creating a master suite, master bath, and office upstairs.

Perfect.

She retrieved her meatball submarine sandwich and her notepad from the car. Sitting on the front lawn, she ate her lunch and began drawing out interior plans. She was so enmeshed in the scale of rooms and the positioning of doors that she didn’t even notice that she wasn’t alone until Vivi Ann said her name.

Winona turned. “Hey. I didn’t even hear you drive up.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Vivi Ann crossed the lawn toward her as Noah exited the passenger side of the truck. Making no move to join them, he stood there, hands in his baggy chewed-up jeans, shoulders slouched, hair in his face, looking put-upon and pissed off.

“You came out to see the new house, huh?” Winona said. As a rule, she ignored Noah’s presence whenever possible. It made life easier. “Can I show you around?”

Vivi Ann’s gaze swept the place. “What do you have to do before you begin tearing down walls?”

“Oh, lots. There’s always prep work. You should see the dock. Forty years’ worth of seagull crap takes a while to wash off.”

“That’s perfect!”

“I know. A dock adds over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of value to this place.” Winona frowned. “Is that what you meant?”

Vivi Ann glanced over at Noah, who was studying his dirty fingernails as if he might find gold in there. “Noah doesn’t want to be in 4-H anymore and he’s refusing to show at the fair.”

“Uh. Duh. He’s a boy. Maybe you want him to take ballet, too.”

“I’m glad to see you understand the problem. It wasn’t quite so clear to me.”

“Of course it wasn’t. You were beautiful and popular. If you wanted to play football, the guys would have said it was cute. Hell, if you threw up at homecoming, the boys would’ve lined up to hold your hair and still thought you were adorable. A kid like Noah has to be careful: no math or computer clubs, no chess, and certainly no 4-H. He’s trying to make friends, not lose them.”

“And you said he shouldn’t be sitting around all day.”

“Did I? I think I said he needed counseling, too. He seems . . . angrier than normal.”

“What he needs is a summer job. And not at the ranch. We don’t need something else to fight about.”

“That’s a great idea. It would use up his time and give him self-esteem and . . .” Winona stopped. “No,” she said to Vivi Ann, shaking her head. “You aren’t thinking—”

“It would be perfect. He could clean up the dock. Eight hours a day, five days a week. You can pay him by the foot. If you pay him by the hour I think you’ll go broke and your dock won’t ever get cleaned up.”

“I’m supposed to pay him, too?”

“Well, he’ll hardly do it for free. And you’re rich.”

“Look, Vivi Ann,” Winona said, lowering her voice. “I don’t know about this.”

“Tell her you’re scared of me, Aunt Winona,” Noah yelled. “Tell her you think I’m dangerous.”

“Shut up, Noah,” Vivi Ann snapped. “She certainly isn’t afraid of you.” She looked back at Winona. “I really need your help here. You’re so good at solving problems. Aurora thinks it’s a great idea.”

“You ran it past her?”

“Actually, it was her idea.”

Winona was screwed. Any idea that had been vetted and approved of by half the family was a done deal. “He has to pull his pants up—I don’t want to look at his underwear all day—and he washes his hair on the days he works for me.”

Noah grunted. She didn’t know if he’d agreed or not.

Winona walked over to him, hearing Vivi Ann following her. “How does eight bucks a foot sound?”

“Like slave’s wages.”

Vivi Ann cuffed the back of his head. “Try again.”

“It sounds fine,” he grumbled, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets.

Winona was actually afraid his jeans would fall down in a heap around his ankles.

This was a bad idea. The kid was just like his dad: trouble. But she had no way out. “Fine. He’s hired. But if he screws up once—
once
—you get him back, Vivi. I’m no babysitter.”

Vivi Ann looked directly at Noah. “If you fire him, he’s competing at the fair. Is that understood?”

Noah didn’t answer, but the look in his eyes was pure teenage rage.

He understood.

WHAT DO I CARE ABOUT?

Another totally useless question, Mrs. I. What do you do, sit around reading some old teacher’s handbook on how to get bad kids to talk? I can tell you what I don’t care about. How’s that? I don’t care about Oyster Shores or the kids in my class or high school. It’s all just a big waste of time.

And I don’t care about family suppers. We had another rocking good time at the Grey house last night, btw. It’s always the same. Aunt Aurora bragging about how perfect her kids are. Ricky the perfect college student and Janie the girl wonder. And Grandpa sits there like a rock while Aunt Winona tells us all how perfect her friggin life is. No wonder my mom used to take a bunch of pills to get through the day. I’m not supposed to know about that. They think I’m an idiot. Like because I was a kid I didn’t notice that she used to cry all the time. I tried to help her—That’s what I remember most about being little. But she used to either push me away or hold me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I got so I knew what her eyes looked like when she was drugged up and I just stayed away. Now she pretends everything is okay because the medicine cabinet is empty and she never cries.

I found something else I don’t care about. Aunt Winona’s dumb old dock. It’s covered with bird shit, so naturally I’m the one that gets to scrape it all off. You should see the way she watches me. Like I’m going to blow any second or come at her with a knife. She used to like me, too. That’s another thing I remember from when I was little. She’d read me bedtime stories when Mom was gone and watch Disney movies with me. But now she stays away, staring at me when she thinks I don’t notice.

I think she’s scared of me. Maybe it’s because of that time I got pissed off at a family supper and threw my glass at the wall. That was the day Erik Jr. told me my dad was a half breed murderer. I didn’t believe him and when I got home, I asked my mom and she talked and talked and talked and never said anything.

And everybody wonders why I get pissed off. What am I supposed to do when Brian calls me injun boy and says they shoulda fried my dad for what he did?

The next Friday teased them with the promise of summer. A pale, pretty sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds; light came and went across the yard like a capricious child, until finally sometime just past noon it came out and stayed.

Winona was busy scrubbing the kitchen floor when she noticed the change in the weather. At first she thought nothing of it, figured, in fact, that it was just as likely to begin raining as not, and kept working. But when she started to feel heat prickle on her forehead and form tiny moist beads in the curl of her back, she climbed to her feet and pulled off her rubber gloves. If it was actually going to stay nice out, she knew she should power-wash the deck. You didn’t squander sunlit days in June around here.

She changed into shorts and a baggy, thigh-length T-shirt. As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she peered through the cloudy glass of her bedroom window and saw Noah down on the dock, supposedly scraping bird poop off the splintery wooden rails.

Honest to God, the dead moved faster.

And his pants were so low she could see the waistband of his blue boxer shorts.

He’d been working for her for five days and she could barely identify his progress. He got here promptly at nine o’clock every morning and went down to the dock without saying a word to her. On the days she went into the office, leaving him here alone, she had no doubt whatsoever that he was sitting on his ass.

“This is so not working out,” she muttered, grabbing a roll of duct tape.

She marched out onto the deck, letting the door bang shut behind her. Enough was enough. She might have to employ him, might have to ignore his surly attitude and his dirty hair, might have to pretend he was working, but by God, she didn’t have to look at his damn underwear.

She walked down the dock. The tide was low, so the ramp down to the dock was steep and springy beneath her. She held tightly to the bird-ruined handrails, looking carefully for bare wood places to touch, as she made her way cautiously down to him. “Noah.”

He’d been so busy doing nothing that he was startled by her voice. He flinched, dropped the metal scraper. “Jeez. Yell, why don’t yah?”

“Duct tape is a remarkable invention. It can be anything. Did you know that?” She unwound a length about as long as her arm, tore it off, and then carefully folded it in half lengthwise.

“I don’t think about tape much, but I’ll believe you.” He reached down for the fallen scraper. “Unless you want to tell me something about . . . I don’t know, maybe yarn? I think I’ll get back to work.”

“We both know what a joke that is. Here.” She handed him the strip of silver tape.

“What is it?”

“Your new belt. Put it through the loops—you do know how to do that, don’t you?—and tie it in a knot. I do not want to see even a strip of your boxers.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“This is the style,” he said stubbornly.

“Oh, yes, you’re a real Giorgio Armani. Put on the belt. If you’ll remember, it was a condition of this ridiculous enterprise you and I pretend is employment.”

“And if I don’t?”

She smiled. “You know what I loved about the fair? The way my chaps and hat and gloves all matched. They were all the same blue. Your mom called it dressing to win. And everyone I knew was there, seeing me dressed like a fat blueberry.”

Noah said nothing.

“I’m sure you’ll be very handsome in whatever outfit she’s made. She
is
still making your riding clothes, isn’t she?”

“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the makeshift belt. It took him a while to thread it through the loops and pull it taut, but when he was done his pants were pulled up to his waist. The knot was as big as a fist. “I look like a total dork.”

“You won’t find any disagreement here. If you’d buy pants that fit it would help.”

“Whatever.”

“That is such a useful word. I notice you’re particularly fond of it. I’d appreciate it, as your employer, if you’d speak in complete sentences.”

He glared at her. “Whatever . . . Aunt Winona.”

“And progress is made.” She started to explain to him yet again how to scrape the dried bird crap off when she heard a truck drive up. She tented her hand over her eyes to block out the sun and saw a large yellow moving van pull into the driveway next door. “I wonder who bought that place,” she said. “The construction crews have been there for weeks.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“As easy as that would prove to be, I’m going to check out my new neighbors.” She made her way up the steeply pitched ramp and cut across her shabby yard. Everything on this edge of her property was overgrown, almost primeval in size. Giant rhododendrons, sprawling junipers, hedges gone wild. She peered through the narrow break in the foliage and tried to see the house. Unfortunately, the moving truck was directly in front of her. Disappointed, she returned to her house and began power-washing the deck.