What Love Sees (35 page)

“I’ve been making one outside, too.”

Jean stifled a laugh, gave her a quick hug and left her alone to her task. The next day when the children were at school, Jean went outside and felt along the wall between the bushes under Faith’s bedroom window. Yes, there was a little hole there, too. Forrest’s adobes were twelve inches thick, though, and the tooth fairy assigned to Ramona made his call long before the two holes met.

“How’d he get in?” Faith asked at breakfast the next morning, breathless.

“Just found a secret way, I guess,” Jean said.

“I still don’t understand,” she said wistfully.

It was a precious moment. Jean wished she could prolong it. “Understanding some mysteries will just have to wait, maybe until second grade,” she said.

Forrie wasn’t one to share quite so openly, but Jean still learned about him through a variety of sources. He had his problems, too, and in the third grade a major one was school. Specifically, handwriting, and, at times, self-control. One day Jean got a phone call she didn’t expect. It was Mrs. Kelly, Forrie’s teacher, notorious among Ramona children for her motto, “Self-discipline secures success; dishonesty determines defeat.” They constantly imitated her prissy voice. When Jean met her once at PTA, she discovered the children’s impersonation was remarkably accurate. And here was this same voice on the phone, testy and high-pitched.

“I simply had to speak to you, Mrs. Holly.”

Jean could just imagine what that stereotype of a stern old schoolmarm looked like. She probably wore faded cotton print dresses that fit poorly and buttoned up the front. “Why? Did something happen?”

“Your son, Mrs. Holly, did something no child has done in the 27 years I’ve been teaching at Ramona Elementary. I simply cannot believe it. You know, of course, how difficult it is to read his handwriting.”

“No, I wasn’t aware—”

“Yesterday afternoon I kept him after school to practice. For a time he was alone in the room, and your son, Mrs. Holly, relieved himself in my thermos.”

The conversation was brief. What could Jean say? She stammered out an apology and a promise to reprimand and tried to get off the phone quickly. Then she slumped down in a chair, numb. She tried to imagine Forrie doing that. Surely it couldn’t have been vindictiveness. It was kind of funny, she had to admit. Maybe Forrie had to practice with one of those boring handwriting books with solid blue lines equally divided by a dotted line. The fat letters always looked so impossibly neat. Jean remembered seeing them herself. She had hunkered down over them, too, her round glasses perched on her nose, trying to imitate the masters. “Make your e’s look just like these, round and wide,” Mrs. Kelly probably said.

Fat chance, lady, Forrie probably thought. It was his latest expression. He was getting pretty independent, maybe even a little mouthy.

The door slammed closed. “Who’s that?”

“Me,” Forrie said.

It would have to be now. She sat Forrie down in the bedroom with the door closed. “What did you do after school yesterday?”

“Played in the fort with Chuckie.”

“No. Before you came home.”

He groaned and his voice fell. “That old Mrs. Kellybelly made me stay after school.”

“What for?”

“Handwriting.”

“Tell me about it.”

Forrie didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “She made me do one page over and over again. It was boring. It was “E’s.” You know, “b-e,” “c-e,” “d-e,” “f-e.”

She could tell Forrie was trying to deflect the conversation from the critical point. “It doesn’t matter what the letters were.”

“Yes, it does, Mom.”

“I had a call from Mrs. Kelly this afternoon.” The words must have exploded in Forrie’s mind. He didn’t say anything. Apparently, he didn’t even move. A mockingbird outside filled in the silence. “I’m not angry, Forrie. Just tell me what happened.”

“I had to pee, Mom. I couldn’t help it. She didn’t even let me go outside after school was over, and she told me not to leave the room and to keep practicing until she came back.” He paused a moment and then began talking faster and faster. “I looked for a plant first, honest I did. But there wasn’t any. And her wastebasket was that wire kind. I was scared to leave. ‘Don’t leave the room, Forrest Holly,’ she said in a real screechy voice. She stayed away a long time. I bet she was peeing, wherever teachers go to pee. I tried to keep writing that dumb stuff, and then I got to the p’s and had to write ‘p-e.’ I couldn’t help it, Mom. It was the only thing. I looked out the window first and no one was there and I didn’t hear her clumpy feet, so I—I just did it.” Forrie sounded as though he was about to burst into tears.

Despite herself, Jean began to laugh and grabbed him in her arms and nuzzled him by his neck. “It’s okay.”

“I thought maybe she’d just pour it out and not notice. I stayed until the z’s and she came back and let me go. Are you going to tell Pop?”

“Of course I am.”

Forrest laughed that night when she told him. “He was probably dancing on the walls, terrorized by that biddy. It might have even taught him to pray,” he said, and laughed some more.

Jean felt closer to her children for these glimpses into their private lives.

She felt further from them when they didn’t obey. And that usually centered around chores. Animal feeding was a chore. And with two horses, chickens, Roosty the rooster, Rusty the dog, Jean’s parrot, ducks, Angelina the cat, and Hap’s array of guinea pigs, there were plenty of animals in the Holly menagerie to feed. When Faith was seven, Angelina was her responsibility, which meant that Angelina was frequently hungry, and would eat anything, particularly human food.

March was often a rainy month, and Easter vacation that year was near the end of March. Rain drummed monotonously on the roof for a week and kept everyone indoors. When it rained a lot, the adobe soil around the house became slicker than ice. Feet slid out from under running children, and even Jean fell once just walking. So, for the whole week, the children were inside. The house seemed as small as the old frame cottage.

“When’ll it stop, Mom?”

“I don’t know, Forrie. When it gets ready to, I guess.”

“I’m ready for it to now. I gotta go see my fort.”

“It’s probably all washed away,” Faith chimed in.

“What do you know, dumbbell?”

“Mo-om. Forrie called me a name.”

“And you’ve never called him one?”

“Your fort’s probably a big pile of mess, all caved in.”

“What do you know about forts, stupid?”

“I know you’re not supposed to have ‘boys only’ forts. That’s what I know.”

“Who says?”

“President Eisenhower.”

Their bickering had started earlier and earlier every morning this week. Probably more than they did, Jean hoped the rain would stop so they’d go outside. “When it lets up some, you can go feed the animals.”

The next day it let up. Jean opened the windows in the stuffy house. Peacock and turkey droppings smelled foul and pungent in the wetness. In a steady stream of hallway clatter and doors slamming, the children headed outside.

“Ugh, it’s all slippery gush,” Billy said.

“Then stay inside.”

“No. I’m going to the barn.”

“Close the door, Billy.”

“Me, too,” Faith said and headed out the door followed by Hap.

“Not me, I’m not going where she’s going,” Forrie said. “I got to go see my fort.”

“Wear a jacket. Not your new one, Forrie.”

He came back inside, raced through the kitchen and down the hall, then back outside again. “Close the door,” she said again.

All day, in and out. But it was better than having them cooped up. By midmorning she wondered what her floor looked like. She couldn’t keep track of who was in and who was out. “Close the door,” she kept repeating, like a stuck record. They’d have to get a spring-loaded closer. Why they hadn’t before this, she didn’t know.

When Forrie came in for lunch, Faith squealed. “Mo-om, Forrie’s got mud all over his jacket.”

“Quit it.”

“And it’s his new one, too.”

“Keep your mouth shut, dumbbell.”

“Forrie, didn’t I tell you not to wear it?”

“I couldn’t find my old one.”

She took the tomato soup off the burner and started in on a lecture about school clothes and play clothes. It was tiresome, even to her, so she stopped abruptly. She went back to the stove. Feeling for the pan of soup, she found the cat on the counter, her head in the pan. “Dammit! Stay out of our lunch!” she yelled. She grabbed her by the scruff so roughly that Angelina squeaked. Jean headed for the door and felt with her foot. Open, of course. She pitched the cat as hard as she could outside. Angelina’s jangling two-note shriek as she hit the adobe wall across the breezeway was the stuff of nightmares. Four children sucked in their breath in unison.

“Mom!” Faith cried.

“If you’d keep the door closed, and that means you, too, Billy, the cat wouldn’t come in. And Faith, if you fed her when you were supposed to, she wouldn’t be so hungry that she eats our food. You didn’t feed her yet, today, did you?”

A meek little, “No.”

“If you don’t start doing what you’re supposed to, that cat’s going to the Humane Society, do you hear?”

“Yes.” Even softer.

The rest of the day the children walked on tiptoe, quiet as mice, closing the door without a slam.

But the effect of Jean’s outrage didn’t last. Before long, Faith again began forgetting to feed Angelina. After four days in a row of that and another discovery of Angelina on the kitchen counter indulging in the family’s dinner, Jean was determined. On Monday when the children were in school, she asked Ed Nelson to take the poor, neglected cat to the Humane Society.

Nothing happened the rest of the week. Just as Jean suspected, Faith didn’t even notice. On Saturday they had pancakes for breakfast. Faith cooked them. After the meal, Faith took the remnants outside on a plastic plate. “Here, ki—” Suddenly, truth dawned. She turned on her heel, flung the plate in the sink and raced through the house, bawling. The door to her room slammed. She didn’t come out all day.

By late afternoon, Jean wondered if she’d done more harm than good.

Chapter Thirty

The 1928 pickup was a rusted hulk, skeletal and barren. It had no distinct color, no windshield, no fenders, no sides, no division between cab and bed. A wooden bench served as a seat for driver and passenger. Forrest sat behind the wheel, shoulders squared to the task ahead, unaware of any discomfort as they bounced over the deeply rutted dirt road. By gum, he thought, I’m taking my family out to dinner just like any other father, risks be damned. Excitement pumped hard in him, and his muscles were tense, though his feet worked the pedals slowly and accurately. On his lap sat eight-year-old Forrie.

“Stretch up tall now so you can see everything ahead of us.” Forrest rested his hands gently on Forrie’s skinny arms, tight with the responsibility of holding onto the man-sized steering wheel.

“Have we passed the three big pepper trees on the right yet?” Forrest asked.

“Yup,” said the boy.

“Then we’re right by Lance’s.”

“Yup.”

“Do you see that bad place in the road yet?”

“Nope. Slow down.”

Forrest let off on the gas pedal.

“Oh, yeah. Now I see it.”

Forrest felt the muscles in Forrie’s arms grab on tighter as he prepared to steer around the ruts in the road. He let off on the gas a little more and the jalopy inched along. When it hit the ruts, it lurched and Hap grunted.

“Those were some nasty ones,” Jean said. She sat bracing herself on the seat with one arm, holding Hap in her other.

“No cars up ahead?” Forrest asked.

“Nope.”

“Po-op. Of course there’s no cars. This is private property,” Faith said from behind. “And this is our own private road.” The smugness in her voice coat the dry air.

“What’s that mean, private?” Hap asked.

“That means we have to pay to have it smoothed out.” Forrest chuckled. “That’s why it isn’t.”

The end-of-day sun slanting at a low angle made Forrest’s face warm. He tasted dust. Hap squirmed next to him and leaned down to look between the wooden slats that served as a floor.

“Mommy, you can see the road go by.”

“Tell me what it looks like,” she said.

“Just dirt.”

The truck jolted again and Forrest grunted. “As if we didn’t know.” After a pause he asked, “Do you have shoes on, Forrie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you, Hap?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know if the others do, Jean? I don’t want them looking like a bunch of moth-eaten ragamuffins.”

“I think so.”

Hap wiggled out of Jean’s grasp to look behind. “Yeah, they do.”

“Are they holding on?” Jean asked.

“Yup.”

“What’s up ahead now, Forrie, the big gully?” Forrest asked.

“Pretty soon.”

Forrest loved the closeness of driving with his son. He would do it with each of them, when they got old enough. He knew Forrie was hardly old enough now, but need made him grow up fast. Forrest felt the truck head down the incline. “We’re just about there, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”