Written on My Heart (19 page)

T
he girl I had once been expected to greet an eager, restless boy with an electric smile and soft, beautiful eyes that had never been afraid to hold my gaze. But time had transformed both of us. I now stood in front of him as a mother and a wife. The boy I had known had changed too, leaving a thin, hesitant man in his place. Andy's dark eyes darted here and there, looking at me and then shifting away. A nervous smile quickened on his ragged face as the November wind tousled his dirty-blond hair, which was two or three inches shorter than it had been a few years back. The tips of his ears were red.

“You need a hat,” I said.

He reached for me and, before I could think, I reached back and we held on to each other for about ten seconds. “It's so good to see you,” he whispered. “Oh my god, it's so good to see you.”

My nose took in stale cigarettes and old pot. He squeezed me tighter.

“It's good to see you too,” I said.

“Oh my god,” he said into my hair. His voice trembled.

“That's enough!” I laughed.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.” He finally let me go, but his eyes continued to trip over my face. “You are just as beautiful as ever,” he said. “Life agrees with you.”

“Better than it did the last time we saw each other,” I said. “Neither of us was in any shape to agree to anything.”

“I know,” Andy said. “Oh god. I run that night over in my head all the time. Fuck me. I could have killed you.” His eyes filled with tears and I didn't know what to do. Our past and our accident all seemed so dreamlike. I decided to move things along.

“Well,” I said, “we're okay, after all. It's nice to see you up and walking.”

“Got the limp,” he said. “Always will. Messed myself up good.”

“We're here,” I said. “And that counts for something. I'm a mama. And a wife.”

“I heard,” Andy said. “I'm so glad. My god, I'd forgotten how beautiful you are,” he said again, in case I hadn't heard him before.

“I have a girl, Arlee, almost two and a half, and a boy, Travis, almost seven months.”

Andy whistled. “Wow. You've been busy.”

I changed the subject. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, taking a break,” he said. “The family is here for Thanksgiving.”

“All of them?”

He laughed. “Mother is here. And Edward.” He winced when he mentioned his father's name.

“Speaking of Edward, the last time we talked, you were in military school.”

“I stayed about six months. They tried to march the limp out of me, and when they couldn't, Edward let me go somewhere else. I finished up high school with tutors and, somehow, Edward got me into UMass, but that didn't work out. So, I'm thinking about the next step.”

“Oh,” I said. “Dottie graduates from college this spring.”

“No shit. I've seen the other guy. The big guy. Glen? I've run into him a few times, around here. We've shared a few tokes.” He spat on the ground. “Fuckin' war,” he muttered. “The one good thing that happened when we crashed was this limp. It kept me from being drafted.”

We stood there, filling the silence with awkwardness. It seemed to be a day for silences. I thought about Bud and a strong longing to be with him made me want to turn and run. I started to tell Andy goodbye, but he had more to say.

“You got me through a hard time, Florine,” he said. “No, don't shake your head. You did. Don't know what I would have done without you.”

“We got each other through some hard times.”

He wrapped his hands around my upper arms. “I mean that,” he said, his voice soft.

I pulled away gently. “I have to go,” I said. “Bud and the kids will want lunch.”

“Can we get together sometime?”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said.

“That means no,” Andy said. He looked down at the ground. One cracked hiking boot scuffed the pine needles into a semicircle.

“But I'm glad to see you,” I said, sounding too cheerful. “I'm happy you're okay.”

His eyes filled with tears again and he wiped them away with his fists. He hugged me, once more, hard, until I almost wrenched myself away. Had he always been this needy? This desperate? Had I?

“You will always be special to me, Florine,” he whispered. “I hope you know that. I will always love you. Always. And I hope you will forgive me.”

“I do. We were both kind of crazy.”

“No. I mean it. Please.”

“Jesus, yes.” I laughed. “I forgive you! Now, I have to get home.”

“I will always love you,” he said again.

“Andy, I will always love Bud,” I said, finally. “Always. I hope with all my heart you find someone that makes you happy.”

Andy shook his head. “Can't ever happen,” he said. “Sold my soul a long time ago. Goodbye, sweet girl.” He turned and shuffled out of sight, his head down and his hands crowding the pockets of his jeans.

I hurried away home.

Bud was rocking on the porch when I got home. “Ma wants to know if we want to have supper with them,” he said.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Want to get the kids? They should come up here for a nap. They don't sleep as well down there.”

“Do you mind going? I just as soon sit here,” he said.

I bent down and pecked him on the lips. He sniffed. “You smell like . . .”

“I'll be right back,” I said on my way out the door.

I met Glen coming up from the wharf.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “How you doing?”

He shrugged. “Doing.”

“Bud's at the house,” I said.

He nodded. He walked by me and passed Grand's house. “Okay then,” I muttered, and entered a warm kitchen filled with women and babies. I nestled in, cuddling my son's warm body against me and watching my daughter scamper around. We stayed for about an hour and then I took my babies home. Bud was napping in Grand's rocker as I put Travis into the bassinet. Arlee curled up under the coffee table in the living room. I stood in the kitchen, wondering how to spend this tiny pocket of spare time. Then I remembered the mail, and the letters. I sat down, picked up the envelopes, and sighed.

The rocker creaked as Bud got up and joined me at the table.

“You got more of them letters?” he said, yawning himself awake.

“I don't want to read them. But I don't not want to read them, if that makes sense.”

“'Bout as good as anything else makes sense.”

He picked one of them up by its corner, took from his pocket the small penknife he carried, and slit the top of the envelope. He opened it and placed the letter in front of me.

No date. No salutation. No closing.

I could gaze at you all day and all night long and never get tired of the view. But I cannot take this anymore. I loved you more than you love me. I know that. And so I say, goodbye, my love.

“Jesus,” Bud said. “Whoever it is needs to lighten up. ‘
Gaze
'? Christ.”

“If you said ‘gaze' to me, I'd split a gut,” I said.

Bud opened the other letter and placed it in front of me.

I can't leave you. I love you. Please be patient with me. I'm sorry.

“He should make up his mind,” Bud said.

“We don't know that it's a he,” I said. “I have to give these to Parker.”

Bud shook his head. “Not today,” he said. “Fuck it. Let's enjoy the holiday.”

I took his hand and squeezed it. “I do love you,” I said. I almost told him about seeing Andy, but I decided to stuff it. This, I thought, is how volcanoes erupt.

Arlee called my name from underneath the coffee table. Before I could get up to check on her, Bud grabbed my hand, hard. “Wait,” he said.

“What?”

“
Perhaps
, I ain't perfect,” he said. “But I could
gaze
at you for fucking ever. And, by the way, you ain't perfect either,
my love
.” Our hands linked over the letters and smudged away whatever fingerprint evidence there might have
been.

R
obin cried when she saw The Point. “Oh my god, Florine,” she said, “it's so beautiful here! You got to grow up here? What was wrong with our damn parents that they couldn't get it together so that we could visit?”

We flung our arms over each other's shoulders and looked from the top of the hill down to the harbor. “You should see it in the summer,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, I love the colors in November best of all; the reds and browns, and yellows. November glows like the embers of a dying fire.”

“You make that up?” I asked.

“Corny, huh? Well, I'm inspired.”

Bud and I had discussed whether we should invite her for Thanksgiving. When I'd brought it up, he shrugged and said, “Why wouldn't you invite her?” as if we hadn't had a tense little talk about her new place in my life.

“You sure you're okay with it?” I'd said.

He'd rolled his eyes and said, “Of course I'm okay. Invite her, for chrissake.”

“Because it seems to me that you got a little jealous when I said . . .”

“I know what I said,” he'd grumbled. “Get her down here. Ma always has too much food anyways.”

“I'll make sure she doesn't eat much,” I'd said. “I'll keep an eye on it, smack her hand with a knife if she reaches for seconds.”

“Especially the pie. She can't have any pumpkin pie.”

She'd love to come, Robin had told me over the phone. “I'll bring a pumpkin pie.” I'd smirked, thanked her, and told her I couldn't wait.

She arrived on Thanksgiving at about midmorning, tooling down the dirt road in her little Corolla. She would be staying in Bud's old room at Ida's house, but first, I showed her Grand's house. In particular, she loved the kitchen and the porch and rockers. She also loved Stella's house, which had been empty for about two weeks, according to Madeline. Robin and I walked up Daddy's driveway and viewed the house from all sides. I showed her The Cheeks at the back of the yard.

“It does look like the crack of someone's butt,” Robin agreed. She turned back to the house. “I love this place. It's small and sweet.”

“It was sweet,” I said, “back in the day.”

She smiled at me. “Maybe it will be, again. Good memories to come.”

“Most people really love Grand's house when they see it,” I said. “Sometimes they knock on the door and ask if it's for sale.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. That's happened a few times. Happened when Grand was alive. She'd say, ‘Well, probably about a million for the house, and a couple million more for the view. You come up with that, and we'll talk.' But she'd laugh when she said it, and she'd bring folks in for a look-see and sometimes they'd have tea. But I'm not Grand. Once, a young couple from Connecticut came by a couple months after Bud moved in. I just said, ‘No, but have a nice vacation,' and waved them off.”

“I guess they see what Aunt Carlie must have seen,” Robin said. “Romance, beauty. It's like being in a book.”

“Horror story, sometimes. Gets pretty cold and lonely in the winter, if you're not used to it. A few years back, and a couple of Points down, a wife murdered her husband in the middle of their first winter living there.”

Robin shivered. “Well, it's beautiful,” she said. “My dad would love it here.”

I had never met my uncle Robert. He had not been at the house when we had visited that one time. I said, “Does Uncle Robert look like Carlie?”

Robin shook her head. “No. He looks like Maxine did: dark, thin, and tall. And quiet. No one is as quiet as Dad.”

“Bud is spare with his words.”

“Not like Dad.”

“What did Uncle Robert think about Carlie?”

“I don't know, really. He's about ten years older than she was, so he was out of the house and married by the time she went through her trouble.”

“Where's your mother?”

“She lives in Boston. She's a bartender. And she loves the life. Out at night, sleeps most of the day. She's on her third marriage. I don't hate her; I just don't know her. Once in a while we get together for a little visit.”

“What about Ben?”

Robin smiled. “My little brother is a surfer dude. That's his job. Dad and Valerie let him be. I give him crap when we talk, but I don't care. What's it to me? It makes him happy, I guess. He's only seventeen.”

“I had a baby when I was twenty,” I said. “Carlie had a baby when she was nineteen. You're nineteen now. Isn't it time for you to jump on the bandwagon?”

“I'll catch up someday. In the meantime, I get to have people puke on my shoes, bleed all over me, and shit in my hands. Why would I give up the glamorous life of a single girl?”

“Sounds good to me, sometimes, but I wouldn't say that out loud. I love my kids past what I thought love could ever be.”

“What would you do if you didn't have kids, though?” Robin asked.

“Well, I have them, and I love them, so this is just pretend.”

“Of course.”

I looked down at the frozen ground and thought for a little while.
“I guess I'd need to get my GED first. I quit school after Grand died. One more semester to go in high school and I quit. Stupid. I know that now.”

“Well,” Robin said, “you can get your GED, like you said. Then what?”

“When the kids are in school . . .”

“You can work on your GED while they're in bed, or Bud can watch them, or I'd be happy to help in any way I can, if you want.”

Robin's voice had taken on a brisk tone that left no time for my half-formed thoughts. I wanted her to think that I was smart and together, even though I didn't believe it myself. Wiseass and bossy, yes, but together? “I need more time to think this through,” I said. “I've been busy with diapers and bottles and stuff.”

“Of course,” Robin said. “You don't need to figure out your whole life plan right now.” She shivered and I realized that I was cold too.

“We'll go for a longer walk, after dinner,” I said. “Let's see if Ida needs some help.”

A big crowd gathered around the dining table in Ida's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Maureen, Robin, Bud and me and the kids, Ida. Ray made a special guest appearance. After dinner and cleanup, Robin and I took the kids up to Grand's house. They went down for afternoon naps and Ida and Maureen joined Robin and me for a vicious game of Hearts around the kitchen table.

Dottie wandered in at some point and livened things up.

“You got to be Robin,” she said to my cousin. “About freaking time you showed up.”

“I'm always late,” Robin said.

“So's Florine,” Dottie said. “'Least she's got kids to blame. What's your excuse?”

“I'm busy trying to beat your bowling score,” Robin said.

That stopped Dottie and everyone else.

“You bowl?” I asked Robin. “Did you know that Dottie is . . .”

“Of course,” Robin said. “She's famous. Anyone who bowls knows who she is.”

“Not everyone,” Dottie said. “Maybe a few people out there don't know.”

“Don't be so modest,” Robin said. She looked at me. “I knew who Dottie was before I knew you,” she said. “I'm going to beat you someday,” she said.

“Like to see you try,” Dottie said. They shook hands.

“You're on,” Robin said.

That settled, Dottie sat down and Ida left, taking a reluctant, wide-eyed Maureen with her. Bullshit flew around the room as Robin and Dottie talked about their adventures in bowling. The kids woke up and got restless, so I fed them a little supper. Shortly after that, Arlee got sleepy again and crawled under the kitchen table for a nap. I took Travis upstairs, bathed him, cuddled him, and sang him an off-key lullaby as we sat in the rocking chair. I loved holding my precious baby boy. I loved that the house was full of people. This, I thought, is how I want to live for the rest of my life. This is my goal—to have people in my home, having a good time. I can get a GED, I thought, and some kind of job, but this is what is most important to me.

I put Travis to bed and tiptoed downstairs in time to answer the soft knock on the door. Glen, and a very pregnant Evie, stood there. Both of them sported stupid smiles on their faces. Evie's blue eyes were bloodshot. So were Glen's black ones.

“Come in,” I said. “Join the party.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Glen said, and wrapped me in a bear hug. The bones in my back cracked.

“Ooh,” I said, “that felt good. Thanks.”

“Robin, this is my pregnant sister, Evie,” Dottie said. “That's Glen, our friend. It's not his baby. Only Evie knows for sure who the father might be.”

Evie made a face at her sister.

Robin stood up and shook Glen's hand. “I've heard about you,” she said.

He blushed and looked down. “Not all of it's true,” he mumbled.

“It's all good,” Robin said. “Hi,” she said to Evie.

“Hi,” Evie muttered.

Robin stared at her until Evie said, “What? I got stuffing between my teeth?”

“No, but you're stoned,” Robin said. “And you're pregnant, and you have some puffiness in your face and hands. I don't mean to insult you. I'm a nurse.”

“So?” Evie said. “Who made you the judge of me?” She said to Glen, “Let's go.”

“Oh, don't go,” Robin said. She stood up. “I'm just concerned. When are you due?”

“December fifteenth,” Evie said. “Sagittarius, the Archer.” She beamed as if this were great news.

Robin smiled. “December eighteenth. I'm a Sagittarius too,” she said. “Optimistic, idealistic, and honest.”

“Good for you,” Evie said, readjusting her maternity blouse.

“Got any beer?” Glen asked.

“You know where it is,” I said. He headed for the refrigerator.

“Where's Bud?” he asked.

“Watching football down to Ida's,” I said.

He grunted. “I could go down there, I guess, with the men.”

“Why?” Dottie said. “When you got us beauties to hang around with.”

Glen laughed.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“Well, nothing,” he said. “Unless you're the one looking at you all.”

“We may not be pretty,” Dottie said. “But we're strong and we could take you down right now, if you don't behave.”

“Except Evie,” Robin said. “Probably not Evie.”

“Shit, I could take you down too,” Evie said.

Glen sat down in a kitchen chair. He leaned back, balancing it on its two rear legs.

“Down,” I said. “Now. I mean it.”

“He ain't a dog,” Evie said.

I shot her a look that even she didn't dare cross. “Glen,” I said.

He tipped back down, but when he straightened out his legs, his right, combat-booted, size-thirteen foot connected with Arlee's little left arm. When she screamed, we all jumped.

“Oh, damn,” I said. “She's so quiet. I forgot.” I ducked beneath the table to check on my girl, who was now sitting up, crying so hard that she wasn't making any noise. When she finally caught her breath, she let loose a storm of tears, snot, and noise. When I tried to touch her, she pulled away from me.

“Honey,” I coaxed, “come on out. Mama needs to look at your arm.”

“I'm sorry, Arlee,” Glen said from somewhere above us. “Why didn't no one tell me she was there, for crying out loud? I'm sorry, baby.” He got down on his hands and knees. Arlee scrambled away from him, toward the other side of the table. Dottie scooped her up and held her against her chest.

Glen got up and I crawled out from beneath the table, banging my head on the way. I bit my tongue to keep from yelling something rude.

“Ouch, man,” Evie said. “Wow. This is turning into a real bad trip.”

I went to my baby. “Let Mama see,” I said. We surrounded her like some sort of witch's circle.

“Back up,” Robin said quietly. We did. She took Arlee from Dottie while I swiped cards to the other side of the table. She sat her on the cleared spot.

“Is it broken?”

“Dammit,” Glen said. He put his face into his hands. “I fuck everything up.”

“Quit crying,” Dottie said. “You didn't mean it.”

Robin moved her quick fingers over Arlee's arm. “You're okay,” she said.

“No, she's not,” Glen said.

Arlee began to wail.

“I'm leaving,” Evie said. “I'm not feeling so good.” Out she went.

“Glen,” Robin said, “if you don't make this a big deal, she'll calm down. If you can't calm down, you should leave until we figure out what's going on.”

Glen turned and marched out of the house, banging the front door shut behind him.

Arlee had a big, fat bruise. I fetched ice and a towel and Robin applied it to her arm. We fed her a leftover summer grape Popsicle and she finally calmed down. Her eyes were swollen and the lids drooped. I picked her up and held her close.