Written on My Heart (23 page)

“Of course,” Edward said. “Long story short. We struck up a conversation that continued at a coffee shop close by. At that point in her life, Caroline did not like to go home. Or to school, but at least school was not home.”

He paused and looked up at me. “Do you know about her earlier life? Do you know about her . . . trouble at home?”

I nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Then you know how hard it was to live there. So, she went to school, sometimes, and then she spent the afternoons and evenings with me, studying or having coffee or tea or what-have-you. While she hated school, she loved to learn, and we had many long discussions about poetry and literature. I encouraged her to finish school and go to college. I loved
being with her. She was funny and bright, young, but old at the same time. She had all the makings of a muse. My poetic muse.”

Before anyone could ask him what the hell that was, Ida spoke up. “A muse is an inspiration,” she said. “Mr. Barrington is saying that Carlie inspired him.”

“I thought I was going to write poetry and novels,” Edward said. “I thought a great many things, then, and it was the best time of my life, although I didn't know it. Soon enough, as it got colder, Caroline began to stay with me in my room, nights, and we became lovers. But then, school ended in May. She went off to wait tables in Cambridge, and I came here, to Maine, to be with my family.

“I missed Caroline and, at first, I wrote to her all the time. Love letters. Yes, some of those letters are filled with things that happened that don't and needn't concern you, Florine. Your mother had a life prior to you and to Leeman, and I was a part of that life. I don't regret it, and I don't believe you have a right to deny me our time together.”

“Don't tell me what rights I have,” I said.

He sighed. “Our letters began to drop off in early August. I got caught up in what was going on here, and I'm sure she must have been busy in Boston. And then, I met my wife-to-be. She was a cousin to friends of ours, a couple of cottages down. She, like me, was an English major, at Vassar, and she was writing a novel. Barbara had come for a few weeks, and we . . . well, we got together.

“When summer ended, I told Barbara that I had made a mistake, that I loved someone else. She took it hard, but she let me go. I returned to Boston and to Caroline and forgot about Barbara entirely. What a year that was! We were drunk on one another, and on language and poetry and love.”

“Hurry up,” I said. “This is making me sick.”

“My apologies, Florine. As I said, this is not my inten—”

“
Just get it over with
,” I shouted. Bud got up from the table, came over to me, and put his arm around me. “It's crap,” he whispered. “It's a story that got done a long time ago.”

Edward overheard Bud's deep-voiced whisper. “Some things are never done,” he said, and sighed. “I graduated from college the next May, and Caroline did make it through high school, although she didn't apply to any colleges as I'd hoped she would. I know now that making it from day to day for her was a victory of sorts, that thinking ahead for someone surviving from hour to hour is almost impossible, and that she was younger than both of us pretended. And, although I tried to fight it, I began to think about how life might be, married to an uneducated girl not within my social class. Yes, I thought about marriage. I loved her. But I never took her to meet my family. And for that, I'm ashamed. I thought, I suppose, that I was too good for her. But it turns out that she was out of my league. It has been the greatest regret of my life.” Edward's face went all sad and droopy and, I think, if we had let him, he'd have paused to feel bad about his choices. But when Bud cleared his throat, he continued.

“Caroline didn't tell me of her plans to drive up to Maine and work at the Lobster Shack. She'd learned about it through her friend Patty, whom I later got to know. Patty, it turns out, was familiar with the area through someone who knew someone who owned the Lobster Shack. She obtained a summer job through those connections and convinced Caroline to drive up and join her. I had no idea that she was coming, but in the end, it didn't matter. She stopped at Ray's, met your father, and never did look me up. Barbara and I stopped at the Lobster Shack for dinner one night, and there she was, all fire, but for someone else.

“Of course, I wanted her more than ever. But she would have none of it. At least, not in terms of us getting together the way we had been. We did meet to talk a few times, near my house, in the woods, just to catch up.”

“I know where it is,” I said.

Edward looked startled. “You do?”

“Of course,” I said. “The three rocks. The clearing. And bullshit, you just talked.”

He blinked and a smidgen of fear darted across his face. He picked
up the teacup again, and his face resumed its cool, superior expression. “We just talked, Florine,” he said. “We loved to discuss books, music, and life. Later, we discussed you and Andrew. I found out in late July that Barbara was pregnant. She delivered Andrew in late December. Caroline delivered you the next May. You and Andrew met in the state park once, when you were toddlers. You threw a pinecone at Andrew, and he cried.”

Glen snorted. “Right,” he said. “No surprise there.”

“We only met a few times. But I won't forget those little minutes. She had one rule. We were never to talk about her marriage to Leeman. I was not to bring him up. She was the guard at his gate and, if looks could kill, she would have speared me through and through the few times I mentioned him. I wish I . . . Well, I wish a great many things, but wishing about the past doesn't make sense.”

Edward put down his teacup and stood up slowly. “To end this, I don't know what happened to her, but the sun dimmed considerably when I found out that she was missing. As time passed, I had the park position a bench down by the water, and had the plaque placed upon it. For the rest of my life, I will always regret not being a part of her life. I should have married her. I am also sorry that I hurt Barbara, who is more fragile than I even guessed. I wish she hadn't turned Caroline's letters in to Parker. He says I may not get them back. I can't have time back either, or Caroline back, and I can't undo the mistakes I've made.”

He looked at me. “You'll find, Florine, as you age, that you'll make mistakes,” he said. “I hope you'll find the compassion to understand that we were young and that we loved each other. Know that your mother was loved. And know, finally, that she loved you more than life itself.”

Edward turned to Ida and put out his hand. She put out her own hand and they shook. “Thank you, Mrs. Warner, for your hospitality,” he said. He turned to me. “I've somehow managed to alienate you, first with Andrew, now with my relationship with your mother. I don't want your forgiveness. I don't want anything. I just wanted to clear things up.” He nodded and turned away.

“You say that you wouldn't have hurt my mother for the world,” I said. “You used the word. ‘Hurt.' Do you know that someone hurt her?”

He turned back, the thick line of a big frown dividing his pale forehead in half. “What are you asking me?” he said.

“You heard me.”

His eyes went darker, if that was possible. When he took a step toward me, Bud tugged at my shoulder to pull me back. But I stood my ground. “You know that someone hurt her?” I asked, again.

“I don't,” he said, not breaking our stare. “As I said, I don't know what happened. But I've imagined what might have happened, and I've come to the conclusion that it must have been tragic. She would never, ever have left you behind.”

He turned away again and opened the door, but then he stopped, shut it again, and said to me, “Please forgive me, but I am wondering if you would indulge me with an answer to a question I've wondered about for a number of years.”

“What?” I snapped.

“Thank you,” he said. “On the night you and Andrew were in the car accident—that night we almost lost you both . . .”

“It was your fault . . .” I began, but he held up his hand.

“I am not absolving myself of blame,” he said. “But the question I have is in regards to the time before that, when I slipped on the step.”

“What about it?”

“Just this: What happened?”

“I'm sure Andy has told you.”

“Yes, he has.”

“Then why—”

“Because I don't remember it, of course, and that frustrates me. I want to hear the details, if you recall them.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “You came to the cottage to get Andy to take him back to Massachusetts with you. You told him that the sheriff had been called, and he would be coming up in a few minutes. Andy told
you he was going with me, and we went out the door. You came after us. You slipped, cracked your head on the step, and went out. I didn't know if you were dead or not. I touched the back of your head. You were bleeding. I told Andy we needed to get help. He said we would call a doctor later, so we got into your car and we left. We didn't get a chance to call a doctor. We got into an accident.”

“You told Andy you needed to get help for me? You didn't tell Andy that you both needed to leave, right then?”

“Andy was in no shape to think at that point. You scared the crap out of him.”

Edward looked at me for a few seconds, and then he gave me a small, sad smile. “Thank you for telling me your side of the story,” he said. He let himself out and closed the door quietly behind him.

Bud dropped his hand from my shoulder but put it back again when I slumped.

“My legs won't work,” I said. He guided me to the kitchen table, where I sat down.

“There,” Ida said, “we've heard the man out.” She picked up his teacup and carried it toward the kitchen sink.

“Something tells me he ain't telling the truth,” Glen said. “The army did teach me something about how people stand and look. Something ain't right.”

Ida put the teacup into the sink, turned around, and shivered. I saw that what she had just done had not been easy for her. “I never want that kind of negativity in here, ever again. It's as if the devil just blew through here,” she said.

“He has that effect,” I said.

When someone knocked at the door, we all jumped. When we saw that it was Parker, Ida let him in.

“Just talked to Edward at the office,” Parker said to me.

“So did we,” I said.

“He come down here, did he?”

“Yes,” Ida said.

“Well,” he said to me, “I'm sorry, but I ain't got nothing to hold him on. Can't arrest someone for having letters.”

“He knows something,” I said.

Parker frowned. “Florine . . .”

And then, as she sometimes did, Ida surprised me. She said, “He bears watching.”

T
he day after Edward's visit, I asked Glen if he would mind if I came by to clean Grand's house. Glen shrugged and said of course not, it was my house, for chrissake, he'd get right out of my way. He and Bud rode up to Long Reach to get into some kind of trouble up there. Arlee and Travis stayed with their grandmother and their aunt.

I skirted past Glen's tent and started upstairs, giving the bedrooms a quick once-over, as he hadn't touched either room, it appeared. As I dusted Arlee's room, my foot knocked against something under the bed. I crouched down and fished out Arlee's cigar box treasure chest. My eyes roved over her little collection of dried and wrinkled flowers and clovers, feathers, pebbles, and shells. “So sweet,” I said, tenderness washing over me for a second. I swept and dusted under the bed, and then slid the box back.

I cleaned the bathroom while breathing as little as possible. I wondered whether to inform Glen that when the toilet bowl turned brown, it was time to clean it. The ring around the inside of the tub was caked on. It took me some time and a lot of words I was glad no one could hear me say to scrub it away. I would leave him a note, I decided, because if I didn't, come summertime I would have five months of yuck to sandblast off.

Downstairs, I worked my way around the living room, leaving
Glen's tent and the stuff around it as alone as I could, until the closed flap on the front of the tent was too much temptation for me. What was inside, I wondered? Finally, I threw the flap up, unzipped the nylon mesh liner, and skittered inside.

The light from the living room filtered through the tan cloth, and I tried not to gag at the smell of stale farts and sweaty socks. After I got used to it, I looked around. Glen had taken a baby stepstool that usually lived in the kitchen and put a kerosene lamp on top of it, beside his sleeping bag.

Magazines scattered near the little makeshift table featured busty women on their covers, promising a lonely and fucked-up ex-soldier living in a tent inside the house of a friend cheap and harmless company. I was about to pick one up and compare my own pitiful boobs to what I might find inside when the front door opened and someone came in. “Shit,” I said, and I threw the magazine onto Glen's sleeping bag, where it flopped open to the pinup in the middle. The blonde pictured there had spread her legs and her private parts, and she grinned up at me as if she was happy to be doing it. I didn't dare to move. I wished for whoever was inside the house to go away, but nope. The nylon on a winter jacket zizzed against itself as someone took heavy steps down the hall. My heart looped around itself as I held my breath. Glen had staked out his privacy by closing both the net and the flap. I had had no right to trespass.

As I tried to figure out how I would explain what I was doing in the tent, the sound of the footsteps plodded closer, and I saw big boots and corduroy pants. Dottie leaned down and said, “What the hell are you doing?” Then she saw the pinup. She twisted her head to get a better view. “She doing what I think she's doing?” she said.

“Yep,” I said. Dottie ducked inside and sat down on Glen's sleeping bag. She picked up the magazine and turned it this way and that. She shrugged and put it down. “I seen better,” she said, and gave me a sly grin.

“What?” I said. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I like girls,” she said. “Happy New Year.”

“What?” I said, again. “What the hell do you mean?”

“You remember that talk we had with Grand, about Germaine?”

I did. Glen's mother, Germaine, lived with her girlfriend, Sarah, up in Long Reach. Glen had gone through some bad teasing about it in high school. Dottie and I had decided to shock Grand one night at supper by asking her if she knew what a lesbo was, but Grand had turned it back on us. “Is what Germaine likes hurting you?” she had asked us. When we'd said no, she'd added, “That's good, because I say it's none of your business.”

Dottie's brown eyes twinkled. “Had to tell you. Haven't told no one else.”

“I won't either then. How long you known?” I asked her.

“Well, probably for always, but for not too long,” Dottie said. “Been meeting all kinds of interesting people.”

“I'll bet,” I said. For the first time in our lives, I didn't quite know what to say. I wondered all kinds of things, such as, had she thought in certain ways about me while we were growing up?

“You ain't my type. Too skinny,” Dottie said, as if she was reading my mind.

“What's wrong with that?” I snapped. Then I said, “I got to think about this.”

“What's to think about?”

“Well, I've always pictured us living here with our husbands and children, raising them up, like Ida and Madeline.”

“I can still have kids,” Dottie said. “Way things are going, I might have to raise Archer. Wouldn't mind that a bit.”

“He could do a lot worse,” I agreed. “You happy?”

Dottie shrugged. “Same, I guess,” she said. She sniffed the air and changed the subject. “Smells bad enough in here to gag a maggot,” she said. “Let's exit, stage left.” We closed the pages on the spread-eagled blonde and tossed the magazine on the floor of the tent with the others. Dottie straightened the sleeping bag and we backed out and zipped and closed the flaps, hoping to leave it as it had been before we'd snuck inside.

“I don't get why he needs a tent inside,” Dottie said.

“Maybe it's like Arlee's fuzzy blanket. It's comforting.”

“Could be.”

“You want to help me with the red ruby dishes?”

She and I washed and dried every piece out of the cabinet, lemon-oiled the cabinet, washed the glass that fronted the cabinet, and set the dishes back inside. While we did that, we talked about Edward's visit.

“Thing is, no matter what he does or says, he gives me the creeps,” Dottie said. “He could be wearing wings and playing a harp and I'd still think he was a slimeball.”

“I'm wondering if he was even supposed to come down at all, after he talked to Parker. What was the point? Why did he bother?” I said. “And he said, ‘I didn't hurt Caroline.' Who says she was hurt?”

“Ida had her radar up too,” Dottie said. “Parker paid attention to that.”

“I know,” I said. “He believes her but he thinks I'm crazy.”

“You are.”

“I know that. But what I think counts. I'm Carlie's daughter, for crying out loud.”

“He probably thinks you're too close to it all.”

“I am. Of course I am. But I want it done with,” I said. “The letters stirred things up, but I've got this life now. I want my family to come first, always, and I can't do that because my damn mother keeps popping up. You know what I mean. I want Carlie to come home, one way or another.”

“That'd be good,” Dottie said.

We worked for a while, and then I said, “So, you have a girlfriend in mind?”

Dottie laughed. “No, not yet. I ain't in no hurry to get tied down.”

A couple of minutes later, Glen and Bud burst in, reeking of beer, liquor, and cigarette smoke.

“Got a cool bar up to Long Reach called the Harbor Light,” Bud said. “Had a couple. Don't freak out now, Florine. I know how much you hate it when I have fun.”

Glen let out a burp that replaced most of the air in the house.

“Jesus, bring it up later and we'll vote on it,” Dottie said to him.

“Okay with me,” Glen said, and he and Bud laughed like hell.

“We're leaving,” I said. “Glen, clean the toilet and tub once in a while, would you?”

“Yes, sir. I'm on it, sir,” Glen said, and saluted.

“She gets like that,” Bud said to Glen. “Kind of bitchy and bossy.” He grinned at me.

“I'll see you down the hill,” I said to him. “Whenever you feel like showing up.”

As Dottie and I left the house, Glen and Bud busted up laughing.

“Bud's kind of nasty when he's drunk,” Dottie said.

“Whiskey and him don't get along as far as I'm concerned,” I said. “Whiskey and beer and him don't get along worse. Hope this doesn't get to be a
habit.”