Written on My Heart (5 page)

W
e came home after our honeymoon night to a house decorated with ribbons and a refrigerator full of wedding food. We ate leftovers for a few days, and after that, Ida brought supper to us almost every night. I was thankful, because the downward pull of the baby pressed against my weakened back. The car accident had twisted it badly, and I would always have pain. Sometimes I cursed out Andy as I beached on the sofa, knitting baby blankets and sweaters sized from birth to one year old. I pondered what to name a girl. Bud had taken charge of naming any sons we would have.

“Why can't I think about boy names?” I said.

Bud shrugged. “I like the idea of you naming our girl.”

“How many kids you think we'll have?” I asked.

“About ten, I think.”

“That's a lot of names. We'd better get cracking.”

“Later. It's wicked hard to be on top of you these days. I'm scared of heights.”

We were joking about the number of babies. I knew that my body wouldn't be able to do this ten times. My doctor had been surprised that I had gotten this far without the pain that was just setting in.

“Stupid,” I said, aloud, one afternoon. “Stupid me.”

“What's stupid?” Ida said from the front hallway. Sometimes, I swore my mother-in-law balled up noise and tucked it into her pocket to nap.

“Someday, I'm going to hear you before I see you,” I said. Ida smiled and headed for the kitchen with a covered dish for supper.

“Want some tea?” she called.

“No,” I said, “but I want to have this baby.”

“I'll bet you do.”

“The next time I get pregnant, I'm going to shoot for the other three seasons and leave summer out of it. It's hot!”

“Certainly is,” Ida agreed. She came into the living room carrying two glasses of iced tea. “I thought you'd like the ice,” she said, sitting down in the overstuffed chair next to the sofa. “You know, you could stay upstairs in bed.”

“And miss all the action?” I said. “I'd rather be here during the day. Breaks it up.”

“It's June twenty-eighth,” Ida said. “Your due date. I thought we could toast the day.” She handed me a glass and we clinked them together. I moved several skeins of yarn so I could set the glass on a coaster on the coffee table in front of me.

“I don't think much will happen today,” I said. “No earthquakes down below.”

Ida smiled. “Maybe not, but soon,” she said. “And I have a favor to ask you.”

“Ask away,” I said.

“Will you let me take the baby to church?”

Ida's request wasn't a surprise, but it made me squirm all the same. She loved Jesus as much as Grand had, but Ida liked to push him toward those, like me, she felt might be in desperate need of his services. I envied both Grand and Ida's faith but I didn't share it. Bud's need was less than mine. We had gone to church and listened to Pastor Billy preach for the years we were forced to go, and as soon as we could, we quit going. Our Sundays were spent believing in each other.

I sighed. “Ida, I don't know. Maybe we'll wait until she's older.”

“What would be the harm?”

I shrugged. “No harm. I'm not sure I want her going to church right
off. Let me talk it over with Bud.” I twisted to relieve my numbed right butt cheek.

Ida nodded as if what I had just said was what she had expected to hear.

“Please don't be upset,” I said.

“The baby might like it,” Ida said. “Jesus works in mysterious ways.”

“I know that, for sure,” I said. “But let us come to that on our own, if you don't mind. That way, it would be our idea.”

Ida swallowed the rest of her tea and got up to leave. “I guess,” she said. “But maybe you and Bud should have a talk with Billy about it.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Before she could turn to walk toward the hall I said, “Wait!”

And a streak of lightning tore through my belly.

I talked to Jesus a lot the rest of that day, night, and the morning of the next day. I hissed his name through gritted teeth and shouted it into the ceiling of the delivery room. Bud, pale as skim milk, stood beside me and told me to take deep breaths and just relax, relax, until I swore at him and told him to get out, that I didn't need him, I'd never needed him, I didn't need anyone, and why didn't he leave me alone. But he didn't leave, and finally, the baby found the tiny escape tunnel and I began to push, push, push and then, there she came, all seven pounds six ounces of her, screaming at me and at anyone within a half mile of her voice.

I named her Arlee June before she could go from blue to pink. They took her from me for a minute or two, and then placed her on my chest. Bud and I cried, and I pledged to her that should anyone dare touch one copper hair on her head, they would suffer great harm. She blinked and cooed and my heart was swallowed up by love so intense I shook with it.

“Tuesday's child is full of grace,” Madeline Butts said to me, sometime after Arlee and I had been cleaned up and they brought her to me. She and Dottie sat in matching tan visitor chairs by the bed.

“She's a looker,” Dottie said.

“Can't you see it?” I said. I could, plain as the minute nose on Arlee's perfect face. “She looks exactly like Carlie.”

“I guess she does,” Madeline said. “She has her red hair, sure enough.”

“Why did you name her Arlee June?” Dottie asked.

“Rhymes with Carlie, but the l-e-e is for Leeman,” I said. “The June is because she was born in June.”

“Makes sense,” Dottie said. “Arlee Dot would have been nice, though.”

Arlee and I slept away much of our first afternoon together, until about six o'clock, when Bud came back and we wondered at our baby, who was the most beautiful child ever created.

“Time to have another one,” I said to Bud as he held our daughter. He looked up at me, his eyes stupid with love.

“Let's spoil this one for a while,” he said. “And before we do have another one, we should think about where we're going to live and get settled.”

My heart sank. Bud was restless and I knew that. He talked about seeing new places, all the time. For the time being, he worked at Fred's, but Fred had told him that his brother, Cecil, who had a garage down to Stoughton Falls, might be looking for help in the near future. Bud had gotten all fired up at the thought of an adventure, so we had driven south for about two hours to check out the area. The autumn leaves along the drive had been pretty, but Stoughton Falls was tiny, and it lacked the backdrop of an ocean. None of that had fazed Bud, though, and he hadn't stopped thinking about working there since.

For me, moving to Stoughton Falls meant no sassy whitecaps whipped up by flirty winds. No watching the sunrise yawn its way up over the east and stretch out into day over The Point and the harbor. No double-yolked sunsets dipping behind the pines at night. No sweet, familiar house. No people that I knew. I went quiet whenever he mentioned it. This time was no exception.

As he nuzzled Arlee's fuzzy head, he said, “Florine . . .”

“I know,” I said. “I'm still getting used to the idea.”

A shadow fell over his face.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Dad's not doing good. I should go and see him.”

About two hours after Bud had driven me to the hospital, Ida had called an ambulance down to The Point for Sam, who had taken a turn for the worse. He was waiting out the last stages of his life, only one floor below us.

“Tell him we love him,” I said to Bud. He nodded. I wanted to take the sadness from his eyes. I said, “Bud, when the time comes, we'll move for sure, and I'll be glad to do it.”

He kissed us and left to go visit Sam. Arlee fussed and my breasts went heavy. She bumped and bobbed for a minute or so and then she grabbed onto a nipple. “Yowza!” I said. “If you're this strong now, what's this going to feel like when you're older?” Arlee drifted into a milk-drenched stupor about ten minutes later. A nurse moved her to the little crib beside me, and I fell asleep beside her.

Some time later, I heard an “Oh my god.” My eyes shot open and I sat up before I was even awake.

Stella stood over Arlee's crib. I could smell booze from across the room.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Well, what a nice greeting,” she said. “No, I'm not drunk. I don't drink nearly as much as you think I do. I wanted to see Leeman's grandchild. I was hoping that she might look like him. But I can see you've got your mother back.”

“She looks like herself, mostly,” I said.

“Well, of course she does,” Stella said. “But she's definitely Carlie's granddaughter.”

“And she's my daughter,” I said, “and we're both tired, Stella.”

Stella put her hand down to touch Arlee's cheek. I held my breath.

“Soft,” Stella murmured. “Well, I won't take up any more time. I just wanted to see the baby. Are you feeling okay?”

“Ripped from stem to stern. But otherwise, fine.”

Stella raised an eyebrow. “You'll heal. You always do,” she said, and she left.

Stella and I had such a strained relationship. We would never be friends, but there were things to be admired about her. The way she loved Daddy, for instance. The way she went after what she wanted. The way she kept a secret between us, instead of telling him.

When I was fourteen, I'd snuck into Daddy's house one day while he and Stella were out. I hadn't been there for a long time. When I saw that Stella had completely redecorated it, I went into a rage. I broke glass and threw things around before I ran off. When my conscience got the best of me, I hurried back to fix it before they got home. But Stella was there, and she caught me. She told me to get out, but she never told Daddy what I had done. He never knew. For that, I was grateful. Still, our relationship was built on unsteady ground, and things could go wrong with a misread look, or the tone of a voice. I was temperamental and she drank too much.

That night, Bud wheeled me and Arlee down to Sam's room. His skin was the color of a buttered moon, and his breath rattled in his throat, but he smiled when he saw his granddaughter.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. Bud held Arlee so Sam could stroke her hair and her face. We stayed only five minutes, and then Bud pushed us back to the elevator and pressed the up button. We rose to a higher floor filled with light and new babies.

N
o time for my aching back. No time for knitting, reading, baking bread, or goofing off. No time to finish dishes, housekeeping, laundry, cooking, or going to the bathroom. No time to brood and mourn over those no longer in my world. My tiny infant girl held the clock hostage with demands that ranged from feedings to diaper changes to sleeping and back again. And although she had been quiet in the hospital, almost from the minute we stepped over the threshold that separated the outdoors from Grand's front hall, Arlee discovered her lungs.

Bud and I settled into a routine, understanding all too soon that our efforts to keep our lives on track could be blown to bits by Arlee's crying for no reason or for a real reason. Both of us carried her as if she were made of glass for the first few days. Ida and Maureen helped, but they could also leave. We could not.

“You realize this is for about eighteen years,” Bud whispered one night in bed as we lay there, half asleep on our covers. July was keeping her midsummer breezes to herself that night. She'd been playing them close to her chest for the two weeks we'd been home. I was so hot. My breasts hurt, my stomach felt like jelly, and my crotch ached.

“I was thinking we could send her off at about six. Or two, if she's
smart,” I grumbled. He moved his hand toward me. “Don't touch me. I hurt everywhere. I'm tired everywhere.”

“You're not the only one,” Bud said, and turned over as I continued to rag about how much more I had to do than him, even though I couldn't complain, as he was a big help.

We'd switched our bedroom around so we could get out of bed on both of our sides, instead of Bud climbing over me to get to Arlee when she woke up at night. He took the midnight shift, which I appreciated, but I was the milk machine so he brought her to me. When he got home at night after work, he was tired, but he was good about taking her. I was happy for the sitting porch next to the kitchen, with its line of rockers and room for a bassinet. It became a mini nursery. Since it was summer, we could open the windows and let in the harbor breezes and noises.

“I'm so tired,” I bitched to Ida one day. I should have known better.

“Did you expect not to be?” she asked.

“I don't think I knew what the word meant,” I said.

Ida smiled. “Get used to it,” she said, and then she took Arlee for a couple of hours.

Bud didn't get many naps. He got up to go to work, even though he might have been up half the night. Then he came home and ate supper. Most nights, he drove up to Long Reach to visit his father in the hospital. Later, he nodded off in front of the television set.

“Remember those ten kids we talked about having?” I shouted to him one late afternoon as he sat in the kitchen, jiggling our screaming baby and waiting for supper.

He rolled his eyes and carried Arlee outside. I watched him walk down the ramp to the wharf, where he lowered himself into a weather-bleached Adirondack chair. As the harbor water rocked the wharf with gentle green hands, our daughter's cries softened and stopped.

I loaded up a plate with shepherd's pie and took it down to him. I took Arlee from him while he ate. I sat on the arm of the chair and listened to water
bloop
against the wet pilings beneath us. Bud's fork tinged like a bell against the plate.

“This is peaceful,” I said. “Maybe we should eat here every night.”

“Might as well,” Bud said. “We're not going to move anytime soon.”

Arlee muttered against my shirt, then stilled.

“Why not?” I said.

“Cecil don't need anyone right now. I asked Fred today.”

“That's too bad.”

“Is it?”

“I know it's what you want.”

“So? Doesn't really matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I got to get to the hospital to see Dad,” he said. He clattered the fork against the plate and Arlee jumped in my arms. We walked up the ramp to the house.

“Do you want us to come with you?” I asked him as we reached the yard.

“No. Calms me down to think of you here.” He set the plate and fork on the lawn, and wrapped his arms around us. He kissed me with salty, potato-flavored lips.

“I'll call if something happens,” he said. He started up his Ford Fairlane and chugged up the road and out of sight.

I cupped my daughter against me and nuzzled her sweet head. “I need to be there for your daddy,” I confessed to her.

I put Arlee down at about eight o'clock in her bassinet on the porch. When the phone rang, I picked it up as fast as I could. But as I said “Hello,” Arlee began to cry.

“Damn. Did I wake her up?” Bud sighed.

“Dust bunnies hopping across the floor wake her up,” I said.

“The doctor thinks Sam will go tonight. We're going to stay with him.”

“I'm here,” I said. “We're here.”

We hung up a couple of minutes later and I fetched my girl. It took a changing and another feeding to convince her that sleep was probably her best choice. I took her upstairs and set her on her back, in the crib. Afterward, I wandered out into the side yard and sat down in a lawn chair. My legs throbbed as I thought about how two weeks ago we hadn't had a crying baby to care for. Just sixteen days ago, Sam had been that much further from dying.

I didn't know much about my father-in-law, really. Like Bert Butts and Daddy, Sam was a lobsterman. Height-wise, he was the smallest of The Point men, but drink-wise, he kept up with the best of them. He could be touchy, the depths of which Bud told me about during nights we revealed the secret lives we had led growing up.

One night when Bud was about ten, he told me, Sam had roused him by hauling him out of bed and pushing him into the living room. He proceeded to throw everything in Bud's closet out onto the floor, flipped the mattress off the bed, and said, “There, dammit. Maybe you're better off in a pig's sty.”

“What was he talking about?” I asked Bud. “What had you done?”

“I hadn't hung up my jacket. I'd left it on the back of the kitchen chair.”

“Wow.”

“I had school the next day, and I didn't have time to pick anything up before leaving that morning. That night I overheard Ma tell Dad that she had put the room to rights and that he might consider giving up some of the liquor that made him so crazy and start praying to the lord for help.”

“Ida said that?”

“Ma believes that the meek shall inherit the Earth, and she goes about proving it every chance she gets.”

I said a prayer for Sam and sent it up to the moon and the stars as night spun out its story. I went to bed at eleven and fell into a mother's waking sleep. Only an hour later, something woke me up.

I hopped out of bed and hustled toward Arlee's room just as a
high-pitched shriek punched through the open window in my bedroom. I froze. Arlee whimpered. The shriek came again, followed by words.

“You killed him. You did. He was mine, and you killed him, you selfish bitch.” It sounded like Stella, but not like Stella. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I left Arlee's room and crept to my bedroom window. Sure enough, it was Stella, tripping through the pansies and petunias in the side garden. The glass from a bottle she was holding glittered as it caught the half-moon. She fell into a cluster of budding daisies and I winced as she crushed them. She struggled up and stepped on Bud's supper plate, which was still setting in the side yard by the lawn chair. It cracked under her bare feet.

“You bitch,” she screamed again. “You took away the only thing I ever wanted. You think you hate me, I hate you worse. I hate you for killing your father. You killed him!” This last sentence was filled with drunken rage like to have ripped her little body in half. She smashed the bottle against the side of the house. The force caused her to fall backward into the beach roses and she cursed the thorns as she tried to right herself.

I slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and walked across the hall. Miracle of miracles, Arlee still slept. I closed her door quietly and went back over to the bedroom window. Stella was picking roses and thorns from her clothing. “Your fault,” she whimpered. “All your fault.”

I'd never seen her like this and I wasn't sure I could handle this alone. I decided to call Sheriff Parker Clemmons and Bert and Madeline Butts. They would be able to calm her down.

I creaked my way down the stairs, through the living room, past the front hall, and into the kitchen, toward the wall phone. Before I could pick it up, Stella banged on the kitchen window and hollered, “I see you! Come out here and tell me why you killed your father. Do it, or I'll break this window. Don't you go near that phone.”

I picked up the phone. Stella bent down, seized up one of the big rose quartz rocks Grand had gathered to decorate the borders of the
house, and heaved it through one of the kitchen windows. Glass shattered. I ran outside.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I screamed. I faced Stella, who still stood in front of the shattered window, looking as if she couldn't believe she had done it. She turned and said, through her gritted teeth, “It's almost the second anniversary of when you killed your father. Doesn't surprise me that you don't remember it.”

“I know damn well what day it is, Stella. He died of a heart attack. I didn't kill him. And you are some holy-o drunk,” I said. “I'm not arguing with whatever craziness you've swallowed. Go home and sober up.”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” Stella said. “And you know what? Your mother was a whore. She wasn't the saint you think she was.”

Arlee finally began to cry. “Go home,” I said. “You've waked up the baby.”

“Oh, I've waked up the baby. Well, that's too goddamn bad.”

Someone, most likely Grand from her rocking chair in heaven, touched my soul, and for a few seconds I understood the pain clawing at Stella's heart. Soft as I could I said, “I'm sorry you miss Daddy so much. I miss him too. But shouting at me and getting mad at me won't bring him back. You need to go home and sleep this off.”

Stella responded by bending down and picking up the fork Bud had used for supper. She ran at me, and before I could grab it away from her, she scored my cheek with the prongs. The pain, and Arlee's cries, made me crazy, but before I could wrap my hands around Stella's twiggy neck, Bert Butts pulled us apart.

“Grab
her
, goddammit,” Stella screamed. “She's a killer!”

Bert put his big lobsterman's arms around Stella's slight body and held her to him as she struggled.

Dottie and Madeline had followed Bert. Dottie's eyes were dazed, but Madeline, who appeared to be more on top of things, said, “What the hell is going on?”

I held my hand up to my bloody cheek and moved to go into the
house to get to Arlee. Dottie stopped me. “I'll fetch her,” she said. Madeline took me into the kitchen as Parker rocketed down the dirt road in his car, lights flashing.

“I called him,” Madeline said. “Thought you were being murdered.” She gaped at the broken window. “My god,” she said, “did Stella do that?”

I sat down hard at the table. Madeline wet a cloth at the sink and dabbed at my cheek. “She got you good,” she said. “You had a tetanus shot lately?”

“Doesn't sound familiar,” I said.

We listened to Stella cry and protest as Parker and Bert talked to her outside.

Dottie came downstairs toting my red-faced baby and I took her and tried to settle her down. I told Madeline and Dottie that I had been waked by Stella's screams, that I had tried to talk to her. “Things bottomed out fast,” I said.

“She's drunk,” Madeline said.

“No shit. That's nothing new,” I said. “But she's never attacked me.”

“She's been alone in that house too much,” Madeline said. “Ida and I have both tried to get her out, but she's been stubborn about leaving. I guess everything got to her tonight, somehow.”

Sadness washed over me. “The hell of it is, she's right,” I said. “I probably did kill Daddy.”

Madeline said, “Your father had a bad heart for years, Florine.”

“Yes, but I was hard on him.”

“You was hard on everyone after Carlie went missing and Stella showed up,” Dottie said. “None of the rest of us died from it.”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “Dorothea, you have such a way with words.”

“Just telling it so Florine can understand that she didn't do nothing wrong. She wasn't awful nice, but she had some reasons. She sure as hell ain't no killer.”

I gave Arlee an idle boob to suck on. “I hope my milk isn't sour,” I said.

Madeline asked me where we kept the first-aid kit, and set off for it.

Sheriff Parker Clemmons came into the kitchen, saw me nursing Arlee, turned on his heel, and started to leave.

“It's okay, Parker,” I said. “Dottie, get me a dish towel.” She fetched it, and I put it gently over Arlee's head and my boob. “All covered up,” I said. “You can look.”