Written on My Heart (7 page)

I'm looking for meat or I'm going to pop,

A rag, a bone with a cherry on top,”

Says Barnacle Bill the sailor.

I peeped over the rocker to see that Arlee was wide-eyed and awake, watching him. I put my hand on his left shoulder.

“Nice song,” I said.

“It's my lullaby,” Bud said. “Sam used to sing it to me.” I settled in my rocker while Bud went through every verse of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” before handing Arlee to me.

“I think her hair is curlier, after that,” I said, lifting my T-shirt to feed her.

He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

The next morning I noticed that the car in Stella's driveway hadn't moved. Grace, if it was Grace, was still there. I lifted my hand to my face and ran it over the scratches. They were hardening to scab, and my cheek itched.

“Don't scratch,” Bud said.

“Hard not to,” I said.

“Stella is a friggin' wack job,” Bud said. And with that, he left for work.

I got busy with baby and house during the morning. At noon, I decided to take her up the road to Ray's to pick up some groceries. I snuggled her into my old buggy. The carriage rocked as the wheels took the shocks from the bumps in the road.

“Wait up!” someone called. I turned to see Maureen flying up the road wearing a thin cotton dress and no shoes. When she reached us, she skidded to a stop.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Can I steer?”

“Up to Ray's,” I said. She curled her long fingers around the buggy handle and we began our little walk. Before we could start a conversation, a door slammed off to our right. I looked over to see a stout woman tromping down Daddy's driveway. It was Grace. I recalled the scowl on her face.

“Why don't you keep walking,” I said to Maureen. “I'll meet you at Ray's in a minute.” Maureen plugged on up the hill as I planted my feet and waited.

Grace stopped about three feet away. I noted the resemblance between the sisters, except that, judging by her build, Grace had claimed a good portion of whatever they'd eaten during their childhoods.

“Stella's gone away for a while,” Grace said. “I'm here now.”

“Good for you,” I said. My cheek itched and I reached to scratch it.

Grace smiled. “She got you good, didn't she? Boy, don't she hate you.” She turned and walked away. I sputtered like a seized engine as I hurried to catch up with Maureen.

“Is Grace staying long?” I asked Ray Clemmons as he bagged our groceries.

“Don't know,” he said.

“Where did Stella go?”

“Grace ain't giving out the address,” he said. “No idea of where she went, but here's hoping she stays gone for a while. She needs to find what mind she's lost.”

“Has Glen written you a letter yet?” Maureen asked.

“Nope. His mother got a note from him. Said he was doing okay. Said it was hot. Not much else.”

Maureen said, “Can I have his address?” which surprised us both. Ray gave it to her and we rattled back down the hill.

“You going to write to Glen?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Probably could use all the mail he can get,” she said, which shamed me, because I hadn't written to him since he'd been gone, nor had I sent a photo of the baby. I vowed to do that soon. It didn't seem real to me that Glen, who bungled just about everything, was tracking down some enemy with a weapon in his hand. “Copy the address for me,” I said to Maureen. “I'll send him some pictures of Arlee.”

Dottie came over later that day and I told her about the encounter I'd had with Grace.

“It was so strange,” I said. “Not ‘Sorry she ripped up your face,' just, ‘Boy, don't she hate you.'”

“Well, she's to the point,” Dottie said. “How long she staying there?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Daddy had willed his house to Stella, so I supposed that members of her family could stay there. But did Grace plan to live here permanently? Would the whole Stella clan move in? Oh, sweet Jesus, I hoped not.

“Maybe she's having an off day,” Dottie said. “I'll keep my eye on her. Maybe she bowls. Looks like she's built for it. Maybe I can keep her busy. We're a man down on the team. She might be the answer to our prayers.”

“Might as well make use of her while she's here,” I said.

Dottie was a big-ball bowling champion with several trophies to prove it. She had started rolling strikes in high school. She tried to teach me once, and then told me that it was a good thing I had other talents to rely on to make my way in the world. She had played all over the state and was thinking about turning pro. But her roots were strong and Bowla Rolla, the alley where she had started her journey, was her favorite. Just a month ago, she had won her latest trophy there. Dottie, a woman not given to pride, beamed when she told me. “Five highest scores for a woman in that alley, ever,” she said.

She tried to talk to Grace about bowling, but it turned out she was immune to even Dottie's charm. “She's about as wacky as they come,” Dottie
concluded.

S
ummer boiled over into fall's territory. Arlee got more interesting and took up more time than seemed possible. The anniversary of my mother's disappearance in mid-August almost went by without me noticing that she was still gone.

But I did remember. I walked down to Ida's house and asked her to take Arlee for a few minutes. I made my way to the stony beach and sat down on a familiar barnacled rock to think about her. I shut my eyes and tried to remember her face. I saw different features clearly, but not at the same time. I could not wish her whole face into my memory and my heart beat faster as I realized she was fading away.

I stood up and paced back and forth for a minute or two. I looked out to sea for comfort and had a sudden urge to swim out to Bert Butts's white ball mooring. The day was warm and no one was around, so I stripped down to my bra and panties, waded into the chilly water, and struck out on my own, counting my strokes as I swam. I thought about the time Bud and I had raced each other to this mooring. I couldn't remember who won, but what I did remember was us holding hands and diving down and down, coming up only when our lungs begged for air. It had been a beautiful day, one that may have meant the beginning of love for both of us. But Carlie had vanished on the same day, possibly as Bud and I swam and flirted. The fact of that changed everything.

As I reached the mooring on this sad anniversary, I felt only the dregs of loss and I didn't linger. I started for the shore again using a breaststroke, watching the way my white arms and wavy fingers pushed the water aside. I was almost to the beach when Ida appeared with Arlee in her arms. I wondered if she would mention my swimming attire, but after giving me a quick once-over, she smiled.

For some crazy reason before Arlee was born, I pictured being able to click along doing what needed to be done while Arlee napped. But it didn't quite work that way. For one thing, all the clicking and cleaning in the world wasn't possible in the time she was down. And sometimes, I took naps too, leaving dirty floors, undusted furniture, and piles of wrinkled clothes to breed and multiply. When Arlee was up, it was all about her. I began to get behind on the chores, which wore on me, because I hated clutter. One morning Bud had the courage to ask for a clean work shirt.

“This baby takes up all of my time,” I said. “I don't have time to wash your damn shirts. I don't have time to iron. You're going to have to learn how to do it.” I cried and ran upstairs to our bedroom. I lay on the bed sobbing, feeling stupid with tiredness, wondering how anyone ever did this. The stairs creaked and Bud stood in the doorway with Arlee in his arms.

“You okay?” he asked.

I wiped tears off my face, sat up, nodded, and smoothed down my grubby T-shirt and my baby-food-stained jeans. I took Arlee from Bud and we all trooped downstairs.

“I'll wear the shirt I wore yesterday,” Bud said on the way down. “What the hell. It'll just get that much greasier. I'll try to get home earlier, help out.”

We reached the bottom of the stairs and I turned and kissed him. “I'll wash shirts today. I can do it. I know I can. I know you're tired too.”

But Arlee began to fuss the minute he went out the door and things
continued along in that vein for most of the morning. I fed, changed, and burped her, walked from the stairs to the porch, rocked, fed, changed, burped, and so on until early afternoon. I finally ended up in our bed, holding her while she fell asleep after a feeding. I managed to plant her in her crib for her nap. I hurried downstairs and soaked Bud's dirty shirts in ammonia in the kitchen sink before I stuffed them into Grand's good old washing machine.

After that, I stood in the middle of a kitchen floor so dirty that I was walking on gravel and sand instead of linoleum. But before I could take a step toward sweeping and washing the floor, someone hammered on the front door. Arlee shrieked from her crib upstairs as I ran into the hall and threw the door open. Grace Drowns stood there.

“Oh my god. What?” I cried.

“Move the boat out of the yard. Takes up too much room.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

“Move it, or I'll sell it,” she said, and she turned and walked away.

I thought about running into the kitchen to grab a knife, but I figured she'd be too far away to hurl it into her spine by the time I got back.

As I took the stairs two at a time to get to Arlee, I shook, I was so mad. I stopped outside of her room and turned into my bedroom to calm down. While she cried, I looked at the
Florine
sitting in the side yard of Daddy's house. Stella hadn't minded that she was there. The boat had belonged to Daddy, she said, and anything that reminded her of Daddy comforted her. In fact, at some point last fall, Stella had laid a ladder against the
Florine
's broad hull, probably so she could climb up and hang around in the cabin, drink, and remember him.

I took a deep breath, walked across the hall, and held Arlee against my pounding heart until her cries sank into me and drove out all thoughts of crazy Grace.

I talked to Bud about Grace almost as soon as he came through the door after work. He was wild when I told him what she had said to
me. “We don't have to move the boat,” he said. “She ain't got any business asking us to do that. Who the hell does she think she is? I'm going to talk to her.” He left our house and walked toward Stella's.

Grace came toward him before he could get to the front door. She planted herself like a stubborn cow and they faced off. At first Bud's voice was low and reasonable, but soon he was waving his arms and shouting. Finally, he stalked back toward me, and Grace went back into the house. Before he reached me, he swerved and headed for the Buttses' house.

“Gonna talk to Bert,” he growled as he went past. I went back into the house to tackle supper. He was gone for about twenty minutes, and then he slammed through the screen door before I could say, “The baby . . .” Right away, she began to cry. I picked her up from the bassinet and we joined him in the kitchen as he paced and raved.

“She says that because it's on her sister's land, she has the right to sell it,” Bud said. “She didn't even hear anything I had to say. It's like talking to a rock.”

“What did Bert say?” I asked.

“He says she can't sell it, because it's not hers to sell, and since it's Stella's house and Stella wants it there, she's full of crap about what she can and can't do. Says not to worry about it, she's just blowing smoke out her ass.”

Bert and Bud spread the word to everyone they knew that, contrary to what they might hear, Leeman Gilham's boat, the
Florine
, wasn't for sale. As days passed, I tucked the whole thing away and relaxed about it and, of course, that was when someone knocked at my door.

I'd never seen him. He was a nice-enough guy, youngish, black beard and blue eyes. Tan face and rough hands like a fisherman. Medium build. He smiled. I smiled. I must have looked like an idiot, standing there with spit-up milk on my shirt, hair looking like a truckload of mice had held a wrestling match in it.

“Yes?” I said, and after that, all pleasantries were off. After I
recovered from the perfectly innocent question he put to me about the boat's sale price, I ranted that the
Florine
was mine and would stay mine, contrary to what that bitch across the road thought, and he might as well go fry eggs on hell's roof as to think I would ever let it go and I was sorry that he'd been led down God's garden path but no. No. And no.

He left in a huff and I just spun with rage in the hallway for a minute. Then I sat on the porch and rocked until I calmed down. When I could breathe without exhaling fire, I went upstairs and picked up Arlee, who was deep into her nap, and we walked down the hill to Ida's house. The sight of the harbor calmed me, as it always did. The tide bustled by, whitecaps twirling back on themselves like curls of meringue.

Ida's face beamed when she saw us. She took Arlee from me as carefully as she would handle flower stems made of threaded glass. I made us cups of tea and we sat down in the living room.

“A guy came by, asked how much the
Florine
was,” I said, recounting the story.

As I talked, Ida looked out of her picture window toward the harbor, nuzzling Arlee. When I finished, she said, “Why don't you just move the boat?”

“What?” I said.

She shrugged. “Move the boat. Have Bert trailer it down and back it into our yard. That way, Grace will be out of your hair.”

“Well, that's not the point,” I said.

She sighed. “What is the point?” she said. “It's the easiest thing. Then you can give all your attention to this sweetie pie.” She shuffled into her kitchen, humming a hymn to Arlee as I sat there and wondered how the day had taken such a twist.

That night, I said to Bud, “I think I just met the woman who got your father to church every Sunday.”

“What did she want?” Bud asked. “Whatever it is, just do it.”

We moved the boat. We parked her beside Ida's house, where the
Florine
could reflect on the tides and look forward to Glen's return.

When Grace demanded that we move Bud's 1947 coupe, Petunia, out of the shed that Daddy had built for her when she had belonged to Carlie, we did that too. Bud drove her up to Fred's garage and parked her in a shed on Fred's property.

It was time to move on. Ida had been right. It was the easiest thing to do.