The Sweet Spot

by Joan Livingston

  The Sweet Spot

  A novel by

  Joan Livingston

  For my mother, Algerina

  Memorial Day 1978

  The rap on the bedroom door was light and quick. Edie St. Claire sat up in bed.

  “Crap, it’s after nine,” she said.

  Her daughter’s voice came through the door in a thin, worried wail.

  “Ma, you up yet? We gotta go.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Amber, I’m getting ready.”

  Edie reached over Lonny for the black bra on his side of the bed. He groaned in his sleep when she touched him, and then she was on her feet, running to use the bathroom, grabbing whatever clean clothes she could find. She was a pretty woman, the type who made men smile and want to be with her. Short, she favored her father’s side, the Sweets, with her slight build and light blue eyes. She combed her fingers through her brassy brown hair, cut straight at the jaw.

  Lonny opened one eye and watched her hasty dress. He mumbled something low and creaky in the back of his throat.

  “I gotta go. I told you last night,” she said.

  Lonny propped himself on one elbow.

  “When you comin’ back?”

  “I dunno.”

  Edie slipped out the door with her purse and a bottle of mouthwash. Amber was on the other sTide, her blue eyes blinking fast, brows arched high. Edie shut the bedroom door behind her.

  “Amber, I gotta teach you how to use the coffee machine.”

  “But I’m only seven and a half.”

  “Seven and a half? You’re old enough.”

  They raced out the kitchen door to the car. Pop’s pickup blocked their way. Edie studied her father’s half of the house. Nothing stirred, except two gray cats jumping off a couch to the porch’s floorboards.

  “How we getting out, Ma?”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Amber. Just get in the car.”

  The wheels of Edie’s white sedan spun into the high grass when she drove across the front yard, steering hard to the right to avoid the drainage ditch. Her mouth was full of wash, and she worked at the sharp liquid until she spat out the open window.

  “See?” she said.

  Her daughter’s head moved in several small bounces.

  “Yeah, Ma.”

  They were nearly at Aunt Leona’s house, one of three on this dead-end dirt road. Amber spent the night there and walked back this morning. Leona’s dog, a mix of golden retriever, collie, and some other breed, trotted slowly like the old mutt he was along the road’s shoulder. The dog halted briefly and raised his head when he recognized the sound of her car.

  “Uh-oh, old Bob’s following you.” Edie slowed the car when it tires chattered and slid sideways over the road’s hard ridges. “We’ll just have to bring him back later. I don’t have time for it now.”

  “Are we gonna be late?”

  “No, no, we’re fine. Honey, fish in my purse for my sunglasses. Any aspirin? No? Shit. Oh, yeah? Open the bottle and give me two. Thanks.”

  Edie pushed the car forward to the main road, past the edges of dense forest toward the town’s center, where she found a parking space behind her in-laws’ Thunderbird.

  Amber knelt to reach the car’s back seat.

  “See. I remembered,” she said.

  Amber clutched a framed photograph, the one taken of her father weeks before his helicopter was shot down in Vietnam. It happened one month before Amber was born, and the sun glinted off Gil’s long, thin face in a way that broke Edie’s heart all over again. His hand was on his hip. His khaki shirt was unbuttoned as he leaned against the chopper. He and his crew, who died together, called it the Angel of Darkness. Gil’s dark eyes went through Edie as if he was cool and tough, but she knew better. Those were boys who died that day in Vietnam, and sweet boys if they were like her Gil.

  “I’m glad you brought Daddy’s picture. Come on. It hasn’t started yet.”

  Edie and Amber slipped through the small crowd clustered on the town commons. People nodded or spoke her name. Edie knew every one of them because people had a way of sticking close to the hilltown of Conwell in Western Massachusetts.

  “Marie, Fred,” she greeted her in-laws, but her attention was on her mother-in-law. “How are you?” Edie asked although she didn’t expect an answer.

  Marie smiled instead at Amber. Edie’s father-in-law, Fred, his bald head shining as if it had a pink shell, hugged a wreath of red and white carnations. A blue ribbon said, “OUR BELOVED SON GIL.”

  Marie’s head chopped toward her husband.

  “Where’s Walker?” She worked the corners of her mouth. “It’d be just like him to forget his brother.”

  Fred raised his chin.

  “He’s over there. See him?”

  Walker, wearing a black cowboy hat and boots, marched across the mowed grass. His face, thin, with a straight nose, was tanned from working outdoors. One of the builders in town, he greeted people he knew, firm handshakes all around. He leaned in to speak with someone in the crowd.

  Marie hummed.

  “It’s about time he showed up.” She sniffed. “I don’t see Sharon or the boys. Do you?”

  Fred shook his head.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Marie pursed her lips.

  “She never comes. Never. He could’ve at least brought the boys. Gil was their uncle after all.”

  Fred clutched his wife’s arm.

  “Marie, take it easy.”

  Edie closed her eyes behind her sunglasses. Her head throbbed.

  “Honey, what do you have there?” Marie asked Amber.

  Amber showed her the photograph.

  “It’s Daddy.”

  Marie held her hand to her chest.

  “Oh,” she said in a broken way.

  Amber glanced large-eyed from her grandmother to her mother. Only a head shorter than Edie, she was going to be tall and skinny-boned like Gil. Her hair, somewhere between black and brown, just like his, fell over the left side of her face. Edie tucked it behind her daughter’s ear.

  “That’s better.” Edie swallowed. “You have Daddy’s picture. Wasn’t he so handsome?”

  Amber held the photo face out, so everyone could see her father. Edie used a knuckle to smear the tears that spilled down her cheeks. Thirty, maybe thirty-five people were here today. When Gil died, the church was so full people had to stand outside in rain mixed with snow, and she let the baby she carried keep her upright throughout the ordeal. Now Edie rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to calm herself again.

  Walker pecked his mother’s cheek.

  “Mom?”

  “Shh, Walker. It’s going to start. Take off that damn hat, will you?” Marie hissed.

  Walker swiped the hat from his head and smoothed his long, dark hair in place. His eyes shifted toward Edie.

  “I came. Didn’t I?”

  Edie tried to smile.

  “You did, Walker,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  He nodded.

  Schoolchildren and scouts in droopy uniforms clutched flags or lilac sprigs. A color guard of men who fought in World War II or Korea hauled flags from the back of a station wagon. One of Gil’s great-uncles watched from the passenger seat of a car parked on the edge of the commons. The ceremony was so brief it wasn’t worth getting his wheelchair from the trunk. He gave Edie a ghostly wave from the open door. She waved back.

  The veterans in the crowd saluted as the color guard marched toward the town’s memorial stone and flagpole. Lots of boys from Conwell fought in Vietnam, but only he
r Gil died. His full name, Gilbert James St. Claire, was painted in black on a white wooden cross beside the ones for the two boys killed in World War II. Edie knew their last names because their families still lived in town. But like the children here today who never met Gil, she didn’t know either of them.

  People stared sadly at Edie and Amber while one of the color guard read President Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.” Some years, a group of children recited a poem or sang a song, but not today. The pastor of the Conwell Congregational Church spoke, his voice a drone as he praised the three brave soldiers, who grew up in Conwell and died so far from home.

  Edie saw past the row of scouts to a man standing near the edge of the road. His head tilted to the right. He was tall, but he held his body in a twist as if a part of him were incomplete. Deep scars cut the flesh of his face below his aviator sunglasses. She hadn’t seen him before. Maybe he was visiting someone in Conwell or driving through, and he stopped when he saw what was going on at the memorial. Maybe he fought in Vietnam. Maybe it’s how he got hurt.

  The pastor was silent. He gestured.

  “Marie? Fred?”

  It was their signal. Fred set the wreath in front of the large stone, and then he and Marie stood at Gil’s cross. Fred put his arm around Marie when she began to weep. After several minutes, they were back.

  Marie reached into her purse for a handkerchief. She studied Amber’s upright face.

  “Sweetie, did anyone ever say you look just like your Daddy?”

  “You do, Grandma, all the time.”

  Marie smiled.

  “That’s right.”

  Two high school boys played taps, one hidden behind the church, so it sounded as if there was an echo although one boy’s horn was better than the other’s. Afterward, men in the color guard raised their rifles and fired blanks into the air. The ceremony was over, and the crowd broke apart. Edie searched for the stranger, but he was gone.

  Her mother-in-law tapped her arm.

  “Edie, you’re coming to the house?”

  That, too, was the same. Her in-laws held a Memorial Day barbecue, and they invited about a quarter of the town. People ate and drank their fill, and after the crowd thinned, those who stayed swapped stories about Gil. Marie stuck with it until she got teary. Fred shot stony stares at his wife, but eventually the memories touched him, too, and he went away quietly. Gil and Walker were Fred and Marie’s only children. It was a hard scene to get through.

  “Uh-huh, Marie, I’ll be there, but I have to go home first to get the potato salad. Could you take Amber with you?” Edie turned toward her daughter. “Let me bring Daddy’s picture home for you.”

  Amber handed her the photograph. Edie stared longingly at the image. Her daughter’s fingerprints on the glass formed a thick halo around Gil’s head.

  The diamond rings on Marie’s fingers glittered when she took the girl’s hand. Raising a brow at Walker, she asked, “The boys are coming, aren’t they? And Sharon?”

  Walker replaced his cowboy hat.

  “Yes, ma’am, they’ll all be there.”

  That Old Sadness

  When Edie returned home, her aunt’s dog, Bob, lay in the sun on the right side of the porch. A family of cats living in one of Pop’s rundown shacks watched from a distance. This was supposed to be their spot during the day.

  The duplex, built long before the Sweets came to Conwell, was painted white on three sides, a project that took her and Pop a month of weekends last summer. The house never owned a coat of paint on the back as long as Edie remembered. Pop swore the town had to charge him fewer taxes because one side was unpainted, but it just meant anyone who might drive by would be fooled into thinking theirs was a well-kept house.

  Edie insisted Pop keep all the junk he brought home from the dump in the back yard if it couldn’t fit in the barn or one of his shacks. Pop worked as the town’s dump attendant for about thirty-five years, and the barn was crammed with stuff he stored there: doors, farm tools, rolls of screening, furniture, anything someone was throwing away that Pop thought useful. Washers, stoves, and metal cabinets lined the barn’s walls in foot-high grass near two junked cars.

  Edie moved here from the apartment above her in-laws’ store when Amber was still a baby. She spent a week, with Pop’s help, cleaning the side of the house he rented to a series of drinking buddies, all impossible slobs, and another to get the junk from the front yard. “Take it all back to the dump,” Edie pleaded with her father, but he found places out of sight for all of it. She was not as fussy as her two older sisters, too embarrassed to be the dump attendant’s daughters they high-tailed it out of town as soon as they could marry.

  Edie remembered when Marie came for an inspection. She went from room to room.

  “See here. Amber has her own room. And we have a yard,” she told her mother-in-law. “Those stairs to the apartment were awfully dangerous for a baby.”

  “I suppose,” Marie said.

  Now Leona’s dog raised his head and flailed his tail against the porch’s floor. Edie bent to pat him as she glanced at Pop’s windows. Nothing moved behind the glass. He must have gotten home late from that dive bar he liked in Tyler.

  Lonny was still in bed although awake. He looked like a kid the way his curly, brown hair was messed. He wasn’t a kid although he was probably at least five years younger. Edie normally didn’t go for younger men, but she was a bit drunk last night at the Do-Si-Do Bar in town when she and Lonny got extra friendly. One thing led to something else, and then he followed her home in his pickup truck.

  Edie nodded as she placed Gil’s photo upright on her bureau. She threw her purse onto a chair.

  Lonny folded his hands behind his head.

  “I made coffee. Left some in the maker. I’m afraid it tastes like shit. But I was hoping you was coming back.” His eyes stopped at the hem of her skirt. “That’s some getup for a memorial service. You must’ve given those old vets a thrill.”

  Edie tugged at her skirt. It was too short. She shrugged.

  “Tell you what.” She kicked off her shoes. “I’ll take it off.”

  She pushed the skirt down her hips and pulled the top over her torso. She gave a shake. Lonny’s mouth twisted into a grin as he threw the sheet aside.

  She tossed a rubber from the top of her bureau.

  “Here,” she said.

  She slipped next to Lonny. Her fingers slid across his logger’s arms and chest.

  “Lonny,” she cooed. “Come on, baby. You know how.”

  He moaned.

  Later, while Lonny used the shower, Edie rolled toward the bedroom window. He sang a country tune about being in love. She hoped she wasn’t making this guy too happy because she wasn’t interested.

  Edie thought about Gil. They were in his pickup going for a ride along the back roads in town. They hadn’t been together long, maybe six months. Both were still in high school, and Gil smiled as if he kept a big secret from her. He didn’t say a word, but at that moment she knew Gil loved her more than anyone in the world, and she couldn’t ask for anything else.

  They were married a month after their graduation. Everyone figured she was pregnant although she wasn’t. She and Gil couldn’t wait to be husband and wife, and considering what happened, she was glad they didn’t listen to his parents. Pop and Aunt Leona were pleased for her. Both declared Gil was the nicest of all the St. Claires.

  She and Gil couldn’t have been happier. Gil worked on getting his electrician’s license although he talked about becoming an engineer because he was so smart with math. They lived in the apartment above the store, but her in-laws were going to help them buy a house.

  Then there was the lottery draft in 1969. It was December. She and Gil watched it on TV. Edie cried when Gil got 124. He definitely would go to Vietnam although not right away. They tried to stay as happy as they could
until it happened, and they knew they were going have a baby before he left.

  The day she learned Gil was dead, she was lying on her couch, feeling out of sorts. She heard a woman scream in the store below, and she sat up immediately, her heart running hard when she heard heavy feet on the stairs. She saw her father-in-law’s pale face through the door’s window. Walker and a uniformed man were behind him.

  She knew at that moment her life would never be as good again.

  Lonny sang in the shower still. Edie glanced out the bedroom window. The sun played on the tops of the swaying bushes, and she felt that old sadness all over again.

  A Way About Her

  Edie tried to lure her aunt’s dog into the car with a piece of bread, but she ended up asking Lonny to lift him onto the back seat. Lonny did it easily, and after she shut the car’s door, he stood there, wrapping his arms around her waist. He kissed her twice.

  “How about doin’ this again?” he said low in her ear.

  Her head cocked to one side.

  “I’m usually at the Do on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes Sunday,” Edie said. “You can catch me there.”

  She could tell he expected more, but he was trying to be cool about it.

  “Okay.”

  She checked over her shoulder at the bowl of potato salad in the car’s front seat. The dog raised his nose.

  “I gotta go,” she said. “It was a lotta fun.”

  Lonny drove by when she was at Aunt Leona’s. He tooted the horn and shouted her name as she dragged the dog from the car.

  Edie opened the front door to her aunt’s house and called. Leona sat on the couch, watching TV. She grunted when she realized her niece was inside.

  “Edie, it’s only you,” her aunt said.

  “Yup, it’s only me.”

  “Hell, you know I don’t mean it that way.”

  “I know.”

  Her aunt brushed dog hair from her housecoat. She lifted her head, her hair a ridiculous shade of red for a woman her age. She had powder on her face. Her eyebrows were plucked thin as wires.

  “Got my roots covered, and my face made up. Not too bad for an old broad, eh? Maybe I should go down to the American Legion bar and try my luck. Maybe some of those old soldiers can still salute. What do you think?”