FIFTY-FOUR
I figure it’s because a turtle spirit is so connected to the earth that it feels the tectonic plates shifting before others know what is happening. Mr. Ellis zips across the field to catch up to me. “Hey, Appleton, wait up. I want to see your painting before you take it home.”
“Don’t give me that. I know Rochester’s beady little eyes have already been all over it.”
He smiles. “Mina showed it to me last night. She thought the detail was extraordinary.”
“And you?”
“Ordered and still.”
“It’s a gift for Jennah. She loved the one I did for the art show.”
“Rochester wants to know how you paint stillness when there’s none in your life?”
“Things are cool. I’d tell you if the Dick was ready to blow.”
“But, would you tell me if you were ready to blow?” His hand lands soft on my hair as we walk. “I think I’d rather catch you heading across the field at lunch than see you sitting under that tree, staring into tomorrow, books and lunch unopened.”
“Were you in the war?”
“Yup. Got called up late. Didn’t really see any action.”
“My dad said when he heard that the Germans had surrendered he didn’t know how to put his gun down and stop fighting. He volunteered for every detail in the aftermath cleanup because he didn’t know how to go home.”
“Ari, you just get on the train and go.”
“All my summers out east have been a sanctioned leave from conscripted battle. Now it’s me deciding to re-enlist.”
“Mr. Peterson came to see me about your biology exam.”
“I must’ve done okay because he said he was proud of me.”
“You got a ninety-seven.”
“Oh, bloody frig.”
“What?”
“I promised Ralph that if I got above eighty I’d go with him to his cousin’s wedding. My toes barely survived the spring dance.” I stop to inhale a simmer of mowed grass and early roses. For the first time in weeks I feel like I could sleep.
Mr. Ellis’ deep sigh surfaces me. “Ari, you are so bright and full of potential. You haven’t asked for my advice but I have to give it. Move into your life with your aunts. Sixteen is too young to be a soldier.”
“Tell that to Mikey.”
“The Resistance is not going to stop fighting for him. It’s okay for you to go home.”
“Thanks, sir. That really helps.” The lie stings my tongue. “I have to fly.” I tuck the painting under my arm, turn, and run.
Hand-me-downs from the sisters have always been treasures to me. Whenever we got farmed out Jasper could fill out Jacquie’s sweater so it felt like she was lying in bed next to me, or he could turn June’s scarf into a sturdy hug. Now that the apples have fallen far from the tree and I’m more like a string bean than a golden delicious, the pickings are slim.
Jennah roots in her closet for something for me to wear to Ralph’s cousin’s wedding. I hold up a pretty sundress and check out my reflection. “I like this one.”
She snatches it away. “You can’t wear white, or black, to a wedding.”
“Oh.”
She smoothes her perfect hair and swipes on pink lipstick. “Come on. We’re going shopping.”
“What about the kids?”
“Maria picks them up and Wilf goes to the club on Fridays.”
“I’ll have to go to the bank.”
“My treat, sis.”
My dress, when we find it, is palest mauve, a flapper meets the sixties with sass. It scoops low on my back. Skin peeks through fine lace insets on the front. Jennah tames some of my hair with a sparkly clip. “The bride is going to hate you.”
“We should keep looking.”
“You’re right about that.” She snips off the tags. “I’ll find something for me. And we need shoes. Then dinner.”
At the restaurant, two men at the bar drink us in. I want them to go so it can be just us. I want Jennah to tell me how she grew to be so brave. “I remember a night when Mum locked us out of the house. You loaded us in the station wagon and drove us to Auntie Elsie’s.”
“Impossible you remember that. You couldn’t have been more than three.”
“And I remember you in our kitchen making crispy little pancakes out of nothing.”
She nibbles up a tip of asparagus. “Amazing what you can do with rotting potatoes, flour, and sour milk.”
The waiter appears with two glasses and a bottle of wine. “From the gentlemen at the bar, miss.”
“Thank you. But we must decline.” Smiling, Jennah looks over her shoulder and says in a voice loud enough to be heard over the tinkling music, “Mother of five and,” she points to me, “jailbait.”
The one resembling Rock Hudson takes off his glasses and looks right through me and I’m grateful my dress came with a gossamer shawl I can disappear under. I want to talk about Mummy meeting Daddy when she was younger than I am now. I want to ask if he was always the devil. I need her to help me sort out the voices crying in my dreams. But Jennah seldom tolerates a stirring of the daddy muck.
The waiter returns with two chocolate-drizzled whipped strawberry clouds. Jennah’s eyelashes lift upwards to the waiter. “Tell the gentlemen, much better choice.”
“He asked that I give this to the young lady.” A business card is placed near my plate. I read, “James Smythe, Agent,” in embossed gold letters.
Jennah tilts and appraises it. “Please tell Mr. Smythe she’ll be in touch when hell freezes over.” The waiter snorts and goes away.
“Agent? Like a spy?”
“Undercover definitely, sis. Roland had the same bloody card.”
“Scuzzy-first-husband Roland?”
She punctures dessert. “He was chocolate-covered shit.” A small bite slips into her mouth. “I still can’t believe I let that creep into my pants.”
“Auntie Nia says messing up is good fertilizer.”
“I adore Nia, but no matter how you dress it up, messing up does not look pretty on a woman. Look at Mum.”
“Was there ever a time she didn’t? Before me?”
“God, no. It’s her gift. Want to hear a case in point? Auntie Elsie and Uncle Marvin picked us up in their shiny new Buick once. It was scorching hot and they were taking us for a picnic. The men sat in the front. Little Nathan had on this precious sailor suit and kept smiling over the seat to us girls in the back. Uncle Marvin asked the songbirds for a melody. Auntie Elsie sang, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Everyone joined in, even June. Except for Mum who rolled down the window and sulked. We sang, “Swinging on a Star,” “Mairzy Doats,” “In the Good Old Summertime.”
I ask without thinking, “Was Daddy singing, too?”
“If I’ve told you once I’ve told you to eternity and back, that person deserves no remembrance. Anyway, when we got to the lake we all grabbed bags and blankets. I turned back to take June’s hand and I saw Mum dragging her nail scissors along the side of the pretty blue car. That perked her up for the afternoon. She was humming when we headed back to the car. She gasped like Scarlett O’Hara, ‘Oh, my, look at that nasty scratch!’ Uncle Marvin examined it and said he must have caught a branch. Mum said, ‘Elsie, you must be devastated.’”
Elsie knew, but she has such class. She smiled and said, ‘We survived the day without a scratch on any of us. It’s just a hunk of metal.’ Mum got all sulky again after that.”
The waiter clears away my untouched dessert and Jennah asks for a pot of tea. “She’s never been wired right, Ari.”
“Well, the circuits are pretty much fried now.”
“I always remember you trying to cheer her up.”
“You know what I remember most about you?”
“Me bossing you around?”
“You singing
and putting things back in order.”
“You were the only one who ever seemed to notice. You’d get right tickled about a washed pillowcase. Positively giddy over a tablecloth and some jam for your toast. All you ever wanted was a home that stayed put under you.” She pours tea into my cup. “Do you remember calling me Jemma?”
“You were the best ma I knew.”
“So, can I give you some motherly advice?”
“Please.”
“It’s time for the lion side of you to rest and the eagle to fly.”
“Thought you thought my spirit friends were craziness.”
“Thinking a man will change is what’s crazy. This civility is not going to last. I know about taming men and this one is going to start frothing at the chains. Wilf says there’s talk the Chief is retiring at the end of the year, so that constraint will be gone. He’s already getting cocky. Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep low until school lets out, then you’re moving to Mary’s for good.”
“He’ll destroy Mikey.”
“Let his mother step up.”
“Like ours did?”
“We managed.”
“What you did for us, who you are now is so much more than managing. You’re a lioness. You were and are my strong, fierce sister. I wouldn’t have survived the chaos without you.”
“See, we all turned out just fine and Mikey will, too. It’s not your job.”
Aunt Sabina comes at me with a broom. “Ari. I thought you were a mouse. What are you doing in there?”
I emerge from the closet draped in Len’s lanky cardigan. “Getting my grad dress.”
“I thought Jennah bought you a new frock.”
“It feels like the empress’ new dress.”
“You feel like a queen?”
“No, I feel naked in it.” I remove the dress Len bought me from the garment bag. “This one has joy woven into it.”
“You’ve outgrown this, I’m afraid.”
“Frig.” I plunk on the chair. “Do you ever outgrow missing a person?”
“The weight, the size of the loss never diminishes. But you grow more muscled so it feels lighter, more bearable to carry.” She goes into the shop and returns with a simple azure shift with cutwork flowers edging the bottom. “This will suit the occasion.” She tugs off Len’s sweater and slips it over my head. “Two nights ago, Len was in my dream.”
“A good visit?”
“I stepped outside to the patch of dirt behind the shop and it was a garden with lush flowers and water trickling down the rocks. He was strumming a blue guitar. I asked where he’d been and he said he’d been seeing the country but he was home now.”
“I wish he’d come to my dreams. Mine are filled with crying: Jacquie’s lost baby, or a cat, or Jillianne. Last night it was a fish that wasn’t really a fish as much as it was a wolf.”
She twists strands of my hair and joins them with an enamel butterfly. “Do you know what year I left Poland?”
“No.”
“In 1943 an uncle arranged for me to join his family in New York. Think of what that date means.”
“You left before the war ended?”
She smiles. “Your papa is home now. Go to this wedding, then east. Go to your life.”
Mr. West is leaning forward on the bench, studying the ground, not the lake. His smile is forced when he looks up.
“Is Zodiac okay?”
“He’s great.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just going to miss these Sundays.”
“Auntie Nia would thwap you for being sad about the Sundays we won’t have on the Sunday we do have.” I perch on the bench. “Besides, Jasper tells me that you and I are friends for life, so we’ll figure out the workings of that as we go along.”
He searches the trees. “You really think that?”
“Spectacularly so. Your inner animal does, too, if you’d listen to it.”
“But we’ll be provinces apart.”
“Lord, man, in two weeks you’ll be conquering Kilimanjaro, and you see the Trans-Canada Highway as an insurmountable barrier?” I hand him an embossed leather journal. “I don’t know when your birthday is but I figured this would come in handy on your adventure.”
“Where did you find one with my initials on it?”
“I made it. Fringed bags are out and we’ve got a leather stockpile.”
He reads the inscription. Aaron West, In you is a story the world needs to read. Write it. Ari.
His head lifts slow, cautious, like someone just peeked into a room he kept locked inside him.
I smile. “Something bumping around in there?”
His head shakes over a skittish laugh. “Enough. So when do you leave?”
“Saturday we’re hitching a ride to Montreal with Ellis and Mina so I can see Jillianne, then Mikey and I are taking the train east from there.”
“The Dick okay with Mikey going for the summer, same as last year?”
“He calculated his grocery savings and gave his blessing.”
“I’ll be looking out for him here next year. You know that, don’t you?”
“I appreciate it more than I can say.” I nudge him with my sandal. “But, I was sure I’d get a, ‘hope you come back in September’ from you.”
“Seeing just the surface of the damage that house causes you,” he rests his eyes in mine for one deep inhale and a long exhale, “how could I ever hope that?”
We back away from the subject and wander and talk around the world ’til we come to a silence, an ending, and we stand. He wishes he could kiss me goodbye. I can tell. “Jesus, I’m going to miss you.”
“Travel safe.”
“I’ll touch base in September so we can figure out how to get Zodiac back to you.”
Jasper is brave and pushes me into a hug. “Thank you for seeing me through all this.”
He gathers my hair and holds me close. “You—are—spectacular, Ari Appleton.” He releases and I back away.
“So are you, Aaron West.”
There were speeches in me on why I should go. The words sit like a bowling ball in my gut because no one needs to hear them. I take a sandwich to Todd so his mouth will be full while I get it out.
He clips the nails of a prissy Pekinese. “Shit, Hari. You’re nuts if you don’t get the hell out when you’ve got the chance.”
“But Mikey.”
“Get off the pot. You think you’re Jesus Christine? You know the Irwins managed to feed and dress themselves before you showed.”
“I know.”
“You don’t belong in that shithole. You never did.” His eyes are as sad as the basset hound in the cage behind him. “And if you don’t run and never look back I’m taking back saying you’re the smartest person I know.”
“You’ve never said that.”
His cheeks plump with his smile. “Not to you.”
Chase fills my mismatched fancy glasses with Sprite, lights the candle, and pulls out my chair.
“Tell me honestly,” I say, “is the Resistance meeting without me? Everyone is pushing me east.”
He slips a fluffy omelet onto my plate. “Swear I haven’t seen any of them since the mayor’s barbeque.”
“So are you going to tell me I should ditch Mikey?”
He smacks and shakes the catsup bottle. “Mikey had this idea of making a catsup gun. It’s a brilliant idea.”
“Is that code for what you think I should do?”
“Nope, there just has to be an easier way to get this stuff onto my egg.”
“If it was in tubes like my paints you could squeeze it out.”
His ragged notebook flips out of his shirt pocket and he skims to a blank page. “You might be on to something.”
“You going to invent it?”
“I give this stuff to Zander. He does R&D for my dad. The deal is, if he strikes it rich he’ll help fund my campaigns.”
“You know exactly what you want to do, don’t you?”
“Right now I pretty much do.” He forks up a cheesy bite. “So do you.”
“Really, Chase, I don’t. What do you think I should do?”
“Do you trust me?”
“More than myself right now.”
“Okay. Saturday you and Mikey get in the car and go. For eight weeks you play, create, absorb, dance, eat, sleep, love, and be loved. When thoughts about September come, put them in a bubble and blow them away. I’ll call you last week of August and ask you a question. In your answer you’ll have your answer.”
“Sounds like hokey-pokey baldercrap.”
“Jasper, what do you think?”
I try to put the twirling seahorse in a bubble and flick him away but his excitement can’t be confined.
“Touché, Chase Pace.”
FIFTY-FIVE
I leave my corner of the craphouse untouched so the stink can’t follow me. “Mikey, don’t pack the books you’ve read.” His yellow suitcase is already ten inches above closing.
Todd huffs into the room. “Quick, hide.”
“Why?”
“The Dick is coming up to take Mikey somewhere.” I hear the squeak on the stairs and we scramble out the window and tuck up under the eaves.
“Where’s the kid?”
“Um, he wanted to say bye to Laura so Ari took him over.”
“Go get ’im.”
“Uh, uh, they were heading somewhere after. I think they said that Mrs. Vandervolt was having a little party or something.”
“Why didn’t I hear about this?”
“Dunno. Mikey had a form; you signed it.”
“Fucking Christ.” He stomps down the stairs.
The Clay Girl Page 29
