Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833)

by Rogers, Morgan Callan

  That had been only last year. This year, Daddy said he thought we’d stay home.

  “I thought it might be a good idea to do something a little quieter this year. So, we’re having company over,” Daddy said. “Stella offered to cook us a nice supper.”

  He might as well have said, “The devil’s coming over to burn holes in your ass with a hot iron poker.”

  When he saw my look, he said, “Now, Florine, stop with the faces. You can have supper with us, then you can go to Dottie’s house.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to see her,” I said. “You tried to hide from her.”

  “That wasn’t very nice of me,” Daddy said.

  “What would Carlie think?”

  “This has nothing to do with your mother. It’s just supper with Stella. Be nice to talk to a friend, Florine. Be like talking to Dottie for you.”

  “That’s bullshit, Daddy,” I said.

  “Where in hell did you get that mouth?” he asked. “That’s enough of that.”

  “I don’t like her. She didn’t like Carlie.”

  “Well, she feels bad about it,” Daddy said. “She’s a friend and she’s good company.”

  “So’s a dog, and it’d be better looking,” I said. His jaw dropped, and then he slapped me across the face.

  He’d never hit me before. We looked at each other like we’d suddenly been separated by a high barbed-wire fence. I stormed off and I slammed my bedroom door. I threw my books, one by one, at the wall, swiped all of the things on my bureau onto my floor and ripped the bedding off the bed and tossed it around. Then I flopped onto the mattress facedown, and screamed into my pillow until I was hoarse. I didn’t hear Daddy come in until he said, “Grow up, Florine. You can start by picking up this mess.”

  “I want my mother,” I said into my pillow.

  Daddy said, his tone softer, “I want her too, but she isn’t here. Pick up your room, now. Stella will be by in a couple of hours and we got to get this place tidy.”

  This battle was lost, and I knew it. I put everything back, then swept the floors while Daddy shoveled the walk and put down sand so our honored jeezly guest wouldn’t slip.

  She was due at five, and when the sweeper hand kissed the second hand on the twelve, she was at the door like her first day to a new job.

  Daddy took a deep breath. “Jesus, what am I doing?” he muttered.

  “Tell me and we’ll both know,” I said.

  He opened the door and Stella stepped in holding an orange dish between two brown pot holders. She and Daddy did a dance where she put down the casserole and went to take her coat off, then he tried to help her, and she put it back on so he could help her, and they laughed. Daddy finally hung her coat on the rack near the door.

  Stella wore a red dress with a wide belt around her tiny waist. She’d squeezed every ounce of her thin nothing into a curvy something. I was certain it wasn’t for my benefit.

  “How you doing, Florine?” she asked.

  “Fine, thank you,” I said.

  “Glad you could come,” Daddy said.

  “Isn’t the weather lovely?” I said. Daddy shot me a look.

  Stella said, “Well, it’s better than nothing, as poor my father used to say.”

  “Florine, why don’t you set the table,” Daddy said.

  As I did that, Stella put her casserole dish onto a black trivet she’d brought that read, “No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best.” We all sat down and Stella said a short grace, no holding hands thanks be to Jesus, then served us up something with ham, cream sauce, and potatoes. I wish I could say it was awful, but it was one of the best things I’d ever eaten. Flavors popped up like spicy surprises throughout my mouth. I wanted seconds, but I was damned if I’d ask for them. Daddy, on the other hand, kept saying, “This is so good,” over and over again. I caught the satisfied glitter in Stella’s eyes as she watched him eat. She had him, at least for this meal. I drank my milk down in a couple of good swallows so that I could be excused.

  “I’m glad to see a girl drink her milk,” Stella said to me. “You’re growing, and you need your calcium. Makes strong bones and teeth.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out,” I said. “May I please be excused, Daddy?”

  Daddy raised his head from his plate, nodded, and then went back to the food.

  I went into my bedroom and rolled up some pajamas and grabbed my toothbrush from the bathroom. While I did this, Stella talked until the air was thick with words. Words about people who came in the store, people she and Daddy had in common, people in church, and on and on. Daddy made sounds once and a while, but it seemed clear that his job was to gobble down everything except Carlie’s good tablecloth. Carlie and I had found that tablecloth one day at a yard sale and brought it home. It was fine white cotton with whiter cotton flowers embroidered on top of it. A little rip in a corner was all that was wrong with it. Stella wasn’t noticing how pretty the tablecloth was, though. She sat with her elbows on the table eyeing Daddy as if he was the bird to her cat.

  “I’m going to Dottie’s,” I said on my way out.

  “Okay,” Daddy said.

  “Happy New Year,” Stella called as I went out the door.

  “Happy New Year your ass,” I muttered, and slammed the door, just a little.

  “She’s after him, bad,” I said to Dottie. “She laughs at anything he says. It’s this jackass hee-haw that she lets out and reels back in again.”

  “They got a name for that hee-haw noise,” Dottie said.

  “Bray,” I said. “She brays. She prays, too. Says grace.”

  “That’s just god-awful,” Bud said. “Thanking the Lord before a meal. Bitch should be shot and skinned.”

  I smacked his arm.

  Dottie and Bud and I were playing gin rummy in Dottie’s kitchen. Bud was winning. Or he thought he was winning. I was just about to show him what was what. Carlie and I had played gin rummy for hours on rainy days. She always won, but I had gotten close to beating her a couple of times, which meant I was good, and I was about to prove it.

  “Gin,” I said to Dottie and Bud. It was a big win—both of them lost points. Dottie had been trailing anyway, and now she was way back. Bud and I were about equal points, now, although I won the next four hands. I could have played all night, but finally, Dottie had enough. “I’m done. Let’s go, Florine.”

  “Night,” I said to Bud, and followed Dottie into the hellhole she called her bedroom. A row of dolls her mother had bought her, hoping in vain that she might somehow learn to love them, lined a shelf on one side of her room. I thought about the dolls that Robin had shown me. She had named each one; each one was precious to her. But not to Dottie. The lonely dolls were the only neat thing in Dottie’s room because Madeline dusted them from time to time. The rest of the room was a pig pile of clothes and junk that I hoped wouldn’t somehow come to life and attack me. The bed was made—Madeline had seen to that, seeing as how I’d be staying—and I pulled on my pajamas and jumped in before Dottie.

  As Dottie and I settled side-by-side in her big bed, I listened to the adults partying in the living room and thought about other voices, other years, when Daddy’s surprising guffaw and Carlie’s girlish giggle had been part of the mix. I wondered if Daddy was missing her as much as I was missing her right now. Then I thought of Stella and her goddamn ham dish and her cinched-in, tiny waist.

  “I hate Stella,” I said.

  “Isn’t worth it,” Dottie said, and yawned.

  “Well, how would you like it if your mother’s worst enemy came by and made eyes at Bert and acted all nicey-nice when you knew she was a witch?”

  This woke Dottie up a little bit. “Hah!” she said. “That’s funny. You really think someone would come by and make up to Bert?” It’s t
rue that Bert wasn’t much of a looker. His ears stuck out so far he looked like a taxicab coming with the doors open.

  My heart drooped. “I miss Carlie so much,” I said.

  “Wish I could tell you something to make you feel better,” Dottie said, and then she fell asleep. I leaned my head against her warm flanneled back as the adults shouted, “Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year, Carlie,” I whispered to the night.

  I wasn’t anywhere near tired, so I decided to go and sit out of the way in a corner and listen to the adults. I got up, pulled my clothes back on, and went out into the living room. When I showed up, they stopped talking and looked at me as if they might burn in hell for laughing in my presence.

  “You okay, honey?” Madeline said.

  I nodded. “Dottie’s snoring.” Everyone laughed.

  Bert shook his head. “She was snoring when she was born.”

  “How would you know? You wasn’t there,” Madeline said.

  “I heard her from the waiting room,” Bert said, and everyone laughed again and forgot about me. Madeline went back to talking to Ida while Bert, Ray, and Sam Warner got up and went into the kitchen for a gab and another beer.

  Then I noticed Bud, sitting in an overstuffed chair in a corner, taking it all in with his curious dark eyes, a small smile on his lips.

  He got up, brushed by me, and said, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” I followed him into Madeline’s studio, where the paints and brushes sat quiet and sober. Bud sat down on Madeline’s painting chair backwards, his long, thin legs sticking out like pipe cleaners bent just so. I fell into the cushions on an old, soft couch sitting against the wall, opposite Bud.

  “Wonder how Glen’s making out,” I said. His mother had made him dress up and join her in Long Reach for a New Year’s Eve variety show at the Opera House.

  “Wasn’t too pleased to go,” Bud said.

  “’Spose Germaine had to threaten him to get him into a suit?”

  “Probably paid him to do it.”

  I thought about Germaine, who looked like a quick and angry monkey. I pictured Ray and Germaine making Glen and the picture made me cover my mouth.

  “What?” Bud said.

  “Nothing.” We went quiet. I pictured Daddy and Carlie making me. It made more sense to me as my head clicked through the times I’d seen them dancing, touching, kissing, fighting, laughing, and making up. I disappeared into thinking about that, I guess, because Bud suddenly said, “You doing okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, too quick. Love me tender . . . her feet on his shoes. Love me sweet . . . his hand on her hip. Me sandwiched between them.

  “Must be hard,” Bud said.

  His eyes were soft and serious, and they opened me up, somehow. “It’s all I can do not to scream, sometimes,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to Daddy about it because he’s so messed up. I don’t want to keep crying to Grand, she’s heard me enough. Dottie doesn’t know what to say. Most of the time, I don’t know what to say. It fills my head, all the time. And I miss her. I miss her so much, Bud.”

  By the second “miss her” he was by my side with his arm wrapped around me. I rested my head on his shoulder until I was cried out. We sat like that until we heard footsteps and he claimed his arm again. Madeline wandered into her studio.

  “Well hi,” she said, her voice pitched high and low and everywhere in between. “I thought you’d left, Bud, and you’d gone to bed, Florine.”

  “I’m on my way home,” Bud said. “We was just talking.”

  I don’t know how Madeline could have thought that, seeing as how I couldn’t see because my eyes were swollen to the size of ping-pong balls, but she didn’t say anything, just swooped in and wrapped Bud in a big hug.

  “Happy New Year,” she said, and gave him a big smack on his cheek. “You get some good rest now, Buddy.” And he left, then I got up and she shawled me up in a soft hug and led me back to Dottie’s bedroom. I counted her snores instead of sheep.

  15

  Dottie and I woke up about nine on New Year’s Day. We shoved beer bottles to one side of the kitchen table so we could feed Evie and us some breakfast. Evie’s black curls bounced in the dim winter light as she ate her cereal. Her pink cheeks nestled into her little heart-shaped face and red lips. She was going to be a beauty, something neither Dottie nor I would ever be. Me, skinny as a fishing pole, and Dottie with her build like a brick shithouse. What would become of us? I wondered suddenly.

  “Want to watch cartoons?” Dottie asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s red ruby glass day.”

  Every New Year’s Day, Grand and I cleaned the red ruby glass while she told me the story of her mother, Emma, who had been orphaned in Boston when she was a child and danced on the streets for pennies. Somehow, she got shipped up to relatives in Spruce Point. She married Harold Morse, who was twenty-five years older. He moved them to The Point and Emma gave birth to four children, three of whom died young. Grand was just a kid when her father died of meanness at age sixty.

  Harold had died penniless, and Emma thought about selling the house and moving to town and working as a housekeeper until one day, when Grand was playing hide and seek under her parents’ bed, she looked up and saw green paper hanging out of a small rip in the bottom of the mattress. She pulled out fistfuls of it and took it to her mother because she thought it was pretty.

  It turned out that Harold had filled the ticking with twenties, tens, and not a few fifty-dollar bills that Emma straightaway took to a bank in Long Reach. He’d been a fisherman, and only the devil knew how he’d come by such a stash, Grand said, but it didn’t matter. It was enough to make Emma and Grand comfortable until Grand married Franklin Gilham some twelve years later. Emma had lived with them until she passed.

  Grand shared her father’s Yankee thrift and had a little nest egg socked away to make sure she made it all the way through her old age. She didn’t want for anything more than she had. She surrounded herself with her favorite things and she had her garden. I was walking toward Grand’s house and thinking how I couldn’t wait for summer to come so I could stick my nose into the center of one of her peonies and suck the perfume straight down to my heart when I glanced to my right and saw Stella Drowns walking up our snowy driveway with her casserole dish.

  When she saw me, her pale face went pink as the peony I’d been imagining, and she said, “Happy New Year, Florine. Did you have fun at Dottie’s house?”

  I went to the heart of it. “Did you have fun at Daddy’s house?” The January wind picked up the pace and snow began to fall.

  Stella hugged the casserole dish to the bulk of her green wool coat with one hand while she freed up a hand to turn up her collar against the cold. “I had a wonderful time,” she said, looking me right in the eye.

  “Did you spend the night?”

  She took a deep breath, and let out a frosted exhale. “Yes, I did,” she said.

  “Daddy is a married man,” I yelled.

  “He’s a lonely man, Florine. Just because he wanted company for a night doesn’t mean he doesn’t love your mother,” Stella said. “Do you want him to be lonely?”

  “Lonely would be better than you,” I said.

  Stella’s scar flushed purple. “I want to be friends,” she said.

  “Why? You never did before.”

  Stella lifted a bit of snow onto her boot toe and then tossed it off. “Happy New Year, Florine,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” She walked off up the hill, backside swishing like a cat that’s had her cream and sausage, too.

  “You can’t cook, either,” I shouted, although we both knew that was a lie. I turned and stormed into Grand’s house, slamming the door behind me.

  Grand was walking from the cabinet to the kitchen with a ruby glass water pitcher. “
God’s sake, no need to bust in here like that, Florine,” she said.

  “Stella Drowns spent the night with Daddy,” I shouted.

  “You calm yourself. Sit while I put this pitcher down so I don’t break it.”

  I sat on the sofa, stiff backed, jiggling my knees up and down. How could she? How could he? How could they? Daddy had deserted Carlie and me for a skinny, scar-faced bitch. I wanted to kill them both.

  “Let me take your coat,” Grand said. I shucked out of it and she hung it on a hook in the hall. Then she sat down next to me.

  “Now, what’s all this?” she asked.

  “I was coming from Dottie’s and I saw Stella walking up our driveway. She said she stayed overnight with Daddy. She did it with him, Grand, I’m sure of it.”

  “Did what? Oh. Well, for heaven’s sake.”

  “They can’t do that, Grand,” I said. “Daddy’s married to Carlie.”

  “All right, all right,” Grand said. “Just set here and be for a minute.”

  My fists hit the tops of my thighs as if they meant to flatten them and I yelled, “I don’t want her near Daddy. How could he do that to Carlie and me?”

  Grand gathered my hands in her own and said, “I don’t know, honey. He’s lonely and mixed up, I imagine.”

  “You talk to Daddy. Tell him he can’t do this. Tell him Jesus wouldn’t like it.”

  “Florine, I don’t use Jesus to threaten anyone.”

  I took my hands from hers and stood up. I paced back and forth, then needing a purpose, I remembered the reason I’d come, and I went toward the china cabinet. I took the heart from the center of the cabinet and walked toward the kitchen with it.

  “Not right now, Florine,” Grand said. “You need to calm down. You might break something and then we’d both feel bad.”

  “Your goddamn glass is more important than me?” I hollered. Then, I ran down the hall, out of the door and down our driveway to the path that led to The Cheeks. I scrambled over the rocks and waded through calf-high snow to the State Park. Once there, coatless and cold and hidden in the park’s deserted aloneness, I barged toward the ledges by the ocean, trying to ignore the bully wind that pinched my face and the snow that nipped at my feet. I slipped on the icy path, belly flopped, and dropped the little heart in the snow. “Shit,” I said, as I groped, found, and clutched it to me. I reached the ledges. Icy spray planted frozen kisses on my face.