It was about eleven o’clock, and the April night was dark and chilly. I hustled up the driveway. I glanced down toward the water and I saw that the lights were out at the Warner and Butts houses. I pictured them sleeping with no cares, and jealousy broke over me like a rogue wave. They had each other and now, Daddy had Stella. I was alone.
The sheer weight of that fact made me sit down on the large white rock at the end of our driveway. Then, like a single, fat raindrop that warns of something bigger coming, a little noise came from somewhere deep inside and worked its way out of my throat. Self-pity played with grief and I knew that no one would give a flying fig if I wandered up the road and went away to become an orphan.
But then, a light snapped on in Grand’s bedroom. She parted her curtains and peered out, closed them up. Then the front door light went on and she came outside and walked to where I sat on the rock. When she reached me, she said, “Well, Florine, what in the world?”
Without waiting for an answer, she picked up my suitcase and we walked to her house, where she sat me down at the kitchen table.
“Nobody loves me,” I wailed.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, that’s not true,” Grand said. “Now, I was sound asleep and I heard you crying and I woke right up. Guess that’s love, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“I should think so,” she said. “Come on with me.” I climbed into bed with her and cuddled back to her warm soft side.
I woke up late the next morning to find Daddy sitting on the side of the bed.
“I want to stay here,” I said.
He didn’t argue. “Maybe we need a break,” he said. “You can stay with Grand for a while, but I expect you home for supper.”
We tried. But it made me crazy to know that Stella would probably come by after I left for the night. I began to skip suppers, saying I had too much homework and I needed to eat at Grand’s, so I could get on with it. Soon, I hardly went to Daddy’s house at all.
My thirteenth birthday on May 18, 1964, was held at Grand’s house. The gift I most wanted in the world was not to be mine, and I knew that, but how I wished she were with us that day. I knew that if she was anywhere, she would know it was my birthday, and she would have called, or come home, if it were at all possible. The beginning of my understanding that she wouldn’t be coming home hit me hard on that otherwise bright, sunny, warm day.
Grand made a confetti angel food cake and she, Daddy, me, and Dottie ate it with chocolate ice cream. Since Dottie’s birthday was on May 19, we usually shared some part of our days, and always our cakes and ice creams.
Dottie brought me two of her lonely dolls, with Madeline’s permission. These dolls were my favorites and I had named them Caroline and Patricia, for Carlie’s and Patty’s real first names, long ago. Dolls on my thirteenth birthday may have seemed odd, but Dottie knew what I needed, and I held them in my arms as Daddy took a tiny box wrapped in gold paper with white ribbon curls out of his pocket. He handed it to me and said, quiet, “This is from your mother and me.”
I looked at him, confused.
“Go on and open it,” he said.
A green velvet box nestled inside. I lifted the lid, said, “Oh,” and shut it again.
Grand took the box, opened it, and pulled out a gold ring set with a tiny green stone.
“Your birthstone,” she said. “A real emerald. Hold out your hand.”
It slid around on my right ring finger, and Daddy said, “Too big. Damn it.”
“We’ll get it fitted,” Grand said. “Until then, I have just the thing.” She hurried upstairs. I stared at the ring, rubbed my fingers over the prongs.
Daddy said, “We wanted you to have this for your thirteenth birthday. Carlie picked it out way back in June. I hope you like it, honey.”
Grand came downstairs holding a golden chain. She took the ring from me, slid it onto the chain, and fastened it around my neck as tears ran down my cheeks. In all the time I had it, it never left my neck, or later, my finger.
18
I loved living with Grand. For one, she wasn’t likely to go hunting for a man, nor was a man likely to call for her. Probably she wouldn’t just disappear and I wasn’t waiting for the phone to ring. Here, sorrow was allowed to perch and settle inside of me, instead of digging its claws into my heart and flapping its wings, trying to rip it out. When my longing for Carlie got too strong, Grand was there to comfort me in her plain, strong way. We knew each other’s routines and I knew what was expected of me.
Church, for instance.
I’d been to service with Grand before. It was the only thing she’d asked of Carlie and Daddy, that I go with her a few times each year. So ever since I’d been able to sit for any length of time, Carlie had rousted me up on certain Sunday mornings and trotted me over to Grand’s house in my church clothes. Daddy and Carlie didn’t go to church. Daddy said the water was his church. Carlie thought God was part of everything, everywhere. “And in you,” she’d say, and touch her finger to my heart.
The Baptist church was up on Route 100. Sam Warner drove us there, every Sunday. I doubt he would have gone, except that Ida loved Jesus, too. Despite quiet Ida’s friendship with silence, she got her point across, and if she wanted Sam in church, Sam went. He might sell his soul to the devil with as much drink as he wanted any night of the week, but he had to get it back, intact, by Sunday morning for his come-to-Jesus meeting.
Grand sat in the backseat between Bud and me. Maureen, who so far in her life appeared to be as quiet as her mother, sat up front between her parents, the top of her smooth brown head barely visible. Grand hummed “The Old Rugged Cross” in a wavery voice, and Ida hummed along with Grand. Bud looked out the window, thinking about escape, I figured.
After Sam parked the car, we went inside the little white church, and Grand marched me down to the front row. We sat with three or four older ladies who made room for us by scooting down along a seat worn smooth by warm, shifting bottoms. There, Grand left me for Jesus, lifting her eyes to the ceiling and saying “Amen” in a sure voice.
In this place, Pastor Billy carried himself like a he-gull in his prime. His sermons were both strong and gentle, filled with stories of love and forgiveness. He never preached hell and damnation. Because he was a fisherman, too, he understood what his congregation faced as they rode the waves; how things could get out of hand in a mad minute. They needed comfort, not threats.
Every Sunday, he asked me how I was doing. His big hands, like my father’s, were tough and callused. He always set one of those hands on the top of my head and left it there for a few seconds, as if he was wishing good things into my heart.
One Sunday afternoon in late June, after Sam had dropped Grand and me back home, I got it into my head to take a walk to the spot where I’d thrown the red ruby heart into the sea. Pastor Billy had been preaching about Jonah being cast into the raging waters, and how the sea had become calm, and it reminded me of that time.
“I’m going out for a little while,” I told Grand.
“Not too long,” she said. “I’m making Sunday dinner and I’ll need your help.”
The air in the woods was sweet and warm like baby’s breath, and it seemed that Carlie walked beside me. I hadn’t been wrong, I thought to myself. She was here, just as she had been on that bitter New Year’s Day. My heart rose as I neared the rocks. But I stopped when I saw someone sitting on a stone bench that hadn’t been there last winter.
The sitter, a man, turned his yellow head and our eyes locked. It was Mr. Barrington. Had it only been a year ago that he’d walked down the line of us, and each of us had said we were sorry for almost burning down his house? I felt the ghosts of Carlie’s hands squeeze my shoulders and I reached up to touch them.
Mr. Barrington squinted at me. “Is it you?” he whispered.
“It’s Florine Gilham,” I said, trying to figure out how to back up and bolt the other way without looking like that’s what I was trying to do.
“Of course,” he said, and he stood up and held out his hand. I didn’t see why we needed to shake hands in the woods. Still, Grand would have wanted me to be polite and Mr. Barrington wasn’t a stranger, so I took his hand. He gave it a firm squeeze.
Then he said, “It’s nice to see you, Florine. I’ve been coming down here for years.” He looked out over the water. “Since way before you were born. I finally paid the park to put a bench here.” He pointed at a small brass plaque that read, On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale. Alexander Pope. I wondered if Alexander Pope was a relative, but I didn’t dare to ask.
“Sit,” he said, and pointed to the bench. I sat. I looked down at Mr. Barrington’s new Top-Sider moccasins. Then I looked at my feet. One of the shoelaces on my right sneaker had broken and I’d tied it back together. A big knot snarled up the laces.
“You’re about the same age as Andy, aren’t you?” Mr. Barrington asked. “He was born in December 1950.”
“May,” I said. “1951.”
Mr. Barrington said, “They say that spring babies are easier to get along with than winter babies. Maybe it’s the weather.”
I knew that some might argue that easy-to-get-along-with spring baby part about me, but I let it go.
“Your father’s probably been out on the water for a few months already,” Mr. Barrington said. “We just arrived. Seems we get here later every year.”
“Yes, he’s working,” I said.
Then Mr. Barrington turned and held me with those dark eyes. “I wanted to say how sorry I am about your mother,” he said. “She was a lovely woman.”
“Thank you,” I said.
That being said, he switched back to his son. “Andy is taking an Outward Bound course this summer,” he said. “Hurricane Island, up the coast. New program. Hear of it?”
“No,” I said.
“’Course not,” Mr. Barrington said. “No reason you should. You live Outward Bound on The Point.” He smiled. I noticed the stubble on his face, and how the rough blackness of that made his lips look smooth. He had a beautiful mouth, something I’d never particularly paid attention to before in a man or a boy. It disturbed me that I was noticing it on him. I stood up. “I have to go, Mr. Barrington,” I said.
He stood, too. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I kept you. I need to get back as well. Barbara and I are celebrating our fourteenth wedding anniversary this weekend. The guests will be arriving even as I take this quiet time for contemplation. Do me a favor,” he said, and he winked at me. “You bring that gang back. We could probably use some fireworks this weekend to get things going.”
“Bye,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He held out his hand again and I took it. He didn’t let it go, this time, though. He lifted my hand to those smooth lips and I felt their coolness, even as the stubble pricked the back of my hand. I pulled away as a park ranger walked down the trail with a group of nature walkers.
Mr. Barrington and I brushed by them and I walked in front of him as fast as I could without seeming rude. We reached a fork in the trail and he said, “Goodbye, Florine.”
“Goodbye,” I said, and I started to hurry away.
“Florine,” he called, and I stopped and turned around.
“You’re lovely,” he said. “Just like your mother.”
19
One July day when Dottie and I were sitting in her room doing nothing, Dottie said, “You want to see something?” Before I could say yes or no, she pulled down her shorts and hauled down her blue cotton panties. She pointed to the chubby V between her legs. “Look,” she said. “Isn’t that gross?”
“What?”
“Look closer.”
“I’m close enough.”
“Jesus, Florine,” Dottie said. “Look. Can’t you see them things?”
When I squinted, I saw four or five little blond hairs rooted like unfurled ferns in her smooth pink skin.
“Wish I had some,” I said. I was hairless.
“I don’t,” Dottie said. “I’m going to shave them off.”
“And I don’t want to be flat forever,” I said. “I want boobs. You got boobs.” Dottie did have real boobs now. They wobbled on her chest like half-baked custard.
“I’d give you some if I could,” Dottie said. We looked at her doll shelf. “Look at them stupid dolls watching me like they expect something,” she said. “You want the rest of ’em for when you have kids?”
“Caroline and Patricia are enough. Give Evie the dolls,” I said.
Dottie snorted. “She’s got enough friggin’ dolls.”
“You might change your mind. Your kids might like the dolls, even if you don’t.”
“I don’t want kids,” Dottie said.
That alarmed me. I’d always pictured us growing up and living in these houses with our husbands and children. I decided to let the whole thing drop. “Want to go get a tan?” I said, just to change the subject.
“For a little while,” Dottie said.
We changed into our bathing suits, walked down to the shore, and spread our blankets on the pebbly sand. Now that we were both thirteen, the adults let us go down to the water by ourselves. The boys weren’t around. They were too busy. Glen worked with Ray at the store, and Bud went out on the boat with Sam and Daddy. Bud had stayed pretty clear of me since the day we’d locked eyes while sitting in Petunia. A few days back, though, I had run into him as I was walking down the hill from Ray’s store and he was walking up.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
“Been fishing?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Been to the store?”
“Yeah.”
“Bye,” he said and passed me.
But I caught him looking at me when I turned around to watch him walk away. He ducked his head, made a half-assed wave with his hand, and kept on moving.
Now, as Dottie tanned and I burned, words strange to me popped out of my mouth. I raised myself on my elbows and said to her, “I got to tell you something. I like Bud for a boyfriend.”
Dottie shaded her eyes from the glare of the sun and squinted up at me.
“That won’t work,” she said. “That’d mean I have to like Glen.”
“It doesn’t mean that.”
“It would follow.”
“I like Bud, anyway,” I said. “You don’t have to like Glen.”
“Look,” Dottie said, “Bud’s a good guy. Hell, Glen’s a good guy. But they’re like our brothers. Be odd if you two was to get together.”
“Well, let’s see what happens,” I said.
What happened is that I did get odd. I wouldn’t wave if I saw Bud onboard the Carlie Flo or the Maddie Dee. When the men came up from the boat, sometimes I went to say hello to Daddy and Sam. I couldn’t look Bud in the face and I barely spoke. Bud wouldn’t look at me, either.
After about two weeks of this foolishness, I decided I’d had enough.
One day, I said to Dottie, “I don’t like Bud anymore. It’s weird. You were right.”
Later that day, I ran into Bud as he was walking down the hill from Ray’s store and I was walking up. My heart jumped and tried to run, but I forced it back into a sitting position and I said, “Hey” to Bud.
“Hey,” he said back.
It took a mountain of will on my part, but I didn’t look back.
The rest of the summer ticked down to the anniversary of Carlie’s disappearance. When the day came, it hit me like a stone to the heart. Daddy took me out on the boat with Sam and Bud for the two weeks before school. Out on the water, I
was too busy to worry about whether or not Bud liked me or I liked Bud. I helped with the bait, I steered the boat, I plugged lobsters, and did what they asked me to do. Sometimes, I sat in a chair and stared at the water and the sky. None of us talked much. Their quiet company calmed me, and I liked being near Daddy without Stella around. While we worked, Grand took some of Carlie’s old clothes and she and Ida made a beautiful quilt for me. I wrapped it around me at night and slept better than I had in a long time.
20
Nothing much happened for the rest of the summer. I grew a few pubic hairs and that cheered me up a little bit. Stella and Daddy stayed locked together in his house, I still lived with Grand, and then it was time to head for junior high for the eighth grade. This meant we had to travel by bus to Long Reach. The comfort of small numbers vanished when we entered a school that contained three grades with about two hundred students per grade. Corridors and hallways had to be navigated by twists and turns to find our classrooms. They called us fish, at first, and they said we smelled, because we were from The Point. Dottie laughed at them, Glen didn’t notice, Bud thought they were assholes, and I tried to become invisible. It didn’t work.
I was tall for thirteen, and skinny, with hair that curled any way it wanted to go, no matter what I did. I was shy as a shit poke, but Carlie’s absence was what made me stand out. When we first went to junior high, the Long Reach kids whispered about it just loud enough so that I heard it, clear. “Ran off with some guy. Dad’s a drunk. I heard she got around. Murdered, maybe?” Although it didn’t make any sense, it made me mad that Carlie wasn’t there to stick up for me. Talking to Daddy about it was out of the question. I went, as always, to Grand.
Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) Page 11
