Operation Bonnet

by Kimberly Stuart

  “Right. Awesome, cool, fantab, dope.” I didn’t exactly know if anyone ever said “dope” anymore, but one look at Katie and her getup told me she wasn’t exactly on the front lines of urban slang.

  “Dope,” she tried out the word slowly. “Raspberries are dope.”

  “These are,” I said through a mouthful.

  She laughed. “A few should go into the buckets.” Her eyes were blue enough to merit mention in a Jane Austen novel. They matched her simple blouse and the expanse of sky that curved over us in a bright dome. Under her long skirt, bare toes peeked out.

  I gestured. “How does Granny feel about that? Seems scandalous.” I shimmied my skirt up above my knees and set to yanking my own stockings off as fast as I could.

  She gasped and peeked through the branches. “Bare feet are fine when no men are around. Easier to wash off dirt and mud.” She stepped back from the bushes. “But we do not lift up our skirts in public.”

  I tucked the leopard tights into my shoes. “Ah,” I said, wriggling my toes. “I don’t know how you do it, Katie. It is so stinking hot out here, and you’re practically mummified in clothes.”

  She shrugged. “This is my normal custom.” She nodded at my bonnet. “I do not wish to offend you, but that bonnet must make your head hot like a coal. Why do you wear it?”

  I tugged at the strings and tossed the bonnet aside as well. “Out of respect, of course. Even the baby girls wear them in their strollers. Bonnets for all, I say.”

  She tsked. “Yours is too heavy. Can you even see side to side when it is on your head?” Concern knit her forehead. “It is awesome you do not trip more often.”

  I laughed, and she smiled. “All right. I’ll leave it off when outside the eyeball range of Mary. And maybe you should consider shortening that skirt, at least in July and August.”

  She shook her head. “I tried wearing the tank tops and short pants for a spell, but they are not very comfortable.”

  I gaped. “Granny Mary let you wear tank tops and short pants?”

  “Yes. No.” She pulled off a rotting berry and tossed it behind her shoulder. “I wore those things during my rumspringa.” She studied my face, thin eyebrows lifted in curiosity. “Do you know what this is? Rumspringa?”

  Oh, did I. Just the past weekend I’d rented a DVD from the library about the time when Amish teens take off for a bit of oat sowing. Not all Amish communities were fans of rumspringa, but some, like Amos and Katie’s, reasoned that by allowing youth to go buckwild on the “outside,” they were better able to make an informed decision about returning to the Amish for good.

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said, waiting for her to tell me more.

  “When I was sixteen years old, I was permitted by my family to test the world. We do this before deciding to be baptized as Amish.” She moved a step away from me, having cleared the branches in front of her. “I know the Hollywood says rumspringa is a time of wild parties and drinking many kinds of alcohol beverages. But for me, I got bored quickly. The smoking makes me cough, and short pants are not comfortable to my body.” She stopped, glancing at me. “I am talking too much.”

  “Not at all,” I said. I walked behind her and began work on another section of berries. “I like to listen.”

  We worked in silence then, taking turns peeking through the branches to pinpoint Granny Mary’s whereabouts. After a few minutes, I tried again.

  “Did you date any boys during your rumspringa?” After a lifetime of people pronouncing my French middle name the same way they’d say the words dog food, I made special effort to get my German on.

  She looked surprised or impressed; it wasn’t immediately clear. “I did like a boy during that time. A boy from around here but different from all the others.” She shook her head quickly, as if to clear out the cobweb of that thought. “That was two years ago. I do not know even where he is now.”

  My cell phone was burning a hole in my pocket. I could just imagine Amos’s eyeballs popping out under his shellacked hairline when he heard Katie’s voice on the other end. But patience, my dear Monroe. Cases were not solved in brash uses of technology with innocent Amish girls.

  “What was he like, the boy?” I busied myself with watching the raspberries drop into my bucket. I thought I saw her shoulders slump.

  “Kind, funny, a bit wild.” She blushed. “Mostly kind. And he had very nice eyes.”

  It was true. Amos did have nice eyes. A bit over-enthused about nail guns, but he did have nice eyes. “He was Amish too?”

  She nodded. “But now he is not.” She let a handful of berries drop into her pail. “This is a serious problem.”

  I leaned into a gap in the bushes and saw Granny snapping the ends off beans. She was smiling. Dismemberment in any form, even vegetal, gave this woman pleasure.

  I looked at Katie. “What did Grandmother Mary have to say about that?”

  She smiled sadly. “She will not even say his name. No one will.” She went back to work but her pace slowed. “His name was Amos. It is a good, strong name.” At that, she stopped talking until we heard Sarah call us to break for lemonade and cinnamon cookies.

  Katie swung her basket in a small arc by her side as we walked. “I am sorry to be poor company.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I want to hear your story.”

  She looked at me long and hard, hard enough that I started to worry. Finally, she said, “It is awesome to work with you, Nellie Monroe.”

  Mary saw us smiling, but she didn’t say a word.

  16

  Come-to-Jesus

  Nona hugged me around the waist as we shuffled toward the clubhouse door.

  “I love summer storms,” she said, the stripes of our umbrella splashing movement and color onto her body and face. “Such drama and romance, I expect Bogart and Hepburn to come dancing through the puddles at any second.”

  I opened the door while she held the umbrella.

  “Plus,” she said, “storms make even dirt smell good.”

  I inhaled deeply as we entered, the heady fragrance of wet earth mingling with the bittersweet smell of fresh coffee.

  “Nellie!” Tank roared from behind the counter. He snapped to attention, pulling his feet off their perch on the glass top. “What on earth are you doing? Bringing the most beautiful woman in TOWN to my shabby spot during a THUNDERSTORM?” He walked toward us, mitts outstretched. “Leila Byrne, YOU are a sight for this man’s eyes.”

  “Tank,” Nona said, “you are a hopeless charmer, but the trouble is, I see through it.” Her eyes sparkled. “Have you talked with Mr. Winthrop lately?”

  “Oh, come ON, Mrs. B.!” Tank groaned. “I’m a GROWN MAN. And that was forty years ago.”

  “I’m sure he’d appreciate knowing who stole the plastic cow outside his Dairy Sweet.” She leaned against the counter, arms crossed and eyes twinkling. “What about Suzette Martins? I know she’s not the school nurse anymore but—”

  “Good luck,” I said and patted Tank’s shoulder on my way to the back of the clubhouse. Tank and Nona had a running dialogue on the merits of confession and as far as I knew, Tank had never come out ahead. Nona had seen him through a long and fruitful delinquency and had persisted in loving him when even his own mother stopped taking his calls. As a result, Tank had an undying affection for Nona, even when she brought to mind the endless list of wrongs he probably should make right. He crumbled every time. Inevitably, in the next week, I would see him in town with his ball cap curled in his beefy hands, looking a lot like a repentant Eddie Haskell.

  I stood on tiptoes in the back room, rummaging through a stack of shelved papers in search of my check. Tank had called early that morning to relieve me of my scheduled hours because of the storm, but Nona had been in a funk and I knew we both needed a diversion. Nothing spelled d
iversion quite so well as a man named after military machinery.

  The front door squeaked open, and I peeked out to take a look. Amos stood on the mat, shaking his head back and forth like a dog. Water sprayed out in either direction until Tank hooted.

  “You keep that up and you’ll have to go back home for more of that GLOP you put in it!”

  Amos scowled but softened when he saw Nona. “Hello,” he said, wiping his hand on his shirt before offering it to her. “I am Amos.”

  “Amos, it’s lovely to meet you. I’m Leila, Nellie’s grandmother.” Nona reached to take his hand. “Pay no attention to this surly old man. He’s merely jealous of your full head of hair.”

  One side of Amos’s mouth lifted in a shy smile. “Thank you,” he said. “You talk much nicer than Nellie.”

  “I heard that,” I called from the back. In a moment, Amos joined me.

  “It is the truth.” He crossed his arms, daring me to disagree. “Sometimes it is the truth that injures the most.”

  “That’s deep,” I said. I was at the bottom of a stack of envelopes, one of several stacks peppering the room. Tank the visionary was not to be bothered with details like cleanliness and prompt salary checks. Koi ponds, mini-golf, charming elderly women, yes. File cabinets, no.

  “Here!” I said, rump in the air, head near the floor, but victorious. “I have yours too.” I straightened. “Payday,” I said and handed him his envelope.

  He took it with a scowl. “This does not matter,” he said, lifting the check to eye level. “Without a woman to love a man, the money is not of importance. And you cannot buy me love.”

  So we’d moved to the Beatles. “I talked with Katie.”

  His eyes grew big. They were a darker blue than Katie’s and flecked with green. “What did she say to you? Does she love him?”

  I shook my head. “Pretty sure she loves you, champ.” I sat on a stool next to the broom hooks and gestured for Amos to take the folding chair. “She didn’t say a word about Yoder.”

  “You are not lying to my face?” He sat but just barely. His posture was extremely good, so much so that Misty Warren would have called him a fruitcake in junior high. “Why do you say she loves me and you know I should be glad?”

  I tapped my head. “So many reasons. First and foremost, I’m a very smart girl. Ask anyone. Second, I’m a woman, and women know about love.” I didn’t recount for him my complete lack of personal experience in this area. Sometimes the client-investigator relationship allows for discretion. “Third, when I asked her about boys, she talked about you and only you. And she got teary.”

  He bit his lower lip and leaned back in the chair. Both hands behind his head, he balanced on the chair’s back legs. “She still loves me. It is a difficult idea to hold in one’s mind.”

  I watched him brood for a moment. “Amos. You look completely depressed. I thought you’d be happy.”

  He let the chair drop. “Of course I am the happiest. My wildest dreams are coming true. But it is not easy, this dream. Our love is a long and winding road.”

  “NELLIE!” Tank called from the front.

  “Listen,” I said, standing. “Just take it one step at a time. Let it be, all right? All you need is love, but I’m a mere walrus.” Dang! I was on a roll!

  “Nellie?” Tank came to stand in the back-room doorway. He looked shaken. “I think you should come.”

  I stepped around him and hurried to Nona. Her eyes were dark and shifty.

  “Hi, Nona,” I said. “Sorry I took so long. Should we go home?”

  She looked at me, puzzled, but nodded. “We should go home, Annette.”

  My heart stopped in my chest. This was new. “I’m Nellie,” I said, too loudly. “Nellie, your granddaughter.”

  Tank wrapped his arm around Nona, touching my shoulder with his fingertips. “I’ll help you two to the car. It’s quite the rainstorm, isn’t it?” He spoke with such gentleness, I could feel my racing heart crack and bleed within me.

  We walked slowly to the front door. I sensed Amos watching us, and I wanted to tell him again to be patient. Sometimes love was harder than it looked.

  I was sitting on her bed that night when she said the words.

  “Nellie, I’m going to die.” And she took a sip of tea, as if she’d told me Biz keeps colors bright, wash after wash.

  “Well, yes, I’d assume so,” I said, but my voice had a tremor. “I will, too, so touché.”

  She didn’t smile. “You need to think about me dying. So it won’t hit you so hard when it happens.”

  I looked at her full in the face. “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Not much, you haven’t. And the way you looked on the way home from Tank’s tells me you’re not one bit ready for it.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” I said in my High School Musical voice. “Think macabre thoughts? Wear black? Imagine you in a casket?” That last one made my breath catch. I stopped.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t really like the idea of leaving you either. Solomon wrote that God sets eternity in the hearts of men. We’re not wired to want to die or to watch the people we love leave us.”

  I was quiet. The quilt on Nona’s bed was a patchwork of pinwheels, the scraps of fabric melting together in riotous bursts of color. I ran my fingers along the stitching, feeling the softness earned through years of human warmth and contact.

  Nona put her hand over mine. “Time to look at me.”

  I raised my eyes to meet her blurred image.

  “Nellie Augusta Lourdes Monroe, I love you.”

  “Nona—”

  “Don’t interrupt. It’s rude, and I’m losing it, so you’d better let me talk while I’m thinking straight.” Her smile made me ache all over. “I love you, and God has created you to be magnificent. I’m not sure what that will look like yet, but you might as well be patient. He’s not finished until he’s finished, a moment which happens to coincide with your dying breath.”

  “Sheesh, a lot of death chatter, Nona,” I said. Tears ran down my face, and she brushed one away.

  “Do you know how much he loves you?” She was staring straight through my eyeballs, but all I could feel was warmth, cashmere-like, spreading through me.

  I didn’t speak. For all my word-of-the-day calendars over the years, not one of them helped me in that moment.

  She smiled suddenly, a full-blown, Christmas-morning grin. “Well, aren’t you in for a ride.”

  “What?” I said. “What ride? Where? What does that mean?”

  She laughed. “I have no earthly idea. But I can’t wait to hear about it.”

  “Nona, I appreciate the God-and-his-indecipherable-mysteries thing, but I’m more of a typed-agenda kind of girl, okay? I’m not sure how this works, if you have some direct line or if Jesus dabbles in the psychic network….”

  Nona rolled her eyes. “Nellie, don’t insult him.”

  “Okay, well, I’m just saying I’d like to know what you know.”

  She yawned, her little jaw dropping all the way to her chest, her nose wrinkling with the force of her weariness. “I’ve already told you all I know. He loves you, he has bottomless reserves of forgiveness, and he’ll pursue you to the end, even when you’re a pill and long after I’m gone. Now,” she said, bumping my tush with her knees, “get off my bed and let the old woman rest. It was a long day.” She closed her eyes. “Would you mind turning out the light, dear?”

  I watched her, listened to her breathing become regular, then conclusive, like the periods at the ends of sentences. Even after I turned out the bedside lamp, I watched her in the stubborn daylight of a summer evening. It left slowly, the light, in increments so subtle they made a girl think maybe it was as dark as it was going to get. But then, a quarter shade darker, and another, until not a sliver was left a
nd I had to feel my way toward the door.

  17

  Forget and Forgive

  I stretched my legs on the Adirondack chair. Matt sat in a twin chair beside me, watching with me as the sun hung on above the tree line. After a tedious day of inventory at the course and the perpetual need to shoo Tank out of my work, I was ready to be worthless.

  “Rockin’ sundaes,” Matt said. He flexed his feet and sprawled, hands propping up his tangle of hair. “I’ve never had homemade caramel sauce, and I can see now what a shame that is.”

  “You’re welcome.” I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sun. Overhead ceiling fans mounted on the beadboard above us cooled an otherwise sultry part of the day. The back portion of our wraparound porch caught breezes from three directions, often making it the coolest part of the house on a summer’s night. Pop and Annette had long ago installed three Humvee-sized AC units to accommodate our home’s square footage, but once a hundred-year-old house, always one. My favorite coping mechanism remained ice cream and ceiling fans on the back porch.

  I turned my head to one side, letting the sun’s rays warm my left cheek. Squinting at him, I said, “I like your new glasses.”

  He took them off and looked at them, as if evaluating them for the first time. Slender frames, black with squarish lenses. I thought they complemented Matt in both personality and his wiry body. “You really like them?” he asked. “You don’t think they’re too passive-aggressive?”

  “Passive-aggressive glasses? What, you mean they like you, then they hate you? They get up in your face and then retreat with compliments?” I turned my face back to the sun. “How many more years until you’re licensed in this drivel so you can charge people giant sums of money to sort them out?”

  He sighed. “Many years. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of years.” Glasses back on, he said, “I’m glad you like them.” He cleared his throat. “Nellie,” he said. “I’m going to ask you a question, but I don’t want you to freak out.”