Operation Bonnet

by Kimberly Stuart

  My eyes drifted to the periphery of the room. Nona had been busy. Paintings lined the junction of floor and wall, three deep in some places. I walked to a stack by the window and began flipping through. Wildly joyful some: bright swaths of red and orange, arcs of yellow, green, and fuchsia. Others were dark and mournful, barely eking out a smidge of light amid layers of black, blues, bruised purple.

  Nona saw me looking. “Oh, Annette, honey, don’t look at those. I’ve got so much work yet to do. I just can’t seem to finish one before needing to start another these days.” She set down a narrow brush and picked up one with a robust plume.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said. I paused in my riffling and leaned against the wall, legs crossed, one arm propped on a stack of clean canvases. “I think I’ve blown it, Nona.”

  “Oh, Annette, you were always far too hard on yourself,” she said, not turning from her work. “It’s good you chose that Clive Monroe. He seems like such a nice young man.”

  “He is a nice young man.” Some things weren’t worth the fight, proper nouns among them. “But I think I waited too long to figure out just how nice he is. I should have noticed when he was tortured and mopey and now, just when I want him to be mopey, he’s all happy and focused and magnanimous. Magnanimous, from the Latin for magnus and animus, great or courageous of spirit.”

  “Hmmm,” Nona said. She reached for a brush laden with goldenrod yellow.

  “And then there’s the Amish case.”

  “I knew an Amish girl once,” Nona said, but stopped before adding any more.

  “The Amish girl I know is about to make a big mistake. I’m trying to stop her, but I’m not sure it’s going to work. And the Amish boy isn’t making it easy, which makes me wonder how bad he wants it, you know?”

  “A girl should only marry for love. Financial security is highly overrated.”

  That was the thing with this horrible disease or condition or whatever was robbing me of Nona. There were moments when she’d zone in on exactly what we were discussing, putting a name and face and context to my Amish boy and girl ill-fated but in love. And then, just as quickly, she’d be knee-deep in the murky waters again, wondering if she’d be late for her wedding or if Annette and Clive had had their baby yet.

  “What should I do, Nona?” I said the words softly.

  She turned, brush poised in her strong grip. “You do what we always do, dear. You cry or pout or laugh or whatever you must about what needs to be let go. And then you let go. Never try to run the world. Only a God of bottomless grace can pull off a feat like that.”

  I watched her return to her work, her spine straight and full of certainty. Those words, I knew, originated at a cellular level. Some things even a fractured mind could not erase. Please God, I prayed, not really knowing the end of that sentence. Please.

  I returned to my perusal of Nona’s work. A still life of peonies, her favorite flower. A landscape of the plains. My hands stopped their paging. A portrait of me, my undoctored afro hair, bright and curious eyes, a flush to my cheeks. I pulled the canvas and sat back on my heels. I was smiling in the portrait, as if it were a gift of an autumn day and I was just back from a meandering walk and would I like some cider and a hot doughnut? That kind of happy. The happy I had on my face when I smiled at my Nona.

  She caught me staring and looked at the object of my gaze.

  “Isn’t she a lovely one?” she said and went right back to her painting. “I don’t know that girl, but I dream about her face nearly every night.”

  The green backdrop, the russets of my hair, my smile, the eyes, they all blurred in my vision.

  She still dreamed of me every night.

  The world felt too heavy for me, and the one person who always knew how to lighten it was left with dreams alone.

  Please.

  23

  Self-Defense

  There was really no good reason I worked at an establishment dedicated to golf. The game itself bored me to the point of a nervous twitch by the third hole. I’d just as soon walk alongside a threesome, but only if the temperature read somewhere between 65 and 85. That Friday, it was 99 degrees with 90 percent humidity and not one single cloud in sight.

  Visiting golfers not familiar with midwestern summers expressed confusion at these stats, wondering if perhaps they’d gotten the cloudless part wrong. Certainly there was an ocean of a storm brewing overhead with 90 percent humidity, they said. Certainly this girl must have her numbers wrong! How could a human survive such a harsh environ? I’ll tell you how: unhappily. That’s how she survived it. With a glare for anyone who dared to ask her a superfluous question, such as when the course closed (schedule posted on front door), where to find a restroom (sign overhead), or if it was going to rain (look at the ever-loving sky, buddy).

  Oh, was I in a foul mood. To make matters less congenial, I’d gone shopping with Annette and was wearing one of the fruits of her labor. She’d been home for a few days that week and had pestered me about our shopping trip until I relented. After stops at the Willow Springs Mall, the line of boutiques downtown, and drive-bys at four separate strip malls, I’d returned to the house, stylish but depleted. For work that afternoon, I’d put on a sundress, “so flirty and fun” when in front of the three-way mirror in the store, but so overdressed and awkward at the course. Amos had whistled when I’d come in, and Tank had actually applauded, which had only irritated me more.

  “You two, pipe down,” I’d barked.

  Amos laughed. “This is the perfect time for an idiom I have learned. Let me see: You can take the clothes out of the Nellie but not the Nellie out of the clothes.” He slapped Tank on the back. “Yes? This is true, right?”

  Tank chuckled but sobered up when he saw my face. “You look nice, Nellie. Not as nice as if you’d stop SNARLING like that, but pretty nice. Get ready for a BIG DAY. We’re booked for tee times until closing.”

  Annette had told me taking better care of myself would make me less annoying at home. This was her gentle, maternal way of saying I was driving her nuts. I guess I’d been sulking. Normally Nona would have made me snap out of it, through words or a messy finger-painting session or an uncomfortably brisk walk around the neighborhood. I didn’t have the heart to try any of those things without her, so instead I sulked. I’d gotten really quite good at it, carrying my cell phone everywhere and panicking aloud when it was out of sight. I walked with shoulders slumped, still the best way to get Annette riled up and begin the tirade about how I’d quit ballet too early. I’d even bugged Pop, normally unflappable, to the point that he’d snapped at dinner and asked me to stop sighing so much.

  I figured that if Pop snapped, at least a halfhearted action must be taken, so I wore the sundress to work. It was long and flowy and scrunched all around the top to flatter what Annette had called “a small but feminine bosom.” Not a word you wanted your mother to say, bosom. At any rate, I’d liked the dress before wearing it to the golf course. I thought about asking Tank if I could rip the tags off some of the athletic wear we sold, but we were so busy I didn’t have the chance.

  While I was ringing up two rounds for all thirty-two members of the Roggen Family Reunion, I saw my phone vibrate on the counter next to the register. The screen flashed “Claremont College.” I felt a hard lump form in my throat and grabbed the phone as I retrieved eight cart keys for the Roggens.

  The voice mail began with a pause, then a clearing of a throat.

  “Nellie, this is Sonja Moss. I’m, well, I’m a bit perplexed. I ran into an Amish acquaintance of mine today at the farmers’ market. Rose Lapp? We were discussing the differences between breeds of zucchini, and I was hoping I could convince her to let me have a look at her garden, but she laughed and said she thought one English girl picking up all the gardening secrets in one summer was enough. Of course”—big clear of throat here, a swallow
of water or perhaps moonshine—“of course I wondered who this English visitor might be. She said—I swear she said the words Nellie Monroe, but then her daughter, a girl named Katie, changed the subject and soon enough whisked her mother off to churn butter or comb wool or some such excuse.” She stopped abruptly. I pictured a reddening of the academic cheeks in the silence that followed. “At any rate,” she continued, subdued, “I can’t imagine I really heard your name. I can’t imagine you would have been visiting an Amish farm, my Amish farm, without notifying me. Inconceivable, I would think. Anyway, would you mind giving me a call, Nellie? I’d appreciate hearing from you. This is probably just a matter of my poor hearing.” She laughed a shrill, tinny laugh. “Do me a favor and call, won’t you? Thank you, Nellie. Good-bye.”

  I handed the keys to Uncle Robert, the organizing Roggen, and hung up on voice mail. That didn’t sound good, I thought. She was too close, and I was too close. It was time to make a move, and I knew just what to do.

  The last reservation of the day was for a foursome, and I cringed when they walked in. All guys around my age, each wearing an incarnation of the same preppy baseball cap. The ringleader, a short, muscular man wearing a pink (pink!) polo shirt, leaned on the counter.

  “Hey, there, cutie. You’re a sweet cool drink on this miserable day.” He winked at his friends.

  “I’m sorry to have such a positive effect on you,” I said breezily.

  Pinkie looked confused. “No, babe, that’s good. I mean, you look good.” He checked me out over his sunglasses. I swear this happened, and it wasn’t even a Molly Ringwald film.

  “Right.” I spoke slowly. I’d heard it worked well with primates. “But you’re kind of leering, you know? And you’re wearing so much cologne, I smelled you before I saw you. And you keep looking at my chest, which is socially inappropriate.”

  His buddies elbowed each other and snickered. I kept my eyes on his, darty and mole-like above the sunglasses. “Well,” he said, “it would appear that an hourly wage doesn’t offer the service it used to, is that right? Of course, showing skin like that, you might be better able to answer questions about a different kind of hourly service.”

  I pulled back and punched him square in the face. Let me assure you, this is nothing like it seems in the movies. First of all, there’s no satisfying crunching noise. I listened, but nothing. Second, it hurts like the dickens. I cried out in pain, holding my hand and feeling hot tears fall down my face. Seeing blood on Pinkie’s face and the looks of shock registering on his posse did comfort, but I’m telling you, it hurt.

  Tank materialized without a sound, not a small endeavor for a man who considered any pizza without extra sausage “diet pizza.”

  “She hit me!” Pinkie pointed at my hand when he tattled. He added a whimper for good measure.

  “I saw that,” Tank said, and helped him to his feet. He turned him gently by the shoulders. “She gets a big bag of ICE and a RAISE.”

  “What?” Pinkie was frothing. His buddies followed behind, one clutching the big Italian sunglasses. “She needs to get fired, dude.”

  “NONSENSE. She saved me the trouble of hitting you myself. You tangled with the wrong girl, CHUMP.” He opened the screen door but put a beefy finger on the guy’s chest before he could step into the hot sun. “Listen up, kid.” Tank spoke in a hushed voice, but I could still hear every word. “I’m not sure where you learned to talk to women like that, but pulling that kind of stunt around here will always earn you a bloody nose. Or worse. You GOT me?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Poor Pinkie. Not a good day to play eighteen holes.

  “See you boys,” Tank said, booming and cheery. “You have a nice AFTERNOON!” He let the door slam behind him and strode toward the ice machine. When he returned to the counter, he placed a full bag on my hand.

  I flinched.

  “Where’d you learn a move like that?” I could hear the smile in Tank’s voice.

  “Um, CSI? I haven’t exactly tried it before.” I sucked in air between my teeth. “Sorry about this.”

  “Are you kidding? That slimeball deserved more than a SMACK to the face. No one talks to my Nellie like that.”

  I could feel my eyes sting, just the kind of thing you don’t want to happen when you’ve administered your first bloody nose to a perp.

  “Now, now,” Tank said, nudging me to sit on the stool behind the counter. He pulled up a chair and cradled my hand and the ice between his two mitts. “You go ahead and cry. It’s allowed.”

  I sat, my hand sandwiched between his, letting hot tears wash down my face. Tank let me be and didn’t say a word for a full five minutes. When I finally sighed, he sniffed. I looked up, and he was trying without success to stifle a laugh.

  “MAN, I wish I’d had a video camera. He crumpled like a little girl, in his sweet widdle PINK SHIRT. Ha!” He slapped his knee with one hand and bumped the ice pack in the process. “Oh. Sorry.” He shook his head. “I’d have loved to show a tape of that to your Nona in days gone by.”

  I allowed a half smile. “She would have approved, wouldn’t she?”

  “Oh, good gravy. She would have HOOTED and HOLLERED and then tracked him down to take a whack at him herself.” His eyes searched mine. “She would have told you that God’s the one who made you and so you’d better take his creation seriously. Don’t mess with his best work, she would have said.” He smiled, and I knew by the sadness in it how much he missed her too.

  Amos stuck his head through the back doorway and froze. “Nellie Monroe! You have tears! What happened?” He hustled over to the counter.

  “She’s all right, Amos. Just had to PUNCH someone in the nose, that’s all.”

  Amos took a look at my icing hand and clucked like an old woman. “Nellie, you will never find a husband if you can only punch and hit and kick. Men do not like this.”

  Tank snorted. “I’m not sure Nellie’s in the MARKET for a husband just yet. Not quite the MARRYING type, right, Nel?”

  I sat up straighter on my stool. “Yes, I am. I mean—” I’m not one who likes to stammer. It’s unprofessional and irritating, especially for girls in sundresses. “I will, of course, be open to the idea when I’m a bit older.”

  Amos sniffed. “The English wait for these many years to be married and then their eggs are old and crusty. For example, the old women celebrities like the Courteney Cox, the Holly Hunter, the Helen Hunt, the Madonna (she is nasty), the Nicole Kidman, the Halle Berry, though she is delicious to view.”

  I shuddered and not because of the ice on my wound.

  Tank hooted as he stood, patting my knee carefully before turning to go. I heard him reciting celebrity names as he made his way to the back of the store. “The Halle BERRY!” he said and let the screen door slam.

  I tried my most intimidating glower on Amos. “First, puff pastry is delicious. Women are not.”

  Amos shook his head. “Oh, yes, they are—”

  I held up my hand for silence. “Second, when and if I decide to marry is of no concern to you, crusty eggs and otherwise.” My phone vibrated on the counter. Professor Moss again. I sighed. “Amos, I think my work for you is finished. I’ve solved your case, let you know what’s going on with Katie and John Yoder, and I think it’s time for me to bow out gracefully.”

  His eyes grew wide. “But what am I to do with Katie? How do I stop this wedding?”

  I shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s not covered in my fee. Besides”—I gave a small, tired smile—“I wouldn’t know how to help with that anyway.” I stood, biting my lower lip as my hand shouted out in protest. “But if you want my professional opinion?”

  “Yes, of course. You are the best. I support you.” Amos watched me with eager eyes.

  I looked him full in the face. “Amos, if you love her, you need to act on it. The whole Amish thing does complicate matters
, but you have to figure it out if you love that girl and want to marry her. She’s inching toward a wedding with Slim Shady Yoder, so I’d hurry up if you’re going to make a move.”

  His shoulders sagged but he nodded with great solemnity. “You are correct, Nellie. It is time for me to make a stealthy move. I have seen Mission: Impossible, and I know how to make these moves.”

  I stared at him, disturbed to the core to imagine him rappelling down into the Schrock barn in black tights. “Right. Well, you’re on your own for that. But keep me posted.” I held out my good hand to shake. “Thanks, Amos. It was a pleasure working with you.”

  His handshake was firm. “This is also my feeling, Nellie Monroe. Your future is bright in my opinion.”

  I smiled. “Thanks.” I retrieved my purse and keys from under the counter. Halfway to the front door, I called back, “Keep me informed. I want to hear how it all turns out with Katie.”

  He waved, and I opened the door to the outside, never imagining how inextricable to his plot I already was.

  24

  Missing Persons

  The next morning I hustled up the driveway to the Schrock house, taking care not to twist my ankle in the buggy-wheel ruts on either side. No rain for three weeks made for a dusty walk, but I kicked through the swirling clouds of dirt and took the stairs to the kitchen door two at a time. I hadn’t returned Professor Moss’s calls but knew my time of hide-and-seek was limited. The woman didn’t seem like the type to get distracted by charm, and I considered my lying skills below average, so I would pay one last visit to the Schrocks and be on my merry way before the kettle got too hot.

  Granny answered the door. “Nellie Monroe.” She moved aside to let me pass.