So B. It

by Sarah Weeks

  “I’ll tell her,” Bernie promised.

  When I came out of the den, Roy was waiting for me.

  “You got something to sleep in, or do you need to borrow something? I’ve got a big old flannel shirt that might do, or Rube’s probably got something frillier you could borrow if you want.”

  I told him I had something in my suitcase and started to go back to the little bedroom where I had changed earlier. Roy stopped me.

  “Heidi, does the name DeMuth ring a bell at all?” he asked.

  “DeMuth?” I said,

  “Diane DeMuth. Ever hear that name?” he said.

  “I don’t think so. Who is she?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Ruby’s been running those taps for a while now. You’d better run along now and get ready for your bath.”

  I went to my room and opened my suitcase, digging around until I found the nightgown I’d packed. I fished my toothbrush out of the pocket of my backpack and went down the hall to the bathroom.

  Ruby had run the bath so hot, steam was floating up out of it, and she’d put in enough bubbles to make it foam up like whipped cream. I’d seen pictures of bubble baths in magazines, but I’d never actually had one. Once when I had chicken pox Bernie put oatmeal in the bathwater to help with the itching, but that was lumpy, not like the bubble bath at all. I spent a long time soaking, and when my fingers were completely pruned and the bubbles had died down to a thin soapy film, I got out and dried off. I brushed my teeth and put on my nightgown and tried to comb through my wet hair, but it was even more tangled now than it had been before. I gave up. At least it was clean.

  Roy and Ruby weren’t around when I came out, and I felt too shy to go looking for them or to call out their names, so I went back to the little bedroom and dug my notebook and pen out of my backpack. I carried them over to the wooden bed and lay down on top of the covers. Then I flipped through the pages until I found the “Things I Don’t Know About Mama” list.

  What is soof?

  was all that it said. Below that I wrote:

  Why does Elliot know Mama’s word?

  I was too tired to write more, so I closed the book and slipped it under the pillow. Then I pulled back the covers and slid down between the crisp, cool sheets. I turned off the light and was already halfway asleep when there was a soft knock on the door and a wedge of pale light unfolded into the room. Ruby stood in the doorway.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I told her drowsily.

  “Need anything? Drink of water? Another blanket?” she said.

  What I wanted right then was for her to come and sit on the edge of the bed, to read to me or scratch my back or talk to me the way Bernie always did at bedtime. On the bus sleeping had just happened when it happened, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at night. But there, lying in a real bed like that in a real room, I wanted to be tucked in.

  “I’m fine,” I said, and wondered if that counted as a lie.

  “Good night then,” Ruby said. “Sleep tight.”

  “Ruby?” I said as she started to pull the door closed.

  “Yes, Heidi,” she said.

  “These sheets feel different from the ones at home. Stiffer.”

  “They’re line dried,” she said. “Out in back.”

  “They smell like…sky,” I said.

  “I would have never thought of putting it like that,” Ruby said softly. “Good night, Heidi.”

  I fell asleep that night thinking about all the people I knew in the world. Mama and Bernie and everyone else from home, but now I also knew Georgia and Roy and Ruby and Elliot. Their faces began to jumble together in my head, tumbling like jelly beans down the smooth sides of a glass jar. Right before I drifted off, I turned over; and as my bare legs slid under the stiff sheets, I heard Elliot’s voice calling to me. Sooooooooof.

  Roy came in to say good night—I heard him but I was too far away by then to answer. I had followed the sound of Elliot’s voice into the dream that lay waiting for me on the other side. It was about Thurman Hill’s watch. He came into my room holding one hand out to me, the cold, white fingers closed tightly around something I couldn’t see. His sleeve pulled up as he reached out, and I saw his bony wrist with the gold watch. The face of the watch was blue, but there were no numbers on it, just four letters: S-O-O-F—one letter each at twelve o’clock, three, six, and nine.

  “Show me what’s in your hand,” I said.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “You’ll never know,” he whispered back.

  Then he turned into a huge white bird with pale sea-glass eyes and flew out of the window.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kiss

  I slept late the next morning. It was almost nine o’clock when I finally woke up, and the first thing I thought about was Elliot. I wanted to show him the photographs. I went straight out to the kitchen without even getting dressed.

  “Where’s Roy?” I asked Ruby, who was standing at the sink washing dishes. “He didn’t leave for Hilltop already, did he?”

  “No, he’s gone to Monticello this morning,” she said. “He had some business with the county clerk. Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “Like a top,” I answered automatically.

  “That’s an interesting expression,” Ruby said. “Where’d that one come from?”

  “I don’t know—Bernie always says it,” I said.

  “I’ve heard of sleeping like a rock, or like a baby, but never like a top,” Ruby said.

  “Is Roy going up to Hilltop after Monticello?” I asked.

  “He’ll call in a while. We can ask him then,” she said. “Want some pancakes? There’s blueberry syrup I made myself last summer.”

  I was hungry, and pancakes with blueberry syrup sounded delicious, but I wasn’t going to be distracted from my plan.

  “Are you going up to Hilltop this morning to work? Could I come with you? I want to show Elliot my photographs,” I said. “I thought maybe he’d remember Mama if he saw her.”

  “I’m taking the day off today,” Ruby told me. “Thought maybe we’d spend it together.”

  “Won’t Elliot miss you?” I asked.

  I liked Ruby, but I didn’t want to spend the day there with her waiting for Roy. I needed to go back up to Hilltop. I needed to be there to make sure somebody asked Thurman Hill to explain why Elliot knew Mama’s word.

  “I haven’t taken a personal day all year,” Ruby said. “There are plenty of other people Elly likes. There’s Sally. She sings, and her voice is much better than mine. And he’s got physical therapy with Bruce today. He likes that, too.”

  “But I want to show him the photographs,” I said again.

  “Show me instead,” she said. “I only got to see a few yesterday. It’s amazing to see how the place has changed. And I’d like to see your mother again, and your grandmother, too.”

  “I don’t know if she’s my grandmother,” I said. “Do you think Roy could stop here first and pick me up before he goes up there? Or could you take me, even if you’re not going to work?”

  “Heidi, I’m sorry, but for the moment, like it or not, you’re stuck here with me,” she said. “Even if I wanted to take you up there, I couldn’t. We only have the one car, and Roy’s got it.”

  “Can I walk?” I asked.

  “Much too far to walk. It’s almost ten miles. Why don’t you go get the photos and I’ll make you a plate of pancakes,” Ruby said.

  I was disappointed, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I went back to the little bedroom to get dressed.

  When I opened my suitcase, I was surprised to find that it was empty. I looked around and found that everything in it had been taken out, washed, ironed, folded, and put neatly into the top drawer of a small bureau near the door. The socks were rolled into tight little balls, reminding me of armadillos Bernie and I had seen once in an animal book from the library. The shirts and underwear were stacked
in tidy piles, all the edges lined up and facing in the same direction. Tucked in among the piles was a small, nubby brown ball. It smelled spicy, and when I looked at it up close, I saw that it was an orange, stuck full of cloves.

  The jar of jelly beans and my backpack were sitting on a shelf under the window near the bed. I pulled the packet of photos out of my backpack and headed back to the kitchen, where Ruby was busy at the stove, flipping pancakes.

  “Thank you for washing my clothes,” I said. “They smell good, and I like the way you fold.”

  Ruby smiled.

  “You know, that bed you slept in last night was mine when I was a little girl, Heidi,” Ruby told me as she set a plate down on the table for me. “It used to be painted blue, and underneath the edge on the right side is where I parked my chewing gum at night.”

  “Is it still there?” I asked as I sat down and pulled the folded triangle of napkin out from under the fork at my place.

  “If it is, it’s a valuable antique by now.” She laughed.

  There was a pitcher of orange juice and little juice glasses with sea horses all around the edges. Ruby brought a cup of coffee over to the table and sat down across from me.

  “This ought to help make up for the frozen potpies last night,” she said. “I made the syrup this past summer, picked all the berries myself.”

  I pressed my fork sideways down into the stack of pancakes. Blueberry syrup spilled over the edges and raced out to the rim of the plate like a little blue river. I took a big bite, closed my eyes, and groaned out loud, it was so good.

  Ruby watched me eat, and when I’d all but licked my plate clean, she reached over and tapped her finger on the yellow envelope of photos.

  “Will you show me?” she asked.

  I nodded and wiped my lips with the napkin. Then I opened the packet the way I had a million times before and began to hand the photos across the table to Ruby.

  “This is the one you saw already, with everyone out on the porch under the sign,” I said. “And this is the one of Mama and the woman in the red sweater who might be my grandmother.”

  Ruby took the photo from me.

  “And this is the scrawny Santa Claus—” I stopped mid sentence. The Santa Claus with his arm around the shaggy-haired boy. The unpadded red suit, hanging loose and billowing around his tall, skinny frame, the sleeves so short that his bony wrists poked out. And his watch…his watch. No wonder I had dreamed about it the night before.

  I knew now who the Santa was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bad

  Roy called at ten to tell Ruby he was on his way back from Monticello.

  “There’s news,” I heard Ruby tell him. “Mr. Hill is in the photos, Roy. And Elliot, too. He saw those photos himself yesterday, and he still told Heidi her mother had never been there.”

  Thurman Hill had known my mother. There was no doubt about it now. He had been at the party with Mama and the woman in the red sweater. People lie, but pictures don’t. Elliot had been there too. He was the boy with the shaggy brown hair. I knew there was something familiar about him when I first saw him asleep in the chair, but with his hair shaved off, I hadn’t recognized him from the pictures.

  I had a hard time waiting for Roy to get there. Ruby explained to him that I was very anxious to go back to Hilltop to see Elliot, and Roy had said we would talk about it when he got there. While we waited, Ruby and I went through the photographs again one by one, pulling out everything that showed Elliot or Thurman Hill or Mama. There were even a couple where all three of them were in the same shot.

  “I just don’t understand,” Ruby said more than once. “He’s a good man, Heidi. Why would he lie to you?”

  “I don’t know, but he did,” I said. “He told me she was never there, and the whole time he knew she was.”

  “There must be some reason he’s not telling the truth,” Ruby said.

  I thought about my list—

  Sometimes people lie because the truth is too hard to admit

  When Roy came back, the first thing he did was ask to see the photos. We showed him all the ones we’d pulled out.

  “It’s clearly him,” Ruby said. “And Elliot. Look at his hair, Roy—it was curly. I’d have never guessed that.”

  Roy got a phone call, so I went to my room to get ready to go. I wanted to bring my notebook along in case there were new things to add to the lie list, and I also wanted to start a list of questions to ask Thurman Hill. I decided to wear the red sweater to Hilltop, so Thurman Hill couldn’t lie about that too and say that it didn’t really match the one in the pictures. I had just started to look for the sweater when I heard a car start up in front of the house and gravel crunch in the driveway. I ran out into the living room in time to look out the window and see Roy pulling out.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked anxiously. “He’s just turning around or something, right?”

  “No. He’s going up to Hilltop,” she told me. “Mr. Hill called to say he’s waiting there with his lawyer.”

  “But I wanted to go too,” I said. “Roy knew I wanted to show Elliot the pictures.”

  “Roy has the pictures,” Ruby said.

  I was really upset.

  “My pictures? He took my pictures?” I asked.

  “Only the ones we pulled out,” she said. “The others are still here.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have taken my pictures without asking,” I said. “And he shouldn’t have left without me. He knew I wanted to go. He said I could.”

  “No, he didn’t. He said we would talk about it,” Ruby said.

  “Well, we didn’t talk about it. And now he’s gone,” I said.

  “He thought it would be better this way, Heidi,” Ruby said. “Better to let the grown-ups sort things out.”

  “Grown-ups are the ones who tell the biggest lies of all!” I cried.

  “He promised to call,” Ruby said.

  I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. I had a right to be there when the truth about Mama finally came out. It was cold outside that day, and the wind was bending the trees in the yard like giant gray pipe cleaners. I ran to the little bedroom to get my red sweater. It was all I would have to keep me warm on the long walk to Hilltop.

  I was pretty sure Ruby hadn’t put the sweater in with the other clothes in the spicy top drawer, so I pulled open the second drawer from the top. It was filled with impossibly tiny clothes—little shirts and nighties trimmed with ribbons and printed with patterns of lambs and kittens and ducks, most of them still in the wrappers or with tags attached. I didn’t hear Ruby come in.

  “Those belong to the babies I lost,” she told me. “There were three.” She was leaning against the door watching me, and if Bernie had been there, I know she would have said that Ruby’s eyes told the whole story. I quickly shut the drawer, but it was too late—the sorrow caught in between those soft layers of pastel cotton had escaped and hung in the air now like a cold damp mist. Everything slowed down as the mist swirled around the two of us standing there together in the little back bedroom.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby. I didn’t mean to open it,” I said. “I was looking for my sweater.”

  “I washed it last night. It’s drying on a rack out on the porch,” she said. “I should probably empty that drawer out anyway.”

  I could tell that sorrowful mist I’d loosed had wrapped itself tight around Ruby. I wanted to tell her I was sorry she had lost those babies, sorry that I had made her remember. Instead, I offered her the only thing I could think of to give her right then.

  “There were one thousand, five hundred twenty-seven in here when I started. But I ate a few yesterday, so I don’t know the exact number anymore. You can have the rest, though,” I said as I walked over and lifted the heavy glass jar of jelly beans off the shelf.

  Ruby brushed the backs of her hands across her eyes and smiled sadly.

  “That’s very sweet,” she said. “Where’d
you’d get those, anyway?”

  “I won them,” I said. “With a lucky guess.”

  “I believe it,” she said.

  She sat down on the end of the bed, and I sat down next to her with the jar in my lap.

  “One thousand, five hundred twenty-seven, huh?” she said.

  “Originally,” I said.

  I tilted the jar to one side and watched the beans tumble down through the glass. Reds, greens, yellows, pinks pushing up against each other, then going their separate ways, making and breaking up patterns as they went. I tilted it the other way and watched them shift and tumble again. I was the one tilting the jar, but it wasn’t like I had any control over what happened inside it; all I could do was watch.

  “It’s not fair,” I said. “He was supposed to take me with him.”

  “I know. But life isn’t fair sometimes, is it?” Ruby said.

  The phone rang then, and Ruby went to answer it. When she came back, she had my red sweater with her.

  “I think it’s dry enough now. Here, put this on and go comb your hair. Roy is coming to pick you up and take you up to Hilltop.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  No

  Even though it was cold out, I waited for Roy outside. Now that I knew he was taking me to Hilltop, I wasn’t angry at him anymore. The morning paper was on the porch, rolled up next to the welcome mat. I took it out to the rope hammock so I could swing and read to help pass the time until he got there. I’d combed my hair like Ruby had told me to, though there were still a lot of big tangles hidden underneath.

  I got in the hammock and opened the paper randomly to the science section, where an article caught my eye. It was about dinosaurs and how nobody really knows what color they were because you can’t tell by looking at the bones.

  Ruby came out on the porch and called to me.

  “Heidi! Bernadette’s on the phone!”