“Honey, there comes a time when staying with a bad life means you’re throwing away the chance to make a good one, and God takes great offense at that. He made us in His image, with choices and powers, and if you throw that away and make less of yourself than you could have, you’re diminishing what He made with His own hands, and that’s a wrong thing, honey. It’s plain wrong.”
Petie’s voice sank until it was barely audible. “Is it wrong to be unhappy?”
Marge leaned forward and squeezed Petie’s hand. “Honey, is it wrong to be a broken vase when it’s not your fault you fell off the table? You can’t always keep things from breaking, hon, but it’s not the breaking that God faults us for. It’s throwing away the pieces that hurts Him, honey, when He’s made perfectly good glue if you’d only take the trouble to use it. Now, you’re never going to look brand new again and you can’t do anything about that. But you’ll hold flowers all the same, even if you’re a little stove in on one side. Do you see? The important thing is, you can still be the receptacle for beauty, honey; you can still hold His pretty colors just like you were intended to. Your little Ryan knows that; all children know that. It’s only us grown-ups that forget.”
Petie sat perfectly still as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Marge went on. “I’ve heard the stories. You had a bad man for a father, honey, and the Lord took your mama home way too soon. But God gave you a stout heart and a strong mind to make up for it. No one’s faulting you for needing time to fix things, honey, as long as you do fix them in the end. It’s when you leave yourself broke that you commit a sin. It’s not a sin to be unhappy, honey, but it is a sin to stay unhappy.
“Now, with me, the Lord took Larry and left me behind with a strong heart and a terrible sorrow. He doesn’t fault me for crying, just as long as I do my best to go on. Do you see, honey? He knows I’m a flighty old lady who makes a mess of half the things I try. But I try all the same, honey, I try every day and every hour, and the sadder I feel, the more determined I am to go on. And maybe that’s what it all comes down to, honey. Maybe in the end, life is all about going on.”
“I love you,” Petie said quietly. “I’ve never told you that before.”
“I know you do, honey. You have a gift for loving and you always have, even when it scares the bejeebers out of you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Doesn’t matter, honey. Everyone else did.”
Chapter 18
PETIE CREPT into the kitchen at five-thirty in the morning and dug in her utensil drawer for a set of measuring spoons. They were the ones Eula had given her all those years ago as a wedding present, the present she cherished more than any other gift she and Eddie were given. The house was quiet except for the creak of the trees outside when a gust of wind tangled with them.
She quickly put on a slicker, grabbed her car keys from the counter and drove ten blocks, turned out her headlights half a block away from the old coastal pine and opened her car door with a minimum of squeak. Peering into the darkness, she slipped across the ratty lawn, stepping into the occasional spongy molehill. Beneath the tree she pulled the spoons from one pocket, her broken spade from the other, and crouched under the dripping branches. Her hands shook as she dug the hole and packed the spoons in tight. When she was done, wet through, she crouched there for several minutes, tears mingling with the rain. Her sinuses were nothing but soggy sponges these days, full of snot and tears.
She broke open a clod of dirt and rolled the smaller bits between her fingers, thinking of Eula Coolbaugh, the first woman—the first person—who had loved her without limits. Paula Tyler must have loved her, too, but Petie couldn’t summon any memories of it. Paula, in her memory, was a broken woman, a wisp of smoke, hardly ever there at all. Eula, on the other hand, had been substantial, living her life in the wide-open places where Paula had been afraid to go. She had provided for Petie, fought for her, worried over her, urged her to sound her thoughts as loud and clear as trumpets. Eddie Coolbaugh had never had much of Eula in him, but Petie guessed there had been enough to cling to. Now, under the dripping tree, taking in the smell of the loamy earth in great gulps, she could hear Eula’s voice, clear and strong: I’m proud of you, hon. It’s long past time to say goodbye, you know it is. Don’t you waste what I’ve given you, all that talk and strength. I love you. Go on, now. Go.
Petie pressed her palms flat over the grave for several minutes, willing herself to say this worst of goodbyes. In the week since Marge had come home, everything Petie had said was, in some way, a goodbye. In every good-night kiss to Loose there was a farewell; in every cup of coffee she set in front of Eddie Coolbaugh there was a leave-taking. It was even harder than Petie had thought it would be.
She drove home and slipped into the house as quietly as she could, given the desperate state of the old floorboards. Apparently no one heard her, not even when she turned on the shower and gave herself up to the luxury of heat and steam until the hot water ran out.
SCHOOL WAS out for spring vacation, so Petie let the boys sleep. After her shower she filled the car with boxes—clothes, art supplies, a few favorite toys. Just after sunup she drove to the Sea View Motel. Marge must have heard the car because she had the door open before Petie even reached the top of the stairs to her apartment.
“Oh, let me help with those things, honey!” She took a small duffel bag and a box out of Petie’s hands and brought them into her bedroom. Petie set down several other boxes and a backpack, and called, “I’m going back down. Don’t come—I’ve only got one more load. I’ll be right back.”
“All right, honey.” Marge appeared in the doorway.
“Do you want me to bring your suitcase down?”
“Why, I guess so. I’ve been all packed for two days.”
“You’re still sure you don’t want to stay?” Petie said.
“I’m sure, honey. I proved to myself that I could do it, but my heart isn’t here anymore. I’m an old woman who wants to spend the rest of her life with family, not with strangers staying for one night.”
“All right,” Petie said. “You know you can change your mind anytime.”
“I know, honey. No, I’ll be glad to think of you and Ryan living here now. I know Larry would like that, too. There’s lots of love in these walls, honey, all around you like a hug.”
Petie descended and brought up her last load. “How are the boys?” Marge said while she put boxes in the bedroom.
“I don’t know. They seem okay, mostly. I thought they’d be upset at being separated, but all I’m hearing is griping about why Ryan gets to move to a new house and Loose doesn’t.” Petie sighed.
“Well, you be brave, honey.”
Petie gave Marge a quick hug. “I’ll pick you up at two,” she said.
“All right, honey, I’ll be ready.”
The household was stirring when Petie got back. Loose was padding around in Eddie’s socks, four times too big. Ryan was completely dressed, including his shoes, and was at the kitchen table eating Cap’n Crunch with chocolate milk, a combination that made Petie feel nauseous just to look at, but then she had no appetite these days. She kissed Ryan on the top of the head.
“Loose, you sure you don’t want to come with Ryan and me?” Petie said. “It might be kind of like a treasure hunt.”
“What kind of treasure?”
“Well, maybe junk treasure. My grandfather lived up there all his life. I don’t know what he might have left behind. No one lives there anymore.”
“I want to help Daddy with the dirt bike.”
“Okay, as long as you know you have a choice.”
Petie pulled mud boots from the closet for her and for Ryan. They’d change into them in the car.
“I’m ready,” said Ryan, taking his bowl to the sink and washing it out—something he’d never done before. In the car she asked him why he did it.
He thought for a while. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know why I do half
the things I do, either, but it was thoughtful of you. If you hadn’t done it, Daddy or I would’ve had to.”
“Daddy doesn’t know how to wash dishes.”
“Of course he does.” She shot him a look. “What made you say that?”
“You always do them.”
“Well, that’s mostly true, but you know what? It doesn’t take a college education to run a sponge over a dish.”
“No,” Ryan said doubtfully.
“Are you worried about Daddy?”
Ryan nodded.
“I am too, a little bit, but you know what? Daddy’s a grown-up, and grown-ups know how to figure out the most amazing things. If he can figure out how to put a dirt bike back together, sweetie, he can certainly figure out what detergent to use in the washing machine.”
Ryan brightened. “Do you think so?”
“I know so,” Petie said. “Tell me this, kiddo. Do you think you’ll miss Loose?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“He beats me up a lot.”
“Not so much since he’s been taking his medicine,” Petie said. Loose had been on Ritalin for two weeks, since they were told he had attention deficit hyperactive disorder along with dyslexia. Petie hadn’t wanted to drug him, but even she had to admit it was a big improvement.
The decision to split the boys between them had been Eddie’s idea, though she’d never tell Ryan that. Loose was Eddie’s sidekick and pal, his shadow, his accomplice. Petie agreed that he would probably do better living with Eddie, at least for now. Ryan, on the other hand, would suffer by staying. He was her son, as Eddie often pointed out in disgust, and she knew that Eddie, with his sarcasm and hurtful jokes, would just make a hard situation harder.
“It’s been a long time since I was here,” Petie said with undisguised trepidation as they turned onto the logging road that led to Camp Twelve. “It looks gloomier.”
“It is kind of spooky,” Ryan said.
“Mostly it looks drippy,” Petie reassured him. “Did I ever tell you about when I came here?”
Ryan shook his head. Petie decided to tell him the truth. “My mother died when I was your age. My grandfather lived up here, and Old Man figured he ought to know she’d died. So we came here to tell him.”
“Was he here?”
“Yes. I think he was the last person who ever lived here.”
“Oh.”
“You know the scar on my foot?”
Ryan nodded. He’d always been afraid of the rubbery look of the thing.
“Well, this is where I got that scar. My father and my grandfather talked and talked and I got so cold I lit a little fire to stay warm by, except that it spread. I stamped on it to make it go out, but I got burnt. That’s why I always tell you and Loose not to play with matches.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Holy cow,” Petie said. “I couldn’t walk on it for three weeks. And you know the odd thing? I never saw my grandfather again. I don’t know why.”
Ryan looked out the window for a bit. “Will I ever see Daddy again?”
Petie gripped the wheel a little tighter. “Oh, sweetie, of course you’ll see Daddy. You’ll see him all the time. Sometimes you’ll still sleep in your old bed, too, when you stay overnight with him.”
Ryan nodded, apparently reassured. Petie had already learned it wouldn’t last, that she’d be saying the same thing all over again tomorrow.
They bumped over the increasingly rutted and overgrown road for several miles, until Petie had begun to think they were in the wrong place. Then she saw a clearing ahead, and a minute later spotted the first of the little cabins she always saw so vividly in her dreams.
“There,” she said, pointing. “There it is.” She steered them into the clearing, though it was smaller than she remembered, and shut off the engine. While they put on their mud boots, Petie made sure her voice was hearty, the voice of an adventurer instead of a coward preparing to face down her past. Ryan went ahead, peering into one tumbledown shack after another. Several that had been standing when Petie was here before had fallen in, undermined by blackberries and rot.
“Look!” Ryan came running up with a battered tin cup. “There’s one house with a door!” He pointed at what Petie recognized as her grandfather’s house. With considerable dread she pushed open the door. It shrieked but yielded.
“It’s creepy,” Ryan moaned, standing behind Petie. She had to agree. The interior was still relatively intact, with the crude table and chair she remembered, and the bedstead against the far wall. Pill bugs littered the floor, and part of the roof had fallen in. On the table there was a jar with a brown residue in the bottom. Tobacco spit. There was nothing else, at least not that she could see from the door. She stepped inside, and as her eyes adjusted she saw a mouse nest, a piece of the old curtain, an empty snuff tin, a stub of pencil.
As she stepped the floorboard gave beneath her. Petie cried out, jumping aside as though something living had grabbed her, but it was only rot. Her foot hadn’t gone all the way through the board, but had displaced it enough for her to see the tatters of a plastic bag. She reached down and carefully pulled up the floorboard, which came to pieces in her hand like rotten honeycomb. Grouching, she peered into the space beneath, and then quickly ripped up the adjacent floorboard and reached inside.
“Oh my God.” She pulled up a plastic bag filled with ashes.
Ryan tugged on her sleeve. Petie said, breathing hard, “Get in the car. It’s warmer there. Go.”
He scuttled off to the car and shut himself inside.
The bag was completely intact, though there was no sign of the cardboard box that had once held it. She stared at it dumbly, these last abandoned remains of an unmourned life barely lived. Gently she carried the bag outside, putting it in the trunk of her car with shaking hands. Then she climbed into the car beside Ryan and fumbled for the keys.
“You’re crying,” Ryan said, frowning. “Why are you crying, Mommy?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Petie drew a deep, shaky breath. “It’s just the cold. It makes my eyes water.”
“It’s okay.” He patted her arm awkwardly and watched her. “Are you sad?”
“Yes,” Petie said, wiping the snot from her nose with a limp Kleenex. “I’m sad, but in a good way. I came up here to say goodbye to someone I used to know. I didn’t think I’d find her here, but now I have.”
“Who?”
“Someone you never met,” Petie said, turning the key in the ignition. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” Ryan said, frowning. “Was she a ghost?”
Petie smiled, drying her face on her sleeve. “No, not a ghost. Maybe more like an angel, sweetie. Well, maybe an assistant angel, because she was very shy, I think, and very afraid, like you get sometimes. She wouldn’t have wanted to be an angel herself, having to make decisions like they do.”
“What decisions?”
Petie pulled away from the camp, picking her way around the worst ruts. “Oh, there are lots of them, like whether to turn on a rainbow or not, or whether to make the sun come out and shine because someone’s done something kind. Like whether to bring a sweet dream to a little boy in the night because he had a hard day.”
“Yes,” Ryan said solemnly, nodding his approval.
Petie drove in silence until they were clear of the woods and back on a paved road. She had four dollars and fifty-nine cents in her pocket. She said, “I’ll tell you what we need. I think we need a Dairy Queen. Don’t you think so?”
He did.
· · ·
THEY GOT into Hubbard just in time for Petie to drop Ryan off with Eddie, turn around and pick up Marge, who was waiting for her at the Sea View office door. Petie swept the mud from Ryan’s boots out the car door and closed it again once Marge was settled.
“Here you go, honey,” Marge said, and put the master key to the Sea View Motel in her hand. “Now you know after spring break’s done you can close the
place up again if you want.”
“I know,” Petie said. “I won’t, but I know.”
“Well,” Marge said, watching pensively but dry-eyed as Petie pulled out of the parking lot. “I never expected I’d want to leave this place, honey. But you know he’s not here at all. The things he made are here, but he’s not anywhere. Do you think it’s for the best? Maybe the good Lord spares us the things He knows we can’t bear to live with.”
“Maybe,” Petie said, and reached over to squeeze Marge’s hand. “Maybe that’s what’s happened to me all these years. Maybe I was spared.”
“Maybe so, honey. He must have decided you’re strong enough, now, and I believe He’s right.”
Petie had her doubts.
They didn’t say much the rest of the way into Sawyer. Marge located and relocated her bus ticket in her purse, and fussed with her various pillboxes and packets of Kleenex and hand lotion. Her mind was already hundreds of miles down the road, running south into Tempe. Her bus was already waiting when they got there. Petie pulled out Marge’s suitcase and loaded it into the baggage hold of the bus while Marge presented her ticket. The driver closed and latched the baggage doors the minute Petie backed away.
“Oh!” Marge said, tearing up. “I’m going to be praying for you, honey, I’ll pray for you every day. You’ve got a long road ahead of you, but it’s the right one, I know. You let me hear from you sometimes.” Petie wept and Marge wept and the bus driver cleared his throat. Marge grasped Petie in one last rib-crushing hug and fierce clap on the back, as though the strength of her conviction and love alone could see Petie through. Petie waved until the bus reached the corner and turned, passing out of sight.
EDDIE WAS waiting for her when she got home. The boys had their suitcase by the door and were arguing bitterly over some toy.
“Jesus, Petie, you sure took your sweet time. It’s been like this since you left, they’re so keyed up.”
Petie walked past him and barked orders. “Loose, go use the bathroom one last time. We’ve got a long drive. Ryan, you use it after Loose is done.” To Eddie she said, “I’ve left the Bachelor Butte phone number on the refrigerator door. One room’s in Schiff’s name because it was originally his invitation, and one’s in Jim Christie’s. We should be home by Sunday night. Will you be home then?”
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