“She what become of you and Bud foolin’ around?” he asked, reaching for Arlee, who reached back.
“Here,” I said, and handed her over. “I meant to send pictures . . .”
Glen shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. He bent his right arm and made a seat for Arlee. She reached for his chin and patted his shaved face and he laughed.
“She likes you. Arlee doesn’t take to just anyone,” I said.
“Well, she heard her uncle Glen talk while she was baking in your oven,” he said. “’Course she knows me.”
“You want to come in?” I said. I had a million questions but I couldn’t think of what to say first. We headed for the rockers on the porch. “How long you home?” I asked.
“I got about a month,” Glen said. “Then I go back for six more months.”
He sat down with Arlee still in his arms.
“Want a beer?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. I flipped the top on one of Bud’s Schlitz cans and handed it to him. He sipped at it and lowered it to the floor next to the chair. Arlee watched every move he made without a sound.
“Can we talk while I finish making this bread?” I said. “I’m supposed to have it up to Ray’s sometime this afternoon.”
“Sure,” Glen said. “Or not talk. I could just as soon sit here with this princess and watch that beautiful water move.”
“Good,” I said. I went back to the bread, kneading it down and tearing it into two rounds. I plopped them into bowls and set them on the wide windowsill Billy had added on when he’d replaced the window Stella had broken. The sun shone down on the damp dish towels. The heat from it would fire up the dough beneath the towels. I washed and dried my hands and wandered back onto the porch. I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it as I took in Glen, sound asleep in the rocking chair, my little girl snoozing against his chest.
The bread was baked and finished by the time Arlee woke up. I took her from her still-sleeping buddy and she fussed for a little bit as she came back to Earth. I took her into the yard and fed her a late picnic lunch, but she was more interested in getting back to Glen and she headed for the house.
“Glen’s asleep,” I said. “Let’s walk up to Ray’s with the bread.” I picked her up, crept into the kitchen, and tucked the four warm, wrapped loaves of bread under my arm. We snuck out again to the sound of Glen’s soft snores.
On the way up to the store, Arlee wandered off to pick up a blade of grass or to bring me a rock. I would take each thing home and put it into an old cigar box that had belonged to my grandfather, Franklin, for safekeeping. I pocketed a gray rock, a tired blue jay feather, and a dusty daisy. It took us a half hour to take the five-minute walk up the hill. Ray’s face lit up when he saw her. He pulled a crinkled paper bag from underneath his counter, reached in, and took out a gumdrop. He held it in the palm of his hand and Arlee grabbed it.
“What do you say, missy?” he said.
“Sa,” she said.
I handed over my bread.
“Glen’s at my house,” I said. Ray’s eyes widened.
“Glen’s home?” he said.
“You didn’t know that?”
“He don’t tell me nothing,” he said. He handed Arlee another gumdrop, rolled down the top of the bag, and stashed it beneath the counter.
“I would’ve thought you’d know,” I said.
“Christ, no,” Ray said. He turned away and stuffed packs of cigarettes into their slots.
“I’ll tell him to—”
“Don’t bother,” Ray said. “Don’t bother.” He didn’t turn back around, even when Arlee said, “Bye.” We left the store just in time to catch a ride down to the house with Bud. “Glen’s asleep on the porch,” I said.
“He’s here?” Bud said.
“Either him or his ghost.”
“Cecil called today. Wants to know if I can start earlier.”
“When?”
“Middle of August,” he said. “He’s going to put me up in a little shed down by the water on his property.”
“Great. Does it have water and a bathroom?”
Bud shrugged. “I can deal.”
We pulled up in front of the house and he got out. Arlee scrabbled off my lap and crawled over to the driver’s seat. Bud lifted her out while I sat in the car counting whitecaps on the water. Bud came around and opened the passenger door, leaned down, and said, “You sitting there all night?”
“Do I have a say in whether you go or not?”
“You do, but I’m going. I got to get started, Florine.”
That settled, we went into the house, where Glen was fixing us some kind of hash from stuff he’d dug out of the refrigerator.
“Rations,” he said. “Thought I’d best move my lazy ass.”
“Why?” Bud said. “You never cared about moving your lazy ass before.”
“True,” Glen said. “Good to see you too.”
I left them all in the kitchen and went outside. I walked down to the wharf, sat down on the edge of it, slipped my sneakers off, and stuck my feet into the water. It was cold until my feet got used to the temperature. I looked down at my toes, the nails unpainted since I’d given birth. “You look like hell. What do you have to say for yourselves?” I asked them. One foot rubbed itself over the other, as if it were embarrassed.
The ramp shook as someone else walked down to the wharf. I thought it might be Bud coming to tell me that he loved me more than life itself and so he would wait until the fall as we had planned, but it was Dottie.
“Bud’s going to Stoughton Falls soon to start work,” I said.
“Hello, Dottie, how was your day? Fine, thank you,” she said.
“How was your day, Dottie?”
“Good enough. Water warm?”
“Takes a few seconds.” She rolled up her summer-job state-park uniform pants, took off her shoes and socks, and eased herself down beside me. We both looked at our feet in the water. “Feels good,” she said. “Look at how fat my toes are.”
“Mine look like worms,” I said.
A cormorant poked its sleek head above the water’s surface, spied us sitting there, and ducked back down.
“I guess Bud’s got to work,” Dottie said. “Wants to do his best. No harm in that.”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh, Florine, my best friend in the world, you poor thing. How can I help? What can I do? How can I ease your pain?’”
“Screw that,” Dottie said. She shifted beside me. “Did we ever meet Andy Barrington’s mother?”
My toes curled at the sound of “Barrington.” “Never met the woman,” I said.
“She fell off the rocks by that bench Mr. Barrington put up.”
“No shit,” I said. “When?”
“This afternoon. She was higher than a kite. Came through the woods and sat down with some family having a picnic. Tried to talk to them but she wasn’t making much sense. Left them and went off down the path. The mother come to me, said she seemed out of it. I walked the way the mother told me she went. Got to the bench. That metal plaque with the saying on it was lying on the ground next to a screwdriver. The bench was scratched up where she’d pried it off. Heard someone yell and found her catty-corner on the rocks, cut up and bloody, hollering away.”
“Hollering what?”
“Couldn’t make sense of it. I called for some help and we hefted her back up onto the path and got her on her feet. We tried to clean her up, but she got riled and said she wanted to get out of there and get home, so I walked her back up the path to the house—place still gives me the willies—and waited until the maid come to the door.”
“Louisa?”
“That her name? Anyways, Louisa hauled her inside, said thank you, and pretty much shut the door in my face.”
“Every one of them is a
pain in the ass,” I said. “I wish they’d just go away.”
“You think they do it on purpose? You don’t even know her.”
“She’s a Barrington. That’s enough,” I said. “Speaking of pains in the ass, Glen’s at the house with Bud. Come have supper with us.”
It was good to have the four of us together again. We talked that night about what we had done and who we had been, not who we were and what we were going to do. We drank beer and took a trip back down memory lane, remembering times that would never come around again.
11
Glen didn’t talk about the war much, except to Bud. He didn’t flirt with Evie Butts, who fidgeted and wriggled around him like a dog in heat. He thanked Maureen for writing to him, but told her it was okay if she didn’t do that. He didn’t go uptown to Long Reach to visit his high school buddies. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything.
Most of the time, he slept on Grand’s porch, in her old rocker. I fed him and went about my day while he rocked and slept and rocked. Bud joined him there when he got home from work. After supper, they drank beer and talked until the night switched places with dawn. One night, cranky, cold, and lonely, I came downstairs at about midnight. I said to them, “Time to go night-night,” and I huffed back upstairs. Bud followed me right away, leaving Glen on the porch. “Thank you,” he said as we got into bed, and he was asleep two seconds later.
The next morning at the kitchen table, after I’d coaxed Glen into the kitchen with six scrambled eggs and half a pound of bacon, I said to him, “What is up between you and Ray? I told him you were home and he didn’t know. I felt bad for him.”
Glen snorted. “Don’t go feeling too awful sorry for him,” he said.
“Why not?”
“He told me the army might be the best thing for me. Give me a good start in life. Christ, Florine, it’s hell. You don’t know. You just don’t know.” And with that, he wiped his face with the paper napkin I’d provided, got up, kissed the top of my head, gave Arlee a big hug, and left the house.
“Glen’s gone back,” Bud told me that night. “Called Fred’s and told me goodbye.”
“I hope it wasn’t because of me,” I said. “All I did was ask him about Ray, and he stomped out of the house.”
“Leave was over anyway,” Bud said.
“He’s not who he was,” I said.
“None of us is,” Bud said.
“Do you ever wish you had gone into the army?”
“No,” Bud said. “I don’t think I could’ve stood being told what to do, more so if what they was telling me to do was crazy.”
The next morning when someone knocked at the screen door, I hoped it might be Glen, come back to us. But this shadow form was tiny and most unwelcome.
“Go away,” I shouted, and I snatched Arlee away from the door and stepped back, ready to run.
“Florine,” Stella said through the screen, “don’t be afraid. I came to say I’m sorry.”
“Go away before I call the sheriff,” I said. “Parker told me to call him if I needed to, anytime. I don’t want you anywhere near us.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I was kind of crazy.”
“Kind of?”
She sighed. “Okay,” she said, “I’m calling in my chips from that time you wrecked my bedroom,” she said. “I just want a little of your time. That’s all I want from you.”
“I would think you scratching up my face evened things out. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Well, I’m sober and I want to apologize.”
“You can do it from there,” I said.
Another sigh. “I guess we’re just destined to tolerate each other. Okay. I’m sorry for every miserable thing I’ve ever done to you. I’m sorry for how I made you feel when I slept with your father, even though I loved him more than life. I’m sorry for being drunk all the time after he died. And I am very, very sorry for attacking you. Thank you for not pressing charges. I will not bother you, or your family, again.” She turned to go.
Goddammit, Grand, I said to my grandmother, who pushed me toward Stella’s apology. I walked to the door and said, “Wait.”
Stella stopped. I noticed that she wore no makeup and that she looked older. Tired. “That baby isn’t such a baby anymore,” she said, taking in Arlee’s rosy cheeks and redder-than-ever hair. “And she is the picture of her grandmother.”
“Yes, she is,” I said. “Are you moving away or are you back?”
“I’m back,” Stella said. “It’s my home.”
“Grace leaving? She’s a real hoot.”
“When Grace focuses on something, she nibbles on it like a squirrel with an acorn. Anyway, she’s staying with me for company for a while. I’m sorry she made you move the boat. I love that boat too. As far as I’m concerned, you can move the Florine back onto the lawn.”
“We’ll leave her where she is,” I said. Arlee whimpered and put her head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair. “Stella,” I said, “I’m tired of this crap. I have a baby now. We’ll never get along. Let’s just start and stop right here.”
Stella nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’d like to hear the word ‘forgive’ from you, but I can wait.”
I couldn’t say the word. Instead, I said, “I hope you’re able to stay out of the sauce.”
Stella nodded. “Me too,” she said. “I’ll see you.”
I didn’t tell her that we were moving.
The night before Bud left for Stoughton Falls, I took Arlee down to her grandmother’s house for her first overnight. I tried to be calm, but I failed.
“She’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night,” I babbled to Ida. “She’ll want a hug, and a bottle. She doesn’t stay up long; it’s more like she wants to know someone is there. She wakes up really early. Usually, Bud takes care of her in the morning so she might be strange about that. But I’ll be down for her before breakfast.”
Maureen took Arlee’s hand and led her into the living room and out of my sight.
“Florine, she’ll have a wonderful time,” Ida said.
To my shame, I began to cry. “I know,” I said.
“Bud will be okay too. You knew what you were getting into when you married him, Florine,” Ida said, her voice gentle.
“I know,” I said. “He’s always wanted to leave.”
“You need to let him try things out,” Ida said. “He’s had sparks in his shoes ever since he was a little boy.”
“I told him I would go anywhere with him,” I said, “but that was before we were actually leaving.”
Ida said, “Go and be with Bud. Have a wonderful night and don’t let him know how you really feel. Send him off with a smile and he’ll be happy to come back.”
I left my little girl with her aunt and her grandmother. With every step up the hill, my legs and feet felt as if they were being torn from their roots.
Bud and I had a light supper. We didn’t talk much, partly because we were used to being interrupted, and partly because I had to concentrate on not running full tilt down to Ida’s to grab my baby back. We packed everything that Bud needed to live in Cecil’s shed, so that he could just hop into the car and take off in the morning.
After that, we went to bed. It was strange to be able to make love noises without being afraid of waking Arlee, but Bud’s body and the way it moved with mine brought back things I had almost forgotten about during my first year as a mother. We loved each other into deep sleep at about midnight, but soon after that, I woke and was up before I knew what I was doing. My feet automatically started for Arlee’s room. I stopped in the hall and turned around. I walked across our bedroom to the window and looked down over Ida’s house. All was dark and, although I strained my ears, I couldn’t hear a sound, which I hoped meant that Arlee was asleep.
Bud whispered, “Come back to bed, baby
. She’s safe.” I went to him and we found each other again.
He left as the sun rose over The Point, but before he did, he pulled me close and whispered, “I told you when we got together our very first night, Florine, I ain’t leaving you. I’ll always be back. Count on it.”
“And I will never leave you,” I said.
I stood on the road and let the rising sun warm my face. Then I ran down to Ida’s house.
12
“When you going to get a license?” Dottie asked me.
“When I get a minute,” I said. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Doing what?”
She ignored my look. We’d been in the car for about two hours. She was driving me to Stoughton Falls to look at a house trailer that belonged to one of Cecil’s friends. Over the phone, Bud had told me that he’d checked it out and that he thought it might do for us for a start.
He called me every day from a phone at the back of Cecil’s garage. Auto-repair noises took up a lot of ear space at first, but I learned to tune them out in favor of my husband’s quiet, deep voice.
Life in the shed was interesting, he told me. He shared it with a bat that came out every night. Said he just ducked into his sleeping bag while the bat cruised the shed, snapping up bugs before flying out for the night. “Never have a mosquito in the place,” he told me, like it was a point of pride. He soaped up and shampooed in a nearby pond, he said, and an old double-seater outhouse sitting near the shed took care of his other needs.
“Why?” I said.
“Why what?”
“Why two seats? How would that happen? Do people wait for each other so they can go to the bathroom together? Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Hadn’t thought about it.”
“Do you switch off seats?”
“No, I use one.”
“Which one?”
“The one on the left. This what we’re going to talk about?”
Written on My Heart Page 9
