Bud walked downstairs a few minutes later and I poured him a cup of coffee. As he drank it, I brought up something that had occurred to me in the middle of the night.
“What if another letter comes while we’re back in Stoughton Falls?”
“Ray will forward it,” he answered. “Or Dottie will let us know.”
Dottie was staying in the house for the rest of the summer. I figured it was the least I could do for her. Life at the Butts house had gotten louder in the last couple of weeks, what with Madeline and Evie going at each other hammer and tongs.
“Too much hissing,” Dottie told me. “Why the hell I came home, I don’t know.”
“To see me,” I said.
“You’re out of here,” Dottie said. “I’d go too, except for my jeezly job at the park.”
When I asked her if she wanted to stay at Grand’s house, I thought for a scary minute that she was going to jump on me and give me a bear hug.
“Please keep it clean,” I told her.
“Grand will make sure I do,” she said. “I can just hear her saying, ‘Dorothea, things don’t stay clean by themselves.’ She’ll keep me in line.”
The fence got finished around noontime and I fed Billy, Bud, and Arlee lunch. As I warmed a bottle for Travis, Stella called “Yoo-hoo” from the screen door.
“Come in,” Bud called, and she rounded the hall and walked into the kitchen carrying a plate full of brownies. She ignored me and beamed at Billy and Bud. She said, “I saw you both working so hard in this sun, and I figured Florine wouldn’t have time to make you something special. So I baked these.”
“Thank you, Stella,” Billy said.
Bud said, “You eaten lunch, Stella? You want something? Sit down.”
Stella looked at me. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged and Stella took that as a yes. She sat down as I slapped together a ham and cheese sandwich for her.
“How you doing?” Billy asked her.
“I’m just fine, Pastor,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
He nodded. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m here on this beautiful day, helping a friend, hugging babies, and eating the best ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had.”
“The brownies aren’t half bad either,” Stella said, “if I do say so myself.” She looked at me. “Where’s that beautiful baby boy?”
Maybe it was because Billy was helping us out, and Stella had supplied brownies. Maybe generosity was the word of the day. Maybe, Grand said, you could do something nice too. I pulled Travis’s bottle from its boiling pot and tested it for warmth and said to Stella, “This will be cool enough in a couple of minutes,” I said. “You want to feed him?”
“I would love to feed him,” Stella said, her voice filled with quiet surprise.
She took the foil off the brownies for Bud and Billy. They each grabbed two. Bud handed one to a wide-eyed Arlee, snatched her from her high chair, and they all headed out into the sunshine. I tested the milk for temperature, lowered Travis into Stella’s arms, and handed her the bottle.
Stella crooned something to a contented Travis, who moved his pudgy hands in the air in a way that reminded me of kittens kneading on their mother’s tummy.
“He’s so beautiful,” Stella whispered. “Is oo a pretty boy? Whose pwiddy boy is oo?”
The high pitch in her voice and her baby talk irritated me and I lost the urge to be kind. “Why did you bring the brownies over, really?” I asked.
She sighed. “To poison everyone,” she said. When I didn’t smile, she rolled her eyes. “Really, Florine, where does your sense of humor live? Is it even in the same zip code as the rest of us?” She looked back at Travis. “I wanted to see this widdle biddy boy. And to check on Billy.”
“Why?” I asked. “You after him now?”
“Oh, for crying out loud. No. I wanted to see how his cancer treatments were going. That okay with you?”
My heart dropped to my stomach. “Billy has cancer?”
“Well, yes,” Stella said. “I thought everyone knew it.”
“I didn’t know it.”
Stella readjusted Travis in her arms. “Some kind of leukemia. He’s had it for about a year. He just let the congregation know a week ago.”
That explained things. I didn’t congregate. Ida and Maureen must have known, yet, they had kept it to themselves. Why hadn’t they told me? I looked out of the kitchen window and saw them walking up our way. Sadness for Billy washed over me.
He was good people, as Grand would have said. Billy had come to our house late one night when Daddy had been at his worst, during that hell-ridden time after Carlie had disappeared, before Stella showed up. I had been at my wits’ end, what with missing my mother and fearing what Daddy might do to himself. When Billy had knocked at the door late that night, most likely because Grand had called and asked for his help, I let him in. On that dark night he and Daddy had fought the devil head-on and forced him into an uneasy truce. Compassion. That would be a big word Edward might use. Well, I knew it too. Billy had shown compassion that night and I would never forget it.
“It’s too bad,” Stella was saying. “Can’t think of how to thank him for helping me through my awful days and nights. Brownies seemed to be as good an answer as any.”
“I’m going into the garden,” I said, bending and reaching for Travis. “We can finish his bottle out there.” Stella got up from the chair and Travis and I followed her outside.
Billy sat on the grass beside Maureen. Ida and Bud sat next to each other, each leaning back in two of Grand’s Adirondack chairs. I handed Travis and his bottle to Bud and sat down on the arm of his chair. He snuggled our son in his arms. Stella dragged a lawn chair up to complete our little ragged circle.
“Almost the Fourth,” Billy said. “Razzle-dazzle on the beach this year?”
“Ray’s got a few things up his sleeve,” Bud said.
“I might come down and bless the works this year,” Billy said.
“Someone will probably roast a pig,” Ida said.
“I can bless the pig too,” Billy said.
“And the potato salad?” Maureen said.
“If it has lots of mustard in it,” Billy said.
We spun out conversation and the pauses in between as delicately as a spider web. No one mentioned cancer. We watched Arlee run across the lawn, the early afternoon sun twisting her fine hair into thin copper wires. Her little legs blurred against the summer grass. At one point she climbed up onto Billy’s lap and hollered, “Biffy Jeezus!” Billy’s eyes filled and he blinked to clear them. “I don’t believe anyone has ever said anything so nice to me before,” he said, and hugged her.
We sat there until the heat drove us further into our own days.
19
Arlee was sick to her stomach that night. I took her downstairs and put her on the sofa, where she threw up and wailed as I ran a cool washcloth over her face. I gave her watered-down ginger ale and crackers, and she finally went back to sleep. I dozed beside her in one of Grand’s chairs.
Bud and Travis wandered down around two a.m. and Bud warmed a bottle for him. They sat down in the rocker near the sofa and we studied our kids, and then each other. He smiled first. “How did this happen?” he said.
“We forgot to have a plan,” I said. Arlee stirred and muttered. I touched her little face. It was warm but not hot.
Bud said, “I like you like this. Your hair is all ratty and you got some greenish circles under your eyes. I want you bad right now.”
“The growth on your face would trap a mouse,” I said. “And speaking of ratty, your hair is sticking straight up.”
“But you want me, right?”
“Nope.”
Bud grinned. “I’d be hurt, but I know you’re lying.”
“Nope.”
“You mad because we’re leaving
in a couple days?”
“I’m not too damned pleased about it.”
“If I combed my hair, would you like me better?”
“I might,” I said.
“If I shaved, would you give me all of your loving?”
“When Arlee stops puking, I’ll get right on it.”
His eyes lit themselves from somewhere inside, close to his heart. “What a woman,” he said. He looked at Travis, who had fallen back from the nipple on the bottle and was sleeping, his little mouth slack. “Drunk again,” Bud said, and shook his head.
“Burp him first,” I reminded him. “At least one.”
Bud put his sleeping boy over his shoulder and patted him on the back.
“Put some spunk into it,” I said. “He won’t break.”
Bud patted him harder and leaned his dark head against Travis’s curly blond one. “You sure I’m their father?” he said. “Not much of me in either of them.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to take in the parts that are you when we move back. Look at Arlee’s hands and legs and feet. She’s going to be long and thin, like you. Travis looks like Daddy, but when his little face shifts, I see you. His eyes are shaped like your eyes. He’s got your nose, I think.”
“See,” Bud said. “That’s what I’m missing. Little things, like noticing the particulars of who they are. And I like to watch you with them. I think to myself, You didn’t do too bad for yourself, James Walter.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “And then I think, And man, can that woman fuck.”
“We got to stop with that word,” I said. “Arlee will pick it right up.”
“I suppose.” Bud sighed. “But you can.”
“You’re a sweet man, Bud. All this tenderness makes me want to use my ratty hair to wipe the tears from my greenish-circled eyes.”
“Better not do that, I might forget myself,” Bud said, and yawned just as Travis let out a burp that would have been rude from someone who knew better.
Bud and Travis went back up to bed, while Arlee and I stayed downstairs for another round of spitting up, crying, wiping, drinking, and sleeping. Somewhere around four a.m., she began to sweat and her body grew cool. I carried her upstairs, put her into a fresh pair of pajamas, put her into her bed, then stumbled across the hall, fell into our bed, and toppled off a cliff into some sleep of my own. I didn’t wake up until ten to find myself alone in bed, no husband and no children. I jumped up, my heart hammering.
I heard a girl laugh, and I looked out of the window to see Maureen whirling Arlee around in a circle. Their hair and the sun mingled in a morning glow of browns and reds. Bud was down in his mother’s yard messing around on the deck of the Florine. Travis, I assumed, was with Ida. I decided to take a bath. I soaked for a while and listened to firecrackers pop from across the harbor. That would continue all day and most of the night.
Once I got dressed, I walked down to Ida’s yard and looked up into the boat. Bud looked down at me. “Lazybones,” he said, and smiled.
“Thanks for letting me sleep. Where is our son?”
He moved his head toward Ida’s house. I picked him up there and took him home to start making food for the Fourth of July festivities.
Although the residents in each of the four houses on The Point lived side by side, we tried to respect one another’s privacy. Most days on The Point, everyone knocked on doors to announce themselves. But on holidays, people wandered like loose chickens between houses. At one point during the late morning, Madeline Butts and Ida sat with me in my kitchen, passing around Travis. Madeline chugged down a Schlitz and Ida sipped strong black tea while I whipped up a potato salad for the pig roast. Loud music blared from the Buttses’ house. Evie was grounded, again.
“I have to admit it,” Madeline said. “I’m real worried about her. She’s been raising hell and she thinks she won’t have to pay for it. Maybe she won’t, but I’m thinking it’s going to catch up with her.”
“She’s not pregnant, is she?” Ida asked. I blinked at Ida’s bluntness, but Madeline took it in stride.
“Not as far as I know. I hope not.”
“Maybe you should have her checked.”
“I suppose I could. I’m going to hold out for a while and hope she comes around.”
“Do you trust her?” Ida said.
“Of course not, but that’s beside the point.”
“Might be the exact point,” Ida said.
“She’s using a line on you,” I said. “Believe me. I know all the lines. No one trusted me, and they were right not to do it. It got bumpy along the way.”
“What do you wish you’d done differently?” Ida said.
“Might not have quit school, but it felt right at the time. Now I wish I’d gotten my diploma. It would make it easier to find a job. Might have given me some idea of what I’d like to do.”
“If Leeman had really tried to make you go back to school, would you have gone?” Ida asked.
“I wasn’t listening to Daddy,” I said. “I wouldn’t listen to anybody.”
Ida’s face held the ghost of a smile. “And you listen to them now?”
“Now,” I said, “I haven’t got much time to listen, let alone do anything else.”
“You’ve done all right,” Madeline said. “You got another beer?”
I grabbed a sixteen-ouncer from the refrigerator, chunked it open, and handed it to her.
“I was twenty-four when I married Sam,” Ida said. She looked at me. “Did you know that I was his second wife?”
I didn’t know, and my face must have shown it.
“Pony Barnes,” Madeline said. “So long ago, I forgot about her.”
“Who was Pony Barnes?” I asked.
“Oh, she was a piece of work,” Madeline said. “Wild woman. Fished with the men. Sam followed her around like a seagull looking for any treat she might toss his way.”
“They got married,” Ida said. “I’m not sure why.”
“Her name was Pony?” I said.
Madeline peered at me over her beer. “Her name was Lucille. But the men said she liked to be ridden until she decided to buck someone off.”
“Oh, Maddie,” Ida said, and blushed.
“Well, she did,” Madeline said. “Anyway, while she was married to Sam, she met some other fella on one of the other boats and galloped off with him. Left Sam with a pile of bills and not much else.”
“That’s when he began to drink,” Ida said. “We met in a bar, as a matter of fact.”
“What?” I said, shocked. Ida, setting foot in a bar?
“Jesus hadn’t made his appearance in my life, as yet,” Ida said. “I’m thankful, every day, that he did. Anyway, Sam and I got to talking and I gave him a ride down here to the house. He tried to get me to come in, but I wasn’t about to do that yet. We started going out, and we got married about a year later. I had Bud about eight months after that.”
My mouth fell open.
“What?” said Ida. “He was conceived in love, like Arlee.” She gave me a sly look. “I’m not such an old fart. And you’re not the only little devil. I’ve had my fun,” she said, which made us all laugh.
Early that morning, Ray had driven his shaky-ass pickup down the hill and backed it down to the beach. Bert helped him dig out a pit, start and bank a fire, and prep the pig. It slow-cooked all day. During the afternoon, Bud left the Florine to help set up a couple of tables and some lawn chairs on the beach. Arlee took herself under the sofa for her nap and Travis caught a few fussy winks on the porch. Bud came up to the house around seven o’clock and I gave him a sandwich to tide him over.
“Pig’ll be ready around eight,” he said.
“Fireworks going off right after?” I said. “Can’t imagine that the noise will set well with either of these guys. I’m hauling them off the beach before the fun starts.”<
br />
“Far as I know,” Bud said. “Ray’s got a pile of shell rockets. They’ll light up the sky for sure.”
Ray’s “special” fireworks were gotten every year from someone no one knew, from a place no one knew about. Glen had always loved looting his father’s stash and setting them off. He and Bud loved lighting them off around all of our houses, scaring us and running away, laughing like fools.
Vietnam must be loaded with fireworks, I thought.
“Hey!” Maureen shouted at us from the screen door.
“It’s open,” I said.
“Want me to take Arlee?” she asked.
“Go Mo,” Arlee said, crawling out from beneath the sofa and running to the door.
“See if she’ll eat a little something,” I said to Maureen.
“You can both help me pick up wood for the bonfire,” Bud said, and off they all went.
I warmed a bottle for Travis as he shifted in his bassinet, and then carried him to the porch. We nestled into the rocker and I studied his perfect face, with its gold-dusted eyebrows and long, light lashes. His greedy mouth pulled every ounce from the bottle. “You’re a handsome boy,” I cooed. He looked at me and smiled around the nipple of the bottle. “Gas, hell. That was a real one,” I said. He did it again. “Let’s sit here forever,” I said. “You and me.” We rocked for about an hour, me falling in love with my son over and over again as the sun started its lazy summer journey toward night.
Carlie whispered a memory into my ear. I was eight years old. We were sitting on the wharf at dusk.
“Listen,” she said.
“What? I don’t hear anything,” I said.
“Today is a special day,” Carlie said. “The tide is changing and it’s twilight all at the same time. Listen.”
So I sat still. The water stopped, the birds went silent, and the sky held its breath. I froze, waiting with the world. And then the tide turned, the stars wheeled into place, and a fox barked.
Written on My Heart Page 14
