Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  “How’s he doing?” I said.

  “Don’t see him much. He’s out on the boat from dawn to dark. Doesn’t seem to bring much in. Just goes out. Walks up the road after dark. Never stops in. Don’t talk to no one. Maureen made him some brownies the other day. Told her to stop doing that, for chrissake, he wasn’t no charity case. Pissed off Ida.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, no,” I said.

  “Told him what she thought. Only person can maybe knock some sense into him.”

  “He living with Ray?”

  “No, he’s living in a tent off the path between The Cheeks and the state park.”

  “What? That’s really weird.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s where he’s at these days.”

  “So, is there anything good going on?”

  “Pastor Billy’s feeling better. Came by the other day. Seemed surprised to see me answer the door. Made him some tea before he went down to Ida’s for supper.”

  “You made tea?”

  “I did. Turned on the stove, boiled water, stuck a bag in a cup, poured water over it.”

  “I’m proud of you, Dorothea. Makes me want to cry.”

  “Well, I got a life to run. And my sister is knocked up. Much as she’s a pain in my ass, I got concerns.”

  “You do.”

  “Anyway, that’s all the news from here. I’m leaving in a week.”

  “I know,” I said. “We’ll be down to tuck everything in for the winter some weekend.”

  “Say hi to Bud for me.”

  “I will. Talk to you before you go?”

  “’Course.”

  After we hung up, I sat by the kitchen phone, listening to Bud sing a song to Arlee. It was a peaceful moment. I thought about Dottie’s news. Glen living in a tent and being ugly to everyone, and Evie knocked up. We had all been expecting something like this with Evie, but Glen’s withdrawal from everyone who loved him or who might help him broke my heart. I ached for the good-natured, goofy boy he had been growing up. Our scatterbrained, funny friend, the one who had tripped over his own clumsy heart too many times but had come up grinning, always. I missed him.

  Bud clicked shut the door to Arlee’s room and walked into the kitchen.

  “Everything all right?” he asked me. I told him the news.

  “Kind of glad I ain’t there,” he said.

  I nodded. “For once, I am too.”

  22

  How I managed to get through my teens without learning to drive baffles me. How I managed to get through my teens at all baffles me. But I never learned to drive out on a main road and I never got my license.

  Grand never drove, and Daddy wouldn’t let me do it anyway. He said that I was too young. And, truthfully, after the car accident I got into with Andy, I was afraid to ride in a car, let alone drive one. But after he moved in, Bud coaxed me into slipping behind the wheel and driving down dirt roads at night, to little beaches most people didn’t know about. These puny strips of sand couldn’t compare to the big state-park beaches like Mulgully and Popham, but they suited us fine. We walked them for hours under bulging moons and parked our butts on rocks along the beach shores, and we talked unless we didn’t. Once in a while, if the moon was bright enough, Bud drove without the headlights on barely there roads leading through miles of bleached dunes and silver grass.

  So, I knew the basics. Gas and brake pedals, lights, windshield wipers, and how to adjust the driver’s seat. I knew how to go forward. Bud had always reversed us. When I got pregnant with Arlee, I stopped driving altogether, although once in a while, I thought forward to a time when I would be seated behind Petunia’s wheel, tapping my pink-polished fingernails against the wheel to the beat of a favorite song, kids in the back, driving along to wherever life was taking us. Carlie, driving Petunia in just that way, was one of my favorite memories.

  All that said, Bud completely surprised me when he signed me up for driver’s education, which was taught just down the road in a Stoughton Falls Elementary School classroom. He loaded up the kids and me on the nights that it was held, dropped me at the door of the school, and drove home for the hour that class was in session. Then, he and the kids picked me up. I loved that little ritual. Arlee always clapped and smiled when she saw me, and her father’s eyebrows wiggled as I swayed toward the car.

  Mr. Dion taught ten of us the rules of the road. We watched grainy films and slide shows and studied our driver’s manuals. After the inside classes ended, it was time to get behind the wheel and drive.

  “I’m nervous,” I said to Bud. “I don’t know if I can get out on a real road and make sense of everything. And people go so fast. The crazy drivers that go by here don’t think there’s a speed limit. What if they catch up to me and crash into the ass end of my car?”

  “What if they don’t?” Bud said.

  “Bud, if anything can happen to me, it will,” I said.

  “Got a point,” Bud said. “But don’t worry about it.”

  I did, of course, and something did happen.

  Saturday mornings, Mr. Dion picked me up. Another student, an older woman named Olga Carlson, steered into our driveway and beeped. She was almost too old to drive, about sixty-eight, as she said. Her husband, George, was going blind, she told us, and so she, in spite of her great fear, needed to learn to drive a car, as they didn’t want to rely on anyone else to be able to get around.

  On that particular Saturday in September, I hopped into the backseat and waved goodbye to Arlee and Bud from where they stood watching us in the picture window. “Oh, isn’t she precious?” Mrs. Carlson said, waving at my daughter, who rewarded her with a big smile. “Oh, my goodness, what a little sweetheart!” She launched into the charms of one of her granddaughters, who was just three months older than Arlee. Mrs. Carlson loved to talk. I suppose it was her way of flicking away her nerves. My way was to clam up and hold my breath. Mr. Dion, who took up all the space in the passenger seat in the front, snacked nonstop to take care of his own doubts about his student drivers.

  Mr. Dion told Mrs. Carlson, “Put the car into reverse, please.” She took a deep, shaky breath and scrunched her bony hand around the gearshift on the floor. She shifted into R and turned her head as far to the right as she could to see the road in back of her. She put her foot on the gas and, so slowly that the second hand on a clock could have passed her twice, she backed up.

  “Don’t forget, you’ve got your mirrors too,” Mr. Dion said. This caused a complete stop on Mrs. Carlson’s part, as she did what he asked.

  “You don’t have to stop. In fact, don’t stop. Just check to see what’s there,” Mr. Dion said. “Those mirrors are there for a reason.”

  “Oh, right,” Mrs. Carlson said. “George always says, ‘Look over both your shoulders, not once, but twice, to make sure nothing’s coming.’”

  “George is a smart man,” Mr. Dion said. “I bet he uses his mirrors too.” He put a hand to the battered golf cap on his head and adjusted it against the grain of his close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair. He reached into a potato-chip bag and brought out five or six chips. He made a sandwich out of them and bit into it, scattering crumbs and spit over the glove compartment and the dashboard on his side of the car.

  Every Saturday, we drove along Route 100 to Portland. Mr. Dion gave orders for Mrs. Carlson to turn onto a side street just inside the Portland city limits, so she could practice parallel parking. “Oh, I get so nervous doing this,” she said, every time we did it. So far, she hadn’t been able to complete it. The only time she had come close, a car owner ran from his house and down his driveway and hollered at us to practice somewhere else; he didn’t want to get his car dented again, goddammit. This flustered Mrs. Carlson, so that every time we practiced, her eyes skittered over the front doors of the houses around her. “Oh, I don’t want to get yelled at,” she said.

  “You won’t. Don’
t worry about it,” Mr. Dion said. “Sometimes, people do get anxious, and when they do, we politely move on.”

  “We could get shot,” I pointed out.

  “That’s not helpful, Mrs. Warner,” Mr. Dion said.

  But that Saturday, Mrs. Carlson parallel parked. With Mr. Dion’s quiet assistance, Mrs. Carlson snaked her way behind a purple VW Bug that sported peace-sign stickers all over it, slid in slicker than shit next to the curb, and put the car into park.

  “Oh, my goodness. Am I in?” she said. Mr. Dion opened the door.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “Good job,” I said. Her face lit up like a lighthouse beacon. She looked at me in the rearview mirror and we smiled at each other.

  Her good job was short-lived, however. We pulled out of the spot and drove to the end of the street, which joined up with Baxter Boulevard. I loved this part of Portland. The wide street curved around Back Cove, a large round tidal basin that took in water from Casco Bay at high tide and then let it all out, leaving cold mudflats during low tide. Big, beautiful homes sat on green lawns along the edges of the boulevard. High, clipped hedges hid some of them, but other homes faced toward the cove.

  “Who lives in those houses?” I had asked Mr. Dion when we first saw them.

  “Doctors,” Mr. Dion said. “Lawyers. Judges. People with those kinds of jobs.”

  Traffic was heavy on Saturdays around the boulevard, as drivers streamed toward downtown Portland. It made me nervous to watch Mrs. Carlson, and I knew how she felt. Neither of us had a good sense of when we could join a line of moving cars.

  “Now,” Mr. Dion would say, but timid Mrs. Carlson usually missed her chance. It took two or three “nows” from Mr. Dion to get her to goose the gas and join the flow.

  But on that Saturday, Mrs. Carlson had just conquered parallel parking. She reached the end of the street, saw the cars coming, figured she had time to pull out, and she did it, just as Mr. Dion shouted, “Not now!” She turned the wheel hard toward the curb and bumped it. A sharp pop harmonized with the vicious horn honk from the driver behind her. I lurched against the backseat as the car behind gunned it and passed us.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Carlson said.

  “Jesus,” Mr. Dion said, and climbed out onto the curb. He looked down at the right front tire and shook his head.

  “Oh, look what I did,” Mrs. Carlson said to me.

  “It’s just a flat tire,” I said.

  “Oh, I feel so stupid,” she said. She started to cry. “I hate this. I hate that George can’t drive. I can’t do it. I can’t.”

  “You can,” I said. “Everyone gets a flat tire. I bet I’ll get one before we’re done.”

  “Oh, you drive good,” she said. “You’re young. You’ll be driving for years.”

  “So will you,” I said.

  Mr. Dion opened the front passenger door and said, “You ladies get out while I change the tire. Be careful, Mrs. Carlson. Wait for the cars to go by.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Carlson wailed. Mr. Dion shut the door and I thought I heard him say, “Yeah, so am I,” but I couldn’t be sure. We stood on the grass by the curb while Mr. Dion fumbled around in the trunk for a jack and the spare tire. He looked at his watch, mumbled something about “no damn way to spend Saturday,” and hauled out a set of golf clubs nestled in the folds of a well-worn brown leather bag.

  “Oh, I’ve messed up your golf time,” Mrs. Carlson said.

  He sighed. “No, you haven’t, Mrs. Carlson. I’m sorry for being so impatient.”

  He muttered under his breath as he worked, finishing in about fifteen minutes.

  “You drive,” he ordered me, and I climbed in behind the wheel and adjusted the seat and the mirrors. Mrs. Carlson sat quiet in the backseat. I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You okay?” I asked her. She gave me a little smile and looked out of the window as I checked in back of me. All clear. I pulled out and we drove around the boulevard and ended up on State Street. This would take us up onto Congress Street, the spine of Portland. The first time I had done this, my armpits had dripped with sweat, but this time I liked inching along the big street. No one went too fast, and I got to look at the tall buildings on either side of me. I couldn’t help sneaking peeks at people walking along, particularly red-haired women who might be my mother.

  About halfway up Congress Street, it occurred to me that Mrs. Carlson hadn’t said a word, which was unusual. She liked to comment on what was going on outside. A stoplight gave me the time to look back, and I saw that she was slumped against the window.

  “Mrs. Carlson?” I called. She didn’t move. “Mrs. Carlson?” I said, louder. No movement at all.

  “Shit, what now?” Mr. Dion said, and turned to look at her as the light turned green. He reached over the back of the front seat and shook Mrs. Carlson’s knee. No response. “Damn,” he said.

  “What do we do?” I asked. “Want me to pull over?”

  “No. The hospital is up the street. Just let’s get there.”

  What only took about five minutes seemed about an hour. Mr. Dion checked Mrs. Carlson’s pulse. She had one, he said. I bumped along, red light to red light, until I reached the turn to Maine Medical Center, where, not so very long ago, I had been a guest in the maternity ward.

  “Go to the emergency room. Follow the signs,” Mr. Dion said, and I drove that way. We parked and Mr. Dion hurried into the building while I got out of the car and opened Mrs. Carlson’s door. “Ummm,” she mumbled.

  “Mrs. Carlson?” I shouted. This reminded me too much of Grand’s fatal stroke. “Cut it out, Mrs. Carlson,” I pleaded. “Wake up.” Her eyes fluttered and she looked up at me.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  The emergency room workers loaded Mrs. Carlson onto a gurney and hurried her inside. Mr. Dion parked the car and we walked into the waiting room. He looked at the paper he had on Mrs. Carlson—we all had one with next of kin listed, should we really fuck up and wind up hurting ourselves or other drivers—and roamed off to make some calls. I sat in a chair next to a little boy I guessed was about a year older than Arlee and his mother. The boy was hiding his head beneath her arm, but I saw dried blood on his green striped shirt. The mother and I exchanged sympathetic smiles.

  “He’s got a crayon up his nose,” she explained. “I got most of it out, but it broke off and there’s still a piece of it that I don’t dare touch.”

  “What color?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Burnt orange.”

  “My little girl would probably pick periwinkle or violet blue,” I said.

  We smiled again, and someone called a name. The mother said, “That’s us. Let’s go, Alessandro.” They got up and walked toward a young woman clutching a clipboard.

  She was around my age. Her long hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dark red. Her eyes were brown. She wore a striped skirt and white blouse with a striped vest over it. She reminded me of someone.

  When she smiled at the mother and her boy, I thought, Robin. Robin was my cousin. I had met her and her younger brother, Benjamin, once. They were the children of Carlie’s brother, Robert.

  To say Carlie was not close to her family would be an understatement. She didn’t speak to them, and hadn’t done so since before I was born. This bothered Daddy, who was lucky enough to have had Grand for a mother. His father, Franklin, who died when Daddy was young, was also kind. Carlie hadn’t been so lucky.

  Still, Daddy thought it might be good to have me know her family, so one Saturday when I was six, he packed Carlie and me into the pickup and we drove to her hometown in Massachusetts. I met Robin, who was four, and Benjamin, still a toddler. Carlie’s mom, my grandmother, seemed happy to see us. Carlie’s father didn’t turn around when we came into the living room. He stayed in a chair watching television and smoking a cigarette. The long ash on the end of it dre
w me to him and when he had noticed me staring, he’d said, “What the hell are you looking at?” Along about then, Daddy came over, and Robin grabbed my hand and took me upstairs to her bedroom.

  We understood each other right away. We giggled and played with her dolls and brushed each other’s hair and I felt as close as I ever would to knowing what it felt like to have a sister. She would visit me, we decided, and we would have fun at The Point. Maybe she could stay for a long time.

  All of that fell apart when Carlie got into a shouting match with her father. We left shortly after that and we never went back. I wrote to Robin. When I didn’t hear from her, it quietly broke my heart. After a while, life happened and I pushed her to the back of my mind. But I had never forgotten her.

  The young woman who looked like Robin came out from behind the curtain carrying her clipboard. She walked over to an old man sitting a few seats away and took his arm as if she knew him. And then I saw her nametag. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. She glanced at me and smiled. I stood up. “You’re Robin?” I croaked.

  She looked at me. “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m Florine,” I said. “I think I’m your cousin.”

  She frowned and studied my face. “My cousin?”

  “Florine Gilham. Well, Warner now. My mother, Carlie, was your aunt.”

  Robin dropped the old man’s arm. “Oh my god,” she said.

  A slow smile spread over my face.

  “What? How? Where?” she said. “You’re Florine?” She squinted, and maybe that helped her to see me as a child. She grinned. “You are! Wow! How great is that?”

  The old man said, “I’m gonna puke,” and Robin hustled him toward the patient rooms. But before they could get there, the old man upchucked on her shoes.

  She looked at me and shrugged, helpless to move.

  I fished an old shopping list and a pen out of my purse and hustled over to her, trying not to inhale the sharp smell of vomit. “What’s your phone number?” I said. She told me. I wrote her number down. When our fingers touched, we smiled at each other.