Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  Lucy sighed. She turned and saw Ida standing by the corner of the building watching her mother drive away. Lucy took a step toward her, but Ida turned and ran back behind the building.

  “Not my problem,” she muttered. Dog eyed her disdainfully and trotted away to pee on the fire escape. “Not. My. Problem.”

  ✽✽✽

  Lucy found Ida on the swings.

  Dorian and Rob were busily sorting lumber into piles, oblivious to the ongoing drama that had arrived on Lucy’s doorstep. Lucy felt she had enough drama of her own, thank you very much, but Ida had brought her a chicken, so she felt she owed the kid something.

  Ida was hanging upside down on the swing, her hair brushed the gravel as she swung slowly back and forth. She looked comfortable. Kentucky was perched on the seat, eyeing Lucy with malice as if daring her to lift Ida right-side-up.

  “Hey kid, you’re upside down.” Lucy plonked herself on the gravel in front of Ida’s inverted body.

  “Not. You is.”

  “This is not my problem, you know,” Lucy began. “This thing, with your mom? Not my problem.”

  “Mine neither.” Ida dragged her fingertips through the gravel, leaving little tracks like highways for ants.

  “Uh, nope.” Lucy tilted her head sideways. “Totally your problem. Your mom. Your problem.” She shifted awkwardly, resting the crown of her head on the gravel so she was almost but not quite at the same orientation as her young friend.

  “I like it here,” Ida looked away. Lucy could feel the blood rushing to her head and pressing behind her nostrils. She persevered.

  “I like it here too, and you can hang out, even upside down, if you insist, but you gotta go home to your mom because… social services.” Lucy wondered if too much blood in one’s head made one speak in broken sentences.

  “They’ll take me away.”

  “I won’t let them.”

  Lucy said it before she knew she was going to say it and she wondered if too much blood in one’s head lead one to say things one couldn’t possibly mean. She kept going, shifting her butt up higher and awkwardly resting her knees on her bent elbows like she had seen some yoga freak do in a YouTube video. The tiny gravels ground tightly into her skull, but Ida was in perfect focus, right-side-up, all giant blue eyes and fuzzy blonde hair and a scared little smile. “I will not let them take you away, but we gotta make a plan. Understand?”

  Ida giggled. “Your face is really red.”

  “I’m probably going to have an embolism any minute here, kid.” Lucy slowly and unevenly tried to raise her legs upright… there was a powerful twinge in her back, and her head was on fire, but her legs were going up… up… up… and over. She slammed backwards, thanking the gods of playgrounds that gravel was more forgiving than concrete.

  She lay prone for a moment, her head pulsing, watching the clouds drift by. How peaceful. How calm. How social services free.

  Ida’s face appeared above her, blotting out the sky and the clouds. She smelled like dirty toes and peanut butter-banana sandwiches. She was grinning.

  “I love plans!” Ida giggled. “So does Kentucky.”

  Lucy raised her throbbing head just enough to meet the baleful glare of the chicken from between her raised knees. It hopped forward, between her legs, landing sharply on her belly. Its claws pricked her skin and she briefly considered igniting the deep fryer that lay dormant in the school kitchen. “Kentucky is going to get deep fried if he doesn’t back off, kid. Ya feel me?”

  Ida giggled again.

  She stroked the rooster’s head and Lucy rolled her eyes as he tipped his head back and purred.

  “How come you can make it purr, and all I can do is make it bite me?”

  “Chickens don’t purr, silly,” said Ida. “Chickens cluck.”

  “Chickens get dipped in sweet Thai chili sauce if they aren’t careful.” Lucy sat up as quickly as her head allowed her, Kentucky tumbled off in a flurry of feathers and disgruntled poultry attitude. “And you need a bath.”

  Ida scrunched up her face. “Do not.”

  “Do too.” Lucy stood up and held out a hand to the slightly muddy and slightly smelly child who had somehow become Lucy’s Project. “It’s part of the plan to keep you away from Social Services. Bath. Clean clothes. Hang out with mom. It’s foolproof.”

  “Don’t wanna.” Ida stepped back, crossing her arms across her chest. Lucy noticed for the first time that her arms were bony, tiny and thin. Her shoulders were sharp and her collar bone was shadowed against her small chest.

  “And breakfast. All the raisins you can eat.” Lucy turned and began to walk toward the school, squeezing her eyes against the burn of tears. How had she not noticed this child? How had she simply glanced over her as if she wasn’t even there?

  Ida hung back, kicking the gravel.

  Lucy stopped and turned back. “I won’t let them take you, kid. Okay? I promise.”

  She realized the sounds of lumber being thrown had stopped. Dorian was looking at her from across the playground with his head cocked to the side like a friendly retriever. She ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging several pebbles.

  “I promise,” she said to him, half a smile daring to find its way to her face. He nodded, his face thoughtful.

  Ida took several steps toward the school, scooping Kentucky into her arms as she went. “OK,” she muttered as she passed Lucy and stomped toward the doors. “But Kentucky gets a bath too.”

  Lucy sighed.

  This, she thought, is why people drink.

  If anyone ever really needed a reason, this was it.

  Chicken bathing day.

  Fourteen

  “Someone’s knocking,” Ida said. At least Lucy thought it was Ida. The small form was so bedecked by flour that she could have been the abominable snowman, except for her eyes like two currants peering out of frosted eyelashes.

  “Couldn’t be,” Lucy said. “People don’t knock on school doors, they just…”

  “Helloooo! Hello? Helloooohooohooo!” A voice interrupted her. Lucy froze in mid-bend, a tray of muffin batter clutched in her oven mitted hand. The enthusiasm of the greeting did not bode well. No one should be that animated, ever.

  “Hide,” Lucy slipped the muffin tray into the stove and brushed heaps of flour off Ida’s shoulders. “We’re about to be invaded.”

  Ida giggled.

  “Not funny. I’m serious.” Lucy bustled the floury girl around the edge of the counter and behind the big fridge. The school cafeteria looked like it was equipped to feed giants, not just wee elementary-aged children. The fridge was big enough to hold half a cow and an acre of cheese.

  “Helloooo? Lucy? Are you here?” The voice was coming closer.

  “Why are we hiding?” whispered Ida. “I wanna cook the muffins.”

  “We’re hiding… because that’s what grownups do when…um…” Lucy peered around the fridge. The Heartswell Association of Women who Care. The HAWC. Hell on wheels. They could only be here for one reason… one reason that involved vegetables, yoga and a café. And there wasn’t a glass of whiskey in sight. “We’re hiding because I don’t want to dig up the soccer field with my bare hands.”

  Ida was unimpressed. “You could use a shovel, silly.”

  “Duh.” Lucy marvelled at her command of the English language when faced with the logic of a six-year old.

  “Lucy? It’s us… the HAWC… Rosalee, Irenia and Belinda…hellooooohoooo!”

  “They’re nice,” Ida said, slipping out from Lucy’s twitching fingers and scuttling like a wee floured crab back toward the oven and the unbaked muffins. Lucy cringed. She peered around the fridge.

  Rosalee, Irenia and Belinda looked like they had been birthed by the same mother on the day polyester was invented. Each lady wore her own distinctive color but the fabric was the same, stretched snugly over diminutive frames of varying height. Rosalee was the tallest, in fuchsia. Belinda was next, in plum. And Irenia, the spokeswoman for the group, w
as the smallest and roundest bedecked in a minty forest green that someone must have told her brought out the hazel in her eyes. Her eyes which were quite round and protruding, like a fish out of water.

  None of them looked under seventy.

  Ida greeted the polyester panel like it was perfectly normal to show up unannounced in perma-pressed fabric on a baking day when things were, obviously, going down in the kitchen.

  “We’re making muffins,” Ida told them. Lucy couldn’t see her face, but she knew the child was grinning. “They have raisins.”

  Lucy heard the squeal of the oven door as Ida opened it, as if there were a hamster stuffed in the hinges. She didn’t think to worry about the fact that a tiny child was opening a very hot oven, she just hoped the HAWC would take the hint and realize how very, very busy they were here… making things… in hot ovens… with no adult supervision…

  “Let me help you, dear.” Irenia’s voice inferred neglect and abuse and the likelihood of charges in the future. “Where is Lucy, dear? Surely you’re not here alone?”

  “I’m okay,” Ida said. “Lucy’s hiding.”

  Lucy groaned. Note to self: teach the child to lie.

  “Hiding?” three voices intoned in unison.

  “It’s a game grownups play sometimes,” Ida continued, not noticing the icy chill Lucy was certain was oozing from all three Church-going, God-fearing, Prohibition-loving elders. “She’s really bad at it though.”

  Lucy heard the oven door close, and what she thought was the sound of the final nail being hammered into her coffin when she realized what she was hearing was a deep manly voice.

  Dorian.

  Lucy regretfully rethought her choice to hide behind the fridge.

  “Oh, hello ladies,” Dorian sounded genuinely pleased to see the phalanx of polyester. He was good.

  “Thank goodness, Constable,” Irenia’s shrill voice broke Lucy’s reverie. “I hope you’ve come to put some semblance of order into this place. Just look at this kitchen! And this child… using a hot oven, without supervision…” The voice continued to list the vagaries associated with the kitchen, with the school, with Lucy, with the entire world at large until Dorian’s deep voice cut through the diatribe.

  “Everything is fine, Mrs. Crawley.”

  Lucy squinted around the fridge again, but all she could see were the three broad backs of her aggressors who had somehow shifted themselves so they were between her and her heroic rescuer. She watched him gather the small flock toward him and usher them out of the kitchen, murmuring all the while. He turned as the last lady exited the kitchen and his gaze found her hovering at the edge of the fridge.

  She shrugged, her vision blurred by flour and gratitude.

  He gave her a thumbs up and a nod and disappeared, speaking loudly to Ida over his shoulder.

  “I’ll be right back, princess. Lucy won’t let you touch the oven while I’m gone, will she?”

  Ida nodded seriously, then turned and skipped over to Lucy who was thumping her head against the fridge.

  “Are we still hiding? You aren’t very good a hiding, Loocy. I could see you the whole time.”

  “I guess I need more practice,” she said.

  Ida sniffed, her eyes growing wide.

  “I smell burning.”

  The muffins.

  Dammit.

  Fifteen

  Dorian was only able to placate the HAWC as far Grim’s where they set up camp and refused to budge until Lucy came out of hiding. Dorian returned to the school with this dire information and seemed entirely unimpressed by Lucy’s insistence that meetings made her nauseous and she had to cook muffins and who would look after Ida?

  “I will,” he said. She found she hardly noticed the Lazy Eye when he looked at her like that. Like she was a human being and not a walking disaster. “We’ll bring the muffins. To your meeting. With the ladies.”

  Lucy had been forced, entirely against her will, to take off her apron and hike up her big girl panties so she could march down the road to face her doom. Dorian offered to drive her but she felt the fresh air would help her collect her thoughts.

  Goat followed her.

  It was comforting, being followed by Goat.

  Dorian and Ida agreed to stay at the school to clean up the kitchen, with promises to arrive at Grims’ at exactly the right moment, bearing warm raisin-filled muffins and a non-charred six year old as proof of Lucy’s competence and willingness to adhere to the strictures of her contract.

  “Goat,” she said, who bleated softly in agreement. “Goat, we need a plan.”

  They trudged down the shoulder of the road toward Grims’. It was warm. Warm enough that Lucy immediately regretted her misguided desire for fresh air. Fresh air was overrated. Lucy’s scalp prickled with sweat as she trudged on.

  Goat did not contribute any ideas to the plan.

  “So… we have just learned the mastery of the muffin and we have just decided that Dorian is, actually, incredibly handsome despite his penchant for rational thought and therefore… we…” She stopped, spitting out the random bug that had just flown into her mouth. “We must gird up our loins for the advent of the yoga retreat, which is, apparently, beginning with the influx of the T’ai Chi People.”

  She was chattering happily to herself when Jo pulled up beside her in the pickup. Dust enveloped Lucy for a moment. She coughed. Goat coughed. By the time she had stopped coughing she was in the passenger seat, with Goat draped across her lap while Jo related a strange story that seemed like it was one of those weird déjà vu things.

  Lucy asked Jo if they’d had this conversation before.

  “Oh yeah, well I suppose this is kinda a deja whatsit thing… we talked about this a few days ago, remember?” Jo drove like a man. One hand on the wheel, the other hanging out the open window of the truck so she could wave at every house whether there was someone there to wave to or not. The truck smelled of oil and leather and dry grass and Lucy was suddenly, inexplicably overrun with comfort and joy. She could stay in this truck, with this girl and this goat, forever. She tipped her head back against the seat as Jo said things like wedding and reception and dance, and she ran her fingers through Goat’s fur as she breathed in the deeply comforting warmth of spring and truck-seat smells and life was good.

  “So, we have, like, a month to get ready, right?” Jo stopped the truck. Lucy only realized the radio had been playing when it stopped.

  “I think I love that song. What was it?” She reached out toward the radio, her hand moving sunbeams.

  “Oh, I dunno, some country thing. Didn’t know you liked country.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  Goat bleated.

  “Goat likes it too.” They were parked outside Grims’. Inside was the angry phalanx of the HAWC and proof of her failure to comply with anyone’s expectations of her behavior.

  And Jo wanted to get married in a month in the soccer field of Lucy’s school… the field Lucy had spent half a night trying to dig up with her bare hands to plant lettuce to feed the yoga people who were, weirdly, becoming T’ai Chi people…

  “Yes, Jo of the smelly truck, I will definitely marry you on the soccer field in a month.” This seemed like a good plan. A good plan to share with the HAWC. A plan with Goat approval.

  Jo laughed. She radiated joy from every dimple. “Awesome! I’ll tell Tom you and I are getting married… he’ll love that, won’t he?”

  ✽✽✽

  Whenever Lucy entered Grims’, she wanted to cry. She didn’t understand this, but it happened every time. This wasn’t heart-break crying… this was just the prickle of tears and a bone-deep ache that was somehow, illogically, aroused by rough hewn barn boards beneath her feet, shelves of tools and antiques and the aroma of baking and fresh coffee. The solitary jingle of the cow bell over the door announced her arrival, and she wanted to dissolve into the wooden beams and bins of seeds.

  She sniffled. Get over it.

  “Hi Rob,” she said, ho
ping her eyes didn’t betray her with the gleam of tears. Judging by his reaction, she looked bad enough without adding tear-face to her list of inadequacies.

  “Uh. Hello…” Rob was tall and gangly and freckled. He was Ruby’s probation case, young and clumsy and he had obviously forgotten Lucy’s name, even though they had met several times.

  “Hello,” he started over. “Welcome to Grim’s Feed and Seed. How can I help you? Perhaps I can interest you in today’s special on winnowed flaxseed oil?”

  “Um, I … winnowed? What’s that?” She smiled at him. She remembered how to smile, how to put young people at ease. She had taught high school for ten years before becoming a raging alcoholic responsible for the death of… she blinked. The smile faded.

  Rob didn’t seem to notice. Having completed the obligatory greeting, he now lapsed into an adolescent slouch bordering on insolence. “No idea. But you can get a giant jug of the stuff for 5.99. This week only. I think you’re supposed to wash your hair with it?”

  Was that a slight? Lucy squinted at him. She was familiar with teenage sarcasm as well.

  “Rob, do I look like the kinda girl who washes her hair in winnowed anything?” She put her hands on the counter and leaned over closer toward him. She was fairly sure her hair was still liberally dusted with flour. “Do I look like the kinda girl who washes her hair… period?”

  Rob straightened up. Half a grin whispered across his face, then fled when she shook her head, leaving a fine white snowfall on the countertop.

  “We also have…um… licorice?” He obviously had decided to be her friend. Questionable hygiene notwithstanding.

  “Sold,” Lucy grinned. She groped in her pockets. Empty. She heard Goat distantly bleating outside and thought for a moment that leaving a Goat untethered near a feed store was unwise, but, licorice. “I have… no money. Not a penny.”

  “Uh,” Rob glanced around, like a criminal, she thought. Sweet Jesus let me not lead him into temptation.