Girl Unmoored (6 page)

Finally, after about a year of me turning my bracelet right side up and then upside down again, someone started walking down the aisle because both Reverend Hunter and my dad shifted their eyes back there. It turned out to be Grandma Bramhall, though, wearing a brown skirt with pineapples on it and a yellow button-up shirt. She waved a flat hand up to my dad, or Reverend Hunter, you couldn’t tell, and then sat down next to me.

“This is craziness,” she said giving me a butter-scotch drop. I unwrapped it quietly. After I put the ball of melting happiness in my mouth, Grandma Bramhall took my hand inside her boney one and said, “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do,” with her eyes closed. But with her head shaking like that, it looked like she was secretly asking the Lord
not
to forgive them. Sometimes I heard people whispering about her behind her back, but I couldn’t imagine Grandma Bramhall’s head staying still like everyone else’s. You might think she can’t read a book, but people can adapt to anything. Just look at how monkeys turned into humans.

“Where is she?” Grandma Bramhall asked loudly, not whispering like everyone else. Even with pink lipstick on she had my dad’s exact same face minus the freckles.

I pushed the butterscotch into my cheek and said, “I don’t know.”

My dad waved to someone else back there, which turned out to be Mr. Haffenreffer and his wife, who was wearing the same bright pink dress with yellow flowers and green stems on it that Mrs. Perry wore sometimes, plus a matching headband. They sat down behind us and Mr. Haffenreffer leaned his face in between us and said, “Nice to see you, Mrs. Bramhall.” His breath smelled like old coffee.

Grandma Bramhall nodded and said, “Nice to see you, too,” without turning around. Then she lifted her chin up toward my dad and cleared a frog out of her throat.

“Hey, kiddo,” Mr. Haffenreffer said, getting way too close to my ear and rubbing the top of my head like a boy. “Exciting, huh?”

It was lucky for him I
wasn’t
a boy, because if I were, I would have slugged his pasty white face and shattered his big round glasses. But all a redhead girl sitting next to her grandmother could do was shrug and move away. I looked up to make sure my dad wasn’t watching, but he was having his millionth conversation with Reverend Hunter.

Before any more of that breath hit my face, the music started playing from somewhere loud and high. Mr. Haffenreffer sat back and Grandma Bramhall and I both turned around, but my eyes crashed right into Mrs. Haffenreffer’s, whose mouth was so tight it looked like you needed a key to open it. She gave me a little nod, but you could tell she didn’t want to be here any more than we did. Which made me kind of like her.

Someone we didn’t know was walking down the aisle. I looked at my dad to see what he was going to do about that: the wrong bride walking up to him. But he just stared at her, bouncing up and down on his toes like he does when he’s nervous.

I looked back at the bride, getting closer. Turns out it
was
M. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and she had a white veil hanging down over her face. Her dress was so big and frilly you would never know there was a little whatever growing in there. She was carrying dark red roses tied up with a yellow ribbon, and even though both of her nurse uniforms were white, I had no idea that M could look this good. But when she got up to Grandma Bramhall and me, she looked over and there was her same old mean face with rouge on top. Then the back of her dress floated up next to my dad, who took her hand and the two of them turned to face Reverend Hunter together.

“Dearly beloved,” Reverend Hunter started, “We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.” It was the same thing people said on TV. I would have given a million dollars to be able to change the channel on this, though.

I looked at Grandma Bramhall’s watch. Everyone in my class was running around, dodging rubber balls or throwing them. Even if you hit someone so hard they cried, you didn’t get in trouble, not even Johnny Berman, because
that’s
dodge ball. But I was stuck inside this soggy church, wishing someone would smash a ball into me and get me out for life.

I looked past my dad and M, and up to the rug on the wall with the picture of Jesus hanging on the cross. Pieces of blood were dripping out of his hands and down his feet. He had been hanging like that since my mom’s funeral. Since forever. Just hanging there. Not saving anyone. Not even himself.

Reverend Hunter kept blabbing on in one long sentence. My cheeks burned and I looked down at my mom’s hospital bracelet. I hadn’t taken it off since she died. But now, I slid my finger underneath it and started pulling.

Reverend Hunter stopped talking so Grandma Bramhall and everyone else could say, “We will.” But I clamped my teeth down as hard as I could and kept pulling, like I was trying to unplug something big enough to turn off the whole world. The edge of the bracelet was starting to dig into my skin. I looked up at Jesus again. He could have saved Nutter at least.

A snap happened. My arms flew apart so fast I hit Grandma Bramhall right in her chest.

“Uh!” she groaned, loud enough for everyone to hear, including Reverend Hunter, who stopped talking.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, Grandma Bramhall. Are you okay?” My jaw was hard to get moving again, but my hand went right to her heart and started rubbing out the dent I just made. Grandma Bramhall kept looking straight ahead and blinking, and then her head started slowing down.

I rubbed her chest harder. “Grandma Bramhall, are you okay?”

Mr. Haffenreffer and his breath poked in between us again, but this time I didn’t shrug away. He squished his eyebrows together and looked at me and said, “What happened, Apron? Why did you hit your grandmother?”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. Are you okay?” But Grandma Bramhall stayed staring straight ahead. Then she started gasping.

“Apron, what did you do?” my dad said, walking down the steps back to us. M looked at me with such meanness on her face that for once anyone could have seen it, if they were looking. But no one was, because everyone was looking at us. Even Reverend Hunter put down his bible and started walking toward Grandma Bramhall, whose head kept getting slower and slower.

Mrs. Haffenreffer came around and knelt by Grandma Bramhall. “Are you having trouble breathing, Mrs. Bramhall?” Grandma Bramhall tried to croak something out. Nurse Silvia and the other lady, who was definitely a nurse by how she kept saying “Okay, everyone, give her some room,” were standing there now, too.

“Move, Apron,” Nurse Silvia ordered me through her shiny lip gloss.

I slid away and looked up at that Jesus and prayed for him to help Grandma Bramhall.
Please
, I said, putting my hands together.
Do something
. But of course he didn’t. He just hung there and when I looked back over to her, Grandma Bramhall’s head was almost at a standstill.

They started to lay Grandma Bramhall down across the pew, so I slid all the way over to the other side and ran up the aisle, slapping my palms against the entrance door.

Outside, the sun burned straight into my eyes. I ducked my head and ran down the stairs, past the statue of Mary holding her baby with the chip in his foot.

And got struck by lightning.

It cracked my forehead and split me down the middle. Everything went dark. I fell to the ground.

And then there was Jesus, down from the rug, shaking his long blond hair over me.

Two blurry faces were leaning over me.
One of them was Jesus and the other one was bald. Both of them knew my name.

“Apron,” they kept saying. “Can you hear us?”

Somebody else was hammering a nail into my head. I closed my eyes. “Stop it.”

“What?” Jesus asked. And then I saw the crooked teeth.

I covered my face with my hands and groaned. I had been hiding from these teeth since Saturday. Every time I saw that ORD UCK in Mrs. Weller’s driveway, I biked by it so fast I had to pull over and catch my breath.

“Looks like she’s got a hard-boiled one, Mikey,” the bald man said. “I’ll get my Big Gulp.” I heard him walk away.

Mike touched my shoulder. “Man, I’m sorry, Apron. You just ran smack into me.”

My teeth throbbed. I looked through my fingers and saw Mary and her baby smiling down at me. And then I remembered Grandma Bramhall’s head.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, sitting up.

“What
are
you doing here?” Mike asked, easing me down again.

A car door slammed and the bald man yelled, “She comin’ around, Mikey?”

“Think so,” he answered.

“I’m fine,” I said sitting up again. I tried to stand, but my head split further apart so I let Mike take my arm and help me.

“Good thing you’re a kid,” the bald one said in front of me now, studying my forehead. “That’ll be gone by tomorrow.” I studied him back. He was bald but young, like Mike, only skinnier and shorter and he had a big black birthmark on his neck.

Mike took the Big Gulp from him and handed it to me. “Put this on your head, Apron. You sure you can stand?”

I nodded and put the melting drink on my forehead. Down at my feet there were white flowers and pieces of broken glass inside a puddle. In the parking lot, there was a white van with its back door open and
Scent Appeal 321 Center St. Portland
written across it.

“We’re doomed,” the bald man said, squatting down, shaking water and glass out of the flowers.

“Stop it, Chad. I’ll get it.” Mike let go of my arm and yanked him up by the wrist. Chad turned and walked back down toward the van.

“You sure you’re okay?” Mike asked me.

I told him yes, but his eyebrows still didn’t believe me. He knelt down over the pile and started shaking out the flowers himself.

“Wait a minute. Did I do that?”

Mike smiled. “It’s okay.”

But I knew that it wasn’t. Casablancas were expensive, and hard to get in Maine, and now they were all bent or broken.

“But they’re Casablancas,” I said.

Mike looked up at me, surprised. “It was my fault. I didn’t see you until it was too late.”

He must have seen my underwear. People who bang their heads into huge vases and fall down in their mini long-sleeved Lilly Pulitzer dresses have to show their underwear at some point along the way. I smoothed my dress down and watched Chad pull another bunch of Casablancas from the van.

The Big Gulp was starting to feel good on my head.

“Apron, why are you here?” Mike asked.

“My grandmother.” I pointed to the church door. “She’s in there.”

“Your grandmother?” Mike stood up fast. “Does Millie know?”

“It just happened. Her head’s probably stopped by now.”

Mike’s forehead squeezed together. Mrs. Weller and Grandma Bramhall had been friends since before Maine got electricity. In the distance, I heard a siren getting closer. “What are you talking about?” Mike asked, his blueberry eyes drilled straight into mine. “Does she need help?”

“Coming through,” Chad panted behind us, struggling with another huge vase. Mike whipped his head around, his blond hair shimmering like the sun on top of Grandma Bramhall’s pool. “Whoa, Chad. Let me get that.”

Chad handed him the vase, then wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve and headed back down toward the van again without saying thank you. The sirens kept getting closer.

“Apron, does your grandmother need
help
?” Mike asked again, but not waiting for an answer this time and walking by me with the flowers. Below in the parking lot, an ambulance pulled in and stopped right behind the
Scent Appeal
van. Chad had his hands on his ears when he ran out from behind the door and jumped up onto the path. Mike stopped and all three of us watched two men in dark blue clothes, one old and one medium-old, leap out of the ambulance, run to the back and pull out a gurney. The older one asked Chad something, but he shrugged and looked up at us.

“The victim inside?” the same man asked when he got up to us, not even stopping for the answer, those wheels crunching over broken glass.

“Yes,” I said. Then they were gone.

“What is going on?” Chad yelled up to us, throwing his hands in the air.

“Apron’s grandmother,” Mike yelled back, starting up the path again. I put the Big Gulp down by the baby Jesus’s chipped toe and followed him.

The church was darker than I remembered it.
Mike looked around for a place to put the vase down, but there wasn’t one. M was sitting on the top step of the altar, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Mr. and Mrs. Haffenreffer were sitting to the side of her. My dad, Nurse Silvia, Reverend Hunter, and the other nurse were spread out behind the paramedics, who were picking Grandma Bramhall up gently. I could see Grandma Bramhall’s eyes were open and one of the men was talking to her. Mike moved a few steps ahead and placed the vase down carefully on one of the pews. Chad stepped in behind us, breathing heavy.

“Is she all right?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Isn’t that your dad?”

I nodded.

“He’s getting married?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. But really, I didn’t want to talk about it, so I stepped away from them.

Grandma Bramhall was in the gurney now, sitting up with a mask over her mouth. The older paramedic was talking to my dad, using his hand to tap on his own chest like a monkey. It made my dad look worried instead of mad. Then the other paramedic started rolling Grandma Bramhall toward us. Before she reached me, I saw her head shaking. It might have been a little slower than normal, but it was her same old shake all right.