Heart and Home (4 page)

“It’s the rush from the
oxygen level in your blood escalating,” he said. “It’ll pass in a few minutes.
Just keep calm.”

They were all standing
around me, I realized. Everyone in town crowded in to stare down at me, and
some of their faces were long with concern while others seemed round with shock
and curiosity. I thought I heard someone whisper, “People just don’t faint,”
while another replied, “Give her a break, she’s probably devastated.”

Dad still held my hand in
his, and Lottie parked her wheelchair on my other side, her grey eyes filled
with concern. “Troy, why don’t you go and fetch that bottle of water from the
truck?”

“I’ll be right back,” he
told me. He lowered my head slowly to the ground, which he’d covered with his
bundled suit jacket. “Just keep still. Don’t try to move.”

I nodded and was grateful as
the crowd gathered around me began to recede into curious groups. Some of them
started to leave, while others called out to let Dad know they would catch up
with him at the fire hall. Those that lingered stared on, and as their eyes
bored into me, I felt a strange rage burning in my belly.

God. How humiliating. How
many people fainted at funerals? Did people really even faint at all anymore?
It was like some old fashioned attention grabber I remembered from black and
white movies, or the Victorian Era, when women were fragile and breathless from
tightly tied corsets.

Dad was in constant
conversation with Lottie Kepner. Mrs. Williams stood nearby with Amber, who
sent her children off with a thin man I didn’t recognize. The once willowy,
dark-haired beauty was still beautiful, but she now possessed a hometown,
mother of three look that I’d never imagined on her. Miss Rogers was there too,
fussing at my side, but whatever it was she said to me seemed to go in one ear
and out the other.

“Here, drink this.” Troy
hunkered down beside me again, sinking a knee into the earth as he leaned
around to look at me. “It’s still cold.”

“What if I catch cooties?”
Had I hit my head?

There was a twitch at the
corner of Troy’s mouth, but no one else in the ring around me seemed even the
least bit amused. “You might want to spray it down.” He tilted his head and the
flicker of a grin spread a little deeper against his features. “I had a few
sips on the way over so it’s probably infested.”

“I hear they aren’t so bad
after you hit twenty,” I reasoned.

“Here,” a soft chuckle
followed, “let me help you sit up.” Before I could protest he slipped his hand
between my back and the ground, and with a gentle motion swept me forward. For
a moment my spinning head protested with hints of black just around the edges of
my blurred vision. “How’s your head now?”

“Mm,” I could barely even
shake it without feeling dizzy. “I feel really strange. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” He still
had one knee in the mud as he leaned in toward me. “It might be a while before
you get your bearings back. Just relax, and try to focus on your breathing, get
the blood flow regulated.”

My father moved away from
the scene to say goodbye to someone, and Troy’s mother was caught up in
friendly conversation with Miss Rogers behind us.

“So are you the town doctor
now,” I questioned.

“Doctor?” he guffawed. “No
ma’am.”

“Oh.” Each new thing that
came out of my mouth made me feel stupider than the last. “How do you know so
much about fainting?”

“My cousin Ernie’s a
diabetic.”

I searched my memory for any
cousins of his I might remember, but then Dad returned and leaned in over me.

“You feeling all right now,
Jannie?”

“Much better, Dad.”

“Thanks for looking after
her, Troy.”

“No trouble at all, Mr.
McCarty,” he nodded respectfully toward my father. “If you think you’ll be all
right, I should help Mom into the truck.”

“I’ll be fine, really.”

“Sure?” His soft eyes shone
with worry.

I nodded, “I’m sure. Thanks
for the cooties.”

His grin was incredible,
stretching the muscles in his jaw in a way that you rarely saw in smiles. “I
hear they’re not so bad after you turn twenty,” and then he winked.

He started to stand up, but
for a moment we held one another’s gaze. Part of me wondered how I could have
forgotten about him, or even worse, never really noticed him. I should have at
least remembered how blue his eyes were.

“Take care, now.”

He gripped the handles and
turned his mother’s wheelchair toward the truck, leaning down to whisper
something in her ear as he maneuvered through the hilly grass. She reached up
and patted his hand, and I watched from my cold seat on the ground as he loaded
her into the passenger’s seat and helped her with her seatbelt. As he stepped
up into the driver’s seat, his gaze crawled across the grass to where I still
sat, and I thought he smiled at me one last time.

Miss Rogers leaned in to
offer me her hand, “I’ll help you up, dear.”

“Oh, no, Miss Rogers,” I
patted her hand. “I’ll manage.”

It took everything in me to
steady my legs and stand. I smoothed the wrinkles from my skirt and brushed
away the clinging dried grass and leaves. I looked up just in time to watch
Troy’s white Ford disappear along the winding hill of the cemetery drive.

Chapter Four

I felt like a ghost walking
through the buffet line at the fire hall, or maybe ghost isn’t quite right
because it wasn’t like they couldn’t see me. It was like one of those dreams
where you show up to take your SATs naked, or like I plunked a vulture hat down
on top of my head and was making a huge spectacle of myself. When anyone actually
dared to make eye contact they offered twitchy, insincere smiles, but the
minute I looked away I caught them from the corner of my eye putting their
heads together to whisper.

It must have been the
fainting. I knew fainting was outrageous, and I hated myself for having
actually done it. A huge part of me wished I could go back in time and find
some way to not faint, but then I thought about his hands on the back of my
neck, his curious smile and those stunning eyes.

Had he always been so
attractive? I mean, I’d never really paid attention to him beyond the whole
“Sonesville Hero” thing, and even that never interested me. He was just another
dumb jock, one of the holier than thou with no eye or mind for the rest of us,
or at least that was how my small circle of friends had seen his kind.

I thought about my circle of
friends for a moment and wondered why Megan Ward and Karen Pryer hadn’t
contacted me since I’d been back in town. They both got angry with my best
friend Erika Lewis and me for forsaking the town. Best friends forever meant we
had to come back, and when we both refused to attend the five year reunion the
lines of communication closed. Erika and I still kept in touch, when our
careers allowed it. In fact, she sent condolence flowers and a card from South
Africa, where she was currently on one of the most significant archeological
digs of her career. Maybe the whole thing would have been easier with Erika, I
thought. The two of us lived in our own world through most of high school, our
big plans to escape the very glue that bonded us together.

“Janice?”

I turned from the tin-foil
platter of baked beans and into the curious, but hopeful stare of a forgettable
face. I vaguely remembered seeing her at the cemetery; she’d been the one who’d
stopped to talk to my father, her gentle hand reaching out in a sincere act of
comfort.
 

“Hi.” I scratched through
the faded memories of my youth to place that face. Scrawny, blond stringy hair,
but the worst crime she’d made against herself was the large, bright red
glasses frames straight out of the 1990s. Unfortunately, none of it helped me
identify her, and I felt a surge of guilt clench tight in my stomach.

“Hi.” Everything about her
was nerves and insecurity. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am about your mom.
Chandra was such a wonderful person. She brightened up our scrapbook circle
every first and third Wednesday of the month.”

“Thank you.”

Scrapbooking, quilting,
canning, prize watermelons at the county fair, volunteer work. My mother was
clearly a superhero.

“She always talked about you
and your work. She was so proud. In fact, she was working on a whole scrapbook
of your career. She started it with the school paper and the articles you wrote
for the
Shopper
and the
Sonesville Standard,
and of course she
had a ton of articles from the
Tribune-Review
.”

“She did?”

Maybe if I’d come home she
might have shared them with me. I didn’t even know she’d liked to scrapbook,
but the last thing I wanted was for any of these people to know how little I
really knew about my own mother.

“She did, yes, she did.
Scrapbooking… it was just one of her things. She had a lot of uh things.”

“Yeah,” the woman nodded. “I
have some of the projects she was working on at my house. Maybe while you’re
home you’d like to come over and pick them up.”

Home. There was a
conflicting ache in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t really been planning on
staying long enough to call it home, now that she mentioned it. “I—yeah,
I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. I have work and…”

“Oh, no, no. Of course you
do.” At some point she’d reached out and laid her hands on my arm. I hadn’t
even noticed. “I’m sure you’ll be heading straight back now that all of this is
over, but you know, in case you don’t or something, I really think she’d like
you to have them.”

“Yeah, okay,” if only I
could actually remember her name.

“You’re not over here
bothering poor Janice with minutes from the quilting bee, are you Becky?” The
shadow that moved over us was Amber Williams, complete with a plastic fork
stabbed into a piece of lemon cake.

Becky Raynard. I should have
recognized her, but the believer in me wanted to have faith that the underdog
could rise up against the challenges after high school. I felt ashamed now that
I hadn’t recognized Becky, but then having been tormented most of her life by
the Amber Williamses of the world, she learned the effective art of making
herself invisible when necessary. I watched Becky, her demeanor shrinking
impossibly inward, and realized if she suppressed herself any more than she
already had she’d wind up imploding, or something equally messy.

“Amber,” I turned a plastic
smile on her. “Becky and I were just talking about scrapbooking and what a
fantastic way it is to bring friends together. In fact, I am seriously
considering extending my stay just so I catch up with Becky and her friends at
the next meeting.”

There was a new glow in
Becky’s face, as though that simple statement really turned her whole day
around. Why I said it I really had no idea because the truth was I wanted to
get as far away from Sonesville and the small town pettiness of people like
Amber Williams as possible. In the city pettiness was an anonymous crime, the
type of thing you could completely overlook and ignore. In Sonesville, it was
in your face everywhere you turned.

“Right.” Amber’s stiff nod
looked like it made her neck hurt. “Well, I just wanted to stop over and make
sure you were all right. Everyone was a little worried after you fainted.”

It took everything in me not
to say, “I’ll just bet they were.” I could feel my lips pinching in on each
other in a scowl, and was thankful I’d caught it before it could satisfy any
twisted plans she had. Same old Amber always seemed to know how to stir up
trouble by digging down around the roots.

“I’m feeling much better
now, thanks.”

“Well, you know, my mom is a
nurse.” And what that had to do with the price of tea in China was anybody’s
guess.

“I’ll be sure to call her if
I need anything.”

Becky was like a hinge
between us, the only thing keeping us civil in the ultimate stare-down. Had we
been alone, Amber might say whatever was on her mind without refrain, but
Becky’s presence seemed to stifle her a little. Even as she had just gone out
of her way to make Becky uncomfortable, I highly doubted there had been chance
for much rivalry between them without the backdrop of high school.
  

“Well, you take care.”
Amber’s smile was more erasable than an etch-a-sketch. One shake and it was
gone as she turned away from us. She did pause to call over her shoulder, “Call
me while you’re in town. I’d love to play catch up.”

“I bet you would,” I
muttered to myself, sparking a light of admiration in Becky’s green eyes. “So,
Becky, I don’t know how long I’ll be in town, but call me with the date for
your next meeting and I’ll definitely do my best to make it if I’m still here.”

“Really, Janice, you don’t
have to do that.”

“I want to.” Inside a voice
noted that my mother would have wanted me to.

“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll
call you.”
   

Becky fluttered away with
far more life than she’d approached me with, and I scanned the fire hall for my
father. My distracted gaze settled on Troy Kepner, but then it was impossible
not to notice him since he stood at least six inches taller than everyone else
in the fire hall. He was beside his mother’s wheelchair, one foot up on the
folding metal chair in front of him as he partially leaned inward to
participate in the conversation. He nodded at whatever was being said, and for
a moment paused to smile. I noticed a dirt smudge on the knee of his pants,
obviously the result of him leaning down beside me, and a momentary surge of
guilt nagged at me.

As if he felt my stare, he
lifted his gaze to mine and I looked away too quickly. I hustled over to the
table where my father sat with Miss Rogers and a few other familiar faces that
offered me their heartfelt condolences during the funeral.

I didn’t really feel much
like eating, but went through motions while I listened to so many of her
friends share their favorite memories of my mother. Did I remember that time
she took over the carnival committee and brought the whole affair back to life?
And the Girl Scout troop fundraisers were never the same after I finished
school and mom wasn’t a leader anymore. She still held the record for most blue
ribbons won in a single year at the county fair, and there wasn’t a soul in all
of Sonesville who could top her apple coffee crumb cake.

“She kept this town’s heart
beating,” Bonnie James shook her head.

“She sure did,” Dad reached
over and patted the top of Bonnie’s hand. “She sure did.”

It was like she couldn’t
help herself; my mother had to have her hands in everything, and her vibrant
spirit lit up every function she attended. She didn’t just keep the town’s
heart beating, she was that heartbeat. I started to push my chair away from the
table and muttered something meant to sound like
excuse me
before darting through the crowds of people gathered
around my mother’s memory.

Her name was everywhere,
voices singing her praises, lamenting her loss, and it was too much to hear.
She was the only real connection I felt to that place, the only string tying me
to its memory, and that string was cut away making me feel like there was
nothing I could do to stop the spinning feeling inside me.

I pushed through the double
red doors and welcomed the rush of cool air against my face. Raindrops dappled
my cheeks as I stalked toward the parking lot, but I wasn’t even sure where I
wanted to go. I couldn’t remember where Dad parked the car, not that I could
leave without him. I just needed to get away from the clawing hands that sunk
into my conscience in an attempt to draw me back into the familiar comfort of
that place.

I didn’t want it to be
comfortable, not that I could imagine it would ever be a comfortable place
without my mother, but all of those people sparked nostalgia and that familiar
longing passed through me like a nauseous cloud.

I must have looked frantic
from afar, that seemed the only explanation for his presence when I turned back
toward the fire hall without the slightest clue how to get away from it all.
Troy’s hand steadied my shoulder as I spun into him.

“Whoa there.”

I swallowed hard against the
defiant confusion rushing through me. “I’ve got to do something or go
somewhere, I just can’t … this isn’t who I am, and I don’t know any of them
anymore, but it’s like they all know me, everything about me, and I don’t know
what to say. They keep looking to me for an answer, but I don’t know what they
want to hear.”

His hand smoothed down my
arm, pausing just above my elbow. “Shh—it’ll be all right.”

“No, it won’t be all right,”
I cried, boldly avoiding his intense stare. “Don’t you get it? It’s never been
right, it’ll never be right. I don’t belong here with all of these people who
must have known and loved her better than I ever could.”

“Now hey, that’s just
crazy,” he insisted. He reached forward and lifted my chin so that I had no
choice but to look at him. “How can any of them love your mother more than you?
Don’t you hear how crazy that sounds?”

Crazy! Great, I was some
crazy out-of-town fainter! God, I’d be lucky if I didn’t make the front page of
the
Sonesville Standard
.

The droplets of rain grew
heavier and fell in a steady rhythm that began to soak into my clothing. I
could smell the clean scent of his skin, or maybe it was fabric softener. His
hand lingered under my chin, and for the moment it was like he was the only
solid thing with the power to hold me in place.

“I don’t think I can keep
this up,” I finally tugged my face from his grasp. “I am not a part of this
place.”

I’m not sure what he found
so funny about that, but the scuff of his laughter accompanied a half-cocked
smile.

“Like it or not, we’re all a
part of this place, Janice McCarty. You can go away for six months or eight
years, but all it takes is for you to come back once, and it reclaims you as
its own.”

I did everything in my power
to disguise my horrified reaction to that statement; my best maneuver managed
to be keeping my eyes from meeting with his. My heart pounded though, and my
stomach had that crazy feeling that happens when your body thinks the bottom
has dropped out from under it. It surprised me how well I’d suppressed the
instinctual “no” of horror that caught in the back of my throat.