Love Me Tender (15 page)

“We'll help you do whatever you want to do,” Aunt Clare said. “I mean, I know Mel can't stay away from home forever, but—”

“The baby's not due for two months,” Mel said. “Only, I'll have to put the girls back in school before then.”

“You might think again about moving back here,” the grandmother said.

“Oh, Momma—”

“It's just something to think about,” the grandmother said. “Well, let me take this breakfast plate over to Mr. Singer. His hotcakes will have to be heated up again.”

I heard Kerrie moving around in Aunt Clare's old room, and for a few minutes I let myself think about what it would be like to live in this house.

“Well, what do you think of that?” Aunt Clare said after the grandmother had gone out of sight around the hedge.

“He's a sweetie,” Mel said. “I'm wondering how you'd feel if Tony and I ever moved back here. Would we mean the end of your social life?”

“You were right. I'm not a cheerleader anymore,” Aunt Clare said. “I should never have said that.”

“Things we should never have said seem to run in this family. How would you feel about us living nearby? Not that I know if that's even possible. Tony would have to want to.”

“I hope you will, Melisande. I hope you can.”

“If there's any real threat of it,” Mel said, and I didn't have to see her smile to know it was there, “you'll be the first to know.”

They got up and walked away. I slid the window down a little to make sure the drying paint didn't glue it in one spot. My fingertips were stiff with dried paint, and my shirt was ruined.

I noticed I was soaked with sweat, but for ten minutes or so, I had my thoughts to myself and nobody bothered me. It didn't take me that long to decide painting was boring. Still, I wanted to finish.

The back door opened again.

“I'm going to go peek in at Kerrie,” Aunt Clare said, Mel coming right behind her. “I won't wake her.”

I said, “We aren't worried.” And got paint on the window glass as I looked at her.

Mel put her plate into the kitchen sink, saying, “I'm putting on water for tea and I'm going right back out.”

“So the ban on not using the stove has been lifted?” I asked, wiping paint off the glass.

“No, but yesterday we were going through iced tea the way a herd of elephants takes up pond water,” Mel said. “So I'm making tea now.”

The funny thing was, the paint did smell worse only a minute after Mel turned on the gas. It wasn't so much the paint smell as the gas smell that seemed stronger. We wrinkled our noses at each other.

“Momma may be right.” Mel turned off the fire. “We can make instant tea, I guess. Are you finished up there?”

“Nearly.” Nearly finished with the hard part, anyway.

Kerrie started downstairs, with Aunt Clare right behind her, calling, “She was already awake, I swear.”

“She was,” I said. “I heard her walking around earlier.”

“Where's your mother?” Kerrie asked Mel as she came into the kitchen.

“Call her your grandmother, please,” Mel said.

“Your grandmother, please,” Kerrie said.

“Hey!” Mel said.

“Grandma,” I said loudly, and then, because I had their attention, added, “She agreed to that.”

“You don't say.” Mel broke into a big grin.

“I made a suggestion while we were painting the window.”

“Grandma sounds fine to me,” Mel said. “Kerrie?”

“Okay.”

“There are blueberry hotcakes under a towel in the oven,” Mel told her. “Do you want some?”

“Fine,” Kerrie said, and sat down at the table.

“Here, here,” Aunt Clare said, hopping into the middle of things. “You're a big enough girl to get your own hot-cakes. Your momma can't be waiting on you hand and foot anymore.”

“Fine, fine.” Kerrie got up again and opened the oven door. She plucked out a pancake and held it like a slice of pizza for the first bite. Then she set it on the table without bothering to look for a plate. “Milk?”

“Fridge,” Aunt Clare said, and pointed to a cabinet. “Glasses in there.”

“Good,” Mel said, “because the paint's too strong for me. Elvira, I want you down from there, whether you're finished or not. You need ventilation, and I am not talking about the holes in your ears.”

I dipped, scraped, and painted a little faster. Paint dripped onto the towel. The grandmother came through the back door. “Mr. Singer has invited us all to dinner,” she said.

“Grandma's getting married,” I told Kerrie.

“Oh, Grandma,” Kerrie said, hugging her around the waist.

“What do you feed this child?” the grandmother asked in a sorry attempt at a critical tone. “She is tiny. Surely we can remedy that.”

Kerrie said, “I eat plenty,” and bit into her pancake.

“I've got mouths to feed over at my place,” Aunt Clare said, pouring milk into a small glass. “I came over to find out if the girls might like to help me. If it's all right with you, Mel.”

Mel gave me a glance, but I hardened my heart.

“Pleeeeee-uz,” Kerrie begged.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don't want to miss the puppy when I go home.”

“What a sweet thing to say,” Aunt Clare said, as if surprised. She handed the milk to Kerrie. “I thought maybe you didn't care for dogs.”

“Both the girls loved Tony's old dog,” Mel said. “You poked Elvira in a tender spot.”

The grandmother said, “Elvira and I can attend to this window before the heat gets too bad. We want to bring that crib downstairs too.”

“I'm coming along with you,” Mel said as Kerrie guzzled her milk down. “I like puppies, you know.”

“I like Mr. Singer,” I said when the others had gone.

“I like him too. Old people need companionship. It's just icing on the cake that I love him a little bit.”

“Just a little bit?” I asked, seeing her blush again.

“Now don't tease. You're old enough to fall in love your-self, but you don't know what a serious step this is for me.”

“I bet I do.”

“I bet,” the grandmother said. “How often do you say ‘I bet’ in a week's time?”

I shrugged.

The grandmother said, “When you're young, you take chances. You take chances because you're counting on more chances.”

“You have chances,” I said. “Mel wanted another chance. And you opened the door. Maybe that's how it works.”

“Maybe that's true.”

“I'm giving you a chance,” I said, “and you're giving me one.”

“I'm getting very lucky all of a sudden,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn't turn down any chances that come my way.”

“That could be a song,” I said.

Chapter 26

MEL AND Kerrie and Aunt Clare got back just about the time I finished with that window. Kerrie had stars in her eyes. “If we find a bigger house,” she said, “we might have room for a baby
and
a puppy.”

Which meant Mel had fallen in love with the puppies. I said, “I'm glad you kept a lid on it so you wouldn't get her hopes up.”

“I know, I know,” Mel said.

“Don't pick on your momma,” Aunt Clare said.

I said, “You pick on yours.” I was hot and sweaty enough to say whatever came to mind. No matter what the consequences.

To Mel, Aunt Clare said, “I have no doubt this is what comes of letting them call you by your first name.”

“Don't you pick on me either,” Mel said, and then turned to me. “That window looks finished.”

“Close enough,” I said. “But it gets another coat tomorrow, I think.”

“Let's go bring that crib down,” Aunt Clare said. She brushed at her slacks as if she'd found a little of our dust on them. I noticed then that she was dressed pretty much like a normal person. Not a bead in sight. However, she wasn't quite dressed for tackling the attic.

I said, “It needs some cleanup.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well. All right, then. We'll carry it outside and turn the hose on it.”

Aunt Clare turned out to be better at taking on her share of the work than I thought she would be. We wrangled the four sides, some long metal rails, and the flat springs down the narrow attic stairs, and then out to the water spigot under the kitchen window. By then we had come to some kind of understanding about getting along.

Or maybe we were just too tired to spit.

Once we had everything in place, I said, “Stand back so you don't ruin your outfit.”

While I scrubbed the crib with soap and water, she asked, “Are you looking forward to having a little baby in the house?”

“Oh, yeah, it's a dream come true,” I said unenthusiastically.

“Oh. So you're not happy about this.”

“I'm thirteen. Kerrie is eight. I don't know anyone who has a brother or sister under five.”

“So you think they're too old,” Aunt Clare said. “Mel and Tony?” The note of real regret in her voice brought me up short.

“It just seems that way to me,” I said, thinking suddenly of what the grandmother said about her chances.

“That's what I want to know,” Aunt Clare said. “How it seems to you.”

Sadly, that was all the encouragement I needed.

“Parents are always making decisions that change kids’ lives and we're supposed to go, ‘Hey, that's okay,’ every time. I saw this movie where the dad takes the whole family to Africa and they have to live like Robinson Crusoe. Then things go bad and they end up on a boat, either dying of thirst or getting half drowned. Mel and Daddy aren't that bad, of course. It's only a baby.”

“Are you afraid things will go bad?”

One part of my mind was completely aware that Aunt Clare might very well be the worst possible person to confide in. Another part argued that I wouldn't ever be sure I could trust her until I tested her.

I said, “Daddy went off to that Elvis competition even though Mel wanted him to stay home.”

“Didn't she want to go?”

It occurred to me that these were precisely the things Mel wouldn't have said to Aunt Clare, but I was on a kind of downhill slide, I couldn't stop myself.

I remembered Mel didn't want to make Daddy look bad. Probably she didn't want to look bad either. I said, “She wanted to go looking her best, I guess, the way Daddy did. So she stayed home.”

“I can't imagine Mel being too happy about that.”

I said, “She's always asking, ‘Do I look too much like I swallowed a watermelon whole?’ Like she could possibly have this baby without ever looking like that. Or she asks, ‘Will you help me shave my legs if it gets to where I can't reach them?’”

“Well, that would be pretty horrible,” Aunt Clare said. “Not to be able to reach around the watermelon, I mean. But I don't think it's very likely.”

“I don't mind helping her shave her legs. But a few months from now it'll be,
I'm going to the store, take care of the baby. I feel like taking a nap, watch the baby. Your daddy and I are going to a movie, blah-de-blahblahblah.
Who asked me if I want to change diapers or feed the baby or get spit up on? There is a reason why I don't babysit for money.”

My voice had gone higher and higher, until I heard it in my ears like a tape played at high speed. I took a deep breath and shut up.

“What
do
you do for money?” Aunt Clare asked in a problem-solving tone. “I mean, if you get an after-school job and maybe work on Saturdays, that keeps you out of the house for a while.”

“I work for Daddy,” I said, as if I was chained to a plow. But I could only hope that it was still true.

“Then you can plead homework,” Aunt Clare said. “Get on the honor roll so they can't argue that either.”

“That's an idea,” I said, not believing for one minute that my troubles were over.

I could get on the honor roll—all that took was determination and giving up all my free time and never caring about all the fun I'd had as a B-minus student. And Mel would still expect me to babysit.

It was funny, though, how Aunt Clare had turned into somebody who was good to talk to. Then I realized we hadn't heard any of the others for a while. I said, “Where is everybody?”

“Momma's probably showing Mel Mr. Singer's garden,” Aunt Clare said. “Some kudzu vine must've wrapped its tendrils around them.” She brushed her hands through her hair, pushing it back from her sweaty face. She looked like a crazy woman. The kind that now and then gives good advice. “Grab a machete and let's go rescue them.”

I followed her.

Chapter 27

MR. SINGER'S garden grew by leaps and bounds and grew half wild besides. It stretched from one corner of the yard to the other and crept close to the house at the sides.

In the center of the backyard, a waist-high cement sun-dial stood in a pea-gravel circle, with flowers scattered about wherever they had sprung up.

Mel was sitting in the gravel on a chair cushion, pulling weeds. Even Kerrie knew a weed when she saw one, thanks to Daddy's training. Most of the time, anyway. As we walked over there, Mel was looking at something limp and twisted beyond reviving. She said, “If you have any doubts, let the plant stand.”

The grandmother pulled weeds from a deep well of energy. That is, she started out weeding, but soon she was moving entire plants from one spot to another.

“Momma, this isn't even your garden,” Aunt Clare scolded as she hurried to take the weight of the plant. “Not yet, anyway.”

I waved to Mr. Singer, who could be seen at the window over his sink. He waved back.

“It's that time of year for dividing some and saving others,” the grandmother was saying. “That work won't wait. Be careful now, you'll dirty your pants.”

“Too late,” Aunt Clare said, scurrying to hold up the business end of the shovel. Kerrie took hold too, and they all went around the corner of the house.

“She has only to pass a flower bed to set it quaking in fear,” Mel said to me in a low voice. I figured she meant the grandmother, since Aunt Clare would be no threat to the flower beds.

I sat down to help with the weeding.

“I want your reaction to something,” Mel said. “But only after you take a deep breath and answer back in a low voice.”

“Shoot,” I said, following a long strand of root to another sprouting of weeds.

“I think I want to bring us back here to live,” she said. “I'm seriously considering it.”

I looked at her from under my eyebrows.

“We'd have this big house,” she said. “We can buy it from Momma. She'll be living next door, so we can always look in on her and Mr. Singer as they get older.”

“Are we talking Daddy too?”

“Of course I'm including your daddy.”

“He's got his business to think about.”

“He lost his three biggest customers for no good reason, may their roses get black spot and thrips,” Mel said.

“He got them back.”

“He's in the mood for a change,” Mel said.

I said, “We haven't heard from Daddy. Does that still not bother you?”

“We aren't at home, and this is the last place he'd ever expect to find us. Can you just stop talking like he isn't coming back unless we get home and he still isn't there?”

Things had been rough lately, but until the competition rolled around and they had their big blowout, I had not worried about Daddy leaving us. So I pulled out a few timothy weeds, waiting to see if I could go along with Mel on this.

I said, “It's just that he looked so different, I guess. No, it's that he acted different. He was different.”

Mel nodded. “Okay, he is different for the hours at a time that he's trying to channel Elvis. But I promise, once he wins this contest, you will not have to stare at a row of look-alike men and wonder which one is the real Tony Ruggiero. He'll be the one waving and grinning like a fool.”

“What if he doesn't win?”

“Oh, he'll win,” Mel said.

“That's the other thing,” I said. “If he does win, doesn't Elvis come home to live with us? Don't get me wrong, it's amazing Daddy can do that. The Elvis thing, I mean. Cool, even. But I don't want Elvis for a dad. I want
my
dad.”

“I know what you mean,” Mel said. “All those years on the road, I had to practically walk tiptoe not to wake him too early in the morning, which was not easy for me when you were little, believe me.”

I did believe her. I sort of remembered, just not clearly.

We pulled a few more weeds before she added, “It wasn't easy for you either. I used to worry it was like you were living with alcoholics or something, demanding that you be quiet and then making you put up with a lot of loud music when your daddy was working. I figured you were going to grow up confused.”

I sat back on my heels. It was like hearing about a bad dream I had every so often, but forgot about in between.

“About once a month, we had to have this big fight that kind of knocked your daddy down to ordinary size again.” Mel twisted the flowering head off a weed before she went on. “I had just about had it with him when I got pregnant with Kerrie. She saved our marriage, I think, because she forced us to get off the road.”

“But Daddy's not like that now,” I said.

“It wasn't till he took up gardening that I found out what a sweetie I was married to. The daddy you know is the man I love best. I don't want to go back to the old ways either.”

“How can you make sure?”

“He's more grown-up now, Elvira,” Mel said. “I know you think we fall short, but we're both more grown-up now.”

We both fell to weeding with a ferocity we couldn't keep up in the heat. But it felt good for that two or three minutes that we did it.

“I heard you talking to Aunt Clare,” Mel said. “I was close by the hedge and you were talking over the noise of the water.”

“Yeah?” I said, like I'd said nothing of any great importance. But inside, my heart considered a swoon. I hadn't been in trouble for about fifteen running minutes, and it was beginning to feel good to me.

“I can hire a babysitter, you know. And if you feel so strongly about it, I won't expect you to change diapers.”

I sighed. “We'll all help with the baby,” I said. “Especially Kerrie. She's at that age where the baby's going to look like a big doll to her.”

Mel didn't look convinced.

“The way she looked to me once or twice before she was two years old and into my stuff all the time. Of course, I thought she was
your
doll.”

“So eight's a good age, is it?” Mel asked. “To find you have a baby in the house, I mean.”

“It really is. Six years old was all wrong. I was just starting school, I thought I was being replaced.”

“So what about thirteen?”

“I don't know yet. We'll probably just need to set limits.”

“On what?”

“On how often you can say watch the baby. And for how long. Like that.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

I thought about living in Memphis. It didn't sound bad. We wouldn't have to start a new garden from scratch. Mr. Singer said there are some kids on the next block. One of them is a tall girl, he said, and I figured she might like having me around.

“I'll tell you a secret,” I said. “Grandma has every picture of us you ever sent her. She's going to love having a grandbaby nearby.”

“She already does,” Mel said. “She isn't half so crabby as when we first showed up, is she?”

“Besides, she'll be over here soon enough,” I said, looking around the garden. A lot of the best flowers were already done. But the border around the house was bright with the reds and yellows of August, attracting butterflies.

I pointed. “What are those little yellow ones called?”

“Butter stamps,” Mel said.

“Really?”

She nodded. “Not scientifically, I guess. But that's what we always called them.”

It seemed to me we could do with a little music on the air, but over our heads, a blue jay and a squirrel were having a big disagreement. Mel and I sat back and wondered what their problem could be.