Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (17 page)

31

D
uring the last week I would ever spend in high school, I ran afoul of a pack of idiot girls led by a dumpling of a bitch named Angela Hill. Everyone knew these girls and steered clear of them. Angela's girls stuck close to her, like sucker fish to a shark. I don't know what made Angela so mean, but even those of us that tried to be invisible could be a target at any time. Even Dottie had been zoomed in on because she was such a good bowler. Dottie told me that Angela was on another team that the Gladibowlas always beat, so maybe that pissed her off. When word got around to Dottie that Angela was making fun of her weight, Dottie handled it like she handled everything, straight on. She walked up to Angela and told her that if she didn't shut up, she would sit on her until she begged for mercy.

My time came in the high school gym locker room in November of 1968. We shared a gym class that fall, which was hell for me during the best of times. I hated being naked in the locker room. I wasn't built like many of the girls; they were small and curvy, and I was the opposite. During the gym classes I managed not to stick out too much, save for one horrible moment during my sophomore year when the gym teacher asked me why I didn't go out for basketball, I was so tall and the team could use me. I mumbled something about not having time to practice and fled from her as fast as I could.

Gym classes were awkward, but the shower was a nightmare. We all had to take showers. I turned around once in freezing cold water, wrapped a towel around myself, and faced the tomalley green walls of the locker room as I fumbled my tiny bra on and dressed as quickly as I could. But on the last Tuesday of my last week of high school, as I hurried to dress and get out of the locker room, I heard a voice behind me. Angela whined like a buzz saw. “Florine Chlorine,” she said. “I'm talking to you.”

I turned around to find her about three feet away from me, flanked by two of her cronies. I didn't say anything.

Angela sniffed the air. “Chlorine, like bleach. Smells like bleach. Ewww.” One of her friends, a dirty-blond girl, brushed her hair and smiled. The other, a dull brunette, just looked at me with her dead eyes. “No, wait, not bleach,” Angela went on, “more like hot tuna.” Both of her friends laughed.

I said nothing.

“Do you know what hot tuna is?” Angela asked me. “Can't talk? Well, ask someone then. It's all over school what you smell like.” She and her friends left me alone, and I finished dressing in peace, wondering what the hell she was talking about.

“Why did she call me that?” I asked Bud and Glen later, in Bud's car. A silence a little too long to be comfortable filled the air and I said, again, “Why?”

“Don't tell her,” Bud said to Glen. “Just don't tell her.”

“I got a right to know,” I said.

“Shit, Bud, we should tell her,” Glen said.

“No,” Bud said. “Don't do it.”

“WHY DID SHE CALL ME THAT?” I shouted into poor Glen's ear.

“The hot part means a good lay,” Glen said, shrinking down into his seat. “The tuna part means you smell like fish down there. Don't hit me.”

“Who the hell says that?” I asked him.

“Kevin Jewell started it,” Glen said.

I sat back in my seat, my burning face outdoing the car heater. “Why would he do that?” I said. “We didn't do anything.”

“He's an asshole,” Bud said.

On my last day of school, a Thursday, Angela struck again. This time she didn't bother to come around the lockers. She started in on me from the other side. “Hot tuna,” Angela said to her giggling friends, “is only good on the first day. After that, it goes stale and it smells bad.”

I had just come from the shower, and I stood swamped in my towel. I shook my head, wishing Dottie, with her negotiating skills, was here. Then, the shit hit the fan for me.

“Florine Chlorine Hot Tuna, is it true that your mother ran away?” Angela asked.

The locker room went quiet, except for the hiss of the showers.

My hands shook as I grabbed my hairbrush from the locker.

“Chlorine, did you hear me?” she said.

I heard her. I dropped my towel and walked around to the other side of the lockers, still holding on to my hairbrush. Angela was looking up over the lockers, no doubt waiting to spew some more garbage at me. When she saw me standing there, she almost looked startled. She opened her mouth, but I chose that moment to find my voice.

“It's none of your goddamned business,” I said to her and her friends. They moved closer to one another and gasped as if they were one thing.

“I don't blame her for leaving you and your drunk daddy,” Angela said. “Can't imagine her putting up with you.”

“You'd better stop, now,” I said. I stepped toward her, naked and ready to kill her.

I looked at all of the girls and I said, “I'll tell you what I know about my mother. She disappeared when I was twelve. We never found her. She's probably dead. I haven't stopped missing her. Any other stupid questions? No? Then you leave me the hell alone.” I looked at Angela. “And by the way, I never screwed Kevin Jewell.”

I stomped back to my side of the locker, breathing hard. Very little talk took up the air as I dressed, took my books out of the old locker, slammed the door, and left.

Right outside the locker room, I bumped smack into a tall man.

“Hey, watch where you're going, there,” the man said. I glanced up at him.

“Sorry,” I said. Then I gave him a good look. His hair wasn't greased back anymore, and the black was mostly gray. But his eyes were still blue and he was smiling, and a snaggletooth showed at the side of his mouth.
“I just need to know the rules,”
I had heard him say to Carlie that day at the beach.

“It's you,” I said.

“Who?” he asked, and he laughed a little.

“Snaggletooth Mike,” I said. He stopped smiling. “You were on the beach with Patty and my mother. You knew my mother. You acted like you really knew her.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you? Who was your mother?”

“Carlie Gilham,” I said.

Mike crossed his arms over his chest and squinted hard at me. “Oh, you're her daughter,” he said. “Lorraine? Is that your name?”

“It's Florine,” I said.

“Florine,” he said, and he nodded. “I remember you now. I remember the cops asking me a lot of questions. Got my wife all worked up for no reason.”

“Seems like you weren't too worried about that on the beach,” I said.

“Whoa, whoa,” Mike said. He stepped back further and held out his arms as if I was going to rush him. “Look, Florine, I'm sorry about your mother. She was a nice lady. We flirted, that's all. At the restaurant. I had a job delivering milk for Maplehurst Dairies that summer. I'd stop at the Shack, get funny with Patty and Carlie. We had some laughs. Patty told me to come along to the beach one day on a day off. I would never have done anything to your mother,” he said.

I stared at him, turning to stone inside.

“Listen, Florine, I'm substituting for the men's gym teacher today, and I need to go. Are we okay? I promise you, I wouldn't ever hurt Carlie. She was a good girl. A fun girl. And she loved your father. Everyone knew that. Are we cool?”

I turned away and walked down the hall, late for class. I sat in a fog through the rest of the day, thinking about Carlie, the beach, Mike, that awful, awful time. I was still thinking about these things when I got into Bud's car. He was alone.

Bud said, “I heard you gave 'em hell in the locker room.”

“I did,” I said.

“Good for you,” he said.

We didn't talk until we reached Grand's house.

“You know,” Bud said, “you're better than any of them, don't you?”

“I wish none of this had ever happened. I wonder what my life would have been like if it hadn't happened.”

“Different, for sure,” Bud said. “But I think you've done good, anyway. Don't know as I could have done it without going crazy. You're some girl.” He patted my hand, and then he squeezed it before he took his hand back.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. I watched him drive down the hill, and then I went into the house to have a cup of tea with Grand.

She wasn't in the kitchen. But the teakettle was fussing so I turned off the burner. When I picked it up, I found that most of the water had boiled away. “Oh Grand,” I said. I picked up the kettle to tease her and went into the living room. She was lying on her side between the coffee table and the sofa. She groaned, and I went to her.

32

I
covered Grand with one of her crocheted afghans, shut off the television and then called the ambulance. She mumbled and moaned, and I listened hard to catch anything that might make sense. The lights in her eyes showed through the slits in her eyelids and I hoped those lights wouldn't go out.

As we waited, the November dusk put the brakes on the day. My heart knocked against my head and I breathed deep, trying to keep calm. I hummed the tune to “Amazing Grace” over and over. “Help is coming, Grand, hold on,” I said between humming.

After endless minutes, I heard the siren, and red lights flashed as Bert Butts and his brother, Wayne, wiped their shoes on the welcome mat in the hall, as Grand had trained everyone to do.

“Where's the light?” Wayne hollered.

“Switch to the left,” I called, and lights went on there, then in the kitchen, then in the living room, then they were tending Grand and I watched them with my hands tucked beneath my armpits to keep from shaking apart.

More shoes scraped the mat, and Bud and Glen walked in. They stood in the doorway to the living room, their breath visible in the light.

“Go get the gurney,” Bert said to them.

The four of them eased Grand onto her back, counted to three, and hoisted her onto the gurney. They counted again at the back of the ambulance and loaded her up. I climbed in back with Bert and Grand. Wayne turned on the siren and we bucked up the rocky hill. The lights at Ray's showed people standing outside, wondering who was passing. Then the dark gobbled up all but the lights inside the ambulance.

We sped toward Long Reach. Cars hugged the sides of the road as we flashed by—all but an old Chevy with a bumper sticker that read H
OW'D YOU LIKE ME UP YOUR ASS,
C
HUMMY
? It wouldn't move over and we couldn't pass on the twisted road.

Wayne beeped the horn. Nothing. “Jesus,” he said.

“Must have the radio cranked,” Bert said.

“I'll mess with his crank if he don't pull over,” Wayne said.

Grand groaned. I took her cold, dry hands in mine. “She worse?” I asked Bert.

He placed his fingers against the pulse in her neck. “Gun it,” he said to Wayne.

But the Chevy blocking us moved as slow as a dreamer who can't outrun a nightmare.

Bert yelled at Wayne, “Either pass the bastard or run right over him.”

“I'm on it,” Wayne said. Then he hit the gas and we zoomed past the Chevy, whipping around the curve at Pine Pitch Hill. I waited to take flight, or waited for the jolt that meant we'd hit a car coming toward us, but it didn't happen. I looked out the back window and saw the Chevy still moving as if nothing else mattered.

Bert muttered, “Shit,” and moved a stethoscope from atop Grand's sheet-covered chest.

“What?” I cried, my own insides ticking down to a stop.

“Wayne,” Bert said, “floor the bastard. Florine, you got to move.” I scrambled to get out of the way while he placed his hands on Grand's chest and began to push and count.

It took Wayne about five more minutes to make the emergency room. They whisked Grand out and wheeled her inside, where they moved her into a curtained room. I tried to go in, but a woman in blue put her hand up and said, “Wait outside, please. The family room is right over there.”

I backed up toward it. One old man sat on a brown sofa watching the TV mounted on the wall. He didn't look up at me, and I didn't want to go in, so I turned and looked down the hall. A man about Daddy's age swished his mop over the floor. I wanted to be him. He had nothing to worry about except his floor, even as people were going through some of the worst moments of their lives. It might come around to him, but not right now. Now, he was just washing the floor.

“Come in and sit down, young lady,” the old man called to me, and I turned around. His eyes were still on the TV, but he signaled me with his thin hand to join him, so I took the blue chair beside the sofa. As soon as I did, Bert came into the room and we went back into the hall. He looked at me, straight on.

“Florine, they're trying,” he said. “She's not doing good though, honey. She's tough, but she's had a bad stroke and they think she's still having 'em.”

A chill raked its nails down my back.

Bert put his hand on my shoulder, left it there.

“Will Grand die?” I asked.

When Bert took his hand away from my shoulder I knew the answer. But he said, “Not if they have anything to say about it. Your father's on his way up.”

He walked off and I went back to the waiting room and sat with the old man. We watched a newscaster deliver the news. The sound was off so we couldn't tell if the news was good or bad. Her expression stayed the same, no smile, no frown, just her mouth moving at us. A bomb could right now be ending the world and she'd let us know without so much as a blink.

“I got you some cocoa,” someone said and I looked up. Glen held out a big red cup, and Bud stood beside him.

“I'm not that thirsty,” I said. “Grand's really bad.”

“Got whipped cream,” Glen said.

“Jesus, Glen,” Bud said. “Think she cares if she gets goddamned whipped cream?”

“It'll make her feel better,” Glen said. “Good for what ails you.”

I took the offered cup and took a swig. It was dark and sweet and half whiskey. Fire and sweetness tickled their way down my pipes and jolted my pale soul.

“One of them Irish coffees without the coffee,” Glen said.

“My wife died,” the old man said.

We all turned and looked at him.

“When?” Bud asked.

“About an hour ago.”

“Why you still here?” Glen asked. “You by yourself?”

“Yes,” he said. “Tried to call my boy. No answer. He's probably at work.”

Bud pulled a whiskey flask from a pocket inside his flannel jacket, and he passed it to the old man, who lifted it to his mouth and drank deep. His Adam's apple roamed up, then down, then settled in the middle of his throat. He passed the flask back to Bud and rubbed his mouth with his sleeve.

“Thanks,” he said. “Now can you tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do?”

Just before Grand died, Daddy and I were allowed into the emergency unit. We watched her take her last breath. It rose in a high swell before she settled forever on a calm sea. Daddy and I stayed with her for some time, then Daddy said, “We got to be strong when we go out there,” and so we were.

The morning Grand was buried, no one on The Point went to work or school, and all the boats stayed in the harbor. The store and the gas station closed. The gravediggers dug past the first frost and made a deep, clean hole for her to rest in. The whole Point and people from the surrounding areas filled the little church at her funeral. People we didn't know showed up—old ladies Grand's age who had gone to The Point school with her, and craft fair and shop people who sold the sweaters she'd made. A few summer people showed, too, those who had bought her bread and sweaters. A couple of older gentlemen with gloom tracing the road maps of their wrinkled faces sat toward the back of the church. I wondered if they'd been in love with Grand at one time or another. Any man would've been happy with her, if she hadn't only loved one man for her entire life.

After the service, people bustled into and out of her house with the casseroles and stews. Stella looked as though she might want to comfort me, if I would give her the chance. But the only person who might have comforted me was more than likely having a high old time with her good friend, Jesus.

The Point women worked like a machine; they ran the wake and the after-funeral gathering, made the men drink and smoke outside and pick up their empties and butts, and cleaned up afterward. Then they were gone.

Daddy, Stella, Dottie, and I were the only ones left. We slumped at the table, tired and sad. Dottie still managed to chow down on chunks of this and bites of that from the leftover casseroles, while Daddy and Stella drank coffee. I wasn't hungry or thirsty.

“You eat anything today?” Stella asked me.

“No,” I said. Sorrow was beginning to work its way up inside me like unchecked bittersweet settling in for a lengthy growing season.

“You got to eat,” Daddy said.

“You want to come home with us?” Stella asked.

“I'm home,” I said. I'd seen the will. Grand had left the house to me when I turned eighteen next spring. She'd left me a little money, too, enough to tide me over for a year or two. And her bills were paid ahead, as she'd always done.

“I know, Florine, but I thought you might be lonely.”

Dottie said, “I can stay with you, if you want.”

“That'd be good,” Daddy said.

“Okay,” I said to Dottie.

Daddy hugged me close before he left and I hugged him back. This we understood about each other; that we were veteran soldiers on the battlefield of grief. Then he and Stella left and it was just Dottie and me at the kitchen table. The only sound for a few seconds was Dottie's top and bottom teeth clicking together as she ate.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Kind of numb.”

“It's weird here without Grand.”

“Yeah.”

Dottie stood up. “I'd better clean up or she'll come back and have my ass.” As she washed her plate at the sink, she said, “I wonder what was up with Stella. Usually her dishes come out so decent they get you to groaning, but that macaroni and cheese was gummy as pitch and half again as good. How could she screw up something that easy to make? Madeline's always making it because she can throw it together.”

“Makes you wonder,” I said.

“Glen flushed his plateful down the toilet. Caught him in the bathroom, using the plunger to get it all the way down. Before I saw what he was doing, I thought he was jerking off, but then I saw the mac and cheese in the bowl.”

I smiled.

“Hope it doesn't muck up the septic system,” Dottie said. “Can't you just see some Roto Rooter guy saying, ‘Best to toss this out into the bay, or bury it so's it won't kill the fish. I don't want to see it in this tank again. I find it, you get a big-ass bill and a fine for cooking this crap up in the first place.'”

I had to laugh, but when she put a cup of tea in front of me, something she'd never done before, I cried.

She didn't follow when I ran upstairs to Grand's room. I spread myself over the bed to fill myself with her presence and sobbed. I fell asleep clutching her pillow.

Much later, I woke when the door creaked. I sat up and cried out, “Grand!”

The hall light backlit Dottie's stocky form.

“It's me,” she said, quiet. “I was just checking on you.”

I stared at her, stupid with sleep and grief.

“Can I get you something? Water?”

“No,” I said.

“You want me to sleep in here with you?”

It would have been nice to have her warmth, but nothing would comfort me tonight, and she needed to sleep, so I said no. She shuffled in and kissed the top of my head, then she left the room, closing the door so that it never made a sound.

Too tired to squeeze out any more emotion, I stumbled toward the ragged edge of sleep. Then I thought of something.

I got up and went to the window that looked across the road to Daddy's house. I remembered the night I had stood out at the end of the driveway by the big white rock, feeling alone and unwanted. I recalled the way Grand had come for me, saying,
“Oh for heaven's sake, that's not true. Now, I was sound asleep and I heard you crying and I woke right up. Guess that's love, don't you think?”
Moonlight kissed the white rock with a pearly glow, then the clouds took back the moon, and it turned dark.