Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (24 page)

“Thanks,” I said. “Thank you so much, Bud.”

He shrugged and went to put the groceries away. He helped me upstairs and waited outside the bathroom while I had a good, long pee. Then he helped me across the hall to Grand's room. He sat me in the rocker. “I'll go tell Ma you're here,” he said. “She'll be glad to help.”

The thought of a visit from gentle Ida cheered me up. I nodded and said thanks again.

Bud's heavy steps creaked down the stairs. I heard him open the front door, then shut it again. He clomped back upstairs and came into Grand's bedroom. He knelt down in front of me and said, “I'm glad you didn't die, Florine. I was scared you might, and I would have missed you all my life.” He kissed my forehead and pounded down the stairs and out the door.

“I appreciate everything you've done,” I said to Daddy and Stella when they came hustling over to see if I'd killed myself. “But I feel better already and you can relax.”

“Well, since you say so, and since we trust your judgment, Florine, we'll just relax,” Stella said. “Thank you. My mind is at ease. What about your mind, Leeman?”

“You don't have to be sarcastic,” I said.

“What if there's a fire?” Daddy asked.

“Won't be one,” I said.

“You never know,” he said.

“No,” I said. “But the chances of it are slim to none, don't you think?”

“The chances of you getting into a car accident with a summer kid were slim to none,” Stella pointed out, “but it happened.”

“I'm not going back,” I said. “If a fire takes me, it'll take me here.”

Stella looked at me as if to say, That would solve everything, as far as I'm concerned.

“How are you going to get downstairs?” Daddy asked.

“Oh,” I said, “that's easy. Watch.” I slid my crutches down the stairs, then bumped down each riser on my butt.

“Great,” Stella said. “Just great.”

“Daddy, I'm happy here,” I said. “It's home to me.”

“If I hog-tie you and carry you across the way you'll just come back here,” he said. “How the hell did you get so stubborn? Never mind. Your mother.”

I didn't like him talking about Carlie in front of Stella. I gave him a look, and he said, “Come summer, I'll rewire the place. Hasn't been done since Dad was alive.”

I woke up sometime later that night, not because of a nightmare, but because I wondered how Bud had known that I liked my tea with milk and sugar.

44

T
he accident and the long time I'd had to lay in bed and think changed me. Stella's words about going after what you wanted seemed like the truth to me, too. Some kind of determination had taken hold in my brain and made things clearer. One of the things I was pretty clear about was that Andy and I were over.

Andy called me once more during the day when I was downstairs and could answer the phone. By then, I'd come to the conclusion that without him in front of me, it was as though he didn't exist. Everything we had been to each other had been so loaded with touch and feel. And his voice on the phone was thin, with a trace of whine in it.

He told me that he was staying with his mother. “I'm going to come up and see you when my legs are better,” he said. “We'll work this all out. We'll make a plan.” When I didn't say anything, he asked me if I loved him. Again I said that I had, but it didn't sound real to me and I realized I was saying it to make him feel better.

“You do love me, now,” he said. “Right?”

Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I said, “I don't know anything anymore, Andy.”

“Hang on,” he said. “Hang on to what we had. I'll be coming up as soon as I can.”

We hung up shortly after that. He called a few times at night, but I was upstairs and couldn't get down to the phone in the hall without risking life and limb. When the calls stopped, I was almost relieved. I knew he would not be up, at least not for a long time, and probably never, for me, anyway. I stopped trying to recall him in my head, and concentrated on getting well.

Rain took up my eighteenth birthday. Stella made me a passable angel food cake, but I missed Grand and Dottie, who was too busy to get together with me. But we spent time together at the movies a few days later. Madeline tagged along after talking us into seeing a movie called
Midnight Cowboy
. She cried at the end and thought it was “brilliant.” I thought Joe Buck was sexy, but I didn't get much of what the plot was about. Dottie slept through most of it.

On June 5 the temperature went up to sixty-five and the sun shone almost every day. I bumped downstairs every morning and hobbled into the kitchen to make myself breakfast. I sat on the porch and rocked and watched the water turn from murky green to the bright blue that meant summer was coming. Stella came by every morning to find me up, fed, and ready to roll. Daddy came by in the afternoon to find me busy with a knitting project or making myself some dinner. They began to relax, just as I'd told them to do.

I settled into a routine of cleaning as best I could, calling up to Ray's for supplies, and knitting sweater sets. I would be ready for the season, for the fairs and for the new craft show that had opened in Long Reach for the Fourth of July celebration.

At about one o'clock every day, my heart picked up the pace and my ears strained past seagulls and wind, boats and rattletrap trucks for a low chug-chug, and here Bud would come, stopping outside to drop off groceries. He'd put them away and we'd sit on the porch and watch the water and talk.

One day he talked about why he didn't want to be a lobsterman. “It's too hard. Jesus, have you had a good look at our old men? I'm going to be a mechanic,” he said.

“How does Susan feel about that?” I asked.

“She's fine with it,” he said. We watched two seagulls catch drafts over the water. One rose, then the other, back and forth.

I said, “Why do you like her?”

He frowned. “What do you mean, why do I like her? Why wouldn't I like her?”

I backed up, slow. “She's pretty, she's sweet, and funny. I just wondered what makes people like each other.”

“I don't know. You think weird things, sometimes, you know that?”

I laughed. “I'm crazy,” I said. “
You
know that.”

The seagulls were side-by-side now, balanced on the wind.

Then Bud said, “I don't know why she picked me. She could have gone out with anyone. She makes me feel smarter than I really am. She makes me think I can be something. She thinks I'm special.”

One seagull rose above the other one, turned, and flew down the harbor toward the bay. The other stayed with the wind for a few seconds, then flapped off the other way.

“I know you're special,” I said, soft. “I don't just think you're special.”

Bud smiled. “You're my friend,” he said. “We've known each other a long time.” We sat quiet for a minute, and then he said, “I got no right to say this to you, and I know it, Florine. You deserve someone special.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Florine, he almost killed you.”

“You're talking about Andy, I guess?”

“You know I am. And I got no right. But don't even think about ever going back to him. He almost killed you and he left his father—now I ain't saying he's much better than his son—to die in the cold, maybe from freezing or from hitting his head. Doesn't matter. You got to find someone who will take care of you and himself. Someone who has his head on straight.”

“I know that,” I said. “I do.” I did.

“You ain't mad at me for saying all that,” Bud said.

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “I had to say it.” He got up, patted my shoulder and left. I smiled.

Dottie told me that she was going to the college at Farmington, no doubt due to Madeline's determination to get her there. “And they got a bowling alley down the hill from the dorms,” Dottie said. “You can bet I'll be there any chance I get.”

Glen had made up his mind to go to Vietnam. The thought made me sad, but his decision sat on his brow, solid and true to him. I hoped that he might keep himself out of trouble, by thinking about coming home to Evie Butts. Evie was all curves and giggles and Glen was a fool for her.

“Madeline's fit to be tied,” Dottie said. “Glen swears to her that he won't touch Evie until she grows up. Says by the time he gets back, she'll be the right age for him.”

“Will he wait?” I ask.

“If he wants to keep his balls. Oh Christ! He could be my brother-in-law.”

“You always said he and Bud were like our brothers,” I said.

“I did, didn't I? Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut,” she said. “That should be my motto.”

In the middle of June, I went to graduation with Bert and Madeline and watched my friends get their diplomas. As I sat through the ceremony in the hot June sun with the rest of the crowd, I pictured myself up there, and in my mind, I saw my proud parents watch me walk across the stage to shake hands with the principal, take my diploma, move the tassel on my cap to the other side, wave and smile. That vision disappeared as I realized that my arms were turning too pink. Carlie would have taken me home at that point, but I made it through the long ceremony and put ointment on when I got home. Someday soon, I vowed, I would try to find a way to get my diploma.

All this planning for the future made it clear to me that, before I got my diploma, what I wanted was across the road and down the hill. I was going to marry Bud. Susan was gone. She just didn't know it yet.

But she might have picked up on some kind of radar that I was sending out, because one afternoon when Bud came through the door with the groceries, she was with him.

I hadn't seen her since my stay in the hospital. She was thinner and prettier than I'd remembered her being, all smiles and shiny hair. Bud put the groceries on the table and Susan put her arm around his waist and they looked at me sitting in my chair at the table.

“How you doing?” Susan asked.

“I'm fine,” I said. “Just fine.”

“You look fine,” Susan said. Her eyes narrowed, like a cat's eyes will when it might pounce. And I knew that she knew. “Cast coming off soon?” she asked.

“Soon,” I said.

“Must be good, knowing you'll be able to take care of yourself.”

“I get along,” I said. Then I narrowed my eyes. And she knew that I knew that she knew. And she knew I didn't care.

On weekends, Bud worked on the Fairlane in his driveway. I loved to sit in the kitchen, look out the window, and watch my future husband bend over the engine. I would watch him for as long as he was out there. To my mind, there was no finer thing to do.

In late June, I got my cast off and set myself to learning to walk normally again. My leg was weak, but my will was strong, and although I limped, I kept on going. I gave the house a thorough cleaning and started gardening outside, when I wasn't watching Bud and Susan.

She spent the last part of June in a lawn chair reading a book near Bud as he worked on the Fairlane. She wore shorts and cinched her shirt up and tied it into a knot that showed off her belly, back, and her curvy sides. While Bud tinkered with the car, she would do things like run her hand up the back of Bud's thigh and bring it to rest on his butt. Sometimes after she'd done that, he'd pull himself up from under the hood and give her a kiss. But it didn't bother me. It had nothing to do with my future. I knew she knew I was watching her—why else would she put on such a show?—and one Sunday afternoon she put the book she was reading down beside her lawn chair, got up, and walked toward Grand's house. She let herself in, came directly to the kitchen and stood in front of my chair, her long hair framing both sides of her pretty face. “What is going on?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Why are you watching us?”

“I like the view,” I said, and I smiled. She moved her hair back with her hands.

“Okay,” she said. “I knew that, I guess. So, I'll be honest, and I hope I don't hurt your feelings. Bud's been really nice to you, but that's all. It's one reason I love him. But I hope you're not mistaking him being nice for him falling for you.”

“No, no mistake,” I said.

“Good,” Susan said, “because we are definitely together.”

“Then you shouldn't mind me admiring your happiness.”

“You're giving me the creeps.”

“Why? I'm not looking at you.”

“You're looking at Bud?”

“I am,” I said. “Don't you think he's worth looking at?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “He's my boyfriend.”

“For now,” I said.

“What does that mean? I thought you were my friend.”

“I am, but he won't be your boyfriend in a few months.”

“Why do you think that? We're together now more than ever.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Look, I don't want to be mean, but you need to start asking other people to help you out. He's tired of it. He told me.”

“I don't think he's tired at all,” I said. “I think he's just warming up.”

“No,” Susan said. “No. He told me he feels sorry for you.”

“I feel sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“Because he's going to marry me.”

Susan turned pale. “You're crazy,” she said.

“No, I'm not,” I said. “You need to get going now.”

She stomped back to Bud and tapped him on the back. He stood up as she waved her hands and pointed at the house. He looked over and saw me looking out the window. I smiled and waved. He waved, but he didn't smile. He slammed the car hood down and Susan climbed into the passenger side of the Fairlane. He got in on the driver's side and they drove away. He didn't beep as they passed.

But I knew he'd be back.

Late that night, when he knocked at the door, I was snuggled down in bed with a book. He let himself in and mounted the steps two at a time. He stood in the doorway, a scowl in his eyes, hands gripping either side of the doorframe.

“Did you have a nice date?” I asked.

“Susan is my girlfriend. Stop staring at us. It's weird.”

“No law against looking at the scenery, is there? We live in a beautiful place, Bud.”

“Florine, we talked. I thought you understood everything.”

“It was fine, then. Things have changed.”

“Not with me. If I got to choose, I got to stop seeing you.”

I swung myself off the bed and stood in front of Grand's lamp. The warm yellow light backlit my thin nightie and showed each curve and angle, the soft darkness on my mound, and my nipples. I knew how it looked, because I'd checked it out in the mirror.

“I don't think you can,” I said.

His eyes moved to my breasts, down my belly. “Jesus,” he said.

I yawned. “I'm sleepy, Bud,” I said, and I tousled my hair. His eyes went down everywhere, and he moved back from the doorway, toward the stairs. “Good night,” I called. “Thanks for your help.”

He stomped down the stairs and went out the front door. The Fairlane roared to life and he rumbled down to his house.