Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (14 page)

Chapter Fifteen

SUNDAY WAS RAINY,
but Monday was bright with sun and a nearly perfect morning to begin weeding. Some of the goddesses were visiting on Friday, and Cristy wanted to get a start on the garden to show she was serious. Luckily Zettie had shown her what to remove and what not to.

There wasn’t much to keep. The thicket of blackberry bushes in the corner needed to be thinned, but Zettie had said to leave them for now, in case they were a cultivated variety.

Judging from the shriveled ferns in another corner, Zettie had thought asparagus might be wintering there, but its ultimate fate was uncertain if the bed hadn’t been cared for. She suggested Cristy weed that area first, since it couldn’t be tilled without damaging the asparagus roots, and Zettie promised that once it had been weeded, her husband would bring a load of composted horse manure to top it.

After breakfast Cristy donned her oldest jeans and a flannel shirt she’d discovered in a box left by a previous tenant, and went out to the barn to gather tools. The asparagus bed was about twelve by fifteen, and she hoped to weed that much today.

An hour later she sat back and stared at the small patch she had cleared, adjusting her expectations. The weeds were deeply rooted and determined, and the shadows that had sheltered her were giving way to sun. Worst of all she had blisters on her palms, despite garden gloves. It was time for a glass of water and a little rest.

In the kitchen she was filling a glass with ice when the telephone rang. By the third ring she knew the caller wasn’t one of the goddesses. The problem was, it could be Lorna Dobbins. Cristy hadn’t told Lorna to ring once, then try again. Explaining to a prospective employer that a man might be stalking her was as good as saying she didn’t want the job.

She picked up the telephone, and in a moment she was slumped against the wall in relief, nodding as Lorna offered her the position. She managed to hold back happy tears until she was off the phone.

Against all odds she had a job. In fact, she had two. She would clean for twenty-five hours a week, probably more once the busy season began, but Lorna would also pay for flower arrangements. Cristy would have a budget, and if she used wildflowers or flowers she grew herself, then she could keep the extra.

She couldn’t believe her luck. Lorna wanted her to come over in the afternoon to sign some papers.

Only then did she sober and wipe her cheeks. What if she had to
fill out
papers, too? Betsy had always done the paperwork for her. At first Betsy had tried to help Cristy improve her minimal skills, but they had both given up quickly. It wasn’t a matter of paying attention and trying. Cristy just couldn’t learn.

Georgia Ferguson thought otherwise, of course. But how would
she
know?

She started to pick up the glass of ice when she realized the sides were smeared with blood. Obviously she needed to take care of her hands right away. There was a medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom, and after she washed her hands with liquid soap, she examined the contents.

Nothing in the cabinet looked familiar. There were tubes with labels she didn’t recognize, but when she pulled out one to investigate, she had no idea what the tiny print said. All the letters slid together and made no sense. The tube was white with a green swirl, but for all she knew, it might be for poison ivy, or sunburn, or athlete’s foot. She didn’t dare put the ointment on her hands.

After removing the box of Band-Aids—impossible to mistake—she replaced the tube and closed the door. She would have to be satisfied with soap and water.

The reality of her situation was, for once, impossible to ignore. Her inability to read was a weight around her neck, and the upcoming trip to the B and B, which should have been a joy, was now another hurdle to jump while illiteracy weighed her down.

What if Michael were here with her? What if she needed to give her son medicine, or find the right ointment for skinned knees? How would she read the directions to be sure she was giving the proper dosage? And something as simple as a book or a website on basic child care? Information so freely and easily available was lost to her. What to do for fever? How often to bathe a baby? When to toilet train? How would she know?

How, too, would she read her son a bedtime story? And once he was in school, how could she help with his homework, or read notes a teacher sent home?

She recognized the feeling of panic, and tried to push it down. She had a job and a place to live. Michael was fine for the moment, and Jackson hadn’t returned. She was okay. She wasn’t in prison. She just had to put one foot in front of the other.

She smoothed the Band-Aids over her palms and started upstairs to change into something clean for the trip to the Mountain Mist. If she was forced to, she would admit to Lorna she couldn’t read. After all, her job didn’t depend on it. And wasn’t she good at covering her deficiencies? Even Jackson had never known the extent of her disability. If she was sleeping when he’d left in the mornings, he had written notes or marked articles in the local paper for her to read, without suspicion he was wasting his time.

Of course, maybe he
had
known. Maybe he’d just left notes to taunt her. Maybe the newspapers had been not-so-subtle reminders she was lucky to have somebody like him paying attention to somebody like her.

She stopped on the steps and closed her eyes. The days to come were never going to be easy, but she looked back on what she had already survived. She tried not to think about the young woman who just a year ago had believed there was so much more to life than going through the motions.

She made herself finish the climb, and thirty minutes later she pulled out of the driveway and onto the road to the Mountain Mist.

* * *

The evening sun was slipping behind the mountains when Cristy wandered out to the porch again with canned pork-and-beans, bread and butter, and a handful of carrot sticks.

She had escaped the worst. Lorna had asked for important information, her social security number, emergency contacts, date and place of birth, and typed them into her computer for safekeeping. Then she’d filled out a couple of forms online and printed them for Cristy to sign. Cristy knew her signature was childish, the kind of hesitant cursive a third grader might turn out, but Lorna hadn’t seemed to notice that or the fact that Cristy hadn’t even glanced at what she was signing.

With luck, her inability to read wouldn’t be obvious at her job. If it became so, she could tackle the explanation then, when she’d already proved she was a conscientious worker.

By the time she abandoned the porch, she was glad she’d left a light on in the living room, but inside it was hard not to be tortured by her past and future. Tonight the future was very much on her mind.

It was past time to call Berdine and Wayne. Now her job was official and it was clear she was trying to be responsible. She could ask about her son, as if the smallest details really mattered to her.

That thought wasn’t worth examining more closely.

Dinner felt like a slab of granite inside her. She told herself she had faced worse, but she wondered.

She sank onto the stool closest to the telephone and pulled Berdine’s telephone number from her pocket. She read the series of numbers out loud, committing them to memory.

She could read numbers and had shown surprising aptitude for math, although word problems had been impossible. Oddly enough she had also learned to read music quickly, and for a while she had pleased her parents by singing in the church choir, graduating quickly to soloist because of a clear, true voice and nearly perfect pitch. Then a new choir director with exacting standards had begun to ridicule her when she forgot a word or phrase. After too much humiliation she had refused to go to practice, and her disgraced parents had been angry once again that she wouldn’t try harder to please them.

She wasn’t sure why she was thinking about that now. She made the call, then fixed her eyes on a speck on the wall and prayed that this time, too, Berdine would not be home.

Berdine answered on the second ring.

Cristy hesitated. She could hang up and do this another day, but would it be easier?

“Hello?” Berdine repeated, this time as a question.

“Berdine, it’s Cristy.” Cristy waited for her cousin to lash out at her for not calling sooner, to tell her what a terrible person she was for not caring enough, but Berdine did neither.

“Oh, honey, how are you?” she asked. “I’ve been so worried, but I knew you would call back.”

For a moment Cristy couldn’t speak. Tears were a watery knot clogging her throat. She cleared it, then cleared it again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just...I just couldn’t.”

“This has to be so hard for you.”

“You’re being too nice to me.”

“No, I know it’s a hard time. Adjusting must be so tough, after...after everything you’ve been through. And I know you, remember? I knew you would call as soon as you could manage.”

“I feel...so awful.” The struggle ended and Cristy began to cry.

“Hush. You don’t have to worry.”

“But you’ve got my baby. It’s so much to ask....”

“We love the little guy. He’s everybody’s favorite play toy here, so don’t worry about that. He’s a joy. We went to the pediatrician this morning, and he’s in the ninetieth percentile in height and the seventy-fifth in weight. He didn’t even cry when he got his shots. Oh, I’ve taken so many photos for you to see. When you come, we’ll go through them.”

“What does he...he look like?”

Berdine was silent a moment. “I thought he might be blond, like his pretty mama, but once that baby fuzz disappeared, it’s pretty clear he’s going to have dark hair.”

“Oh.” Like his father. Cristy felt her stomach clench.

“He’s adorable, honey. Just such a little charmer. Smiles so much and loves being held and cuddling. You’re going to love him to death, I promise.”

“I—” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say she couldn’t imagine that, but how would that sound? Berdine adored children. How could Cristy explain her own feelings when she didn’t understand them herself?

“I got a job today,” she said. “And I’m working on the garden here at the house where I’m staying. I’m...I’m going to be pretty busy for a while. I don’t know when I can come.”

“You ought to come soon,” Berdine said. “You’re missing a lot. You missed the entire newborn phase. I hate to see that.”

“Is he too much for you? Is that it?”

“No, no! Really, please don’t even think that for a moment. He’s like a little piece of heaven. The girls adore him, and Wayne? Michael’s got ol’ Wayne wrapped around his finger. The man’s crazy about him.”

“Can you keep him a little longer then? Until I get on my feet, I mean? Until I can find a way to have him with me?”

“Cristy, we told you we would be with you through this. However long it takes.”

“What...” She began to cry again. “What did I ever do...to deserve you?”

“Honey, hush now. Don’t you know? You’re just you. We love you. I wish...well, I wish you’d been
my
daughter instead of Candy’s.”

Cristy hiccupped, half laugh, half sob, imagining Berdine as her mother instead of Candy Haviland. “You’d have been what, fifteen when you had me?”

Berdine didn’t laugh in return. “Even at fifteen I would have been a better mother than Candy ever was.”

Cristy had never heard Berdine sound so angry. “What a thing to say.”

“It’s true. You deserved better. You still do. None of the problems between you and those parents of yours was ever your fault. Are you sure you don’t want to move in here? We’ll make room for you.”

Cristy wiped her eyes, then her nose, on her sleeve. “This is best for now. Trust me, okay?”

“You know I do.”

“Just one more thing? Jackson knows you have Michael. He was here.”

“You’re not... The two of you aren’t—”

“God, no! He came to scare me into staying away from Berle. Like I’d ever, ever want to go back.”

“What about Michael?”

“Jackson doesn’t want him, Berdine. His parents would be furious if he admitted he’d fathered a baby and tried to take custody. But he’s not above using Michael to get to me. So just keep your eyes open. Please, tell Wayne?”

“Wayne’ll be cleaning his guns before I get all the words out.”

“Just be careful. All of you.”

“You come and see us. You come see this baby. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Cristy hesitated, then asked softly, “Will you kiss him for me?”

“I will.”

She gave Berdine her phone number and hung up, but it was a long time before she got off the stool and turned on a burner to make tea.

She had a son. Whether she’d seen him or not. Whether she’d held him or sung him lullabies, Michael was hers. No matter what Berdine said, Cristy couldn’t leave him with her cousin indefinitely. She had to learn to be a mother.

She thought of the ointment she hadn’t been able to use. She thought of the storybooks. Didn’t babies begin playing with books right away? Cute little cardboard books with one or two words on a page? Words she might or might not be able to decipher.

She thought of Georgia, and she closed her eyes.

She knew that learning to read was no longer a choice, it was a requirement. She had one more telephone call to make now, and she wasn’t sure which call would keep her awake longest tonight.

Chapter Sixteen

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Georgia found Cristy in the garden by herself. The sun was beating down on her bare head, bleaching her blond curls a lighter shade. In ragged denim cutoffs and a well-washed T-shirt, she looked like a female Huckleberry Finn.

Last night the house had hosted a goddess convocation, of sorts. Harmony and Lottie, Taylor, Maddie and Edna, had all come to spend the night. Today Georgia had arrived earlier than planned, hoping to find the others still in residence, but when she had stored dinner in the scrubbed-clean refrigerator, she’d seen the Goddess House was deserted. The women had planned to help Cristy ready the garden, and she’d guessed correctly that Cristy might still be there working alone.

When she was fifty feet away, she called Cristy’s name to alert the young woman that she had company again. By the time she approached the fence Cristy was on her feet, stripping off worn garden gloves.

“I’m sorry, I guess it’s later than I thought. The others left a while ago. I just wanted to see if I could finish the asparagus bed before you got here.”

“I’m early—don’t worry.” Georgia let herself inside the fence and walked along the rows to see what Cristy had been doing.

“Are you a gardener?” Cristy asked.

The air smelled like freshly turned earth baking in the sun, and she inhaled deeply before she answered. “I don’t seem to have any domestic goddess virtues. I don’t cook well. I pulled a lot of weeds as a girl, but I never liked it, so I don’t do it now. I live in a low-maintenance town house, and I have a truce with the only plant I own. I water Ralph at most once a week, and he only wilts if he really has to.”

Cristy smiled, and Georgia thought once again how pretty she was, particularly when she relaxed. “I always wanted a garden. But we lived beside my father’s church, and my parents thought if we grew vegetables, that would be a slap in the face to the members, like they weren’t paying us enough to buy groceries.”

“What did
you
think?” Georgia asked.

The young woman looked surprised, as if that wasn’t a question she was asked very often. “I thought if we wanted a garden, we should grow one. We could have shared what we grew with hungry people.”

Georgia stepped closer to gaze at Cristy’s project. “Were you able to finish the asparagus?”

“I just did. And the other women got a good start on the lower half. Taylor and Maddie really know what they’re doing. Taylor’s nice. She says what she thinks, and Maddie’s adorable. Harmony’s practically a pro. She says she’s raising tomato plants, enough for this garden, too.”

“The tomato trees. Did she tell you about them?”

“She started to, then Lottie decided to eat again.”

Georgia tried to imagine how Cristy must feel every time she was presented with the ebullient Harmony, who adored her new baby and loved to show her off. But asking would draw attention to the issue of Michael, and they had other hurdles to get over today.

“The tomatoes are an heirloom variety that Charlotte’s grandmother used to grow, and they might go back generations. We’ll never know. Charlotte never lived here again after she left home as a girl, and she just assumed the tomato trees died off. But apparently renters kept the strain going, or possibly a neighbor was given some and returned the favor, because last spring Analiese found they were coming up again. At the end of her life Charlotte found comfort in knowing that. Now Taylor grows them in her garden, Harmony grows them in hers, and we’ll grow them here this summer. The continuity is nice, don’t you think?”

“I guess when she died she felt she was leaving behind something her family had treasured.”

“She left a lot.”

“You must miss her.”

Georgia considered, then decided to tell the whole truth, since Cristy seemed to value that. “Charlotte and I knew each other a long time, but most of it we were adversaries. We weren’t friends until right before she died, and I do mean
right
before. But she changed so much at the end. I think she became the person she was always meant to be.”

Cristy looked interested. “How? And that presupposes that we’re meant to be something in particular, doesn’t it?”

Georgia hadn’t needed another example of Cristy’s supple mind and vocabulary, but she didn’t mind having this one. The young woman might not be able to read, but she seemed to absorb as much of the world around her as she could.

“Charlotte took a good, long look at her life and decided in the remaining time she had she was going to reach out to the people around her and try to make up for some of the less appealing things she’d done. And your second question? What a good one. I don’t have an answer. Analiese would, but I’m the resident cynic. I guess I figure most people are born good and just need guidance to help them fulfill their potential. But life’s tough and straying from the high road’s easy.”

“You said
most
people?”

Georgia thought about that. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve met people who’ve made me wonder.” She saw the expression on Cristy’s face and understood. “And I can see you have, too.”

Cristy didn’t answer. “Do you mind if I change real quick when we get back to the house? I’m a mess.”

“You’ve had plenty to do this weekend. I brought dinner. Just some things for a salad, a rotisserie chicken to eat with it. I thought maybe you were tired of vegetarian fare now that the others have gone.”

“It was nice to have a real meal. The girls made pizza with a million mushrooms. Chicken will be great, too.”

Georgia wanted to tell her she didn’t have to put a positive spin on everything. If she had opinions, no one would kick her out of the Goddess House. But she was afraid, from the few things she knew about Cristy’s family life, that having opinions had been frowned on, like the girl’s dyslexia, only easier to stamp out.

Cristy was silent on the trip back up to the house, and she disappeared upstairs as Georgia went to wash the salad greens. As the cool well water flowed over her hands, she decided to go easy on cucumbers and tomatoes, just in case Cristy didn’t like them. The girl wasn’t comfortable enough to tell her. This way she could pick them out without making a fuss.

She had settled herself at the long plank table in the oversize country kitchen when Cristy reappeared, cleaner but wary.

Georgia tried to lighten the atmosphere. “You haven’t told me how you like your new job.”

“My very first morning I learned where everything’s kept, the way beds should be made, the best way to stack the dishwasher and load sheets into their industrial-size washing machine. I’m supposed to remove cushions when I vacuum the sofa and chairs, dust before sweeping, go over wood floors with a damp mop after they’re swept.”

Georgia wondered if Cristy’s recital was to show she could do just fine without reading. Look what she’d learned and remembered.

“Sounds like a full day.”

“On my third morning Lorna gave me a Mountain Mist T-shirt and an apron with our logo. She isn’t chatty, but she seems happy with my work.”

“Let’s just get something out of the way,” Georgia said. “This will be hard for you to believe, but I know you aren’t stupid. And you aren’t lazy. It’s a lot simpler than that. The people who tried to teach you to read were using methods that work with most learners, but not with everyone, particularly not with people who have dyslexia.”

“I don’t see things backward.”

“It’s true some people with dyslexia do have problems a bit like that, but not nearly as many as you would think. May I ask some questions?”

Cristy shrugged, then seemed to think better of that, as if she’d remembered she was, at all times, supposed to be polite. “Of course,” she amended.

“You know, anytime you want to disagree or refuse to do something I ask, you’re welcome to. I don’t expect you to be nice a hundred percent of the time. Living here doesn’t depend on it.”

“You’re trying to help me.” Cristy pursed her lips as if trying to keep something else from emerging.

“And...?” Georgia asked.

“And you’re probably wasting your time.”

“Ah, but it’s my time to waste, right? And I’m choosing to waste it with you. I need somebody to prove I’m not as good a teacher as I think.”

Cristy smiled, as if she hadn’t had time to think better of it. “I’m your girl.”

“I knew it. I told you I was good.”

“What do you want to know?”

Georgia had a long list of questions, but she already had a lot of the answers. She tried just a few, to make her point. “What are your talents?”

“Talents? I thought we were talking about things I
can’t
do. Little things, like read and write.”

“Humor me.”

Cristy thought. “I was good in art, or that’s what my teachers told me.”

“So you made good grades there?”

“I didn’t take many classes. My parents said I was wasting my time.”

“Okay...” Georgia was not unfamiliar with that kind of thinking, but as always, she had to take a moment to compose herself. “We know you had a promising career as a florist, until everything went haywire.”

“Betsy thought I had talent, but Betsy liked me.”

“And did the people who bought the arrangements you created like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they return them or complain?”

“Okay, I have talent in flower arranging.”

“Good. How about music?”

“I had...have a good voice, and I can read music.”

“Can you? That’s great.”

“It goes up and down. It makes sense.”

“Not to me. I have trouble following hymns on the rare occasions I go to church. How about drama? Were you in plays in school?”

“Sixth grade. I was Alice, in
Alice in Wonderland.
My older sister helped me learn my lines. People said I was good, but my parents...”

Georgia had already figured out the rest of the sentence. “How about mechanical things. Can you fix things when they break? Can you take things apart and figure out how they work?”

“You learn to do that when you live alone, don’t you?”

“Not everybody. Let’s go in a different direction. When you were in school did you do a lot of daydreaming?”

“I did some.”

“Did you like classes better if the teacher was demonstrating something, or if you got to experiment, like in a science class?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“When you tried to spell, did you find it hard to make the letters behave? Did they drop off the page, or did you forget letters or put them in the wrong order?”

Cristy didn’t answer.

“That means yes, right?” Georgia raised an eyebrow in question.

“Nobody would believe me. They said I was careless and wasn’t paying attention.”

“They
always
say that.”

Cristy looked as if she was afraid her confession had fallen on deaf ears. “Maybe they were right.”

“You said you met Maddie this weekend, didn’t you?”

“She’s a sweet girl.”

“Do you know she has epilepsy? She had surgery in December, and so far the results have been good. We’re hoping it’ll make a big difference in her life, but do you know what they used to say about children with epilepsy? That they were possessed by demons. In the Middle Ages they used to put people who suffered seizures in mental hospitals, where they were isolated from the other patients because epilepsy might be contagious.”

“I know times change.”

“We still don’t know everything about anything, but we’re learning. And we do know that children with dyslexia are not careless, and they
are
trying to pay attention to something so perplexing an adult would give up and walk away. Children want to learn. If they don’t learn the usual way, they need to be taught in a way that fits with their own experience. You can’t tell a child who can’t make sense of letters on a page to just start reading, any more than we could tell Maddie to stop having seizures.”

Cristy didn’t answer.

“Were you easily distracted by noises around you?”

“When I was bored.”

“Which you must have been pretty often, considering you were being left out of what was going on in the classroom.”

Georgia continued, asking about numbers and learning to tell time, how old Cristy was when she learned to tie her shoes, whether she thought most often in pictures or words.

Cristy was puzzled by the last question. “I don’t see how that matters.”

“Well, if you’re a person who pictures things, and learns from the whole picture, then learning to read will be frustrating, because a page is the picture you see, not each individual word or letter. So breaking down words and sounding them out is frustrating, because it’s like looking at a painting in a museum and being told you have to focus on a dot in the corner.”

“I guess.”

“And another part?” Georgia said. “People who form pictures have more trouble with words that have no picture to connect to them, like
and, the, if.
How can they make a picture and use it to jog their memories when they see the word again?”

“Do you know what you need to yet?” Cristy sounded genuinely curious.

“You’re completely normal for what you are, which is a person with dyslexia who has all kinds of creative abilities but needs to learn how to do some other things well. Like read and write.”

“I’ve
tried.
”

“You’ve fooled a lot of people, haven’t you? Do most people know how badly you read?”

Cristy shook her head.

“Most of us couldn’t pull that off.”

“Great. I can manipulate and lie with the best of them. Apparently I was in the right place when they sent me to Raleigh.”

“No, you just cover up problems so you don’t have to ask for help. That’s different.”

“So, what do we do about me?”

Despite her studied nonchalance, Georgia knew Cristy was both dreading the next part and anxious to begin. But they weren’t ready yet.

“First, I need to see where you are with sounds, Cristy. I’ve brought my laptop, and I’m going to give you a simple test. You can’t pass it or fail it, okay? It’s not that kind of test. It’s just a test to see where we need to begin. But this first step is important. It’s the gateway to improving your reading skills. Once you walk through it, you’ll be on your way.”