Where the Heart Is (29 page)

That night, Novalee dreamed of Forney, something she had done often in the past few months. He was outside her house trying to find his way in, trying to find his way to her. But there were too many doors, hundreds of doors, all of them locked except for one.

Novalee wanted to call out, tell him which door would open, but she couldn’t. She could only wait.

And then she heard the whine of the screen, and knew Forney had found the unlocked door. But when she heard a familiar metallic click, she sat up in bed, no longer dreaming. Someone had just opened her front door and she knew it wasn’t Forney Hull.

Slipping out of bed without waking Americus, she tip-toed down the hall to the living room. The twins were asleep on the couch, but Brummett and his cot were gone.

“He moved his bed outside. To the deck.” Lexie was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

“Lexie, are you okay?”

“I got up to go to the bathroom.”

“You want some water? Something to drink?”

“I was standing beside the cot, watching him sleep. But then he woke up and stared up at me . . . and I saw something in his eyes.”

Novalee sat down, folded her legs under her and tucked her gown around her feet. “Did he say anything?”

“Not a word. Just jumped up, grabbed his cot and went out the front door.”

“Well, he’s moved that cot before. Never know where he’ll be come morning.”

“He hates me, Novalee.”

“No, he doesn’t. He’s just confused.”

Lexie pulled in a deep breath, then said, “I was supposed to work until four o’clock that day, but I skipped my lunch hour and got off at three because Roger was coming in from Fort Worth.”

“Are you sure you’re ready to do this, Lexie?” Novalee reached for Lexie’s hand.

“I stopped by the day care for the twins and the baby, then hurried home. I wanted to take a shower and shampoo my hair before Roger got there. Get the smell of hospital off of me.

“Anyway, his car was parked out front when I pulled in. I was surprised because he said he wouldn’t be in until after four. But Praline and Brownie were home, so I knew he hadn’t had to wait outside in the heat.”

Lexie tightened her grip on Novalee’s hand, her thumb beginning to move in hard circles.

“When I opened the door, I heard a sound coming from the back Where the Heart Is

of the apartment. It sounded like Brownie, like he was choking. All I could think was that he was strangled on something.

“I shoved the baby at Cherry and I ran to the back, ran toward the sound. My bedroom.”

Lexie’s fingernails were cutting into Novalee’s palm, her hand locked like a clamp around her fingers.

“Something was against the door. I had to push to get it open. It was Pauline, crumpled in the floor, her hands over her eyes.

“Roger had Brummett on the bed, bent over the end of the bed, and he . . . Roger had . . .” Lexie’s breathing quickened. “He had his .

. . he was inside Brummett, Novalee. Inside my baby.”

Lexie shook her head as if she might dislodge the image.

“I flew at him. I was going to kill him. I wanted to, more than anything in the world. I think I hit him twice before . . .” Lexie shivered.

“That’s all I remember.” She dropped Novalee’s hand and let her head fall forward.

“You couldn’t save them that, Lexie. But you may have saved them from something worse. After he beat you, he ran. And as horrible as it was for Brummett . . . and for Pauline . . .”

“You know he didn’t rape her, don’t you?”

“Yes, they told me at the hospital.”

“When he tried . . . tried to put it in her mouth, she threw up on him.

And that’s when Brownie walked in. That’s when he took Brownie instead.”

“Lexie, Brummett knows it wasn’t your fault. But he’s just a little boy. He’s going to need some time.”

“How much time, I wonder. A lifetime?”

“Maybe when the police find Roger Briscoe, when they get him in jail, maybe then you and the kids can . . .”

“We’ll never be the same, Novalee. Never.”

Lexie pulled herself up from the table and padded across the kitchen. For a second, Novalee thought she was going back to her room, but then she stopped, turned.

“How did a man like Roger Briscoe find me? How did he find me and know he could do such a thing to me? To my kids?”

“What do you mean?”

“He had to be looking for women like me, women with children, women alone. Women who were stupid.”

“Oh, Lexie . . .”

“But the others, those other women, they saw through him, didn’t they? They could tell he was evil. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t know.

And now, I’ve got to live with that, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can.”

“You can! You can, Lexie! This isn’t the first time you’ve been hurt. It’s not the only time you—”

“But this time it’s not just me. It’s my kids, goddammit. It’s my kids.”

“That’s right! And they’re in pain. Maybe the worst pain they’ll ever feel in their lives because they’ve lost something they can’t get back, something they’ll never have again. That’s gone, Lexie. Roger Briscoe took that!”

“That bastard!”

“Yes, he is. But you’ve survived others. Every time one of them left you pregnant, walked away from you and your baby, he hurt you both. And I know that kind of pain. But look what they left behind.”

“Yeah. Dirty underwear, hot checks, shitty toilets.”

“They left us with these little people who celebrate the wrong holidays all year long . . . who get roseola and ringworm . . . bleed on our blouses and pee on our skirts, lose our keys, drag home dogs with mange and cats with worms . . .”

“Spill nail polish on our best pair of shoes,” Lexie said, “and drop our favorite earrings down the garbage disposal.”

“Flush our only good bra, wear a velvet hat with a veil . . .”

“But Novalee, what am I going to say to Brummett and Pauline when they ask me why this happened to them? What will I say?”

“Tell them that our lives can change with every breath we take.

Lord, we both know that. Tell them to let go of what’s gone because men like Roger Briscoe never win. And tell them to hold on like hell to what they’ve got—each other, and a mother who would die for them, and almost did.”

Novalee went to the kitchen window and pushed the curtain aside.

“Then tell them we’ve all got meanness in us . . .”

She could see Brummett asleep on his cot, one arm dangling over the side, his face dappled by moonlight shining through the buckeye tree.

“But tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That’s why we’ve got to make sure we pass it on.”

NOVALEE HAD NEVER BEEN on a college campus before and she was sure everyone who saw her knew it. She tried to look like she belonged there, but she didn’t figure she was fooling anyone. Most of the people she passed had backpacks or armloads of thick text-books. She had a camera and a thin spiral notebook with a picture of Garfield on the cover, a gift from Americus and Forney.

She wasn’t even sure where she was going. She stopped outside a red-brick building and dug in her purse for the brochure the college had sent her a few days earlier.

When the hateful little man at the camera shop had shoved the flier in her face, she never dreamed it would lead to this. She hadn’t even intended to keep the flier, but she had carried it in her purse for three months until she finally made the call. Two weeks later, Novalee had become a college student.

She was there for a photography seminar—four Saturdays at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, to study printing techniques—for seventy-five dollars. And she would earn one hour of college credit.

She had been sure she wouldn’t be accepted, certain she couldn’t be enrolled as a student because she hadn’t even finished the tenth grade. But her enrollment papers had been processed and she had a copy in her purse in case anyone wanted to see it.

According to a campus map in the brochure, she was in the right place. Regents Hall, a majestic three-story building draped with ivy, just the way she had imagined it. She found the seminar room on the second floor.

She was the first to arrive so she slipped inside, afraid someone might hear her, call out and ask to see identification. Demand proof that she had a reason to be in such a place.

She had expected desks and blackboards, but the room looked more like an auditorium than a classroom. Tiers of theater seats were arranged in a semicircle with a stage in the center.

She took a seat in the first row, but she felt like a kid at the movies, so she got up and moved to the back.

A steady stream of people entered, nearly two dozen, and they all sat near the front. Just as Novalee made up her mind to switch seats again, a thin, deeply tanned woman took the stage.

“Good morning,” she said, then pulled a pair of glasses from one pocket and a folded piece of paper from the other.

Novalee would never have imagined her to be the teacher. She carried no books or briefcase, and she looked more like a construction worker than a college professor. She wore a baseball cap, work boots, slacks and a canvas jacket.

“I’m Jean Putnam,” she said. “You don’t need to bother with the

‘Doctor.’ Just call me Jean.”

She counted heads then and when she came to Novalee, she smiled and said, “Why don’t you come down front with the rest of us.”

Everyone turned to stare as Novalee made her way down the aisle.

She turned her notebook so they couldn’t see Garfield and wished like hell she had worn her jeans.

She knew she was dressed all wrong, had known it as she watched the others file in. She was wearing a skirt and blouse, hose and a brand-new pair of navy pumps. She had dressed the way she supposed college students dressed. But the ones in this class were wearing pants, sweatshirts and tennis shoes.

Novalee slid into a seat in the second row and tried her best to disappear.

Dr. Putnam spent the first hour giving an introduction to the course, talking about “slow-sync modes” and “built-in slaves,” “hard shadows” and the “afterglow of filaments.” Sometimes Novalee knew what she was talking about, but sometimes she didn’t.

“Now,” Dr. Putnam said, checking her watch. “Our bus should be out front. Let’s get going.”

Novalee had no idea where they were going, but she fell in behind the others as the teacher led them outside and onto a university bus.

From the conversation around her, Novalee learned they were going to an outdoor lab, whatever that might be.

The man who sat beside Novalee was friendly and they made small talk a couple of times, but mostly Novalee’s mind was on a conversation she and Moses had had a few nights earlier.

“You go on and take that class,” he said, “and don’t you be scared.”

“But I might be getting in over my head.”

“You’ll be fine, honey. Just fine.”

“Moses, I’m not sure about that.”

“Listen. They’re going to teach you some things I can’t. There’s lots of technical stuff I don’t know. But you remember this. You know something that no one can teach.”

“What’s that?”

“You know about taking pictures with your heart.”

The bus trip, which took nearly twenty minutes, ended on a gravel road a hundred yards from the Illinois River. From there, they walked to a wooded area where Dr. Putnam stopped, the students fanning out around her.

“We’re going to make our way upriver for a mile or so. You’ll find plenty to shoot out there, but remember, the best part of a good picture takes place in the darkroom. That’s where we’ll be heading when we’re finished. Any questions?”

Two hours later, when they crawled back on the bus to return to the campus, Novalee had a blister on her heel, cockleburs in her hose and tree bark in her hair, but she was no longer worried about how she looked.

She had taken three rolls of film along the river and somewhere in those seventy-two shots of dragonflies and honeybees and horny toads, she might have one that would tell her a secret. And her adrenaline was pumping with the odd excitement she always felt in knowing she was about to find out.

“Remember this,” Jean Putnam said, “bleaching is a process that can’t be learned from books. No one can tell you how to do it or show you how to do it. Oh, they can demonstrate. They can suggest and they can advise, but bleaching is learned by doing. Learned by touch.”

The campus darkroom was large enough that every student in the class had a separate work station at a counter with a sink. Jean Putnam strolled around those counters as she talked.

“Now you can use a Q-tip selectively to lighten portions of the print, spots with too much shade or small dark areas threatening black.”

Novalee had slipped off her stiff new shoes and her shredded stockings and was working barefooted, the tiles of the darkroom floor cool against her feet.

“Or you can use a sponge if you’re working with a large area,” Dr.

Putnam said. She stopped then beside the man who shared Novalee’s seat on the bus and bent close to the print he was working on.

“You’ve probably gotten that a little too light, but it’s hard to tell.”

When she resumed her pace, she said, “Remember, the bleaching process doesn’t stop when the application does. Potassium ferrocyanide is like that rabbit on television. It just keeps on going.”

Novalee was working on one of the lizard prints, the first one she had shot.

She had been stumbling down a dry rocky gully in pursuit of a monarch butterfly when she saw the horny toad and when it saw her.

The lizard lifted hooded eyes in startled response, but it did not race away. As Novalee bent and swung the camera around, the creature backed up, but still it did not run, instead held its ground just at the edge of an outcropping of rock.

When Novalee pressed closer, the horny toad puffed itself up in a show of boldness, the spiked horns at its neck menacing and dangerous. Novalee cut her eyes to the viewfinder just as the horny toad hissed, a fierce little dragon in an ageless ritual of courage and dread.

Now Novalee was remembering what Dr. Putnam had said earlier in the day. “The best part of a good picture takes place in the darkroom.”