I was glad for Mrs. Stuldy, too. I got in the habit of finishing at her house, whether she’d had me run any errands for her or not. I barely saw Mr. Stuldy—he was a quiet type, who always seemed to be on his way out the door just as I was coming in. He’d nod politely and say, “Oh, Early’s in there waiting for you. Go on with you.” He was so unnoticeable, it was several days before I thought to wonder why Mrs. Stuldy was having me run her errands, instead of asking her husband to do them. But by the time I started wondering, I had it all figured out. Mrs. Stuldy needed company.
Every day when I got there, she always had something home baked waiting on the kitchen table: apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, hazelnut cake. And the dessert was always gone and replaced by something new the next day. By Friday I felt like I’d known her long enough to ask where all the extra baked goods went.
“Oh, Mr. Stuldy takes them down to the senior center with him every morning,” she said. ‘They like my cooking down there.”
“Why don’t you go with him?” I asked. I’d been past the senior center on my errands. It was a huge building with more windows than walls, so I could see the dozens of old people in there sitting around talking and laughing, playing cards or checkers or chess, doing the funny stretching exercises that old people do. Once I saw a whole row of women painting faces on china dolls. Mrs. Stuldy seemed like the type who would like painting dolls. She seemed like the type who’d want to be laughing and talking in there with the best of them.
Then I remembered that she couldn’t walk very well.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s probably too hard for you to get there, isn’t it?”
“No,” Mrs. Stuldy said, with a heavy sigh. “They’d send the van for me, if I wanted. I just don’t fit in real well down there.”
“You don’t?”
She sighed again.
“Some of the women have said some things about my son—I just don’t feel I can sit next to them and tat and crochet like it’s no big deal.”
“What about your son?” I asked, bewildered. Why was it that suddenly everyone around me was filled with secrets?
Mrs. Stuldy looked straight at me.
“He’s in prison,” she said in an unwavering voice. “That’s why I have all his furniture. We’re waiting until he gets parole—if he gets parole.”
I couldn’t believe it. Someone related to wonderful Mrs. Stuldy was in prison?
“What did he do?” I asked, before I realized what a rude question it was.
Mrs. Stuldy answered me anyway.
“He got in with a bad crowd, and they decided to rob a bank. Sam was the one with the gun. He says he didn’t mean to shoot anyone, just scare them” her voice trailed off. “He’s down at Stillwater. I go see him every month. I think—I think he’s sorry now. He’s repented, and if they let him out, he’d try harder not to get in trouble again. He’s apologized to the family of the man he killed. But I don’t reckon that brings him back to life.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I was so mad at Sam when it happened,” Mrs. Stuldy said. She wasn’t looking at me. It was almost like she was talking to herself. “Here I was calling myself a Christian, and going to church every Sunday, and singing songs about forgiveness, and I couldn’t forgive my own son.”
“Well, if he killed somebody—,” I said. And then I wanted to take my words back, because Mrs. Stuldy looked like I’d punched her.
“He did,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “No matter what else he does with the rest of his life, he’ll always have to carry that around, that he ended another man’s life.”
The way Mrs. Stuldy spoke, it seemed like each word coming out of her mouth weighed too much, like stones she could barely lift. That made me think that maybe the reason she walked with such difficulty wasn’t bad hips or old age, but the burden she carried.
“I see why you can’t forgive him,” I said in a small voice.
Mrs. Stuldy sighed.
“Oh, but I should,” she said. “I’m trying to. I’m trying real hard. I pray about it all the time. And sometimes I think I could forgive him for taking that man’s life. But . . .” She glanced around and lowered her voice, even though there was no one in the house but her and me. “Do you want to know what an awful person I am? Sometimes I think I would have forgiven Sam years ago for the murder if it weren’t for what it did to me. I didn’t know the dead man from Adam. I could forget about him. But I have to listen to the other so-called ladies whisper about me while they’re bragging about their own children. I probably won’t ever have grandchildren because of Sam being in prison. Because he’s my only child. I can’t sit here thinking back on all my happy memories of him as a little boy without thinking, And then he grew up and killed a man.’ Don’t you see how selfish I am?”
Mrs. Stuldy blinked, and there were tiny droplets of tears caught in her eyelashes.
“You’re not selfish,” I said loyally. I didn’t know what else to say. I’d never had a conversation like this before in my life. I was kind of proud that Mrs. Stuldy trusted me with her story. But it was awful, too. It scared me. What if something like having a criminal in the family was contagious? I was worried enough about Bran as it was.
Then I remembered how I’d assumed that Mrs. Stuldy had at least a dozen grandchildren to spoil and they were all little angels. I remembered how I’d seen her the first time I’d met her, as just some old lady in a gaudy dress. Uncomplicated. Good at baking cookies.
“I’m sorry about Sam,” I said. “I’m real sorry.”
Mrs. Stuldy was wiping her eyes. Suddenly something else struck me about her story.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Did you say you go visit him in prison? Even though you’re mad at him?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “He’s my son.”
I tried to imagine Mrs. Stuldy walking into one of the prisons I’d seen on TV—some place with concrete and razor wire and grim-faced guards. She would look as out of place as a gardenia.
“What do you talk about?” I asked.
“Memories,” Mrs. Stuldy said, looking wistful. “And what he’s going to do when he gets out of prison. All the good things he’s going to do. It’s—it’s the best part of my month, going to visit Sam.”
And for a minute she almost looked happy again.
“You still love him,” I said, amazed.
“Of course,” Mrs. Stuldy said.
That wasn’t how things worked in my experience.
“Wow,” I said. “I think, I think you really have forgiven him. Because—” I hesitated. Bran had said I wasn’t supposed to talk about our family. But he wasn’t there, he hadn’t heard what Mrs. Stuldy had just told me. And I wasn’t going to talk about what was happening in my family now. I just wanted to hear what she thought of things that had happened in my family years ago. My family’s history.
“Your son killed somebody and you still go see him every month,” I said. “My mom, all she did was elope with my dad and her parents disowned her. They acted like she was dead. They wouldn’t even speak to her when they ran into her on the street.”
I don’t know why, but I started crying then.
Mrs. Stuldy patted my hand across the table.
“There, there,” she said.
I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Mrs. Stuldy gave me a Kleenex.
“I’ve never met them,” I said. “I’ve never even seen a picture of them. Mom won’t even speak their names, they hurt her so bad. She says there’s no point in having any part of them in our lives. But sometimes—sometimes I think Mom thinks they were right to disown her, because Dad wasn’t a good person for her to marry.”
I wasn’t crying anymore, but Mrs. Stuldy kept patting my hand.
“There’s no excuse for disowning a child,” she said sternly. “Oh, it’s awful what people do to each other.”
“Mom says she doesn’t think they ever loved her,” I said.
“Now, that’s just plain wrong,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “Everyone should have parents who love them.”
Hearing Mrs. Stuldy say that made something shift in the way I thought about my family. I remembered when I was really little, thinking my parents’ story was like a fairy tale. My grandparents were like the evil stepmother in Cinderella, like the witch in Rapunzel—just obstacles to true love. Even though my dad had moved out when 1 was just a baby—moved clear out to California, about as far away as he could go—I still believed they would get back together. Then I saw Dad that one time when he and his parents came to visit, and even at five, I saw that he and Mom were all wrong for each other. He had a motorcycle and wanted to take Bran and me on it. Mom said, “You’ve got to be kidding. They’re not even allowed to ride a bike without a helmet, let alone a motorcycle. And you’ve had too much to drink.” And then they fought, and Dad’s parents took his side, and pretty soon Dad and his parents went away. And I was happy. I liked our family being just Mom and Bran and me.
But sitting there with Mrs. Stuldy, I saw how sad it was for Mom not to have parents who loved her no matter what. I saw how sad it was for her to be alone.
Mrs. Stuldy’s wrinkled old hand stayed on top of mine.
“I’m sure you and your brother are great comforts to your mother. I’m sure she’s proud of you. You’re a good child,” she said.
“Bran is too,” I said loyally.
“Yes,” Mrs. Stuldy said as she poured herself another cup of tea. “I’m sure he is. He seemed a little troubled that day he was here.”
So even Mrs. Stuldy had noticed. I wasn’t used to people calling Bran troubled. Usually they raved about what a wonderful teenager he was, how responsibly he behaved, what a bright future he had ahead of him.
“He’s under a lot of pressure.” I made excuses for him. “He’s supporting us while Mom goes to school full-time.”
Too late, I remembered Bran telling me not to talk about what he and Mom were doing. But this was just with Mrs. Stuldy, not the other neighbors. And it was in Bran’s own defense.
“Bran’s really eager to have Mom succeed, because he’s the one who talked her into moving to Florida in the first place,” I said.
I remembered all our dinner discussions last winter, the snow blowing in through the cracks around our front door. It was Mom’s friend Carlene who started talking about Florida.
“Why are you in this flea-bitten town anyway?” she’d asked Mom. “Just because your man left you behind when he dropped out of college . . . Let’s go south! Let’s lie on the beach! Live a little, Becky!”
“I’m trying to finish college,” Mom had said quietly. “That’s why I haven’t left yet.”
And Bran had chimed in, “I just saw something on the Internet the other day at school—there’s a university in Florida that has a special program for single mothers.”
From then on, the Florida talk was hot and heavy in our apartment, even as it got colder and colder outside. We barely got anything for Christmas, we were trying so hard to save our money to move. Carlene was going to come with us and chip in part of the gas money and rent. And then—suddenly it was February and we were leaving Pennsylvania, just Mom and Bran and me. I don’t know why Carlene didn’t come. I just remember waking up in the middle of the night, when we’d been driving straight through. We were parked at some rest stop in Georgia or Tennessee—some state between Pennsylvania and Florida—and Mom was crying.
“What am I doing?” she moaned.
And Bran had answered quietly, “You’re moving your family to another state, where there’s more opportunity. People do it all the time.”
“No,” Mom said bitterly. “I got carried away by someone else’s fantasy again. And then, even when it didn’t work out with the other person, I just forged ahead. Why don’t I stop and think? Why don’t I quit for once?”
“Mom,” Bran said patiently. “You’re going to wake Britt.”
And then they talked in hushed voices in the front seat while I was curled up in the back. I wasn’t worried about Mom crying. I wasn’t worried about whether or not it was a good idea to move to Florida. I knew Bran could take care of everything. The murmuring I heard from the front seat was soothing, like a lullaby. I fell back asleep feeling safe and cozy. And in the morning, when I woke up for good, everyone was cheerful and the Florida sunshine was streaming in the windows.
“Looks like your brother just got home,” Mrs. Stuldy said now, bringing me back to the present.
She had taken our dishes over to the sink and was leaning on the counter looking out. I went and stood beside her. Bran was pushing his bicycle alongside the Marquises’ house. I was going to rap on the window and wave, but something stopped me. Bran bent down just then, peering at something near the ground. His dark hair fell across his forehead, and he looked from side to side before rubbing a finger on some steel-and-glass contraption attached to the house. Without trying to, I remembered one of those stupid vocabulary words that Ms. Rogers, my English teacher back in Pennsylvania, had worked so hard to get us to learn: furtive. Bran was acting furtive.
I wished Ms. Rogers had never taught me a word like that. It made Bran seem guiltier than ever.
“Something wrong with your electric meter?” Mrs. Stuldy asked.
“Huh?” It took me a minute to understand what she meant. The thing Bran was looking at was an electric meter. “I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s just—making sure everything’s all right. That’s how Bran is.”
But the way he crouched over the meter, glancing from side to side once more, he didn’t look like someone making sure everything was all right. He looked guilty. About an electric meter? Why? I thought about the way Bran had acted about the air-conditioning, and how even now he always seemed to be inching the thermostat upward, when Mom wasn’t looking, so the air almost never kicked on. And now that I thought about it, Bran had had an odd look on his face the second night the timer light clicked on, and he announced, “Oh, the Marquises want us to leave the timer alone. Just in case.” Lights and air-conditioning and the electric meter . . . There was a clue in there somewhere. But I didn’t understand what it was a clue to.
I knew Bran wouldn’t be involved in anything like a bank robbery or murder. But Mrs. Stuldy’s story made me even more worried.
I looked over at Mrs. Stuldy, and she looked almost as puzzled as I felt.
“Bran is so careful about things like that—things most kids wouldn’t even think about,” I said quickly, trying to convince myself as much as her. “Boy, when the Marquises hired him to house-sit for them, they really got the right person.”
My voice was too loud and cheery-sounding. I’d never heard myself sound so fake. But Mrs. Stuldy just nodded and said, “Reckon so.”
I was walking home from Mrs. Stuldy’s just as the mailman came up our front walkway.
“Here,” he said, handing me a thin stack of papers. “You can save me a few extra steps.”
He was sweating like crazy in his blue uniform—I couldn’t blame him for wanting to walk a little less.
I let myself into the house and glanced at the mail. It was all junk and ads, nothing interesting. I started to drop the whole pile onto the coffee table. Then I remembered how Bran had acted about the Eckerd’s sale circular just a few days earlier. I started looking at the ads carefully. Carpet cleaning, pizza coupons, offers to order vitamins through the mail . . . All addressed to occupant or current resident, except for one furniture-store ad that was labeled JOHN MARCUS.
Marcus, not Marquis.
Alarm bells started going off in my brain. Everything else was right in the address—852 Sundial Lane, Gulfstone, Florida. Even the nine-digit zip code. But I stared at the name, the cu that was supposed to be a qui. I stared until the letters blurred before my eyes.
What if the Eckerd’s circular had also said Marcus, instead of Marquis? What if that was the reason Bran had ripped the front page off the ad and hidden
it in his pocket?
But why? Why did it matter?
I thought again about how Bran had been so careful writing down the Marquises’ name. That seemed weirder than ever.
Bran came in through the back door just then.
“Hey, Bran, look,” I said, holding the furniture ad out toward him. “I think you must be wrong about how the Marquises spell their name.”
Bran glanced down at the ad as if it were a piece of roadkill that had been rotting in the Florida sun for days. But when he spoke his voice was carefully casual.
“Hunh,” he said. “That’s just a mistake. Companies misspell people’s names all the time. I bet we’ll see lots of mail with the wrong name on it this summer.”
But he took the ad and the rest of the mail from me. He tossed it in the trash can.
“Shouldn’t they, you know, forward the Marquises’ mail to them in New York?” I said. “So we don’t get their letters?”
“They only do that with first-class mail,” Bran said. “Not ads.”
His voice sounded so strange—so glum—I looked at him quickly. He smiled back at me—not a “Gosh, isn’t this a great day, aren’t you a great sister” smile, but a “Who? Me? I’m not hiding anything” smile.
I might not have been used to Bran hiding things, but I was his sister. I could see past smiles like that.
“Mrs. Stuldy and I were wondering what you were doing outside, with the electric meter,” I said.
“The electric meter?” Bran said. “Nothing. Just looking.”
I stared at him doubtfully.
“Look, I’ve got to go mow,” Bran said. “Would you just stop acting so . . . suspicious about everything?”
And then, even though it was about 70 billion degrees outside, he stalked out the door.
I watched though the kitchen window as he unlocked the shed, then crammed the key back into his shorts. I thought about sneaking into the shed while his back was turned, but the backyard was too small. He’d see me for sure.
I’d have to pin all my hopes on Mom.
It was only later—after I’d watched some TV, after Bran had finished mowing, after I’d dragged a couple loads of our clothes to the Laundromat and back—that it occurred to me to fish the furniture ad out of the garbage can to show Mom. I wanted all the evidence I could get.
The House on the Gulf Page 7