Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833)

by Rogers, Morgan Callan

  “Did I say we was bowling?” Dottie said. “We’re just looking to relax, is all.”

  “How old are you?” the maid asked her. “You look like you should be in school.”

  “Day off,” Dottie said.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I turned and walked out of the room, Dottie close behind me.

  We looked back toward town. Carlie had walked that way one morning, never knowing that she would not be coming back.

  The maid came out of her room to her cleaning cart. I gathered up some grit and said, “Can I ask you something?”

  She shifted her weight to one hip, ready to listen for as long as it took to get rid of us.

  “My mother used to stay here,” I said. “She used to come every summer with a friend of hers.”

  “Lot of people do,” the maid said.

  “She disappeared from here about four years ago. No one ever found her.”

  The maid’s hazel eyes opened wide and she straightened up. “Carlie Gilham,” she said. She looked at me, closer. “You’re her daughter. I knew Carlie. She was a hoot. She and Patty Higgins, right? Used to come into town when they was here and join us in Frenchman’s Folly for a drink sometimes. I felt bad about what happened. Everyone talked about it. My Lord, you’re her daughter, here. For heaven’s sake.”

  My eyes welled up. She’d known Carlie. She’d liked her. People had cared. The town had cared. They’d come up empty, but they’d cared.

  “My name is Jorie Rich,” the maid said. “Used to be Marjorie, but I sliced off the Mar when I was a teenager. What’s your name? Carlie told me, but it’s been years.”

  I told her and I introduced Dottie.

  “You look like your daddy,” Jorie said to me. “He’s a handsome man. Stood out when he was up here looking around. Big man. Felt so bad for him. Came back two years in a row after that around this time. Always looked me up for coffee. We’d drink it down and he’d walk into town, trying to figure it out, he said. Same thing you’re doing. How is he? I haven’t seen nor heard of him for a while.”

  “He’s fine,” I said. My brain twirled to learn that Daddy had come here, alone, looking for her. And did Stella know? Jesus, did anyone talk to anyone anymore?

  “I came up with my friends,” I said. “I just wanted to see where she was last.”

  “Of course you did,” Jorie said. “Well, let me think. Nothing much has changed. That’s the way to town. Carlie liked to look around in the bookstore at the end of the street straight ahead. She liked to read them thrillers. She liked Grundy’s Dress Shop, too. About halfway down that street. And the Lard Bucket—don’t ask, been there so long I can’t remember why they called it that. It’s got some tourist-trap things in it, fun to poke around. Mostly, though, she liked to sit around the pool, go into town for dinner and a couple of drinks. Patty and her splurged and took a couple of sunset cruises on the sloop Cordelia a couple times. That was about it.”

  My mind danced through space and time, picturing her here, walking there, shopping there, gabbing with the girls over beers. All this was overlaid with seeing Daddy taking that long drive up here, alone, on the off chance he might find out something new.

  “She had some pictures of you,” Jorie was saying. “She had baby pictures, and on up through. She was some proud of you.”

  “Oh,” I said, and choked. Jorie walked over to me, stood on tiptoe, and gave me a hug that bent me like a bamboo fishing rod in her direction. “I’m all right,” I said, moving back gently. “Thank you for the nice things you said,” and I turned and walked toward town, following on the heels of my mother’s ghost. Dottie trotted along in back of me like a faithful dog. We walked toward the boat slips, where the boys had headed. They were admiring a small yacht at the end of the wharf. We hollered to them and they joined us. We all went into the bookstore.

  The bookstore clerk looked at us as if we were high school students skipping school. The thing that confused him, I guess, was the fact that he didn’t recognize us as locals. I moved up and down the aisles, looking up at the book titles. “Where’s your thriller section?” I asked the clerk. He tore himself away from eyeing Glen and Bud, both of whom were looking at magazines.

  The clerk pointed to a wall right behind me. “Have they always been here?” I asked.

  “Bud,” Glen whispered so that we all heard him, “get a load of these.”

  The clerk frowned, trying to figure out, I guess, why I had asked that question, and whether or not Glen was looking at what he seemed to be looking at.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve owned this shop for years, and the thrillers haven’t moved. Are you thinking of buying those magazines?” he said to Bud and Glen.

  Bud moved away from Glen and walked to the register with his car magazine. He pulled out his wallet. The clerk watched Glen put his magazine back, underneath the latest edition of Good Housekeeping.

  “Doesn’t go there,” he growled at Glen. Glen slunk outside.

  I stood in front of the thrillers with my eyes closed, willing my mother to walk in and take control of me, give me some information, even let me know which books she’d bought to read by the pool. I stood there until Bud whispered, “Let’s go,” into my ear.

  I followed him out the door. We joined Dottie and Glen on the bench seats inside the bandstand in the little park.

  “Clerk was an asshole,” Glen said.

  “Cop,” Bud said. We followed his eyes to a blue-clad figure walking along the sidewalk opposite us. He went down a side street and soon was out of sight.

  “We’re not doing anything wrong,” Glen said.

  “We skipped school,” Bud pointed out. “You got the shortest memory there is.”

  “Where is Grundy’s Dress Shop?” I asked. I stood on the floor in the middle of the bandstand and turned a quarter to my left. Didn’t see it. Turned another quarter, and another, until I began to spin around. The absence of my mother and the surprise that was my father blended and blurred as I whirled around and tried to make some sense of it. Dottie stopped me mid-spin and hissed, “Stop that. The cop is walking this way.”

  “Ah shit,” Bud muttered.

  The cop walked up to the bandstand and put one shiny-shoed foot on the lowest step. He was thin and handsome in a Bing Crosby kind of way, with clear, far-seeing eyes that told us he spent a lot of time on the water.

  “Afternoon,” he said. “You kids supposed to be in school?”

  Dottie said, “Yes,” just as Glen said, “No.”

  Bud said, “Yes, we are.”

  The cop nodded. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  Bud started to say something, but I said, “My mother disappeared from here about four years ago. I wanted to come up and see the place for myself. Her name is Carlie Gilham, and I’m her daughter, Florine. I got my friends to drive me here. It isn’t their fault. I wanted to see.”

  The cop studied me. “I remember her,” he said. I reached into my dress pocket and pulled out her photograph. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  He said, “That was four years ago this summer.”

  “I was twelve. I’m turning sixteen tomorrow.”

  “Happy birthday,” he said, and he gave me a sad smile. “Florine, I’m sorry we weren’t able to find your mother. We followed every clue we could. Your father still calls, once a year or so around the time it happened.”

  Daddy, again, still following up.

  “We talk with the State Police; talk with Parker Clemmons, down your way. Talk with Detective Pratt in Blueberry Harbor. We never quit, Florine. Believe that.”

  “Everyone says that,” I said, low.

  The cop nodded. “You’d best be getting on home,” he said. “You have a long ride.”

  “That Jorie woman was nice to tell you all that stuff,” Dotti
e said. I was huddled into the backseat with her. Glen was in front with Bud.

  “I know,” I said.

  Dottie said, “Well, at least you went up there. Now you know what it’s like.”

  “I thought if I showed up, something would come to me,” I said. “Something would change. I might know what had happened. It was a stupid idea.”

  “No it wasn’t,” Dottie said. “You did something about it, anyways.”

  We rode some more, for a long time. Sadness circled my side of the backseat, but I didn’t cry. I just watched the scenery fly by, thinking more about Daddy’s quiet, lonely search than I did about Carlie.

  About two hours into the drive, I said, “Thank you,” to Bud.

  “No need to thank me,” he said, looking at me in the mirror. He looked back at the road and I studied the back of his head. Thick hair, a little too long for me, small ears tucked in tight. His neck looked sweet where the hair dipped into it. I wanted to stroke that spot, but I left it to my imagination.

  We reached home at about five o’clock. As we drove down the hill, I noticed the Carlie Flo sitting beside the Maddie Dee out on their buoys.

  “Daddy finally got the boat out,” I said.

  Bud dropped me off. “I hope it helped a little bit,” he said. He gave my hand a warm squeeze, then drove down the hill toward his house.

  I woke up on my sixteenth birthday to the smell of angel food cake baking. Grand had the radio in the kitchen set on the oldies station. Big band music drifted up the stairs. I turned and looked at my Mickey alarm clock. His hands told me it was eleven.

  I heard Daddy come into the house, go into the kitchen, and talk in low tones to Grand. My daddy, who I didn’t know. His secret trips up north. His choice of Stella to keep his bed warm. For a set-in-his-ways man, he was filled with surprises.

  Turned out he had one for me.

  “Happy birthday,” he called up to me. “Come down a minute.”

  I tugged on bell-bottom jeans and threw on the last of Carlie’s sweaters that fit me. The short sleeves were frayed, and the waistband rode my belly button, but I didn’t care.

  I met Daddy in the kitchen, sipping coffee at the table. “Come with me,” he said.

  “Where we going?” I said.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said. I followed him down to the wharf.

  My soul leapt as I watched the Carlie Flo bob in the harbor.

  “She looks good,” I said.

  “Give a look aft,” Daddy said. Just as if she knew that he’d asked, the wind moved her so that I could check out her rump board, and I saw that Daddy had changed her name to the Florine. No Carlie and, surprising to me, no Stella. The letters of my name were bright white against the dark green.

  “Now, I know you probably wonder why I took your mother’s name off,” Daddy said. “I got to tell you the truth. I don’t think any less of your mother. I never could. But you take a boat out to sea with her name and, well, it makes me nervous. I need a steady name for her. We’ve been through it all, thick and thin. We don’t see eye to eye sometimes, but I know we see things clear heart to heart. I know I can count on you.”

  I reached around him to give him a big hug. The last time I’d done that, my nose had pressed against that place where the center of his rib cage met muscle. Now, my nose pressed into the lower part of his shoulder. “Happy birthday, Florine,” he said.

  29

  I went to my clearing often during the fall of 1967. I loved the colors: the reds and browns that some of the bushes took on, the paling of the moss and lichens, the occasional yellow, orange, or pink leaf from an oak or maple that twirled its way down through the pines and spruce that surrounded the little clearing. Crows cawed in their scraggly rooks, warning each other about owls and hawks. Geese, fretful about a possible early winter, honked to one another as they passed overhead. My sorrow for Carlie had seasoned, and she appeared in my mind wrapped in October’s colors and moods, set for a long winter before spring.

  Except for my three best friends, I kept this place secret. I made a game out of getting there. Turning off the State Park trail and making sure no one was following me, I looked both ways before I ducked down the side path near Barrington’s house. Once I reached the clearing, I opened an old knapsack of Daddy’s I’d found in Grand’s crawl space, took out and spread onto the rocks a small, crocheted blanket I’d made that reminded me of Carlie—spring green for her eyes, red for her hair, and white for her skin—on the three flat rocks. I sat on the blanket, knees up by my chin, arms wrapped around my legs, and I talked to my mother. I no longer pleaded for her to come home. That was out of my hands. Instead, I told her about what was going on in my life. “Grand’s been better lately. Not so tired. She’s still taking afternoon naps. I’m baking most of the bread, but I don’t mind. It’s selling good. I’m knitting more, too,” I’d tell the clearing.

  If anyone heard me talking out loud to the rocks and the trees and any animals that might be listening, they probably thought I was nuts, but I didn’t care. They also might have thought it crazy that I buried small things Carlie had owned in the clearing. Scraps of cloth, used lipstick, a pack of gum I’d found in a pair of her shorts.

  One late October day, when the air nipped my nose with the scent of the sweet-sour juice of a cold apple, I came back from Carlie’s Clearing and went over The Cheeks through Daddy’s backyard to find him loading up the truck. Stella was going through another binge of redecorating. The house needed a new roof, and she’d managed to get Daddy to agree to insulate it so that the upstairs rooms could be opened up and heated. While he was doing that, she planned to clear them of the junk.

  Grand had told me all this beforehand so there wouldn’t be any surprises. “Now, she’s not touching your room at all, Florine, and the things she’s throwing out are no good. She wants to make a sewing room out of one of the rooms. The other one will be storage. You can check to see if there is anything you want, she told me.”

  I didn’t bother. I’d been up there a few times in my life before. Two broken bureaus stuffed with old, mouse-turded-and-pissed-on clothes. A hanging rack filled with Hattie Butts’s old lady dresses. Boxes of old records, some magazines, more mouse turds. Stella could have it.

  Daddy said good morning to me as I came out of the woods. The truck bed was heaped with the upstairs trash. “You got it all,” I said.

  “Most of it,” he said.

  “Going to plant some bulbs,” I said. A little while later I was in the side yard, sticking in tulip and daffodil bulbs. I did this every year, in different places. Grand liked to be surprised at where they came up in the spring. That morning, as I finished poking about two dozen bulbs into six-inch holes, I heard the storm door at Daddy’s house slam and I glanced up to see Stella sit down hard on the front steps. She stared out over the harbor for a minute, then got up and wove her way up the driveway like a drunk on a three-day bender. Her face was white as sifted flour except for the scar. When she saw me watching her, she covered her face and stood, her shoulders shaking. I hollered, “Grand. Something’s wrong with Stella.”

  Grand came out to the side yard. “For heaven’s sake, what’s happened now?” she said, and walked toward her. When she reached her, she put an arm around her shoulders and Stella caved into her chest. Grand turned her around and walked her back to Daddy’s house and they went inside. I waited to see what would happen next, but she didn’t come out, so I made myself some lunch. Grand came back an hour later while I was rocking on the porch and looking out over the harbor.

  She sat down hard in her own rocker. “Floor gets lower every year,” she said.

  “Stella okay?” I asked.

  “Well, no,” Grand said.

  “What’s wrong? Daddy give her the heave-ho?”

  “Now, I’m going to tell you and you’re going to feel
bad for saying something so mean,” Grand said. “She had a miscarriage.”

  We rocked back and forth a few times. Then I said, “How far along?”

  “Not more than a month.”

  “I didn’t know women could get pregnant at forty-five.”

  “Ain’t common, but it happens,” Grand said. “I was thirty-five when I had Leeman. That was ancient in those days.”

  “I’m sorry I was mean.”

  “Don’t forget to tell it to Jesus, too,” Grand said. “I invited Stella and Leeman to supper. I might as well invite the rest of ’em over, too. We’ll throw together something simple. Winter’s almost here and we haven’t had time to get together. Pretty soon, all you kids will be flung to the four winds and we’ll have missed the chance.”

  Grand and I made up a Saturday night supper of beans and biscuits and hot dogs. Madeline brought brown bread and Ida supplied an apple crisp. Everyone on The Point joined us, except for Bud, who was out with Susan.

  I hadn’t really seen Bud since our trip to Crow’s Nest Harbor, after he and Susan had gotten into a fight about it. She came at me in the school hall on the Monday after our trip.

  “Who the hell do you think you are, getting Bud to drive you up north?” she yelled.

  “He chose to do it,” I said, as people slowed to take us in. “He wanted to.”

  “Well, it was stupid and selfish. It better not happen again.” And she stomped off.

  Bud was in a foul mood for days. He picked me up, but we barely spoke.

  “You going to talk to me, or do you want me to take the bus?” I finally asked him.

  “Maybe you should take the bus for the rest of the year,” he said. But lucky for me, Dottie got her license about then, and she drove me to school for a while, until he simmered down and began to give me rides again, now and then.

  At the supper at Grand’s house, Dottie, Glen, Evie, Maureen, and I sat in the living room eating off TV trays.

  Stella clung to Daddy. Every once and a while, when we were in the same room, I’d catch her looking at me and when I did, she’d look away quick. I wondered if she was thinking that the child she’d lost might have looked sort of like me, only with a scar on its face, had it been born.