Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833)

by Rogers, Morgan Callan

  30

  Winter brought the flu and a couple of bad colds to Grand. She fought being sick like the trouper she was, with cold medicine, both store-bought and one she concocted herself made out of honey, ginger ale, and melted Canada Mints. She drank strong tea until it steamed out of her ears, and even dipped into the whiskey for medicinal purposes.

  I made soups and stews and made sure she was comfortable before I went to school. Most of the time she was up and around when I left, but it was obvious that something nasty was dogging her every step. By the time I got home, she was usually lying on the couch, watching television or napping.

  Susan decided to talk to me again, although she wasn’t nearly as friendly as she had been. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “I guess I was jealous for not getting to go. You’re like a sister to Bud, he told me. He made that pretty clear.”

  I didn’t tell her that I didn’t think of Bud as a brother. In fact, these days, I had a hard time thinking in a sisterly fashion about any male that caught my eye or brushed my arm, or breathed in my general direction. My body was hot to trot.

  Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968 and Robert Kennedy was killed in June. Even our tiny place in the world mourned the losses. I turned seventeen in May. Grand called me Mooney Mulrooney, because my attention sputtered and my moods wavered, dipped, and then straightened like a guttering candle. Days, I worked in the gardens, or baked bread, or sat on the porch and waved in the boats. Nights, I rode twisted wads of blankets jammed up between my legs. I was turned inside out with touching and wanting, wishing someone would touch me back. That wishing felt more real than the rest of my life did.

  Spring bumped into summer, excused itself, and moved on. Dottie got a job at the State Park for the summer, leading nature walks during the days. It was interesting, she said, when it wasn’t driving her crazy. She had great stories. “So the other day,” she said, “I says to some numb nuts guy, I says, ‘That’s poison ivy, sir, best not touch,’ but didn’t he do it anyway. He says, ‘That’s not poison ivy,’ and I says, ‘Yes, it is,’ and kept walking down the trail. Well, don’t you know he comes back a week later and he walks up to me and a group of kids from the YMCA camp and he turns around back-to, hauls down his shorts, pulls up his shirt and he says, ‘See what you caused to happen?’ Jesus, he was scabbed to the gills. I says, ‘I warned you not to touch it, sir. See why?’ I says to the campers—they was standing with their mouths open like they was catching midges—‘This is why we don’t touch poison ivy.’ That man asked for the manager, I pointed to him, and off he went.”

  “Sounds like an asshole,” I said.

  “Probably itched there, too,” Dottie said.

  We sat at the end of the wharf, swinging our legs. I looked up into the sky and saw the moon shining through the bright blue daytime sky. “Huh,” I said. I pointed it out to Dottie.

  “That’s pretty clever, I think,” she said. “You don’t see the sun in the middle of the night, but here the moon is hogging part of the sky.”

  “I wonder if Carlie is up there,” I said.

  “Good a place as any,” Dottie said. We studied the moon for a little while, and then Dottie said, “I add her to my prayers every night, still.”

  “You do?” I said, touched to think that she would. “I didn’t even know you prayed.”

  “How do you think I get all of them strikes?” she said.

  One Saturday night about nine o’clock in the middle of August, Grand and I were watching television. I was just thinking about going upstairs when someone knocked at the door.

  “You expecting company?” I asked Grand.

  “Jimmy Stewart said he’d drop by,” Grand said. “Might be him.”

  Jimmy Stewart was Grand’s favorite movie star. “He seems like he’d be good company,” she’d say. “Just a nice fella.”

  “I’ll get it,” I said. I opened the door to find Susan standing there.

  “Can you come outside for a minute?” she whispered as if she held a secret that only I should know.

  “Who’s out there?” Grand shouted.

  “It’s Susan,” I yelled back.

  “Hello Susan,” Grand shouted. “Come on in. Bring Bud, too. Tell him I got some of those molasses cookies he likes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be right back,” I said. I caught Grand halfway up off the sofa, ready to go fix us snacks.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, sharper than I meant to say it. I took a deep breath and said, softer, “Susan wants to talk to me outside. You okay with that?”

  “Well, I guess,” she said. “She’s welcome to come in, though.”

  “She knows,” I said, and almost ran from the room.

  Susan was looking down toward the wharf.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  She stuck her little hands into her patched pockets and sighed. “Well, I hope you’re cool with this. I got you a date.”

  “What do you mean, you got me a date?”

  “Oh man, don’t get all weird, okay?”

  “Who said I needed a date?” I said.

  “No one, but if you want a date, you can have one. I hope you do because he’s here.”

  “Who’s here?”

  “Kevin Jewell.”

  “Who is that?” I asked, although I knew. He was part hippie, part football player. He was part good-looking, too, and he had a nice smile.

  “We met up with him in Long Reach when Bud was getting beer and he rode down just to see you,” Susan said. “Kevin thinks you’re groovy, but he told me he was too shy to talk to you in school.”

  I snorted. “Sure he is,” I said.

  Susan’s eyebrows knit a cross-stitch and she said, “He’s a good guy. You should give him a chance. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll make something up. It’s up to you.”

  She turned and started to walk toward the wharf, while I pondered on it. Inside was Grand and some bad TV, upstairs was a pile of abused blankets and another night French-kissing my pillow. My feet moved to follow Susan to the wharf. I squinted to see if I could see Bud and Kevin, but all the shapes threw shadows.

  The tip of a cigarette burned a hole in the dark. I hated that Bud smoked now, but who was I to tell him not to if his girlfriend didn’t mind. When we got closer, he said, “Hey.” He took a drag off his cigarette and his eyes glowed orange above it. The glow also revealed a tall boy with hair to his shoulders. Another drag from Bud and the boy smiled and bobbed his head.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi,” Kevin said.

  “Well, now that’s out of the way, let’s have a beer,” Susan said. Bud reached in back of him and a paper bag rustled. He pulled out a pint can of ’Gansett and handed it to me. I stood against the railing and popped the top. I’d never had a whole can of beer before. But I’d seen them guzzled down, sucked down, belched loud, and pissed out into the snow. I had all of those things in me to do, so I figured that what might happen to me wouldn’t be much different.

  Kevin came and stood beside me. He smelled of smoke and cloves. The hairs on his arm touched mine and I rubbed my arm. We all took a swallow of beer.

  Kevin said to me, “Want to show me around?”

  “Take him down by the rocks and the little beach,” Susan said.

  “Be careful. Tricky getting down there,” Bud said. “Might fall and get hurt.”

  “I know that way just as good as you,” I said to him.

  “I know,” Bud said. “And I’d worry about getting stoved up on the rocks.”

  “She’s a big girl, Buddy,” Susan said. “She can take care of herself.”

  “Take my lighter,” Bud said, and handed it to Kevin.

  In the small light cast by Bud’s lighter, the path looked like a
white snake winding its way down toward the beach. Then the path disappeared behind a wall of boulders.

  “You got to go round this boulder,” I said. Kevin put his hand on my shoulder and held the lighter up higher. “And then you go this way. Step down,” I said, and I did, and fell, and I twisted my ankle, and then I was on the beach on my butt, hissing pain in and blowing it out through my teeth. The beer in my can blooped as it spilled out onto the sand. Kevin righted it as he knelt beside me.

  “You okay?” he said. He held the lighter between us and I saw the beginnings of a mustache above his upper lip. His eyes were light green.

  “’S fine,” I hissed. “Just fine.”

  “No it’s not,” Kevin said. “Hold on to me.” He helped me hobble to a boulder and lowered me against the back of it. He pointed the flickering lighter toward my sneaker.

  “Great,” I said. These were my faded blue house sneakers and they were too small. My growing feet had whittled holes over the big toes and the smallest toes. They looked so awful that I put my hands over my eyes and groaned.

  But Kevin didn’t say anything about the holes, and his hands were gentle. He cupped one palm under the heel of my sneaker and undid the laces. “Double knots, huh?” he said, and smiled. “Me, too.” He worked the sneaker off, then cradled my bare foot in his hand. He held the lighter close to my ankle, warming it up as he peered at it.

  “See if you can move your foot,” he said.

  I winced, but I did it.

  “Wiggle your toes,” he said. I did.

  “I think it’s okay,” he said. He handed me my beer. “Take a swig,” he said. It tasted like cold metal, but a couple of good swallows took the bite out of the pain.

  Kevin sat down beside me.

  “You okay?” he asked. I nodded and he moved my hair back behind my ears. “You got the grooviest hair,” he said. “All wild, like some kind of river in the spring.” He nudged me, put his mouth against my ear, and whispered, “I think you’re beautiful.”

  I giggled, and when I did, I moved my ankle. A bullet of pain shot through it.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Kevin asked when I jumped.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good,” Kevin said. He took one of my hands and kissed it. “Because all we have is now. What if the world was going to end in thirty minutes, and this was all the time you had? Wouldn’t you rather be with someone than be alone?”

  Before I could laugh my ass off at this bunk, his tongue was in my mouth, and my tongue touched his tongue back and then we were on the sand and he was half on top of me and we were kissing to beat the band. Kevin reached between my legs and squeezed. This was much better than my bedding. I moaned and he did it again.

  “Like that?” he asked.

  He moved my legs apart, dragging my ankle, which he’d been so careful with only a minute before, through the pebbles and sand. As I cried out from the hurt, he said, “Sorry,” and unzipped his pants.

  And then, a frail warble hailed my ears, from where, I couldn’t tell, but it sounded weak and frantic to find me.

  “Florine,” it whined. “Florine.” I pushed against Kevin and he tumbled backward. I struggled up, hopped around on one foot, and looked out at the water, heart thumping hard against my chest. Kevin followed me.

  “Who’s calling you?” he asked. He put a hand on my back to steady me.

  Then, the voice again. “Floorrriinnneeee.”

  At the sound of footsteps, Kevin walked away from me, trying to zip up his jeans. I wobbled, trying not to put too much weight on my ankle. Bud said from somewhere above the rocks, “Grand’s calling you, Florine.”

  “Florine,” the voice came again, and then I recognized it, and could even tell where she was standing—in the road outside the house.

  “It’s my grandmother,” I said to Kevin.

  “Oh man,” he said. “Can’t she wait?”

  “Florine?” Grand called.

  “You want me to tell her you’re down here?” Bud asked.

  “No, I’ll go up,” I said.

  “Well,” Kevin whispered into my ear. “Later then. We have a date with destiny.”

  With Susan following us, Kevin and Bud helped me up the path to where Grand stood in front of her house.

  “I was just about to go get your father,” she said. “You hurt?”

  “Just twisted my ankle,” I said.

  “Well, thank you boys for bringing her home,” Grand said. She looked at Kevin. “Hello,” she said and stuck out her hand. “I’m Florine’s grandmother, Mrs. Gilham.”

  “Kevin Jewell, ma’am,” Kevin said, and took her hand. Grand invited them all in, but Kevin said no, he’d best get uptown, and Bud and he and Susan drove past the house as I was limping upstairs to bed. Bud beeped the horn as he drove by, and Grand said, “He seemed like a nice boy.”

  I choked down my aggravation as Grand wrapped my ankle in an old Ace bandage. She stood behind me as I made my painful way up each riser. I used one of my pillows to cradle my ankle, and I finally settled down long after Bud drove back home. I wondered if and when Kevin would be back. Something told me never. It turned out that Something was right.

  31

  During the last week I would ever spend in high school, I ran afoul of a pack of idiot girls led by a dumpling of a bitch named Angela Hill. Everyone knew these girls and steered clear of them. Angela’s girls stuck close to her, like sucker fish to a shark. I don’t know what made Angela so mean, but even those of us that tried to be invisible could be a target at any time. Even Dottie had been zoomed in on because she was such a good bowler. Dottie told me that Angela was on another team that the Gladibowlas always beat, so maybe that pissed her off. When word got around to Dottie that Angela was making fun of her weight, Dottie handled it like she handled everything, straight on. She walked up to Angela and told her that if she didn’t shut up, she would sit on her until she begged for mercy.

  My time came in the high school gym locker room in November of 1968. We shared a gym class that fall, which was hell for me during the best of times. I hated being naked in the locker room. I wasn’t built like many of the girls; they were small and curvy, and I was the opposite. During the gym classes I managed not to stick out too much, save for one horrible moment during my sophomore year when the gym teacher asked me why I didn’t go out for basketball, I was so tall and the team could use me. I mumbled something about not having time to practice and fled from her as fast as I could.

  Gym classes were awkward, but the shower was a nightmare. We all had to take showers. I turned around once in freezing cold water, wrapped a towel around myself, and faced the tomalley green walls of the locker room as I fumbled my tiny bra on and dressed as quickly as I could. But on the last Tuesday of my last week of high school, as I hurried to dress and get out of the locker room, I heard a voice behind me. Angela whined like a buzz saw. “Florine Chlorine,” she said. “I’m talking to you.”

  I turned around to find her about three feet away from me, flanked by two of her cronies. I didn’t say anything.

  Angela sniffed the air. “Chlorine, like bleach. Smells like bleach. Ewww.” One of her friends, a dirty-blond girl, brushed her hair and smiled. The other, a dull brunette, just looked at me with her dead eyes. “No, wait, not bleach,” Angela went on, “more like hot tuna.” Both of her friends laughed.

  I said nothing.

  “Do you know what hot tuna is?” Angela asked me. “Can’t talk? Well, ask someone then. It’s all over school what you smell like.” She and her friends left me alone, and I finished dressing in peace, wondering what the hell she was talking about.

  “Why did she call me that?” I asked Bud and Glen later, in Bud’s car. A silence a little too long to be comfortable filled the air and I said, again, “Why?”

 
“Don’t tell her,” Bud said to Glen. “Just don’t tell her.”

  “I got a right to know,” I said.

  “Shit, Bud, we should tell her,” Glen said.

  “No,” Bud said. “Don’t do it.”

  “WHY DID SHE CALL ME THAT?” I shouted into poor Glen’s ear.

  “The hot part means a good lay,” Glen said, shrinking down into his seat. “The tuna part means you smell like fish down there. Don’t hit me.”

  “Who the hell says that?” I asked him.

  “Kevin Jewell started it,” Glen said.

  I sat back in my seat, my burning face outdoing the car heater. “Why would he do that?” I said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “He’s an asshole,” Bud said.

  On my last day of school, a Thursday, Angela struck again. This time she didn’t bother to come around the lockers. She started in on me from the other side. “Hot tuna,” Angela said to her giggling friends, “is only good on the first day. After that, it goes stale and it smells bad.”

  I had just come from the shower, and I stood swamped in my towel. I shook my head, wishing Dottie, with her negotiating skills, was here. Then, the shit hit the fan for me.

  “Florine Chlorine Hot Tuna, is it true that your mother ran away?” Angela asked.

  The locker room went quiet, except for the hiss of the showers.

  My hands shook as I grabbed my hairbrush from the locker.

  “Chlorine, did you hear me?” she said.

  I heard her. I dropped my towel and walked around to the other side of the lockers, still holding on to my hairbrush. Angela was looking up over the lockers, no doubt waiting to spew some more garbage at me. When she saw me standing there, she almost looked startled. She opened her mouth, but I chose that moment to find my voice.

  “It’s none of your goddamned business,” I said to her and her friends. They moved closer to one another and gasped as if they were one thing.