Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833)

by Rogers, Morgan Callan

  “You remember that man in the chair?”

  “The one watching the boxing match?”

  Daddy looked at me, amazed. “Christ, you got some memory on you!” he said, then continued, “Well, he was a mean son of a bitch. Used to pick fights with Carlie when she was growing up. Get drunk, smack her around, call her ugly names. Mother wasn’t much help. Nice woman, I guess, but afraid of him. Carlie got out every time she could. She told me she used to climb out her bedroom window to the back porch roof and jump down. She used to go into town, get herself into all sorts of trouble, then sneak home.”

  “I guess I take after her, that way,” I said.

  “Well, she got herself in real trouble,” Daddy said. “When she was sixteen, some boy in town got her pregnant.” He looked down as he said this, maybe watching the way his feet stayed still on the floor even as his body rocked back and forth. I thought, I have a brother or a sister somewhere in the world. I did the math in my head. I was seventeen, so that meant my sister or brother was twenty or so. “Where’s the baby?” I said.

  “Lost it,” he said. My heart fell. “Went into early labor at about six months and delivered a dead baby.”

  “How come that happened?”

  Daddy rocked and looked out of the window. “When she got pregnant, her father called her all kinds of names. Told her she was no good, a lowlife piece of shit, whore—things like that. She had to quit school when she was pregnant. Stayed at home, hiding. No one was supposed to know. No one in the house was talking to her much—she stayed out of her father’s way, stayed in her room. Now, you know how your mother loved people. How that must have driven her crazy. One night she couldn’t stand it anymore and she went out onto the roof, figuring to go to town. Get out for a while. This was in the middle of winter and she slipped and fell. Went into labor. Didn’t dare call for help. She had the baby in the yard before they found her. The baby was stillborn.

  “After that, she just waited, worked, saved money to get out. Bought Petunia with all the money she’d saved and she packed up and left. She ended up here. You know the rest. Father told her not to come back and, believe me, she didn’t have any intention to go back. That’s why we only went to visit once. I thought it might be good for you to know her family, but it was all I could do not to choke the living shit out of him when I saw him in that chair. You didn’t know it, but she cried a lot about it. She wasn’t always the sunshine and light she showed you. She got some sad, sometimes. Some nights she just cried herself to sleep.”

  I wondered how I could have missed this part of my mother. I thought I’d heard everything from my room. How could this have slipped by my eagle-sharp ears?

  As if he’d heard me, Daddy said, “She would have talked to you about things when you got older. She didn’t like to think about it but it was part of who she was.”

  I thought back to the beach, to Carlie’s story of meeting Daddy. I heard her, word for word, talking in her voice. “When I was little, I used to go to bed and before I’d go to sleep, I’d put myself to flying. I’d go to all these places and touch down, look around, see if I recognized anybody. Then I grew up, drove up here, and recognized your father. He’s a good man, Florine. One of the best men I’ve ever met.”

  “She loved you,” I said to Daddy. “She told me all the time.”

  “I’m happy she told you,” Daddy said. “I talk to her on the water sometimes. I go over everything we ever said to each other. Mostly, it’s a comfort to me.”

  We were quiet for a minute, then Daddy said, “I wish we could find out what happened. I wish we could put her to rest. Bring her home.”

  “I do, too, Daddy,” I said. Someone dear to me whispered into my ear just then and I said, “Grand would say we need to give her soul a place to settle. “We need to have some kind of ceremony. Put her to rest where she can feel welcome forever.”

  Daddy’s eyes got shiny and he wiped at them. He said, “Next summer it will be six years. We’ll do it then, Florine. What do you think about that? Can you wait?”

  I could. We’d waited all this time. What were a few more months?

  43

  Around the middle of April, I wanted to jump out of my skin, to fly out of the window. I wondered how people trapped in their bodies year after year could stand it.

  “I’m freaking out,” I told Dottie. “Think of how you would feel if you couldn’t bowl.”

  “It would just about kill me. By and by, though, you’ll be up. Might as well wait for good weather,” she said. “Wait for May.” But it seemed such a long way away. Time inched its way along.

  I hadn’t seen Bud or Glen since they’d helped me into the house after I’d gotten home from the hospital. Dottie told me Bud was working at Freddie’s garage when he wasn’t in school or with Susan. Glen was thinking about joining the Army, going to fight in Vietnam. The thought of big stupid Glen carrying a gun in a jungle didn’t comfort me.

  Then the nightmares began, and I remembered one big reason I’d left this house for Grand’s house. They crawled up through the cracks in the deepest part of my brain like daddy longlegs spiders. Trees. Screaming. Andy calling my name over and over again, then not calling my name at all. Lights. Wind. Mr. Barrington smashing the windows in the car with a fire poker, trying to get at Andy and me even as we lay dying. Carlie walking through the trees and past the hood of the car with a little smile on her face, ignoring me as I writhed in pain and cried to her to help me.

  Sometimes, after one of these horror shows, I woke up to find Daddy wiping the sweat and tears from my face. But it was Stella who understood what was going on. One night she was there as I struggled to escape a night terror. She was dabbing at my forehead with a damp washcloth when I opened my eyes. When my ragged breath settled down, she said, “I went through that.”

  “Was it this awful?” I asked, too frightened to remember that I hated her.

  “Oh, ugly, horrid stuff.”

  “How did you get through it?”

  “I tried not to sleep, but of course I did, so off I’d go, down the chute to hell. Metal on trees. Blood in my eyes. Jimmy’s dead body pressing me down into the seat. All of them pissed at me because they died and I didn’t.”

  She smoothed some hair from my forehead. “The dreams will pass,” she said. “You’re strong. One of the toughest people I’ve ever met. Tough like me.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked that, but she said, “Tell you what it did do for me, though. It taught me to go after what I want out of life. It’s too short not to do that.”

  “You went after Daddy.”

  “You never saw me do that when Carlie was here, did you? I never would have done it if she hadn’t disappeared. I saw what her being gone was doing to your father, Florine. I couldn’t have him go through that. I loved him too much.”

  “What if she’d come back?” I said.

  Stella got up from the bed. “I would’ve gone back to what I’d been before. Maybe moved away again. Think I don’t know he still loves her? I don’t care.”

  As she started out of the room, I said, “I’m sorry about your baby.”

  She turned and looked at me. I could see she had no idea what I was talking about. “What did you say?” she said.

  “Your baby. Grand said you miscarried awhile back.”

  Stella’s face went white and wobbly. “Oh,” she said. “The baby. Yes. The baby.”

  As she left the room, her wake turned black, then grays and whites filled in the space.

  In early May, they cut the cast off my arm and gave me a sling. I thought that meant that my leg would be set free, but the doctors said, “Another month. Be patient.” They put a bar on the end of the cast so I could put weight on it. I ended up back in my bed, itchy and miserable.

  The nightmares didn’t end. One night, after a nasty one ab
out Andy walking toward me with no head, I woke up and thought, “If I get out of here, this will stop.” Back in Grand’s house, these dreams would go away and my leg would heal. But I knew that Daddy and Stella would let hell freeze over before they’d let me go. So I sat on the nest of a breakout plan, waiting to hatch it out. I practiced walking around the house with one crutch underneath my left armpit because my right arm was still tender, bearing as much weight on the bar of my cast as I dared.

  One rainy Friday about a week before my birthday, after Daddy went to Long Reach to work and Stella left for Ray’s, I got myself up, tucked my crutch under my arm, and made it to the coatrack by the kitchen door. I shrugged my slicker on, took the spare key Daddy kept for Grand’s house and put it into the slicker pocket, lowered myself into a kitchen chair, and dragged Daddy’s left-footed boot to me with my crutch. I rested as I savored the next step.

  It wasn’t a long way from Daddy’s house to Grand’s house. I could hop, skip, and jump it in no time. Then, I would unlock Grand’s door and get myself inside. Grand’s radio was upstairs and the bathroom was just across the hall. I would move up and down the stairs on my butt, coming downstairs only to eat. It made perfect sense. Going home would give Stella and Daddy a break, I would be free, and the nightmares would stay across the road in my childhood bedroom.

  I pulled the boot onto my good leg, wrestled the door open, hop-walked down the four front steps, and gimped up the driveway. Blessed May rain fell on the hood of my slicker and hit my face. The smells, the birdsongs, the feel of that rain, made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t felt in months. I smiled as I moved toward the shuttered arms of Grand’s house. Step, swing, step, swing. This was easy. My heart soared.

  But the soft Maine mud and the tip of my crutch were determined to mate. When the crutch sank into the mud, I tugged hard to get it out, but as I did that, I lurched hard to the right, almost falling to avoid putting too much weight on my right leg. “Not happening,” I said. I eased my crutch out of the mud and took another few steps. The crutch became mired again.

  “Shit on a brick,” I muttered. I pulled. The crutch slipped and sank back. My leg throbbed in its cast. The sky opened up and the rain hit my exposed skin and dribbled down my neck into my shirt.

  The sound of a car coming down the hill told me I was about to be seen and maybe helped back into bed. “No,” I said. I hopped a few steps forward before my left foot slipped out from under me and I fell backward and landed on my butt in the driveway.

  The car’s purr sounded familiar. I said, “Oh no,” as Bud’s Fairlane came into view. He looked my way, looked away, looked back. He jammed on the brakes and started to laugh. And laugh. He used up so much air laughing at me that the driver’s window fogged up and I couldn’t see him anymore. I struggled to get up, but it was no use. He opened the car door and got out and laughed some more. Then he shook his head and walked my way.

  “Florine, Florine,” he said.

  “Help me up,” I snapped and he bent down and reached behind me to pull me up until I was standing.

  “Put your good arm across my shoulders,” he said. He began to turn me around, back toward Daddy’s house.

  “Toward Grand’s house,” I said.

  “Leeman know you’re making a break for it?”

  “No, Leeman doesn’t know. But he’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know,” Bud said. “Doesn’t seem like you can get around real well. Looks like you need more help than you might think.”

  “I would have been okay without the mud,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Bud said. “But the bathroom’s upstairs. How you going to get around, on your butt? That’s a picture.”

  “No one has to see it,” I said. “Please take me over there. I’m going nutty. I need to get out of there.” I looked at my bedroom window, and I swore I could see the nightmares peeking out from behind the curtains. “Please, Bud.”

  The rain poured down on both our heads and he looked at me. His dark eyes still laughed, but he turned me around in the direction I wanted to go. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, and he became my crutch for the rest of the way. He unlocked the door for me and we went inside. I breathed in lemon furniture polish.

  “Someone’s been here,” I said.

  “Ma’s been over a few times,” Bud said. “Stella asked her if she’d mind. Let’s get this off,” he said, helping me shed the slicker. He took in my pajamas and giggled. “Which way we headed?” he asked and I said, “The living room.” We hobbled that way. At my orders, he went upstairs and brought down a towel, which he set on the sofa. I sat my muddy butt down on the towel and breathed as deep as I’d ever breathed, tired, but happy as a clam at high tide. I grinned like a fool at Bud, who shook his head and gave me his crooked smile.

  “I got to move the car,” he said. “I got to get your other crutch, too. I’ll be right back. For chrissake, stay put, will you?”

  I was still sitting and smiling when he returned. “You want anything?” he asked.

  “Cup of tea,” I said.

  He headed for the kitchen. The faucet went on, the water splashed into the hollow bottom of the old metal kettle. The match scratched against the stove as Bud lit it, the burner whooshed on, and the water on the outside of the kettle hissed as the flame hit it. I heard all this from the living room, music to my ears.

  Bud shuffled back and leaned against the doorway.

  “Why you here?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

  “Yeah,” Bud said. “But I didn’t feel like it. Don’t give me any shit about it, either. You can’t really say nothing about it.”

  “Not going to,” I said.

  “I’m sick of it all,” Bud said.

  The water hummed.

  “You going to be in trouble?” Bud said. “Will they be pissed?”

  “Probably,” I said. “But I’m going to stay here.”

  “Well, you got your mind made up. I know no one can change it.”

  “I needed to be here.”

  The kettle whistled and Bud went back to the kitchen. He brought me Grand’s favorite mug, a white ceramic thing so old that the cracks on the inside were stained brown. I sipped at the strong, milky, sweet tea. It was just the way I liked it.

  “How’s Susan?” I asked.

  “Good. Thinking about colleges. Wants to be a teacher.”

  “She’s smart,” I said.

  “Yeah. You’re almost out of sugar. What else do you need?”

  We made a list of basics and I told him about the brick in back of the stove. He took some cash and started out.

  “Wait,” I said. “What if Stella gets her radar up?”

  “Told Ida I’d pick up some stuff for her on my way home.” Off he went. As the sound of the engine in the Fairlane died away, the telephone on the hall table rang. Did Daddy know already? Had someone else seen us? Should I just let it ring?

  Then I knew.

  I pulled myself up using the arm of the sofa, and I lurched to the hall and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Just the smallest of pauses, then Andy said, “Florine?”

  I lowered myself by inches into the telephone chair by the desk. “Andy,” I said, and we both started to cry. For about a minute, that’s all we did, listen to each other sob, sniffle, and take in and let out broken breaths. Then he said, “You’re alive.”

  I laughed. “Yes,” I said. “And so are you.”

  “I’ve been having horrible dreams,” Andy said.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Andy. We’re going to be okay.”

  “I was crazy. I almost killed you. I’m so sorry. I can’t even think of the words . . .�
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  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m just glad to hear your voice.”

  “I’ve been calling for about two weeks now, every day. I didn’t dare call your dad’s house, but I was hoping that you were going to be at Grand’s some day. I kept trying. I sent you a card. Did you get it?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’m not surprised. Don’t worry about it, Andy.”

  “I’m going to have to go to an army school, Florine. I don’t know if I can stand it. I’ll go out of my mind. How will I get through it?”

  “You’re Outward Bound boy,” I said. “You can get through anything. You’re strong. Tougher than you know.”

  “Florine?”

  “What?”

  “I meant it when I said I loved you.”

  “I know.”

  I heard a door open on his end. “Did you love me?” he whispered.

  “I did, Andy.”

  “I have to go,” Andy said. “I love you. I’ll try to call later. Goodbye.” And then he was gone.

  Bud found me crying by the phone. He put the groceries down and helped me back to the sofa. He went upstairs to the bathroom, grabbed a box of Kleenex, and then came back down.

  “I know you don’t like him,” I said. “But there’s good that people don’t see.”

  “He must be a good guy, somehow. You ain’t a stupid girl.”

  I threw the balled-up Kleenex across the room. “I am a stupid girl,” I cried. “Look at me! I’m sitting on my dead grandmother’s sofa with a broken leg, a twisted back, and an arm that’s about as well knit together as a cracked branch. I quit school. I got no mother. I got no Grand. I got no future. I’m just going to bake bread for Ray and the rest of you are going to move away, and I’m going to turn strange.”

  “You ain’t going to turn strange,” Bud said.

  “Oh,” I said. “But the rest of it is true?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “Well, you quit school and Carlie’s gone. Grand died. You couldn’t help those last two things. You didn’t have nothing to do with them. Lighten up on yourself. You ain’t so bad. You got us.”