“I’ll bet. You want me to leave the computer here?”
“Sure.”
Fabulous, then. I’m so disappointed I actually want to cry. I read on. Sure enough, all the buildings came down, and the stone from Warren was used to build a shopping center down in Anneslie where Jace and I first lived. A shopping center! I’ll bet I know the one too, stone buildings with a storybook appeal.
Will’s right. My way was better.
I call Lark.
“I can’t stand on the cliff anymore listening for a bell that just won’t ring, can I?”
“If I knew what you were talking about, I might be able to answer that question.”
“I don’t understand it either, Lark.”
“Heather, have you thought about therapy?”
“I don’t need therapy, Lark. I need a frontal lobotomy.”
Today I placed a hundred red and green dots, ten blue, and one yellow. Only one thing out of 111 possessions had any real meaning for me.
* * *
There hasn’t been a day in my memory I’ve felt comfortable inside my own skin with anyone other than my father. And while I love the Hotel, I was just too busy with my cakes for school this morning when Lark called and asked if I wanted to accompany her this coming Monday. Besides, I have to be honest, the second time I went down there and actually saw all the homeless people, I just felt, well, awkward, really.
Uncomfortable.
I call Jace.
“Can’t I just be a champagne socialist, a benevolent patroness of the Hotel? If it’s good enough for Lark, isn’t it good enough for me? What would those places be like without the monetary support of people God has blessed financially? I could plan a fund-raising dinner. Something nice at the club. Carmen could give me loads of good ideas right off the top of her spikey-haired little head. I’d rather spend money on this stuff than all the stuff I buy.”
He sighs. “If you say so, Hezz.”
“Okay, just checking. Bye.”
“I mean, if you’re so set on spending to make you feel better, I guess this is better.”
“I said bye, Jace. Mercy!”
I hang up and survey the cakes on my island, ready to be iced. I outdid myself this time. Maybe I feel there’s more to prove as second choice. I’ve constructed the vanilla cakes like giant tropical flowers; I’ll decorate the chocolate cakes as edible jungle islands. Thank heavens the dinner is in the evening.
Once again I pull out all my decorating tools from the appropriate bin in the pantry and gloat a little. It never gets old. Like Will enjoys the mere sight of his paints and clay, the pristine expanse of white paper, the square gray lump ready to receive the crushing blow of his grasp, I love the sight of that sugary golden canvas in front of me—knowing what I do will actually give the partaker a burst of energy and, hopefully, a moment of joy when that moist, sugary confection touches their tongue and for a split second they forget their cares. Unless it’s my rum cake—two pieces of that, and you can forget your worries for an hour at least.
I have to admit, though, that I don’t feel comfortable even in this role—the sugar mama of St. Matthews Country Day School. Do people look at my thirty extra pounds—okay, forty—and say, “I’ll bet she eats this stuff at home too!” And on the scale of importance, does cake rate very high when considered alongside the likes of teaching, preaching, playing in the church orchestra, and cleaning the facilities?
I call Jace back. But his voice mail picks up.
“Do we really just need to get back to church? Do you think that’s what’s at the base of all of this?”
I hang up.
Ah, but I do enjoy these things here in my hand, the decorating bags, the various tips, and the icing colors . . . the colors, how I love to mix the colors into vibrant hues, dusky hues, pastels—I love all the colors. Who knew what that little cake decorating class at the community college would do for me?
But there’s still time for this, and surely I need more confectioner’s sugar, don’t I? It’s only 8:00 a.m., see, and I have to get out of the house right now.
* * *
Back in my bus route days, it was just a dingy old bungalow on the outskirts of the town of Hickory. Back in those days, nearby St. Ignatius Catholic Church wasn’t the thriving parish it has become. Back in those days, Hickory Elementary hadn’t yet experienced the slightly postmodern do-over that it sports now. Back in those days housing developments hadn’t filled in the gaps between houses and farms and businesses like the Tractor Supply Company or Bill’s Deli or the Hickory Inn specializing in broasted chicken and charbroiled steaks.
I long to pick up my cell phone and call Jace or Lark, or even Leslie. But I can’t. Too much at stake. How about Laney? Can I trust her?
I dial her number, and she answers in a whisper. “Oh, hey, Heather. The baby’s asleep.”
“Want me to call back?”
“No. Hang on a sec while I walk outside and slide under the deck.”
“Under the deck?”
“They won’t find me there. They never have yet.”
I hear the sliding door open and the muffled sounds of her stooping over to walk beneath her shoulder-high deck. “Okay, I’m sitting down now.”
“I always went to the linen closet in the guest bathroom.”
“Did Will ever find you?”
“Eventually.”
“So what’s on your mind?”
“I have to tell you about where I went to school growing up.”
“Having another spell?”
“Ah . . . yes. I guess you could call it that.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Do you think I’m going crazy? The others do.”
“No, I have this feeling you’re probably saner than you’ve ever been.”
“I feel that way, in some fashion. I hope you’re right.”
“Heather, when God speaks, it usually sounds like the light’s not on in the attic, usually counterintuitive from mankind’s boring ways of doing things. So go ahead and talk. I’m hearing you. I really am.”
I fiddle with my Vera Bradley change purse as I talk. “I rode this bus route to a Christian school from third grade forward.”
“I went to one.”
“I felt a little silly wearing those fundamentalist Christian clothes that made up the dress code; hated the fact they paddled kids; hated even more that my fifth grade teacher had drilled holes in his paddle and painted ‘Mr. Stinger’ in bright red letters across its surface and then this bee with a big stinger coming from his butt.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“No. Oddly enough, it seemed normal, in a harsh way, true, but nobody wondered how a grown man could keep a paddle like that up on the blackboard ledge. Nobody wondered if he was actually abusing children.”
“Can you imagine that happening at St. Matthews?”
“No, thank God. I haven’t thought about Mr. Stinger in years! Wish I hadn’t thought about him right now. Who says times haven’t changed for the better?”
“I’m with you. So did you have chapel service once a week like we did?”
“Oh yeah. And what I heard there contrasted with Dad, who took me to his church for worship and youth group. He led a men’s Bible study as well. Had a very vibrant inner faith.”
“My dad’s like that too.”
“Dad took long walks around town by himself and called it his praying time. Sometimes I’d catch him on his knees by his bedside. But I never let on that I saw him. His body seemed to be strung in anguish at times like that.”
“How did you end up at Christian school?”
“My aunt offered to send me, and he wanted to protect me from the sex education at public school. He was the single dad of a daughter, you know? I’m sure he was pretty scared about raising me right.”
“Understandable.”
“So I ended up on this bus to the Christian school where I heard so much talk about persecution and how the world was going t
o hell in a handbasket, how the ‘godless left’ plotted to steal away all our rights like a thief in the night, but I rarely heard much about love, about basic human kindness. It was all ‘us versus them,’ and believe me, the transition from ‘us’ to ‘them’ could be found in a single breath if someone found out you wore shorts or liked rock ’n’ roll music.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Laney, nobody ever took me and my friends aside and said, ‘What you’re doing to Mary and Gary Andrews is abominable, horrendous, cruel behavior. What you’re doing to those poor children is so terrible that if you ever come to some moral grounding you haven’t been spoon-fed, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself. If you ever become a decent human being who adheres to a code of kindness and the law of love, you’ll look back on this time of your life and cringe at your own inherent depravity. You’ll pray that God is merciful and your own children won’t reap their mother’s cruelty.’ Nobody ever said that. And so I drive by their house a lot, Laney.”
“How bad were you? I’m assuming you were horrible.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I can even get out the words to tell you. And now I wonder if Will suffers because of it. He’s odd, and the type of group I ended up in would have had nothing to do with a talented, sweet guy like Will. I worked hard to get into that group because I was ridiculed myself until grade five because of my weight.”
“How did you end up in the cool crowd?”
“Julia B. came to our school, fresh from New York City with a go-to-hell attitude, and she decided she liked me. I slimmed down over the summer due to a crazy growth spurt. We rode the same bus as the once-popular crowd that Julia B. dethroned and then asked into her court, and I rode her train to popularity.”
“And Gary and Mary became the brunt on the bus?”
“Yes, and everywhere else too. Julia B. cornered the market on insulting superiority. She had a nose for the weak, descending upon them like a wild animal, the queen of our pack. She left after eighth grade.”
“What happened to you?”
“A lot of them forgave me when I changed my tune in high school after Julia B. left. I assume she spent her time wreaking havoc at some other school in Pennsylvania where her father was relocated. But Mary and Gary were long gone by then.”
“Can you find them, Heather? Do you know where they live?”
“I know where they used to live.”
“Well, start there. Oh crud, I hear one of the twins. Hey, can Will come down later on? Nicola’s jonesin’ for him.”
I inhale sharply. “She really does like him, then?”
“She’s nutso. And she should be. For a while there she took a shine to that Legermin freak, but I nipped that in the bud.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her that if she insisted on liking a cretin like him, she’d have to do the family’s laundry for a year. That shut that down.”
“Oh, Laney!”
We ring off. Laney doesn’t think I’m crazy.
Find Gary and Mary. Is Laney right? I stare at the small house, as humble as the home in which my father raised me, played Monopoly with me in the evenings, readied me for church. But I live on the hill now. Away from them all. I live above. Away. Above. I live on waters that have swallowed towns whole.
* * *
I guess a new owner fixed up the Andrews’s house. Putty-colored vinyl siding overlays the old siding; the door, diamond-shaped window pane still set into its surface, is painted a shiny hunter green, and new white picket fencing has replaced the former rusted chain link. I pull into the gravel drive, the wheels of my giant car crunching so loudly as to be violating.
What went on here, Heather?
For a person can fix a house so it appears fresh and without stain, cover up the grunginess, paint the surfaces that experienced the abuse and neglect of the once-inhabitants, but these acts are absorbed into the very fiber of the wallboards, the studs, the foundation blocks themselves. I feel that, just like at the Hotel.
I negotiate a sidewalk freshly invigorated with interlocking pavers before I can think further and rap my fist on the diamond door.
“Hang on a sec! I’ll be right there.”
Okay, so she must have smoked a thousand packs of cigarettes a year. For the past seventy-five years or so. Maybe I should go. This was a stupid idea. And it wasn’t even my idea. Thanks, Laney.
The door opens.
Mercy!
So she isn’t one hundred. Midsixties, perhaps. Her homemade hair color—a purply red; how did she get that shade?—is pulled back into a bow the size of a train case. I haven’t seen one of those since the late ’80s. I almost offer to give her a free cut and color right there. “Sorry. I had to sign off on my computer. What can I do for you?”
“I was looking for someone who used to live here. Gary and Mary Andrews?”
“Sure.” She pulls wide the door. “Come on in. My allergies are killing me.” As her reddened, tilted nose attests. She leads me down a narrow hallway into a small kitchen painted a sunny yellow at the back of the house. I feel sick. Are they still here at this place? “Mary?”
“Oh, good heavens, no! I’m old enough to be Mary’s mother. She’s long gone. I spent a fortune redoing this place, you know. Ultra-seal windows, state-of-the-art air purifying system.” She turns on me suddenly. “You don’t have cats, do you?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Have a seat.” She points toward a dinette upon which sits an arrangement of faux sunflowers, a napkin holder with one napkin between its wooden sleeves, a shot glass with Splenda packets, and one bambooesque place mat. “Would you like a cold drink? Iced tea, water, or Tab?”
Tab? Who the heck drinks Tab anymore? Might as well see if it’s as bad as I remember. “I’ll take a Tab.”
Her eyes light up. “Another Tab fan! Swell!”
She opens a harvest gold refrigerator and pulls out a can. “Ice?”
“No thanks. I’ll take it straight from the can if you don’t mind.”
“You’re my kinda gal, all right. I’ll have one myself, I guess.”
I take a sip. Mercy, it’s just horrid. But the nostalgia factor is sweeter than hard candy, hearkening back to a time when you had a limited amount of choices. Boy, those days are gone!
She sits down. “So you want to know about the Andrews kids?”
“You know them?”
“I knew their grandmother years ago when I was a pharmacist in town. She worked the register. Was there long before I was.”
“Is she still alive?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for, shoot, about thirty years, I guess. We worked together for eight, I guess.”
“Do you know Gary and Mary?”
“Xavier’s kids. Delores’s grandkids. Well, sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“At least I did know them once. Every once in a while Delores brought them in. Xavier was a wild one. He was in high school when I first started working with Delores. Oh, she’d complain about that boy all the time. But you couldn’t help but like him, you know?”
I nod.
“So he was always one to win the ladies. Had that flash in his eye. Good lookin’ he was, really foxy.”
Foxy?
“He shacked up with this woman, Sandy something or other.
Maybe Cindy. Mindy! Mindy was her name. Had these two kids, Gary and Mary, when she started dating Xavier after they met at the oyster supper over at the United Methodists. He used to work on the grounds crew at that church.”
I remembered an old gray pickup truck parked near the house. A dumpling of a pickup, putty thicker than the makeup on a drag queen’s face.
I sip on my Tab. There are worse things to drink. Offhand I can’t think of what they are, but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.
“So this Mindy got her hooks into him, they got married, and he adopted those kids, I guess. Not two months later, she was gone!”
“As in left?”
“As in hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back gone. Gone, gone, gone. And she left Xavier with those kids. Now Delores tried to do her best by them to be sure, put them in that Christian school up a ways. They didn’t like it after a while, though, and asked if they could just go back to the elementary school. Delores said sure, the tuition was a huge sacrifice for her. Actually brought in mayo and lettuce sandwiches for lunch just to make do.”
Dear God in heaven.
“And then one day Xavier announced he was moving to Michigan and taking those kids with him.”
“He got the kids when they were how old?”
“Elementary school age. Didn’t quite know what to do with them, I guess. Delores was always getting on him, but he was lost. Sort of a wild one anyway, and then to be saddled down with those two. It isn’t any wonder he couldn’t take care of them.”
She leaned forward.
“Delores once confided in me that he wasn’t all that nice to them, really. She tried to make up for it all best she could, but she was only one woman, divorced years ago, and she was living hand to mouth as it was. And honestly, they weren’t her grandchildren. But that was Delores for you. A kinder soul I’ve yet to meet.”
“So they moved to Michigan, you say?”
“Years and years ago. Delores followed them soon after. Xavier needed her.”
“Why didn’t they just put them in foster care?”
“I don’t know, really, only that Delores had a strong faith and probably figured God brought those kids to them for a reason. That’s what Delores was always saying. ‘These things happen for a reason.’ It could be the most horrible situation, and Delores would say, ‘This happened for a reason.’ Me, I think she was a little overboard on all that stuff; I mean, I’m as God-fearing as the next person, but Delores never seemed to question one thing about God, as if He’d come down and give her a good shake or something if she did. Sometimes I’d ask her questions about why God allows this or that, and believe me, being a pharmacist, I saw a lot of pain, and she’d say, ‘Oh, heaven help us, Peggy, it’s not up to us to question.’”
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