“Really?”
“Yes, because it seemed that all my hours working myself to exhaustion were taken completely for granted. Every new thing we didn’t need felt like a slap in the face. But yet I wanted you to be happy. I don’t know how to even explain it, hon.”
So I sit back against the couch and tell him about my dream. Mr. Purpose and the little white house. How the dots fit in. A small, practical little home for the three of us. Will’s permission to leave this hill. This time, though the hour is late and all I can hear is the thrum of the air-conditioning unit and my own voice, Jace doesn’t fall asleep.
“You’re not just saying what you think I want to hear, are you, Hezz?”
“Nope. This is all me.”
After he goes to bed, I walk to the banks of Loch Raven and weep for my father and let him go a little more, my memories flung over the dark waters to come back healthier and dressed in smoother raiment, white and neat and with no extra yardage.
Yes, it’s time.
I hurry back inside, pull down the attic door, open up the box, and place my hands around the urn. Okay, Dad, you ready?
In the darkness I slip down to the water. He must have been scared having to raise a daughter on his own. He must have wondered why such a load was placed upon his shoulders. And yet he never flinched. Never once. He loved me.
Oh God, how my father loved me.
I don’t fling the ashes, but, crouching low like a little mouse, I tap them from the container and into the night-blackened waters. Just him and me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
On my nightstand a note from Jace says, “Carmen called.
“Carmen called again.
“Again.
“Again.
“Again.”
Oh great. I never did call.
I unpack my suitcase and lay the lavender on my dressing table. I feel something thin and cold at the bottom. Pulling it out, I smile at the sight of the sisters’ silver fork. Around it a ribbon is tied, and attached to it, a note.
You are our dear friend. We will miss you. Thanks for brightening our days.
Love, Liza and Anna (and Oatmeal)
* * *
I drop Will off at swim team practice and swear to myself I’ll call Carmen on the way home. But to my dismay, she comes charging over to the car. “Heather!”
“Hi, Carmen. I am so sorry—”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for weeks.”
“I know. I was away.”
“Lucky for you. Do you realize I’ve put you in charge of the new mothers’ tea?”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d agreed.”
“Oh great! Now I’ve got to find somebody else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I heard you were staying with those two old biddies over on Merrymans Mill Road.”
“Well, they normally refuse to be called biddies, but yes, Liza and Anna let me stay with them.”
“Life goes on, Heather. I’ve been picking up your slack.”
“There are other women in the school, Carmen.”
“Oh please. They’re worthless.”
“I can’t do the tea. I’ve got other volunteer opportunities.”
“Such as?”
“A homeless shelter downtown needs help right now.”
“But what about your own son?”
“Will isn’t exactly a baby anymore.”
She crosses her arms. “You know the school does so well because of its volunteers.”
“Yes. I didn’t say I wouldn’t ever volunteer for St. Matthews. I just can’t take on so much this year.”
“Then I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve got to go.”
I watch her walk to her car, cell phone once again plastered to the side of her head, her other hand whirling about in angry circles as she talks.
* * *
The light has changed. The afternoon has obviously waned. Golden blinds block the low sunrays. What a lovely nap that was!
I pick up my Bible, and there it is, tucked in between the pages of Galatians, Xavier Andrews’s phone number in Michigan.
Sunday afternoon is a good time to call, so I pluck the phone on the nightstand and dial the number before I can change my mind.
A cracked voice, churlish and clipped, answers. “Yeah.”
Okay, then. I can do this.
“I’m looking for Xavier Andrews?”
“He hasn’t lived here for a few years.”
“Do you know—”
“Yeah. Used to work for him. What do you want with X?”
“I’ve been looking for him. I’ve got something I need to discuss with him regarding his wards. Do you know where he lives?”
“He doesn’t have a phone. Went and bought some land in the most god-awful place in Minnesota you ever saw. Cold. Lonely. Nothin’ out there but this crazy old lodge. We all thought he was crazy.”
“Can you give me the name of the nearest town?”
“No, but I know he’s somewhere near the Boundary Waters.”
“Thanks.”
I hang up on him before he can hang up on me.
I write the words Boundary Waters on a slip of paper. Fabulous— Minnesota. Remote Minnesota. It might as well be Guatemala.
* * *
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s in bed today. Very tired.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’d love a visit.”
“I’ll bring Will down tomorrow morning.”
“Great. Come early for breakfast.”
Lark and I are eating a cell phone lunch together; she’s out on the patio at the Medieval Monstrosity, and I’m sitting at the picnic table by the pool. I tell her about further locating Xavier and that I’m thinking about making the trip to northern Minnesota.
“Better you than me,” she says. “Let me ask you a question, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Did you ever once do anything nice for Mary, or even act nice or something?”
“Only one time did I ever treat Mary Andrews as a human being loved by God.”
“What happened?”
“My dad, for some reason, agreed to drive Mary home from the big Christmas basketball game, alumni versus the varsity team. I don’t know how it happened, and I wasn’t all that curious back then.
“So I slid in the front seat and Mary sat in the back, and Dad asked her all sorts of questions, and Mary answered with ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir.’ I said nothing. It was easy to see Dad liked Mary, and as he continued his questioning, I found out that her mother had grown up not two blocks from Dad. He actually knew her when she was a little kid, and had babysat her a couple of times.
“When she got out of the car to go into her house, I smiled at her and she smiled back.
“And then, when January second rolled around and she climbed on the bus after Christmas break, she looked at me with hopeful eyes. I turned away.
“I made myself greater than God.”
“It’s easy to do.”
“I haven’t told you the worst of it.”
“Darn. I was hoping we could put this all to bed, that I could shake some sense into your head. What happened, if you’re willing to say?”
I’ve got to start over. I’ve got to throw myself into a place where there’s nothing but an empty me, a full God, and a lot of people who need Him in a way I never have. Maybe this is a good first step.
Easier said than done, right? But as Liza says, easier done than undone.
“Okay, the fact that my dad babysat her mother, that they grew up together, was information I could not afford to get around school.”
“So you were just as socially unsure then as you are now?”
Ouch. “Mercy, Lark. Can I finish?”
And I told Lark about the scheme. How my friend Rich, and Julia B. of course, cooked it up one morning on the bus. I sidled up to Mary and told her Rich liked her, and did she like him too?
Mary nodded, looking alm
ost pretty. I knew if I had said that about any of the boys, Mary would have nodded. Just the thought of being liked by any boy would render her completely in love with him. Step one was out of the way. Rich hung out with Mary on the playground for a couple of days before the big math exam that would finish out second semester, just before Christmas.
Now Mary didn’t get great grades, except for math. Rich convinced her to let him cheat off of her. She would have done anything for Rich. And Julia B. and I were acting all buddy-buddy, even inviting her to sit with us at lunch.
During the exam, Mary was supposed to look over at Rich’s paper, see which answers he got wrong, and pencil in the answer on her scratch paper. It had to be this way so it looked like she was hell-bent on looking off his paper. I slipped out of my desk and walked up to the teacher and whispered, “I think Mary’s cheating off of Rich.” Then I just as quietly made my way back to my seat.
Five minutes later, the teacher stood over Mary’s desk. She was taken to the principal’s office and suspended for three days. She gathered her books to sit in the library until school let out, and she looked at me like she knew. I felt like Simon Peter when the cock crowed, but really I was Judas. On the bus ride home, I hissed in her ear, “If you ever let on that our parents grew up together, you’ll get more of this.”
“Wow, Heather.”
“And she got a zero on the exam, and the only A she had went down to a C. Three days later after she served her suspension and came back to school, she got on the bus with a bruised cheek and marks around her forearm from what looked like someone gripping her hard. She was terribly uncomfortable in her seat.”
“You think her dad beat her?”
“Yes. I never wanted to admit that before. She was beaten for cheating she didn’t even do. And I just laid on some more blows. I knew it, Lark. I knew it then. Looking back as an adult, it’s even more clear.”
“You should find her, then.”
TWENTY-NINE
Before I gave birth, my periods lasted nine days, and my cramps felt like a giant snake snuck up behind me, sank its teeth into my backbone, and tried to suck my uterus through it—and now my periods are a light five days with no cramps. Before I gave birth, I’d get the worst canker sores about two weeks after my period; now I only get them when the toothbrush slips and goes crashing into my gums. Before I gave birth, I had mousy brown hair. Now it’s a rich dark brown, a dark baking chocolate brown, not that anybody’d ever know it after my buck fifty trips to the salon.
As payment, I lost my waistline, my smooth thighs, and the ability to drink large glasses of orange juice without calculating the calories.
It’s worth it, I guess.
Usually. But I stand in front of the bathroom mirror as I slip on my nightgown and want to cry.
And Jace is so looking forward to this?
What is wrong with the man?
Music starts to play in the bedroom. A little Barry White.
I laugh. Barry White? The man is too much. Well, if we can’t make it sexy, maybe we can make it fun.
I lost my sexual desire years ago, and I’ve looked for it everywhere. Remember that miracle cream someone touted on Oprah a few years back? That did absolutely nothing. Supplements? Nope.
It’s not like I don’t try or anything. I want more than anything to desire lovemaking.
Afterwards, Jace reaches over to the bedside table and takes a sip of water. “Would you like to head down to the Hotel with me tomorrow? I told Sister J I’d stop by and check up on those patients.”
“I’m on it.”
“You really ready, Hezzie?”
Yep, I really am. “I’ll tell Sister Jerusha tomorrow.”
* * *
Mo swings an arm like one of the Price Is Right girls. “And look at this. Those Summerville people did it right! We’ve got carpet, we’ve got paint and plaster, we’ve got new ceiling tile. Now all we got to do is round up the volunteers to install it, and we’ll be sittin’ pretty.”
Two large rolls of carpet, cases of ceiling tile, and paint cans assemble nearby with little thought to arrangement. Behind the serving table parks a heinously ugly roll of padding that looks like a thousand sponges got in a tear-’em-up fight in front of a steamroller.
“Fabulous!”
“I can hardly imagine this place fixed up.” Will.
“I know that’s right. Hey, you all here to see Sister J?”
Jace nods. “I’m here to check up on a couple of patients.”
“Uh-huh, that’s right. I’ll call ’em down.”
I step forward. “Is Sister Jerusha in?”
“Naw, she gone to some seminary somewhere for some downtime. Some crazy Catholic-silence thing. Be back tomorrow.”
Drat. I’ll have to call her on the phone and tell her I’m all hers.
“What about Krista? Is she around?”
“She sure is. I’ll call her down.”
Mo starts making his calls. Jace looks around. “Maybe we can help find some volunteers. Your friend Laney at school, Hezz. Doesn’t her husband lay carpet?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe me and the guys from the old food-basket ministry at church can replace the ceiling tiles and lay the carpet. Redo the plaster too.”
“I’ll bet Carmen and I could round up a group of ladies from Will’s class to help. If she’d even take a call from me.”
Jace puts an arm around me.
“I hate it when I burn bridges like that.”
Krista walks down the stairs. “Miss Heather!”
“Dang, you look good!”
She turns. “I got it all cut off! You like it?”
“I do.”
Her hair is shorn close to her head. She looks so sleek.
“Jace, remember Krista?”
“Absolutely. How are you?”
“I’m good. Good.”
“Great.”
“Dr. Curridge! Your patients are on their way down.” Mo.
Jace turns on the kind professionalism even as he turns toward the first patient walking down the stairs.
As long as he’s turning, I turn toward Krista. “How about we go get something to drink?”
“Okay.”
Will looks at Mo. “Can I stay here with you?”
“If it’s all right with your mother.”
I shrug. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”
“Wanna play dominoes?” Mo asks Will.
“You’ll have to teach me.”
“Sit down, sit down, sit down.” He drags a chair to the desk. “And learn from the master.”
A few minutes later Krista and I sit on a bench on North Avenue, right near the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. The row houses along this stretch, some of them four stories high, sat pretty and proud back in the day, I’ll bet. Beautiful woodwork probably hides behind drywall or heavy layers of paint inside those homes.
“So what’s the news? Are you still going to rehab?”
“I’m just going to regular meetings now.”
“Are you hopeful?”
“I guess so. It’s hard, though, you know? Living there at the Hotel. If I could just find me a place, just a little place with my own refrigerator and a stove where I could make up a stew or some beets—I love buttered beets—a little room with a pullout couch and room for a crib.”
“An efficiency apartment?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nothin’ much, just a place I can make my own. There’s women at the Hotel acting like they know all that and more, and if they do, what they doin’ there? No, ma’am. I just want to have a little place to call my own and still be accountable to somebody. I got to have that. I know I can’t figure this all out by myself, but I’m about to go crazy there!”
“I don’t know of any place like that.”
“Me either.”
It’s amazing how different Krista is now that she’s clean. I grieve to imagine her heading in again and losing all hope of getting Kenya back.
I reach int
o my purse and pull out a little calling card I had printed up when we moved into the house on the hill. “You know what, if you ever need anything, just call me. I’ll drop everything.”
She takes the card and doesn’t say anything.
I want to fill in the gap and expound on my offer, but something tells me to let it be.
* * *
Mo trounced Will in several games of dominoes, and Will is determined to best him next time.
Jace examined some extra patients who heard there was a doctor in the house.
I actually had a conversation with Knox Dulaney just as I slipped back inside the Hotel. Krista took one look at him and hurried up the steps.
So here’s the crazy thing. I’ve never before communicated at length with a criminal, but he’s so cordial. I can’t understand that, but I do understand how Sister J can’t forsake him. He’s lost. So very lost, and a piece inside him knows it.
“Sister Jerusha told me about my man giving your husband trouble awhile ago. I just wanted to apologize.”
What do I say? It’s okay? I mean, this isn’t your standard situation. Oh, sure. It’s okay if your enforcer or whatever they call these guys was ready to rough up my husband. No prob.
He smiled. “It’s awkward. It’s okay. Listen, when I walk in here, I lay everything else aside.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Will you be coming back?”
“Yes. I wanted to talk to Sister J about that today.”
“Well, do me a favor. You keep an eye on her, won’t you? She burns the candle at all three ends.”
“I will.”
And then he left. And I swear, when he walked out that door, the delicate planes of his face hardened into walls of concrete. He slipped into the backseat of a black BMW, and it sped off as he closed the door.
Even now, I can’t believe I interacted with a drug dealer. How can he come into that place knowing he’s the reason a lot of those people are there in the first place, hooked on his drugs, scared to be anywhere else?
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