Beyond Deserving

by Sandra Scofield

  Ursula cannot move for a moment. “Oh Julie,” she says.

  Juliette bursts into fresh sobs and turns to put her face in the pillow. Ursula finds it heartbreaking not to touch her, but she can see it would make things worse. She stands up. Something occurs to her. “Has Brian seen your feet?”

  Muffled by the pillow, Juliette says, “Yes, tonight. He said he is going to call you tomorrow. He said if I didn’t tell you he would.”

  “Good for him,” Ursula says, and marches out of the room.

  It is relief to find that everyone has declared the evening a success but a tiring one. Carter has left to take Annabel home. Rhea has fallen asleep on the floor. “I could put her on my bed,” Fish says, “and sleep on the couch.” Ursula nods. Katie gathers glasses, takes them to the kitchen, and exits without saying much of anything. Finally, Ursula, Michael, and Clare huddle on the couch to talk about Juliette.

  “I went up to tell her goodnight,” Michael says.

  “Did she show you her feet?” Ursula asks.

  “No. She was awfully tired. She gave me a big hug and I think she was asleep before I left the room.”

  “Good,” Clare says.

  “I told you she needed a therapist,” Ursula says.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Clare says.

  “Hasty! How long has this been going on?”

  “A few weeks, I gather. And that was a few weeks ago. If Brian hadn’t noticed, probably none of us would have, either.”

  “God,” Ursula says.

  “Her feet?” Michael says.

  “She’s only mutilated them,” Ursula says.

  “She’s been picking at them,” Clare says. “It looks worse than it is.”

  “Hmmm,” Michael says, unalarmed.

  “You didn’t see,” Ursula says. “I think I should call someone tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” Clare says, “you should talk to someone yourself.”

  “Me!”

  “To get a handle on your anxiety.”

  “Mother!” Ursula looks to Michael, who maintains a clearly neutral expression. “Michael!” Then, she crumples and begins to cry. Michael puts his arm around her.

  “Darling,” her mother says, “take a tranquilizer or something and get a good night’s rest. Go to work tomorrow and let me spend some time with her. Now her little secret’s out she won’t feel so guilty and confused. You know, as bad as it looks, I don’t think she’s hurt herself, really. Sometimes when you’re worrying too much about something, and you don’t have the coping skill, you do something else to distract yourself. Chew your nails. Drink. Tear paper. Julie scratched her feet.”

  Ursula feels as if she has already taken a sleeping pill. “I can’t hold my head up much longer,” she says in surprise. It seems negligent, to go off to sleep now.

  “You go along,” Michael says. “I’ll be up in a while.” He kisses her forehead. “If Clare is interested, I’ll open the wine from the back of the frig. The good stuff.”

  Clare gets up too. “I’ll wash us some glasses, Michael.”

  54

  While the men help Mr. Melroy pack up his stuff from the flea market table, Rhea lies in the back of Gully’s truck on his makeshift bed. It is rumpled and it doesn’t smell very fresh, but Rhea has never been in any kind of camper before, and she loves the cozy feeling. She is reading a book her Uncle Michael gave her about birds and birding. She never heard about “birding” before. Uncle Michael and his students make nesting boxes for bluebirds, and take them out into the woods every year. He says she can put out water dishes, and hang fresh fruit in the yard tomorrow, to make more birds come; he says his kids weren’t so interested in birds, so he didn’t think right away to tell her about them. Juliette does love the hummingbirds that come around the back of the house where the feeder hangs. Rhea loves to sit out there with Juliette, who is beautiful and smart and a wonderful dancer too.

  Rhea recites the names of birds. She isn’t sure how you say some of them, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s like saying a poem or singing a song: mourning doves, ring-necked pheasants, grackles and catbirds, tufted titmice, slate-colored juncos and redpolls, finches and grosbeaks. When Rhea gets home, she is going to tell Granny that they should feed birds in the winter, and when she has a project at school, she will do it about birds.

  Or boats. Her father likes boats the way Uncle Michael likes birds, except that Michael does something about birds, and Fish doesn’t actually have a boat. He says that after he moves back into his house, he is going to build a little fishing boat to take out on the river, and next summer when she comes back, they will go out in it together. She likes the idea of next summer already.

  It is amazing to Rhea that she has so many relatives. It seems to her that if you are at Uncle Michael and Aunt Ursula’s house, it is like a reunion just about every day. There are so many people in and out of the house, she wondered if she would have to write their names down at first to remember. But she knows everybody now, even several of her cousin Carter’s friends.

  “Hey sweet thing,” she hears her Uncle Michael say. Her birding book has slid off her chest onto the quilt beside her. Her eyes are puffy and blurred; she has been asleep. “You can ride up front with Gully, or ride with Fish and me. Gotta have a seat-belt.”

  She sits up and rubs her eyes. “You all done?”

  “Sure are. Melroy had a good day and he’s invited us to come up and see the dogs and drink lemonade. Would you like to do that? We’ve got a little time before we need to go home.”

  “Oh yeah!” Rhea says. She crawls down out of the canopy and goes around to ride with her grandfather. Fish leans in the window. “You hungry?” he asks. She wasn’t thinking about it before, but now she is. “Kinda,” she says, and Fish produces a bag of popcorn.

  When they are on the road, Rhea says, “I don’t know what I am supposed to call you. You’re my grandfather, but everybody says Gully.”

  “Well now, we didn’t talk about that, did we? What do you think?”

  “I don’t have a grandpa in Texas. Could I call you Grandpa?”

  “You can if you want to.”

  “What does Juliette call you?”

  “Gully.”

  “My father calls you Pop.”

  “And you call him Fish!”

  “Yeah.” She thinks about that for a few minutes.

  “What’s that book you’ve got there?”

  “It’s about birds. Uncle Michael gave it to me.”

  “He does love them. Both boys had birds when they were kids. They had canaries and wild birds both. Once we had a goose we were going to cook for Christmas, they must have been five, they were in kindergarten. You know, that goose died a natural death the year they started high school? I couldn’t believe that some critter didn’t chomp its neck off. Course half the time the boys put it in a shed or the garage at night, and it slept in the doghouse, too.”

  “Did it have a name?”

  Gully laughs. “Goose.” He’s a funny man, thinks Rhea, in his coveralls, with long white hair.

  Rhea thinks her grandmother would wonder if he was all right, but he is. He’s very nice. She laughs too. “I never had a pet.”

  Gully says, “One year they brought home a whole nest of orphan crows and kept them for months. Their Ma liked to died of the racket, but when we tried to get rid of them, they found their way back. They pecked at the boys’ windows in the morning, real early.”

  “Did you like birds when you were a boy?”

  “I was always a dog man. And I had a pet raccoon, a pretty tame squirrel, a rat or two. Never liked cats, like Michael does.”

  “But you don’t have a dog now, do you?”

  “Naw. My dog died. But I might take one of Melroy’s. You want to help me pick one out?”

  “Sure!”

  “Look at that silly Fish,” Grandpa says. He points to Michael’s truck, in front of them. Fish has turned around in his seat and is making faces at them. Rhea giggles
and waves and sticks out her tongue, back at him.

  “I don’t know when I’ve seen him have such a good time,” Grandpa says. “He’s real happy you came to see him.”

  “Me too.” The funny thing is, she’s hardly seen Katie at all. Katie works sometimes, and she sleeps someplace else and leaves Rhea at Uncle Michael’s. She says she doesn’t like to go out to Gully’s house. Rhea feels funny about her mother. She thinks there is something she ought to do to make her mother like her more, but she doesn’t know what it is. At least she knows she will see her again, in Texas, but even if they do talk about next summer, she isn’t sure she will get to come to Oregon again, so it is really important to get to know everybody. There will be so many things to tell Granny and Aunt Christine.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe I could keep a diary,” she says. “In case I would forget the things I’m doing now. Our teacher says even when it’s really important stuff going on in your life, you grow up and forget, because your mind gets stuffed up with new things.”

  “That’s a fine idea. Would you like me to buy you one?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she says, “Grandpa.”

  “I think it’s a fine idea, keeping a diary. Sometimes I write little things down, myself. But it isn’t true that you forget everything. When you get old like me, you start losing stuffing, and lo and behold those old memories are under there waiting to come out again.”

  “Like what? What do you remember?”

  “Well, like your dad’s first boat he built. You ask him about it sometime, I bet he remembers. He was twelve, and he spent a whole winter building it. He had a grand summer with it, too. Then there was a big storm. He had it tied up at the river, and it broke loose and got pulled away. Months later he was walking and he saw this boat in an old man’s yard, turned over and propped up against a shed. He went up to the old man and he asked him would he sell it, he’d like to have it real bad. Then he ran home to get money from me. Paid fifteen dollars for his own durned boat.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell the guy it was his?”

  “He didn’t have any way to prove it. And maybe he figured the old man had rescued the boat, you know, kept it from smashing up? It was kind of like a reward.”

  “You tell good stories, Grandpa,” Rhea says. “You should write them down.”

  “You think? Who’d care what an old goat like me had to say?”

  “I would.”

  55

  Rhea and Juliette sit up in Juliette’s bed after everyone else is asleep, whispering in the dark. Rhea tells her cousin about Melroy’s place. “You’ve got to go sometime,” she says. “It’s really fun.” There were dogs everywhere, and all of them nice ones you could pet. Melroy showed her how he makes a dog do a trick, and if he doesn’t do it right, Melroy shakes a bean can at him. “They knew lots of tricks,” Rhea tells Juliette. Melroy lay down right in the middle of the yard, and the dogs jumped over him like a hurdle. It was the funniest thing Rhea ever saw. She loved that dog Bounder. Everywhere she ran, Bounder came too. And when she got tired and sat down right in the dirt, Bounder raced around her and licked her legs and jumped up to put his nose in her face. Grandpa said he liked Bounder, too, and Melroy said, anytime you want, the dog is yours. Easy as that.

  Juliette says she doesn’t like to go out to Gully and Geneva’s. “Geneva doesn’t like kids, didn’t you notice?”

  “We didn’t stay there. We just went in for a few minutes, and she gave me a cookie out of a bag. An Oreo. It was okay. She wanted Fish and Michael to stay for supper, but they said they had to come back because we were all going out Chinese, and she said, I don’t know why anybody eats things in little pieces like that.” Granny says sometimes old people just get a little sour, and you have to be polite and not mind, because you might be that way too someday. Rhea doesn’t think she will ever get sour. After all, Granny is sweet and so is Aunt Christine. And Gully/Grandpa isn’t sour, either. Maybe there is something that made Geneva really sad a long time ago and she didn’t get over it. Maybe she wishes something about her life she can’t change. If there was anything Rhea knew to do, she would do it. Geneva is her grandmother.

  “I’m going to go to Seattle after my dad’s birthday party,” Juliette says. Rhea can tell she is excited. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ll only be gone a few days.”

  “I think I go back to Texas pretty soon after the fourth anyway. Time is going by fast. Fish said he would take me to Crater Lake, too. I think that must be far away.”

  “Not so far. A few hours.”

  “You’re going to Seattle because your grandmother lives there?”

  “She works for a school that trains artists and actors and dancers. They let high school students come half-days if they are good enough. I’m going to go up and audition, and see about where I’d go for the academic stuff.”

  “And not live here?!” Rhea doesn’t see how Juliette could think of that. This is the nicest house Rhea has ever been in. It is full of things and people. Something is always going on.

  “My mother hasn’t said yes, but Dad says, we’ll see, in a way that I know means yes if it works out. I just want to dance. I don’t care about school.”

  “Is that what you’re going to be when you grow up? A dancer?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. But right now I’d like to get to be good at baton twirling. I’ve been practicing the hand roll for the longest time. You try to make the baton roll around in your hand, while in your head you say, roll and grab, roll and grab. Only most the time it falls off my hand. It’s a hard roll.”

  “What have you shown me? I mean, what do you call those things?”

  “I can almost always do a Pinwheel. Sometimes with my left hand, too. I have to practice that. I know how to do the Baton Salute, and some poses.”

  “I can help you with that arabesque one. If you hold your head up higher you’ll keep your balance.”

  “I can strut and keep time doing it.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Juliette?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think I look like anybody? Like I belong in the family?”

  “You look like your mom and dad both, Rhea. You look like a kid, I guess. Like you. Listen, we all like you lots.”

  “I’ve always wondered. My name is Rhea Fisher and I wondered if I looked like one. Like a Fisher. Or if I act like one.”

  “Don’t do that!” Juliette laughs. “We’re all crazy!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I gotta go to sleep. I have ballet class at nine.”

  “I’ll go down to the guest bed. See you tomorrow.”

  “Night.”

  Downstairs, Michael and Ursula are sitting on the couch side by side, reading. The child peeks around from the stairway and says, “Goodnight.” Michael says, “Come get a hug,” and she does.

  They hear her scampering along the hall upstairs. “She’s a cute kid,” Ursula says. She has Juliette on her mind, of course, but Rhea is sweet.

  “She’s a great kid,” Michael concurs. “But why do you think they named her Rhea? Why would they give her the name of a flightless bird?”

  “Don’t you breathe a word!” Ursula says. “I’m sure Katie has no idea.”

  “The funny thing is,” Michael says, “it’ll probably be Rhea who finds out. She’s smart and curious. If you ask me, she’s very likely to have wings after all.”

  They go up to bed together and it isn’t until they are in the dark that Michael says, “We probably ought to talk about Carter soon.”

  “What now?”

  “I don’t think he’s going to go to school this fall.”

  Ursula jumps up and turns the overhead light on.

  “Hey, that’s not necessary!”

  “It is too. I want to see you while you explain what you just said.”

  “He wants to open a pizza parlor. A jazzy one, he says. There’s going to be
a space in that cluster of shops across from the college, it’s perfect.”

  “You have to have money for that. He’s eighteen years old!”

  “Annabel is putting up some of it. I don’t think she’s going off either. Not this year.”

  “But she’s accepted at Bennington! She can afford it!”

  “She wants to run a pizza place with Carter.”

  “They’re BABIES.”

  “It’s a lot better than having them.”

  “Oh God.” Ursula can’t think of that. “What do you mean, Annabel’s putting up some of the money? Who’s putting up the rest?”

  “I gave him a thousand dollars to lease equipment.”

  “Michael. Without talking to me.”

  “You’ve been so wrapped up in this Juliette thing. And he had to make a decision or miss his chance.”

  “Our son is going to make PIZZA?”

  “Just for now, Ursula. It’s not a bad idea.”

  “And stay HOME?”

  “He says he’s going to move to the basement when Fish moves out.”

  “What about his school plans? What about his FUTURE?”

  “He can get deferred admission. He says he’s not ready to be serious. I think he’s being pretty mature, frankly. And the worst that can happen is he’ll lose his thousand dollars.”

  “HIS thousand?”

  “It is now. Ursula, I think you should take time off and go to Seattle with Juliette. I don’t think you should turn this whole business about dance school over to Clare. You’ll be in a stew if you do.”

  “What good will it do for me to go?”

  “Maybe you’ll see what Clare sees. Maybe you’ll see Juliette like they see her. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

  Ursula starts to laugh. She stumbles over and turns off the light.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I just realized. You’ve hardly snored at all in weeks. It’s like, maybe you were snoring because you were bored.”

  “Maybe my nose has cleared.”

  She laughs until the tears run. “Oh Michael,” she says, “I thought snoring was the only thing going on. I thought we were becalmed on a still, still sea.”