And then she remembered she had taken the box of stuff outside.
She dashed out of the room and looked everywhere for the sparkly pin. In the parking lot. Up and down the sidewalk. Under the picnic table. Out by the diving board.
Finally, she sat on the wet grass by the flagpole and put her head on her knees.
“What’s wrong, Loretta?”
Loretta looked up. Aggie was bending over her. She was wearing a clear plastic rain hat tied under her chin with a red ribbon.
“I lost my other mother’s poodle dog pin,” Loretta said in a trembly voice.
“Oh, dear,” Aggie said.
Loretta had never felt so miserable. Those things had been all of her other mother’s earthly possessions and now one of them was gone.
And it was all her fault.
Why, why, why had she brought that box outside?
Loretta felt Aggie’s warm hand on her shoulder.
“I hate losing things, too,” Aggie said. “But you know what?”
“What?”
“I have a real knack for finding lost things.”
“You do?”
Aggie nodded. “If I had a nickel for every time Harold lost his glasses, well, shoot, I’d be richer than the Queen of England. And don’t you know it was me that found ’em every time.”
“Really?”
“That’s right.” Aggie stroked Loretta’s hair. “And one time some folks from way up in New York lost their car keys and like to gone crazy till I found ’em. And guess where they were.”
“Where?
“In one of my flowerpots.” Aggie chuckled. “Right down in there with the begonias.”
Loretta stood up and brushed the wet grass from the backs of her legs.
“Aren’t you smart wearing your bathing suit in this wet weather?” Aggie said.
Loretta looked down at her mud-splattered bathing suit and shrugged. She didn’t tell Aggie that she had put on her bathing suit so she could pose in front of the mirror, pretending like she was on a rock in the middle of a creek, holding a towel—just like her other mother in that photo in the box.
“I’ll help you look for that pin, okay?” Aggie said.
Loretta nodded, brushing strands of wet hair out of her eyes.
Loretta and Aggie looked for the poodle dog pin all afternoon. Under Clyde Dover’s pickup truck. All around the sign out by the road. Even in Aggie’s begonias.
Loretta’s mother joined them, telling Loretta over and over not to worry. They would find it.
When Loretta’s father finished helping Clyde Dover fix the clogged drain in Room 4, he joined them, too. Even Ugly ambled along beside them as they searched, stopping every now and then to lick the rain off his scruffy black coat.
But no one found the sparkly poodle dog pin.
Not even Aggie, who had always been so good at finding things.
Aggie
Aggie hung her wet jacket on the hook behind the door and took off her muddy rubber boots.
“I can’t believe I can’t find that pin,” she said to Ugly.
Aggie had been so certain she was going to find Loretta’s pin. She had looked for hours yesterday and again first thing this morning.
But she hadn’t found it.
“Maybe I’ve lost my touch,” she said to Ugly.
She slipped into her ratty old bedroom slippers and put the kettle on the stove.
“We might as well have some tea before we, well, you know …” she said.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word out loud.
Pack.
Pack her things.
Pack Harold’s things.
Pack all their things in boxes so Clayton Underwood could take them to her cousin Evelyn’s place over in Raleigh.
While she sipped her tea, Aggie watched the rain outside. Every now and then she glanced over at the cardboard boxes by the door. Clayton Underwood had brought them when he’d delivered her groceries, and she had thanked him and promised she’d have them packed by next week so he could pick them up. She had written Clothes on one and Kitchen on one and Other Stuff on one.
But she didn’t know where to start.
How do you pack a life? she wondered.
“Aggie?”
Aggie jumped.
“Aggie?”
Aggie recognized that soft little voice coming from the other side of the curtain over the office door.
“Is that you, Willow?” Aggie said.
Willow pulled the curtain aside and stood in the doorway, looking like the shyest child Aggie had ever seen in all her born days.
“Come in, sweetheart,” Aggie said. “Me and Ugly are just sitting here having some tea.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like some?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Nasty weather out there.”
Willow glanced out the window and nodded. Then she stepped into the room.
“I brought you something,” she said.
“You did?”
Willow held out her hand. A china horse. A galloping black stallion.
Aggie felt her worried face soften and her heavy heart lift, and all she could do was shake her head in amazement at how a little ole thing like a china horse could change things so much.
She set her teacup on the TV tray beside the chair and motioned for Willow to come over to her.
Willow walked with one foot in front of the other, ever so slowly, like she was balancing on a log. When she got to Harold’s chair, Aggie hugged her.
She was surprised how small and fragile Willow was. Such a frail wisp of a girl.
And then Aggie felt Willow’s arms around her neck, hugging her back.
“His name is Lightning,” Willow said, looking down at the little horse in the palm of her hand. “You can keep him,” she added.
Aggie took the horse from Willow and studied it.
“You know, my Uncle Nathan used to have a horse looked just like this,” Aggie said.
“Really?”
“Sure did. Me and my cousin Evelyn used to ride him bareback. You ever ride bareback?”
Willow shook her head. “I never rode a horse at all,” she said.
Aggie slapped her knee. “You don’t mean that,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Well, I bet you’ve done plenty of things I’ve never done.”
Willow shrugged.
Ugly leaped off the chair and strolled along the orange carpet path toward the door. Then he jumped inside one of the cardboard boxes.
“What are those?” Willow said, pointing.
“Oh, well, those are for, um, packing.”
There, Aggie thought. She had said it.
“Packing?” Willow’s eyebrows squeezed together.
“Clayton Underwood’s gonna have a conniption fit if them boxes ain’t ready by next week.”
“Ready for what?” Willow said.
“Um, well, ready for him to take ’em over to my cousin Evelyn’s place in Raleigh.”
“How come?”
Aggie looked down at the china horse in her hand and was nearly knocked over by the smothering sadness that fell over the room. It swirled around her and it swirled around Willow. It seeped into every corner of the room, climbing over Harold’s lounge chair and slithering along the tabletops and snaking through the begonias.
Finally Willow’s voice broke the silence. “Why do you have to leave?” she said, sitting on the bed across from Aggie.
So Aggie explained to Willow that this room wasn’t hers anymore. She told her about Evelyn’s condominium over in Raleigh. How there was an extra bedroom with pink striped wallpaper that she had never seen but Evelyn had said was real nice. There was a laundry room with six washers and six dryers, a heated swimming pool, and a community room where folks could watch movies on Mondays and play cards on Wednesdays.
“And they allow cats,” Aggie said, looking over at Ugly sitting in the box marked Kitchen. �
��Although Evelyn never has cared much for cats,” she added.
“But don’t you want to stay here?” Willow said, twisting a strand of her thin blond hair around and around her finger.
Aggie studied Willow’s face. Her serious eyes. Her quivering chin. If there was ever a child who needed to hear the truth, the forlorn little girl sitting in front of her was it.
So Aggie said, “Yes. I do want to stay here.”
“Then why don’t you?” Willow said.
Aggie’s hand fluttered up and adjusted her glasses. “Well, you know, life marches on. And sometimes we have to join the parade whether we want to or not.” Aggie took both of Willow’s hands in hers. “You know what I mean?” she said.
Willow lifted her shoulders and let them drop with a sigh. She hung her head and planted her feet on the floor, looking for all the world like she intended to stay there forever.
Aggie waited.
And then Willow told her all about Dorothy.
How she used to make gingerbread every Friday.
How she had read the Bible cover to cover and once broke her arm trying to get a cat off the roof.
How she had named Willow after her favorite tree and sometimes wore her sweaters backwards just for fun.
How she believed that if you walk into a cobweb, you’ll get a letter from someone you love.
How she and Willow’s dad had just stopped loving each other and so she had left.
Then Willow got quiet and they all just sat there.
Willow on the bed.
Aggie in Harold’s chair.
And Ugly in the Kitchen box.
The rain splattered against the windows and ran down the glass in wavy little rivers.
Aggie’s thoughts were bouncing all around—from Willow to that condominium over in Raleigh to those boxes stacked up by the door and back to Willow again.
“I know your mama loves you a lot,” she said.
Willow shrugged and picked at a thread on the button of her shirt. “I’m pretty sure she used to,” she said so soft and low that Aggie had to lean forward to hear her.
Aggie slapped her hands on the arms of the chair so hard that Willow jumped. “Used to?” Aggie said. “Listen to you.” She peered up into Willow’s face. “I guaran-dern-tee you that as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, that mother of yours loves you to pieces.”
“Then why’d she leave me?” Willow said.
“Just got in the wrong parade, I reckon.”
Willow cocked her head like she was thinking it over.
Aggie pushed her glasses up on her nose. “What I mean is, she just veered off in a different direction from the one she was going in before.” She patted Willow’s knee. “She ain’t forgot you, sweetheart.”
Aggie studied Willow. Her curly blond hair swirling around her face. Her peeling pink fingernail polish. The spattering of pale freckles on her arms.
“Well, would you look at that?” Aggie pointed out the window. “The sun came out.”
Willow looked out the window and nodded.
“Let’s go say hey to Harold,” Aggie said. “You know, back there in the garden.”
“Okay.”
Outside, the air smelled fresh and clean. Queen Anne’s lace, heavy from the rain, bowed down along the roadside. A tiny wren splashed in a puddle of muddy water in the parking lot.
With Ugly strolling along beside them, Aggie and Willow walked around back to the garden, hand in hand, to say hello to Harold.
Willow
Willow had a stomachache.
She sat in the rocking chair in front of Room 10 and made a list inside her head of all the reasons she had a stomachache.
Dorothy
Those cardboard boxes over in Aggie’s room
That boy Kirby, hopping all around out there in the parking lot
Dorothy
The new motel sign that was on its way here at this very minute
Dorothy
Willow was supposed to be inside, eating the ham sandwich her father had made for lunch.
But she had a stomachache.
She stayed out in the rocking chair and waited for Clayton Underwood to bring the mail.
Maybe he would bring a letter from Dorothy.
After a while, Willow got tired of waiting, so she went down to the office to watch her father paint.
“This will cheer the place up a bit,” her father said, swiping bright yellow paint over the dingy gray wall.
“What about those?” Willow pointed to the cup hooks lying in a pile on the counter.
The cup hooks that used to be on the wall to hang the room keys on.
Her father glanced at them and shrugged. “I don’t know. They seem kind of old-fashioned to me.”
“Not to me.”
“Anyway,” her father went on, “I was thinking we should change all the locks on the doors and have those cards. You know, like fancy hotels have.”
Willow shook her head. “That’s a bad idea.”
Her father kept painting. “And I’m thinking we should charge for those maps.” He nodded toward the stack of maps on the counter. “Maybe a dollar?” He looked at Willow. “What do you think?”
“I think they should be free.”
Her father tossed the paintbrush onto the newspaper on the floor and sighed.
“Willow,” he said. “A lot of things around here need changing, and your attitude is one of ’em.”
Willow kept her gaze on the counter in front of her. She swung one leg back and forth, hitting the stool with her heel.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Her father picked up the paintbrush again.
“If we’re gonna make this place work, we’ve gotta change things,” he said.
“Why?” Willow’s voice was soft and trembly.
Her father let out another sigh.
A big, heaving sigh.
“You said yourself this place is awful,” he said. “You hate the carpet and you hate the swimming pool and you—”
“Well, I don’t anymore.” Willow kept thunking the stool. “Why does Aggie have to leave?” she said.
And then her father did what he always did. He closed right up. He shut his mouth and he shut his mind and he shut his heart. Sealed it all up and threw away the key.
So Willow left the office and went around back to the garden. Raindrops still glistened on the droopy leaves of the beans and tomatoes and melons. She sat on the milk crate and wished she were back in the little brick house in Hailey, playing with Maggie, trotting her china horses around the screened porch until Dorothy called her in for dinner.
When Willow got tired of wishing, she headed back up the path out of the garden. And just as she was rounding the corner of the motel, she felt something on her face.
A cobweb.
The soft strands of a cobweb, stretching across her face and in her hair.
Kirby
Kirby sat in the lawn chair outside his room and took out the shoebox that Burla had given him.
Dear Burla,
How is Barney? I hope he is good.
Virgil said he sent money to get the car fixed but he didn’t. Mama is mad as anything. (What else is new? Ha Ha)
That girl with the bracelet (her name is Loretta) asked me to teach her my yo-yo tricks. Maybe I will.
I ate all the cookies you sent. They were good.
Give Barney a hug.
Your friend,
Kirby
“Oh, yoo-hoo, Kirby.”
Aggie shuffled toward him in her big yellow boots.
Kirby stuffed the letter into the box and clamped the lid on.
“I was wondering if maybe you’d like a little job,” Aggie said.
Kirby shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said.
“I could use some help cleaning out that storage room over by the office,” Aggie said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll pay you, of course.”
“You don’t have to,” Kirby
said.
“Naw, I’m paying you.” Aggie gave him a little push. “Shoot, you’ll be wantin’ a raise after you get a look at that room.”
Kirby wiped sweat off the back of his neck with a paper towel and pulled another dusty box off the shelf in the storage room. Aggie sat in a lawn chair outside the door.
Kirby was supposed to hold up each thing in the box for Aggie to see and then she would say Keep, Sell, Give Away, or Toss. Then he would put it into the right pile.
The trouble was, instead of saying Keep, Sell, Give Away, or Toss, Aggie would say, “My land’s sakes alive, I’d forgotten all about that.” Or, “Well, I’ll be a saint in heaven, I thought I gave that to the paperboy.” Or “Oh, bless me. I got that when me and Harold went to Charlotte to see his brother Ed.”
Sometimes she would tell a long story. Like about how she had bought all those paper napkins at the flea market and figured they could use them in the bathrooms and save on the laundry bill, but Harold thought she had plumb lost her mind, so then he got some little ole tea towels real cheap and used a marker to write Sleepy Time Motel on them, but the writing wasn’t very good and then it all came off in the washing machine anyway and then …
Kirby tried to listen.
He really, really tried to listen.
And he tried to be still while he was trying to listen.
But it was hard.
Now he was opening about the hundredth box, and the Keep pile was getting bigger and bigger, and there was nothing at all in the Toss pile.
Kirby reached in the box and took out a brown envelope. Inside the envelope was a frayed cloth patch. A round blue patch with a silver star and gold wings. He held it up for Aggie to see.
She drew in her breath and clasped her hands together.
“Well, would you look at that,” she said, holding out a trembling hand to take the patch. She squinted down at it, turning it over and over, rubbing the front of it.
“What is it?” Kirby said.
“Harold got that in the war,” she said, tracing the gold wings with a crooked finger. “It’s from the Army Air Forces. That’s what Harold was in. The Army Air Forces. Back in the war.”
Greetings from Nowhere Page 7