Heart and Home

by Jennifer Melzer

  “That’s great. I’m looking forward to it.” She gave me the address and thanked me again before finally hanging up.

  It didn’t occur to me until after I’d hung up that she’d said she had to take her son to the doctor, and the notion of her being married brought a small grin to my lips. There was hope in the world if Becky Raynard managed to find happiness despite the obstacles Sonesville’s upper crust had thrown in her path.

  I looked back in on the dining room. The scrapbooks and the materials would all need to be organized somehow, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do just yet. Combing through her youth was strange enough, like I was outside looking in at the life of the woman who raised me. Now that she was gone, she seemed foreign to me, almost like she’d never really been at all. Maybe I’d consult with my dad before tackling the scrapbook stuff. He might even want to help.

  Instead, I decided to get started with the three sorted piles of dirty clothes on the laundry room floor. I arranged the first pile evenly around the agitator and opened up the cupboard only to discover the reason they’d remained unwashed. The detergent bottle had less than half a cupful. I turned the water off and hiked upstairs to check the grocery list my mother started. Sure enough, laundry detergent was at the top, and it was followed by bleach, dishwasher gel, toilet scrub and a host of other cleaning agents.

  Obviously, I was going to have to drive over to the store if I wanted to get any of the housework done before Dad came home from work. I ran a brush through my hair, and wound up hiding the unruly mass under a blue bandana. I debated changing out of my sweats, but in the end decided I wasn’t out to impress. It made no sense to shower and get all dressed up if I was just going to come home and get dirty again. If I ran into Amber Williams, my appearance could give her something to gossip about at her next “Mommy & Me Gymboree,” or whatever it was she did with her spare time.

  In retrospect, I probably should have thought beyond Amber in terms of who I might run into, because no one was more surprised than I was when aisle three brought cleaning supplies, paper towels and toiletries and Troy Kepner. I saw him before he saw me and was just about to back out of the aisle to hide in the frozen food section when he looked up and caught my eye. Realizing there was no escape, I swallowed the rising panic in my chest and tried not to think about how awful I looked.

  I pasted on my biggest smile and tried to ignore the fact that to top it all off I picked the squeakiest cart in the whole grocery store. Even if I tried to escape, the cart would have attracted the attention of everyone.

  “We meet again.” I reached across the aisle and hefted a gallon of liquid laundry detergent into the cart.

  “Funny how that keeps happening.” Dimples shadowed his cheeks as he laughed. He was still dangerously unshaven, the kind of stubble with the power to make even the most rigid man seem casual and sexy.

  “Yeah,” I leaned on the cart in front of me. “I mean it’s such a big town. What are the odds?”

  “Slim to none?” The full force of his grin sunk into me, and I had to hold on to the cart to hide the fact that it made my knees feel a little weak. “It must be fate.”

  “Fate,” it was my turn to laugh. “Good one.”

  “How have you been doing, Janice?”

  My lips pursed together almost involuntarily as I lowered my head in a stiff nod, “I’m hanging in there.” I avoided his eyes when I added, “Thanks for asking.”

  “Well, I wanted to ask after you at church yesterday, but I had to get my mom home. She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I hope it’s nothing serious.” Nothing serious? The woman had multiple sclerosis. That was about as serious as things got.

  “Oh, no,” he shook his head. “She gets headaches sometimes, has trouble with her vision. I tried to talk her out of even going yesterday, but asking her to miss church is like asking Monday not to follow Sunday.”

  “My mom was the same way.” Or at least she was when I was a kid, I thought. “She’d be delirious with fever and chills as she huddled in her pew, and then she’d always be the last one to leave.”

  He turned a box of dishwasher tabs over in his hands, as if the movement itself calmed him somehow. I watched his hands, weathered and callused from years of working outside, and for a moment I actually found myself thinking about how hands like that might feel against my skin. A jolt of weakness shot straight to my knees.

  “So, uh, how long do you think you’ll be in town for?”

  “Just the week.” I said. “I really shouldn’t have stayed, but there’s still so much to do. I couldn’t leave my dad with all of it.”

  Troy nodded, “I know how that is.”

  “I’ll probably head back next Sunday.”

  “Nice,” he was still nodding. “Maybe I’ll see you around again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you know, if you find you need anything this week,” he started, and I wondered all the way down to my knees just how he’d go about finishing that sentence. After a long pause he added, “Anything at all, don’t be afraid to give me a call.”

  Anything at all. I hoped the warmth in my cheeks wasn’t evidence of a blush, because despite not having let my thoughts wander too far over that anything at all, it didn’t seem to take much to make me feel flustered when it came to Troy.

  “All right,” I hoped I didn’t seem too eager as I nodded my appreciation. Not that’d I’d actually have the guts to call him, but it was the thought that counted. “Thanks, Troy.” For a moment I was drawn into his gaze. I’d never seen eyes that particular shade of blue before, and there was a comfortable warmth about it that made me want to stand there like that for as long as he’d let me. “I mean it, thanks for everything. You’ve been so kind to me this last week, and I really appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I think he told me to take care before he walked away, I wasn’t sure. In fact, I felt so wobbly-kneed that it actually took me a few seconds to figure out how to make my legs work after he left. It was embarrassing in retrospect. I mean, in all honesty I hadn’t had a guy make me feel like that ever, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about Troy (all right, aside from the fact that he was incredibly attractive,) that was making me crumble like half-dried clay every time he was around.

  Just thinking about calling him made me squirm nervously, but the greater part of me started hoping like hell I needed something before the week was out. Anything at all.

  Chapter Eight

  I headed home and immediately hit the shower, completely embarrassed that I ran into Troy looking the way I did. Vain, yes, but I wasn’t about to risk running into him again on my way home from Becky’s house dressed like Burt the Chimney Sweep from Mary Poppins. By the time I left to visit with Becky and pick up my mother’s scrapbooking materials order, I felt more confident, even as I continued to deny I had any need to impress anyone.

  I cruised through the streets of my old hometown and tried to curb my nostalgia, but an extra burst crept up on me as I passed by the old Sonesville Standard building. The Standard was my first real journalism job, even if all I did was hit the movie theater at the mall every weekend and then write up reviews. It really wasn’t journalism at all, but despite my small role, I had been a part of the Standard during one of the biggest news story to ever hit our little town.

  Just before my senior year eleven-year-old Bethany Moss was abducted from her bedroom while her parents slept three rooms away. During the six week search for Bethany the environment at the Sonesville Standard had been electric. It was during that time that my longtime dream of becoming a jet-setting journalist was confirmed. As horrible as it seemed to me even then, I realized for the first time that beyond our small town there were newspapers that experienced that kind of excitement every day.

  Three days before I left for college my final task for Mr. Sanders was to fill the marquis in front of the building with a neighborhood-friendly warning that read: SCHOOL’S IN WATCH FOR BUSE
S. I was both saddened and surprised to see that the marquis hadn’t been updated since I’d left, and it now read: S OOL S I ATC F R BU ES. The fact that no one bothered to update it in years was disheartening. Even worse, I couldn’t believe that no one rearranged the letters to spell something clever like: FOOL I C UR ASS, leaving the final letters to dangle at the end without purpose.

  A disappointed sigh left me feeling deflated long after I passed the building. Mr. Sanders was old long before I worked for him. Even then I’d known it was only a matter of time before the poor excuse for a paper fell apart. Regardless of how far The Standard had fallen in the last ten years, I would still clip my mother’s obituary from its pages when I got home.

  During the rest of the drive I thought about scrapbooking. I hadn’t even known my mother was into that. She’d never mentioned it, but then I wasn’t surprised. Personally, I knew very little about the art and couldn’t see myself memorializing her obituary or the collection of condolence cards that poured in through the mailbox all week. Did people even scrapbook death? Would that be in any way, shape or form appropriate? Fortunately, my train of thought was interrupted when I realized I arrived at the address Becky gave me over the phone.

  I scanned the street and double checked the address. The greater part of me expected to find her still living along the river in the trailer park where she’d grown up, but the address she’d given me led to one of the oldest Victorian homes in downtown Sonesville. As I checked the address a third time, shame crawled across my conscience. The fact that I hadn’t expected Becky to live anywhere outside the trailer park made me no better than Amber Williams or anyone else who believed those born without money couldn’t rise above their circumstances.

  Becky opened the door and stepped out onto the porch before I even got out of the car. “I saw you pull up,” she explained, hiking up the toddler on her hip.

  I almost didn’t recognize her without the bright red-rimmed glasses that took up half her face at my mother’s wake. Her long hair was coiled into a braided bun at the back of her neck while a few loose tendrils framed her oval face. She wore just a hint of make-up, but that subtle addition was enough to make me second-guess the impressions of her I surmised on Saturday. I really was no better than Amber, I realized, and instantly made myself promise to stop judging everyone I came in contact with.

  I tried not to gawk at her as I started up the steps, but my curiosity got the best of me. “You look different.”

  A smile lit up her entire face. “You mean without those hideous glasses?” she shifted the little boy on her hip to the other side. “I had a bad infection last week and couldn’t wear my contacts at all. Unfortunately, the only pair of glasses I have on hand came straight out of the nineties.” She chuckled. “Come on in,” she stepped aside. “I was just getting ready to put my boys down for a nap.”

  I slipped past her and into the vast, but cozy foyer. “I’m sorry,” I glanced down at my watch. “I didn’t know you had little ones.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she waved me off. “In fact, if you don’t mind having a seat in the den, it’ll just take me a minute to get them situated.”

  “No problem,” I nodded and followed the direction of her finger toward the den.

  It was the kind of room proper ladies had afternoon tea in, I thought. A smile nagged at me when I saw evidence of a more casual lifestyle just beyond the den. A host of toys littered the floor, and the television in the family room blinked images of some yellow sponge in a pair of brown shorts marching circles around a cardboard box. I made myself comfortable on the love seat and folded my hands nervously in my lap. Eyes closed, I breathed in the scent of Becky’s house, which held vague hints of cinnamon and apple, and I wondered if she spent a lot of time baking. I listened in the distance as she talked to her children upstairs and my grin grew wider.

  We hadn’t exactly been the best of friends growing up, but most of the girls in our year were friends in grade school. We’d all been to each other’s houses and birthday parties and knew what to expect from each other personality-wise.

  Becky was been shy and withdrawn, but she was also the first person to come out of her comfort zone and step up when someone else was in need. By the time we reached junior high school Becky’s shyness was intensified by shame about her family life. Amber and her friends tormented a lot of girls, including Becky, but feeling safer out of the line of fire, I kept my nose out of it instead of stepping in and standing up for those other girls. Did Becky hate me for it?

  “Coffee or tea?” Becky leaned in from foyer.

  “Coffee, please.”

  “Let’s have it in the kitchen,” she gestured with her head. “I keep a monitor out there to keep an ear out for the kids. Sometimes they sneak across the hall to play when they’re supposed to be sleeping, and well, that expression ‘boys will be boys’… let’s just say there’s some truth to it. If I don’t at least keep an ear on them, the cat will wind up painted purple, or something.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at a café-style table she gestured toward. As she bustled around the kitchen putting on a pot of coffee, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of her nervousness. On Saturday she’d been unsure about what to say to me, which was completely understandable, but when Amber walked into the picture Becky’s apprehension grew worse. Just under the buzz of the baby monitor, I could hear the children rustling around in their beds.

  “How many children do you have?”

  “Just the two boys,” she pressed her back into the countertop and turned to face me with her arms crossed as the coffee brewed. “Marty’d love to fill the whole house with kids, but I’d be happy with just one more if we had a little girl.”

  “Marty?” I combed through the list of names in my memory bank, and at first I could find no recollection of a Marty.

  His face formed in my mind the minute she said, “Marty Kaufman. He was a few years ahead of us in school.”

  “I remember,” I nodded. “Wasn’t he in the theater club?”

  Becky pursed her lips together in thought, “You know, now that you mention it, I think he was. He played the father in Death of a Salesman the year we were in eighth grade.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I pictured him in my memory dressed in a suit that made him seem much older than his mere eighteen years. “He did a good job.”

  “Yeah,” Becky grinned. “He doesn’t have much time for acting these days, but he’s still a real character.”

  “So you’re Becky Kaufman now?”

  “That’s me,” she walked toward the table with a creamer and sugar bowl. “It used to shock me too, especially when we first starting dating, but it didn’t take much convincing on his part to know he was just what I needed.”

  “Awe,” I lowered my head. “That is so sweet.”

  She turned back toward the table again with the coffee pot in hand. “And what about you? Your mom said you weren’t serious with anyone in Pittsburgh. Was there anyone she didn’t know about?”

  “No, not really.” I admitted. “My job keeps me pretty busy, and there doesn’t seem to be much time for relationships.”

  “That’s too bad,” she tilted her head. “I bet you meet a lot of really interesting people.”

  “A few,” I laughed. “Not many I’d want to date though.”

  “I can’t imagine moving away from here.” She poured coffee into my cup and sat down across from me with her own mug, which she quickly sweetened with cream and sugar. “Do you get lonely at all?”

  My first instinct was a stubborn no, but the revelation I had after talking to my father at brunch stabbed at me like a dull knife. “You know,” I started, “I do get a bit lonely sometimes. It’s not easy to make many real friends when you’re tied to such a sketchy schedule.”

  Becky frowned and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I don’t think I realized how lonely I really
was though until…” I waved my hand in a flourish. “I don’t know, until all of this happened.”

  “You mean your mom passing?”

  I nodded and reached for the creamer. I watched the dollop of cream swim against dark liquid, making it blonde and rich.

  “Coming back here again, seeing how tight the community is, and seeing how many people here just loved my mom… I don’t know.” I paused, not sure I really wanted to go on spilling my guts out to someone I hadn’t really known since the third grade. “This sounds crazy in my head because I spent my whole life doing everything I could to put as much distance between me and this town as I could, and now there’s this secret part of me wondering why I was so eager to leave.”

  “Wow,” Becky’s brow furrowed as she listened, and I couldn’t believe that within less than fifteen minutes at her house I was already telling her things I’d barely even revealed to myself on a conscious level. “Maybe it’s just grief and confusion.” She tried. “I mean, your mom just passed away, and that’s never easy. Maybe there is a part of you that feels like you can connect with her if you’re here, even though she’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” I looped my fingers through the handle of my mug and stared into my coffee. “Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry,” she spoke up. “We barely even know each other anymore, and here I am digging at your private life like some kind of psychotherapist or something.”

  “Don’t apologize.” The ceramic mug warmed the insides of my hands as I lifted into a sip. Hot liquid nipped at my lips and tongue, momentarily numbing the skin there. “There are a lot worse people I can think of to have digging at me.”

  Becky’s quick laughter lit up her entire face, and though neither of us said any names, we both knew who I meant. It was the curse of small town life, living with those who thrived solely on the fumes of everyone else’s garbage. Even as we spoke, someone somewhere was discussing my visit to Becky’s house, probably even talking about my clumsy face-to-face with Troy in the store earlier that morning. Everything was news for the grapevine in Sonesville, which was one of things I did not miss about living there.