Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  “I wish we’d never met them,” I said out loud.

  “Who?” Bud asked.

  “Edward and Andy Barrington.”

  “Let’s not spoil a nice time.”

  We reached the bench, sat down, and looked out over the moonstruck water. Bud kissed my cheek. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m so glad you picked me,” I said.

  “Well, I’m glad you picked me.”

  We grinned at each other and kissed, and as we did we heard a thump in back of us. We broke apart and turned in time to see the figure of a man hurry back up the path. Bud jumped up, but I grabbed his wrist. “No,” I said. “Whoever that is, let him go.”

  “Let’s go back anyway,” Bud said. “The mood and the moon aren’t getting along.” He hustled me up the path and we glanced to the left and to the right, hoping not to glimpse the running man.

  That night, I dreamed of Carlie. She paced back and forth from one side of my brain to the other, like a caged animal. She was wearing a black leather coat that came down to the tops of her thighs. High, black boots covered her knees.

  “Carlie?” I said to her.

  She stopped pacing and looked at me.

  “Where did you get those clothes?” I asked her. “I’ve never seen those clothes.”

  “We’re not what we are,” she said. “And we’re exactly what we are.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But what about your clothes?”

  “I’m just telling you.” She started to pace again.

  “The way out is through my eyes,” I said. She turned, walked toward me, and when I opened my eyes, she disappeared. I got up and went into Arlee’s room, where I sat in a small rocker next to her crib and watched the moon kiss her pure, smooth face.

  At the general store the next day, Ray told me that Stella had gone somewhere to dry out. “’Least, that’s what Grace told me.”

  “She tell you where?”

  “You going to visit her?” Ray looked up at me over his half-glasses. The bristles of his gray crew cut glinted in the overhead light over the cash register.

  “No,” I said. “But she attacked me one day, and she was gone the next. It’s kind of like Grace killed her, buried her somewhere where no one will find her, and then took over her house and her life.”

  “I guess you got a right to have that much imagination,” Ray said. “I got a letter from Glen the other day. Says the food is crap and he’s got bug bites from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet. Says he has to keep his boots on to keep things from crawling inside of ’em. Says it isn’t like he thought it would be. Don’t know what he thought. The army ain’t a vacation. Got to work during a war.”

  “Guess he thought he was doing the right thing,” I said.

  “He don’t know the right thing from the left thing,” Ray said.

  9

  The snarling, hateful winter we had in 1972 shredded autumn. Incoming and outgoing tides bulldozed ice cakes into the harbor and piled them on shore like the teeth of broken sea monsters. Cold slathered a sheet of sheer ice along the dirt road leading to and from The Point.

  The sound of spinning, smoking tires became part of January and February’s song. We spread salt and sand outside, but finally Bud and everyone else, except for Grace, who didn’t seem to need to go anywhere, parked their cars and trucks up the hill by Ray’s. Every time we went outside, an unforgiving wind pounced on us with bitter, sharp claws. No one went out unless they had to work, go to church, or buy groceries.

  On rare days when winter pulled back to regroup and allowed an exhausted sun to burn through the low-down clouds, I bundled up Arlee until she couldn’t move, strapped her to my chest with a thick, shawl-like sling I had knitted for her, and minced my way in toddler-style steps up to Ray’s or down to Ida’s.

  Once, we ended up staying overnight at Ida’s house when a hideous blizzard swooped in during a late-afternoon visit and made it clear that even walking back up the hill to Grand’s house wasn’t going to happen in a way that would be safe for us.

  “I read once about farmers tying ropes between their houses and barns so they wouldn’t get lost going back and forth during storms,” I said to Ida as we sat in her kitchen after supper, watching snow skirls spin around like hula hoops on tricky hips.

  “I believe it,” Ida said.

  “No school tomorrow,” Maureen sang.

  Ida winked at me and said to her daughter, “Good. Bible study.”

  Maureen’s smile faded just a little and I had to laugh.

  “You too,” Ida said. “Do you good.”

  “Most likely,” I said.

  “Hah,” Maureen said. “Now you’re trapped.”

  “Not if I walk up the hill before breakfast tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion,” Ida quoted. “Where is that from?” she asked Maureen.

  “Proverbs 28:1,” Maureen said.

  “Name that tune,” I said. Maureen’s eyes lit from within but she didn’t dare to smile. Ida shook her head at the both of us, and thankfully, Arlee began to cry from her crib in Bud’s old room. “Well,” I said, “no rest for the wicked,” and I went to fetch her. I settled us in the rocker next to the crib and as I fed her, Bud stamped his way in through the front door. “Holy shit, it’s bad out there,” I heard him say. I snorted, imagining the look on his mother’s face. I heard his step as he walked through the living room and into his bedroom. He bent down and kissed my cheek.

  I gasped at the cold.

  “Yeah,” he said. “No work tomorrow. Fred threw out his back when he fell in the parking lot. Told us all to go to hell, then he told us to stay home tomorrow.”

  “We may have Bible study if we don’t get out of here tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “Well, we’ll have to do some sinning tonight, then,” Bud said, “and pray for sun in the morning.”

  “How did you get out of it?” I asked. “Growing up?”

  Bud grinned. “Sam, believe it or not. Told Ida that church on Sunday was enough and that he needed me on the boat. So, I went on the boat. How’d you get out of it?”

  A trickle of regret slipped through me. “Grand asked me once if I wanted to come down here with her. I was kind of an asshole about it. I think I rolled my eyes and told her that I wasn’t going to sit with her and Ida and talk about begetting and smiting. I had better stuff to do.”

  “Wow,” Bud said. “She didn’t get mad? How come you’re still alive?”

  I switched Arlee over to my right boob. “Grand was disappointed,” I said. “She said something like, ‘Well, Jesus loves you, anyway. And so do I.’” I sighed. “Would it have been so much to do? I was so horrible to her, a lot.”

  “Well, now you got someone to do that to you when she gets old enough,” Bud said. “I imagine Grand’s up in heaven, happy as hell because you’ll get to see what it’s like. So it all evens out in the end.”

  We did commit some hushed-up sinning in Bud’s narrow bed that night. Afterward, as we slept, the latest blizzard beelined it out to sea to beat the waves up into twenty-foot rollers hissing froth and fury. On land, the sun shook itself awake in time to light the day. Bud and I tried to make a quick getaway the next morning. Ida beat us to it, but she didn’t mention Bible study and neither did we and after cornflakes and tea, I gave her a big hug and my little family struggled up the hill to home.

  It was chilly inside, as if the absence of us gave it no reason to keep up the warmth. Bud turned up the heat and I put Arlee into her playpen in the living room.

  “You watch her while I take a bath?” I asked Bud.

  “Got to shovel, but the snow will be there when I’m ready,” Bud said.

  “I noticed you got some new muscles last night.”

  “Bullshit.”
Bud laughed. “You buttering me up?”

  “I mean it.”

  “Not to change the subject, but to change the subject, I got the mail at Ray’s last night before I come down to Ida’s. It’s on the kitchen table.”

  I picked up the envelopes and started upstairs. Four of them were white and long and probably had bills tucked inside of them. The fifth one was small and cream colored, like special stationery, with a little note tucked inside. My name was on the front, printed, all capital letters. Freeport postmark. I stopped on the landing, worked my thumb under the flap, and ripped it open. I pulled out a folded white piece of paper, not the matching cream color, as I had expected. I shook it open and read the following words: I will love you forever.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey. I love you forever too.”

  “What?” Bud called from the sofa, where he was watching the Today show, bouncing Arlee on his knees.

  “I said, ‘I’ll love you forever too.’”

  He turned and looked up at me on the stairs. “That’s nice. I’ll love you forever, back.”

  I walked down the stairs. “Who’s bullshitting who now?” I said, and I handed him the letter. “I got your note,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Bud frowned. “I didn’t send this,” he said.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “If you didn’t do it, who did?”

  Bud shook his head and looked at me, his black eyes serious as could be.

  “I didn’t send this,” he said. “I’m not kidding. I don’t write like that.”

  I studied the words again. “It’s printed,” I said. “Could be anyone’s writing. I thought it was yours. Who else would have written this to me?”

  Bud shrugged.

  “You really didn’t?”

  “No,” Bud said. He handed Arlee to me and looked at the letter again. He looked up at me. “Is this from Barrington?” he snapped.

  “What?”

  “Andy Barrington. He’s around, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “He’s not stupid enough to mess with me, or with you. Why would he do that?”

  “Well, who the hell would have sent it?”

  “Bud, I really don’t know. I’m as freaked-out as you are.”

  “Fuck,” Bud said. “I got to shovel.”

  “You don’t believe me?” I said.

  “Well, someone goddamn sent it,” Bud said, his eyes blazing. He punched his arms through the sleeves of his plaid flannel jacket.

  “Calm down,” I said. “I don’t know who sent this. I thought you did. You didn’t. So, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t give a damn who did it.”

  “Well, it’s fucking weird.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ll ask around as soon as I get a few minutes or when the ice melts. Is that okay with you?”

  “I’m going outside,” he said, and he left.

  Arlee grabbed a piece of my hair and pulled. The pain brought me back to the present. As I unwound my curls from her little hand, I said to her, “Maybe we should have stayed for Bible study.”

  Bud was outside for about an hour. He was still steaming when he came inside. I pointed to Arlee in her bassinet on the porch.

  “Okay,” he said as we sat down on the sofa, “we got to figure this out.”

  And we tried. We thought about all possibilities. I called Dottie at school. We wondered if Glen might have done it. I even thought about Stella or Grace. Bud brought Andy Barrington up again, saying he was going to take the letter up to the cottage and ask him about it. The next day he did just that, but no one was there. “He’s cleared out,” Bud said, and even though I hadn’t known he was there, I felt relieved. “I’ll talk to him when he gets back. He’s like bad news. He always comes back.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I keep an eye on him,” he said, and the subject of Andy shut tight with a bang.

  The mysterious note bothered us for a little while, but sometime around March, I tucked it away in the bottom of my underwear drawer and forgot about it as days dipped and rose according to the whims of my baby.

  March was lost to winter, but spring fought back in April. In May, the war was over, and spring took its rightful place. I had my twenty-first birthday on May 18, and when Dottie came home from school we celebrated her birthday too. What time and love Arlee didn’t take up belonged to the man who would love me forever. Bud didn’t need to send me a letter to let me know that. It was written on my heart.

  10

  About a week after my birthday, Arlee began to master walking, when it became clear to her that getting from one place to another would happen faster if she used the funny-looking things on the ends of her legs. She hung on to edges and curves to make her way from here to there, and Bud and I held her between us for hours, walking from the kitchen to the living room and back and taking her outside when the weather was nice.

  On June 12, 1972, our first wedding anniversary, Bud, Dottie, and I sat in lawn chairs and watched Arlee play with pieces of grass and clover on the lawn. Suddenly she stopped, frowned, placed her palms on the grass, pulled herself to her feet ass-end first, and began to walk. Three steps. Plop. Up again. Three steps. Plop. Four steps, teeter, recover, then five steps. The three of us laughed and clapped for her as she made her way to us, her face lit by joy and the June sun.

  “Oh, boy,” Dottie said. “You’re in for it now.”

  Arlee headed for Bud and he stood and caught her, throwing her into the air with a look on his face that made me say “I do” again, out loud.

  “Do what?” Dottie said.

  “Marry Bud,” I said. Dottie raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

  Bud put Arlee down and they moved across the lawn. He seldom grinned, but as he walked with his daughter his face cracked open with happiness. As I watched them, I mourned the part of Arlee’s life where she had needed me for everything. Now she would be under her own steam while I trailed after her, trying to keep her from breaking her head, and her heart, on hard, pointy surfaces.

  “Well,” I said, “guess it’s time to have another one.”

  “Let’s wait until we move,” Bud said.

  “You moving?” Dottie said. I hadn’t told her yet. Cecil needed help, at last.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Got a job in Stoughton Falls,” Bud told Dottie. He caught my look and his smile grew smaller. I could ruin his good day by being cranky or I could ball up that feeling and toss it away. I took a deep breath and let it out. I thought about something I had overheard Carlie say to Patty on the phone once. “Being married means never having your own way again,” she had said with a sigh. She had been right.

  “Got to find a place to rent for fall,” I said to Dottie. “Want to go on a road trip?”

  “Sure,” Dottie said. “Who knows? Might look around myself. More bowling alleys near the city. Could get a job there in some school after I graduate.”

  It cheered me up to think that Dottie might be teaching gym to schoolkids in Portland, Maine’s biggest city, or somewhere else near Stoughton Falls, so that she could drop in anytime. I settled that it would happen in my mind, and with that, she and I got up and chased Arlee around the yard until we wore her out.

  Three weeks later, on a warm July day, Glen came home.

  Arlee might have known that something about the day was different. I had opened up the storm door to let a summer breeze drift through the locked screen door, and of course Arlee was attracted to it. She loved hitting the screen and shouting, “BAM! BAM! BAM!” I chased after her and brought her back to the kitchen, time and again.

  In between bouts of chasing Arlee, I was baking bread to sell at Ray’s. I had upped my bread making because Ray had gotten a lot of requests for it. I was making all the bread he would take, because it gave us extra money to move and set up in Stoughton
Falls.

  When fall came, we planned to leave Grand’s house empty. The house would have plenty of minders, though, in the persons of Ida, Maureen, Bert, and Madeline. If it worked out, we would stay in Stoughton Falls for the fall, winter, and spring, after which Arlee and I would come back to The Point and reopen the house for summer.

  “Slow down,” I called to Arlee, who had dashed for the door again. I was worn out and it wasn’t even noon. It had crossed my mind to take her down to Ida’s house so I could finish with the bread, but I needed to be more independent. After all, Arlee and I would be alone in Stoughton Falls. We would be partners in crime, she and I. I ran into the hall to grab my daughter. But I stopped suddenly. A tall figure stood just outside the screen door, blocking the light. I hurried toward Arlee, who had been shocked into standing still. “Come here, honey,” I said. I picked her up and backed toward the kitchen, where I supposed I could grab a knife or something to defend us.

  “Florine, it’s just me,” a familiar voice said.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” I said. I flipped the lock up on the screen door and let Glen into the hallway. “I’m so glad you’re back,” I added. I reached up to hug him with Arlee squeezed between us. My nose, pressed against his uniformed shoulder, picked up sweat and the smell of something burnt. He wrapped his big arms around the both of us and held on until I finally said, “You can let go. We won’t run away.” He did, but slowly, and we stepped back from each other.

  I saw Bud every day, so noticing any changes in him came slow to me. But I hadn’t seen Glen for a year. This was no pudgy high school graduate standing in front of Arlee and me. This was six feet two inches of man. He wasn’t thin—he would never be thin—but the army had sanded down his softness and varnished his body with muscles. He stood straight and looked down at us with sharp eyes that had seen what there was to see far outside of our little world and beyond that. He looked strange to me until he opened his mouth and the Glen I knew came out.