Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  “Arlee said ‘Ida’ today. Only it was more like ‘Ia.’”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Lots to do up here. Cecil’s got a good thing going. Busy from morning to night.”

  “Me too. Baking lots of bread.”

  Long pause.

  “Bud?”

  “Shit,” he said. His voice quivered. “I miss you so much.”

  My throat closed, but I managed to squeak out, “Me too.”

  We heaved and sighed over the phone for about ten seconds.

  “I need you here,” he said.

  “I need you,” I said. “Period.”

  I looked out the window at the way the generous August sun cast a pale gold sheen over The Point. A cicada’s zzzzz high up in a nearby tree signaled dog days. It was hot. It was sunny. It was perfect, except for no Bud. Arlee looked for him every day and she fussed when he didn’t show up, but I didn’t tell him that over the phone because I didn’t want to break his heart. I didn’t tell him that she stood in front of the screen door and waited for the sound of his car. I didn’t tell him that I cried as I watched her wait for him and that I had to distract her to get her away from the door.

  One day, early in the morning, Bud called. “Cecil may have a line on a place for us to live,” he said, not even trying to contain the excitement in his voice.

  “That was fast,” I said, while I thought, Well, crap, it’s real now.

  Bud was due home the next day, Friday, but we decided that he should stay there through the weekend so Dottie and I could ride up on Saturday and check out the trailer. So, my best friend and I, along with Arlee, found ourselves driving toward Stoughton Falls and Cecil’s garage, where we would pick up Bud and go on to see the place together. Arlee sang a song only she understood from her car seat in the back.

  “Don’t think I want to live in a trailer,” I said to Dottie.

  “Now, you don’t know until you see it,” Dottie said.

  “What if I hate it?”

  “Why you worried about something hasn’t happened yet?”

  “Just getting ready for the worst.”

  “You got to change your attitude.”

  “When you going back to college?”

  “Not soon enough for you, I guess.”

  “I always miss you when you go.”

  Dottie slowed down as we reached a stop sign. We had reached Route 100 in Stoughton Falls.

  “Left or right?” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “Cecil’s is down the road.”

  Cecil closed on weekends, so we found only Bud slouched on a bench beside four giant green doors hiding the greasy cave where he tinkered with other people’s cars and trucks. My mouth slid up to a grin when I saw him. Dottie played chicken, driving as close to him as she dared before his smirk made her stop. She hadn’t even shifted into park before I jumped out and filled my empty arms with my husband. I drank in his scent of automobile oil and car paint as if it were Champagne. I found his lips just as he found mine, but before we could get much further, Arlee whined from the backseat and Bud let go of me and bent to take her from her car seat.

  Dottie got out of the car and stretched. “I ain’t kissing you,” she said to Bud. “But I got to pee, that’s for sure.”

  I did too, so Bud let us into the office and waiting room beside the garage and gave us a tour. The garage, with its four lifts, was twice as big as Fred’s shop.

  Dottie raided the candy machines in the office and stuffed her pockets with M&M’s, gumballs, and peanuts. “Well, we going to see the trailer or what?” she said.

  We got back into the car. Bud climbed into the backseat beside Arlee, and we turned around and drove back toward the intersection. We went through it, and about a half a mile farther Bud said, “Turn in here,” and Dottie took a right into a dirt driveway.

  The trailer sat to the left of the driveway. “It’s pretty big,” Bud said. “See, they got a picture window and a fence around the yard so Arlee’s got a place to run.”

  Dottie stopped the car in front of a small, dark-brown shed with a wide door. “I’m thinking of storing Petunia in here,” Bud said. “Or we can use it however you want.” He hopped out of the car. “Backyard too, with a picnic table.”

  I sighed as I forced myself out of the passenger seat.

  “Give it a chance,” Dottie said under her breath. “It don’t look so bad.”

  I held Arlee as we followed Bud into a small backyard with the picnic table he had mentioned. A garden shed stood to the right of the yard. The lawn had been mowed a few days earlier. The blue siding on the back of the trailer looked cared-for. Propane tanks, closed in by a high, dark fence, stood close to the right side of the back of the trailer. A line of stunted firs and pines crowded the edge of the back lawn.

  “We can clean them out, make some paths through the woods,” Bud said.

  “Ain’t that illegal?” Dottie said, but Bud ignored her as he walked toward the front of the trailer.

  The good-size front yard was surrounded by chain-link fence. “You can make a garden in the yard,” Bud said. “Plant flowers, maybe?” A small gate in the fence led up a set of steps to the front door. Bud unlocked the door and we followed him inside.

  I put Arlee down and she ran to the picture window that looked out into the front yard. She put her small hands on the glass surface. Little prints remained when she took them away. She ran down the hall, Bud chasing her.

  “It’s not horrible,” I said to Dottie. The space inside surprised me. The kitchen took up the right end of the trailer, with cupboards and counter space. Off of that was a little room with space for a washer and dryer.

  A small bar separated the kitchen from the widest part of the trailer. On the right, I could fit a dining-room table and chairs. To the left, where the picture window was, we could squeeze in a sofa, a chair or two, a coffee table, and a television set. Dottie and I followed Bud and Arlee down the hall. A large room at the end of the trailer would be our bedroom, should we decide to live there. To the right was a bathroom bigger than the one at Grand’s house, and next to it, two small bedrooms sat side by side.

  “One can be a bedroom for Arlee,” Bud said. “Maybe you could use the other room to do some knitting or whatever you want.”

  “Or a guest room,” I said. “For Dottie, when she wants to drop in.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dottie said. “I ain’t sleeping on the sofa.”

  The tour over, we ended up back in the living room. I looked outside at the yard, and beyond that, at Route 100, which, on a Sunday, wasn’t as busy as it would be on a weekday. I would find that out later, along with details I couldn’t take in on that day.

  “Well,” Bud said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Dottie took Arlee out into the yard while Bud and I stayed inside the trailer and broke in the floor of our bedroom. We were harsh in our eagerness to attach ourselves to each other again, if only for a few minutes. Our bones ground together as we tumbled from corner to corner and back to the middle of the room.

  “Thanks for the privacy,” I said to Dottie on the way home.

  “I aim to please,” she said. “Is it always that quick?”

  13

  Every car and truckload that went up the hill from The Point toward Stoughton Falls broke my heart. We took some of the furniture from the house, but left most of it there, where it would wait in the silent dark of wintertime for our return in late May. We mothballed furniture, covered everything with old sheets, and tied our heartstrings to a post on the headboard of our bed.

  Finally everything was done. I stood in the doorway that September twilight, unwilling to turn out the hall light while Bud sat in the car with our cranky baby. Finally, my finger pushed the light switch, I h
eard a tiny click, and Grand’s house went to sleep as we bumped up the hill and away. I didn’t look back and I fought not to cry.

  About halfway to Stoughton Falls, I looked at the side of Bud’s dashboard-lit face. “We’re summer people now,” I said to him.

  He grunted. “Who’d a thunk it?” he said.

  I kept myself busy the first few days by arranging furniture and putting things away. Arlee and I went outside often. She played while I cut the grass with a little rolling mower we bought at the Elephant Mart down the road. We watered the one sorry rosebush sprouting under the picture window. Traffic was heavy on Route 100, especially during morning and evening commutes into Portland, about twenty minutes away. I found that if I shut my eyes and tried hard enough, I could imagine the whoosh that the cars made sort of matched the sound the harbor tides made as they washed in and out. Homesickness came in roiling waves, but I didn’t dare call Dottie or Ida. I didn’t want them to think I was a sissy. I told myself to get with the program a hundred times a day. I thought about Bud. “This is fun. This is an adventure,” I said to Arlee, often.

  “Fuh,” she replied.

  “Fun,” I agreed.

  I cleaned the trailer and sometimes I made bread and when I had gone through my little routine, I willed Bud to come home early. He was done for, most nights, but after he washed away the daily grime he kept Arlee out of trouble while I made supper. He put her to bed and read her stories, after which he joined me in the living room and later, in bed. When he was home, it was a good and quiet time.

  “It’s almost like a vacation,” I said. “Just us. No Stella or Grace. No Ray, no . . .”

  “Bible-thumping mother?” Bud said.

  “I love Ida,” I said.

  “Me too, but just us is fine with me.”

  All that couldn’t last, of course.

  One October morning, I told Arlee to stay out of trouble while I ran to the bathroom to throw up. Dr. Anna Pulsifer told me that the baby I was carrying was due on May 8th. The nausea would pass, she said. But she was wrong.

  Being the queasy, pregnant mother of a toddler was a pain in the ass for both Arlee and me, but we made a game out of it. When the urge struck I stuck her in her playpen, held up my finger, said, “Wait,” and ran for it. She learned to stay put until I returned to her and we went into the kitchen where, with me shaky and sick, we shared crackers.

  “I don’t understand this,” I said to Ida, over the phone. “I was never sick with Arlee.”

  “Each one is different,” Ida said. “I was the opposite. Couldn’t keep anything down with Bud, but Maureen was another story. No rhyme or reason to it. Ginger ale and saltines worked for me.”

  It didn’t do the trick for me, and one night, after a busy day of running for the toilet and chasing Arlee, I said to Bud, “I’d like to have this baby now, please.”

  “You need some help? Ma will come help.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I don’t want to bother her. What if she wants to have Bible study? She’s so much better than I’ll ever be. It makes me nervous that she thinks I’m going to hell after I die.”

  “She loves you anyway,” Bud said.

  “So you agree I’m going to hell after I die?”

  “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?” Bud said.

  “Hard to walk around it,” I said. “I don’t need help. I can handle this.”

  But it got worse. A couple of days after a half-assed Thanksgiving for the three of us, Bud left work to rush me to Portland to Maine Medical Center’s emergency room. After they stuck a needle in my arm to pump fluids into my dried-up body, and told me I had something called hyperemesis gravidarum (a fancy name for Puke-itis), Bud called it.

  “Arlee needs someone who can keep up with her,” he said. “And you need to rest.”

  Ida showed up two days later and put me to bed with soup and crackers.

  “I know you’re not hungry,” she said, “but you have to keep trying.”

  “Where’s Maureen?” I asked her as she sat on the bed and watched me eat.

  “Madeline’s keeping an eye on her. When you lived alone in Grand’s house, we watched over you more than you knew. She’ll be fine. And so will you.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way right now,” I said.

  “The baby’s healthy, I’m here to watch Arlee and I’m glad to do it, and Bud can go to work. That takes pressure off all of you.”

  “I appreciate it, Ida, but I’m still sick as he—. I mean a dog.”

  Ida smiled. “Florine, you can swear in front of me. Jesus won’t take off points for a good swear, now and then.”

  “I miss Arlee,” I said. “I know she’s in the living room with Bud, but I’m losing so much good time with her.”

  “She seems to be just fine. Babies are resilient. She knows you don’t feel well. They pick up on a lot. She’s got her daddy out there with her.”

  “I know,” I said, trying not to get irritated. “I know she’s tough as nails. I’m saying I miss spending time with her.”

  “You’ll get that time back when you’re better. She’s loved, she’s happy, and she knows you’re nearby. You need to stop worrying and concentrate on getting better.”

  What I really wanted was someone who would listen to me whine and feel sorry for myself. Ida was no fun. Everything she said made sense. I sighed and plugged away at the soup and crackers. Nausea met them halfway down, but I was determined to keep the food in my stomach. I was more afraid of disappointing Ida than I was of losing precious fluids.

  Arlee’s second Christmas passed with Ida, Maureen, Bud, and sometimes me gathered around a tiny tree. Bud had driven to The Point to bring Maureen to Stoughton Falls and they had gone out into the woods together to cut it down. They put the tree up and we decorated it with ornaments and lights Ida bought from Elephant Mart. I stayed in bed for most of the holiday, but we did the best we could. Maureen went home after a couple of days, and Ida stayed on until the second week in January 1973, when a boatload of flu snagged against the shore of the new year and caught Maureen off guard.

  The day after Ida left, Bud said, “You going to be all right?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  We struggled through to the middle of March. Bud took me in for fluids twice a week. He and Arlee found something to do while they pumped and plumped me up. Some days were useless as far as my being able to help, but somehow, as Ida had noted, Arlee sensed how I felt. We took long naps on my bed. Bud went to the Stoughton Falls library and got a library card. He toted home piles of children’s books recommended to him by the librarians. I read to Arlee in bed or on the sofa, or we watched Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. At night, Bud completely took over.

  I still felt sorry for myself, but Bud was getting impatient and tired, and his mother’s matter-of-factness crept into his conversation more and more. One night when I whined, “Do you still love me?” he snapped, “Don’t be so foolish, of course I do. But I’ll tell you right now, I’ll be goddamn glad to see this one come out.”

  In late March, the nausea came back full tilt, and my back began to act up, to the point where I could barely walk, let alone run after Arlee. I was too sick to care for her, and Bud reached his wits’ end.

  The morning I couldn’t get up, he said, “Florine . . .”

  I said, “I know,” tears streaming down my face.

  We packed Arlee’s clothes and her toys and Bud took her down to The Point. She left me with a smile on her face, snuggled in her Daddy’s arms, carrying Dodo the donkey. Rivers of water ran down my face from the time I heard Bud pull out of the driveway until the time he returned to hold me in his arms and tell me that she was playing a game and eating a cupcake when he’d left her.

  I took the sheets off her crib mattress so that I could hold them to me and smell her. At night, I i
magined her squeaky voice calling out for one of us.

  “Goddamn quiet,” Bud said one night in bed.

  “I hear her talking and running through the trailer,” I said.

  “I do too,” he said. “Drives me crazy.”

  “Do you think we can drive down to see her?”

  “You really want to do that? Even if you could, it would rip you up to leave again.”

  He was right, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  Once, Ida let me talk to Arlee on the phone, but it confused her.

  “Mama?” she said. “Mama?”

  “Here, honey,” I said. “Mama’s right here.”

  “Mama. Mama. Dow.” When Ida let her go, she ran through the house calling my name, which killed me.

  Not having to care for both Arlee and me eased things for Bud, but he still had to come home to my grumpiness. It was hard to carry on a conversation when all I wanted to do was throw up. Every day I got up after Bud had gone to work to try to make some kind of supper for him, but that was a lost cause. The baby had gotten big, and my dizziness made it almost dangerous for me to try to do anything. Bud had to make his own meals, plus bowls of soup, ginger ale, and crackers for me.

  And then, of course, my fear of losing Arlee forever in some way surfaced because she wasn’t right there in front of me. I knew her grandmother and her aunt would protect her with all of their fierceness and love, but accidents happened. I had nightmares where I couldn’t get to her, and others where I couldn’t find her. I had nightmares where I saw Carlie walking off with her, and I couldn’t catch them.

  Apparently, how I acted out during those dreams affected Bud’s sleep, because one night he woke me up and got tough with me. “Cut this out,” he said. “I miss her too. Let me sleep. You sleep. Let’s all sleep, for chrissake.” He brought me a glass of water and said, “Now, go to sleep,” and I did.

  One Saturday morning, after he brought me a bowl of oatmeal and then sat on the bed beside me, I said, “You didn’t sign up for this, Bud. I’m sorry.”

  A quick flash across his face told me that he thought so too.