Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  “It looks great,” I said, conscious of how hard Bud was setting the grocery bags on the counter.

  “I’m going,” he said abruptly. He pecked me on the cheek. “You girls have a good time.” And he was out the door, backing out of the driveway in a spray of loose gravel. He burned rubber until he was out of sight. I sighed and put the groceries away while Robin continued to play with the kids.

  Quick as I could, I said, “Let’s get out of here.” We dressed the kids and packed them into the car. I drove us into Stoughton Falls, past a diner, a hardware store, and a sweet library. I parked in a lot close to that library. We lifted the kids from the car and put them down on a plowed pathway that led through the town’s park while Robin got the sled from the trunk. Soon we were moving along, me pulling Travis while Arlee ran ahead and jumped into snowbanks.

  “The sweater is beautiful,” Robin said. “No one has ever made me a sweater. Florine, it’s amazing. You could sell these for some good money!”

  “Once in a while I do,” I said.

  “You could strike up a deal with some craft stores.”

  “You think?”

  “I think,” Robin said.

  Arlee grabbed her hand and they jumped into a virgin patch of snow. I pulled Travis from the sled and we watched them, our breath mingling. The sun burned the fog from my brain, and a touch of happiness crystallized into a pearl of pure joy.

  Robin and Arlee waded back to the path. Arlee climbed onto the sled. I put Travis in front of her.

  “I’ll pull them for a while,” Robin said. “Not to keep hammering at you but, no kidding, Florine, you could make and sell these. Valerie asked me if I could ask you if you’d make one for her. And for my father, for his birthday. They’ll pay good money.”

  “Well, get me sizes,” I said.

  “Valerie works in a clothing shop and she said she could carry one or two to see how they sell.”

  “Wow!” I said. If someone in California was willing to carry my sweaters, maybe people living in other states might like to too. I’d have to knit like a bastard, but I worked fast, as Grand had taught me.

  “Did you happen to find the present I left for you?” Robin asked.

  I stopped walking. “Shit—I mean shoot—no! I totally forgot. I got the phone call from Parker and off we went. Crap! I’m so sorry.”

  “You can open it when we get back,” she said, which made me want to hurry, so we dragged the kids back to the car, stuffed them into their seats, and drove through the small town. We all staggered into the trailer red-faced, cold, and happy, dripping melted snow throughout the trailer.

  Robin helped Arlee shuck her coat and boots and began to undo Travis’s snowsuit.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “The angel-food-cake pan near the back of the cupboard,” Robin said. I fished out a small square package wrapped in red-and-gold-striped Christmas wrap. Robin had curled the same color ribbon over the top. I admired it quickly, and then tore open the wrapping.

  The plain white box revealed a layer of soft cotton. I lifted it and gasped. It was a gold bracelet with a red stone. “Oh my god,” I said.

  “Mama, no,” Arlee said. I ignored her.

  “It was our grandmother Maxine’s,” Robin said. “She left me all of her jewelry. She didn’t have much, but what she had was nice. I wanted you to have a piece for yourself. The heart is made of ruby.”

  “You have no idea what this means,” I said. Tears ran down my cheeks. I sat down at the kitchen table and wiped them away.

  I said to Robin, “I don’t think I told you, but you know Grand’s red ruby glass cabinet? The one in the corner of the living room? There used to be a red ruby heart that sat in the center of the middle cabinet. I took that heart one day when I was really upset and I threw it off the ledges at the end of the state park.”

  “Why were you upset?” Robin asked. She sat down across from me at the table. Arlee clambered into my lap and Travis crawled over to her. She picked him up and then settled back to listen.

  “It was New Year’s Day. Grand always cleaned the glass on that day and I usually helped her. I wasn’t living with her then; I was still living with Daddy. Carlie had been gone for a little over four months. I had stayed overnight at Dottie’s house for a New Year’s Eve party. I was walking up to Grand’s to help her with the glass when Stella Drowns walked out of Daddy’s house. She’d slept with him. Oh my god, Robin, I was so mad. I went into Grand’s house and I yelled about Stella and Grand tried to calm me down. I grabbed the heart and I was going to wash it, but Grand said I should settle down first. I got mad at that and I stormed out, without a coat, by the way, and ran to the ledges. I threw the heart into the ocean and asked for my mother back in exchange for the heart. It was insane, I know, but I was crazed.”

  “Hungee, Mama,” Arlee whined.

  “In a minute,” I said to her.

  “Wow,” Robin said. “I wish I’d been there for you. I would have kicked Stella’s butt for you.”

  “Well, you’re here now, and you’ve given me back the heart, in a way. It’s a piece of Carlie.”

  Robin grinned. “The universe, again, working in strange ways.”

  I slipped the bracelet onto my arm and admired it. It was made of thin gold that twined itself around tiny prongs cupping a precious stone. I touched the ruby and held my finger on its surface until it grew warm and my finger throbbed with the pulse of it.

  Arlee said, “Eat now, Mama.”

  Robin cleaned the kitchen as I put the kids down for naps. We sat down at the table again with cups of tea. I stared at the stone in the bracelet, trying to see into the center of the heart.

  Robin took in a deep breath. “I’m moving to California,” she said.

  I looked up, startled. “What? Why? When?”

  “In June, when school lets out. I’m torn, but I like the weather, and I like being close to my family.”

  “Not to be selfish, but I was getting used to having you here.”

  “I’ll be back. And you and Bud and the kids can visit. We can go to Disneyland, and to the beach. And you can meet your uncle for the first time. He can’t wait to meet you!”

  I gave her a little smile, hoping it covered the sudden lump in my throat.

  “You okay?” she asked, and I said of course. We went back to chatting about what we would do while she was still here. She would help me with my GED. We would visit Portland and look for places that might sell beautiful, homemade sweaters. We still had some days together, we told each other, and we would make the most of them. But in my mind, she was already gone.

  After she left, the blues settled in and I mooned around the trailer, cleaning up the mud and water from our earlier visit to the park.

  The kids and I ate supper without Bud, who never called to let us know he’d be late. I sat through a boring television show after I put them down for the night. I switched it off at nine thirty and sat on the sofa, twisting the golden bracelet with the red ruby center around my arm, trying not to worry.

  About an hour later, his pickup’s lights pinpointed the icy particulars of our gravel driveway.

  34

  Bud lurched from the driver’s seat, started for the house, realized he’d left his headlights on, and wove his way back. Finally, he stumbled through the door, shut it, saw me, and stopped. “You still up?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m a ghost, standing here, watching her sloshed husband come through the door.”

  “You do look faint,” Bud said. He laughed. “Christ, all’s you need now is a rolling pin,” he said.

  “They’re down to The Point,” I said.

  “The Point, The Point, the precious Point,” Bud said in a singsong voice. “I’m starved. We got anything to eat? We should, you bought groceries.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Get it yourself. I
don’t want to talk to you. You’re in your mean son-of-a-bitch mood. I’m going to bed.”

  “Wait a minute, dammit. Sit down for a minute.”

  “Why should I?”

  He said, “Look, you’ve been wanting to know what’s up with me? Well, I’m ready to talk. So, sit down. Wait, I got to piss like a racehorse. What does that mean, anyway?” He chuckled as he swayed on an invisible tightrope down the hall to the bathroom.

  As he passed me, my nose took in the burn of whiskey, along with the stink, the gloom, and the stale smoke that buries itself in the clothing of barflies. I walked to the front door, opened it, and sucked down fresh, cold air. I shut the door, closed my eyes, and waited for a comforting word from Grand. To have and to hold, she said. Thanks, I said. I got that. I sat down at the dining room table.

  Bud banged his way out of the bathroom. He looked at me and frowned, his fuzzy brain ticking away. Finally, it occurred to him. “You going to make me a sandwich?”

  “Make your own fucking sandwich,” I said.

  “Oooh, oooh,” he said, and giggled. “Make my own fucking sandwich. Okay then.” He snickered his way into the kitchen, where he hauled out meat, cheese, bread, mayonnaise, and mustard. He clanked around as if we had no sleeping kids.

  “Quiet down,” I said.

  “Can’t help it,” he said. “Stuff makes noise.”

  When he was finished, he cut the sandwich crosswise from end to end instead of across the middle, which was the way I always did it. “See,” he said, holding the two halves up. “I like it cut this way. You always cut it the other way.”

  “I don’t know as we’ve ever discussed it,” I said. “And frankly, so what?”

  Bud sat down at the table. “So, this is why I don’t like Robin.” He bit into the sandwich. Bread stuck to the roof of his mouth and he smacked as he ate. Why the hell did I fall in love with you? I wondered.

  “Why don’t you like her?” I asked.

  “Because, she reminds me of Susan.”

  “Why does Robin remind you of Susan?”

  A piece of cheese fell from his sandwich and landed on the page of a coloring book. The unicorn on the page sported a turquoise mane, courtesy of Arlee and her shades-of-blue crayon army.

  Bud grinned. “Aw, isn’t that some pretty,” he said. “We got good babies. We got that, at least.”

  “I hope we have more than that,” I said.

  Bud slammed his sandwich onto the table. “Jesus Christ, Florine, it ain’t that I’m not happy. I ain’t, but you’re not the problem. Problem is, I’m twenty-three years old and I got a wife and two kids. And that might be all I ever have.”

  “If that’s all you ever have, you’re a lucky man,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “But here’s the thing. Susan, well, she wanted me to make something out of myself. Instead, we got together, you got pregnant . . .”

  “With a little help from you,” I said.

  “Yeah. I was there. I remember,” he said. “Anyway, Robin reminds me of Susan: Going to college. Having a career. Someone who’s making something of themselves. She reminds me that I’m not.” He leaned over the table toward me and I studied the red veins in his eyes. “You know what Robin asked me before you got home today?”

  “No,” I said. “I have no idea.”

  “She says, ‘If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked her what the hell was wrong with what I was doing now.”

  “And she said what?”

  “She said, ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. What you do now is fine. I just wonder about people and what they’d do, if they could.’”

  “Well, what would you do?”

  “Fuck if I know!” he shouted, and I shushed him. “That’s the thing. Goddamn her, why did she have to bring that up? She got me to thinking, anyways. Why can’t we do what we want, Florine? I’m scared all I’ll ever be is a shit mechanic in a shit garage working for shit money.”

  “Well, when the kids are in school, I’ll have my GED and maybe . . .”

  “My god, that’s years from now!” Bud cried. “In the meantime, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to fucking work I go and you stay home, doing whatever you do all day.”

  I gave him a look that he knew enough to respect, even in his drunken state. “I do my share,” I growled, “and more. Be patient, and for the love of all that’s holy, lay off the goddamn whiskey.”

  He started to say something.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Arlee goes to school in two years, and Travis goes to school in four years. I will start working on my GED now. Robin got me to thinking today too. Maybe I can sell sweaters and other knit goods. I can bake. I can do lots of things. I’m good at math. Maybe I can do something in a store, or be a bookkeeper. In the meantime, we can work on what it is you really want to do. Give it time. We have time.”

  Bud stared at me for about half a minute. Then he stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and forced it down his throat. He said, “I’m tired. Tomorrow’s Sunday. I get to sleep this shit off and watch television all day.” He got up and kissed me on top of my head. “Night,” he said.

  Off he went, leaving me to clean up the mess he’d left behind.

  35

  I couldn’t even shake Bud awake the next morning. The kids and I did our thing without many tears or too much drama for a couple of hours before Arlee decided to wake Daddy up to come and play with us. The sorry-assed version of Bud that appeared in the hallway made me laugh.

  “Not funny,” Bud said.

  “You’re right. It’s not,” I agreed.

  The kids and I went outside while Bud drank his coffee. During the night, as we had slept, warm air had blown in, producing a late thaw that put the snow on the run. As we watched, a giant icicle toppled forward onto the front lawn. After a while, I took Travis inside to sit with his father while Arlee and I made snowmen. In all, we made ten of them, all different sizes, standing all over the lawn. We went inside at about noon to find Bud feeding Travis lunch at the table.

  I made peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches for the rest of us. I cut Bud’s sandwich the way I had always done it. When I set it in front of him, I said, “Is there anything else I can do for you? I hope it’s up to your standards.”

  “Why the sarcastic tone?” he asked.

  “You don’t remember?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Evidently, I haven’t been cutting your sandwiches the right way for all the time we’ve known each other. Last night was the first night you’d ever said anything about it.”

  “Christ,” Bud said, and ran his hand over his face. “Who cares?”

  “That’s what I said. But you cared about it, last night,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t remember anything I said. Can we just forget about it?”

  “No. You said some things last night that make me wonder about what you want in your life. If you’re not happy, maybe we can try to fix it. If not, well, we can’t, I guess.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know, yet. But you married me. You didn’t choose Susan. You knew, or at least I thought you knew, the differences between us. Now, I’m not sure you ever left what you had before. Sounded to me, last night, as if you wished you were doing something different. You didn’t seem to think that my suggestions were good enough. And you were drunk on your ass. You figure out what you want, let me know so I can make plans. You keep drinking, and the kids and I will leave you.”

  The look on Bud’s face went from confusion to denial to regret. He looked down at his sandwich, then at Arlee, who had taken apart her sandwich and was dragging her index finger through the Fluff on the bread, and at Travis, who was
nodding off in his high chair. Neither of us had raised our voices, and I didn’t intend to do that.

  “Arlee, eat the sandwich,” I said. “Don’t play with it.” I looked at Bud and said, “And you, don’t play with me.” I left the table and went into the bathroom, where I sat on the john for about ten minutes, trying to calm down and wondering if we had enough Windex to clean the bathroom mirror. It was spotted with toothpaste, and it probably always would be. “What’s the frigging point,” I said. I left the bathroom and went across the hall to clean the bedroom.

  Bud shuffled up the hall and leaned against the door frame. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too,” I said. “But you’re an asshole.”

  “Not all the time. Not most of the time.”

  “More and more of the time.”

  The phone rang. “Want me to get it?” Bud asked.

  “No,” I said. As I brushed by him, he took my arm and turned me. His lips touched mine for a second. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll stop drinking. I promise.”

  “You should be.” I hurried to the end of the trailer to pick up the phone.

  “Hi, Florine,” Ida said. “How are you all doing?”

  “Oh, peachy, Ida,” I said. “How are you guys? Arlee misses you.”

  “We miss her and Travis,” Ida said. “I’m calling for a couple of reasons. First, before you hear it from anyone else, Pastor Billy is staying here with us for a couple of weeks. He’s in Bud’s old room.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, he’s been going through those cancer treatments for a while. I’ve been keeping a close eye on him, every Sunday. He’s just been looking worse and worse, and finally, last Sunday, he stopped halfway through his sermon and told the congregation that he had to sit down. Before I could move, Maureen jumped up and helped him out. And then, Florine, I could hardly believe it, she went up to the pulpit and she led us in hymns for about ten minutes, and finished up with prayers! I was so proud of her. She did all of this on her own. She’s just turned sixteen years old!”