Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  I smiled. “Grand would be proud of her,” I said, thinking about the grin that would have crossed her sweet, worn face. “She’s a keeper for sure.”

  “Yes,” Ida said. “Well, anyway, Billy was so weak after the service he could barely stand up. A few of us were going to take him up to Long Reach, to the hospital, but he didn’t want that. He wanted us to drive him back to Spruce Point, to his house. ‘No,’ Maureen said, ‘you’re coming home with us. You’re staying in Bud’s room, until you feel better. Right, Ma?’ I thought, Well, why not? and so I said yes. Billy objected some, but Maureen was not going to give an inch, so we brought him back here with us.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Well, he sleeps most of the time,” Ida said. “I know from living with Sam’s cancer that rest is what he needs. When he’s awake, Maureen sits with him and they talk about the Bible and such. And, until they can find another pastor to take his place for a while, Maureen is helping him to find other people to lead the Sunday service. She works on his sermons with him. I just may have a preacher in the making in the family!”

  As Ida went on, her not-a-chance-in-hell-of-ever-being-a-preacher son bumbled around in back of me, perfuming the air with the sharp remnants of last night’s liquor. “I can’t believe it either,” I said, “but Maureen’s always been headed toward the light, as Grand would say.”

  “She has, hasn’t she,” Ida said happily. We went on to talk about the kids and how everything was going. It was hard not to tell her the truth. Maybe she would have understood, but it may have brought Sam and his sad journey to the forefront, and right then she was so happy about Maureen.

  “How’s Glen?” I asked her, digging for a change of subject. “Have you seen him?”

  “Oh, that’s the other thing,” she said. “He’s moved out of the house. Cleared all of his stuff out a few days ago and lit out for who knows where. I went and checked the house. He cleaned it as best he could, being Glen. I’ll give it a good go-over before you all come down. Do you know when that might be?”

  “Well, it might be earlier than you think,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry about cleaning the place. The kids and I might come down for a few days soon. It would be a nice change from the trailer.”

  “Be great to see you,” Ida said. “We’d love to see the kids! I might have to come up there to see you, instead of having them down to the house, just until Billy’s stronger.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I understand that. Do you have any idea where Glen went?”

  “I don’t,” Ida said. “I haven’t had a chance to ask Ray.”

  Poor Glen. Another lost soul out driving around in the butt crack of winter. Maybe Bud knew where he had gone. I hoped that Bud could find himself too, before he wandered too far away.

  That night, while Bud dozed in front of the television, I put Travis and Arlee onto her bed and let them play for a few minutes before I read to them. Travis stared into space before his eyelids closed, while Arlee and I went on for at least another story. Afterward, I carried Travis to his room and his crib, settled him, and tucked Arlee into her bed. I walked into our bedroom and turned on the radio, which set on a small shelf above our bed. I picked up my knitting needles, both filled with loops of yarn the color of Travis’s eyes. I stretched out on my bed and watched a sweater grow before my eyes. My mind turned toward Grand. She had set me down beside her in a rocker on the porch to teach me how to knit scarves. I was impatient and I treated it as a contest.

  “Done,” I would yell, and she would say, “Well, let me look at it.” She always found places where I’d slipped a stitch or suddenly knitted looser or tighter. “Do it again,” she’d say as she ripped out my work. “Make sure your work is steady.” Eventually, I learned and, although I liked to see the results, she had been right. It was more important to make sure the work was well done.

  Thinking of Grand took me to The Point. The precious Point. I sighed.

  “What’s going on?” Bud said from the doorway.

  “I was thinking about The Point, The Point, the precious Point,” I said.

  Bud ignored me. “What did Ma want?”

  I told him about Billy and about Maureen’s becoming a substitute minister.

  He smiled. “Where she came from, I don’t know. Probably the best of Ma and Dad.” He looked at me. “He did have a good side, you know. He wasn’t just a drunk.”

  “No one is just a drunk. No one is just anything.”

  “That’s right. And just because I drink once in a while doesn’t make me a drunk.”

  I slipped a stitch and fixed it.

  “Is that all you think I am?” Bud continued. “A drunk?”

  “Is a dumb girl who didn’t finish high school and got knocked up all you think I am?”

  “What the hell?” Bud said. “Don’t take what I might have said last night to heart. I got the right girl. I’m smart enough to know that. Jesus, give me some credit.”

  “You should hear yourself when you’re bombed. You’d think you were a dink too.”

  “I think I’m a dink every day,” he said.

  “I don’t think that,” I said. “Unless you’ve been into the sauce. And if you think you’re a dink every day, I’m sorry for you for thinking that.”

  “Well,” Bud said, “you should be inside of me.”

  “I’ve got enough shit to deal with.”

  My knitting needles clacked. Bud inhaled and exhaled. The refrigerator engine snapped on, droned for a few minutes, and then turned itself off.

  “Well,” he said. “I’ll come to bed soon.”

  My needles flashed as I picked up the pace.

  36

  After our conversation, Bud kept to only one beer after work. No whiskey. At least that I could tell.

  Arlee and I grew our snowman village and we began to get fancy. I mixed together food coloring and we gave them blue or brown or green eyes and red lips. We wet brushes and painted on different-colored hair. We dotted buttons down their fronts, or sloshed on skirts or pants. They had the usual carrot noses, with slices of oranges for the ears. The ears didn’t last long because the birds loved them, but that was okay. I knitted matching headbands for each one. We built about forty snowmen, women, and children.

  Someone passing by on Route 100 must have noticed them, because one day, a photographer showed up from the Stoughton Falls Weekly Reader newspaper, and took a picture of us with our snow people. I cut out the article with its caption and sent another one to Ida and Maureen. It was a peaceful couple of weeks.

  And then, Glen showed up.

  It was about midnight on a Friday night. When we heard tires pop bits of gravel in our driveway, Bud slipped over my body and pulled on a pair of jeans. My heart skipping double-time, I followed him down the hall in my T-shirt and panties. “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  The twin suns of headlights pierced the closed drapes over the picture window. I moved to stand beside my husband, but he hissed, “Stay here.” He crept to the front door and stood to the side of it. The lights went off and I shivered and waited in the darkness of the living room. “Bud?” I whispered.

  “Quiet,” he said. A truck door slammed. The sound of footsteps crunched toward the house.

  Bud switched on the front-stoop light and the footsteps stopped. “Jesus, my eyes,” someone whined, and Bud and I breathed a single sigh of relief.

  Bud opened the door. “Get in here,” he said.

  Glen lumbered up the steps and entered the trailer, pulling damp March air along with him. He reached back and shut the door behind him.

  “Took me a while to find this place. Wasn’t sure this was it till I saw the Fairlane. How the hell are you guys?”

  “Good,” I said, glancing at the clock on the stove. “For midnight.”

  “Oh, is it?” Glen said. “Shit. I�
�m sorry. I don’t sleep good, so I don’t bother counting the hours. Anyway, I was up this way, and . . .”

  “Come in,” I said.

  He did, and just as he did, I remembered what I was wearing. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Bud, put the coffee on. Glen, boots and coats go in the laundry room.”

  As I changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, I found myself thankful that his wanderings had brought him to our door, no matter the time. Grand would say the best way a lost soul can find itself is by seeking out the comfort and company of loved ones.

  I went back out into the living room. Glen was sprawled out in Grand’s rocker.

  I leaned down and gave him a peck on his cheek and headed for the refrigerator. I pulled out sandwich fixin’s. “I’m so glad to see you both,” Glen said, letting out a big sigh.

  Bud, who had been leaning against the breakfast bar in the kitchen, rubbed his eyes and grinned. “Glad to see you, too, brother,” he said.

  I made a stack of sandwiches and put a pot of coffee on the dining-room table. We sat down and watched Glen inhale the food.

  “Why did you move out of the house?” I asked. “It’s still cold. You could have stayed there for another couple of months.”

  “I got restless,” Glen said. “Guess it’s from Nam. Up and at ’em. Thanks for letting me stay for as long as I did.”

  “Where you living now?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Glen said. “You can’t see it, but I bought me a new pickup. Got a cover on the back. Been bunking down in there. Fixed it up so it’s plenty warm. I been all over the place. I drive for a ways. Set up a little camp at night, and then go to bed. Do the same the next day. Been up to Crow’s Nest Harbor and beyond.”

  Crow’s Nest Harbor was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen, but it would always remind me of Carlie’s walking off into thin air.

  “Went up to the tip of the county,” Glen said.

  “Which county?” Bud said.

  Glen snorted. “Only county that counts. Aroostook,” he said. “On my way down to Kittery in a day or so. Then, I guess I go across and zigzag my way up again. Big state. Lots of moose too. You and me should get some licenses,” he said to Bud. “Lots of meat in one of them bastards. Should go up to Rangeley. Go to Katahdin. Moosehead Lake. Mooselookmeguntic.”

  I laughed at that name. “Moose lick ma what?”

  “We might do that,” Bud said to Glen, rubbing his hand over his face. “Could be a good time.”

  “When’s the last time you went hunting?” I asked Bud.

  “Too long back,” Bud said. “Only got one deer so far in my life. Want at least a couple more under my belt before I die.”

  He and Glen started talking about the joys of killing Bambi and Bullwinkle, a line of talk that left me cold, so I left the table at about two thirty a.m. I stretched out on our bed with my clothes still on and nodded off.

  When I woke up, late-morning light was squeezing its way through the bedroom curtains, and Arlee sat beside me, combing my hair with a toothbrush.

  “Good Mama,” she crooned.

  I wound my right index finger through one of her fat, red ringlets and pulled on it. It sprang back to its place on her head. “Boing,” I said, and she giggled.

  Out in the living room, Travis was laughing so hard I had to smile.

  “Gen,” Arlee said. “Come see.” She pulled on my arm.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m up.” When I walked out into the living room, both Bud and Glen greeted me with way-too-cheerful hellos.

  I looked at the clock. “It’s noon,” I said. “How’d I sleep so late?”

  “You was tired,” Glen said. “That’d be my guess.”

  “Kids had lunch?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Bud said. “We was going to get it, but we didn’t.”

  I walked over to the kitchen. “We all want lunch, is that right?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t mind it a bit, if you wouldn’t,” Glen said.

  Mind it or not, I fed those with teeth some sandwiches, and mixed up cottage cheese and baby pears for my teething baby boy. I tried not to focus on the pile of beer cans on the dining-room table, but I couldn’t help it. I wondered where drinking this early would lead Bud. I wondered how the day would go with Glen there to egg him on.

  It didn’t take long to find out.

  “It’s Bud and Glen like I’ve never seen them,” I said to Dottie, my hand cupped over the mouth of the phone. I had called her at her college dorm, in desperation.

  “How’s that?” Dottie asked. “I thought we’d seen every damn way they could be.”

  “This is them, sitting around drinking beer and laughing their stupid asses off,” I said. “We might have seen that, but what’s different is they’re leaving me out. I might as well be invisible.”

  “What are the kids doing?”

  “Travis is in his baby walker.”

  “He’s walking now?”

  “Almost. Arlee’s climbing up and over Glen and Bud at the table and then she’s jumping down and doing it again.”

  “Sounds like a good time to me,” Dottie said.

  “I’ve told them to watch her, but I’m afraid she’s going to slip and fall.”

  “It’s your job to worry, I guess.”

  “You sure you can’t drive four hours and join us?”

  “Nope. Going to try to bowl a string or two with Addie.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Oh, someone I met.”

  “Does she have a last name?”

  “Not yet. Got to earn it first.”

  The hollow sounds of scattering empty beer cans got my attention, and I turned around in time to see Bud bend down to pick Arlee up off the floor.

  “Gotta go,” I said, and hung up. “What happened?” I asked.

  “She’s fine, just scared,” Bud said. “Hit her head a little, that’s all.” Arlee screamed and held out her arms for me. I took her in, kissed her, calmed her down, wet a washcloth with cold water, and held it against her forehead.

  Bud kissed her head and touched her curls. “You’re okay,” he said.

  “We’ll see how big the lump on her head gets before we decide that,” I snapped.

  “What now, Ma?” he said. “She’s okay. Let’s all just relax.”

  “That was an accident waiting to happen,” I said. “You should—”

  “Okay. Okay. Jesus, Florine, she’s not dead.”

  Bud kissed the top of Arlee’s head, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out more beer.

  “Does it breed in there?” I asked, and he snorted. I took Arlee into my bedroom and held a bag of frozen peas to her head. I rocked her back and forth for about a half hour, until her eyelids and her neck drooped. I went back into the living room, fetched Travis, and settled him into his crib.

  After I put them down, I decided to be a good sport and join Bud and Glen for a beer. I walked into the living room, grabbed my knitting bag, made a cup of tea, and joined them at the table. I spied the used shot glasses and the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s sitting in front of Glen. Shit, I thought. This isn’t good.

  Glen said to me, “That army of snowmen outside is wicked cool.”

  “Did you see the picture of Arlee and me on the refrigerator?” I said. When he shook his head, I jumped up and fetched it.

  “That’s some special,” Glen said. “Guess you’re famous now, around these parts.”

  “We had fun,” I said. “Each one of them is named, too.”

  “Mind if I build one?” Glen said. “Add my two cents’ worth?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “The snow is still sticky. I expect they’ll all melt soon, but go ahead and do it.”

  “I don’t want to go outside,” Bud said. “I’m happy here.”

 
“Well,” Glen said, “be nice to get up off our asses, wouldn’t it? Get out of Florine’s way.”

  “She’s all right,” Bud said, deciding how I felt for me. “What’s she got to do anyway? Kids are in bed.”

  “I imagine she could come up with something,” Glen said, winking at me.

  “I could,” I said. “I could clean up this mess on the table. Get the table ready for the next mess. Go play outside.”

  Glen got up and went into the laundry room to put on his clothes.

  Bud’s eyes were glassy with booze. He smirked as he got up. “Sorry we’re such a goddamn bother,” he said. “Sorry you have to clean up our mess.”

  “Me too,” I snapped. “I’m sorry you’re drunk.”

  He turned around and glared at me. “I ain’t fuckin’ drunk, goddammit,” he said. “Jesus, let me have some fun.”

  I glared back at him until Glen started out the door. “You coming?” he said to Bud.

  “Yep,” Bud said, and he followed Glen out the door without putting on his coat and hat. The day wasn’t freezing, but still, in his condition he wouldn’t know how cold he was until he was past needing a coat. But I didn’t want to tackle that topic. I decided to let it go for a few minutes.

  Travis made a small sound and I went into his bedroom. I found him deep in a dream place where twitching and moaning were part of the language. I walked into Arlee’s room. I smoothed back her curls and noted that the lump on her forehead had gone down.

  I went back into the dining area and gathered beer cans, shot glasses, and debris from the sandwiches and snacks. I looked out of the picture window on the way over to the sink. They were rolling a big ball of snow down at the end of the yard, toward the road. As I watched, Bud slipped and fell. Glen laughed and Bud made a snow angel before he jumped up to help Glen push the ball to their destination.

  I cleaned the kitchen, which took about ten minutes. When I looked out the window again, the ball had been abandoned. Glen and Bud were ducking behind the snow people and throwing snowballs at each other. They were laughing like fools, until Glen nailed Bud in the side of the head as Bud was making a break for it. Bud grabbed the side of his head and kicked at Betsy, one of Arlee’s little snow girls. She went flying in all directions. “Oh shit,” I said, and ran outside into the yard.