“If you don’t mind, I’d like to look at your scrapes and cuts before I leave.”
Bud nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
The front door opened and closed. Billy walked into the kitchen with Stella and Grace in tow. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Are you kidding me?” I said to Billy.
Billy held his hand up. “Be charitable,” he said.
“Why should I? They—”
“Because Grand would want you to,” Billy said.
Dammit, I thought. Yes, she would.
“I want to explain,” Stella said.
Robin said, “Well, we were just saying that we’d all like to get this settled, so why don’t you two sit down at the table.”
“Just talk. Then go,” I said. I said to Arlee, “Mama’s going to talk to Stella and Grace. Think you can go in the other room and color for a little while? Maybe you can make Robin a nice picture?”
Arlee stomped over to Grace and hit her leg. “Leave Mama alone,” she said.
“Say you’re sorry to Grace,” Bud said, picking her up. “You should never hit anyone, and you shouldn’t swear.”
“Mama did.”
“That was bad for Mama to do,” I said. “Say you’re sorry to Grace.”
“You first,” Arlee said to me. Billy ducked his head to hide a smile.
I frowned at Grace and said, “I’m saying I’m sorry because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Least you’re doing it,” Grace said, and I fought to keep myself in the chair.
“Now, Arlee,” I said, taking a deep breath, “tell Grace you’re sorry.”
“Sorry,” she said to Grace.
“Okay then,” Robin said. “Can we all sit down?”
We all sat.
“Everyone set?” Billy asked.
“Let’s get this over with,” Bud said.
“I’ll be quick,” Stella said. “I found these letters upstairs in the house, tucked away in back of an eave, when Leeman and I were turning it into a sewing room.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t want to show them to Leeman. It would have broken his heart.” She touched the pile of letters. “I only read one. I don’t know what the rest of them said because I didn’t open them. But the one I looked at was full of . . . well, things that . . .”
“I’m not going to read them,” I said. “I’ll turn them over to Parker. He already has her letters to him. I didn’t read those either. Why didn’t you burn them if you didn’t want Daddy to know about them? Why didn’t you throw them out?”
“Oh, I was going to do it,” Stella said. “But someone held me back.” She looked at me. “Your mother haunts that house,” she said. “Everywhere I turn, it seems like she stands just outside the corner of my eye. I swear, sometimes, I can smell her perfume. I’ve tried to paint her out, redo the house to confuse her, anything to get rid of her, but of course I never will because she always sat first in Leeman’s heart. After Leeman died, she didn’t go away. And she’s still there. It was her that told me to keep the letters. Somehow, Grace got a hold of them and thought she’d do something stupid and wrong.”
“Wasn’t wrong,” Grace said.
“It was,” Stella said, sharp as sleet. “It was very wrong. You had no right to do it. And I want you to apologize to Florine, Grace.”
“I did it because she—”
“I don’t care what you think she did, Grace,” Stella said, raising her voice. “Say you’re sorry.”
Grace pressed her lips together.
“Say you’re sorry.”
A tear rolled down her stony cheek. “I’m sorry,” Grace whispered, and she got up and left the house. I saw her walk across the road from the kitchen window, her head down, her arms at her sides.
“I can’t figure her out,” I said.
Stella sighed. “I know. No one can. She’s the oldest out of four of us sisters. She jumped off a cliff on a dare near our house when we were small. She’s lucky she lived, but she hurt her brain. My sisters and I take turns taking her in.”
“We never talked about your family,” I said.
“We never talked about a lot of things,” Stella said. “I regret that. I really do. Anyway, we all love Grace, but we’ve all had to apologize for her actions at one time or another. Grace can function—she drives and so on—but she doesn’t have the personality to be able to work for long without offending someone. She’s very blunt.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“She’s overly protective and we have to be careful what we say when we’re around her. She’s also nosy and she watches too many detective stories on television. She found the letters during one of her stays with me. I told her they were private, but she knows we have a history. I guess she thought she’d shake you up by sending the letters to you.”
“What about the postmarks? There were different postmarks,” I said.
“From where?”
“Lewiston. Freeport. Long Reach.”
“Frances lives in Lewiston. Judy lives in Freeport.”
“That explains it,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Stella said again. “I’m always sorry around you for something.”
“It’ll be dull around here without you,” I said. Stella looked up and we shared a smile.
“You too,” she said. “Then you want the house? Have you talked it over with Bud?”
“I haven’t had a chance,” I said. I looked at him. “Stella wants to sell us the house . . .”
Bud snorted. “We can’t afford it.”
“For a dollar.”
He looked at Stella. “What?” he said. “What?”
“That’s what I said,” I said. “She’s getting married to someone who lives in New Hampshire. She wants us to have the house.”
Bud thought about that for a few seconds. “Buy it,” he said. A twinge of pain crossed his face.
“You need to rest,” Robin said.
“I know, but I can’t get up,” Bud said. “You’re all killing me.”
Robin scraped back her chair and went over to him. I stood up as he did. He let Robin take his elbow. The stair risers creaked as they took it slowly.
Stella stood up. “It’s settled then. I’ll have movers take away the stuff and the house will be cleared out and you won’t have to bother with it.”
“Just take what you want,” I said. “I’ll deal with the rest later.”
“Good,” Stella said.
Forgive, Grand said. I sighed. “Why don’t we forgive each other before you go?”
Stella said, “I would love that. Should we shake hands?”
“That’s okay,” I said. We smiled at each other and she left.
Billy said, “That was a good thing you did. Now you can go forward.”
“Grand made me do it,” I grumbled. “Thank you for talking to Bud,” I said. “I hope it takes.”
“I hope so too,” Billy said. “He knows what he’s got in his life, and he’s determined to keep it. He knows you mean what you say. He loves you. You’re one of a kind.”
I blushed and looked down at the pile of unopened letters. The risers creaked again as Robin came back downstairs.
“What are you going to do with these, really?” Robin said.
“I’m going to give them to Parker, just like I said.”
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Billy said to Robin.
“I’m Florine’s cousin, Robin Collins,” she said.
“I’m Billy Krum. Baptist preacher, lobsterman, carpenter, cancer survivor, world-class sinner, poker player, and, let’s see, anything else?”
“An angel,” Arlee yelled. She ran to him and he snapped her up.
“No angel,” he said to her. “Not by a long shot, pumpkin.”
�
��Come on upstairs, Billy,” Bud called from the upstairs landing.
“On my way,” Billy said.
“Tea?” I asked. “Coffee?”
“No thanks,” Billy said. “Nice to meet you, Robin,” he said, and he headed upstairs.
Robin looked at me. “A lot just happened,” she said.
“Yeah. A lot always happens,” I said.
Arlee said, “I want ice cream.” Travis woke up and whined for me. I headed upstairs to get him.
45
Parker came by and picked up the letters and said he’d get around to reading them when he could. A messy case involving warring lobstermen was taking up a lot of his time, he said. I said, I’m busy anyway and got back to my life. Stella and Grace left the house the day after our little showdown. Robin went back to Portland to finish her school year. Bud went back to Stoughton Falls to work after a week off.
“You going to be okay?” I asked as we stood by the pickup on the morning he left.
“I’m going to a meeting tonight and every frigging night this week. Billy got me all set up. I’ll call you when I get back to the trailer.”
“Please, please call me if you need me,” I said.
“I need you all the time,” he said, putting his forehead against mine.
“I love you,” I said. “Remember, call me.”
He called me for three nights straight. “This is hard,” he said.
I decided to join him on Thursday. I left the kids with Ida and Maureen and drove to Stoughton Falls. I had supper waiting when he got home from his meeting. He was thoughtful and quiet, and told me that he had found a sponsor he could talk to when he needed to dull his cravings. Billy had called him every night that week, just as I had, to check on him. We made love for the first time in a while. We were careful with each other, tender. Afterward, we held each other until daylight.
I scoured the trailer for his wedding ring on Friday morning before I left for The Point, but I couldn’t find it. He had already looked through the truck and the shop and had come up with nothing. He felt bad about losing it, and I missed seeing the bright band of gold circling his rough, grease-stained ring finger. We decided that in June, on our wedding anniversary, we would buy him a new one.
Per our usual routine, he joined us for the weekend, and then drove back to Stoughton Falls on Monday morning. One Monday night, though, he surprised us by showing up back to The Point. “Daddy’s here,” I said to the kids, and Arlee ran, while Travis crawled, to the door. Bud came in and I heard him talking to them, giving them kisses and hugs, and then he walked through the kitchen, brushed right by me, and picked up the phone.
“Hello, honey, how are you?” I said. He waved at me.
“Billy? This is Bud,” he said. “Yeah, you busy? . . . That’d be good.”
He hung up the phone and walked over to me. He kissed me, hard, and then let me go.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “I got fired.”
“Why?”
“Evidently I carry gloom and doom around all day,” Bud said. “Cecil said the customers been complaining that I’m not real friendly to ’em. He said I got too much going on in my personal life to pay attention to my work. I says, ‘Is my work bad?’ He says, ‘No, but your attitude is. I’m going to have to let you go.’ So he did. Well, I’m yours, honey. I’m meeting Billy at the Lobster Shack. Want anything?”
The Lobster Shack. Every time someone brought up the name, thoughts of Carlie thundered through the halls of my memory. I remembered the times I had hung out there while she worked. How I loved to watch her and Patty have fun and flirt with customers. Those two had been such a team.
“No,” I said. “Good luck.”
I tried to feel bad about him getting fired, but I was overjoyed. Maybe, I thought, this will work out. Maybe Bud will be able to handle living here. The Point will be our sun and we’ll revolve around it; go out into the world and come back here, for always.
Maureen joined the kids and me for a mac-and-cheese supper. I didn’t tell her about Bud’s job. I did tell her Arlee had called Billy an angel and she smiled. “He’s not,” she said. “But he might be closer to God than the rest of us.” Her smile stretched to a grin. “At least, I think so.”
Bud walked back into the kitchen about halfway through supper.
“Dish up a plate,” I said.
“Ate,” he said. He sat down. “Well, Billy’s got me working with a carpentry crew. And he wants me to sand, caulk, and paint his boat too. Get it ready to go out. Wants me to be his stern man on the Blind Faith for the summer.” He filled Maureen in. “Guess you can tell Ma,” he said to her. “It’ll save me a trip.”
“Billy can use the help,” Maureen asked. “I could help too, if he needs it.”
“We’re all set. We got it planned out for the summer. You stick to the Bible and Sunday school.”
Maureen’s fork clattered onto her plate. “I can do anything I want to do, James Walter. I don’t have to just ‘stick’ to anything. Don’t you tell me what I should be doing.”
“Calm down,” Bud said. “Billy needs you at church. He said so, while we was talking about what needs to be done. He says you’re his right-hand girl. He says he feels like he’s part of the family, what with the way you took care of him last winter.”
“Oh,” Maureen said. “Well, that’s all right then.” She helped me with the dishes and left. I put the kids to bed and joined Bud on the sofa.
Bud said, “You know what I’ve been thinking? Everything in life is a deck of cards. You got your kings, aces, queens, jacks, jokers, and numbers that stand for the rest of us.”
“What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. It’s as good an explanation as anything.”
“What number am I?”
“I’d say you’re an eight.”
“Why?”
Bud smiled. “It’s curvy on the top and curvy on the bottom,” he said. He leaned over and kissed me. Then, he said, “We got to move out of the trailer.” That turned me on so much I unzipped his fly, right then and there. Afterward, with television light from The Six Million Dollar Man reflecting off my bare butt, we decided where and when to move things from the trailer.
At seven on Tuesday morning, I found myself standing in front of Daddy’s empty house. I took a deep breath, unlocked the front door, and entered the kitchen, where my childhood hit me like a ton of bricks.
Stella and Grace had left most of the furniture, along with dishes, linens, and day-to-day items I could choose to keep or to throw away. I walked into my old bedroom and remembered the night I escaped through my window to go explode firecrackers at the Barringtons’ with Dottie, Bud, and Glen. I walked into the bathroom and could almost hear Daddy puking up his guts every morning after trying to drink away his grief for his absent Carlie. The kitchen, where he and Carlie had waltzed to “Love Me Tender.” Here was the living room, where I had fallen asleep on the sofa night after night after Carlie had gone, while Daddy drank himself down to hell. Daddy’s workshop, which I had swept up before Stella had first come to dinner. I walked upstairs to the two tiny rooms that once had served as storage. Stella had turned them into sweet spaces that would make fine little bedrooms.
Something thumped somewhere in the house and I held my breath. “Are you still here?” I asked. No answer, but something warm moved through me, from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head. Whatever it was, it left me crying a soft rain of tears. They wet the dust in my soul and sank into my heart, and I knew that my old house and I would get along just fine.
46
May 1, Travis’s first birthday, was clear and warm. While he took his nap before his little party, I threw together a spaghetti sauce and let it simmer while Arlee and I went outside to the side garden to check daffodil and tulip bulbs.
; A car headed past the house and parked in the Buttses’ driveway. My smile showed up before Dorothea Butts even got her car door open. Arlee dashed across the road before I could say no, me on her tail.
“Hi there, you two!” Dottie called. Arlee flew at her and Dottie caught her up in her arms. “When the hell did you get so tall?” she asked.
“You remember it’s Travis’s birthday?” I asked.
“’Course I do. Couldn’t forget that one. You home for good?”
I smiled. “Looks like it. Come over when you get settled.”
Madeline stepped outside, carrying Archer. He shrieked for joy when he saw Dottie. She headed straight for him, with Arlee following right on her heels.
“Send her home when you get tired of her,” I called.
“Will do,” Dottie said, and they all went inside.
At five p.m., Billy, Ray, Ida, Maureen, Bert, Madeline, Dottie, and Archer and our family filled the house with spaghetti, cake crumbs, melted ice cream, and party hats that Dottie had dug out of somewhere. Travis didn’t have a clue that the whole thing was about him, but he ate it up anyway.
It was over fast, presents strewn everywhere throughout the house, people stepping over babies and toys and boxes and ribbon to bring me their dishes from wherever they had found to sit. Ray brought me a soupy ice cream and cake plate. “Thanks,” he said. “You get a chance, you come up to see me.”
“I come up there too much already,” I said. “Maybe we should start dating.”
“I’m too young for you,” he said. “I told you before, I need someone to work at the store. Part-time, I know you got the kids, but I need help. Think you might be interested?”
“I am,” I said. “And I have some ideas I want to talk to you about.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Ray said. “Anyways, let me know soon, will you? Don’t play hard to get and make me wait.”
“I think I’d like playing store,” I said to Dottie later, as we rocked on the porch.
“You would,” Dottie said. “You can add, you like to keep things neat, you can make sandwiches, you’re a wiseass, and you don’t put up with bullshit. Kind of what Ray does every day.”
Written on My Heart Page 30