Chapter Twenty-two
“It wasn’t my fault,” the man was saying. “You hid your trail as good as someone brushing their tracks with a broom.”
“I waited,” my mom’s soft voice replied. “I couldn’t believe you’d walked out on us. Then we got those letters saying you were coming back. Do you know what that did to me when you didn’t? What it did to Blue? So I moved on. And on…” There was a long pause. “What’d you expect? You think it’s been easy, this life?”
“It wasn’t a piece of pie for me either. I was, how do you say it, fed up? Yes. Full to the top with arguments, fights.”
“It was partly the booze,” came my mom’s voice, so soft I could hardly hear it. “Your drinking. As well as mine.”
“Well, I’m back. You’re still my wife. And our daughter, she’s still my little girl.”
I touched the doorknob as if it would bite. Flicked the door open.
I stared at this stranger. His eyebrows met at the top of his nose like a ram getting ready to charge. A scar ran down one cheek, giving him the dashing look of a pirate. He stood so straight he looked as tall as the sky, so tall he could reach up and grab stars, or at least touch the ceiling. How handsome he was—no wonder Mam’s insides had turned to mush when he sang for the dudes by the campfire. And yes. His greenish brown eyes and dark reddish brown hair were the same exact colors as mine.
“Bleu?” he asked, making my name sound like a blur and a question.
“Papa?” I said.
“Happy Bastille Day! Your birthday! My little girl! I thought you’d be tall like me, but look at you! You’re still small as a mouse.”
I’d already dived into his chest as if it was the deepest ocean, thinking, I’m home. I’m home. My dad’s back after a zillion trillion prayers and wishes.
But when I floated up from that plunge what I felt was pure anger. How could you? I wanted to yell. Why did you do that to us? And by the way, I wanted to say, I’ve grown a whole bunch since you last saw me. But I just stood there letting the waves continue to wash over me while his big silver belt buckle grated into my side.
Mam’s wide eyes told me she’d been as shocked as I was. On the table, on top of a pile of books, lay a bouquet of red roses still in their cellophane wrapper. She turned and rattled through the kitchen cabinets, holding up a brown pot, then a glass, and then a squatty glass vase. Her nostrils flared as she made a face at the choices. Then she rolled her eyes at the junk on the table. She reminded me of a spooked horse.
“I’ll help,” my voice squeaked, sounding in my head as if I were sinking and calling for help.
Already my dad had let me go. He stood in my blue-for-me-kitchen as if it was the most natural place in the world for him to be. His black cowboy hat lay crown down on the table. He pushed aside the rock that lay on the note I’d left on the table that morning. Touching the note, he bent to read it. He frowned.
Usually when I’m nervous I chatter nonstop, but now all my questions bunched up in my throat like a big wad of feathers. So I whizzed about, opening a cupboard and having no better luck than my mom at finding a vase for the roses. I grabbed an armful of cobalt-blue bottles off the counter and held them up to see if they’d do. Mam nodded, relieved, and took them from me. The bottles clinked in the sink as she nervously filled them. She unwrapped the roses and stuck two in each of the six blue bottles.
The fridge suddenly roared into action, its motor thrumming and filling the silence. I whipped the books off the table, along with a stack of newspapers, a pile of fence staples, a pair of gloves, a can of nails, a pair of pliers, and my note and the pink rock. My dad’s hat I carefully put on a hook in the mudroom.
“Boyfriend already?” my dad asked, pointing to the note.
My face burned. “Just a friend,” I said, and felt my heart flutter.
I snatched up a dishcloth and swabbed at the table while Mam shuffled through drawers to find the pretty rose-patterned tablecloth we’d used only once. I grabbed one end as she flipped it, and we smoothed it down on the table. The cobalt-blue bottles she placed in the center, under the cobalt-blue lamp. The three of us stood back and stared at the roses as if they were the stars at a show. I almost expected them to bend their red heads and bow.
Stew Pot had been strangely absent. He hadn’t even come bounding to greet me after my long day away. Now he came out of the living room and stood in the doorway with his head tipped to the side and his ears cocked.
“Hey, boy,” my dad said. “Don’t you remember me?”
Why should he? I wondered.
Stew Pot wagged his tail, tipped his head the other way as if he was puzzling over the matter, but didn’t come to him. I hurried over and gave Stew Pot a hug.
“I bet you wonder where I’ve been,” my dad said suddenly, and as he spoke the fridge stopped its humming. The kitchen got quiet with a silence as huge as the years full of wondering exactly that. I held my breath, thinking he’d start with day one—the day he’d walked out of our life. But no.
“Last place was up in Montana,” he said, jumping over the years as if they didn’t exist. “Hollywood’s taken over up there. Did a bit of acting myself. Drums of the West, Saddle Up, Sally. You see those? No? Well, those cinema folks aren’t anywhere near as impressive when you have to saddle their horses and then watch them comb their hair and put on makeup while they ride. I have had it up to here.” He slashed at his throat, around which a red silk scarf was neatly knotted. “No more dudes and dude ranches for me. I got out of there before the tourist season got started. No, I’ve been scouting around for something new.”
He rubbed his hands till I thought they’d smoke, and grinned as if waiting for us to ask excitedly, “What? Tell us!”
This was the storytelling dad I remembered. But neither Mam nor I spoke. I was suddenly reminded of how sometimes my own volley of words seemed to bowl Mam over, leaving her totally speechless.
“Voilà!” he said. “I will make my own film. I will call it, A Frenchman Roams the West to Find Its True Essence.” He bowed.
Mam looked down at the pot she was stirring. I just stood there blinking my eyes.
“We will celebrate now, yes?” My dad bowed himself out the door.
Mam and I didn’t speak. She’d fixed me a birthday dinner; probably she’d worked all afternoon on it, before my dad showed up. From the shocked state she was in I figured he’d arrived not long before I came back. I wanted to ask her, What do you think? But she busied herself at the stove, blindly stirring the pot of what looked like already-very-mashed potatoes. Suddenly she stopped and looked over at me.
“So. Are you happy, Blue?” she asked.
“I’m … of course. I’m thrilled out of my mind,” I said, thinking, I’m so confused I don’t even know how I feel.
Mam nodded. She blinked at the pot as if it’d suddenly come into focus. She put the spoon down on the stove and sighed. “I’m glad you’re happy. You deserve to be.”
What about you? I wanted to say, but she’d turned and walked into her bedroom.
My dad was gone so long I peeked out the kitchen windows. He wasn’t by his truck. I ran into my secret room and looked out the back windows. I was about to run outside when I spotted him clear up the hill behind the house, up by the fence. He seemed to be poking something into the ground. Is he planting a little tree for me, for my birthday? I wondered. He turned in a circle looking at the landscape, and then he walked briskly down. A few minutes later he burst into the kitchen carrying a really big box under one arm and two bulging paper sacks in the other. He let the box slide onto the couch by the window and then juggled the sacks onto the table. He took three bottles of wine out of one sack. “Voilá!” he said, rubbing his hands briskly together. Then he narrowed his eyes, looking around the kitchen as if setting the stage for something. Without a word he rummaged through the cupboards for glasses, pushing some aside until he got to some wineglasses hiding in back. He held them up, made a horror-struck face, and
took them to the sink and washed them. He grabbed a dish towel, snapped it in the air, and then held up each glass and inspected it as he dried it. Then he poked around in a drawer and found a corkscrew and opened a bottle of wine. With a grand, sweeping gesture he poured out three glasses.
“To the birthday girl!” he said.
Mam murmured that I wasn’t anywhere near old enough to drink and that she wasn’t drinking anymore, but he covered her words with, “Don’t be silly! She is thirteen! We must celebrate! I have found my little girl. And”—he bowed toward Mam—“my runaway wife.”
It was weird how when he said that it almost seemed true—almost as if the reason he’d been gone all those years had been Mam’s fault and not his. It was all so unreal I felt as if I’d tumbled down a rabbit hole when I stepped into the house.
My dad picked up his glass and held it toward me. I picked mine up and tapped his with mine. He held out his glass toward Mam. Her hands had gone to her chest and she stared at the glass on the table as if it might bite. My dad picked up her glass. Held it out to her. She hesitated. Slowly she wrapped her fingers around it. Slowly she reached out and clinked her glass against his.
I almost put mine down. Almost shot a hand out to stop Mam from taking a sip. But I didn’t. It was my birthday! My dad had come back! I stood there and watched as Mam held her glass up to the light. I watched as the light shining through the red liquid glimmered across her face as she drank.
I took a sip. It tasted like metal. My mouth puckered. Honestly, grape juice would’ve been a lot better. I set my glass down and watched Mam. She glanced at me. Slowly she put the glass down. Her hand shook. She picked it up again and took a sip without looking at me.
I almost couldn’t blame her. If she’d ever needed a drink, I’m sure it was now.
But my dad was all fun and games, pulling a loaf of French bread, several kinds of French cheeses, and three cans of some kind of French spread and a big box of chocolates out of the sack like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. Mam set out the vegetarian chili she’d made just for me and the salad from our very own garden, along with those mashed potatoes that were now totally gluey.
And there we were. My mom, my dad, and me. Sitting around the kitchen table like your regular, totally normal, typical family.
Except nothing was normal at all. I couldn’t swallow. Mam pushed her food from one side of her plate to the other. Only my dad ate as if there were no tomorrow. And all the while he talked. We listened. Listening was easy because he hardly even asked about what had been going on in our lives all this time. When he did ask, it only reminded him of his own stories, and he’d spin off into some other tale.
“He had the gift of gab,” my mom had once told me. “He could turn things around till you felt so dizzy you couldn’t tell if you were coming or going, or if what he said was the truth or a lie.” That was something I just remembered, and if my dad hadn’t been there in our kitchen, I’d have run up to my journal and written it down.
The only thing I managed to squeeze into the conversation was the question, “How did you find us?”
My dad frowned at my mom. Then he turned to me. “It was very curious, how do you say? Strange. Yes. I am driving along, going west to Jackson Hole, when my truck suddenly has big troubles. Smoke. I think I’m on fire. I am! Lucky I have just passed the only gas station around for miles. I walk back and they tow it and fix it. I pay with a check.”
My dad did a pantomime of someone taking a check, pushing their glasses up, and holding the check out at arm’s length.
I could feel my mouth drop and my eyes grow huge. I could just see the man—Clyde! I wanted to shout, Can you believe it! It worked! My plan worked!
But already my dad was going on with his story. “Yes, so this man says, ‘Gaspard. You related to that pair up at Far Canyon?’ And so I know where you are. I go on to Jackson Hole and do some business and shop for you and plan this day. One week ago, he told me. Good timing, yes?”
Timing? The whole thing was fantastic, but I wondered what I would’ve done if I’d been the father. I think I’d have sped up that road so fast that my truck would’ve caught fire once again. For sure. But then I wasn’t my dad.
I hardly ever paid attention to Mam’s lights I was so used to them, but now I noticed how they spiked up around her like a porcupine. I think if my dad had touched her he’d have felt spines going right through his hands.
As for my dad, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the space surrounding his head as it blazed like yellow-orange fire and then exploded into bright blues and purples and then switched back to yellows again.
All evening Stew Pot hovered under the table, nuzzling my feet. I scraped my scraps into his dish, along with Mam’s. I felt bad that the two of us had eaten so little because the dinner she’d fixed had been super, except maybe for those potatoes. I told Mam it was a wonderful dinner and my dad kissed his fingers to the ceiling and declared he’d never eaten anything better. That was nice of him, since I’d noticed he’d mostly eaten the stuff that he’d brought.
My mom bit her lip nervously and said nothing. She disappeared into her room and came out carrying a cake decked out with swirls of pink icing that said, “Happy Birthday, Sweet Thirteen.” She gave me a quick, brave smile.
“But your presents!” my dad exclaimed. “I’ve brought you a beauty. Is it not time to open?”
“First things first,” Mam said, striking a match.
My dad grabbed the matchbox. “My job! Fire maker!” he said.
The match in Mam’s hand burned down to her fingers as my dad lit the candles. I wondered if their life together had been like that, him taking over and her not saying a word.
I bent low over the candles, almost expecting my dad to help blow them out. But he burst out into the birthday song and soon my mom’s sweet voice joined in, and I closed my eyes and thought, Thank you, thank you. I couldn’t understand why, when I should’ve been totally ecstatic, I wanted to cry.
Mam brought two presents out of her room and set them beside the big box on the couch. Hers were wrapped in newspaper comics. My dad’s, in silvery paper as fragile as butterfly wings. I reached for one of my mom’s. A pair of hiking boots! “Just what I needed,” I said, tugging off my cowboy boots and putting them on.
“Open, open this one,” my dad said, but I’d already started ripping the paper off Mam’s other present. “Just what I needed,” I trilled as I held up a blue shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
My dad pushed his present toward me and bent over my shoulder as I slid the card out.
“To my little girl. Kisses, your papa,” I read. “Thank you, Papa,” I said, and opened the box. A doll dressed in a long pink satin dress stared up at me. On her head was a shiny tiara. I swallowed. “She’s … amazing,” I said. “Totally…”
“A princess for my little princess. And for all the birthdays I did not get to spend with my little girl,” my dad said, looking reproachfully at my mom.
I kept my head down as their looks collided above me. Stew Pot padded over and sniffed at the doll. The hair on his back bristled.
“It’s a doll, silly,” I whispered. I lifted her out of the box—she was at least three feet tall—and sat her on the couch, fluffed her long skirt, examined her silver slippers. She was Sleeping Beauty laid out in her casket, waiting for the prince’s kiss. She was so not me. My dad beamed as I reached up and gave him a kiss. “She’s…” I gulped. “She’s… incredible. Thank you….”
“I thought of you when I saw her. I am so happy you like her. And now for the even bigger surprise. Outside, everyone, please.” My dad waved his arms and shooed us out of the house. Then he disappeared into the darkness.
The dark night was quiet except for the call of a hoot owl. The moonless sky glistened with stars. Mam clutched my shoulder as we stumbled across the yard. “It better not be …,” she said. “I hope he didn’t…”
I held my breath. “No, of course he wouldn’t. Not
when everything’s so dry….”
Stew Pot streaked under the porch as a whistling sound broke the silence. With a soft crackle pop! a star burst apart in the sky. Silvery sparks fluttered down to the ground while already another star flew up and popped. Comets hissed and spit as they whizzed up and burst into white and red blossoms. And then it was over and the night settled back into silence.
I couldn’t help it. I clapped. My papa had come back and lit up the night just for me! It was just like old times! And no harm done….
Beside me, Mam stood stiff as a fence post. “Well, that wasn’t too bad,” she said. “Looks like the sparks all landed in the green meadows. And at least he didn’t shoot off any loud ones, or the horses and cows might’ve bolted. Still, you’d better go check on your bums.”
Mam was right, and I headed off to see if the ruckus had freaked out my bums. But then a loud bang stopped me in my tracks. Evidently the show had only just started.
Now my dad brought out the big guns. I clapped my hands to my ears as machine-gun explosions rat-a-tat-tatted across the hillsides and echoed up and down canyons. Rockets flared and exploded. Mortars shot into the sky and boomed with thundering crashes. The air screamed as slowly but surely my dad blew up the night.
Chapter Twenty-three
Later, I couldn’t sleep. Every once in a while I’d leap out of bed, my heart pounding, and run to the window to stare into the darkness, expecting to see a red glow. I’d stare until my eyes watered and then stumble back to my bed. But as soon as my eyes closed I’d picture a wiggling red snake slithering under the sagebrush, sneaking across the hillside, and creeping silently up on the house. Then I’d shoot out of bed and rush to the window again.
All night I heard Mam bumping into stuff in her room as she, too, checked on the hills from her window.
I’d never seen her as furious as when that first loud machine-gun blast tore into the sky. She’d stormed up the hillside to where my dad was busily setting off fireworks, while above us whizzers whistled, rockets roared, and the whole night sky exploded.
Lifting the Sky Page 16