Willa by Heart

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

After JFK buys the book and Nana gives him a complimentary quarter pound of chocolate pecan fudge, still warm from the pan, and a bag of sour gummy worms for his little brother, Brendan, JFK says hell walk me home.

  I tell him about the basement full of books and how the Blazers are coming later today to plan Suzanna’s wedding, and then we turn the corner and nearly bump into Mariel Sanchez.

  Her long black ringlets frame her beautiful, heart-shaped face. She’s wearing a jean skirt, a low-cut white tank top, and a necklace made of beach glass—brown, blue, and green. She looks exotic, tropical.

  “Joe,” she shouts. Then she hugs my boyfriend, chest to chest, tight.

  JFK coughs and pulls away. “Hi, Mare.”

  Mare? He calls her by a nickname?

  “How are Nico and Sofia?” JFK asks awkwardly.

  The two little kids, maybe? How does he know them?

  “Fine,” she says. She looks at me. “I’m Mariel Sanchez.”

  “Yes. We met on the beach last week.” I reach for the locket, framing the heart with my thumb and pointer finger to be sure she sees it. “I was the one calling to you. I thought you had drowned or something.” I look at JFK. I twist the heart back and forth, hoping the silver catches the sun, wanting to be certain she notices.

  If she does, she doesn’t let on at all. “Drowned?” Mariel laughs, a lilting sound like a chickadee. “What would make you think that? I was swimming.” She reaches toward JFK. Takes the book from his hand. “Our Town,” she says with a sweet-sad smile. “I didn’t know you—”

  “What time is it?” JFK says, taking the book back, looking at his watch. “Oh, wow, I’ve got to go. Baseball practice. If I’m late, Coach’ll make me do laps.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say, turning to watch him leave. “Call me.”

  When I turn back around, Mariel is gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sixteen Bridesmaids

  It seems to me that once in your life … you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.

  —Our Town

  “I was swimming.” Mariel’s words scratch like a sand flea in my head as I hurry home. The nerve of her to laugh at me. And the way she smiled at JFK, my boyfriend. My boyfriend. And how do they know each other? I need to talk to Tina.

  But that will have to wait. The Blazing Buick limousine is in our driveway. Beep, beep, beep.

  The back door of the limo flies open before the chauffeur can do his job, nearly knocking the poor guy out cold.

  “Willa, honey!” Suzanna Jubilee shrieks, running toward me in a hot pink minidress. I brace myself for the tackle. We jump up and down, hugging, laughing.

  “Congratulations, Suzy. I’m so happy for you!”

  “My turn! My turn! Come here, baby,” Mama Blazer says, swooping me up off my feet. “Gosh, we’ve missed you,” she says, planting a big, slurpy kiss on my cheek.

  She sets me down and swooshes back one of her signature feather boas, this one fire-engine red. “Let me look at you.” She shakes her head side to side. “Cute as a button, pretty as a picture.”

  There’s that c-word again.

  “Willa, I have something to ask you,” Suzy-Jube says. “Something important.”

  “Sure, anything.”

  Suzy looks at her mother. Her mother smiles and winks. Suzy looks at my mother. My mother smiles and winks.

  “Willa,” Suzy says, then pauses.” Will you be my maid of honor?”

  “Me?”

  “You.” Suzanna clasps her hands together, fingertips touching her lips, eyes squinting like, I hope you’ll say yes.

  I swallow hard. My eyes fill up. I’ve never been in a wedding before. And the maid of honor … that’s very special. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as sugar,” Suzy says. “On Saturday, June tenth, Bramble, Cape Cod, United States of A-mer-i-ca, is going to have a wedding like it’s never had before. I’m going to have sixteen bridesmaids. That’s mine and Simon’s lucky number. We met on September sixteenth and we counted sixteen stars on the night we first kissed, and well, I just couldn’t leave any of my best, sweet pageant peeps, my chicklets, out of the wedding party, but then I couldn’t pick one favorite to be my maid of honor, the rest would get all jealous, and so I thought about who I most wanted to have up there next to me on the stage on the most important day of my life, and your cute-as-a-button sweet little face popped right into my mind.”

  “Popped right in,” Chickles says, testifying to the truth, crisscrossing her hands over her hefty chest.

  “I’d be honored,” I say.

  “Good!” Suzy shrieks, and twirls me around. “Now, aren’t you dying to see my man?” She reaches into her pocketbook and hands me a picture. “Willa Havisham, meet Simon Finch.”

  “Wow.”

  Simon Finch gives new meaning to the word “hot.” Simon deserves his own new word. Long, dark hair, sultry eyes, stubble on his chin like he didn’t shave that day, a leather choker with some sort of charm on it, a small hoop earring … Who cares if he doesn’t have two nickels to tape together?

  “He’s gorgeous, Suzy. You make a stunning couple.”

  “Thanks, honey, I know. And he’s just the perfect man for me. Isn’t he, Mama?”

  Chickles bobs her head like there has never been a truer true. “If Noah came back down again and called folks two by two, Suzy and Simon would be first on the ark.”

  I dig my fingernails into my palms so I won’t giggle. I look quickly at Mom, but she’s remaining nicely composed.

  “And speaking of arks,” Chickles continues, “we’ve rented out the new Cape Queen for the second reception….”

  “The cruise ship?” Stella says. “But don’t you want to have the reception here?”

  “Oh, yes, Stella. We want the wedding here, of course, and the first reception for close family and friends. But we’ve got so many relatives and employees and business associates, and well, Suzanna has a ton of girlfriends from all her pageants, and Papa B and I thought it might be nice to invite all those nice young people we’re putting through college through the Blazer Benevolent Foundation ever since we read those inspiring words on Willa’s Bramble Board last year and started doing all these good things with our money, and well, this is our one and only baby girl and she’s only going to get married once and we can afford to do it, so why not?”

  The Blazers are loaded. I mean they are billionaire loaded. And you can’t even hold it against them because they are the kindest, sweetest, most down-to-earth people you’d ever want to meet.

  “That sounds wonderful,” my mother says.

  “And of course you’ll all come on the Queen with us,” Mama B. says. “Right?”

  “Well, we’ll have to see,” Mom says. “Summer is a busy time for us….”

  “Mom, please,” I say.

  “Let me talk to Sam,” she says. “If there is any way we can, we will. Now, let’s talk about the wedding. Come, let’s sit on the porch. I’ll get us some iced tea.”

  We make a circle with our wicker chairs. “Go ahead, princess,” Mama B. says, “tell Stella and Willa what you have in mind for the wedding.”

  “Well …,” Suzy-Jube says, “I had a dream.” She closes her eyes and smiles, then opens them. “And I could see the whole thing picture perfect…. You know that lovely lake you’ve got back there?”

  Mom and I nod.

  “Well, in my dream the audience, I mean the guests, were all seated facing the water. And there was a boat out on one side of the lake. I was sitting in the center of it. And a man in a costume started rowing it. You know, like those ganolas they have in Italy. That’s where we’re going on our honeymoon. Italy. Neither of us has been, and we don’t speak Italian, but who cares about talking on your honeymoon, right?” She giggles. “Anyway … over on the other side of the lake, at the very same moment, Simon was being rowed out on another ganola, and the two boats met in the center and …”

  I force myself not to
look at my mother. I’m remembering her Weddings by Havisham studio and the easels where she’d display the Twelve Perfect Ingredients of her masterpiece weddings, and I’m afraid if our eyes meet, she’ll start laughing or crying. I get a picture of those “ganolas” in my head and picture these hunky muscle-beach lifeguards rowing Suzy row-ee-o, row, row. And where will the sixteen bridesmaids be? And I dig my nails in deeper.

  “Oh, and …,” Suzanna continues, “I want tons of dancing. Tons and tons of dancing. Maybe you can hire that jazzy babe who ran the turkey dance you had in the barn last Thanksgiving.”

  “Shirley Happyfeet?” Stella asks.

  “That’s right,” Suzanna says. “Happy feet. Happy feet all night long.”

  Stella and I take notes as Suzanna talks. I can tell my mother is exercising every ounce of self-control to just listen, open minded. What Suzanna is describing is a far cry from the work-of-art weddings Stella Havisham was known for. But I’ve got to hand it to my mother. That steely coat of armor she used to wear seems to be in permanent storage. She actually seems to be enjoying this.

  “And I want pony rides and clowns for all my little cousins …,” Suzanna sails on.

  My mother sets down her glass of tea quickly.

  “And, wait …” Suzanna gets a new idea. “What about acrobats? You’ve got all those lovely tall trees….”

  Mom goes over the menu choices, and I explain how we are working on a Bramblebriar Inn signature wedding cake that will make its grand debut at Suzanna’s wedding.

  “Yummy-yum-yum-yum,” Mama B. says, smacking her lips together like she can taste the frosting already. “Better make it a big one. Everybody in the family has a super-size sweet tooth. Never skimp on the suga’ when the Blazers are in town.”

  “The signature cake was Willa’s idea,” Mom says. “I think she has my wedding planner genes.” She sets her pen on the table and rests her hand on her stomach.

  I smile, nodding slightly toward her stomach and then at our guests with an expression like, Are you going to tell them?

  Mom smiles and winks at me. “Oh, and we have some news, ladies,” Mom says. “It’s early and we really aren’t telling many people yet, but … Sam and I are expecting a baby.”

  “A baby!” Mama B. shouts.

  “A baby!” Suzy-Jube shouts. They rush to hug my mother.

  “Wait till Papa B. hears you’ve got a guppy in your tuppy,” Mama B. says. “He can’t wait to be a granddaddy. He’ll be ordering dollhouses and rocking horses and train sets and … is it a boy or a girl?

  “It’s still too early We don’t know yet,” Mom says.

  “Oh, Willa, how wonderful,” Suzy-Jube says, hugging me again. “You’re going to be a big sister!”

  CHAPTER 13

  Fly, Mama, Fly

  Some people ain’t made for small-town life.

  —Our Town

  After our wedding-planning session, Suzy-Jube and I have a chance to talk, just the two of us. I tell her about Mariel Sanchez and how she and JFK were a perfect match at the dance and how JFK called her Mare when we ran into her outside Nana’s store and how she’s beautiful and how she hugged him—

  “Okay, honey, hold it right there,” Suzy says.

  She stands up and puts her hands on her hips. “Listen up, because this is important.”

  I lean in closer, all ears.

  Suzy checks her gorgeous face in the mirror. Straightens a lock of hair. Turns around and looks at me. “I always found with boyfriends—and believe me, I’ve had a gazillion—that the best thing to do is play your hand straight up. Lay your cards right on the table, no bluffin’, and tell the boy you expect the same. And Willa, don’t go getting worry wrinkles over the fish girl.”

  “The fish girl?” I laugh.

  “What?” Suzy laughs too. “She sounds awful fishy to me, out swimming when any sensible girl would be home getting her beauty sleep. And … we can’t jump to conclusions until we know the facts. Only Joey knows the facts. Now, here’s what you do. There might not be anything to worry about a’tall. Don’t make it into a soap opera or anything, just say real nonchalantly, ‘Hey, Joe, how did you know that girl we saw the other day?’ Now, listen, here’s the key part. Don’t look at him while you’re talking. Be fixing your lipstick or brushing a crumb off the table or something, so it looks like you’re hardly even listening, not concerned a’tall.”

  I have my chance the next day when JFK sits with me in the cafeteria. Tina and Ruby are eating lunch outside, trying to catch some color. “Spring tan training,” Ruby calls it.

  JFK talks about the Red Sox.

  They’re looking good.

  He talks about his baseball team.

  They’re looking good too.

  I wait until just before the bell rings. I take out my new watermelon lip gloss and pull off the top. “Hey, Joseph, I was wondering. How do you know that girl we saw the other day”—I put on some gloss and smack my lips—“outside my grandmother’s store?” I put the top back on the tube. I brush a sandwich crumb off the table. Suzy-Jube would be proud.

  “Uh …” JFK’s face reddens. He crumples up his sandwich bag.

  Oh, no. Not the reaction I was looking for.

  “It’s sort of awkward,” he says.

  Waves rush into my ears, drowning out his voice. “What do you mean ‘awkward’?” I manage to say.

  “I don’t know if I should tell …”

  My face flushes. Beads of sweat are forming on my forehead.

  “What?” I say. “Tell me.” Please don’t tell me you used to go out with her….

  “Okay We met last year in Hyannis. At a homeless shelter. I think I told you I used to go with my mom to volunteer sometimes. Well, one night when I was there, Mare came in with her baby brother and sister.”

  “Nico and Sofia?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Mare’s father was in the hospital, and their landlord was a real jerk. He locked them out of their apartment because the rent was late. Mare was so embarrassed. ‘We would have paid him back,’ she said. My mother felt bad for them and sort of took Mare under her wing. She brought them clothes and diapers for the babies, helped Mare’s father fill out paperwork for government assistance, even helped them find an apartment here in Bramble….”

  The bell rings.

  “Where was Mariel’s mother?” I ask.

  “She’s an actress,” JFK says. “She had just landed a big role in some production that was touring the country. But Mr. Sanchez got hurt in an accident, and Mrs. Sanchez had to give up the play and come home. Mare said her mother got really depressed, I mean really depressed. Mare couldn’t stand to see her so sad. And so she told her mother to go. Go back to the play, go follow her dreams. Mare said she’d take care of the babies.”

  JFK shakes his head. “Can you believe that? Being that brave? I mean, Mare is just a kid, and she said she’d be the mother so her mother could go be happy.”

  We walk to history class in silence. I feel an overwhelming sense of doom, like a thick curtain of fog is falling on my sunny little world.

  Now I wish JFK had said, “Yeah, we went to the movies once.” Or, “Yeah, we hung out at the mall.” Or even, “Yeah, we used to go out.” That I could deal with.

  But no, this is bigger than that. Way bigger than that.

  This girl is in his heart.

  CHAPTER 14

  Auditions

  We’ve got a lot of pleasures of a kind here: we like the sun comin’ up over the mountain in the morning, and we all notice a good deal about the birds. We pay a lot of attention to them.

  —Our Town

  I wake up the next morning with this queasy feeling inside. What if JFK cares more for Mariel than he is saying? What if they were more than friends? Why did she have to move here to Bramble, anyway? Hyannis is a perfectly good town. Why didn’t her family stay there?

  I pick up Our Town. Auditions
are this Friday. I know Emily’s lines by heart. I’ve practiced them on the beach, in front of the mirror, in the shower, in bed before I fall asleep. JFK says he’s been practicing too. If all goes well, we’ll be Emily and George.

  ***

  In English on Friday, Sam is standing at his desk with a book, smiling like he can’t wait to begin. “We’ll be studying a very different sort of heroine,” he says. “Miss Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s groundbreaking novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Sam holds up the book like he’s holding up a trophy. “This is a classic that should be as familiar to you as The Wizard of Oz. I’d like you to read it over the weekend and come in with three talking points on Monday.”

  “Monday,” Tina says. “How many pages is it?”

  Sam opens to the back of the book. “About two hundred.”

  “Two hundred,” Ruby says. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No,” Sam says, with a kind smile. “I’m not.”

  “How are we going to find the time to do that?” Luke says.

  “Hmmm.” Sam clears his throat. “Let’s see. You have the whole weekend. And it takes about an hour to read twenty-five pages. I mean really read, making notes in the margin, keeping track of the characters. So, let’s see. Twenty-five pages an hour … two-hundred-page book. Eight hours, right?”

  People groan.

  “Trust me”—Sam looks around at each of us—“This book will be worth every minute you give it. Every television show you watch this weekend will fly out of your mind before your alarm rings Monday morning. But a great book like this …” Sam holds up his trophy again. “A great book like this leaves indelible marks.”

  During study hall at the end of the day I finish algebra and open up to the first page of Their Eyes Were Watching God.

  Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing…. That is the life of men.

  Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember eveything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.