He jammed the rag back into his rear pocket. “Everybody does. You can walk it from here. She’s three blocks over, on Pattison.” He chewed his gum lazily, making it snap.
Gemma whispered the words, stared down at her own grimy hands. “Tell me how to find this place.”
“You mean you aren’t gonna stop by the museum first?”
“I just want to go to the house, if you don’t mind telling me the way.”
“Museum makes it easy with that printed map and directions. Don’t expect her to answer any questions for you today. Mrs. Bartling used to come out on the stoop with pitchers of lemonade and cookies whenever anybody stopped by, she loved talking about those flowers so much. But not now. Now, I doubt she’ll even come to the door.”
Gemma clasped both hands behind her hipbones and said nothing.
“Take Avenue C two blocks to the traffic signal. Turn right on West Third. First left you come to after you cross the railroad tracks is Pattison. Roses are on the left, four or five houses down.”
By the time they found the Bartling place, it was late afternoon.
Gemma gathered Paisley against her and left the side walk, approaching the house through a grove of ancient cedar trees in the side yard where she couldn’t be seen.
The notched red-brick chimney towered over the porch; a slight entryway constructed of the same brick with one round windowpane faced the street. Each gutter and gable had been painted maroon to match the striped awnings that hung over each window like a scalloped petticoat. A tin watering can sat on the bottom step, a circle rusted on the brick because it had been there so long.
Gemma’s heart had gone leaden in her chest. Now that she’d finally arrived, she was afraid to knock on the door. Faded pink blinds had been snapped shut, shrouding each window as if the occupant wanted to disconnect herself from the world.
The place seemed pleasant enough. Gemma didn’t know why anyone would want to runaway from a home that appeared so cozy.
A jumble of yellow roses lined the brick sidewalk. A webbing of them swayed along a trellis that divided the expanse of bluegrass from the porch. Paisley scrambled down and pointed. “Are those the roses, Mama? Is that them?”
“Yes, honey bananas,” she whispered. “That must be them.”
For the first time in an hour, Gemma noticed the chocolate smudges on her daughter’s chin. She considered using the watering can on the steps, but she couldn’t be sure how long the water had been standing. Instead she licked a finger and did her best to spit-polish the chocolate off. Paisley scrunched up her cheeks. “Don’t, Mama.”
“You’re filthy.” But cleaning was a lost cause and Gemma knew it. She smoothed her own hair. They were two bedraggled waifs, exhausted and road worn and alone as they mounted the brick steps to the little covered entrance. Gemma rapped on the front door and waited.
It didn’t take too long. The door opened, singing on its hinges, and out wafted the stale smell of last night’s supper.
“I’m sorry.” The woman spoke from the darkness behind the screen and her voice sounded flat, wary. “I’m not showing these flowers. If you’ll stop by the museum, someone will give you information there.” She started to shut the door.
“We aren’t here to see your roses,” Gemma said. “We came looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” the woman repeated, and she seemed to be squinting so she could have a better look through the screen. “Why?”
Gemma moved no closer, but stayed where she was at the edge of the brick steps. “Mrs. Bartling? Are you Mrs. Bartling?”
“I don’t know what you want.” The woman kept both hands on the jamb, ready to slam the door. “Whatever this is, I’m not interested.”
“I’m Gemma.” She stepped forward then, quietly and with solemn purpose, her child’s spindly arms adhering around her leg. She extended her hand into nothingness. “I was just coming to meet you,” she said. “I’m Nathan’s wife.”
Chapter Five
Mama? Is this her?” The little girl’s question rang out, a clear bell across the front yard, pure and guileless and true. “Is she the one?”
Bea stared into the dark, wide eyes of a little girl. The child’s cheeks were grubby with what looked like an entire boxed array of chocolate candy. The sticky gunk had oozed between the little girl’s fingers, had coated strands of her curly dust-brown hair, and had stained a spot the shape of Minnesota on a baby blanket so loved and worn that it might fall to tatters as she stood there on the porch.
Beside the child, holding her hand, stood a young woman with ragged teenager hair, chopped short at the nape of her neck with long, unruly strands around her face. She wore a blue-jean skirt smeared with oily hand prints, so short that it swung with her hips every time the girl nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her rumpled blouse, the color of dishwater, looked like it had been worn for days.
“Hush, you.” As if the young woman knew exactly what drew Bea’s attention, she tugged down her skirt and tried to scrub some of the chocolate off the little girl’s cheeks.
She smeared it even worse than it had been before.
“You have to be quiet, Paisley Rose. We’re concentrating on meeting each other.” That handled, she straightened again, her expression containing an un-fathomable mixture of awe and dread. “Mrs. Bartling, I—”
Bea took one step toward the door, as if to banish these strangers from her territory. “What did you say?”
The girl retreated backwards, down one step. It appeared she took a deep draught of air for courage. “Are you Nathan’s mother?”
“Yes, I am.”
The girl’s whisper came soft, disbelieving. Her green eyes pooled with emotion. “We’ve found you then,” she breathed.
“I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said—”
“I did say it.”
“—that you were Nathan’s wife.”
“I did.”
At the young woman’s words, anger and uncertainty began to gnaw inside Bea, wretched, hollow. Even though Nathan had been gone from home so long, he never would have done something like this without her, would he?
He wouldn’t have gotten married.
No, Lord. I can’t. You can’t do this to me, too.
The three of them stood riveted to the spot, not one of them giving an inch, not one of them willing to take this conversation forward even one more word.
There isn’t even anywhere for us to start with this, Bea thought. I don’t even know what to ask. There isn’t anything I know that would prove it. Or disprove it.
“Mama, I’ve got to go potty.”
The young mother frowned down at the chocolate-covered child. “I guess you should have gone at the Kwik Stop.”
Paisley’s legs crossed and she wore such an expression of desperation that, in spite of this new anguish, even Bea could not deny the necessity of allowing her inside.
The girl issued a deep, apologetic sigh and spoke in a tone of someone intruding. “Do you mind if we use your rest room?”
“What did you say your name is? Gemma?”
Gemma nodded.
“Where have you come from?”
“Omaha.”
Bea glanced out suspiciously toward her front curb. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight.
“The car broke down a few miles back. Somebody gave us a ride.”
For the first time, Bea noticed the dilapidated pink suitcase, skinned along the corners, frayed plastic jutting from its underbelly. “Happiness Is A Visit To Grandma’s.”
“Mama, I’ve got to go.”
Bea stepped back from the screen and let them inside for a moment, pointing the way and then following them through the house as if this was the height of imposition. She watched the girl named Gemma traipse down the long hallway lined with yellowed portraits hanging at odd spaces along the wall, smiling with inward satisfaction because the girl walked through Nathan’s childhood home without showing any sign of recog
nition. They passed the bedroom with the two oak beds that Ray had made, designed to set one atop the other as bunks if space became a consideration; the shelf with its collection of rocks and blunted map pencils, scratched metal Tonka trucks lugged home from some garage sale over on Third Street, and the ball in its plastic case that read “Nathan ‘The Grape’ Bartling. #14. First All-Star Homerun 6-28-91 -vs- Bucktail”; the red-and-white banner tacked on the wall that proclaimed “Go Huskers!” But just when Bea had satisfied herself that the girl had made the entire trek without once noticing any of Nathan’s belongings or pictures, the young woman stopped, her breath only a wisp, and reached up to touch a photograph.
Tears welled in the young woman’s eyes. “How old was he in this?”
“I don’t remember.” A hard-hearted tactic, Bea knew, but she didn’t feel comfortable giving anything else away.
Paisley came banging out of the bathroom with her pants hanging open. “Is that Nathan, Mama? When he was a little boy?”
Gemma stooped and started buttoning Paisley’s pants. For a moment, neither the mother nor her child could take their gazes from the portrait. Nathan in his striped Izod shirt with his hair brushed in a sweep across his forehead, his brown eyes bright, his gap-toothed grin as wide as a Nebraska mile.
“Did you flush?”
“No.” Paisley shook her head.
“You go right back in there and flush.”
Paisley’s little bottom gave an endearing waggle when she turned to go back. After a minute, from inside the bathroom, they heard the flip of the handle, water rushing.
“That little girl—?” Bea’s inflection left an open blank. She didn’t dare try to fill in that blank herself.
Gemma helped her. “You want to know if she’s Nathan’s?”
Bea nodded.
“Well, she isn’t.” The girl in the short skirt nudged the toe of one worn sneaker against the other and gazed down at them as if she was afraid to gaze anywhere else. “I already had her when I met him.”
Oh. That kind of girl.
For one disorienting moment, Bea didn’t know whether to feel keen disappointment or relief. There was nothing about this young woman—nothing—that could bind them together in anyway.
“I’m so sorry,” Gemma whispered. “So many times I’ve wished that she was his.”
After Paisley slammed her way out of the bathroom, this particular subject could no longer be discussed. A lull fell. They stood silent, uneasy with being alone, just staring at Nathan’s picture, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
I’ve just seen my son laid into his grave. I’m struggling every minute not to break down or fall apart. Please, please don’t expect me to ask you to stay.
Gemma turned to Bea and waited, her eyes fixed on the open button at the neck of Bea’s blouse, at the hollow of Bea’s throat that worked as she swallowed.
Since Nathan’s died, you are the only thing we have left. Please, please don’t ask us to go.
The silence between them grew and grew until it became an unbearable thing.
When they finally spoke, they spoke all at once.
“Don’t think—”
“This isn’t—”
“We’ve left our things on the porch,” Gemma said. “We’d better go.”
“Yes,” Bea said. “Yes. You go.”
“We shouldn’t have come,” Gemma said. “We’ve bothered you.” Gemma seized Paisley’s hand and started up the hallway. Their sneakered footsteps made sad little squeaks on the polished oak floor. Bea’s Naturalizers made a decisive tap tap tap as she accompanied them to hold open the screen door.
The two visitors, mother and child, stepped back out into the daylight, back out to where this whole thing had begun, where their little suitcase and the wad of faded jackets laid waiting.
“Mama?” Paisley gripped her mother’s hand as if she gripped onto a knot at the end of a rope. She clung for dear life. Her voice sank into a whisper, but not so low that Bea couldn’t hear her. “Aren’t we going to stay?”
“No, honey bananas. I don’t think we are.”
“Do you think if we go, we could have that little-boy picture?”
“Sh-hhh. Paisley, you have to be quiet. No picture. We haven’t any place to put something like that.”
Bea’s hand stayed the door. She felt a vague need to apologize for something, to make this girl understand that she had absolutely nothing left to give them—that Nathan’s life had been so far removed from her own that she hadn’t anyway to ferret out the truth of Gemma’s claims. She struggled for a long moment to find the words. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I haven’t talked to my son in a very long time.”
Even though a four-and-a-half-year-old could be much too heavy to carry, Gemma lifted Paisley and perched her on the ridge of her pelvis. Paisley stuck a finger in her mouth and sleepily laid her forehead against her mama’s jaw. “That’s okay.” Gemma hefted their tiny suitcase and those coats with her free hand.
She stepped off the porch, barely able to manage the load, and started down the walk.
“Wait.”
Gemma turned from where she stood and waited.
“When you asked how old he was, I lied. I know how old he was. He had turned six just a few months before.”
“Pardon?”
“In that picture. He was six. I kept him back from kindergarten that first year because I couldn’t let him go yet. I wanted him to be safe.”
Gemma let Paisley slip down and stand by herself, braced against her knee. “He looked cute without any teeth. I’m glad we got to see your picture.”
In all the stories of Nathan that had been circulating during these past days—the sad remembrances, the funny yarns—this one was the first story that Be a Bartling had shared with anyone herself. “He put his tooth under his pillow but he kept climbing out of bed. No matter how I chastised him, he wouldn’t go to sleep. Finally, I asked him. ‘Nathan, are you afraid of the tooth fairy?’ He said, ‘I’m not afraid, Mama, but the tooth fairy’s somebody I just don’t know.’”
Gemma hefted the suitcase a little higher. “I know you don’t know us, Mrs. Bartling.”
“Ended up with his tooth in a bowl on the table. That’s the only way I could get him asleep. He lost his first tooth and he was afraid of her coming, because she was a stranger.”
“I’m sorry you’re afraid of us.” Gemma gave one careful, sad smile. “If I’d had my way, we wouldn’t have been strangers.”
Bea came out on the porch behind them and took one wary step down. “Can I ask you one thing?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you really come here?”
A pause. “To find you.”
“Why?”
The girl seemed to choose her words with great care. “He always said that, if anything ever happened to him, we ought to come find you.”
“He told you that?”
The words emerged quickly and quietly, as if she could not keep herself from saying them. “Of course, when you say those things to people, you never actually think they might happen.”
“No, you don’t.”
A breeze worried the maple leaves in the tree at the corner of the yard. Bea heard the whistle of mallards overhead as they flew toward the little pond where the children fished for perch at Goose Leg Park.
“He told us how to find the roses, really. He said all we had to do was ask anybody about it, that everybody in town knew how to find this place once we told them what we were looking for. So that’s what we did.”
“Anybody could come into this town and find me.” Bea pronounced these words with great emphasis, as if she could measure this girl’s mettle by her reaction to this one, forceful word. “Anybody.”
Gemma said, “He told us how the roses smelled in summertime. Like sweet tea. How he used to sneak the petals when you weren’t there to get after him and squeeze them, just for the smell.”
Bea’s backbone went rigid as a hoe handle. Withou
t realizing what she was doing, she pressed her hand against her stomach. Nathan had done just what the girl said. She’d caught him squeezing rose petals once and had sent him straight to his room.
An astonished silence hummed between them.
Bea felt the first warning signals burst forth inside her belly. I don’t care what you know about him. I can’t accept it. I just don’t have the fortitude to allow you into my life. Not now. Not this way.
It got so quiet they could almost hear the maple leaves growing on the tree.
Bea grasped for the first subject that seemed to have reason. “Where are your people?” she asked. “You got family back in Omaha?”
“Sure I do,” Gemma lied. “I’ve got plenty of family.”
Perhaps she was being cruel, not inviting this girl to stay. But Bea had herself to think of. Her own survival was at stake these days. She had her own grief to bear.
While she mourned her son’s death, she did not have the courage to confront her son’s life as well.
Lord, not now. I just can’t do this now.
How easy it would be for some desperate person to take advantage of her at this time. Someone who’d read an obituary and decided to come into her life, to use her tragedy for some personal gain.
“I’m sorry.” Her words came so soft that the girl standing on her front walk leaned forward a bit as if she couldn’t hear, as if she had to try doubly hard to understand it. “I cannot manage my own sorrow and welcome strangers in this house all at the same time. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes,” Gemma said, showing no emotion on her face. “We understand. We do.”
Chapter Six
The only family Gemma had left in this world was Grandma Hardeman, and Grandma Hardeman hadn’t let Gemma cross her threshold since the day she’d been seventeen years old and had started showing with the baby.
Gemma had walked home from school that day, dumped her books on the seat of the porch swing, jangling the chains, while Doreen Hardeman barely moved the swing with her toes and sat viciously shelling peas.
“I’ve got to take the money for my graduation gown tomorrow, Grandma. Do you mind if I walk down to Mosher’s again and see if they need help stocking shelves?”
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