Gripping the wine bottle, her mouth twitched as the confession welled up and escaped through her windpipe. “I haven’t been to church in years.”
Sometimes, like now, words flew out of her mouth and circled around her. Maybe that’s why Aunt Star didn’t quite trust her with their secret. You tuck it away deep inside of you, so deep your body will absorb it…
But her body didn’t absorb it. It grew like a tumor deep within her, threatening to rupture at the slightest reminder.
Still holding the flowers, Clay strode toward her. He touched her forearm. “Sorry I had to go out of town on your birthday.”
Blinking, she noticed how her hand strangled the neck of the wine bottle.
He chuckled dryly. “You squeeze that bottle any tighter, you’ll pop the cork.”
His comment made her laugh. How she’d missed his sense of humor. She loosened her grip. “Thanks for your text.”
On Monday, he’d sent her a message from Las Cruces: Happy 58th Birthday, Bewitched. Save me some treats! LOL!
She’d blushed at the promise of more things to come…
“Those flowers sure smell good.” She glanced at the twin bouquets, and then into his sky-blue eyes. She could float there forever, riding his thermals.
He winked and handed her a bouquet. “One’s for your mom. I need to stay on her good side.”
As Trudy went to usher him through the living room into the kitchen, he leaned closer and gave her a peck on the lips. They hadn’t seen each other since Saturday after they left the base and grabbed dinner in town. Afterwords, they lingered over small talk in his driveway, Trudy in the driver’s seat and Clay riding shotgun. They talked about classmates who’d died right after graduation and more recently. They discussed how it was getting harder to stay in shape at their age. Clay said he worked out at the gym when time permitted. Trudy confessed she’d stopped walking after Skylar’s death, explaining how she felt off-balance without Skylar by her side, like she’d lost a limb. When Clay inquired about Trudy getting another dog, she shrugged and said, “I’m not ready.” He paused briefly then said, “Give it time. Skylar will let you know.”
Before he got out of the car that night, he reached over and brushed his lips against hers — a tender but tentative kiss. “I have to drive to Las Cruces tomorrow on business. Sorry I’ll miss your birthday.” She’d smiled, surprised he remembered after four decades. “You’re a Halloween baby,” he’d teased. After she’d backed out of the driveway, she glanced in the rearview mirror as Clay unlocked the door and scooped Hercules up in his arms. He stood at the door watching her drive away.
All the way back to her mom’s, she couldn’t shake Cinda’s warning: “Just be careful, Papa. You’ve had your heart broken before.”
As she prepared for bed that night, Trudy phoned her sister. “We barely kissed,” she told her. “We were together all day.” Georgia yawned and observed sleepily, “Lupi told me Clay’s ex-wife hurt him bad. Said it had something to do with their daughter. Clay’s probably testin’ the water before he dives in.” Sometime during the night, Trudy dreamed she and Clay were running down the runway, hand in hand, and when they reached the end where the asphalt stopped, their feet left the ground and they flew among a flock of large graceful birds, each calling to the others in flight. Long after she awoke, she’d slumbered in bed feeling weightless, unencumbered by the pull of gravity. In her mind, her long supple limbs wrapped around him, yearning to go to a place they’d never been.
“Well, hello, handsome.”
Jewel’s sudden appearance in the kitchen startled Trudy. She pulled away from Clay like they’d been caught necking. His kiss from a moment ago lingered on her lips.
He knuckled her playfully on the nose and turned to address her mother. “You’re looking beautiful as ever, Miss Jewel.”
“Liar.” She reached up on her tippy toes and gave him a hug. Then she held him at arm’s length. “Last time I saw you, you pulled me over for speeding. Back when you were a beat cop.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “That was years ago. Hopefully I just gave you a warning.”
“Yep, you let the old lady off easy. Trudy tells me you’re quite the remodeler.”
Clay scratched the side of his face. “That would be my cousin Hector. I was merely his apprentice.”
Jewel patted Clay’s arm. “I’m sure you were more than that. Come, I want your expert opinion on something.”
Was it Trudy’s imagination, or did her mother stand taller, smile brighter, as she looped her arm through Clay’s and led him down the hallway? Trudy followed, curious what her mother was up to.
Although her mother had dated off and on since Trudy’s dad disappeared from the radar, nothing much came of it but a chance for dinner and a movie or play or a concert at the community college. Everyone understood Jewel Cutterbuck’s heart belonged to a tall lanky fighter pilot forever young and handsome, an American hero and the father of her three children.
But that didn’t keep her from enjoying herself in the presence of a handsome man.
At the entrance to Bogey’s bedroom, Jewel flipped on the light switch and gestured to a bare window overlooking the sunroom. “I want that window knocked out along with most of the wall. Maybe install French doors or carve out a wide archway.” She blinked up at Clay, deferring to him. Then she led him across the small room.
Flabbergasted, Trudy’s jaw dropped as she leaned against the doorframe. This was the first she’d heard about her mother wanting to knock down a wall. She and Georgia had spent years discussing ways to remodel and update the hacienda with acreage. Trudy had even offered to bankroll the whole thing. But always, Jewel shot down their ideas.
As Trudy visualized the project, she mentally rearranged the furniture in the sunroom. “Momma, it seems natural to join the two rooms together. Let in more light. But you’ll have to move the chuck wagon.”
Clay’s head swiveled. A look of amusement spread over his face as their eyes met across the room. His expression conveyed two things to Trudy: he remembered her nickname for the Western-style couch, plus all those late nights when they snuggled under a blanket on the Naugahyde cushions after her mother had gone to bed.
“And what may I ask is the chuck wagon?” her mother said, peering back at Trudy over the rim of her spectacles.
“The couch, Momma,” Trudy giggled, avoiding eye contact. “It butts up against the wall on the other side of this room.”
“Your daddy handpicked that couch at the old Lawson’s Mercantile on South Main right after we moved back,” her mother said. “It might weigh a ton, but it’ll outlast us all.” She lifted her chin up at Clay, letting her hand slide up and down his arm. “Well, Detective, what’s the verdict? Can we tear down this wall?”
“Absolutely, Miss Jewel.” Clay stepped closer to the window and examined the area. He knocked up and down the wall in a few places. “You’ll have to put up with construction dust though.”
“I figured as much.” Jewel opened the window and poked her head into the other room. “You can take a break from cleaning for a while, girl…all that extra dust might set off your allergies.”
Trudy studied the wine bottle in her hand, feeling tipsy although she hadn’t had a drop to drink. Her eyes drifted back and forth between Clay’s broad shoulders and her mother’s head bobbing around in her sporty beret. “Don’t you worry about me, Momma. I’ll strap on a face mask and be good to go.”
Her mother ignored the barb and shut the window. “After Shep built the sunroom, I was worried Bogey would feel cut off because his window no longer looked outside. That this room would feel like a cave. But he claimed he liked living in the dark. Said it was good training for when he traveled to outer space.” Her mother glanced up at Clay, keeping her voice even. “My son got his wish. It came earlier than I expected. He’s up there flying among the stars. That’s what it says on his tombstone.”
Clay wrapped a protective arm around Jewel, letting her l
ean into him.
Trudy’s eyes misted up. Maybe the interior window made Bogey feel safer, too. After all, it could keep out a pack of hungry coyotes…or a peeping Dub.
A hush fell over the room — an impromptu pause for a moment of silence to honor a boy taken too soon.
Except for her mother’s computer desk and a poster of Neil Armstrong taking his “one small step for man,” Trudy had stripped the room bare of her brother’s belongings. It was the first room she had tackled the morning after she returned from her overnight trip to Texas. Before her mother left to volunteer at the hospital’s information desk, she told Trudy: “I trust your judgment. Just don’t throw anything away he made with his hands. Put everything in that new keeper box we bought at Walmart.”
After a day of pitching stuff, Trudy had dropped off several large bags of outdated but wearable clothing at the Salvation Army. Her brother’s collection of books on space and aviation went to Pardon Library. The plastic container she’d shoved into the closet held his prize-winning Pinewood Derby car, a few drawings and papers, selected sport trophies and team jerseys, and a Bible he received from the base chapel in third grade.
When Jewel had returned later that day, she stuck her head in the door and gasped. Not at the bare walls, but at a fabric growth chart Trudy had discovered taped to the back of Bogey’s closet door. “I completely forgot about that,” her mother said as she ran her slender fingers along the canvas that resembled a giant measuring tape. “While you girls’ heights shot up, Bogey’s stopped at four foot ten inches in 1974.”
Trudy straightened her shoulders. “Time for wine,” she caroled, breaking the moment of silence and to lighten the mood. “Clay came for dinner. Not a memorial service.” She started to leave the room.
“I’ll second that,” her mother chimed in, turning to Clay. “Now, how do I get hold of your cousin? Let’s get this demolition started.”
Clay pulled out his wallet and handed Jewel a business card. “Here’s Hector’s number. Tell him I said to give you a military discount. He served time in the Marines.”
Her mother took the card and leaned her head on Clay’s shoulder. “I’ve been wanting to make some changes for years,” she sighed, “but it took our girl coming home to get me motivated.”
Our girl. Trudy had a hunch her mother was already incorporating Clay into the family.
Alone in the kitchen, Trudy stood at the sink sipping a glass of tap water. Her mother and Clay were still in the bedroom discussing the wall project. As Trudy gazed past her reflection in the window, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was out there watching her.
And because it came from the direction of the old base and not the edge of the railroad tracks, she wasn’t afraid.
Setting her glass in the sink, she filled a crystal vase with water and arranged the flowers and took them into the sunroom and placed them in the center of the round pedestal table that had been in the family for years. Moving the heavy piece the other day without help took some doing. Instead of waiting on the yardman, like her mother insisted, Trudy had used what Aunt Star referred to as good ol’ female ingenuity.
Once Trudy separated the pedestal from the top, she turned the top on its side and rolled it into the sunroom and propped it against Grandma Lily’s rocker. Jewel leaned against the rocker to keep it from swaying. After Trudy maneuvered the solid oak pedestal onto an old quilt and dragged it into the sunroom, she hoisted it in place in the right corner near the wall of windows. With the rocker supporting the bulk of the top, Trudy lifted one side and used her torso to push and slide the top in place on the pedestal. Then she tightened the hardware, brought in the chairs, and popped two Tylenol for her aching joints and muscles.
Stepping back, she admired the floral centerpiece and the three large speckled brown and turquoise dinner plates from her mother’s Red Wing Bob White stoneware collection. Each plate featured a mother quail and two chicks. When she and Georgia were little, they called them the blue birdie plates. After Bogey was born and Trudy was old enough to count on her fingers, she informed her mother the plates were missing a chick.
Through the archway, she heard her mother order Clay, “Sit there.”
Bustling into the kitchen, Trudy found Clay making himself at home in the conquistador. Stretching his legs, he crossed his feet at the ankles and offered a contented smile. Her mother stood nearby, holding court. “It was Trudy’s idea to rearrange the furniture.”
Clay twisted in the chair and gestured at the turquoise phone hanging above the poppy-red desk. “I can’t believe you still have that.”
Jewel fiddled with her beret. “That old touchtone works just fine, not to worry. I do keep a newfangled version with all the bells and whistles back by my bedside, but these days I mostly use my cellphone.” She reached over and twirled her finger through the coils of cord plugged into the base and receiver. “I recall how a certain girl in this room tied up this phone line for hours on end. And her sister did, too.”
Trudy made a face and went to open the wine. “Clay, you must be starving by now. You’re going to think Momma and I are terrible hostesses.” She stole a glance his way then uncorked the wine and filled three goblets. “Momma, you go first.”
Her mother took a healthy sip, smacked her ruby lips with pleasure, and announced, “This is the good stuff.” Setting her wine on the counter, she went to lift the roast from the oven.
Turning, Trudy sashayed toward Clay with a goblet in each hand. Once again, she’d ignored the seasonal rule about not wearing white after Labor Day. She’d slipped into her best white jeans — the ones that gave the illusion of long and lean — and a formfitting teal-colored V-neck sweater.
Right before she passed Clay his wine, Preston’s voice snarled through her mind. “You fat cow. You used to be sexy once. What happened to you?” After all these years, his cruelty still picked at an old scab of self-doubt.
Clay rose from the chair. His expression told Trudy he approved of the view — a jiggle and wiggle appealed to him. They clinked glasses and offered to help Jewel with the food preparation, but she shooed them away.
Wine in hand, Clay walked into the sunroom. His whole face lit up as he gazed at everything. He pointed to the far side of the room. “Over there’s where we played Twister.” He brushed up against her, tugging her ponytail.
Heat rose to her face as she recalled the white floor mat with red, yellow, green, and blue dots. While Georgia spun the spinner and played referee, Clay and Trudy were human game pieces, their youthful bodies entangled around each other on the mat.
After Jewel brought the food in and they took their seats, she tapped her spoon against the side of her water glass. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
All three raised their wine glasses. “To the renewal of old friendships,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice.
They ate, sipped wine, and caught up on local gossip. Clay regaled them with stories of attending Catholic grade school and getting in trouble with the nuns.
Jewel twirled her fork in the air. “My goodness, Clay. I can’t see you ever getting into mischief.”
He chuckled, charming them with his boyish grin. “Of course I shaped up by the time I met your daughter.” He winked at Trudy before he stabbed his fork into a hunk of meat and began chewing.
Batting her lashes, Trudy kept a straight face and kicked him under the table. “Except for the prank you pulled at Sonic,” she muttered out the side of her mouth.
Halfway through dinner, Jewel set her fork down and placed her hands palms down on each side of her plate. Her eyes glistened and her voice trembled. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has sat around this table.”
Having just taken the last savory bite of potatoes and carrots, Trudy stopped chewing and stared at her mother. Oh Lord, you’ve had too much to drink…now you’re going to get all melancholy again.
Jewel picked up her wine glass, drew it to her lips, and took a healthy swig. Then she peered over at Trud
y. “Except for Sarah Jewel.”
Trudy froze. Her eyes burned as she stared at the mother quail visible to one side of her plate. Fingering the cloth napkin on her lap, she twisted the edges of fabric, rolling it between her fingers as her heart collided with the back of her throat.
Her mother kept yapping. “Even though I never met her, I love her just the same.”
Stop, Momma! Trudy took a deep breath, held it there a moment. Her throat swelled like she’d swallowed an olive pit.
By now, Clay had set his fork down and stopped chewing. His eyes darted back and forth between Trudy and her mother. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. But who is Sarah Jewel?”
When Trudy didn’t answer, her mother squirmed in her chair before she hunched forward, her lips parted in an O. Her eyes pleaded with Trudy: You mean you haven’t told him yet?
Leaning back, Trudy smoothed a hand over the top of her head and took a deep breath. She clasped her hands in front of her plate and addressed Clay. “She was a sweet soul who passed through my life briefly on her way to someplace else.” She set her napkin down and pushed away from the table. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
In the kitchen, she tore off a paper towel and dabbed at the dampness on the back of her neck and forehead. She should’ve told Clay sooner. It wasn’t her mother’s fault. Buck it up, Cutterbuck.
Circling the kitchen, she composed herself and grabbed the wine bottle. Halfway through the archway, she heard her mother say, “I realize you deal with real crimes like rape and murder, but has there been any more vandalism at the cemetery since that graffiti artist struck?”
Trudy halted midstride. Her heart thumped wildly as she waited for Clay’s response.
“Not that I know of,” he said.
Her mother took a delicate nip of wine and set the glass down, wrapping her elegant fingers around the stem. “I’m sure Trudy’s mentioned it before, but Bogey’s buried out there and I’d hate for anything to happen to his grave.”
The Flying Cutterbucks Page 14