The Book of CarolSue

by Lynne Hugo

  “I meant about Rosalina.”

  “Oh. Make the question clear. First rule, son. Ask clear questions. What was it again?”

  Gary clenched his teeth. He drew in a breath through his nose, blew it out through his mouth, controlled his tone and said, “I was wondering if you’ve found out anything . . . about Rosalina . . . where she is, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Will you keep looking? Please. It’s important.”

  “So you said. Yes. Bet she’s got false papers. Immigration put it out to local cooperating departments, they’d picked up a guy, regular fake paper factory. Between Elmont and Indy. Round the time they got the convenience store chain that hired lotta illegals. Remember?”

  Gary did remember. It had been all over the news maybe six months ago. Immigration attention had ramped up over the past year, as they did every now and then, arrests splashed on the local news as if an international war had broken out. Gary supposed it made sense. Gary saw the logic that refugees should do it the right way, apply, get in line, like the people who’d done it according to the law. That was okay by him. Hadn’t Jesus said Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s? This was just about the church not turning someone away, which it wasn’t supposed to do. Jesus said to help the strangers and beggars. In a way, it was all pretty confusing. But he was just trying to do right by one person, after all. So maybe he did have something personally to gain; that really wasn’t the point.

  “You mean she might be using a different name?”

  “No way to know, now is there? Could order a police artist sketch, I suppose, give me something to go on?”

  “I’m not sure I remember well enough . . .” Gary said, as Rosalina’s face appeared, too clear in his mind, the long lushness of her nearly black hair that came to a widow’s peak on her forehead, neat sweeps of brows that were as dark as her hair, and wide-set eyes. Broad cheekbones. But a police artist? Wouldn’t that make it official? Had he already done that when he called this morning? He didn’t dare ask.

  “You know, I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Gary started again. “I mean, not cause her any trouble.” He meant immigration agents but didn’t know if he should keep mentioning that. He said a quick, silent prayer to Jesus to make that much clear to Gus.

  “You said that.”

  “If you can get me any info, strictly unofficial, I mean, I just want to offer her help. From the church, I mean. Church work.”

  “I’m doing what I can,” Gus said. Not quietly. “Give your mother my best.”

  And without thinking to say that he didn’t want his mother to know he’d asked Gus to look, didn’t want her to know he’d spoken to Gus at all, Gary said sure, he would do that, right before he hung up. Then, for the second time that morning, he slapped his palm to his face and held it there as he shook his head and called himself an idiot.

  Chapter 13

  Gus

  Some idiot with Michigan plates who probably had a PhD (Sure thing, Pile it Higher and Deeper, Gus always said about that) but couldn’t read a simple map, had run out of gas on one of the iffy rural roads, of which Shandon had plenty, and couldn’t tell AAA where the hell he was, so call the sheriff’s 911 line.

  Gus had been drinking coffee when the call came, so he lumbered out to his black-and-white and went out to find both him and the AAA truck. Good grief. Once he found the motorist by using the landmarks he said were around him (easy, there aren’t that many unmarked mailboxes that still have old candy-cane decorations on them from last Christmas. He was in front of the Hamiltons’ place, empty since they moved and it hadn’t sold), he guided the AAA guy by the motorist’s cell phone, turn by turn.

  It had brought him within a mile and a half of Louisa’s place, and he hadn’t gotten to finish his coffee when the call had interrupted his break. He touched her name on his cell phone, thinking maybe she’d put some coffee on and even better, sometimes she’d made cinnamon rolls. Even a cookie with the coffee would be mighty nice. And, of course, there’d be the pleasure of seeing her. She’d sort of hurried him off last night, which she’d not done before. He didn’t take it personal, though. She was exhausted, she said, from harvesting the garden and canning. Gus had thought it would be easier this year, what with CarolSue there to help.

  He liked CarolSue fine. She and Louisa were cut from the same cloth, he could tell, although she wasn’t as rooted in the land, and didn’t seem to take to the animals and chickens as deep as her sister, although she and the yellow Lab Jessie were a pack of two now. It was good for Louisa to have CarolSue with her, he supposed, but he did have some concerns about how it would affect keeping company with Louisa. Yesterday, she’d hinted about coming to his place. Whew. That was one terrible idea, not that he was eager to explain to her, but it would be one giant job to make it fit for her to walk in the door. Since Gus’s own sister, Rhonda, got that cancer in her pancreas and died so quick, he’d been on his own about cleaning it. Which meant that it was pretty dirty. And a mess, too. Figuring out where to put things in a house was never his strong suit. He heard Rhonda’s voice in his head all the time telling him to clean it up.

  Louisa answered the phone on the fourth ring, sounding a little breathless. “How’s my sweetheart?” He spoke up so she’d be sure to hear him.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” she said. “I was just carrying in what might be the last nine zucchini. I’ll probably need to make some bread for the freezer with it.”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you. Got a call from a stranded motorist brought me all the way over here. I’m maybe two minutes from the house. Thought I’d come by. You got some coffee for your local sheriff? He needs it bad, and a glimpse of your beautiful face.”

  Silence. Gus thought he’d lost the connection. “Louisa? Honey? Louisa!”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Well, the thing is, CarolSue’s not dressed. At all. She’s . . . not feeling well.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that. Tell her for me. I won’t bother her. You and I can sit in the living room instead of the kitchen, give her more privacy. How’s that?”

  A pause. “Uh . . . okay.”

  “Don’t worry, honey. You know, we both got to get used to having CarolSue there, figure out how to live our lives like always. Right?”

  “Give me ten minutes to clean myself up,” she said. “I’m a mess. You know CarolSue. Fashion queen, hair, makeup. Not only will she not be feeling well, she’ll have to rouse herself to kill me if I let you come over looking the way I do right now. Then she’ll kill you for having made it necessary to kill me.”

  “What am I supposed to do for the next ten minutes?” Gus whined.

  “Spend it trying to pull up your big boy pants. Ten minutes. Not a minute sooner.”

  * * *

  When he arrived, Louisa had set up coffee and yes, a cinnamon bun she said she’d pulled from her freezer, out on the porch, where there was a small table between two white rockers. Late morning sun was on their legs, but not in their eyes, a small mercy. No breeze stirred the leaves of the big maple tree in the small grassy area. A few leaves had already started to turn, early warning flags. It wouldn’t be that long before the field corn would be harvested. He hoped Louisa would make good money from her field. Al Pelley kept intimating that she could make more if she’d listen to him.

  “Not too hot out here for you?” Gus said, meaning, It’s too hot for me out here, and I’d rather be inside where I won’t sweat inside the heavy pants and long-sleeved shirt and tie of this damn uniform.

  “Oh no, it’s lovely,” Louisa trilled. “I never want to be inside when I can be out, nice and warm in the sunshine.”

  Gus wondered if she’d gone mad overnight but decided it was unlikely. He’d heard that older women had hot flashes. Maybe they had cold flashes, too. He wouldn’t know, and who could he ask now that Rhonda was gone?

  “Good coffee as always,” he said, “and even better cinnamon bun. You could make a fortune selling those. I’d go broke
myself buying them.”

  “You’re just trying to get seconds, but that was the last one frozen. I’ll make more next week. After I get zucchini bread done.” She looked pretty to him, her light hair pinned back like that, it made her blue eyes stand out. She always said her sister’s eyes were brighter blue, and Gus could see that they were a different, lighter blue, and that CarolSue was more Atlanta-looking with her polished fingers and clothes, and the haircut that Louisa said was like a small animal chewed its way all around the edges right before the wind blew just until her hair looked like a magazine picture. Louisa was more earthy, even when she’d put on lipstick like now. It was CarolSue got her to put on makeup and do her hair, and one time after a nap Louisa told Gus that CarolSue got her a different bra, too, to pull her boobs up higher.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I did notice a difference,” Gus had said, and she’d slapped his ass in play. Which had led to a second nap that day, a record of which Gus was quite proud, not knowing whether his blue pill would last two naps. But it had.

  “I guess I’d best be getting back to work,” he said finally, after discussing when the next round of repairs over the Rush Run Creek bridge would start, and the ridiculous detour that annually drove them nuts. “I’m just gonna run in and use your john.”

  “Oh, wait a moment, and let me check that CarolSue’s not in there,” Louisa said, jumping up, almost blocking his way. “Hang on.”

  A moment later she was back. “Oh, sorry, but she’s in there. Not feeling well, you know.”

  “I’ll wait,” Gus said. “You know. Damn prostate. You don’t want me over there peeing into your bushes. Wouldn’t be seemly for the sheriff.” He grinned at the self-evidence of that one.

  “Oh. All right.” She sat back down but didn’t say anything.

  “So, back to the garden when I leave?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Canning this afternoon?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Then she was up again. “I’ll check on CarolSue,” she said, and the door closed behind her. This time she was gone a good five minutes. Gus checked his watch and waited. He really did have to go. Was CarolSue that indisposed? Maybe he could just quickly use the other bathroom, the one in the part of the house Louisa had closed off. This once.

  She was back then, though. “Okay, she’s out. You can use it.”

  The radio was on, tuned to National Public Radio, Louisa’s favorite, he knew, and fairly loud, even for Gus. Louisa was always telling him he didn’t have to shout, she could hear just fine.

  Louisa stood almost outside the bathroom door, waiting for him, which made him very self-conscious. If the radio hadn’t been so loud, she’d have been able to hear him pee, and intimate as they’d been, that felt like a bridge too far if a point was being made of it. Why would she want to listen in anyway? He turned to use the towel after giving his hands a cursory rinse and saw a weird plastic thing in the bathtub. He leaned in to inspect it.

  When he opened the door, there was Louisa practically pushing him toward the porch again. “What’s with the thing in the bathtub? With the yellow duckie in it?” he said.

  “Oh, that. Um, well, Marvelle got herself filthy—I don’t know, must have been hunting mice. She . . . didn’t smell good. So CarolSue thought a small tub like that wouldn’t freak her out. She got it, it was her idea.”

  “No! You gave Marvelle a bath? She let you do that?”

  “I had to talk her through it, uh, you know, it’s like soothing a . . . baby.”

  “You got her a rubber duckie?”

  “We thought it might distract her. Well, I mean, a bird-type thing. She . . . watches them out the window. ”

  “Huh. Never heard of that before. So, she’s . . . clean now?”

  “Oh yes, she’s doing great now,” Louisa said, all chipper, and took his arm. “Let’s go check on her, in the backyard, so you can see.”

  They talked their way down the hall, through the kitchen, and were in the living room by then. There was Marvelle on the back of the wingback chair, giving him the evil eye. “Honey, she’s right here. Looks fine to me,” he said.

  “Oh good, let’s take her outside. Sometimes she needs urging to get some exercise.”

  “Sweetheart, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll call you later. Maybe we can . . . arrange a . . . nap?”

  “CarolSue’s not feeling well at all,” she said. “Not at all. Not today. Not here anyway, but . . . ?” And she raised her eyebrows at him, like she was saying, Well, how about your place? Good Lord, his dear departed sister would have marched in his place, huffing about how, just to get in the door, she’d had to fight the Board of Health, which was ready to nail up a giant CONDEMNED sign. She’d find a way to die all over again if he let Louisa in there.

  Gus went back to work, more than a little worried about CarolSue’s health and his future as the King of Naps.

  Chapter 14

  CarolSue

  Louisa waved goodbye to Gus and turned from the front door. We looked at each other, mugging wide-eyed, burst out in hysterical laughter and gave each other high fives. “Holy sh . . .” she gasped.

  “Language,” I cautioned her. “Little pitchers have . . . and there’s a little pitcher in my arms. Holy poop, that was close.”

  “How’d you keep her quiet?”

  “Stuffing her pacifier in her mouth three hundred times. How’d you keep him out there?”

  “By pretending I didn’t notice it was like a sauna and trying not to faint from the heat.”

  I’d ventured out of the master bedroom with Gracia and Jessie after I’d heard him leave, finally, after he used the bathroom. “It was a mite tense. But Gracie was such a good girl, wasn’t she?” I kissed the baby’s head. She burped a good one and spit up on my shoulder. “I need a cloth,” I said to Louisa. “And you probably need a cold shower, and not for the usual reason.”

  “You’re just lucky he had to get back to work anyway, or you and Gracie would have had to figure out how to climb out the bedroom window. Now that I would have liked to see!”

  “You mean my desperate illness wouldn’t keep him from wanting to nap?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  We were laughing about it then, but it had been a rough go. First we’d panicked about Gus coming over, but as Louisa slapped on some lipstick and made it look like she’d used the ten minutes to clean up the way she’d told Gus, I made coffee, scrounged a bun out of the freezer—“Just one!” Louisa yelled from the bathroom, “Or he’ll stay longer and eat as many as you put out! ”—and then I set up a tray for her to take out on the porch. Meanwhile I grabbed a bottle, the pacifier, the toys, and got Gracie and me in the master bedroom where we just had to desperately hope I could keep her amused and quiet until he was gone.

  It went all right until Louisa came in and whispered, “He wants the damn bathroom now,” and we had to rush around the kitchen, around everywhere, snatching up all the little evidences of a baby, a sock here, a rattle there, an unfinished bottle on the counter, the duckie book half tucked under the wingback chair. At the last minute, I’d realized the tiny soft hairbrush I’d bought Gracie was on the bathroom counter from when we’d bathed her last night. All of it had to be stashed in the master bedroom, door firmly shut, and I’d have to keep her silent while Gus was in the bathroom just down the hall.

  “Turn the radio up,” I hissed at Louisa just before she went out. A sensible suggestion from the sensible sister, please notice. She did. I think the Athertons, who live a quarter mile down the road, might have enjoyed the program without needing their own radio on, but I have to say, it helped muffle any other sound.

  “I thought he’d never leave,” I said then, once Louisa found a cloth and helped me wipe spit-up from both Gracie and me. “Shoot, I’m going to need to change us both.”

  “You missed the baby tub, and the duckie. I thought I was going to have to make up something ridiculous but I covered. Gary better come get
this baby is all I can say,” she said. “What if it had been raining? He’d never have bought the lovely day to sit outside thing. His cheeks looked like tomatoes, he was so hot.” She stuck out her lower lip then and blew upward to move the light bangs I’d cut for her—makes her look younger, and they’re quite sexy if I do say so myself, not that I enjoy the picture of her with Gus, but somebody has to make her look good—off her forehead. I guess that was to make me think she’d been through some great stress. She ought to try keeping a baby quiet while her sister makes goo-goo eyes with a puffy sheriff while relaxing and drinking coffee on a summer porch. It’s not like there was no shade there.

  So she’d noticed Gus was hot, had she? You know what I wanted to say right then about that? How come you never noticed how hot it was out in the garden when I was falling over from heat stroke, my skin itching me to distraction from vegetation and bugs creeping around my legs, and my back feeling like I’d been lifting boulders for a year? That’s how quickly my feelings turned from our old laughter to jealous irritation. I could bite my tongue because I was going back to Atlanta anyway. I just hadn’t had the time to make my calls yet, too busy with the baby, and I didn’t really want Louisa to know my Plan. Not yet.

  “I think you need to take Gracie for a half hour. I feel a lie-down coming on.” I put on the Georgia accent that she hates and laid the back of my hand across my forehead, Southern belle–style. Yes, I knew it would drive her mad. I’m not incapable of taking my own shot here and there.

  * * *

  The day crawled toward evening, Louisa working the garden, and me happily not—rather playing with Gracia, feeding her, changing her, letting her sleep on me. I’d told myself that today I’d definitely call the lawyer in Atlanta, and my real estate agent, but I was either busy with Gracie or hadn’t the heart to put the baby down when she was sleeping in my arms and her breathing was so much like peace itself. My elbow was propped on a pillow so her weight felt easy—until my arm went numb and stiff, but I still didn’t move, the time was so precious. The picture of my stillborn son was still in my mind, the hour I’d held him after the pain I’d thought about to end, instead of guessing it was the physical prelude to a worse suffering. Here was a perfect living infant in my charge who needed me. I’d not known the hole in my heart was still there, the hopeless tender longing, begging him pointlessly to breathe, breathe, breathe. Much as I cared for my nephew, Gary, who was born nearly the same time as the boy I lost, he was Louisa’s, always Louisa’s, and I’d had to guard my heart.