Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) Read online

  “Oh, Leeman,” Carlie said, but so soft he couldn’t have heard her. Her eyes filled with tears and she stepped over to the kitchen counter to find something to blow her nose on. She reached into the junk drawer and came up with a napkin from the Shack.

  “Go to bed, Florine. I have to talk to your father,” she said.

  She walked into their bedroom. I went back to bed and listened to a low murmur from her, an occasional grunt from him. Then the sounds stopped and I went to sleep.

  In the morning, after Daddy had gone out on the water, I came out of my bedroom to find Carlie slumped at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of coffee. Her new blond hair was bed-messed and hung down over her shoulders, limp and pale. I touched it, and it was soft. I stroked it from top to tip and back again.

  “It’s nice,” I said. “Takes some getting used to, but it’s pretty.”

  “Your father is upset with me,” she said in a hoarse crow’s voice.

  “Can I have some coffee?”

  “Lots of milk,” she said. I rolled my eyes. Surely I was old enough to drink regular coffee, but I settled for fixing a glass of milk with enough coffee to color it, then added three teaspoons of sugar. I sat down and looked at Carlie. Her lashes were clumped with old mascara and most of the eye shadow had rubbed off during the night.

  She picked up a piece of her hair and frowned as she studied it. “Looks like shit disguised as straw,” she said. “Do you think I should dye it back?”

  I shrugged and chugged the coffee milk, held the glass to my mouth and watched the melted sugar flow toward my tongue in a slow sweet stream. The sugar flooded my mouth and breached my taste buds back to my ears.

  “Maybe you should ask Grand what she thinks,” I said.

  “Oh shit,” Carlie said. “Grand. I wonder what she’ll say.”

  “Let’s get dressed and go over and find out. I bet she likes it,” I said.

  When she saw Carlie’s hair, Grand said, “Well, now, that’s a change.”

  “Leeman hates it,” Carlie said.

  “He’ll get over it,” Grand said. “Hattie Butts and Cora Brown and I liked to do each other up. Least Leeman noticed. Franklin never did. I don’t see the harm in it.”

  After our visit, Carlie felt better. Still, we cleaned house until it sparkled and made Daddy a good supper. Carlie got a phone call from Patty midway through the day and I caught the words, “I really screwed up this time,” before they hung up.

  Daddy came home to the smell of supper and the table set. Carlie moved her chair close to his and he kept looking at her, trying, I guess, to learn who she was with this new hair. About halfway through the meal, I realized I might as well be wallpaper. Carlie kept rubbing his leg under the table and Daddy’s eyes were getting bright. When Carlie asked me to go to Ray’s for some dessert and to take my time, I knew enough to go.

  Stella Drowns was the only one in the store. I headed for the cream horns, took two of them to the counter, and handed Stella a dollar.

  “You still being punished for the fire?” she asked.

  “I didn’t set it.”

  “Not what I asked,” she said. She smiled, shifting the scar a few inches up on her cheek. “Think you’ve learned your lesson?” she asked.

  “Can I have my cream horns?” I said.

  “Not getting it until you answer me,” she said.

  “Give me back my money,” I said.

  She slapped my dollar into my palm.

  “You’re a witch,” I said, and left the store, determined to tell Daddie and Carlie about her. When I got close to our house, I heard Elvis on the record player. I started to go inside, but then I stopped, wondering at the sight of Daddy holding Carlie to him as he led her in a clumsy slow dance across the kitchen floor. When they saw me in the doorway, I said, “I’m staying at Grand’s house. I need my PJ’s.” I started to walk past them, but they opened their arms as if they were a bridge and then they brought down their arms. Carlie giggled on one side of me, and Daddy’s soft chuckle moved against my ear. “Let me go,” I said, in a muffled voice. When they freed me, I grabbed my pajamas and ran out the door.

  Grand cut me a big piece of her chocolate cake and we watched television, then went up to bed. I snuggled down in Daddy’s old bedroom to go to sleep. Just before I dropped off, Stella’s voice hissed at me, “Think you’ve learned your lesson?”

  5

  Madeline, Dottie’s mother, was an artist. She sold watercolors at a little gallery up on Route 100. I loved to watch her paint, and on a Wednesday afternoon during the second week in August, Dottie and I sat on her lawn while she did just that. She gazed out over the water, back at her painting, out again, dabbed a few strokes of color down, looked out. I could have watched her for hours.

  That Monday morning, a blond Carlie and a redheaded Patty had driven up north for their yearly trip to Crow’s Nest Harbor. They were due back Thursday. Carlie packed a suitcase with some summer things, threw a couple of meals together for Daddy and me, and they were off. But not before she’d made Daddy talk to Bert about Dottie and me seeing each other again. They’d agreed, but no overnights, and the boys were still off limits.

  Dottie picked a blade of grass out of the lawn and split it down the middle. She put it between her thumbs, gave it a blow, and got a squeaky honk out of it. I tried it and spit all over my hands.

  “I don’t know why you can’t do that,” she said.

  “I’m not good at sports like you,” I said.

  “This ain’t sports,” Dottie said. “It’s grass blowing.”

  I shrugged. Madeline moved her brush and blue slashed across the top of her painting. She moved it again, and another blue slash, lower and darker, appeared.

  “Let’s do something,” Dottie said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Keep-away,” she said. “You take Evie and I’ll take Maureen.”

  Dottie’s sister, Evie, was six, and Bud’s sister, Maureen, was five. Dottie called them pinkie girls, doll-playing girls. “Keep-away will be too hard for them,” I said.

  I watched an orange spider the size of a freckle move up Dottie’s leg. When it reached her knee, she smeared it. “Them things bite,” she said. “I got bit the other day, and I looked down and it was one of them.”

  “I never got bit by one,” I said.

  “You probably did. You just didn’t know it,” Dottie said.

  Madeline shifted in her chair. A little breeze lifted the corner of her paper. Dottie picked a little weed shaped like a spoon and peeled the veins up from the stem and down the back of the leaf. Then she threw the stripped weed onto the lawn. “Grand have cookies?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “But she’ll let us make some.”

  “I don’t want to make ’em, I want to eat ’em,” Dottie said. She said to Madeline, “Ma, when can we go swimming? You almost done?”

  “No,” Madeline said, in a faraway voice. “Not for a while.”

  “Let’s go to Grand’s and make cookies,” I said. “Tide’ll be in after we do that and then we can go swimming.”

  “Okay,” Dottie said. “It’ll pass the time.”

  Grand was watching a soap opera when we banged through the screen door.

  “What you doing in?” she called.

  “Can we make some cookies?” I asked.

  “Just a second,” Grand hollered. “Lisa’s going to tell Bob she’s leaving him for Howard. Been waiting for months for this. Hold your horses and I’ll be with you.”

  “We can do it,” I said, but she didn’t hear me.

  “Wish we had horses,” Dottie said, sitting in Grand’s rocker on the porch. “We could ride them somewhere.”

  “What kind of horse would you have?” I asked, sitting down in my own chair.

/>   “Palomino. Like Trigger.”

  “I’d have a black stallion,” I said. “He’d hate everyone but me. I could ride him without a saddle or a bridle.”

  “You can’t even ride with a saddle,” Dottie pointed out.

  “Neither can you. We don’t even have saddles. Or horses. I’m just saying, if I had a horse, this is what I would want.”

  The television was pretty loud, so Dottie and I got to listen as Lisa told Bob she was leaving him. Lisa sounded more upset than Bob. “I’m sorry,” she cried, “I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world. I do love you, Bob, I do, but . . .” Bob mumbled a couple of words and Lisa started up again.

  “That’s crap,” Dottie muttered.

  “You mad?” I asked.

  “No. Just bored.”

  Bob finally hollered at Lisa. “You think I haven’t noticed you’ve been acting strange, lately? You haven’t wanted to sleep with me. You haven’t even wanted to kiss me. Oh, I’ve noticed, Lisa. I’m not blind.”

  “Maybe not,” Dottie said, “but you’re ugly.”

  We giggled, and then a commercial came on and Grand got up.

  “All right,” she said behind us in the kitchen. “Get in here you girls. Dorothea, you get them bowls over there and Florine, you get out the flour and sugar.”

  “We can do this,” I said again, but Grand waved me off.

  Dottie got out the bowls and sat down as Grand and I gathered all of the ingredients.

  “Dorothea, get up and take a couple sticks of butter out of the fridge,” Grand said.

  “What kind of people name a kid Dorothea?” Dottie said. “I hate my name.”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Grand said. “Your father’s grandmother Dorothea was a wonderful woman. You cut the butter up into little pieces and wash your hands first.”

  Dottie dragged herself over to the sink and turned on the tap.

  “Use soap,” Grand said. “That’s right. Just like that.” She looked at me. “You too.”

  “I know,” I said, and muttered under my breath, “you don’t have to tell me.”

  “Seems like I do,” Grand said, somehow managing to hear me.

  I bumped hips with Dottie at the sink and the soap popped out of her hand and flopped onto Grand’s kitchen floor. We reached for it at the same time and bumped heads.

  “Ow!” I hollered.

  “Shit!” Dottie yelled.

  Grand bent down and picked up the soap. “If I’d wanted a show, I would’ve turned on The Three Stooges,” she said. “Lucky you two got hard heads.”

  Dottie said, “I’m sorry I swore.”

  “Sorry accepted,” Grand said.

  I poured white and brown sugar, cracked eggs, tipped vanilla into a spoon and took a deep snort of it. Grand measured flour, baking soda, and salt. The butter chunks thumped as Dottie cut them into a bowl. A breeze chased through the kitchen, touched the back of my neck, and moved on. Grand hummed “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  “I got the messiest job,” Dottie said.

  “You done yet?” Grand asked. She took the bowl from Dottie, dumped the butter pats into the sugar and egg, and began mixing it together with a wooden spoon. Then she added chocolate chips and mixed it again. The back fat on her arm wobbled as she gave the ingredients hell, still humming away. The skin on her elbow reminded me of pictures I’d seen of elephants’ knees.

  Dottie and I smeared Crisco over cookie sheets, and Grand spooned dough onto them. Dottie picked at the dough. Grand said, “Dorothea,” and Dottie took her hand away.

  Grand bustled into the living room for a go-round with a second soap opera, leaving us to pick up the kitchen. Dottie scraped the sides of the dough bowl with a fingernail. I took it from her and set it in the sink to soak, put spoons and cups into the soapy water in the bowl.

  “I got a black and blue?” Dottie asked, tilting her head so her brown bangs fell away.

  “No,” I said. “Me?”

  “No,” Dottie said. “I’m going over and get Ma to let us go swimming. Bring them cookies over when they’re done.”

  “You’re supposed to help clean up,” I said.

  “I got to move,” she said. “Come over in a little while. Don’t forget them cookies.”

  “Dorothea gone?” Grand asked when she came to check the cookies.

  I nodded. “She couldn’t even help clean up.”

  “Well, she’s a restless soul. Her great grandmother, the other Dorothea, was, too. I never saw someone keep so busy. I’d see her down in the clam flats, digging up dinner, feet and legs in muck up to the knees. Then, later I’d see her beating carpets she’d hauled out of the house and draped over her clotheslines. Made me tired to watch her.” The smell of chocolate chip cookies wafted our way and the bell went off.

  “Course,” Grand said, “I don’t see young Dorothea doing that.”

  “She hates clams,” I said.

  Grand gave me all three dozen cookies. I took them to Madeline, who put away her painting supplies, let us each have one cookie, then walked Dottie, Evie, Maureen, and me down to the beach by the wharf.

  “I wonder when we’ll be able to go swimming by ourselves,” I said to Dottie as we trailed the others.

  “Probably never,” Dottie said. “Might as well get used to it.” She hitched up the top of her bathing suit. “This friggin’ thing don’t fit anymore,” she said.

  “Stop bragging,” I said, and she snorted.

  The water was almost as warm as the air. Dottie and I held a contest to see who could do a handstand underwater longest. I was winning for the fourth time when I heard Dottie shout, “Hey!” I came up to see Bud and Glen standing amongst the boulders up above the beach. Bud grinned at me so wide his ears disappeared behind his head.

  That grin made me feel strange, so I dove underwater to get away from it. Then I stood up, swept my hair out of my face, and Dottie and I waded toward the boys.

  “Hold it. They’re not supposed to be here,” Madeline shouted from her rock. We froze and looked at her. Then she said, “Oh, the hell with it,” and let the boys join us.

  Dottie and Glen were busy ducking each other when Bud said to me, “Let’s swim out to the mooring.” The white mooring that belonged to Bert Butts wasn’t too far offshore, but a steep drop-off made the water deep. “One, two, three, go,” I said. We raced each other out and Bud won. When we reached the buoy, he let me grab the mooring rope while he treaded water.

  “Swim to the bottom?” he said, and down we went on the count of three. I took hold of the rope while Bud swam beside me. As the water got deeper, it got colder. My ears felt as if they were pressing against my brains, and I wanted to head back up in the worst way. But Bud grabbed my hand and we spiraled down, until he stopped and pointed.

  We’d reached an underwater city of rusty black rocks, where barnacles dotted the surfaces. Seaweed church steeples reached for the light. The far-above sun filtered through them, and Bud and I wove our way through their paths. An olive-colored crab marched backward between two rocks as two small silver fish swam past. A flash of white belly gave a flounder away as it sped off.

  When an extra-cold current wrapped itself around my burning lungs, I tugged at Bud’s hand and we swam up. I grabbed the mooring as we gulped in fresh air. I blinked my salt-stung eyes and the world blurred, then cleared.

  “Want to go again?” Bud asked.

  But Madeline shouted to us to get back to the beach right now, if we knew what was good for us, so we raced each other back. I won, but I think Bud let me do it.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon with Grand, knitting and reading on the porch until Daddy came in. We ate supper and I went to bed at nine. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about Carlie. She had promised me that she would buy me something
special. I wondered what it might be. She always seemed to know what I would have picked out for myself.

  When the phone rang, I jumped. I looked over at Mickey. It was 10:30 P.M. I heard Daddy get up from his living room chair, heard him walk across the kitchen floor to the wall phone and clear his throat of sleep. Heard the crack of a bat and the crowd roar on television. Heard Daddy say, “Hello? No, I haven’t heard from her. Why?”

  6

  Crow’s Nest Harbor was up the coast about three hours away. I knew from Carlie’s description that it was a tourist town set on a bay that made our little harbor look like a puddle. Carlie and Patty had traveled up there for a few days every summer since I’d been old enough to wave goodbye to them. They always stayed at the Crow’s Nest Harbor Motel, just off the main street, near the bay. The postcards Carlie mailed me every year showed me that the motel had a pool and pretty, light rooms. Carlie had promised to take me with them when I turned thirteen, which would be next spring.

  Patty was the one who had called Daddy. She told him that she and Carlie had eaten breakfast together at the motel at about ten o’clock, and then Carlie walked into town to a dress shop to pick up something for me that they’d seen on Tuesday. She told Patty that she would be back in the early afternoon.

  By five o’clock when Carlie still wasn’t back, Patty began to wonder if she’d misheard her, so she walked into town. The dress shop sales clerk told Patty that she had seen Carlie, but it had been at about eleven o’clock. So Patty walked the streets and went into and out of shops and restaurants until about 7:00 P.M. Then she went back to the motel. At ten thirty that night, when Carlie still hadn’t called or shown up, Patty decided to call Daddy.

  This is what Daddy told everyone, later. He didn’t tell me all of that right then, but I picked up the worry in his voice, so I got up and came into the kitchen. “You hear from her, have her give me a call,” Daddy said, and hung up. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and glanced at me. “Why you up?” he said.

  “Was that Carlie?” I asked.