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

  “No,” he said. “That was Patty.”

  “Where’s Carlie?”

  “Good question,” he said. He caught my frown and said, “Oh, you know your mother. Sometimes she likes to go off. That’s probably what happened, and she didn’t check with Patty. I’m pretty sure Carlie will call us in the morning.”

  He told me to go back to bed, that he was about to do the same thing. I did, but not for long. Carlie not being where she was supposed to be was odd. I got up and stood in their bedroom doorway and said to Daddy, “I’m not going to be able to sleep until I know where she is.”

  Daddy sat up and turned on the little lamp beside him. He ran his hands through his hair and got out of bed. He hadn’t taken off his pants, and he hadn’t pulled down the covers. We went into the kitchen and we sat down at the table together.

  “You want milk or something?”

  “Yuck. No.”

  “I’ll have a glass for myself, if you don’t mind,” he said. He got up and poured some milk into a little pan and turned on the burner. A blue ring of gas lit up with a hiss. “Grand used to make me hot milk, sometimes,” he said.

  “What if something has happened to Carlie?” I asked.

  “Let’s not worry,” he said.

  The milk fizzed as it got hot, and Daddy turned off the stove. He opened the cupboard over the stove, fetched down a bottle of whiskey, and poured a jigger into a mug. He poured the hot milk over it and sipped at it.

  That looked good to me, so he poured a little into the jigger glass and I said, “Bottoms up,” chugged it, and felt sleepy soon after.

  Daddy tucked my blankets around me. I was too old for that, but I didn’t say anything to him. It was comforting, somehow.

  “You sleep,” he said, brushing my forehead with his lips. “See you in the morning.”

  Come Thursday morning, Carlie didn’t call, and Daddy didn’t go out on the boat. He talked to Patty and at ten o’clock, about twenty-four hours after Carlie had disappeared, Daddy called Parker Clemmons, who called the Crow’s Nest Harbor police department, who called the State Police.

  Grand came over to our house. At eleven o’clock, Parker called and said the police needed a picture. Did we have one? Parker would drive it up. Daddy would go with him. No, it was best if I stayed with Grand. When I threw a fit about being left behind, Daddy held firm. “Why don’t you help me look through the pictures,” he said.

  They were jumbled together in an old yellow suitcase with mouse-chewed leather straps under my parents’ bed. Carlie had vowed that one day she and I would put them all into photo albums, but we hadn’t gotten around to it. I dragged the suitcase into the kitchen and Daddy lifted it onto the kitchen table and undid the buckles. He and Grand and I began to sort through the pile.

  Here was me as a fat baby. Here was me at three with Grand’s black-and-white cat named Poker, who had folded his game long ago. Daddy as a boy, standing beside Grand, both of them looking spiffy in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Daddy and Carlie hugging each other and looking into the camera.

  Carlie alone.

  I shuffled it out from the pile. Even in the black-and-white picture, I could tell it was summer. Carlie stood back to the harbor, her hair flying around her face. She looked into the camera, not smiling wide, as she was apt to do, but giving the photographer just a hint instead, and her eyes were smoky. “I asked her to marry me after I took that picture,” Daddy said. “I couldn’t believe she said yes.”

  “’Course she said yes,” Grand said. “You are the best thing happened to her.”

  Daddy said, “Well, she’s the best thing . . .” He put his hand on my head. We looked at Carlie looking back at us from the photograph, and then Daddy said, “She hasn’t changed much except for the stupid dye job. I guess we can use this one.”

  Daddy and Parker left to make the trip to Crow’s Nest Harbor at about 3:00 P.M. on Thursday. Grand stayed with me Thursday night. We slept in my parents’ bed, and I tossed and turned and breathed in the perfume from my mother’s pillowcase. Come Friday morning, Carlie still hadn’t made an appearance.

  Word spread like measles through The Point, and by noon on Friday, Evie, Dottie, and Madeline came to keep Grand and me company. Then Ida, Bud’s mother, showed up with Maureen, and Stella Drowns wandered down from Ray’s store. I wasn’t happy about Grand letting her into our kitchen, but Grand would have said all were welcome, so Dottie, Evie, Maureen, and I went into the living room. Evie and Maureen cut out paper doll dresses from a book Ida had brought along to keep them busy. Dottie and I picked up a jumbo-sized Archie comic and read the parts to each other. But I kept one ear on to what was being said around the kitchen table, where the women sat drinking pots of tea that Grand kept boiling up.

  They didn’t know Carlie well. She’d made a nest of her life with Daddy and me, but she was too restless for quilting, like Ida did, or painting, like Madeline did, or knitting and baking, like Grand did. Carlie liked to move. That was Carlie.

  Stella, sitting across from Grand at the kitchen table, said, “Seems strange, all the same. It’s almost like she and Patty planned it.” The kitchen went quiet, then Grand said, pressing down on her words, “How do you mean?”

  “I’m just saying, the whole thing is weird,” Stella said.

  Madeline said, “A wife and mother went shopping and disappeared. That’s weird.”

  A cold band settled around my heart as I realized that they thought something was wrong. I left Dottie and stood in the kitchen doorway. Grand saw me and said, “Florine, do you and Dottie want lunch?”

  I ignored her. I glared at Stella Drowns. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

  “Oh, Florine, I didn’t mean it,” Stella Drowns said. “Thinking out loud is all.”

  “Might think better with your mouth sewn shut,” I said.

  Grand said, sharp, “Florine, apologize. I won’t have you talk like that to anyone.”

  I muttered, “I’m sorry,” and I went back into the living room.

  Everyone but Madeline and Dottie left soon afterward and the day passed. Grand went over to her house and welcomed in the boats while we waited for news.

  The phone finally rang about six o’clock and Madeline answered it. Daddy told her that the police had Carlie’s picture. No, she hadn’t been seen but in the morning, the police would show her photograph all around Crow’s Nest Harbor. Grand came back over soon after the phone call and Madeline went home.

  Dottie and I went outside and sat on the front steps of the house. Thin purple clouds clung like spider webs to the twilight long after the sun set. Fireflies blinked and darted across the front lawn. Usually, Dottie and I would get a jug and collect them, but that night we just sat and didn’t talk. Grand called us in at about eight thirty. She made us go to bed in my little room and I tried to sleep but Dottie’s chunky body, along with my own ragged thoughts, crowded me into a corner. I thought Dottie was asleep, so I jumped when she suddenly said, “She’ll be okay. The police will find her.” She fell asleep after that and I listened to her breathe for a little while, then I got up. Grand sat on the sofa, knitting and watching Johnny Carson.

  I sat down beside her.

  “What you doing up?” she asked.

  “I want Carlie,” I said. “I want my mother.” Grand put down her knitting and pulled me close. I put my head down on her lap and sobbed into her dress as she stroked my hair and shushed me. Johnny Carson said goodnight and the network played the national anthem, and there was nothing but hiss, and still she sat and smoothed my hair and hummed hymns to me. I fell asleep staring into the darkness of her lap.

  7

  Daddy came home from Crow’s Nest Harbor two days later.

  I sat at the picnic table in our front yard and looked down the driveway all day Sunday, waiting for him. Finally, he r
umbled home in the pickup. Before he could shut the pickup door, I was on him and he hugged me tight. We went into the house and he gave Grand a hard, tired look.

  “Sam brought a six-pack of ’Gansett by for you,” Grand said to him. “Told me to give him a call when you got back. You feel like seeing him?”

  “’Spose,” he said. “Might as well call everyone, tell them what’s going on.” Daddy and I sat down at our picnic table and soon, everyone on The Point came by.

  Carlie’s picture was up all over town, he told us, and it was set to go into the local paper on Monday. They’d already checked all the shops in the village. The Crow’s Nest Harbor police, the State Police, and the Coast Guard were searching.

  When he brought up the Coast Guard, I dug my fingers into his arm. I’d already started my list of Horrible Things That Might Have Happened. Amnesia or kidnapping were at the top, but now I could add another, more permanent thing.

  As if he knew my thoughts, Daddy took my hand and held it.

  “Florine, no one knows what happened. They’re checking everything, though, and they’ll find out, I’m sure of it. Someone like your mother doesn’t just disappear.”

  “What’d they ask you?” Sam said.

  “First thing was, why’d she bleach her hair? Why did Patty dye her hair?” He shook his head. “What the hell was I supposed to say? She got an itch to do it and she did? Well, that’s what I said. Far as I know, that’s the only reason. They asked me if she was happy. Was she restless? Was she acting funny? Did she make phone calls or try to get the mail before I could see it? Did she spend a lot of money all of a sudden? Did she have her own bank account? What did we fight about? All kinds of things.” Daddy took a big gulp of beer and wiped his mouth. “I couldn’t tell them so many things. She always got the mail. Don’t know if she got phone calls. Didn’t have a bank account we could find. Paid for her trip with tip money. Sometimes she was happy, sometimes she wasn’t, same as the rest of us. Our fights mostly had to do with us not going anywhere and me being stubborn.”

  “Did they call her family?” Madeline asked.

  “Nothing there. I talked to her brother. He’s no help. Christ, you think I don’t talk much; you should try to worm things out of Robert. Mother’s real sick, he said. Father died a year ago. No one’s heard from Carlie.”

  “Be good to send someone down to talk to them, all the same,” said Ida. “Might be something they know about her that we don’t.”

  “They’re going to,” Daddy said.

  We sat at the table for a couple of hours. Daddy smoked Chesterfields down to stubs and drank a six-pack of ’Gansett by himself. Grand brought out fried fish and fresh corn for everyone, but Daddy and I just pushed the food around on our plates.

  Dottie set up my croquet set and batted a blue ball and a green ball through the wickets. Everyone left as the dying sun dusted the tops of the pine trees orange.

  A swarm of mosquitoes began to whine around our heads, so we went inside.

  “I know it’s only eight thirty, but I’m bushed,” Daddy said. “I got to go to bed.”

  “I should say so,” Grand said. “Florine, you want to come with me for overnight?”

  “I want to stay here with Daddy,” I said. He rubbed his hands over his face and Grand said, “Why don’t we let him get some sleep?”

  “What if Carlie calls?” I asked.

  Daddy said, “I’ll let you know right away.”

  As Grand and I walked to her house, she said, “We got to give him a little time alone, Florine. He needs to catch up to himself.”

  The steady rhythm of Grand’s snoring knocked me out that night, and I slept until nine o’clock the next morning. When I went downstairs, I looked through the picture window in the kitchen down to the harbor. The Carlie Flo was not at her mooring.

  “Daddy’s gone,” I cried, and I ran out the door in my pajamas and went across the road and down the driveway as fast as I could go. What if the phone rang? What if Carlie came home with amnesia and left again because she wasn’t sure it was her house?

  Grand found me in the kitchen, staring at the phone.

  “Florine, my number is next to be called,” she said. “Your Daddy’s got to work. Doing daily things gives a soul some comfort. Parker’s got my number and Carlie knows she can call me. Get dressed and we’ll work in the garden before it gets too hot.”

  I weeded and pinched back the row of sticky pink petunias that made up the border of Grand’s garden. But their heavy perfume made me woozy, so Grand moved me to the vegetable garden, where I squashed bugs in the tomato plants.

  Around eleven o’clock, Patty drove up and parked in front of Grand’s house. Her dyed red hair looked rusted out, and dark rings had settled in underneath her eyes. I ran to her and hugged her, not wanting to let her go. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she said. Grand sat her down in the kitchen and she told us what she knew, which is what we’d heard, for the most part. They’d asked her a lot of questions, like they’d asked Daddy. Why had they dyed their hair? Why were they traveling to Crow’s Nest Harbor? Did Carlie and Daddy get along? Did she know if Carlie planned to meet anyone? Did Carlie make friends easily? Would she go off with a stranger?

  “What about Mike?” I asked her.

  Patty looked puzzled. “Mike who?” she asked.

  “That guy at the beach with the black hair,” I said.

  Patty shook her head. “No, Florine, he’s just a customer. He’s married. He flirts, but he doesn’t mean anything.”

  “He really liked her,” I said.

  “He did,” Patty said. “But she didn’t like him that way.”

  “Well, Carlie loves Leeman,” Grand said. “Isn’t no one else for her.”

  Patty agreed. “The police had Carlie’s suitcase. Did they give it back to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Grand said. “I haven’t seen it.”

  “I’ll go look,” I said, and before they could say no, I zipped down the driveway. I found the blue suitcase in Daddy’s pickup, stashed on the floor below the passenger seat. I wrestled it out and lugged it inside, sprang the snaps, and opened it up.

  Her Carlie smell of oranges and peonies triggered tears even as I stared at her gone-through clothes. It made me mad they’d messed them up so. Someone, I thought, should have had the manners to fold them, so I did it. I remembered when I’d last seen her in this shirt, in those shorts, in the bathing suit she’d worn to Mulgully Beach. When I found her favorite green sundress, I held it to my face and cried until I soaked it.

  A little while later, Grand showed up and she sat down on the floor beside me, which wasn’t easy for her to do, and put her big old hand on my shoulder.

  “Patty had to go,” she told me. “Said she’d be right up the road if you needed her.”

  I later found out from Dottie, who’d heard Madeline talking to Tillie Clemmons, who was married to Parker Clemmons and wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything that her sheriff husband told her in secret, that the police thought Carlie and Patty had planned this. That Carlie had run off and Patty was covering for her. That Patty had had to name every man who’d come into the restaurant and how she thought Carlie acted around them. That she’d been questioned about herself and Daddy maybe having an affair. That she hadn’t been charged with anything, and she was free to go, but she had to stay in touch with the police. Patty left two days after she came to see me and Grand. She stopped by on her way out. She needed to get away, she said. She told me, “I wish I could think of something that would help. I miss her too. She’s my best friend.” She gave me an address and told me she’d keep in touch. Then she left for New Jersey, where her family lived. Not long after she left, I wrote to her, but I never heard back.

  The day after Patty left, a state trooper came to the house to see me. Daddy had told me ahead of time t
hat he would be coming. Parker came with him. Unlike his brother, Ray, who was short and round as a root beer barrel, Parker was tall, with gray and black hair and one thick eyebrow standing watch over stormy dark green eyes. But though Parker was big, the trooper beside him dwarfed him.

  “This is Trooper Scott Sargent,” Parker said, and then Parker, Trooper Sargent, Daddy, and me sat at the kitchen table. Trooper Sargent’s shaved head shone over hazel eyes the same color as mine. His face was kind, and his long mouth turned up at the corners. He set his Smokey the Bear–shaped hat on the table and folded his big hands as he questioned me. Why did I call my mother Carlie? Was she ever sad, for no reason? Did she whisper when she got phone calls? Had she said anything about going away at any time? Did she get mad when there was nothing to be mad at? Had she ever had any strange men over to the house when Daddy was out? Did I remember seeing any men I didn’t know talking to her at any time?

  I said, “Mike,” even though Patty had told me that he wasn’t to be blamed for sure.

  Trooper Sargent looked at Daddy and Parker.

  “He’s that dipshit—sorry Florine—we talked to before,” Parker said to the trooper. “He had an alibi. He was at the hospital with his wife the day Carlie disappeared, waiting for their first baby to be born.”

  Then Trooper Sargent and Parker left. Daddy saw them out. He sat down across from me and said, “Almost time for supper. What do you want?”

  “I want Carlie,” I said. The look on my face had him over to me in no time.

  August ticked down toward September. I spent a lot of time sitting on the big white rock at the end of our driveway, looking up the road, straining my ears for the sound of a car, or for a glimpse of a small woman walking down the hill toward me. Daddy bought more ’Gansett and added vodka to his drinking inventory. Every night, he sat in front of the TV while I fell asleep on the couch next to his chair. At some point late in the evening, he shook me awake and I stumbled off to bed where I might or might not sleep. Every minute I was awake, I prayed to whoever might be listening for my mother to come home.