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

  8

  When I was six, we visited Carlie’s family in Massachusetts. We went down in Daddy’s old green pickup and it was a long ride. Carlie was quiet on the drive.

  I’d never met my grandparents Collins. They’d never sent me a birthday or Christmas present, or even a card. I knew Carlie had a brother, which made him my Uncle Robert, and that his kids were my cousins, but Carlie didn’t have pictures of them and she didn’t talk about them. I didn’t miss not knowing them, because my life was filled with everyone around me. Daddy had never met them, either. But he finally got Carlie to agree to visit, in part because of me.

  “Florine should know your family,” Daddy said to her. “She might need them someday. Grand and I are all she’s got on this side.”

  Carlie wasn’t happy about it, but she agreed to go.

  In the town where Carlie had grown up, grass sprouted through cracks in the sidewalks on the main street. People stood on corners, watching us go by. Huge buildings took up blocks of space. Carlie said they’d been linen mills, and they’d closed down either before she was born or when she was a little girl.

  We drove along gawking for a while, then Daddy said, “Which way do I go?”

  Carlie pointed left and Daddy took the turn.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Slow down after the next stop sign. It’s the third place on the right.”

  A black dog with a gray muzzle was taking a dump in front of the first house on the right. Where the lawn should have been in front of the second house was just dirt and weeds. An unpainted picket fence had gaps in it like punched-out teeth.

  The third house, where Daddy parked the pickup, had a whole picket fence. It needed painting, but the patches of grass on the lawn had been mowed no more than a couple days back. A black-haired Patti Playpal sat in an old lawn chair above a bunch of scattered Lincoln Logs. “Well, here we are,” Carlie sighed, and hopped out of the pickup. She reached for me and gave me a quick hug before putting me down.

  Daddy came around to the sidewalk and joined us. “Let’s get this over with,” Carlie said, and she headed up the walk ahead of Daddy and me. When we got to the front door, she paused to knock, then shook her head, and we walked inside.

  We found ourselves in a dark hall cluttered up with a laundry basket, more toys on the floor, and a fat yellow cat spread smack in the middle of the black-and-white-striped runner as if he had melted and stuck to it. He swished his tail and Carlie said, “Tiger,” and crooked her finger. Tiger glared at her with shiny orange eyes, then looked down and began to lick his left front leg. Bleach and cigarette smoke tickled my nostrils.

  Two little kids came running into the hall. One of them was a toddler who wore diapers and nothing else. The older one, a girl, wore a brown pair of corduroy overalls and a blue-striped shirt underneath. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and stared. Both kids had dark red hair and brown eyes. The little girl smiled at me and I smiled back.

  “Hi,” Carlie said. “I’m your Aunt Carlie. You must be Robin,” she said to the girl. The diapers fell off the toddler, and Daddy said, “This must be Ben.” The kids didn’t talk, Tiger stopped licking his leg, and no one else came to see who was at the door.

  “Nice welcome,” Carlie muttered, and she took a deep breath, stepped over Tiger, and walked around the corner to the left. I moved against the wall as Tiger swished his thick tail and sized me up with jack-o’-lantern eyes.

  To the left of the hall, where Carlie had gone, was a room so gloomy that the only thing I could see was the picture on a TV, which sat against a wall in the center of the room. It was midday and sunny, but heavy dark curtains blocked out the light. As my eyes sorted through the murk, I saw the outline of an easy chair. The light from the TV showed up a man’s arm resting on the left arm of the chair. The hand at the end of the arm held a burning cigarette. A standing ashtray full of butts sat next to the chair. The hand flicked the ashes of the cigarette into the tray.

  To the right, a woman sat on a sofa that blended into the wall. She’d been folding clothes when we walked in. Her face flickered from white to whiter, depending on what was on the TV screen. Her hair might have been black or dark brown.

  “Hi Mom,” Carlie said to her. “Surprise!” She raised herself to her toes and clapped like a little girl. Her voice cracked in a high squeak.

  “Well for heaven’s sake,” the woman said. She got up and said, “Well for heaven’s sake,” again, and she gave Carlie a quick, fierce hug. Then she looked at Daddy, then down at me. “This is my husband, Mom,” Carlie said. “This is Leeman, and this is Florine, our daughter.”

  “Well for heaven’s sake,” the woman said again, and I wondered if she knew any other words. She glanced quickly at the back of the chair, then at me. “What a pretty girl,” she said. “Florine? That’s a different name. And Leeman,” she said, and Daddy held out his hand. Some “pleased to meet yous” passed back and forth over my head, but I had stopped paying attention.

  Something about the hand holding the cigarette drew me to it. I walked till I stood beside the chair, near the ashtray. I looked down at the hand and saw that it was small, like Carlie’s hand. I followed the hand up the arm to find a gray-faced man staring at me out of hollow eyes. He took a drag of his cigarette, blew out the smoke, flicked the ash, and looked back at the television. My eyes followed his. Two men were duking it out in a boxing ring. I looked back at his face.

  “What are you staring at?” he croaked. He said that while keeping his eyes on the boxing match.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He coughed up something and spat it into a handkerchief. “Nothing? Kind of dumb answer is that?”

  “Daddy,” Carlie put her hand on my head and said, “this is my daughter, Florine.”

  He didn’t say anything to her, and he didn’t look at either of us.

  But then Daddy said in his best manners voice, “How do you do, sir,” and he bent down and held out his hand. The man looked at him, put down the handkerchief, and then held up his hand. They shook hands, and he muttered something I didn’t catch, then Daddy and he both turned to the boxing match.

  The two kids had crowded into the living room with the rest of us, and Carlie’s mother said to Carlie, “Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make us some coffee.” I trailed after Carlie, and felt a small hand take mine. I looked at Robin. “You’re my cousin,” she said. We walked into a kitchen with yellow walls and a red table with five chairs around it. Tiger’s dishes sat in a corner by the stove. A fly buzzed on top of a hunk of half-eaten cat food.

  Carlie sat down at the kitchen table. Ben, still naked, bounced around the floor, grinned and twirled around, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Robin held on to my hand. “Where’s Robert?” Carlie asked.

  “Oh, he’s working,” Carlie’s mother said. She wore a checked green housedress and old sneakers that scuffed as she walked. She emptied coffee grounds into a garbage pail that was almost full, then rinsed out the basket and put fresh coffee into it.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been down,” Carlie said. “It’s a ways away.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Carlie’s mother said, quickly. She looked at me and said again, “Aren’t you pretty, dear?” She smiled and I saw Carlie in her. “How old are you?” she asked me.

  “Six,” I said.

  “She has your hair,” Carlie’s mother said. “That curl.”

  Carlie said, “She’s got my mouth.”

  Carlie’s mother smiled and said, “God help her.”

  “How old is Robin?” Carlie asked.

  “Four and a half.”

  “Where’s Liz?” Carlie asked.

  “She and Robert got divorced,” Carlie’s mother said. Then she said to Robin, “Why don’t you show Florine your toys?” As we left the
kitchen, I heard Carlie’s mother say, “Got to drinking. Robert had enough, and . . .”

  I followed Robin up a steep set of stairs that led to another hall crowded with more plastic baskets of laundry. Robin’s room was at the end of the hall, past a bathroom and another room on the right with a crib in it.

  Her room was stuffed with dolls of all shapes and sizes. “You got a lot,” I said.

  “Here’s their names,” Robin said. She held each one up and told me its name. After each name, I said, “Pleased to meet you,” and I shook its hand and we giggled.

  “We could be sisters,” I said to her.

  Robin said, “Okay,” and we looked at each other, wide eyed.

  “You can come stay with me, sometimes,” I said, and Robin jumped up and down. Then she said, “Let me brush your hair.” She took a tiny blue brush from a shiny plastic doll case on her bed and combed through my pucker brush of curls. Her small hands tickled like moth’s wings as she pushed my hair back from my face. Then I combed her long straight hair. When I finished, I said, “Let’s go ask Daddy and Carlie if you can come home with me,” but we’d no sooner cleared her room when Ben began to cry downstairs and I heard a man’s raised voice. Then Carlie shouted and I said to Robin, “We got to see what’s going on,” and I dodged around the hall clutter, ran down the stairs, and twisted away from one of Tiger’s hooked paws to reach the living room.

  Carlie’s mother held Ben, the man still sat in his chair, and Daddy stood beside Carlie with his hand around her shoulder. Carlie stood stiff and stared at the man in the chair.

  The man pointed one finger at Carlie and said, “I don’t care whether you come to see us. Far as I’m concerned, you been dead for years.” Then he turned the chair around and went back to the boxing match. Carlie’s mother carried Ben out of the room.

  “You’re wrong, you old bastard. I came alive when I left this place,” Carlie said, her voice caught between a cry and a growl, to the back of the man’s chair. “I’m done. I’m not coming back.” And then she went down the hall and out the door.

  The sound of coffee gurgling and punching the top of the pot drew Robin and me into the kitchen, where Carlie’s mother stood, head down, arms locked at the elbows, holding on to the sides of the stove. Ben stood beside her, gripping her dress.

  Daddy walked out into the kitchen and said, “Come on, Florine.” He bent down and I let go of Robin’s hand as he picked me up and held me in the crook of his left arm.

  “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Collins,” he said.

  Carlie’s mother took a balled-up tissue from a pocket in her dress and wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You come up and visit us anytime you want,” Daddy said. “You’d like it. I’ll take you out on the boat. Bring the kids.”

  “We’ll try to make it,” Carlie’s mother said.

  They never came. I thought about Robin, drew her on paper, and colored in her eyes and hair and the clothes she’d worn the day I saw her. Soon after that visit, I asked Carlie if I could write her a letter. I sent a crayon picture of us in her room surrounded by dolls. I never heard back from her.

  When Carlie disappeared, her family was no help. After all, as Carlie’s father had said to his only daughter, “Far as I’m concerned, you been dead for years.”

  9

  No sudden disappearances could stop school from coming. The Thursday before Labor Day, Madeline and Grand planned to take Dottie and me shopping.

  “She better not make me get nothing plaid,” Dottie said. “I hate plaid.”

  “Carlie always let me pick out what I wanted,” I said. Dottie didn’t answer me.

  The day before the shopping trip, Bud, Glen, Dottie, and I went for a last swim. Dottie climbed into an inner tube and pushed offshore. Her wide, tanned feet stuck out as she used her hands to paddle around.

  “Let’s have an inner tube fight,” she called to Bud, Glen, and me as we stood on the beach.

  “Only one tube left,” Glen said. Three of them had drifted off with the tide, and it made no sense to have Bert lug a new batch down from Freddie’s in Long Reach, because swimming ended with Labor Day. Even now, the water had a nip to it.

  “Double up,” Dottie said. “Bud and me against you and Florine.”

  “Nah,” Bud said. “We’re going to swim out to the mooring.”

  “We are?” I said. Bud nodded and I shrugged.

  “I bet I can paddle out there faster than you can swim,” Dottie said. Glen grabbed the other inner tube and waded out toward Dottie.

  “You got to come back to shore,” Bud said. “We start from here.”

  “Well shit, why didn’t you say so?” Glen muttered and waded back. Dottie paddled in and dumped herself out before she hit the shallows. We stood together in a line that Bud drew in the wet gravel with a stick.

  “Who gets to say go?” Dottie asked.

  “Ma,” Bud called to Ida. “Say one, two, three, go.”

  Ida looked up from the rock where she’d been sitting and chatting with Madeline. “One, two, three, go,” she said, but Bud and I were in the water by the “three.” Glen and Dottie hollered at us, but we laughed and struck out toward the mooring.

  “Let’s go down,” Bud said when we reached it, and we kicked and dove together. I was looking forward to seeing the crab and swimming through seaweed like before. Instead, I saw my worst nightmare.

  What was left of Carlie rose and fell on the bottom of the sea. She was naked, bloated belly turned to sponge, chunks bitten out of her pocked arms and legs, red hair tangled around the seaweed. Her eyes bulged out, and her mouth stuck open in the last scream she’d ever made. The current turned her over and I saw big holes in her back; little barnacles stuck to the lines along her sharp white ribs. I sucked in water and screamed and thrashed, trying to rid myself of the sight as Bud used all his strength to pull me to the surface. When we reached it, I beat the water in a panic, screeching “No,” over and over. Bud reached for me but I wouldn’t let him touch me.

  “She’s drowned,” I cried. “She’s down there.”

  “Who?” Bud asked. “I didn’t see anyone. Who?”

  “Carlie,” I sobbed. “Carlie is down there. How could you miss her?”

  Dottie had reached us in her inner tube by then. “You mean she’s dead and she’s down there?” Dottie said.

  I nodded.

  “No, she isn’t,” Bud said. “I didn’t see nothing, Florine, and I was right beside you. Nothing but seaweed and rocks. Not even a crab.”

  “I saw her,” I insisted. “I saw her.”

  Then Madeline was beside us.

  “What happened?”

  “Florine says she saw Carlie down there,” Dottie said.

  “What?” Madeline said. “Where?”

  I pointed straight down. “There,” I blubbered.

  “I didn’t see nothing,” Bud said. “I was right with her.”

  Madeline said, “Show me, Bud,” and they dove while I clung to the mooring and shook. They surfaced and Madeline said, “Florine, there’s nothing. You imagined it.”

  “I saw her,” I insisted. “I did. She’s dead. Drowned.”

  “Take hold of Dottie’s inner tube and we’ll get back together,” Madeline said. “Go get Grand,” she ordered Bud, and he was off.

  Grand wrapped me in a blanket and set me on her sofa. She made tea laced with milk and sugar and she threw in a good dollop of whiskey. Someone radioed Daddy out on the water, and he burst through the door like a bear after his cub.

  “What in God’s name happened?” he asked, kneeling beside me.

  I looked at him through sleepy, whiskey-laced eyes. “Carlie drowned,” I said.

  “How?” Daddy said. “Where?”

 
; “She didn’t see anything, Leeman,” Grand said. “She imagined it.”

  Daddy moved strands of hair off my forehead. “You know it ain’t real, honey,” he said, soft. “I see things too, but it’s all in my head. Just our brains, I guess, trying to figure it all out.” He held me until the image faded and the only thing that mattered was the fishy smell of his bait-stained T-shirt.

  That night, Daddy took me to Long Reach to the last summer band concert and the movies. I hunted for Carlie as we drove down the streets of Long Reach to the square where a brass band was playing. I scanned the crowd for her as we listened to the band and ate hot dogs Daddy bought from a cart. We went to the movies and I studied each head above each seat for the one that I would know anywhere. When the lights dimmed we stared at the screen in front of us. But the main attraction in my head—Carlie mauled and jellied on the ocean floor—played over whatever was showing that night. When Daddy said, “I’ll be right back,” I followed him up the aisle past the pale faces of the audience. We walked out of the movie theater and headed for the truck. We climbed in and sat, both of us staring at the people walking by. He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Smoke snaked out of the driver’s window. He looked at me and said, “Florine, the only thing we can do is take it day to day. You got school and I got work. We got to get on with both of them. You with me?” I nodded, and he started the pickup.

  We almost hit a big doe near the turnoff to The Point. Daddy slammed on the brakes and threw his arm across me to stop me from jerking forward. The headlights flooded the doe’s eyes, and then she flipped her flag tail and slipped into the woods.

  Labor Day passed and the first day of school came calling. I wore a pretty, plaid, blue dress Madeline had bought for me. Grand brought me lunch.

  Even though I would be thirteen in eight months, Grand and Daddy walked me to the bus stop across from Ray’s store. Dottie, Bud, and Glen were boarding the bus. I tried not to look at schoolmates who might be looking down at me. I climbed onto the bus behind Dottie and we plunked down in a seat close to the middle. Daddy and I took in each other as the bus pulled away.