Love Me Tender (13 page)

Chapter 23

KERRIE AND I went back to the kitchen in time to hear Mel slogging to the top of the stairs. The grandmother said, “I can make canned soup, if you girls like tomato rice or bean with bacon.”

I thought maybe we ought to leave the stovetop alone, just for Mel's sake. “I'd be happy with leftover chocolate donuts, if that's okay with you.”

“It's not,” the grandmother said. “Not tonight, anyway. We just got through an upset over a caffeinated drink.”

Good point.

“Mel lets us have peanut butter and jelly on Saturday night,” Kerrie said. “We missed it this week.”

“PB and J it is,” the grandmother said. “So what's in the sacks?”

“We brought Elvira a get-well present,” Kerrie said, and pulled it out of a bag. It was a T-shirt in swirly greens, with loose ruffly fabric where the sleeves ought to be. It had an allover shine, like glitter had been sprinkled on it.

It wasn't only the shirt; I couldn't accept a gift from Aunt Clare. “I don't think—”

“Oh, go on,” the grandmother said. “If we all start taking sides over that drink, the fight will go on forever. Or until you go home, anyway.”

Kerrie said, “It's just that Elvira hates green clothes. Aunt Clare and I meant to make that a joke, but now it seems kind of stupid. The T-shirt is for me. The CD player is for Elvira.”

“CD player?” I looked in the other shopping bag and, sure enough, there was one. Plus two CDs. It still didn't seem quite right. “I got a CD player and you got a T-shirt?”

“We share the CD player when we get back home and you have your iPod back.”

Which meant I got the loan of Kerrie's CD player now. “You are the queen of finagle,” I said to her, which is what Daddy sometimes says to me. It's almost complimentary, the way he says it.

Kerrie said, “Is Finagle in Ireland?”

I said, “It means you got us both what we wanted.”

Kerrie nodded, satisfied.

“Dinner is served,” the grandmother said, setting three flavors of jelly beside the jar of peanut butter.

By the time we finished making sandwiches, Mel had come back down, having changed out of her skirt and into stretch pants. She'd been crying. “Deal me in,” she said as I put two slices of bread on a plate.

Over supper, Mel and the grandmother decided to watch a movie on TV. Kerrie and I were left behind to clean up, which was no big deal.

As I put away the peanut butter and jelly, I said, “I know this is probably the wrong time to bring this up again. But, Kerrie—”

“I know. We don't have room for the dog.”

“Not that dog, anyway. Hound was heavy, but he was short. He was small.”

“Okay.”

This speedy agreement surprised me. After a moment, I said, “That's not the biggest problem we have.”

I didn't mean Daddy.

Kerrie liked Aunt Clare. Having to choose between her and the grandmother would be much harder than being the middle sister.

She said, “Don't tell me the rest of it, okay?”

“Only because you let me rest my head in your lap.”

“I also bought you aspirin,” she said as she rinsed off our plates.

“You're on the verge of ruining this generous mood I'm in.”

“I'll take my chances,” she said on her way out of the kitchen.

I wiped the table, dropped the sponge on the drain-board, and followed the sound of a cheery argument. Mel and the grandmother couldn't decide which movie to watch: the old one just starting that everybody had seen or the new one that was already some ways into the story and nobody knew what was going on.

My ear weighed ten pounds and hurt hurt hurt. I felt like I was getting a fever, not that I cared to mention it. I settled into a wing chair so I could rest my head.

Kerrie was still awake when Mel woke me up. “Elvira, go up to bed.”

The late news was ending. I'd been in that chair for hours. Like a zombie, I went to the kitchen and put batteries into the CD player.

I couldn't really wear the earphones. My ear was too sore. But I found I could hear just as well if I set them over my cheekbones. I didn't even have to turn up the sound. Weird, but fine, really.

Maybe Kerrie stayed up later. Maybe they all did. I was the only one making the trip upstairs. I thought my headache was a little better, but even if it wasn't, I intended to take full advantage of having a room to myself.

I picked out a book, I stacked up pillows to lean on. Since I'd already had a nap, I figured I wasn't likely to fade as fast as the night before.

As I pulled the quilt over myself, I glanced around the grandmother's sister's room. Golden eyes were looking right back at me. The grandmother's cat sat on the top of an armoire in the Egyptian statue pose. It was rusty-colored, like a marmalade cat mixed with a lot of brown.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” I said after a moment.

It didn't flick a whisker.

I was tempted to try to stare it down, but I was too tired to win the contest. “I hope you're not going to keep me awake with eyes that glow in the dark,” I said.

I didn't know I had fallen asleep again until Mel came in, gently slid the earphones off my face, and flicked my hair away from my ear. Before I went back to sleep, I added to the list I hadn't yet written into my diary.

Find out what makes cats purr.

Tomorrow, swab my ear with alcohol. If I could touch it at all.

Imagine what it would be like to sleep in this room more often. Which led to wondering what would have to happen to make that possible. Which led to thinking about Mel and Daddy. I thought about how for years they talked about moving back here.

Not that they talked to me about it. But sometimes, after I'd been put to bed and they thought I was sleeping, I would hear them sitting at the kitchen table, talking. Daydreaming, in a way. I never for a moment expected them to go anywhere.

Maybe Mel had some hopes, though. Because when Daddy stopped wanting to talk about moving back to Memphis and talked instead about making his comeback, she wasn't happy.

I fell asleep to the low sound of a cat motor.

Chapter 24

KERRIE WOKE sometime in the night, screaming bloody murder. I leaped out of bed, snatching the CD player and earphones off the bed table.

Mel and I nearly knocked each other over in the hall-way. For me, it was just habit to react fast to this cry. Mel hardly knew what was going on. She switched on the over-head light in Kerrie's room.

Kerrie was sitting up in bed crying, shivering like all her dreams were horror movies. The sudden bright light didn't help any of us.

“Sweetie, what is it?” Mel asked her, squinting hard as she gathered as much of Kerrie onto her lap as possible. That left a lot of Kerrie hanging over onto the bed. I turned off the light. “What are you doing?” Mel asked as I put the earphones on Kerrie's head.

“We have to play the radio when she wakes up like this,” I said. “Only there's no radio in here.”

Mel looked confused. “You make it sound like this is something she does a lot.”

“Not a lot. I usually wake up before she gets really into it. I turn on the radio and she falls asleep again right away. It happens when she worries about things.” Even in the dark, I could feel Mel's anxiety. “Not that eight-year-olds usually worry about the things normal people worry about.”

“I never realized,” Mel said.

“You and Daddy sleep like the dead,” I said. “Besides, your bedroom is on the other side of the house. I'm two feet away from her.”

“You're a good sister,” Mel said.

“Don't rely on it,” I said, taking full advantage of Mel in a weak moment. “When the Belly is ready to move out of your room, I'm moving into your work shed. You and your furniture projects get the carport.”

Kerrie had meanwhile slumped over the Belly, already quieting. Drugged by the music. I was glad I hadn't worn the batteries down. Together, we got her stretched out and threaded one arm through the earphone wires so she couldn't strangle herself. I could hear the music coming on strong, and I moved the earphones onto her cheekbones.

“What would she have to worry about?” Mel whispered as we stood in the doorway and looked at Kerrie. In a shaft of moonlight we saw her eyelids spring open, then lower again.

“She wouldn't worry about Daddy going off to Las Vegas, do you think?” I felt a surly mood coming on. “Nah,” I said, answering myself.

Mel pulled me out into the hallway, whispering, “She knows he'll come back.”

“No, she doesn't, and neither do I,” I said, keeping my voice low. “He went off on Friday. He drove to the airport and flew. Mel, he must've been in Las Vegas by the time you made popcorn.”

Daddy should have called Saturday morning, the latest. I was mad now, seriously mad. If Mel tried to get in a word, I didn't know about it.

I said, “We still hadn't heard from him when we left on Sunday. By then he could have called at least twenty times, just figuring how many pay phones he must've walked past.”

“Families go through things,” Mel said. “That's all.”

“There's a name for when families go through this,” I said, “and it isn't 'that's all.’”

Mel said, “He was mad, okay, but I was mad too, and I'm over it. He's over it by now, and he'll come home, you'll see.”

“Set it to music,” I said. “Maybe you can sell it.”

“You have a terrible mouth on you,” Mel said, forgetting to whisper.

“Wonder where I get that.”

“I'm serious, Elvira.”

“You talk like you and Daddy are sharing a private joke,” I said. “Only Kerrie and I aren't in on it, and frankly, I don't think it's funny.”

Mel put her fists on her hips. I could see her silhouetted in the little bit of light we had from the window in Kerrie's room. “Is that so?”

“Kerrie deserves better, and so does this one,” I said, waving my hand in the general direction of the Belly. “They deserve exactly what you ask of me,” I said. “Grown-up behavior.”

“Is everything all right up there?” the grandmother asked from down below.

“We're fine, Momma,” Mel said. “Kerrie had a little nightmare, is all.”

“I don't think there's such a thing as a
little
nightmare,” I said.

I went back to the grandmother's sister's bedroom—my bedroom—and shut the door. My night was wrecked. I didn't think Mel would go back to sleep either. Because Daddy could like Las Vegas better than New Hope. He might like looking like Elvis a whole lot better than a fired landscaper, even a fired and rehired landscaper.

Sure, Kerrie worried, but she slept through the worst of their big blowout. She didn't hear Daddy saying he thought Mel would rather see him holding a shovel than a guitar any day and getting pregnant was just one way of making that happen.

And Mel had said, “If you believe that, you should take your guitar and your shovel to Las Vegas and stay there.”

“I just might do that,” Daddy'd said. “I can be a land-scaper anywhere, but there isn't much use for my guitar here.”

This was the sad truth.

I heard a small motor sound that I realized after a moment was the cat. I looked for it, but it was out of sight completely. Mel opened the door and, after standing there in the darkness for a minute, said, “What is that sound?”

“The cat.” It sounded louder with the light out. “It doesn't seem friendly.”

“Elvira, I want to order you not to worry, but I know that won't work.”

“What will we do if he stays away and never calls?”

“He's coming home! Have you got that?” Mel said in a low, intense voice. “How can you think he wouldn't come home?” She sat down on the end of the bed. “I hope you won't tell Momma you're worried about such a thing. I don't want to have this talk with her. Or worse, with Clare.”

“Because they won't know if he'll come home either?”

“Because it wouldn't be fair to your daddy to give them one more thing to hold against him.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “You're really not worried he won't come back? Plus, you decided you're okay with it if he wins. And deep down, you didn't really want to go along with him. Did you just not want him to have a good time?”

“Well, of course I want your daddy to have a good time.” I could hear the surprise in her voice. “But I wanted him to have it with me. Even if I do look like a toad. I wanted him to rather stay with me if I didn't really want to go. Especially since I look like a toad.”

“You don't look like a toad.” She looked like the Goodyear blimp. I couldn't even imagine what she'd look like in two months.

Mel said, “Don't kid a kidder.”

“A little bloated, maybe. But not a toad.”

“If you think flattery is going to get you forgiven one minute before I stop wanting to lock you in a closet, you can just forget it.”

But I knew that in some way, she didn't want to lock me up much.

“It's hard to explain feelings, Elvira. Especially when they don't all fit together the way we think they should. But feelings change, usually for the better somehow.”