Love Me Tender (7 page)

Chapter 12

“I CAN get up there without a stool,” I said, pointing to the smoky walls.

The grandmother looked interested. “Can you?”

“She no doubt can,” Mel said. “She used to get up on the counters to look in the cabinets for cookies. She made me think of a pigeon on a ledge.”

Aunt Clare met the grandmother's glance, and it was apparently decided to ignore Mel's offering of this piece of my personal history. I knocked off my shoes, put the chair in front of the sink, and climbed up. This brought every-body out of their chairs to look up, like one of those scenes where everyone points up at Superman.

With a slight stretch, I could put the flat of my palm to the ceiling. I could clean it. I would clean it, even though we'd received only the most grudging welcome. Grudging welcomes did seem to be the grandmother's style.

“I could get up there too,” Kerrie said, only because she wanted to be included. She was never a climber.

“You still won't be tall enough to reach,” Mel said to her. “And if I catch you trying, I will snatch you bald-headed.”

“Melisande!” The grandmother put her hands over Kerrie's ears. “Is that any way to speak to a child?” My sister looked a little bewildered. Mel tended to make colorful threats, but we never took her seriously.

“It's the way you always talked to me, Momma,” Mel said, dabbing soap onto a sponge she found in the sink. She handed it to me.

“This sponge is going to get all black,” I said after the first swipe.

“Don't bother about it,” Mel said. “It'll wash or it'll throw. We can get more.”

“You can get them right there under the sink,” the grandmother said helpfully. She started messing with spray bottles and drying rags and offers of iced tea. All things the job didn't need, but I liked the feel of this shared activity. We talked very little, we fought not at all.

Kerrie, meanwhile, showed Aunt Clare her body roll-on, and the both of them wrote their names on their legs. Kerrie told her sad story of the eyelashes. I glanced at Mel and she gave me a firm look, one that said,
Who cares if she tells?

There was some tsk-tsking and a remark from the grandmother that we were all lucky Kerrie didn't go blind. I didn't look down to see if any of it was aimed at me. Wall washing, that was all the meaning in my life.

The water dripped down my arm and off the sharp point of my elbow, and Mel dried the counter before it be-came slippery. Every couple of minutes, I handed a black-ened sponge down to Mel for rinsing and resoaping, until it wouldn't come clean anymore.

The smoke stains were oily, and there had been an old coat of kitchen grease on the cabinets before the fire. I was tired, but I was also glad I had something to do.

“I wish I could offer to help with the cabinets,” Clare said three times in about an hour. “If I had known we'd be working on a kitchen project, I would have dressed accordingly.”

“We have enough hands at work here,” Mel said.

Mel was no doubt happy to have Kerrie occupied, even if the eyelash fiasco was now known to all. Although it did seem to me it ought to be Mel sitting in the chair and Aunt Clare soaping the sponge. No one said anything along these lines, but Aunt Clare couldn't leave it alone.

After a few harmless remarks about the trip we made, she began to take potshots at Mel again. “How are you feeling?” Aunt Clare asked. “Do you find pregnancy more of a drain, being an older mother and all?”

“Not in the least,” Mel said, a hard edge creeping into her voice. “It makes me feel twenty years old all over again.”

“Well, you look wonderful,” Aunt Clare said in a falsely flattering tone.

In fact, Mel looked like someone who had driven through the night without sleeping more than a few minutes at a time, and there was no one there who didn't know it. I looked at Mel with what she sometimes called “a speaking glance,” but she only shook her head as if to say,
Don't get into it with her.

So all right, I wouldn't. But I couldn't keep entirely quiet either.

“Why is it that the
e
in Clare is pronounced but the final
e
in Melisande is silent?” I asked, in the direction of the ceiling.

It seemed they were stumped for an answer.

I handed Mel the sponge and saw that she'd thinned her lips till they were practically gone. I grinned and she laughed.

That made me laugh in this strange contorted way, like my voice came through a spiral straw. The grandmother and Clare didn't see anything funny. Mel laughed harder, like she was crying, and then I did too. Laughed so hard, I felt weak in the belly.

“They're both punch-drunk,” the grandmother said.

Kerrie said, “What does that mean?”

Mel slapped my leg with the sponge before she gave it back to me; our laughter had become long, wheezy moans.

“They're Cracker Jacks,” Aunt Clare said. “Nutty popcorn.”

“Because they're tired,” the grandmother said. “Both of you come sit down.”

“No, no,” Mel said, and sputtered into the crook of her elbow. “We're fine. Really. Give us a minute.”

Kerrie opened the nail polish, ready to do Aunt Clare's manicure.

This made it possible for Mel to shift gears. “Take that stuff outside. It turns my stomach over.”

“Well, we surely don't want to do that,” Aunt Clare said as she picked up the nail polish. “Let's go out on the veranda, Kerrie, the way ladies do.”

Just the movement in the room seemed to help me get back to work. I had a little more energy; just enough to finish, I figured. After a time, Aunt Clare called into the kitchen to say that she and Kerrie were going for a walk.

“The way ladies do,” the grandmother said.

Chapter 13

“COME ON down,” Mel told me once. “You've been up there for nearly three hours.”

“I'm not done yet.”

“Trade places with me,” the grandmother said to Mel. She was the one, then, to hand me the sponge and wipe the counter dry. Mel sat down on the floor, cross-legged, to go on cleaning the lower cabinets.

After a time, Mel said, “It's getting too hot for this, you're dripping sweat on me.”

“I'm nearly done. Let me finish.” I was tired to the point of feeling dizzy, but I didn't want to quit just yet. “I might find out where the cookies are hid.”

The grandmother laughed. “You let me know about it if you find any. But don't worry, we'll buy some before the day is out.”

I grinned down at her, but right away her eyes slid away, almost as if she was afraid of me. That couldn't be true. When I had my diary to hand, I'd start a new list: Things to Figure Out About the Grandmother.

In the end, we were lucky the counter crossed the entire wall so we could go from corner to corner without leaving a visible line between clean and still dirty. The kitchen looked brighter, or at least it looked cleaner, which was a lot to say.

There were some oddly stubborn stains left on the wall that looked like drifting smoke. “Nothing a coat of paint won't cure,” the grandmother said. “Time to eat something.”

We fried bologna and layered it with lettuce and tomato in sandwiches. We'd just sat down when I noticed the cat's dish. The food hadn't been touched.

“I haven't seen your cat.”

The grandmother looked at the dish. “My lands. You two start, I'll be right back.” She picked up the dish and headed out of the kitchen, and maybe upstairs. “Go ahead, start without me.”

We wouldn't, of course. Mel touched her finger to a flap of bologna and tasted it, gave me the thumbs-up sign. I grinned, but we both turned at the sound of Kerrie pounding up the back steps at full speed.

She came in, pink with happy excitement. “You'll never guess what Aunt Clare has at her house.”

“Puppies,” I said, the way somebody might say “roaches.”

“You knew?” Kerrie asked. “How did you know?”

“I guessed.”

“I brought you girls something,” Aunt Clare said, coming into the kitchen with a golden bundle of fluff in her arms. “Mel, are you going to shoot me if I give these girls a dog?”

“Probably,” Mel said.

“You don't just give people's children a dog without asking first,” I said, standing up. I wasn't going anywhere; I just couldn't stay in the chair.

“I thought you'd love a puppy,” Aunt Clare said, for once nearly at a loss for words. She had her hands full of wriggling puppy. It looked like its every gene was screaming,
New place to mess up. Let's get going.

“Elvira,” Mel said, “I'll be the mother.”

“It isn't right,” I said. “First she makes a crack about you having another baby, and then she waltzes in—”

“What does that mean, a crack?” Aunt Clare said as the grandmother's footsteps could be heard coming down-stairs. “What am I being accused of?”

“That crack,” I said, “about Mel being an
older
mother? That was entirely uncalled-for. Waltzes in here,” I continued, “like Santy Claus with long glittery nails, and expects us to take on a puppy that's gonna need to be house-trained.”

“If you don't want this puppy,” Aunt Clare said, getting mad, “you don't have to take it.”

“Oh, no,” Kerrie cried. She threw herself on the floor for a big sobfest. The puppy went still, its brown eyes fixed on me, tongue lolling.

“Land's sake, what's going on in here?” the grandmother wanted to know as she sailed in. Unless she was deaf as a post, she had heard every word on her way into the room.

“This child has the manners of a goat,” Aunt Clare said, pointing at me. Kerrie pounded on the floor with her fist and gave us what was very likely her version of the same opinion, but we couldn't understand a word she said.

“My children and their manners,” Mel said, “have not been your concern from the day they were born. One day's acquaintance does not make you qualified to comment.”

From the floor, Kerrie wailed, “Bu-wha-gih-ih-ih-anhdoh-kik.”

Mel said, “Kerrie, get up off the floor. Go back outside. I don't want to listen to this.”

Kerrie did.

Maybe it was just the novelty of having two fairly new family members for an audience. Or maybe she looked over and saw the grandmother had turned a glinty eye on her. Raspy sobs echoing through the hallway as she headed for the front porch, she went.

“That doesn't even look like it'll be a
small
dog,” I pointed out. “We don't have enough room for it.”

“Why's that? Where are you living?” Aunt Clare said, which made for a silence in the room. Somehow I'd managed to open us up to some further insult.

“Just take the dog home for now, Clare,” Mel said. “I need to talk to my girls.”

“I didn't mean to cause trouble,” Aunt Clare said. “Really, I didn't.”

“I know it.” This was Mel. I had my doubts.

Looking straight at Mel, I said, “I'm not changing diapers, and I'm not picking up wee-wee pads either.”

“Take that dog outside, Clare,” the grandmother said. “Put it in the boot box and leave the top open. Did you and Kerrie eat?”

“No, we got involved with the puppies,” Aunt Clare answered, never making a move for the door. But this answer got Mel to her feet.

The grandmother said, “A lot of this could have been avoided if you had simply fed that child. She hasn't had nothing but a plate of eggs since I laid eyes on her. None of us have.”

I said, “Kerrie can have my sandwich.”

“How could you never get around to eating?” Mel asked Aunt Clare in an annoyed tone. She began to take the sandwich makings back out of the fridge. “Don't I remember you bragging about how your husband always came home for lunch? Didn't you feed him?”

Aunt Clare and the grandmother looked a look at each other, which I thought must mean they took this remark as a crack of Mel's own. It might have been. But Mel glanced up and caught that look. “Clare? What is it?”

“My husband left me, Melisande. Nearly eight months ago.”

I waited to see how we were to take this. “Oh, Clare,” Mel said with real sympathy. “How awful. You know I didn't know. Why didn't you write or something? Surely that's as serious as—”

“As Momma losing her marbles?” the grandmother said. “I hope I am more a matter for discussion than Clare's husband flying the coop. I am family.”

“So was he, Momma,” Aunt Clare said, “until he—you make me sound like a cage.”

“Sorry, Clare,” the grandmother said. “That was unintended.”

“I didn't know what to say to you, Mel,” Aunt Clare said, sinking into a chair at the table, holding the puppy. It had begun to chew on the collar of her blouse. “I still don't. After all the hair Momma and Daddy raised over you running off with Tony Ruggiero, and you have these lovely girls. And I didn't stand up for you. I know you wished I would.”

“Why didn't you, then?” Mel said. “I know you liked him. You kept saying how cute he was, right up till I packed a bag to go with him.”

“Well, that's just it,” Aunt Clare said. “I didn't think you'd run off with him. If I had been a less popular girl, it would have destroyed me socially—”

“Stop right there,” Mel said, frosting over. “I know where you're going with this. But you aren't a cheerleader or class secretary anymore, Clare, and I do have these lovely girls. Tony's girls.”

I was proud of Mel. It made me crazy sometimes when she could be so quick to decide what she thought and I found myself in the wrong, the way Aunt Clare was suddenly finding herself, but for the moment I was proud of the way Mel stood up for herself.

“Well, I can't feel right about it now, Melisande. Not after my very perfect marriage falls apart and he leaves me with a bunch of dogs to take care of.”

I had to admit this was an unexpected side to Aunt Clare. Genuine.

Mel had begun to fry more bologna. She said, “Elvira, will you take that dog outside for Aunt Clare? Send Kerrie back in here.”