Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (5 page)

7

D
addy 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 rumbled 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 that 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.

8

W
hen 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.”