Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (6 page)

9

N
o 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.

10

D
uring the first few days, kids I'd gone to school with since we'd been five mumbled hellos, and then moved away like they were afraid of catching whatever I had.

“They don't know what to say, Florine,” Grand said. “They probably don't want to hurt your feelings or make you cry.”

What Grand told me made sense, but it didn't make things easier until I started finding things in my desk, like three blue marbles, a pinecone painted white, and a tiny baby doll wrapped in a pink piece of felt and tied with string to a stick cross. Little notes were tucked into the desk, too. “I'm sad about your mom going lost,” said one. “I said a prayer for you,” said another. “My dog ran away and I still feel bad about it. If my mother went missing, it would be awful,” someone else wrote.

While Daddy kept at Parker and Parker kept at the Crow's Nest Harbor police, the State Police, the Coast Guard, and anyone else on the case, September moved into October, then October 13, which was Carlie's thirty-first birthday. I woke up with her name on my lips. I sang “Happy Birthday” while I looked at the ceiling, and it sounded more like a prayer than a celebration. Daddy was quiet that day.

We joined Grand for supper. She made Carlie's favorite dish, baked scallops, mashed potatoes, and spinach, and she baked a chocolate cake. We stuck thirty-one candles into the cake and sang. The word “Happy” came out like a dying breath.

October passed its flaming torch to November.

Our schoolwork was harder, now that we'd hit seventh grade. But I welcomed it, because it kept my mind from caving in on itself. I took to math that year. Numbers had a rhyme and reason to them. I craved answers, and math gave them to me.

One Friday in early November, our teacher, Mrs. Richmond, asked me to stay for a minute after the rest of the class filed out for the day. She looked up at me with kind brown eyes through her smudged black cat-frame glasses. A flake of red lipstick clung to the curve of her upper lip and chalk dust sprinkled the top of her navy blue suit.

She said, “Florine, I know you're going through something very hard. You are being brave about it, but let me know if you need help. Okay?” I was embarrassed, but glad that she was watching out for me. Then she asked me to help Rose Clark with math.

Rose had come up from kindergarten with us. While we'd grown, she stayed about the size of a fourth grader, with fuzzy yellow hair and pale eyes the color of water on sand. She didn't mesh with the world we knew, but she was sweet. Besides, Dottie would have killed anyone who dared hurt Rose. Two things about my friend Dottie. She was bone kind and she was strong.

Learning got harder for Rose as we went up through the grades. Each teacher found help for her, but she'd barely squeaked by sixth grade. This year, if she didn't make it, word was that she would be riding the retard bus to Long Reach.

I told Mrs. Richmond that I would help Rose. So, during math period, Rose and I left the classroom and went into a small, empty room with two side-by-side desks and one high window. I showed Rose what to do, then sat back and watched her dirty, chewed-down fingernails trace invisible numbers from the bottom of one column to the top of the next, where she tried to figure out where to go from there.

“Just like the right column,” I said. “So, one and one and eight make ten, so what goes on the bottom here?” She giggled and guessed, “Nine?” Then she'd say, “Florine. Your name is so pretty. Like a flower.”

“Your name is a flower for sure,” I said. “But that isn't going to help you on the next math test. You got to pay attention. Try it again.” Each forty-minute period would end with me drained and Rose still happy and stupid.

I complained to Dottie. Her being my best friend and me being in the situation I was in would get me some sympathy, I thought. But when I ventured to say that teaching Rose math was a waste of time, Dottie said, “Not everyone gets to have brains in everything. I ain't that bright, either. I'm just smart enough to get Madeline to help me out every night, else I'd be down the hall with you and Rose.”

“She picks her nose and she eats it,” I added for a gross-out factor.

“Maybe she don't get breakfast at home,” Dottie said, and I finally got the message.

The day I started being mean to Rose, I'd had a scene at home with Daddy. He'd sat up until 2:00
A.M
., drinking vodka and making phone calls to Parker. When he stumbled off to his room, I heard him crying. I wanted to go to him, but I knew he'd send me back to bed. Even after his cries turned to snores, I didn't sleep until about 4:00. Both Daddy and I overslept. I woke up at about 6:30, and I flew out of bed and threw on the same clothes I'd taken off the night before.

“Daddy,” I shouted at him, “Daddy, get up.” I heard him grunt and swear as I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I grabbed an apple and ran for the bus stop, only to find I'd missed the bus.

Daddy was upchucking in the bathroom when I got back home. “I missed the bus,” I shouted over his puking.

“Shit,” I heard him say, and he let loose again. Then the toilet flushed and he walked out of the bathroom, wiping his face with a hand towel Grand had embroidered for him and Carlie. I could see the
L
and
C
on the corner closest to me. “Why don't you stay home?” he said.

“You said we needed to get on with it.”

“I ain't in the mood to hear you tell me what I said, Florine.”

“You shouldn't drink and you shouldn't stay up so late,” I said.

“Well, if you're smart enough to tell me what I shouldn't do, don't you think you're smart enough to get yourself up, eat breakfast, make a goddamn sandwich, and catch the bus?”

“You were crying. You kept me awake.”

“Well, excuse me for living here.”

“You don't have to be mad at me.”

“I'm not mad at you.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, I'm goddamn not.”

“Are you giving me a ride or what?”

“Don't talk to me that way. Say to me, ‘Please, Daddy, may I have a ride to school?'”

“PLEASE MAY I HAVE A RIDE TO SCHOOL?”

“Jesus,” he said. He went back into the bathroom and threw up again as I slammed out of the house and stomped up the driveway.

Grand came out of her house and said, “You're late today. You okay, Florine?”

“No,” I shouted. “No, I'm not. I hate Daddy. He's an asshole.”

I walked past her and toward the bus stop; head down, into the sour wind. I picked up the pace as Daddy's truck squealed out of the driveway, but he caught up.

“Get in, Florine,” he said. “I ain't got time to dick around.”

“No,” I said. “I can walk to school.”

“It's three miles up the road. Get in, goddamn it.”

“No.”

He put the emergency brake on, and opened the door, and walked after me. I started to run, but he caught up to me, picked me up, and slung me over his shoulder. I beat at his back with my fists and screamed as loud as I could, but he wasn't having any of it. He opened the passenger side door of the truck and threw me onto the seat. He slammed the door, walked around to his side of the truck, got in, and slammed his door. We both steamed as he drove, and he dropped me off in record time. I climbed out and left the door open so that he'd have to walk around and close it.

When I walked into the classroom, Mrs. Richmond looked at me, then at the clock, then her face changed and I could almost hear her thinking to herself, “Oh, poor Florine. Her mother's either run off or dead. I must be patient.” It would have been better if she'd sent me to the principal's office, but she said, “We just started math. Why don't you go down the hall with Rose?”

So off I went, poor Rose toddling behind me. We sat down at our desks, and Rose snuggled next to me. She smelled like dried pee. I moved my chair away and said, “Let's get started.”

“I like your shirt. It's pretty,” Rose said.

“Same shirt I wore yesterday,” I snapped. “Let's go.”

As usual, she couldn't do her numbers.

“I just showed you how to do that, Rose,” I said, a little too loud, a lot too impatient.

Her smile flickered like a breeze-smacked candle flame. “Forgot,” she said.

“Well, don't forget again,” I said. “I'm going to show you one more time, then I'm going to be quiet until you get it right.”

“All right,” she said. She bent to her task, her little finger moving down, then up, her mouth pursed into a tiny pucker. She took a long time to come up with an answer, but she did, and then she put down her pencil and folded her hands.

“Let me see,” I said. When I saw it was wrong, I rolled my eyes. “Rose, how do you expect me to help you? Do you want me to tell Mrs. Richmond that you can't do this?”

Still a tiny smile, but she shook her head.

“Well, then you have to learn this stuff.”

“I will,” she said.

She tried again, and she got it wrong.

I broke.

“You can't do this,” I said. “You're just too stupid.” Rose's lip quivered and tears spilled out of her eyes.

“I know I'm stupid,” she said. “You don't have to be mad at me. I know you're sad because your mother died.”

“Don't you say that! She did not die!” I yelled, and then I melted onto the floor. “You can't say that,” I sobbed. “No one can say that!”

I scared the hell out of Rose, and she set to crying as hard as me, and neither of us could stop. We watched the ugly masks of each other's faces as tears, snot, and drool ran down our cheeks, into our mouths, dripped onto our clothes.

Why no one heard us, I don't know. No one came running to see what was going on. By and by, shame and sense slunk back into my brain, and I managed to choke out, “I'm sorry, Rose. Don't be scared. I'm sorry,” because she was still crying so hard that she shook. I wiped my face with my hands, got up off the floor, and went to her. I said soft words to her, much as Carlie or Grand had to me when I was young and afraid or hurt.

I finally got her calmed down and cleaned up, but the math lesson was over for the day. We walked side-by-side back to the classroom holding hands, still sniffling a little bit. When Mrs. Richmond saw us, she took us into the hall.

“What happened?” she asked me.

Rose said, “Florine didn't do nothing. I just don't feel good.”

I didn't feel good, either, and I felt worse later that day when Dottie walked up to me on the playground and stood an inch from my face.

“You tell Rose she was stupid?” she asked.

I studied the tops of my shoes. The unfairness of it all crouched solid and square in my mind and I said, “She is stupid. No sense pretending she isn't.”

Dottie said, “Fuck you, Florine,” and walked away, taking my breath with her.