Seeing Things (18 page)

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Authors: Patti Hill

BOOK: Seeing Things
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“Do you miss Ouray? It's so beautiful there.”
Fletcher hugged his long legs to his chest. “You've been there?”
“Every winter. My brother ice climbs. We
all
have to go. My mom wants to be there to tell the ambulance driver ice climbing was
not
her idea.” She laughed. “That's
not
going to work this year. Mom's been working out at the climbing gym. She learned how to belay for my stupid brother. She doesn't trust anyone else to keep him from falling. I think she's crazy.”
“Next time you go to Ouray, let Fletcher know you're coming. You must stop by. I make the best pie in town.”
Fletcher spoke like I'd twirled my underwear over my head. “Grandma, she hardly knows you.”
“It's different in the mountains,” Mi Sun said. “There you're friends with
everybody.
People look you in the eye. It's so
not
Denver.”
“So, you come to Ouray every winter?”
“Three or four times. We
love
the hot springs, and we stay at a place with a vapor cave. It feels so good in there after standing in the snow all day.”
“You come that often? No kidding? Is there room in your car for Fletcher? It's been forever since he visited.”
Mi Sun shook a finger at Fletcher. “You don't visit your grandma?”
“I want to. It's . . . complicated.”
“You
have
to come with us,” she said. “It's
deadly
boring to watch Ty climb. We could go to the hot springs pool and the skating rink. You'd love it.”
“Yeah . . . well . . . maybe.”
Fletcher and Mi Sun walked ahead of me. Bee stayed at Fletcher's knee, looking up at him for approval and a liver treat, but Fletcher was preoccupied. Huck walked with his hand on Bee's back. I toddled behind, concentrating on the uneven path and praying that the Good Father would use Mi Sun to bless Fletcher. Who among us hasn't benefited from the approval of someone like her? For me, it was Darrel Sichel. That boy had dimples as deep as canyons. He carried my books home one day. I floated on air and treated Evelyn kindly for a month afterward. Grace comes to us in the most unexpected ways.
Back at the truck, Mi Sun knelt face-to-face with Bee and massaged her shoulders. Huck leaned against the truck, studying the scene like he expected a genie to appear.
“What a well-behaved dog,” she said. “I can't take Tootsie anywhere. He nearly pulls my arm off.”
Breathless from the trek across the park, I said, “Fletcher helped train Bee. You should have him work with Tootsie.”
As we drove away, I looked back to see Huck shinnying up a tree.
FFLETCHER DROVE WITH HIS elbow resting on the window. “Maybe we should go to the park tomorrow.”
“You get those hands back to ten and two and we'll discuss it.”
He sat up, gripped the steering wheel. He flashed the turn signal, slowed, and took the turn like a champ. “Thanks, Grandma.”
My ankle pressed against the inside of the boot. Ice. I needed ice.
“Let's try out Bee's new booties when we get home.” That's what I said, but what tickled my brain was this: If Bee could feel Huck's touch, could I?
Chapter 18
Bee slunk under the dining room table. Her head thudded against an oaken post, but she snaked deeper into the tangle of table and chair legs. She lay there, panting, probably believing herself invisible. Not the smartest of the litter, but she sure had a hard head. Like owner, like dog?
Suzanne followed Bee into the dining room, moving silently in her stocking feet. “What is that dog doing in the house? Get it out of here now.”
The intensity of Suzanne's anger surprised me. I fumbled over my words. “I bought her booties. They have rubber soles. They're meant for hiking, but she won't scratch the floors. I wanted to . . .”
Express the full extent of his love.
It had taken Fletcher and me nearly an hour to fit Bee with the booties, and then she'd spent the next half hour chewing at the Velcro fasteners. I figured they'd last another five minutes, tops. “I only wanted to protect your floors.”
Suzanne rubbed her temples and blew out hard breaths. “I had an especially difficult day. Nothing went as planned. I don't need this kind of aggravation.” She bent to look under the table. Each word punched the air. “She's drooling all over my Kelmscott rug!” Suzanne pulled out a chair and reached for Bee. “We had an agreement, Birdie. The dog stays out of the living area.”
“Let me get her,” I said, reaching from the walker for a chair. “She's frightened.”
Suzanne ignored me. “Lupe, call the number I left in the desk drawer.”
Lupe's slippers shuffled toward the back door. “I'm off the clock.”
Fletcher bounded down the stairs until I pointed to Suzanne under the table. He took the final steps one at a time. “Hey, what's going on?” he asked evenly.
I started to answer, but Suzanne jerked on Bee's collar with each word of her command. “Get out, you miserable piece of flea-bitten hide.” True to form, Bee made like a statue. Suzanne persisted, yanking Bee's collar with surprising force. My mouth went dry and my hands trembled. I pushed the walker aside to kneel beside Suzanne and felt my way past her to Bee. I caught a glimpse of Fletcher's feet behind us.
“That's enough,” I said to Suzanne as if talking someone off the ledge. “Let me handle this.”
Suzanne ignored me, pulling Bee millimeter by millimeter across the rug.
Fletcher shouted, “Leave her alone, Suzanne.”
I startled and hit my head on the table. Bee growled deep in her throat.
Uh-oh.
“Why you—!” Suzanne swung her arm to strike Bee, but Fletcher grabbed Suzanne around the waist and pulled her from under the table. He held her as she swore, all the while kicking and swinging her fists.
Bee no longer considered the dining room a safe place, so she trotted toward the bedroom, pausing to shake a booted foot every step or so. Fletcher released Suzanne the second Bee crossed the threshold into my room. She turned on Fletcher, her fists thudding against his chest. Fletcher collapsed into a ball on the floor.
She screamed at him, “Never. Touch. Me. Do you hear me?” Struggling to pull myself up with the walker, I heard a smack of flesh. “Answer me, you little—”
I pushed my walker toward her, missing my mark by a wide mile. Still, it skidded across Suzanne's beloved hardwood floors with enough screeching and clanking to distract her. “That's enough! Get away from him.” I reached for Fletcher. Under his T-shirt, he trembled. “Fletcher, go on upstairs—”
“You crossed the line, big time.” Suzanne spoke to Fletcher as if spitting poison. “Don't expect your granny to save you. You're out of here. Which will it be? Parading in the hot sun of Virginia or shivering in the wilds of Alaska?”
Fletcher's fists shook at his side. “Fine!” he yelled into her face. “The farther the better.” He took the stairs three at a time. “I hate this place!” His door slammed.
Suzanne stood with her arms crossed and her head down. Without the walker, I was anchored in place. “I don't know what to say. I've never seen a child treated—”
Suzanne's head swung up. “No, but you knew what your husband did to Andrew.”
“What are you talking about? Chuck loved Andy. There wasn't a kinder, gentler man on the planet.”
“Then why did Andrew run away?”
“Your days of bullying Fletcher are over,” I said, feeling small and ineffectual and hating myself for it.
She returned the chair to its place at the table and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I'd ask Andrew about the kindness of his father, if you have any doubts.” And she walked toward the stairs without so much as stirring the air.
Back in the bedroom, I flipped through the pages of my Bible until I came to the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. I skimmed the story under a magnifying glass, looking for the very moment Judas left the Upper Room to betray the Lord. Once I discovered Jesus had washed Judas's feet long before Judas rose to betray him, I closed the pages to curl around Bee on the bed.
Lord, this isn't working. I cannot love that woman to the full extent of anything, not now. I'd just as soon drop her through a hole in a roof. No more pussyfooting around. Unless you want me to wash her feet with lye, you've got some work to do. My heart's empty.
WHEN ANDY AND SUZANNE left for the evening, I scooted up the stairs on my hind end and sat on the floor at Fletcher's closed door. I tapped lightly. “Fletcher? Honey? Are you okay?”
Silence.
I knocked harder, spoke louder. “Are you all right in there?” I jiggled the doorknob.
“I'm okay, Grandma.”
“Open the door, Fletcher. Did she hurt you?”
“I'd rather not, not now.”
I spoke through the crack of the door. “You did the right thing. I'm so proud of you. You protected the innocent. You kept your cool. You treated Suzanne respectfully.” I tapped on the door again. “Did you hear all that?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Listen, Grandma, I have a lot to do tonight.”
I rested my forehead against the door.
Oh, Lord, what have I done? The boy is so dear, and I've mucked things up for him something awful. Bless him in a big way in spite of me, won't you? I lower him into your presence.
I rubbed my hands, feeling the burn of the rope.
Oh, Savior, accomplish your good will for him.
WHEN I HEARD EMORY'S voice on the other end of the line, I swallowed hard to loosen my throat. I spewed the story about Fletcher and Suzanne and idiotic ol' me.
“Remember what Jesus said about brushing the dust from your feet?” he said.
“I can't do that. Who would be here for Fletcher? What a dope I've been! As if I could serve this family. They don't even wash their own underwear.”
“Andy's the one to talk to.”
Yes, I had to talk to Andy about Suzanne and Fletcher, but the conversation that scared me more was talking to Andy about Chuck. The months leading up to Andy's “adventure,” as Chuck and I referred to his running away, had been tough. I read books about personality disorders, thinking a flood of testosterone had flipped a switch in his brain. Overnight he'd gone from being a pleasant, compliant boy to surly and cantankerous. Elsa Nagel insisted I leave laxatives in his bathroom, but that was back when an enema solved all our problems. I'd had my suspicions that something more than cross words had been exchanged between Chuck and Andy up on the meadow, but, well, I'd never asked. And now I regretted my silence.
“Andy's never home to talk. And when he is, he's working on reports in front of the TV. And Suzanne is never out of sight.”
“Can you catch him before he goes to work?”
I'd already ordered the rhubarb and strawberries. Breakfast pie had worked once.
Emory said, “If you won't come home, let me get Bee. She can dig and drool to her heart's content at my house.”
“Too many coyotes around your place.”
“Josie will watch her while I'm at work.”
I needed Bee. She kept me warm at night and snored to cover the traffic sounds. “She's doing just fine outside. Fletcher's taking her for walks. She's good for him. Her approval means more to him than mine.”
“Don't underestimate yourself, Birdie. He's a lucky young man to have someone like you on his side.”
A brooding presence settled on the house in the days that followed. We moved around each other as if we walked on tightropes—one false move meant a headlong fall. No one wanted to know what waited for us on the ground. I no longer dreamed of my quiet cabin. For the rest of my stay, I promised myself to never leave Suzanne and Fletcher alone together, which wasn't so hard. I stopped resenting the time she and Andy stayed away and focused my attention fully on Fletcher. I made him breakfast sandwiches every morning and packed a lunch that I slipped into his book bag without Andy knowing.

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